VINTAGE ANNALS ARCHIVE - THE DEEP DIVE PODCAST

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VINTAGE ANNALS ARCHIVE - THE DIVE PODCAST
​
We focus here on people and histories considered to be the other or Outsider. Our focus is to explore the uniqueness and individuality of folks and topics thinking and working in non-traditional ways. We also present histories of the past as a roadmap in how to navigate the present. We present a unique form of interview, conversation, and storytelling in an organic manner and focus on art, culture, music, film, comedy, and more. 

​​Hosted by:
Rich Wexler, photographer and curator of the @vintageannalsarchive Instagram feed.
Otter Castro - Editor
Stephen Bluhm -= Sound Engineer 

Based in beautiful West Philadelphia.

APPLE PODCAST LINK
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vintage-annals-archive/id1645791721

ANCHOR LINK
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vaapod

*The information below are a mix of released and upcoming episodes. 
Check the link here for episodes that have been released
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vaapod 

PODCAST EPISODES

These are not in the order they have been, or will be released.
​Please check the podcast here 
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vaapod 
​to see what's been released. 

Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy

Will Oldham (born 24 December 1970, Louisville, Kentucky) is an American singer-songwriter, actor, and musician. His music is often (perhaps inappropriately) placed under the genre of “alt-country”. Oldham has recorded under many names, including Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, and Bonnie Billy. He often plays and records with other musicians, including David Pajo and his brothers Ned and Paul Oldham, but is generally the chief creator of the music. He has also been involved in musical projects and bands such as Amalgamated Sons of Rest, The Anomoanon, The Boxhead Ensemble, Tortoise, and The Sundowners as well as releasing his first solo album in 1993. Oldham has said that the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy moniker has many references. These include ‘Bonnie’ Prince Charlie, an 18th century Jacobite; Billy the Kid, the 19th century American outlaw also known as William Bonney; and the American singer Nat King Cole. He has also appeared in several films, such as the 1987 film Matewan and most recently in Old Joy (released in late 2006). He is also the photographer of the cover image of the slint album Spiderland.

Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary w/ Director Garret Price

YACHT ROCK: A DOCKUMENTARY chronicles the emergence and popularity of the West Coast, soft rock pop culture epitomized by musical artists such as Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto. Retroactively dubbed “Yacht Rock” in 2005 by a parody website series, the easy listening, relaxing sounds of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which were beloved by many, came to be gently mocked and even dismissed by rock lovers and critics, but have since reclaimed their legitimate place in music history and are celebrated in this groove-infused film from the Music Box anthology series.
RELEASE DATE: November 29
CAST: Christopher Cross, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Steely Dan, and Toto

Jets to Brazil (Jeremy Chatelain and Blake Schwarzenbach)
with co-host Gaelan Draper (Art of A Hit - Director)

Jets to Brazil was founded by Blake Schwarzenbach, the former frontman of Jawbreaker, and Jeremy Chatelain, previously the guitarist and vocalist of Handsome, when Schwarzenbach relocated to New York City after Jawbreaker's disbanding. The two began working on four-track recordings aided by drum machines until former Texas Is the Reasondrummer Chris Daly joined the band, and they signed to Jade Tree Records. The origin of the band's name came from a suggestion by Daly, after seeing it on a poster in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The group's first album, Orange Rhyming Dictionary, was released on Jade Tree Records in 1998 to critical and commercial success, followed by extensive touring with bands like The Promise Ring. Their second album, Four Cornered Night, was released in 2000 to mainly positive reviews. Four Cornered Night was the first album to feature new guitaristBrian Maryansky, formerly of the band The Van Pelt. With Maryansky included in the band, this allowed Schwarzenbach to also become the keyboard player for the band. In 2002, Jets to Brazil released their third and final album, Perfecting Loneliness, to positive reviews.
By the fall of 2003, less than a year after the release of Perfecting Loneliness, the band broke up for unspecified reasons.

"Art of A Hit" Mini Podcast Series

Gaelan Draper (Director/Producer/Writer)
Charlie Saxton (Actor/Producer/Writer)
Adam Lasus (Music Director) 
David Valdes (Actor)
Joe Simon (Director oh Photography/Cinematographer) 
Shakira Kibirige (Make up/prosthetic)
James Earl (Actor/Musician)
Tim Jo (Actor/Musician)
Allie MacDonald (Actor)
Ryan Donowho (Actor)
Jets to Brazil (Jeremy Chatelain and Blake Schwarzenbach)

Poster Art by Eileen Steinbach of SG Posters

" ART OF A HIT" a ​musical horror-thriller starring Ryan Donowho (THE O.C.), Charlie Saxton (HBO’s HUNG), Tim Jo (THIS IS US), Rob Raco (RIVERDALE), James Earl (Hulu’s WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP), Allie MacDonald (WHAT/IF), and David Valdes (LAST THE NIGHT).
Directed by Gaelan Draper, the film was co-written and produced by Saxton and Draper, and features an original soundtrack with music by indie rock band Jets to Brazil. Giant Pictures plans to release ART OF A HIT on streaming platforms August 20th, 2024.
In the film, Ryan, the lead singer of a late-90s rock band is haunted by irrelevance and struggling to regain visibility a decade after the band’s prime. Charlie Dupont, an eccentric super-producer, invites the band to his 1000-year-old French chateau to record a comeback album. But as tensions rise and tempers flare, Ryan and his bandmates realize they're up against more than just the pressure to succeed.
“ART OF A HIT takes everything we love about the late ‘90s and early 2000s rock scene and jams it into a wildly creepy castle in the most beautiful place on earth: Dordogne, France. It’s funny, scary, messed up and honest—a story about what it’s like to be in a band and the insane fears of trying to make it as an artist. If you love late 90s rock, if you loved being in a band, you will love ART OF A HIT,” Draper and Saxton shared.
​https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3817808/art-of-a-hit-first-look-at-horror-movie-that-pays-tribute-to-the-90s-rock-scene/

PODCAST LINK (Episode 1 Available August 20th then weekly episodes)

APPLE PODCASTS
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-official-art-of-a-hit-podcast/id1763174573

SPOTIFY
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/12146016738

Alice Bag (Musician)

Alice Bag is a singer/songwriter, musician, author, artist, educator and feminist. Alice was the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, one of the first bands to form during the initial wave of punk in Los Angeles. The Alice Bag Band was featured in the seminal documentary on punk rock, The Decline of Western Civilization. Alice went on to perform in other groundbreaking bands, including Castration Squad, Cholita, and Las Tres. She is the author of the critically acclaimed books 'Violence Girl' and 'Pipe Bomb For the Soul.'  Her self-titled 2016 debut album received critical acclaim and was named one of the best albums of 2016 by AllMusic. Her second album, Blueprint, was named one of the Best Albums of 2018 by NPR and the Los Angeles Times. Bag’s 3rd album, Sister Dynamite, was released in April 2020 on In The Red Records.

Howard Jones (Musician)

Electronic music pioneer Howard Jones has been a constant presence on the international touring scene for the past four decades, playing live in a number of different configurations including intimate solo shows and dates with his full high-tech band set-up. He first burst upon the contemporary music scene in 1983, with his very English songwriting and pioneering synthesizers with 'New Song'. His first two albums HUMAN'S LIB and DREAM INTO ACTION were worldwide hits. HUMAN'S LIB reached #1 in 1984 in the UK and featured the hits 'New Song,' and 'What Is Love?' In 1985, Jones released the follow-up, DREAM INTO ACTION, which quickly became a Top Ten Platinum album in the United States and featured the smashes: 'Things Can Only Get Better,' 'Life In One Day,' 'No One Is To Blame,' and 'Like To Get To Know You Well.'
Howard Jones has sold upwards of 10 million albums worldwide and continues to make new music and tour the world. Jones has performed on NBC's top-rated morning and nighttime shows respectively, Today and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. His ubiquitous hits can be heard in such high-profile television series and films such as 'Stranger Things,' 'Breaking Bad,' 'Watchmen,' 'The Carrie Diaries', 'Superstore' and 'Bumblebee'. Howard Jones' most recent album is DIALOGUE, which was released in September 2022. DIALOGUE is the third album in a trilogy of electronic releases from Jones with multi-media project ENGAGE released in 2015 and studio album TRANSFORM, released in 2019. DIALOGUE garnered serious coverage in outlets such as Spin, Stereogum and more.

Patrice: The Movie  Interview with Patrice Jetter, Garry Wickman, and Ted Passon (Director) 

A feature documentary romantic comedy from award-winning filmmaker Ted Passon about the next frontier of marriage equality – disability. Patrice Jetter has finally found the love of her life, Garry, who is also disabled. They want nothing more than to get married, but if they do – or even if they just move in together – the government benefits they need to survive would be cut. Despite the scrutiny they’re under, they decide to plan a commitment ceremony that could risk their entire future.
The film interweaves vérité from Patrice’s present with stylized recreations from her past. Patrice designed the sets, guided the performances, and co-wrote the stories of the scripted scenes. Patrice portrays herself no matter her age, while all other characters are played by children. The reenactments tell Patrice’s personal story of a life lived navigating a world that was not built with her in mind.
Cast: Patrice Jetter, Garry Wickham, Elizabeth Dicker 
Director: TED PASSON

Sachiko Kanenobu (Musician) with Jordan Burgis

​Sachiko Kanenobu is generally acknowledged as Japan’s first Female Folk Rock singer-songwriter. She was discovered as a precocious 18-year-old and Signed in 1968 by Japan first independent record company URC(Underground Record Club) which changed Japan’s Musical landscape. In 1972, they released her first album Misora coproduced by Haroumi Hosono (he was Bassist and creator of YMO and Happyend). Before the release of Misora in 1972, she left Japan and Married Music critic Paul Williams and had Two sons.
In 1976 she met world- renowned Science Fiction Author Philip K. Dick. When he heard her album Misora, he encouraged her to return writing her songs again. In 1981 Dick released her first American Single record “ Fork in The Road/ Tokyo song”. He was the executive producer and Sachiko started performing again. PKD wanted to release her first American album, but unfortunately he died of a stroke in March 1982. She kept performing though the ‘80s through 2000 with her Rock band Sachiko & Culture Shock and Solo and released several English Language rock albums.
In 2019 the Seattle Label “LIght in The Attic “ reissued and released Sachiko’s debut album Misora in US. She is still Performing to this day at 75 years of age, touring in Japan several times and in 2019 performed at SummerStage in New York Central Park as well as shows in LA and Europe.

Annie Golden (Singer/Actress)

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Annie Golden first came to prominence as the lead singer of the punk band the Shirts from 1975 to 1981 with whom she recorded three albums. She began her acting career as Mother in the 1977 Broadway revival of Hair; later taking on the role of Jeannie Ryan in the 1979 film version of the musical.
Golden appeared in films such as Desperately Seeking Susan, Baby Boom, Longtime Companion, Strictly Business, Prelude to a Kiss, 12 Monkeys, The American Astronaut, It Runs in the Family, Adventures of Power (2008), Orange is The New Black, and I Love You Phillip Morris.

Robert Lester Folsom (Singer/Songwriter) 

​His sole album is an unexpected relic from the era with a distinct knack for songcraft, hooks and breezy melodies. When Anthology’s reissue of ‘Music and Dreams,’ the sole contemporaneous album released in 1976 by Folsom, surfaced in 2010, little else was known of Folsom’s nearly five-decade deep archive of unreleased demos and fully formed studio recordings. In 1975, Folsom assembled Abacus, a rock ‘n’ roll band made up of his hometown and college friends from southern Georgia. Inspired by the sounds and vibes the band was producing, Folsom dropped out of college to pursue his true passion of music. Spurred on by lead guitarist Hans VanBrackle (also Folsom’s sidekick on the reel-to-reel recordings that would eventually become the album ‘Ode to a Rainy Day’), who attended school in Auburn, Alabama, Folsom convinced the entire band to relocate there. Leaving a major, southeastern college town, their time in Auburn was unfortunately uneventful. Abacus was only able to book one solid gig in their new homebase, in part due to the rising popularity of disco as well as a string of failed managers.
Folsom’s career was picked up by the fantastic reissue of his sole album, followed by the release of many demo recordings. He is still keeping busy recording new material.
https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2023/03/robert-lester-folsom-abacus-interview.html

Lara Taubman (Singer Songwriter)

Lara Taubman is a performing singer songwriter currently living in New York City. She is about to release her third album The Gospel of Getting Free. Lara calls herself a troubadour of the new world because she believes in the power of song and story as a critical aid for people who need respite and refuge in a world that is rapidly transforming. 
Before she began writing songs in 2015, she was a visual art critic, curator and painter. She has been passionately creating since she can remember, but it was when she committed to singing and songwriting that her personal world changed radically. She was living in Montana and it blew up her marriage. She moved back in 2016 to the creative home of her heart, New York City, to pursue music as a career.
Soon after she put music at the center of her world, life became very simple. She had found her reason for being. Music had always been a powerful healing force since she was a girl. Born and raised in the coal country of southwestern Virginia, the ubiquitous Old Time and bluegrass music got into her blood and is a significant inspiration in the long, rambling ballads of her own songwriting today as can be seen in her songs, “Snakes in the Snow,” “The Water” and in the title track of her new album,” The Gospel of Getting Free” and others. 
The ancient ballads of Britain and Appalachia bring her back to memories of the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains of her childhood home. She still drowns in the long narratives of the music, luxuriating in the memory and feelings of them. The music of her childhood made her know that she wasn’t alone. Lara’s hope is to make music that helps others to also feel less lonely. The more music she makes, the more it is clear to her that this was why she was put on earth. 
She released her first album “Revelation” in 2020 on Wolfe Island Records. She was so moved by the year long journey of her first album, that she often returns to Wolfe Island. Fortuitously in 2021 she met producer/drummer Steven Williams on a gig and soon after they started working together on her second album 
Ol’ Kentucky Light. Through Steven, she met and began co-writing and working with musicians Walter Parks, Askold Buk, Teddy Kumpel, Etienne Lytle, Paul Frazier and others. She feels fortunate to have found this group of exceptional, award-winning talents in New York City.
 In the summer of 2023, she began writing on “The Gospel of Getting Free.” Around the same time, she began her work in somatic trauma therapy which created a rapid shift in her emotional life. While this next album continues the melancholy, heartbroken themes of the first two albums, she suddenly felt compelled to write songs about joy and hope. Contacting a more ecstatic approach to her music led her to go deeper into gospel music, which was a key inspiration for her second album “Ol’ Kentucky Light.” In The Gospel of Getting Free,” she went further, choosing simpler lyrics and  trusting the music to lead her into the journey of a song. She wanted to make music that could move the spirit.
https://www.larataubman.com/

Major Entertainer 

Major Entertainer is a Los Angeles based professional *OPENING ACT* deeply committed to self promotion and social networking. Able to quickly adapt to any situation in which entertainment is required, he shines brightest in front of a small audience who has never heard of him before. He has toured internationally opening for the likes of Neil Hamburger, Secret Chiefs 3, Eric Andre, Pinback

Steven Weber (Actor

This Queens-born actor has certainly proven himself adept at everything from quirky comedy to flat-out melodrama earning TV stardom in the early 1990s and maintaining a strong foothold on stage, film and TV in its aftermath.
Steven Robert Weber was born on March 4, 1961, to Fran (Frankel), a nightclub singer, and Stuart Weber, a nightclub performer, and Borscht Belt comic and manager. He was already appearing in television commercials by elementary school age. He later studied at the High School of the Performing Arts in New York and graduated from New York State University. The fair-haired, fair-skinned actor worked a series of menial jobs during his salad days as a struggling thespian (custodian, elevator operator, singing waiter) until earning his break on TV in a presentation of one of Mark Twain's stories. Quickly making his film debut in the popular comedy The Flamingo Kid (1984), he nabbed a running role on the soap opera As the World Turns (1956) a year later. On the set he met first wife Finn Carter, another co-star on the daytime drama. Steven stayed put for a year then went on to gain recognition in more offbeat and/or prestigious productions on film and prime-time TV. He played a rock star in the thoroughly offbeat foreign-made film Angels (1990) and showed real command as John F. Kennedy in the epic miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts (1990).
That same year TV stardom came his way with the sitcom Wings (1990). Co-starring with Tim Daly as Brian Hackett, the looser, goofier more aimless half of the brotherly team who co-owned a one-plane, Nantucket-based airline, the actors' chemistry, not to mention a terrifically eclectic supporting cast, kept the show on a steady course for seven seasons. Easily typed now as a genial, lovable loser type, Weber faced the prospect of severe pigeon-holing. So during the show's off season, he started showing up in more serious roles. He suffered at the hands of the deranged Jennifer Jason Leigh in Single White Female (1992); appeared in a second chiller with The Temp (1993); and made a cameo in the highly depressing, award-winning Leaving Las Vegas (1995). His flair for comedy shone in is straight-man role as Johathan Harker in the critically acclaimed horror spoof, Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) He truly impressed both critics and audiences alike as the complex title character in Jeffrey (1995), a gay romantic film comedy, and then completely defied all odds by starring in an epic TV-movie version of Stephen King's horror classic The Shining (1997), seizing the role inherited from Jack Nicholson and brilliantly making it his own while earning a Saturn award for his chilling efforts

Harvey Sid Fisher (Musician) 

Harvey Sid Fisher is a singer, songwriter, musician, actor, model, and screenwriter. He is best known for writing and performing mostly humorous songs about astrology, golf, the battle of the sexes, and quitting smoking. Greg Beets of the Austin Chronicle called him the "undisputed king of astrology songs." Fisher has referred to himself as "one of L.A.'s top ten thousand photographic models."

Joe Iconis (Broadway Composer/ Performer)

Photo by Stephanie Wessels.

Joe Iconis a is a musical theater writer and performer. He has been nominated for a Tony Award, two Drama Desk Awards and a Lucille Lortel Award, is the recipient of an Ed Kleban Award, Jonathan Larson Award and Richard Rodgers Award.  Joe’s musical Be More Chill (with Joe Tracz) opened this season at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, following a sold-out Off-Broadway run at The Pershing Square Signature Center and a world premiere at Two River Theatre.
He is the author of Broadway Bounty Hunter (with Lance Rubin and Jason SweetTooth Williams; Barrington Stage Company and Greenwich House Theater Off-Broadway), Bloodsong of Love (Ars Nova, NAMT), The Black Suits (Center Theater Group, Barrington Stage Company), ReWrite (Urban Stages, Goodspeed Opera House), Theaterworks USA’s The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks and We The People. Musicals currently in development include The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical (for La Jolla Playhouse), Punk Rock Girl, and Love In Hate Nation.
His music appeared on Season 2 of NBC’s “Smash,” with his song “Broadway, Here I Come!” hailed by The New York Times as a new entry in The Great American Songbook. Albums: Be More Chill (OCR), which has been streamed over 220 million times; Things To Ruin (OCR); Two-Player Game; and The Joe Iconis Rock and Roll Jamboree all available on Sh-K-Boom/Ghostlight Records.
His concert act, Joe Iconis and Family, frequently plays Feinstein’s/54 Below, The Laurie Beechman Theater, Weston Playhouse, and other venues around the country.
Joe is deliriously inspired by Robert Altman, Dolly Parton, Martin Scorsese, Sardi’s, The Rolling Stones, whiskey, The Muppets, and The Family of artists he frequently surrounds himself with.
​https://mrjoeiconis.com/

Renacio Reyes (Fashion Designer)

Designer Renacio Reyes’ Whimsically Sophisticated collections have been widely received in the Paris, New York and Dallas fashion scenes as Theatrical and Darkly Romantic displays of Fashion Storytelling. Taking large inspiration from Surrealist and Fantasy artist Remedios Varo, Renacio allows the Audience to Escape into the Runways like Falling into a Dream State.
Renacio has been seen in Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, and Time magazine amongst other publications. Receiving formal fashion education from the University of North Texas as well as supplementary Couture training at the Paris American Academy in France. The brand has since shown in New York Fashion Week four times and Paris Fashion Week twice.
Most recently, Creative Director of “Renacio” Carlos Reyes has been announced to be a participant in Julia Fox’s “OMG Fashun” fashion competition. Tune in May 6th for the designers reality TV debut.
​https://renacio.com/about

Jennifer Finch (Bassist for L7/Photographer/Writer)

In 1981 at age 13, she got hold of a film camera and began taking images of hardcore, punk, and art shows, as well as the queer scene, performance art, and skating events. Although she has taken iconic photos of skaters, personalities, and performers, her chronicles of being a runaway and drug user through the early 80s are both haunting and transformative. 
In the mid-80s, Finch moved on to become a musician, writing, producing and performing with Sugar Babylon (Courtney Love and Kat Bjelland 1984-86), L7 (1986 – current), Other Star People (1995-2001), and The Shocker (2003-curren
Currently (2023/24), Finch is completing an undergraduate at Antioch University in Applied Arts and Media. She thinks a lot about the connections between “end-stage capitalism,” equality, feminism, post-industrialism, punk, and your mom.
https://jenniferfinch.com/

In Defense of Ska (Expanded 2nd Edition) with Author Aaron Carnes

New topics covered include LA’s ongoing vibrant traditional ska scene and how young Latinos are keeping the ska torch aflame, how the devastation of Hurricane Katrina inadvertently kicked off a thriving scene focused on keeping
community alive in New Orleans, a deep review of Christian ska group Five Iron Frenzy, who broke a Kickstarter record in the ’10s while making progressive activists out of their fan base, a close inspection of a hipster rocksteady scene in Brooklyn that grew so popular it nearly kicked off a nationwide revival, and more secret ska past revelations with none other than Fall Out Boy lead singer Patrick Stump—who has a story that, up until recently, was carefully guarded. 
Plus, the book reexplores several bands featured in the first edition, revealing new layers and more details about all the bands fans love, like Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Operation Ivy, the Slackers, Hepcat, Mephiskapheles, and Reel Big Fish. With 30,000 additional words, this is the complete ska package.
https://www.clashbooks.com/new-products-2/aaron-carnes-in-defense-of-ska-the-ska-now-more-than-ever-edition-preorder

Scott Crawford (Documentary Director)

"Salad Days" director/writer Scott Crawford has spent much of his devoted to documenting independent culture. In 2001, he launched Harp Magazine and served as its Editor-in-Chief for over 7 years. After leaving publishing behind, he began to study film production and specifically documentary filmmaking.
His documentary feature film debut in 2015 was "Salad Days" about the influential DC punk underground in the 1980s. It received critical praise from the NY Times, Washington Post, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, MTV, and sold out theater screenings all over the world. The film also won two film festival awards, including "Best Overall Documentary." The cast includes Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye, Fred Armisen and many more.
Crawford's next documentary was entitled "CREEM: America's Only Rock'n'Roll Magazine"-which tells the story of the most popular music magazine of the 1970s (second only to Rolling Stone) and its freewheeling, dysfunctional yet brilliant staff and its ultimate demise. The film was released in 2019 by Greenwich films and garnered critical praise from The NY Times to Rolling Stone to Variety. The film is currently rated 96% for critics and 97% for its audience score. The film won "Best Documentary" at the Freep Film Festival. The cast includes Cameron Crowe, Gene Simmons, Kirk Hammett, Michael Stipe, and many more.
Scott Crawford's latest documentary will debut in 2024. Entitled "Something Better Change", it follows punk rock icon Joe Keithley (DOA) and his foray into local politics. After 40 years of playing loud, politically charged punk rock, Keithley decided to put his lyrics where his mouth is and scored an unbelievable win in 2018 in his bustling hometown of Burnaby, BC. Win or lose, the film follows him as runs for a second term. The cast includes Beto O'Rourke, Duff McKagan, Ian MacKaye, Jello Biafra, and many more.

Chris Cohen (Musician)

Photo Credit: Jasper McMahon

Chris Cohen, the LA-based songwriter, makes music that is, at first glance, lush and mellow. However, when you listen closely, you hear all the idiosyncrasies of Cohen’s detailed songwriting; something that can only come from his skilled control in writing, playing, and producing the whole thing mostly alone. It’s a surprise that he’s constantly collaborated with so many artists that are sonically on the other end of the spectrum throughout his whole career. (Deerhoof, Ariel Pink, Natural Dreamers, Zach Phillips, etc.
https://www.flaunt.com/blog/chris-cohen

Welcome Space Brothers Documentary w/ Director Jodi Wille 

WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS unveils the true story of The Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school in Southern California who in the late 1970s became a wildly prolific filmmaking collective under the direction of their outlandish spiritual leader Ruth E. Norman, AKA “Archangel Uriel.”
Los Angeles Magazine - “Welcome Space Brothers is the latest film from Jodi Wille, who made waves with her first doc on another psychedelic spiritual collective The Source Family.”
Deadline- “EP (Elijah) Wood says, “As our first entry into the documentary space, Welcome Space Brothers has all the qualities we look for in a film: compelling characters, stunning music and visuals and incredible heart. At a time when we humans are examining our relationship to the UFO phenomenon, its hopeful message is as welcome as the Space Brothers themselves.” 
Artillery - “...it was their collectively-authored low-budget audiovisual fabulousness that set them apart from the UFO cult herd…. Wille has referred to UNARIUS as Warhol’s Factory ‘but with the objective of spiritual healing and transformation.’ It’s a vision of healing, acceptance, peace, cooperation, and hope, expressed through an outpouring of unbridled creative energy. If that spells crazy, beam me up!” 
Director: Jodi Wille (The Source Family)
Producer: Caryn Capotosto (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Little Richard: I Am Everything)
Exec. Producers: XTR (Bryn Mooser, Kathryn Everett), Diorama Media (Matt Perniciaro), Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, Thalia Mavros (The Front), Rob Ganger, SpectreVision (Lawrence Ingle, Daniel Noah & Elijah Wood), Josh Braun (Submarine),
https://jodiwille.com/films

Machine Dazzle (Costume Designer/Artist) interviewed by Earl Dax

Matthew Flower, aka Machine Dazzle, has been living and working in New York City since 1994. An artist, costume designer, set designer, singer/songwriter, art director, maker, and all-around creative, Dazzle has worked with many from the New York downtown scene and beyond, including Diane Von Furstenberg, Cara Delevingne, Godfrey Reggio, Justin Vivian Bond, Taylor Mac, Basil Twist, Julie Atlas Muz, Jennifer Miller, The Dazzle dancers, Big Art Group, Mike Albo, Stanley Love, Soomi Kim, Opera Philadelphia, Pig Iron Theatre, the Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Spiegelworld, The Curran Theatre, and more. He describes himself as a radical queer emotionally driven, instinct-based concept artist and thinker.

