Behold the wild new video for “Halfway” by Milagres, from their new album Glowing Mouth (Kill Rock Stars). Directed by Dangerous Minds pals Valiant Effort (Dimitri Simakis of Everything is Terrible!, Suki-Rose Etter and Vinod Gundapaneni).
Like many of you reading this, I’ve certainly seen my share of creepy Christian ventriloquist dummies, but “Little Ricky” is probably the creepiest of them all.
Supercut from the geniuses at Everything is Terrible of Christian “humorist” Barbara Johnson’s uh, “routine” I’d guess you’d call it, about her gay son. The late Mrs. Johnson was the author of Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy.
Then at 4:30, there will be a special Firesign Theatre mini-film festival with Peter Bergman and Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre, in attendance. Films include the only film visual record of one of their legendary radio shows, Martian Space Party and a new 5.1 surround version of Everything You Know is Wrong.
On Sunday as part of the grand experiment in entertainment excess that is the five-day long Everything Is Festival! held at Cinefamily here in Los Angeles, there will be a Firesign Theatre mini-film festival starting at 4:30p.m. (just after Neil Hamburger’s Dora Hall tribute, which starts at 2:30).
The event will feature two Firesign Theatre shorts that have not been shown theatrically in many, many years (probably not since the mid-70s, in fact) and that are not currently available on home video (yet), plus other previously unseen goodies and rarities.
First up will be the only cinematic documentation of their legendary free-form radio shows, Martian Space Party. The “Martian Space Party” show was the final program in the “Let’s Eat” radio series of 1972 and was staged for cameras and a small audience.
Everything You Know is Wrong, which is a lip-sync’d visual interpretation of their 1975 album of the same name, will be premiering in a new 5.1 surround sound presentation, prepared from a digital dupe of the film supervised by famed cinematographer Allen Daviau (E.T. Bugsy, The Color Purple).
Plus some other SUPER SECRET Firesign Theatre films and videos and a live Q&A with Peter Bergman and Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre, EYKIW director Allen Daviau and Firesign Theatre archivist Taylor Jessen, author of the new book and DVD-ROM Duke of Madness Motors. Yours truly will be asking the questions.
Tonight is the opening night of the incredible five-day long Everything Is Festival! here in Los Angeles at the Cinefamily theater on Fairfax.
Getting the first night off to a great start will be the “Conan O’Brien” writers retrospective panel, featuring a live gathering of Conan writers past and present, followed by a live appearance from IFC’s Thu Tran, host of the delightfully surreal Food Party show.
One event that I’m certainly jazzed for is Neil Hamburger’s tribute to the one and only Dora Hall:
America’s Funnyman finally returns to the Cinefamily, for a program celebrating one of his all-time favorite entertainers — and one of Cinefamily’s fave found footage personalities! Long ago, a handful of enigmatic VHS tapes, adorned with watercolor illustrations of an old lady amidst a generic cast of smiling faces — and the Solo disposable cup company logo — fell into our hands. On these tapes were wonderfully cracked ‘70s variety specials starring septuagenarian starlet Dora Hall; who was this woman? A long-forgotten pop star reclaiming past glory? A wrinkled studio creation meant to appeal to the AARP set? Someone in power’s ambitious relative? WHO?!?!
Neil finally explains it all:
“The undisputed queen of vanity entertainment, Dora Hall was married to Leo Hulseman, the founder of the immensely successful Solo Cup Company — a man quite happy to delve into Solo’s apparently bottomless coffers to finance dozens of record releases by Dora, all given away free of charge with packages of plastic cups and plates during the ‘60s! Not content with her “success” in the record biz, Dora branched out in the ensuing two decades with several full-blown Solo-financed TV specials designed to make her a star — despite the fact that she was an elderly grandmother with limited show business experience!”
Sunday afternoon, Neil Hamburger will appear in person to present a psyche-shattering afternoon of vintage Dora TV variety special highlights, along with other special treats! More info and tickets here.
Below, an excerpt from Hall’s Once Upon a Tour TV special. How could you miss this?
Negativland’s Mark Hoesler will be delivering the keynote address at the big Everything Is Festival this Friday night at Cinefamily in Los Angeles:
Is Negativland a “band”? Media hoaxers? Activists? Artists? Musicians? Filmmakers? Culture jammers? Comedians? An inspiration for the unwashed many? A nuisance for the corporate few? Decide for yourself in this video & storytelling presentation from founding Negativland member Mark Hosler that uses films and stories to illustrate the many creative projects, hoaxes, pranks and “culture jamming” that Negativland has been doing since 1980. Whether you’re a hardcore Negativland fan, or even unfamiliar with the band (but interested in a highly entertaining and informative jaunt into the evolving landscape of art vs. ownership), Hosler’s EIF! keynote presentation is essential, and we can’t recommend it enough. As well, stick around for a Q&A with Mark Hosler after the presentation!
