Movie meets world

I’m very happy to finally announce that we’ve signed a worldwide distribution agreement for Nerdcore For Life with a fantastic company called Journeyman Pictures.  Journeyman is based in the UK and they specialize is distributing offbeat documentaries.  They do a ton of business throughout Europe which is a market that we all think will be really accepting of a crazy documentary about rapping nerds.  Journeyman has some really interesting plans for Nerdcore For Life. The DVD release is already in the works but the film should hopefully be accessible to people in lots of other ways.  For now though, the focus is getting the DVD ready to ship.  So stay tuned for a release date!

OMG! LOLcats musik video unleeshed on teh internetz!

It was exactly one year ago today, on July 12th, 2008 that Nerdcore rapper/producer Doctor Popular and I spent an afternoon in a garbage filled alley in San Francisco filming a music video for his song LOLcats. Nerdcore For Life is roughly 84 minutes long.  It took about 5 months to edit.  The music video for LOLcats is under 3 minutes.  It took me 12 months to edit.  Ok…I didn’t spend all 12 months editing the thing.  It just got pushed to the back burner for a minute.  But when I realized that the one year anniversary of the shoot was coming up, I dug through my hard drive, found the files and finally finished our nerdcore magnum opus.  I didn’t exactly plan to post the video one year to the day that we shot it but sometimes the universe just makes cool stuff like this happen.

I think the video turned out awesome.  I’ve watched it 500 times at this point and it still makes me smile.  The song is great and Doc Pop is actually a really good actor too.  I think the reason I like the video so much is because I think LOLcats and Icanhascheezburger.com are like the most hilarious things to take up space on the internetz.  I look at ICHC every day!  Doc Pop is an LOLcat fan too and when you combine our geeky affection for this bizarre little meme, you get a very strange music video packed with in-jokes that only the most die-hard LOLcat fans will understand.  Even the San Francisco ally where we shot the video is an in-joke!  (details here)

So watch and try to enjoy the fruits of our Audio and Visual labors.  If you get every single LOLcat reference then congratulations;  you win a cheezburger…..and a belly rub…and a bukit!  We took a bunch of pictures during the shoot.  Here are a few of my favorites:

This might be my favorite photo of the set. It's just 2 guys; one performing and one filming. I didn't even own a decent camera this time last year. The one in the picture is borrowed.

End of the road?

I stopped submitting Nerdcore For Life to film festivals a good while back and now that I think about it, I don’t think the doc has had a festival screening since October!  Oh my God, that feels like it was last month.  No wait!  We screened in the Lake County Film Fest a few months back.  Well anyway, I thought we’d go for one more and as it turns out, we were accepted to what will probably be Nerdcore For Life’s final film festival.  The fest?  The Hardacre Film and Cinema Festival in Tipton, Iowa.  It’s our Iowa premiere!  There are only 5 documentary features selected for this year’s festival so it’s quite an honor to be accepted.  Couple that with the sentimentality that comes with our last fest screening and I’ve got enough motivation to get in my car and drive out there.  The festival runs August 7th and 8th at the very cool looking Hardacre Theater.  Is “Hardacre” the best name for an Iowa film festival or what?  Like I can just imagine that the theater got its name because the farmers would go there at the end of the day to unwind after working their “hard acres” or something.  Or maybe it was just built by a guy named “Arnie Hardacre.”  I don’t know.  I’ll check on that when I get out there.

http://www.tiptoniowa.us/hardacre/

NC4L finally on the Facey-space

Nerdcore For Life has had a myspace page since pretty much day one and we have a pretty healthy collection of fans over there.  But the times…they are a changing.  A lot of folks made the exodus to Facebook a long time ago so I figured we should do the same.  So Nerdcore For Life finally has a Facebook page and you can become a “fan” of us by clicking right here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nerdcore-For-Life/79341126707

So what’s the benefit of becoming our Facebook fan?  Well, because facebook is so easy to use and since it’s basically designed as a place where people can share micro-messages, we’re going to be posting lots of little stuff that we normally wouldn’t post to the blog or to Nerdcoreforlife.com.  Like what, you ask?  Like news and info about individual nerdcore rappers that appear in the documentary or maybe a link to the “Which Nerdcore Rapper are you?” quiz.  Yes that’s a real quiz and the link to it can be found on our Facey-space.

Youtube, we love you

Wow, well we hit kind of a mini-milestone today.  I checked the stats for Nerdcore For Life’s youtube channel and in total, all of the videos on our channel have racked up 1,500,120 views.

The first video I posted to the channel was the Nerdcore For Life trailer on December 7, 2006.  I remember the date because you know….it lives in infamy.  So it took 2 1/2 years but we finally reached the 1.5 million views mark.  Most of the views belong to the trailer which is up to 842,027 views and the music video I made with MC Router for her song “Buggin’ Out,” which is at 302,601 views.

Our third most popular clip is some raw footage of Monzy performing his song “Kill Dash Nine” at Stanford University which is up to 263,832 views.  That last video tought me a little something about working the interwebs.  When the Nerdcore For Life trailer was featured by youtube back in December 06, Monzy right away asked me to post a clip of him to the channel too.  I did and lo and behold, the video became a hit.  A lot of the people who watched the trailer wanted to see if we had any other nerdcore clips up.  So the lesson is that a rising tide raises all ships.  That Monzy clip went on to earn me a really huge geek-bragging right.  For a day or so it was the Number 1 item on Digg.com.  You know how freaking hard that is to do!??!  Man I wish I had taken a screencap of that.

Anywho….thanks to all the nerds out there for watching out stuff!

Free Colorado NC4L Screening

A nerdcore fan at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, CO contacted me about two months ago and asked what it would take to make a screening and concert happen at his school. We exchanged some ideas and the dude actually busted his ass and made the whole thing happen! He even got the school to sponsor it as an official event so the whole thing will be free and open to all. They even made up some really sweet posters:



I’ll be there and so will Colorado’s favorite son, Ytcracker. This is a student thing but the general public is welcome.

NERDCORE FOR LIFE screening + YTCRACKER Performance!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
7:00pm – 10:00pm
Lory Student Center Theatre
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO

Cost: Free!

Neat Amp Magazine Piece

Hey so this is cool, Amp Magazine did a great story about Nerdcore For Life and you can read it by clicking right here, right now:

http://www.ampmagazine.com/index.php/interviews/comments/nerdcore_for_life/

I did my interview for this so long ago I didn’t even remember what I said. I like this piece because it’s the first time a reporter included anything I had to say about craigslist. Without craigslist, I never would have been able to make the film; I found most of our camera operators there and I even found our editors there! So I’m glad Craigslist finally got a little credit.

We Heart Amsterdam

We’re back! After some genuine concern and worry about one member of our party, I’m happy to say that all of us (Beefy, MC Router, MC Lars, Ytcracker and me, Dan) survived our trip to Amsterdam for Glitched: The Dutch Nerdcore event. I think all of us would agree that it was one of the best, coolest, most special things we’ve ever done in our lives. It’s not just that it was a fun trip (which it was) it was because the guys that brought us out there (4Worx) were just such awesome, cool, happy people and they really made us feel appreciated and welcome. They didn’t set up the fest for money…they did it because they thought it would be fun and man. oh man, did those guys have fun. Those 4Worx guys partied harder than any of us!

The American Nerdcore For Life team, the Dutch 4worx guys and a lovely fountain

My flight landed at the airport in Amsterdam at about 9am on Tuesday and I was met by Gerrit, one of the 4Worx guys. He bought me some tea and we talked for like 2 hours while we waited for Beefy, Router and Ytcracker to get there. They were all coming in on the same flight from Houston. We were soon joined at Schiphol by Stevijn, the genius who came up with the idea for Glitched. Both he and Gerrit were super great guys; both as funny and as nice as could be. They took good care of us.

About 20 minutes before the other guys were supposed to land we noticed that suddenly everyone in the airport had gathered around every big screen TV they could find. Gerrit got up to see what was on. He came back and said “a plane just crashed at Schiphol Airport.” I said, “Wow, where’s Schiphol Airport?” And he said something to the effect of “you’re in it right now!”

I’ve been asked a few times about this but no, we didn’t feel the crash or hear any noises or see any wreckage. Right away we heard the flight was from Turkey so we knew our crew was ok but it wasn’t fun hanging out at the airport anymore. Shockingly, our friends’ plane was allowed to land after being delayed by only 15 minutes. When they got off, they didn’t even know there had been a crash or that they were almost diverted to Germany. So all of us were very lucky in more ways than one.

Our hotel....for serious!

Our hotel turned out to be outrageously nice. We would have been happy to sleep at the train station but instead, 4Worx booked us into the Hotel American which is right on one of the most famous and popular squares in Amsterdam; the Liedsplein. It was absolutely the best area you could ever hope to stay in. It was right in the heart of all the action. The rooms we got were ridiculous! I stayed with Beefy and our room overlooked a canal. Ytcracker stayed with MC Lars’ manager Mark (also a great, funny guy) and they had a huge balcony overlooking the square. MC Router got here own room, MC Lars stayed with his very cool girlfriend and Gerrit and Stevijn even got rooms at the hotel too.

That first day we had an awesome time just wandering around and then that night, the head of 4Worx, Hermen came in to meet us. That dude was super cool too. Hermen, Stevijn and Gerrit all kept taking us to dinner, showing us around, buying us drinks….it was just all fun, all the time. Here’s a video the 4Worx guys posted. They took me and Router to a popular Dutch fast food place to try something that Hermen described as being “the best thing you will ever eat.”  Here’s some video trying that particular item:

MC Router VS. The Frinkendel

Dutch food is pretty crazy. Most of it was good and most of it was fried. I decided I should try a pickled herring since it’s like the beloved national snack of Holland. Here’s my herring:

Pickles and death

Not pictured: me nearly puking after a single bite.

The day of the show, the 4Worx guys took us on a boat trip around the canals of Amsterdam. Probably the coolest thing about the excursion was that all we had to do to get to the boat was walk out of the front door of the hotel and there was the boat. Here are a couple pics and here’s a video posted by Stevijn (I think) of some of the rappers freestyling while boating. You can chalk up the bizarre freestyles to a combination of jet lag and too many Frikendels.

Beefy and Router...on a mother F-ing boat!

After the boat trip we headed to the venue; Club Panama. We spent a few hours setting up and doing tech checks and at 8pm we were greatly relived to see that a throng of people were waiting outside! I’m going to guess that overall, 250+ people turned out and some came from as far as Germany and the UK.

The 4worx guys greet their public

Everyone watched the film intently but the audio was kind of a problem since no matter how quiet everyone tried to be, there was always a soft murmur amongst the crowd. I wish we had screened a copy of the film that had subtitles. That way people could have been able to socialize while still keeping up with the film.

Stevijn had a good idea which was that as soon as the credits started, Beefy should come out and perform “Nerdcore For Life.” He did just that and the crowd went BERZERK. The audience loved the show from start to finish. I have been to more nerdcore shows than I can count at this point but I have never seen a reaction like the one that Router, Beefy, YT and Lars got in Amsterdam. People danced their asses off! And what was really, really, really great is that the people who danced the hardest and seemed to have the most fun were all the employees of 4Worx. Oh, there was tons of media people there too. The artists all probably did like 5 interviews each. Here’s a video piece about the show. Some of it’s in Dutch but you’ll get the point: http://www.bright.tv/series/nerdcore

Here’s a few random pics from the show:

Me introducing Nerdcore For Life

Router does a mid-movie interview

MC Lars tears up Club Panama

Lots of happy Dutch people

After the performances on Thursday night, Ytcracker DJed for a while and the people kept on dancing. When Club Panama finally kicked us out at 2:30am, we headed back to the liedsplein. I rode back in a cab with Router and some of the 4Worx team….they were the drunkest, craziest people I’ve ever ridden in a cab with. After a late night snack at a dutch burger king (lol) we found another club to go to. When I finally couldn’t take anymore I snuck out of there at about 4am which was just about the time that Router got up on the bar’s “stripper pole.” (that’s always my cue to leave.)

The 4Worx guys had to head back to the home base in Amersfoort on Friday and it was sad to see them go. After they left, we all did various fun things that won’t be covered here. (What happens in Amsterdam, stays in Amsterdam.) I will add that Router passed out cold on Saturday night and though we called her room and banged on her door, she slept until 11am on Sunday. Too bad her flight was at 8am. Since she didn’t give us any sign that she was in her room we assumed that she went out and didn’t come back. So our last hours in Amsterdam were a little tense. But after she awoke Router was able to catch a later flight and lived to get wasted another day.

Me and our new heroes

I can’t say thanks enough to Gerrit, Hermen, Stevijn and everyone at 4Worx for being such fun, gracious hosts. I hope they thought the whole thing was worth all the trouble they went through! I also really appreciate the artists from the film who were willing to fly half-way across the world to play one, single show. Without them, there wouldn’t be a movie let alone a “Dutch Nerdcore event.” So basically I pretty much owe like a dozen people some really giant favors. Next trip, the pickled herring’s on me!

Lots more photos of the trip on out flickr page: http://flickr.com/photos/nerdcoreforlife/sets/72157614636456032/

Recent Visitors

I use a program to track where visitors to Nerdcoreforlife.com are from and shows their location on a map.  I’m heading to the airport in an hour and I thought I’d check and see how NC4L website’s traffic is doing one more time.  Check out this section from the Recent Visitor map:

The Netherlands: Nerd Central

I’m going to take this as a sign that Amsterdam screening and concert are going to go well.

Two new Chicagoland screenings

Ah-ha.  We’ve got two screenings coming up that I don’t need to get on a plane to attend.  Both will be for the Lake County Film Fest in early March.  Here are the deets….

Friday, March 6th @ 6PM
College of Lake County, Room B270
19351 W Washington St.  Grayslake, IL

Sunday, March 8th @ 4PM
College of Lake County, Room B270
19351 W Washington St.  Grayslake, IL

It’s just a 90 minute drive to Grayslake so chances are good that I’ll be at both screenings.  The fest guide says that the doc plays both days with the short film Reefer Madness but no, it’s not the Reefer Madness you’re thinking of.  It looks good though.

Oh yeah, in a weird twist, my “Why Chicago” 2016 Olympics video is going to be playing in the shorts program.  How the heck did that happen?  The director of the fest saw it here on the blog and said the fest should show it.  If only it was that easy to get into every film fest!

Here’s the festival’s full schedule:  http://lcff.bside.com/2009/schedule

Next Page »