Busy Beaver Botton Museum 

Since pinback buttons were patented in 1896, people have communicated and built community through these little wearable items. The mission of the Button Museum to show how as much American history as possible through pinback buttons. The words, artwork, printing style, color, and size were the final result of a vision they wanted to communicate. Buttons tell a peoples' history like anything else!
The physical museum is located in Busy Beaver Button Co.'s office where custom buttonsare made!
We also happily accept button donations!
We have a book! Published and designed by the amazing Princeton Architectural Press. You can buy Button Power: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons directly from us. Button Power is also available for purchase from your favorite bookseller. 
Please contact us if you have something to add or find any missing information. 
Thank you,
Joel and Christen Carter
(brother/sister button making/collecting duo)
The Button Museum
3407 W. Armitage Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647

Jason Joshua (Singer)

Well I am a musician and producer I can play a variety of instruments and learned music from the ear. I am self taught so everything written or sang is all me. What sets me apart is that I am me and no one else can be that. I got here by working hard for about 10-12 years before things started to take off, and we are just getting started. Nothing came easy and challenges are all part of the game. We all learn lessons daily so even to this day I’m still learning about myself and this business. At the end I want to leave great quality music by a Latino who wanted to bring up not just his circle but his whole musical community & give great music to world & serve others through that.  https://shoutoutmiami.com/meet-jason-joshua-musician-producer/

*Kevin Allison (Risk Podcast/MTV's THE STATE) 

Episode 1 and 2 
First Episode! Part one of our hilarious, honest and heartfelt conversation with the talented Kevin Allison, host of the popular live show and podcast Risk! where people share uncensored true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. He also talks about his legendary sketch group The State, who made one of my favorite TV shows of all time.  Since we talked, Kevin has become a sponsor, advisor and booster of our podcast! Our first ad in this episode is one Kevin made about both his podcast and ours. To say we're honored is a wild understatement. Hosted by photographer Rich Wexler and MC/costumed karaoke host Dr Thunder.​
​Bio
Kevin Allison is the creator and host of the hit podcast, RISK!, where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share. Since Kevin started the podcast as a DIY passion project from his bedroom in 2009, RISK! has grown to have millions of downloads per month and legions of ardent fans around the world. It has featured incredible true stories from famous folks like Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron, Aisha Tyler, Trevor Noah, Margaret Cho and more, as well as ordinary people from around the USA and beyond. Slate.com called RISK! “Hilarious, jaw-dropping and just plain touching,” and Rolling Stone named it one of its top podcasts. Kevin is also the founder and lead instructor of The Story Studio, a storytelling school which offers classes around the USA and online, and corporate workshops domestically and internationally.  Kevin is also the editor of the book adaptation of RISK!, which features many of the best true stories from the podcast, with an introduction from Kevin. The RISK! book was published by Hachette Books in summer of 2018. As an actor, writer and comedian, Kevin began his career as a founding member of the legendary sketch comedy group, The State, whose cult classic show aired on MTV from 1993-96. More recently, Kevin has appeared in shows such as Reno 911!, Flight of the Conchords, @Midnight, High Maintenance and more.  Kevin lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Quincy. 
https://kevinallison.net/
https://www.risk-show.com​

We will be talking about these photos during the podcast episode

 ​* Stephen Tobolowsky (Glee/Goldbergs)

Episode 3 
Prolific actor and storyteller Stephen Tobolowsky tells us amazing stories, teaches us ancient wisdom, not to mention vivisection and briefcases full of penises. StephenTobolowsky.com for his podcast, books, documentaries about him, upcoming movies and lots more! Thanks so much Stephen! Hosted by DJ / costumed karaoke host Dr Thunder, and photographer / VAA Creator Rich Wexler.

Bio
Stephen Tobolowsky is one of the leading character actors today. He has appeared in over 200 movies and television shows. Here is the list: Stephen Tobolowsky at IMDB for credits. 
He has played everything from Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day to Sandy Ryerson in Glee. He has appeared almost naked as Stu Beggs on Californication and has worn the same suit for seven years as Principal Earl Ball on The Goldbergs. Stephen currently appears as Dr. Leslie Berkowitz in the new generation remake of Norman Lear's One Day at a Time. Seasons 1-3, at present, are still available on Netflix.  PopTV and CBS aired Season 4.  Hopes are high for more episodes as soon as safe filming practices can be set in the pandemic era!
Please read here for the One Day at a Time journey.
Stephen has always been a storyteller. In sixth grade he won his school’s storytelling contest and over that summer won the award as best storyteller in the City of Dallas (13 years old and under division.) That impulse led him into writing. He wrote the screenplay for True Stories with David Byrne and Beth Henley.
He wrote and performed his storytelling films Stephen Tobolowsky's Birthday Party and The Primary Instinct.
His labor of love has been The Tobolowsky Files, created with producer David Chen. What began as a behind-the-scenes movie podcast has become a sometimes funny, sometimes compelling portrait of a human life - as described by Miles McNutt here. “The Tobolowsky Files” is available at tobolowskyfiles.com and on Apple Podcasts. Early episodes were also previously broadcast on KUOW 94.9 in Seattle, on WFPL in Louisville, KY and many stations through Public Radio International (PRI). He has two books of stories published by Simon & Schuster: The Dangerous Animals Club and My Adventures with God.
​
https://stephentobolowsky.com​

We reference some of the photos below in this episode.

* The Story Behind "Taste the Biscuit"  

Episode 4
The catchy song "Taste The Biscuit" by Toasters 'N' Moose has taken over the internet. Remixes, memes, lip syncs and fan clubs have cropped up since the lounge-y, seductive tune about food exploded on TikTok just a month ago. But the deeper you go into the story behind it, the weirder and funnier it gets. 
This week's guests are the talented stars and creator of the movie it's from, Chickens In The Shadows: Estelle Piper, Tom Shaw and Vincent Gargiulo. We had a great time talking to them and hope you'll check out the rest of their truly entertaining work:
​
EstellePiper.vpweb.com
www.TomShawEntertainment.com 
www.VincentGargiulo.com

"It's just a sexy food song, probably written under the influence of eating KFC back in 2009," Gargiulo tells me in an Instagram DM. Piper, whose voice you hear on the track, says that "Vincent wrote Seventies genre songs in several of the styles prevalent then, making them catchy as hell, but just off enough that you see why this fictional duo only had one album and one hit." She remembers that "Taste the Biscuit" achieved standalone meme status after the online success of Chickens in the Shadows, and "was picked up by all kinds of fans who did their own versions or duets on YouTube: hip-hop kids, kids from the Midwest and, for some reason, Phish fans."  ​

* Oscar Montoya (HboMax Minx) 

EPISODE 5
​
Oscar Montoya is an actor, comedian, dancer and podcaster. Rich and I are big fans of his role on the HBO show Minx, whose 2nd season is filming now. He's a regular on College Humor and the Dungeons and Dragons-based show Dimension 20, and he hosts the podcasts Inside The Disney Vault, and Podcast Killed The Video Star. 
We talk with Oscar about getting dressed up in authentic 70's clothes, which Muppet he and each of his castmates are, and getting over stage fright by discovering improv. By the end of our talk, I come close to officiating a wedding between him and Rich. Find him @OzzyMo on Instagram and elsewhere.
 
Bio 
Oscar Montoya is an actor, comedian, and hip hop dancer living in Los Angeles. He was born in a small town in Colombia and lived in New York for a spell, where he was a performer and a faculty member in both the Magnet Theater and The People’s Improv Theater. Oscar has appeared in several national commercials (Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Cheerios) and various videos for College Humor, MTVOther and Buzzfeed. Oscar currently performs at UCB with Skyjammer, a freestyle rap improv team, and on Harold night. He is also a performer and director for the arts education and media company Story Pirates. He also currently stars in HboMax Minx as Richie. 

 B.J Snowden (Musician) 

About BJ Snowden 
B.J. Snowden is a uniquely talented singer, songwriter and performer who, with only one independently released album to her credit and a handful of live appearances limited to the East Coast, has managed to attract great attention and acquire a following all over the world. Ms. Snowden's talent was apparent early on when she began playing the piano and composing songs at the tender age of three.  As her interest and talent at the piano blossomed, she decided to study music more intensively at the prestigious Berklee College of Music.  Snowden graduated from Berklee with a degree in applied music (performance), and has earned her living as a school teacher teaching music in school systems from Boston to Philadelphia.  As nightfall beckons however, she dons a sequined outfit, ascends the stage, and singlehandedly performs all of the original music that she has composed. In a strange but true tale that has taken the status of underground music legend, the staff of a now-defunct East Village record store "discovered" B.J. when they decided to play one of her demo tapes (an item that had been lying around the store for years and was destined for a "bargain bag" of hard-to-move cassettes).  The usually jaded staff was mesmerized by what they heard.  They convinced the store's owner that this was something so wonderful that the whole world should hear it.  Fred Schneider of the B-52's, a frequent shopper at the store, heard B.J.'s music as well, and wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of a proper release.  The album BJ Snowden:  Life in the USA and Canada debuted in the fall of 1996, garnering mentions in The New York Press, Magnet and other noteworthy publications.  B.J.'s music was frequently featured on Irwin Chusid's WFMU show, and she quickly became a listener favorite.  Not long after she was a featured guest on MTV's Oddville, and could also be seen on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. As a live performer, BJ has appeared at some of New York's hippest music spots, including Brownie's, The Cooler, and CBGB's Gallery.  Based out of Massachusetts, B.J. is always chauffeured to her gigs by her starlet of a mother, and is usually accompanied by her guitar virtuoso son, Andres
​https://bjsnowdenmusic.com

Meryl Meisler (Photographer) 

Meryl Meisler was born in 1951 in the South Bronx and raised in North Massapequa, Long Island, NY. Inspired by Diane Arbus, Jacques Henri Lartigue, and her dad Jack and grandfather Murray Meisler, Meryl began photographing herself, family, and friends while enrolled in a photography class taught by Cavalliere Ketchum at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1975, Meryl returned to New York City and studied with Lisette Model, photographing her hometown and the city around her.   After working as a freelance illustrator by day, Meryl frequented and photographed the infamous New York Discos. As a 1978 CETA Artist grant recipient, Meryl created a portfolio of photographs that explored Jewish Identity for the American Jewish Congress. After CETA, Meryl began a 3-decade career as an N.Y.C. Public School Art Teacher. Meryl was honored with the 2021 Center for Photography at Woodstock Affinity Award. She is included among The Hundred Heroines – a celebration of Women in Photography. TIME includes her in their selection of women trailblazers in photography: The Unsung American Female Photographers of the Past Century.  Meryl has received fellowships, grants, and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Light Work, Y.A.D.D.O., V.C.C.A., Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Leonian Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, Time Warner, Artists Space, C.E.T.A., the China Institute, and the Japan Society. Her work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society, Dia Art Foundation, MASS MoCA, Islip Art Museum, Griffin Museum, Annenberg Space for Photography, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New-York Historical Society, Steven Kasher Gallery, The Whitney Museum of American Art and in public spaces including Grand Central Terminal, South Street Seaport, Photoville and throughout the N.Y.C. subway system. Her work is in the permanent collections of the American Jewish Congress, ARTPPOOL Budapest, AT&T, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Book Art Museum- Poland, Columbia University, Emory University, Islip Art Museum, LaGrange Art Museum, Library of Congress, Musée de la Poste Paris, New York Transit Museum, Pfizer, Reuters, Smith College Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, University of Iowa, The Waskomium and can be found in the artist book collections of Carnegie Melon, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Chrysler Museum, the Museum of Modern Art N.Y.C., Metronome Library, and Whitney Museum of American Art.
Upon retiring from the N.Y.C. public schools, she began releasing large bodies of previously unseen work. Meryl’s first monograph, A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick (Bizarre, 2014), received international acclaim. The book juxtaposes her zenith of disco photos with images of the burned-out yet beautiful neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn in the 1980s. Her second book, Purgatory & Paradise SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre, 2015), contrasts intimate images of home life on Long Island alongside N.Y.C. street and nightlife. Her latest monograph, New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco (Parallel Pictures Press 2021) makes her first books seem like fairytales. She has returned to her analog roots in the darkroom, making gelatin silver prints of contemporary images and never seen photos from her enormous archive. Meryl lives and works in New York City and Woodstock, NY, continuing the photographic memoir she began in 1973 – a uniquely American story, sweet and sassy with a pinch of mystery. ClampArt represents her work.
www.merylmeisler.com
We will be referencing the images below in her episode. 

Paul Willams (Singer, Songwriter, Actor, Author and Recovery Advocate) 

Paul Hamilton Williams Jr. (born September 19, 1940) is an American composer, singer, songwriter and actor. He is known for writing and co-writing popular songs performed by a number of acts in the 1970s, including Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song" and "Out in the Country", Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World", Tiny Tim's "Fill Your Heart" and the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays". Williams is also known for writing the score and lyrics for Bugsy Malone (1976) and his musical contributions to other films, including the Oscar-nominated song "Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie, and writing the lyrics to the #1 chart-topping song "Evergreen", the love theme from the Barbra Streisand film A Star Is Born, for which he won a Grammy for Song of the Year and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. He wrote the lyrics to the opening theme for the television show The Love Boat, with music previously composed by Charles Fox, which was sung by Jack Jones and, later, by Dionne Warwick. 
Williams had a variety of high-profile acting roles, such as "Little Enos Burdette" in the action-comedy Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and the villainous Swan in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974),  which Williams also co-scored, receiving an Oscar nomination in the process. Since 2009, Williams has been the president and chairman of the American songwriting society ASCAP. Paul also wrote "Gratitude and Trust" with Tracey Williams and dedicates his time in helping others with their recovery and sharing his story. 

Eddie Davis (Musician)

Bio
Eddie Davis, Vocalist, Recording Artist, Producer and Published Songwriter, known for his soulful, dynamic, vocal style & warm, out-going personality, has played the most upscale events & private parties over the years with Eddie Davis Band. Eddie is owner of Eddie Davis Entertainment, which had become one of the premier booking agencies in the tri-state region, booking bands, unique acts and talented artists for special events. 
As a songwriter, Eddie is affiliated with ASCAP & The Harry Fox Agency. Eddie wrote & produced "Doin’ The Zombie," a well-known Halloween tune recorded by Chubby Checker and released on K-TEL’s Bare Bones label. Eddie has written, produced & sung many of his own compositions, as well as co-written & recorded a number of songs with songwriter/guitarist, Richard Lee Steacker, the late, great, Grover Washington, Jr.’s guitarist.
Eddie formed the blues band, Blues Anatomy, which Eddie fronts and shares the stage with 5 other world-class musicians and has performed and recorded with the best musicians anywhere, locally & nationally. Some of his acclaimed CD’s include “Blues Diamonds,” “Blues Anatomy,” "Blues Is My Business, "Let's Straighten It Out" and “Rediscovering Lonnie Johnson.” His newest release is "Good News, Still Singin' The Blues."
Still going strong, writing, recording and playing, Eddie is looking forward to putting out more great, soulful music for everyone to enjoy.
​
 eddiedavismusic.com

Sara Sherr (Karaoke Host)

Sing Your Life Karaoke host Sara Sherr is a former Tower Records employee, music critic and music promoter who was hanging out in record stores with her musician father by the time she could walk. She is known for her work with women's music series Sugar Town, live independent music events Plain Parade, international women's music festival Ladyfest Philly, and LGBTQ music and arts festival Phreak N Queer.
​https://singyourlifekaraoke.com/

Gabriel Nathan and Herbie 

Gabe is an author, editor, actor, playwright, director and a lover of commas. For five years, he worked at Montgomery County Emergency Service, Inc. (MCES), a non-profit crisis psychiatric hospital in the capacity of Allied Therapist and, later, as Development Specialist. At MCES, he created innovative programs such as a psychiatric visiting nurse program, a suicide prevention collaboration with SEPTA, and an Inpatient Concert Series that brought professional performing artists to entertain the patients and enrich their inpatient experience. While at MCES, Gabe also produced and directed a full-scale production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with the staff of the hospital, as an exercise in teamwork, empathy-building, and creative expression. He lives in a suburb of Philadelphia with his wife, twins and a basset hound named Tennessee. Gabe Nathan, a Wynnewood activist and Herbie the Love Bug enthusiast, brings joy and a serious message with his replica of the famous Volkswagen Beetle. Image via OC87 Recovery Diaries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlQz0KDJJGg&t=4s

Tracii Guns of L.A. Guns and founding member of Guns and Roses 

Tracy Richard Irving Ulrich (born January 20, 1966), known professionally as Tracii Guns,  is an American guitarist best known as the co-founder of glam metal group L.A. Guns, as well as the supergroups named Brides of Destruction and Contraband. He was also a founding member of Guns N' Roses, but left shortly afterwards. Ulrich's uncle Ron taught him how to play guitar at a young age. Ulrich attended Fairfax High in Los Angeles. While there, he met future L.A. Gunsmembers Robert Gardner and Michael Jagosz. The three formed a band called Pyrrhus with bassist Dani Tull. Ulrich (now going by Tracii Guns), Gardner, and Jagosz recruited Danish bassist Ole Beich for their new band in 1983, officially starting L.A. Guns after leaving Guns 'N Roses. Ulrich cites Johnny Thunders, Randy Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Mick Jagger, Michael Schenker, Tony Iommi, and Jimmy Page as his influences. L.A. Guns was formed by Guns in 1983, initially with singer Mike Jagosz, bassist Ole Beich, and drummer Rob Gardner. This lineup recorded the EP Collector's Edition No. 1 which would be the only release from the band with its original lineup. After Jagosz was arrested in a bar fight, Bill Rose (later known as Axl Rose) joined the band as singer. Rose had previously fronted Hollywood Rose, backed by Izzy Stradlin and Chris Weber. Rose's stint in the band was short-lived, as Jagosz returned weeks later. Guns joined a newly reunited Hollywood Rose (alongside Rose, Stradlin, Gardner, and Steve Darrow) for a 1985 New Years show. Shortly afterwards, L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose merged bands to become Guns N' Roses, with the lineup consisting of Guns, Rose, Stradlin, Gardner, and Beich. Guns, Beich, and Gardner would exit Guns N' Roses just two months into the new band, with Guns leaving after an argument with Rose, claiming "It just wasn't fun anymore." Guns was replaced by Slash, while Gardner and Beich were replaced by Steven Adler and Duff McKagan respectively, forming the "classic lineup" of Guns N' Roses

Jeb Berrier (Actor - Co-op Documentary Now/A Perfect Day For Caribou )

Biography 
Jeb has previously appeared as the oft-inebriated Jimmy Farrell in 2014’s Playboy of the Western World. Jeb moved to Portland from beautiful Telluride, CO where he spent many years as a member of the Telluride Repertory Theatre, performing in over 25 productions. In Portland he has worked with Coho, Action Adventure, the Interstate Firehouse, Funhouse Lounge, and the Portland Revels. Other credits: New Rep Theater, Boston, Open Stage, Harrisburg, PA, Prithvi International Theater Festival, Mumbai, India, HERE Theatre, NYC, National Shakespeare Company, NYC. TV: Grimm, Librarians, Portlandia, Everything Sucks, Documentary Now. Film: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, the documentary on plastic, Bag It, and the soon to be released, Lorelei, Timmy Failure, and First Cow. 
artistsrep.org/artists/jeb-berrier/
aperfectdayforcaribou.com

Jim Tozzi - Artist  (Wonder Showzen/ Bert's Tit) 

Biography 
Jim Tozzi grew up in Everett, a city to the north of Boston. The most distinctive thing about this town was the smell of freshly roasted peanuts due to the Teddie Peanut Butter factory. The factory's emblem, a grinning cartoon bear with a bucket, would be one of the first influences of advertising on Jim. He went to Everett public school: always an outsider, he preferred drawing weird cartoons and watching monster movies to playing sports.
In his early teens, Jim borrowed a super 8 camera from his Aunt and began experimenting. Lacking a tripod, he would tape the camera down onto the kitchen table and animate various toys, Star Wars figures and clay monsters. He also created a live action series starring his little sister as "Chico" the heavily mustachioed drug dealer who would meet an unlikely demise in every episode. Jim went on to study film and illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. He continued doing both animated and live action films creating a short film parody of an afterschool special called "Sunday School Girls" which tackled the subject of what Jesus really looked like. Tozzi moved to New York City and started working at Broadcast Arts inking and painting animation cels. He also started directing music videos for obscure alternative bands. One of the first was for Mercury Rev and featured Ron Jeremy as a floating space traveler. Jim approached Nick at Nite with his reel and some promo ideas; he was brought on to TV Land to come up with a new promo campaign. This campaign conceived, written, and directed with his wife Vezna Gottwald, developed into the award-winning "Twip" series[1]. "Twip" was an imaginary product in which its evolution was traced in commercial parodies from the early 1950s through the 1990s. Now as a directing team, the "Tozzi's" signed on to Bob Giraldi's company and began directing spots for Miller Lite, Sprite and Florida's anti-tobacco campaign. The "Tozzi's" split up and Jim went solo; joining M-80 he directed an award-winning campaign for Kellogg's Rice Krispie Treats for Leo Burnett. He went on to direct comedy spots for Sony PlayStation, Nick at Nite and Miller.
https://theaither.com/2020/08/04/art-talk-jim-tozzi/
https://jimtozzi.threadless.com​

Austin Pendelton (Actor)

Austin Campbell Pendleton (born March 27, 1940) is an American actor, playwright, theatre director, and instructor. He is known as a prolific character actor on the stage and screen who has appeared in various films including Catch 22 (1970), What's Up, Doc? (1972), The Front Page(1974), The Muppet Movie (1979), Short Circuit (1986), Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), My Cousin Vinny(1992), Amistad (1997), A Beautiful Mind (2001), which earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture nomination, and Finding Nemo (2003).  For his work in theatre he has received a Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for the Broadway revival of The Little Foxes in 1981. He has received two Drama Desk Award nominations and the recipient of a Special Drama Desk Award in 2007. He also received a Obie Award for Best Director for the Off-Broadway revival of Three Sisters in 2011. Recent Broadway credits include Choir Boy in 2016 and The Minutes in 2022.  Pendleton first received critical acclaim in 1964 for his performance as Motel in the original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof. He appeared in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac (for which he won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance and an Obie Award), The Diary of Anne Frank, Goodtime Charley, and Up from Paradise as well as many other plays. In August 2006, Pendleton played the Chaplain in Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline in the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater production directed by George C. Wolfe at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. In 2007, he appeared as Friar Lawrence in the Public Theater's production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Delacorte Theater. Pendleton wrote the plays Uncle Bob, Booth, and Orson's Shadow, all of which were staged off-Broadway. Uncle Bob had its off-Broadway premiere in 2001 at The SoHo Playhouse, starring George Morfogen—for whom the role of Bob was written—and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who made his New York theatre debut in the production. The critically acclaimed production was directed by Courtney Moorehead and produced by Steven Sendor.  As a director, Pendleton has worked extensively on and off Broadway. His direction of Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes garnered him a Tony Award nomination in 1981. Additional directing credits include The Runner Stumbles by Milan Stitt(1977),  Spoils of War by Michael Weller (1988), and The Size of the World by Charles Evered (1996).

John M Valadez (Muralist/Painter)

Muralist and pastel artist, grew up in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. While studying at East Los Angeles Junior College in the early 1970s, Valadez joined a theater group — performing in productions at the Mexican American Center for Creative Arts (MACCA)  and immersed himself in the study of art history and painting. He earned a B.F.A. from California State University at Long Beach in 1976. Following graduation, Valadez became involved in numerous mural projects in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work today.
https://johnvaladezart.com

Bill Yates Photographer and William Boling (Fall Line Press)  

Bill Yates is a Southern photographer best known for his body of work documenting a roadside roller rink in Florida. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, studying under the likes of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskand. In 1972, fresh after purchasing a medium-format camera, Yates was driving along and stumbled upon the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink. He returned to this spot nearly every weekend for over seven months, making more than 800 photographs, resulting in a monograph of the same name—Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink. Highlights of Yates’ career entail inclusion in the 1975 Artists’ Biennial Exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art; receiving a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; acting as a curatorial consultant for the Corcoran Gallery; and serving as the Director of the University Gallery at New Mexico State University. His photographs can be found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC); the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans); the Davis Museum at Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA); the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), and more.  Bill Boling is the man behind the photobook publishing company Fall Line Press. A true Renaissance man, Boling is a full-time attorney, photographer, artist, book lover, and, in his own word, a “picture-holic.” His passion for book collecting and art publishing has led him to develop a diverse line of imprints over a very short period of time. We sat down with him in his law office on Drewry Street, next to the BeltLine, where he plans to reopen his bookstore and reading room in 2017​​
​http://lenscratch.com/2014/01/bill-yates/ https://bittersoutherner.com/bill-yates-down-at-the-sweetheart-rink
https://www.artsatl.org/conversation-bill-boling-fall-line-press/

Jamel Shabazz (Photographer)

Jamel Shabazz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of fifteen, he picked up his first camera and started to document his peers. Inspired by photographers Leonard Freed, James Van Der Zee, and Gordon Parks, he was marveled with their documentation of the African American community. In 1980 as a concerned photographer with a clear vision he embarked on a mission to extensively document various aspects of life in New York City, from youth culture to a wide range of social conditions. Due to its spontaneity and uniqueness, the streets and subway system became backdrops for many of his photographs. Shabazz says his goal is to contribute to the preservation of world history and culture. In the past 10 years he has had over two dozen solo exhibitions; “Men of Honor”, “A Time Before Crack”, “Pieces of a Man”, “Represent”, When Two Worlds Meet”, “Back in the Days,” and “Seconds of my Life,” which have been shown from Argentina to The Netherlands, England, Italy, Germany, France, Japan and throughout the United States. An even longer list of group showings include Art Basel; Miami, the Brooklyn Museum, the Newark  Museum, the Contact Photo Festival, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Duke University, and the Adidas Photo Festival in Ethiopia. Over the years Jamel has volunteered, working with a wide range organizations centered on inspiring young people in the field of photography and social responsibility.  In addition, he has been a teaching artist with the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation; the Bronx Museum’s Teen Council youth program, The International Center of Photography, Friends of the Island Academy; and the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Expanding the Walls Project. Adding to his community service he has lectured at the Fashion Institute of Technology, The International Center for Photography, The Brooklyn Historic Foundation, Haverford College and Parsons New School of Design. Shabazz is the author of 5 monographs and has contributed to numerous others. He is presently working on a new book, titled “The Book of Life”.
http://www.jamelshabazz.com/

Flo Fox - Photographer/ Disability Activist/ Designer 

Biography
Flo Fox began her career as a photographer in New York City in 1972.
For the better part of her career, Flo Fox has been legally blind, as a result of multiple sclerosis that she contracted when she was thirty. She is Totally disabled from the neck down and has been confined to a wheelchair since 1999, Flo now shoots with an automatic camera and directs friends, attendants or people in the street to take pictures for her.

