zoobombs
There are a few things I haven’t done for a while.
I have not written, like this, since 2020 - I wrote an essay about Jerry Springer, and before that, about urinals. I hadn’t made a movie since 2021, where Bombing the Hill crawled its way out of my brain and onto a select number of screens, where it wriggled and squirmed like a leech plucked freshly from my skin. I hadn’t adored a person since 2021, and I hadn’t been very seriously hurt since 2019.
And so, these were the hallmarks by which I judged the efficacy of my life:
- Have I made anything of note?
- Does someone love me?
- To what extent do I hurt?
There is this funny little thing that happens when you put words down on paper (though you see it even more clearly when the letters appear one by one on a screen). I’ve always felt that words help to make a feeling objective, they transmogrify feelings into something more tangible, in the same way you can turn a square into a cube in your mind; and in the sense that screens are a mirror, words are a sculpture, little bits of carved clay that add up to make a Thing.
Damaged people are comfortable in uncomfortable situations, this is a fact. This is like the fish in the water, who doesn’t know he’s swimming - the quite frankly very fucked up qualities of your life don’t look so odd when you’re swimming in them - this is where the words come in. Because in time, when you view the Thing, and it is laid in front of you, irrefusable, concrete as a sack of russet potatoes, you realize with a BANG, that wow, man, things are not, have not, will not be okay.
Referencing the above rubric: this is no way to judge a life. This is, in fact, a really tremendously terrible way to judge a life: has it been effective. This is the part of my life where I’d like to rewrite my rubric.
AFTER PRODUCTION
I received a special package, bought on a whim, just a day before production - a CD, scratched and dusty, shipped from some basement in Kentucky, adorned with a warm painting of two dogs, playing in the sun. It looks like something Norman Rockwell would make - the puppies are idyllic, one is brown, the other is white - the white puppy has placed her paw on the brown puppy’s face, and he’s smiling. Emblazoned in the top right: “WELCOME BACK, ZOOBOMBS!” I hadn’t opened the package during production, where it sat lost under heaps of garbage and water bottles and other abandoned Things.
After the movie had wrapped, Ethan had packed up and left and Fiona had extended her flight, I opened it, shouting in my brain, “WELCOME BACK, ZOOBOMBS!”
WHO ARE THE ZOOBOMBS?
ZOOBOMBS!
THE JAPANESE FUNKY HARDCORE NO.1!
“ZOOBOMBS WAS FORMED ON A FULL-MOON NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER IN 1994. DON M. (VO./GUITAR), WHO WAS ACTIVE AS A INDUSTRIAL GRAPHIC DESIGNER HAD ACTUALLY CALLED IN THE OTHER MEMBERS TO FORM THE ZOOBOMBS. THE FORMATION OF THE ZOOBOMBS INCLUDED MOO-STOP (HE’S A WIZ IN MAKING BOMBS. BETTER THAN PLAYING), BUKKABILLY (HE’S A KIND OF GUY WHO WAS NOT INVITED TO THE PARTY BUT HAS SART DOWN IN THE BACK SIDE OF A DRUM KIT AND NEVER MOVED SINCE THEN), AND A GIRL WHO KEPT ON SCRIBBLING ON A CORNER WALL SILENTLY NAMED MATTA (SURPRISINGLY, THERE’S PEOPLE THAT THINK SHE IS A BOY). FROM THAT DAY THEY HAVE CONTINUED TO AIM FOR THE SOUND LIKE BO DIDDLEY PLAYS - TRUE HARDCORE CREATION. NO ONE KNOWS THE ORIGIN FOR THE BAND NAME ZOOBOMBS EXCEPT THE NAMER MATTA (SHE HAS THIS NAME IN MIND FOR OVER A YEAR). BUT THE BAND SURELY SOUND LIKE A BOMB.”
Or so the CD claims. It continues:
“THE ZOOBOMBS HAS ESTABLISHED ZBON-SYA (IE ZOOBOMB COMPANY) AND HAVE STARTED PUBLISHING BOZOOBOMB (IE ZOOBOMB TIMES) RIGHT AFTER THE BAND FORMATION. IN THIS IMAGINAARY COMPANY, THERE EXISTS A PRESIDENT NAMED KUMAKU (LITTLE CARTOON BEAR) WHO NO ONE EXCEPT MATTA UNDERSTANDS FULLY. BUT EVERYONE CONNIVE. KUMAKU (ACTUALLY A DESIGNED CHARACTER THAT APPEARS ON THE BOZOOBOMB) ALWAYS LEADS THE ZOOBOMBS TO WORK HARD FOR RECORDING, GIGS AND MANUFACTURING TO NEWSPAPER.”
