It's been a busy week - that's why I skipped last week's Scrapbook edition.

I escaped the early-spring snowstorm to show my films in the Bay Area - Courtney Grammer invited me out to San Jose State University to talk to his students about my career in animation. It's a beautiful campus with a very strong program in animation and illustration.

Fortunately, I was able to watch a lot of their recent work - one of my favorites was called "25 Ways to Die", and one of the ways was called "Leprosy Nachos", in which a guy takes a nacho chip and dips it in the back of a guy with a very advanced state of leprosy - now that's my kind of humor!

The high point was a screening of "Mutant Aliens" at the Towne Theatre, a beautiful Deco-style cinema. It was standing-room only, and the crowd was one of the best I'd ever experienced - thank you San Jose!

Then, it was on to San Francisco, where the indefatigable Karl Cohen set up a special screening for ASIFA-S.F., with lots of familiar faces in the crowd - Nancy Beiman, Steve Segal, and Keith Thomson (who co-wrote MTV's "Helter Shelter" with me)

After that show, I rushed to the Balboa Theatre, another revived Deco cinema, to show the "Don & Bill Show" - with short films from Don Hertzfeldt (my love-child and a brilliant animator) and me put in a compilation. Unfortunately, it was only half-full, which is too bad because it's a brilliant program.

At the next night's midnight show, I introduced "Mutant Aliens" - again, a small crowd. Too bad, they missed a great show. Then, it was back to the cold of New York and trying to finish "Hair High".

I did a quick appearance on the "Naked New York" TV show, and was able to meet a hilarious writer, Gersh, and he's now doing a column about me and my Anicam for the New York Post. So watch for next Monday's edition...

But, the highlight of the month is the ASIFA-East competition screening - I'll just mention a few of my favorite films:

In the student category, Mike Mayfield of Philadelphia School of the Arts did a great short "The Lollipop Tree", Brian Haimes' stop-motion "The Inevitable", and a wonderful line film called "MMMM" by Steig Retlin.

The next night's screening was the commercials - I liked Jen Oxley's "Please Baby Please" (with Spike Lee) and of course, Joanna Quinn's Charmin bear commercials.

For the last night, the Independents were screened - there was a buzz in the air, it was a packed house and this would be the best films of the year. My favorites were: "Delivery" by Patrick Smith, Jesse Rosensweet's "The Stone of Folly", Mike Overbeck's "Tongues and Taxis", Alex Bodovsky's "Bathtime in Clerkenwell", "Roof Sex" by PES, and of course "Woman" by Signe Baumane.

It was a very demanding audience - a number of wonderful films were "timed", meaning they were cut short because the audience thought they were boring. The awards ceremony will be next month, so stay tuned.

Thanks for your time, and please let me know how you like the "Hair High" Anicam.

See you all next week,
Bill Plympton