Brother Otto Update

A few weeks ago I had a meltdown on the show as I was attempting to share some scary news about Otto Schutt, a member of our beautiful community, who has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer and is also without health insurance.

Otto's chemo treatments are going to be gianormous. If you can help, please donate here.

Christopher Lawrence @ Burning Man

From Central Station:

"Christopher Lawrence, the man behind the Pharmacy Music label, is back from playing the Burning Man festival in Nevada and clearly he’s had a good time.'

"I would give up ten Winter Music Conferences for one Burning Man. If you miss out on going to Burning Man, you will miss out on one of life's greatest experiences. Hopefully I'll see you there in 2008"

BURNcast #066 - ModMan & the Dream Machine

Please click here to listen to this
episode of BURNcast as hosted at Archive.org.

Today we talk to ModMan about the Dream Machine.  Recorded in Black Rock City on September 2, 2007.

Credits

Photos by Chai Guy

Music by Hands Upon Black Earth

Experience an on-line dream machine here.

Here's a video of ModMan's Dream Machine:

Burning Man sponsor's project is energy plan worth emulating

Posted today in the Reno Gazette-Journal:

Burning Man organizers and volunteers are setting a wonderful example with their gift of solar panels to Lovelock's Pershing General Hospital and to Gerlach schools. The group is acting on justifiable concern for the environment. They're also working smart by creating this partnership with the hospital and the general community to encourage the manufacture and use of renewable energy technology.

Read the entire article here.

Afrika Burns!

Afrika Burns is a creative arts and freedom of expression festival that aims to build temporary community through collaborative arts projects, in a completely non-commercial environment.

This is a place to collaborate, cooperate, and add to the public environment. To build community. We want you to make a conscious decision to inject artistic sensibility into every daily activity: to invent the world anew; to generate a culture, a connective environment to be idealistic and celebratory. We want you to think of this gathering as an “invent” rather than an “event”. See this as an opportunity to reinvent the world and to foster art-making

So our objective with Afrika Burns, is simply to create a blank canvas on which participants can project any creative endeavour that they desire to create; project aspects of themselves, collectively or individually; all of this in an environment not mediated or controlled by commercial enterprise.

BURNcast #065 - Burning Love with divaD (Part 2)

In this episode, divaD goes to L.A. and NYC decom to talk to several people about Burning Man relationships and what makes them work.

Krishna Camp at Burning Man

Nitai Das, one of the lead organizers of Krisha Camp, is featured in the current episode of BURNcast when I met up with him at NYC Decom. He just pinged me to thank me for the podcast and also took a moment to share with me a video from this year's Burning Man:

Is it art, a prank or a hate crime?

D. Parvaz from the Seattle Post Intelligencer, whose previous blog pissed a few people off, asks the question: "Is it art, a prank or a hate crime?"

A snippet:

I recently riled up some people when I blogged about what Paul Addis' motives might've been when he showed up at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral on Oct. 28, strapped with fireworks. Some took what I said to be a defense of church burning (it was not). It turned into such a really big deal that I wanted to learn a little more about the guy, who also prematurely burned the effigy of The Man at the Burning Man festival in Nevada (which has a huge base of participants from here) in August as a gesture of revolt. Was burning a church Addis' idea of art, a prank or (as some charged) a hate crime? The Burning Man stunt -- or the resulting backlash -- seems to have tugged at a loose thread in Addis' psyche, because over the next two months, Addis, 37, came unraveled.

Read the entire article here.

SF Weekly: Burning Man Arsonist Paul Addis' Backstory -- Murder Threats, Arrests

The latest article about Paul Addis by Joe Eskenazi just posted in the SF Weekly.

Click here to read.

The Force Is Strong In Toronto

From the Torontoist:

This Friday, November 16, Newmindspace will be hosting our very first lightsaber battle! This summer at Burning Man, we witnessed a 10,000-person lightsaber battle put on by a camp called Watto's Junkyard, easily the largest lightsaber battle since the Jedi Civil War. However, with our limited resources, we realized that without a large donation from a rich weirdo (which are plentiful in San Francisco), we would probably not be able to get the plastic, LED-lit, colour-changing expanding kind without some sort of fundraising "starter battle" first.

NewMindSpace is interactive public art, creative cultural interventions and urban bliss dissemination based in New York and Toronto. Read more here.

BURNcast #064 - NYC Decom

In today’s episode BURNcast visits New York City's Decompression where we experience a creepy hug from a creepy guy. Then we gaze into John Walter’s “True Mirror”. Finally, we talk to Nitai Das from Krishna Camp about the Hare Krishna’s presence at Burning Man.

Well, that didn't take long..."Burner" extended!

Hi everyone,

For those of you asking when "Burner: Tales from the Playa" will be done again, I have the answer for you:

Thursdays, December 6, 2007 and January 10, 2008.

Apparently, so many of you called and emailed "The Bank Heist" that they begged me to do the show again just so that you would stop bugging them. Way to go, kids!

Actually, Jason the owner of the club, really enjoyed the show as did the guys from Crystal Method. So, "Burner" will become a monthly gig, with two performances to start.

I have posted updated information on www.ohtony.com and will soon be putting a new website up for www.thebankheist.com. Yeah, I'm doing their website now. Sneaky, huh?

Thanks to all of you who came to see the show on Thursday. You were there for the beginning. And for those who missed the show, I am so happy have another opportunity to tell my story to you.

