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August 28, 2004
Burn Baby Burn
Stayed up all night packing and updating the blog. In an hour a car is coming to take me to Burning Man where I'll be hosting a psychotronic talk show, complete with a kick bootie house band led by funk prophet John Sully. Should be a throbbing good time. If you are at Burning Man, my camp is at Mecury and 6:30. We'll be doing the show around sun down nightly. Come and sit on the couch. Lets chat. I'll make you a star, or at least a sparkler.
Posted by Jonny at 03:58 AM | Comments (2)
No to No
I took part in a flash mob protest thing on the Great Lawn at Central Park. The deal was, show up and lie down with a bunch of other people to spell the word "NO" in the grass that could be seen above by news helicopters. The point was to reject the decision to bar protests from Central Park during the RNC. I heard it got on Fox 5 for their 5PM broadcast, but didn't see mention of it on their web site. There was a brief mention of it in the New York Post though.
This shows part of the "O" and the "N." We were covered with trash bags to be more visible from the air, and also to hint at body bags. There were a bunch of choppers swarming over us. Some were from the news, and some were military looking. A little creepy.
The people in the green hats were legal observers. The cops were pretty jolly, like the fellow on the right.
The only thing that really harshed my mellow at this event were 3 or 4 Revolutionary Communist Party acolytes who tried to lead every one in harsh voiced, trite, political chants. It was grueling. That shows just how comitted I am to ousting Bush. I'm willing to endure the kind of egomaniacal would be cheerleaders who seem to swarm to events like this to inflict themselves on everyone else. The people on either side of me hated it too. It did give us something to complain about though, which is always a good time. At the end they tried to gather all the participants to read a letter out loud to us "situating this event in historical context." I couldn't take it any more and headed South to the Sheeps Meadow for a picnic for Kanae Ito who is moving back to Japan. Met up with Paul, Mike Sharon, James Claar, and another friend of Kanae's to eat some yummies and drink some wine. That got the taste of the annoying chanters out of my mouth. Despite the grating chanting, I'm glad that I participated in the event. No. No. No. Yes.
Posted by Jonny at 03:13 AM | Comments (0)
Neo(con)ey Island
These pics are from a performance I did on August 14th, a political freakshow called Neo(con)ey Island, which was held on a blocked off street in Billyburg, not Coney Island. It was a lot of fun. Mark Argo took the pictures of my performance and the audience. Thanks dude! Also present were Ann Poochareon and Mikey Sklar. The performance setup was kind of weird though. There wasn't really much of a stage---it was more of a fashion runway. It made it tough for the audience to coalesce as they were spread along the length of the runway. My samples were much louder than my voice. I determined that in the future I would need to aquire a wireless clip on microphone. Still, my schtick was pretty funny. I wrote up some new material especially for the event.
An expressive face is a gift, no?
The crowd seemed to have never seen anything quite like the PowerSuit as worn by yours truly.
This guy was impressive. He pretended to hang himself with a noose tied to an American flag while ranting poetically about how awful Bush was. The higher he raised the flag, the more it choked him. Great costume. Great concept. Great writing. Great delivery. Did I mention that this guy was great?
These babes were awesome. I was honored to appear at the same event as the Missile Dick Chicks. They sing, they dance, and they strap huge silver missile phalluses to their midsections. Great stuff.
Posted by Jonny at 02:34 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2004
Bio
The Short Version:
Jonny Goldstein is a videoblogger, visual artist, comedy performer, and videoblogging teacher and curriculum developer at Phovi.com. He recently finished a stint managing the technology education arm of the groundbreaking BX21 program which taught 100 Bronx teens to videoblog. Jonny's video art was screened in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the 2001 Detroit Electronic Music Festival and his online videos have been downloaded more than 20,000 times. Recently, Jonny has been producing online video for iVillage.com. Jonny is a big proponant of media by the people for the people and has spoken on this topic at universities, forums, retail stores, and conferences all over the country. At Vloggercon 2006 he gave a presentation about videoblogging in education and moderated panels on oral history, the digital divide, and interactivity. Jonny currently splits his time between Washington DC and New York City.
The Long Version:
The origins of Jonny Goldstein are shrouded in mystery, but this much is known: He was born in the mean streets of South Central Eugene, Oregon. He spent his formative years in Oregon, Southern England, and Papua New Guinea. As a young man he moved to Israel where he performed menial jobs for no money. As a college student he dwelt in Colorado Springs equidistant from NORAD, the Airforce Academy, and Focus on the Family, protected by a thin layer of trust fund hippies and future delegates to the Republican National Convention. He studied English Literature, a wise choice, as he already knew how to read and write in English coming into the deal, which left him considerable time and energy to fend off existential angst.
Jonny Goldstein popped up irregularly in the next several years seeking to explore his limits in a variety of settings. 47 settings to be precise---Here as a whitewater raft guide, there as a homeless shelter counselor, and still farther out there as a door to door dog licenser. After many years of reading comic books, he decided to move to New York City, where he took the subway often. He exhibited a bizarre, Zelig-like, talent for appearing on TV. After many years of doing little, he started to do more. Along the way he honed his runner up skills by coming in second place in the playing card memory competition at the 1999 Memoriad in New York City, and garnering the Silver Medal in the Mind Map Competition at the 1999 Mind Sports Olympiad in London, England.
Shortly after, he began working with video art collective Dorian Orange. His climactic moment came in 2001 when he projected his own hand drawn visuals live on the main stage to accompany musician Mix Master Mike in front of tens of thousands at the 2001 Detroit Electronic Music Festival. His slightly less climactic, but still fun, moment came a couple of months later when he VJ-ed to accompany DJ Spooky at the Lunatarium in New York City. Soon after that, he decided that it was in his eardrums' best interest to find a new line of work.
Finally he ran out of money and went to grad school at the prestigious Interactive Telecommunications Program where he created the web radio show, Jonathan's Throbbing Boil. The Boil was a program of the arts, information, and ideas. Jonny then developed, with a crack team of scientists, the PowerSuit, a set of technology encrusted coveralls which enabled him to talk with beings from the future by pressing and slapping different parts of the garment. Since then, Jonny has taken his art to the streets of New York (low overhead, no audition necessary), San Francisco, Denver, and the halls of Salem College in Winston-Salem North Carolina.
For the first half of 2005, Jonny has cohosted a stand-up comedy show which featured such luminaries as Victor Varnado, Ali Walker, and Rob Shapiro in Greenwich Village, and performed stand-up comedy at such venues as the Knitting Factory and New York Improv. Jonny has started videoblogging in early 2005 at jonnygoldstein.com. He currently appears biweekly on the Manhattan cable TV program "The Erzsi and Jonny Show."
Over the past year, Jonny managed the technology education portion of the ground breaking BX21 program for Vision Education and Media. The program taught 100 Bronx teens how to videoblog. Jonny continues his interest in teaching and videoblogging at Phovi.com where he creates curriculum and will teach online videoblogging classes. Jonny splits his time between New York City (noisy dirty subway, great streetlife) and Washington DC (quiet clean subway, buttoned down, khaki streetlife).
Posted by Jonny at 03:06 PM | Comments (2)