Here’s who the Zoobombs are to me:
The Zoobombs are a Japanese Funkadelic Rock band from Tokyo. Led by Don Matsuo — a spritely middle-aged man, the Zoobombs write the most rocking, the most grooving, the most exceptionally funky music known to man. Their energy is infectious. Don M. shreds the rhythm guitar, which sings out like an ancient blade — backed up by Matta on the keys (distorted, windy, like an organ) their music came to me as a revelation.
THE INTERNET IS A PLACE
I had just flown into Dayton, Ohio - hardly a jewel of the midwest, but as a 15 year old boy, I had a very good reason to bring me here: my online friend Jack (not Jack R, or Jhack) lived here. We’d been friends for a few years at this point, and had met through another virtual friend, Josh (Bloodhound3323) who was my best friend for a long time. I had known Jack lived in relative proximity to Illinois for some time, and had convinced my parents to let me fly out to Dayton on my own, so I could meet him and his friends in person.
This was not a particularly hard thing to convince Mom and Dad of - they had let me stay with my Canadian friends (whom I met through my old Facebook page) when I was 13, allowing me to hang out with them uninterrupted in Toronto for three whole days. My parents were very hands-off, and they trusted me, and the people I chose to spend my time around. The conversation to visit Jack was brief - I had saved up money working at Toys R’ Us, and I was all set to go.
JOSH
There have been many Josh’s in my life, but only one who I really, really loved. This was Bloodhound3323, Josh, my internet best friend, who I would stay up late with, play games, back in my parent’s first house. Josh and I did everything together - one day, we sang all of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea on Skype, just because it was fun. It was midnight, so my Dad burst into my room and told me to Go the fuck to sleep!
He lived in Maryland, and was really just the funniest dude ever. We reconnected recently, which was nice - he was dating a lovely girl, and introduced me to some of his friends. Every so often we’ll message each other - not a ton, but enough - to wish each other the best. Josh showed me something very important early on: his favorite YouTube video, which soon became mine. That video was dancing euphoric alien.
It’s a simple video: an alien dances to a J-Pop song, but there’s an energy there that’s undeniable. Maybe it was how he showed me the video: late at night, on a school night, introducing it like it was some magic artifact - Jonah, check this out. He’s getting it, ayy.
I rewatch this video all the time - when I need a pick me up, I come back home, and he makes me smile. And as it turns out, I’m not the only one. Some of the comments:
Josh and I lost touch for a while - around high school, life moved on, and we stopped hanging out. But I never forgot Josh, my online best friend, who was there for me through so much - the worst days of my life, ready to make me smile, to get stupid. One year, I come back to this video, and I see it:
I scroll more, and the year prior:
And again:
Josh was coming back to the video too. Maybe he thought about me.
DAYTON, OH
And so there I was, in Dayton, Ohio, where the sky is permanently grey, the sidewalks are cracked, and a fair amount of the people you’ll meet are on crack. Dayton was charming in the same way a shot of Malort is - it tastes bad going down, sure, but you’re really there to share the experience of Malort, to bask and revel in shared pain, mutually assured destruction. And like a every shot of Malort, Dayton felt new: far removed from the vacant sidewalks, mowed lawns and oppressive quiet of Woodridge, where I grew up - cars drove fast and reckless, and I was a fish out of water. Dayton was one of the first cities I spent time in, setting a very low bar to beat. It sort of looked like the city towards the end of Fritz the Cat.
Something about Dayton shone, though, and she had a name, and it’s unfortunate that I forget it. I think her name was Claire. Usually in these stories men remember the name of the girl that got away, but maybe it’s more male to forget it after a few years. Claire didn’t exactly get away, though. She was a friend of Jack’s that I’d met online. We’d play games together, and like every girl I played games online with, I was smitten. People are cuter in pictures, especially so when you’re a 15 year old boy unaware of the impact of light and posture, curation and conceit. She was, and I’m sure is, still very lovely. She was an artist, around my height, had a brown pixie cut, was a few years older than me, and made my heart sing. She was one of the first girls that made my heart sing, after Kayleigh.
