Published on
July 18, 2009 in
events.
The International Cartoonist Conspiracy, Big Time Attic, and Altered Esthetics Gallery in Minneapolis are staging Big Funny, a month-long wake celebrating the endangered medium known as “newspaper comics.” They have produced a full-size, full-color Sunday Funnies and loads of collateral art.
There will also be a vintage cigarette machine stocked with mini-comics. I will be contributing the three *highly-collectible* Uncles minis whose covers appear above. (Your spare change will help to buy meagre portions of Artist Chow for unnamed starving cartoonists and gallery owners who aren’t me. I get paid in mini-comics, which pretty much rules!)
The opening reception is Friday, August 7 from 7:00-11:00 at Altered Esthetics, 1224 Quincy Street NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413, 612.378.8888. Please bring your checkbook and a pocket full of quarters!
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Published on
May 7, 2008 in
events.
We ended up getting 140 groups to do readings of Boggle and Sneak, for a total of close to 300 people. I’ve been saying that the story of this Maker Faire for me will be that 300 people walked up and knowingly did me a personal favor (and this was on top of the giant-sized favor that my crew of Ed, Andrew, Will and Susan all pulled out.) My main reaction is basically stunned and bewildered gratitude. People can be pretty great!
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Published on
May 3, 2008 in
events.
Ed, Will, Andrew and I spent the day at Maker Faire asking fairegoers to read pages out of Boggle and Sneak in our time machine. Each person or group read a single page, and we’ll be editing all the the pages into chapter-length videos. The readers were great! We had individuals, couples, parents and kids, moms and babies, groups of friends, and a man with the devil on his back. We’re still hoping to get R2D2, but we haven’t been able to get his attention yet.
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Published on
March 3, 2008 in
events.
Published on
October 25, 2007 in
events.
My old friend Joe Weismann fronts the band The Smarts, which is the house band for the Minnesota Public Radio show In the Loop.
“In the Loop” did one of their occasional open-mic Story Slam tapings last night, and Joe encouraged me to show up and perform. Theme of the show was “Disguise,” so I told a story (perhaps not mine to tell) my high-school guitar teacher once told me, about the time she attended a costume party dressed as God.
She bound her breasts, wore baggy clothes, pulled a paper bag over her head, and refused to speak. This was met by universal hostility, as each guest demanded to know, “Are you a man or a woman under there?” and “Who are YOU supposed to be?” Eventually one of the guests became so upset by the ambiguity that he squared off and tried to fight her.
I’m ambivalent about appropriating her story, and I’m not sure I rendered it particularly well. The best I can say is that I fought down stage fright and spoke slowly and clearly. Beginner’s mind, beginner’s mind…
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Published on
August 7, 2007 in
events.
Ed Vogel (author of the awesome Cigar Box Guitar article in Make among other accomplishments (and whom I met in a longboarding context not writing or strumming or making, but that’s another story)) invited me to attend last Sunday’s Lit6 Story Stage at the 331 Club in Northeast Minneapolis. I’m still lit up from the exposure to so many talented writers.
Lessons (re)learned:
- Reading out loud is a critical discipline that I ignore at my peril.
- Being too old for stage fright does not prevent stage fright.
- I do not know how to speak properly into a microphone.
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