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.

I think that Hurricane Irene’s only real casualty in New York City was the And I Am Not Lying show. I was willing to wade to Union Hall and stand on top of the bar if I had to, but with the MTA shut down, not many folks would have made it. And plus, the place was closed.

But we’re roaring back with a rescheduled show next week on wednesday, October 5th. Here’s an updated poster, show info after the jump …

Read the rest of this entry »

Summer colds are such a ripoff. At least when you’re sick in the wintertime you can enjoy being under a blanket and watching TV indoors. When I’m sick in the summer everyone else is having the most idyllic day of their life — the whole world is tossing a frisbee in slow motion while a death march plays in my head.

Ever since I’ve moved to New York, I’ve gotten more colds. And more of those colds have mutated into full-blown sinus infections. Last winter I coughed so hard I thought I cracked a rib.

I used to wonder why I got so sick all the time, and figured it had something to do with touching all those handrails on the subway all day long. Take a look at this guy I saw on the N train this morning — I think I’m right:

He rode the subway all the way from Atlantic/Pacific to Canal Street with his nose smushed against the railing, pausing only to give it a deep picking. I don’t know if I’m grossed out for that guy, or because of that guy.

From now on, I’m commuting in a HAZMAT suit.

I’m incredibly excited about the show that we’re putting on at Union Hall next weekend — for any number of reasons, really. But one of the most exciting things for me about this variety extravaganza is that we’re featuring what promises to be an incredibly strange burlesque act from Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz.

Here’s a little about Mat, from his Wikipedia page:

Fraser was born with phocomelia of both arms, due to his mother being prescribed thalidomide during her pregnancy. As a live artist he was a member of the performance art group The DHSS in the early 1990s. He was included in Manuel Vason’s book “Exposures” and has performed at numerous internationally renowned venues. He received considerable critical acclaim for his one-man show “Seal Boy”. In 1999 he worked with the Hydra Collective on an event known as “Wrong Bodies” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As an actor he has performed with the “Graeae Theatre Company”, Europe’s leading disabled theatre company. He is the creator and main performer in a new play called Thalidomide!! A Musical. He also co-hosts the BBC’s Ouch! Podcast.

Fraser has appeared on television both as a presenter and as an actor, in a number of productions including Metrosexuality and Every Time You Look at Me. He is also a martial artist having studied hapkido, taekwondo, Karate.

The following video is a trailer for his movie “Kung Fu Flid,” also known as “Unarmed and Dangerous.” Bear in mind that it’s incredibly gory and the language is likely not safe for work:

This video shows more extensive clips from the film, too. And brother, the language would make a porn star blush. It gets really intense at 1:52:
Read the rest of this entry »

This is the Jersey City Pimp:

I saw him on the PATH Train a few weeks ago. I don’t see him that often, but he’s not like, white buffalo rare. A JC Pimp sighting brings you goodluck, but it’s rapidly expended: you get the privilege of seeing him. That’s good enough. I have no idea what this guy’s name is, or what he does, or how he afoords those suits that make him look like Flavor Flav starring in a remake of “The Mask.” But he’s probably not a real pimp, like that other guy in Jersey City.

People in Jersey City try to photograph him, and they track sightings on the JC List. I saw him on the train once, wearing a floor-length faux-raccoon fur coat and a fedora covered in matching fur. I asked him if I could take his picture, and he waved me off, muttering “no pictures, no pictures.”

It’s fascinating to me, that someone could want to draw so much attention to themselves in one way — and so little in another. He’s not exactly trying to blend in.

I spotted this flyer walking up 5th Ave in Brooklyn today. I don’t think someone so much lost this cat as cast it out of their home with a series of prayers and incantations.

Hotsy Totsy Burlesque is back after a 4 month break! I love this show. It is an ongoing burlesque soap opera with returning characters and plot lines. We’ve been doing it for 4 years.

The basics are that Cherry Pitz and the girls live at The Home For Wayward Girls and Fallen Women, an all girls’ hotel that is always in need of cash so every month they run a show to raise funds. Of course, there are things that always seem to go wrong or weird behind the scenes. Think Muppet Show but instead of puppets you have naked girls…..(Which the Muppet Show kinda wanted to do.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Someone pulls up slowly to the crowd on the elevated highway, just to the edge where all the people and abandoned cars make it impossible to drive further. The driver wrenches the wheel to the side at the last second, lurching to a sudden stop and surprising a shriek and a laugh out of the woman in the passenger seat.

