Backyard MUSCLE Wrestling

In late November, Scene Point Blank received an unsolicited pitch about a fan-made music video to the song "Shorty's Ark" from Matthew Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The creator had contacted the band and received positive feedback, and as music fans who put our own spin on our favorite works, we were intrigued about the story behind the video. Plus, I had a bunch of M.U.S.C.L.E. men too.

A guest blog by Andy Rothwell.

On Oct. 23, 2023 I put this fan-made video up on youtube:

That project started the first week of May 2021. I was visiting my parents and clearing out the closet of my childhood bedroom, where I found the ~100 M.U.S.C.L.E. men and the broken wrestling ring I’d owned as a kid.

If you don’t know them, those toys were big in Japan in the early ‘80s, and then big in the States in 1985-86 where they were called M.U.S.C.L.E. – standing for “Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere.”

Superwolves by Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy had come out the week before my visit, and I had it on all week. It’s one of those albums I like every song on. At the end of 2021, when Spotify told me my top 10 songs, 9 of them were the first 9 songs on Superwolves.

Around the 15th time “Shorty’s Ark” came on, the idea for the video started to take form.  A decade ago I made a handful of fan-made videos for songs by Robert Pollard, Woods, Tom Petty, and others. It had been about 5 years since I’d started a really complicated one for a Kurt Vile song, stalled in the middle, and never made another.

That night I made a spreadsheet with every animal in the song, and scoured http://blog.uofmuscle.com/ and ebay, buying vintage M.U.S.C.L.E. men that I’d never owned as a kid.

The next morning I had my first moment of regret, wondering if I should really take on a music video for no reason, or just have stuck with the plan of getting rid of my old stuff.

Over the first half of summer 2021, the project moved. In the early mornings before work I invented the lego stadium with the gears, axels, and cams that makes the M.U.S.C.L.E. men look like they are jumping and cheering. 

The M.U.S.C.L.E. Hard Knockin’ Rockin’ ring was always a pretty bad toy. You were tempted to squeeze into the plastic hook the fattest M.U.S.C.L.E. man you could, so it wouldn’t get dislodged in the fight. Everyone broke the plastic within a few weeks. I redrew the hook in 3D, adding 9 hook sizes for using the different sized figures, and 3D printed the replacement sets.

Later in the summer, however, I switched focus. In late 2020 I’d gotten into drawing and heat-pressing parody movie posters onto mugs. It was my first hobby I could at least try to break even on; I’d opened an Etsy shop with 5 mugs in early 2021. I’d planned to add a mug every few weeks and now it had been months since I’d drawn anything.

All of the M.U.S.C.L.E. men and panels of the lego stadium went into a plastic bin in my basement, and I went back to drawing mugs and filling out the store.

A couple times in 2022 I thought about reviving the video project, but each time realized how far there was to go and dropped it again. I had other interests. I got into sign-making with my CNC, and made stuff with my niece’s quotes and nephew’s video game progress.

Finally in the summer of 2023 I picked the video back up. It was hard to get going through the repetitive stuff. I spent a Saturday taking pictures and photoshopping the M.U.S.C.L.E men. A Sunday overlapping the letters in animal names with the periods between each letter, to mimic the M.U.S.C.L.E. branding. Another Saturday printing and gluing the paper animal names to the walls of a labyrinth I'd previously made.

But the good thing about picking up an old project is some of it is already done, and you have more skills and tools than the last time you worked on it.

Making the video title board was easy with my recent sign-making experience. I got all the props ready for a shoot in my tiny Philadelphia backyard exactly when my wife’s garden looked perfect. Weekends in a row it rained, but the shoot with my niece and nephew landed on a perfect fall Sunday.

Now the video is up and I'm finally getting rid of all the stuff. Another Saturday went to dismantling 3 panels of the lego stadium; I kept 1 panel so the design isn't lost.

I accumulated a couple of extra wrestling rings off ebay for helping with some shot angles. I 3D printed sets of hooks to go with each one, and put the sets up in my Etsy store.

Now I’m thinking about getting all of the complicated props ready for shooting that old Kurt Vile video idea next summer. Easier to pick back up since I still have paintings in my basement that my wife and I did in 2015.