Random Chatterings [Ep. 1] - Prologue

During 10th grade, hidden far away from the critics of the world, I made my first recording about ‘my’ sitcom, The Presenters, with a story about how Harold was having difficulty relating to his son, Hal. He tries to remedy this by mentioning all of the girls in Hal’s life, expecting some kind of reaction. It became an obsession of mine and every single Monday, I would go back to my hiding space, located at the edge of the school, and let my ideas flutter away in the form of an awkward teenager’s constant ramblings. I’ve only told five people about the recordings, and probably will regret posting this since my voice is an acquired taste. Shortly after making the story recordings, I embarked on a journey even I wasn’t sure I wanted to take: to explain the machinations, the fascinations, and the folly of my mind. How the great essayists of our time could take the same journey and survive still impresses me. For 22 episodes, I became the question and the answer to all random thoughts. It’s something I’d like to share with everyone in a different way. Seriously, you can’t listen to a person’s terrible accents for twenty minutes even if you tried. 

I hope you enjoy it and please let me know what you think in the comments.

Technical info:

Recorded with a Sansa Fuze by Arlill Rodriguez

2010, 2014

EPISODE 2

Fredrick

There once was a bunny. His name was Frederick and he was on his death bed. He lived for about 10 years but was finally giving the go-ahead to the grim reaper to take him back to the essence of the universe. The rainbow-colored hospital dimmed in color as the entire place began mourning Frederick. His family, a bunch of money-grubbing social wimps, waited at bay for the appropriate moment to begin suing Fredrick's estate for his millions of carrots. The situation was too much for his son, Jeffery, to handle and he killed himself by choking on his cotton-ball tail. Frederick sat in his chair, staring outside of the window, watching the protestors walk by. His heart filled with joy when he saw the youth acting on their own beliefs rather than the systems. Little did Frederick know that the protestors were hired by a cigarette company to gain publicity.
The nurse walked to his bedside, holding her paws together.
"Mr. Frederick?"
"...ye, yes?"
"This is kind of awkward. Um, my husband, he loves your work."
"Oh, oh thank you."
"Yeah, but...here's the thing. He heard that you were in the hospital right now so he made an unusual request."
"What is it, my dear?"
"I can't say it out loud or I might get fired."
"Oh, okay, just whisper it."
"Um...all right."
The young rabbit, wearing the cutest red cross hat, hopped over to the wise hare, and whispered, “He wants me to french-kiss you. He only gets turned on by the saliva of his dying heroes.”
“oh, OH! Uh...well...okay, but I want my eyes closed the whole time. My faithful wife, Dorothy, bless her soul, would be devastated if she ever knew."
"No problem, and really, I don't mean to offend."
"I understand."
The wise hare closed his eyes. His illness slowed down his movements so it took him a minute to close them fully. The nurse closed the door. She slowly reached toward Fredrick's lips, and stuck her tongue in his mouth. She swiveled around for a while, sticking into molars and incisors until finally snake-wrapping it around Fredrick’s flattened tongue. The nurse did everything in her will to prevent her heel from rising up, reminding herself that she is not supposed to be enjoying this. She stops, and looks at Frederick, thinking he's dead.
“Oh,” Fredrick says, “you remind of Beatrice, my first companion."
"Really?"
“Yes. There's a reason why she was my first."
"Oh. Sorry, sir. I have to leave now. You understand, though?"
"Of course. Give him my blessings."
"I, I will. Farewell," said the nurse, opening the door, and hopping outside to reach her disturbed lover. Strangely, this was not the only time old Frederick received such requests. For his sake, I will not reprint the more absurd ones. 
Frederick was a watch maker. He had a shop in the town square. Against everyone's wishes, he built the quaint shop next to a shopping mall, and was almost sure that he would become bankrupt in a matter of days. His business grew and grew, and more bunnies preferred to line up to have their watches repaired than to watch the controversial remake of Deep Throat starring only children.
His secret? He was a fantastic conversationalist. Even in his early years, he resembled a rugged Socrates, a rabbit who understood how and why the world functions but didn't stop questioning when someone or himself was wrong. Frederick never swore, either. Never even thought about it. He offended people, accidentally, but he never went out of his way to be vulgar. His family couldn't stand him, thought he was a despicable disgrace who ruined the family name. He wouldn't hesitate speaking to his family if they ever came by his shop, but everyone in the town knew him as Frederick the watch-shop owner. And everyone waited in bated breath for the death of their famed conversationalist.

