Eva Robot!

Eeek, they even pronounce her name AVA like me! AAAAHHH!



Cherry 2000, here we come! Undead Molly just did a very good post about Real Dolls which is my current fixation and how I found the above video.

Me Likey

Too much to blog about lately and no time to download pics and what not. In the meantime, here is some Crawford and Goma fun as documented by the Amazing Sachie (Part 1 and PArt 2) who taught me how to make spring rolls this weekend.

Here is some delicious POP from MGMT, MMMMM:



And here is my new favorite band playing on Letterman in capes!



Back to work!

I love you Little Edie

...even if I am scared to death I may end up like you, dreaming alone and dressing up in various strange costumes. Still, there are worse places to live than Grey Gardens....

The Mighty Boosh Live

Oh how delicious...I am having an attack of the Boosh variety...

Alcatraz Art Attack!

My new pal Matt made this awesome video about a wild event at Alcatraz that happened 2 days after I left SF (sniffle).

Hip hop artists, painters, sculptors, cabaret performers - all invading the desolate and beautiful island of Alcatraz in the middle of the night!

Wish I coulda been there. Too bad we don't have an Alcatraz to visit in the middle of Lake Champlain! ZOWIE!

My New Internet Friend

Matt Petty is my new internet friend. He is the art director at the SF Chronicle and he makes these super cool videos on the side. They are the closest thing I have found to Stuck in Vermont out there in the alt weekly online media scene. Matt's vids are called Art Adventures and they are about these uber cool obsessed Bay Area artists AND they have MONTAGES!!!! YIP!!

Below, Mr T dolls, I PITY THE FOOL WHO DON'T WATCH THIS VIDEO (this exhibit is SO San Francisco, we loves it):

Why I Love YouTube

Go on Singing Orson

For some reason I started thinking about the fabulously brilliant Orson Welles today.

Two seconds later I was whizzing through YouTube's hallowed halls watching his drunken champagne outtakes (video) and all of his unfinished movies.

Oh YouTube, never leave my side, what would I do in a world without you?

My favorite Orson video is this entirely random bit between James Stewart, Dean Martin and Orson Welles. They are at a man's hair salon poking fun at girl talk and it is just so...odd...and did I mention the singing, wigs and "sausage curls"?!



Also, of note, Orson Welles' "Voodoo" Macbeth (Macbeth with an all black cast) and Orson Welles on London Clubs and a haunting clip from F for Fake in which Orson waxes poetic about life and death:

"Our works in stone, in paint, in print are spared, some of them for a few decades or a millenium or two. But everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes.

A fact of life, we are going to die.

"Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living pasts. Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much..."

Zack the Peacock

Zack is my YouTube pal and he lives in LA and makes nifty videos about celebrity-dom. Unlike many YouTubers, Zack appreciates irony and satire and has a sense of humor!!?? Plus, old pervy ladies love him. He is gonna be a superstar, just watch.

Says Zack, "This video is about fame, in its very widest definition, not only People magazine-type celebrity...Yay for idiosyncratic, self-indulgent, potentially alienating videos! w00t!.. maybe I should wait another year before the next one..

Tortured Artists in Houston

Oh boy! YouTube strikes again! My Tortured Artist 101 vids (Part One, Part Two) are going to play at a Tortured Artists gala in Houston in a couple of weeks. I am trying to figure out how I can get there so I can see my friend Keith in Austin, revel in the Texas warmth and wallow with the other irony-soaked tortured artists. What a dream come true!

Check out this awesome theater group who is putting on the shin dig, Infernal Bridgegroom Productions whom I met, where else, in the crowded halls of YouTube (this is their YT channel):

In 1993 Infernal Bridegroom Productions (IBP) was born from the seamy, punk-rock underbelly of Houston, Texas, as a way to make theatrical art unlike any other. And so art was made – in borrowed theaters, abandoned shopping centers and moving buses – and quickly the diverse, disparate, driven artists who made the provocative plays realized the commonality of their vision and formed a company. Today, the IBP company includes Houston's most idiosyncratic, fearless actors; mind-blowingly mental designers; intrepid, smart, shout-out-cool directors; and obsessive creatives of all stripes.

And just listen to their super cool promises, god, I love them already:

We promise never to make you sit through some lame-ass “good for you” play, or spoon feed you “important” theater like a high fiber cereal.

We promise to develop powerful original work.

We promise to let you bring your beer inside the theater.

