Super Fun was SUPER FUN!


Super Fun was SUPER FUN! Thank you to all of the amaaaaazing performers and fabulous, rock-of-Gibralter-solid behind-the-scenes folks who made our evening together one of unforgettable, world-class entertainment. And thank you to all of the people who came out for the show—we had more than 120 heads in the crowd, with ages ranging from 7 months to 7 decades! We hope you all come back for more on April 21, for the next round of the Super Fun Superfund Variety Show! All new all-star performers to tantalize, delight, and amuse—save the date, and don't be late!

Click through the photo above to see more of Gretchen Robinette's terrific slideshow from show night at Film Biz Recycling, captured for the curious public in Impose magazine. And mark your calendars: April 21 is Super Fun Superfund!

The Bad Advice Column


One part Dear Abby, one part Savage Love, one part Trampoline Hall: Email us with your burning questions about love (or anything else) and get answers from our panel of certifiable non-experts (circus performers and audience volunteers) during the next Super Fun Variety Show on Saturday, April 21. Live, improvised, highly public answers to life's deepest problems: what could we call it but The Bad Advice Column?

And yes, your question will be read anonymously:)

Brooklyn Base Your Face Off!

We love Brooklyn Based. They give some of the best insider tips around for living a better, more exciting life in BKNY. And, wonder of wonders, they sent us some love back! Jump through the image to see Something Else For Your Saturday...




What else do we love? Up-by-the-bootstraps urban renewal! And that means we keep up with the fine folks listing articles and events at Gowanus Your Face Off...and they sent us some love today too! All damn right! Super Fun gets more Super indeed, what with support from friends like these!

Super Fun's 2/11 Film Short: Oscar Nominated!!!

Breaking! Screening in our upcoming Super Fun Superfund Variety Show on February 11th is the short film “Time Freak,” which has just been nominated for an Academy Award. And the first filmmakers' first reactions upon learning that they are Oscar nominees? Caught on tape. Here's the story from the LA Times.
How great would it be to turn back the clock, peek into the homes of this year’s Oscar contenders and watch their real-time reaction to the nominations announcement? That’s part of the public fascination with a “you-are-there” video made by Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey, a husband-and-wife filmmaking duo who are now Oscar nominees in the live-action short category thanks to “Time Freak.” The shorts nominees were were announced online Tuesday at 5:50 a.m. and Bowler and Causey’s natural reaction to the nerve-wracking wait was to turn on the cameras.

Mark Your Calendars for SUPER FUN!

SUPER FUN SUPERFUND VARIETY SHOW RETURNS TO GOWANUS 2/11
Oscar Nominated Short Film, Variety Performers, OWS Art Exhibition to 
Repurpose Unique Venue for World-Class Cabaret


WHAT: Super Fun Superfund Variety Show
WHEN: Saturday, February 11, 2011
WHERE: Film Biz Prop Shop
ADDRESS: 540 President Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY 11215
VENUE WEBSITE: filmbizrecycling.org 
DOORS: 8:00pm
SHOWTIME: 8:30pm
TICKET PRICE: $8 (includes 10% off Film Biz coupon)
E-MAIL: SuperFunVariety@gmail.com 
SHOW WEBSITE: superfunvariety.com

The Super Fun Superfund Variety Show presents the second edition of its circus-meets-sustainability cabaret, Saturday Feb 11 in Gowanus, Brooklyn, showcasing comedy, puppetry, circus, burlesque, music, the Academy Award-nominated short film TIME FREAK (Best Live-Action Short), and an Occupation installation of OWS poster art. Super Fun Variety debuted in December to a standing room only crowd and featured an incredible array of talent ranging from the silly to the sublime. The February show will be hosted by ukukele sensations Ellia and Josh Bisker (of Sweet Soubrette and Cobra Gold), and promises more genre-bending performances in a one-of-a-kind setting: the Film Biz Prop Shop, a 10,000 square foot upcycling center for props, sets, and materials donated by film and TV productions. Audience members will have the chance to win a hand-selected mystery treasure item from the Prop Shop, and each ticket includes a 10% off coupon for a future visit.

The Film Biz Prop Shop, located in Gowanus, Brooklyn, creates socially responsible and sustainable solutions from media industry waste, selling and renting a vast array of furniture, household goods, and one-of-a-kind theatrical props donated by film and TV productions. Super Fun Variety applies Film Biz’s mission to “reuse, repurpose, and upcycle” to the Prop Shop itself, transforming the treasure-filled warehouse space into a performance venue for a truly diverse array of artists. Together, we offer an outstanding resource for artists and the community at large.

The Super Fun Superfund Variety Show incubates emerging talent and cultivates seasoned professionals by offering filmmakers, musicians, variety artists, and other performers the opportunity to test and refine new work in front of a live audience. The show’s name refers to the Gowanus Canal’s recent designation as a federal Superfund site, and reflects an irreverent spirit, a strong social consciousness, and the goal of contributing to an environmentally and creatively sustainable local community.

FEATURING:

February 11: Super Fun!!!

Mark your calendars, and dust off that polka-dot bow tie...


FYI, local business owners can email superfunvariety@gmail.com to get listed for half-off admission at the door. If you're working that hard, you deserve a good, cheap night out in the neighborhood.

Also FYI, unemployed and financially stricken Occupy Wall Street protestors can email for complimentary admission to the show. Financially stable Occupiers can email for half-off admission. See, from our point of view, OWS activists are working hard for the sake of all of our futures, often at great sacrifice, so they should be able to come enjoy some entertainment regardless of their financial position. Regarding any Occupiers who do email for complimentary admission, however, a bit of bartered time to help us strike our stage afterward would be very much appreciated.

