Chris Lanphear A thirty-something trying to find my way.

To appease those of you on Facebook who have endlessly tagged me with this meme, I present to you 25 random things about me. The facts are free, the snark will cost you…

  1. While I’ve spent nearly my entire life here and identify as a Colorado native, I was not actually born in Colorado. (Real answer: Kansas.)
  2. I have a Bacon number of 3. For those of you who don’t know, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a game whereupon any actor/producer/whoever in the film industry can be linked to Kevin Bacon in under six degrees. (Me -> Tales from the Crapper w/ Eli Roth -> Inglourious Basterds w/ Cloris Leachman -> New York, I Love You w/ Kevin Bacon.)
  3. I have never used or tried an illegal drug. I have no particular moral objection to them or those who do; I just don’t like the idea of requiring an artificial influence to enjoy myself.
  4. Although I’m not particularly fond of the color, I have owned three red cars.
  5. I participated in a Daughters of the American Revolution speech contest in fourth grade. I can’t remember what the speech was about … all I do know is that I went about seven minutes over the allotted time. Still got second place.
  6. Most of my friends call me Duckie. This comes from the movie Pretty In Pink and is thanks to Amy. I don’t even turn my head anymore when someone says ‘Chris’.
  7. I have also never smoked a cigarette or any variation of them. I consider this a byproduct of being raised by a family full of smokers.
  8. In front of a crowd of over 500 people, I was once jokingly introduced on stage by my then-boss as the head of our company’s chapter of NAMBLA. Despite this, I continued to work for him for nearly two years afterward.
  9. I have perfect vision and am not allergic to anything. Yeah, you hate me.
  10. I got my first taste of video production in junior high while working on my school’s TV station. We had, for its time, a state-of-the-art facility and I learned editing on a three-screen, two-VTR Panasonic deck. Since then, I’ve done freelance editing, worked on dragon*conTV and worked for a film studio for five years.
  11. I once did some writing for Kevin Smith of Clerks fame. I can’t take credit for the movies, though. Those are genius enough on their own.
  12. I lettered in high school, but not in a sport.
  13. I once did jello shots with Fran Drescher. She’s really quite nice, and doesn’t sound remotely like her characters on TV.
  14. Back To The Future Part II is my favorite film in the series. Not entirely sure why.
  15. I started at a new school in second grade. One kid targeted me for ridicule and it went on for months until I decided that I had had enough. At lunch, I walked up behind him and held a fork to his throat for about 30 seconds until two teachers pulled me off of him. I’m much calmer now.
  16. My cat is named after Detective Lennie Briscoe from Law & Order.
  17. I love Colorado and all, but I hate the cold and I’ve never been skiing. I should probably move somewhere else.
  18. I was nearly expelled during my junior year of high school for a writing I had posted on a website I had at the time, and I probably would have been kicked out had I not threatened to call lawyers at the ACLU (of which I am a member) for violating my freedom of speech.
  19. I started learning webdesign when I was 14. I started charging for it a year later.
  20. My first job was as a dishwasher at a sorority house when I was 15. Not a bad gig, but that’s the closest I ever got to food service.
  21. I suck at Guitar Hero, but I still enjoy it anyway.
  22. I can’t draw to save my life, and I’m also not that good at cooking. I would like to get better at one of these.
  23. I can’t go to sleep without something playing in the background. I find the silence unsettling. DVD commentaries seem to work best.
  24. I really don’t get the obsession that some have with professional sports and find the idea of someone making millions of dollars for knowing how to play one well mortifying. I guess there’s just some things that I’m not meant to understand.
  25. I’m deathly afraid of two things: heights and spiders. If you use this information to your advantage, I may have to kill you out of principle.

This time last year, I was (very) seriously considering not returning to dragon*con as a staffer. 2007 was a draining, hellish year for the ‘con and easily the one where I enjoyed myself the least. There were large, intense problems from minute one and the hits just kept coming. Everyone seemed to be strung out — mentally and emotionally drained by the end, and I just wanted to go home. For being the one event I look forward to every year, that’s pretty bad. I always told myself that if it ever got that bad, I would get out from under working the convention and just show up as a paid attendee.

