#13: "a frenzied explosion of dazzling WTFness"
Welcome to issue #13 of THIS NEWSLETTER CANNOT SAVE YOU, in which we momentarily divert your attention, dangling baubles and trinkets with mysterious properties to tempt you, offering vague promises of minor epiphanies to come. What's the worst that could happen?
Highlights from Scottoworld
Behold the hand-assembled mechanical keyboard I was gifted by friends recently that glows in colors matching the cover of BATTLE OF THE LINGUIST MAGES, to commemorate the book's release. Even the USB cable matches the cover. Crucially a spare set of interrobang keys was provided to rotate in for future use. The gift came with instructions to use this keyboard to write the next book. However I have already turned in the next book, so it will get its first proper use (aside from goofing off on the internet) on the next next book.
I spoke on a virtual author panel presented by the North Seattle College Literary Guild along with poet Laura Da’ and the video is up, if you'd like to hear us dig into the art and craft of writing for an hour or so. I think it was a pretty great conversation.
Scottovision
I managed to plummet down a nice little rabbit hole while I was getting started on this issue, and I thought I'd enter my paper trail into the permanent record as a public service.
I finally got a chance to sit down and watch a couple of longer pieces from the return of InfoChammel, a surreal web series that parodies infomercials, public access TV, early cable channels, and the like; this Verge article does a great job of encapsulating the project as of 2016, and I'm glad it's back in action. The first piece I watched was a block of short promos from the original run, called "IC-LIVE_PROMOPROTOPACK_40_MIN_LOOP" (2021). You don't need to watch all forty minutes; watch it until either you get the joke or you decide you don't get the joke, and if you do get the joke, keep watching until the joke isn't particularly funny anymore, then - crucially - keep watching some more until the joke's funny again except actually a bit funnier now because you've suffered a little for it; or don't do any of that, I'm not the boss of you.
The second piece I watched was "INFO LIVE NOW SATURDAY SPECIAL" (2022), a recording of a recent InfoChammel livestream hosted by Davy Force, a director and animator who is also InfoChammel's "CEO" according to official show lore. Watching the live presentation is challenging even if you do get the joke, although it took me half an hour to reach that conclusion for myself. But one of the guests was director and animator Nick DenBoer, aka Smearballs, and I hung around long enough to catch a few of DenBoer's animation samples go by.
The sample that got my attention was a short looped animation called "Flophouse" (2022), which sits squarely in the zone of wildly surreal & borderline obscene 3D animations that has gained traction over the years. The deadpan description of this particular piece: "Not a cell phone in sight. Just a bunch of people living in the moment."
Somehow I connected the dots and realized I'd seen some of DenBoer's work before. He and Davy Force co-directed/co-wrote a demented short film called "The Chickening" (2016) which screened at Sundance and TIFF. It's a "remix" parody of Kubrick's "The Shining," although it's not really shooting for laughs exactly. I've never seen "The Shining," so for me, "The Chickening" exists in a pure ideatic realm beyond parody, afloat on a serene cloud of pristine internal logic, emanating bemused self-justification for the duration of its runtime. No really.
More recently, DenBoer directed, edited, and co-animated (with Davy Force) the excellent music video for the track "Pomegranate" (2020) by deadmau5 & the Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo). Here DenBoer's rowdy sensibility has been skillfully polished into a delightful candy-coated sheen to match the chill, feel-good vibe of the song. It's smooth summertime surrealism tailored for the much larger audience that deadmau5 and Pharrell attract.
Turns out DenBoer has a thriving little consultancy, frequently collaborating with Wieden+Kennedy in the commercial world. For instance, DenBoer is the guy responsible for the Virtual Influencer Colonel Sanders campaign. I digress.
deadmau5 is one of the most popular electronic musicians in the industry, and yet, somehow I managed to make it this far in life without seeing any of his music videos except "Pomegranate." This seemed like an egregious oversight on my part, especially because I did know his live shows are visually spectacular - see for yourself in this fanvid from a concert in Chicago in Feb 2020 (watch in 4k if you can!), out on tour with the Cube V3 stage set. This behind the scenes vid from 2019 of Cube V3 in rehearsal is mind-boggling. Clearly the correct thing to do at that point was binge watch all of deadmau5's music videos. (He's got around 10 or so.)
That eventually led me to the animated music video for "Telemiscommunications" (2013), an "ambient electropop" track by deadmau5 & Imogen Heap. The gorgeous video - lonely and bittersweet and then somehow a little hopeful - was assembled by selecting twenty winners in an online competition to animate sequences of the video in twenty different styles that clash and interlock and perfectly capture the frustration of the moments being depicted. An unexpectedly emotional culmination to this surprise side quest, and I'm pleased about it.
Exit Music
Sending you out with an upbeat pair of music videos by Lucius, who have a new album arriving in April. The tracks are called "Heartbursts" and "Dance Around It" - two very different styles of movement video, as it were, with Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow making guest appearances on the latter.
Here is the YouTube playlist featuring all the recommendations from this issue. If you enjoy this newsletter, pass it on to a friend perhaps; the archives are online if your friend needs more convincing than a single issue can provide.
Until next time, I remain your friendly correspondent, thinking of you,
Scotto