Dinosaur Jr. tomorrow night.

Original lineup. Ears will bleed.

Can't wait.

The Cross (as done by Prince)

I'm getting closer to finally finishing Witchcraft 13 in it's DTV market form. I don't really know what's going to happen to it, but I guess it will be out there in one form or another - possibly even with commentary and behind-the-scenes. It seems like a lifetime ago that we were in production on it...but it hasn't even been a year yet. Crazy.

Closet Space is trucking along - we shot some test footage for the tentacles over the weekend. Test footage...tentacles...does that make it "test-tacle" footage? These are the questions that haunt us.

Anyway, the digital FX guy is working on that stuff for us right now, so we can see what he can do with it. The practical FX guy is also doing some tests and designs.

Started doing the CS shooting schedule last night - its another motherf&%ker, but we only have 3 locations. If we can hit things efficiently, I think we'll have no problem shooting this one out.

But then again, I said that last time, didn't I?

In totally unrelated news, I experienced the worst pain I've had to endure in a while at the doctors office today. I will leave you with this: stop using q-tips to clean out your ears immediately. Trust me.

Manic Compression

I'm spending this weekend in a state of quasi-relaxation to allow my brain and body to catch up to one another after the madness of the last few weeks. Actually, it's been longer than that...this is the first pure down-time that I've had since my honeymoon late last year. But, as is par for the course for me, I'm not fully immersed in laurel-resting. To wit:

After we returned from the mini-tour with Jonah, I dove right back in to Closet Space mode - getting the actors ready to rehearse, securing some locations and materials, getting the shoot dates together, and most importantly finding a digital and practical FX supervisor. I believe that I've found both, and they seem to be on the same page creatively, which of course, is a huge plus. They both are also very enthusiastic about the project - another huge plus. The final plus is that neither of them are flinching about any of the really brutal, gory, rough stuff that I want to do in this movie. We all seem to be sick in the same way, which is great. Now we can begin the design and life-casting process.

We are doing some more location work tomorrow, and then I'm going to start storyboarding and character designs this week. Our go date is May 20, and we are shooting throughout June. I guess I'd better rest while I can.

And by "rest", of course I'm implying that I'm going to see a midnight screening of Cannibal Holocaust tonight. What better way for the House to unwind than to watch an infamous exploitation movie featuring bludgeoning, animal cruelty, rape, genital mutilation, and (of course) cannibals? I tremble in anticipation. Of course, I've seen the movie dozens of times already, but I can't wait to see it on the big screen with a crowd. Should be a blast.

I'm not really here...

Wow. This week(end) has been surreal.

I've been the unofficial tour manager/bass player for Jonah Matranga these last few days on a small Texas run of shows. Jonah came in on Tuesday night, and we had dinner, hung out a little and had a short practice with the other two members of his band to be. Wednesday Jonah and I got to hang out and talk a lot about various things (some of which might prove to be exciting projects for the future). Wednesday night was the show at the Proletariat. Radio Pioneer, You In Series, and Jenny Westbury opened the show, and they were all really, really good. Jonah dedicated "A-L-L-Y-S-O-N" to my wife Melanie (who became his unofficial merch woman), which was sweet.

Thursday night we played at The Yellow House in Denton. The "venue" was punk-rock/d.i.y. to the extreme, but it ended up being a pretty fun show, with Jonah jumping up on couches and furniture while singing. Right afterward, we got on the road to get to Austin in time for our 9 AM SXSW showcase load-in. Domingo was a driving machine, and we made it to Austin in time to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep.

Friday was a madhouse - there were 10 bands showcasing on each of the Emo's stages, and it was total anarchy at times - but in a good way. During the day, I got to catch pieces of sets by Head Automatica, You In Series, Fear Before The March Of Flames, Fall Of Troy, and the reunited Lifetime (who were incendiary).

Before I knew it it was time for us to play, and I quickly went from being pretty nervous to having the time of my life. Jonah did a couple of solo acoustic songs while we set up behind him, and then we all launched into "Lukewarm" - but not before Jonah plugged Witchcraft 13 (thanks for that, by the way). The crowd (which was probably the largest that I've ever played in front of) went crazy over the loud rock. When we closed out the set with the Far classic "Bury White" it all went to a whole other level entirely. I was screaming the song along with guys in the crowd who were going positively batshit over the whole thing. I forget how much of a following that Jonah has until stuff like that goes down. It was a phenomenal experience, to say the least. Afterwards, I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening in Austin eating and walking around the 6th St. St. Paddy's day/SXSW nuttiness, all the while coming down from that sizable high.