Throughout her career and with an archive of over 130,000 works, Flo photographed various subjects that chronicled the rich ironies of street life in New York City. Flo Fox’s work is in the permanent collection of Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian. Flo Fox has also been interviewed on several talks shows including Regis and Kathy Lee and Tom Snyder. During the early 80s she hosted her own show called the Foto Flo Show, interviewing other photographers such as Ruth Orkin and Ralph Gibson on their work and their creative methods. Riley Hooper made a short documentary film,  FLO which was featured in The New York Times in 2013. Flo Fox is an advocate for the disabled and has taught  photography class for the blind and visually impaired students at the Lighthouse for the Blind. Despite blindness, multiple sclerosis, and lung cancer, photographer Flo Fox continues to shoot the streets of New York City and never goes anywhere without her camera.
​
www.vintageannalsarchive.com/flo-fox-69-project.html
Flo Fox's Youtube Page
www.youtube.com/@flofox9831

Ed Askew (Musician/Artist)

 Biography 
Ed Askew is a painter and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, he moved to New Haven to study painting at Yale Art School in 1963 and took up, more or less, permanent residence there until leaving for New York in 1987. After graduating from art school in 1966, Askew was called up for the draft. Not feeling particularly enthusiastic about going to war at age 26 (the Navy tried to convince him that he should apply for officer training!), he looked for a teaching job and found work at a private prep school in Connecticut. It was while teaching he started making songs; he also acquired his Martin Tiple at this time. "I must have written 25 songs that semester; all of the material on Unicorn and possibly some stuff on Little Eyes." The singer-songwriter moved to New York for a few months n 1967 where he met Bernard Stolman of ESP Disk', who offered him a contract. Between 1968 and 1986, Ed lived, mostly, in New Haven; doing occasional shows with his band, and later doing solo shows there. Around 1987, Ed moved to New York City, where he continues to write and record songs, and occasionally perform.
edaskew.bandcamp.com
https://www.dragcity.com/artists/ed-askew

Stuart S. Shapiro and Night Flight (Plus)

Biography 
Stuart S. Shapiro is a visionary who has spent his career producing, directing, writing, and creating innovative entertainment and e-communications content and technologies. A pioneer in the field, Mr. Shapiro is responsible for many cutting-edge breakthroughs. He was among the first to use e-mail as a form of mass marketing and communication for government. As an entrepreneur, he founded several successful Internet communication ventures, including, Woodstock.com, ArtistEnt and Patronet with Todd Rundgren, one of the first Internet artist music subscription services, and AskDrMao.com, The Natural Health Search Engine. Mr. Shapiro is also credited with producing the 72-hour live Webcast of Woodstock99, the largest Internet live music event in history at that time. As a film distributor and producer, Shapiro was responsible for such classics as Tunnel Vision, Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps, Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii, Mondo New York, Comedy’s Dirtiest Dozen, which helped launch the careers of Tim Allen and Chris Rock, and Only The Strong, from which he produced the famous Mazda song, “Zoom Zoom Zoom.” He also created, directed and produced Night Flight (nightflight.com), the award-winning late night TV series on the USA Network. He recently re launched Night Flight as an OTT streaming channel, Night Flight Plus (nightflightplus.com). As an author/producer he published Flash Frames, a book featuring the best of Flash art from the Internet and This is Today, a history of NBC’s Today Show. His new book, iDentifi Yourself, will be published by Dolphin Books in 2017.
​​https://www.nightflightplus.com

Dean Friedman - Musician/ VR Expert/ Author

Biography 
Dean Friedman first marked his entry into pop consciousness with the Top 20 chart success of his infectious hit single, Ariel, a quirkily irresistible and uncategorizable pop song about a free spirited, pot-smoking, vegetarian Jewish girl in a peasant blouse who lived, as the lyric goes, "...way on the other side of the Hudson". Friedman scored again with the release of his follow up album, “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair’, and the now classic hit single, Lucky Stars. This magical duet, performed with singer, Denise Marsa, zoomed to the top of the UK singles charts, going instantly gold. Lucky Stars paved the way for a slew of Friedman hits, including familiar radio staples such as Lydia, Rocking Chair, McDonald’s Girland Woman of Mine. 
 Friedman’s consummate songwriting and performing, have earned him a loyal international following, devoted to the sophisticated, funny and profound work of a master songsmith.  “Stunning Musicianship” - Hot Press, "Songsmith Extraordinaire!" - Music Week , "An Amazing Talent" - The Sun, "An American Classic" - Tribune, “The Soundtrack of Our Lives” – NY Times, are just of few of the superlatives used to describe Friedman's powerfully unique and original talent.  Friedman’s recent run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival garnered similar critical praise:
“Every song in this Edinburgh show is a classic. You won't see a better show.” – London Theatre Guide.  "Sophisticated and humorous work from an old master!" Scotland on Sunday. “With his mix of jaunty ditties, sentimental ballads and bashful charm, Friedman is the pop troubadour of choice.”  The Scotsman. “Dean Friedman is entirely unique and utterly brilliant” – ThreeWeeks. Though Friedman’s next single, McDonald's Girl was officially banned by the BBC for mentioning the  tradename of the fast food restaurant, the irrepressible pop song has been successfully covered by a number of acclaimed contemporary bands including the Blenders (Universal) and top canadian band, Barenaked Ladies [WEA]. (BNL member, Steve Page, sings background vocals on Dean’s recent double album.) The song has become a viral YouTube video hit, and a staple of high-school and college a capella groups, around the world – including Harvard’s Din & Tonics and Yale’s Mixed Company - spawning more than 40 different video versions on YouTube; and now, three decades after being banned, the song has just been licensed by the McDonald’s corporation to be featured in a national TV/Radio campaign:"McDonald's Girl". Friedman composes and produces music soundtracks for TV and film, including five seasons of Central TV's hit series BOON and the soundtrack to the underground cult horror film classic I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle [Hobo Films/U.K.]. Other credits include Nickelodeon, NBC, BBC and FUJI TV. Despite Friedman's apparent absence from the popular music scene, evidence that his name and music have made a lasting impact on pop music can be found repeatedly in popular media: The British band Half Man Half Biscuit released a best selling EP containing the oddly titled, The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman. (Dean emphatically denies this claim.) Friedman extracts his revenge on his CD, Submarine Races with his song, A Baker's Tale, the hitherto untold story of Nigel Blackwell's dubious origins. With his influence evident in the music of contemporary bands like Barenaked Ladies, the Blenders and Ben Folds Five, Friedman states, ‘It’s nice to see my music has made an impact on a new generation of artists.’ Friedman  also produced and presented BBC Radio Scotland’s acclaimed radio series, ‘Real American Folk’, which has featured American Folk icons such as Christine Lavin, David Bromberg, John Prine and Steve Forbert. One of Friedman's recent tours was almost cancelled when it was announced that his tour sponsor www.goldenseeds.co.uk would distribute packets of cannabis seeds to the first ten people that purchased CD's at each of Friedman's gigs. The controversy was only resolved after Friedman promised not to distribute the seeds within 50 yards of the venue premises. (click to see Songwriter's Cannabis Controversy). [note: it is legal to possess cannabis seeds in the UK as long as they don’t get wet and germinate!] Friedman’s latest CD, 'American Lullaby', has been receiving rave reviews from fans and critics, alike. The long awaited, fan-funded, studio album contains 12 brand new original tracks, lyrical soundscapes and story-songs, bursting with life, love and survival in a surreal world. It contains instant classics like, 'American Lullaby', 'Halfway Normal World', 'The Russians Are Coming!', 'Too Much Stuff', 'Welcome to Stupid Town', 'On a Summer's Night', and more. This stunning recording further confirms Friedman’s status as one of the finest songwriters of his generation. Friedman, 66, makes his home in Peekskill, NY where he lives with his wife, Alison, and Lola, the smallest dog in the world. 

​VR Work
In Video - In 1986, Dean saw a demo of a powerful VR program that put you right inside of a video game using a video camera - no helmet required. It blew me away and he wrote an article about it for Electronic Musician Magazine. Three years later he used the software to design a game called Eat-A-Bug which he licensed to Nickelodeon TV and served as a prototype for the series Nick Arcade, for which he produced a dozen InVideo games. Since then, InVideo has produced state-of-the-art VR games for TV and leading theme parks, family entertainment centers and museums around the world, including Nickelodeon, Disney, Fuji TV, Brooklyn Children's Museum, Science Museum of London, Boston Science Museum, Liberty Science Center. 
Dean's The Complete Guide to Synthesizers, Sequencers, and Drum Machines
​https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Synthesizers-Sequencers-Machines/dp/082562410X

Box Brown

​Philadelphia - In a first, a cannabis-centered comic has been signed for syndication: Legalization Nation by Brian “Box” Brown is now carried by Hearst: King Features. It's now alongside a catalogue of icons like Popeye, Blondie, and Hagar the Horrible.
The weekly comic strip, drawn in Brown’s unique and award-winning style, breaks down dense topics into enjoyable bites. Legalization Nation uses an original format of graphic news commentary to tackle state and federal affairs from the perspective of a registered medical marijuana patient. 
“The goal is to educate consumers, patients and the general public about modern cannabis,” said Brown, “Hopefully, readers will have some fun too.”
The strip covers reform and regulation from a ground-level view. It never shies away from issues like the underground market, individual rights, and massive corporate advantages. When cannabis makes local and national headlines, Legalization Nation dives into the details.  
Trulieve series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
Brown regularly conducts exclusive interviews with politicians, advocates, and activists who then appear in the strip. This included speaking with the family of Gregory Longenecker, a Pennsylvania man killed by police during a raid on his personal cannabis grow. (Links: Part 1, Part 2) 
The digital publication Green State from Hearst Communications was the first to option the strip. Brown explained his approach in a recent interview with GS, “There is so much reporting that gives credence to sigma, focuses on the big business aspects of the sector and serves large corporations. I had to speak up.”
Brian “Box” Brown is an Eisner and Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist, illustrator, and designer from Philadelphia. His books include the New York Times–bestselling Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, Tetris: The Games People Play, Is This Guy For Real?: The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman, Cannabis: The Illegalization of Weed in America, and Child Star. 
His work has been published in seven languages and Brown is celebrated for helping popularize the genre of documentary comics. Illegalization of Weed has become a top reference for the history of marijuana in America and understanding the cannabis industry. Andre the Giant is considered one of the best non-required books for high schools.
A native of New Jersey, Brown was arrested for cannabis possession in 1996, and endured probation with regular urine screenings. Today, he’s a registered medical cannabis patient in Pennsylvania. Brown’s books have earned features in The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the New York Times. Brown has been a guest on Getting High With Doug, regularly appears in the press, and often serves as a panelist or keynote speaker at events. His newest book is due out in November 2022; a complete illustration of Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin written by Andrew Weiss, an expert on U.S.-Russian affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
​https://www.boxbrown.com/

Ann Magnuson 

Ann Magnuson is a writer/ actress/ singer/ musician/ performer whose eclectic resume traverses the entertainment landscape like few others. She has acted in Hollywood blockbusters, Off-Broadway plays, TV sitcoms and indie films; fronted various bands; made records; written for numerous publications and has presented her original performance art pieces at art institutions worldwide including the Whitney Museum (performing a 5-hour “Tribute to Muzak” in the museum elevator), The Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, BAM, LACMA, MOCA, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, The Walker Art Center, The Andy Warhol Museum and in places as far flung as Tokyo’s Sogetsu Hall and The Ice Hotel inside Sweden’s Arctic Circle. Ann was inducted into the West Virginia Hall of Fame (along with Hasil Adkins, Fred “Sonic” Smith) in early 2018 and, in May 2020, West Virginia University will be present her with an honorary doctorate from their College of Arts.
Current projects include a recurring role in Season 3 (and Season 4 – now in production) of the Amazon Prime series “The Man In The High Castle” and a new music single, “The Sun Don’t Care (Who’s President)” with accompanying video that offers a cosmic ray of hope and whimsy amidst the hostility aggravated by our current political climate. Ann was guest curator of the recent Club 57 retrospective at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NYC that ran from October 31, 2017-April 8, 2018 and will be curating a show along similar themes for the LA-based gallery Winslow Garage in Spring 2019. She performed “The Bongwater Songbook” at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in November 2017, reuniting with her former bandmates who also accompanied her in the 2016 MOMA performance, “Dream Sequencing” (featuring video as well as music and spoken word from her 2016 CD, “Dream Girl.”) Her epic track “Open Letter to an Open Letter: Seriously WTF?!,” (a serio-comic rant about the insanity of the internet) was released in 2017. She is currently finishing a recording project with the LA-based DJ consortium Dub Lab. MOMA recently acquired MADE FOR TV (the 1984 art video she made with artist Tom Rubnitz) as well as Ann’s student films from her time at Denison University (including “One God, One Singer”, a short film about Elvis Presley’s 1976 concert in her hometown of Charleston, West Virginia.) Ann Magnuson currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband, architect John Bertram.
​http://annmagnuson.com/

Joseph A. Gervasi (Curator/collector) 

Joseph is as a founding member of Exhumed Films, and is a freelance writer, reviewing films for Cinedelphia. Joseph was a founding member of the Cabbage Collective in Philadelphia and Orgasmic Productions in NJ, organizing DIY hardcore punk and spoken word shows. He also "sang" in The Orgasmic Toilet Band (TOTB). He edited NO LONGER A FANzine (NLAFz) and co-edited the later stages of Philly Zine. Gervasi co-conceived The Valerie Project with Greg Weeks.​
​http://loudfastphilly.com/interviews/joseph-gervasi-loud-fast-philly

Kater Tot (Burlesque/Comedy)

Humorously indecent. Fully embracing my chaotic weird on stages and online since 2014. Geeky, Scarousing entertainment
​https://www.instagram.com/katertot_onehotpotato/

Fayette Hauser Co-Founder of The Cockettes 

Fayette Hauser was born in Troy, New York and raised in Wanamassa, New Jersey, a suburb of the beach town of Asbury Park. At the age of 3 she embarked on a modeling career, which lasted until kindergarten set her in a more scholarly direction.Fayette graduated in 1967 from Boston University, College of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and sculpture. Fayette lived for a year in Manhattan’s West Village with Lenny Kaye who became the guitarist for Patti Smith. She was involved with the underground scene there with filmmakers such as Jack Smith and Andy Warhol appearing in the Ronald Tavel-Andy Warhol film The Life Story of Juanita Castro. In the summer of 1968 Fayette went to Aspen, Colorado to paint. While there she was picked up hitch-hiking by Nancy Gurley, the wife of James Gurley, the guitarist for Big Brother and the Holding Company. Meeting Nancy was the event that changed the course of her life. Nancy brought Fayette to San Francisco and into the arms of the original counter-culture tribe, The Family Dog. She began to live communely with other artists and in the fall of 1969 she co-founded the avant-garde experimental theatre troupe The Cockettes. (see Cockettes) She performed, designed costumes and extensively photographed the troupe until it's demise in 1972. (see Gallery) n the summer of 1972 Fayette went to Seattle to be with Tomata du Plenty and to perform with his troupe Ze Whiz Kidz. Tomata formed his group after performing with The Cockettes early in 1970 so he successfully brought the Cockette zeitgeist to Seattle. Ze Whiz Kidz were the first spin-off group of The Cockettes. They did shows every weekend at the Smith Tower, in the basement in a club called The Sub Room. It was an intimate location with a small stage so shows were fast and furious, lots of small skits and songs, all original material.  In 1975 Fayette moved to Los Angeles to write for CBS Television. However the burgeoning Los Angeles performance scene was too enticing so Fayette along with Tomata du Plenty continued performing in many underground clubs like Al's Bar, The Anti-Club, The Brave Dod and The Whisky. In 1978 Fayette, along with Jeff McGregor and Chuck Ivey formed the band Interpol. The band featured original New Wave music in a Neo-Romantic, Goth style.  At the same time Fayette continued her education receiving an Associate Degree in Photography and becoming a professional photographer and graphic artist, photographing and designing album covers for many of the creative artists in the music scene of Los Angeles in the 70's and 80's.  Along with her photography Fayette created a small design business called Atelier Fayette which featured Wearable Art, one-of-a-kind clothing. Her clients included The Rolling Stones, New Kids on the Block, Arsenio Hall and Diana Ross. 
In the early 90's Fayette studied Method Acting with Susan Peretz, the then head of The Actor's Studio. At this time Fayette also was the Costume Designer on four feature films, The Russian Godfather, The Isle of Lesbos, My Brother Jack and High Cotton (not completed). She received two Dramalogue Awards for the plays Detective Story and A View from the Bridge.  Later Fayette became a table-top prop stylist for Bon Appetite magazine simultaneously maintaining her small business, Atelier Fayette, which now focused on Antique French Textiles from the Art Nouveau Era, creating pillows for home decor which were featured in magazines such as House and Gardens. Fayette's photography work has been featured in galleries and museums and is currently a part of the exhibit West of Center: Art and The Counter-Culture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, first curated by the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art.  Fayette has presented an artist's talk and slide show as well as performance, travelling with the exhibit to all its various locales; Scottsdale MCA, Jordan Schnitzer Museum, U. of Oregon, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland. She has also presented her artist’s talk to the students at the University of Washington, Counter-Couture class 2 years in a row and to the Barbie design team at Mattel’s Handler Design Studio. http://fayettehauser.com/bio.html​

John Ross Bowie (Actor/Musician/Playwright/Author)

John Ross Bowie (born May 30, 1971) is an American actor and comedian best known for playing Barry Kripke on The Big Bang Theory and Jimmy DiMeo on Speechless, in addition to over 100 film and TV credits. He appeared in What the Bleep Do We Know!? opposite Marlee Matlin and made guest appearances on shows such as Reno 911!, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Glee, and Good Luck Charlie. In March 2011 he began a run in a series of commercials for the Ford Motor Company. Bowie is a regular sketch comedy performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (UCBT) in New York and Los Angeles. At UCBT he was a member of the sketch troupe "The Naked Babies" with comedians Rob Corddry, Seth Morris, and Brian Huskey. He had a recurring role in Corddry's Adult Swim series Childrens Hospital. A former member of New York pop punk band, Egghead, he worked with Big Bang Theory co-star Kevin Sussman to create two television comedies, The Ever After Part and The Second Coming of Rob. Bowie has written for Go Metric and The New York Press, and has authored a book on the cult movie Heathers. His memoir, No Job For A Man, was published in November 2022 by Pegasus Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Publishers Weekly called the book a "smart, pithy memoir with an earnest emotional arc." He also created the play "Four Chords and a Gun"  about punk sensations, The Ramones. Giving crowds a glimpse into the band's fascinating history, this play divulges into the riveting and tense conception of the Ramones album, End of the Century, produced by the eccentric gun wielding Phil Spector in 1979. John also recently wrote an amazing memoir "No Job For A Man" 

Kilynn Lunsford (Musician)

Philadelphia’s Kilynn Lunsford had been conceiving her first solo album since she was a young teen. Growing up through the MTV era of Missy Elliot, Timbaland and the Swing Mob collective, and drawn towards its “sometimes ridiculous, but overloaded” qualities, she found herself returning to that state of emerging adulthood when the moment for a solo record finally arose. 
The image of Britney Spears being recorded in an empty field somewhere in her native West-Philly - “like Alan Lomax recording Betty Boop near the Delaware water gap” - provided a key 'mental mood image’ for what would eventually become ‘Custodians of Human Succession’. As if Blackout was reimagined by Throbbing Gristle, Lunsford’s debut straddles unclear boundaries between electro-pop, post-punk and the avant-garde; it delves into those liminal spaces between pop culture and experimentalism, between city and country, between verse and chorus. 
Written over four years, drafted during long car rides from work, hewn out first thing in the morning or last thing at night ‘Custodians'…is Lunsford’s first work since the dissolution of her former project, noise-punk outfit Taiwan Housing Project in 2021. Being now uninhibited by the democratic needs of a band writing and jamming in the practise-room, choosing to ‘go solo’ liberated her song building process. While some arrangements would be hammered out for weeks, sometimes it was a loose, “off-the-cuff” take that could make the final cut: “Wanting to combine irreconcilable elements”, Lunsford explains, “we would set up for hours and then do one take, always allowing for the aleatoric to come through”.
​https://evernever-records.bandcamp.com/album/custodians-of-human-succession

Jason Hammer of Hamer FX (Minx Season 2 and more/Prosthetics and Special FX)

HAMER FX
Hamer FX is Jason Hamer's boutique effects shop specializing in prosthetic make-ups, animatronic characters and sensational practical effects - after twenty years in the industry working for other people Jason figured it was his time to be winning the Emmys so he set up Hamer FX and did just that. 
Wins in 2016 and 2017 for American Horror Story season 6 and Key and Peeles'
"Y'all Ready For This?". Nominations in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017 for American Horror Story seasons 1-3 and 7 and Westworld season 1.
Now, with exceptional artisan Hiroshi Yada on board and twenty-seven years in the trenches, Hamer Fx specializes in innovative techniques, clever problem solving, imaginative solutions and a level of hands-on craftsmanship that is second to none. High budget, low budget, no budget, unlimited budget (yes please), Hamer FX works in all ranges to deliver original designs and astounding effects. Entrust your project to Hamer FX you'll get awesome service, a sensational result and a trustworthy partner who'll always give you the straight story.
https://www.hamerfx.com/?fbclid=PAAaaDvCoTWbQ5mxZFT-5Fv0MM85pZJbz8MiZ1BTQOpOseOey56Eb1_y0OXRs_aem_AUMY_Ibi27pZHdaoOc9_x-ckVS7BQPFsaZKJfSV2Bx9s2X09XmPo-AALPoDVHJy7CF8

Pamela Renee Smith (Singer/Producer) 

Pam is a singer, producer, and keeper of the flame of the history of old school Philadelphia through her work on the Facebook Page, The Sound of Philadelphia Legends. She also has an amazing story! 

David Pasquesi (Actor/Improviser)

David Pasquesi (born December 22, 1960) is an American actor and comedian. His screen credits include Groundhog Day, Strangers with Candy, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Return to Me, The Ice Harvest, Veep, At Home with Amy Sedaris, Lodge 49, and The Book of Boba Fett.
Pasquesi was born in Chicago and raised in Lake Bluff, Illinois Pasquesi starred in the short film Regrets that premiered An Event Apart, and co-starred in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.  He wrote for Exit 57 and Strangers with Candy, co-wrote and appeared in the Spike TV series Factory, and co-wrote and co-starred in Cop Show. In 2009, he was in the cast of Angels & Demons, where he played the character Claudio Vincenzi. He co-created and co-wrote the new show Merkin Penal. Similarly to his role of "Meat Man Stew" in Strangers With Candy, Pasquesi plays "Knife Man" in At Home with Amy Sedaris. Pasquesi has performed at The Second City, iO Theater, Improv Institute, and Annoyance Theatre, and studied under Del Close in the early 80s and became part of the first iO Harold team "Baron's Barracudas". He appeared in four mainstage revues at Second City as well as in plays at the Steppenwolf Theatre and the Goodman Theatre.
In 2009, he played a supporting role in the Harold Ramis film Year One as the Prime Minister of Sodom. Pasquesi was a cast member in the Chicago premiere of Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage at the Goodman Theatre.
TJ and Dave - Since 2002, he has been performing with T. J. Jagodowski in the all improvised show "TJ and Dave".In 2006 they began an Off Broadway run, performing monthly at The Barrow Street Theatre in New York City.  The Chicago Reader has described the show as "an hour of subtle character development, verbal facility, and pantomimic agility that anticipates and plays off the audience's reactions.” Guests of the show include August: Osage County's Tracy Letts, Academy Award Nominee Michael Shannon, SNL's Mike O'Brien, and Absinthe's Jet Eveleth. The 2009 South by Southwest Film festival included the documentary Trust Us, This is All Made Up directed by Alex Karpovsky, which chronicles a "T.J. and Dave" performance
https://www.davidpasquesi.com/
http://www.tjanddave.com/

Dan Fishback (Playwright/ Performer/Singer)

DAN FISHBACK is a playwright, songwriter, performer in the band Cheese On Bread, and host of the podcast Sick Day with Dan Fishback. He founded The Helix Queer Performance Network in 2013, and directed its programming through 2020. Fishback’s musical The Material World was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play You Will Experience Silence was called “sassier and more fun than Angels in America” by the Village Voice. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread, which dropped "The One Who Wanted More" in 2018, along with a video for their song Bad Friend, directed by Stephen Winter and featuring Justin Vivian Bond. With the Helix Queer Performance Network, Fishback created La MaMa Experimental Theater's annual series La MaMa's Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance. He is developing a new musical, Rubble Rubble, which was the focus of public controversy in 2017, when a Zionist institution canceled the play’s first reading in response to Fishback’s support for Palestinian human rights.
Fishback has had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for over a decade, and partially supports himself through his Patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/danfishback
https://www.danfishback.com/

David Gebroe and Paul Major 

​Dave Gebroe
Dave Gebroe has written, produced, and directed two feature films to date. The Homeboy, distributed worldwide by Urban Entertainment, marked his debut. His follow-up was the horror hit Zombie Honeymoon.  After a successful festival run (Slamdance, Sitges, Hamptons, Torino, San Francisco International, and many others), Zombie Honeymoon was picked up for national distribution by Showtime, and internationally by Fabrication Films. It is enjoying a healthy life in over 45 countries, in addition to having experienced a successful North American theatrical release. In addition, Gebroe has served as manager to such indie music luminaries such as Jessica Pratt and La Sera, and has been a contributing music critic to such publications as the International Review of Music and LiveDaily over the years. 

