 Hi, welcome to Town Meeting TV, CCTV. I'm here today with David Colossal, Sanders, Holub. And we ran across some things. Somehow I ran across what you were doing, and it seemed compelling and interesting. And I wanted to hear more about what it is that you do. Who are you? What is it that you do? What do you call this? Well, I think the short answer is that I like to sit around and amuse myself and try to make myself laugh. I've been writing jokes in a notebook since 8th grade. I think it was the first joke I wrote. I wanted to be a stand-up comedian. So I've always been writing funny things. And for the past two decades, I was a graphic designer working for publications in newspapers and magazines. So I cut my teeth using Photoshop and all that stuff for a long time, but it was always producing illustrations and designs for other people. And then I got the chance to just start doing my own art. So I combined these two things I'd been doing on my own and professionally into one thing. And so I started just making my own art and exploring the inside of my head. Cool. Do you still have those notebooks from when you were? Of course, yeah. Is it just been a running series of notebooks? Pretty much. And I've moved around so much in my life from state to state. And there's a few things that I always pack up for safekeeping. And that first folder where a lot of my early writing is... I wrote little stories in high school. And somehow I got a Hulk Hogan folder. You mean like it looked like Hulk Hogan on outside? It was like a folder, but it was Hulk Hogan. I think I bought it ironically like in high school. Anyway, that's where all of my early things are. And I know exactly where that is right now. And so, yeah, it's just been a part of my life. So there's not a particular notebook that you go back to years and years? Well, then I do have those early notebooks. I have all the early notebooks. I probably have a stack that high of notebooks. Do you plan to commit to a particular kind of notebook now? No, it's kind of like whatever I find, whatever's laying around. Sometimes they've been tiny notebooks that I keep in my pocket. I have a bunch of those. Sometimes they're big ones that I write. And of course now, like the unfortunate thing is I do all my notekeeping on my phone or on my iPad. So I don't have those anymore. I'm not making any new notebooks. But I don't know if you'd call it an epiphany the other day. But just a way of living that I really recommend to other people is write it down. People always ask, how do you come up with your ideas? And I don't know if I have more ideas than anybody else, but what I do is write them down. Because you think you're going to remember something and you're not going to remember it at all. Do you go back and look at those ideas as somebody who does write things down? I write a lot of things down. When do you go back and look at them? It's so funny, I constantly go back and look through old files. I've just written so many things, especially so many short things, jokes and stories. I might have thought of something 20 years ago that's really funny and really unique. So yeah, I do. I go back and read those old notebooks and sometimes I'll find a weird thought that I had. I can't think of anything specific, but I've recently gone back and found a joke that I wrote 15 years ago. There's a popular piece that I do and it's an owl that's wearing a shirt that says, my favorite birds are birds. Is it on your website? Yeah, he says, my favorite birds are birds that eat birds. That's what his shirt is saying. I wrote that joke like 15 years ago. It's always stuck in my head. And then it came back to you and you? Yeah, well I wanted to do an owl wearing a flannel shirt. That's just what I wanted to do. And then I thought, well if he's wearing a flannel shirt he should wear a t-shirt underneath it. So I then made the t-shirt. It was just a gray t-shirt. And then I was like, well it should say something funny on it. There's an opportunity for a joke right there and so it was an afterthought. But when I hear people talking about that piece, it's not about the owl and the flannel shirt he's wearing. It's about the birds that eat birds. People like to say that phrase. And I like when you have to explain a joke a little bit because it brings you into it a little bit more. So that's cool. You said a little bit of your background but what did you do before you did this? So I don't think we've named this yet. Artist, joke maker, digital creator. I struggle to define what I do other than I have an art business and I make funny illustrations that I put on different things. You have a creamy strong man. Is this what sort of started it all for you? No, not really. So when I first moved to Vermont, or shortly after I moved to Vermont, which was going to be like five years ago, which is five minutes I learned in Vermont to be living here. But I created, I got fascinated with old postcards. You know, like those Tickner Brothers postcards from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And I thought I might do a series of postcards in that style, but something a little off. I'll hold these up while you're talking about them. Yeah, so the Bread Loaf Bridge was one of them and I did like five. Bread Loaf, but or not, got it. Yeah, so I did like five of those and I thought, funny enough, I thought the Bread Loaf Bridge was going to be the