Invader Tim

It’s ok. I do that from time to time. No one ever said that was against the rules of my super-villainy. If you can get me to say my name backwards, I return to my own dimension, by the way.

About those billboards…maybe a wild goose chase? Yeah. Just saying. I haven’t seen any up yet. I think someone is dragging their ass in billboard makin’ land.

They still will be up, but just not yet. So I hope the thirsty masses won’t hate me too much for their combing the state-line area for yet-to-exist billboards. I’ll let you know when I actually see one. Then you find the rest, and the free drink quest is on…

It’ll all be worth it. Wait till you get your mitts on a that free drink! Wait…Mit…that’s my name backwards…oh hell. See you later…later…later…echo…echo…echo…zap!

Chek it…
Zoom in on Rockford, IL.
vlogmap.org
Hey, look. I’m waving at you and shit.

This started as a reply to SSG’s comment on the post about the VODcast follwoign closely in the footsteps of an older progect I intended, and in fact started working on: The Deep End
I certainly never intended to redux the Deep End. And I was not consciously aware off it. And even when you pointed it out in the previous post, my automatic response was "nu uh." But you are right; there is a similar spirit involved. The output itself is going to be different, but I guess, so am I. It isn't so much about my deliberate changing the product, but just reflexive of my evolution, and I guess what's possible.

After I posted the initial thing, I checkd some of it out myself. A couple things felt like sliding into a warm blanket on a fall day, curling up on the couch, and watching a favorite show on DVD that had been long since canceled by the network dunder heads. And there were some—well “surprises” isn’t a truly appropriate word in that I generated the content. That would be hard, like sneaking up to yourself in the mirror and scaring yourself—but I certainly forgot things.

Looking through the script of Readers, a production that I was doing in about May of 2001, I made a Taliban joke (toward the end of the script). I didn’t know, or I guess remember, that anybody (much less me) knew about them then. Obviously, that would change 4 months later.

I also noticed that one of the pages I found most entertaining, was the Help Page. That was either a good example of trying to pack everything with entertainment, or a good example of how un-entertaining the rest of the site was. Heh

I apologized for making people upgrade to QuickTime 5. And I had OS X back then, but didn’t use it much. I’m now on a machine that can’t even run OS 9 (not natively, and I nuked my classic by hacking). What’s more, I’m now apologizing for making people upgrade to QuickTime 7. Times may change, but standards must remain. Heh

Little know fact, the Terrific Two was never supposed to be a stand alone production. It was supposed to be two different scenes in a fast paced skit episode(a continuing series of whip-fast, Dada stuff called “Off the Deep End”). If you look at it, that explains a lot.

I still think it’s cool that I got April March to agree to let me use her music. I dig her shit, and she was one of the animators of the Ren and Stimpy Show. Like I said on the site, that’s as close I get to hanging with the cool kids.

The Obscure-o-matt™ rocked much face. It was also a fun way to riff on myself for making jokes about Wittgenstein and stuff. A note to those visiting the page…the audio snippets are only placeholders.

And then there is the “what was I thinking” part of the thing. My main fear now is feeding the beast; i.e., making sure I have enough bandwidth and things. Back then, that was an impossible task. Now, it’s do-able with difficulty. Hell, back then I didn’t even have money for the fancy kind off Ramen Noodels, much less a hosting bill that was eleventy-kajillion dollars a month. Man, did I have a Studebaker on my hands or what?

I also had the bad idea of dragging out some ooooold stuff. Like form High school. I might still. It’s scary that, other than a few more pounds, I have changed so little. It’s also scary how we thought the short shorts on men were really funny. You’ll see what I mean soon.

So, want to see a rare behind the scenes glimpse of something I did a loooong time ago?

I actually planned to post video on the web of skits and us being silly back before video blogging or VODcasting was a blip on the pop culture radar.

Same old story: didn’t have the money to get the server space a-going. Now, luckily it’s cheaper.

I miss those old days. There is even a smattering of Video here and there.

So this was a prototype site, and lots of dead links and errors about, but please explore. I may reuse some elements! Like this: I love the obscure-o-matt.



So, without further ado, I give you The Deep End

Ok, so there have been victories. I embedded the RSS feed necessary to make the VODcast so you tweaked little donkeys can subscribe to it right into the .html page.
I’ve had good luck exploring compression and determining format.
And I’ve been researching a lot out there, and getting good info.

The one thing that floored me is this: I was listening to a Podcast interview with the rocketboom creator and he said that at the peak their hosting plan skyrocketed to $5,000 bucks per month.
OUCH!

Here’s why this might still be ok: I don’t put out a show everyday, and although I hope that many people will watch the progrum, I know it will take a while to get to that level of popularity, or I may never reach it. Who knows?

I guess in addition to what the progrum will be about, and how to implement it, I need to start looking at making a buck or two.

The word of the day is: “sustainability.”

NO, NO, it’s not the end as in canceled or anything. That would make it worse than Turn On.

Hell The Progrum hasn’t even started yet. I’m talking about a sneak peak at the closing graphic!



Ahh, it makes me look silly, and it evokes a memory of shitty cartoons that I liked despite their shittyness.

Nostalgia.

I just made a billboard for Midway Village’s WWII Days. If you’ve never gone, it is cool. They have honest to goodness tanks and stuff blowing up everywhere!

Oh, yeah, and honor the veterans…but, you get to honor them by watching honest to goodness tanks and stuff blowing up everywhere!

And no one gets hurt. I’ll be there.

So, yeah, about the big sign thing. I think one location will be at Alpine and Broadway. Don’t know the rest, but I’ll let you know…or wait no. The first person to identify the locations, I’ll buy a beer or gin and tonic, or whatever (if you’re of age, something else like a smoothie if you’re not) for you the next time we’re out. And don’t worry; it won’t be like I’ll duck you. We can even make arrangements to meet at a watering hole. But a cool one; I got a rep to protect.

Podcasting was pretty new when I jumped on; VODcasting is really new. I find myself having to add yet another new fangled high tech term to Word’s spell-check.
As new as it is, I’m calling on a lot of skills I’ve used forever.
-I interviewed Maureen, and that went well, but long. Maureen is a prefect mix of pretty, smart, and yet really damn silly. How could that not go long? I’m going to have to split it up into chunks. File Size is going to be a tremendous hurdle.
-I’m still messing with the format (I mean what the show’s contents will be, not what file format), and looking ahead to segments. For instance, I’ve had SSG film the behind the scenes of a photo shoot that I just did on Sat.
-I came up with an opening segment that will involve Greg…and knitting, strangely enough. I originally wanted just to jump into the Maureen footage, but I think I want most shows to have a couple segments.
-SSG is making some new intro music, too.
-And, I’m recruiting correspondents. I don’t want this to be a one-man-show. I’ve already got a pretty good stable lined up, but if yer interested in being on the internet TV, well sign up. The other correspondents don’t know it yet, but they will be called the Chitlins.

Now, onto the stuff I’m new at…like programming XML so that people can subscribe right from itunes. Because if they couldn’t, then it would be a Vlog, or Video Bloggin instead of a VODcast, and come on, that would just be lame.

The good news is everything is ready to role soon. And you can go check out the intro at: http://www.timstotz.com/vodcast/

To address the question why? I’m doing it all to impress Amanda Congdon. (Better than shooting a president). And how the hell do you not have a crush on Amanda? Come on. That’s just adorable. Plus a VODcast is cheaper than getting a network show running like I’d need to do to impress Tina Fey.

Well, that’s it for now. Hope you enjoy the progrum.

So, yeah, here it is...a VODcast. it's like podcasting but with video. still workign on the first one, and getting the subscription glavins working.

You can view the intro now, but you'll need Quicktime7. it's free and fun for the whole family (quicktime, not the Vodcast. VODcast = NC17). If you don't have it, you can get it from a link on my site.

This is a sneaky peaky. It's sooooo not finished. Feedback appreciated. I myself think the retro TV Dinnner is the Bee's Knees.

http://www.timstotz.com/vodcast/

The next thing.

‘Cause that other thing was so 15 minutes ago.
Crank it, señiors. This here’s the joint.

Pablo asked me to do it. It was for the airport. I just wish he’d help me get the fucker back on now. My hand and I have had some good times together. You know what I’m talking about.

Thanks for crashing my shit!
And other MySpace complaints from TV’s Tim.

The first shitty thing to mention about MySpace is the weird media files some of you put on your page. Most of these things are the 1996 equivalent of animated gifs of dripping skulls, dancing jesus, various shit on fire, and intricately dancing envelops that enticed visitors to email you. Ok, a lot of this stuff is lame, and there is no way I’d ever think, ‘Gee, I need some new music; I could go to iTunes, or something like that, but no. That one person’s MySpace profile has a random piece of media on it. I’ll go there.” But it gets worse. A lot of you have media files that crash people’s browsers…so we can’t see that profile you worked on at all. If you’re a band, or you make movies, I can see you putting that stuff on there to pimp yourself, but even then…how about providing a link, not slapping it right on the page. And if I get the hankerin’ for doing a puzzle, or doodlin’, you’re probably not going to be my first stop either. Thank you for providing that public service though. Yeah. And even if your media plug ins don’t crash me, I may not want to stick around and read about you, if you’re forcing me to listen to “We Built This City on Rock and Roll” or any other piece of music that hits you like the pain threshold of being trapped in a steam room with an overly flatulent Dr. Laura and Judge Judy, and you’ve got temporary tattoos of upside down crosses that you can’t remove and a mommy complex (so you want them to approve of you despite your temporary, freakish appearance), and you are in fact dead and your corpse is infested with a rare species of burrowing monkey who all excrete sweat made of bees, and who are staunch monkey republicans who sniff monkey markers made of pure Sunday school.

