…I went around town and photographed “Crimewave” filming locations. It wasn’t until 2024 that I got the image of the MacArthur Bridge to Belle Isle, where the villain battles the hero before falling from the bridge and being smashed by a car. I hope you enjoy my nerdy then-and-now tour of filming locations.

In 1950, Francis A. Johnson began creating a ball of twine that grew to be the world’s largest made by a single person. It became the star attraction of the tiny Minnesota town of Darwin, and inspired a 1989 song by “Weird Al” Yankovic. In 1999, I visited the grounds with a group of friends, and I brought along my MiniDisc recorder to document the trip. Here I bring you some choice audio from those recordings, my impromtu interview with the then-caretakers of the twine ball, June and Jess Hatfield.

In April, 2005, the massive former Studebaker factory at Piquette and John R in Detroit burned. These are my photos and video of the aftermath.

Here’s my video documenting the 2023 Detroit Cantastoria festival. This big group art show had me pulling from all of my skills, writing, acting, painting and documenting. This video flips betwen fly-on-the-wall clips during the construction and open workshops as well as from the two evenings of performances. This is truly a you-had-to-be-there medium, but I hope that my phone clips give an idea of the weekend. I’ll be returning to join in for 2024, too…

Gary Schwartz directed a two-day workshop to produce this short frame-by-frame animation. I joined in the class and also made the music (and Jeff Jimison voices the late Senator Thomas Palmer.

Gary Schwartz and his pupils at the Flint Institute School of Art animate this brief expression of anguish at the outset of the war in Ukraine. A large Soviet 35mm anamorphic projection lens was adapted for the project. My sound design samples The Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, from a 1960s Detroit recording. Animation by Benjamin Strom, Brianna Rose Haywood and Noah Hansz.

In the spirit of DIY 1990s zine culture and styled after the incredible WFMU, WAITING FOR LUNCH RADIO ZINE is a cornucopia of outsider art. Dozens of episodes were created between 2020 and 2022, going out not only online via Mixcloud but also over real-life terrestrial FM radio in the Detroit metroplex, appearing on WAHS 89.5FM Auburn Hills, WPHS 89.1FM Warren and WFCB-LP 100.7FM Ferndale.

This game show for artists can’t be lost. Seven quick episodes created concurrently with sister show Waiting For Lunch Radio Zine. This mini-podcast was also featured on “Incubator” as part of The Planet Ant Podcast Network.

Episodes feature puppet artist Lindsay McCaw, writer Amanda Nazario, musician Swivs, illustrator Bekki Doodles, voice actor Tim Rath, animator Gary Schwartz, and visual artist Vagner Whitehead. Jeff Jimison created original sound design for our MANDATORY OBSTACLE COURSE.

This incredible podcast documenting the Weird Al universe honored me by interviewing me across two episodes!

I created the soundtrack for a new forty-second animation by filmmaker Gary Schwartz, which is live on YouTube and will premiere in-real-life in October! The sounds for this film include clips from tapes I recorded as a child, field recordings of real locations including Cedar Point and Dutch barrel organs, a few catalogue sounds and a bunch of custom sounds created at home for this short. It’s amazing how many useful noises a simple bicycle can make.

Iztac, the snow leopard at the Mexico City zoo, plans his escape in the midst of his trapeze act. DJ Stashu longs for a blue-collar lover. Mitch gets trapped in a time vortex, and Detroit looks forward optimistically amidst chaos. Quirky original music and animation soundtracks round out this new six-track collection.

Fans from the newsgroup alt.music.weird-al mailed cassette tapes to my mom’s P.O. box when I was 15 so I could compile this: the first-ever “Weird Al” Yankovic tribute album. Long unavailable, it’s back on this site for free as of June 27, 2020.

5 hours and 44 minutes of rain and other sounds recorded with binaural microphones at the Western edge of Downtown Detroit on 5/15/2020 during Covid lockdown.

The annual observation of my world.

The Illitch family, owners of Little Caesars Pizza, deliberately destroy historically protected buildings in Detroit to create parking lots for their stadiums.

A time-lapse 9-square cube of clouds and urban scenes in Detroit with backwards singing.

As part of my ongoing collaboration with Academy Award nominated animator Gary Schwartz, I recently created two minutes of “walking” sound design for a student workshop he taught in Armenia. The high-school-aged students were charged with creating walk cycle animations to the changing scenes set up by the sound design.

A comedy skit I made when I was 14.