Here is the video “Antsy Niles” starring Niles Mallory, Dann as the voice and Mimi as the companion. Antsy Niles is laying on the couch, bored out of his mind but not Antsy. I tell him he should be moving, since he is, after all, “Antsy Niles.” He doesn’t. Fed up I offer him some warm milk and tell him to call it a night. However, Niles really wants to stay up and visit with his friend Dann Vazquez. After telling Niles in a high-pitched voice that he will never be abandoned, Mimi comes by and tells me how she really feels about it all. This video was aired on Northampton Community Television in the months of April and May 2009. You can also see it on YouTube.

Here is the rejected NCTV promotional video I was meaning to put up a long time ago but I didn’t. NCTV executive director P. Al Williams asked me to create one on the opening day of broadcast for the new station. The plan was to get someone from two businesses in Northampton to answer three questions:

1. Would you like to get involved with your community television station?
2. What would you like to get out of your community television station?
3. What kind of shows would you like to see on NCTV?

I called Josh @ Turn It Up! Records, seeing that he was hoping to submit some experimental films, to say a few things of what he’d like to get out of NCTV. Unfortunately, the shoot was a disaster so I couldn’t use Josh’s footage. I then asked NCTV president Bill Dwight if he’d like to be interviewed for this promo. The video above is what came out of it, but as you can tell it has many faults. The sound was bad and some college students were goofing off in the background. It was never used and replaced with a promo set around the 2001 spoof I did for my video “Pockets of Discontent.”  Just recently I asked Al if he could air the video just for the “hell of it.”
Again, he said no. So that’s the reason why it’s now on YouTube. I gotta do something with it and it needs to be seen. Thank God for Bill Dwight encouraging people to participate in NCTV, even if they don’t know how to handle a camera. As he said, regular TV is rehashed and it’s exploitive and is just plain nonsense. This is the new NCTV so let’s make it happen.

Have you ever been so mad at a psychiatrist that you’d like to punch him out? Really. A doctor who refuses to listen and goes by what he thinks is right, even if you plead and plead for him to think of you as a real human being with basic life struggles and ups and downs. If he refuses to listen you’d just want to rough him up a bit. Tell him who you are and what you really need, understand? Well, roughing someone up ain’t gonna get you nowhere except a place in prison. Your gonna spend a good chunk of time chewing this one over, asking yourself “Oh, what have I done? Why couldn’t I’ve used some anger management skills?” Take my advice: use a pillow, use a couch, or maybe even create a life size dummy of your doctor and take it out on him. In my opinion, this is the best way. Now you have almost the full flesh and blood, so use it to your heart’s content. On that note, here’s what me and my friend Antsy Niles did in dedication to all those who feel they are not being heard. The best possible thing to be these days is to be nonviolent. If you have to get it out on your doctor, then do what I do. Maybe it can ease the pain a little bit. I do hope so. Good Luck!

Promised videos? In the form of “See See Rider (Elvis Impersonator Nonsense).” A dadaistic piece which has been airing on Northampton Community Television these past few weeks. The video was centered around a public access television clip I found on YouTube called “Elvis Fanboy.” The user monolith0 has many other inspiring public access videos but this was the one I set my heart on. I later found a clip of an Elvis impersonator performing in some nightclub. I added a karaoke track of “See See Rider” and played around with the editing. After that I re-created my own version of “Elvis Fanboy,” a la, Andy Kaufman. NCTV has been airing this as well as the famous “Wocksy Poem.” You might see it once in awhile if you channel surf. If not, here it is on Google Video.

Part of the NCTV’s public access compilation video “The Lo-Fi/Lo-Bit Hour.” This bit was featured at the very end, asking everybody if they want to get quality material, get it @ El Trasho Loco (the name i go by on amazon.com to tag products). The “Lo-Fi/Lo-Bit Hour” consisted of clips taken from public access shows out of L.A. and New York. Some of the ones featured are “Francine Dancer,” “Let’s Paint and Exercise TV!” and “The Rock N’ Roll Manson Show,” a video collage of campy movies and underground bands. The music featured in this clip is from Ornette Coleman’s “Skies of America” and The Residents “The Third Reich N’ Roll.” There’s also a sample from Franks Zappa’s “Let’s Make The Water Turn Black” music video outfake.

