You guys. I need to tell you about DC PIERSON!

My add this week is AMAZING!!! There is a ridiculous amount of information here to process, so the very short version is: Songs for “The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To”, curated by author/comedian/actor/filmmaker/sometime rapper/aspiring boyfriend DC Pierson, is going for adds this week (1/26/10), and it features some fantastic tracks by Jason Anderson (K Records), MCDJ (Donald Glover, NBC’s “Community”), and more. The Current Projects page has a slightly more informative version of the essentials. For a longer version of me gushing and giving a lot more information, read on!!

SO. This is kind of a new thing for me to try through radio promotion: I’m not only promoting the music, but a whole UNIVERSE of stuff involved with the music, and it is all going to freaking BLOW YOUR MIND. Do you think you might like cute/sweet folk songs, cool sound-collage songs, coming-of-age books about high school kids and cyborgs, excellent stand-up/improv comedy/youtube comedy shorts, AND/OR an incredibly funny movie about grown-up kid detectives?? Then THIS IS THE PLACE FOR YOU!! Also let’s date.

Believe it or not, there is one guy who has his hand in ALL of those things. At 25 years old, DC Pierson is conquering the media (all of them!) and making all the rest of us look pretty pathetic.

I first became aware of him through some friend or maybe Internet-stranger linking me to a few youtube/funnyordie videos made by his comedy group, DERRICK Comedy. They are all real funny and mostly NSFW/NSF your parents. Here’s a couple you could watch in front of both, uh probably, if you like: “Celebrity” (starring DC as the “Adam Sandler”):

Or here is even one that is music related: “Emo Song” (starring DC):

but I’d highly recommend looking into the rest of them if you’re not particularly squeamish/easily offended. If you’re not into dick jokes of the UCB/alternative-comedy sort, their videos might not be 100% for you, but I bet their MOVIE still is!!!

Last year at Sundance, DERRICK Comedy premiered their first feature film: MYSTERY TEAM. You may have noticed me freaking out constantly about how good it was if we are friends on Facebook or if you read my massive lists from 2009 that placed it as my #5 movie of the year. It is NOT like a longform youtube video, don’t worry, no “Run Ronnie Run” here. It was shot beautifully on one’a’them fancy RED digital cameras and it is just incredibly well-written, well-produced, well-acted. Well-everything really. I love it because it is knock-you-over, line-after-line hilarious, but I also love it because it is a coming-of-age story with real heart that at its core really does feel true. Plot synopsis: a group of 3 kids (DC Pierson, Donald Glover [who you know from NBC’s funnier-every-episode “Community”], and Dominic Dierkes) started an Encyclopedia Brown-style kid detective agency when they were little, and now they are 18 years old and are STILL DOING IT. Same goofy kid haircuts, same dorky clothes, same kid nonsense mysteries like “who stuck their finger in Mrs. Brewster’s pie?” And then a little girl retains their services for a dime, and asks, “can you help me find out who murdered my parents?”…naturally, they accept, and HIJINX ENSUE. They produced it themselves and all the actors are their friends, but luckily they are friends with people like SNL’s Bobby Moynihan, Aubrey Plaza (“Parks & Recreation”, Funny People), Ellie Kemper (the new secretary Erin from “The Office”, who also stars in DERRICK’s most famous literally-15-million-hits video), Kevin Brown and John Lutz (Dot Com and Lutz!), and UCB’s Matt Walsh. COOL FRIENDS YOU GUYS.

TRAILER:

Mystery Team has been on this crazy rolling release thing that has basically amounted to them being on tour with the movie for the last year. I guess it’s a thing their distributor does on a regular basis, and although it means their movie is only in one city at a time, it is really cool, because that means some or all of the members of DERRICK actually get to SHOW UP at basically every single city it’s playing in on opening weekend. They do Q&As, they hang around outside of the theater and talk to you for as long as you want them to, and they basically just make a point of being the coolest dudes (and girl) ever. That’s how I initially met DC and this whole thing got started.

And then!!