I had a lot of fun in Dayton, meeting Jack was awesome. He had a turntable that I’m sure he bought from Urban Outfitters, and we were deep in our Anthony Fantano phase, and so we spun Exmilitary and Swans, acting like we had our own opinions about music and sound, and didn’t regurgitate the bald’s. We played games, I met his friends, we ate at Subway, made jokes about grapes, shared the classic midwestern pastime: explored an abandoned building.
He showed me Dayton, and brought me to an unsuspecting record store I can’t recall the name of, the location of which is a blur. I see it in my mind: on some corner of some desolate street. We walked in.
We dug around looking for what Fantano liked, and I eventually made my way over to the used record bin, they were all being sold for, what, $5 a piece? So there I am, digging through, until I find it, beaten up:
“WELCOME BACK, ZOOBOMBS!”
I’m charmed by the puppies, and curious what the hell a ZOOBOMB is, and so I buy it with money I stole from Dad, which he stole from Mom, and take it back to Jack’s.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER
HAHA
BUM DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM
BUM DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM
BUM DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM BA DUM
REEEEEEEEE OOOH YEAH!
My eyes bloom like a thirsty flower.
YOU!
My skull turns to Jack like a rusted head tube.
YOU!
Jack turns the music louder.
YOU’VE GOT TO HIGHWAY A GOGO!
A NON-EXHAUSTIVE LIST OF SIMILES
The music of the Zoobombs made me feel as if:
- A runaway car had smashed through the wall, directly into me, pulverizing me into a million pieces
- My bones had become electric
- I had been eulogized
- My first kiss
- The way your heart feels when it doesn’t want to shut up
- My senses had become burnt like hair
- Synapses had nerves, and I could feel them all at once
- The look in Claire’s eyes when she realized I wasn’t interested, anymore
- Present, present, present
- I had put Icy Hot on my eyeballs
How does one put into words how music makes them feel? That’s a job better suited to dance, I think. It’s easier that way, and more honest, too. But there was one thing that captured me about the Zoobombs, immediately: their music demanded your full attention. You can’t listen to this music in the background. They won’t let you off the hook - for this hour, you’re theirs, and theirs alone. This is all suffice to say: I love the Zoobombs. Of their songs, I love Highway A GoGo the most, followed closely by everything off of Bomb Freak Express.
This is why I love the Zoobombs: they entered my life with no warning, appeared as a revelation, pure coincidence, and gave me a memory that I have never forgotten. They gave me a moment that has felt entirely mine, a memory that I possess - it hasn’t been touched or colored by anybody else. There are many Zoobombs fans, but I’m the only one who found them this way. I think about them in all of my work - especially that of ppl - which I want to find and affect people in the same way. I want our connection to be organic, special, one of one, just for you and just for me.
This relationship feels fleeting in today’s modern Internet age - growth is the end-all goal of all “content”. The goal is not to move, or to remain special, it is to make the special general, to expand, to conquer, annex, take take take, to drive numbers up. I refuse to chase that. I want to move a little boy in suburban Illinois, to give him a memory he’ll never forget. I want him to know these words are for him.
A BRIEF INTERMISSION
You do not understand what it is that you are saying. It turns out that emotions are not like currency that you can spend and flaunt around, they do not flap in the wind or spill out of your pockets - feelings are not made of paper that smells and the exchange of feelings does not happen through terminals and dirty hands. Feelings are like ghosts, and ghosts are not real. They can not hurt you like currency. They will not abandon you like currency. There is a man somewhere that you have left feeling broke, not broken, broke, whose head is turning this way and that like an Ostrich, searching for some dollar that he prays falls out of your hands and into his open mouth, down that long throat and into that pool of digestive enzymes, green, green is the color of stomach acid, green is the color of envy, the color of currency, the shade underneath your skin, in your Rembrandt triangles and of your shoes: green, chlorophyll green, in the trees, the grass and everything else that gives us life, it is always, always green.
