Brad’s way too modest to say so, but he is tearing UP the NYC storytelling scene right now. He won two Moth GrandSlams back to back, which is not unlike Ian MacKaye starting both Minor Threat and Fugazi — except tinier and more fleeting. He and Cyndi Freeman have a new storytelling show out in Brooklyn called The Standard Issues, and he’s blogging here AND his personal blog, too – you’ve heard me mention that ad infinitum.

Juliet Wayne has been a great friend to me since the night we met. She’s a hilarious storyteller and a caring soul who once painted me a picture of a pink cockroach with one testicle while I was recovering from surgery. She lives in Philadelphia and occasionally creeps up here on a Chinese bus, lays waste to a roomful of people and then goes back home and hides in her attic until next time.

Here’s their shared podcast: Juliet Wayne & Brad Lawrence: GrandSLAM Stories

Brad posted a video of himself performing at Story Collider yesterday on this here blog — I’d encourage you to check that out.

And this is a video of Juliet Wayne doing what she does best. She actually performed this story the night that we met for the first time. It was my first Moth event, and it felt like pulling a sword from a stone. I’d been looking for something to do and some cool weird art form to dive right into, and that lightbulb went on during Juliet’s story. I ran up to her after, trying really hard not to be a creepy fan guy. Turns out she was just as stunned as I was. She’s helped me shape a lot of my stuff and is always there to freak out with over the telephone.

Being friends with Juliet reminds me of being in high school, where we talk on the phone late at night and say outrageous stuff to each other and are both way too sensitive and passionate. We got in a fight once like a couple of teenagers and it felt like one of my legs got cut off until we made up.

But anyway: here goes Juliet Wayne in Rehab:

Enjoy, people.

The show features storytellers with no science background, as well as scientists with no performance background. The theme for the one I did was Friction and, as you will see, mine is very science light because I am somewhat science dim. Or to be generous, I took the metaphorical route. Cyndi will be appearing in their next one, which is Epidemics, on August 12th at Pacific Standard.

As you will see in the video, a show about science; educational perhaps, but not for kids.

After you enjoy this, go check out my GrandSLAM winning story on The Moth Podcast. It won a GrandSLAM.

And then there is this story.

Trust-fund Soviet – Brad Lawrence from The Story Collider on Vimeo.

Years later George Lucas was said to have made this statement “If I had the time and a hammer, I would smash every copy of the Holiday Special.”

Doug Karo and the Late Night Explosion have watched the full two hour show, bless them, and they have then edited the worst 5 minutes together for our enjoyment, bless them again.

Meet Chewbacca’s family, listen to Carrie Fisher Sing lyrics to the Star Wars theme, and don’t forget special guest stars Art Carney, Bea Arthur and The Jefferson Star Ship!

And if you really want to geek out, did you know that there are lyrics to the Buck Rogers Theme song? in 1979 the tv-series pilot had a theatrical release which included this epic intro… and I mean epic. When I was 13 I loved this song so much I bought the sound track album – which I still have. I also wanted all of the silver-space-babe outfits. Especially the bikini. *note to self, make silver space bikini.

BTW: The people at www.livevideo.com won’t let me embed this video so click to link below – enjoy!

Buck Rogers Movie opening

I can’t get enough of the following two acts, so I thought I’d share ‘em with you guys …

I first met Francis a few years ago when we nearly got into a fight at a bar in Williamsburg. I’m not proud of it. I doubt he is, either.

We got over it, fast, when Francis got on the stage and delivered some of the most heartfelt and refreshing jams I think I’ve ever seen live — before or since. Francis is a white dwarf of soul and meaning, performing with maximum density and immense heat and pressure, fusing hilarity and passionate funk. The end result is a diamond the size of Jupiter’s core — multifaceted, mysterious, worth a hell of a lot more than the ten bucks you’d get charged to take a peek.

Francis and the Lights have a new(ish) album out. It reminds me of those hits I heard on the radio in springtime in the ’80s, back when I had my first crush and the warming air made anything seem possible.

It’s embedded below (or after the jump), but I strongly recommend purchasing the album from iTunes. I particularly like “Tap the Phone” and “In a Limousine.”

I saw The Gaslamp Killer totally by accident at South by Southwest this year. My friend Giselle just said “hey come by, there’s this awesome DJ playing,” and I went mostly to hang with Giselle. Her text would have been a lot more accurate if she’d said “hey come by, there’s this scraggly spastic guy playing brain-melting beats that sound like weaponry from a distant planet.” The bass poured out of the speakers like invisible tar oozing over every single hair on my arms, thudding my adam’s apple like a kick drum while the DJ postured and gestured and flicked his arms and hair like the sorcerer’s apprentice practiced on a feather duster first while texting someone with his free hand.