I found out that DC, on top of everything else, also WROTE A NOVEL, and it is coming out on Vintage/Anchor (a division of Random House) this Tuesday (1/26/10)! I’ve had the fantastic luck to have gotten to read it already, and you guys, THIS BOOK IS AMAZING!!! It is basically the novel I have always wished I was writing. Here’s a plot synopsis on this thing: A couple of geeky loner kids befriend each other in high school, and they start making up this totally awesome comic book/movie universe with stuff like cyborgs and zombies and wormholes and time travel. Then one kid (Eric) reveals to the other (Darren) that he doesn’t sleep, like at all, ever. This comes as a huge revelation to Darren, who is at just that age when you start to realize that maybe the world is not all magical fairydust after all and maybe you CAN’T just be anything you want and sometimes things don’t turn out like you think they should. It gives him hope: wait, maybe the world IS magic after all!! And then a love triangle gets in the way, and some of the stuff Darren and Eric made up starts maybe coming to life, and everything is falling apart and also beautiful and tragic and hilarious. Also DC loves puns and because of this there are a ton of great fake band names sprinkled in there. My favorite is “Andre the Client”. YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. Preferably buy it (less than $10 preorder on Amazon right now!!), so that people keep paying him to do this again.

AND ALSO, as if that weren’t ENOUGH ALREADY, DC has also gotten a bunch of his musician friends to write songs inspired by his novel, and he is just giving those things away! You’ll know some of the musicians and some of them will be new, like Donald Glover did a bunch of sound-collage style tracks as his producer alter-ego, MCDJ (who also by the way scored Mystery Team), and also Jason Anderson, a beautiful human being who released his most recent album on K Records, did a great little ditty. And I convinced DC to let me send those tracks out to you, the worthy citizens of College Radioland!! So ENJOY, college radioland!! You could even ADD IT ON 1/26 on CMJ if you felt so inclined!! It’s a download only, and you can find that download here in a post with some more info on DC’s site, or here zipped up with other info from me like a press onesheet, a photo, and a .wav file of one track for higher-quality radioing. Also here is a radio edit of the one song that has some Bad Words, because that is important if you’re playing stuff over airwaves monitored by grandparents.

You’d think that would be about enough for one add (/career/freaking LIFETIME), but there are even a few MORE littler things that DC Pierson has had his hand in if for some reason you haven’t had your fill. You might have noticed him on “Community” a couple episodes ago (1/14, the one with Jack Black in it: DC’s line: “welcome aboard jeff, this is my article on the school’s new water heater” / then Joel McHale: “you got chops, kid, but we need your talent on a bigger story: Pizza Wars”.)

PLUS, sometimes, DC raps too. Sometimes by himself, and sometimes as a guest on Donald Glover’s (his buddy from DERRICK Comedy/Mystery Team/”Community”) tracks where he raps over indie rock songs (DC’s featured on Discovery and Pictureplane tracks in that FREE MIXTAPE DOWNLOAD) or over Donald’s own MCDJ beats. “They make anti-me PSAs cause I’m dope” INDEED, DC. I will await your proposal of marriage which I’m sure by now is on its way in the mail.

Clearly, this is just ridiculous. Here’s a video about “booklegging,” the dangerous crime in which you individually hand-copy his book and distribute it illegally:

And here’s one about his elaborately-planned book tour:

And here are some dates where you can catch him on his for-real tour with Mystery Team and invite him into your radio station while you’re at it:

NOW: Seattle, WA @ Central Cinema (you missed DC last weekend, but the movie is playing through like 2/4)

THIS WEEKEND 1/29: Boston, MA @ The Brattle

ALSO THIS WEEKEND 1/29: Port Orchard, WA @ The Orchard Theater (DC won’t be there, but the movie is still awesome)

NEXT WEEKEND 2/4: Chicago, IL @ The Music Box

3/5: Minneapolis, MN @ Landmark Uptown

3/12: Los Angeles, CA @ the Nuart

Feel free to contact me to set up an interview (on the phone or in person – he wants to meet you!), or just to hear me gush for a couple more hours about this. Don’t think I won’t.