Stuff is cool. So it gotsta be true that lots of stuff must be like a ninja-driven laser hovercraft made out of orgasm-inducing pizza. So you pack it on: 5 surveys, what is your pornographic stage name, candy type, superhero, surgical instrument, Judd family member, Simpson character, what your acronym of your name stands for, and a huge treaties of why you like cats. And your web page is no longer rectangle shaped. And you provide yet one more bastion for finding celebrity pictures. And riddle me this: How come it is that people who start their profiles out with the phrase, “I don’t like writing about my self,” or “I’m hard to define to sum up here,” or, “nobody wants to know about me” wind up writing pages and pages of blather. I’m not reading all of that. Only people wanting to stalk you do. Not that there are any on MySpace. Nope.

You overly-sentimental, over sharey-types, need to chill a bit. Go step away from the computer and take a walk; I think drinking might be real good too. That might be enough head clearing to help you come to the conclusion that perhaps in front of the millions of people (who don’t care about you, btw) on here is not the place to air your most private issues. And maybe you should make a necklace out of macaroni, or make little roses out of tissue paper and straws instead of compose verse…blank or non. There are too many adults spewing the angst-ridden teen type poetry up in the hizzy. And teens too. Instead of being proud you rhymed “love” with “above” try to get some penis up in your business.

Putting gas in your car is not the same as being a mechanic. So, just because you type a few pithy phrases into a form on MySpace, doesn’t make you a web designer, nor you MySpace profile a web page. Stop calling it that or people will think you were visited by sweet lady syphilis and the wacky insanity she brings.

So I get the secret code thing where, you make your text almost the same color as your background…invisible…but, if you select it, then you can read it! Yeah, I could do that. But am I? Well, the few times when I have selected the text, and it revealed such insightful nuggets as the fact you are fun loving, and easy going, I feel like the kid in Christmas Story who decodes the secret message to find out it’s about drinking Ovaltine. If you’re site rocked my face, or even offered to touch my genitals, it would be different. But your invisible text is a tree falling in the forest, Prancibald.

I want to know what you’re doing…when you’re doing something. That having been said, bored MySpace stuff can be some of the best. It gets really silly, and Dada, and I love that. But if you’re just reporting how bored you are…over and over again, and how you’re probably going to go get coffee, well, just stop that. How do you not know I don’t care? Next time you post a bulletin, it better be about you using sex-lasers to defeat a robot made of colostomy bags that was slamming your fool head in a car door.

Snopes.com. Great site. It debunks urban legends. So, next time you get an email asking you to stop people from stuffing kitties in a jar, or attributing peace plans to Robin Williams, or think that corpse heads are going to come out of your mirror, visit that site. Verify the random shit you’re spreading around the Internet. It’s not just annoying; it’s kind of socially irresponsible. It scare people and gets them riled for no reason. There are plenty of real reasons to be scared and riled. If you can’t be troubled to go to that site, then here’s a quick few pointers for you:
-If a bulletin says, “you can’t fault that logic” it’s code for “this logic is deeply flawed.”
-If a bulletin is a petition that admonished you by saying that “if you don’t sign this you have no heart” that is code for “we just made a fake petition that sounds evil, and we are going to see how many gullible, outraged people we can evilly sucker into signing it.” BTW: say the petition was real, do you think forwarding it around the net in this manner would help?
And why is it always a businessman from Texas who is what people use to verify these claims? I lived in Texas. You can’t trust the business people from there any more than anywhere else. And, as a side note you gullible freaks, don’t get in the car no matter how much candy the stranger whose breath smells like Walter Matheu’s scrotal sweat promises you.

You should consider getting a new religion if yours is so lame, obliviously fake, deeply flawed, and hated by the masses that you feel that you have to trick people into reading a bulletin about it by putting a fake headline in it about sex, or non-sucky religious-themed things. I can’t speak to the other fake, lame religions in the world, but the bible doesn’t have a passage that goes, “Thou shalt try to trick people into being down with jesus by making them think they’re going to read something sexy, and not some dry, guilty crap that reads like legal jargon written by syphilis-ridden, sun stroked nomads who had Down’s syndrome.” If you’re proud of your religion and have something to say about it, do so…in the headline, so people who want to avoid that stuff can.