Tutu: Unleashed!

Archbishop Desmond Tutu decided to go continue being awesome, writing a Message of Solidarity for the Occupy Wall Street movement. (Meanwhile, American mainstream media is throwing down "Occupy Is Over" headlines, and Democracy Now! reporters are getting beaten up by the NYPD...sigh.)

Well, I've got some solidarity to send right back at the Archbishop. Earlier this year, HarperCollins put out TUTU: AUTHORIZED, inexplicably rejecting my cover design in the process. BEHOLD, ARCHBISHOP, WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN.


Theirs
TUTU!

OWS Barter Bazaar & Skill Share: Holiday Special!

OWS Sustainability Working Group and Evolver Present the
OWS Holiday Bazaar and Skill Share



When: Sunday, December 18th, 2011, 1-9PM
Where: City Life Wellness, 75 Frost St., Brooklyn (L train to Lorimer)

This is a FREE event! Why? OWS Sustainability and Evolver are committed to building alternative economies out of the shell of the old. Instead of relying on currency to determine value, we believe in a system that allows individuals to work together and assess value for themselves. People are encouraged to bring items or skills of their own so that they may interact with the vendors. The Holiday Bazaar will be packed with workshops and a live barter market, donation based body work, dinner and live music. Everyone is encouraged to bring an item, art, skill, or service to come and barter with. Folks are also free to accept donations as well.

The workshops included are below…and we are continuing to add more as the week goes on!!

  • Guerrilla Gardening: Seed Bomb The City, Transform The Space (OWS Sustainability)
  • Know Your Rights: Harm Reduction for Encounters with Police (Paula Segal, National Lawyers Guild)
  • Q & A with "No Impact Man" Colin Beavan
  • Introduction to Permaculture with Andrew Faust
  • Food Fermentation Workshops (Food Justice and OWS Sustainability)
  • A Presentation On Climate Science By Patrick Robbins (OWS Sustainability)
  • The Alternative Economy Think Tank (Alternative Economy)
  • How To Make Your Own Tea And Herbal Medicine (OWS Kitchen)
  • Live Demonstrations: Pedal Power Energy Bikes (OWS Sustainability and Times UP!)
  • How To Survive A Blackout: End Times Candle Making With Sarah (OWS Sustainability)
  • Fortune Telling And Life Counseling (People of Color Caucus)
  • Be Your Own Home Plumber: Rebecca Bone (Evolver)
  • Composting with Dr. Susan Rubin
  • How to Occupy A Hood (Occupy the Hood)
  • Bodywork by Donation, Including Reiki, Massage, Energy Healing, Group Meditation
  • Tarot By Donation
  • Live Music
  • Holiday Dinner (begins at 6:30pm)
  • Live Screen Printing (OWS Screen Printers Guild)
  • And more!

Can I Lead a Workshop? Can I set up a table? Can I be a vendor? YES!!!!!
Please email owssustainability@gmail.com and check out our Facebook event page to keep up to date

Can’t Wait to See You There!!!

Here's Mud in Your Eye, Mankiw

A recap of our stupendous and successful Super Fun Superfund Variety Show soon, but first: here's my very first letter-to-the-editor, written to the NYT in response to the tooth-gratingly frustrating op-ed piece "Know What You're Protesting," by Harvard econ professor Greg Mankiw (whose intro text I relied upon, and valued, in Econ100 at Oberlin). The NYT didn't publish the letter, so here it is in all its glory:

Professor Mankiw, you comment that "as with much of the Occupy movement across the country, their complaints seemed to me to be a grab bag of anti-establishment platitudes without much hard-headed analysis or clear policy prescriptions."

It’s hypocritical to malign your students for their lack of investigative acumen when your conclusions proceed from such lazy, uninformed reporting about the "complaints" of "much of the Occupy movement." Go sit in on a Facilitation meeting or GA, ask Sustainability or Trans-Equality groups, your local UAW, or someone recently foreclosed upon, why *they* Occupy. Right now your missive reads "Those Fools Rock the Boat Without Even Understanding the Physics Behind Sinking.” But the U.S.S. Status-Quo is undeniably sinking, into a future of defunded public services, engorged class disparities, and multifarious environmental catastrophes. Occupiers are trying to build an ark out of that broken ship’s spars; you’re telling them to ignore the water already reaching their necks.

Suck it, Mista Harvard! I emailed the man himself a slightly longer version of this letter, too, that included this post-script:
You are, clearly, a sensible, knowledgeable, perceptive economist, and I respect and admire your work. So: seek better data before putting out irresponsible writing like this. Investigate why your opinions look the way they do. Get to the bottom of the suppositions you use to underpin your conclusions--in this case, the opinions held by a massive, diverse group of motivated people, a movement--before you allow yourself to publish findings that proceed from those suppositions--in this case, the cursory lambasting of that movement. We have a world to save here, after all, and it's going to take a lot of us to do it. Your help would damn well help.
His response? "Thank you for your comments."

(For another "WTF, Mankiw?" point of view, this time from an actual economist, check out Chris Bertram's post on the Crooked Timber blog.)

He's MAGIC

Get ready for an incredible lineup at the first Super Fun Superfund Variety Show! Our latest performer showcase: the talented Magic Brian—one of exactly two magicians, of all the ones you see, who have ever made me think to myself, "well, maybe it's just magic." Check out his amazing promo video below, and get psyched to see him on December 10 at Film Biz Recycling!


Magic Brian Short Promo from Magic Brian on Vimeo.

Check out our Performer Roll Call tab above for more about our fabulous lineup, and RSVP with the Facebook link in the sidebar!
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