Boring Old Raphael.TUMBLR

What We've Been Up To

FYI, JUST THOUGHT YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW:

oldeenglish:

Not to put you in one groove, but is Olde English working on anything new? OE is my favorite online sketch group. - pom5

I get this question a lot. Like, a lot a lot. For the record, here’s the answer:

Even though we haven’t put out a new sketch in a few years, we’ve been working constantly the entire time since. We’ve written two half-hour pilot scripts, created numerous “pitch bibles” (i.e., fully worked-out visions for television shows), and written pages upon pages of supporting material. The reason for the shift in focus: After six years of making sketches for the Internet, we decided that it was time to get some material on television or in theaters. Unfortunately, the downside of this approach is that all of the material you produce is designed to be consumed only by a few television and movie executives, rather than by your fans. And when those executives pass — because even if your ideas are good, they’re often still not “what we’re looking for this season” — all of that work ends up being seen by no one. It’s a shitty trade-off — unfortunately, it’s also part of the business.

But: I’m happy to say that for the last few months, we’ve been working on some projects that will one day be seen by, you know, an audience. Currently in production are a cartoon series we’re developing with PUNY (the animators of Akon Calls T-Pain), and a web series based on one of our pilot scripts, entitled “How to Be Alone”. Both are projects we’re very excited about, and with any luck, both will be coming to the web soon.

- Adam

Sad Song Saturday: Fountains of Wayne - No Better Place (download)

Send your sad song suggestions to Raizin(at)gmail(dot)com.

The last thing I did before I left New York was I ate a whole bag of miniature Reese’s peanut butter cups that Dave and Maya got me as a going away present. “I’m hoping you won’t eat all of them on the plane,” Dave said, “but also I know you will.”

“Shows what you know,” I texted him the next day. “I finished the bag before I even got to the airport.”

I’m spending a week in Palo Alto before moving down to Los Angeles where my bright beautiful future awaits me. I’m getting my driver’s license this week and then I’m emptying my bank account to buy a car and then I’m driving down the I-5 to SoCal (do people still say SoCal?) where I will immediately be offered a high-paying job as a Very Important Writer. Once I get this job, I can afford to live somewhere. Also, health insurance?

THIS IS THE PLAN: In Southern California it never snows and it never rains (that’s why there’s so many fires) and everyone is incredibly friendly and clean. I will make all sorts of friends super-fast who will like me and respect me and never accidentally call me Raizin. I will be happy and I will be successful and most importantly I will be successful at being happy, which will in turn make me even more happy. I will find an apartment in a nice neighborhood (AND GET A GOOD DEAL) and I’ll finally write my novel (AND SHARE IT WITH NO ONE) and pretty girls will smile at me in Starbucks and Starbucks-like establishments and years later I will refer to this period of my life as When Things Started To Finally Make Sense.

OF COURSE there is the off-chance that southern California won’t solve all my problems, that my strategy of Keep-Moving-So-The-Sadness-Can’t-Stick-To-Me is flawed, that this move is just another distraction in a long series of distractions, that New York wasn’t the problem, that the problem is something deeper, something truer, something intrinsically et cetera, et cetera—

BUT!

By the time all that dawns on me, I’ll be off on my next adventure! To Portland! To Seattle! To some other project and a whole new life path! I hear Austin is beautiful and very very hip.

∞ Interview with three playwrights of Great Scot: New Plays

In this interview, I attempt to sell THE MIKE AND MORGAN SHOW, talk about what I learned in college, and explain why I believe plays should be a little sloppy drunk.

If you haven’t seen the play yet, you have five more chances:

Tue Jan 26, 7pm Thu Jan 28, 7pm Fri Jan 29, 9pm Sat Jan 30, 7pm Sun Jan 31, 4pm

The Access Theater is at 380 Broadway (4th floor), between Walker and White, two blocks below Canal. Tickets are fifteen dollars.

Wanted: Camera

standardreview:

silverscreens:

Our project is a pilot Muffin wrote. I really love the script, even though there is a lack of aliens, robots, and demons. It’s not even set on a ship or outer space, and I still dig it. A girl has to diversify her interests sometimes.

The whole project is really exciting and very Roger Corman-esque, except we aren’t exploiting women and minorities. It’s a Corman budget friendly project. Every person is working for credit and copy, which helps tremendously since the cast is enormous. The cast is from people we know (or rather, Muffin knows because I am severely socially awkward), who are either aspiring actors or can pretend to be aspiring actors. The rest of the cast is auditioning through a Craigslist ad… and yes, this meant that 1. my inbox was flooded with headshots and 2. my inbox was flooded with porn star headshots. We had one gentlemen whose website included a picture of him in a blue Speedo with the reminder that he was “willing to do anything.” We did not email him back.

The only thing standing in our way at the moment is a camera. We have set up a Mandy ad for a director of photography, but a lot of them have rates. It is completely understandable, because I would want money for my time and my equipment too.

Muffin and I ended up meeting with a man from our fancy school. Same year, same age as Muffin and me. We told him about our camera-deficiency, to which he spent some thirty minutes describing how to make a movie in the 1950s. Muffin and I nodded our heads along with this man (a boy, who are we kidding here) as he started to talk about having an executive producer and a financier. Even at twenty-two, he was unaware of Roger Corman, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and the entire world of independent film production. He spewed these erroneous ideas with such startling certainty, I’m sure he is going to be the next Jeff Zucker – a man who knows nothing about television, and yet somehow, talks his way into power. He was one of those Hollywood-types who think they are hot shit, but really, they are just full of shit.

Anyone with a camera can make a movie – at least that is what I’ve been told. This kid told us we couldn’t. It was our John Locke moment. Tell us we can’t do it, and we will get out of our wheelchair and walk dammit!

Now, we might just My Date with Drew it and “borrow’ a camera for a couple weeks.

The Muffin in this story is me.

Home for Hannukah (a Christmas song)

Written by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Sung by the Gunn High School Choir at their winter concert, 2007 (download)

Sad Song Saturday: Leonard Cohen - So Long, Marianne (download) (submitted by Victoria J.)

Send your sad song suggestions to Raizin(at)gmail(dot)com.

Victoria says: So Long, Marianne is a sad song. Apparently it is about Marianne Jensen, who was married to Scandinavian novelist Axel Jensen and bore his son, Axel Jensen. After Marianne and Axel (dad) broke up, Leonard lived with Marianne and Axel (son) for a while. But then, one must assume from the song, they broke up. And wouldn’t you know it, she wrote a book about it.

I say: Wednesday night was the performance of my students’ final plays — they were so wonderful and clever and beautiful and I was so proud of them. Part of me wished I could hold on to the moment forever, but as it turns out, time moves forward. Everything ends.

These last few months have been incredibly rewarding and challenging and exhausting and fun, but we humans have to keep moving forward or we’ll die (or maybe that’s sharks; no, I’m pretty sure it’s humans). One of my students asked me where I was going next and I said I would hold up my umbrella and let the wind take me to the next children who needed me. It was both funny and sad — “kind of like real life,” as my own high school drama teacher used to say about things that were both funny and sad.

It was either William Faulkner or the band Semisonic that said “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” and I now stand on the precipice of the next great adventure, whatever that may be. And yes, it’s scary when warm things end, when you outgrow a boyfriend, when old friendships sour, when you get too big for your shell and are forced to wander naked across the ocean floor in search of a soda can (okay, that may be hermit crabs). It’s scary and bittersweet and sometimes pretty gross. But it’s also a little bit thrilling.

Kind of like real life.