Your body changes and it gets Old, stretching this way and that way. One day my tattoos will look like jelly, not Astro Boy, not Half Light, thick grape jelly that you cut up with a knife and struggle to get out of the jar because they really should have come up with a better solution for this shit by now, but I don’t want to buy one of those squeezer bottles because there’s a certain charm in struggling to get the damn thing out of the jar, the knife clinking around the lip, the way the lid never gets back on the way it came because the jelly’s been sitting there too long and by now has congealed into some gross mess of jelly that isn’t purple so much as it is black, I never liked Strawberry jelly anyhow, and I like the way the jelly mixes on the knife after I’ve made my sandwich and I like licking it off and I like knowing that there’s a bit of peanut butter in the jar and I like knowing that it isn’t the same way it started, I like that it goes away, I like that I am decaying, I like that we age in three sections: once at 30, twice at 60, finally at 80, and I like that I am closer to my first decline than I am my first ascendance, I like growing pains and the way the needle felt going into my soft tissue, I like when they hit my knee ditch and asked me how that felt, I liked the fact that I didn’t move, I like when it’s swollen and red and plump and soft and I like sleeping that night trying very hard not to move because it hurts, I like it all, the sound and the shouting and the vaseline and when they rub it down and the worst part is the paper towel, I like limping home and being in pain, my arthritic fingers, my strained voice, knowing you’re out there dreaming, that someone is out there dreaming of the same thing, of me, and I wonder if they’re out there thinking of me at night, or if they’re also trying very hard not to move, not to let their brain move, if I pop up in their dreams, wondering, wondering, wondering, it’s nice to wonder, to let your nerves ask questions punctuated by exclamation points, why would you do this, why would you hurt you, is every act of reclamation painful, growing pains, growing pains, growing pains, growing pains, growing pain.
THE POINT
The internet is a place you go to. It is not a tool. It is a place where you relax, learn, communicate, work. The internet is a place. You explore the internet like that abandoned building in Dayton, Bart Simpson graffitid on its walls, meandering into the dark corners - and in some of them, you find a light, a piece of something made by someone somewhere that speaks to you, and for the first time in so long, you are spoken to, not at; you choose to participate in this dialogue, with this thing, because it moves you, it speaks to you: This internet is a big, scary place, but I’m yours, make of me what you will.
There is something the internet can not provide, right? I can not hold it in my hands, and I couldn’t hold her in my hands when she was so far away, I can’t love an MP3 and I can’t make love to data, I can’t protect data, I can’t cherish data, I can’t carry data with me when I move. It is always there and so it isn’t, ever.
There is a great contradiction that I’ve never quite settled: why are we affected so tangibly by the most intangible things? Why, when I was a 13 year old boy, living in Suburban nothingness, when Esme broke up with me, did my life feel so big, cinematic, my pain feel so great? And why, when I watch dancing euphoric alien, does my heart stir? Why do I move when I see Josh’s comments? Why am I reacting so intensely, physically, to this digital nothing? How does the digital have such control over me? How do we bake pathos into words, how do we texture these characters, our punctuation, why am I paying attention to your periods, your commas, your capitalization? Where do I find the answer?
I held that record in my hands, I felt the grooves in it’s vinyl, set it on a shitty turntable and watched it spin, I felt it in my bones, I felt Don M. scream into my brain, man, I felt Rock - real Rock - I touched and moved and danced and grooved and sang and nodded my head to this treasure I discovered, that came to me like a miracle, I found something I never thought I’d look for: a textbook, a lesson, the blueprint for the rest of my life, my rubric!
I’ve learned that in life, powerful lessons hit you on the back of the head like a baseball bat. There is no gentle lesson. When you learn, you learn hard, and the Zoobombs taught me something that I’ve only begun to appreciate in my post-developed-frontal-lobe age: that I would like to hit other people in the back of the head the same way. I want my work to arrive in your life when it is meant to - and that if it isn’t meant to arrive, not to force it, to let it be. I want to affect you, just you.
I didn’t make a movie after Bombing because of the common thought, how can I go bigger, how can I be better? And the gross assumption that bigger = better, that I had to do more, not that I could do more with less, and so for three years, I sat buried, burying, underneath gravel and soot and dirt, waiting for something to pull me out.
And so, when Ethan left that morning, and the furniture was askew and I was looking at a corpse, that little thought came: I’m getting better at this, and the tears came too, fast and hard, down my face and onto my knees, which were planted firmly on the ground, my back shuddering, hunched over like a beast, sobbing next to my Trashcan full of the last month’s muck, I’m getting better at this, I couldn’t move.
There are stories in every cell of my body, and they need to come out. This used to be a survival tool - if I didn’t tell the stories, my head would pop. It’s different now - they’re still there, and they still want out, but I don’t need that to survive, I choose to do that because I want to invite you in, to share this with you, I want to be with you, when the camera’s close I wanted to hold her hand, I want to hold your hand, Y O U, to turn the camera off and to be with you, to enjoy it presently, to texture your life, I am a giver, let me give, let me love on you!
