mikl-emphasizes

An update at last

2007-09-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

What I'm up to lately...

Lots of house stuff: see Flickr. Danielle and I took a trip to the northwest. I'm working on an article for Hi Fructose, and there's always a bit of mischief with the Dark Room in the near future.

You can find me on Flickr, Twitter, Yahoo! Group, and only occasionally at home. I'm supporting Chicken John for Mayor of San Francisco, in case you were wondering.

We bought a house!!

2007-05-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

This is mine and Danielle's now

SF Theatrical update

2007-04-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

Cool stuff coming at the Dark Room in May:

Great sketch comedy from the Only and One (er, Two) Uphill Both Ways
And the return of Lovesick: the Cat Allergy Musical with a great new cast!

Good things to see. Some more news from me and from the NYC theater world, shortly....

Final Lineup for tonight's benefit at the Dark Room

2006-12-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

We've finalized the performers for tonight's show, and it's looking great. See below for videos from a couple of the participants...

Just added, Lemmy & Figgy! Check it:

And the Ukulady, straight outta LA...

12/29 Special Dark Room show: Mikl-em, UkuLady, and more

2006-12-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

Thessaly is up from LA for a visit. We're going to put on a special show on Friday featuring her as UkuLady and her new band Special Occasion Music.

Also on the bill, I'll be reading a great piece of writing that I haven't unearthed in years. It's worth it, I swear! :) Red Door on the left bring the sketch comedy--it's Alexia and John, my co-stars from Young Frankenstein. And Jim F, the man who makes so much of the Dark Room go-go-go, will have his banjo on his knee.

All goes down Friday, December 29th at the Dark Room in San Francisco's Mission District. Show starts at 8pm.

Applied directly when directly applied

2006-12-22T15:02:00.000-08:00

A friend pointed out the Head On entry in wikipedia. And it's funny.

2006-12-18T00:29:00.000-08:00

Santa like it's 1996 on Tuesday

1996 Portland Santacon 10th Anniversary Party

Tuesday, December 19th

Cafe du Nord
2170 Market Street
San Francisco

doors: 8pm
video starts: 9pm

Santa Open Mike and general merriment after screening til closing.

Free admission. Santa attire encouraged.

It was the Cacophonist of times, the first Santa Rampage planned for outside the City by the Bay. And vision of riots danced in The Man's heads. Cuz Saint Nicholaus x 10 x 10 x 2 soon would be there.

And shit.

Yup, 200 Santas invaded Portland (some were indigineous, actually) 10 years ago. And a bunch of this city's usual suspects were of course leading the charge. The list reads like a Ho's Ho of SF Cacophony. Melmouth, Geekboy, Cortez, Holmes, Burke, John, and of course that damn Beale guy. With his video camera!

It was before my time. Just before my time. I was here but I hadn't quite drunk the water yet. :) I went the next year to LA. You can see a very quick cameo of Danielle, early on--she didn't go to Portland though, it's in pre-launch festivities.

I believe that this video, assembled by Scott Beale, Stu Mangrum, and Scott's voiceover guy friend, is the best encapsulation of the mysterious, beautiful, intoxicating and creative mischief that we breed out here in Norton's city. Practitioners of forgotten social arts and biters of feeding hands, the post-something, semi- comatose cultural criticism of the Drunken Masters, all hail Santa(s) in Perversitus Bacchanalium Uber Alles. And shit.

Whenever friends came to visit and wanted to know what I'd been doing, I would play them this video. It was much easier to explain that way. It's like this. Every weekend. *Sigh*.

10 years ago? No way. You're lying. Not every weekend is like this anymore. It's probably still going on, and I'm just not sticking my foot in it as often. But on Tuesday, we'll get a nice fat taste of Vintage 96 Cacophony. Wear something you can get messy. Like say a holiday outfit from Oriental Trading Company (remember, one size fits none.

That link again, in case you missed it....

2006-11-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

My Other Blog-- there, I said it!

