Hello (Nov 2017)
Please note that all Laughtears.com events are listed on the calendar on our website http://www.laughtears.com/ - the opening page. This is the best source for the most updated information., and/or call 310 306 7330  

MESS meets regularly at 212 Pier (no longer at the Unurban) - 2nd Saturdays from 2-4pm. Free street parking  on 2nd St between Pier and Rose Ave

for immediate release contact: Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 PFSuzy@aol.com 

212 PIER is proud to host MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) at Cafe 212 Pier, 212 Pier Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90405, 310-314-5275Free admission, 2 pm (for two hours), More info: 310-306-7330 - The public is invited to these engaging interviews by Gerry Fialka with the following modern thinkers who'll address the metaphysics of their callings and the nitty-gritty of their crafts. http://www.laughtears. com/mess.html and  http://www. laughtears.com

Dec 9, SAT - Michael Novick is a long-time anti-racist, a retired school teacher and rank-and-file union activist, former board member of KPFK and the Pacifica Foundation, staff member of Change Links community calendar and editor/publisher of "Turning The Tide: Journal of Inter-communal Solidarity." He was born and raised in an Orthodox Jewish immigrant trade union family in Brooklyn NY. A former member of SDS, Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, he founded People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action-Los Angeles (ARA-LA/PART) in 1987. He edited "Brother: A Forum for Men Against Sexism" in the 1970s in the Bay Area. He has lived in L.A. since 1982, participating in many anti-war, anti-colonial, antirepression and anti-capitalist campaigns and coalitions. He is a (non-biological) great-grandfather. He is committed to solidarity with liberation and independence movements inside and outside the militarily imposed borders of the US, Native land and water rights, Puerto Rican independence, the Chicano/Mexicano movement, Hawaiian sovereignty, the BDS movement for Palestine, and the Black freedom struggle. He has participated for a number of years in the Little Tokyo to Manzanar Spirit Run organized by the 50/500 Elders Committee annually since 1992. He believes that decolonization is essential to liberation and defense of the planet and the biosphere, and that people of European descent must help uproot white supremacy. www.antiracist.org

Jan 13, 2018 - Sat - PAULA PERLMAN After completing her Masters of Arts from Loyola Marymount University in Dance Therapy, Paula went on to study Authentic Movement, a Jungian-based approach to deep listening of the body and respect for the unconscious as it is expressed in movement.  At the same time Paula worked in a community mental health center with all ages as a Dance/Movement therapist. She presently teaches creative movement with inner-city children (since 2002) and with children at a child-initiated, conflict resolution-based progressive private school in Los Angeles (2 1/2 yrs.-11 yrs.) (since 1993).  She also facilitates retreats for adults in creative process, creative movement and Authentic Movement.  Paula was a teaching faculty member for the Center for Movement Education and Research (CMER) which provides certification through an alternate route program in Dance Therapy.  Paula is co-creator of a movement-based, arts in education program, “Access to Learning through Dance and Movement,”   for teachers.  She assists with   the Professional Development program at Inner-city arts  and volunteered for ten years with Disabled Sports Eastern Sierras as a ski instructor for people with varying different-abilities.  As a life-long learner valuing exploration, play, discovery and reflection, she continues her studies  of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Training in Level III and received her MS in Creativity, Change and Leadership in 2016 from Buffalo State College.  She plans to continue sharing her expertise in creativity by providing  Professional Development workshops for teachers on Enhancing Creativity in the Classroom and in her creative movement classes for children 2 1/2-11years. She also is also excited to combine her creative personality and skills into her clinical work with adults and looks forward to facilitating creativity workshops that will include art, dance and creative problem solving.  She loves to spend time in nature swimming  in the ocean, cross country skiing, hiking, biking or sitting under an oak.  Find her at paulaperlman.com. BC-DMT, MS, LMFT, CLMA 

Feb 10 Sat KEN YAS has been involved in almost every aspect of Hollywood-based production and post production, from several perspectives: as a product specialist, marketing manager, post production executive and service provider. His skill set is comprehensive and cross-disciplinary. 
Beginning with his work @ the Sony Video Institute and Lucasfilm, he has collaborated in the development and introduction of systems that have revolutionized how films and television are made. These included the EditDroid System from Lucasfilm, the CMX 6000 nonlinear system from Chyron, the Lightworks nonlinear system, the Avid Media Composer and the first authentic digital motion picture camera—the Viper from Grass Valley. 
His career includes senior managerial and sales roles @ The Post Group, Hanna Barbera Cartoons, Intel, Thomson-Grass Valley and Santa Monica Video. 
At WCP Media Services, Ken’s current clients include film and television production companies looking for a secure, cloud service to deliver high-value content to international broadcasters.
At Lightcraft, Ken is representing the new Halide FX system, a wide area camera tracking, rendering, and compositing system integrated with the Unreal 3D render engine. Halide FX represents a technological and function leap forward for real-time virtual production. It's VR capable and shows promise as an adjunct to AI platforms. 
Yas is concerned with how technology shapes human behavior, and its hidden psychic effects. Visit: halidfx.com

March 10, Sat - MEGAN WILLIAMS - An Academy Award nominee and recipient of the Alfred I. duPont Columbia Journalism Award, Williams teamed with Dunham in 2002 to produce No Distance Too Far, an official selection of the International Documentary Association’s 6th Annual Documentary Film Showcase. A former adjunct professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, she began her career in the 1970’s as co-founder and partner of TVTV — an independent video collective known for its influential body of work. Visit: www.bostonmarathonfilm.com

April 14, Sat - Doug Knott has been writing and performing poetry in SoCal for many years. He is the author of the collection Small Dogs Bark Cartoons, various chapbooks, and is included in the Outlaw Poetry BibleHe was a member of the seminal touring poetry performance troupe “The Carma Bums” – who won the revived TV “Gong Show” with an act called “Slobs in Suits,” and wrote/produced several poetry videos, some of which played on broadcast TV and won national prizes. He has hosted many poetry-reading series, and since 2013 has been president of the board of trustees of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation. He has also written and continues to perform his solo theatrical show “Last of the Knotts” in LA, NYC and other venues. Now retired from a California legal practice, he is writing another solo theatre show based on a naïve young lawyer’s (somehow comic) true close-up encounters with white-collar crime.
June 9, Sat - Mike Mollett poet and artist http://mikemollett.com/about.html
July 14, Sat - John Mooney glass blower and artist http://www.johnmooneyglass.com/about.htm
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Gerry Fialka interviews are at

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"Gerry Fialka asks unexpected Questions about important Ideas, eliciting Answers that can surprise even those doing the answering.  My Interview with him taught me something about myself; it was a Gift." - David Gatten 
  
"Great interviewing requires a stimulating interviewer and Gerry Fialka is certainly that. Best part is that he makes the rare act of deep thinking in public before an audience flow as creatively and easily as a Basquiat painting." - Jay Levin, LA Weekly founder and former editor-in-chief 

"Fialka's cool questions are right at the heart of all my work. By far the best interview I have ever been treated to." - Ondi Timoner, only two time Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury winner  

"My experience in Gerry Fialka's MESS series was a scintillating discussion of history, culture, philosophy, sociology and the creative process. His questions and ideas transcend the accepted, traditional limitations of 'the interview.' " - Brad Schreiber, author, producer, screenwriter, journalist  

"Fialka's interview with me was an invigorating, pleasurable, philosophical, specific, awakening journey." - Harry Northup, actor and poet  

"Fialka's interview had me buzzing inside with thoughts and memories that his engaging questions set in motion. Super stimulation." - Filmmaker Larry Gottheim  

"Fialka's interviews are really inspiring. Listening to these interviews have given me a peace of mind."  - Creator of things/Film Curator/Wanderer Michelle Mellor 

"Gerry Fialka comes up with some dynamite questions that never occurred to me, and he has an astonishing memory for quotations. I appreciate his great work. " - Author Kristine McKenna  

"I had so much fun. I don't think I've ever heard such wonderful questions." - Author Janet Fitch  

"Fialka's interviews are more gratifying than one could imagine, exploring ideas that don't normally get discussed. With his MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) series, a cumulative effect emerges as each progressive interview builds upon and enhances the previous ones. His diligent efforts examine the impulses that motivate people. The secret to good conversation lies in the questions, and Fialka's questions are an art form." - William McNally, Activist/Author  

"I was so honored to be selected for an afternoon of stimulating and rollicking conversation with you! It's rare to have an opportunity to communicate for any length of time these days.  What a gift you give to your interviewees of your bright, probing and convivial interaction. You've created a simultaneously celebratory and profound happening unlike anything else anywhere. What a splendid combo of fun and intelligence you possess! Your creativity enlivens our community enormously, and I truly appreciate you. " - Poet Linda Albertano to Gerry 
"Fialka's interview of me was smoother than fine tequila, and twice as intoxicating!!!" - Robert Egger, President of L.A. Kitchen
 
"Fialka's questions were engaging.  What a wonderful and uplifting interview."  - Steve Vai

GERRY FIALKA, film curator, writer, lecturer, and paramedia-ecologist has conducted interactive workshops at Cal Arts, UCLA, MIT, USC, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Art Center, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Culver City High School, Massey University (New Zealand), and more. His public interview series MESS has included the likes of Mike Kelley, Alexis Smith, Abraham Polonsky, Mary Woronov, Paul Krassner, Ann Magnuson, Heather Woodbury, Norman Klein, Chris Kraus, P. Adams Sitney, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Kristine McKenna, John Sinclair, Van Dyke Parks, Orson Bean, George Herms, Doug Harvey, Janet Fitch, Jon Rappoport, Brad Schreiber, Simon Forti, Rudy Perez, Barry Smolin, SA Griffin, Bruce Bickford, Stan Warnow, Rip Cronk, Marina Goldovskaya, Harry Northup, John French, Jon Alloway, Bill Daniel, Phil Proctor, Ed Holmes (aka Bishop Joey), Marcy Winograd, Greg Burk, Kirk Silsbee among many others. Fialka's interviews have been published in books by Mike Kelley and Sylvere Lotringer. His William Pope.L interview is published in the magazine ARTILLERY Jan'08 issue. Fialka's MESS retrieves the original 1970 MESS (McLuhan Emergency Strategy Seminar) with McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, and Ted Carpenter (They Become What They Behold) all of whom stressed that breakdowns can be breakthroughs. Fialka has also interviewed Grace Lee Boggs, Ondi Timoner, Timothy A. Carey, George Clinton, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Ben Watson, Tom Gunning, Mac Rebennack (aka Dr John), Martha Colburn, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Bill Brand, Pip Chodoov, Craig Baldwin, DJ Spooky, ruth weiss, MA Littler, Bill Morrison, Braden King, Bruce Langhorn, HASKELL WEXLER, BILL PERRINE, PAUL CRONIN, HASKELL WEXLER, JEFF MOSIER, JOHANNA DRUCKER, PATRICK GLEESON, PAUL KRASSNER, JEREMY KAGAN, CARL STONE, ROY ZIMMERMAN, HENRY SCHIPPER, GORDON WINIEMKO, CARL STONE, ROGER STEFFENS, PAUL ZOLLO, NAOMI UMAN, SKIP BLUMBERG, JACK EPPS JR, STEVE "MURUGA" BOOKER, STEVE VAI, LILA GARRETT, ARI WEINZWEIG (Zingerman's), DAVID AMRAM, BILLY VERA, STEVE FIFE, THEO ANTHONY, DAVID ERHENSTEIN and many more.  

Visit: Fialka bio https://www.laughtears.com/bio.html & image:http://www.laughtears.com/ 

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MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon), produced by Gerry Fialka since 1997, is based on Marshall McLuhan's insight: "If you don't study the effects of technology, you become its slave." And by "technology" McLuhan was referring to anything humans invent, from language to computers, from philosophy to books, from toothpicks to bulldozers. In dialogues with modern thinkers, MESS provides a forum for probing both the form and the content of media, and for comprehensively surveying-its services and disservices, avoiding bias or point of view. MESS is percept-plunder for the recent future. 

In his book "I, Fellini," Federico Fellini wrote, "I don't mind speaking autobiographically because I reveal less of myself talking about my real life than I do if I talk about the layer underneath, the one of my fantasies, dreams and imagination." MESS peers into the portals of discovering this layer. MESS seeks what lies beyond this layer. 

Participants -- including writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and activists -- are the early radar systems and rear-view mirrors detecting how major transformations in technology affect us. As we live in a MESS-age, this interactive series shakes people out of their regular agendas and reality tunnels. MESS promotes mapmakers who search for new lands and new data. MESS seeks meticulous understanding of every thing we see, hear , feel, taste, and smell, passionately needling the somnambulists and proving that learning can and must be fun. As McLuhan asked, "How are you to argue with people who insist on sticking their heads in the in visible teeth of technology, calling the whole thing freedom?" "Technologies are not mere exterior ads," said Walter Ong, "but also interior transformations of consciousness." And, in his book Immediatism, Hakim Bey observed, "Simply to meet face-to-face is already an action against the forces that oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media." "If it works, it's obsolete." -- McLuhan. "Another fine MESS." - Random Lengths News. 

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"Gerry Fialka's MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening." - Phil Proctor of the "Firesign Theatre" 

"Gerry Fialka is very special, well prepared and ready to take risks - I learned about my self! My kind of interviewer. " -Martin Perlich, author THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW 

"Gerry Fialka is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating people I've met." - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films 

"What a great interview Fialka conducted with me. He made it so easy. There used to be people on TV who conducted interviews in depth, though few as good as Fialka. Tom Snyder was the last." - Orson Bean 

"My four hour conversation with Gerry Fialka was fun and enlightening. I agree with art critic Doug Harvey that Fialka should have his own department at Cal Arts. His astute probing of James Joyce, McLuhan, Duchamp, Zappa and the hidden psychic effects of media is infectious and comprehensive." - Historian Paul Cronin  

"Talking with Gerry is like an amazing whimsical journey back in time through your earliest visions and reasonings concerning what you are doing now, and why you began doing it as an artist, and human being. It's a true gift: an innerview, not an interview." - Jeff Mosier, entertainer, banjo player 
  
"What I like about being interviewed by Gerry Fialka is that he stimulated cells that were dormant, that were hiding, that were lazy. His questions inspire fresh answers." -- Paul Krassner, writer, stand-up comedian, publisher of The Realist 

"Fialka is a Zen master of media shuffling your mind with McLuhanisms, and stacking the deck with fresh insights into our culture." - David Selsky, Independent Film Programmer & author of 'Worlds of Silence' 

"Like an eye-exam of flashing dots, my answers to Gerry Fialka's insightful questions worked like an i-exam catapulting me into my many faceted stories." - ruth weiss 

"Gerry Fialka is a wonderful host, able to create a joyful relaxing and concentrated atmosphere. During the Q&A he showed himself as a very eloquent critic asking deep and serious questions- always with humor, knowledge and full of energy." - Ine Poppe, Professor at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Amsterdam 

"I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan spirit, to create and foster interdisciplinary, living, educational projects in which people can talk about ideas. [Fialka] creates forums that bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one multivalent conversation. " - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHALL McLUHAN:COSMIC MEDIA. 

"When I participated in Fialka's MESS, he created a unique through-space kind of meditation. This collective free high fires up the ability/consciousness of not judging. It makes a gap between saying and meaning leaving a lot of room for interpretation. Really amazing event." - Marc Herbst, editor-Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. 

"Fialka's MESS interview series is a fascinating evening with stimulating questions and approaches. I surely enjoyed the depth of the arena and a chance to pontificate on questions of the spirit in a relaxed scenario and free speech surrounding." - Lady Lord Buckley 

"Gerry’s interview with me was like hypnotherapy without the snapping of the fingers to bring you back. I really felt good after that." - Lucky Otis, grandson of Johnny Otis and son of Shuggie Otis & the GTO’s Miss Mercy 

“Gerry Fialka has built up an important body of work in his decades of interviews. My challenge to him is: get a book deal, already.†- Tibby Rothman, Feature Writer LA Weekly, Founder/EditorVenicePaper 

"Gerry Fialka's interview with me at Experiments In Cinema 2011 Film Festival was a highlight. He is my new favorite person. He is writing a book on Avant Garde Film & The Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is such a trip! Totally brilliant and passionate about everything about human existence it seems, but in particular media theory, media art, media activism. He asked me all sorts of great questions." - Julie Perini, filmmaker, writer and teacher 

"Gerry interviewed me. I've given talks all over the world and none of them touched what happened in that interview. For 2 hours and 45 minutes, the spontaneous river rolled on. At the end of every outpouring, Gerry turned the page with a new question, and the new page was just as exciting as the last one. I guess I've been waiting for an interview like that all my life. Gerry Fialka is the world champion of interviewers, it's not even close" - Jon Rappoport, author & journalist. 

