I came cross this great little documentary of San Francisco’s favorite notable icon, Frank Chu. Frank was born in 1960, his father is 98 and is still alive, his mom was murdered by the CIA and 12 Galaxies or maybe there was some natural causes. He’s been in and out of jail, the Oakland cops almost murdered him a few times. He starts his routine at 8am downtown everyday and likes to break for lunch at Jack in the Box.
The vlogosphere keeps getting better, or I’m just discovering undiscoverd gems like Ze Frank’s the show. Ze’s show has been on my radar for a couple of weeks and now it’s down to daily must see viewing. Seriously, give up 2 minutes of your life and take in the fabulously fucked up essence that is Ze Frank. Describing him just won’t do it justice, so peek it yourself. He does everything you wish you could so you don’t have to, especially thinking.
Day 7: Ok It’s been a week or so since Videoblogging Week ended, but since I missed doing a last video, I’m tossing this into the mix as it. This is the BYOBW (Bring Your Own Big Wheel) race on Easter Sunday down Lombard Street in San Francisco. Yeah, that really twisty one. I also pushed this out as a GETV episode, letting the streams cross.
Tag: videobloggingweek2006, byobw
Or how I got the blog drop on Scott Beale. Marc turned me onto Nathan Barley yesterday, a brilliant British commentary/parody of the commodity cool culture of the dot-com era, UK style. Genius writing, I can see why it only lasted a season in a country that drops everything for Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. It would have lasted even less here. Barley is a self-described self-facilitating media node who wears dual bluetooth headsets while directing his growing self-referential media empire under the sparkle of the discoball and celebrity spotlight.
This BBC article from 2001, reporting on the British dot-com backlash (yes, it’s total twilight zone!), describes the early Barley:
“Nathan Barley rides a tiny metal scooter along the pavement in the direction of an overpriced ‘gastro-pub’ in order to attend a meeting with a group of worthless toffee-nosed sh**s intent on setting up an internet radio station with an elaborate Shockwave interface, eternally doomed to be of interest to absolutely no-one other than themselves.”
It might hit home a little, which is partially why it’s funny as fuck and worth a snort in the BitTorrent-o-sphere. You can find the first season, 6 episodes, which only aired in the UK last year. While waiting for the download to finish, follow Barley’s Wikipedia roots. The subversion runs deep.
Yes, it’s true. The MCness himself is keeping it real with a blog. Hammer is hurtin’ ’em with stories, audio clips and pix of eating nice fat breakfasts with his son. It’s the story behind the Hammer, straight from the man who had the best pants in all of 80’s rap. Seems as Hammer got some geek cred. He’s made the rounds out here at Google and YouTube, posts pix from a Sidekick, links to Wikipedia entries, has a Feedburner feed and a gmail address. He’s fairly prolific too, dropping lots of content each day and the comments are adding up.
The SRL mayhem in Chinatown LA was a great little show, smaller than last year but just as scary, freaky and fun to work on as ever. The show titled “The Fish Boy’s Dream” ended in a nightmare for poor little Fish Boy as he was poked from a puking alligator above, tossed around like a floppy halibut by the shaker and finally seared from a fiery blast from the Boeing jet engine. Fish Boy lived a short humble life, but his spirit lives on in that stinky, fish water coated parking lot in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Jack Nicholson would be proud.
I ran this sneaky soldier with Nina during the show, which performed admirably within it’s constraints. With the right pulsing movements on the remote control, Sneaky would inch forward slowly and zip backwards more quickly. Turning was out of the question, though with several tons of other fast moving machines dancing around, there really wasn’t anywhere to turn to. Sneaky survived the ordeal, though decapitated. He can be seen or bought along with his head and a couple of his brothers in the Fringe Exhibitions gallery until Feb 25th.
Here’s pix I took, mostly during setup. More links from the official SRL page, BoingBoing and Laughing Squid.
Survival Research Labs is doing a little show in Los Angeles this weekend as part of the Fringe Exhibitions gallery opening in Chinatown. I’ll be there working it, so stop on by and say hi if you’re in the ‘hood. Gallery opening is 6-8pm and show starts promptly (heh!) at 8pm Saturday, Feb. 21st. FREE!
Coming to a big box retailer near you, it’s the Wal-Mart Dance Party, flash mob style. Kind of.
We weren’t terribly organized on our first attempt. One of our friends brought an ipod w/ an iRok transmitter and a forward guard had tuned all the boom boxes to the same transmitter station. In the mean time, there was a gang of at least 25 punks, sceneagers and freaks hanging around the electronics section trying to figure out how to not look suspicious. Once all the boom boxes got tuned and we got “Safety Dance” going. they just came and shut off the power to the entire section.
Lesson 1: Don’t malinger beforehand unless you wear white trash disguises. There’s something not-so-terribly-believable about a large gathering of disheveled sceneagers and anarchists in black with mohawks, nose rings and tats on a group shopping trip in the Wal-Mart music section.
We had better luck at Target on our second stop. Amazingly, they didn’t have a section where you could listen to the boom boxes, so everyone pretty much just scattered around the electronics section, making the employees nervous. Finally, Big Balls just plugged a boom box in and wired the speakers. Unfortunately, the kid with the iPod didn’t make it, so we just put a CD in and turned it up. The party lasted longer at Target — about 2 minutes — before a lackey came and shut it down.
Good times. Be sure you check out the videos.
Last night was the anniversary party to end all anniversary parties. Laughing Squid celebrated 10 young years of bringing forth San Francisco’s most freakiest. I bring you this short video that captures a few of the highlights.
