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.
• Campaign 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.

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).

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!

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

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").

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

a hairless cat is now my desktop wallpaper.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Check out:
Attaboy @ Kid Robot - a photoset on Flickr

I went to see Attaboy at Kid Robot on Haight Street last week. He has some incredible new pieces on display, you can see some of them in the Flickr photo set that I put up. The pictures are a mix of shots of Attaboy's artwork and xtreme and goofy closeups of friends who were there. View the slideshow.

And Attaboy's new magazine, whcih I've written several things for is coming out later this month. It's called hi fructose.

d_onFunstonSteps_close

d_onFunstonSteps_close
Originally uploaded by mikl-em.

This is one of a set of photos that I uploaded to flickr.com a while back. It's
from a lovely March day that Danielle and I spent at Fort Funston just south of SF, with the Pacific Ocean crashing nearby.

flickr is a fantastic site for sharing photos online. They have all kinds of cool features. I'll post more about it sometime soon.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

19th Century electronic music

Recently read an entry in Wikipedia about the The Telharmonium which debuted in 1897(!). Interesting stuff, for you paleo-technophiles out there....

morning automatic poem

some sun the only one we get

the fakest English accent you can manage

and the dove on the football on the poster

of the rally of the world that we are sorry

is not our world anymore.

How bad is Bolton? Even worse.

In case you haven't read this, a few weeks old now, from a letter written to the subcommittee considering Bolton to be ambassador to the UN, by a woman who had, um, an interaction with the man...

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel
-- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door
and, generally, behaving like a madman.

That's John Bolton who was the Prez's nominee for ambassador to the UN. A total disaster who served as Dick Cheney's mole in Colin Powell's State Dept. Fred Kaplan from Slate has written several articles which eloquently profile the problems with Bolton.

Read the entry in Wikipedia and Sourcewatch for a lot more info.

yes. I need to do some reformatting on this blog. blug. blugh. i have never successfully been accused of being a web designer. quick man, to the style sheets!!

That Mac's so Big cuz it's paid for

So if you hear a rapper saying they like Big Macs, don't believe it. They are likely getting paid to say it. Lovely. All that credibility straight out the window.

Stupid Stupid Stupid
Today Is!!! Happy Day of Stupid!

Bishop Joey and the First Church of the Last Laugh will be leading the Saint Stupid's Day parade through the streets of San Francisco. One of the greatest weird traditions of this weird and greatest city. HST would be proud, this is definitely pro weirdness.

For 500837 years of our lords, Saint Stupid has in the beards of our lords and the streets of San Francisco. Like Karl Malden in a lobotomized yamalke with entourage. Whoooo Booooy!! Am I right?

It's also a ton of fun, and all is sad that I can't be in it today (it's my one religious holiday). I will console myself by gazing at pix from last year's parade. Later check out the after party at 12 galaxies or the Flambe Lounge at Yerba Buena.

Bad Movie Night
at The Dark Room

TONIGHT: The Dark Room debuts the MST3K-like "Bad Movie Night". Each Sunday evening for a month, a rotating roster of local laughability optimizers comment on films of lower than average quality. Tonight's show features Bucky Sinister, Lynn Breedlove, and Sherilyn Connelly.
This should be a great show!

I won't be able to make it because we bought tickets ages ago for the ROVA Saxaphone Quartet and friends (aka Orkestrova)performance of John Coltrane's Ascension. The show is part of the SF Jazzfest, which is always impressive, especially in their spring season, but this year is one of their best. More on that in some other post. Here's a review of the last time ROVA performed Ascension

The Bad Movie Night series will continue throughout April on Sunday evenings. Next week I'll be one of the guest hecklers, along with one or two or three cohorts I hold in high and humorous regard. More on that next week.

On Flickr!

Okay, I'm on Flickr now. Flickr is the best photo-sharing site, with great features, RSS-n'-blog-savvy, and a social networking thing going on. If you didn't hear Yahoo just bought them. And I'm playing catch-up. It's good timing as Danielle and I got a digital camera (finally) two months ago.

So look for pix there, and maybe even some here soon.

Forever it's been

Yes, I know. And you've been waiting with bait on your breath, right?

Well, I've been quite busy and many wonderful and many banal things have happened since my unceremonious silence began. And we lost the election. But you know that.

A quick update or re-statement of some essentials:

• I work at Yahoo, as part of Yahoo Search


• The Dark Room is where I'm doing lots of theater stuff


• Laughing Squid and Attaboy's Yumfactory are my peeps


• And bianca will always love you

I'm going to start the info flow here again soon. So stay with a tune. Upcoming: stuff about all the stuff I've been writing for Hi Fructose and the various Dark Room stuff upcoming including Bad Movie Night on Sunday April 3, 2005 at 8pm.