About The American Astronaut: It is a movie musical, about a space cowboy, made by a band called the Billy Nayer Show:

(BNS is much like the local group "Awesome," in that it is a band that writes scripts and acts them out. It is also like "Awesome" in that it is part of the current cultural project of overhauling the American musical—ripping out its engine, building new components, repainting the exterior, maybe putting some fins on the sides, maybe adding a helicopter blade on top. Who knows? They—"Awesome" and the Billy Nayer Show and Passing Strange and The Drowsy Chaperone and the splendid Freres Corbusier, et al.—are still tinkering.)

Some clips from The American Astronaut:

In this one, the hero goes to the bathroom in the space bar and is musically attacked by thugs:

More clips here, here, and here.

And, because the song is excellent, this one, in which a young man tells a bunch of miners what a woman's breast is like (because they've never seen one):

From a DVD column about The American Astronaut:

The American Astronaut is a thought experiment about a world without women, where the men—roughnecks, thugs, and a natty professor—embody an ideal of manliness that's alien to us now. They are taciturn, tough, and resourceful, but they are also passionate, if not always graceful, dancers. They sing to each other. They get jealous. They drink and smoke and play practical jokes. They are affectionate but not soft. They do not hug.

Because there are no women to keep down, no feminine mystique threatening to compromise the parade of masculinity, the men in The American Astronaut, all of them 10 times rougher than any Alabama shitkicker, can hold a dance contest in a greasy bar fully confident that their manhood will remain intact. There is also a brilliantly awkward standup routine by actor Tom Aldredge, a great score by the Billy Nayer Show, and this chilling final line: "I stayed on Venus to help raise Bodysuit in the hopes that he would grow up to be a fine young man and I could kill him. But a boy seldom lives up to his father's expectations."

And today, seven years after The American Astronaut was released, I received this email:

AMERICAN ASTRONAUT is also extremely proud to announce that their new film STINGRAY SAM will have its world premiere at the 2009 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL as part of the NEW FRONTIER program.

And this trailer:

I do not care about Christmas on Mars. I only care about Stingray Sam.