空オーケストラ写真

Here's a playlist featuring short teasers & trailers for the karaoke-themed unscripted drama (that's the official way of saying reality show) I've been working on. It has a cool Japanese codename until we figure out what the final title is.



If you would like to support this sort of thing, financially, through social media, or with artistic/filmmaking resources, please get in touch with me. I can say with confidence it is going to be the Star Wars Episode 7 of karaoke-themed unscripted dramas.

Jessika Fett and Boyd Hastings in a scene from A Piece Of Me.

I Am So Going to Beat the Shit Out of This Weekend.

You heard me. That's what's up. Yeah, it's a pretty big weekend. So what? It's got knees and eyes like everybody else. Here are the 27 ways in which I'm going to beat the shit out of this weekend.

1)  I'm gonna watch the recap of Game 5 of the Giants vs. Reds about 100 times in the solitary comfort of my cute Hollywood apartment. I'm going to loopily enjoy the beauty of Posey's grand slam, Pagan's catch, Crawford's dive, Panda's Pandaness, Cain's cool.

2)  I'm going to get a fat load of Twitter followers for @Phearchannel and @Thorhulkcritic and a bunch of Youtube subscribers for Paranormalstatus.com. Because every weekend starts with #Follow #Fucking #Friday, baby! HELL YEAH. POUR IT.

3)  Gonna write up a proposal and treatment for a new rock musical, because that's one of the things in life I kick bloody ass at. No I'm not gonna write no flipping script. Who reads, or follows, or understands, or gets hard from flipping scripts? TREATMENT, MAN.

4)  Gonna edit a cute cat video. And post that shit. That's right.

5)  I am gonna hound LA Weekly until they correct the spelling of chashu in their supposedly-hip ramen capsule review. It's not char siu, dude. Char siu is Chinese and not in ramen and also not pronounceable in Japanese. If you're gonna have the gig of reviewing the best Asian cuisine in America and feel compelled to hiply print words in the language, try to get it right. It's only the languages of about 2 billion people or so.

6)  I am so going to totally forget about every woman I have ever strongly liked. At least, I am going to forget that I like them. Because clearly that shit gets you nowhere, buddy.

7)  I will overcome every socio-racial disadvantage I have ever whined about by temporarily turning into a white dude. Gals will feel that they are supposed to throw the sex on me because of every movie and TV show they have ever seen, despite the fact that I am of only medium height. I don't give a pho.

8)  I will exploit a new area of socio-racial advantage by turning into an Asian woman and getting a great writing job, beating out many other qualified applicants on a questionable unspoken basis, which is that everybody likes Asian women. Yeah, I said it. Sue me.

9)  I will hook up with a very intelligent funny girl with three boobs. When I say I just want to cuddle, she goes, "Damn! That's awesome! That's not biologically repulsive at all!"

10)  Fuckin' gonna buy a blanket and some envelopes, too. And maybe some socks. And gonna pull a box of crap out of my car and organize that crap. You darn tooting. That's how we do.

11)  Why? Because I Want It That Way. BOOM.

12)  Somehow amongst all this business I'm gonna fit in a fucking epic nap.

13)  I am hell of going to that Peruvian restaurant to have a big fat plate of lomo saltado and see if they got a causa rellena. 

14)  Gonna see the shit out of Looper, because that guy is the best director working. He is so awesome he had a cute Asian girl sidekick in his second film and it was not extremely creepy and stupid.  Amended because I did see Looper, which was a fine film except for the part which had every Asian female film stereotype ever documented. Hey white boys! Keep fucking up! The love of a mute Chinese woman will save you! And then she will die and you will have a reason to live/murder children. (I'm not making that up to be tacky, that is the plot of the movie,)

15)  I'm gonna have a few cocktails with vodka in 'em. Maybe a fruit-flavored vodka. What? You wanna tussle?

16)  Will memorize all the words to "Geto Superstar," just because it is mentally possible to do so.

17)  I'm going to find Mitt Romney and personally beat the shit out of him. Because he is not now and is never going to be president, so making that kind of threat idly is always going to be legally permissible.

18)  I'm gonna watch some football while doing a hard workout, just to ensure that I can still be effortlessly crushed by any of those guys.

19)  I'm gonna stare at my goddamn phone like a boss. 

20)  I am going to write a poem or a song about you.

21)  I am hell of not gonna get married, or have a baby, or post pictures of my food. Because I like to believe I still stand for something.

22)  I am gonna find out what is up with my Internet connection and beat the shit out of it.

23)  Everyone is going to be so impressed by all the shit-beating-out-of which I will ostensibly accomplish this weekend, they are all gonna subscribe to paranormalstatus.com and also start a kickstarter campaign with the singular goal of raising $2.6 million dollars to dump straight on to my big head. Then I will be exposed to a radioactive cloud and gain fucking superpowers.

24)  I'm gonna enjoy the crap out of some rain.

25)  I'm going to make a page for a fictional character on Facebook and then BEFRIEND IT. Yeah!

26)  I'mma hit up a sexy birthday party in Little Tokyo. Because I live in Los Angeles, bitch. I don't have to go to Big Tokyo. I live in a heroic struggling fantasy of myself and I can go to Little Frakking Anywhere.

27)   I am gonna root like hell for the Orioles.  Mainly because I like The Wire.

Viewers' Guide to PARANORMAL STATUS (or, How To Meaningfully Interact With Those YouTube Channels All the Kids Are Tweeting About)

So, honestly, this is what I'm hoping you will do. It will take between 2 and 35 minutes depending on whether you actually watch the vids or not.

Any clever viral/interactive/audience-engagement marketing I might scheme up is a coded attempt to get you to do Exactly This.