The Sixtininth One

The headline is correct. For the fall semester, I will be going to the University of Carlos III in Madrid to study film-making. It’s been my dream since sophomore year to be able to officially study filmmaking under an official curriculum. Officially. With all of this going on, I must be one extremely excited to go. Right?

I’ve completed three years of college (a massive accomplishment, in and of itself) with only one left to go. Then what? To be honest, I’m not completely sure how I’m supposed to feel right now, especially with the beginning of my professional career looming closer and closer. 

I’ve also chosen to participate actively in the film industry where there is not a guarantee of financial security. It’s also incredibly competitive and I will be going up against other ambitious and creative filmmakers pushing to have their own ideas produced. I am very much aware of these difficulties, especially if I pushed myself to create my own film major, but now that I’m closer to the goal, I couldn’t be more frightened as well. The most anyone can say is "if you’re passionate about something, pursue it endlessly" but at what point should you admit that you’re abusing yourself too much to achieve your dreams? 

Maybe that’s what’s worrying me the most. This fall, I will be able to prove, once and for all, if I am capable of doing film. I’ve done it before (to mixed results) but can I do it under an academic program? Should I even be asking this question if only to ruminate on it for the rest of the summer?

…I guess I’ll find out a few months from now.

I made some promises that I did not adhere to, College Student: Nutrition for example, so I apologize to you all for not keeping up with them. I won’t say what I’m working on now since that puts more pressure on me but I will say that stuff is coming, sooner than you might think. With yet another year of working on this blog coming and going, I’m always surprised by the small yet devoted following that I somehow maintain and could not be more grateful for your support especially when I ask for absurd requests like this one: "So, I'm currently writing a script and one of the characters is a ghost. Do you have suggestions for comically tragic ways that the character died? I'd really appreciate it!”

Thanks for being with me on this crazy journey.

-Arlill “Arley" Rodriguez

Video Gamology - A Review

Oh god. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh god.

So once upon a time, I made a blog post about Ideas That Would Never Happen. In this post, I talked about a time not so long ago (6 years, actually) that I made comics. I made them with sprites that I found on the internet but because I was young and stupid regarding internet content, I never credited the original people who made the sprites. For that, I'm sorry and I will credit you now. I used many different kinds of sprite art, all of which can be found at The Spriters Resource, an enormous resource with sprite art from different video games.

These comics were...well, they were...

Kirby, you shouldn't play with bombs. It's dangerous.

The comic series was called Video Gamology. It starred Kirby, Sonic, and Shadow. Mario was a supporting character who occasionally dropped by to enlighten the comic with some important information.

Brilliant.

Shadow was a very depressing character who never wanted to be involved in anything the other two were doing. The only thing he enjoyed doing was beating up Kirby. Sonic was the voice of reason in the group, and admittedly, a reflection of myself as a middle schooler, stupidity and all. Kirby was...um...

Oh, Kirby. What've they done to you?

Kirby was the unfortunate fall guy of the three. Everything conceivably horrible only happened to him. Kirby was the exact opposite of the character we've become familiar with: a bombastic and vulgar loudmouth who constantly did very stupid things including acting in pornographic films, attacking others for the hell of it, threatening to kill himself for attention (as you can see in the image above), and many other indescribable actions. On top of that, he would constantly be tortured by Sonic and Shadow on many occasions, including being used a Christmas ornament, and did not have any other friends who he could relate to. Typing that really breaks my heart.

We're here for ya, buddy.

This has only been either segments or parts of comics but for the purposes of this review, we will be looking at one comic which summarizes the entire series in one comic. Ladies and gentleman, this is comic 22 of Video Gamology titled "New Video Gamology 1", originally posted on DeviantArt on September 8th, 2008.

Self-aware characters. That's never been done before.

This comic was meant to be a reboot, bringing back all of the characters and putting them into new scenarios. I had three comic ideas ready to go when I released this one, but the reception (only 1 view) was disappointing and I lost any kind of interest to continue with the strips.

This was the first time the characters would speak with uncensored swears. I thought it was the most hilarious idea but it seems to pad out the attempts of humor by filling it with profanity. You can also see how piecemeal the presentation is, with a basic understanding of the comic strip format but with a lack of animated expressions from the characters.

Look at the frown on Kirby's face. That's art.