This morning the crew all woke up and headed home to get Jonah on his flight. Before we left Austin, we stopped in to Whole Foods for breakfast, and we ran into a couple of Jonah's friends from NYC. They told me that they absolutely loved my playing during the show and the fact that I was getting nuts and singing along the whole time. I told them thanks, and that it meant a lot to me...seeing as how Jonah is a huge musical idol of mine. Their remarks really made me feel nice and complete, and it was a neat post-script to this wonderfully surreal experience for me.

Thanks to Dwayne and Rudy from Radio Pioneer for being a kick-ass guitarist and drummer, and helping me with this crazy idea. Thanks also to You In Series and Fear Before The March Of Flames for letting us all use your stuff. And most of all, thanks to Jonah for being not only an inspiration, but a great friend as well.

This Is The Part

I played onstage with one of my rock idols last night. It was bad ass.

The crowd was practically screaming all the songs, especially the Far stuff. Or maybe it was me screaming them on stage.

More to come once we finish up our Texas run of shows on Saturday.

Could this be the impending release of Witchcraft 13?

If you look at the description, it is that of Witchcraft XII, but the box art makes it look like the included movie is Witchcraft 13.

Either way, I guess we'll know on May 23, 2006. Thanks to Joel for pointing this out to me.

Just a quick aside:

You should all be watching Penn & Teller's BULLSHIT!. If you don't have Showtime, go out and buy the DVD's right now.

Penn Jillette for President in 2008.

I'm out of luck...are you the same way?

Well, we are back from our trip to Chicago for the Midwest edition of the Fangoria Weekend Of Horrors. I believe the trip was a pretty successful one, even though I'm still suffering through the final throes of a killer cold/laryngitis (which of course, was exacerbated by the snowy, cold Illinois weather).

I arrived on Thursday, picked up my rental car (somehow upgraded to a 2006 Mustang at "economy class" rates - thanks Hertz), checked myself in to the hotel, and pretty much slept until dinnertime to try to get the sick out of my system. Later on, I hooked up with Mike (WC13 sound guy) and Will (WC13 DP), and we hooked up with Shaun (WC13 producer) and Mike Wolinski (WC13 writer) and had some "pie" aka pizza.

Friday, we pretty much killed time until that evening, when it was time to start setting up our booth for the convention. We put up posters for Witchcraft and Drawing Blood, and generally situated things. We also met up with Zoe Hunter (one of the witches of WC13 in attendance for the convention), and it was good to see her again. Then we popped into Chicago proper to see Jeff Wolinski's (WC13 writer and brother of Mike) new band play. I enjoyed what I saw/heard, but I felt like utter crap, so we had to bail relatively early.

Saturday morning I got to the convention center about 8 AM, and things were ramping up. The con ended up being pretty freaking packed, and there was a lot of traffic around our table. Zoe sold and signed a bunch of pictures, and even I did a few, but the big crowds started forming when Robert "Maniac Cop" Z'Dar joined our merry band of misfits. He was signing at the Tripod Films table to promote Drawing Blood (which he stars in), and a lot of the fans showed him some love, most of which spilled over onto us through osmosis.

Saturday night the gang and I caught an advance screening of Slither (with cast and crew in attendance), and I have to say that it was pretty much everything that I expected. Slither wears it's influences on it's sleeve, but what's great about that is that the aforementioned influences are the wet, slimy, hard-R body horror movies of the 70's and 80's. No pussy PG-13 "horror" here. Kudos go out to James Gunn and company - the audience enjoyed the hell out of your movie.

Sunday was more of the same, although I did get to see the Silent Hill panel, which amped me up for the movie even more than I already was. The SH producers showed the brutal clip that they showed at the Comic-Con a while back, and it looks freaking sweet. Thank Christ that someone finally applied the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage to these survival-horror video game adaptations. We can finally have one to be proud of, it seems.

Thankfully I didn't go swag-crazy this time (although I did finally pick up the Meet the Feebles DVD), but it looks like I'll be going to the Burbank show as well, so maybe I can go broke then. I was also informed that Witchcraft 13 will be screening in Chicago next month, so I'll be heading back up there for that. Hopefully, it won't be so freaking cold.