This weekend is the big Everything Is Festival here in Los Angeles. Cinefamily’s Hadrian Belove and Dimitri Simakis of Everything is Terrible preview the five day fest, which will feature Mark Hosler of Negativland, Neil Hamburger dipping into his personal collection of obscure TV specials made by a 70-year-old grandmother, Andrew W.K. with a motivational lecture, a Firesign Theatre tribute, TV Carnage and others who’ll appear amidst the cinematic mayhem they plan to hurl at the audience. Full schedule here. Get a festival pass before it’s too late!
If you live in Los Angeles and you love weird, insane, hilarious underground shit—like, say, the kind of fare you might find on the popular Everything Is Terrible! blog—then the second annual Everything Is Festival! is going to be better than your Christmas, Halloween and birthday combined. It’s the film, video and music festival that feels like a holiday. But a really fucked up holiday in a really fucked up country. Or a fucked up planet. (I was there last year, trust me on this one).
Let’s take, for instance, the “Super Cuts and Trash Compactors” show. According to Cinefamily programmer Hadrian Belove, a “trash compactor” is “when you take a film and distill it to its essence”:
Cinefamily’s grabbing the zeitgeist by the nutsack and squeezing the video juice out of the YouTube for all of our viewing pleasure! Tonight we celebrate two of our favorite memes in the viral video world: “supercuts” and “trash compactors.” You know, like when TV Carnage cut together every “Gimmie your badge…and your gun” moment from every shitty cop movie ever made, or when FourFour did a mashup of every time someone said “I’m not here to make friends” on a reality TV show — that’s a “Supercut.”
And when that anonymous editor compressed 120 minutes of Wicker Man Nic Cage insanity into a high-powered two-minute H-bomb of hilarity — that’s a “Trash Compactor.”
This show features our favorite pre-existing classics in these two categories, and a group show bursting full of brand-new premieres by Everything Is Terrible, FourFour, Cinefamily’s own Mondo Squad, and more. I tube, you tube, we all tube for YouTube! Tonight’s show features a live appearance by online video mashup maven FourFour!
Watch the now-classic Trash Compactor featuring every dumb pun delivered by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Mr. Freeze” in Batman & Robin:
More on the Everything Is Festival all this week on DM, but you can go here for more information and ticket purchase. Here’s a two-minute version of horror film, Incubus, in which John Cassavetes seems obsessed with sperm.
“Don’t fear your asshole or you will never uncover its powerful secrets.”
Might have been my favorite clip from the insanity of the Everything Is Festival at Cinefamily in Los Angeles last month. This guy is so earnest. This brought the entire house down.
Last night during the fourth (or was it the fifth?) session of the (incredible) two day Everything Is Festival at the (awesome) Cinefamily establishment here in Los Angeles, they had a “Found Footage Battle Royale.”
Now what that means is that the entrants had to submit 2 minute clips and then they’d face off against each other with the audience “applause-o-meter” deciding the winner of each round, who’d then move on to the next. The winner was a fellow named Uneven Eagle who presented clip after clip of an enigmatic Wausau, Wisconsin cable access fitness instructor named “Jim.”
Once “Jim” was unleashed, no one else stood a chance.
There is next to nothing about this cinch-waisted fitness guru on the Internet, just a brief listing on the local cable access station’s website. The show is aired there, amidst Lutheran and Baptist televangelists, the teachings of “Eckanar” (with Living ECK Master, Sri Harold Klemp) and The LaRouche Connection. Even in that company, Jim must stand out, as you can see from the following clips.
For over 20 years, “Jim” has hit record and videotaped himself brandishing a scimitar, his monological musings on having a “little body,” “fat farm boy hands” and the price of magazines, pork chops and apples, as well as his thoughts on the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because “Jim” edits his show “in camera” (i.e. starts and stops the camera between scenes) he has to hold still for several seconds after each set up to avoid the camera preroll erasing the previous scene. So he just stares into the camera. The winner of the contest had a final clip of these moments all cut together. Maybe it was the free beer, but the entire audience was shrieking in hysterics. The clips below are pretty much arranged in the order that the audience saw them in.
Above: “We can pretend we’re Hercules and we’re crushing…something. Something evil.”
New Everything is Terrible spotlights what it takes to be a stuntman. Highlights: Choking yourself, taking punches, fighting like a guy but looking like a girl. Wait for the gang signs and the “pain and agony of being the hero.”
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