VBW07: Day 5 – Thrills

I recently took a visit to Santa Cruz with my friend Lindsay and we rode the
super rickety Giant Dipper wooden roller coaster. Santa Cruz is the only US west coast city to still have a boardwalk with amusement park rides.

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8 Days in Austria

Taugshow #9

Before I completely forget, it’s time for my Austria trip wrapup post.

Vienna: Vienna is beautiful old city, once the center of power during the Austro-Hungarian Empire empire. It has exhibits in it’s natural history museum that are older than the United States. This place IS real history. Austria is also known for it’s copious amounts of meat, chocolate, punsch and beer. I indulged in plenty of all of it.

Roboexotica Festival – The main reason for trip, this event is like nothing else. Johannes and the monochrom crew along with Magnus from SHIFZ put this thing on, now in it’s 8th mechanically intoxicating incarnation. Essentially, Roboexotica is a week long exhibition in the heart of Vienna, showcasing a variety of robots and other machines related to cocktail culture. Much media was made. GETV videos w/Violet hosting. LunchMeet w/Johannes & one with the Slovenians coming soon. My photos. Jake’s photos. Violet’s photos.

– Roboexotica Symposium – I was asked to deliver a lecture which became a multimedia presentation on undeground robot culture in San Francisco. I covered mostly my experiences with SRL. I was a bit nervous following the creative genius minds of Kal Spelletich and V.Vale.

Taugshow #9: This is monochrom’s live monthly variety/talk show which was brilliant and hilarious. Since there were so many of us from San Francisco in town, Johannes made this a special English language only edition. Highlights include interviews with Kal, Violet, Vale, the overhead projector song (acoustic and disco versions) and Krack the robot that dances to cheesy techno. Video of the whole thing is online.

Graz: The city of Graz is just 2 hours outside of Vienna and is the home to the football stadium formerly named after famous Graz homeboy Arnold Schwarzenegger. The city erased the Governator’s name from the stadium after his uncompromising pro-death penalty stance. It is amazing that the US is one of the last “civilized” nations to still employ this barbaric method of justice.

– Videoblogging workshops – Johannes asked me to give a series of videoblogging workshops to his students at the FH JOANNEUM- School of Informations Design in Graz. I did four 45-minute sessions to four different groups of students. It wasn’t really enough time to go into much depth but I was able to cover basics of getting video onto a blog using blip.tv and Blogger. Here’s the results.

– Lecture: Videoblogging, Webzines and Zombies – I gave another multimedia presentation, this time in Graz at the same university as the workshops, and relating to videoblogging, independent publishing and underground San Francisco culture. This was fun to do as there is such a wealth of documented material out there on all this, and they are all things I’m passionate about. I think Scott Beale alone deserves credit for the photos I used to illustrate the culture topic. I’ll try and output the presentation from keynote and post it.

It was a great 9 days and I know I’m missing tons. Thanks to Johannes and Evelyn for putting me up at their place for the duration and to Johannes for finding a way to fund this trip for me. It was an amazing time and it’s heartening to know that creative freaks are doing amazing things in other countries AND want to include us often self-centered Americans.

5 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

OK, Micki tagged me, so here’s my 5 things you probably didn’t know about me. This blog meme started with Jeff Pulver. Others who have been tagged are Irina Slutsky, Zadi Diaz, Steve Garfield, Chuck Olson and Bre Pettis.

— A first proud geek moment was when I created an animated version of the opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on my Commodore VIC-20, in Commodore ASCII. If i ever find the data tape i saved it to, i’ll post it.

— I’m now working for my 5th San Francisco based Internet startup. In chronological order: Studio Verso, Phoenix-Pop Productions, Fast Forward Networks, Inktomi, PodTech.

— No, I didn’t cash out handsomely at any of the above, though I did turn down a job at Yahoo! in 1996.

— I once sold magic mushrooms to an undercover cop in college. That didn’t turn out so well.

— I’ve handled poisonous snakes and lived. This was when I was traveling through southeast Asia in 2002.

OK, my turn to tag 5 people. Paul Boutin, Jackson West, Ryanne Hodson, Schlomo Rabinowitz, David Pava, tell us your 5 things.

Off to Austria for Roboexotica



Vienna
Originally uploaded by ioerror.

I’m taking off on Sunday for a week in Austria, mostly in Vienna to attend and cover Roboexotica, “the festival for cocktail robots”. I’m super psyched to be hanging out with new and old friends as they compete with their robotic creations in areas of expertise such as ‘robots that mix and service cocktails’, ‘robots that light your cigarette for you’, and ‘robots that engage in bar conversation’.

Then I head to Graz to give videoblogging workshops to university students and give a multimedia slideshow presentation on weird techno-art San Francisco. Drop me a line if you’re also gonna be around in Vienna or Graz.

Desert Bound

Pray to the dogs of hot

I’m off to frolic in the desert and put first life on the back burner, so to speak. I’m bringing video gear so I may even try to capture a sliver of the madness. In the meantime, check out the daily video updates over at Current TV.

John Kricfalusi is a twisted genius



John Kricfalusi is a twisted genius
Originally uploaded by ekai.

Yes he is and I got to witness it live tonight and then meet him. I’ve been a fan since first discovering Ren & Stimpy however many years ago. Tonight John K came to the Castro Theater in SF to present a bunch of rarely seen and some banned cartoons that the networks never let him air. The Adult Party episode of Ren & Stimpy was pure brain breaking genius from start to finish. It’s also on the recently released Lost Episodes DVD. Just two words: touch tip.

3 more shows tomorrow/Saturday. An afternoon kid-friendly show at the Castro, an adult one in the evening and a gig at the Cartoon Art Museum where John might draw you some twisted knowledge. Stay up to date with Kricfalusi’s world on abundantly updated blog.

Testicle Festival

Testy Festy Apparently testy festies are all the rage across the heartland.

“A fresh calf testicle tastes like lobster. You never had anything like it. Bull nuts taste like shoe leather. You can have ’em.”

–Bob Zeier, 75 year old cattle rancher