haircut

I'm currently in Bowling Green Ohio.

I've traveled back in time to the 1950s... maybe the 40's (I just did Lost Film Fest last night for the student dems at BGSU)

So this morning, I'm minding my own business at a coffee shop, nursing a double soy latte, an older man, walked up. He looked at my laptop, and then at me, back and forth, sizing me up. Looking up, I invited him over to chit chat.

Our conversation went like this:

old man: "I can loan you my comb if you want."

beibin: "I kind of like the 'unmade bed' look, thanks".

old man: "You know, there's a recruiting office down the street. They'll give you a good haircut, and teach you how to make a bed. They'll teach you some discipline".

beibin: "Thank you for the tip."

old man: "Which high school are you attending?"

beibin: "I actually graduated recently...maybe 2 decades ago"


Sigh.. middle america


My friend Taran is thinking about developing some kind of comedy television show, and asked me I would participate if I were involved, soI've been contemplating about the kinds of things I would do if I was on the show. While brainstorming, the idea of playing games with military recruiters to see what I could coax from them came up. So I'm thinking about getting a hidden 'tie cam', and hidden microphone to hear what kind of stuff said recruiters would give me to have me sign up. I would tell them about my outlandish desires, and see how they would try to fulfill these desires to get me to sign up... Would they bring me to Theme Parks? restaurants? Bring me shopping for vegan food?

....the gears are turning.

Lost Film Fest Europe

Some images from Lost Film Fest European tour 2007

Lost Film Fest tour of Europe starts today

Liz and I just arrived to the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Our friend Matt Pascarella from the BBC is flying in from NYC shortly, and then we're off to adventures. We're completely exhausted, and totally nerding out in a corner by an electric socket, but in a few hours I'll be presenting a short vj set at the 20th anniversary celebration of IDFA. I also just found out I'll be doing Lost Film Fest in Berlin on the 11th. Information about that show is forthcoming.

My old friend Alain and the crew (Tania, Philthy, etc) from La Zone have been working feverishly to do the french subtitles for a bunch of the films. They are totally rocking my world right now. We're super looking forward to the next three weeks. I'm so glad to get out of the fucking united states for a bit. I really need a break from the Idiocracy. xo Scotty

What do Jerry Springer, guitar tuners, answering machines, and real estate purchases have in common?

Years ago while I was away in California my house in Philly was robbed. As a result I called the Jerry Springer show to cheer myself up...proposing an outlandish story in which I was sleeping with a bunch of my friends from San Diego including Justin Pearson from The Locust. You can read all the details here: http://www.lostfilmfest.org/jerry-springer-episode-debacle/

One thing I don't really detail in the story about the Springer episode is that when my house was burglarized, the thieves stole all of my amps, powertools, and a bunch of other stuff...Here's where it all gets interesting...

Yesterday I was over at my former neighbors house who is an elderly woman, helping the kids clean up a ton of garbage (the place is wall to wall clutter). Her kids were there looking for heirlooms and other familial artifacts. Lo and behold, as I was throwing trash into bags, I found a couple of things that made me laugh.

I found my guitar tuner that was with my SG that was stolen all those years ago, my clock radio, and my answering machine (with my outgoing message still on it). (There were 25 other answering machines there too...probably stolen from other people as well)

I don't think for a second the elderly lady stole the stuff. What I do think happened is that these neighborhood thieves who used to come visit her would brought these things by as gifts.
I decided not to tell her kids that I found the stuff. There's no point in creating schism over something that happened almost 10 years ago.

Overall, I'm laughing about it in good spirits, and it does help to make a little bit of closure. It's just funny to think about when my house was burglarized all those years ago, and how that shifted my entire paradigm from being a west philly activist, to getting involved in the film industry.

Robbers, Vegan Goodies, Housemate Call-Out, and Evil Twin Booking Agency update

Tonight/Tomorrow:

Halloween Critical Mass in NYC, Rubulad... tomorrow we'll go to a cool art exhibit and the anti-war march. I believe our new friend Lara will be joining Liz and I on our adventure. Sunday night we're going to see our Seripop friends Chloe and yannick's band AIDS WOLF and Old Time Relijun

Lost Film Fest update.