"Fialka is a damn good interviewer. His questions are sometimes so precise that it tickles and sometimes so grand and thought provoking that one feels on the edge of a new spiritual awareness." - Lynne Sachs, award-winning filmmaker 

"Being interviewed by Gerry Fialka was a real high point in my film career. His questions are wacky, discursive, cosmic, probing, thought provoking and, yes, experimental and avant garde. I left brimming with a renewed passion for the wide world of film and ideas. Gerry's enthusiasm and restless intellect are contagious." - Mark Street, award-winning filmmaker 

“Fialka’s questions are challenging and thought provoking. These questions rattled me for days.†-Mary Jordan, filmmaker of Jack Smith documentary 

"I am inspired and excited that Gerry Fialka, who holds an affinity for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, is writing a history of it. Having attended two of his 2008 AAFF workshops, I can testify he is intimate with experimental cinema and media philosophy, and is deeply dedicated to the exploration of new knowledge. " - Leslie Raymond, Professor of Art & New Media, University of Texas. 

"Gerry Fialka is the Studs Terkel of Venice, California - nurturing active participation for common ground." - Michele Raven, Writer/Producer 

"Gerry Fialka is one of the most giving impresarios that ever landed in Venice, California. He continues to fulfill Venice founder Abbott Kinney's dream of Chautauqua's influence on people. Fialka is the glue of the Venicessance. " - Jeffrey Solomon, Historian, Venicebeachwalkingtours.com 

"Gerry Fialka is an awesome interviewer with a very surprising element of danger." - Filmmaker Carl King 

"My interview with Fialka was both a rolicking journey into the heart of deep thought and some sort of hard core, cosmic tennis match. He uses quotes to spur new thought more than old thought. It was truly 'far out.' I am grateful." - Fred Dewey, writer, teacher, editor/publisher, former director of Beyond Baroque 

"Gerry Fialka is LA's premiere curator of true underground film and interdisciplinary cultural expression and ephemera. Iconoclast Fialka carries a University of cultural references in his head and enjoys spreading the word."  - Writer Robin Menken 

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"The confusion is not my invention...It is all around us and our only chance is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess." -Samuel Beckett. 

"It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else. " - Stanley Kubrick 

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ARCHIVES-
2017=Oct 14, Sat - Frankie Louise, performer, director, hacker of non-ordinary & peak states of consciousness, www.frankielouise.com  (previously scheduled Doug Knott is 4-14-18)

Nov 11, Sat - David Ehrenstein's writing career began in 1965 with an Andy Warhol interview, published in  "Film Comment" in 1966. He soon began contributing to other publications such as "Film Culture," "December" magazine and the "Village Voice." In 1976 he moved to Los Angeles and began work as a film critic and entertainment journalist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. During this period he also contributed to "Film Comment" and "Film Quarterly." The Herald was one of the few newspapers in the U.S. with THREE movie critics. (Thus this book's "Third String" title.) His decade-long association with that paper resulted in many hundreds of film reviews. Many tended to be of the offbeat, "B," sleeper and Foreign variety. In addition, he wrote many interviews and profiles for the paper. Among those included in "Third String" are Christine Keeler, Richard Pryor, Erté, and John Cleese. He has also published a number of books on film including "Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000," and critical studies of such as Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski. His most recent book is Playing the Third String: Weeding in the Garden of Cinematic Delights. cllrdr@ehrensteinland.com


Archives:  
***  http://archive.org/search.php?query=fialka 

***Ondi Timoner Interview http://www.laughtears.com/mess%20ondi%20interview.html 

***Gerry's interview with M.A. Littler (who's new film features Noam Chomsky) 
http://www.archive.org/details/M.a.LittlerInterviewByGerryFialka10-1-11 

***Gerry & Jon Rappoport - Progressive Radio Network 11-15-10 
http://garynull.squarespace.com/the-jon-rappoport-show and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnscVLV1nNs 

***Del Casher - seminal musician & inventor 

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Gerry on Erik Davis' Progressive Radio show 9-8-11 
http://prn.fm/2011/09/08/expanding-mind-090811/#axzz2KFm07bAe 
(there's a little static for first two minutes, then gerry comes in at the 4th minute, about 60 minutes total) 

Gerry's OtherZine article http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=26&article_id=135 
Oldest Finngans Wake song http://vimeo.com/24018381 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjG3pZzrcY 
SUZY's What the Frack is Going On song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs-hKvEETFM 
Suzy & Brad Kay's Pinchback Pixelvision http://vimeo.com/19769816 
Phil Ochs Film review by Gerry & Suzy http://change-links.org/?p=1561 

Gerry's McLuhan WikiLinks Other Zine article - 
http://www.fivebodied.com/viewtopic.php?p=18650&sid=93d5b80cfb44c5d99ac1701e040f0a33 
and, with graphics, at http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=25&article_id=123 
MAP (live improv music/noise band) http://www.archive.org/download/MapAtTheTalkingStick/Track1.wma 
Gerry on Music for Nimrods http://www.mediafire.com/?daa6kzkpdodm013 
GF's Dream Awake Litquake 2009 http://www.archive.org/details/litquake_2009_1013_fialka 
and Burroughs-Beckett http://www.archive.org/details/newnothing_2010_1021_Fialka 
Essential reading - http://www.mcluhanonmaui.com/p/publications.html and 
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/health-headlines/2011/4/29/dr-carolyn-dean-the-medical-monopoly-its-not-about-whos-righ.htm 
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ARCHIVE 
2010- 
SAT, Jan 9. RUDY PEREZ from 2-6pm (Film from 2-3:30, interview at 3:30). RUDY PEREZ's career has encompassed early training with the giants of modern dance, the birth of the postmodern dance movement, and the creation of a large body of vital work. He is an active 80 year old, influential choreographer and teacher based in Los Angeles, California, recognized in 2005 with the Lester Horton Lifetime Achievement Award and an Honorary Doctorate from California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) in 2006. Perez's career began in New York, working various day jobs and studying dance at night with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Mary Anthony, and others. His breakthrough solos in the 1960's with the Judson Dance Theater - whose members included Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer - helped launch the postmodern movement in dance. During that time, he studied with dance therapist Marian Chase and practiced dance therapy at Bellevue Hospital.http://www.rudyperezdance.org/about.html 
SAT, Feb 13 at 3pm. DONOVAN SEELINGER - 2-4pm - Eight year old whiz kid, who's made experimental films, specializes in science, string theory and singularity. This unique fun interview transcends Art Linkletter's Kids Say The Darndest Things by merging Stephen Hawkins with Pee Wee Herman. 
SAT, March 13. RONALD X. SENSOR - 2-4pm - The mysterious regular caller to Reverend Dan's seminal rock'n'roll radio show MUSIC FOR NIMRODS, Ronald X. Sensor will discuss his philosophies, censorship, and his alien abduction survivor techniques. Reverend Dan will spin wild tunes for a 4-6pm listening/dance party. 
SAT, April 10 at 3pm. BARRY SMOLIN is an LA radio host, noted educator, composer, and writer. Best known as the longtime host (since 1995) of The Music Never Stops, KPFK's psychedelic radio show, Smolin has also released 3 albums of original music under the performance moniker Mr. Smolin: At Apogee (2003), The Crumbling Empire Of White People (2007), and, most recently, Bring Back The Real Don Steele (2009), a Los Angeles song-cycle recorded live and unrehearsed at Echo Curio. In addition to the albums, Smolin's music has been featured on the Showtime TV series Weeds. As a journalist, Smolin has published articles on a variety of subjects in the L.A. Times, NY Arts, The Sondheim Review, and numerous online venues. In 2004 he penned the foreword to the groundbreaking art book Dumb Luck: The Art of Gary Baseman, published by Chronicle Books. His current ongoing fiction project, The Miranda Complex, chronicles the romantic misfires of a pair of teenagers set against the backdrop of 1970s Los Angeles. Smolin earns his living teaching high school English at the Hamilton Humanities Magnet in the Los Angeles Unified School District. 
Sat, May 15 at 3pm: DOUG HARVEY. Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about the Los Angeles and International art scenes and other aspects of popular culture, primarily as the art critic for LA WEEKLY, the largest circulation free weekly newspaper in America.His writing has also appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Modern Painter, ArtReview & Art Issues. He has written museum and gallery catalogue essays for Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Rick Griffin, Gary Panter, Big Daddy Roth, Thomas Kinkade, Basil Wolverton and many others. Harvey’s curatorial projects have ranged from a raffled solo show at INMO gallery to late psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin's retrospective at Laguna Art Museum. He has also been part of the curatorial collective creating the exhibition content and design at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. Mr. Harvey also continues to maintain an active art career, exhibiting his visual art (painting-based multimedia) locally and internationally, and participating in international experimental sound, radio, and film communities, as well as regularly teaching in both studio practice and art theory contexts. His diverse oeuvres were recently the subject of the survey exhibition Untidy: The Worlds of Doug Harvey at LA Valley College. He lives and works in Los Angeles and maintains a blog atwww.dougharvey.blogspot.com and a website at www.dougharvey.la 
Sat, June 26 at 3pm - UNCLE RUTHIE BUELL wears a lot of hats. For 50 years, she has hosted the enlightening KPFK 90.7FM radio program, "Halfway Down The Stairs" (every Saturday 8 AM), a program of stories, songs, poetry, & live guest performers.) It's audience ranges from age 3 to age 93! She teaches music to LA's Blind Children's Center in Los Angeles. Ruthie is also a singer-songwriter. Her music is multi-leveled, non sexist, multi-cultural and all those fine PC things our little hearts cry for! (recognize the quote?) Ruthie also teaches beginning piano to kids, adults and special needs students of any age. Her students are also introduced to many other instruments, all of which are found in Ruthie's home. In her spare time (she does not fold her laundry) Ruthie writes a lot of poetry, does two fast miles daily on the boring gym treadmill, pushes 115 lbs on the leg press, swims, and dreams of winning the three yard Sprint Event at the Senior Olympics.. or performing her off-color adult songs at Buckingham Palace, whichever comes first. Every third Thursday at 7pm, leads a poetry workshop called "Poetry Plus" at The Workmen's Circle, 1525 S. Robertson Blvd, LA. Ruthie received The Magic Penny Award from The Children's Music Network, past winners have included Malvina Reynolds, Woody Guthrie, & Tom Chapin. 
Sat, July 17 at 3pm: JOHN RAPPOPORT has worked as an investigative reporter exposing medical fraud for 20 years. He is also a painter and a musician. The author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies, he is working on a new book, The Magician Awakes. The cryptic sub-title is: "everything you don't know about magic is wrong." Jon writes, "In journalism, I follow one dictum--the closer you look, the worse it gets. In art, as in civilization, we are declining only because we need more preposterous exaggerations. I am inventing something new, however. The exaggeration that automatically keeps on expanding to a theoretical distance of infinity. The anti-meme." 
Sat, Aug 21 at 3pm: JAY LEVIN is best known as the Founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Weekly. Under his editorial, and business leadership the newspaper became one of the premier journals in the country. It had the largest circulation of any urban weekly in the country and won numerous journalism awards. Jay, who has several media projects in development, is also a grassroots political activist and thinker, mostly around issues of poverty, sustainability and media reform. He is the president of the non-profit Share With The Other LA and is heading an effort by the nascent Green Business Assn of LA to attract more capital for green jobs creation to LA. A trained counselor as well as a media expert, Jay now keeps sane in a very ridiculous political and media landscape by teaching a highly original life mastery course he created that is becoming popular by word of mouth. This has now led to him being invited to teach and speak at venues other than his living room. 
Sat, Sept. 11. LELAND AUSLENDER (films at 2pm, interview at 4pm). Auslender’s photographic â€ Celestial Images† and prize-winning films depict transcendental or “peak†experiences of our oneness with the mystical universe. Influences include the erotic sculptures of Taki and Ron Boise, the ecstatic poetry of Rumi, the death of the filmmaker’s 3-year-old son, and experiences with entheogenic substances such as LSD and magic mushrooms. “Entheogenic†is Greek for â€œFinding God Within,† which replaces the misleading words, “hallucinogenic†and “psychedelic.†Films to be shown are: â€œThe Birth of Aphrodite† 1969 - 9min(CINE Gold Medal, Atlanta Silver Phoenix, Cannes Film Festival), â€œThe Sculpture of Ron Boise† 1966 - 9min (Venice, Bergamo, Addis-Ababba. and San Francisco International film festivals, CINE Gold Eagle), â€œDear Little Lightbird† 1971 - 19min (One of Ten Best – Photographic Society of America), â€œVenice Beach in the Sixties-A Celebration of Creativity†2007 – 15min (Gold Remi Award - WorldFest Houston International Film Festival). 
Sat, Oct 16 at 3pm. LES PLESKO - Les Plesko’s most recent book is Slow Lie Detector, a novel about love and filmmaking in the Mojave desert, his former home, as well as The Last Bongo Sunset, a semi-autobiographical romance about drugs and sex in Venice in the 1970s. He claims to have lived on every virtually every walk street along the Venice boardwalk. Plesko was born in Budapest and made his escape in the 60s. He teaches a very popular series of Novel Writing workshops at UCLA and is a recipient of the program’s Instructor of the Year award. In his spare time he likes to read books of arcane postmodern philosophy while smoking many cigarettes. 
Sat, Nov 20 at 3pm. CHUCK ANDERSON is one of LA's most knowledgeable political activists. His background involves poetry with W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, and admiring the militant anti-slavery activist John Brown. Anderson is active in the Peace Movement and Pacifica Radio-KPFK. Anderson lived in Mexico for 20 years and served as the foreign correspondent for the LA/Detroit Herald Dispatch, managed by Malcolm X. His grass-roots activism has ranged from supporting Black Panther pioneer Robert Williams to years of street corner protesting for human rights. He has volunteered for LA's Progressive Newspaper CHANGE-LINKS for many years. Chuck is a Pan Africanist, Bolivarian, and supporter of open borders, open arms and open hearts for all immigrants. 
Sat, Dec 11. FILMMAKER ALAN GORG (films at 2pm, interview at 3:30pm) Alan Gorg, (B.S. 1952 and M.F.A. 1970, U.C.L.A.), teacher/writer/producer/director/actor, has written and produced documentary films for the University of California and PBS, and founded theater groups in Hawaii and California. Media Associates published his two autobiographical novellas THE SIXTIES and THE SEVENTIES. "Alan Gorg is a filmmaker who truly cares about the uplifting our world. His intention with each project is to awaken the world to a more compassionate and loving appreciation of each other." -Ruby Lee. HOW TO JUMP START YOUR WAR (2010, 20 minutes, at 2pm) is a satirical look at the four similar deceptive protocols used to start each of the last four big international wars: World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. Most people of all political stripes do not like being swindled, and this animated and historical video is about giving college and high school classroom exposure to what might possibly be the four biggest fakes of the last hundred years. This video is sure to provoke discussion about the causes of war. Please note that among the four rulers primarily responsible for those four big wars, there was one fascist, one communist, one Democrat, and one Republican. War is an equal opportunity enterprise. PROPHECY & POLLUTION (2010, 80m, at 2:20pm) starts with Part One, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A HOPI, nearly fifty years ago in a quiet pueblo village where connecting with nature has provided a peaceful agricultural life. In Part Two EARTH SPIRIT, oil and mining development threaten the indigenous pueblo people, who raise protests, citing aboriginal prophecy that incursions into Mother Earth will bring disaster. In the third and concluding part THIRD WORLD INVESTMENT SEMINAR, prophecy is fulfilled as corporate capitalism does in fact develop oil and mining on lands of indigenous peoples all around the world, and the results are more protests, but also widespread war, disease, and death . 