hit of the series. It was the most straightforward. I also did like a swimming giant. I did a flannel shirt statue. And I never thought that the creamy strong man was going to be the hit of that series, but it absolutely has been. So yeah, that's like a... And that, so that was the biggest. These are, and where do folks get these if they want to get? Well, I'm in close to 70 shops in Vermont now, so it's kind of all over the state. And then of course my website and I sell off of that too, but yeah. Tell me a little bit about your process. You said, you know, you've got your book of jokes and then you have... What, you know, are you drawing this out? Are you going straight to Photoshop? It kind of depends on the particular piece. So a lot of what I do are greeting cards. And that's really how, that's really what got my business going was selling greeting cards. Fred love some butter. Sorry. Yes, a good one, you know, as we say around my house. So these greeting cards that are birthday cards? Yeah, any occasion, what's really popular now or just like no occasion at all. It's just like a funny joke that somebody wants to kind of share with their friend or whatever. So those are, a lot of the cards, those are more joke driven. So I will think of a joke, think of a funny, you know, something funny and that's the impetus for the piece. So you're kind of helping to save the postal service. You have a mission, you're a mission driven. Absolutely, 100% and I know all my postal workers by name. So, so yeah, a lot of it's joke driven. I'll think like come up with something funny and I could, you know, like, oh, that would be funny for a birthday card or that would be a funny phrase to use for an anniversary card. A lot of my Vermont stuff comes is more concept driven. So the first, the first piece that got some traction here in Vermont was a piece I did called the Virgin's Moose Rodeo. Is that a real thing? There's one in here because it's that one there. Okay. So that that piece in particular, I, you know, people like moose around here, even though, you know, you don't see them every day, but it's kind of an animal that's popular, especially in this region. And so I just thought it would be funny if, if I, if there used to be moose rodeos. And so I had that concept in my head. And it was just a matter of, of making it piecing together, you know, taking apart a moose in Photoshop. Is this a particular person who's on here? Or is it that is just an old cowboy making the gesture that I wanted. And I have to go to public domain images a lot for my, my stuff, which is why a lot of it's old looking. So I just found that cowboy that seemed to be doing what I wanted him to do. And so, you know, I just, I just created that moose in Photoshop. And what's hilarious, I think about that particular piece is so many people have asked me if it's real or just think it's real. Was this really from 1923? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like, I didn't realize we used to have moose rodeos in Vermont, you know, stuff like that. Or one, one person said, like, too bad about animal rights these days that we can't do that anymore. Too bad. Yeah, because I would have, I wish we still had moose rodeos going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway. I mean, this makes me wonder, and you must hear this, this must be something that you hear a lot. You know, I'm going to ask you about next AI. Oh, yeah. How does this affect, how does AI and Dolly and some of the AI generating software affect what you do? Well, the good news for me right now is that, I don't know if you've used it. Yeah, I know. It's not great. Yeah. One time I don't remember what I was trying to do, because I've used it. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember what I was trying to do is, I was trying to complete somebody's, like, sweater. You know, because, like, all, you know, manipulating images. You know, sometimes I'll need a complete picture, but it's like cut off. Yeah. I was just trying to complete the sweater of this woman. And it always gives you, like, three options when you, like, type in what you want it to create. Yeah. And, or generate, I should say. And the first two were, like, close to completing the sweater. And then the third one, there's all of a sudden a guy, like, behind this lady. Just, like, looking. I'm like, whoa, it is, like, late at night. So, for what I'm doing, it's not, it's not very useful. I will have to say there's one piece in here that I did use it on because I couldn't figure out this one here. The Creamy World Headquarters. Yep. And so I was, you know, the point of that one was obviously to make a skyscraper in the shape of a Creamy. Yeah. And so, like, I was trying and trying using my normal techniques, which would be, like, to get, like, a bunch of different office windows and kind of manipulate them so they look like they're curved going around a circular structure. And I was working, working, working, couldn't figure it out. So then I was like, oh, let's see what AI will do. And so I, you know, if you type in ice cream cone office building, like, it's nonsense what it produces. But I kind of got it right. Yeah. I kind of, like, using my, the techniques I use for my other work. And then it started to complete it a little for me. And so it kind of, it was just a useful tool in, like, kind of getting me to the next part. Pull that image out, put it in Photoshop and build on that. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like you really have to have, like, the prompts and understand how to work with the prompts. Yeah. It really is. And, or just, I've found that if you kind of let it know what you're trying to do, like, what I'm doing is more, like, it's beyond the creative capacity, I think, for AI to do. But it doesn't have a sense of humor, probably. And it doesn't know what, like, whimsy is, you know, it's based on reality, like, what already exists. And, like, this stuff doesn't exist. There's not an ice cream cone skyscraper. Oh, I thought, yeah, okay. But, like, for instance, I did a piece, it was a Vermont scene that I did. I really just wanted a steeple sticking out of the trees. Uh-huh. And what I normally would have done for that is gone through this entire library of postcards, you know, that's freely available online, and found a steeple, cut it out, put it there. Yeah. And that would have been pretty easy. It would have taken me probably 20 minutes, let's say, to do that. Yeah. AI, I circled where I wanted it to be and wrote in church steeple sticking out of trees. And it just put it there. It put it in the exact style. So, like, I have this, like, old-timey, grainy, textured look, and it recreated that. And so, when I think of AI now, for me, it's like an assistant. Yeah. Are you using AI assist in Adobe? Yeah, in Photoshop. Oh, god. They've integrated it with Photoshop. Got it. So, a lot of time of what I do is spent looking for images, because that's what I do. I piece together different images to create the final. And a lot of my time is spent combing through images. And so, I've got this, like, robot assistant that combs through a bunch of images and gets me what I want. And now, are you working all on keyboard screens, digital tablets, or do you do some stuff in a tactile? Not, yeah, not for any of this stuff. I do some funny other things, like these toys. I make these... Yeah, you... Yeah, let's get into that. Yeah, I wish I would have brought one of those, but... Well, we can look at the website, because the website has some of that. So, you're creating these, like, sort of flat assets, or something like this. Creamy. You create in a poster, a postcard, cards, magnets, et cetera. But then on your website, you also have... Vermont compliant syrups. I don't know if they're... Gags. Yeah. Which... Where's that on the... Where's that on this dropdown here? I don't know. Can we see it? On there. Now that I think about it... Oh, magnets. It's under magnets. Interesting. Yeah, so you see the Vermont compliance syrups down there. Yeah, so scroll down a little bit, right in the middle there. I think it's... If I got that right. Yeah. That middle yellow... It's the... Yeah, that one there. Click on that, and let's see if we can... Oh, that's the compliance chili. Oh, okay. Well, that's compliance chili. Okay. I see I have one idea, and I go with it. Yeah. Right, so I make these little toys. Okay. I've been making those for a number of years now. And that's probably the most tactile thing that I do. How do you make that? Are you making that at home with tiny little... Yeah, so I have... So you're not sending this off, too? No, and I have a really long explanation of how I make them, because for the price that I sell them at, I think people assume that they are made by a machine. Yeah. And I'm like, no, I hand cut all this stuff in my home, you know. So, yeah, for those, the process on that is I print the back on a sheet of cardboard, chipboard, and then I print the front on sticker paper. And this process has taken me years to perfect, because I used to do it totally different. It was much harder. Yeah. I cut the front on sticker paper. Yeah. And then I cut both of those, stick them together, then trim them. And then I fill a little bottle of syrup. You find a little vial. Yeah. Purchase the vials online somewhere, yeah? Yeah, like a two-dram vial. Yeah. Fill each one individually with a little eyedropper kind of thing. Then close it up, attach it, glue it to the little cardboard thing that I made. Yeah. And then glue a little plastic bubble over it. And how did you start with the bubble? You were like, I need to like shape, I mean, you can't, you must purchase those bubbles to fit. Right, yeah. I bought a gross years ago. And so I slowly see like these thousand little bubbles like disappearing. I think I've sold like 400 of them at this point. Oh my God. That's hysterical. Because I did, when I looked at the website, I was like, what is he like, come up with a concept and send it off? And then how are you putting a copyright on me so that somebody else doesn't just come in and be like, I want to make... Yeah. Well, copyright law, I didn't know. Like is, like I own it, like I don't have to do anything. I used to thought you had to send off for a copyright. So I think I would have grounds to sue if somebody came out with Vermont compliant syrups. Yes. Yeah. And that's a magnet. Somebody can attach that to the refrigerator. Yeah, I put a little magnet on the back just because a challenge. So I've made other toys as well. Like I think I don't have any examples to show but the crapsters. Okay. Which were little Hot Wheels cars that I banged up. I saw those on your website, I thought. Maybe I didn't see them there. I don't know. Yeah, you had got, are those actual