RAMONE!

More on my radio show animation project, with the working title "Chicken Chokes You". The clip I'm animating is from "The Opie & Anthony Show", undoubtedly SiriusXM's best program in terms of relevance and unfiltered humour. Growing from borderline-unlistenable roots as a 'shock jock' double act, it's morphed into a uniquely authentic outlet for political debate, social satire and theoretical musings interspersed with molestation humour and ridiculing the less fortunate.The duo consist of former nice-guy-doormat-turned-embittered-sociopath Greg Hughes (Opie) along with former tin-knocker-turned-casually-racist-cradlesnatcher Anthony Cumia. Their third mic is standup comedian Jim Norton, with whom I'd been vaguely familiar through his collabs with Louis CK and Lewis Black when I first saw him perform at a charity benefit at Gotham in New York a few years back. I subsequently became a huge follower of his books, performances and O&A in general.I'd say the show's initial appeal was its ability to hit nerves with me that I'd assumed a quarter-century of bitter douchebaggery had eroded, but the more I listened the more I felt a legitimate affinity with what they were doing. It's the same fundamental comfort that I take from hearing performers like Doug Stanhope (as well as the aforementioned CK and Black) that beneath the unending bullshit we're fed by the media in all its forms there are a small handful of people who are scathingly honest. Or, more likely, their opinions and thought processes just happen to coincide with mine, which of course makes them geniuses. I think that's how it works.
Ironically the audio I picked to animate is Jim Norton's 'light' side at work, hilarious when juxtaposed against his usual brutal tirades and confessions of sexual deviancy. I'm not entirely sure how the short will play out of this context, but here's the original audio (thanks to kennethjohnali for uploading the clip):

The show has previously shown a lot of enthusiasm for fan-made animation, holding their own animation festival back in '08 and encouraging some really gifted creatives such as Allthingsmedia and the staggeringly prolific, Terry Gilliam-esque Cokelogic. So if I'm gonna follow through on this I really want to be proud of the result beyond just having some new showreel footage. Watch this space.