Our small-but-mighty crew has begun shooting the Two Performance Artists video trailer! The first shots were in San Francisco—we spent the day dodging Tenderloin freaks at the corner of Turk and Taylor, and trying not to fall from a rooftop where the sun’s heat was intense in spite of freezing wind and swirling white clouds that were so low we could almost touch them.

Days 2 & 3 were in Hollywood, where we shot bits of the novel’s skating scene, and later, a narrow alley exterior that turned out to be right beside the studios of surrealist photographer & artist David LaChapelle.

For my fellow cinephiles, shooting was on a Nikon D7000 with its standard 18-105mm telephoto lens, a Nikor 35mm 1.8 prime, a Tokina 11-16mm 2.8 wide angle, and a Sony HDR-XR200 for backup. For an upcoming apartment interior, I’ll be using a wind-up 35mm Bell & Howell Eyemo. Loading it is a bitch (requires doing it blindly with safety scissors in a change bag), but the look is gonna be sick!

I don’t want to give too much away, so for now, here are just a couple of footage samples. Release is scheduled for October—about 6 months before the book’s publication date.  Can. Not. Wait.

…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

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).

The full 5-minute video footage of “Seed” — my psychic-surgery-with-citrus performance I unveiled in Ventura last month — is finally up on YouTube.  I had no idea a grapefruit could make sounds like that….

Is our “twitterization” making us spill more details than we should? Have we exchanged our interior voices for external ones? Are we becoming masters of telling at the expensive of showing? Come find out this Friday when I unveil Seed, my new performance art work with citrus, surreal psychic brain rewiring and more! Fri. July 6, 2012, 8PM at the Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura, CA. FREE! Let’s operate!

Dear Diary,
I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I’ve been crazy-busy getting more comedy and videos in the pipeline, directing my first short, putting the final editorial touches on my novel, getting engaged, working on an exciting new film script outline, and—the very latest—carving out a new performance art piece about kindness, rocks, and my unconscious-unfurled for your horror-pleasure-horror. You’re invited to come watch the antics at the Sylvia White Gallery in Ventura on Friday March 2, 2012 at 8PM. It’s free. It’s going to be wild. And I’d love to see you as usual.
Yrs in the making,
–s

I’m uber excited to be opening for Elisha Shapiro’s THE FUNNIEST NIHILIST one-man show at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Believe in nothing? Then this show’s for you! Producer of the Nihilist Film Festival, creator of the Nihilist Olympics, 1988 Nilhilist Party presidential candidiate, and more, Shapiro weaves a hilarious tale of a life about nothing that you won’t soon forget (and if you do, that’s ok with him too…heh). June 24+25 @ 8PM in L.A. Tix are FREE, but they’re going fast—get ‘em while you can!