Upscale Activism: Raquel Welch Rallies Beverly Hills Behind the Troops

"What's your favorite episode?" I ask Chip.

"I always like when they're doing some wacky occupation, like when they become doctors," says Chip. "Men in Black is an episode that was the only short that was up for an Academy Award. They just caused craziness and hysteria and chaos. They pretended to be doctors, and it featured some of their wacky wordplay, which was just absolutely brilliant."

Chip's on a roll now. "I remember another scene from another episode [he mimics a Stooge]: 'The prime relation of the pedal extremity is impeded by a foreign botanical offshoot,' and they're merely taking a splinter out of a dog's paw! That just shows you the brilliance . . . it's all great. Even though they spend all the time whacking the heck out of each other, it's timeless humor."

Chip pauses a moment and shifts gears. "I should have been in this business from the start, because I remember back in 1965, I'm in a theater with my brother and it's some afternoon matinee, and I saw these images of Coca-Cola and popcorn on the screen, and I looked at my brother and I said, 'Did you see that?' He said, 'What are you talking about?' 'Well, there's Coca-Cola on the screen.' My brother said, 'You're out of your mind!' And I found out later that they were subliminal images, and I remember people getting up and going to get Coke and popcorn. I saw it. It stuck out like a sore thumb. Those are called flash frames in the business."

Whenever Chip takes a gig, he insists on watching the entire work in order to become informed by the subject matter. I ask if he still likes his work. "I still can't believe I get paid!" he beams.

I wonder if that much television affects one's personality. Chip admits that "Now that you can go so much faster on a digital editing system, sometimes I go home at night and there's bpa-bpa-bpa-bpa-bpa-bpa going off in my brain of these images just playing over and over in my head. But you just learn how to turn it off."

And what did Chip learn from spending almost half a year with the Three Stooges and their antics?

"I think I have a deeper understanding of Shemp."

—Tulsa Kinney

We Have Our Issues

LOOKING BACK AT 25 YEARS OF L.A. WEEKLY

Video Wars

I wonder what kind of lovemaking occurred around the world on the night of January 16: I imagine intertwined bodies lit not by candlelight but by the pale glow of television screens. There is something deeply disturbing about a war turned aesthetic experience. It is impossible to experience the suffering of others through an audio hookup that bounces energy from source to microwave dish to satellite to network headquarters to local transmitter to one's home. Inevitably, then, the war turns inward.

—Rubén Martínez
January 25, 1991