Lust or Promotion for Robby Hoffman?

In May, there were two or three Missed Connections for Robby Hoffman. The first one just seemed like average everyday lust, but when the second (and I think thrid) appeared, it looked more like an advertising campaign. Which has been done in the past by certain Fringe acts.

       I want Robby Hoffman - w4w - 25 (Montreal)
       Date: 2011-05-11, 7:50PM EDT
      __________________________________________________________________
      funniest lesbian comic in Montreal. I love a woman with a sense of
      humour...find me!

      I also would like to have Robby Hoffman. - 21
      Date: 2011-05-28, 6:34AM EDT
     __________________________________________________________________
     Robby Hoffman is just the prettiest girl I have ever seen! Those bow
     ties really get me. I really think we could be soul mates? Maybe? I
     think so. I'm out of town right now, but give me a shot when I get
     back? Please? You're funny and I like to laugh. It could work?

A Cold Dark Night of Fringe For All

These are the flyers saved from slaughter after
the Fringe For All 2011










So yes I went to the Fringe For All. Nobody told me about it, but at least there was an ad in The Mirror that was towards the front. I guess they are back as a sponsor, I'm not sure what happens but every few years it switches between the two alt weeklies. But for a few years, the ad was stuck at the back of Hour, so it was not very obvious.

A few years back I skipped a couple of Fringe For Alls, for a few reasons. I don't like the venue, too dark and unfriendly, emotionally cold, but it's become long, tedious and routine.  Maybe it's just because I've been to too many, but it seems like in the old days the acts really tried to get your attention, seeing it as a chance to pull you in early, rather than to present their art.  The gimmicks happen less often, yet a two minute excerpt doesn't stand out that much.  Better to have zombies on stage to make people remember your show is about Jane Austen than to present a snippet of that show.

I was ambivalent about going, it doesn't really put me in the mood, yet it is one of the triggers that mark the impending return of the Fringe.  At least they start it an hour earlier than they used to, though it ran for four hours which is longer than it used to.  Pat Donnelly said the doors opened at 5pm, though when I got there about 6:30 there was a line forming so maybe the 5pm was in reference to the media.  I got a reasonable seat, so the venue hadn't been filling for two hours.

As usual, the press got the best seats, or at least the best seats were reserved for the press.  I learned later by someone sitting there that much of the press did not appear.  Unlike tradition, there was a press conference about May 16th, presumably because they wanted to get the word out about the early events, when usually the press conference is just before the FringeFor All.  If the press didn't show up for the FFA, it's telling, they aren't interested in the snippets but the media kits.  I'm not sure how much of this is true, but I know in the past I've seen the press slowly trickle out as the evening progresses, a large number disappearing at the intermission. I didn't see that, but I lost my seat at the intermission so I moved to the press section and didn't see that many familiar faces, and sure didn't take someone's seat away.

It was just a blur, I stopped going for two years when I realized I didn't get much out of it, not sure if it was me or the artists.  It seemed to go on forever, but at least there seems less of a show than at one point a few  years back. It's now so long because the number of acts has increased, and they all seem to want to be at the FFA.  Memory says that in the old days, not every local act appeared.


I was sitting two rows behind the press section, and we did not get many flyers. Some acts would throw from the stage, that didn't get too far back. Some acts tossed from the balcony, which resulted in many landing on the floor near the front.

Flyers don't really matter, it's the contact with the acts that oes.  The blurbs in the program don't say much, the flyers aren't an additional source of information, but meeting someone connected with the show provides peripheral information.  It may not tell someone the right thing about the show, but that connection between the artist and the audience is what counts.  The whole point is to get an early audience, to fill those seats and hopefully like it.  If they do, that creates the buzz that will lead others.  (Likewise doing something outrageous on stage creates buzz, keeping a show in public view.)

The venue is horrible for that contact with the audience.  It's not easy to move through the crowd, it's too dark to really get much from being handed a flyer (when it happens).  In the old days, we'd have to run a gauntlet to get into the Fringe For All, groups eager to pass you their flyer as you went in, far more intimate than passing a flyer in the dark today.

Someone was passing out shot glasses, dressed like waiters with trays (I'll reveal later which act).  One woman had a basket of goodies, she was promoting the art sleepover, though the flyer was pretty vague and without greater context I didn't know at the time what she was offering.  Someone gave away small chocolate bars, but I can't remember which act.

When it was finally over, some of the acts (at least I assumed it was the acts) started going through the piles of flyers to retrieve their own, doing it in a desultory fashion.  Nobody thought of doing it collectively, everyone seemed to wonder who that guy was who was telling them to grab them all and sort them out later.  I don't like to start too early, since maybe the audience will want flyers, but wait too long and the staff at the venue will clear out the "garbage". It's a fine line, I'm not sure if anything has changed.  Once I saw the acts looking, I started collecting, and once again the flyers were saved from slaughter.