Paul Major
If you’re not into psychedelia or rare records, you might not have heard of Paul before – but the way we understand music today has his hands all over it. He is the original sound scavenger and vinyl collector, having spent the golden decades of rock music with his hands deep in the bargain bins of record stores all across the United States, looking for every odd sound that was yet to be shared with the world back in the 70s. Today he is recognised as an expert in music made on the fringes of culture, from private pressings to one-song bands. When we start talking, Paul lists off names of obscure records and artists like it’s nobody’s business, telling me enough stories to make it clear that we’re not really just conducting an interview, this is a chance for me to hear firsthand about a part of history. 
Starting out as a coin collector in rural Kentucky, 12-year-old Paul was oblivious to music as a kid, instead obsessed with UFOs, maths and monster movies. All that changed by the end of 1966, when the fuzzy guitars of Psychotic Reaction by The Count Five first graced his ears. From that moment on, a spark was ignited, Paul sucked into a whole new alternative universe: Rock’n’roll.
From the get-go the records that attracted him were those which offered a gateway to the unusual – sounds that allowed him to escape the humdrum into a world of LSD, psychedelia and hippies. As a teenager, weekends were spent in record shops, carefully flicking through the titles of songs on the back of albums, in search of the surreal. When something seemed interesting enough, he would invest what little money he had. The first album Paul ever owned was Revolver by The Beatles.  “I discovered soon that there were some used record shops near my house, which were cheap. I just started buying every record I couldn’t before – every single one that looked psychedelic and was part of this counterculture movement, this underground world of hippies and radical freaks that I, at the age of fifteen, desperately wanted to be a part of.” His record collection started expanding rapidly, but it was still just a personal pursuit at the time – Paul would listen to records with his college friends at parties and embrace his passion. Then in 1977 Paul moved to New York, in search of the newest musical phenomenon of the time: punk rock. He did end up finding punk, but that wasn’t all. In New York, Paul found a scene of record collectors, and that’s when his life’s work truly started coming together.  It was while falling deeper and deeper into the world of these musical outsiders that Paul found out about private pressings – long-forgotten albums recorded by everyday people, hidden away from the eyes of the music industry. “There was no watering down, no attempt to be commercial, no one telling these people what to do when they make their records,” Paul tells me, “it wasn’t about making money. The actual music of the artist is coming across without filters. I started noticing that, the less influenced by the music industry, the better chance a record was going to speak to me.”
Although his attraction to the outsiders and the oddities of the music world came from gut instinct, Paul unwittingly came across a way to dodge the mainstream music press, at a time – long before the internet – when that was no mean feat.

Taken from this article 
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/music-2/paul-major-record-collecting/

Amos Poe (filmmaker) 

Amos Poe is an American New York City-based director and screenwriter, described by The New York Times as a "pioneering indie filmmaker. Amos Poe is one of the first punkfilmmakers and his film The Blank Generation (1976)—co-directed with Ivan Král— is one of the earliest punk films. The film features performances by Richard Hell, Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, and Wayne County. Rolling Stone named it number 6 on its list of 25 Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time. He is also associated with the birth of No Wave Cinema due to films such as The Foreigner (1978), featuring Eric Mitchell, Debbie Harry, Anya Phillips; and Subway Riders (1981) starring Susan Tyrrell, Robbie Coltrane, and Cookie Mueller. During this time he was also the director of the Public-access television cable TV show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien and Chris Stein. He is part of the Remodernist film movement, which he described as the next development of Postmodernism and the transformation of existing cultural features, but "using the technology and the sensibility of contemporary rather than nostalgia". "My idea of my work's importance is to see how it moves the culture to where I'd like to see it," Poe said in a 1981 interview. In 2008, he wrote the screenplay for the 2008 Amy Redford film The Guitar. The New York Times reported in 2020 that Poe had lost all ownership of several of his groundbreaking films, including The Blank Generation, to Ivan Kral in a 2012 lawsuit over profits from licensing fees for showings of the film. Thereafter, Kral billed himself as the director of the film, demoting Poe to co-editor; Kral also acquired ownership, for $10 each, of Poe's films Unmade Beds, The Foreigner, Subway Riders, and Empire II. In late 2019, shortly before Kral's death, at a screening of The Blank Generation, it was revealed that Kral, or his wife, Cindy Hudson, had changed the ending of the film, switching out the original ending (depicting Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye), for a brief biopic about Kral, followed with the credit "directed by Cindy Hudson." Although the theater screening the film had, apparently unknowingly, marketed it as the iconic 1976 work, it was a considerably different film, and Poe's name was excised entirely.

The Dead Milkmen

​Co-interviewed with John Ross Bowie
​
The Dead Milkmen is an American punk rock band formed in 1983 in Philadelphia. Their original lineup consisted of vocalist and keyboardist Rodney Linderman ("Rodney Anonymous"), guitarist and vocalist Joe Genaro ("Joe Jack Talcum"), bassist Dave Schulthise ("Dave Blood") and drummer Dean Sabatino ("Dean Clean"). The band distinguished itself in the hardcore punk scene of the early 1980s through its jangly punk sound and sardonic humor delivered with thick Philadelphia accents. They attracted college radio attention with their 1985 debut album, Big Lizard in My Backyard, and the song "Bitchin' Camaro". Extensive touring and further releases helped the band garner an underground following. The band enjoyed international success on the strength of "Punk Rock Girl", a single from their 1988 Beelzebubba album which entered into MTV rotation.[1] After an ill-fated stint with major record label Hollywood Records, health problems and industry frustrations in the wake of their success led to the group's 1995 breakup. The group reunited in 2008, with Dan Stevens replacing the deceased Schulthise. In 2011, they released The King in Yellow, their first studio album in 16 years. The band remained active thereafter, touring sporadically and releasing further records
http://www.deadmilkmen.com/

Lennon Parham (Actress) 

Lennon Kathleen Parham (born October 26, 1975) is an American actress and improvisational comedian from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. With frequent collaborator Jessica St. Clair, she created and co-starred in NBC's Best Friends Foreverand USA Network's Playing House. She also co-starred in the CBS sitcom Accidentally on Purpose from 2009 to 2010. More recently, she has appeared in the HBO Max series Minx.  After her stint as a French teacher, Parham began performing comedy with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. During this time, she starred in the two-person show The Adventures of Lock & Kay and the one-woman show She Tried to be Normal. In the fall of 2009, Parham began a supporting role in the comedy Accidentally on Purpose. Parham and frequent collaborator Jessica St. Clair created and starred in the NBCcomedy Best Friends Forever, which ran for one season in 2012. Their second sitcom, Playing House, premiered on USA on April 29, 2014, and lasted three seasons. In 2015, Parham and St. Clair spun-off their Comedy Bang! Bang! characters Wompler and Listler for a new Earwolf podcast called WOMP It Up!, with St. Clair as host Marissa Wompler and Parham co-hosting as Marissa's teacher Charlotte Listler. Frequent guests on the podcast include Brian Huskey as Marissa's stepdad "Seth" and Jason Mantzoukas as Marissa's former flame Eric "Gutterballs" Gutterman. Parham has made appearances on television programs such as Veep, Parks and Recreation, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Bad Judge, Arrested Development, Lady Dynamite, Review, and Mad Men. In 2019 and 2020, she was a main cast member of the ABCsitcom, Bless This Mess, starring Lake Bell and Dax Shepard. Her notable work in film includes Confessions of a Shopaholic, Splinterheads, and Horrible Bosses 2. Parham was a guest on The Big Alakens Big Lake marathon fundraiser episode of The George Lucas Talk Show.

Perry Shall (artist/musician/collector)  

You might not know Perry Shall by name, but if you’re a music fan in Philadelphia, you’ve almost certainly heard the longhaired rocker in one of his many bands or seen his art gracing the albums and t-shirts of some of your favorite acts. You might have even heard him on WFMU’s The Best Show – he has the show’s slogan WE GET IT / THEY DON’T tattooed on his wrists – or seen the wildly popular SuperDeluxe video about his immense vintage t-shirt collection, 1400 and counting. He is the very definition of a man about town, though these days that town isn’t just Philly: Shall has been doing much of the art and design work for Nashville-based label Easy Eye Sound, run by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Don’t worry, he’s not leaving us for the Music City. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who loves this city as much as Perry does and I suspect he’ll never live anywhere else.
https://perry-shall.myshopify.com/

Jayden Libran (puppeteer/voice actor) 

Jayden is a very talented puppeteer and voice actor and based in LA puppeteer and has been puppeteering since the age of 6! He was trained by The Jim Henson Company at 16, and the Sesame Workshop at 18, and currently performed in The Henson Company live improv "Puppet Up".  He currently does voice work on "Duncanville" and "Beavis and Butthead". He also has a  huge collection of Muppet and Henson  related items that's he's been collecting since he was four. 

https://www.instagram.com/j.libran98/

Ellen Rapoport (Writer/ Producer/ Director/)

Ellen Rapoport is an American television writer, producer, and director who created and executive produced the 2022 television comedy series Minx. Rapoport also wrote the screenplay for the 2020 movie Desperados. Rapoport grew up in the Midwest to immigrant parents. education. Rapoport earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University. Rapoport earned a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. In her third year of law school, Rapoport had to write a third-year paper, which was a one-hundred page legal thesis. She convinced her law school professor to let her write a legal drama for this assignment, which inspired her to start writing scripts. After graduating from law school, Rapoport became a corporate lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Wharton & Garrison. She recalls disliking her job as a lawyer. Rapoport sold her first script while employed at the firm. Rapoport created and executive produced The Starlet, a 2005 reality TV show.  She also developed multiple television pilots, including "Puck Buddies" for Fox, "Hex Ed." for ABC Family and Sony, and "Legally Blonde" for MGM Television.
In 2009, Desperados got picked up by Universal, with Rapoport attached to write the script.  In 2020, the film was released on Netflix.
Rapoport wrote for the 2021 film Clifford the Big Red Dog. Rapoport is the creator of the critically acclaimed comedy series Minx. On February 19, 2020, HBO Max gave the project a pilot order, with Rapoport attached to write, as well as executive produce with Paul Feig and Dan Magnante. The show, along with Rapoport's writing, was positively reviewed by the public, holding a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In 2022, Rapoport signed a deal with Lionsgate Television.

Andy Sweet Photo Legacy

Andrew John Sweet (November 9, 1953 – October 17, 1982) was an American photographer known for his documentary photography and street photography. He photographed the life and residents of South Beach, with a particular focus on the Jewish community, many of them Holocaust survivors. Sweet also captured the carefree young people who made Miami Beach their second home. The Oxford American wrote a story on his vision of capturing a disappearing Jewish Community in Miami Beach.
His violent death and the following trials were covered extensively in the media. The son of a prominent Miami Beach family, the gruesome nature of his death diverted attention from his art just when his work was gaining a following. By mischance, his negatives were lost, leaving only the prints he had made as his legacy, their colors slowly fading away. In 2006, Ellen Sweet Moss' partner, Stan Hughes, found a trove of color ‘work prints’ Sweet made prior to printing full-size prints, Hughes realized that digital technology could be used to restore the fading colors back to the original color that Andy Sweet intended by using color photography instead of the black and white photography that was popular during this era. The discovery of Sweet's test prints in a family storage unit has garnered new interest in his documentary photography. Some of his surviving prints have been restored over the last decade. A documentary on his life and photography was released in 2018. The Andy Sweet Photo Legacy Foundation, founded by his sister and artist Ellen Sweet Moss, is dedicated to increasing awareness of his photography and organizing exhibits of his work.
​https://andy-sweet.format.com/

Illeana Douglas - Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia

Illeana defines how the perception of on-screen Connecticut, originally created in Hollywood, has shifted more than that of any other New England state over the decade and offers some surprising conclusions about just what it means to be a “Connecticut movie. ”Films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, such as Theodora Goes Wild, Bringing Up Baby, and Christmas in Connecticut, presented Connecticut as an antidote to the metropolis—a place where you could find your true self. The slogan “Come to Peaceful Connecticut” not only led to Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, but to an exodus of urban moviegoers seeking their dream houses. In post-war America, Gentleman’s Agreement challenged Connecticut’s well-cultivated image, as did the suburban malaise of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, and contemporary takes on dark suburbia like The Swimmer,The Ice Storm, and RevolutionaryRoad. From Sherlock Holmes to Mystic Pizza to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; from horror in The Stepford Wives to historical in Amistad; picturesque in Parrish, to perverse in The Secret Life of An American Wife, the Constitution State has been the background for surprisingly over 200 feature films, yet these cinematic contributions have long gone unrecognized; until now. Connecticut in the Movies is not only a keepsake for denizens of the state, but a valuable resource for film buffs everywhere.
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781493075737/Connecticut-in-the-Movies-From-Dream-Houses-to-Dark-Suburbia

Karim Brown (photographer)

Karim Brown is a documentary photographer living and working in North Philadelphia. 
Keeping the Black Philadelphia community and its people at the forefront of his mind, Karim uses  photography to intimately engage with Black ways of knowing and doing that he has been immersed in his entire life. 
Using Black Studies as the foundation of his work,  Karim’s photography considers how Black folk understand and tell their own stories through the Black gaze.

https://karimbrown.com/

The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives (Photography) 

The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives was established in 2014 by artist Stephanie Farago as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, dedicated to the representation, exhibition, and study of the estate of American artist Steven Arnold.
The archives contain works and ephemera spanning from 1943 – 1994, including extensive personal files, calendars, props, sculpture, paintings, sketchbooks, drawings, films, and black and white tableau photography.As the museum does not have its own exhibition space, we are currently working with established institutions, galleries and publishers to ensure that the work remains visible. We maintain and update this website as an easily accessible record for those who can not view the work in person. The archive in Los Angeles, California is available to curators and researchers by appointment.  
https://stevenarnoldarchive.com/

Reggie Bügmüncher

Reggie is an American entertainer based in Los Angeles, California. She is ½ of Philadelphia’s Olde City Sideshow, and has been performing in sideshow for over a decade. As a solo performer, she travels the country working everything from the midway to nightclubs and variety shows. Reggie is one of the few women in the world performing several unique acts such as the anatomical wonder act and riding a motorcycle in a high wire thrill show. She has appeared on the Gong Show, Americas Got Talent, been featured in stories by news outlets from Fox to NPR and in books and magazines on Tattoos and Sideshow. She has opened up for Primus, suspended for Jane's Addiction, performed for Ripley’s Believe it or Not, and at Tattoo Conventions across the globe.  She is committed to community building in the sideshow arts.  ​

Interview with Director of "Jews of the Wild West" Amanda Kinsey 

ABOUT The film may have been silent, but the impact was that of a loud bang. “The Great Train Robbery,” known as the first American Western, would prove to be one of the most influential films in cinema. The year was 1903 and tales of the Wild West were quickly spreading throughout the world. In the film, Broncho Billy Anderson plays four roles. He is considered the first film celebrity cowboy and became so iconic that he was immortalized on a US stamp, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is honored in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma. Fun fact? Broncho Bill was actually named Max Aronson and the son of Jewish immigrants.
 Western Jewish pioneers, those of the silver screen and real life, are a largely forgotten chapter in US History. And yet, they played a definitive role shaping the expansion of the United States. There were nationally known names such as Levi Strauss, Samsonite founder Jesse Shwayder and the Guggenheim family, who built their great success through grit and determination in California and Colorado. A young Golda Meir spent formative years in Denver. And there were also lesser-known characters such as Solomon Bibo, a Prussian immigrant, who became a non-Native American tribal leader in New Mexico and Solomon Carvalho, a Sephardic painter and photographer who spent the mid-1800s documenting the territories of Kansas, Colorado and Utah. Wyatt Earp’s wife, Josephine Marcus Earp, was a Jewish actress whose beauty is rumored to have triggered the fight at the OK Corral. And by the end of the 19th Century nearly every notorious Wild West town had a Jewish mayor.
 The wagon trains that moved westward with Jewish families traveled for the same reason as many settlers: opportunity. Continuous cycles of anti-Jewish oppression, deadly violence and forced poverty in Europe pushed over two million Jewish refugees to seek out a better life in America. The antisemitism and tenements found in New York City, however, did not offer the respite many were seeking. By 1912, it is estimated over 100,000 Jewish immigrants had moved to the Wild West. They put down roots and, today, they epitomize the important legacy of immigration in America. 
 “Jews of the Wild West” is a feature length documentary. The independent not-for-profit film is produced by Electric Yolk Media and directed by award-winning filmmaker Amanda Kinsey. Through on-camera interviews, compelling footage, and historical photographs, the film tells a positive immigration story and highlights the dynamic contributions Jewish Americans made to shaping the Western United States. The film premiered at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in early 2022. The documentary was funded through individual donors, grants and crowdsourcing. Any profits made by the film's distribution will be donated to the Rose Community Foundation.
 "Jews of the Wild West" is currently streaming on Amazon, iTunes and most video-on-demand platforms. It is also available at participating libraries through Kanopy and is broadcasting on public television stations across the country through our distributor American Public Television. For more information about booking in person and virtual community events, please see Screenings below. Film merchandise can be purchased here. Your support of this project is greatly appreciated.​
​https://www.jewsofthewildwest.com/

Ryan Cassata (Trans Singer Songwriter/Activist)

Ryan Cassata (he/him) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, actor, performer, published writer, LGBTQ+ activist, and transgender motivational speaker. His work has been featured on/in GRAMMY.com, Rolling Stone, Billboard, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, AltPress, American Songwriter, and The NY Daily News.  With over 650 performances nationwide and internationally and seven original and critically-acclaimed musical albums, Ryan is proud to be recognized as the first openly-trans performer at the Vans Warped Tour, in addition to featured performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Green Show, Global Pride and the world’s biggest pride festivals, and SXSW in Austin, Texas. Ryan has been praised by The Advocate Magazine as a “Transgender singing sensation.” Paper Magazine included Ryan on their "50 LGBTQ Musicians You Should Prioritize" list, and LOGO’s New Now Next included Ryan on the “9 Trans Musicians You Need To Get Into” list. Billboard Magazine has referred to Ryan as a “true force in the industry,” honoring him as one of the esteemed "11 Transgender & Non-Binary Musicians You Need to Know" while premiering his award-winning music video "Daughter," garnering over 2M views on Youtube and 2M streams on Spotify. Ryan’s music has been featured on Sirius XM Radio, BBC Radio 4, and other broadcast channels worldwide. Ryan Cassata is the proud recipient of The ASCAP Foundation 2019 Mariana and Paul Williams (President of ASCAP) "Sunlight of the Spirit" songwriting award for his original song, “Jupiter.” Ryan’s self-written and self-produced album, Magic Miracle Mile, released in October 2021, charted on the iTunes Alternative Charts. Both Ovation Guitars and Marvin Guitars endorse Ryan Cassata. Featured in the award-winning documentary film “Songs for Alexis,” Ryan was the focus of the film, which screened at Frameline SF, Raindance in the UK, Toronto Hot Docs, DOC NYC, and many more. Ryan co-starred in the indie film "Collective: Unconscious," which premiered at SXSW and received praise from Rolling Stone Magazine & The New York Times. Ryan was awarded "Best Breakout Performance" award by the Victoria Independent Film Festival in 2016. Ryan has also been featured in several musical theatre productions, including a workshop production at New York Stage & Film's Powerhouse Theatre at Vassar. Cassata has modeled and enjoys work as an influencer for brands such as Lids, Bonobos, Lull, Lyft, HP, and was the official face of TomboyX’s Trans Pride Underwear line in 2019, which he modeled in The Style Section of The New York Times. Ryan Cassata stars as “Jalin” in the award-winning feature film “Two Eyes,” which debuted as the final, premier film Outfest 2020. His song “You and Me Babe” has a central piece in the film as well.  Beginning his important work as an activist at age 13 after joining "The Safe Schools Team," Ryan is most proud of being a trans advocate and public speaker in and around his hometown on Long Island, New York. Ryan is the youngest keynote speaker at the Philadelphia Trans Health conference and continues to make appearances and speeches at countless Middle Schools, High Schools, and Universities nationwide. Ryan is passionate about being visible and sharing his story openly to inspire greater inclusivity.  Ryan is the first-ever recipient of the Harvey Milk Memorial Award, has been recognized by United States Congress, and has enjoyed many televised appearances on notable news channels such as CNN, The Larry King Live Show, and The Tyra Banks Show. 
Committed to educating the global community through music, film, print, TV, and in-person speeches, Ryan most enjoys shedding his optimism, light, positivity, and experience of being a proud transgender man while highlighting the adversity he has faced throughout his journey. Ryan continues to share his inspiring message of hope and acceptance via his social media platforms and at nationwide venues.
http://www.ryancassata.com/

Found Footage Festival

The Found Footage Festival is a celebration of the videos that time forgot, dredged up in dusty thrift stores and estate sales throughout North America. Childhood friends Joe Pickett (The Onion) and Nick Prueher (Late Show) take audiences on a guided tour of their latest and greatest VHS finds, providing commentary and where-are-they-now updates on the people in these videotaped obscurities in their live tour and their weekly YouTube show, VCR Party Live!
Pickett and Prueher began collecting found videotapes in 1991 after stumbling across a training video entitled, “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties,” at a McDonald’s in their home state of Wisconsin. Since then, they have compiled the world’s largest collection of strange, outrageous and profoundly stupid videos.
The Found Footage Festival live show debuted in New York City in 2004 and has gone on to sell out hundreds of live shows each year across the U.S., Canada and the UK, including the Just For Laughs Festival, Edinburgh Fringe and Bonnaroo. It has been featured on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and National Public Radio and has been named a critics’ pick in The Guardian and The New York Times. To book a Found Footage Festival live appearance at your venue, university, or corporate event, email [email protected].
New episodes of VCR Party Live! premiere every Tuesday night at 9pm ET on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch and feature dozens of newly discovered VHS clips, plus special guests like Kyle Mooney, Jon Glaser, Jo Firestone, and David Cross, and regular segments like “This Week In Flying Windows” and “IMGs.” Regular viewers of the show call themselves “Melindas,” after a found VHS clip of Nick Nolte walking into a doctor’s office and saying, “Well, hello, Melinda!” Watch the origin story of Melinda here, and join the Patreon for exclusive bonus episodes each week. Deep cuts and full VHS finds, as well as the entire Found Footage Festival DVD output, is available on the FFF’s streaming service, Rewind-o.
Pickett and Prueher are also the masterminds behind the Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser, Chef Keith, and Chop & Steele pranks that hit local morning TV news shows across and have since racked up millions of hits on YouTube. One appearance as the strongman duo Chop & Steele resulted in a federal lawsuit that Fast Company magazine called “the dumbest First Amendment battle” of the year. A documentary about Pickett and Prueher and their misadventures on local news and on the road, Chop & Steele, will hit theaters and streaming in 2023.
https://www.foundfootagefest.com/

Jodi Wille (Filmmaker/Scholar)

Jodi Wille is a filmmaker, curator, and book publisher known for her work exploring subcultures. She directed and produced the documentary on the 70s Los Angeles utopian commune THE SOURCE FAMILY (2013) and is in production on her new feature documentary, WELCOME, SPACE BROTHERS, about the Unarius Academy of Science.  She cofounded the book publishing companies Process Media and Dilettante Press and served as editor of several award-winning books. She has curated art exhibitions for The American Visionary Art Museum, Deitch Projects, and The London Photographer’s Gallery. Over the past 12 years, she has specialized in curating rare films and cultural experiences across the US and in Europe related to spiritual subcultures and intentional communities.
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
Jodi loves to share ideas and her work. She has presented her work and talks at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Columbia University, University of Southern California, Johns Hopkins, Emerson College, Kenyon College, Cal Arts, Otis College of Art and Design, Gregg Museum, Maryland Institute of the Arts, Denison, 72 and Sunny Day, ArtSlant, South By Southwest Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Silverdocs, Hot Docs: Doc Soup, True/False Boondawdle, and others.
​https://jodiwille.com/

Heads Together: Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate, 1965–1973 interview  with David J Kramer (editor)

A glorious design herbarium of marijuana ads from the great underground magazines of the 1960s and '70s
The youth uprising now simply known as the Sixties was fed by one of the greatest booms in publishing history. The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) began as a loose confederation of five papers in 1966, and within a few years swelled to over 500 across the world, including Kaleidoscope, International Times and the East Village Other. They "spread like weed,” said the UPS director, weed dealer and eventual founder of High Times Tom Forcade. The metaphor was apt: the UPS spurred the legalization movement, and weed became its totem―and a helpful means for government agencies to crack down on the UPS, since weed permeated UPS pages, with gaps in text crammed with weed-inspired “spot illustrations.”
Heads Together collects these drawings, shining a light on lesser-known names in the stoner-art canon, and many who weren’t names at all since no signature was attached. It also compiles guides for growing weed from the period that were treated like contraband by the CIA. Activist-oriented, psychedelic rolling papers are showcased too. As pot now fast-tracks toward legalization in the US and beyond, its once-incendiary status is brought into odd relief. Pot’s contemporary corporate profiteers do not reflect those who fought for legalization, or the Black and Latino populations strategically criminalized for pot well before hippies were targeted and long after. The art in this book speaks to a time when pot was smoked with optimism, as something capable of activating transformation in the face of corrupt and powerful forces.
https://www.artbook.com/9783907236543.html​

Patrick D Pagnano Legacy (Photographer/Photojournalist)

An inveterate street photographer, Patrick D. Pagnano ventured out daily with his camera after moving to New York from Chicago in 1974, Pagnano developed a practice rooted in a kind of stream of consciousness, following what he describes as "visual clues" to guide him to his subjects. He immerses himself in the subject, shooting individuals in either the same space or type of event over time, a reflection of his belief in the importance of the existing environment and its role in affecting the people within.
 Patrick Pagnano (b. 1947, Chicago, IL) holds a BA from Columbia College. photographs have been included in exhibitions at venues such as the Brooklyn Museum; New York Public Library, NY; and Mois de la Photo à Montreal, Montreal, Canada, amongst others. His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, all NY; the Brooklyn Museum; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Helmut Gernsheim Collection, Switzerland. He published a book, Shot on the Street, featuring 60 color images of his work, in 2002. 
Patrick's self-published book, Shot on the Street, was released in 2002. 
Anthology Editions released "Empire Roller Disco" in April of 2023.
www.pagnanoandpagnano.com/index.html

Peaches Christ (Performer/Filmmaker/Producer/Director)

Peaches Christ is a filmmaker and cult leader living in San Francisco. Her infamous movie events are self-produced at the Castro Theatre and regularly draw over 1,000 attendees to each new production before they tour. Events have featured special guest stars John Waters, Cloris Leachman, Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell, Linda Blair, Bruce Campbell, Apollonia, Barry Bostwick, Pam Grier, and more. Peaches is the alter- ego of Joshua Grannell, the writer and director of the feature film All About Evil. The award-winning dark comedy gore film stars Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Dekker, Cassandra Peterson, Mink Stole, and Peaches Christ herself. Peaches Christ has been featured in the films Milk, I Am Divine, Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Mansfield 66/67, Tura!, Scream Queen: My Nightmare On Elm Street, You Don’t Nomi, and more.
https://www.peacheschrist.com/

Mink Stole (Actress/Musician) 

Nancy Paine Stoll (born August 25, 1947), known professionally as Mink Stole, is an American actress from Baltimore, Maryland. She began her career working for director John Waters, and has appeared in all of his feature films to date (a distinction shared only with Mary Vivian Pearce and Pat Moran). Her extensive work with Waters has made her one of the Dreamlanders, Waters' ensemble of regular cast and crew members.

