Big Daddy Voodoo has moved!!  His new site is at BigDaddyVoodoo.Com

YUP!!

The site you now find yourself reading was originally created as a space to display my short films and video projects and projects created by friends.  When I lost access to quality video production equipment, I became a roller derby announcer and re-purposed this URL.

I have created a NEW page for my derby announcing persona over at http://bigdaddyvoodoo.com, so go over there to read about him.

Now, I'm taking this page back.  I'm going to re-dedicate it to creative pursuits, but I haven't quite decided how yet.  I'm writing more than I used to, but I'm shooting almost nothing that isn't a corporate how-to video.

Stay tuned.  Soon you'll find very little BDV info and...something else.  Something fun, something original, something new.

Welcome back, Techno Bohemia!

I was always an odd kid.  I liked things that other people didn't like, tended to dislike anything popular, and generally lived in my own dream world.

Living in the woods, I didn't have many opportunities to play with other children.  I had a sister to adventure with and torment, but we were total opposites.  If she loved it, I didn't, if I thought it was cool, she wanted to avoid it.

This pushed me to look out on the world through the only window we had that didn't look out over forest or empty fields.  I loved television.  My earliest memories are watching Sanford and Son, Chico and the Man, and Barney Miller in the mornings.  Dinah Shore, Phil Donahue, and Richard Simmons were my guides to normalcy.  I remember staying up late with Dad. We would watch Benny Hill, Space: 1999, endless B-Movies, and...roller derby.  I learned that some shows were so amazing and separate from everyday mundate reality that they were irresistable.  My little imagination was sparked by Star Trek, Doctor Who, Lost in Space, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  My parents indulged my dreamy nature buying me Star Wars action figures, Micronauts, and an endless assortment of GI Joes.  I began telling my own thrilling tales with the action figures.  In 1983, I made my own Super 8 film with my action figures.  I still believe it was better than Phantom Menace.

We had bookcases full of magazines and two sets of encyclopedias!  One was the 1966 World Book Encyclopedia, and I can't remember the other one.  They had subscribed to the updates up until the mid-70s.  Reading these encyclopedias sparked my imagination even more, especially the tales of the distant past.  Cultures extinct for milennia, heroes and villains long gone, and pivotal events hooked me, but it was imagining the everyday world of these individuals, this truly foreign, yet familiar world that inspired my action figure theater.

Around 1981, when I was 11 years old, I discovered my Dad's 1964 manual typewriter.  The first story I wrote would now be called "fan fiction."  It was a story of good vs evil based on Roger Corman's "Battle Beyond the Stars."  I think it held up pretty well.  My 6th grade teacher raved about it, praising my natural dialogue and the example for people doing good for the world that was it's central theme.  I went through a few ribbons on that typewriter, exploring ideas, journals, just random snippits.  Eventually, I would go to high school, get a piece published, never get paid for it, and lose interest in becoming a published writer.

I tell you that story to tell you this one.

Techno Bohemia is a name my buddies and I came up with one drunken night at Buck's Pizza in Johnson City, TN.  It was a name for what I hoped would become a group of artists, writers, and performers collaborating on new thoughts, but in continuity with styles of the past.  For instance, I was fascinated with writing 1920s style pulps in a mashup style based on E &O Binder, H.P. Lovecraft, HG Wells, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (it was a developmental period,) but they were set in the modern era with modern technology and sensibilities.  (Steven Moffat's "Sherlock" series is the ultimate realization of my vision!)

It became an online forum and website that was used regularly by my close friends, but never caught on with any of my luddite artist friends.  It was a production logo for a while in 2004 when we made some original videos for DragonCon in Atlanta, GA, but, eventually, after many script kiddie hacks, and the rise of myspace/facebook the site I built became too much trouble to maintain.

I was about to shut down the server permanently when I got involved with roller derby.  The new team I was hanging out with needed a message board, so I used my experience with the techno bohemia forum (and a long-running Everquest guild forum,) to build a forum devoted to the team and it's fans called "Little City Big Army."

I held on to the name and the web address.  Even when I stopped being known as Techno Bohemia, and became Big Daddy Voodoo, I retained the techbo address in addition to bigdaddyvoodoo.com.

So here I am, with an oddly named website for a roller derby announcer.  I am still the dreamy kid, but I've honed my writing and creative skills and fused them with troubleshooting and vast technical ability.  I honor past pop-culture and love reworking traditions to suit a new world.  I love taking old ideas and re-booting them into something relevant and powerful.  I have oddly wonderful friends who range from introverted hermits to fabulous extroverts, from artists to technicians, all unique, wonderful, and essential to my continued happiness.

 techno-

a combining form borrowed from Greek where it meant “art,” “skill,” used in the formation of compound words with the meaning “technique,” “technology,” etc.: technography.

Dictionary.com

bohemia-
a district inhabited by persons, typically artists, writers, and intellectuals, whose way of life, dress, etc., are generally unconventional or avant-garde.

-Dictionary.com

I'm slowly getting back into the swing after a bit of an illness.  I have so much to say, but so little time.  My pain filled October made me realize how much I have to say.

Soon, I'll be using this site as a test for a bigger project I'm working on.

Since I will be using it regularly, I hope my ability to post regularly will return.

Once Little City's schedule is made public, I'll post mine here.  So far, I have lots of open weekends next year.

XXOO

BDV

This auto-generated transcript of my branding video is so wrong that it's funny.

I am going to be announcing Friday and Saturday of Blue Plum in Johnson City, TN!  Double duty!

The Little City Rollergirls' Blue Plum Roller Derby Championship!

Friday, June 1
6pm-8pm  Little City Derby Brats & Little City Junior Roller Expo!

Saturday, June 2
11am-6pm Little City and friends divide up into 4 teams and compete for the Blue Plum Cup OUTDOORS on Tipton Street!  4 different types of BEER on tap for your refreshment!

I will also be introducing bands on the Main Street Stage!  This is my favorite stage of Blue Plum because it's entirely local acts!  So much fun that I'm going to be grinning all weekend!

Friday, June 1
    5:00pm -   6:00pm       Little Chicago
     6:30pm -   7:30pm       Steve Gilbert & Dallas Danger
     8:00pm -   9:00pm       The Farmhouse Ghost
     9:30pm - 10:30pm       The Black Cadillacs

Saturday, June 2
  12:30pm -  1:30pm       A Great Disaster
      2:00pm -  3:00pm       The Continental Waylay
      3:30pm -  4:30pm       My New Favorites 
      5:00pm -  6:00pm       this mountain
      6:30pm -  7:30pm       Mona Lisa Tribal Dance 
      8:00pm -  9:00pm       Old Flings
      9:30pm -10:30pm       Cutthroat Shamrock