Kisses and dust,

OhTony

"Burner: Tales from the Playa" - The Aftermath

Just thought that I would give you all a post-game report on "Burner: Tales from the Playa", which I performed on Thursday.

I'm very happy and grateful to all of you who came out to see "Burner" at Heist. I hope you enjoyed the show and our little get together afterward as well.

In case you are wondering, I think that the show went very well, considering that it was the first time ever presented. I wish that I had had a little less stress right before the show. As of 7:20 (the show was scheduled to start at 7:30), I had NO AUDIO coming out of the computer. Of course, Turo, Chris, Nadia and Quinn came to the rescue. What I would have done without you guys, I don't know.

Some of the people who saw the show gave me notes. If you have thoughts about how it went, let me know. I'm sure that this won't be the last time that I do "Burner", so your suggestions would be quite helpful.

Jason (owner of The Bank Heist) said, "You know, I didn't know what to expect. And I'm the kind of guy who, if I didn't like it, I would have been polite. But, I've got to tell you that I thought the the show was awesome. Really." Also, Ken Jordan and Chris Cox of The Crystal Method thought the show was great as well. Ken said that "we are going to put something together to involve you". Yeah, I don't know what that means either. It may be North Hollywood, but it's still Hollywood, and one thing I do remember about my show biz days is that you have to take stuff like that with a grain of salt until somebody signs something.

Still, chances are very good that "Burner" will return to the Heist, most likely in conjunction with "NoHo Massive". The biggest determining factor is whether we can draw an audience which is not comprised of mostly my friends. Would you like to help this happen? If you feel so inclined, you can send an email to Jason and/or Kat Johnson (managing partner, also saw and loved the show)...

jfeld@thebankheist.com
kjohnson@thebankheist.com

...telling them your feelings about the evening and, more importantly, that you have people who wanted to see the show, but couldn't make it or other folks that would enjoy it as much as you did. Please copy me, so that I can use your comments in future communications promoting the show, if that's okay with you.

"Burner" is a work in progress and will only get better as we go along.

I was wonderful to see all of your shining faces out there in the audience. I had a blast. Hope you did too.

Dusty Kisses,

OhTony

tony@ohtony.com
"Put your pants on!"

SEAcompression

Seacompression
Burning Man without the dust and heat
By Gavin Borchert
November 7, 2007

One of the big takeaways of the Burning Man experience is that life doesn’t only have to be cool and fun and creative and art-filled in one spot in the desert one week a year. Burners across the country organize other events, smaller in scope but similar in spirit, year-round. The burners of Seattle, reputed to have the largest community of regular attendees outside the Bay Area, is planning a traditional post-BM party, or “Seacompression,” in Magnuson Park's Hangar #30—a sort of ceremonial easing-back-into-the-real-world, a chance for those who went to show off their art and costumes again and for those who missed it to get a taste of what went on down there. Tonight’s bash, according to a floor plan on the Ignition Northwest Web site, will include a parking place for art cars, “catapult art,” a “mutant sofa,” a “grapestem sculpture,” and the “Temple Whores Massage Table and Chill Space.”

Sat., Nov. 10, 7 p.m.-2 a.m., 2007

Donut Freakout! New Burning Man Network

Is Tribe down again? Need to connect with other burners? Donut freakout!

There's a burgeoning social network called Ning that's got its own little group called Tribe Refugees headed up by Ms. Dynomite. It has hope for me, whereas Tribe...well it's just on the way out IMHO and other bulletin boards dedicated to Burning Man are just, well, too cliquey.

At Ning, burners are asked to follow forum etiquette which includes mutual respect and a no tolerance for personal attacks policy. That alone makes it more appealing. It's worth giving it a try!

Oh, and BTW...BURNcast represents on Ning, too.

Photos from NYC Decom

Photo by imbrettjackson


Here's a Flickr slide-show from NYC Decom recently posted by Runnannchew. And here's a bunch more!

Burning Man festival raises up from underground

An article in the NY Daily News about last weekend's decom at the Queens Museum in New York.

BURNcast #063 - ChaiCast is Back!

Chai Guy is back producing and hosting his own show. In this episode we catch up with Daniel Brezenoff, a former Green Party candidate for Congress and Burner at L.A. Decom. Then we go back to the playa where we talk with a group of friends about friendship within the confines of Black Rock City.

divaD at New York Decom

DaBomb at New York Decom

No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn!

OK, that title may be kinda lame. It should've been "No sleep 'til Queens" cuz like NY Decom is at the Queens Museum of Art this weekend.

But it kinda worked (I think), right?

No?

Well, whatever! I'm just a valley girl and like, I'm just posting this to say that I'm going to New York Decom and like my plane leaves today. Be back Monday. And as divaD put it: "No sleep for the weak!" Oh, and no blogging from me 'til I get back! Like totally for sure!

Oh, and this photo. It's a webcam. It updates like every few minutes. It's totally, totally cool.

Drunken Housewife asks: "Where is the art?"

Guessing from her blog post, Drunken Housewife will not be voting for John "Chicken John" Rinaldi in the SF mayoral race. She's disappointed in Chicken John's bid and asks: "Where is the art?....So far, I don't see the art in any of this, and I don't see any interesting political commentary, either."

Read Drunken Housewife's blog here.