Marty loves to hear from people (mostly praise). Write to him with anything – ideas, conversational threads, recipes, maps, quests, jobs, love notes, love jobs, love maps, what have you at:
sockpuppetportraits (at) martystuff (dot) com.
He’s available for all manner of commisions and ideas. Seriously, he can come up with anything.
Send him cool stuff via the US Postal service at:
Marty Allen, Superhero
262 Taaffe Place| Apartment 112 | Brooklyn, NY 11205
B I O – type thinger
Marty Allen makes all sorts of things. One thing that he is least proficient at is writing biographies in the third person. While he likes to talk about himself at length, in general they quickly devolve into something or other about sandwiches.
The last several years of his life (let’s call them the “The New York Years”. No! The “Brooklyn Years”. Aw yeah…Brooklyn, baby!) have been marked by a lot of projects that circle around and then devour sock puppets (just ask his dog). And delicious sandwiches. Seriously though, he’s gotten in over his head with this whole sock puppet thing, so much so that the sock puppets have completely infiltrated the nationally touring rock band he participates in, too. Did he mention the national tour?
Marty was born on a dark cold night under full moon light in Brockton, Massachusetts. City of Champions. Go Rocks. He spent many of his formative years playing by himself until he met an awesome friend named Jeremy. They taught each other that it was ok to be really weird all the time. Most of this was accomplished in a suburb of Boston, as punctuated by a variety of experimentations with too many controlled substances, a technique neither the author nor its intended audience recommend, endorse, or deny having participated in. He then spent a cold decade rocking out and being pretentious, drunk, and still weird in Boston (where he blah blah attended Mass College of Art graduating with blah blah honors and distinction from the Studio for Inter-related Media).
Previously on Marty Allen (starting in, let’s say, 2005 or so), which is to say while he was living in the aforementioned Boston, he did this crazy project where he’d make a Song-a-Day for thirty days (still yours to see at martystuff.blogspot.com). He did this with varying results 3 times resulting in 90 songs (moreover he did this twice with sock puppets resulting in 60 puppets), much of which set the stage for the nonsense that he is creating (and selling) now. Who knows what he is doing now that will set the stage for stuff that he’ll do and sell later? It boggles the mind into quandaries and vexations. They veer towards conclusions but always avoid any kind proper terminus via naps and/or ‘gettin boozy’.
Marty’s OTHER formative years were spent at Massachusetts College of Art’s Studio For Inter-related Media, an open-ended hippie-fest of a major that set the stage for much of the inspiration and experimentation that is the foundation for Uncle Monsterface, and more importantly led to many artistic collaborations that remain strong and consistent to this very day.
Eventually, he’ll insist upon writing a more cogent (or at the least colorful and amusing) biography. For now he insists that “, this will suffice,” because,”who gives a damn or reads this part, just make me a funny picture you jerk.”
While having respect for a number of noteworthy fine artists (or at least pretending to know about them), most of Marty’s influences stem from the world of pop culture, the source of that which has truly moved him throughout his life – comic books, movies, video games, toys, pop rock bands and the like. But the weird and really good ones.
He owes great debts to the likes of (in a very important and incomprehensible order):
They Might Be Giants, Jim Henson, The Kids In the Hall, the first 6-9 Seasons of The Simpsons, Oingo Boingo, Tom Waits, Chris Ware, Edward Gorey, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Ben Edlund, Joss Whedon, Wes Anderson, The Dead Milkmen, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Miyazaki, Lane Smith, Tim Burton (minus the last 15 years), Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi, Michel Gondry, Chip Kidd, Phillip Pullman, whoever thought up the 80’s version of GI Joe, The Residents, The Flaming Lips, and the like. Etc. So forth. Yawn.
There is also a consistent thread of the Tao Te Ching (srsly).
And most importantly, the amazing people that he knows, and his grandmother.
And SANDWICHES!
(I’m the one with the megaphone. I look more like a hobo now. If you can believe that that’s possible…)