“For those comedy fans still in mourning for Bill Hicks 18 years on, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in the work of DC-born stand-up Lee Camp. Like Hicks, Camp has a visceral disregard for big business and big politics, and speaks his mind on everything from abortion rights to the evils of the modern media. However, where Hicks was more of a commentator who stayed above the fray, Camp is much closer to British activist-comics like Mark Thomas, a real-life serial protester.” the Guardian

Click here for eatils of Lee’s London gig at the Comedy Cafe

www.leecamp.net

What is spec work?
Spec work – crowdsourcing – spec competitions.
Working on spec is when a single designer or agency design for free in the hope of winning a project.

Example 1
Here’s an example 99designs logo crowdsourcing
New logo for $700. Entries so far totals 1,133 with 5 days still to run. Potentially thousands of free design hours for the client, nice profit for 99designs and hundreds of disappointed designers. Who is winning here?!

Example 2
Client asks 3 design agencies to show what they can do for them if they want to win the £60,000 / $100,000 project. The agencies will spend a solid week, or longer, with many staff involved to prepare the perfect pitch. The pitch has cost the agency £6,000 / $10,000 and there is a 66% chance of losing. Client is 100% winning.
What other professions get involved with spec work?
None. Not that I can think of. If you can think of one please do let me know.

Dude, it’s ok for you because you’re busy with work
It is tough for designers starting out. They have no money to advertise for work and they have a limited portfolio to showcase their design. Crowdsourcing websites know this and take full advantage.
Tougher still perhaps for design firms who have many overheads and staff. Ultimately this is why they resort to working for free in the hope of landing a gig.

You have options
You’re better off contacting a charity and designing their website for free to add to your folio rather than pissing into the wind at a crowdsource website.

Become an intern. Contact your local design agencies.
Freelancers and design agencies can explain to potential clients that they have a policy not to work for free. It is proven that clients can respond positively to the self-assurance that comes from an agency that isn’t willing to sell their soul.

A Comedienne’s Plan for Middle East Peace: “The Two Genital Solution”

by Kayla Malahiazar    March 15, 2012

Between her and the Jewish man she met at a bar, a new way of calming Middle Eastern tensions was born in the form of stand-up. “With every sweaty pelvic thrust, I feel like we are getting that much closer to peace in the Middle East. It’s called the two genital solution.” Negin Farsad’s personal approach to Middle East peace requires intelligence, experience, and lots and lots of comedy.

Wearing her audacious glasses with a fire red frame that contrast her jet-black hair and compliment her lipstick, the Iranian Muslim American comedienne can’t help cracking a joke every other sentence. In the time it takes to drink a coffee she can perform an impersonation of her mother’s thick Persian accent, tell stories of the white kid who made fun of her hairy legs and unibrow in elementary school, and use enough profanity to make any sailor on the Straight of Hormuz blush.

Farsad grew up in “the desert” of Palm Springs, CA in a household where two foreign languages are spoken, Farsi and Azeri, given that her parents emigrated from Tabriz, Iran, which is home to a large Turkic population. Although both her parents are supportive, Farsad enjoys impersonating their “go to answer” when asked what their daughter does for a living. “’Eh she is comedian BUT she went to Cornell and got two Masters from Columbia.’ You know they latch on to these things that they know are kind of traditionally measures of success or whatever.  They are good they are great, but they just don’t get it.”

Farsad is not only a performer. She has written and directed works titled, “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Romantic Comedy,” a show that tracks the historic conflict back to a botched one-nightstand at the Geneva Convention in 1948, “The Dirty Immigrant Collective,” a standup show featuring “comedians of the immigrant, minority, or otherwise outcast variety,” “Bootleg Islam,” and “Iran-ing on Empty,” Farsad is upfront about her political satire and sexual humor that serve to bring the funny out of the current political and social reality of the United States’ relationship with the Middle East.

Farsad’s most recent project, “The Muslims Are Coming!” is a stand up tour and soon to be film that uses the stage “as a sounding board not only for punchlines but for social commentary” on the issue of Islamophobia. The traveling band of Muslim comedians tour through the South and the Midwest of the United States doing free shows in everywhere from small coffee shops to large auditoriums and setting up  “Ask a Muslim a Question” booths in town squares all over the country.

The first stop was Gainesville, FL made infamous by Pastor Terry Jones’ attempt to upstart an “International Burn a Quran Day.” Although Farsad expected some negative audience reactions, she was pleasantly surprised to get some positive commentary. “Sometimes people come up to me and say like ‘That was so funny and educational!’ That’s very shocking to me every time, that anything I say should be remotely educational hah, but you know that’s gonna be the most that they know about anything human in Iran, because everything else is just news stories about how they are enriching uranium.”