I just had some awesome shows opening for Gogol Bordello. What a dream!! I think the only thing that could top that would be opening for Manu Chao...Maybe some day. I've never presented LFF in front of such a large crowd of people but the shows went over well, and I made some new friends. I'll be doing Lost Film Fest again in the near future at this awesome club in Baltimore called Sonar. I'm definitely going to start to have to use a mic at large concerts like that... John Macavoy, boy genius and arch archivist has started to work on documenting the history of the Lost Film Fest and Evil Twin Booking Agency. I can't believe all this stuff I'm doing with film is almost 10 years old. holy moly! The other day, I had an awesome show in Blacksburg, VA at Virginia Tech. Sallie, Anthony, Dan, and Devin pulled the show together without a hitch. Old friends Sascha and Madigan were on tour with the Icarus Project and happened to be in town. It was great to have them there.

I have 3 LFF shows coming up close by Nov 5-7. I'm pretty excited because a documentary film crew (jaded multimedia) will be following Liz and I around trying to gain some insight into what the hell we're doing (do we even know?) Hopefully they will figure it out. Here are the dates/locations. Please spread the word. Bring friends!

Nov 5 Mon
Philadelphia, PA @ Bubblehouse. | 3404 Sansom St. | 9pm | admission by donation | all ages

Nov 6 Tue
Brooklyn, NY @ The Change You Want To See | 84 Havemeyer St. | 7:30pm | dontation $5-10 sliding scale | http://notanalternative.net/wordpress/

Nov 7 Wed
Doylestown, PA @ Siren Records | 22 s. Main St. | doors 6pm | $6 | http://www.sirenrecords.com/

I'll post the European tourdates as they become clear. There's also a chance I'll be doing 2 midwest dates at Loyola and Oberlin after the west coast tour if all goes according to plan. If not I'll go there in the spring. The next couple of months is going to be pretty crazy: Green Fest in San Francisco, traveling down the west coast doing Lost Film Fest and spreading Raw Revolution bars around, Doing Lost Film Fest shows in the midwest, Thanksgiving with my family, Touring Europe with lost Film Fest doing stuff with IDFA, the EU cultural capital, and activist spaces. I'm dying to do the film fest at Mariatchi (Manu Chao's neighborhood bar) in Barcelona.. I can only dream.. I'll be coming back to the trial as well as the perils and travails of living in wild west Philadelphia...

Robbers and such

We have a trial in late December with the guy who robbed us at gunpoint. The guy is still in jail. His bail was set at $150,000 so he's not getting out anytime soon. I'm having so many conflicting emotions about the whole thing, and honestly I'm feeling a bit of sympathy for the guy who robbed us, though I have to remind myself that he used a gun on us, and really clocked Liz hard on the back of the head and me in the face. He also totally fucked up that weekend I'd been preparing for the past 4-6 months. So what that he go my wallet... The gun could have gone off when he pistol whipped us... He could have just used a shoe, or a zucchini covered in shoe polish, or something to keep it non-lethal. The gun will get him 5 years for each instance he used it. I feel strange contributing to the prison industrial complex, which in my view is tantamount to modern slavery. I'm still trying to sort out my feelings over this. It doesn't help that the robbers friends have still been harassing Liz and I on the street, so we're keeping a low profile until the case is tried and over with. What's next? Oy vey! Any decision we would have made with how to deal with the situation would have sucked.

Steaz veggiemobile back in Action

Later today we're stopping off at Steaz HQ so I can discuss our plans for Sundance (I'm going to be running their marketing campaign at the film festival again this year). Were also going over all my expenses from the last several months. I'm also pretty excited to take the new Steaz Veggiemobile up to NYC (I finally got this thing back after almost a month of being jerked around. My new friend Tracy, referree extraordinaire of the Charm City Rollergirls risked life and limb to get that thing back to Philly (THANK YOU!!!). It's really anticlimactic that I have it now, but C'est la Vie..eh?"