She was born into a large Roman Catholic family, and has nine siblings, including children's-book author Ellen Stoll Walsh and sculptor George Stoll.  Her father, Joseph A. Stoll, died in 1955, and her mother, Nell, remarried twice, resulting in an extensive step-family. 
Stole has performed in most of the films by close friend John Waters. Her film career began as a party guest in Waters' film Roman Candles. Since then, she has appeared in all of his feature films up to and including 2004's A Dirty Shame. The only Waters films in which she does not appear are the early short films Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Eat Your Makeup, and The Diane Linkletter Story. She has appeared in a number of films and television shows, and wrote a column for the Baltimore City Paper titled "Think Mink" until mid-April 2006. She is the lead singer of Mink Stole and Her Wonderful Band, of which musicians Kristian Hoffman, George Baby Woods, and Brian Grillo have been members.  The Baltimore incarnation of Mink Stole and Her Wonderful Band (2009–present) includes Scott Wallace Brown (piano, organ), Walker Teret (upright bass, guitar), Skizz Cyzyk (drums), and John Irvine (trumpet). 
In 1999, Stole appeared in the satirical lesbian film But I'm A Cheerleader alongside Natasha Lyonne in the role of Megan's mother. In April 2009, Stole connected with cult director Steve Balderson for Stuck!, an homage to film noir women in prison dramas. Co-starring Karen Black, Pleasant Gehman and Jane Wiedlin, Stuck! was filmed in Macon, Georgia. Stole played Esther, a religious inmate sentenced to death. She once again co-starred with Natasha Lyonne in Joshua Grannell's All About Evil. 
Mink Stole with Peaches Christ at a 2007 showing of Desperate LivingShe received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 Boston Underground Film Festival in Cambridge following the East Coast Premiere of Stuck! on March 27, 2010. In 2011 she successfully completed a Kickstarter fundraising project to finance her first CD, titled Do Re MiNK. The CD was released on May 23, 2013.

Micheal Varrati (Filmmaker/Screenwriter/Podcaster) 

Michael Varrati is the screenwriter behind several award-winning independent horror films, as well as a number of TV movies for networks such as Lifetime, Hallmark, and Ion. As a columnist, his work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Vice, FearNet, VideoInk, Videoscope Magazine, and a regular column for legendary studio Hammer Films. Varrati currently serves as the host of the queer horror series Dead for Filth on the Revry TV streaming platform. Varrati also does regular speaking engagements, appearing annually at venues such as San Diego Comic Con International. Both he and his work have been profiled in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Out, Fangoria, Horror Society, Entertainment Weekly, and MTV News.

Seasonal Depression Suite Album Project Featuring Gregg Turkington and Erik Paparozzi 

Gregg Turkington (Actor/ Writer/ Producer)

Gregg Turkington was born in Darwin, Australia in 1967, of American parents, and grew up in Arizona and California, founding the independent record label Amarillo Records in San Francisco in the 1990s. As the stand-up comic character Neil Hamburger, he has repeatedly headlined nightclub worldwide since 1999, as well being selected as the support act on national and international tours by Faith No More, Puscifer, and Tenacious D. He has worked doing voice overs for cartoons produced for Disney, The Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon, including the character "Toby Determined' on _Gravity Falls (TV Series 2012-)_. After his breakthrough film role in Rick Alverson's The Comedy (2012), he reunited with frequent collaborator Tim Heidecker and director Rick Alverson to write and star in the feature film drama Entertainment (2015), which premiered at Sundance. That same year he appeared as the sad-sack Baskin-Robbins manager Dale in Marvel's Ant-Man (2015).
Neil Hamburger is a standup comedian and singer. Distinguished for his misanthropic jokes and anti-comedy style,  Neil has released a number of albums as Hamburger and has appeared in various films, television shows, and other media. Neil came up in the 1990s and originally envisioned the concept as a "weird recording project". It originated from a prank call that had appeared on the album Great Phone Calls Featuring Neil Hamburger (1992). He followed the LP with three more albums issued on Drag City Records before he began receiving offers to perform as the character for live shows.  His albums Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners (2009) and First of Dismay (2014) feature original songs and cover versions backed by "The Too Good For Neil Hamburger Band".

Erik Paparozzi (Musician/Composer)

Erik Paparozzi is known for Historical Film, RuPaul's Drag Race UK (2019) and Gary Got Involved! (2020) and performs with Catpower.

SEASONAL DEPRESSION SUITE 
A new work from the songwriting team of Gregg Turkington and Erik Paparozzi. Seasonal Depression Suite is an album-based musical, sung by an all-star cast whose voices embody various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, re-living personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Expert music played by an all-star band, to boot! Direct mail order customers will get an added value item with purchase: a custom-branded DO NOT DISTURB door hanger, so the randos will know to leave you to your obsessive Seasonal Depression Suite listening session. You'll come out when you're damn ready, damn them! 

Buy Here!!
https://www.dragcity.com/products/seasonal-depression-suite

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu (Author)

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu is a Be’chol Lashon Rabbinic Fellow and the spiritual leader of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda. Gershom is the current leader of the 100-year old Abayudaya community of almost 2,000 Jews living in rural villages in Eastern Uganda. He is the grandson of community elder “Rabbi” Samson and lives near the Moses Synagogue in the village of Nabagogye, which he and others from the community’s early 1980s “Kibbutz movement” built with their own hands. Their goal has been to gather what was left of the Abayudaya community back together after the devastating reign of Idi Amin Dada ended in 1979.
As a visionary leader, Gershom’s dream was to attend a rabbinic seminary to better understand ancient and modern egalitarian Judaism and bring the Ugandan community intomainstream Jewish life. Gershom was awarded a Be’chol Lashon Fellowship in 2003 to attend the five-year Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He returned to Uganda in 2008 as the first native-born black rabbi in Sub-Saharan Africa and opened a Yeshiva to train African teachers and rabbis to serve their ancient and emerging Jewish communities. In 2016, Gershom became the first Jew ever elected to Uganda’s parliament. As a member of the Be’chol Lashon Speakers Bureau, Gershom travels to the United State very year as an ambassador for the Abayudaya 
globaljews.org/jewishand/authors/rabbi-gershom-sizomu-2/

Stephen Bluhm (musician)

​Stephen Bluhm charms with disarming, eclectic pop and a commanding, whimsical stage presence.Dedicated to the craft of songwriting, Stephen writes, arranges, and produces all his own music and lyrics. In 2018, Stephen released his first album, melding synth pop, disco, and 60s pop. He’s now finishing an orchestral pop album with grand piano, and musicians from The Orchestra Now on oboe, French horn, cello, and violin—as well as classically trained players of double bass, bass clarinet, clarinet, tenor sax, flute, and viola.
On stage Stephen transforms from a shy “man-about-town into a guy who was seemingly born to command a stage” who loves dancing with the audience.
His work has earned praise from members of The Magnetic Fields.
The otherworldly album art is a partnership with celebrated artists Kahn & Selesnick, known for their music videos (Amanda Palmer) and album artwork (Sheerwater, The Waterboys, Beirut) as much as for their photography, painting, and tarot decks.
Stephen’s music is used in the Vintage Annals Archive Outsiders Podcast on multiple episodes, including Amos Poe’s interview. His music appeared in the Jennifer Love-Hewitt film Cafe, and he played the androgynous singing TV show host Barry Robbins in the film Thirsty.
Stephen lives in Hudson, New York, where he helped open the renowned music venue Club Helsinki.
In his spare time, Stephen works for Etsy.com, as one of their longest tenured staff.
​www.stephenbluhm.fun/

Mojo Nixon (Musician/Activist/DJ)

Mojo Nixon is one of the most outrageous voices in contemporary rock 'n' roll music. Songs such as "Jesus at McDonalds," "Bring Me The Head of David Geffen," "Stuffin' Martha's Muffin," and "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two Headed Love Child" have drawn criticism and even caused lawsuits to be threatened. However, Nixon's broad, even extreme parodies conceal a sensibility concerned with maintaining and exercising personal freedom. It is the mix of his fervent political beliefs and beer-drenched rock that gives Nixon's music its power. "It's Nixon's commitment to raw, stripped-down rock 'n' roll, and his anger at all the things that defile and dilute it that make such a bracing tonic in these bland and kingless times," wrote Rolling Stone.
​https://musicianguide.com/biographies/1608002903/Mojo-Nixon.html

Antoine Haywood (Community Organizer/Media Maker)

Antoine Haywood is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. He holds a B.A. degree in English from Morehouse College, an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School, and an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. His research broadly evaluates the relevance of public, educational, and government (PEG) access media-making practices in the digital age. His research projects focus on community-engaged, participatory journalism, local media ecosystem sustainability, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) community communication. Antoine's dissertation is an autoethnographic exploration of the resonance of African American community participation in public access television. 
Before Annenberg, Antoine spent 15 years working professionally as a community engagement director at public access media centers: People TV in Atlanta, GA, and PhillyCAM in Philadelphia, PA. He served on boards for community media organizations such as the Alliance for Community Media and Radio Free Georgia, and he is currently a member of the Independence Public Media Foundation's board of directors. He is an experienced grant writer, public education program developer, community video documentary producer, and program facilitator. Along with his professional and academic experience, Antoine enjoys playing guitar, collecting and spinning vinyl records, and producing original video projects. Antoine proudly hails from Palm Beach County, Florida.
​https://antoinehaywood.com/

Gary Monroe (Photographer/Author) 

Gary Monroe, a native of Miami Beach, received a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1977. Upon returning home, he photographed the old world Jewish community that characterized South Beach. Since 1984 he has photographed throughout Haiti, and later looked at tourism across Florida, especially the "rite of passage" of vacationers at Disney World. He also "wanders aimlessly" to photograph in other countries – Brazil, Israel, Cuba, India, Trinidad, Poland and Egypt to name a few. Recently he has been looking at the landscape, especially the transformation of place due to corporate-driven planning.
https://www.garymonroe.net/default.html
​
Gary's Books 
Welcome to the online gallery of Florida Highwaymen and  self-taught art. The artwork offered for sale is selected from the Monroe Family Collection.
University Press of Florida has published ten books written by Gary Monroe about non-academic Florida artists. These include the primary texts, The Highwaymen: Florida’s African-American Landscape Painters and Extraordinary Interpretations: Florida’s Self-taught Artists. Building this collection of artwork has taken more than four decades and most of the artwork was acquired directly from the artists. 
​http://www.floridafolkart.net/

Anna Biller (Filmmaker/Author) Bluebeard's Castle Novel

Bluebeard gets a feminist Gothic makeover in this subversive take on the famous French fairy tale — from the acclaimed director of The Love Witch, and for fans of Jane Eyre
When the successful British mystery writer Judith Moore meets Gavin, a handsome and charming baron, at a birthday party on the Cornish coast, his love transforms her from a bitter, lonely young woman into a romance heroine overnight. After a whirlwind honeymoon in Paris, he whisks her away to a secluded Gothic castle. But soon she finds herself trapped in a nightmare, as her husband’s mysterious nature and his alternation between charm and violence become increasingly frightening. 
As Judith battles both internal and external demons, including sexual ambivalence, psychological self-torture, gaslighting, family neglect, alcoholism, and domestic abuse, she becomes increasingly addicted to her wild beast of a husband. Why do women stay in abusive relationships? The answer can be found in the tortured mind of the protagonist, whose richly layered fantasy life parallels that of the female Gothic romance reader. Filled with dark humor and evocative imagery, Bluebeard’s Castle is a subversive take on modern romance and Gothic erotica.
https://www.amazon.com/Bluebeards-Castle-Novel-Verso-Fiction/dp/1804291854
https://www.lifeofastar.com/

Dollar Country (Collector/DJ/Archivist)

Dollar Country is a radio show hosted by WTFC radio. It primarily features country 45's that I find in dollar bins around the country. Featuring everything from old hits to b-sides, common records to rarities, and everything between the most popular artists and private press junk. I try to play things that I find good, interesting, or at least amusing, and I hope you like the show too. All feedback is welcome! You can find the most recent episode on the main page and all others under the "shows" tab. All the episodes are posted for free streaming on mixcloud.com/dollarcountry as well
​https://dollarcountry.org/

An Earful of Wax (Vinyl Collector)

Joe Buck collects and plays outsider, soul, funk, gospel, and does a ton of research for his Instagram account.
​https://www.instagram.com/an.earful.of.wax/

Awful Library Books 

About This Site
Librarians, bibliophiles, and lovers of nostalgia are all welcome here. Your librarians for this site are Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner. We are public librarians in Michigan. We have both been holding court at various reference desks for over twenty years and love talking about library collections and library service.
This site is a collection of library holdings that we find amusing and/or questionable for libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection.  Contained in this site are actual library holdings. No libraries are specifically mentioned to protect our submitters who might disagree with a particular collection policy. (A good librarian would probably be able to track down the holding libraries without too much trouble anyway…) Our posts come from snooping in library catalogs and from submitters all over the world. Please join in the fun and send us your finds.  Go to Submissions to find out more details.
Comments are welcome and moderated, but we do ask everyone to be nice and use your library voice.

https://awfullibrarybooks.net/

Long Lost Personals Instagram 

Posting daily to bring you only the finest of personal ads, as available, from the 20th century and prior. You will find love, in time.
https://www.instagram.com/longlostpersonals/

Eric Bresler (Curator/Filmaker)

Upstate New York native Eric Bresler is the Director/Producer of Otaku Unite!, the world's first documentary on the history of Japanese animation fandom in the United States. He is currently (2013) Site Editor/Founder for Cinedelphia.com, the online center of the Philadelphia film community, and is the Director of Programming at the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art (PhilaMOCA). Eric served as Program Director for the Cinedelphia Film Festival, which ran throughout the city of Philadelphia from April 4-27, 2013, and is the pop culture-filled mind behind the found footage comedy show Video Pirates.
​​https://www.philamoca.org/

Damon Devine - 2 Part Interview
​
Yma Sumac - Interview with Damon Devine 
Tammy Faye Baker - Interview with Damon Devine 

Yma-Sumac.com is run by the Official Archives of Yma Sumac created in mid-2004 with the active participation of Yma Sumac herself and expressly authorized by her. It is the official website of the Diva and all its contents are strictly copyrighted. There is no other such website or archive authorized by Sumac.
Miss Sumac’s Official Archives consist of thousands of vintage original photos (original negatives and color transparencies included), both personal and professional, as well as vintage documents, personal memorabilia, letters (both personal and professional), previously unpublished music and a great deal of her professional wardrobe and jewels (some of which were on display in a London fashion museum in the summer of 2018). Virtually all of the contents of the Archive consists of unique property previously owned by the Diva herself, amassed over her long life and a career that persisted for many decades. Such property was provided to the Archives either by her during her lifetime or by the personal collection of this site's webmasters, and from the estates of fans who have passed on and willed their collections to the archive. 
Owner and webmaster of this website is Damon Devine, who was Yma Sumac’s representative, personal assistant, makeup artist, and eventual caregiver for the last 11 years of her life. Because of these roles in her life he has been able to grant interviews to numerous publications including The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, numerous magazines, podcasts, TV, and radio shows all over the world.
In addition to being a homage to the great Diva, this site is the definitive source of factual information about her. As we know, there is much mystery surrounding Yma Sumac and her origins, marriage, career and personal life. The factual information contained in this website is taken directly from original official documents and letters covering the period 1941 to 2008.
Despite serious efforts, Wikipedia has unfortunately refused to accept use of this documentation, and therefore Wiki should not be taken seriously when reporting or seeking information about
Yma Sumac. Her Wiki entry has in fact been corrupted by quite a lot of undocumented and unreliable misinformation.

Julie Klausner (Actress/Writer) talks about writing "Schmigadoon" Season Two

Julie Klausner created the Hulu series “Difficult People,” produced by Amy Poehler and starring Klausner and Billy Eichner. Her podcast, How Was Your Week, was  called “one of the few essential podcasts” by the New York Times. She is head writer and Co-EP of Billy on the Street.  She’s also written for Mulaney, Best Week Ever, The Big Gay Sketch Show, The Triumph and Jack Show and many other comedy specials and pilots. She wrote a YA Novel called Art Girls Are Easy, and a a memoir called I Don’t Care About Your Band, which she’s currently developing to be a movie with Broad Green Pictures. Julie was, at one point, steadily employed by Vulture.com, which showcased her Real Housewives recaps and original videos in addition to lots of her other pop culture writing. Julie does a lot of comedy, variety and cabaret shows in New York City, where she lives with her tuxedo cat, Jimmy Jazz. She is a writer for "Schimagadoon". 

Cedric Yarbrough (Actor)

Cedric Yarbrough (March 20, 1973) is an American actor and comedian who stars in series Reno 911! as Deputy S. Jones and as Kenneth on the ABC sitcom Speechless, as well as voicing Gerald Fitzgerald on the Netflix comedy Paradise PD, Officer Meow Meow Fuzzyface on the Netflix comedy-drama BoJack Horseman, and Tom DuBois on the Adult Swim sitcom The Boondocks.
Yarbrough starred on the Comedy Central television series Reno 911! as Deputy S. (Sven) Jones which aired from 2003-2009 on Comedy Central. The series returned for a seventh season in 2020 on Quibi and for an eighth season in 2022 on The Roku Channel as Reno 911! Defunded. He also appeared in both of the feature length films, 2007's Reno 911!: Miami and 2021's Reno 911! The Hunt for QAnon.
He also provided the voice of Tom DuBois and Colonel H. Stinkmeaner on The Boondocks, Chocolate Giddy-up on Black Dynamite, and Firestorm and Black Lightning in the animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.
From 2016–2019, he co-starred in the ABC sitcom Speechless as Kenneth Clements. He has also had recurring roles in series including The Goldbergs, and Rake.  On Carol's Second Act, which premiered in 2019, he stars as Nurse Dennis, which started out as a recurring role before being promoted to series regular early in the first season. He is featured currently in "Lucky Hank". 

Alyssa Al-Dookhi (Comedian/Actitivist)

Alyssa Al-Dookhi (they/them) is a comedian, educator and activist who has been featured on CNN's United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell. They are a YallaPunk artist fellow and official POC (Person of Comedy), and have received grants from the Independence Public Media Foundation and The Leeway Foundation for their upcoming talk show for the LGBTQIA+ SSWANA community, Sabah il Khara. Their mission is to help marginalized artists create community, and to educate others on how comedy can be a life skill. You can follow their work @yallapunk and @thedookness
Alyssa grew up in the sweltering luxury of Kuwait and attended college in the frozen tundra of Kalamazoo, Michigan. However, it is in the City of Brotherly Love that Alyssa found comedy, honed their sharp wit and cultivated their dominating, energetic style. 
They are currently a production consultant for First Person Arts and a staff writer for Abortion Access Front. Alyssa co-hosts the podcast “Make Up Or Break Up”with John Deary. You can also catch them showing their passion for public television as membership talent on WHYY. Alyssa was a contestant in the Netflix karaoke competition show ‘Sing On!’ a warm-up comic for season 5 of Netflix's 'Queer Eye.’
Alyssa was a finalist in Helium Comedy Club’s Philly’s Phunniest contest and a featured performer at the Women in Comedy Festival presented by HBO. They have performed with SNL’s Punkie Johnson, Emma Willmann, Jimmy O. Yang, Sydnee Washington, Josh Gondelman, and Moshe Kasher.
​www.thedookness.com/

The Black Version 

The Black Version is a completely improvised show that started at the Groundings Theatre in Los Angeles in 2010 to sold out crowds and great reviews. Rolling Stone magazine calls the show “Hot” and the cast a “Comedic A-Team”. LA Weekly says the show is “Red Hot” and “Scores more than its share of belly laughs” while the LA Times calls the show “A Winner”.
The all African American cast of regulars includes show creator Jordan Black along with other comedy veterans Cedric Yarbrough, Gary Anthony Williams, Daniele Gaither, Phil Lamar, and Nima Funk all under the direction of Karen Maruyama. Special guest performers include Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele of Key & Peele (former original cast members), Wayne Brady, Niecey Nash, Jerry Minor, Angela V. Shelton, Misty Monroe, and others who come and perform in the show from time to time.
This talented cast has vast film and television credits ranging from Mad TV and Saturday Night Live, to The Boondocks and Reno 911. The show begins when the director asks the audience to suggest a popular film title and then the cast, right there on the copy, improvise the “Black Version” of that film. The show regularly performs at the Groundlings Theater and the Largo at the Coronet.
https://www.theblackversion.com

Julia Gorton (Photographer)

JULIA GORTON STARTED HER CAREER AS THE PHOTOGRAPHER, CREATIVE DIRECTOR + PUBLISHER OF THE NO WAVE FANZINE BEAT IT!,  WHICH OFFERED AN INSIDERS VIEW OF THE DOWNTOWN NEW YORK MUSIC SCENE, 1976-1980.
HER HIGH CONTRAST PHOTOS COMBINED WITH GRAPHIC PATTERNS, DIY LETTERING AND RANDOM COLLAGED ELEMENTS CAPTURED A FLEETING TIME WITH UNIQUE STYLE WHICH SHE CONTINUES TO EXPLORE THROUGH HER PHOTO COLLAGES, T-SHIRTS AND ZINES. GORTON'S PHOTOS OF MUSICIANS HAVE BEEN SEEN IN NY ROCKER, NO MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, VICE/GARAGE, DAZED, I-D AND ON RECORD JACKETS FOR INDEPENDENT LABELS INCLUDING ORK RECORDS, LUST/UNLUST AND ZE RECORDS.
HER PHOTOGRAPHY WAS PROMINENTLY FEATURED IN NO WAVE: POST-PUNK. UNDERGROUND. NEW YORK. 1976-1980 BY THURSTON MOORE AND BYRON COLEY, UNTYPICAL GIRLS BY SAM KNEE AND WHO SHOT ROCK AND ROLL: A PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY, 1955-PRESENT BY GAIL BUCKLAND. NOWHERE NEW YORK IS HER FIRST PHOTOBOOK.
HER WORK HAS BEEN SEEN AT KATA GALLERY IN TOKYO, DOOMED GALLERY IN LONDON, THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY, THE MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM, MOMA, MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN + THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART IN NEW YORK CITY. 
http://www.juliagorton.com/

Ricky Tucker (Author/ Educator) And The Category is...