This video pretty much sums up the live experience:

The Gaslamp Killer, Live @ The Drake, Sept 13 2009. Toronto. from mymanhenri on Vimeo.

He’s got this great ear for vintage Middle Eastern pop music, long lost movie soundtracks, deep bass and hard-edged robotic trills: pretty much all my favorite stuff, and I didn’t even know it. This is my favorite track off of his latest EP:

I’d recommend trying out “All Killer” as a lighter, more relaxing hourlong mix — still intense, dense, complicated an funky, but easier for people who aren’t as into the sound of slam-dancing androids. You can find that on iTunes here.

Image by Joined at the Stitch

We’ll not belabor this:

Twitter.
It’s a thing. With tweets.

We’re on it.

Follow us (@andiamnotlying) and make us feel even more loved than you already do.

Hearts and zombies,
Jeff, David, Brad and Cyndi

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…

CYNDI:
“Where did my Dawn Dolls go? In 1960’s and 1970’s. My friends and I had all the accessories, The Dawn Disco, The Dawn, Beauty Pageant. We would take our Dawn dolls with us for play dates and so my Dawn doll got out and partied. My dawn doll enjoyed the fine art of strip tease – after I saw Gypsy. My accessory? A Dawn Doll purse. It was a plastic purse that had compartments for Dawn (with a sliding window so she could breathe) and room for her clothes. Plus a section in back for your wallet etc. Here is an amazing promo video that was probably used in trade shows that shows it all!:

Where did they go? I’ll never know. I imagine that great doll disco in the sky.”

BRAD:
“I don’t have a lost toy story… but there was a giant box of Peanuts books, those $1:50 (in the late seventies/early eighties) mass market size, pulp books of comic strips.

Every time we would go anywhere, garage sales, grocery store, Wal-Mart, I would beg my Mom to buy me one of these. By the time I was in high school and not reading them anymore, there were about three hundred of these in a cardboard box. By the time I was in my twenties and old enough to be nostalgic for them, that box was gone and nobody knew what happened to it. I still look for it when I go home.”

JEFF:
“I’ve had this Han Solo since 1981/1982. Chewbaccas came and went. I once lost a Chewbacca in the yard and found him a year later, his arms and legs turned green. Now he’s gone.

I was fiddling with this photo while listening to Slint’s ‘Good Morning Captain’, and started imagining Hoth Han here as the ‘captain’ in the song, sending a message via a dying camera to a lost Chewbacca.”

What about you, readers? Drop your nostalgia in the comments.

So, going to the Madagascar Institute’s shop in Gowanus, Brooklyn is like visiting an embassy of Bartertown from “Beyond Thunderdome.” It is all raw steel and piles of scrap metal stacked on old cable spindles, in a space that looks like the garage where one might keep a souped up dunebuggy that had spikes and a harpoon gun welded to it. I was three feet in the door and already waiting for Tina Turner to walk up and explain that “The real power here is shit. Pig shit.” For a certain generation, even with current situations being what they are, that possibility still gives a little thrill.

Instead, I was greeted by a pretty woman who was dressed like a hard drinking, but sexy, car mechanic. She handed me a release form that absolved her and her employer of any liability should I burn my face completely off before the day was out. After I had signed away my right to recoup my precious flesh, I was introduced to Leif and Hackett, who looked like they were the stars of a post apocalyptic, Chuck Norris – Predator, buddy flick. These were the guys who were going to teach me how to make a flame thrower.

The Madagascar Institute bills itself as an art combine. It is a DIY shop for every kind of weird fantasy contraption you can think of. The entire atmosphere is of a world in which there has been a nuclear holocaust and the only survivors were MacGuyver and the crew of Mythbusters.

They teach classes on everything from MIG welding (and, no, I don’t know what MIG stands for) to how to build a pulse jet (I am assuming that is what was strapped to the dirt bike behind the work area) and a lecture series on Secret Societies. And of course, how to build a flame thrower.

The class runs about four hours with Leif explaining the legal way to do everything and Hackett telling you how to work around that entirely. Then, after a long but very accessible explanation of the physics of propane, they proceed to build an eight foot tall flame canon out of, literally, whatever they have lying around. And there is a lot of stuff lying around.