2011: 

SAT, Jan 8. Metaphysical Mash-ups: M&Ms With D&G - Don Leidinger, Devotee of the Divine Discipline of Druidic Deconstructions and Gerry Fialka, paramedia ecologist, lead adventurous discussions in American Zen, Anarchist Spirituality and Constructive Rechannelling. No experience preferred. Explore center without margins. Percept plunder for the recent future. 
SAT, Feb 12. MARCY WINOGRAD, founder of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, mobilized 41% of the vote in her anti-war congressional challenge to incumbent Jane Harman in June 2010. A high school English teacher at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles, Marcy is a strong advocate for investing in education and job creation, rather than war and occupation. In that regard, Marcy helped launch the Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism (CAMS) and advocates for promotion of college-going culture, rather than military recruitment, on our high school campuses. In the wake of her campaign, Marcy has assumed a leadership role in Progressive Democrats of America, serving as an advisory board member and a co-chair of its End War and Occupations nationwide organizing team. In the final analysis, Marcy won the vote in the 11th city council district, garnering 54% of the vote in Venice and 53% in Mar Vista. Winograd is very articulate on the peace movement, health care and education. 
SAT, March 12. BILL DANIEL, Texas-born, San Francisco exile, and confirmed tramp, continues to experiment with survivalism and bricolage in his attempts to record and report on the various social margins he often finds himself in. Working without an art or film school education, he endeavors to make work that connects with an outsider audience. His work began in 1980 as he participated in and photo documented the blossoming punk rock scene in Austin, Texas. Since then his subcultural documentary subjects have included bicycle messengers, radical environmentalists, hobo graffiti artists (check out his experimental doc Who is Bozo Texino?), swap meet guitar players, rural drag racers, and "water squatters"--outlaw anchored live-aboards. His study and love for documentary photography and filmmaking has given Daniel the charge to create work that communicates across socioeconomic boundaries. Drawing from his backgrounds in studio photography, experimental media and the construction trades, Daniel builds site-specific viewing environments as a method for deploying non-linear documentary material within an allegorical, interactive setting. Daniel is also recognized for his work as cinematographer and editor for five films of filmmaker Craig Baldwin. 
SAT, April 9. HARRY E. NORTHUP has had nine books of poetry published: "Amarillo Born," "the jon voight poems," "Eros Ash," "Enough the Great Running Chapel," "the images we possess kill the capturing," "The Ragged Vertical," "Reunions," "Greatest Hits, 1966-2001," & "Red Snow Fence." He received his B.A. in English from C.S.U.N., where he studied verse with Ann Stanford. New Alliance Records has released his "Personal Crime," new & selected poems from 1961-1991, on CD & cassette audio recording, & "Homes" on CD. Northup has made a living as an actor for thirty years, acting in thirty-seven films, including "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver" (1976 Palme d'Or winner at Cannes), "Over the Edge" (starring role), & "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991 Oscar winner for Best Picture). Harry is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Lewis MacAdams, in the "L.A. Weekly," wrote, "Northup is the poet laureate of east Hollywood." Harry is married to poet Holly Prado. 
SAT, May 14. BRAD SCHREIBER has worked as a writer in all media, as well as producer, executive, director and actor. He was Vice President of Storytech Literary Consulting, founded by story structure expert Christopher Vogler, for 11 years. Brad handled international consultations with executives, writers, directors and producers of material for TV, film, books and New Media. In television, he created the series North Mission Road, which ran for six seasons on Court TV, based on his nonfiction book Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner (Running Press/Perseus). He has worked as a writer, producer and development executive for L.A. PBS affiliate KCET-TV as well as director of development for TV/film director Jonathan Kaplan. Schreiber also wrote the six-hour live telecast, L.A. County Holiday Celebration that was aired nationally on PBS. His six books includes What Are You Laughing At?: How to Write Funny Screenplays, Stories and More and his compendium of live theatrical disasters, Stop the Show!, which was praised by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Postand his national credits include Variety, The Writer and Written By: The Journal of the Writers Guild of America . He was nominated for the Kingman Films Screenwriting Award for his script The Couchand has won awards from the Edward Albee Foundation, the National Press Foundation, the National Audio Theatre Festivals, L.A. Press Club and others. Schreiber has taught at the American Film Institute, the Directors Guild of America, the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York and writers conferences and universities in the US, Canada and Mexico. His newest book is the early years biography Becoming Jimi Hendrix, published by Da Capo Press/Perseus in the US and UK. His website is www.BradSchreiber.com
SAT, June 11. FRANCINE OLLER - While a participant of the Human Potential Movement of the 70's and a student of art and psychology, Francine found her creative voice in the disciplined art of calligraphy. At the height of the AIDS epidemic and her mother's death, a mystical experience revealed a new and unexpected path. In partnership with her deceased mother through "automatic writing" she was guided through several years in service of the dying. As a support group facilitator for L.A. Shanti and a hospice volunteer coordinator for several organizations including The West Los Angeles V.A. Hospital, Francine has spent thousands of hours guiding people towards a peaceful and conscious transition from life through death. A continuing student of thanatology, theosophy, mindfulness and calligraphy Francine seeks to integrate her experience of the seen and unseen in ordinary life. 
SAT, July 9. PHILIP JAMES DAUGHTRY, born and raised in a coal mining village outside Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, initiated UCIrvine's first Black Studies course, and resisted the Vietnam War .His "baby beat" evolution was a consequence of wanderlust, love of wilderness, romanticized existentialism and the literary support of Robert Bly and a community of North Beach writers. He has published 4 books of poetry. His latest work, "The Centaur's Son" (Mercury House), is a collection of short stoies. Daughtry was a professor of English at Santa Monica College for over two decades, has lectured on story development at UCLA and on filmic writing at USC's Lucas Film School and at the Claremont Colleges. Daughtry has worked as a ski bum, ball boy, dishwasher, ditch-digger, waiter, skip loader, house framer, ranch hand, dialect coach, radio dispatcher, painter and bit actor. " Daughtry...is a raven of transatlantic magic, a poet of excellent ear, quick craft, sure language who lives his poems boldly and deftly." -Gary Snyder. "Daughtry's work throbs with specific concreteness, realized experience and critical intelligence." - Bobi Jones. "His are precise poems in which myth and history are not frozen but appear and reappear, like animals, the moon, and the land, as old friends." - Betram Minkin. 
SAT, Aug 13. KIRK SILSBEE is a Santa Monica journalist who has written about jazz and culture for over 30 years. His work has appeared in publications that include the L.A. Times, the L.A. Reader, New Times L.A., L.A. CityBeat, Mojo, Jewish Journal and the Playboy Jazz Festival program. He makes a mean plate of pancakes and is known to be a terrific kisser. 
SAT, Sept 10. GREG BURK is a veteran music journalist whose work has appeared extensively in LA Weekly (where he staffed for 27 years), LA Times and his own MetalJazz.com, as well as in other publications. His interview subjects have included Ornette Coleman, Marilyn Manson, Charles Lloyd and Judas Priest's Rob Halford; he often focuses on the borders between heavy metal and jazz. With his group Dred Scott, Burk was also a member of the late-1970s music community that Plugz drummer Charlie Quintana has called the O.P.'s -- Original Punks. His writing is informed by longtime analysis of B.S.: Biblical Scripture. 
SAT, Oct 8. PETE THOTTAM is Los Angeles based activist. He is an elected Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Officer (Venice, CA) and current Chair of the Education Committee for the Venice Neighborhood Council. Mr. Thottam is also a progressive attorney, a community activist and an organizer. Mr. Thottam was also the founder and Executive Director of the nationally covered Los Angeles National Impeachment Center (LANIC) from 2007 to 2008. Thottam has been a longtime activist with the Progressive Democrats and a volunteer with KPFK/Pacifica, the Sierra Club and many Los Angeles based progressive groups. At Yale University he majored in (1) Economics and (2) Ethics, Government & Philosophy. He has a law degree from UC Berkeley, an MBA from UCLA Anderson and has worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs and several of California's leading law firms. He believes it is critical for Americans everywhere to become much more involved politically, informed, engaged and pro-active citizens. Since 2002, Pete has been working with a range of progressive groups focused on helping internationalize American citizens' political consciousness and their awareness of local as well as global economic and environmental problems. 
SAT, Nov 12. LISA GREEN is a member of the Green Party of California and the current co-coordinator of the Green Party of Los Angeles County Council. Lisa resigned from a 20 year corporate budgeting and finance career in 2008 to pursue her own artistic "organic and green" business. She is frequently found on Venice Beach Boardwalk and at Venice community meetings speaking on behalf of others about social justice, equality, and freedom. Currently she lives outside, making jewelry with trees, and plant blossoms, and fruits, and paints on a variety of media. She is a healer, and a video advocate in Venice. She has participated in multiple candidate forums emphasizing electoral reform, legalization of cannabis, single payer healthcare, Prop 13 reform (split roll approach), marriage equality, regional water planning and management, protection of ocean, forests, reducing GHG emissions, more open space, electoral reform, eliminating corporate welfare. She emphasizes holistic ways of life, while recognizing the interconnectedness of our life and all systems. Lisa encourages others to realize as human race we must shift from the love of power to the power of love. Take action now. 
SAT, Dec 10. WILLIS 'BUDDY' CLARK, JR. is an entrepreneur, psychologist and filmmaker. His concerns include ethics, technology, and forms of information. Buddy has been deeply involved in the war on poverty, human rights, health & welfare issues, the history of railroads and the first cable TV systems. He lived with the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and helped them finance A Gunfight, the 1971 movie with Johnny Cash & Kirk Douglas. He produced From Wounded Knee to Washington - A Trial of Broken Treaties and Up You Custer, then the FBI confiscated all the research for these unreleased films. Buddy has documented culture from Vietnam to the Venice arts community for many years with love and righteous insights. He worked with Bobby Unser (3 time Indy 500 winner), partied with John Wayne, Desi Arnaz & Robert Mitchum, and almost had a fight with Lee Marvin. His motto is to "Do Anything I Want To Do." 
2012 
SAT, Jan 14, 2012. TERRY WOLVERTON is author of nine books: Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman's Building, a memoir that won the Publisher's Triangle Judy Grahn Award; Embers,anovel-in-poems, a finalist for the PEN USA Litfest Award;three prose novels, Stealing Angel, The Labrys Reunion and Bailey's BeadsBreath and other stories, a collection of short fiction; and three collections of poetry: Black Slip, Mystery Bruise and Shadow and Praise. She is currently collaborating with jazz composer David Ornette Cherry to adapt Embers as an opera. Terry has also edited thirteen literary anthologies, as well as, with Sondra Hale, the scholarly compilation, From Site to Vision: the Woman's Building in contemporary culture. She spent 13 years at the Woman's Building as an artist, student, teacher and administrator, eventually serving as Executive Director. Terry is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing center in Los Angeles, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. She is also an Associate Faculty Mentor in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles and Adjunct Faculty in the M.A. in Arts Management Program at Claremont Graduate University. She is also a certified instructor of Kundalini Yoga. www.terrywolverton.xbuild.com
SAT, Feb 11. MARY JANE continues her pro-bono life in Venice California, with decades of arts, festivals, exhibits, events, and activism for conservation of environment, history, health and civil rights. She was/is a cofounder of core issue groups in Venice. As a single mother she raised children here when we did not lock homes. She has made 9 documentaries in/on Venice. She fully illustrated, wrote, designed and published her acclaimed book A Sea Shore Memoir, Celebrating Venice 100th Anniversary 1905-2005. Mary Jane received the Spirit of Venice Award in 2000. She co-founded four theatre companies, and is thrilled, for many years, to be a member ofVenice's nationally famous Pacific Resident Theatre. 
SAT, March 10 . BILL MOHR is a poet, critic and teacher. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up there and in other Navy port towns. After moving to Los Angeles and acting with various small theater companies, including the Burbage Theater Ensemble, he published and edited Momentum magazine for five years, and founded Momentum Press. He published almost two dozen books between 1975 and 1988 by poets such as James Krusoe, Holly Prado, Leland Hickman, Alicia Ostriker, Joseph Hansen, and Kate Braverman. He also edited two anthologies, The Streets Inside (1978) and Poetry Loves Poetry (1985). Momentum Press was awarded four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. During much of this time he worked as a blueprint machine operator and a typesetter. The editorial papers of Momentum Press are part of the Archive for New Poetry at the University of California, San Diego. Mohr has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, as well as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. His first full-length collection of poetry, HIDDEN PROOFS (caps to indicate italics) was published in 1982. His most recent book of poems is BITTERSWEET KALEIDOSCOPE (IF/SF, 2006). His poems and critical writing have appeared in six dozen magazines as well as over a dozen anthologies and have been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Italian. His literary history of poetry in Los Angeles, "HOLD-OUTS: The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance 1948-1992" will be published by the University of Iowa Press in December, 2011. He is an associate professor in the Department of English at CSU Long Beach. 
SAT, April 14. MEWS SMALL is an acclaimed actress and singer, most known for the role of Candy, opposite Jack Nicholson, in the Academy Award winning film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Mews’s professional career began as a teenager in New York City. Dustin Hoffman, not yet famous, gave Mews her first role, acting and singing in a play he was directing. She went on to act in many leading roles in resident theatres all over the East Coast. In 1966, Maria von Trapp came to Mews’s (then Mary Small Rusk) opening night as the lead in The Sound of Music. At the end of the show, there was a standing ovation and Mrs. Trapp stood up, hugged Mews, and said, “I have seen many Marias, but tonight it was I. There couldn't be a better Maria.†She then invited Mews to perform with her at the Montreal World’s Fair, where Mews stunned the crowd of 10,000. Mews eventually landed the role of ‘Frenchy’ in the original Broadway show Grease, and later played the same role opposite John Travolta at the Schubert in LA. Mews had a lot of fun playing the New York City night club circuit and performed many concerts on the East coast before coming to Hollywood with Woody Allen’s filmSleeper. Mews has had feature roles in 18 feature films and numerous television shows. She has worked with Susan Sarandon, Morgan Freeman, Henry Fonda, James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, Danny De Vito, Gene Wilder, Kevin Kline and Vanessa Redgrave. Mews sings every Sunday at the UnUrban and other venues around LA. Her CD's, Pearl Street Garage #1 and Do What You Do play on radio stations around the country. â€œMews" - what kind of name is that? She made it up. It's the initials for Mary Edith Willard Small. Her Dad put the Willard in so it would not spell "mess," which happens to be the name of this series. 
SAT, May 12. JOEL ISSACS began his professional life as a Ph.D. physicist doing research on magnetism at ultra-low temperatures. His last position in physics was at UC Berkeley, in the late 60's. That was a hot time! After publishing six articles, Joel decided to follow the beat of his own drum and went on to study Clinical Psychology at Yale University, and then to work with some colleagues at Harvard University's innovative program of Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. Along the way he was also interested in Alternative education and the free-school movement. Joel has become more active in progressive politics, working on the Marcy Winograd campaign for congress, helping to lead the Activist Support Circle in Santa Monica, and consulting to progressive groups about running better meetings. He is interested in ideas about how our society can become more participatory and more egalitarian. He has been with Anne Isaacs for over thirty years, and they have a daughter, Vida, who is now 21. In 1977 Joel moved to Los Angeles to follow his interest in Wilhelm Reich and body oriented psychotherapy. Joel has practiced in Los Angeles as a body-oriented psychotherapist since then. In 1990 he began his formal training in Bodynamic Analysis. He is a certified Bodynamic Analyst, and a Trainer. Together with colleagues Joel has published a number of articles about Bodynamic Analysis, including The Bodymap, in professional journals. He is presently Director of Bodynamic Institute USA. Together with his wife, Anne, Joel has led trainings in Europe, South America, and Australia, and for twenty years they also led 5-day workshops at Esalen Institute. 
SAT, June 9, 2012 - EMMY COLLINS - "When actor Emmy Collins resolved to bite the bullet and move to Hollywood, everybody in the business had the same advice for him: Cut your hair, shave your beard, hit the gym and invest in an expensive wardrobe. You’ll never be leading man material -- that’s for the prom kings and football heroes -- but you might just scrabble out a living. Emmy thanked them politely, but opted for an alternative strategy: He threw on an old T-shirt and started showing up at auditions. Now, five years later, in a town where ex-prom kings wrap twice around the block at the cattle calls, or clog the margins of Back Stage or the back pages of the L.A. Weekly, Emmy works constantly. His Charles Manson countenance, thrift store casuals and Dilaudid-lidded thousand-inch stare have made him the thespian of choice for a spectrum of hippies, junkies, muggers, burnouts and psychotics in TV commercials, series and feature films alike."- Paul Cullum, "He's a Super Freak," L.A. Weekly, December 4, 2001 
SAT, July 14 CANCELLED and MOVED to March 30, 2013  JULES MINTON 
SAT, Aug 11 - TBA 
SAT, Sept 8. FRED DEWEY replaced (WANDA COLEMAN is the author of 18 books of poetry and prose, she is a recent contributor to HARRIET, a blog (poetryfoundat-ion.org), occasionally contributes to drgodine.blogspot .com, and is featured in Writing Los Angeles (Library of America, 2002), in Poet’s Market (2003), and Quercus Review VI (2006). She has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and a former columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine; a nominee for poet laureate, California 2005 and for the USA artists fellowship 2007. She was a Gaea fellow at the Sea Change Cottage, Province-town, October 2010. Coleman’s books from Black Sparrow Books (Godine) are Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize—the first African-American woman to receive it, and Mercurochrome (poems), bronze-medal finalist, National Book Awards 2001. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She writes fiction as well ( A War of Eyes and Other Stories and the novel Mambo Hips and Make BelieveShe was C.O.L.A.’s first literary fellow, Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, 2003-04. Her most recent books include Ostinato Vamps (Pitt Poetry Series), The Riot Inside Me: Trials & Tremors (nonfiction, Godine/Black Sparrow) and WANDA COLEMAN: Poems Seismic in Scene (de la chienne) - Mise en page et calligraphies/layout and illumination by Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, Lille, France, spring 2006. A second collection of stories, Jazz & Twelve O'Clock Tales was published in 2008 from Black Sparrow Books (finalist for the Patterson Fiction Prize 2009). The World Falls Away is forthcoming in 2011 (Pitt Poetry Series). 
PLEASE NOTE: AT BEYOND BAROQUE- contact: metzger.richard@gmail.com or Gerry Fialka 310-306-7330 PFSuzy@aol.com 
MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) The public is invited to Gerry Fialka's engaging interview of RICHARD METZGER, who will address the metaphysics of his calling and the nitty-gritty of his craft.http://www.laughtears.com/mess.html and http://www.laughtears.com/ 
SUNDAY, Sept 23, 2012 at 7:30pm at Beyond Baroque http://beyondbaroque.org/ 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, 310-822-3006, free admission, donations appreciated. 
Richard Metzger is one of the founding "dangerous minds" of the popular Dangerous Minds.net blog. Previously he was known for being the creative director of the New York-based counterculture multi-media publisher, The Disinformation Company Ltd. For two years he was the on-camera host and the director of the "Disinformation" television show on the Channel 4 broadcast network in the UK. He has worked with Ann Magnuson and Johnny Knoxville. Metzger is the author of two books. Disinformation: The Interviews (2002) features unedited interviews with several of the characters and thinkers who were guests on the series such as Marilyn Manson, Kenneth Anger, Joe Coleman, Robert Anton Wilson and Genesis P. Orridge. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide To Magick & The Occult (2004) is an anthology of occult essays. 
SAT Oct 3 - TBA 
SAT, Nov 10 - MICHAEL C FORD - Born in Chicago in the shadow of the Cubs the White Sox and all those blues on Wells. He migrated with parents to Southern California at the age of 3. In the summer of 2002 he was invited by the Baseball Reliquaryto host an event at the Pasadena, California Central Library, to curate a verbal recognition of literature and baseball and to conjure a batting order of 9 poets who could take a few swings at the national pastime. The poets were videoed by May Rigler , later on edited by Lindsay Mofford then, wired for sound by the indispensable Tucker. An in-house audio copy was handed over to Hen House Studios, turned into a live-date production, and transformed into a CD document titled PLAY BALL on the Hen House label and distributed Internationally. About age 10,witnessing post MVP season of Nellie Fox w/the White Sox in a rare battle w/the Cubbies in an exhibition game at Pasadena’s Brookside Park. The CD track titled Grounding Out In Southern California recalls that occasion. As an audio journalist in 1986, he recorded his paean to the barnstorming ballplayers of the Pacific Coast League. The following year it was put on a Los Angeles radio play list by Bud â€œthe steamer† Furillo on KMPC and by Cleve Hermann on KFWB. It was included on a compilation CD entitled Innings. Included in his catalogue of stage plays is a 2-character pastiche which is a 1-act titled Termite Palace (paying homage to the demise of a wooden stadium in Pacific Coast League baseball history). His volume of selected work published by Amaranth Editions in 1998 attracted a Pulitzer Prize nomination. His 2011 spoken word recording is entitled 20th-Century GoodbyeThe Marilyn Monroe Concerto. was published as a 6-pg pamphlet-length poem by Pitchfork Press in Chicago. It was designed to be a tipped-in document to accompany the publication of To Kiss The Blood Off Our Hands (2007) which went into a 2nd printing, the same year by Ion Drive Publishing, also responsible for publishing his 2009 print document The Demented Chauffeur & Other Mysteries.His 2011 entry is San Joaquin County Solutions: a collaboration with the North Central Valley prize-winning photo-journalist Rose Albano Risso. He is currently involved in a Hen House Studios CD production project {10 tracks with music composed and arranged by Harlan Steinberger} which will be marketed with the title FAST FOOD SANITARIUM,Plus a short film based on his one-act play: Blondes Don’t Bother To Knockcurrently being edited and digitally designed by the San Diego filmmaker Venus Maslaki. "He's a treasure chest of American Pop Culture." - Tom Waits 
SAT, Dec 8 - DON LEIDEINGER replaced (RAY ZONE rip is an award-winning stereoscopic 3D artist, author, and 3D film producer. He was 3D Supervisor for the film Dark Country 3D (2009), starring Thomas Jane and Ron Perlman, and was the 3D Producer for Brijes 3D (2010), the first feature-length animated 3D film made in Mexico. Zone has produced or published 150 3D comic books and is the author of “3-D Filmmakers, Conversations with Creators of Stereoscopic Motion Pictures†(Scarecrow Press: 2005) and “Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838 – 1952†(University of Kentucky Press: 2007). Zone's website is viewable in anaglyphic 3D at: www.ray3dzone.com 
2013- 
SAT, Jan 12, 2013 - LINDA J. ALBERTANO grew up with strangers in Wheatridge, Colorado, where the back acre was full of fresh corn, and they killed a chicken for every Sunday dinner. But, as a teen, she managed to hang with her extremely cool mother. Shortly after her mom issued her a cheap guitar, Linda J. Albertano's real life began. Failure to conform, however, bred rejection from the world of songwriting. Being a pigheaded girl, she ultimately refused to rhyme even her verses and finally abandoned melody altogether in favor of spoken word. Albertano was among five poets who represented Los Angeles in Amsterdam's One World Poetry Festival, a ten-day multinational bash underwritten by the Dutch government. She's been featured frequently at Beyond Baroque, SPARC, LACE, Highways and other literary/spoken word meccas in L.A. She's unleashed her text on MTV, and in such Festivals as LA Poetry, South by Southwest (Texas), and Lollapalooza. She also appeared in Alice Cooper's revival tour of "The Nightmare Returns." By night she was the Evil Nurse and Executioner. But by day she read her work in her own Radio Tour of America in Chicago, Miami, Nashville, El Paso, New Orleans and other U.S. hotspots. Recently she was recognized as "Best Female Performer-Poet" by the LA Weekly. Currently she is performing solo and with such dynamic spoken word groups as Gynomite, Nearly Fatal Women, and WordWomen. 

