A Day Working For Insane Clown Posse

I’ve been looking for a new job or internship lately, and I applied to one at a “sports and music” company. When I received an e-mail back from them, it still didn’t indicate what “sports and music” company this was, but thankfully I had the sender’s e-mail address, which was from an “@psychopathicrecords” account. After having to look them up and discovering they were the record label I.C.P. founded, I spent some time pondering whether or not to take this offer. I finally came to the decision to do it for the lulz.

I scheduled a meeting at the office, and a few days later arrived at a nondescript building in Farmington Hills. I walked in and was instantly greeted by life-sized portraits of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope.

The video department walls were filled with photographs throughout the years of Juggalos excitedly celebrating their favorite clown-make-up-wearing, white rap group, including some of topless Down River girls from the ‘90s. The head of the video department soon put me to work ripping old I.C.P. videos off of YouTube, because none of the workers actually felt like going through their own video collection to legally get the videos they needed for the project they were working on.

They also gave me my first official assignment, which was to help with production of their “pay-per-view” Juggalo Championship Wrestling event. Until this moment, I had not realized Juggalos wrestling each other was a thing, but it seemed logical.

*****

I arrived at The Modern Exchange in Southgate, not really knowing what to expect, as I had previously assumed I.C.P. to be a thing popular when I was in 5th through 7th grade, and didn’t realize anyone cared about them anymore other than to make jokes about things being “fucking magic” and asking “magnets; how the fuck do those work?”

Staying on the Ball

The other day I made myself a project to motivate myself to make more projects.

Camera Dolly

Over the past several months, I've been slowly building a dolly for my camera based on one I saw being used on a shoot I was working on awhile back.

I first built the platform with scrap wood, including notches at the top to hold the tripod and some triangular pieces at the bottom for the wheels. I bought some skateboard wheels for about $15 from eBay and screwed them in with some large bolts and washers I picked up for a few bucks from Ace Hardware on Trumbull. I then took a long piece of PVC pipe my Dad had laying around in his basement and cut it in half.

Next I built two saw horses with lumber I bought new for about $10.

And finally, here it is in its fully-functioning form for about $30. The one I originally saw from Dana Dolly retails for almost $900.

Relief Carvings

Since my last line carving, I've been working on some simple relief carvings. So far they've all been Michigan-themed. I got all of the wood from The Architectural Salvage Warehouse of Detroit so parts of the wood were faded looking or pre-chipped, which I like in some cases and not as much in others.

This is the first one I did. I ended up not really liking the lettering because a) I free-handed it, which was stupid and b) they're just too large. Either too large or I shouldn't have carved out the whole letter and just left an outline.

The water tower in Ypsilanti.

I added a bear to this one, but didn't end up liking the carving around the bear and thought it would look better just around the state, which I changed in the next one. Also, I gave the bear an ear, which shouldn't have happened.

The most recent one I did and also my favorite.

A Plush Whale

I have a niece coming soon, so I made her a plush whale. I hope she enjoys it.

Line Carving

I got a wood carving kit for Christmas and attempted my first beginner-level project, a line carving. For a line carving you basically just draw a picture on wood and then carve the outline. It's pretty simple, no three-dimensional stuff, but it got me familiar with some of the tools.

I took a scrap piece of wood I had laying around and went to work on a scene of musk oxen in the arctic tundra. Musk oxen are pretty rad dudes as they're a lot like bison, but they live in the tundra and get snow on them.

I obviously haven't added color yet, so the image is sort of hard to make out, but there is a way to get color in the grooves, so I'll be figuring out how to do that next.

Generation Why: A Damn Good Night

I recently shot some footage at a party and then slapped a trailer together using a new feature in iMovie that requires little effort and guarantees the cliche-est trailer possible. Some of the best stuff I couldn't fit in because the segments were longer than would make sense in a trailer. Maybe I'll find a use for them someday.

Either I don't know what I'm doing or Blogspot has an inability to embed videos without cutting off the ends, so here's a link: Generation Why: A Damn Good Night