They do this in the backyard and all the students line up to shoot fireballs into the sky, and by sky, I mean the branches of one sorely abused tree. No clue how the thing still has leaves on it. After that, they demonstrate variations on the theme which allow you to have more control and precision with your new lethal toy. And the tree gets it a few more times. Then they expect you to go home, or to Burning Man, and do this yourself.

I won’t, but I just don’t build shit as a rule. For me this was a one off to partake in one of the many odd things that you can get yourself into in this great city. BUT, if you want to build a homemade fireball cannon, I can’t recommend it enough. They were nice people teaching you how to do dangerous things. Leif misplaces anything that has been in his hands for more than three minutes and Hackett chain smokes like nicotine had vitamins, but they taught me in a clear, concise way how to build a machine that will set my neighbors house on fire without endangering myself. I don’t do class and I have no interest in the process except the part where you shoot fire into the sky like a giddy six year old with the world’s biggest hairspray can. But, I walked out of there with enough understanding of the fundamentals that, if pushed, I feel confident I could repeat the process. If you are into this kind of thing, this class might open up brand new horizons.

And I am a little closer to surviving an encounter with Mel Gibson and, really, the way things are going, we should all be concerned about that.

From our homework packet

To find out what’s going on, one must go to the most reliable source, high school girls. These girls live there and they are on a mission to get local news on TV. They show us around the island, interview the acting governor His Excellency Andrew Wells and the editor of the St Helena Herald – who was head girl at their school last year.

St Helena is 1,200 miles from Angola, the nearest land mass, and 1,800 miles from Brazil.  A 47 square mile island, it is one of the most remote islands in the world.  Current population is around 4000. There is no airport – yet.  All goods are sent in via Royal Mail Ship: The RMS St Helen. The ship also has rooms available for if you want to cruise there.

Political cartoonists had a great time taking shots at Napoleon and most artwork portrays the island as a rat infested hell hole. In this one Napoleon leads an army of rat soldiers on the Island of St Helena – 1815

This is what the place really looks like. Which is not to say they don’t have rats. They have rats.

What else is going on there today? Well…

• It is home to Jonathan, the the oldest tortoise in the world.
• They have a new police officer Sergeant Geraint Davies.
• In 1985 local cover band called the Young Turks covered Bryan Adams “Heaven“.
• And currently their is a job opening for: Roads Maintenance & Training Supervisor.

I told the story of Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band, and had the honor of performing with Adam Wade, Margot Leitman, Peter Aguero and Leslie Goshko. Here’s a view of Seth from backstage:

Seth and team cut a teaser for the TV pilot that you can see here, by the way:

Peter and I got the willies real, real hard right before the show. It happens every time, some times worse than others. If you’re not nervous, you’re not taking it seriously. But this time was crippling. We were hunkered down in the little backstage room, obsessively muttering our line and just freaking the freak OUT. Then I said “Pete, man, we got get out of here, just for a minute.” We hit the streets and ended up at a perfectly squalid dive bar around the corner, the kind of place that has a sign that says “you MUST buy something if you want to use the bathroom.”

We each stood there, shaking a bit and sipping a double bourbon on the rocks. You’ve go to be careful with pre-show booze. A little bit calms the nerves but any more than two or three and you’re only fooling yourself. I felt this sudden, buoying energy, this swelling excitement and I dragged Peter in front of the jukebox so we could let “One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer” wash over us, bathe our jittering pores. I punched him in the arm and said “MAN THIS IS IT! This is why we moved here, this is why we put up with the crowds and the smelly subways and the high rents! You can’t have an opportunity like this anywhere else in the world, man, and we are living it now. And no matter what happens, unless we fall down and die, we’re going to do this.”

It felt right. I even believed it myself. We raced back to the theater and did the show and it ripped out just perfect. I don’t remember much of it except for all the hot lights and warm laughter, wrapping me like a blanket of bubbles.

Here’s a view of the crowd from backstage:

We were all heroes that night, slaughtering our fears and drowning them in sweet laughter. Everyone did so well, and we all had so much fun.

Tonight, Brad Lawrence and Cyndi Freeman will be co-hosting Told at 7PM at Under Saint Mark’s Place, 94 Saint Mark’s Place in the East Village. It should be spectacular — it always is.

Stuff like this makes my soul sing. On the one hand, it’s inspiring and hopeful, maybe from a mattress who’s supported the butts of slumbering royalty, seen the worst of the world and doesn’t regret a thing. Or maybe it’s a cautionary tale: no matter what your dream is or how hard you try, you’re going to end up left on the street to be pissed on by dogs and drunks alike.