I first met Michael Che at Hannibal Buress’s free Sunday show at The Knitting Factory. I saw him perform 3 or 4 times, and man – he killed it every time. He did the And I Am Not Lying Live show back in December, and my friends called me the next day to tell me that they’d been quoting some of his lines to each other on the long drive back to Virginia the next day.

He was kind enough to let me share this video of his set:

The guy’s good, huh? You can catch him on Twitter at @chethinks, and on Tumblr here.

I just got some video footage from a Moth show that I did back in September that I’m extraordinarily excited to share with you. I’ve mentioned my stint in Royal Quiet Deluxe, chicken band, on here before, but as a refresher: I used to live in Richmond, Virginia and play the typewriter as a percussion instrument while a few chickens improvised keyboard pieces in toy pianos. For real. It was extraordinarily difficult to build a fan base, and I can say with great certainty that the Reverend Al Sharpton was not a fan AT ALL.

It’ll make more sense in the video, I swear.

I have told this story in various incarnations over the years, but I happen to feel that this performance at the Moth at Southpaw in Brooklyn on Labor Day this year really nailed it. Hope you enjoy it:

If you’re interested, you can actually hear two tracks that we recorded at practice here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, April 1998

Exotic Newcastle Disease, by Royal Quiet Deluxe

If you happen to see this today, and want to see more like it live in person, I’m putting on a show with my awesome and talented friends tonight at Union Hall in Brooklyn. There will be stories like this, burlesque striptease and a sword-swallower. For real.

Click here for show info and a cool poster: And I Am Not Lying Live at Union Hall

You can get advance tickets here.

My friend Tim Gordon (of Royal Quiet Deluxe) was released from jail out in San Francisco last Friday. He had been locked up in there since late September on a false testimony for crimes that he definitely did not commit.

That’s the justice system for you. They tried to break him, tried to get him to plead guilty to crimes he didn’t commit, and he stood strong. Now he’s out and I couldn’t be happier about it.

We have been writing back and forth like teenaged lovers at two different boarding schools since sometime around Halloween. As happy as I am that Tim is out, I am going to miss writing so often. I looked forward to opening his letters at my office. I’d shut my door and read them over and over throughout the day, keeping them in my pocket until I got home at night.

He’d send me little stuff from time to time, stuff that showed he was thinking about me — stuff that showed he was keeping his soul alive, too. He said it was okay to share some of these here, and I will be over the next few months.

I was supposed to be the one keeping Tim’s spirits up, but the picture and letter below really made me smile. My friend Xeni coined the term “unicorn chaser,” and I doubt she’s seen one as bittersweet as this one.

Before reading, you should know this: Tim actually did used to hammer a pen up his nose and make drawings for all takers on the streets of San Francisco. Trust me, it’ll make sense later.

(See the letter explaining this after the jump.)
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I have learned that there is a SUPERVOLCANO (which is a real thing not made up by an 8-year-old kid, apparently,) underneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. This supervolcano has erupted in the past, and was possibly partially responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to one guy (who keeps saying “million” when he means “thousand”, which you’d think would be problematic for a physicist,) it WILL erupt again, and everybody who lives in the huge area depicted here will be pretty well f*cked.

Coincidentally, on the same day that I learned that 11 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces are just incontrovertibly screwed six ways to Sunday, I came across this amazing and hilarious Jack Kirby drawing from 1972 of what our future might look like after “A GREAT CATACLYSM!”:

Image taken from Kamandi #1, Via the always excellent Comic Book Cartography.

Also, Discovery Channel has a pretty cool interactive explanation of the supervolcano.
BOOM. For real.

Cyndi’s taking a bit of a break from blogging here to do something a lot more intense, personal, gratifying and fantastic.

You may know her from the NYC burlesque scene as the fabulous Cherry Pitz — she does a spectacular routine with Vincent Price’s disembodied voice. (Link goes to video that may be considered unsafe for work, but inarguably awesome.)

Now she’s working on a one-woman show show that traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.

The show’s called Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.

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Last night in a “discount store” in Prospect Heights, I came across an amazing little item. See, not only have factories in China been producing unauthorized knockoffs of popular toys (which is nothing new)… it seems like they’re hitting the “shuffle” button with whatever figures they have left in stock, and coming up with new super-teams too! Case in point: the SENSE OF RIGHT ALLIANCE!

Apparently, a robot-armed Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, the yellow Power Ranger, The Thing, and a redheaded Reed Richards and have teamed up…

…to FENCE AGAINST THE EARTH!

And on top of this already delicious ridiculousness, when I took a closer look at their approximation of Superman:

…I immediately made this association:

God, I love this stuff.
PREVIOUSLY IN FOREIGN PLAYTIME ODDITIES: Coming to America Wrapped in Plastic and Cardboard

AND PREVIOUSLY IN AWESOME TOYS : The Longing for Lost Toys

For this month’s Hotsy Totsy Burlesque, Brad, my Co-producer Joe the Shark and I have combined two things we love:
Dr Who and Burlesque.

I love our show. Each month we write a new script in sort of an on-going burlesque soap-opera.

For those of you in NYC, here is the info:

HOTSY TOTSY BURLESQUE
Tuesday, August 17th, 9:30pm
@ The Delancey Lounge
168 Delancey, — just two blocks from the F/J train stop. 9:30, $8.

Cherry Pitz and Joe Shark are unaware – but something weird is going on at the Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women. Something that only one person can understand. Dr Who. Whatever you do … don’t blink! You’ll miss the boobies!

Cherry Pitz is your host and the show features RunAround Sue, Clams Casino, Apathy Angel, Misty Lux and Billy the Id & Special Guest Candy Cory!

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Check out the latest video mashup “premake” by Ivan Guerrero – a trailer for a 1952 version of The Avengers movie, based on Marvel’s “Secret Invasion” storyline, spliced together from over 50 different sources of footage:

And then, to get a real sense of the buckets of attention to detail, skill, love, and sheer nerdiness that went into this, watch it again with Ivan’s annotations (below). He calls out all of the character and location cameos that you might have missed, and even breaks down the typographical references in the title cards! (Pause the video each time a note box pops up.)
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Previously on Aquaman Zen: Alarmed Viewers | Giant Crabs Help | Everyone Hears the Voice

This little tableau was one of the first photographs that I ever took — maybe around age 12 — with my very first camera, a cheap plastic Vivitar 110:

It shows three Masters of the Universe figures that belonged to my brother and I — Jitsu, Tung Lashor (in the Land Shark) and Battle-Damage Skeletor — lined up against the wood panel & linoleum backdrop of the trailer-with-added-rooms that we grew up in, and I f*cking LOVE IT.

I remember the spot where this photo was taken, and I remember that just down the hall under our bunk beds, and under the desk in my father’s “office” there were plastic tubs and wooden boxes of other action figures and vehicles… Transformers, G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels, Marvel Secret Wars, DC Super Powers, M.A.S.K., M.U.S.C.L.E., Battle Beasts, Centurions, and probably others that I’m forgetting. We also had a giant-sized bin of LEGO blocks, all jumbled in together like an 8-bit plastic gumbo. I can remember the feel of the blocks’ corners and the shooshing, tinkling sound as I rummaged through them looking for just one more clear red dot to cap off the wing of my spaceship.

We still have a few of these things in a closet at my mother’s house. (Or we will until I steal them this summer. Heads up, Mom.) But the bulk of them were given away to our nephews or other kids-of-friends-of-the-family, and from what I hear, many were promptly broken. (*single tear*)

So in pining for my lost clumps of cast plastic and rubber, I decided to fire up the group nostalgia engines. I asked my fellow contributors Jeff, Brad and Cyndi if they had any thoughts along these lines to share, and indeed they did…

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