Hot Wheels cars? Yeah, they take out of the original packaging, beat them up, create my own package and then write a story about how and why this car is the way it is. Okay. How that makes a lot more sense. Because a little bit of me, like the like anti-main in China part of me was like, what is this about? What is going on? Did you find a factory that would make Hot Wheels cars that were beat up for you? I wish. No. I wish. That's my dream is that somebody sees crapsters and says that they want to mass produce them for me. Yes. Yeah. But yeah. Someday. Someday your dream will come true. So that's interesting. So just producing it, putting it on a car, putting your name on it, it's yours. We can't come in and start mass producing this. No. I mean, they try in the art world, especially like the commercial art world that I'm in, every once in a while come across somebody saying like, hey, not to me, thankfully, but like to other people, I saw your stuff being sold on like another website and you know, like they'll try to copy it and reproduce it happens in the fashion world all the time I hear. Yeah. Cool. Nate, tell me about the pen. Free. This is a gift. Just somebody gave it to you. That's not one that you've made. No. I was always thinking like, what's my next product? Yeah. But no. Just I have a friend who makes funny buttons. Yeah. You must have a good group of friends that you hang out with that enjoy your sense of humor in this world. Yeah. Yeah. It's always great when you can meet somebody who's also into making weird stuff. Vermont is so great for people A, who make things. Yeah. Like I feel like everybody in Vermont has like a side hustle. They're like, oh yeah, I sell eggs at the end of the road. So to, I mean, Vermont's just full of. That's a good point. I wonder if that's, I wonder if that the side hustle is counted in the gig economy because I think the U.S. right now has like a, you know, a huge amount of people that are working in the gig economy. But I wonder if eggs at the side of the road. Yeah. Yeah. It's, we have this like, I can't remember the exact phrase for it. It's like a craft, something. Anyway, you can do anything you want in Vermont unless you make over $6,000. Oh. In sales and then you have to like start getting certified and licensing and health inspections. Yeah. So I would imagine a lot of people are in that world of selling things, making things. Yeah. I don't know anybody who has a full-time job. Like who goes to a place and then doesn't do anything on the side. Like I know so many people who are just like, yeah, I do this for 20 hours a week and I do that. Yeah. It's an odd place for Vermont. Yeah. What is the question? Do you want to grow this? Do you have, you know, a future where you see you have a workshop of elves? Yes. I mean, it's so funny you say that because I mean, I can't really get into it. But yeah, I'm like, like going to really try to recruit a couple people. Anyway, but yeah, I, I am getting ready to launch a new card line or a new line of products that have kind of a, it's kind of, we just started doing t-shirts. And so this new line is going to kind of take the t-shirts and make designs out of them. So, you know, I've got that on my plate that I'm working on. Are you hand sewing the t-shirts too? No, we buy the blanks. They are made in the, manufactured in the U.S. which is hard, actually kind of hard to find. Yeah. But we do all the screen printing. My wife, Fanny, does the screen printing in the basement. And this is, I mean, we've only been doing this for like four months now, maybe five. And so like, yeah, there's that arm that's growing. And then like, I also, this year, I am hoping to launch a, like a barbecue seasoning product. There you go. Just a different side, yeah. I base a lot of my existence on potato chips. Okay. And I think about them a lot. I eat them a lot. Best birthday present I ever got was when I turned like 43 or something like that. And my wife bought me 43 bags of potato chips. Different flavors? Yeah, all different. Like all different kinds of barbecue flavors? No, but the barbecue flavors were my favorite. I mean, they've always been my favorite. Potato chip restaurant would be. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I asked myself, what are they putting on these barbecue chips? Like, I just want that seasoning. I want to put that seasoning on everything because it's my favorite flavor. So I just sat down and are, you know, really just started mixing things together. And I, I did it. We created a barbecue seasoning? I did. Yeah. And I put it on everything you can, you can do. Put it on ribs. You can put it on chicken wings. You can put it in chili like as a one. Have you tried it on ice cream? No, I'm lactose intolerant. Oh, well there is soy ice cream too. That is true. I could try that. And yeah, I put fried potatoes. Cool. So I, yeah, I have a lot of things. Created your own barbecue sauce flavoring. You know, barbecue. Chips. Chips flavoring. Yeah, it's called barbecue chips. Neat. Well, that gets me, because immediately when you start talking, I'm like, I have ideas. How many, how often is that part of your conversation with people like, David, David, I got an idea for you. I got an idea for you. Oh, yeah. It happens a lot. Or it's, it's more like, yeah, you, yeah, you should do this thing. Here's this funny thing. And I never know how to take