SAT Feb 9, 2013 - FRANCISCO LETELIER ,born in Chile, is known for both his words and his images. Letelier’s perceptive writing and spoken word performances unite with his legacy of creating powerful visual art. Recognized for his interdisciplinary collaborations, with diverse artists and writers, his memoir, ‘ A Nation Without Borders’ serves as the introductory essay for â€œThe Battle of Chile†released by German publishing house, Laika Verlag early in 2011. Letelier has completed murals, public artworks and private commissions throughout the United States and Latin America as well as in Europe and India. He is the subject of the documentary Painted Son by prize winning cinematographer Christopher Gallo. The artist is included in Departuresby KCET, an online documentary series mapping LA neighborhoods through interactive portraits. He recently completed â€œFamily Tree†a mural for A Place called Home which provides after school programs in the Arts for youth in downtown Los Angeles. Through the mural project, Letelier collaborated with Off the Mat, an organization that provides training for Yoga instructors working with youth. In 2011 Letelier performed with the Inspiration House Poetry Choir directed by Peter Harris in The Black/Brown Dialoguessupported through grants by the Ford Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Letelier was recognized for contributions to Southern California and awarded the LA Artcore Award,his accompanying exhibit opened at the Union Arts Center in Los Angeles in December of 2011. After the overthrow of the elected government of Chille by Augusto Pinochet, and his fathers’ subsequent imprisonment, Francisco and his family fled to the U.S. There his father, Orlando Letelier, led a movement to publicize the human rights abuses of Pinochet. In 1976, acting under orders from former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, agents from the Chilean secret police in collaboration with anti Castro Cuban terrorists, assassinated Orlando Letelier in Washington DC. The car bombing was the first act of international terrorism to occur in the nation’s Capital. At the age of 18 Francisco helped establish the "Brigada Orlando Letelier" and began traveling across the country creating collaborative murals. The mural brigade began as a means to reconcile his feelings, but the process of collaboration and storytelling has since continued to propagate and motivate his interdisciplinary work. Letelierart.blogspot.com/ 
SAT, March 9: DAVID MISCH is the author of “Funny: The Book / Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Comedy†(Applause/Hal Leonard; funnythebook.com). He’s been a comic folksinger, stand-up comedian, and screenwriter; his credits include the multiple-Emmy-nominated “Mork and Mindy†, the Emmy-losing “Duckman†, the Emmy-ignored “Police Squad!†, the Emmy-besotted “Saturday Night Live†, and the Emmy-ineligible “The Muppets Take Manhattan†. He blogs for The Huffington Post ( huffington­post.com/david-misch) and his play “Occupied†is scheduled to be produced this spring in Los Angeles. He’s taught comedy at USC, musical satire at UCLA, and lectured at Columbia University, 92nd St. Y-Tribeca, Fordham University, the California Women’s Conference, and the American Film Institute. More at davidmisch.com; Facebook funnythebook, Twitter @funnythebook
SAT, March 30. JULES MINTON - Author, film historian/critic, and opinionated ass, Minton knows a bit about everything and a lot about a lot and is the only non-Bulgarian you'll ever meet who wrote a Bulgarian film. After ten years as head writer for Jeopardy!, he co-wrote the book MR PRESIDENT! MR PRESIDENT!! with Sarah McClendon, the White House press corps gadfly who, from age 34-93, harassed Chief Exes from FDR to Dub-ya (most notably Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan & Poppy Bush), taking her hits (and sometimes the bullet) for the 99%. "His spansive knowledge of art, music, film, theater, politics, comedy, and social issues is ever growing into comprehensive awareness depth" (whatever tha eff t hat means), says Gerry Fialka hisself! 
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NOTE LOCATION & TIME for ASCHER:April 29, MON at 7:30pm at Canal Club http://canalclubvenice.com/home.html 2025 Pacific Av, Venice CA 90291, 310-823-3878 free 
Monday April 29-  RODNEY ASCHER's films have screened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House, and under the Brooklyn Bridge. His 2010 short “The S From Hell†also premiered at Sundance and in many ways laid the groundwork for â€œRoom 237†. His genre-blurring work includes countless short films, as well as commercial projects for clients including EA Games, Capitol Records, and VH1. In his most recent music video he killed Matt & Kim, Soulja Boy, and Andrew W.K. He lives in Los Angeles with his talented wife, their clever baby, and a beautiful cat.rodneyascher.com and Room 237 opens in LA on April 5  http://room237movie.com/ Read Fialka's artilce http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=29&article_id=172 
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SAT, May 11: SUZANNE LOOMIS - Acclaimed poet has been associated with the following schools and poetic sensibilities: The “ Fresno School†.This is the designation for those graduates of a golden era, late 60s and 70s, at CSU Fresno, which gave rise to several of the nation’s most distinctive poets, all of whom studied with Philip Levine. The “Fresno†poets are often characterized by a direct personal voice, a language both lyrical and colloquial, and an image-based fidelity to the tangible world, whether rural or urban. Lummis received her M.A. in English with Creative Writing focus in 1978, before CSU Fresno established its MFA program. She is included in the definitive anthology edited by Christopher Buckley, M. L. Williams and David Oliviera, How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets. Stand-Up Poetry. This sensibility combines the dynamism and bracing irreverence of performance poetry with the skill and attention to detail found in literary poetry. Charles Webb coined the term in the 80s then he and Lummis worked together refining the definition and assembling poems for the initial small press anthology that introduced this movement, which they associated with a group of Los Angeles poets. Lummis is cited as a seminal avatar of the style in the one-thousand word entry on Stand-Up Poetry in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, and in the March/April 2004 Poets & Writers Magazine article on the subject. 
The Poem Noir. Lummis’ forthcoming essay (2013) in The Malpais Review may be the first in print to set down decisively the defining characteristics of this poetry, whose dark themes, atmosphere, and voice of cool detachment are inspired by the low budget black-and-white crime movies of the 40s and 50s. For the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program she designed and teaches, “Poetry Goes to the Movies: The Poem Noir†. She has been an advisor for Philadelphia’s NoirCon. In the fall of 2011, she instigated and produced, through her organization The Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and with valuable support from Beyond Baroque, a citywide, 25-event series, “Night and the City: L.A. Noir in Poetry Fiction and Film†. Los Angeles Poetry. Discussions of her poetry and influence on the Los Angeles literary world appear in Bill Mohr’s history, Holdouts, in the forthcoming book-length exploration by Lawrence Goldstein—longtime editor of “The Michigan Quarterly Review†— Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the City’s Essential Poems—and in Jack Foley’s sweeping Visions and Affiliations, A California Literary Timeline: Poets and Poetry 1940-2005. She was principal editor of the anthology, Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, which The Los Angeles Times named one of The 100 Best Books of the Year in 1997. http://suzannelummis.com/ 
SAT, June 8: ROBERT GUFFEY is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts Program at CSU Long Beach. He’s also a graduate of the Clarion writer’s workshop in Seattle, WA. For the past ten years he’s been teaching English Composition, Literature and Creative Writing at CSU Long Beach. His first book of fiction, a collection of novellas entitled Spies& Saucers, is forthcoming from PS Publishing in England later this year. His first book of nonfiction, Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form, was released in May of 2012 by TrineDay. He’s also published short stories, articles and interviews in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies such as The Chiron ReviewFlurbFortean Times, Modern Magic, Nameless Magazine, New Dawn, The New York Review of Science FictionParanoiaPearl,Phantom DriftPostscriptsThe Third AlternativeUFO Magazine and Video Watchdog Magazine. His website is www.cryptoscatology.com
SAT July 13: LAUREL ANN BOGEN is the author of ten books of poetry and short fiction, including Washing a Language; Fission; The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies and Rag Tag We Kiss. Her New and Collected Poems is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Since 1990 she has been an instructor of poetry and performance for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where she received the Outstanding Instructor of the Year award in 2008. Well known for her lively readings, Bogen has read her work at Cornell University, The Savannah College of Art and Design, The Knitting Factory (NYC), The L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority, MOCA, LACE and a host of other venues.  She is a recipient of the Pacificus Foundation’s Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize, two awards from the Academy of American Poets and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination. Her work has appeared in over 100 literary magazines and anthologies.  
SAT, Sept 14- ROBIN MENKEN is truly one of LA's great thinkers and cultural scholars. As a teenager, she studied with legendary improvisational theater teacher Viola Spolin. She was the Artistic Director of the Second City Workshops, taught at UC Berkeley, USC, Barcelona\'s Ateneu and the Esalin Institute. She was Roberto Rossellini's assistant, and worked with Yevgeny Vevteshenku, Glauber Rocha and Eugene Ionesco. She sold numerous screenplays and wrote the OBIE winning The FTA SHow (touring with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Ben Vereen.) She was a programming consultant and Special Events co-ordinator for numerous film festivals, including the SF, Rio, Havana and N.Y Film Festivals. Her first news outlet was the historic East Village Other. Besides being married to Country Joe McDonald, she hung with Kukla Ollie and Burr Tillstrom (learning puppeteering), Muddy Waters, Mike Bloomfield, Tim Leary and a slew of counter cultural icons. 
SAT, Oct 12: DEDE AUDET - Venice icon Audet has been a professional photographer, writer, swimmer and diver. She has worked as an engineer for Howard Hughes, helped NFL players get retirement income and health care, and raised two children. As a stalwart political activist, she helped originate the Venice Town Council, and stop the Marina Bypass Freeway. Dede writes, "As an uneducated person who had a pretty good run in the world of technology and who loves to take a stab at orthodoxy, old or new, my 92 years young give me the advantage of having lived through stuff others are learning through a civics course." 
Sat, Nov 9 : EDWARD LAGROSSA http://edwardlagrossa.com/ ( originally scheduled WANDA COLEMAN sadly passed away just before this date) is the author of 20 books of poetry and prose, she is a recent contributor to HARRIET, a blog (poetryfoundat-ion.org), occasionally contributes to drgodine.blogspot .com, and is featured in Writing Los Angeles (Library of America, 2002), inPoet’s Market (2003), and Quercus Review VI (2006). She has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and a former columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine; a nominee for poet laureate, California 2005 and for the USA artists fellowship 2007. She was a Gaea fellow at the Sea Change Cottage, Province-town, October 2010. Coleman’s books from Black Sparrow Books (Godine) are Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize—the first African-American woman to receive it, and Mercurochrome (poems), bronze-medal finalist, National Book Awards 2001. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She writes fiction as well ( A War of Eyes and Other Stories and the novel Mambo Hips and Make BelieveShe was C.O.L.A.’s first literary fellow, Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, 2003-04. Her most recent books include Ostinato Vamps (Pitt Poetry Series), The Riot Inside Me: Trials & Tremors (nonfiction, Godine/Black Sparrow) and Poems Seismic in Scene (de la chienne) with Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, Imprimé par Sylvie Lamonier, chez/at ADLIS, Lille, France, poems in translation. Her most recent book (now of 20) is THE WORLD FALLS AWAY  (Pitt Poetry Series) which recently won the San Francisco State University Poetry Center Book Award. 
Sat, Dec 14: GARY PALMER is a painter from Belfast, Northern Ireland, now living and working in the US. His anamorphic perspective street art was published in A Carpet of Dream by RJD Enterprises, and 3D Street Art by Tectum, and featured at festivals in Europe, Australia, Central America, and the US. The Road to Zanzibar, a series of narrative paintings based on travels in East Africa was shown at the LA International, 2001. Distilled Landscapes, a series of abstract interpretations installed as a continuous line of sumi ink were the subject of a solo exhibition at Tarryn Teresa Gallery, Bergamot Station. Gary’s work is held in the collection at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and was recently included in the Biennial del Sur in Panama, 2013. The current work, particulate fields, are a series of abstract paintings for contemplation on the internal workings of nature. http://www.garypalmerart.com/ 

