“Everybody Poops”, a bipartisan Threadless t-shirt design by Chris Lee Jones.

via Tcritic

illustration by Chris Lee Jones

Hulu will be live streaming tonight’s Presidential Debate via NBC through their new Election ‘08 hub.

See Previously: Current & Twitter Rock The First Presidential Debate of Election 2008

Sydney photographer Keith Loutit has created some amazing tilt-shift time-lapse videos, including “Beached”, “Bathtub II” and “Bathtub III”.

via Cult of Mac

Lowbrow artist and Juxtapoz Magazine founder Robert Williams will be doing an artist talk and book signing at 2pm this Sunday, October 12th at the Oakland Museum of California as part of their LA Paint exhibition which runs through March 8th, 2009. As a tribute to Robert’s love of hot rods, 40 vintage cars and custom hot rods will be in the museum courtyard from noon to 5pm.

See Previously: Lowbrow Art Pioneer Robert Williams Launches Website

As one of the media sponsors of Maker Faire Austin 2008, I have a some extra tickets for next weekend’s event, so I’m going to give away a pair of weekend passes (two sets total) and a pair of day passes (two sets total) to the first four people who leave comments on this post. I’ll contact the winners for their mailing address and then send the tickets via US Mail. We will need your mailing address by 6pm PDT on Tuesday, October 7th in order to send you your tickets.

Please note that I’m only giving away tickets to people who live in Austin, TX, so if you win a pair of tickets you’ll need to provide an Austin mailing address.

If you weren’t a recipient of one of the free tickets, you can always buy your tickets in advance online, which can then be picked up at the Maker Faire Will Call.

Maker Faire Austin 2008 takes place on Saturday, October 18th and Sunday, October 19th at the Travis County Exposition Cente. See my previous post for more info.

UPDATE: Thanks everyone, all Maker Faire tickets have been given away.

photo by Scott Beale

The unique comedy music duo Paul and Storm will be performing at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco this Sunday, October 12th. Tickets are available through TicketWeb.

Paul and Storm have been writing and performing funny songs together for a long, long time, starting with their stint together in a cappella band Da Vinci’s Notebook. Their music tends to make people laugh and feel good, and Paul and Storm believe that this makes their pursuit noble, right and just.

BONUS: their live show is better than 1,000 Fonzies, and more spellbinding than Mr. T on a unicycle.

Anyone with ADD will appreciate the broad range of territory that Paul and Storm cover in their music… Chicken nuggets. Love. Boxing nuns. Relationships. Pirates. Friendship. If James Taylor were on fire.

Catchy melodies and well-constructed music underpin the comedy, and in live performance their harmonies draw comparisons to the Everly Brothers, while their stage presence evokes the Barenaked Ladies. They will do nearly anything to win the hearts and minds of their audiences, and often throw Twinkies, Moon Pies and/or other snack cakes into the crowd to help seal the deal. Occasionally, panties are thrown back.

Here’s the video for “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament” by Paul and Story which was animated by Spiff using images from World of Warcraft.

image via Paul and Storm

guest post by Jason Schupp

Recently, I received a strange email from a group calling themselves the Elsewhere Public Works Agency asking me to investigate another outfit known as The Jejune Institute, the website for which invokes a pastiche of 70s pseudo-science and new-agey cultism. Here’s the video from their website, with founder Octavio Coleman, Esq. inviting us to visit the cult— er, Institute:

Good thing it’s not at all real. Some digging around and help from my friend Gwen revealed a connection to the Oakland-based arts and history collective organization Oaklandish, and an older arts group called the Nonchalance Collective that was Oaklandish’s predecessor. A recent post to Oaklandish’s mailing list from Oaklandish founder Jeff “Bobby Peru” Hull repeats some of the same info in the email I received:

