Okay, It’s now officially an internet phenom.

The rap is a little long, but right around the 3 minute mark these guys throw out a lyrical homage to Nakatomi’s Change Into a Truck print…

Man…this is gotten way beyond me.

This was preformed by Twinprov, and they sent the video over to me, saying they gave us a shout out.  From Twinprov’s site-

“Twinprov is a one-of-a-kind comedy troupe made up of two-of-a-kind twin brothers Buck and Clint Vrazel that specializes in creating reality-altering improv, stand-up, sketch, and musical comedy.”

You can read all about them HERE.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed on how they managed to sum up all my feelings about the first TF flick, ragging on M.Bay for exactly the points I was, 2 years ago…but RHYMING!   And the surprising thing is that Paramount apparently invited them to preform this rap, essentially RIPPING the last chapter apart, at some midnight screenings of the film in OKC.

Crazy.

Where will ‘Change Into a Truck’ go next…I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.  (Seriously weird news on that front soon enough…)

-alex fugazi

reNESsance returns!

For those of you paying attention (a-hem!) Nakatomi finished it’s print studio a week or so back, and now it’s time to roll out the first prints from that garage-think-tank!

Available in 3 different colorways each limited to 30 prints each, ‘SMB WTC’ is printed and ready to ship!

World 1-1

World 1-2

World 1-4

‘SMB-WTC’ is a 4 color silkscreen, signed and numbered by the artist.

And because that’s not enough, we also bring you- “Mr. Koopa, tear down that wall!”

Mr. Koopa, tear down that wall!

This print is a 3 color 12×18 screenprint, limited to 50, signed and numbered by the artist.

If you’d like to see images of the printing process, and the screenshop, head on over to AlexFugazi’s Flickr account HERE.

These prints are up for sale NOW in the ART PRINTS section of the Nakatomi store!

If you want to know about new releases before they happen, you should join the mailing list HERE!

Thank you, but our princess is in another castle!

As you may already know, my favorite sidekick (next to Aqualad) passed yesterday.

Ed Mcahon- 1923-2009.

Ed was more man than you or me will ever be. He was a six time decorated Marine test pilot Colonel in WW2 AND Korea, the host of ‘Star Search’ (American Idol owes Ed BIG-TIME), helped Jerry Lewis raise about 2 BILLION dollars for MS research, and even spent an afternoon alone in with Marilyn Monroe in her trailer on the set of ‘How to Marry a Millionaire.’ His ancestor may or may not have invented Mayonnaise. And on top of that he was…you know…that drunk guy sitting next to Johnny Carson for 30 years.

I don’t know if it’s the box wine I’m finally finishing from last month’s Doyle wedding, but this has got me a little choked up. Ed was like Santa Claus for me…always there, but never in my reality…a glowing TV presence, there every night, be it agreeing w/ Johnny, or trying to sell me an investment in gold…Ed was a constant in broadcasting for half a century, and I’ll miss him. So raise a glass of Box-Merlot and shout a ‘Here’s Johnny’ to the darkness for ‘ol Ed.

Like many milestones in my life, my feelings can be best summed up by Weird Al Yankovic- I have no idea what’s going on w/ the video here, but the song is eternal-

- Alex Fugazi

As Chief Technology Officer at Nakatomi, Inc, this is why I love Nakatomi customers and visitors to this site:

No other sites I work on have such high rates of good browser use. In fact I’ve never worked on a web site whose user base is more than 50% Firefox. In addition, the 20% or so of Chrome / Safari / Opera users is totally awesome. Internet Explorer is a web browser that should die. Die. Die. Die. As a web developer, it makes my life hell because 1) they don’t follow web standards used by most all other browsers and 2) they have the majority of the browser market and can do whatever they want, so we developers still have to program for it.

Internet Explorer 8 is MUCH better than anything they’ve done so far (IE6 was/still is an abomination). But check out this this amazing page on the Microsoft web site. Microsoft claims that Firefox doesn’t feature “security” or “privacy”, which is obviously untrue. The new IE8 Developer Tools are a major improvement, but it still has about a tenth of the ease-of-use of Firebug. I don’t understand what “Manageability” even means in the context of a web browser. The funniest post on slashdot about this referring to their quote: “Internet Explorer 8 catches almost twice as much malware than the competition.” — that’s “catches” as in “catching” an STD.

Amazing. Sorry to dork out on you.

Luv,
Biafrah Winfrey

So over the last 2 weeks, we here at Nakatomi have been busting ass getting our print studio up and running… and now we want to show off the fruits of our labors!

This whole thing fits into a 10×15 garage, and ran us just under 2K.  We finished our first print in the new studio last night, and we couldn’t be more proud (or smug in our awesome-sauce.)

Nakatomi fellow Clint Wilson pitched in for a ton of work and advice.

Satch Grimley is a local master printer here in Austin, and all it took was a quick “Hey Satch, know where we can score a rack on the cheap?” and he had the answer.

This was fun and pretty simple.  Just build a box, and slap it on two furniture dolly’s.  Sand it and add a layer of paint.  I found pro exposure booths costing upwards of 7K.  Screw that noise.  The glass was a bit to bite off, but it does the job.  Tempered means it’ll break into thousands of little pieces one day, as opposed to a few Jugular-cutting shards that normal glass breaks into.  The REAL kicker is that the glass shop (Binswanger) left the invoice from the place THEY got the top  from taped to it…and they paid $103 for it…and charged me $300.  Whatevs.

So the next thing we needed was a Washout booth to clean our screens and equiment.  BUT- we didn’t want to splash junk all over the house and garage whenever we printed-

Pretty cool, eh?

It was also pretty important that the whole thing be able to breakdown for transport and cleaning and maintenance if needed.  So…

Of course, spraying water at something I just built was a little scary…especially if we were running eletricity to it, SO…

And because it wasn’t awesome ENOUGH…

And most importantly, we needed a table to do the printing on-

So, there you have it.  We still have a few details to square away, but for all intents and purposes, we have a fully functioning shop in under 2 weeks and 2K in expenses.  If you’re in Austin and want to come by and check it out, drop me an email!

-alex fugazi

The world lost one of its baddest asses today, and is not near as cool as it was.

I grew up on a diet of Kung Fu reruns. There was action in every episode, but there was also the wise teachings of the old Chinese guy from Gremlins. Like Grasshopper, it was the basis for my spiritual understanding. Then you get to see David Carradine use that knowledge to solve problems in the old west… with a few swift kicks to the bad guy’s face.

I even watched the 90s revamp. It wasn’t nearly as good (and how the hell did it take place in modern times?), but still… Kung Fu with Carradine!

As a young man that felt out-of-place watching Oscar nominee borefests, I turned to schlock and trash films. One of the first ones I watched, and the one that would guarantee my eternal love of low-budget cinema was Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000. To my surprise, there was David Carradine again, this time as the mysterious driver Frankenstein. If you’ve never seen this movie, you seriously owe it to yourself to get it immediately and enjoy some nice, campy violence. And Carradine being a totally smooth son-of-a-bitch in a car that looks more like a dragon than an automobile.

Audiences re-discovered the chi-master in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, my favorite of the director’s flicks. Why is it my favorite? David Carradine. Cool as ever, but with a nasty streak. His explanation of why Superman is his favorite superhero hit a chord that left me awestruck by the man’s presence. How can you not be?

So watch a Kung Fu re-run. Rent Death Race. See Kill Bill again. Hell, I’ll be re-watching the tons of straight-to-video movies he did when the world forgot just how badass he was. Remember the man as one of the calmest, coolest actors to have ever kicked your television’s ass.