27 February 2006
    

I’ve performed a lot of places but…

…never one that printed my face and name on a mammoth red ballon. But that’s what happened at the TED Conference last week. And what I should’ve done is ask one of the super-genuises there why wrapping a 2-dimensional illustration (my face) around a 3-dimensional form (a mammoth red ballon) creates an artefact that looks like it just crapped its drawers.

I guess I was too busy getting blown away.

My favorite male presenter: Nobel Laureate Dr. Paul Berg. My favorite female presenter: 11-year-old violin prodigy Sirena Huang. My favorite conversation: introducing the two of them.


26 February 2006
    

Tour schedule for the coming week

Monday night I will be featuring in San Jose at Britannia Arms.

Wednesday night I will be featuring in Berkeley at The Starry Plough.

Thursday night I will be featuring in Oakland at the Oakland Metro for Tourettes Without Regrets. This one will sell out. And it’s NOT for the kiddies. Come for the poetry, stay for the pig heart fight.


22 February 2006
    
“Christmas became…”

One last item about my latest pop-up project (TEDsters—there are a few copies available in the bookstore). “The Christmas Pop-up Present” was released last season. It is a paper-engineered box that folds over and in on itself a bunch of times and then splits open to reveal a hidden holiday scene. Click SLIDESHOW to see the box in action, and then compare what you see with this spot-on translation from Amazon.com in Japan:

“The extent which is surprised in any case it is splendid. As for the eye which you saw however it seems like the simply box, to tell the truth, it has become this Advent calendar!

Furthermore, the mechanism is funny. The cubic eight unites and has been brought together, that unites rushingly and being brought together, various ones being written depending upon the respective place, reaches, comes out. The saddle which can express with word and is not it was and was surprised.

Some time ago as written, this calling the Advent calendar, has become something which keeps counting one day by the day to Christmas. And this work kept making develop it having reached the point where it keeps counting from December 1st, in order to look at at a time that one day, Christmas became, it has reached the point where and others the Christmas scene spreads. After is because, becoming Christmas, rather than lifting, when from Christmas it increases before, you think it is good.”


20 February 2006
    

When you care enough to send a burning bush…

After you’re asked to be a speaker at the TED conference, a number of things happen to you, some of them by mail. The most dramatic so far would have to be a freaking slab of rock with the TED speakers’ guidelines printed on it. The slab was delivered right up my alley a week ago, and now it maketh a mousepad. (The conference begins tomorrow.)

And does “Send the Ten Commandments to a friend!” sound like your kind of thing? Meaning: the original Ten Commandments? Then click the rock.


13 February 2006
    
In New York
The word for blizzard
Is “blizzard.”


12 February 2006
    

Magolwane lea Mkatini, the most renowned of all praise singers, took candour a step too far in the end. When the executioners came for him, he ordered them to stand off, arranged a feast and beer-drink and, when he had had his fill, declaimed Mpande’s praises for hours until his voice gave out and then said: “Now you can kill me.”

—Stephen Taylor, “Shaka’s Children”



11 February 2006
    


Boston


09 February 2006
    



One guy supervises another guy setting up giant fiberglass Dead Sea Scrolls outside The Discovery Place in Charlotte, North Carolina.