: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: ::
Special Transmission from:
Elsewhere Public Works Agency
: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: ::
Slight Nudges Now Offered.
Solely for the Discerning Dilettante.
Be Aware - it could be in the wrong direction.
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::
Is the Jejune Institute still spreading false
nonchalance? Or have they mended their ways?
We need you to find out.
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::
/ // / // Next steps // / // / /
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::
dial: 415.325.4014
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::
visit:
The Jejune Institute
580 California Street, Suite 1607
San Francisco, CA.
Tuesday through Saturday
Noon to 5:30pm
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::
http://JejuneInstitute.org
: :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : :: : ::

I’ve since been to The Jejune Institute’s office, and went through their short “induction seminar,” which is really the first step in beginning the first chapter of a sort of interactive narrative/alternate reality game. So far it’s involved a bit of urban exploration, clue-finding, exposure to street art downtown, and the beginnings of a larger mystery to solve, and made for a fun afternoon. I’m not sure yet if and how it’ll tie in to the local arts scene or creative history of the Bay Area otherwise, but I really like that this is coming from local artists, and not from a marketing firm promoting a video game, a movie, or some such thing. I’ll be sticking with it for now to see how it plays out, ties in with local culture, and why these folks are putting this together in the first place.

Intrigued thrill-seekers who want to play through can drop in the Institute office at the address above. When you go, tell security that you’re going to Suite 1607, and then tell the receptionist on the 16th floor that you’re there for The Jejune Institute. If you’re going to go, I’d try to go within the next couple of weeks. Given the nature of these games, I can’t say how much longer it’ll be available.

Meanwhile, the Elsewhere Public Works Agency would also like to warn you against microwave harassment.

images and video via the Jejune Institute, photo by Michael Van Vleet

The Vote for Chicken Subpoena Art Show takes place this Thursday, October 9th at the Crucible Steel Gallery located at CELLspace in San Francisco, where Chicken John, who ran for major in last year’s election, plans to answer the subpoena from the SF Ethics Commission by gluing the documents to the wall in the form of an art show.

Here’s the announcement from Chicken John’s mailing list:

CELL Space October 9th, 7PM*** Vote for Chicken Subpoena art show with special guest: Gavin Newsome!!!!

So if I said it once I’ve now said it a thousand times: Politics divide people, art brings people together.

I never knew how true it was until I decided it would be interesting and funny if I ran for mayor of San Francisco, the City of Art and Innovation.

I’d make a great mayor. Sure I would.

About half the people unsubscribed from my list.

By the end of the run, more people had signed up and stuff… but some people were really enthusiastic. Some angry. Some embarrassed. But everyone had an opinion. Most people think I did it ‘wrong’. Everyone would have done it differently. So if my campaign was a performance art piece, that makes anyone with an opinion a critic. An art critic.

Suck on that for a minute…

There is a device called the Ethics Commission that oversees campains and monitors the finance and the idea (I guess) is to keep things equal for all candidates. They manage a city fund for campain endeavors that you know of as “matching funds”. Where if you raise a certain amount of money and show that you have some support they will match your funds so you can get your message across. All sounds perfectly reasonable to me….

Please come to The Crucible Steel Gallery located in CELL Space, 2050 Bryant Street in SF, on Thursday night October 9th, 7 PM, as I satisfy the subpoena I received from the Ethics Commission. They wish to scrutinize the paperwork of the campaign committee when I ran for mayor to make sure I filled out all the forms right and didn’t spend any campaign money on blow and hookers. Like you get a receipt from the blow and hooker store, jeeeze…

I’ll glue the paperwork to the walls of the gallery and I’m inviting you, the general public, and the Ethics Commission to peruse the paperwork that I will display. The subpoena asks for me to “surrender” all files and papers and accounting. Why only surrender it to them? Why not let everyone see it? Sounds like a fair political practice to me…

At the show, I will do a short presentation of how I’m protected by the 1st amendment because I ran for second place in a pre-determined election. I will also show you how I almost won. Yup. The Rank Choice Voting thing is actually so flawed that things been just a little different… just a small % different… it’s complicated. Come to the show, I’ll explain it.