NCTV, Northampton, MA community access television station, has been airing some of my original bumper videos I gave them . Last week they played four clips. Here is a brief description of each one:

The first one was called “Wet Feet,” a video of me talking about my ‘scrapbook of madness’ and how I was forced to remove the line about ‘smooth feet’ and change it to ‘feet amore.’ This lead into a snippet of Hemoglobin’s (a band I was in) song “Wet Feet.”

The next video was entitled “Demo/Rodedo.” I talk about the graffiti written along one of Northampton State Hospital buildings. “Demo” means ‘demolition,’ or one of the buildings S&R was planning to tear down. The graffiti reminds me of my song “Demo/Rodedo,” off my Primitive Vibes CD. “Rededo,” as i say in the video, reminds me of a samurai warrior, or, “something you can buy @ a Japanese restaurant”. This segues to the very song itself, featuring some video footage of a chef @ the hibachi grille at Northampton’s Osaka Japanese restaurant.

The next one was Mr. Ron’s “Ghost Riders In The Sky,” originally sung by Vaughn Monroe. I actually never saw this one being aired but I gave it to NCTV on the same disc w/ the others…hmmmm?

The last one (and the one posted above) was grandma Alice singing “Little Sir Echo,” a novelty song sung by such performers as Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Benjamin (Ronald Coolbeth) Franklin had appeared on my public access video Kindred Expressions abt 6 years ago, or so it seems. He’s sometimes referred to himself as Lance, the handsome man, but this time he appeared in full regalia: Benjamin Franklin jacket, styled hair & glasses. He broke out of character from time to time, laughing and snickering, but was able to contain himself for a little words of wisdom. Unfortunately, it all ended on a bad but funny note, where Mr. Ron twisted his back, squirming in his seat and finally leaving for Paris, France. It all went pretty good, I should say. Mr. Ron later played Johnny DeAngelo (a Kindred Expression outtake), pulling out his gat and demanding the package he came for. That one ended on a real bad note, and made everyone very unhappy.

Kindred Expressions was a grandfather/grandson compilation video: the best of our public access television projects. Ron read some poems, I made some music videos, and it all ended where Mr. Ron and myself told everyone the real meaning of being a creative artists (“… don’t give up!” was the final word of advice). The best part of the video was the wonderful “Bobo Dingo Is My Name.” An absurdist piece abt a man who plays tricks on bathroom dwellers. A man who spends his days running around on hospital hill, looking pretty bizarre in a yellow wig and hobo wear, and saying “Mr. Dingo is my name… and strange is my game.” Kindred Expressions was a swell little piece. You can find the complete video here.

A poem set to video, this one is called “Terry’s On The Parrot.” It was featured in my NCTV public access video entitled Scrapbook From The Underground;” Beat styled poetry readings, music videos, sketches, and self-indulgent ad libbing (a recurrent trait in most of my projects). The poems rhythmic quality was inspired by Tom Wait’s “Earth Died Screaming.” I had a lot of fun putting together the images, esp. “The trucker and his gal.” Scrapbook From The Underground is due to air on Northampton’s NCTV sometime this coming week. NCTV has (it’s abt time) recently been airing more creative programming: claymation, a spoof on the movie Saw by Noho High School students, & a families (mostly the kids) original sketch on a scary movie. Hopefully, NCTV will have more to come, sometime soon.

—– (Scrapbook From The Underground was based on my poetry book ‘scrapbook of madness;” a scrapbook full of handwritten & typed prose poetry. The title of the video is a spoof on Dostoevsky’s Notes From (the) Underground. The term ‘scrapbook of madness’ was taken from a John Lennon quote from Jann S. Wenner’s The Full Rolling Stone Interviews — paraphrased: “Me and Yoko would be living along the coast in Ireland when we’re 64, looking through our scrapbooks of madness.”)

The cassette release by Dann V. untitled Dangle My Food Day. Above is a picture of how the cassette tape would look in the stores. In the background you can see the tape Odds and Ends, by the Imagination (a Northampton MA improv band). Also included in this post is a weird Google Video Clip about the album itself. Also, see the post on The Cure For Insomnia to read more about Dangle My Food Day.

This was written by Ronald Coolbeth and videotaped by Dann Vazquez. This is pretty much the only significant scene from the video, aired on Northampton MA’s NCTV. It stars Dann as Zeke and Ron as Jasper. In the complete version, Dann appears in only three scenes. However, this is pretty much Ron’s show. Maybe we should call this one “The Theater of Ronald Coolbeth.