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We first released this to our mailing list back in October, and now we’re ready for the whole world to see it. It’s Nature Footage: The Musical!
Click here to download this as a quicktime file that will also play on your iPod. Click here to view this on Google Video
Featuring: Mike Still, Dan Hopper, Erica Harsch, and Nate Kushner.
Directed by Nate Kushner
We’re trying something new here by hosting this on Google video. You’ll notice that this one comes in the form of a Flash thing, which will load hella faster than the other videos, whch should make it easier to watch, share, etc, without taking away the capability to download it in quicktime/ipod form if you want. We’d love to know how you like this arrangement. Leave a comment if you’ve got two cents.
It’s also on the regular video page. No worries.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 01:06 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
This week’s celebrity sighting is Bobby Boriello, who played the young Tony Soprano in a few episodes. He was riding an uptown 2 train, probably on the way to somewhere where they had some cocaine. So, yeah.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 06:05 PM | TrackBack
I feel like I just got a piece of my youth back. I say that because someone has taken it upon themselves to podcast old archives of the Mister Mark Show. I urge you all to download a couple of these and have a listen, but be warned, you will either love this or hate this.
I grew up in Bethlehem, PA, and Mark Klee was a radio DJ in neighboring Allentown. Every Friday afternoon for years and years, he would be in the Friday afternoon 1:00 PM spot on WMUH, and for two hours, he’d play some strange music that I liked, and a ton of strange music that I didn’t care for at the time, but I probably would now. But the music wasn’t the point of the Mister Mark Show.
The point was that in between, and often on top of, these crazy songs, Mister Mark would bust out the most batshit crazy funny monologues you have ever heard in your life, the majority of which were spoken and written in a style more befitting public service announcements, and were often mixed in with the legitimate PSA’s that Mark would read as a part of being on a public radio station. Por example:
Parents, warmer weather can mean danger for your allergic child. Bees and wasps means painful stings for many, but for allergic kids, it can mean a life-threatening trip to the hospital. Wolves and bears mean powerful bites for the unlucky, but for allergic kids, it can mean a life-threatening diagnosis from a doctor. King Kong and Godzilla mean destruction for Tokyo, but for allergic kids, they can mean puffiness, rash, fever, and loss of appetite. Protect your kids by moving out of high-monster areas, and into the peaceful life on a houseboat. Houseboats are inexpensive, convenient, and secure. You’ll be safe from gophers too. Pick up the phone and call the Coast Guard for an opposing view. The Coast Guard says…stay on land. You decide. It’s the Mister Mark Show…
That wasn’t even the best of them, and his delivery makes it even better. The underlying philosophy of the program seemed to be: “What if War of the Worlds was on the radio all the time? (Not my words, that’s a quotation from a friend of his that you can hear in the hour-long special tribute that makes up the first episode of the podcast. The rest of the episodes are 2-5 minutes.)
Now, it wasn’t all A-material. But it was still remarkable, to me at least, that anybody could write 20-30 minutes of monologue every week and have 12-15 minutes of it be fantastic. Most stand-up comics have to throw out almost everything they write, and even the best of them are left with only about 10 usable minutes of material per year. And he broadcast most Fridays for what I’d been led to believe was more than 20 years.
I discovered him in the summer after I graduated high school, and so my time enjoying Mister Mark was limited to the summer before leaving for college, and my first summer back, and only when I could wrestle control of the radio away from my co-workers at whatever summer job it happened to be.
Mister Mark (That’s what his friends called him) was also a visual artist, a musician, and a playwright, and a musician, and he was considerably accomplished at all of these, at least to the extent one could be in that local scene. Mr. Klee unfortunately killed himself in the spring of 2001 with a handgun he’d purchased a year prior. After his death, I had also found out that he had played Krapp in a great production of Krapp’s Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett, which I’d seen before I knew who Mark Klee was.
Anyway, he was a talented man, pretty much universally loved by everyone who knew him, and it’s only right and fitting that someone is finally making available his monologues. I know I personally had been hoping for something like this since his death, going so far as to search for it often in the years since. Anyway, so I hope you guys enjoy this. When I discovered Mark, I was definitely already on the way to becoming the comedy nerd I am now, but without a doubt, my short time with his show was a swift kick in that direction. Also, in a minor way, it probably planted the seeds of me becoming a Brian Eno fan. I have other sides of my being, but mostly, just the clown on one shoulder and Brian Eno on the other who argue about what I should do in matters of conscience.
Also, happy New Year, cause we haven’t posted in a while. There’s videos and things coming soon.
Posted by Nate Kushner at 12:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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