I’m glad I chose to give it another try.

2008 was redemption for me personally, and by all accounts it seems, for tech staff as a whole. We had our issues as we always do, but unlike 2007, we weren’t constantly barraged with demoralizing and horrible events that hit one after the other like a destructive wave.

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I haven’t spent any time posting here about my time at Troma, but I plan to, all in due course. Until then, I want to share with you, my loyal readers (all two of you), a paragraph of a great review over on DVDTalk:

If you don’t already appreciate Troma’s style, this one isn’t likely to change your mind but those who ‘get it’ will find a lot to love about this mammoth three-disc collection. Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead is a terrific return to form for Kaufman and Troma and the film is as hilariously entertaining as it is an equal opportunity offender. Crass, juvenile, and genuinely disgusting, it’s never the less a clever and creative film and Troma has pulled out all the stops with this jam-packed release. Highly recommended.

Poultrygeist! is a special film to me, which seems odd to say, given its subject matter. Special for two reasons: 1) it’s the one film that I saw from its genesis all the way to completion while I was still with the company, and 2) from a purely egocentric standpoint, it’s the one Troma film that actually has my name in the credits.

So, for the uninitiated, watch the trailer above and then go and pick up Poultrygeist! Night Of The Chicken Dead exactly one week from today: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 — just in time for Halloween! Available in local big box retailers everywhere, as well as Amazon.com, and the Troma Studio Store!

So I replied to someone’s version of this, so I guess that means I’m on the hook to post mine as well. 🙂

COMMENT HERE AND I WILL:

a) Tell you why I friended you. (no such thing as friending here)

b) Associate you with something a fandom, song, color, photo, etc.

c) Tell you something I like about you.

d) Tell you a memory I have of you.

e) Ask you something Ive wanted to know about you.

f) Tell you my favorite userpic from your profile. (only applies to people on LiveJournal)

g) In return, please post this on your own site/journal/blog.

I’m really interested to see who responds to this, all three of you that read this site.

And yes, I will post about dragon*con soon, I promise. 😉

[HT to Jeff.]

Gotta love internet memes. They’re the online version of being the kid on the playground who looks at what everyone else is doing, and says to himself, or out loud, “Me too!”

This one comes from Jeff via Amy. Seriously, blame them. The idea here is that you get a random article from Wikipedia, that’s your band’s name. Random quotation, that’s the album. Random photo from Flickr, that’s the artwork. Ready to play? Discussion is here.


Treo 90 presentsWho Understands Marx and Lenin.”

[photo: “Untitled” by Imre Dr]

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the first truly green candidate for the 2008 election. This year, don’t vote along party lines. Vote Zombie!

I’m baaaaaack!

You can’t keep a good duckie down, I guess. It’s been seven months since I’ve put anything of substance online, and today seemed as good a time as any to start up again.

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We shot so many damn Klingon bits for 2006. Well, saying “we” is actually a misnomer here, as I wasn’t present for the footage that was used to make these up. However, I was tasked with editing most of them.

Get even more funny at dragoncontv.com!

My first attempt at editing video for dragon*conTV. I shot about half the footage for this spoof as well as did the post-editing.

Fun fact! If you keen viewers out there recognize the background image that’s hiding the green screen, it may be because you saw it here.

This is, to date, my Tour de Force, if such a thing exists for spoof videos made by volunteers on a nonexistent budget for a convention on Labor Day weekend.

My friends Brian and Patrick filmed a day’s worth of these great sports in Klingon garb dancing in a community center. They had no real script or idea for the commercial, just the footage. I remember talking to Brian, and getting a response something like, “Try to do something with it.”

So here’s what I came up with. The “script” took a couple of hours of reviewing the shots and then about fifteen minutes of putting them down on a stickie note. I think it came out pretty well, considering.

I also decided to use pseudonyms, since I think that having my name in the credits more than once for such a short video comes off as a bit pretentious. So, for the record, Melvin Ferd and El Duckie Caliente are also yours truly.

I am not, however, Clay Leapheart. That’s a real person. (I think.)

More Klingon silliness at dragoncontv.com!