Come to TOLD tomorrow!

These are the remains of Tintagel Castle, a fortress built in the 12th Century. The site itself, however, is believed to have been a Roman stronghold since the 5th Century. It's most famous for being the supposed birthplace of the legendary King Arthur.

Tomorrow at Seth Lind's awesome story-telling show TOLD: Magic edition, I will tell the story of the vision-quest that led me to this castle when I was 17. I kinda thought we were all supposed to have vision-quests before moving away from our hometowns, but some of my peers were smart and stable enough to dispense with the formalities of confronting maturity and they just bravely went ahead and tucked in to adulthood like it was no big deal.

I have not dispensed with any formalities associated with maturity. I pretty much need a vision-quest for everything.

Tintagel Castle was said to be impenetrable to any army. The fortress is built on a craggy cliffside, and any soldiers who dared attack it risked falling to a bloody death on the rocks below. It was also said to be a place of powerful dark magic, and the notoriously spooky Merlin's Cave gapes ominously below the castle walls. These were considerations FOOLISHLY IGNORED when I broke into it at around 3am on that fateful night in the summer of 2002 and achieved the pinnacle moment of the vision-quest, in all its terrifying, wonderful splendour.

COME HEAR THE FULL STORY TOMORROW - MONDAY, DECEMBER 20TH - ALONG WITH MAGICAL STORIES FROM VETERAN STORYTELLERS!!! There will also be magic tricks! Oh la la. 7pm at Under St. Marks Theatre at 94 St. Marks Place in the East Village. Facebook invite is here! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=176369429054554&index=1

I will also be revealing one of the surefire sentences to get into my pants during this show. May or may not have to do with navigating Sherwood Forest.

Retrofuturism Redux

Albert Robida is a retrofuturist's wet dream. Stay tuned for more about him.

Some Dead Darlings

Bust magazine is planning to publish an article I wrote in their December/January issue, and I am so excited. Bust is one of my favourite magazines ever, so come on, pleeeease pick it up when it comes out. I'll be watching all of you that month just as Santa will be.

Since we heard so much about men cheating on their wives this year, the article is a list of the top ten adulteresses of all time. It's getting edits right now; Bust wanted only super-strong, positive women in there, of which I had eight. The two cuts were a pair of sad sacks and a crazy astronaut, and I'm sharing those entries with you below because the main reason I am proud of the article is the space puns. I really went the extra parsec on those.

The edits I got were really good, and this article will now have two new fantastic and fascinating women in addition to the eight that were already hanging out in it. But please say a prayer for my now killed darlings, who were not tough enough to hang around the in-crowd:

Anna Karenina/Madame Bovary: Anna and Emma are conflated here because it’s the same basic story: if you’re married to a nice guy but you have a taste for bad boys, you’re probably going to end up under a train or filled with arsenic. Or at least you will if you’re created by a 19^th century moralizing male novelist. Most of the women on this list own their infidelities, but these two let their infidelities own them. I hate to say it, but if you’re going to model yourself after a fictional adulteress, you would do better to be a ditzy, amoral farthead like Daisy Buchanan than either of these two sad sacks. At least then you’re not the one dead by your own hand at the end – your lover is. Much happier ending, right? F. Scott Fitzgerald = Pollyanna.

Lisa Nowak: Astronauts have to endure an insanely rigorous training program in order to become indestructible physically and mentally. Yet NASA somehow neglected to prepare their astronauts for the toughest challenge of all: a broken heart. In 2007, Captain Nowak, an astronaut and flight engineer married to fellow NASA employee Richard Nowak, embarked on a solo mission with the objective of attacking and kidnapping Captain Colleen Shipman, the new girlfriend of her ex-lover Commander William Oefelein. She just wasn’t sensing that same buzz (Aldrin) with Oefelein so she really had no choice but to get (Neil) armstrong with his new girl. Oh yeah, she was also wearing diapers and was armed with a BB gun, pepper spray, rubber tubing, a 2-pound drilling hammer and a 8-inch folding knife, so it’s clear that she was seriously moonstruck. The silver astro-lining? It’s a fair bet that men actually are from Mars, given how desperately Nowak has always wanted to go there.

Rocket Summer Rules

Summer Rules is an awesome tumblr run by my equally awesome friend Lee. This is my all time favourite pic yet, made my belly all warm and such.

Also, it's EXTREMELY unlikely you haven't seen this, but here's an amazing music video called "Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury" by Rachel Bloom that was pumped by Neil Gaiman, Wired, and countless others. I am briefly in it wearing a hell of a sweatervest.

Jason Shebiro is a Doosher

Jason: oh man

gross of me

dont tell anyone im a doosher

I'M NOT A TRUSTWORTHY GCHATTER, JASON!!!

Hey. It's Me.

I recently learned through Nicole that I'm not the only one who often hears Admiral Ackbar's "It's a trap" line echo in my head (my head's generally pretty cavernous and empty, thus the echoing) about a whole ton of stuff in my life. I guess that means I'm really, really not the only who hears "I have a bad feeling about this" all the time.

Yet, I'm never reminded of upbeat Star Wars lines when good stuff happens to me; it's generally cautionary. I'm gonna make this pledge to you, world - I'll try to change that. More C3PO lines like "I never knew I had it in me," more Lando lines like "Here goes nothing," more Leia lines like "Count me in," and a fuckton more cocky Han Solo lines for sure, starting with "It's your imagination, kid. Come on. Let's keep a little optimism here."

You may notice that all those positive lines come from Return of the Jedi. That's cuz, well, don't know if you noticed, but the other two be deeeeprreeeeesssinggggg.

PS. FUTURAMA LAST NIGHT WAS GOOD AGAIN, OMG OMG OMG YAY!

ROCKET TALK AND ANNETTE FUNICELLO'S BEACH PARTY!

This is happening next Monday! BE THERE, DUMMIES!