YouTube Milestone

Oh happy day/week - I finally hit a half a million views with my evadeadbeat vids. As an added bonus, my Stuck in Vermont vid about the Burlington Craft Mafia got featured somewhere or other (?!) on YT and shot up to 12,000 views (Update: 40,000+ hits!?). Happy day!

Of course, it is not all fun and games. With hits and exposure come the inevitable hatred such as practically every comment left lovingly on my Green Day vids:

chaz911 (4 days ago)

like wtf? you're an adult, talk like one instead of rambling on like some teenage kid. you're video is pointless and the lack of evidence makes this very stupid.

SpitFire718 (2 days ago)

i would have thrown a pool stick at her face Dumb wanna be blonde

gelignite555 (1 day ago)

if i was billie id have killed her

jay5668 (12 hours ago)

you have no right at all to talk bad about billie he great at what he does and he dosnt deserve to be talk to badly like you did to him you stupid bitch

Oh my. The sad thing is, these comments are somewhat accurate! I DO ramble like a teenage kid and I AM a wanna be blonde! These kids are savvy.

Ah well, my YouTube account will no doubt disappear one day soon for copyright infringment and these kids can mercilessly attack some other childish grown-up blabbing all over the internet tubes. For now though, I will relish my little YouTube milestones for the smidgen of joy they bring to me. Happy Day!!

Washington Kicks ASS!

Ewan the Dreamboat

He sings, he dances, he moons, he acts, he has an earnest smile that sparkles, jeez, I need to splash some cold water on my face. Seriously though, they broke the mold with this one:

Ballerinas, Cupcakes and Geppetto, Oh My!

My new YouTube friend from Belgium, Digibudi has a super duper lovely blog in which he addresses all the dreamiest topics of the day: crafting, walking by the beach, dancing to footloose, watching seagulls, sexy Galliano, fairytales, tinkering in his workroom and making the perfect cupcakes (see video below).

Digibudi is also an awesome illustrator and you can see hundreds of his whimsical drawings on his blog (one is above). Plus his list of people he wants to marry is rather impressive: Anais Nin, Gene Kelly, Picasso, Roald Dahl, Egon Schiele, Bette Davis, Maggie Smith. Hello, sign me up for a marriage license with any of these fine corpses (dear Maggie is not a corpse quite yet)!

Even better, Digibudi can relate to hard-working, obsessive Geppetto:

There has always been one character in dreamland that has been an inspiration to me, this is Geppetto, the maker/father of Pinocchio. Even as a child I compared myself to this character who makes wooden dolls in his little studio. I liked his solitude and his kindness. I liked the fact that he didn't want anything else but to make things with his hands that would come alive. He had no wife, no children, only this little black and white kitten and a marvelous working place, I'd like to call Geppetto's Dreamshoppe.

It's this picture of that workplace I always carried in the back of my mind while I was growing up. And last night I looked at my desk, with all the little compartements and drawers, stacked with thread and fabrics and buttons, that I was reminded again of this wonderful character, Geppetto. Oh I want to be like him when I'm older and wiser. To make things and to bring them alive, is the most wonderful experience I can imagine.

I must email the Blue Fairy one of these days, just to let her know that there's another Geppetto looking for some of that magical stardust she always carries with her. I'll sprinkle it all over my wooden desk, and I'll be sure to spill some on my drawings and puppets too. And I'm sure that when I go to bed, and I'll wake up the next morning, everything will be magic. Even more than it is now.
And this is no lie.

And now prepare yourself for the sexiest cupcakes the world has ever known, YUMMY:

Is Madonna Plastic?

Swiss Baby Lauro on YT

My Swiss German cousin/doppelganger Annelis - we are the same age and our fathers are the same age - just had a baby named Lauro. Her husband made this video of the baby and Annelis (there is some swollen-with-milk boob action which may be why it has 2000 views).



How cool is it that I can switch on my YouTube to see my cousin's baby in Switzerland? Annelis comes from a small farming town called Bleinenbach. Her family has lived in a multi-generational traditional Swiss homestead for years with red geraniums hanging from the windows, a stone oven in which to bake bread and a working farm out back. The local cemetery is chock full of Rosas, Fritzs and Sollbergers.

When I was last there in 2000, there was no computer in the house and my Uncle Fritz was still milking the cows, driving the tractor and slaughtering pigs despite his bad back. His wife Heidi works like an ox gardening, baking and cleaning and the entire family have jobs in the service industry - plant nursery, flower store, canning factory. Horse driven carts still ride up and down the streets in this little town with its beautiful rolling hills and mysterious dark woods. When I am there, I feel home.