11,000 people voted for me. Not bad, really. You’d only need 7,000 or so to slam dunk a supervisor seat. Or 3,500 first place votes, 4,000 second place votes… it’s all kinda complicated…

Please join us for a look at the sheer volume of paper that is generated for a campain. The will be complimentary Hor’dearves and libations for your pleasure and a special appearance from our beloved Mayor Gavin Newsome who will speak about how as Governor of California he will be a great inspiration to artists who will join together against him as he paves over every square foot of our beautiful state with luxury condos as the billionaires kick out the millionaires. Or something.

My artist statement is as follows:

My work deals with contemporary and post-contemporary political paranoia and mistrust through an ancient medium, that of the standard political rhetorical broadside, dedicated though, not to the standard genre of communicating to one’s fellow citizens in the polis through appeals to their reason, love for community, or even sense of play and creativity, but rather to what the medium of political communication is reduced (or elevated? this question cannot be evaded, but is rather met head on through the slapping of form on wall) to in the post-electronic world, communication not across a plane of equals with a common language of gesture and sound, but rather communication between Subject and a shadowy world of hegemonic power that attempts to define art not as a matter of artist and audience but of, in senses both real and metaphorical, master and slave. In this work the meaning of “form” is played with in its duality of shape, medium, or contour and its alternate and paradoxical meaning of a piece of paper with information filled in, submitted to the requirements of the civic ego rather than personal limerence. The piece reconfigures the use of Number in ways meant to make the audience question the hegemony of Mathematics itself; within the ambit of my work, a work whose true scope and space encompasses not just the gallery walls but rather the memories, experiences, cash flow, and enthusiasm of everyone whose desire to see me experiment with political form led them to make the choice to write me a check or hand me their own form of inkjet on paper art, the federal reserve note (a thing of totemic power whose overall shaping of my work is a constant presence-through-absence), an act which, as the work demonstrates, takes them, and me, irrevocably from a realm of (imagined, possible phony) “choice” and “freedom” and into a locked condition of thrall, indeed, to the commissioners–people who their relationship with, rather than being organic or arising from felt need, is rather imposed on them by a system that makes the informational facts of their being property not of them or those they choose to share it with, but rather something that can (and is) taken by force in a curious game where Facts and Information become in essence keys to a very real Jail. (The concept of entrapment also overhangs the work and shapes the viewer’s perception.) We see then Math and Number losing their customary and enforced sense of solidity and entrapment and becomes instead a medium of slippery uncertainty, where the difference between 99.99 and 100 is not simply a single integer but rather a multiplicative function that shifts and expands relentlessly through time with each passing day, eventually becoming not just Number but a crushing Reality that can in fact destroy homes, lives, and futures. In this work a sense of place is reinforced through the rhythmic and repetitive use of street addresses, raising interesting questions about the meaning of “where”.” The overwhelming sense of exile in the current sociopolitical condition is grappled with as questions of “residency” and “last known address” are raised, lowered, parried, and recontextualized, in a situation where “home” again becomes something not purely emotional or domestic but rather the raw material of a Panoptionesque vigorous searching gaze into every aspect of what could once have been considered a realm of privacy and choice; a realm reconfigured, both in the Ethics Commission’s “reality” and the “reality” the artist has crafted in the gallery, across multiple dimensions and platforms: Materials used include wheatpaste, inkjet-on-paper, will, and imagination. And disgust.

photo by Scott Beale

“McCain Be Old” by Jelly Donut

via Current

Dust Films has created a new version of the video for 1985 song “Take On Me” by the band a-ha, where the lyrics actually explain what is going on in the video.

via Andre Torrez

Make Magazine and Craft Magazine present the 2nd annual Maker Faire Austin which takes place October 18 & 19 at the Travis County Exposition Center in Austin, TX.

