hal tweets ·11:28 AM
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
2009,
20:41 GMT
Broken Pencil Magazine $10 Subs and Party
Posted by: Hal
Hey everyone, amidst all the general craziness of my life I almost forgot to tell you that Broken Pencil: the magazine of zine culture an the independent arts has a new issue and an amazing summer subscription sale and a great party — all happening now!
1) New issue — It’s the summer DIY issue. How to build your own screen printing press and so much more. Hundreds of zine and book reviews plus Team Macho!
2) Summer Subscription Sale — for the next ten days or so, you can get yourself a $10 dollar one year subscription to Broken Pencil. Single issues cost $5.95 so that’s quite a savings! Plus, subscribe now and get yourself entered to win free tickets to the VIP area (all you can drink beer, premium seating, plus snacks and bp gift packs) to our upcoming summer party. Enter now RIGHT HERE.
3) The Summer Party — Party happens Friday, August 21 at 9pm at the Whipper Snapper Gallery 587A College Street, Toronto. With DJ Hemingway and the awesome bands Whale Tooth and Dinosaur Bones. Plus wild and crazy surprise guests! Your ticket will cost you $10. Picture the scene: the Broken Pencil intern staring wild eyed at the specter of bacchanalia and creative mayhem that will be the BROKEN PENCIL FANTASY PARTY. You cannot miss this. More details HERE.
2009,
20:18 GMT
Pranknet: the Lunatic but Obvious Evolution of Peep
Posted by: Hal
Two pieces have come out lately about a fringe Internet group that conducts Skype phone pranks which generally involve getting ordinary people to do ridiculous things like urinate on each other or trash their hotel rooms.
The first piece came out in the online magazine Smoking Gun. The Globe and Mail picked up on that piece and ran a similar piece with less histrionics and minus the links to the recordings of the actual pranks. Here’s a quote from the Globe piece:
“Members can listen in, and rate the prank as it’s being pulled, with the most popular attaining the status of ‘epic.’ In Pennsylvania, Pranknet called a hotel guest and told him there was a gas leak. The man was told to smash the window and television screen with a toilet tank lid to prevent an explosion. Another man in Nebraska was persuaded to drive his truck through the door of a hotel lobby to deactivate a fire alarm. A front-desk clerk at another hotel drank a guest’s urine, after a Pranknet caller convinced her it was cider, and that the man who brought it – who thought he was providing a urine sample for the hotel doctor – was the representative of an apple juice company. Is this criminal or comedy?”
Actually it’s neither — it’s Peep Culture. A mutated strain of Peep, yes, but an inevitable and obvious one. If we can derive entertainment value from watching other people go about their ordinary (but often nutty) lives, then why wouldn’t we get even more value out of convincing ordinary people to do nutty things while other (ordinary) people listen in and laugh their asses off? Pranknet is bare-knuckled Reality TV.
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2009,
19:57 GMT
Bill Maher Nails Peep in 30 Seconds
Posted by: Hal
Yep, he’s pretty much got it figured out.
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2009,
16:05 GMT
Hairy Hal
Posted by: Hal
Here’s the video you’ve all been waiting for: My wife – the famous W. – reveals the extent of my hairiness while I encourage her to be as disgusted as possible. This is the video we shot to send to the Reality TV show casting for extremely hairy men and their wives/girlfriends who can’t take it anymore. What do you think, do I have a chance?
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2009,
17:48 GMT
Hal’s Back: And He Almost Burned the House Down
Posted by: Hal
Okay people, I’m back in action after a couple of days of relative radio silence. So, I’m hoping to get several vlogs up in the next two days as well as a couple more blog posts about my general adventures.
In the meantime, today and tomorrow you can expect the cameras to be live at least from 9–5 pm (before family gets home). I’ll be trying to check the chat too, so if you want to talk, now’s your chance. Your last chance, in fact, since the peepcam goes permanently dark as of end of day Friday. That’s right, W. has had quite enough. She’s a remarkably patient woman.
Also one last special event: tomorrow David Sax, the king of smoked meat and author of the upcoming book Save the Deli, will be joining me for a special lunchtime chat. Look for that to start around 1pm. And bring your questions about all things kishka, knish, and kugel.
So now on to the story: Yesterday I cooked tandoori paneer, veggies and chicken on the barbecue. There were some left over woodchips in a bowl of water from a week ago or so. I threw them into the built in smoker and turned that burner on too.
But everything was pretty much cooked before any smoke showed up. Long story short: we ate dinner (E. admired the beauty of my tandoori but declined to taste it) and then cleaned up and got E. into bed.
A digression — E’s been quite a bit more defiant lately (no doubt having a lot to do with all the back and forth that’s been going on in terms of my travel) and W. has finally agreed with me that we need to be stricter and follow through with our threats of punishment. Last night, for instance, she was pretty much refusing to listen to anything we said, just playing and ignoring us. I had to finally grab her and carry her up the stairs to get her into the bath. Not because she doesn’t like baths, just because she refused to cooperate. Anyway, I had a talk with her and explained that if I have to say everything 3 times I was going to start getting really frustrated and take away things like treats, extra stories, etc. She pretended not to be listening, pulling her head under the covers, but I already noticed an improvement this morning. Another aside: I saw all the kids from daycare heading over to one of the park wading pools this morning. It was so cute seeing E. and her little cronies clutching hands and walking over to the park. She waved at me but wasn’t at all concerned that I was just passing through.
Anyway, back to the story. I went out, rechecked that all the burners were off. It was getting dark, the bbq had cooled off, so I put the cover on. Did some work in the basement. I started to smell smoke. It actually smelt kinda good. Did some more work. Smelled more smoke. Went upstairs and asked W. what she could smell. W. has an uncanny sense of smell. It’s like some kind of extra-sensory perception. She has the smelling powers of a, i dunno, insert animal with amazing sense of smell here. Anyway, she also smelled smoke. We searched the whole house, and even called the neighbor to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep while cooking something (which had happened once before).
We couldn’t find anything. The smoke smell was strong though. I decided to do one more check. I checked the basement and every room in the house. I checked out front and then out back. I paused in front of the bbq. The cover was on and there was no heat when I put my hand on the top of the bbq. I was about to move on, when I caught a powerful whiff of wood smoke. Just in case, I pulled the cover off. I found myself engulfed in smoke. The wood in the smoker was smoldering even though the smoker burner had been turned off hours ago! W. was all over that. She’s got a thing about fire. I mean everybody’s got a thing about fire, but it’s really one of her major phobias. I was thoroughly lectured. Even though the risk of fire was minimal — actually nonexistent. Plus I was sober, so there was no reason to bring up my propensity for boozing. Again. Ha! Kidding people.
So lesson learned, fire disaster averted, smoke smell quickly dissipated.
The tandoori was fantastic. So it was all worth it.
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The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
Ghostbuster zines from the Canzine Hollywood Piracy Zine Challenge are now online! http://t.co/RoAMEQTU
EXPOZINE 2011, Montreal’s 10th Annual Small Press, Comic and Zine Fair—http://t.co/3ISW3Ovx http://t.co/FlLfB6hk
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