#breakdancing

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #262 and Like a Hood Ornament 17: Welcome Stunt Woman Jazzy Ellis to the Show!

Episode #262 and Like a Hood Ornament 17: Welcome Stunt Woman Jazzy Ellis to the Show!

https://archive.org/download/podcast-262/Podcast%20262.mp3

jazzy

This week, stunt performer Jazzy Ellis joins the show.  She is a Screen Actors Guild Award winner with many film and TV credits you may have seen or heard of, like Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Walking Dead, Bad Boys for Life, Chaos Walking, and more.  She is also a former teacher, ballet dancer, and a tireless crusader for equal representation for people of color in the stunt and film world.  It was great to have her on to discuss her circuitous journey to where she is now as well as how she prepares for stunts and keeps in shape for the very physical job she has.  We also had a chance to touch on issues of race in the film industry as well as the country at large and what she’d like to see for performers of color in the industry.

For the “Like a Hood Ornament” section of the show, we’re looking at this clip from The Rocketeer, where the Rocketeer takes off:

Coincidentally, the music  – a short version of the theme done I think with a French horn with chimes in the background – that plays right before, about 0:53 in, happens to be my favorite part of the entire soundtrack.  It has always seemed to me that it embodies the spirit of entire film, a little snippet of pre-war optimism for a better tomorrow where rocketpacks wouldn’t be experimental and flight would be commonplace.

In any event, Jazzy is giving her professional thoughts on the fall that the stunt man does around 1:20, where Peevy is tossed backwards by the force of the rocket’s blast.

By the way, if you’d like to learn more about Jazzy, check out the following clips:

… and on the web here:

–Imdb

–Twitter

–Instagram

–www.jazzyellis.com

Thanks, Jazzy, for coming on the show!

Also, the next segment of the fanfic short story, “The Last Rocketeer,” describing a team-up between Centauri from The Last Starfighter and a 71 year-old Cliff Secord who has long since given up being the Rocketeer (but secretly wants one last flight) is up.

You can read the first chapter on Wattpad here: https://www.wattpad.com/919346978-the-last-rocketeer-1-in-which-cliff-finds-a

Here’s part 2: https://www.wattpad.com/926948946-the-last-rocketeer-2-nighttime-visitors

And here’s the section I was reading from in episode 260: https://www.wattpad.com/930869004-the-last-rocketeer-3-into-the-depths-of-hell

The next part of Chapter 4 is here: https://www.wattpad.com/934519790-the-last-rocketeer-4-in-which-the-proverbial

rocketeer night

More coming next week!

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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys!  If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.

If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:

Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

empty hands ep cover_edited-2.jpg

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #255: Welcome Bboy / MC / Professor Raphael Xavier!

Episode #255: Welcome Bboy / MC / Professor Raphael Xavier!

https://archive.org/download/podcast-255/Podcast%20255.mp3

On this week’s show, I’m pleased to welcome Raphael Xavier, a breakdancer and emcee who got his start in 1983 and has been around to see these aspects of hip hop come, go, return, and evolve over the past 30+ years.

RaphaelXavier

He is also a professor at Princeton University, where he teaches a history of hip hop class as well as one that provides an introduction to breaking.  My co-host today is not only my friend but former roommate, training partner, and fellow breaker / Princeton alum, Justin Liang (last on the show on episodes 47 and 48).  We were both blown away that not only is hip hop being taught at our former alma mater, there are actual classes on how to break.  ABSOLUTELY MIND BLOWING.

XaviereBreakdancingClass_0031-people-page

We covered so many topics in this conversation, including a lot of things that, while not part of dance, are important life skills to keep in mind for creative people – transforming pain into insight and then power, not giving up, having a direction in life as well as daily practice, how the creative process changes over time and with age, the past and future of the dance, and – for all the high school and college graduates who didn’t get a keynote speaker at a formal ceremony speech this spring – there’s even one in this interview for you.

Check out the following links for info:

-Agency Website: https://www.pentacle.org/blog/artist/raphael-xavier/

-Benefit Performance (1/30/20, about 33 min into the clip): https://vimeo.com/388609182

-Ignite Philly talk on breaking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRbibaOxAW4

-A Conversation with Urban Artistry (5/30/20 – thanks to my friend, breaking professor, and bboy Taylor Lomba) for posting this clip): https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=541382093407459&id=493753445299&_rdr
-Find Raph on IG and Facebook
-By the way, the clip we were discussing at ~2:05:00 you can watch below on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BN3GwSZgNg7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Thanks, Raph, for joining Justin and me for this interview!

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9c855cfe-2bcf-4f9b-9681-898d80b49e9a

There are now Thirteenth Hour toys!  If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.

If the past few months have got you needing a break, you may want to chill out to this 80s synth throwback track for a upcoming LP with the accompanying music video:

Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  

empty hands ep cover_edited-2.jpg

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast Episode #210: Reflections on The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with Jeremy from Whistlekick

Episode #210: Reflections on The 36th Chamber of Shaolin with Jeremy from Whistlekick

https://archive.org/download/podcast210_201908/Podcast%20210.mp3

As mentioned this past Monday, this episode was done in collaboration with Jeremy Lesniak, the founder and host of whistlekick, a martial arts supply company and a biweekly martial podcast. Today, we’re talking about the 1978 Shaw Brothers film, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, a kung fu film that achieved a certain amount of critical acclaim and the rare crossover to mainstream popularity.

I think I first watched it as a child in its original language (Mandarin … I vaguely recall it being on a Chinese TV station that we sometimes got if the stars aligned and the reception came through in just the right way). The only thing I really recall from the film from that first viewing was the main character trying to jump over logs in the water, repeatedly failing, and trying again and again. It’s odd what your brain chooses to remember.  For some reason, that would be my image of the martial arts for the next several years – a series of esoteric, masochistic practices that embodied the literal spirit of kung fu (功夫, a.k.a. “hard work”) and not disproved by television programming at the time, like the 80s ninja films or the 70s Kung Fu series with similar portrayals of training at the Shaolin Temple.

I can’t say my own exposure to martial arts training (which started a number of years later and has continued into the present) has done much to entirely disprove that early impression, either. Training should be harder than reality, my instructors have often said. Interestingly, something I took from my rewatching of the film this time was just training harder and longer, expending more sweat and energy in the process, need not be the best way to achieve success. The main character in the film does train hard in his own right – don’t get me wrong – but he succeeds as much due to his own ingenuity as due to his persistence.

Films like this, as well as my own experiences, are probably why I wanted to write a martial arts story (which ended up being Empty Hands) mostly about training, since the journey from beginner to master seems much more interesting and inspiring than the incremental improvements of someone who is already exceptional or the nonjourney of someone who is already highly skilled and is just plying his trade without much change or improvement.

It’s also interested how much films of this era influenced many people a world apart. If you talk to many of the OGs in the hip hop scene in the late 70s and early 80s, they often reference these kung fu films as being influential and inspirational. Check out this interview with RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan below (the DVD commentary for The 36th Chamber of Shaolin has him on it discussing the film):

If you haven’t see the film, give it a chance and check it out!

In the meantime, check out whistlekick on social media on Facebook and Instagram.

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This page formerly had what I affectionately dubbed a “starving artist” section on little side hustles you could do (mostly on the internet, often with a phone) to make a few bucks here and there, often in gift cards.  Well, now you can listen to this show (as well as other podcasts) and get paid to do so!  Check out https://www.podcoin.com/ to listen to the show and start earning points that you can redeem for gift cards (Amazon, Target, Starbucks, etc) or donations to a number of charities.  Use the code “Thirteen” when you sign up to get 300 extra points.  The Thirteen Hour Podcast is now on BONUS this week, so you can earn more than normal (1.5x).

Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.  Click on the picture below to listen!

empty hands ep cover_edited-2.jpg

Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #102: Con’t Conversation with Author, Artist, Musician, and Filmmaker Jeff Finley Part 2/2

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #102: Con’t Conversation with Author, Musician, and Filmmaker Jeff Finley Part 2/2

https://archive.org/download/Podcast102_201707/Podcast%20102.mp3

Jeff Finley is back this week to pick up where we left off.  If you happened to miss last week’s show, find episode 101 here.

Today, we talk about a lot of fun things – e.g. travelling in a new country and discovering not only new cultures, foods, and languages but aspects of yourself that come from putting yourself outside your comfort zone.  Travel naturally does this, as we’ve talked about before, fine tuning your senses and kicking you out of whatever routine day-to-day stuff you have going on.  There definitely comes a point when that gets to be too much of a good thing (as Jeff discusses here and on his blog), but like a spice, sprinkled here and there, it can do wonders for keeping things interesting in your life.

We also get to learn more about Jeff’s long career as a music producer (see below) as well as how he got into bboying.  It’s so rare that I find someone with as many diverse interests that it was such a pleasure to discuss these aspects of creative life with Jeff.

Check out Jeff’s portfolio here.   If you’d like one of this patches for your own, check out his etsy site.

Click on the covers of Jeff’s below to find a copy of your own.

Image result for thread's not dead  Image result for jeff finley astral projection

Social Media Links:

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Just for podcast listeners!  Get early access to a new upcoming EP, called Between Two Worlds, the sequel to Long Ago Not So Far Away.  Go here to download the album:

http://bit.ly/2txyAaM

between 2 worlds EP cover 2

The album will be available for one month (until 8/10/17).  The access code is on episode 100 at ~31:30.

Stay tuned.  Follow along on Spotify!  There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #47: Guest Conversation with Justin Part 1

Episode #47: My Friend Justin Joins the Show Part 1 – Gymnastics, Breakdancing, Martial Arts, Learning New Skills, and Not Giving Up

https://archive.org/download/13thHrEps16On/Podcast%2047%20Justin%201.mp3

Get ready for a massive interview spaced out over the next two weeks!  One of my best friends from college joins me for a walk down memory lane as we reminiscence about the years we spent training in gymnastics, breakdancing, and martial arts.  If you have any interest in those topics, you’ll likely find something of interest in this week’s episode.  Some of the topics covered:

-Trying to learn breakdancing by watching old, grainy VHS tapes of pioneer bboys like Crumbs, Ivan, and Storm

-There was only one or two digital video clips we had access to in the beginning (no Youtube).  We watched this unnamed guy doing windmills in his garage countless times and must have dissected it hundreds more – whoever you are, late 90s windmill guy, we are grateful.
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-The bboy crew Justin and started with two other college friends, Sherwood and Tim, Sympoh, is still around and continues to amaze us.

-The freeform aspect of hip-hop/beaking vs. the emphasis on doing things a certain set way in gymnastics and many martial arts

-How doing gymnastics is involved in learning your limits and conquering fear, applicable to other aspects of life (i.e. “there are no dumb gymnasts” per my high school coach)

-How to reconcile the “stay tight in the air” philosophy of gymnastics with the “relax in the air” philosophy of martial arts (we don’t actually resolve this, but it’s an interesting contrast)

-If you were two college kids who wanted to be ninjas, what do you do?

-How we found ninjitsu training

-You can still buy this grappling hook online (though you may not want to)

SZCO Supplies Grappling Hook with Cord

This series of explanatory ninjitsu books by Stephen K. Hayes were the ones I recall most vividly from childhood 

-Unlike in our childhoods, you can now easily find ninjitsu books by Stephen K. Hayes and his teacher, Dr. Masaaki Hatsumu, on Amazon.  The man who taught Justin and I years ago, Jack Hoban, now has training videos, referenced here.

-We spend a fair amount of time touching on the process of learning new skills, e.g.:

-What’s the Dunning Kruger effect?

-What’s the Feldenkrais method?  And how can slow, deliberate movements done with good form in optimal conditions counterintuitively help learn new skills faster?

-We debate whether innovation can/should be taught from the get go or should fundamentals be stressed first

-The beginner’s journey – even as a “master,” hopefully you are still continuing to learn (symbolized by the journey from white belt to black back to white again as the outer coloring of the belt gets frayed with time).

-The importance of not giving up too early – fitting given the meaning of the characters for ninja (忍者 – “one who endures” in Chinese)

-We discuss how martial arts and these other skills have shaped us as people.

There was a natural breaking point here, so I’ve split the interview into two parts for ease of listening.  Justin will return next week with more discussion on fitness and healthy eating.  In the meantime, check out his blog at

 https://dietisa4letterwordblog.wordpress.com/

In other news, since Instagram changed the amount of video they will allow to 60 seconds, I’ve been trying to distill songs that influenced the soundtrack and writing of The Thirteenth Hour down to 1 min in synthesized form.  There are also a few snippets from the soundtrack itself there – all at the Instagram account of @the13thhr.ost.

-E.g.: The Thirteenth Hour Theme, heard in the intro and outro of these podcasts

As always, thanks for listening

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  • Website: https://13thhr.wordpress.com
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The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #30 Bonus Track: Homebrew Games – Tomb Raider, Chimp Fighting, 80s Bboying, and The Thirteenth Hour

As mentioned in the 30th episode of The Thirteenth Hour podcast, my bro and I tried to make video games when we were kids.  Tried is the operative word, since many didn’t get finished.  My brother completed more than I did, but unfortunately, they’ve been lost to the ether of the internet, at least for now.  So instead, this is a page of games I worked on.  I doubt I’ll get around to finishing them since I’ve basically forgotten how to use the programs we used, Klik ‘N Play (KNP) and The Games Factory (GF), so this is a of museum of sorts.

I don’t know if you can find these programs easily today, but you can download a more advanced, free version called Clickteam Fusion (CF), which I think should open any of the game files below.  There are links to compressed folders below where you can run the .exe file to play the game (if it was completed); you can use CF, GF, or KNP to open the .gam file to see the levels and the sprites.  WARNING – these games don’t run very well on today’s computers!  Just a warning that the gameplay, which was never stellar, is even buggier than it was back in the day …

If you wish to use any of these sprites or elements of these games in your own indie games, please feel free to do so; I only ask you please link back to this page!

Tomb Raider: The Unicorn Quest

You can download this game here.

My first completed (fan) game, finished in 1999 or 2000, where a young Lara Croft goes on a search for a unicorn with her mentor.  Not long after they find one, their guides turn rogue after deciding they want the unicorn for themselves.  Lara’s mentor is killed, leaving Lara stranded in the woods.  She decides to save the kidnapped unicorn and avenge the death of her mentor.  I hand drew the animations for Lara, as well as a first person point of view perspective of her shooting dual pistols.

Sounds better that it really was.  The gameplay, 20 years later, is basically ASS 🙂

Nonetheless, here are some screen shots:

TRUQ1

The title screen

TRUQ2

The intro

TRUQ3

Lara’s job interview – how she finds a mentor

TRUQ4

Lara’s mentor gets in trouble

TRUQ5

The first level

TRUQ6

Lara flips while facing the first boss

TRUQ7

One of the mindless bonus levels where Lara gets shot out of a cannon (?!) and goes flipping around a room getting power-ups.

TRUQ8

Lara’s in trouble!  3 motorcycle riders with machine guns are racing to find her, in true 80s movie style.

TRUQ9

Lara steals one of their bikes …

TRUQ10

… you get to this very frustrating level to play – you control Lara as she rides along the desert landscape trying to inexplicably avoid boulders falling from the sky.  I programmed it so the boulders with target your movements, but due to the shite control, it is irritating to play. 

TRUQ11

Like a retro Lucasarts game, you don’t really die in this game … if you run out of hearts, the level basically restarts.  In the interim, you see this screen.

TRUQ12

First person shooting in a boss level – the animations of the guns (slides going back, shell casings ejecting, etc) were hand drawn, then compiled in the games program.  

Tomb Raider: Shadow of the Wolf

Never finished, but you can download the working .gam file here, which you can use to make a game of your own.  For animated gifs, see the post immediately below.

I wrote about this game here, so won’t repeat myself, but the story (I think) revolved around Lara trying to recover a mythical sword rumored to be part of the Regalia of Japan before a group of ninjas intent on finding it first do.  ‘Nuff said!  I do, however, have a little backstory script written for the plot which I may add to and make an actual fanfic short story one day, which may give me something to do with the pictures I drew.

Chimpoeria

You can download it here.