SAT, Jan 11, 2014: TED HAYES is an American advocate for the homeless and an activist. Hayes' activism began in January 1985, when Justiceville, a community of homeless people in Los Angeles, was founded. It survived for five months, until authorities moved to shut down the shantytown. When they did, Hayes entered 35-day fast in protest. In 1987, with producer Tom Bolema and the Butchers, he recorded "Ted's Rap: Justiceville" about the bulldozing of the encampment. In 1993 he founded Dome Village, a Los Angeles homeless facility consisting of geodesic domes designed by architect Craig Chamberlain and funded by ARCO. During the same year, he ran for mayor of Los Angeles during the primary election, receiving 0.63% of the vote. [2] In the mid-1990s, he organized a youth- and homelesscricket team, now called the Compton Cricket Club, that toured Ireland and England and inspired an opera. He has served as president of the Los Angeles Social Cricket Alliance. At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, Hayes, who was leading a contingent of homelessness activists, was shot with a rubber bullet by police. The self-proclaimed Western or American "Gandhi", Hayes is known for being a colorful character, often sporting long flowing coats and wearing American flags as part of his dress, and a yarmulke. He is also known for being an advanced inline skater, rollerblading through skid row and Venice Beach. In 2008, Hayes became the Republican Congressional nominee against incumbent Maxine Waters in California's 35th congressional district. He lost that election, with 13% compared to 84% for Maxine Waters. However, he got more than ten times the votes per dollar of campaign expenditure as Waters did. Featured in several award winning documentaries about homelessness and Cricket, Hayes has also occasionally appeared in Hollywood productions, including a role as himself in the 2000 film Pharaoh's Streets, as well as a homeless person on the sitcom. 
Feb 8: FLO LAWRENCE - Actress, dancer, singer Flo Lawrence has played lead roles and starred in many films.  Most recently, she appeared in Rob Zombie's "The Lords of Salem."  A wonderful role was a film in Russia where she played the Madam of an opera house in turn of the century Poland with Israeli opera stars: Dudu Fisher and Efrat Rotham. She has worked with stars like Sylvester Stallone, Owen Wilson, Klaus Kinski, and Christopher Lloyd. She starred in “Alma,†a period piece about Gustav Mahler's wife, at the Los Angeles Theater on Broadway down town. Will Geer, who played “Slim†inOf Mice And Men, the original l937 Broadway production, said that no one had ever played the part of Curly's wife as well as Flo Lawrence.  Papa Geer commanded great respect and beauty in his being.  He truly became one of those “power†figures in Flo's life. Flo has been involved as an able bodied partner in an acting class taught and managed by Otto Felix, her long time friend and mentor.  Otto was the founder of H.A.P.P.I., Handicapped Artists Partners Performers Incorporated where Flo assisted for 10 years until the untimely death of its beloved founder. Flo can be seen singing up a storm every Sunday at the Unurban Coffee House with Mews Small and Her Fabulous Females. http://www.flolawrence.com/Welcome.html 
Sat, March 8 - Singer-Songfighter  Ross Altman traded his professorship for a life as a political folk singer and music historian of the old and new left decades ago. With a PhD in Modern Literature from SUNY-Binghamton, he won the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest 2010 Music Legend Award.  Ross is a member of Local 47 of the Musician’s Union (AFL-CIO), a columnist and staff writer for FolkWorks ( www.folkworks.org), and serves as President of the Santa Monica Traditional Folk Music Club.  For the Ash Grove’s 50th anniversary celebration at UCLA, Ross performed with Guy Carawan (the folk singer who helped transform  We Shall Overcome into the civil rights anthem we know today); at the House of Blues Ross sang his song  Tiananmen Square for the 20th anniversary observance of the June 4, 1989 massacre of students protesting for democracy; in 2012 Ross performed two shows to celebrate the Woody Guthrie Centennial, one at the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival on May 20 and one at the Pasadena Public Library; in 2013 Ross celebrated the 50th anniversary of the musical legacy of the March on Washington—again at the Topanga Banjo-Contest and Folk Festival and Pasadena Public Library. He is a recording artist for his own label—Grey Goose Music—with twelve albums to his credit. In the spirit of H.L. Mencken Ross writes and sings songs to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. Altman is famous all over town at venues such as the Talking Stick, Beyond Baroque, Sunset Hall (“Retirement home for ageless radicals†) and the UnUrban, where he looks forward to being interviewed on March 8, International Women's Day, an irony which is not lost on interviewer Gerry Fialka. Ross promises to singhis  Ballad of  Aunt Molly Jackson, for the blacklisted Harlan County coal mining organizer, folk singer and author of  I Am a Union Woman. 
SAT April 12- ELISHA SHAPIRO (reschedlued to July 12) (CANCELLED april 12 date) has been creating conceptual art that explores the nature of belief, modern mass media and the form of art itself for the last thirty years.  His work has often taken the form of large-scale public events, including the media coverage related to those events.  Some notable highlights of his career include The 1984 Nihilist Olympics, The Nihilist Film Festival, The Nihilist Party campaigns for President, LA County Sheriff and California Governor, The 1999 Nihilism Expo and the Nihilists’ Corner television show. Most recently, he wrote and performed  The Funniest Nihilist show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.  Shapiro’s work incorporates idiosyncratic humor and startling imagery, video, performance and written material.nihilists.net 
SAT, May 10 - JOHANNA DRUCKER is an author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her scholarly writing documents and critiques visual language:  letterforms,  typography,  visual poetryart, and lately, digital aesthetics. She is currently the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the  Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at  UCLA. Drucker's research focuses on alphabet historiography, modeling interpretation for electronic scholarship, digital aesthetics, the history of visual information design, history of the book and print culture, history of information, and critical studies in visual knowledge representation. Most recently, her scholarship has focused on information visualization, "which draws heavily on models from the empirical sciences, where approaches based on representation and transparency prevail." In contrast to this approach, Drucker stresses the rhetorical and performative nature of visualization, with emphasis on interpretation. She contends that digital tools should be used to "design graphic forms that inscribe subjectivity and affective judgment." Drucker is internationally renowned for her book art, which touches on a variety of themes, especially "the exploration of the conventions of narrative prose and the devices by which it orders, sequences, and manipulates events according to its own logic" as well as "the use of experimental typography to expand the possibilities of prose beyond the linear format of traditional presentation."  
archive 2014 
SAT, June 14 - Kent Minault graduated from the University of Rochester in 1965 with a degree in Anthropology, several acting honors, and the Russell Mumford Tuttle award for proficiency in Classical Greek.  He received his professional theatre training while touring with the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the late ‘60’s, appearing in The Minstrel Show and L’Amant Militaire â€“ both winners of numerous awards.  In the ‘70’s he worked for the San Francisco Arts Commission, starting Make-A-Circus, for which he became Ringmaster and Clown Director, and Talespinners, where he was artistic director.  He also cofounded Reinhabitory Theatre with Peter Coyote and Planet Drum Foundation.  He appeared in numerous legitimate stage roles in San Francisco in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, working at the Magic Theatre, the One-Act Theatre, Steve Dobbins Productions, and ACT.  He starred in the Emmy winning PBS Special, “The People vs. Dan White†, guest starred on “Partners in Crime†with Leo Rossi and Loni Anderson, and played leading roles in a few low budget films.  He also directed several productions before moving to LA in ’87 with the hit production of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Charles Dutton and Richard Lawson at LATC.  He followed this with appearances at the Powerhouse, the Tiffany and the CAST.  He soon returned to LATC to perform in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone with Roscoe Lee Browne.  He made his first appearance in a Hollywood film in Touchstone’s popular “Spaced Invaders†, following it with Richard Benjamin’s “Downtown†.  On prime time, he’s appeared in “Chicago Hope†and “Babylon 5†, guest starred in “Tribes†and “Ferris Bueller†, and won roles in several national commercials.  His GTE spot, featuring an intimate moment with a mouse named Dave, was honored by inclusion in England’s “Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown†.  He continued his arts activism through teaching, and in 1989, became involved with the Classical Theatre Lab.  With his career turning back to the classics, he played Autolycus in A Winter’s Tale and Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in major regional venues.  He returned briefly to the SF Mime Troupe to tour in their multiple award-winning production of I Ain’t Yo’ Uncle.  He played the lead in Kvetch at the Odyssey on and off for nearly two years, and followed it with the lead in The Chicago Conspiracy Trial. The Odyssey had him back forAre You Now or Have You Ever Been and The Good Woman of Szechuan.  His Iliad Project went through several incarnations at the Classical Theatre Lab, where he served on the Steering Committee for seven years, and as Artistic Coordinator for two.  The first book of the Iliad was staged at the Stella Adler as part of the Lab’s Workshops ’96.  In 1997, a lavish production of Books I thru V was staged at the 24th Street Theatre under Kent’s direction.  Early in 1999, Book 9 was performed for a special engagement for the American Archaeological Association.  In 2000, Book I was performed at the Archer School in Brentwood.  Kent’s directing work at the Lab continued with enthusiastically received productions of An Ideal Husband and The Merchant of Venice.  He performed the role of Sir Anthony Absolute in The Rivals at Interact in 2000.  In 2002 he performed the role of Serebryakov in Bruce Katzman’s acclaimed Uncle Vanya, and followed it immediately with a turn as the chilling villain in Jack London's Theft, both with the Lab.  In 2003 he played the writer F. Alexander in the wildly acclaimed production of A Clockwork Orange at the Greenway Court., and followed it by playing Blessington inThe Solid Gold Cadillac at Theatre 40.  In August of 2004, he produced The Tempest for the Classical Theatre Lab, and brought packed houses to the TreePeople Amphitheatre to see it.  Subsequently, he performed the role of Voltaire in Boston Court’s production of Light.  In the winter of 2004, he played King Henry in Henry IV, part 1 with the Lab.  In the spring of 2005, he went back to the Greenway Court to play Alfred Morris in Robey Theatre’s acclaimed Permanent Collection which moved to the Kirk Douglas in December of 2005 and played early in 2006.  He also played Geoffrey Chaucer in the Lab’s highly acclaimed The Canterbury Tales.  Later in 2006, he went back to the Odyssey to give an enthusiastically received performance as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Lawrence and Lee’sFirst Monday in October opposite Ralph Waite.  The Odyssey had him back again to reprise the role of William Kunstler in the 2007 return engagement of The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, and again in 2010 under Michael Peretzian's direction, he played the German writer Thomas Mann in Christopher Hampton's  Tales from Hollywood

SAT July 12 (rescheduled from April 12)-  ELISHA SHAPIRO has been creating conceptual art that explores the nature of belief, modern mass media and the form of art itself for the last thirty years.  His work has often taken the form of large-scale public events, including the media coverage related to those events.  Some notable highlights of his career include The 1984 Nihilist Olympics, The Nihilist Film Festival, The Nihilist Party campaigns for President, LA County Sheriff and California Governor, The 1999 Nihilism Expo and the Nihilists’ Corner television show. Most recently, he wrote and performed The Funniest Nihilist show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival.  Shapiro’s work incorporates idiosyncratic humor and startling imagery, video, performance and written material. nihilists.net 

SAT, Aug 9 (sub) Matt Collison on "Inside Llewyn Davis" 

SAT, SEPT 13 - DAVID L ULIN is book critic of the Los Angeles Times. From 2005 to 2010, he was the Paper’s book editor. He is the author of “The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time†and “The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith,†selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is also the editor of three anthologies: “Cape Cod Noir,†“Another City: Writing from Los Angeles,†and the Library of America’s “Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology,†which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He was awarded a 2010 Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on “Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.† 

SAT, Oct 11 - KENT HAYWARD, Filmmaker, Artist, Educator: Hayward’s work has been featured at over 25 festivals, including Dances with Films, DocuWest, New Filmmakers and Film Independent's Cinema Lounge, and in a recent retrospective hosted by 7 Dudley Cinema at Los Angeles' Beyond Baroque. The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas declared Hayward’s film Homestead Artifact “deeply affecting… Hayward has succeeded beautifully.† LA Weekly called it “an affecting rumination on the importance of memories.†After earning an MFA in Film & Video Production from the California Institute of the Arts, Hayward worked in the entertainment industry on film and television productions, including Inception, The Aviator, Eureka!, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and The Dark Knight Rises.He now teaches film at California State University Long Beach, Loyola Marymont University and El Camino College. His personal work is primarily in documentary and experimental film. “My films aim to tell big stories through small details," says Hayward. " It might be the way someone carries their hand, a spider in a web on a windy day, a child jumping into the sand. You can’t make that stuff up, so I just try to figure out how to incorporate it.† 

SAT, Nov 8 - SEAN WRIGHT - A writer and liturgical artist, Mr Wright designs and tailors liturgical vestments, and has gained renown for his unique crucifixes and processional crosses crafted from fallen tree branches. Once active in the entertainment industry, in an abortive attempt to revive dramatic radio in 1976 with his beloved mentor, the late Daws Butler directing, Mr Wright co-produced and wrote several episodes of the syndicated “New Radio Adventures of Sherlock Holmes†, starring the late Edward Mulhare. He has also written for several television quiz shows and remains proud of his work for “The Quiz Kid’s Challenge†and the popular TV quiz show “Jeopardy!†for which the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences honored Mr Wright with an Emmy nomination in the field of writing in 1985. His interest in Sherlock Holmes led Mr Wright to found The Non-Canonical Calabashes, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Los Angeles in 1970, the calabash pipe being long associated with Mr Holmes. While dashing off occasional poems and articles for The Baker Street Journal, Mr Wright began lecturing on Sherlock Holmes’ influence on literature and cinema in 1971.  At regional and national gatherings of MENSA Mr Wright conducts a highly regarded biennial lecture. Mr Wright has appeared onstage in starring and featured roles as an actor and singer in plays and concerts. Interviews featuring Mr Wright have appeared in many newspapers and magazines in the United States and Europe, on local TV and radio, on news and talk shows with Jerry Dunphy, Harold Greene, Carole Hemingway, Ralph Story, Stephanie Edwards, Tommy Hawkins, Penny Griego, and Bill Handel as well as the incorrigible John and Ken among others. He has also appeared on network television programs hosted by Larry King and Oprah Winfrey. Entertainment notables Gene Wilder, Leonard Nimoy, Nicholas Meyer, Rudolf Friml, Jr. along the late Jack Haley, Jr. and Charlton Heston have sought his advice regarding various projects involving the pipe-smoking sleuth of Baker Street. 

SAT, Dec 13 - THERESE DIETLIN - is a political activist, research scientist and library volunteer. She has hosted a political information table on the Venice Boardwalk since 2001. Her concerns include community, basic protection of the Constitution, truth and integrity in journalism, history and who writes it, money and commerce's relationship with power, local control as opposed to global, government corruption, gentrification, belief systems. and more. Theresa is truly a very conscious member of the Los Angeles & Venice community. 
SAT, Jan 10, 2015 - PAMELA DES BARRES - Despite her infamy as “the World’s Most Famous Groupie†or “Queen of the Groupies,†Pamela Des Barres has many other facets, fascinations and unique talents. Known mostly for her heady dalliances and friendships with classic rock’s elite dandies in the 60s and 70s, she presciently kept copious diaries about those madcap revolutionary days and nights. Pamela has written four books, I’m With the BandTake Another Little Piece of My Heart, (autobiographies) Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon, and most recently, Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies. “Miss Pamela†has shared her history on endless TV and radio shows and documentaries, including two memorable stints with both Oprah and Larry King. Last year she wrote and produced an hour-long VH1 Doc interviewing an array of supergroupies based on her most recent book. She has been teaching ongoing women’s writing workshops in Los Angeles and all over the country for twelve years, inspiring like-minded dolls to share their desire, stories and ideas in a totally safe environment. She calls these writing parties “Groupie Therapy.†And as an ordained minister, Pamela performs unique one-of-a-kind rock & roll weddings! http://pameladesbarres.net/
SAT, Feb 14 - TOSH BERMAN is a writer, poet and publisher. His press, TamTam Books, pretty much focus on the literature and pop culture that came out of post-war France.  The authors he published are Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Debord, Gilles Verlant, and the French criminal Jacques Mesrine.  On top of that he published “Lun*na Menoh: A Ring Around The Collar†and “In The Words of Sparks… Selected Lyrics by Ron Mael and Russell Mael (Sparks) with an introduction by Morrissey. In 2013, he wrote a book called “Sparks-Tastic.†(published by Rare Bird) which is about the band Sparks, as well as being a travel journal with commentary on London and Paris.  In 2014, we will see the re-print of his poems “The Plum in Mr. Blum’s Pudding†(Penny-ante editions) as well a chapbook from his ongoing series “2014†called “Sgt. Pepper.† Tosh is also the son of noted artist Wallace Berman. Tosh is at present working on “2014†which is a project where he writes a narrative/essay per day for the entire year of 2014.  The project began on January 1, 2014 and it will end December 31, 2014.   One can read this at: http://tamtambooks-tosh.blogspot.com 

SAT, March 14 - DAVID McGOWAN is a political researcher, writer, and author of several books. The first, Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See, published in 2000 and now out of print, was meant as a warning to the American people that the country seemed to be sailing into dangerous waters. The second, Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion, was a review of twentieth century American history. If the first book was a statement of this is where we are as a nation, then the second looked for answers to the question of how did we get here? His third book,Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder, was an alternative look at the phenomenon of serial killers. And his latest and most popular book to date, Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream, published in April 2014, is a review of the dark side of the Laurel Canyon music/counterculture scene of the 1960s and 1970s. His most recent project is a fresh look at of one of the most poorly understood chapters in American history, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln – an event we are quickly approaching the 150th anniversary of. McGowan has also, since 1990, run a small contracting business in the greater Los Angeles area. He was born and raised in Torrance, California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in psychology. Currently single, he is the proud father of three adult daughters. Contact:  davemcgowan@roadrunner.com. Visit  www.davesweb.cnchost.com. and www.facebook.com/weirdscenesinsidethecanyon

SAT, April 11 - ANTHONY MOSTROM is a noted cartoonist, illustrator and writer. His illustration work has appeared in the windows at Amoeba Records, the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, in books (a biography of Mark Twain), and most recently, Jack White's The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records. He wrote the LA Times' LA history column in 2011 and 2012. 

SAT, May 9 - DAVID OCKER - Soon after Ocker’s education at Carleton College and the California Institute of the Arts he was hired as “musical secretary†to iconic composer Frank Zappa. Ocker earned album credits from Zappa as clarinetist, synthesist and orchestrator and experienced his "15-minutes of fame" during a 28-minute solo performance of a Zappa work with the London Symphony Orchestra. According to Zappa Ocker did "Synclavier Document Encryption" on the Francesco Zappa album.  He even asked Ocker to write the liner notes for that release. Ocker also had a behind-the-scenes role in the "While You Were Art" incident. Since leaving Zappa’s employ Ocker has earned a living in the exciting world of freelance music preparation, working regularly for noted classical composers such as John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, William Kraft and Anders Hillborg. Ocker was co-founder of a composers collective (the Independent Composers Association), a chamber group (Xtet) and an improvisation trio (with Vinny Golia and Anne La Berge). Lacking commissions, awards, recordings or performances for his own music, David Ocker thinks of himself as a "failed composer". He learned a valuable lesson, however, when he tried to quit writing music altogether: he couldn't stop. Now he spends happy purposeless moments exercising his aural imagination via computer sound software, the results of which he posts to his blog Mixed Meters. In the visual realm he publishes curiously-devoid-of-context photographs on a Tumblr entitled Mixed Messages and videos on a website called YouTube.
SAT, June 13 -  EBEN REY is a radio host and political researcher. 
Her ProjectNext.us programs aired on Roy Of Hollywood's Something 
Happening Pacifica KPFK shows for 15 years. She explores deep  
knowledge and inspired revelations. 
SAT, July 11 - LAWRENCE GROBEL (www.lawrencegrobel.com) is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. 
SAT, Aug 8 WENHUA SHI is Assistant Professor in Art And Art History at Colgate University.Originally trained as a doctor in China, he departed from the medical field and began working in radio and TV in his hometown of Wuhan. In 2000, he came to the US and began studying experimental film at the University of Colorado, Boulder. There he began making and exploring film as and earned his BA &  BFA. In 2009 he graduated with an MFA from the Department of Art Practice at the University of California, at Berkeley. Since then his new works integrate sounds, film, video, installation, and sculpture. His work has been screened  or exhibited at the Pacific Film Archive, Black Maria Film Festival, Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television (UK) ,Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, Denver Contemporary Museum of Art,  and dozens of international film festivals,including Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bradford, SXSW,  and Mexico City. His most recent works have been exhibited at the West Bund 2013: A Biennale of Architecture and Contemporary Art, Shanghai, The Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism, International Arte Laguna Finalists Exhibition at The Arsenale of Venice, Italy. 

SAT, Sept 12 - TYLER HUBBY â€œTyler Hubby demands his audience experience a cinema of time, which transforms the commonplace into an aesthetic . . . that the audience re-imagine the everyday world around them, perceive the everyday in a new way. "-Jack Sargeant , Cinema Contra Cinema. Hubby began making films and photographs as a young boy.  While in high school he was mentored by a then unknown young director named David Fincher. He later went on to study film and photography at the San Francisco Art Institute where he had the privilege of studying with George Kuchar.  Since 1994 he has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the avant/experimental record label Table of the Elements documenting artists such as Faust, Keiji Haino, John Fahey, Jim O'Rourke, Rhys Chatham, Arnold Dreyblatt, Zeena Parkins, Jonathan Kane and Tony Conrad.   As a regular contributor to  Artillery magazine he has photographed such contemporary art figures as John Waters, Mike Kelley, John Baldessari, Shepard Fairey, Susan Anderson, Zak Smith, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andrew Krasnow and Samantha Fields. Additionally his photographs have been used as evidence in federal court. He has edited over 30 documentary films.  Most notable among them are  The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a picaresque biography of mentally ill artist/musician Daniel Johnston;  Double Take, Belgian artist Johan Grimonprez’s metaphysical essay on the cold war, the rise of television and the murder of Alfred Hitchcock by his own double; the HBO documentary  A Small Act; Drafthouse Films' The Final Member which follows the curator of the Icelandic Phallological Museum as he attempts to complete his exotic penis collection;and Participant Media's The Great Invisible,which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW 2014. He also edited and co-produced  Lost Angels about the denizens of Los Angeles’ Skid Row and the new punk rock documentary  Bad Brains: A Band in DC. He served as an additional editor on the Oscar nominated  The Garden and HBO’s  Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. He also edited the gothic horror short  Usher, by cult director Curtis Harrington about whom he also co-directed a short documentary entitled  House of Harrington.  He is currently directing a feature length documentary about composer/musician/artist Tony Conrad.http://www.tylerhubby.com/ 
SAT, Oct 10 - JOHN TOTTENHAM - Failed Visionary   http://johntottenham.com/2014/02/ and   otiosity@sbcglobal.net  
    
SAT Nov 14 ROBERT EGGER pioneered the model of L.A. Kitchen http://www.lakitchen.org/during his 24-year tenure as the President of the DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first “community kitchen†, where food donated by hospitality businesses and farms is used to fuel a nationally recognized culinary job training program. DC Central Kitchen operates its own revenue generating business, Fresh Start Catering, as well as the Campus Kitchens Project, which coordinates programs in 33 university and high school cafeterias nationwide. In addition, Robert is the Founder and President of CForward, an advocacy organization that rallies nonprofit employees to educate candidates about the economic role that nonprofits play in every community. Robert has received numerous awards for his leadership in the nonprofit sector, and his book, Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient and Rewarding For All, received the 2005 McAdam Book Award for “Best Nonprofit Management Book†by the Alliance for Nonprofit Management. 
Dec 12, 2015, SAT - April Hava Shenkman, aka HAVA is a Los Angeles Performance Artist, Comedian, Actress & filmmaker. She has been performing her own original brand of avant grade comedy in Los Angeles for over a decade now. Her work has been presented at numerous theaters, galleries & clubs across America & Europe. She studied theatre at The University of La Verne in CA & The Guildford School of Acting in England. Hava studied with legendary Performance Artist Rachel Rosenthal, & performed with her Company in Los Angeles between 2004-2007. Hava has created numerous solo & ensemble original theatre productions in Los Angeles. She is the creator of THE HAPPY HAPPY SHOW (ran weekly @ El Cid in 2010, & the web series, of which she produced 11 episodes). In 2012 Hava completed her 2nd comedy art film series, "HAVA calendar," which has been exhibited at Iam8bit Art gallery in Los Angeles 2013. In 2012 she ran her one woman show called "HAVA" at Atwater Crossing & the Gardenia Club in Hollywood. In 2013 she ran her show "HAVA HAPPY HOUR" at Spirit Studio Silverlake. Performance Venues include: ACE hotel in Palm Springs, Highways, Electric Lodge, Spirit Studios Silverlake, Akbar, & Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood.  Recently Hava made her first comic book,"HAVAWOOD," an autobiographical glimpse into the life a Hollwyood performance artist chasing her dreams. In May of 2014 she created a 16 ft. tall giant Hava instillation & performance piece, called "Inside Herself." Exhibited at Iam8bit gallery in Los Angeles. All of Hava's work explores the art of happiness. Hava is a surrealist, in love with the charms of Hollywood's golden age. Her performances blend theatre, comedy, & art through the eternal spirit of the Clown. LA WEEKLY says, "Forget your troubles, come on get Hava!"http://www.aprilhavashenkman.com/

Jan 9, 2016 SAT - Educator-writer JOAN ASHWORTH-WARD replaced the cancelled 
AURORA DE LUCIA 

Sat, Feb 13 - ERICA WOHLDMANN - Master forager and food activist Wohldmann holds a joint Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and cognitive science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a professor at California State University, Northridge, where she teaches classes about eco-psychology, the psychology and politics behind our food choices, and best practices in sustainability. Her research focuses on food and consumer choices. In the community, Erica also teaches workshops on herbal and medicinal brewing, wild-food foraging, and primitive skills.

Sat, March 12 - KARIN SPRITZLER - Award winning playwright, singer and artist. She promotes maxims like: "Be kind...isn't life hard enough?" and "The most courageous act...is humility." Influences include Edna St. Vincent Millay and ee cummings. Her work as a playwright has always been the human heart. As a playwright and writing instructor, Karin developed her finely tuned skills in story-telling as a script analyst for major television and film studios, where her instincts and insights have been tapped by Norman Lear, Creative Artists Agency, Paramount Pictures, Trimark Pictures and Orion Pictures.  Karin's training in the arts reaches back to her days at Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard-Westlake) and Carnegie Mellon University, where she studied painting and design. Believing in the healing power of words, for years Karin has taught writing workshops for homeless women, at-risk teens,and those suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. In this deeply felt work, she has keenly understood that everyone has a story. Karin will be interviewed by Suzy Williams https://www.facebook.com/events/807256149386122/
SAT, April 9, JAN-CHRISTOPHER HORAK has emerged as a leading figure in exile research. A committed, indefatigable, scholar, Horak’s contribution to exile research is manifold. To begin with, he was the first scholar to shed a light on the exiled film-artists, which, until then, had been neglected by exile researchers who were concerned primarily with the literary and academic emigration. Horak’s interest in the exiled film-artists was sparked while doing his MA on Ernst Lubitsch and the Founding of UFA at Boston University, from which he graduated in 1975. While his MA on Lubitsch kindled Horak’s interest in other Germans settling in Hollywood, it must not be overlooked that Horak himself is half-German (his mother is from Cologne) and that he was educated in the US as well as in Germany. Horak’s father, Czech by birth, is a concentration camp survivor who fled to West Germany after the putsch in Czechoslovakia in 1948. Hence I suggest, that Horak’s interest in exile research is a consequence of his background and upbringing. Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that Horak’s preoccupation with exile research came at a crucial moment in German history, as a political shift to the left made itself felt in the country’s political and cultural landscape, subsequently provoking the scholarly examination of Germany’s Nazi past. http://film-daily.blogspot.com/2010/03/jan-christopher-horak-and-his.html
 
Sat May 14 - KRISTIN FITZPATRICK is the author of My Pulse Is an Earthquake, a collection of stories forthcoming from Vandalia, an imprint of West Virginia University Press. Her book was a semi-finalist for the 2014 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Kristin's work has appeared in journals such as Colorado Review, The Southeast Review, and Epiphany. Her writing has been chosen for the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Gival Press Short Story Award, The New Short Fiction Series, and Stories on Stage. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Jentel Artist Residency Program and The Seven Hills School. Originally from the Midwest, she now lives and writes in Southern California. kristin.aileen.fitzpatrick@gmail.com,
Sat, June  11, 2016 - MARK LIPSON came to Los Angeles after attending NYU Film School to pursue photography and produce film and television. He developed and was associate producer of the original “Children of the Corn†feature. Then returning to NYC he produced “Almost You,†an indie comedy starring Griffin Dunne and Brooke Adams for Fox Classics (which premiered at the pre-Sundance, USA Festival 1985). In the mid-90’s he supervised 3 innovative doc series for ITVS, including The United States of Poetry.  While in Texas shooting stills for David Byrne’s film True Stories he met Errol Morris. Mark produced 3 of Errol’s films most notably the award winning The Thin Blue Line and then Fast Cheap and Out of Control and most recently Tabloid.  Currently Mr. Lipson has been consulting as executive producer and post production supervisor on numerous Indie Features such as, Standard Operating Procedure, Countdown to Zero, This Space Available, The Source Family and last years Cannes, Telluride and Toronto International Film Festival darling, Red Army. His most recent film as Executive Producer, In Football We Trust, a documentary feature that follows four Tongan high school football players and NFL hopefuls premiered at Sundance 2015. Mark is currently serving as Executive Producer on a handful of independent features including Bogalusa Charm, Larry Flynt for President and JoyBubbles.
SAT, July 9 - DARRYL HENRIQUES - As a "stand-up philosopher" Darryl (aka "The Swami From Miami" and many other comical personas) has performed at benefits for the Rainforest Action Network, the Sea Shepherd Society, the Alliance for Survival, the Abalone Alliance, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Various Waldorf Schools, Fair, and Media Alliance. The D-Man performed on KSAN, FM (the original underground freeform started in 1968) in San Francisco on "The Last News Show" (hosted by Scoop Nisker) appearing as Joe Carcinogenni, Jacques Kissmatoe, the Rev. Clyde Fingerdip and The Swami from Miami, among other characters trapped in his imagination. He has hosted shows and appeared on KPFA, Berkeley, KPFK, Los Angeles and KPCC in Pasadena.  A narcotics officer  in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke was his film debut (which he hopes no one will see). He played a Life Magazine reporter in The Right Stuff and in Jumanji, he was a gun dealer who sells an automatic shotgun to a big game hunter stalking Robin Williams. Other viewers may know him as Nanclus, the Romulan Ambassador to the Federation in Star Trek VIThe Undiscovered Country or from the TV series Star Trek The Next Generation where he played Portal 63 in the Last Outpost. In 2011 he persuaded 20 theaters across the U.S. to do a reading of Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," all on the same night to honor the 75th anniversary of the Federal Theatre Project's performing the play in 17 cities on October 27, 1936. Among the organizations he has founded or is associated with include: The People's Think Tank ("Where we do your thinking for you."), the National Organization for the Abolition of Space Travel ("We've lost the earth, let's save the universe."), and most recently the Cosmic Association to Promote Radical Atmospheric Transformation ("Free the carbon and free it now!").  He is also the author of 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Pave the Earth, but his major claim to fame is that he is the only actor in the world who has worked with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Teatro Campesino and the Bread and Puppet Theater. In addition he was one of the founding members of the never to be forgotten Bay Area street theater, the East Bay Sharks. He asks us all to hopefully remember, “The only change is there is no hope!†

