Michael Sieben's Internet Shack Shenanigans

Hello, I'm Michael Sieben and I live in Austin, Texas and I'm going to be contributing photos and words to this website. Here's my resume: I'm over 35 (I'm 36), I spend a fair amount of time hanging out in drainage ditches, and I do commercial illustration work primarily within the skateboarding industry. I also work as a staff writer (and picture drawer) for Thrasher magazine, co-own a skateboard company called Roger, and am a member of the Okay Mountain art group. You're probably reading this and thinking, "So what, I have a better haircut than you do." And you're totally right. I just wanted to put my credentials down so that you'd have a clue why some old nerd in Texas is contributing to this site.

I'll be making posts about all sorts of random stuff. And by "random," I mean skateboarding, art, and that's probably about it. This first post is a totally self-promotional piece about an internet show that my buddy Mike Aho and I make. The show is called The Internet Shack and it's made possible with support from Volcom and Thrasher. Which means that they pay for the cardboard.

We wanted to make a weird Saturday morning show that felt like you were watching Sk8 TV, Pee Wee's Playhouse, and Beetlejuice at the same time. But just less funny. The show is about a dilapidated skate camp in the woods (called Camp Ramp) that was built over a graveyard.

The show is broadcast from the Internet Shack at the camp. This is just a little model we made of the camp, it's not the actual camp. There isn't an actual camp, the whole show is just for pretend.

We're working on the second season of the show right now. We had a mini ramp that looked like this in the first season. An actual ramp in the woods painted like this. So I guess that part wasn't just for pretend.

This is hamburger. He's a character on the show. He's always doing bad stuff. He's cool.

This was the set for season 1. A dirty little corner in our shared studio. This is the big time.

We thought that if we were making a show that was supposed to look like a Saturday morning show then we probably needed a Saturday morning kid to co-host the show. This is Rye Beres. He landed the role because he's the only kid we know. He plays the character Denver and he's a ghost. For a little while he was supposed to be a wooden tripod ghost hallucination… but that was too confusing so now he's just a ghost.

One of our first guests on the show was Jeremy Fish. This is him and my wife before we ate some BBQ. I thought I'd include this because you've probably heard of Jeremy Fish and I thought it might make you care more about me and my stuff.

While Jeremy was in town he also showed some of his work at the now defunct Okay Mountain Gallery space. We (Okay Mountain) have a new space but it doesn't look as fancy as our old spot. I'm kind of digressing.

But just one more photo from Jeremy's art show. He pulled his van into the backyard of our gallery, set up camp, and sold the shit out of some prints out of the back of his van. It was very honest and personal.

Back to the shack. When friends would visit Austin while we were filming the show we'd make them put on some sort of costume and pretend that they wanted to be a part of the whole thing. This is my buddy Stacy Lowery. He used to get paid to ollie over stuff. I always wanted that job but I wasn't athletic enough.

One time we thought it would be a good idea to try to get a kid named Shortbus to appear on the show.

It turned out to be not such a good idea. But it was still awesome. We love you, Bus.

This doesn't have anything to do with the show, but this is what the first skateboard I ever owned looked like. Except mine was yellow and covered with Maui and Sons stickers. Such a turdy machine.

This is a photo of the last day of shooting stuff for the first season of the show. The dude on the right is Mike Aho and the dude on the left is Remy Stratton. If you skate then you know that Remy is good at making his skateboard perform difficult things. Which is hard. We made ten episodes for the first season of the show and then later made a Halloween episode. If you're interested you can find all of the episodes on youtube.

When we started season 2 of the show, we decided that we should move into a smaller studio with no natural light. Basically just to make our lives feel shittier. We also made a decision to try to shoot outside way more often.

Diffused lighting = butcher paper and duct tape.

Mike has been performing and recording all of the music for the second season. The first season was almost all Garage Band stuff.

If you watch the first episode of season 2 you'll see a pretty awesome chase scene which incorporated some real action stunt doubles. Tom Dugan (bike) and Max Taylor (skateboard).

This dude really wanted to be on the show but it didn't work out.

This is where I'm telling a ghost that I met God (who lives in an office building).

Since we can't afford to build any sets we end up doing a lot of green screen stuff. Mike knows how to do that stuff on the computer. All I know how to do is stand in front of a green screen and act idiotic.

I would love it if we could afford to pay an actor to play me on the show. Because looking at this makes me want to punch myself in the face.

This is what the set looks like if you're sentimental.

Oh yeah, Will Oldham is on the show. He plays "Guy In Cave" and he's sort of like the Oracle of Delphi.

Travis Millard was on an episode. He was supposed to play the role of Todd Mallard the con-man but we ended up editing his footage so that he played the role of God. He's all business and big dogs.

These next three photos are by my friend Brain. This is supposed to be the kind of skateboard that a rich person would ride.

This is one of our exotic location shoots. It's the hallway in our studio next to the crapper. I'm telling you, this thing is fancy.

I guess my hopes with this blog post is to show that this little internet show is basically just two dudes with a crappy studio and a camera. One of the dudes just happens to be pretty educated about video making. That dude is not me. Hopefully watching the show will make somebody somewhere want to make some silly crap as well. We're proof that you don't even need a good idea to make something. You just need some cardboard and the willingness to make yourself look like a dipshit on the internet.

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with the show. It's a huge cactus plant (tree? bush?) after an ice storm hit Austin. Pretty much killed this thing and made it look like it was melting. I thought it looked pretty awesome.

So that's the whole blog. If you made it this far then maybe you can kill another nine minutes by watching the last episode that we made. It's about a bikini camp car wash. Sort of.

MICHAEL SIEBEN