This was the second game I finished – a chimp fighting game.  As a play on the Afro-Brazilian martial art, capoeria, it’s called Chimpoeira.  The game doesn’t run very well on today’s machines – the movements and controls are too erratic to be very enjoyable, but on the 200 MHz machine I had in college, I had a lot of fun playing this game after I made it.

chimp

The graffiti style title screen

chimp2

The training screen

chimp3

Fighting the grey chimp – you ever-present arch enemy

 

The Drummer’s Beat

Never finished, but you can download the working .gam file here, which you can use to make a game of your own.

While I was working on the above games, I was also working on a bboy game where you play a kid in the early 80s running around the Bronx learning how to breakdance.  You have to convince a group of local bboys to teach you in exchange for helping them find a place to practice (a constant real-life hassle for most bboys and bgirls).  The title comes from the Herman Kelly and the Life song “Dance to the Drummer’s Beat,” a good old school breaking beat.

This ended up being a pretty ambitious project, since in addition to making all the animations for the dancers and a breaking battle engine, I wanted to make a city for your character to run around in to give it some RPG elements.  Interestingly, the latter part was what I got hung up on and eventually stalled the project.  The battle engine was more of less done, though it wasn’t great in terms of gameplay, and most of the animations – arguably the more tedious and time consuming part – were done, so if someone wishes to make a 2D breaking game, please feel free to use the above file.  I’ll be first in line to play it!

(If you’re interested in playing an actual, finished bboy game, I’d recommend Bboy for the PSP or PS2, especially since actual OG bboys were used as character models. Unfortunately, that game hadn’t come out at the time I was working on this.  It does most of what I was trying to anyway.  Though I haven’t played it, I heard the PSX game Bust a Groove is another, earlier game where you can apparently bboy).

I didn’t have a chance to go through the myriad animations and turn them all into animated gifs, but here are two:

6step animated gifone of the footwork animations

mills animated gifthis windmill-nutcracker-backspin combo took forever to animate!

Here are some screenshots:

drum1

drum2

Intro screens

drum3

Your main character is the kid on the left, watching the bboys practicing outside your apartment.  Little do they know you’ve been trying to do what they do in your room.

drum4

Eventually, you get up the guts to ask them to teach you something.  They sort of agree, once you show them what you’ve been trying to do.  Ah, hip hop, the great social equalizer.  However, they’d like your help in finding a better place to practice …

drum5

… so you start running around the city, where you can enter stores and talk to people.

drum6

Unfortunately, if you get hit by a car, you end up in that big cypher in the sky.

drum8

You could eventually earn some cash, which you could spend on things like apples for more energy or better clothes to make it easier to do spinning moves.  OR … you could apparently blow it all on a prostitute, haha!  I totally don’t remember adding any of this but laughed out loud when I found the “Death by Prostitute” level I had apparently included.

drum9

If you blew your $$$ on a hooker, though, things didn’t end so well for you in this depiction of pre-AIDS antiretroviral medication (a midi file of “Sexual Healing” would be playing on this screen).

drum7

However, if you managed to avoid these temptations and kept practicing, you’d eventually be rewarded with more moves and better gear.

 

The Thirteenth Hour Game

Although I’ll have to do a separate post on this later, I originally thought The Thirteenth Hour might be best as a game rather than as a book (before I knew about ebooks), so I set out on the ambitious task of making it into a video game.  Not surprising I didn’t finish, but given the length of the book, I’m impressed as how much time I managed to sink into this clearly unrealistic goal.

output_B3j4UO  I modified a Mega Man 2 character sprite to make the main characters – here’s Logan and Aurora on Lightning.

logan lightning animatedThis one is different.  I think I drew this one from scratch and have since used it in the original trailer and other videos.

Here are some screen shots:

13hr1

The intro, with lyrics from Alphaville’s “Forever Young” (playing in the background, of course)

13hr2

The classroom scene – seen out of Alfred’s eyes as he gets drowsy …

13hr3

… and falls asleep.  In the background, you can hear 13 chimes going off to mark the ringing of the 13th hour.

13hr4

Once asleep and dreaming, Alfred encounters two shadowy figures who tell him the tale of The Thirteenth Hour …

dragon

At some point, our heroes will encounter this guy …

outpit(1).gif

This grainy animated gif shows the little intro to the cast of characters …

I’ll have to go back and take a closer look at this pre-game, so for now, to be continued!

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