Sat, Aug 13 - BRIAN McKINNEY, writer, educator, thinker, has explored the likes of Norman O. Brown, Tom Wolfe, Teilhard de Chardin and Marshall McLuhan with an emphasis on understanding relationships. He has written three Young Adult novels and created various artworks. He promotes passion to understand, share and stimulate consideration of our state of being in the shrinking western penumbra of cold revenge. and the genuine deconstruction of world history as the continual psychic carpet of unintended effects of human’s inventions serves as the ephemeral ‘thing’ that allows model building and critical therapeutic analysis. He once created a black power poster using reassembled lines from Shakespeare’s play Othello, “Dost thou mock me? Look in upon me then and speak with me, or naked as I am I shall assault thee.†Brain says, "To make a living we have to create fascinating things '…to keep a drowsy emperor awake…' while we search for the way to bring the future into the NOW long enough for everyone to behold it and consider all the options. "
 
Sat, Sept 10 - MICHAEL WEBSTER is a composer, conductor, performer, and recording artist who has created film scores, albums, art songs, and operas. His body of work grows out of classical training and his study of ancient music forms. Webster's operas, specifically, are rooted in the sensitivity that words and poetry create musically.Webster's performances include Michael Webster and his Band of Grown Men, which premiered at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1998), and Proposal for The Side of the Mountain, at Santa Monica Museum of Art (2002). In 2004, Webster's opera Hell, based on Dante's Inferno, with a libretto by Eileen Myles, premiered at Performance Space 122. It went on to tour at venues including St. Mark's Church, the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; and Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico. With funds from his Grants to Artists, Webster completed the vocal score of a new opera Nice Day for the Races––based on a radio play by Samuel Beckett––the first portion of which was shown in film form in 2013 at 356 Mission, Los Angeles. Webster was also able to resurrect the non-profit Peoples Opera, which he and Eileen Myles formed in 2004.Webster has recorded a number of solo albums including The Native Shrubs of the Santa Monica Mountains (1994), Lotus Festival (2000), and Report (2008). Additionally, Webster has composed and recorded scores for artists' films shown at the Venice Biennial and the Whitney Biennial.Prior to his 2011 Grants to Artists, Webster received a grant from the UC Institute for Research in the Arts (2004), a Meet the Composer Grant (2005), and The Puffin Foundation General Grant (2006). Webster received a B.F.A. (1990) and an M.F.A. (1992) from the California Institute of the Arts. 

Sat, Oct 8 - BRUCE WOODSIDE - animator and Finnegans Wake enthusiast. He has been a story board Artist, and Director on Space Jam, The Swan Princess, Cool World, Mighty Mouse: The New Adventure 2, Beauty and the Beast and more. View his short film An Artificial Life here - https://vimeo.com/45369136 (KLIPH NESTEROFF cancelled)

SAT, Nov 12 - 
NEDI SAFA is an American- born singer-songwriter, author, lecturer, and energy healer. She has played her original music on three continents and now webcasts her folk-rock concerts to over fifteen countries at a time. Her YouTube channel is NEDIsings and her website is NEDIsings.com She was production coordinator on the visionary feature film "Mindwalk", chosen by the world futurist society; and is author of "Inside & Out: Dialogs about Autism between a Mother & Son". Nedi does remote energy healing for clients all over the world through Now Healing. Her creative process and unique voice advocate for a world of unity and equality as in her song "Reason for Hope".

Sat, Dec 10 - S. A. (Steven) Gerber is a native and  resident of Los Angeles, with a slight detour living in Nevada for 24 years, where he wrote and directed an Award Winning Industrial Film.  As a Playwright and Screenwriter, Gerb has collected enough rejection letters (most very positive and encouraging) to wallpaper his home. He was Head Writer (no pun intended) for Caballero Home Video during "the golden age of adult films" for four years. In 1999 he finally settled on Poetry because it requires less paper. Gerb's  two volumes of poetry, Under the Radar and Inventory are available on-line at Amazon and Barns&Nobel, as well as Beyond Baroque Bookstore in Venice, and The Amber Unicorn in Las Vegas. His poetry has been published in such diverse publications as "The Blue Collar Review"..."Subtopian Magazine"..."Black Heart Magazine" "Sediments Literary/Arts Journal"..."Talking Sidewalks"..."Desert Voices Magazine"..."Mad Swirl", and the Los Angeles Poetry Society Poet Page", to name a few. Gerb is beloved mostly by kids, animals, and old ladies.

Sat, Jan 14, 2017 - 
Henry Schipper, filmmaker, author and meditation teacher, has been making documentaries since 1991. Other credits include "The Crumbling of America", "Anatomy of War", and "Sigmund Freud: The Story of a Mind". He is currently executive producer of Unsung Hollywood, a one-hour biographical series about African American actors, comedians, tv shows and films on TV One. Henry is a Venice resident since 1980.

Sat, Feb 11 - 
Gordon Winiemko is an artist that engages with “the things we do” – social customs, idioms, memes – that are so much a part of the "air we breathe" that we often ignore how they shape our lives, for better or worse. He works in several mediums – film, video, performance, participation, and social practice – but video is his essential medium and metaphor because it is the screen – whether a movie, television, or a computer screen – that functions as both a reflection of and instruction in who we are and how we do things. By using the medium of the screen and by employing the tropes of “screen media” like the movies, Winiemko’s work sets the stage for the re-examination of otherwise transparent and comfortable social structures. Since 2007, the year he graduated from UC Irvine with a Masters of Fine Art, he has been collaborating with Jeff Foye under the group name JEFF&GORDON. Both with Jeff and on his own, Gordon has had solo exhibitions and screenings at the UC Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles, the Blinding Light Cinema in Vancouver, and other venues. His work has been included in exhibitions and screenings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives in New York, the SXSW Film Festival, the International Symposium on Electronic Art, and most recently at the Torrance Art Museum. In his review of the Torrance Art Museum exhibition, Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight spotlighted the JEFF&GORDON multi-channel video piece in the show, describing it as creating a “subtle, churning sense of cyclical inevitability and frail response.” 
When he’s not working on his projects, Gordon teaches film production at LA Mission College and CSU Fullerton. Gordon is originally from Detroit. He lived for a few years in San Francisco and currently lives in Long Beach, where he rarely goes to the beach. gordon@jeffandgordon.net
gordon@jeffandgordon.net

Sat
, March 11 - Paul Zollo is a singer-songwriter, best-selling author, music journalist and photographer. Presently the Senior Editor of American Songwriter magazine and editor of Bluerailroad.comhe has written eight books. His most famous is Songwriters On Songwriting, which is used in universities as text and has been expanded four times. The long awaited sequel to that book, More Songwriters On Songwriting, was published in October of this year. He also wrote Hollywood Remembered, Conversations with Tom Petty, and The Schirmer Complete Rhyming Dictionary. The leader of the band The Ghosters for years, he  released one self-titled album with them, and as a solo artist has released two albums, Orange Avenue and Universal Cure. He has co-written songs with many great songwriters, including the late Steve Allen, as well as Dan Bern, Darryl Purpose, Severin Browne and Neil Rosengarden. His photographs have been displayed in galleries in both Los Angeles and Berlin, and have been published in many books and publications including People, American Songwriter, Chicago Tribune and more.   He has contributed writing to the Grammy awards for sixteen consecutive years, and has worked on several music documentaries, including Legends of the Canyon, about Laurel Canyon music. He's contributed to countless magazines over the years, including Musician, Variety, Billboard, Performing Songwriter, American Songwriter, Oxford American, The Jewish Journal, and more.

Sat, April 8 - Walter Reuben is one of the world's prominent dealers in vintage movie posters of all periods and from all countries. He lived in Austin from 1971 through 1988 and directed his early experimental shorts there, including How Others Remember Us (1986), From Bad to Worse(1986) and How to Lose Weight (1987). He wrote the screenplay for the festival award-winning short film 3 Stories About Evil (2008). He produced and co-wrote the short film The Harvey Girl from Shanghai (2010). His first feature, THE DAVID WHITING STORY; or, THE CESAR ROMERO JOKE (a metafictional movie), won the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Experimental/Indepedendent Film Award. His second feature film, THE BIG RAINCHECK (1981) was inspired by a meeting that he had with French director Jacques Rivette in April, 1981.  At that time, Rivette’s legendary magnum opus, OUT ONE, was not available to be screened, but Reuben decided to create a sort of remake of it.  He shot much footage of his new film, called THE BIG RAINCHECK, throughout 1981 in Austin. For various reasons, the film got abandoned halfway through, and the footage was believed lost for more than 30 years. When it got discovered in a garage two years ago, Reuben decided to complete the film---even though most of the cast were dead, the script was lost, and nobody (including the director himself) could remember what was supposed to happen in the footage that was never shot in the first place.

Sat, May 13 - Potier Von Dee Roosueault is a modern thinker, who was born in Massachusetts, grew up on Cape Cod, and went to The School For The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and U Mass Boston.  He works as Security Guard and delves deep into Marshall McLuhan and William Irwin Thompson. cthuluruk@gmail.com

Sat June 10 -  Peter Tagore Tan is a Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's University in Los Angeles. He has a BS in Geology from the University of Arizona, and received his PhD from Fordham University in New York writing on the ontology of the Process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Between the disciplines of science and philosophy, he is similarly fascinated with food (the making and the consumption of it and what it stands for), music, travel, and history. His current project is a book length work that covers all of these points of interest using a 14th century allegorical monograph as a reference point. Awarded with Mount Saint Mary's University's Faculty of the Year, he views philosophy as less of an academic discipline and more as a roadmap that helps negotiate and explain the contours of that map. His main philosophical interests are metaphysics, aesthetics, ontology, and environmental ethics; his main philosophers of interest are Laozi, Spinoza, and Whitehead.
 
Sat July 8 -  Pia Guerrero is a writer, youth development expert, and media literacy pioneer. From Harlem to Hawaii, Pia has led presentations to hundreds of teachers, youth workers, and youth on the impact the media has on young people, especially girls. Pia has also worked with the Department of Education, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and the Independent Television Service (ITVS). She is the founder and editor of Adios Barbie, the first body image website to expand the conversation beyond size to include race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and sexuality. Her work with Adios Barbie has been mentioned in MSNBC, BBC 4, The New York Times, Forbes, Al-Jazeera, Seventeen, Fitness, Glamour, among others. Pia has also appeared numerous times as an expert on CNN’s Headline News (HLN) and Huffington Post Live. A former experimental filmmaker, she currently works with SheHeroes producing films and podcasts featuring exceptional career women who have overcome obstacles to achieve success.
 
Aug 12, SAT – Geri Silva  (with guest host Derek Gibb) was born and raised in Los Angeles where she spent the past 40+ years in all forms of  struggle for human, political and economic rights.  Her activity covers the span from immigration rights to welfare rights to the right to decent housing for all in need.  For the past 20+ years she has fought against the rampant and ongoing abuses in the courts and at the hands of the police.  Silva was a founding member of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (Mothers ROC) in 1992, Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes (FACTS) in 1996, Fair Chance Project (FCP) in 2009, and California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC) in 2011.  She is presently the Executive Director of FACTS Education Fund and a board member of FCP.  CFASC and FCP are projects of FACTS Education Fund. Her radio show airs on KPFK Pacifica. http://www.kpfk.org/programs/196-think-outside-the-cage#.WPVQ4Y5idoA

Sept 9, 2017 Sat - STEPHEN FIFE - Editor-in-Chief of the arts website www.Better-Lemons.com, where he also writes under 
the pen name Twisted Hipster.  Better-Lemons covers the Los Angeles arts scene, with a special emphasis on a grass-roots perspective and the creative personality’s point of view.  His plays SAVAGE WORLD, BREAK OF DAY and THIS IS NOT WHAT I ORDERED have been published by Samuel French.  Other plays include Sizzle Sizzle, Blue Kiss, The Kitchen Girl, The Shadow Man, Sacred Blossoms, Future Perfect and The American Wife (with Ralph Pezzullo).  His adaptation of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance was produced Off-Broadway by the Jewish Repertory Theatre, where it received 17 rave reviews and has been performed all over the world. He has written the book and lyrics for Charming, Young Forever, Isabella in Oz and The Buzz Snapshot Holiday Show.  Charming was produced in the 2016 Hollywood Fringe.  The American Wife had its World Premiere at the Park Theatre in London in September 2016. Cune Press has published his memoirs THE 13TH BOY (featured in People Magazine and The Huffington Post) and BEST REVENGE: How the Theatre Saved My Life and Has Been Killing Me Ever Since, as well as his two books of poetry, Dreaming in the Maze of Love-Grief-Madness and Twisted Hipster.  He has been the recipient of a Federal Poetry Grant.  His articles and essays on Theater have appeared in The New York Times “Arts & Leisure” section, Village Voice and New Republic and American Theatre (among others), and he’s edited several volumes of monologues and scenes for Applause Books.  A graduate of Horace Mann H.S., Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University’s School of the Arts (MFA), Steve was the first literary manager for Primary Stages Company in New York City.   He has written screenplay adaptations of his plays Blue Kiss and Sizzle Sizzle, and of his memoir The 13th Boy. He has also written four original screenplays, The Falling Man (which has received several awards), Sympathy for the Devil (with David Hunt), and The American Wife and The Big Dog Rules (both with Ralph Pezzullo). He has also written novels. He’s currently based in the Los Angeles area.  See www.stealfireproductions.com for more info.  Email:slfife99@hotmail.com

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I would like to interview you about your background, ideas, and the creative process for my series.


Gerry Fialka 

310-306-7330
 


"Fialka's cool questions are right at the heart of all my work. By far the best interview I have ever been treated to." - Ondi Timoner, only two time Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury winner 

 "Gerry Fialka asks unexpected Questions about important Ideas, eliciting Answers that can surprise even those doing the answering.  My Interview with him taught me something about myself; it was a Gift." - David Gatten, preeminent experimental filmmaker 
 
"Great interviewing requires a stimulating interviewer and Gerry Fialka is certainly that. Best part is that he makes the rare act of deep thinking in public before an audience flow as creatively and easily as a Basquiat painting." - Jay Levin, LA Weekly founder and former editor-in-chief

"One of the greatest interviews of my life, and certainly unique. I'll never forget the challenging and intriguing and left-field queries, and the delight in finding such a kindred spirit from the worlds of philosophy and the avant-guardians of our shared experiences. Further!" - Roger Steffens, actor, author, lecturer, editor, reggae archivist, photographer, producer

"My four hour conversation with Gerry Fialka was fun and enlightening. I agree with art critic Doug Harvey that Fialka should have his own department at Cal Arts. His astute probing of James Joyce, McLuhan, Duchamp, Zappa and the hidden psychic effects of media is infectious and comprehensive." - Historian Paul Cronin http://www.thestickingplace.com/ 

"What I like about being interviewed by Gerry Fialka is that he stimulated cells that were dormant, that were hiding, that were lazy. His questions inspire fresh answers." -- Paul Krassner, writer, stand-up comedian, publisher of The Realist
"My experience in Gerry Fialka's MESS series was a scintillating discussion of history, culture, philosophy, sociology and the creative process. His questions and ideas transcend the accepted, traditional limitations of 'the interview.' " - Brad Schreiber, author, producer, screenwriter, journalist
 
"Fialka's interview with me was an invigorating, pleasurable, philosophical, specific, awakening journey." - Harry Northup, actor and poet 

"Fialka's interview was a joy, a challenge and a wonderful adventure. It is phenomenal what he does." - Songwriter, author Paul Zollo

"My interview with Gerry Fialka was a challenging experience. Heavy duty. Very different from any interview I've done... deeper, philosophical." - Skip Blumberg, experimental video pioneer
 
"Fialka's was the funniest interview I have ever had. He has developed a very wise way of triggering thoughts in the interviewee--or at least in me. He didn't ask any of the questions I always hate to be asked.  It was good talking with him" - Leighton Pierce,  Dean, School of Art and Design,  Pratt Institute, now at Cal Arts
 
"Fialka's interview had me buzzing inside with thoughts and memories that his engaging questions set in motion. Super stimulation." - Filmmaker Larry Gottheim
 
"I thank Gerry Fialka so much. I really enjoyed his interview with me, especially his unjaded joie de vivre, hearty laugh, and endless pursuit of knowledge sparked by social curiosity." - Filmmaker Phil Solomon.
 