An Electric Literature “Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Book of 2022” Selection
A love letter to the legendary Black and Latinx LGBTQ underground subculture, uncovering its abundant legacy and influence in popular culture.
What is Ballroom? Not a song, a documentary, a catchphrase, a TV show, or an individual pop star. It is an underground subculture founded over a century ago by LGBTQ African American and Latino men and women of Harlem. Arts-based and intersectional, it transcends identity, acting as a fearless response to the systemic marginalization of minority populations.
Ricky Tucker pulls from his years as a close friend of the community to reveal the complex cultural makeup and ongoing relevance of house and Ballroom, a space where trans lives are respected and applauded, and queer youth are able to find family and acceptance. With each chapter framed as a “category” (Vogue, Realness, Body, et al.), And the Category Is . . . offers an impressionistic point of entry into this subculture, its deeply integrated history, and how it’s been appropriated for mainstream audiences. Each category features an exclusive interview with fierce LGBTQ/POC Ballroom members—Lee Soulja, Benjamin Ninja, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, and more—whose lives, work, and activism drive home that very category.
At the height of public intrigue and awareness about Ballroom, thanks to TV shows like FX’s Pose, Tucker’s compelling narratives help us understand its relevance in pop culture, dance, public policy with regard to queer communities, and so much more. Welcome to the norm-defying realness of Ballroom.
​https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676289/and-the-category-is-by-ricky-tucker/

Rich Sommer (Actor)

Rich Sommer (born February 2, 1978) is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Harry Crane on the AMC drama series Mad Men (2007-2015) for which he earned two Screen Actors Guild Awards along with the ensemble cast. He is also known for his roles in the comedy-drama films The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012), The Giant Mechanical Man (2012), Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015), and BlackBerry (2023) as well as voicing Henry in the 2016 video game Firewatch. He guest starred in a number of Elementary episodes. More recently, he portrayed Detective Dean Riley in The CW crime drama television series In the Dark (2019). Sommer was born in Ohio and raised in Stillwater, Minnesota, where he was educated at Oak-Land Junior High School and Stillwater Area High School.  He then went on to attend Concordia Collegein Moorhead, Minnesota, where he majored in theater and sang in The Concordia Choir. Sommer studied improvisation at the Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis, and started an improv group, the Slush Puppies, in Moorhead. In 2004, he received his Master of Fine Arts in acting from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.Sommer returned to the school in 2006 to teach icebreakers to law students, and again in 2008 to do an improv workshop with undergraduate theatre students.
Sommer's most notable film role to date is as Anne Hathaway's friend Doug in the 2006 film The Devil Wears Prada. From February 2 to March 13, 2016, Sommer starred in the Off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's play Buried Child, with Ed Harris and Amy Madigan.  That same year, he also co-starred in Rob Reiner's biopic LBJ as Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, alongside Woody Harrelson in the title role. In 2018, Sommer appeared in the horror mystery film Summer of 84, opposite Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis and Tiera Skovbye.
Sommer is a fan favorite on the podcast Never Not Funny, hosted by comedian and pioneer Jimmy Pardo. In 2020, he became a recurring guest on the streaming version of The George Lucas Talk Show, appearing as himself and as his own fictional roommate, Steven Charleston. Sommer lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Virginia Donohoe, whom he married on August 13, 2005. They have two children.
Sommer is a fan of tabletop games and hosts a podcast about them called CARDBOARD! 
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cardboard-s-show/id1150235267​

Jeff Brawn (Artist) 

​Jeff Brawn is a Portland based illustrator, mixed media artist and author. His commercial clients include everything from movie studios to restaurants, podcasts, musicians and breweries.  His personal art has been collected by people you may have heard of  (Director James Gunn, Comedians Jimmy Kimmel, Bobcat Goldthwait, Mike Myers, Dana Gould, Jeff Garlin...) and a lot more who you definitely have not (Kevin Hopkins, for instance).  He's won a few awards, but they will not be listed here because Jeff says "Awards for art are as stupid as ashtrays on motorcycles." That statement not only shows his feelings about art awards, but also encompasses everything he knows about motorcycles. He is interested in collaborations, commissions, employment and anything else that might either be fun or put money in his ill-fed piggy bank.
Jeff Brawn's personal art projects fall under the umbrella of what he dubs "THE UNDERDOG UNDERGROUND." In the world of The Underdog Underground, the tables have turned and the underdogs and fringes of society are running the show. Supporting and character actors are the celebrities. Cult figures and used-to-be-famous figures are the stars of their own pinball and bubblegum machines. Everyone is a monster kid in this world, they all read Famous Monsters of Filmland (which is still being published by the still alive Forrest Ackerman) and can reference every Twilight Zone episode. Every citizen is a comedy nerd in this world, with the highest regard for the joy makers of the past and no knowledge whatsoever of bro comics who go to the gym instead of listening to George Carlin records. In this world, the beatniks won the culture war. Everything is cool-catman-daddy and no one is an asshole.
The media used will vary, depending on the subject and the voices in his head, but common tools include acrylic paint, watercolors, digital paint, collage, wood and metal.
 https://www.jeffbrawn.com/

Daryle Lamont Jenkins (Poltical Activist)

Daryle Lamont Jenkins (born July 22, 1968) is an American political activist, best known for founding One People's Project, an organization based in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Jenkins serves as its executive director. Jenkins has been documenting and writing about right-wing individuals and organizations since 1989, while he was still serving in the Air Force as a police officer. In 2000, he founded One People's Project out of a counter-protest to a rally in Morristown, New Jersey by Richard Barrett of the Nationalist Movement.
After anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley published a website that compiled a list of almost 200 active abortion providers and celebrated any act of violence against the providers and encouraged site visitors to take matters into their own hands, Planned Parenthood sued Horsley and other anti-abortion activists that produced similar tactics with "wanted"-style posters of abortion doctors as being a threat to them.
Although Planned Parenthood won the case they lost on appeal when a federal court ruled that the First Amendment protected the Nuremberg Files. That verdict — although overturned on appeal — paved the way for what would eventually be called "doxxing" in 2001, according to Jenkins in an interview. "We didn't see it as a weapon," he said. "We never used it as a threat. We wanted to be open about what we saw and this allowed us to be open."
One People's Project gained a reputation of publicly documenting hate groups, and their activities,[6] but in addition Jenkins has also gained a reputation for helping neo-Nazis leave those circles behind,  among them Bryon Widner, whose story was featured in the documentary Erasing Hate (2011), which has been turned into a feature-length motion picture titled Skin (2018).
While One People's Project and Jenkins had gained some notoriety over the years, it was not until Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency and eventual victory that put him, the organization, and the entire Antifa movement into the spotlight. Jenkins has appeared on numerous television news programs, articles, and documentaries, notably The Montel Williams Show, A Current Affair, The Rachel Maddow Show, and on AM Joy with Joy Reid. In 2018, the documentary Alt-Right: Age of Rage, which features Jenkins confronting white nationalist Richard Spencer, premiered at South by Southwest. Jenkins identifies as an anarchist.

Samm Levine (Actor) Two Episodes 

Samm Levine's first breakout role was as a member of the "geek" half of the short lived cult hit, Freaks and Geeks (1999).
The following year, he rejoined "Freaks and Geeks" producer, Judd Apatow, for another widely praised coming of age series, Undeclared (2001). That same year, Samm made his feature debut in the raucous teen spoof, Not Another Teen Movie (2001).
Since then, he has appeared in over 60 films and television shows, including the Oscar winning Quentin Tarantinoepic, Inglourious Basterds (2009), and in many memorable roles on beloved programs such as Entourage (2004),Modern Family (2009), NCIS (2003) and How I Met Your Mother (2005). In addition to his growing catalog of television appearances, Samm is also known for roles in many cult features, including the Broken Lizard comedy, Club Dread (2004), the sci-fi thriller, Pulse (2006), and acclaimed indie comedies, Drones (2010) and IFC's Made for Each Other (2009)
Samm has also served as co-host and producer to Kevin Pollak's renowned celebrity talk show, Kevin Pollak's Chat Show (2009), since its inception in 2009 - a role he came into after his interview as a guest on the first episode.

Eric Edelstein (Actor)

Eric Edelstein is an American actor and voice actor, who is best known for his roles in movies, such as Max in the 2009 DreamWorks comedy film Hotel for Dogs and Paddock Supervisor in the 2015 Universal sci-fi action film Jurassic World. He is also well-known for voicing numerous cartoon characters, including B.O.B.in the Nickelodeon TV series Monsters vs. Aliens(based on the 2009 DreamWorks movie of the same name), Charles "Chad" Caswell III in the Cartoon Network series Clarence, Timmy the Whale in Pig Goat Banana Cricket, multiple characters in American Dad!, including Mayor Alan Woodside (in some episodes) and Lonnie Bolmenferg, and Grizz in the Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears.
Additionally, Edelstein guest-starred in several TV sitcoms, such as Parks and Recreation, Shameless, and Modern Family. He also starred in Adam Ruins Everything. For Disney, he played Mr. Steve Tonucci in the 2014 comedy film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. He also voiced Michael Coogan in the Guardians of the Galaxyanimated series episode "Welcome Back" and Geoff in The Ghost and Molly McGee.

Skip Heller (Musician/Composer)

Fred Steven Heller, known to the music world as Skip Heller, is one of the Los Angeles country and roots music scene's most interesting and complex players. Known as "America's most confusing country singer," Heller was born in Philadelphia on October 4, 1965 to an Italian mother and Jewish father. The oldest of three, Heller began his musical odyssey when he saw John Hartford perform on Glen Campbell's television show and Michael Nesmith become one of the infamous Monkees. The young Heller decided that their jobs were more fun than his dad's bus-driving gig
He spent his formative years listening to anything and everything, an aspect of his music that is reflected in the eclectic nature of his work, revealing that no two Heller projects are alike. He was deeply influenced by Floyd Tillman, Merle Haggard, Roy Nichols, Bill Evans, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and a host of other contemporary artists from many different genres. While in high school, he was a member of numerous garage and wedding bands. This led to jazz gigs and the formation of his own rockabilly band. He continued to play around his hometown after college, finally landing a publishing deal and eventually a small record contract with Gladman Records that resulted in his first release in 1992, Fallen Hand of Love. Hailed by local critics for his stellar guitar style and journalistic approach to songwriting, Heller was considered to be one of the top up-and-comers around Philly. 
A second project followed in 1993. Again on the Gladman label, Moon Country was equally well-received. In that same year, Heller hooked up with fellow player D.J. Bonebrake and formed a quartet; their efforts were recorded on the Dionysus Records release One More Midnight. 
Heller's success as a musician and recording artist allowed him to expand his horizons. Educated and literate, he moved to Los Angeles in 1995, where he served as Les Baxter's score librarian and publicist while working as the reissue producer of Les Baxter: The Lost Episode on Dionysus. Thus another aspect of Heller's artistry became apparent as he not only worked with Baxter, but also other artists in various capacities. (Heller feels a tremendous responsibility to older artists and has dedicated himself to working with them as much as possible.) 
As a producer and arranger, Heller's move to the West Coast was profitable. Working with rockabilly legends Ray Campi and Sammy Masters propelled him forward. He was in demand both in front of and behind the boards, and toured with Yma Sumac, as well as serving as a sideman on the Rosie Flores/Ray Campi CD A Little Bit of Heartache. In 1997, he released Lonely Town, on the TRG-Ultra Modern Records label. In 1998, Heller released St. Christopher's Arms on Rounder/Mouthpiece and continued his studio work with artists as diverse as bluesman Big Jay McNeely and young rockabilly filly Dee Lannon. He also formed a working relationship with fellow jazz buff John Gilmore. 
A multi-instrumentalist, Heller plays guitar, keyboards, and bass. He has proven to be invaluable as an arranger, orchestrator, and teacher. He moonlights as a music journalist, paying special attention to avant-garde, Jewish, and roots music. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and is often in the company of pals like Dave Alvin, Chris Gaffney, Katy Moffatt, and other locals who have come to respect this most baffling of country singers. 
- bio by Jana Pendragon

Taylor Mac (Performer/ Drag Performer)
​with Host Earl Dax

Taylor Mac is a theatre artist who prefers to write a bio in the first person.  Hello.  I’m also a theatre artist who longs to be rid of the usual bios that are lists of achievements.  Here’s something different.
In case you don’t know, my pronoun is judy (only capitalized when at the start of a sentence, like a normal pronoun).  A few people have claimed I use this pronoun as a joke.  They are uninformed.  It’s not a joke, which doesn’t mean it’s not funny.  It’s a personalized pronoun for someone whose gender (professionally and personally) is constantly changing. My gender isn’t male or female or non-binary (which oddly creates a binary between people who are non-binary and people who are binary).  My gender is “performer” (one day I’ll get it on the passport).  It’s also an art piece.  Imagine getting to have a pronoun that’s an art piece!  I’m here to tell you, it’s as annoying to navigate as it is delicious.  You too may change yourself. I suppose that’s why I’ve made a life in the theatre; it’s a life geared towards change.
Here’s something a bunch of us theatre folk are considering, in terms of change: how can we make wondering the center of dramatic action, rather than centering the achievement of goals that are inherit in conflict? Sarah Ruhl says most theatre is made in the form of a male orgasm.  That seems accurate, in terms of theatre usually engorging to catharsis. But may we add that the radical queer understands a male orgasm may be varied, multiple, and circular?  All this to agree: There’s more than one way to engage with others.
There was once an acting teacher who said, “When your character is alone on stage their action is one of three things:  praying, figuring out, or recalling.”  Wise as that craft may be, may we transform this triumvirate into a truncation, one which offers an expansion?  While the method acting teacher is interested in showing how people are, some of us are (also?) interested in using theatre to explore possibility. Could we turn our craft into a vagary of wondering?  In other words, how do we become less knowing and more Socratic?
And are these actions reserved only for when we're alone? Or singular?  Or hierarchical?  Here’s a funny thing you start to wonder about as you climb the ladder:  if access to the tower means no access to the street, maybe, baby, it ain’t worth it.  And... that tower may be the room where it happens, but the street is where it’s at.
I also wonder:  would an isolated child really dream towards theatre if it meant spending even more alone time? Though, is a character ever alone? Even when rehearsing a one-person show, the ancestral makers are present. So rather than being in a tantrum-tower-building-isolating-your turn-my turn conflict, how might we wonder WITH them?
A start may be to rid ourselves of numbers.  Twenty-four hours.  Two hundred people.  Eight acts.  Five-character play.  Ninety-minutes.  Are all these numbers ways to disengage from the challenge of content?  Does form do the same?
Judy’s been a form queen.  I love a hand painted map.   Personalized, researched, detailed, figurative, metaphorical, and imperfect.  Essentially:  stack the genres, layer the forms, delight in the human warbles, throw in a little direction, notice the image is faded, get lost, damp, realize it’s grown something that might be harming you, try to clean it, hope it worked, realize it hasn’t, choose to make use of the harm, find a different way, repeat with variation, and call it theatre.
And… I wonder if it’s time to consider that form, style, aesthetics, pace, duration, craft, and process may not be content?  Gosh forbid.  We haven’t yet achieved enough critical mass of agreement that they are content.  Don’t give up yet Taylor Mac.  There is more work to be done before derailing this wholistic approach with sabotaging doubt.  Commit gyrl.
Still… there is a nagging question:  are we all simply Virgos obsessing over the categories, stratagems, and lists in order to ground our nomadic insecurities with an organizing principal chained to want?
Here’s a biographical detail for this bio:  I’m a Virgo.  Though I don’t believe in astrology.  Most of the people I hold dear are astrology nuts.  It’s hard to hold firm to a belief when dearness gets in the way.
Another dear thing, which keeps getting in the way of belief:  how can we be quiet while still freeing ourselves from the Puritan dominance over expression?  Another way to ask it:  how may we maintain our gentle souls in a tough place full of so many rules and mountains?  Must the tender queens be “fierce” to chisel a place for themselves in the world?  In order to survive?  Must they be queens; rulers with subjects?  May they not be tender? Must they pull up their bootstraps and emerge from dark caves, ready for battle? Must they brag and promote and grow, grow, grow, simply to be considered?
More here 
taylormac.org/

Bruce LaBruce (Artist/Filmmaker )

Bruce LaBruce is an artist. Numerous key galleries and museums such as Sadie Coles HQ, London (Kingly Street) have featured Bruce LaBruce's work in the past.The artist's work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from 185 USD to 513 USD, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2016 the record price for this artist at auction is 513 USD for 'Cobra Cross-Eyed, NYC', sold at Sotheby's Paris in 2022. Bruce LaBruce has been featured in articles for Dazed and Confused, Ocula and Wallpaper . The most recent article is Sexual Liberation From Pasolini to Bruce LaBruce written for Hyperallergic in October 2023.

Isis Aquarian 

Isis Aquarian is the Source Family’s archivist. As one of Father’s 14 wives, she photographed and filmed Father and the Source Family, recorded audio, maintained scrapbooks, and helped manage the Family business. Since the release of The Source Family documentary and her award-winning memoir, The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and The Source Family, she has produced a record “Isis: The Crone” (distributed through Drag City), supervised the release of other Source Family music through Drag City, created a Source Family comic book and her own tee shirt line. She has written for and appeared topless in Flaunt Magazine. She is co-founder and Vice-President of the Source Foundation. Isis is associate producer of The Source Family documentary. She has spoken at the International Intentional Communal Conference Association. Isis resides in Kailua, Hawaii; she has a daughter, Saturna, and a granddaughter.
 https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/collections/isis-aquarian

Angie Moon (Author - Crime of The Century)

Book Synopsis: Crime of the Century is a nonfiction book about classic rock’s connections to true crime. It’s not just a classic rock book or a true crime book, it’s both! The book is full of over 20 stories about how classic rockers met (or nearly met) murderers and attempted murderers and musicians who killed people. Some of these stories include ones connected to presidential assassinations like The Band playing at a nightclub owned by Jack Ruby, the man who killed JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Manson Family member Squeaky Fromme (who tried to shoot President Ford) trying to meet Jimmy Page, and DEVO writing a song based on a poem written by John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate President Reagan. You can read stories about how classic rockers encountered some of the most notorious serial killers like The Kinks meeting John Wayne Gacy, The Beach Boys meeting Charles Manson, and Debbie Harry allegedly getting into Ted Bundy’s car in NYC. It’s not just an Americanocentric book, there are also stories about The Kinks and Spandau Ballet’s encounters with Britain’s most notorious gangsters, the Kray twins, and Led Zeppelin making a big mistake by hiring gangster turned actor John Bindon as their bodyguard for their 1977 US tour. Section two of the book talks about musicians who killed people like Little Willie John, Joe Meek, Rick Stevens, Jim Gordon, and Phil Spector. This isn’t just a classic rock book, this is classic rock storytelling! 
https://crazyonclassicrock.com/buy-crime-of-the-century/

About Angie Moon 
https://crazyonclassicrock.com/about-me/

Drew Powell (Actor/Musician) 

From the moment Drew Powell was born, he was drawing attention. The actor, who went on to play a young Hoss Cartwright in the television series “The Ponderosa,” started life as a real Hoss: he set a record at the Indiana hospital in which he was born, weighing in at more than 11 lbs.
Drew grew up in Lebanon, Indiana, outside of Indianapolis. He graduated from DePauw University, where he majored in English Literature and was a Media Fellow, an honors program in media studies. He was active in the theatre department, and wrote and performed in campus television shows and student films.
After graduation, Drew moved to Los Angeles. His first television appearance was a small co-starring role in the hit television series "Malcolm in the Middle." So impressed were the producers of the show that they wrote the role into episode after episode and even named the character after him: “Cadet Drew.” He appeared on many episodes of the show over two seasons.
Next up for Drew was the prequel to "Bonanza" called "The Ponderosa” on which he played Hoss Cartwright. The twenty episodes produced continue to air on cable. Shooting in rural Australia, Drew met and fell in love with Veronica, now his wife, who was a make-up artist on the show.
Drew’s first starring role in a major feature film is in the remake of the 1971 film “Straw Dogs,” directed by Rod Lurie and due for release in late 2010/early ‘11. Other feature film appearances include “Starship Troopers 2,” “The Marine,” “Mexican Sunrise” and “1408” with John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Drew has guest starred on numerous television series including “House,” “Leverage,” “Psych,” “ER,” “The Office,” “CSI,” “Cold Case,” “Without a Trace,” “Monk," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Southland."
Playing the role of Bear, Drew starred alongside Paul Reubens in the 2010 stage revival of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. The show was a huge hit and is planning a Broadway run in fall of 2010. In the show Drew gets to perform his lifelong passions of singing and dancing. In "Skirts and Flirts," a monologue show at the Hudson Theatre in Los Angeles and the Kraine Theater in New York, Drew received rave reviews for his portrayal of Paul, a lonely guitar-playing troubadour, performing original songs inspired by a recent heartbreak. He performed in a version of the show at the 2009 South Beach Comedy Festival, sponsored by Comedy Central, in Miami.
Drew lives with his wife Veronica, son Leo and dog Elsie in Los Angeles. He is a legal resident of Australia and England. (2012)
https://www.drewpowell.com/biography​

Danbert Nobacon (Musician)

DANBERT NOBACON 
​freak music legend author, artist, performer, former Chumbawamba, lives and works in, and out of, Twisp WA in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in North Central Washington USA.
NEW DOUBLE ALBUM for 2024 ... update August 2023 - the new album is all recorded, and is currently being mixed. Working title: "Kochtopus'Garden," show-casing songs from the musical: "NOW That's What I Call Capitalism," exploring Dark Money Anon's capture of the US political system, it's idiot plan to rule a burning planet, and people fighting back. The album scheduled to land in early 2024 and features an expanded roster of musicians from both sides of the Atlantic ... more updates soon.
https://danbertnobacon.com/home.html

Little Gate-Crasher - The Life and Photos of Mace Bugen (with Author Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer)

You’ve nev­er met any­one like Mace Bugen — he was 43 inch­es of unstop­pable spir­it and ener­gy! Mace was a first-gen­er­a­tion Jew­ish-Amer­i­can born in 1915 — when soci­ety had low expec­ta­tions for chil­dren born with dif­fer­ences. But Mace was smarter than most; over the years he learned to effec­tive­ly turn what soci­ety in those days called a ​“hand­i­cap” into a pow­er­ful tool he could use to his advan­tage. Over a peri­od of three decades, using his unique com­bi­na­tion of guile, cun­ning, hand­i­cap, and sense of enti­tle­ment, Mace engi­neered pho­tos of him­self with some of the biggest celebri­ties of his day — among them Muham­mad Ali, Jonas Salk, Jane Rus­sell, Sam­my Davis, Jr., Joe DiMag­gio, and Richard Nixon — all fea­tured in the book. The Lit­tle Gate-Crash­er tells the sto­ry of how Mace became a self-made mil­lion­aire and a pil­lar in his Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and how his pro­gres­sive-mind­ed fam­i­ly gave him the con­fi­dence to lead a charmed life.​
https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-little-gate-crasher

John Kilduff (Host of Let's Paint TV/ Painter) 

Let's Paint TV is an American television show hosted by artist John Kilduff.
The show is best noted for its live episodes, which consist of the host painting while he runs on a treadmill; in addition, he sometimes takes calls from viewers, cooks food, plays ping pong, or makes blended drinks. The show's episode titles typically reflect whatever tasks are being undertaken, for example, Let's Paint, Exercise, and Play Ping Pong.
Let's Paint TV was originally broadcast on Los Angeles Public-access television cable TV from 2001 through 2008; after the LA public access studios were shut down in early 2008, the show transitioned to being an online-only program. The program began receiving world-wide attention in 2006 when Kilduff began uploading video clips of his show to YouTube.

John Kilduff conceived the idea for Let's Paint TV while working on a different comedy Public-access show. He was waiting for a Saddam Hussein impersonator to arrive and began thinking about his "exercise bike in the storage room, and I thought visually painting on an exercise bike could be interesting." He eventually decided that a treadmill would be more feasible for painting than an exercise bike.
John Kilduff claims his aim with the series is to make people of all skill levels try their hand at painting or other forms of creative self-expression. Kilduff frequently encourages viewers to use very large brushes in order to cover the canvas as quickly as possible before worrying about details, as he feels an empty canvas can be very intimidating to novices.
Although Kilduff says that the show is meant to inspire creativity in others, many of the callers he gets tend not to take him seriously. As the show was once on Public-access TV and is now on the internet, there is little to no censoring. The show also lacks caller screening. Many take advantage of this by expressing prejudice, cursing, accosting members of the show, and making derogatory comments about rival gangs. Despite the overwhelming number of prank callers, John generally continues to take calls.
John Kilduff is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. In 1987, he received his BFA in Fine Art (Painting) from Otis/Parsons School of Art and Design in Los Angeles and in 2008, he received his MFA in Fine Art (Painting) from UCLA.
https://john-kilduff.pixels.com/

Potroids (Rick DeMint) 

A Portroid is a Polaroid portrait that is autographed by its subject as the photo develops. NYU Langone employee and part-time MBA student Rick DeMint debuted an entire gallery full of them.
His newest exhibit, “Portroids: A 20 Year Retrospective,” showcases 212 Polaroid photos of his favorite celebrities, comedians and those in his circle at Brooklyn Film Camera in Williamsburg. The show highlights and celebrates some of his 5,000 photographs from the past 20 years.
http://www.portroids.com/

Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill Documentary w/ Directors Andy Brown and Brian Lindstrom

The never-before-told story of folk-rock icon Judee Sill, who in just two years went from living in a car to appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone. The documentary charts her troubled adolescence through her meteoric rise in the music world and early tragic death. Featuring Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Fleet Foxes, David Geffen, and more.

