A new wacky video with me & pal Natalie Palamides from our Wet the Hippo show at this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival:

…scribbled on yourself with marker, uncorked a bottle of tequila that had a miniature penis inside, and then stuffed your underwear with 3 straight razors, 1 buzzing electric razor, and shaving cream, it might look like this…. All men should test their underwear to make sure it can stand up to a beating. Fruit of the Loom should totally hire me!

Things I Learned: 1. Hornitos Tequila burns when it runs down your chin, but the bottle’s neck is big enough that you can push a fake weiner through there. 2. Panties full of Barbasol *will* cause your parts to go numb. 3. Norelco’s cordless 7340XL razor will continue running even when submerged in shaving cream. 4. Sharpie Permanent Marker comes off knees+arms easily with soap and a loofah, but the chest is a bitch.

Photo from my “Manly Man” piece in last night’s 5x5x5 Show, Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura. Thanks again to everyone who came out, to John White for putting it together, and to KayDee Kersten for photography.

Here’s a taste of the insanity I’ve been cooking up for the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival in June with John Gilkey, Natalie Palamides, Alec Jones-Trujillo, Tyler Watson, Gabriel McKinney, Tim Reid, Claire Titelman, and Don Colliver. The show’s called Wet The Hippo, and our preview shows all sold out, so don’t delay! Get ticket info here!

 
*** UPDATE: Bitter Lemons, L.A.’s most trusted source for theater news & reviews, just posted a great review of WET THE HIPPO, and called the duo piece that I performed with Natalie Palamides “…absolutely hilarious…hallucinatory….” Not bad!

Sat. April 6th I’ll be in WET THE HIPPO, a seriously demented show produced by JOHN GILKEY, a longtime Cirque du Soliel clown and insane man. It’s improvised, but it’s not “improv.” It’s just…well, insane, hilarious, and terrifying, and maybe the new face of avant garde performance. Doors at 7. Only $5 at the door. Flight Theater at The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. GUARANTEED to sell out, so arrive early!

(While you’re at it, if you want to know more about John, Cirque, and the danger of clowns, have a listen to this radio interview I did with John late last year).

*** UPDATE: There’ll be another performance this Friday, May 3, 2013, at 10PM as we get ready for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. I’ll be performing on stage, plus playing a cajon drum to accompany one of the spazziest performances you’ll ever see! Tickets only $5! Doors at 9:30. Flight Theater at The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Free booze. Come watch the insanity!

*** UPDATE: The show sold out and killed! Don’t miss us at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June, 2013!  Check out a few photos from the show, or learn about tickets.

“Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?” —1 Samuel 21:14

NIHILISM UNLEASHED! Creator of the Nihilist Olympics that attracted world press in 1984, and the only Presidential candidate ever to run on the Nihilist ticket, ELISHA SHAPIRO is arguably the most famous living Nihilist on Earth. Find out how he became a Nihilist when he and I chat this Sunday on the JIMMY’S POTPOURRI show. (And if you need more Nihilism in your life, come to Elisha’s annual NIHILIST FILM FESTIVAL to be held in L.A. Friday, December 7 at the Echo Park Film Center at 8PM — the entry fee is a whopping 99 cents!)    Hear it all this Sunday 9am-noon on JIMMY’S POTPOURRI—listen anywhere online at www.killradio.org

UPDATE: The audio’s now available online—click the play button below to listen in.
Interview with Elisha Shapiro, the Funniest Nihilist by Scotch Wichmann

Forbes recently ranked L.A.’s Silverlake district as the #1 hipster neighborhood in the U.S., surpassing even Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and San Francisco’s hipster Mission District. What the hell are hipsters, anyway, and what’s drawn them to Silverlake? To find out, tune in tomorrow for my 3-part segment SILVERLAKE HIPSTERS, which includes interviews with L.A. architectural historian Laura Massino and District 13 L.A. City Council candidate Scott Crawford. Sunday 9am-noon on the JIMMY’S POTPOURRI radio show. Listen live from anywhere at www.killradio.org

UPDATE:The podcast is ready for listening—you can play it here:
Silverlake Hipsters by Scotch Wichmann

I got the chance to interview John Gilkey in his Hollywood backyard this week. If you’ve ever seen Cirque Du Soleil or the Oscar-winning movie Ratatouille, then you’ve seen John Gilkey’s amazing work. A clown and performer for over 30 years who’s performed for over 3 million people, and a creative force behind the comedy in Cirque shows like QUIDAM, DRALION, VAREKAI, and most recently, the IRIS show in Hollywood, John has incredible things to say about clowns—their comedy, their danger, their anarchy, and their truth—and why we need them more than ever. Hear it this Sunday on Jimmy’s Potpourri, LA’s #1 underground radio station. Tune in from 9AM till noon online from anywhere at www.killradio.org

 UPDATE: the John Gilkey interviews are up on Soundcloud. Listen below!

Scotch Wichmann doesn’t always do performance art, but when he does, he does it wearing ice shoes. I skated out onto stage wearing these beauties during last night’s Ice Fish Fur show, and they were slippery as hell—thank god I was sober. I was able to hold out for almost 2 minutes before my toes went numb—not bad! See them in action on YouTube. Shoes sculpted by KayDee Kersten.

Come catch my new performance art work ICE, FISH, FUR at HIGHWAYS in Santa Monica Friday, September 14, where I’ll be doing unspeakable acts with ice, fish, and fur (how ever did you guess?) in a surreal, linguistically limber, and painfully autobiographical piece about murder, madness, ancestry, magic, and more….

This is part of Solo Dolo, an evening of new solo works that’ll also feature Philip Littell, Megan Therese Rippey, and Johnny Ray (who looks like he *might* be doing something wild with mud or some other amazing slop–I can’t quite tell from his photo, but I’m sure it’s going to kick ass!!!).

If (1) it’s been awhile since you’ve seen performance art, (2) you’ve never seen it, or (3) you never want to see it again (but you can’t help yourself because you crave it like an auto accident lookie loo), then this is for you, served fresh on a golden platter (or more likely, a honey-drenched hunk of leather plastered to the side of my face). Ah yes, I like to think of Highways as the West Coast’s Carnegie Hall of experimental live performance, so don’t miss this chance to see bloody fresh solo works for only $10 before they tour the 2013-2014 fringe festival circuit.

The Solo Dolo show at HIGHWAYS. 8:30PM. Tickets $10 online or at the door (show may sell out, so I’d recommend buying online). 1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA (1/2 block north of Olympic).