This was the email from Annelis in her cute broken English - she is the only one in her family who speaks it:

Hi Eva

You did make very good movies on you tube. My husband makes also some movies there. If you like you can search under LUKAS HALLER. You can find about three movies I think. One about the birth of our son, one of a weekendtrip with friends and one with friends who visit us. The music he makes by himself. He is a good singer its my opinion. I hope you will enjoy this small videos.

Greetings,

Annelis

"Stop! My butt hurts!"

While innocently surfing YouTube this afternoon, I stumbled upon hundreds of videos montaging Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy together in scintillatingly sexual positions. Wha...?

Two seconds later I was on Wikipedia learning all about this Japanese fan genre called "Yaoi" which is also known affectionately as, "Yamete! Oshiri ga itai!" or "Stop! My butt hurts!" Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Yaoi (やおい) is a publishing genre, which originated in Japan and often encompasses manga, dōjinshi, anime, and fan art. It focuses on homosexual relationships between male characters and is generally sexually explicit.

Content ranges from ordinary romantic situations with mild adult content to subgenres containing extreme fetishism, including anthropomorphism, cosplay, nonconsensual sex or "non-con", monsters, incest, orgies, shotacon, and various other taboo depictions of male homosexuality. - Wikipedia

A little more research showed that there are about 8000 Yaoi videos on YouTube and 184 of them involve Harry Potter (many of them made by a Polish girl named Paula). Here are some of my favs:

Yaoi and Justin Timberlake's Sexy back
Yaoi Mix
L-O-V-E (Ron is in this one!)
Harry and Draco - Saving Me
Harry Potter: Kiss the Draco
Harry Potter; I'm the Sex Machine

Apparently, Harry and Draco make a perfect Yaoi pairing because there is always a (seme) dominant male and a (uke) submissive girly man. As in martial arts, one is the attacker and one is the receiver, or bottom and top if you like. Two guesses which role simpering Harry plays:

The seme is often depicted as the stereotypical male of anime and manga culture: restrained, physically powerful, and/or protective. The seme usually has a stronger chin, shorter hair, smaller eyes, and a more masculine demeanor than the uke.

The uke is usually more androgynous or effeminate in appearance and demeanor and is often smaller and sometimes unrealistically girlish in behavior. The uke generally falls in love before the seme does. - Wikipedia

Days like today I love YouTube just a little bit more. Peel back one little corner of it and there is a thriving sub-culture to explore. Thanks YouTube, for the fun you provide to montage-crazed perverts like me all over the world!

Patti Smith Lights Up My Life

Here is yet another reason to love YouTube and obsessed vloggers (takes one to know one!). Gregg is a San Francisco resident in search of the perfect doornob who also puts together an amazing vlog called Junk Thief.

Gregg has the best of quirky tastes and I just know we'd be the best of pals. In fact, me thinks junk thieves and deadbeats may occupy the same genealogical tree - look closely, they are next to the sloths and the criminally insane. I love the content, editing and feel of Gregg's unique works of art.

Here is Patti Smith singing "You Light Up My Life" on ABC TV's "Kids Are People Too," making a statement that weird combinations are what pushes life forward. Trying to imagine such unlikely couplings in 2007 is hard to imagine. 1979 was really the year of the child... Gregg of Junk Thief Blog

You will have to watch this video to believe it. Seriously. And if you are in a January funk that is threatening to become a February funk, it might just light up your life with its 1979 vibe and its over eager children of the feathered hair and the intense pain and power poured into each note emminating from Patti Smith's mouth...




And thanks for the heads up Gregg.

Look Chocolate

Yet another reason to love YouTube. Where else can you find this obscure Japanese ad from the 60s featuring The Walker Bros and, my new future husband, the tortured and reclusive musician, Scott Walker?

Myles' Merry Xmas

Merry Christmas from 19 yr old Myles, a prolific British video blogger:



When I was 18 yrs old and at The University of East Anglia in Norwich (south of London), I lived in the dorms and shared a hallway with a British boy named Miles Davis. He was white and did not like jazz music.

He was, however, a sloppy drunk and a bit of a perv. He would knock on my door late at night and beg to come in to tell me about his relationship woes with Sunshine, the American bird who also lived on our hall.

Out of all those drunken British boys and American girls that I shared a hallway with, Miles Davis was my favorite. This story has absolutely nothing to do with Myles' Christmas video blog. But what can I say, one cute as pie teenage Brit inspires memories of another hot little British smart ass.