They were nice enough to invite me to participate, thanks in part to my friend and former roomate Steve Frost, an excellent artist who has work in the show himself.
Sadly, I won’t be able to make it down for the opening, so if you’re in the DC area, go and represent!
If you do plan on going and want to pretend that you’re me, these are the new collages about which you’ll need to make up something to say in art-speak:
I recommend heavy use of the word “recontextualized”.
I was pleasantly surprised by the reactions to Jeff’s previous post about my artstuffs — a belated thanks to everyone who reblogged or contacted me for more info — so I thought I’d share a few pics from my most recent outing.
If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you’ll know that me and David are suckers for brightly-colored comic-themed street art. Particularly if there’s a visual non sequitur involved. Like this poster I saw plastered around the streets of Philadelphia this weekend.
It’s an image of Marvel’s Doctor Doom charging toward the viewer with the phrase “Well, at least things can’t get any worse” superimposed over top in bright pink text …
Pretty much perfect, I think.
Although it contradicts the Simmermon family motto, which I swear I am not lying about. My dad always says
You know, Jeff, we have a saying. “Things go on like this for a while, and then they get worse.”
During the time that I was in Royal Quiet Deluxe (chicken band), I was invited to a large dinner with the Reverend Al Sharpton. Everyone had to go around the table and describe who they were and what they did. I was neither an accomplished member of the community in Norfolk, nor was I African-American. Everyone else at the table was both. I just kinda ran with a description of the band.
It did not go well. At all. In fact, the evening rippled throughout my life for about ten years, causing tremendous embarassment in a comic book store this summer.
Here’s a video of me telling the story on stage at The Moth:
I think I’ve just about milked this chicken band thing for all it’s worth now …
Look, there’s a million clever Obama t-shirts out there, I know. But I saw this one in Georgetown this weekend and HAD to chase the dude down just to get a picture. Nobody loves a sci-fi reference more than I do, and mashing the President-elect with the Terminator gets my vote every time:
It’s been a couple days now, and it keeps happening — and at the oddest times, too. Sometimes I can control it and sometimes I just let it happen, let the people on the subway stare. My breath hitches kinda funny, hiccups, and my throat and voicebox shake like a bus on a bumpy road. My eyes tear up every time and I’ve just sort of stopped wiping it away.
I can’t tell if I’m happy or sad when it happens, mostly I’m just swallowed up by the enormity of the feeling. It’s like being a particle of plankton and getting swallowed up by a gigantic, benevolent whale.
America elected Barack Obama to be the President of the United States on Tuesday night, and the emotional aftershocks just keep coming.
So along with the spontaneous, random sobs of joy and relief, I’m having this recurring hallucination. Or maybe it’s a daydream. But whatever.
Every time I see, hear, or imagine somebody doing something incredibly well, that person has Barack Obama’s head.
My friend Jim O’Grady is a Moth GrandSLAM contest winner — a great storyteller and a great guy. He’s been a reporter for the New York Times, and works for some mysterious think tank that he says is “physically located on Wall Street, but in no way associated with finance.”
The thing about these story shows is that they let anybody onstage, which gives the show its spirit and beauty. It keeps it from being the province of writers and actors and “who do you know” and lets the voice of the people come through. It also allows people to weep onstage and do some lame standup comedy from time to time. It’s always a crap shoot, and the surprises are the best part.
Jim’s reliably awesome — he has his nights when he kills, sure. But even when he’s not at his best, he’s still really really good, and whenever he gets picked to come to the stage the audience is in for a treat.
Here he is at a Moth StorySLAM this summer, on the theme of “Respect.”
You can see a story by The Moth’s Juliet Wayne here:
Today is national fix-the-country day, and it’s gonna be a long one. No matter what side you’re on, you’re probably sick of the campaigning by now. As a little distraction from all the election-related news you’re sure to be drowning in, I thought I’d post a video of me telling the story of Royal Quiet Deluxe, (chicken band) at The Moth.
The story links to one of our recordings, made with a primitive drum machine, delay/loop pedal, and my tireless prattling.
The following track, though, is a different sort of sound collage. We recorded it on the front porch of Tim’s parent’s place out in Botetourt County, VA, one hot summer evening. You can hear crickets and locusts in the background, something I think is pretty cool. I am playing the typewriter as percussion here, Tim is playing guitar, and the chickens are pecking and vocalizing. Tim mixed in a recording about Exotic Newcastle Disease in Southern California that was recorded over the telephone many years later, and presto — you have:
There’s one more story in this saga. I’ve told it onstage at a Moth event recently, and I’m waiting to get ahold of the video so I can crunch it and post it here — and I’m working on the text version for those of you that want the full-on boxed-set experience. Suffice it to say that while the Internet has helped me find a whole new audience for this band that I never thought existed, I am 100 percent positive that the Reverend Al Sharpton still thinks the whole concept of Royal Quiet Deluxe is the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.
You can see a story by The Moth’s Jim O’Grady here:
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