For the indie artist/videomaker/content creator, this is the platonic ideal for how a viewer interacts with their videos on youtube. If you are curious about how you can support artist/creators that you like, for free, in no time at all, take this as a case study, a walkthrough.

1.  Start here. Find and click the SUBSCRIBE button that is in the upper left corner of every Youtube video (or sort of near the title on the channel pages). If you don't have a youtube account yet you will be prompted to create one, it is totally free and non-intrusive and will take 30 seconds.***

2.  Click the LIKE button. Copy the link, any link. Share it, embed it, tweet about it. Seriously, you don't even gotta watch it. I mean, we worked hard on it, the episode is there to be enjoyed, but don't let some convoluted sense of "I must watch the entire video before validating it with viral shares and mentions" hold you up from just pimping that link everywhere. Write it on the wall of your office building's bathroom. Email it to HuffPost. Text it to your cat. Paranormalstatus.com.



The episode is arranged with a certain narrative delicacy (if I do say so m'self), but if you just wanna know what happens, I can happily spoil it for you. The high points of this episode are Dave getting drunk and singing a variant of "God Save the Queen" and a colorful dream sequence with a terrifying/satirical cliffhanger.

Go to episode 2 to catch up on some plot points. There is an amusing Sadako gag and a tender death scene that will come up again later in the arc of the series.


3.  Like-button everything. Comment on something. If you don't like something about this whole endeavor, comment on that. Create traffic. (The goal of every web-based thing is to create traffic and go viral, that is, the exact opposites of your goals in real life, haha.)**

Detour to click/view the gag reel, the gratuitous wrestling video (there's only a touch of actual wrestling in it, but a lot of charmingly posh British giggling), or this somewhat clever meta-trailer on my personal channel. Subscribe to channel dommah! too, while you're here.

Click on Episode 1, it's the pilot, so it has the most expositional lag, yes, some questionable cinematography, yes, yet you will still find moments to enjoy the buffoonish heroism of Dave and the sardonic radiance of Zoe and Elle. And again, plot points that will come up again later. And if you comment identifying the characters and context of the Dark Knight Returns reference in this episode, you win a 2012 ComicCon bag full of goodies. It's a rolling easter-egg contest that as yet no one has been nerdy enough to win. :)

4.  And by gum, you can even click on an ad, because in theory that turns into $$$, of which some trickles down to the artist (me & the POO crew). You are obligated to buy nothing, yet your friend/video-creator/artist gets rewarded. Kind of an awesome deal, right?

Like this playlist, where I will maintain a curated "best of" all Paranormal Status videos, maximized for entertainment like a circus routine. This is after all, at base, not about money or fancy filmmaking (or consistent camerawork, to be sure). It's about trying to make you laugh.

And then there's our facebook page, and supposedly it is good when people like that.**

5.  If somehow you have read this far, you may as well also follow @dommah @thorhulkcritic and @phearchannel on twitter, and enjoy my 140-character bursts of smile-causing sarcastic musings.

And really, that's it. Thank you!

***This is really important because YouTube success or failure (I mean, nothing really fails on YouTube, but some things are more successful than others) is judged in hard numbers of subscriptions and viewcounts. So if you just wanna click on the thing continuously while it's in the background of your monitor while you're doing other important things...that would be awesome.

**It's cool if you like the things on Facebook, but keep in mind this key difference: FB just tracks and uses your input as part of their Freaking Massive Marketing Data Collecting Machine, whereas, YouTube looks at that data and actually passes on some of its profits to its content creators. Not in a way that it's like they're giving away money, exactly, but on principle, Youtube rewards the people who, you know, make the shit that is on Youtube. No artist ever gets paid off people liking them on Facebook. (SUM-UP POINT: do the FB thing anyway, but the best thing to do on FB is share, share, share.)

Viewers' Guide to "Zoe & Elle Take the Piss Out of American Ghost Hunters"

Here are a few things that may help you enjoy this video if you are not a native UK English speaker or paranormal-show nerd:

1)  TOWIE = "The Only Way Is Essex" = some sort of British reality show.
2)  "Ghost Adventures" is a popular American ghost-hunting show featuring male paragon Zak Bagans. It is fun to drink to.
3)  "Paranormal Status" is a web show featuring British female ghosthunting heroes portrayed by Chloe Zak and Becky Zak Bagans. Er, that is, Becky Zak.
4)  Sporty probably would be considered the most chavvy of the Spice Girls, and Posh would certainly disapprove.
5)  That thing he says at the end is, seriously, "DON'T TAUNT VOODOO."

Subscribe to POO!

Paranormal Status episode 2 is live now! I really like this one.

Please subscribe, share, like, comment. Why do I harp on subscribing? Because I am a 15-year-old girl in 2008? Well, apart from that, 5 simple reasons:

1. It takes no time at all. In the time it took you to read this, you could have subscribed and un-subscribed already. It's no commitment to anything.
2. It helps. It tremendously helps me and the other folks involved in the show.
3. It doesn't affect your life at all. Maybe YouTube will send you an email now and then that you can easily turn off.
4. It's the only way I will be able to continue doing this shit. A lot of people I meet find out that I'm an indie videomaker and say, "It's cool that you do that." If you actually have that thought in your body, you should subscribe. If you would like me to discontinue from making any art/comedy/films/videos for the rest of my life, not subscribing is the way to cast your vote there.
5. It takes no time at all. It's one click on that little subscribe button at the top of every YouTube page. If you don't have a Youtube acct you then have to sign up for one. Again, if you are reading this, you could have done and un-done it already. It's that inconsequential to you, and yet it makes a great difference for me and the team because it becomes numbers which youtoob takes very seriously, and helps the indie video artists who make that webshow or cat video you like so much continue to do their thing.