The strip's humor was very juvenile for its time, doing its best to simulate (copy) South Park's kind of humor but leaving out the intelligent satire. Punchlines for strips would usually just be really gross, depressing, or racially insensitive. And some times, there just wouldn't be a joke at the end. Some strips were also really huge so there would only be occasional moments of humor dispersed with really weird moments like Kirby swimming in a sea of shit, or Kirby eating a tomato and becoming gay. Yes, that was a punchline for a strip. No, I did not get a lobotomy recently.

*canned sitcom laughter*

Despite how hard I've been on the comic so far, I will admit this comic shows a lot of progression from the earlier ones I made. I found the appropriate font for character dialogue, I got a better understanding of each character so that they could play off one another and even Kirby became less of a punching bag. When I started making them, it would take 1-2 hours to finish a strip. At the time, it was time well spent.

"...returning from the grave..." Nope.

I think if anything has shamed me from writing about this sooner, it's the fact that this is the worst kind of fan-fiction. When people think about ridiculous scenarios happening to popular characters (and I don't mean rule 34 kind of things), this comic strip is exactly what that is. Children's characters that swear up a storm, blood, guts, and violence at every turn, and adolescent humor. What this strip is is a type of wish fulfillment that fulfilled my basic desires of humor whenever I wanted. I guess I can understand why I would want to make this kind of comic strip but...geez.

Will I ever make another comic? No, but not for the reasons you might think. It's not like I've advanced in terms of humor but comic strips just don't appeal to me as much as they did when I was in middle school. If you want more intelligent and inspired humor featuring these characters, check out Brawl in the Family. It's well worth your time.

We'll miss you, buddy!

Thanks for reaching the bottom. I have both a YouTube channel and a Vimeo channel. I'm also on Twitter and Tumblr. If you like reading other silly things by me, join the RS Facebook group for updates and info on my projects. We'll see you next year!*

*Not really.

"Mental" Notes: Nothing's Happened to You Yet!!

"Mental" Notes is a bimillenial column that features specific ideas I've had that can't be fleshed out into a full short story/short film/blog post. On certain posts, it's almost meant to be a public brainstorming forum. This post was originally thought up as a continuation to the Now What? series.

I wanted to continue Now What? as a way to update all of you on my life as it was happening and as it was going so far. But as I started writing this post, I found that I had a very angsty/bitchy tone to what I originally thought was insightful. In fact, even the opening I was intending to use now seems very pretentious in hindsight. Although halfway through it, I acknowledged my dismissive atttitude and made fun of it in the end, I thought the post itself was too short and that it needed more depth before I was willing to post it. As it turned out, however, during the summer I wrote this, I accomplished many, many things which make this post, for me at least, very outdated. As I looked over this again to revise as a "Mental" Note, I also realized that I misquoted Louis CK's joke about 20 year olds, and that nearly derailed the entire point of the post. I'm finally posting this, exactly as I typed it almost a year ago, so that I can finally put it to rest and focus on other things...hint, hint. Questions/comments are always welcome!  

 

I am twenty years old, a fourth of the way to the promised land. This has been the most profound statement I've made this year. I have recently completed my second year in college and am now a junior.

Becoming 20 years old should feel like a profound moment filled with truth and responsibility but that should exemplify as to how naive I am if I think becoming older is equivalent to gaining life experience.

I constantly feel imprisoned in "my" own home, and I always think that life continues going on repeat; every day my man-boobs become more developed, my eyeballs more agile due to constant stimulation from the internet.

But every time I come up with complaints about how life is going, the words of Louis CK emanate in my brain, "Nothing's happened to you!" 

Louis CK: Live at Carnegie Hall (20 Year Olds)

Yes, nothing has happened to me. In fact, at this point, life has never been so fucking pleasant. There is very little conflict between all of my family members due to my parents' separation, my brother is doing well in school, I am fulfilling my parents' dream of going to college, getting an education, getting a job, retiring comfortably, and rotting in the ground.

I am a terrible example of Louis CK's very poignant statement regarding the young, how we seem to entitle ourselves beyond everyone else and can only be satisfied with our own lives if our goals have been met. If any complaint I make can be easily solved by effort, I have no reason to complain ever again. But if my brother beats me in another Mario Party session, I will fucking kill everything. Because life sucks. Man.

Thanks for reaching the bottom. I have both a YouTube channel and a Vimeo channel. I'm also on Twitter and Tumblr. If you like being continuously annoyed by extremely obvious hints about future posts, join the RS Facebook group for updates and info on my projects. Take care, everyone!