Farsad also conducted interviews with celebrity personalities like John Stewart, Colin Quinn, Lewis Black, and Aasif Mandvi for “The Muslim’s Are Coming!” documentary. Interviewing CNN’s Ali Velshi, who is an Ismaili Muslim of Indian descent, Farsad proudly recounts one of the most humorous approbations of her comedic style. “Velshi, he’s a Muz, I told him, ‘There are comedians on this tour that talk about their vagina, do you think that’s appropriate?’ And he said ‘I would rather be affiliated with a vagina than with terrorism.’”

Not every audience member is quite as pleased with the comedienne’s racy humor. “I mean I have had plenty of people come up to me and call me a whore, sending me hate mail saying I’m a whore, whorey whore whore, they LOVE the word whore.“ She says one of the most salient examples occurred in Tucson, Arizona during “The Muslim’s Are Coming!” tour.  About twenty Muslim audience members walked out on Farsad’s bit. “There was a ring leader, and she did this motion and everyone stood up and left, and then there were complaints after the show that I was racy and its not appropriate cause I’m Muslim and I shouldn’t be talking about ‘those things’, I was like but I’m an American Muslim you fucks, and THAT’S DIFFERENT.”

The difference for Farsad is that she represents and Americanized face of Islam one that is “super fucking secular.” “I eat pork like it’s a job and I get wasted and that’s how I’m just as Muslim as most others are Christian, which is to say not that much.”

Spreading these messages through comedy is something Farsad can’t help doing because it’s just what comes naturally. “If you want to create a discussion about it culturally, I think it has to be through comedy.”

http://themuslimsarecoming.com

http://www.neginfarsad.com/

https://www.facebook.com/neginfarsad

Article copyright to Kayla Malahiazar and reproduced under creative commons licence. Original article.

Kayla Malahiazar bio

My name is Kayla Malahiazar, I am a senior at Sarah Lawrence College studying politics and development. My parents are from Iran and Portugal and my upbringing in a multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment has served as the root of my interests in international politics and global issues, as well as my love for travel. I am currently volunteering for Nuestra Aparente Rendición, a Mexican organization trying to create dialogue and bring peace to Mexico and am aspiring towards becoming a free lance journalist/scholar.

See also: www.destinationart.org

More

This quote from Apple CEO Steve Jobs Stanford address goes pretty well with Alan Fletcher’s “Down with Dogma” graphic.

]]> http://www.flyingmonkey.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=652 0 http://www.flyingmonkey.net/blog/?p=3022 http://www.flyingmonkey.net/blog/?p=3022#comments Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:21:56 +0000 Zongor http://www.flyingmonkey.net/blog/?p=3022

International award-winning contemporary circus

Forceful and funny, powerful and poetic, La Putyka explores Czech pub atmosphere with the glazed look of a sober pint… This vibrant, colourful show fuses acrobatics, dance, theatre, puppets and live music into original contemporary circus that wins awards.

Cirk La Putyka website

Beyond stand up, beyond improv, beyond sketch, there is Sex You (I’m Gonna).

He’s tried to have sex live onstage with dozens of New York women. Now ‘the hilarious Nathan Phillips’ (TimeOut, NY) will attempt to seduce his first Scottish lass. Using an array of ingenious pick-up tactics in an intimate evening of comedy, one of NYC’s finest solo improvisers takes audience interaction to a whole new level.

He’s also written and performed comedy jokes with Penn & Teller, Blue Man Group, and the lead rollerskaters from Xanadu.

Venue: Just The Tonic @ The Store Show website

Nathan Phillips website

Tweet: @NathanPhillips

show website www.sexyouimgonna.com

‘Thoughts that are likely to strike a chord…concisely and effectively put’ Steve Bennett, Chortle

The political use of voiceover in flying monkey conforms to the subjugation of the individual in the face of the primacy of television.

The prevalance of foreground obstructions in flying monkey masks the containment of visual pleasure.

Through the poetic use of tableaux, flying monkey hybridizes pre-Oedipal guilt.

flying monkey colonizes the rise of currency and the loss of utopia through its conflicting duality of progress and humanity.

flying monkey echoes established notions of the star system through its use of implied depth-of-field.

flying monkey unpacks scopophilic tendencies of the viewer through its fluid identification of the viewer.

flying monkey asks telling questions of suburban notions of containment through its use of mise-en-scene.

flying monkey don’t work with cunts