those. Write them down. Are they? You write them down? No, I don't know how to, I don't, I'm like, are they saying that I should try to be good like this? You know, or I don't know. Yeah. But a lot of, a lot of ideas and, you know, like any idea, like most of the ideas that I have are not good, you know. And so the ideas people are bringing to me typically aren't very good. Did you hear that? Folks. Just in case you were, yeah. I mean, you got to bring 10 ideas to me. And I bet one's going to be good. And that's how, that's how it is for me too. Like most of my notebooks, all those notebooks, 90% of it is useless. Yeah. That's why I got to come through them to get that one. Cool. Do you have any kind of advice for other people in the world of art or digital creation or idea generation? Yeah. I mean, kind of like expanding on what I was just saying, well, first like the writing stuff down. I really do believe it starts with that because when you start writing stuff down, you just become more conscious about what you're doing and what you're thinking. Yeah. And so that's, that's like the first one. And, you know, my journaling over the years has gone up and down, kind of depending on my emotional state. But I always find that that's like a good thing for anyone who's trying to be more creative. You don't, when you start writing, so I used to be a writing professor too. That's one of my other jobs in my past. And so I'm always, something I always told my students is that the act of writing, especially longhand, even that's a dying art, but just the act of writing kind of gets more ideas. So you think I have nothing to say when you sit down to start writing. But if you just start writing, it's going to keep coming. So I would say like those two things. And then the third thing is just do it because like you can't create anything unless you start, you know. And, you know, find, you know, sometimes it's a matter of software like I can't, I hear a lot of people say I can't afford Adobe anymore because you can't pirate it anymore like everybody used to. But, you know, there's like free programs you can put on your iPad, but it's just a matter of doing it, like generating those ideas and starting. And if you can't, if you don't have access to Adobe at your house, you can come find a community media center, which is where we're at right now. Yeah. And many of them will give you access to software like that. I think the last thing I have to ask you, which is probably where we should have started is what, where did Colossal Sanders come from? It's your business name or is that your alter ego? It's a little bit of both. I have an idea of who Colossal Sanders is. So I guess, yes, it is an alter ego for me. Okay. And I wish, I mean, I do have a really good story about where the name came from. I feel like you're going to keep this a secret the way you're starting this. Yeah. There's the real story and then there's the fake story that I tell people. The real story is that I just was, I was kind of half asleep one day, which is where a lot of good ideas come from. I was half asleep and being a word guy, I was just thinking about the two words. Well, I was thinking of Colonel Sanders for a while. I don't know. I probably think about him quite a bit more than the average person. So I was thinking about Colonel Sanders and I was thinking about the word Colonel and like how it's, like, who made this word, you know, like? Because it's spelled. It's spelled, I mean, I'm sure it's like French or something. Yeah, Colono. So I was like Colono, Colono. And I just thought of Colossal and how it's not spelled, it's not pronounced the way Colonel is. You know, I'm sure that's like an old Gallagher joke. But anyway, so I just thought it sounded funny. Yeah. And it's like, it's not an interesting story. So what I tell people now is that the Colonel Sanders is a guy that KFC used, but the Colonel Sanders is actually a breed of chicken. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. And the Colossal Sanders is a larger version of the Colonel Sanders. It's a different kind of breed of chicken. In fact, it's the largest chicken breed. What kind of, what color is that chicken? It's a white chicken. Yeah. So it's the largest chicken breed in the world and it inspired a lot of things. It inspired, there's a rock band that it inspired. There's a chicken. Where are they in Finland or? You know, they long since stopped playing, so it's lost to history. But yeah, Colossal Sanders. Got it. But yet your website has a crow instead of a chicken. A crow, yeah. Good that you knew it was a crow and not a raven. I just got lucky. But yeah. Well, yeah, so I'm glad you brought that up. The crow, so the Colossal Sanders being the largest chicken, it's now known as like the Superbird. So the crow, this is an homage. This is like second generation, or maybe even third generation. So yeah, he's like, I always think of birds as superheroes. Yeah. Do you play Wingsbale? Not to segue too abruptly, but. I have been, I have sat by while others play it, and it's beyond my level of comprehension. I think you'll get there. I do love birds. Neat. So Colossal Sanders, it's been great to have you here. It is so much fun. And you can check out the website if you want to find out more, ColossalSanders.com. You've been watching CCTV and town meeting television. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you.