Pontifex VonHummer's ProfileA Biography of vonHummer
by Vicente Fox
President and Founder of Mexico
Hola, amigo. As our intermingled countries struggle to gain the upper hand of friendship with each other, I feel it is my proud duty to tell you what I know of vonHummer and what perhaps he means to me.
vonHummer was born to poor but poverty-stricken parents somewhere back east. We know he is not of Oregon because he refuses to recycle. But do not hold this against him. In 1999 he immigrated through the porous borders of your state and settled in Portland. His guitar, it was tuned and strung as no other has done in the history of the world. This gives him his unique sound, but do not jump ahead of me, amigo.
It was at the gay abandon of the Portland fiesta known as "The Dada Ball" in 2000 that vonHummer's paint-spattered, lobster-tressed, TJ Eckleburg bespectacled visage caught the attention of local cable access producers Clark Kent and Ann Hammer. His star power, it was magnifique! (As the French say, though I am clearly not French.) A long year they spent, working together, writing material, recording songs, gathering the cast, lovingly, like Juan Valdez gathers his beans.
And in the Fall of 2001, the resulting series, The vonHummer Hour was aired bi-weekly on Multnomah Community TV in the great state of Gresham. Using the website as a fulcrum, Kent and Hammer (aka Therisno Productions) leveraged a cult following from the potatoes sitting at home. Yes, my friend.Theirs was the audience who had forsaken the clamor and discomfort of the bar scene.Theirs was the audience no longer enchanted with talking loudly while a local band deafened their sensibilities and insulted their honor.
Through 2002 and 2003 they laboured. writing, recording, taping, editing. mp3s of the songs from the show were placed on the website, freely distributed for fans to download. And download they did, amigo. Oh indeed they did.
But finally, enough was enough. In December of 2003, with 54 episodes and 74 songs behind them, Therisno took a break from the series. A break to allow vonHummer to do that which he had not had the time for during the grueling pace of series production: play live. This would not be easy for our lord of the lobsters. You remember the unique guitar sound I mentioned before, amigo? Now I will speak of it. Having re-strung and re-tuned a guitar and a bass to be drones that play together, vonHummer looked to piece together a band. Ay, puta! None were willing to share his musical vision of different guitars. What could he do then, but play all the instruments himself? And this was his great challenge in playing live: how to recreate the sound previously only existing in the studio? And not only that. He had to re-learn to play the songs his audience was so familiar with from TV, but that he himself had not played in years. Do not think harshly of him for this, my friend. Again, it was the pace of the show. There was no time to do more than record each song and move on.
Resolving at last to play his 2-piece guitar songs on the bass—and the bass alone! He strums it!—and to make up the difference with the force of his own charisma, vonHummer has played out lazily but with great gusto since October of 2004. With Therisno on the march behind him, releasing in June of 2005 "The Best of The vonHummer Hour" and expanding the show ,,s weekly rerun audience to Washington County in the summer of 2005. In February of 2006 vonHummer released his first post-TV album of new material "Indiscreet Where You Live." .In October of 2007 the first vonHummer film, "Bubiwulf!" was released to brief acclaim and sits on the shelf like an unlit bomb waiting for Therisno to slowly march toward releasing it on DVD this Fall. Currently "The vonHummer Hour" is currently airing on Seattle's cable access, SCAN, [11pm Fridays and Midnight Saturdays, Ch.77 Comcast] to the great admirations of the tens of viewers in that metropolitan metropolis. And need I mention the Ap the new album "Ever So Transient" yet once more? iTunes, carries it. Amazon carries it. CDbaby.com carries it, and now you must carry it, amigo. ¡Mercado azucarito! It seems only death can stop this artisto grande, this vonHummer.
Well, amigo. There is no end to that last sentence that a Presidente like me can manage.
I have to run my country now. Ay! In my excitement, I have forgotten I no longer run the country in the true sense of the word. Que tonto!. Adios!