And not love in this bullshit poetry way - there is no poetry in my love, there is only honesty, there is only devotion. It doesn’t wane with the seasons or fly away, it is earned, steel, it’s yours if you want it, but if you don’t, it’s gone. I love the Zoobombs, I always will. I expect the best of you.
The Zoobombs, though they have little following, have been making music for over 40 years. I will be doing the same. It will enter your life in unexpected ways, and things you see on the street will remind you of it, and then you’ll go back and re-watch it, and be reminded of when it first came to be. Here’s a comment left on an old YouTube video I made when I was 14:
Maybe your friend will show you something I’ve made like Josh and our alien, and even if you fall apart, it’ll still be there. They won’t talk anymore, we won’t either, but we’ll have blurry photos and embarrassing thoughts. We’ll have that moment. To be spoken to, one has to be ready to listen. Ghosts are not real, but memories live forever.
And so, the rubric:
- Have you shown up for yourself and for others?
- Are you being honest?
- Have you listened?
Forever is not a scary word.
i am moving
to new york city! wow. more specifically to ridgewood. the way that this all came about is pretty hilarious and stupid but that's a story you gotta get out of me in person. new york has certainly been in the back of my mind for some time now, but it definitely wasn't at the top of my list on places to move.
one thing led to another, i doubled down, got some roommates, found a place, and now i've got one month left in chicago until i go! it's pretty crazy stuff. i've been getting emotional at the most random moments - i've grown so much in this city that i once hated and now love, so very very much.
chicago is the best city in the world - if there were big rocks here, i'd never leave. but new york has something chicago hasn't provided me: pressure. pressure to grow, to push, to develop, to make things and make things happen. i've noticed that i feed off of energy, and so i'm hoping this move will be very motivating.
here's my plan for my first year in NY:
there's a part of me that's hoping to fall in love in new york - whether that be with a person, the city, work, the climbing scene, whatever. chicago woo'd me eventually, but it took a while. i hated it here at first - but i was young, and upset. now i'm older and less upset, but still kind of angy.
but, there is also a big part of me that is resistant to all of this "new york" shit - having your bed on the floor, smoking cigarettes, fucking what you love, loving what you fuck. that isn't me. and i believe that a lot of this "new york" life isn't for me.
as i wrote in my notes app:
here's what i do know as i march into this great question mark: i know who i am. i know my emotions don't change with the seasons. i know when i love something, i love it. i know my gut's always right. i know i treat people well. and i know i have a lot to give.
haha. there are other things i'm excited to do, as well - but really this next year is going to be about Making The Big Move, seeing how i like it. and if i don't, i'll come back, or chase rocks i guess. but i can't live a life not knowing whether or not i'm good enough. it's time to find that out.
PIGEON
pigeon is a short film i wrote/directed and am now editing. it's been a lot of work. i wish i could say it's been a labor of love, but that feels kind of banal. it kind of feels like the chestburster scene in alien - i'd had this thing in my head for years, and one week it just decided to pop out!
the experience of shooting pigeon was the greatest creative experience i've ever had. to be honest, i had buried this whole "artist" thing and let it decay, prioritizing my climbing, making money, all of these other things. but the whole time, there was a nudging presence somewhere in my chest, some little story.
i don't regret prioritizing those things. for a while i felt very insecure, like my "film friends" looked down on me for prioritizing some silly sport, and my "climbing friends" looked down on me for making art. of course, nobody looked down on me at all - i was just being a big fat liar.
the truth is, like all movies, i care a lot less about what happens with the picture than the experience of making it. this does not bode well for my directorial career, but it bodes tremendously for me as a human being. pigeon is the first film where i'm not worried about mistakes - they were a part of the magic.
pigeon is about one girl's relationship to her past, the ways in which the past confronts her, online and irl. it is about a girl who is afraid to move on. i would like for some person, somewhere, whose knees and cheeks are red, bony and angular, to see this movie, and recognize see a bit of themselves in it.
rough cut as of 6/25/25
pigeon bts
big day in the city! more on that later
don't ask how they got in there or what they were doing there
he's the man with the plan: that's ethan, the best dp i've ever worked with, and one of my best friends. an early thing i told him: "you have an oceanic soul"
everyone gettin after it! this scene really breaks up the film in a lovely way, it's so different from the rest of the movie. i love david's look, and also david too
words words words, and more words. there are a lot of words i could put here. fiona gave a lot to this movie, and i'm sure is still discovering all that it's giving back to her.
more coming soon...