Photographic Justice: The Corky Lee Story (All Is Well Pictures)

 SYNOPSIS For 50 years, Chinese American photographer Corky Lee documented the celebrations, struggles, and daily lives of Asian American Pacific Islanders with epic focus. Determined topush mainstream media to include AAPI culture in the visual record of American history, Lee produced an astonishing archive of nearly a million compelling photographs. His work takes onnew urgency with the alarming rise in anti-Asian attacks during the Covid pandemic. JenniferTakaki’s intimate portrait reveals the triumphs and tragedies of the man behind the lens

Things I didn.tbuy Instagram (Micheal Arvelo) 

I vintage shop at estate sales, flea markets and thrift stores and share things I didn’t buy. I also sometimes do buy things. Submissions welcome!
​https://www.instagram.com/thingsididn.tbuy

Pat Thomas (Musician/Historian/Author) 

Thomas was the founder in 1988 of Heyday Records. He later moved on to Water Records, and currently compiles reissues at Omnivore Recordings.
Heyday Records leveraged the commercial success of Paisley Underground bands as a springboard for new artists who captured the flavor of the 1960s American and British folk scene, particularly local San Francisco artists such as Barbara Manning.Thomas also made pilgrimages to England, tracking down musical artists of the 1960s such as the Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, and Wizz Jones, before most had any of their music reissued on CD. While living in Germany for two years in the early 1990s, Thomas also promoted artists for Heyday and other labels.
His credits as a compiler of reissue recordings also include albums by Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Television, and for Omnivore, artists such as Game Theory.
Writing Thomas is the author of the book Listen, Whitey: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power, a 2012 work of African-American cultural history centering on the Black Panther Party,  with a concurrently released CD and double LP recording of speeches and protest songs. 
He is also known for his work as a music critic. He has written for Bucketfull of Brains, The Bob, Juxtapoz, Crawdaddy and Mojo and was editor of the last issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope. \As a musician, Thomas has been drummer and  sApercussionist for bands such as Absolute Grey, and presently for the musicians' collective Mushroom, which he founded.
From 1987 to 1997, Thomas released five solo records. He has also recorded as Patrick O'Hearn.
Thomas founded Mushroom in the San Francisco Bay Area, in November 1996. The group's sound has been described as a "diverse and eclectic blend of jazz, space rock, R&B, electronic, ambient, Krautrock and folk music".
Mushroom released its first recording in 1997, a 12" single called "The Reeperbahn," described by critic Fred Mills in Magnet as a recording that "could fool a blindfolded test applicant into thinking its 25-minute psych blowout was some long lost Krautrock epic from the early '70s. Let the band's wah-wah guitar, feedback violin, volcanic bass, jazzbo percussion, and tape loops take you down the fabled motorway, never to return to the place you once knew. "The Reeperbahn" provided the basis for CDs released in 1998 in the Netherlands and Germany.
In 1999, the band released Analog Hi-Fi Surprise in the United States and Germany, followed by a European tour, by which time keyboard player Graham Connah had exited and was replaced by Michael Holt.  Toronto music magazine Exclaim! wrote that the band "dish out the tastiest psychedelic funk you're ever likely to encounter. The groove's the thang as these tasty tracks cruise on Rhodes-driven jazz, ambient beats, surf riffs, and post rock textures. The band brew all these elements into a mixture that travels the outer realms of progressive funk. Like Tortoise jamming with the Grateful Dead or Soft Machine exploring the Funkadelic catalog, these loose open-ended excursions raise the art of fusion to a new plateau. While each track works a groove toward heady epiphany, the album as a whole refuses to stay locked into any one genre. Booker T-styled organ gyrations, rock guitar virtuosity, Bootsy Collins funk ups, ambient jazz, electronic beats, and Krautrock trance all make a stand, but the bottom line is that this is music that will move you. 

Kevin Alvir (Ilustrator/Designer/Cartoonist/Musician)

Kevin Alvir is an illustrator, designer, cartoonist, and musician. 
​Kevin was born outside of Washington DC in the suburbs of Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Printmaking. He went on to get a Masters in Art Education at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has also studied narrative illustration at the Kubert School of Art. 
His work has been featured in the pages of Funny or Die, Blackbook, Brooklyn Mag, Edible, The Neu Jorker, Paul Ryan Magazine, on records for acts such as Gabe Liedman, Nicole Yun, Essex Green, Holy Tunics, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and on tv screens for Will Ferrell and for High Maintenance on HBO.
Kevin currently lives in Brooklyn, NY where he illustrates for a variety of clients and comic book projects. 
​www.kevinalvir.com

Suki Jones (Sea, Swallow Me - An Addiction Memior)

In this dark, harrowing, and gripping memoir which details a drug addiction that almost killed her, Suki Jones writes with a raw immediacy and refreshing candor about not only being dependent on drugs, but keeping that dependency a secret from her family and friends.
https://www.amazon.com/Sea-Swallow-Me-Suki-Jones/dp/B0BWDZT7CW​

Jelly Boy the Clown

Jelly Boy the Clown is one part of the inspiring duo that is the foundation of the Squidling Bros. Circus Sideshow.
The Squidlings grew out of a brotherly bond over committing to the strange and deranged in all of us. Ever since that vow was uttered they have been creating feats of endurance and ridiculous that make the world laugh and cringe simultaneously. Having toured the group yearly they have performed in Ireland, England, Sweden, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, and many more countries and including the coasts of America and everywhere in between. When not creeping out the people of foreign lands they are busy creating a spectacular event called Carnivolution in Philadelphia PA, their hometown. Jelly Boy, being a wanderlust clown adored, feared and coveted by all, steals off in the night to frequent other stages across the US. Specializing in performing sick and twisted acts like fire breathing sword swallow, mental floss wine chugging to lighting firecrackers off his crotch to name a very few of his vast sideshow repertoire.

Michael Weinstein (Photographer)

Michael Weinstein has been in the photography business for over 30 years, working initially as a portrait and fashion photographer. After moving to New York from Chicago, he transitioned into architecture and real estate photography and founded MW Studio. His work has been included in numerous architectural photography books, as well as national and international magazines. 
https://www.mw-studio.com/about-us

Gered Mankowitz (Rock n Roll Photographer) 

Gered Mankowitz was born in London, England, on 3rd August 1946.  The first of four sons of the author, playwright, producer and film writer Wolf Mankowitz and his wife, the Jungian psychotherapist Ann Mankowitz.
After an education of sorts at several London co-educational “progressive” schools, he left at 15, avoiding all exams and completed his education devoid of any formal qualifications. Having displayed a natural ‘eye’ for photography whilst on a school trip to Holland and having been inspired to take up photography by the legendary actor Peter Sellers, who was a business associate of his father’s, Gered’s photographs were seen by the photographer Tom Blau, who offered him an apprenticeship at his famous photo agency, Camera Press Ltd., in London.  Over a period of several months Gered worked in all the various departments that made up Camera Press, finally moving to the studio and going on various assignments in and around London.
In 1961, Gered went to Barbados with his family and began taking photographs professionally using a Hasselblad 500C camera; producing work that ranged from architectural studies for the island’s top architect to the first Boeing 707 landing at Bridgetown airport for British West Indian Airways.
On returning to London, Gered was offered a chance to go to Paris for the autumn collections, working for the highly thought of and famously dapper fashion photographer Alec Murray.  Despite the glamour and exciting atmosphere, it was clear that this particular genre of photography was not for him, and on returning to London he went to work for the ‘show-biz’ portraitist, Jeff Vickers MBE hons FRPS.  Gered had already photographed the Bristol Old Vic production of the American musical play “Fiorello” in 1962 and his photos had been used for the front of theatre display in Bristol and when the show transferred to London’s Piccadilly Theatre. This made him the youngest photographer to have his pictures used in this way; so, working for Jeff Vickers gave him an opportunity to develop his ‘show-biz’ contacts and to broaden his experience in the studio under Jeff’s expert guidance, taking portraits of many actors and other personalities.
Early in 1963, together with Jeff Vickers Gered opened his first studio at 9 Masons Yard in the heart of London’s West End.  On one side was the infamous disco “The Scotch of St.James”, hangout of the pop glitterati of the time and where Jimi Hendrix was to play on his first night in the city in 1966, and on the other the art gallery “Indica”, partly financed by The Beatles and where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono.
During 1963, Gered met and photographed the singing duo Chad and Jeremy, who had just signed with Ember records.  One of these photos was used as the cover of the duo’s first album, “Yesterday’s Gone”, and Gered found himself working in the music industry at a time when it desperately needed new, mould breaking images.  He began to work with a new generation of producer/managers like John Barry, Shel Talmy and Chris Blackwell photographing artists who were of his own generation and who felt at ease with him in a way that had not been possible with the old school of established photographers.
Within a few months Gered had already begun to make a name for himself in the music business, and as a result of a chance meeting with Marianne Faithfull, who had just released her first single “As Tears Go By”, invited her to pose for him which she willingly did.  They instantly got on well and after several sessions with her Gered got to know her manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham.  In early 1965, Oldham asked him to photograph the Rolling Stones, who he also managed and produced.  This was a major turning point in Gered’s career, because from this first session came the cover for “Out of Our Heads” (U.S. title “December’s Children”), and as a result he was asked by the Stones to go to America with them on their record breaking 1965 autumn tour.  During this 6 week (36 city) tour of the U.S. Gered photographed the Stones on stage and off, and got particularly close to Keith and Charlie.  There were many adventures as Gered found himself on the road with the greatest Rock band in the world at the peak of their original success.  Gered continued working with the Stones as their ‘official’ photographer, producing photos for other albums (“Between the Buttons”; “Got Live If You Want It”; “Big Hits”; and several others), press and publicity, taken at home, in the recording studio, on stage and behind the scenes until mid-1967, when the band broke off with their manager Oldham.
Through the 60’s, Gered continued in the music world working with Oldham at his famous Immediate label, and with many major artists including Jimi Hendrix, Free, Traffic, The Yardbirds, The Small Faces and Soft Machine. Into the 70s and into the 80s with Slade, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, Sweet, Elton John, Kate Bush, Eurythmics, ABC, Duran Duran and many others.
During this period, Gered also worked in other areas of photography, including advertising, book covers and a brief spell of taking ‘stills’ on movies, including several months in Sardinia in 1968 with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the ill-fated movie “Boom”.
For over 22 years from 1979 Gered was based at his North London studio, a converted Victorian chapel, taking prize-winning photos for the advertising industry.  During this period, he was also a regular contributor to several major publications including The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer Magazine and Mojo magazine as well as continuing his career in the music industry shooting sessions with artists such as Oasis, Verve, Catatonia, Kula Shaker, Embrace, The Buena Vista Social Club, Snow patrol, The Bravery, Dukes Spirit, Patrick Wolf and many others.
In 1982 Gered had a major exhibition of his work at London’s famous Photographers’ Gallery. This exhibition was the first in the U.K. to focus on the world of music and was a pathfinder in this genre. In 1984 a book based on this exhibition, called “Hit Parade”, was published in the U.K. and U.S.A.  Also in 1984 a book of Gered’s Rolling Stones photographs, called “Satisfaction”, was published.  Both books were very well received, and as a result there began the growing interest in the Gered Mankowitz archive.
https://mankowitz.com/

Margaret Cho ( Actress/ Comedian/ Musician/ Advocate/ Entrepreneur)

Photo by Albert Sanchez

Comedian. Actor. Musician. Advocate. Entrepreneur. Artist.Just a few of the adjectives that describes Margaret Cho, a jack of all trades, master of many. When hasn’t Margaret and her voice been a part of our consciousness? It seems like she’s always been here, lighting the path for other women, other members of underrepresented groups, other performers, to follow. 
Margaret was born and raised in San Francisco, an experience that she can say with all sincerity helped to shape her world-view. “There were old hippies, ex-druggies, burnouts, drag queens, and Chinese people. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time.”
Right as she was starting her stand-up career at age 14, Margaret won a comedy contest to open for Jerry Seinfeld in the early ’90s. She soon moved to Los Angeles and, still in her twenties, hit the college circuit, where she became the most booked act in the market and garnered a nomination for “Campus Comedian of The Year.” She performed over 300 concerts within two years. Arsenio Hall introduced her to late night audiences, Bob Hope put her on a prime time special and, seemingly overnight, Margaret Cho became a household name.
Her groundbreaking, controversial ABC sitcom, All-American Girl (1994) soon followed. Oddly, while ABC courted her because she was a non-conformist Korean American woman with liberal views, the powers-that-be decided Margaret should “tone it down” for the show. Although she was an Executive Producer, this would be a battle she could not win. The experience was a traumatic one, bringing up unresolved feelings left over from childhood; Despite all of her successes, feeling left out and alienated are subjects still near to Margaret’s heart. She has gladly become the “Patron Saint of Outsiders,” speaking for those who are not able to speak for themselves, and encouraging people to use their voice to promote change.
In 1999, her groundbreaking Off-Broadway one-woman show, I’m The One That I Want, toured to national acclaim and was made into both a best-selling book and feature film of the same name. After her earlier experiences, she made sure she would control the distribution and sales of her film, an unusual move at the time. I’m The One That I Want received incredible reviews. In 2001, Margaret launched Notorious C.H.O., a smash-hit 37-city national tour that culminated in a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. Notorious C.H.O., hailed by the New York Times as “Brilliant,” was released as a feature film and aired on Showtime.
In March of 2003, Margaret embarked on her third sold-out national tour, Revolution. It was heralded by the Chicago Sun Times as “Her strongest show yet” and the CD recording was nominated for a Grammy forComedy Album of the Year. In 2005 she released Assassin, with The Chicago Tribune stating “(Assassin) packs passion in to each punch.”
In 2007, Margaret hit the road with Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry and Erasure to host the True Colors tour, benefiting the Human Rights Campaign. An entertainment pioneer, she also created and starred in The Sensuous Woman, a live variety show featuring vaudevillian burlesque and comedy, which she took for an extended Off-Broadway run.
Margaret returned to television in 2008 with the VH1 series, The Cho Show. Describing it as a ‘reality sitcom,’ Margaret said at the time, “It’s the closest I’ve been able to come to what I do as a comic on TV.”
The aptly titled Beautiful tour came next, exploring the good, bad and ugly in beauty and the marketers who try to shape our world-view. The concert premiered in Australia at The Sydney Theater, marking the first time Margaret debuted a tour abroad. 
In 2009, Margaret nabbed a starring role in the comedy/drama series Drop Dead Diva, which aired for six seasons on Lifetime.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, Margaret participated in Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars in 2010. Memorably, Margaret performed wearing a gay-pride-supporting rainbow dress during a time when the issue of suicides among gay youth was on the rise due to bullying. “I was very proud to have been able to wear a gay pride dress on a show that is so conservative” 
2010 culminated with another high honor, a second Grammy Award nomination for Comedy Album of the Year for Cho Dependent, her incredibly funny music album. Featuring collaborations with Fiona Apple, Andrew Bird, Grant Lee Phillips, Tegan & Sara, Ben Lee and more, the album received critical acclaim, not only for the topics she tackled, but also for her musicianship. 
In 2011, Margaret released the live concert film of Cho Dependent, which also had its cable network debut on Showtime. Shot at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, GA, the performance was characteristically no-holds-barred.
In 2012, Margaret spent whatever free time she had crafting her all new stand-up show, the uproarious MOTHER, which kicked off with both a US and European tour. According to Margaret, “MOTHER offered an untraditional look at motherhood and how we view maternal figures and strong women in queer culture.”
Margaret’s creative side moved full speed ahead with an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress on 30 Rock,where she played Kim Jong II. 2015 also brought Margaret back to the stand-up stage with PSYCHO. Called “wildly kinetic” by the New York Times, PSYCHO ended up being a sad prediction of our future. Said Cho at the time, “It’s about the insanity, the anger I feel about everything happening in the world, from police brutality to racism to the rising tide of violence against women.” 
The five-time Grammy and Emmy nominee released her second studio album, American Myth, earning her another Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine named her one of the 50 Best Stand-Up Comics, calling her “the sort of funny, sex-positive feminist and LGBT activist younger comics continue to look up to.” 
Her 2018 Fresh off the Bloat tour is still going, even if Covid shuttered it down in 2020. When asked to describe how the show will evolve, she said, “When we go back out into a semblance of normal life, the show will take on everything that has happened while we were social distancing. It was a deep period of reflection where all comedians had to figure out how to live life without hearing laughter. It felt suffocating but also uplifting. I learned so much about myself and the world by staying still. I want to share the things I laughed at, alone, with the world.”  
2019 and 2020 saw Margaret jump back in to acting roles. She kicked off ’19 as the Poodle on the first Season of the wildly successful show The Masked Singer on FOX, appeared in a 2019 episode of Law & Order: SVU and an episode of HBO’s critically acclaimed series High Maintenance. In 2020, Margaret appeared in three films – she played a ruthless Hollywood movie studio exec in Faith Based, “Fairy Gay Mother 1” in Friendsgiving, starring Kat Dennings and Malin Akerman, and “Auntie Ling” in Netflix’s first major animated film, Over the Moon, which Vulture called “one of the most gorgeous animated films ever made.” As if she wasn’t exercising that artistic muscle enough, she launched her own podcast, “The Margaret Cho,” where the first part is a chat with a celebrity friend you already know and the second part is with an up-and-coming artist you may not know yet. 
With so much success in her creative life, Margaret still finds time to support the causes that are important to her. She is incredibly active in anti-racism, anti-bullying, and gay rights campaigns. She was the recipient of the Victory Fund’s Leadership Award, the first-ever Best Comedy Performance Award at the Asian Excellence Awards, the First Amendment Award from the ACLU of Southern California, and the Intrepid Award from the National Organization for Women (NOW). Margaret has been honored by GLAAD, American Women in Radio and Television, the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), PFLAG and LA Pride, who gave Margaret a Lifetime Achievement Award for leaving a lasting imprint on the LGBT community. 
Margaret will also be honored by the She Rocks Awards in January, 2021.  The award credits women who display unique talent and leadership within the music industry. Previous award recipients include Melissa Etheridge, Pat Benatar, Suzi Quattro, Chaka Khan, Ronnie Spector and more. It seems only fitting that Margaret should start the new year alongside some other bad ass women.
https://margaretcho.com/

Godlis (Photographer) 

While art critics and historians cut up and categorize the different styles and intentions of modern day photography, it is street photography that remains elusive—hard to to describe, easy to practice, and close to impossible to truly master. Because when all the world’s your stage, how do you choreograph your actors, choose wardrobe, dialogue, design lighting and basically stop time, while creating something truly timeless? Oh, and all in 1/30th of a second. Yeah, go ahead and put down your Leica and think about that for a moment. It’s an intuitive skillset, one that also depends on the artists’ own experience and their ability to simultaneously be apart from and a part of the scene itself.
But in terms of street photography’s ability to capture something unique about society, when practiced by a master over many years, it reveals as much about us as it does about the artist, that is if you look carefully enough. So let’s take a hard look at the work of David Godlis. Known for his classic images in and out of the punk scene at CBGB’s, his photographs tell a story about a shifting American society, that point where cities were crumbling and everyone was just a bit over the softness and idealism of the decades before. The streets were tough, the faces were hard, and there was an edge about town. And whether in New York, Boston, or Miami, his coincidental locations were themselves important characters in his continuing human drama.
“I got my first camera in 1970 on a whim. It was just a new technological thing for me. I had seen the film Blow Up a few years before and I thought to myself “photographers look kind of cool.” And so I got a camera, a Pentax Spotmatic and I started shooting pictures. At that time I thought I wanted to be a writer because I thought I was decent and I was going to school for English Literature, but then I met a lot of people who were really good at writing. Way better than I was. And I was intimidated. So I started taking pictures of those people I was with and everybody was liking my pictures a lot. Like literally liking, not Facebook liking!
I would just take the film to the drugstore—a roll of Tri-X—take it to the drugstore, get a batch of black and white 4 x 6 prints back and just show them to friends and hand them around and make everyone look like rock stars. I didn’t actually know any rock stars, but my friends were all hippy-ish rock star lookin’, and I’d take pictures and make them look like a band. Everybody liked my pictures so I thought, “maybe I’m good at this?” I was getting a good reaction. And then I started going to the library at Boston University and looking at photo books and pulling them off the shelves and I sort of discovered it all, I think via photo magazines at the time, they’d have history of photography articles. And I’d go and pull a Cartier-Bresson book off the shelf that was in the library. Or look at a Walker Evans book. 
And so photography started seeping into my brain. And I realized there was this “thing” called photography, aside from just having a camera and taking pictures. And as I started to dip into different photographers from different eras, I decided that I wanted to develop my own film. But, unless you have someone to show you, it’s a little complicated. So, I took a course at BU. I had to sneak into a course that was in the School of Journalism, because the guys who wanted to be journalists had to take a photo course that they didn’t want to take. It was a requirement. 
https://www.theculturecrush.com/feature/for-the-love-of-godlis​
​https://www.godlis.com/

Trent Harris (Filmmaker)

Critics have called the films of Trent Harris absurd, pointless, hysterical, brilliant, and one of a kind. Inde­pendent Film and Video Magazine called Harris "one of America 's premier cult directors." This web site contains the most comprehensive collection of Trent Harris' unique films and videos. It also contains books, works of art, and other strange things created by Trent.
https://www.echocave.net/index.html

 Danielson Deep Dive (First episode of our Documentary style series)

“Five years. A very long time in popular music, especially in the present moment when the delivery systems, the methodologies, are changing weekly. And yet five years is the time it took Daniel Christopher Smith, a.k.a. Brother Danielson, a.k.a. Danielson, to complete this his newest work, Best of Gloucester County. Normally what happens to our artists of the popular song, in the completeness of adulthood, is that the demands of family and mid-life make the write/record/tour rat-race unappealing, and five years ensue because the artist no longer wants, not entirely, what the popular song offers in the way of profession and culture. Instead, he wants some of what family brings. Who can blame him?
But in a way, Danielson has, during the five years, let go (reluctantly, perhaps) of some family collaborators—namely his brothers Andrew and David, the percussionists, and childhood friends Chris and Ted, on keys and bass/guitar respectively. While sisters Megan and Rachel and Daniel’s wife Elin, the essential chorus for many a Danielson Famile song, still appear, the bulk of Best of Gloucester County revolves around a completely new “team,” as Smith has put it himself (Patrick Berkery- drums, percussion; Evan Mazunik- piano, organ; Joshua Stamper- bass; Sufjan Stevens- banjo, vocal; Andrew Wilson- electric guitar), most of them local players from the Gloucester County, NJ, area where Smith lives and works and has his studio.
That means that Best of Gloucester County is not, despite the title, a retrospective “Best of” album (that would be Trying Hartz, the last Danielson-related release), but rather a statement of intention. Danielson is now a locally-owned and locally-ambitious entity, and, in this case, a locally-released (Gloucester County) album, since this is the first Danielson release on Daniel Smith’s own Sounds Familyre label. Seizing the means of production! With the result that here is a genuine attempt to dazzle! The tracks are thoroughly arranged (with bass player Joshua Stamper creating some great horn charts), and the rhythm section (which, in the past, was charming and lovely) sounds more like a rock and roll rhythm section than ever before, and the addition of an electric guitar player throughout means that the interplay between guitars, and the relationship between guitar and keys and glockenspiel, is quite a bit more dramatic, more cinematic.
What does that mean? What does a Danielson album actually sound like, if it is no longer “outsider art,” but is, as it ought always have been considered, a thoughtful and persuasive contribution to the world of popular song? Suddenly the musical forebears are not quite as distant, so that you can hear bits of Captain Beefheart and Syd Barrett in the mix, psychedelic music in general, also the Kinks, the Beatles, T. Rex, and also country and folk and gospel (but in a way that doesn’t sound like country and folk and gospel). These influences now give way to a completely realized musical vision, in which arrangement is pursued with a singularity untold earlier, but which is just as virtuosic as on the “chamber pop” releases of the present moment, on an Antony and Johnsons album, as on a Grizzly Bear album, as on a Joanna Newsom album. Danielson, that is, has become a beautiful thinker in popular music, idiosyncratic but accomplished, whose major keys are always slipping away into minor keys, whose chord progressions are most often chromatic, always modulating, whose voice, somewhere in the area of two entire octaves, is in every register here, as though he has to be the entire chorus himself.
For this writer, one of the very best of the earlier Danielson Famile releases was Tell Another Joke at the Ol’ Choppin’ Block (1997), in which there was a trance aspect to some of the compositions, as though the record were Qwaali or Raga. The good news for listeners to Best of Gloucester County is that it picks up that same meditative, and semi-improvised approach to the drone, in “Hosanna in the Forest,” and in “Hovering Above that Hill.” In fact, the album drives ultimately toward these more uncommon song structures, passing through some musical-theater and pop-inflected numbers—“People’s Partay,” and “Lil Norge”.
The whole represents a new and welcome chapter in the Danielson oeuvre—a startlingly effective new band, a new thematic field (the locally-grown opus), produced with more sonic ambition than any recent Danielson effort, but without sacrificing the brave interior journey that we have come to expect from Daniel Christopher Smith: the world is complex, slightly dangerous, full of temptations, but there is still grace, beauty, meaning, and the music that is required to suggest all this is anything but easy, but that doesn’t mean it is not rewarding, beautiful, funny, sad, and generous.”
–Rick Moody, November 2010
http://www.soundsfamilyre.com/artists/danielson/

Minnesota Mean Doc with Director Dawn Mikkelson

MINNESOTA MEAN takes you into the thrilling world of roller derby, following the lives of six badass women as they chase after the ultimate prize, the Hydra. When the team's top player gets sidelined with an injury, the question looms large: can they still clinch the victory?
This isn't your typical sports tale—it's a raw and real look at the tough, independent women at the core of roller derby. It's a story of triumph and heartbreak, of strong women facing challenges with grit and determination. How do these fiercely independent women navigate a sport that demands teamwork? And how do they juggle the demands of roller derby without giving up on their personal dreams?
MINNESOTA MEAN is a powerful exploration of strength—physical, emotional, and mental. It's a journey into the world of friendship, independence, and finding balance both on and off the rink.
​https://www.minnesotameanfilm.com/

Sid Kaplan (Photographer/Printer) 

After graduating from The School of Industrial Arts, Sid worked from 1956 until 1962 at a series of nondescript minimumwage jobs in the photography industry. These years eventually led to a black-and-white printer’s position at Compo, the premiere custom lab in Manhattan. At Compo, Sid printed for some of the greatest photographers of the last 50 years.
In 1968 Sid left Compo to become an independent printer. He has made more than 91,000 images, not counting the bad rolls of film he decided not to keep. The Rose Library at Emory University, Atlanta, GA récently purchased Sid Kaplan’s negatives, contact sheets, and two copies of all of the images.
https://www.lesdoucheslagalerie.com/en/artists/3474-sid-kaplan/

Judi Jupiter (Photographer/Author) 

Photo By Meryl Meisler

Jupiter came to New York in 1974 from Detroit to be a buyer at Macy’s. That gig didn’t last very long — she boasts of great social skills but also concedes issues with authority. She met Meisler on a Grey Rabbit bus to New Orleans in 1977 and just a few months later the two began their nightlife forays. It was May of 1977 — a month after Studio opened — when the two began clubbing, mostly hanging out, dancing, and having fun — “our main reason to be there!” Meisler said. Jupiter carried a discreet spy Minox camera or a Leica CL.
https://www.amny.com/news/city-truly-never-slept/