What’s in a name? Sometimes 48 syllables, and weird characters. Or sometimes, it’s a crazy phrase…like, ‘the world of darkness is my true love’s vulva and her crimson exsanguinations are the tears of the zeitgeist of dream dolphins today.” That’s not a name. It’s not entertaining. It makes me think you’re not allowed to eat with a fork most likely.

Russian mail order brides. No.

Hey, you hypocrites out there telling the nice guys and gals you like them, just not, you know, like them. Stop that. It’s pandering and disingenuous. It’s a small, consolation too. “Yeah, my non-nice buddy may be getting his junk dusted, but, by golly, I got a post on MySpace that someone copied that probably refers to me in a group of other nice men. Neat.” So unless you “salute” the nice ladies and gentlemens with guilt-free oral sex, you should be chased around by the sodomy-bot 3000 with the optional barbed wire gonorrhea sprayer for trying to pull that crap. And, nice people take a stand. Tell these self-esteem poor, emotional vampires to fuck off and stick their heads in Ron Jeremy’s ass while he’s on fire in a hippo’s ass who’s also on fire. If they start talking about their exes, just walk away. I’m not saying it’s not cool to be there for your real friends, but don’t let yourself get used. As soon as the bad, cry-on-the-shoulder times are over, you are not going to be on speed dial. These lovers of nice people will abandon you.

Ok, take it all with a grain of salt, and not too seriously. Happy myspacing, freaks.

Disclaimer: If you’re not into Joss Whedon stuff, you don’t care about this.

So, my friend Matt calls me up, and says, hey TV’s Tim Stotz, hold on a sec…stay on the line.
So I do.
Then this guy says, “Hey, where are you?”
I admit Rockford.
He, asks why I’m not there, but I recognize his voice by then, and it’s none other than Lorne.

Well, that is to say, actually Andy Hallet.

But, Andy plays Lorne, see:

So, he asks why I’m not there and I say, “Where, Pylea?” which is where his demony character is from in the show Angel. He laughs, and I tell him I dig his work, and tell him to drink a sea breeze for me.
Yeah, remember the disclaimer at the top of this entry? If you didn’t follow it, you don‘t care about this, but if you’re a fan of this stuff, you can imagine how jazzed and surreal this was.
Don’t let appearances fool you by the way; Lorne’s a good demon. I’m not courtin’ Satan or nothing. He's this lounge singing, drinking, partying, bawdy guy who rocks, and is nothing but class.
The kind of uncool thing is I was working and had my head phones on, and missed Matt’s earlier call…he was going to do the hand the phone off thing to me again, but this time It was to talk to Harmony…who is evil.

But, she’s kind of inept, and most of the time looks like this (she only goes into vampface on special occasions).

And truth be told, she’s really Mercedes McNab, and quite nice from what Matt says, not a blood sucking evil vampire at all. It’s probably good I missed the call, because I just would have awkwardly hit on her or something most likely.
BTW: Matt volunteered at Wizard World in Chicago, where Andy and Mercedes were signing autographs, I should probably mention. He wasn’t stalking these poor people. Hell, they should be so lucky. I’m sure at the next Hollywood type party, they’ll be all, “Hey did you invite that Matt guy?”
“Shit. Don’t tell me…I thought you did.”
“Nope. Oh well, pass the hoarse tranquilizers.”

Another disclaimer: this next bit may border on TMI.

Matt’s call when he was with Mercedes came relatively early in the morning.
As a single guy, who just woke up, and is often sexually frustrated, and lives by himself, it would not have been out of the question for me to have had my special “tim time.” You know what I mean.
If I would have answered the phone during that sacred time, and Mercedes McNabb was on the other end, that would have blown my mind.
“Hey, uh, Mercedes. Wow. What a coincidence. I was juuuuuuuuust thinking about you.”

That’s right, sports fans! There’s an art opening today at the Rockford Airport at 6 post meridian (that’s PM for those keeping score at home).
Free food and booze, and you get to see one of my giant lady pictures again.
Yessiree-bob, take it from TV’s Tim Stotz, art and airplanes go together like socks and sandals…no wait the opposite of that…which is not at all. So, art + airplane = good. We clear? And while I got you here…
Yeah, you sock and sandal wearers know to quit that right? I mean, shit or get off the pot: if it’s hot, do the sandals; if it’s cold, wear a shoe. Did that help? We feel better now? All right, let’s hug. Good Talk.