I have another blog that I've been playing with. Don't take it personally. It's from the Sixapart folks who make Movable Type. I guess it's their MySpace play or whatever. Whatever. It's cool cuz it easily enables adding multimedia to blog posts. And I need that to be easy. See the heavy textual thrust of this here page.

Yes, at some point in the future I'll make this bit of .com real estate prettier, better, more contemporarily tech-enabled. But for now I'll utilize the pre-fab goodness of the Vox platform. And link to it from here to keep some flow going. Oh managing my many blog personnas. I deserve a vacatation, huh?

2006-11-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

11 Year Old Squid!

Why is this Squid laughing? My good friend Scott Beale is celebrating the 11th year of his company / passion laughingsquid.com. There's a big party this Saturday at Mighty at the foot of Potrero Hill (where it meets... Outer SOMA??). I get to be Master of Ceremonies (yay!), and there's a great lineup including the one and only Mr Lucky.

There's a list, a calendar, a series of events, a blog, videos, photos... he actually has a great post on the blog about what laughing squid is. It's as impressive as always.

Scott has always been dedicated to fanning the mutant gorgeous flames of underground culture. Like me, he came from a distant planet--his is called Ohio, mine is known as Virginia. From a distance we used to observe this thing called "culture" (which grows incredibly well, thrives in fact, here in San Francisco). We'd also get pieces of culture transported to us through a complicated mechanism called "The Postal System". Anyway, once you get to taste the real thing, once you are in the greenhouse as it were... it's intoxicating, you appreciate being here. You want to cultivate it. You want to document it and to help it propogate.

Anyway, that's my reaction. That was Scott's reaction. He made a documentary. He started a company. He shot video of everything cool & weird he found that was going on. He started an email list and a telephone bulletin board, both of which told people what was UP promoting the promoters, enabling the participants. Oh, and far from least important, he made friends.

I think in the big picture, what it's all about is creating opportunities for interesting events to be populated by interested people. For creativity and hard work to be appreciated. And for dreams to be realized, dammit. There's more to say on this theme. I'll have to save it for another proper and truly Blog-type post. When it's not so late and I don't have a flight to catch in the early AM.

Anyway, to note that Scott didn't do these things all by himself. Danielle, my girlfriend & partner in art and crime for getting close to a decade, was one of Scott's first collaborators in event production and related activities. Others like Pippi & Phil with "The Number", and all the artists and Cacophonists who were the subject of the emails of what was going on. But Scott has always had a knack for organization, design, detail, and --wait for it-- follow-through(!!!) which many have lacked. He can run a fucking business for one thing. That's craziest thing. Look I gotta crash now. More at a later time.

Hope you can make it Saturday night!

2006-10-10T15:46:00.000-07:00

Califone tonight at Bottom of the Hill

Califone is probaly Danielle and my favorite band in the world (which is really saying something, as anyone whose seen my music collection knows). They are playing tonight at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

I have two standard descriptions for Califone's music:

Tom Waits' "Gun Street Girl" goes to art school
You find a pair of seemingly ancient cowboy boots in an anonymous thrift store. There's something compelling about them. You start to wear them obsessively. You keep figuring out new functions, bits of magic, they can do. Disappearing your enemies. Giving you control of wasps and locusts (but not honeybees). Now you always have silver coin in your pocket. Eventually, you realize they are the made from the robot snake in Blade Runner. They have a benign curse upon them. And they go with absolutely nothing, but still somehow "work".

You can put these guys on a bill or in a mix w/ the likes of Son Volt and Calexico, very easily. But in concert they also get into noisy, effects-laden jams that no one can wrap a box or a label around. Their renderings of halluciated (sic) blues, roots, and more precisely the roots of blues electrified. Fry the country killer in the chair and turn him into a super hero. Yup. And the lyrics are fine fine.

Want to hear free Califone mp3s from their site?

I suggest "Electric Fence" (early) in particular and "Wingbone" (recent), to represent the range and dynamics of the band.

you can also hunt up several videos on YouTube. Including a few from a week ago, at their first show of this tour

Young Frankenstein the Play: October at the Dark Room

image by Scott Beale (Laughing Squid)

Young Frankenstein is on at the Dark Room. And I am playing the monster. I am! I can prove it! (Thanks, Scott!!). Check out Scott Beale of Laughing Squid's great photos on Flickr. As long as you don't mind finding out ahead of time what all the costumes (and makeup) look like!

The show opens this Friday, 10/6, and plays all of October on Fri-Sat at 8pm, and on Sundays at 3pm. I really highly recommend catching the earlier weeks when tickets will be easier to get--the last couple weekends always sell out.

It's fantastic and includes a lot of great talents involved with last October's great show at the Dark Room (which Scott also documented).

Come check it out!! Tickets are available at the door or in advance from Ticketweb.

2006-04-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

update your damn blog!!! okay, okay already.... okay, well, not all ready, I guess. sooner or later.

2006-01-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Star Wars tops 2005 goof-up list - Cinematical

All-things-movie blog Cinematical pointed to this fun list of the films from 2005 with the most "goofs" (continuity mistakes, "plot holes", etc). SWETRS One-hundred and Thirty Nine mistakes in total, according to the folks at Movie Mistakes. It's a running list including contributions by visitors to the site, so the tally changes, and more recent or less popular films are going to be lower (for now) cuz they've had less scrutiny. King Kong, which I saw last night, has forty-six. But you gotta figure that's gonna grow. [FYI, IMDB has a much shorter list Rev o' Sith, but I guess they aren't as dedicated as the Movie Mistakes folks to that task.] Also, the number sometimes decreases, because the site allows corrections of supposed mistakes. The Corrections page for Sith may be more fun to read than the mistakes page.

Movie Mistakes is a fun site to know about, for now Pirates of the Caribbean has the most mistakes of all time. You've gotta figure that people spending enough time critiquing Gigli. But then that's what Bad Movie Night is for.

2006-01-03T22:53:00.000-08:00

Yo. No. Really. It's me. I do post occasionally.

esp. when Scott name-checks me. ;)

I'm watching Long Riders right now. RIGHT NOW!! A great film, just the cowboy flick you always want to watch. Hero outlaws. Daring robberies. An amazing gun battle. A tough guy knife fight. A tragic ending. It's one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it for a double feature with Outlaw Josey Wales--which is also set in Missouri. And as many folks know, that's very high praise coming from me.

Shot in 1980, it's The story of the Jesse James gang, starring 4 sets of real brothers: Keaches, Carradines, Quaids and Guests. Keith Carradine not long ago played Wild Bill Hickock in the current HBO western series Deadwood. That also recently flew through our NetFlix queue.

It really holds up, after all these years, I'm very pleased to say. Which is good. I can't say that about all the movies I remember fondly and have recently re-watched. That's right, that's right, we really are bad.

2005-11-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

California Election Time (how special)

Just a list of links for the 2005 CA Special Election:

Good site from the California Voter Foundation for state-wide info and more links.
Camp aign Finance Information-- who is funding what Proposition, and with how much $$$
San Francisco voter information and the ballot lineup in SF
Resource on health-related State Propositions

a couple more:

Yahoo!'s directory page on the Special Election
From Wikipedia: Summary info and polling data on statewide measure plus some additional links.

Make sure to research. Make sure to vote.

2005-10-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Closing weekend of BATMAN!!! the TV Show: the Play

Only two shows left. Check it out if you can at tonight's 7:30 show or Sunday's 3pm finale grande! Tickets here. Info here. And coming up next at the Dark Room: The Drug Diaries in November and Emperor Norton (an original musical based on an actual emperor from a San Francisco of long ago).

2005-10-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Pictures of the Batman play

I am playing The Joker. Lots of really great shots, thanks for the photos, Scott!! Only three shows remain, this upcoming weekend--these will definitely sell out, esp. with the publicity we're getting. Buy tickets now while there's still time. Holy limited supply, Batman!