"Fialka is a damn good interviewer. His questions are sometimes so precise that it tickles and sometimes so grand and thought provoking that one feels on the edge of a new spiritual awareness." - Lynne Sachs, award-winning filmmaker 
 
"Gerry Fialka is a master interviewer. Working out of his natural sympathies and his erudition, Gerry cannily and cheerfully guides his interviewees along a path of Socratic inquiry that goes far deeper than the average Q & A and possibly deeper than the interviewee thought himself/herself capable of going. With Gerry at the helm, the journey really is about the destination and not just the journeying." - Fred Worden

"Fialka's interview with me was an incredibly insightful conversation. I enjoyed it immensely." - Theo Anthony, Filmmaker
 
"Fialka's was the most intelligent interview I was ever involved with" - Filmmaker/author Jay Weidner, who is featured in the Sundance hitRoom 237 about Stanley Kubrick
  
"Gerry Fialka comes up with some dynamite questions that never occurred to me, and he has an astonishing memory for quotations. I appreciate his great work. " - Author Kristine McKenna
 
“I had such a great time at Gerry Fialka’s MESS Interview Series! Such provocative and unexpected questions; it was a delightful exercise for my mind. I thank him for his generosity of spirit and positive affirmations during the interview process; he made it really easy!“ -Poet/Author Terry Wolverton
 
"I had so much fun. I don't think I've ever heard such wonderful questions." - Author Janet Fitch
 
"Fialka's interviews are more gratifying than one could imagine, exploring ideas that don't normally get discussed. With his MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon) series, a cumulative effect emerges as each progressive interview builds upon and enhances the previous ones. His diligent efforts examine the impulses that motivate people. The secret to good conversation lies in the questions, and Fialka's questions are an art form." - William McNally, Activist/Author
 
"My interview with Fialka was both a rollicking journey into the heart of deep thought and some sort of hard core, cosmic tennis match. He uses quotes to spur new thought more than old thought. It was truly 'far out.' I am grateful." - Fred Dewey, writer, teacher, editor/publisher, former director of Beyond Baroque
 
" I was so honored to be selected for an afternoon of stimulating and rollicking conversation with you It's rare to have an opportunity to communicate for any length of time these days.  What a gift you give to your interviewees of your bright,  probing and convivial interaction. You've created a simultaneously celebratory and profound happening unlike anything else anywhere.  What a splendid combo of fun and intelligence you possess! Your creativity enlivens our community enormously, and I truly appreciate you. "  - Poet Linda Albertano to Gerry

"
Talking with Gerry is like an amazing whimsical journey back in time through your earliest visions and reasonings concerning what you are doing now, and why you began doing it as an artist, and human being. It's a true gift: an innerview, not an interview. " - Jeff Mosier, entertainer, banjo player 

"...Fialka is a true cultural Patriot, on the front lines of diversity, thought and reflection!..."  - Mark Grasso,
Producer/British Academy of Film and Television Arts-member
 
"Gerry Fialka is a meteor shower in the contemporary media arts discourse. I am SO happy that he writes for OtherZine. He's blowing my mind." - Craig Baldwin, who has published many Fialka essays on his online film magazine OtherZine since 2009
 
GERRY FIALKA, film curator, writer, lecturer, probe artist and paramedia-ecologist has conducted interactive workshops at Cal Arts, UCLA, MIT, USC, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Art Center, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Culver City High School, Massey University (New Zealand), and more. His public interview series MESS has included the likes of Mike Kelley, Alexis Smith, Abraham Polonsky, Mary Woronov, Paul Krassner, Ann Magnuson, Heather Woodbury, Norman Klein, Chris Kraus, P. Adams Sitney, Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Kristine McKenna, John Sinclair,  Van Dyke Parks, Orson Bean, George Herms, Doug Harvey, Janet Fitch, Jon Rappoport, Brad Schreiber, Simon Forti, Rudy Perez, Barry Smolin, SA Griffin, Bruce Bickford, Stan Warnow, Rip Cronk, Marina Goldovskaya, Harry Northup, John French, Jon Alloway, Bill Daniel, Phil Proctor, Ed Holmes (aka Bishop Joey), Marcy Winograd, Greg Burk, Kirk Silsbee among many others. Fialka's interviews have been published in books by Mike Kelley and Sylvere Lotringer. His William Pope.L interview is published in the magazine ARTILLERY Jan'08 issue. Fialka's MESS retrieves the original 1970 MESS (McLuhan Emergency Strategy Seminar) with McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, and Ted Carpenter (They Become What They Behold) all of whom stressed that breakdowns can be breakthroughs.
 
Fialka has also interviewed Grace Lee Boggs, Ondi Timoner, Timothy A. Carey, George Clinton, Colonel Bruce Hampton, Ben Watson, Tom Gunning, Mac Rebennack (aka Dr John), Martha Colburn, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Bill Brand, Pip Chodorov, Craig Baldwin, DJ Spooky, ruth weiss, MA Littler, Jesse Malmed, Nina Fonoroff, Gregorio Rocha, BILL MORRISON, MARK PAULINE, STEVEN CERIO, DAVID GATTEN, VERONIKA KRAUSAS, John Smith, James Harris, Phil Solomon, GENE YOUNGBLOOD, WINSTON SMITH, DAVID ARSON, ALEX MACKENZIE, HASKELL WEXLER, PAUL CRONIN , JOHANNA DRUCKER, JEFF MOSIER, PAUL KRASSNER, JEREMY KAGAN, CARL STONE, ROY ZIMMERMAN, HENRY SCHIPPER, GORDON WINIEMKO, CARL STONE, ROGER STEFFENS, PAUL ZOLLO, NAOMI UMAN, SKIP BLUMBERG, JACK EPPS JR, Theo Anthony, David Ehrenstein and many more.  
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MESS (Media Ecology Soul Salon), produced by Gerry Fialka since 1997, is based on Marshall McLuhan's insight: "If you don't study the effects of technology, you become its slave." And by "technology" McLuhan was referring to anything humans invent, from language to computers, from philosophy to books, from toothpicks to bulldozers. In dialogues with modern thinkers, MESS provides a forum for probing both the form and the content of media, and for comprehensively surveying-its services and disservices, avoiding bias or point of view. MESS is percept-plunder for the recent future. 

In his book "I, Fellini," Federico Fellini wrote, "I don't mind speaking autobiographically because I reveal less of myself talking about my real life than I do if I talk about the layer underneath, the one of my fantasies, dreams and imagination." MESS peers into the portals of discovering this layer. MESS seeks what lies beyond this layer. 

Participants -- including writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians and activists -- are the early radar systems and rear-view mirrors detecting how major transformations in technology affect us. As we live in a MESS-age, this interactive series shakes people out of their regular agendas and reality tunnels. MESS promotes mapmakers who search for new lands and new data. MESS seeks meticulous understanding of every thing we see, hear , feel, taste, and smell, passionately needling the somnambulists and proving that learning can and must be fun. As McLuhan asked, "How are you to argue with people who insist on sticking their heads in the in visible teeth of technology, calling the whole thing freedom?" "Technologies are not mere exterior ads," said Walter Ong, "but also interior transformations of consciousness." And, in his book Immediatism, Hakim Bey observed, "Simply to meet face-to-face is already an action against the forces that oppress us by isolation, by loneliness, by the trance of media." "If it works, it's obsolete." -- McLuhan. "Another fine MESS." -  Random Lengths News. 

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"Gerry Fialka's MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening." - Phil Proctor of the "Firesign Theatre" 

"Gerry Fialka is very special, well prepared and ready to take risks - I learned about my self! My kind of interviewer. " -Martin Perlich, author THE ART OF THE INTERVIEW

"Gerry Fialka is willing to enter in new discussions even if they go against his current views. Fialka's multilayered delivery of ideas encourages the search for new questions and new paradigms that extend beyond. He is well-informed, off-beat and articulate - one of the most fascinating people I've met." - Keith Jeffries, Ascalon Films 

"What a great interview Fialka conducted with me. He made it so easy. There used to be people on TV who conducted interviews in depth, though few as good as Fialka. Tom Snyder was the last." - Orson Bean 

"Fialka is a Zen master of media shuffling your mind with McLuhanisms, and stacking the deck with fresh insights into our culture." - David Selsky, Independent Film Programmer & author of 'Worlds of Silence'
 
"Like an eye-exam of flashing dots, my answers to Gerry Fialka's insightful questions worked like an i-exam catapulting me into my many faceted stories." - ruth weiss 

"Gerry Fialka is a wonderful host, able to create a joyful relaxing and concentrated atmosphere. During the Q&A he showed himself as a very eloquent critic asking deep and serious questions- always with humor, knowledge and full of energy." - Ine Poppe, Professor at the Willem de Kooning Art Academy, Amsterdam 

"I am very impressed by Gerry Fialka's energy in bringing together groups of people to think about ideas. That is very much in the McLuhan spirit, to create and foster interdisciplinary, living, educational projects in which people can talk about ideas. [Fialka] creates forums that bring together a plurality of critical perspectives into one multivalent conversation. " - Janine Marchessault, author of MARSHALL McLUHAN:COSMIC MEDIA. 

"When I participated in Fialka's MESS, he created a unique through-space kind of meditation. This collective free high fires up the ability/consciousness of not judging. It makes a gap between saying and meaning leaving a lot of room for interpretation. Really amazing event." - Marc Herbst, editor-Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. 

"Fialka's MESS interview series is a fascinating evening with stimulating questions and approaches. I surely enjoyed the depth of the arena and a chance to pontificate on questions of the spirit in a relaxed scenario and free speech surrounding." - Lady Lord Buckley 

"Gerry’s interview with me was like hypnotherapy without the snapping of the fingers to bring you back. I really felt good after that." - Lucky Otis, grandson of Johnny Otis and son of Shuggie Otis & the GTO’s Miss Mercy
 
“Gerry Fialka has built up an important body of work in his decades of interviews. My challenge to him is: get a book deal, already.” - Tibby Rothman, Feature Writer LA Weekly, Founder/Editor VenicePaper
 
"Gerry Fialka's interview with me at Experiments In Cinema 2011 Film Festival was a highlight. He is my new favorite person. He is writing a book on Avant Garde Film & The Ann Arbor Film Festival. He is such a trip! Totally brilliant and passionate about everything about human existence it seems, but in particular media theory, media art, media activism. He asked me all sorts of great questions." - Julie Perini, filmmaker, writer and teacher
 
 "Gerry interviewed me. I've given talks all over the world and none of them touched what happened in that interview.  For 2 hours and 45 minutes, the spontaneous river rolled on. At the end of every outpouring, Gerry turned the page with a new question, and the new page was just as exciting as the last one. I guess I've been waiting for an interview like that all my life. Gerry Fialka is the world champion of interviewers, it's not even close" - Jon Rappoport, author & journalist.  
 
"Being interviewed by Gerry Fialka was a real high point in my film career. His questions are wacky, discursive, cosmic, probing, thought provoking and, yes, experimental and avant garde. I left brimming with a renewed passion for the wide world of film and ideas. Gerry's enthusiasm and restless intellect are contagious." - Mark Street, award-winning filmmaker
 
“Fialka’s questions are challenging and thought provoking. These questions rattled me for days.” -Mary Jordan, filmmaker of Jack Smith documentary
 
"I am inspired and excited that Gerry Fialka, who holds an affinity for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, is writing a history of it. Having attended two of his 2008 AAFF workshops, I can testify he is intimate with experimental cinema and media philosophy, and is deeply dedicated to the exploration of new knowledge. " - Leslie Raymond, Professor of Art & New Media, University of Texas. 

"Gerry Fialka is the Studs Terkel of Venice, California - nurturing active participation for common ground." - Michele Raven, Writer/Producer
 
"Gerry Fialka is one of the most giving impresarios that ever landed in Venice, California. He continues to fulfill Venice founder Abbott Kinney's dream of Chautauqua's influence on people. Fialka is the glue of the Venicessance. " - Jeffrey Solomon, Historian, Venicebeachwalkingtours.com 

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"The confusion is not my invention...It is all around us and our only chance is to let it in. The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess." -Samuel Beckett.
 
"It's crazy how you can get yourself in a mess sometimes and not even be able to think about it with any sense and yet not be able to think about anything else. " - Stanley Kubrick.
 
“I think art is about tidying up, really. To tidy up, you’ve got to make a mess.” - Martin Sharp.
 
"Ain't this boogie a mess" - Frank Zappa.
 
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"Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - CinemaWithoutBorders.com
 
Fialka's new book project - AVANT GARDE FILM & The ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL HISTORY BOOKhttps://www.laughtears.com/Ann%20Arbor%20Film%20Festival.html
 
GERRY FIALKA's articles-


Fall 2015 Sticks & Stones will break your bones but FILM WILL NEVER HURT YOU http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/
 
 
Spring 2013 - Nothing & Stay Out (on Rodney Ascher's Kubrick documentary Room 237 & more) -http://othercinema.com/otherzine/archives/index.php?issueid=29&article_id=172
 
 
Spring 2012 - Occupy Awake: Conscious Mapmakers On World Wide Watch http://othercinema.com/otherzine/archives/index.php?issueid=27&article_id=148
 
Fall 2011 - McLuhan's City As Classroom Flips Into All-At-Onceness As Classroom
 
Spring 2011 - McLuhan & WikiLeaks: 'Hoedown' and 'Hendiadys'
 
Spring 2010 - Looking Glass - Review of Millennium Film Journal #51 http://othercinema.com/otherzine/archives/index.php?issueid=23&article_id=99
 
Spring 2009 - Dream Awake -HOW JOYCE INVENTED OTHER CINEMA & DISGUISED IT AS A BOOKhttp://othercinema.com/otherzine/archives/index.php?issueid=21&article_id=85
 

"We must invent a NEW METAPHOR, restructure our thoughts and feelings. The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature." - McLuhan
 
Thank you,
Gerry Fialka 
pfsuzy@aol.com  310-306-7330 


=================
Thanks, Gerry Fialka 
310 -306-7330 
pfsuzy@aol.com 
bio  https://www.laughtears.com/bio.html 
video bio - https://archive.org/details/gerry1_again 
     "Gerry Fialka is Los Angeles' preeminent underground film curator." - CinemaWithoutBorders.com 

check FIALKA's lecture info at

Accolades:

"What fun to have Gerry Fialka at Union Docs. We are grateful that he attracted many enthusiastic artists to convene in the space around his "Genuine Fake Films" program. It was definitely a treat to have full audience participation. He really made the discussion open, accessible and comfortable and we really appreciate that." - Jenny Miller, assistant artistic director, Union Docs NYC
 
"We are grateful that Gerry Fialka brought his energy and ideas to UnionDocs." - Christopher Allen, director Union Docs

"Fialka's lecture was fantastic. It is always good to have students get exposed to diversity and expertise and he delivered in spades. I really liked the open format, the engagement with the students, and the focus on form to contextualize the content." - Peter Tan, professor, Mount St. Mary's University, Philosophy of Film

"Thanks to Gerry for pulling us into such a lively and interesting conversation. It was certainly unexpected but refreshing to talk about subjects I hadn’t thought deeply about. I enjoyed the format of the discussion and especially the way he allowed people the power to say they “don’t know” an answer. I certainly was inspired to think about certain topics more: coping, the concept of double bind, inventions and the rules around them, effects preceding causes and McLuhan's tetrad." - Josh Corn, School of Visual Arts, participant at Fialka's Pokemon Go As Live Cinema at NYU

"Fialka's RIA LIVE CINEMA was an electrifying highlight at our festival. Our audience was deeply engaged in this immersive multi-media happening involving locals." - Ruby De La Casas, director of the Other Venice Film Festival - 2016

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