They slide out of the windows like the Dukes of Hazzard. The woman strips to a Wonder Woman bikini and puts on some silver boots. The driver throws his shirt into the open window and says “well, I won’t be needing this down there.” “Babe, I don’t think you’ll ever need that again,” the woman says, helping him to tie on a giant furry cape as he plops a Thor helmet over his head.

I have no idea why I’m staring at this couple in particular — thousands of people have done this over and over all afternoon, ditching their cars in place on the highway and jumping out to walk down the interstate towards the glowing orb in the park below. They’ve come with roller skates and hula hoops, picnic baskets and massive cone joints that you have to hold with two hands. “It’s a horn of plenty, brother, and the more you share it, the more you get from it,” says the guy that hands it down to me from tall mirrored stilts. You’d think it would be tough marching down the road, slick as it is in spots with smeared fruit dropped from the vines bursting from the median and snaking their way down the guardrails.

The first couple of pilgrims had to stop their cars in the middle of the highway because the undergrowth got too thick to drive anymore. I’ve heard that the giant white orb sticking out of the National Mall up ahead is the source of all these sticky fruit-bearing vines that are caressing the highway system all around Washington with tendrils that plop giant mango-shaped things that taste like honeysuckle and persimmon and breadfruit all rolled into one all over the roads. In some places they burst up through the pavement and then split, creating shady canopies along the road.

We walk faster, laughing and passing a fruit around, the juice dribbling from our chins. Someone bats a beach ball towards me and I smack it on up ahead into the crowd. A couple guys with guitars and bongos are covering the Talking Heads’ “(Nothing But) Flowers”. People are in bathing suits and furry chaps, riding unicycles and laughing but we’re all moving forward together as the crowd thickens and the sun drops down near the horizon, a giant red orb hovering over the bluish white one on the mall.

The other side of the road is deserted, blank except for one guy who has fashioned his blue dress shirt into a sort of head wrap. He motions for someone to help him over the concrete divider. Once he makes it over, he pulls his Blackberry out of the holster on his hip and whips it over the divider and down the empty road, skipping it like a stone on the empty pavement. When it explodes into shiny shards the guy that helped him over the divider whoops and gives him a high five.
Read the rest of this entry »

I would have mentioned this earlier, but I’ve been crippled with a bog monster infestation – a whole bunch of them set up shop in my sinus cavities and have been using my lungs as a fricking waterslide. I coughed so hard the other night that I think I gave myself a small hernia.

That’s got nothing to do with what I’m talking about here, though.

What I’m here to talk about is that we had us a show a few weeks back, and it went really well! I had a ton of fun, despite some really frustrating technical difficulties in the beginning.

The Kraine Theater is this dank, crumbling space in the East Village, the sort of place that feels like it’s haunted by a bunch of old men in long raincoats. It made a certain kind of sonic sense to hear someone kick over a beer bottle during the show, and when an old lady showed up in a sun hat with a Mike-Tyson face tattoo drawn on with eye liner, I wasn’t even surprised. OF COURSE we had one of those. It was that kind of show.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I still wanted to kick the wrinkles out of that old bat when she started heckling the comedian. I like weirdos in the audience and all, but I really prefer when they stay quiet.

Still, I had a ton of fun, and I’m pretty sure the crowd did, too.

I talked to the theater director about the show today, and I think we are going to start doing this quarterly.

One thing I know, though: we’re bringing this show up to Albany, NY in mid-August. We’ll be performing in Saint Joe’s Church, what appears to be this amazing crumbling cathedral in downtown Albany. I’d love to make a little tour out of it, maybe play in Boston, Providence, BUffalo, what have you. If any of you book shows in bars, clubs or theaters in that area and want some storytellers and burlesque people to come up, do please let me know.

And if you happened to be in the audience on Sunday, thank you so, so much for coming. It was a jam, for real.

I’d apologize for being all self-promotional, except I’m not really all that sorry. See, back in December me and my friends David William and Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman put on a live show loosely based on this very blog that we work on (or slack on, more typically) together. And you know what? It went REAL well!

It went so well that we’re now being asked to do another one in a theater that’s double the size. I’m trying to put asses into seats here.

But look: we’re going to be telling stories, seeing some comedy, watching a puppet get all its teeth yanked out at the dentist and then look at some belly-dancing and burlesque.

There’s going to be a whole lot of shaking going on in between all the sensitive people telling witty stories about their precious feelings. Balances it out nicely, I think.

Here’s a flyer, followed by a trailer. Detailed info after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry »