Category: Press

  • Roadshow, As Seen on TV

    Wred Fright doing his thing.Ian Daffern contacted me last year about doing a piece on the Perpetual Motion Roadshow for a new TV show he was producing called Scratch. We bandied about different possibilities, such as sending someone along to document it–I thought the people on the tour might be a bit uncomfortable with that & suggested that the crew take along my Hi8 videocamera and tape each other, then pass along the tapes at the end of it.

    So the eight minute piece for the “Motion” show was made up of these clips of self-documentation as well as footage the show’s crew shot when they caught up with Jessica, Fred and More or Les in New York. I’ve posted a Quicktime .mov of it as I’m curious to hear comments on the segment from other Roadshow alumni as well as people who’ve attended the show as to whether it reflects their experience.

  • Flyboy Lives!

    In a few days the No Media Kings 5th anniversary edition of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask will be back from the printer.

    My first book has been out of print for the last few years. The idea of pumping money into an old project wasn’t nearly as exciting as realizing a new one, so even though I got the rights back from HarperCollins I held off for a while. But fans of the book and booksellers alike kept asking about how they could get a copy–and they almost always wanted one with the Canadian cover, so I couldn’t just tell them to buy the still-in-print US edition.

    So thanks to everyone who enthused this book back into print. “It’d make a great movie!” is something people say flatteringly often, and so I got the idea of promoting the re-release with movie-style trailers for the book. Two groups of indie filmmakers were into the idea and they did a great job, producing very different but intriguing adaptations.
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  • Hey! Where’d the Games Go?

    We totally posed this.
    I’ve moved them to where they belong — The Cultural Gutter. My new collaborative blog has Guy Leshinski writing about comics, James Schellenberg on science-fiction, and my videogame pieces. Once a week we’ll be featuring a new piece on one of these subjects, and once a month we’ll be having a guest write about another piece of intriguing trash — an artform that’s poo-pooed but nevertheless fascinating.

    Eye, where Guy and I write, was nice enough to do a cover article for the launch, which consisted of a chat between the two of us moderated by Bert “Mastermind” Archer. The incomparably clever Marc Ngui was put to the task of realizing us in our true forms for the cover illo. You can click the little cover to see the whole thing in its subtle-yet-striking glory.

  • Continental Bookfest

    Click to see a bigger version.I’ve got gigs on two different foreign continents over the next week or two, where I’ll be bringing the Past Due letters to Africa and Europe:

    CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, Jan. 14, at 19:00: Centre for the Book (62 Queen Victoria St.) Free.
    LANCASTER, UK, Jan. 18, at 19:00: The Yorkshire House (Parliament St.) w/Jess Lewin (funky flapjack, poet and songwriter) + PJ Shepherd (politically charged acoustic punk straight out of Switzerland) Free.
    BIRMINGHAM, UK, Jan 19, at 19.00: Moseley CDT (153 Alcester Rd.) w/singer songwriter Tamsyn Widdon. Free.
    BERLIN, GERMANY, Jan 20, at 20.30: Holz & Farbe (Prinzenallee 58) w/Daphne Owers from New Zealand. ?2.50.

    This little picture is of the Centre for the Book, easily the most stately place I’ve ever performed at. Click it for a better look!

    UPDATE: We’re back! For tour pics of unexpected animals, my BBC interview, seven-seated bicycles, and eminent scientists keep reading…
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  • Controversa!

    vending machine of daily stimuliYesterday, there was a story on No Media Kings aired on Italian national public radio. The show was called Dispenser, and though I understood not a word I was impressed by how lively it seemed: there was dance music backbeat and, at one or two points, a baby’s voice.

    UPDATE: Filippo Angeli graciously did a translation of the article, click to continue reading. Thanks Filippo!
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