Early Warnings: Andy and Eddy and Jair the WEB PRESENCE

This was the shirt we made to celebrate the ending of an era, the Andy Eddy and Jair epoch. We sold one for $20 to a weird old man who dressed up as a Werewolf and introduced z-grade horror movies on public access television, he recently died leaving his best friend a Frankenstein man all alone with the horror movies.

I wanna tell you a little story about the old demon video film. When I was 12 years old I was the most depressed defensive line men on the middle school football team. I would go to every game and stand in the rain on the sidelines, the only time coach would put me in is when we were losing soooo badly my missed tackles couldn’t matter. It all changed one Labor Day barbq at Jake Trickeys house. Andy Cahill was there with his brand new 8mm video camera and we thought it would be cool to film a horror movie. The Blair Witch Project had just come out and we had all seen it. Inspired by the shaky no budget thrills we decided to make a legend of a boy raised by squirrels in a horse cave somewhere in the shadow of Orient Springs. I ‘acted’ in it, I sang in a falsetto so high it still brings a smile to my face, and the song? A little ditty by a new british band, something called “If you wanna be my lover (you gotta get with my friends)” and I was soon attacked by the fearsome CAVEBOY, played by our resident ninja warrior Jake Trickey himself! Andy edited in all in camera and by the time the light had completely left the woods we had our masterpiece done and ready to screen. I must have watched it 7 thousand times. We decided we liked it so much that we went on to make somewhere in the vicinity of 15 sequels. Caveboy evolved into a warner brothers cartoon of the primordial ID (Cave boy) and the bumbling hero (ME) and he sang a musical, died on a razer scooter (wiley coyote style) and met god and the devil and rose from the dead time and time again.
When I realised I liked making videos with nerdy kids more than failure, homophobia and constant brain injuries I quit the football team and basically moved to ACTV (Amherst Community Television) a public access station with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment that no one was using. I spent most of highschool there, learning about video, music, editing and friendship (ugh so quaint but so true) oh and also how flaky mutha funkers can be. We called ourselves Andy Eddy and Jair The Show, and we made about 4 half hours a year. Sometimes the show would grow to feature length, and it was all short films about 3 minutes long. We three wrote, cast, directed, shot and edited about a short a month, and Andy Cahill, Jeremiah Burbank, Rosie Pula (the only woman we knew at the time) Chris Gesualdi, David Lawall and the Kyle’s were our acting stable. I learned how to photograph and edit pictures making posters for the show premieres that no one ever came to. We didn’t really care, and the most important thing I have ever learned was if you are proud of yourself it doesn’t matter if no one shows up to your screenings. It was their loss and the ones who did show up (Peter Kuusisto, David Lawall, Audrey White, Kyle and Colin Bresnahan, Azwan Badruzaman, Elizabeth McHaffey, Peter Marvin, Lila The Viking Wohan, Esteban Arguello and Noah Klugman) they are the only people who really matter cause they are the only ones who understood what we were trying to do.
I can’t thank ACTV enough for helping me realize that I was something more than a gun shy nose tackle, I go back every few years and everything is different but still the same. Yeah Bob ain’t there no more and Peter Marvin is raking in the bucks managing Amherst College’s media, and Osama ain’t Osama no more and is living the dream somewhere out on the west coast, but I want to cry when I see 14 year old weirdo’s editing skater videos on imacs, if only they knew how important this time is.
Anyways enuff with the water works, here in three parts is the Sisterside dramedy “BAG HEAD” it features my Sister, Rosie Pula reenacting our relationship with Chris Gesualdi (My constant stand in) The Katy character was actually written for this girl I had a crush on at the time, funnily enough her name was Katy too, but she wouldn’t return my phone calls so I called up Chris who knocked the part out of the park. I wrote the script, made every one read it, then threw it away french new wave style and we improved everything. Andy Cahill realized it made no sense the way we filmed it, so he tried to patch up the glaring cracks with animation and (godard) Breathless editing. The music was composed by Noah Klugman, and is actually quiet stylish. Kyle Stosz makes an appearance as the flyest muth funka we knew (he still is, just has a baby girl and another on the way) and it ends the way these things always end with a broken heart and ketchup standing in for blood and guts. The Subtext (and there is always a subtext) was Andy and Jair had up and got themselves girlfriends and I was just starting down the road of being a drunk resentful loner. Its a dark dark comedy (all the good ones are) and its still damn funny and sad and true. Please watch it! Not for me but for 12 year old Eddy singing Spice Girls songs and swatting away mosquitoes down in the woods behind the Trickey property and hoping that these super smart weirdo’s will become his friends if only he makes a huge ass out himself for a camera, any camera.

Part the first

Penultimate Part (my favorite by the way!)

The Satisfying finale

The End, thanks for watching and keep spreading the tapes!