Here’s are my photos from Maker Faire Austin 2007.

photos by Scott Beale

Violet Blue shot a great photo of a truck that was literally tagged with a name tag.

photo by Violet Blue

Our friends at breadpig have created an awesome set of LOLmagnetz, which you can use to create your own LOLspeak poetry on a variety of magnetic surfaces.

LOLMagnetz are now available through Think Geek and a portion of each sale is donated to the San Francisco SPCA to save and care for orphaned pets.

Warning, LOLmagnetz are not recommended for use with food.

photos by Scott Beale & Think Geek

Hooters or In-N-Out Burger, seems like it could be the starting point of a bizarre Choose Your Own Adventure game which takes place in Fisherman’s Wharf.

You are standing in front of a Hooters & In-N-Out Burger in Fisherman’s Wharf…

See Previously: In-N-Out Burger, A Fast Food Underdog With a Cult Following

photo by Scott Beale

Tiki Central is hosting Tiki Crawl 8, visiting ten fabulous Tiki Bars around the Bay Area from Thursday, October 9th through Sunday, October 12th.

Come join in the biggest Bay Area Tiki Bar Crawl yet! Four days! Ten Bars! Savor the world of tiki with visits to bars and restaurants both new and legendary all over the Bay Area. Celebrate the rich history of tiki in the Bay Area, and its lasting impact for over 70 years. Make your plans today to join in an exciting four day weekend of good friends, good drinks, and good tiki.

via Tiki Talk

Burning Man Decompression 2008 Heat The Street Faire, the annual post Burning Man celebration, takes place this Sunday, October 12th at Cafe Cocomo and on Indiana Street between Mariposa and 22nd in San Francisco.

guest post by mikl-em

In case you’ve missed it, Tina Fey has been appearing each week on Saturday Night Live as Sarah Palin. The first installment imagined a press conference with Hilary Clinton, the second parodied her funny-to-start-with interview with Katie Couric (including direct quotes better than the SNL writing staff could have created), and this week the VP debates were naturally the topic.

Word is there will be a new Fey-as-Palin sketch to kick off the show each week until the election. This can only get funnier.

Katie Couric interview:

Here’s the Palin-Hilary sketch that kicked this series off:

See Previously:

- Head of Skate, An Alaskan Hockey Mom Becomes Vice President

- Vice Presidential Debate At The Hat Factory

guest post by mikl-em

Deep in Hulu.com’s site, I recently found this pretty amazing retrospective of interviews with David Letterman produced by NBC after he switched networks to CBS. The air date for this special listed on Hulu (May 1978) is wrong because there’s footage of him from much later than that–including a Tom Brokaw interview with him on the occasion of his last week at NBC in 1993. Footage includes interviews prior to him joining NBC when he was doing standup in LA, interviews by Jane Pauley and Tom Snyder, (with Snyder smoking a cigarette, as usual) and even a clip of Dave doing the weather back in Indianapolis.

The special is an hour long, and well worth it, to get a very different perspective on the current grand old man of late night TV.

As a bonus, here’s Dave in a rare TV acting role on Mork & Mindy. With Morgan Fairchild also on as a guest, Dave is doing a thinly veiled parody of Werner Erhard the founder of Scientology-related 70’s self-help seminars EST.

Viewing Note: See Jonathan Davies’ write-up on how to view Hulu videos outside the US using Hotspot Shield.

Improv Everywhere was in town today to conduct their MP3 Experiment San Francisco in Dolores Park. The turn out was great, with a sea of people wearing red, blue, green and yellow shirts, equipped with umbrellas and balloons, all simultaneously following instructions from a MP3 while wearing headphones.

IE founder Charlie Todd invited me to come out as part of his crew to shoot photos and help document the event. He will be posting the video from San Francisco and other cities from their tour within the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

photo gallery: Improv Everywhere MP3 Experiment San Francisco

photos & video by Scott Beale

Here’s clip from the BBC featuring The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performing the Theme From Shaft by Isaac Hayes live at the Cambridge Folk Festival 2007.

via Neatorama