Does This Blog Still Exist?

Well, sorta-kinda, slightly.

After the NYC triumph of my surrealist (actually, I prefer to say Incoherentist) papier-mache puppet production of William (maybe) Shakespeare's Birth of Merlin, I've been layin' low and lovin' livin' in the land of Louisville. As I detailed in my look back at 2010, I took a year off from the frantic pace I'd been going at exponentially since 2005; stopping to smell the roses, and to drink the Four Roses.

However, I'm back in black like Saucy Jack this year, ready to rock and roll, 1918 style. But I need your help, Noo Yawkers. This is a wakeup and a shakedown to lend a hand and help me get this show on the road. Help me help you.

The numerologists say this year may actually be one of "intolerance and regress". Fortunately, I think numerology is a load of old applesauce, and I'm having roast beef for dinner instead.

(Makes telephone-shaped hand gesture to side of head, mouths the word "Call me".)

Merlin: It's on!

Dear reader, I put it to ye thusly: what better holiday season entertainment fare can you think of, besides seeing a Shakespeare puppet play that most scholars disown, starring a clown, a pregnant woman, and Satan, held in a charming NYC warehouse?

Can't think of any, can you?

"The Birth of Merlin" in NYC!

Catclaw's NYC debut will be The Birth of Merlin, allegedly written by William Shakespeare and William Rowley, presented here as a surrealist puppet show. Watch this space, as well as the Catclaw blog, for further details!

Farewell to Conan

We're going to miss our friend Conan O'Brien, who's made NYC a wackier place to be for years. He closes the doors to his Late Night set tonight (if there's any set left to close - he's been systematically smashing it into pieces with an axe!) but we look forward to seeing him transplanted to Los Angeles, where he'll finally take over The Tonight Show at long last.

Shepard Fairey busted in Boston

Internationally acclaimed graffiti-graphics king Shepard Fairey, who recently achieved new fame as the designer of Obama's "Hope" campaign poster, has been arrested in Boston for alleged tagging.

Fairey was on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art to DJ at a sold-out party kicking off his first solo exhibition, "Supply and Demand". Unbeknownst to him, two arrest warrants had been issued on January 24 after police determined that he had tagged property in two locations with his street art campaign featuring Andre the Giant and the word "obey," according to Boston police officer James Kenneally.

Fairey was released a few hours after his arrest, and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

Fairey may or may not have actually done the tagging while he was in town, but my question is, exactly how did the Boston police determine that he was directly responsible? Fairey makes his stickers and stencils widely available worldwide, and I daresay that 90 percent of the Andre/Obey tagging being done out there nowadays is done by persons other than Fairey himself.

Boston, you may recall, is the same place where police and the mayor went completely batshit crazy in 2007, and tried to treat a lightbox guerilla-marketing campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" as a "terrorism hoax" and shut down portions of the city at great expense. The mayor and the police crassly attempted to position themselves as valiant crime-fighting heroes for this surreal debacle of their own making. Of the 10 cities in which the Lite-Brite-like LED displays were placed only Boston saw them as a matter of concern, and the installations had been up for weeks prior to the hysteria.

It's A New World

Obamatinis at Bloomingdale Road!

I just found they're serving Obamatinis at Bloomingdale Road! I wonder if it's too late to get an Obamatini? And I wonder what's in it??