Greenwashing and Film Fests

So, there are all these "green lounges" popping up at the Sundance Film Festival. All these marketing agencies are trying to hock environmental products and turn them into chic totems for wealthy jet setters. It's pretty awful to me that one would try to ruin something cool and good like organic, fair trade, and natural products by laying the veil of "hip" over them, essentially turning it into a shallow fly by night trend. Organic, Fair Trade, and Vegan were cool all along without the help of some of these clowns who are interested in nothing other than making celebrity gift bags. It really detracts from the state of permanence that these types of terms need in the cultural zeitgeist. It also blatantly ignores the point that good food should be for everyone, not just the rich. Last year I was going to do a green lounge, but decided not to after realizing that it would have been like flushing time and money in the toilet, and also, alot more could be done to get the word out by interacting with my fellow proles, rather than being sequestered to an exclusive venue. the story is that after Lost Film Fest was sponsored by Steaz for years, Eric the owner and I became friends. He hired my grassroots publicity and marketing project (The Redefinery) to to the launch for Steaz Organic Energy drinks at Sundance...which provided a great alternative to the diabetes causing taurine laced articifial energy drinks that are hocked at these kinds of things. I got the word out D.I.Y. style pretty well on the cheap and developed a good relationship with the Steaz folks. in the end they hired me to manage all their cultural events and such, sponsorships of bands, films, activist and art projects, tech projects, etc. Over the past year I've been doing similar outreach for TV B Gone, and nowadays Raw Revolution. It feels good to get this stuff out into the world to people who will appreciate companies with an ethical approach to doing it's thing.

Housemate-Age

FYI. I'm still looking for another suitable housemate (vegan, nonsmoker, pet free). If any of my friends know someone suitable please feel free to get them in touch. I'm being super picky, but I'd love to find an interesting person.

Evil Twin Booking Stuff

For 2008 we're adding a ton of awesome stuff to our Evil Twin Booking Agency roster:
presentations by: Derrick Jensen, Shepard Fairey, Paper Rad, Ed Begley Jr., Yo! What Happened to Peace...
music tours: Mos Def/Dead Prez tour, dj Joro Boro...
Film screenings: KING CORN, EVERYTHINGS COOL, MY DINNER WITH ABBIE
and a bunch more: www.eviltwinbooking.org

We do need some help with layout, so if you're an indesign whiz, and close to Philly, please get in touch.

Okay, that's it for an update. When the hell am I ever going to get any sleep around here?

yours in vegan goodness
lovest Scott

PS. This is the Steaz Veggie Van (it runs on vegetable oil!) Awesome!!!

Kaiju Big Battel in new Bloc Party video

Back in 1996 I went to Cambridge, MA for a protest to save central square from gentrification, Starbucks, and all that stuff. Back then the Lucy Parson Center Bookstore and an Ethiopian restaurant claimed the square as a home. Today, it's just another example of stucco'd suburban hell creeping into the urban landscape.

I thought that the whole protest was actually kind of silly because of the inevitability of development in that area..right on the peripherie of Harvard University campus. So, to celebrate the silliness, my friend Phil and i dressed to the nines in outlandish outfits, and annoyed both protesters and developers. I wore a giant fake fur coat with a tall box on my head that said "Sir Jackass, knight of shoplifting". Phil wore a kimono and an afro wig. At this protest I would also meet my future bandmate and friend, Morgan.

Anyhow... The big highlight of the protest was the presence of KAIJU BIG BATTEL, an awesome project organized by a bunch of Mass Art students. They created a pantheon of Japanese style live action monsters with amazing hilarity. Check out their website for a rogues gallery of some of the characters. At the protest, Dr. Cube, Midori No Kaiju and a few others came to knock down some cardboard buildings. It was totally brilliant! over the years I would come to include kaiju Big Battel videos in the Lost Film Fest, and introduced them to my friend Derek who would become their publicist inevitably.

Kaiju has come a super long way since these humble beginnings. Here's a new video for BLOC PARTY featuring some of the Kaiju characters. Enjoy!

Robbery Solved...

Well, Here's an addendum to the story of when Liz and I were held up and robbed.

A few days after we got back we kept on seeing the guy who mugged us walking up and down the street. He kept staring at my house, and even once threw a basketball into the side of my van. I think they call that 'stalking'. We kept calling the cops who took forever to show up, and by that time the guy disappeared.

A few days later Liz was looking out the front window and talking on the phone. The guy was walking down the street. We called the police who actually picked us up. When we got to 44th street the guy was sitting on a stoop. The police arrested him and found some crack in his pants.

We went to the station and found out the guys name is Anthony Hawkins (aka Antwain Hopkins). He lives around the corner at 45th and Market, and has 5 prior minor drug charges. In Philly, the manditory minimum for armed robbery is 5 years...

It's a sad story. The guy is 22 years old, and has a crack problem. When he held us up and stole my wallet he was probably so high he didn't know what was what... and now he's going to prison..

For some reason though, knowing things go the way they go, I'm sure this isn't the end of the story.

The good news is that the yellow jacketed university city district security guys on bikes are cruising around our part of the neighborhood now. It's a welcome change after we were largely ignored forever...