2005-10-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

Webzine 2005: podcasts are up

The folks at Webzine 2005 have now published the podcasts from the conference. It took place in San Francisco on September 24-25, focusing on Independent Online Publishing. When the conference began in 1998 it was before the hype, let alone the business model, had risen around blogs (aka weblogs). You can have a voice for free or cheap, and everyone can access it.

The spirit is the same today as it was when Ryan and Eddie started it 6 million internet years ago. My only worry is that some folks are reading a little too much of their own press (which they and their friends are largely writing). Utopian visions are great to have, reach exceed your grasp and all that. But there's no excuse for being naive after what the industry and culture went through in the boom and bust of the late 90's. Cooler heads need to remember there's more to life than being "cool". The technology is great, and yet it requires a fair amount of motivation to come near its potential. And that enthusiasm is hard to maintain even for some of the hyperactive folks who spoke at the conference. It doesn't invalidate the spirit or even some of the particulars. But I get skeptical and then perturbed when people gloss over the challenges and essentialy "round up" to the idealistic outcome.

Anyway, that doesn't dim my pleasure and honor to be involved with the event. There were a lot of great people who helped make it happen and who spoke, taught or demo'ed. I learned a bit and got inspired to start posting more on this site again (as you can see from the flurry of posts this evening).

So here you'll find the podcast of the panel that I moderated: Culture Jamming in the Post-9/11 Mindset. A fun time with a diverse group of culture-jammers, and me trying to ring lead and foster good convo. Check HERE for extended bios and links to the panelists sites and related resources

2005-10-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

My favorite episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. It features an extended ant-buying excursion at a major department store, a bunch of toupee comedy, and a surreal ant-themed poetry reading ("My name is Ozymandias, King of Ants / Look on my feelers, termites, and despair").

2005-10-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

Domino the movie is based on a true story. It's a pretty incredible one. And the also incredible Keira Knightley stars.

2005-10-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

a hairless cat is now my desktop wallpaper.

2005-10-10T22:51:00.000-07:00

Check out Rove Scandal: New Mysteries, New Props, New Legal Theories - Yahoo! News for exactly what it sounds like. A lot of details on the latest in the Plame investigation, including details on Judy Miller's missing notebook and some insight into prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's possible prosecution strategy.

2005-10-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of admiring Mirrormask a little too much. Please enjoy the film, but leave Neil Gaiman's children alone. I rant (eloquently rant) about Mirrormask here.

2005-09-25T23:22:00.000-07:00

Batman at the Dark Room

Here's my most exciting project in a while, we are putting on a stage version of the old Batman TV Show from the 60's. I'm playing The Joker, following in the esteemed and melodramatic footsteps of Cesar Romero. The rest of the cast is stellar, featuring members of Uphill Both Ways as the dynamic duo, Hal Robins as The Penguin, Sean Owens as The Riddler, and a lot more. The show is up all through October, Fri-Sunday; check the Dark Room website for details.

2005-09-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

Webzine 2005 in San Francisco

I moderated a panel for Webzine today. The subject was "Culture Jamming in the Post-9/11 Mindset" and featured members of Evolution Control Committee, The Billboard Liberation Front, and Archimedia. It went really well, a lot of fun and some serious discussion about how and why to do weird things. Lots of other great stuff going on at Webzine. Tho it's over by the time you read this, you can catch up by looking at the site and the wiki.

More culture-jammery

For those in SF, you can check out the documentary on Culture-jammer Ron English, which also features the BLF. It's playing through Thursday 9/29/05 at the Red Vic. You can see the trailer for the film on Ron's website. We caught the film last night and it was great. I was somewhat familiar with Ron's billboard improvement work, but less so with his "serious" art. The whole thing was really interesting and he's got a diverse body of provocative work. The stuff that he does with Picasso's Guernica are my particular favorites: one, and two examples. Catch this flick at the Vic while it lasts.