Gabriel Amzallag aka Mc Blue Matter (Artist/Musician/Producer) 

Gabriel Amzallag b.k.a. MC Blue Matter is an illustrator from Lille, France. He's part of the Jakarta Records family after living in Berlin for a while. Aside from that, he's made illustrations for the likes of Darker Than Wax, Melodiesinfonie, Dr. Dundiff, and as the co-creator of 'The Limelight' series by The Find Mag. But above all: he's a rap fan from the cradle to the grave. 
https://thefindmag.com/author/mc-blue-matter/

Heavyweight - A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory w Author Solomon J.Brager

A moving and provocative graphic memoir exploring inherited trauma, family history, and the ever-shifting understanding of our own identities, for readers of Gender Queer and I Was Their American Dream.
Solomon Brager grew up with accounts of their great-grandparents’ escape from Nazi Germany, told over and over until their understanding of self was bound up with the heroic details of their ancestors’ exploits. Their great-grandmother related how her husband, a boxing champion, thrashed Joseph Goebbels and cleared beer halls of Nazis with his fists, how she broke him out of an internment camp and carried their children over the Pyrenees mountains. But that story was never the whole picture; zooming out, everything becomes more complicated.
Alongside the Levis’ propulsive journey across Europe and to the United States, Brager distills fascinating research about the Holocaust and connected periods of colonial history. Heavyweight asks us to consider how the patterns of history emerge and reverberate, not as a simple chain of events but in haunting layers. Confronting the specters of violence as both historian and descendent, this book is an exploration of family mythology, intergenerational memory, and the mark the past makes on the present.
In conversation with works by Rebecca Hall, Nora Krug, Rutu Modan, and Leela Corman, Heavyweight will contribute to the collective work of Holocaust studies and the chronicle of woven human stories.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/heavyweight-solomon-j-brager?variant=41120737263650

Walk­ers in the City: Jew­ish Street Pho­tog­ra­phers of Mid­cen­tu­ry New York
w/ Deb­o­rah Dash Moore

In the middle of the twentieth century, good cameras became smaller and lighter, enabling street photographers to roam alleyways, ride elevated trains and subways, and stroll beaches in summertime to capture daily life with urgency and intimacy. Walkers in the City showcases the distinctive urban vision that working-class Jewish photographers produced with these new cameras on New York City's streets and in public spaces. 
Drawing on the experiences of and photographs by a generation of young Jewish photographers who belonged to the New York Photo League, Deborah Dash Moore offers a new perspective on New York as seen through their eyes―a cityscape of working-class people and democratizing public transit. With their cameras, they pictured Gotham's abrasive social milieu and its evanescent textures and light, creating an archive of vernacular images of city life and a distinctive tradition of street photography that would be widely imitated. 
Walkers in the City documents how these roving, imaginative New Yorkers, entranced by the medium of photography, transformed everyday sights into rousing, joyous, and poignant moments of time, creating visual poetry out of the fabric of social life.
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501768477/walkers-in-the-city/

Summer Qamp Documentary w/ Director Jen Markowitz 

At Camp fYrefly in rural Alberta, queer, non-binary, and trans teens get to just be kids in a supportive space, surrounded by counsellors who can relate to their experience ― and help them toast the perfect marshmallow.
Time is a flat circle, and the right-wing rage machine is once again persecuting queer and trans people. Jen Markowitz’s latest demonstrates that one of the best salves is sunlight ― specifically, the sun that shines down on Camp fYrefly in rural Alberta, where queer kids can spend a few days hanging out and just getting to be kids together “without any of the explanations,” as one camper puts it.
Warm, funny, and moving ― and made with obvious consideration for, and clear cooperation from, the people in front of the lens ― Summer Qamp cuts through the fear-mongering around queer and trans kids simply by spending time with its subjects as they are. The kids at Camp fYrefly are less concerned with their specific status in the LGBTQIA2S+ community than they are with what they’re going to do in the talent show or how they’re going to overcome a lifelong fear of horses ― which, honestly, does seem a lot more practical.
Removed from bullies and awkward or uncomfortable family situations, the kids immediately blossom into their empathetic, confident, amazing selves, sharing nerdy obsessions and encouraging one another to do the things that scare them. Maybe it’s petting that horse; maybe it’s telling their parents they’re trans. Either way, it’s wonderful to watch them figure it out.
​https://tiff.net/events/summer-qamp

No One Asked You Documentary w/ Director Ruth Leitman 

Ruth Leitman is an award-winning filmmaker recognized for highlighting social justice issues in feature documentaries over the past 25 years, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, Paul Robeson Fund, TribeCa Film Institute, Fledgling Fund and Illinois Humanities Council. In 2016 she was named in British Film Institute, Sight and Sound Magazine’s The Female Gaze: 100 Overlooked Films Directed by Women. In 2015, she directed for Kartemquin Films’ Al Jazeera America documentary series Hard Earned, which was nominated for an International Documentary Association Award (2015) and won an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Journalism Award (2016). Premiering at Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs, Lipstick & Dynamite (2005) won the Documentary Storytelling Prize at Nantucket Film Festival; was broadcast on SHOWTIME and featured on Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and NPR’s Fresh Air and Morning Edition. Her immigration film Tony & Janina’s American Wedding (2010) premiered at Chicago International Film Festival won a jury prize as well as several social justice awards. Alma (1998) won the Documentary Feature Jury Prize at Hamptons Film Festival, screened at IDFA, SXSW, Director’s Guild of America and Whitney Biennial. Wildwood,NJ (1994) has enjoyed a second life as a viral film since 2009 and screened at Hot Docs, CHP:DOX and toured theatrically in the UK in 2015. Her early photography work was part of the current major exhibition, Underexposed: 100 years of Women Photographers at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2021.  Ruth is developing The Pin-Down Girl, a fiction feature film based on her documentary Lipstick & Dynamite about the pioneers of women’s wrestling. 
https://www.nooneaskedyoudoc.com/filmmakers

Eliza Hardy Jones (Musician/Artist)

Eliza Hardy Jones is a quiltmaker and internationally touring musician, singer, and songwriter from Philadelphia. She currently tours with Grammy-nominated artists Iron & Wine and Grace Potter, in addition to releasing her own original music.
​https://www.elizahardyjones.com/

Andi Marie Tillman (Actress/Musician) 

These days Andi is living out her calling and continuing to make people laugh by the millions with the power of social media. The self-proclaimed “Hillbilly Pygmalion” multihyphenate “actor, songwriter, humorist, papaw and general shitass” has earned millions of views across her social media channels and an avid fan base of supporters, amassing over 13 million likes on her TikTok alone. What started as Andi using social media to promote her acting projects quickly meteored into hundreds of thousands of folks backing Andi’s music, her spot-on impressions, her clever commentary and most of all, her laugh-out-loud skits that feature a cast of familiar characters.
Her digital family tree started with Pawpaw, an old man adorning overalls and a toothless scowl loosely inspired by Andi’s real grandfather. A video skit in 2022 of Pawpaw visiting his buddy at Hardee’s jump-started her viral career, racking up over 2 million views and thousands of comments with some variation of “This is literally my Grandpa!”
Then there are the aunts. There’s Aunt Pam, a church gossip in a Liza Minnelli wig; Bethany, the “Woo Woo Aunt” who peddles crystals and essential oil remedies; and the unnamed Heavily Medicated Aunt who is — you guessed it — on enough muscle relaxers for the whole family.
And this only scratches the surface of Andi’s online character reel. There’s Claudia, Merlee, Charlene and then Nashveratu, the displaced vampire trying to make it big as a singer-songwriter in Nashville. Watching, mockumentary style, with Andi masked beneath a full face of theatrical makeup, a bald cap, fangs and a perfected Transylvanian accent, it’s hard to believe this is the same actor.
All of her characters are an amalgamation of the folks Andi grew up with in Scott County. Pawpaw has the look of her grandpa and the mishmash personality of other old men that were in her life as a child. Aunt Pam is based so closely to Andi’s own Aunt Carletta that the parishioners at Carletta’s church lovingly rebranded her as “Pam” at Sunday service. Even Heavily Medicated Aunt has a real-life muse who shall remain anonymous. 
Taken from this article by Adam Payne
https://ynstmagazine.com/perspective/influence-the-many-faces-of-andi-marie-tillman/

Jesse Moynihan (Artist/Musician) 

Jesse Moynihan grew up outside of Philadelphia where he spent most of his time drawing and playing music. In 1997 he dropped out of Pratt Institute, got a film degree at Temple University and decided to concentrate on comics. His work has been featured in The Believer, MOME, Vice, Arthur, the Philadelphia Weekly, and various independent anthologies. In 2005 he received a Xeric grant for self publishing. In 2009 he released his first graphic novel, Follow Me through Bodega.
Jesse worked as a writer/storyboard artist for the Cartoon Network show, Adventure Time from late Season 1 until the end of Season 7. He helped create the characters Lemongrab, Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant, Maja the Sky Witch, and Jermaine to name a few. He was heavily involved in the story arcs pertaining to Magic Man, Tiffany, Lemongrab, Betty, Wizard City, Glob, and Finn's grass arm.
In 2014 he co-created the animated short, "Manly" for Cartoon Hangover's YouTube channel.
Currently Jesse lives in Los Angeles, writing and drawing Forming, and recording music for his collaborative studio project Make A Rising.
https://jessemoynihan.com/

Reverend Billly (Actor/Activist)

Reverend BillyThe character of Reverend Billy was developed in the mid 1990s by actor and playwright, William Talen.
Talen grew up in small towns throughout Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. He left home at 16, moving east with Charles and Patricia Gaines, a writer and painter who encouraged him as an artist. Talen began to perform his poems and stories, hitch-hiking from Philadelphia to New York to San Francisco.
Talen’s chief collaborator in developing the Reverend Billy character was the Reverend Sidney Lanier,  vicar of  St. Clement’s in the 1960s, an Episcopal Church in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan. In an effort to increase attendance at St. Clement’s, Lanier had torn out the altar and pews, inviting actors to perform scenes from plays by his cousin Tennessee Williams and Terrence McNally, and founding the American Place Theater. Lanier described Talen as “more of a preacher with a gift for social prophecy than an actor.” In the early 1990s Talen moved with Lanier to New York City from the San Francisco Bay Area, branding his act as a “new kind of American preacher”
The Reverend Billy character debuted on the sidewalk at Times Square in 1998, outside the Disney Store, where he proclaimed Mickey Mouse to be the anti-Christ. He was arrested multiple times outside the Disney Store, where he duct-tapped Mickey Mouse to a cross. Reverend Billy’s sermons decried the evils of consumerism and the racism of sweatshop labor, and what Talen saw as the loss of neighborhood spirit in Rudolph Giuliani‘s New York.
The Reverend Billy character isn’t so much a parody of a preacher, as a preacher motif used to blur the lines between performance and religious experience. “It’s definitely a church service,” Talen explained but, he added, it’s “a political rally, it’s theater, it’s all three, it’s none of them.” Alisa Solomon, the theater critic at the Village Voice, said of Reverend Billy’s persona, “The collar is fake, the calling is real.” Along with the Church of Stop Shopping, they have been referred to by academics as “performance activism,” “carnivalesque protest,” and “artivists”
https://revbilly.com/

Charles Traub (Photographer)

Charles H. Traub was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1945. He studied English literature at the University of Illinois, and joined the Peace Corps after graduation in 1967. An accident in Ethiopia forced him home to Kentucky where he met Ralph Eugene Meatyard, who became an important inspiration and friend. After service in the United States Army in 1969, he decided to pursue photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. There he studied with Aaron Siskind, Arthur Siegel and Garry Winogrand. His thesis of abstracted black-and-white landscapes "Edge to Edge" was widely exhibited, and featured in a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago. Following his landscape work he made three well-known series of black-and-white photographs: Street and Parties (from The Chicago Period), and his first monograph, Beach, all used an innovative vignette on a Rolleiflex SL66.
In 1971 Traub began teaching full time at Columbia College, Chicago, and was responsible of developing new curriculum for the growing public interest in the medium. Traub was instrumental in developing the school’s Contemporary Trends Lecture Series that celebrated renowned international photographers and image-makers. Subsequently, he became chairperson of the department and founded the Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, which became the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MOCP). In 1973, along with his colleague Douglas Baz, Traub went on a sabbatical to make the Cajun Document, extensive look at the culture of the Louisiana bayous.
Traub’s first major body of work in color, Street Portraits, began in 1976, continued after his move to New York City shortly thereafter, and culminated in the book Lunchtime. His move to New York was followed by his first solo exhibition of photographs at the Light Gallery. Its owner, Tennyson Schad, then hired Traub to become director of this prestigious gallery. Traub curated numerous exhibitions there, including The New Vision: Forty Years of Photography at the Institute of Design; Aaron Siskind’s Harlem Document; Designed for Photography; and The Color Work of the FSA. Traub also showcased major photographers new to the gallery: William Klein, Luigi Ghirri, Ray Metzker, Mario Giacomelli and Louis Faurer among others.
After leaving the gallery in 1980 Traub continued his personal work and formed the Wayfarer partnership with Jerry Gordon—a specialized editorial and corporate photography agency. Their work was featured in many magazines, including Life, Time, Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, New York and Avenue as well as annual reports for Fortune 500 companies. Throughout the 1980s Traub traveled to Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Morocco and the Far East for his personal work. Dolce Via and In the Still Life are compendiums of photographs from that period.
In 1987 Traub was asked to design a graduate studies program for the School of Visual Arts, which became the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department. Since its inception, the program has been distinguished for its innovative use of digital technology, the inclusion of all aspects of the lens and screen arts and its internationally celebrated faculty. As an early advocate of the power of digital photography, Traub adapted it to his own practice. His philosophy about the importance of digital thinking is reflected in the manifesto "Creative Interlocutor" and the textbook In the Realm of the Circuit. Creative projects that highlight Traub's integration of new technologies include the interactive website Still Life in America and the iBook No Perfect Heroes: Photographing Grant.
here is new york: a democracy of photographs was co-founded by Traub. This living memorial to the tragedy of 9/11 received the Brendan Gill Award as well as the ICP Cornell Capa Infinity Award. It is considered one of the seminal examples of crowdsourcing, digital production and online distribution of universally produced imagery. The exhibition traveled to 42 venues worldwide, and with its Web presence is considered to be one of the most widely viewed exhibitions of all time.
Traub has dedicated himself to photographic education, and has been a chairperson at the School of Visual Arts for 30 years. He has served on a number of non-profit educational boards, and is the president of the Aaron Siskind Foundation. He has had more than 60 major exhibitions in in galleries and museums throughout the world, including one-person shows at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Speed Museum, Hudson River Museum and Historic New Orleans Collection. Traub's work is in the permanent collections of more than two dozen major museums worldwide.
https://www.charlestraub.com/

Melanie Gaydos 

Melanie Gaydos, a trailblazing fashion model and actress, was born on July 18, 1998, in Connecticut.  Melanie pursued her education at the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York, where she embarked on her modeling career by responding to advertisements on Craigslist.

Derek Ridgers (Photographer)

​Derek Ridgers (born 1950) is an English photographer with a career spanning more than 30 years. He is best known for his photography of music, film, club and street culture, and has photographed stars from James Brown to The Spice Girls, from Clint Eastwood to Johnny Depp, as well politicians, gangsters, artists, writers, fashion designers and sportsmen.
https://www.derekridgers.com/

Michael Rupert (Broadway Performer/Composer/Director) 

In Falsettos Michael Rupert created the central role of Marvin, a stressed-out husband who realizes that he’s gay and leaves his wife and son for a man while struggling to act responsibly toward his family. Singer, actor, director, and composer Rupert has often appeared on Broadway in musical theater and is also known for his musical scores.
Born in Denver, Colorado, in 1951, Rupert appeared in various bit parts on popular television series already in his teens and early twenties. He made his Broadway debut in The Happy Time (1968), a musical by Kander and Ebb about a French-Canadian photographer who sees the world and gains fame, then returns to a provincial life in his hometown. The show stared Robert Goulet (who won the Tony® for Best Actor in a Musical), and Rupert, who played the photographer’s impressionable nephew, a Tony® nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
In the mid-1970s Rupert took over the title role in the musical Pippin, set in eighth-century France and focusing on the son of Charlemagne (Pippin). Rupert returned to Broadway as one of the six performers in Shakespeare’s Cabaret (1981), consisting of musical settings of Shakespeare’s lyrics by Lance Mulcahy. In his next appearance on Broadway, Rupert gave a stand-out performance as Oscar in the 1986 revival of Sweet Charity, with a cast that also featured Debbie Allen and Bebe Neuwirth. For his performance as the claustrophobic accountant who gets stuck in an elevator with the leading lady and later becomes romantically involved with her, Rupert won the Tony® for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
It was in 1981 that Rupert assumed the persona of Marvin – a role he is particularly known for – in the original off-Broadway production of March of the Falsettos, written by William Finn. The character Marvin, a troubled Jewish husband and father who realizes that he’s gay and faces a dilemma as he weighs duty against desire, had already appeared in Finn’s musical In Trousers (1979), which did not feature Rupert; but Rupert’s portrayal of Marvin in the March of the Falsettos and its sequel, Falsettoland (1990), as well as in Falsettos (1992), which joined both plays on Broadway, became the benchmark performance. Rupert’s abilities as a creator were revealed in the off-Broadway musical 3 Guys Naked from the Waist Down (1985), a high-energy comedy about three disgruntled comedians, for which Rupert wrote the score. His talents as both composer and performer came to Broadway in Mail (1988), an epistolary musical about a novelist – played by Rupert – who, after hiding away from his unsatisfying life, reads out letters that had piled up during his absence. Rupert wrote the score, Jerry Colker the book and lyrics. In 1991 Rupert took over the leading role of Stine in City of Angels and later stepped in to play Tateh in the musical Ragtime. His most recent Broadway role was that of Professor Callahan in the original cast of Legally Blonde (2007), based on the popular movie. Other off-Broadway and regional credits include Ancient History, Putting It Together, Elegies, Baby, Thrill Me, and Adrift in Macao.

Marc Miller (and Bettie Ringma) Selling Polaroids in the Bars of Amsterdam, 1980

In 1980, Marc Miller and Bettie Ringma, a Dutch-American couple, spent the year making Polaroids of Amsterdam nightlife that have been collected in a beautifully-designed new book. Mainly concentrating around an area locally known as ‘De Wallen’—the most extensive and best known red-light district in town—they portrayed prostitutes, natives of the area and passers-by, bar staff and pub tigers. The images were all taken in an informal manner, though each subject was a customer of the photographers’ little business on the side. Within that square mile and a half—a biotope where a wide variety of exotic creatures of the night crawl around together—one could have an instant photo taken on request for the price of two beers. In the visual arts, there is a longstanding tradition of what in Dutch art history is known as the ‘tronie’: typological portraits depicting the anonymous faces of figures considered outsiders. The odd man out, the eccentric drifter, the prostitute and the parvenu. Paintings of this kind became very popular in the 17th century—Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Steen, for example, were known to observe and draw people in taverns and cafes. From more recent times, we know that such a fascination for debauched nightlife continued in the dive bar portraits of Brassaï and later also in Anders Petersen’s Cafe Lehmitz (1978). These were close-ups of individuals in a state of intoxication, nevertheless vibrating with genuine empathy and respect for the people encountered by the artist—an approach which the early 80s Amsterdam Polaroids also reflect. The collaborative work of Miller and Ringma from 40 years ago has enjoyed renewed attention in recent years. Internationally, the artist duo is probably best known for the series of proto-selfies that they created as conceptual art. From 1976 to 1979, the couple were regulars at the CBGB club at the Bowery, a bar in a notoriously grungy area of New York City at the time. Yet, it had a certain attraction to local creatives who felt a need for the more ramshackle side of life—including Miller, who made a wide range of polaroids of his Dutch partner Bettie at the CBGB, their “second home,” posing in an unbound manner with all sorts of rock stars, who are now considered celebrities, and other punks that made up the Bowery music scene of the late 1970s.
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/bettie-ringma-marc-h-miller-selling-polaroids-in-the-bars-of-amsterdam-1980

Ashleeta Beauchamp (Burlesque/ Author/Magazine Publisher)

Glamour ghoul intersectional feminist and smut peddler. Ashleeta is a burlesque dancer from Hollywood California. She is also the creator of Peek-A-BOO! Magazine. A playboy style horror magazine that features artful nudes of your favorite monsters alongside social conscious think pieces. You can find her on instagram @ashleeta to follow her various creations.“
https://ashleeta.bigcartel.com/

Life of Libby - Chasing Peace & Justice with Humor, Guts, and Passion by Heather Shafter 

This is a book about the life of Libby Frank and her story of chasing peace and justice with humor, guts, and passion. Libby Frank was an activist for peace and freedom since the 1940s. She participated in public swimming pool desegregation actions, support for farm and factory worker strikes, and actions to end the war in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, Libby was the Director of the Bergen County, NJ Peace Center, which provided draft counseling and hosted Jane Fonda (and others) to speak against the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, Libby volunteered with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Middle East Committee and developed international coalitions to work for a just peace in the Middle East. In 1981, Libby became the Executive Director of the U.S. section of WILPF. Libby relied on her bonds with fellow activists, folk music, and her sense of humor to keep her going through decades of activism. Her story shows us that the power of change lies in working with others for a common cause.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Libby-Chasing-Justice-Passion/dp/1962407292

Ruthann Friedman (Musician) 

Ruthann Friedman (born July 6, 1944) is an American folk singer-songwriter and guitarist best known for writing the hit song "Windy" for the American sunshine pop band the Association.
Born in Bronx, New York,  Friedman spent her formative years in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles after her family moved to Southern California when she was 10. She started playing guitar at the age of eight while listening to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Josh White.
After moving to California, Friedman recalled feeling "very isolated" with few friends, so she started playing guitar in her room. Her first song gained her a spot on the television talent show Rocket to Stardom at age 12. While at Ulysses S. Grant High School, she started playing "Hoot Nights" at The Troubadour in West Hollywood
Her first paid performance was at the Green Spider Coffee House in Denver, Colorado at the age of nineteen. Soon she was part of the "Hippie Migration," traveling the California Coast and living off earnings from her performances. While staying in San Francisco, California, Friedman befriended the members of Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and Janis Joplin. Her friendship with Van Dyke Parks not only influenced her deep commitment to music but also introduced her to The Association, who recorded her song "Windy" in 1967. Friedman wrote "Windy" in 20 minutes while living in an apartment in David Crosby's house.
In 1968, she was part of the band Petrus, which also included Peter Kaukonen.
Two years later, Constant Companion, her first solo album, was released by Reprise Records.  She also wrote and sang the songs for the cult movie The Peace Killers,  released in 1971. While on tour promoting the album, Friedman suddenly returned to her family's Los Angeles home after a family tragedy and stopped recording music altogether in 1972–73.
In 2006, Water, a San Francisco label, reissued Constant Companion, renewing interest in Friedman's music. Prior to the 2006 reissue, Friedman had been out of the music business for more than thirty years, spending the intervening time running her own stationery company, raising two daughters and earning a degree in English from UCLA.  Later in 2006, Water released a compilation of rare and previously unreleased home recordings from 1965–1971, Hurried Life.
After the re-release of Constant Companion, Friedman was invited to play at a local festival. She recalls that she had "to learn to play [guitar] again" and was taught the songs from her album by a guitarist at a local folk venue, McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, but "it took about two years [of practicing] for me to get my chops back." Friedman has been performing locally in Los Angeles since that time.

Arlene Gottfried 

Arlene Harriet Gottfried (August 26, 1950 - August 8, 2017) was a New York City street photographer who recorded scenes of ordinary daily life in some of the city's less well-to-do neighborhoods. Her work was not widely known until she was in her 50s. Although Jewish by birth, later in her life she embarked on a career as a gospel singer.  Gottfried published five books of her work: The Eternal Light (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1999), Midnight (powerHouse 2003), Sometimes Overwhelming (2008); One of her series, Bacalaitos and Fireworks (powerHouse 2011), focused on Puerto Ricans in the 1970s; Mommie (powerHouse 2015) was a portrait of three generations of women in her family: her immigrant grandmother, her mother, and her sister. Mommie : Three Generations of Women received Time Magazines Best Photobook Award in 2016. Her photographs and archives are in the collections of the European House of Photography (MEP), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library  Gottfried has exhibited at Paris Photo, the Leica Gallery in New York and Tokyo, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and at Les Douches La Galerie in Paris. Her photographs can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Berenice Abbott International Competition of Women's Documentary. Born in Brooklyn, she moved with her Jewish immigrant family to the neighborhoods of Alphabet City. Gottfried was the older sister of comedian and actor Gilbert Gottfried. When Arlene was a teenager, her father Max gave her an old 35mm camera, which she eventually took to Woodstock, even though she said, "I had no clue what I was doing. She credited her upbringing for giving her the ability to get intimate photographs of strangers . I had exposure to all kinds of people, so I never had trouble walking up to people and asking them to take their picture. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She worked as a photographer for an advertising agency before freelancing for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Life, the Village Voice, and The Independent (London (UK)). She was an habitue of Nuyorican Poets Café, a friend of Miguel Piñero, and on the Lower East Side sang gospel with the Eternal Light Community Singers. Her photography dealer was the owner of the Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery. She died August 8, 2017 from complications of breast cancer at her home in Manhattan at the age of 66 surrounded by friends and family. We will be interviewing many folks that have been close to her and have championed her work. 
cover photo by Kevin Downs

Muppets Muppets Muppets 2 part episode 

A two part episode celebrating Jim Henson featuring such Muppet related interviews and messages
​ by Paul Williams, Gene Barretta, David Arquette, and many, many more. 

Sponsored by Risk Podcast, and Rich Wexler Photography

​https://www.risk-show.com

www.richwexlerphotographer.com
​www.instagram.com/richwexlerphotographer/​