It;s not like I haven't written about this in the past, back in 2000 when I first saved the flyers, there was Flyers Saved From Slaughter  and then in 2007, The Fringe For All is not a Press Conference.


After those four hours or so, I realized it is actually a cold venue.  One thing that wore me down resisting the cold, not enough to completely bother me, but enough to realize it had been there.

Early signs of Fringe, the party

The Fringe should not be seen as a passive event, something to consume, but as something to react to.  Not just whether or not you like a show, but to be active about, to go further.  Like that time in 1996 when an out of town artist sent her father to the Fringe For All to read a snippet of the script, it was memorable because someone older was stumbling over the script, and when she appeared at the Beer Tent opening night, I immediately offered to put up some posters.  Completely on the basis of her father's appearance at the FFA.  Others decide to volunteer, or put on a show. A few years back, one woman posted about seeing 20 shows, and how much it made her feel creative, in crafts rather than in performing art.I'm the bad volunteer, never signing up and not doing that much official, but boy, have I ever reacted to the Fringe over the years.

For a lot of us, there isn't enough priming in the spring. It's been less than a decade since there was a party before the Fringe, to lure in new volunteers and to talk the old into coming back or doing more.  If I hadn't stumbled on a classified ad somewhere, I wouldn't have even known about the party, yet that's one way to prime everyone for a burst of reaction and creativity.

Everyone so young, and all excited.  It's never clear if they are excited about the Fringe, or simply because it's become a party.  I can remember when the volunteer party at the end of the Fringe was relatively sombre affair, maybe too much drinking but you came since it was one last time to see people before going back into deep freeze till the next year.  Now, I can imagine some of that crowd came because they were with friends, not necessarily volunteering but maybe open to it if approached.

It's a really odd situation, all these new faces. amd they don't know anyone, but feel somehow secure in the mass.  Then wait, there's someone I barely talked to last year, returning again, and she's made the magical step of being a two-year volunteer, now a familiar face in the crowd. It works both ways, I felt better after seeing her, I hope she felt more in place (if she felt out of place to begin with) after seeing me.

And then a smaller number still of people who have come back multiple years, including someone who said she was retiring after last year, but somehow back yet again.

The Fringe isn't for the young, unlike something Jeremy said two years ago, but some of the events are aimed more at the young, the older ones either not appearing or feeling somewhat alienated from the experience.

 

Some were already working the crowd.  Here we have Tali who is doing another show about Jane Austen this year, and Liz, who's presenting "Arthur C. Clarke's How We Went to Mars".  Both have been volunteers, so this isn't mercenary, yet it's  chance to work the room, yet have a reason for approaching people in the first place, ie they are coming to order beer.Some were already working the crowd.  Here we have Tali who is doing another show about Jane Austen this year, and Liz, who's presenting "Arthur C. Clarke's How We Went to Mars".  Both have been volunteers, so this isn't mercenary, yet it's  chance to work the room, yet have a reason for approaching people in the first place, ie they are coming to order beer

For a while, all kinds of people would appear, but this year the only technician I remember seeing was Tim Rodriguez, and then the famous improvisers from the Montreal School of Improv (actually, "Montreal Improv") made an appearance.  I didn't stay too late, wanting to get up the next day to go out to Montreal West for a book sale, oddly I had been thinking about Vinnie from Montreal Improv since a few years ago I bumped into him at a used book sale out in Montreal West.

Then the next day, this appeared:

        Michael - w4m (From yesterday)
        Date: 2011-05-07, 6:37PM EDT

        I wonder what you look like without that mask.

That's a good cryptic Missed Connection.  If it was some other day,

it would mean nothing, but since it was after the party, I read something
into it.

I didn't start reading those Missed Connections until my routine searches
about the Fringe landed me there, and then I kept watching.  They can be fun
to read, and yes, if they are cryptic they can be interpreted various ways,
so how one reacts may say more about the person reacting than the person
placing the ad.  I rather liked the one after the Fringe in 2008, that
invoked Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" and enough indirect references to make
me wonder if it was for me.  It's made more complicated since I've reference
Missed Connections in the Diary a few times, so it may all be a setup.

US TV returns to Montreal

The title is misleading, but I haven't seen US TV since mid-Feb of 2009, when the Plattsburgh and Burlington TV stations went to digital.  It was kind of vague whether the DTV signals would make it to Montreal in a usable form or not, not much said and what was said in a form platable to the masses but vague in detail.  So l didn't do anything about getting a DTV converter, more expensive in Canada than the US (where they really planned the changeover and even had a program that put free or cheap DTV converters into people's hands) and hoping/wondering if things might change closer to the Canadian changeover.

Two years ago, I thought of buying a new LCD tv set, use it as a computer monitor too, but the cheap ones that I didn't have DTV tuners built in (the US had laws requiring it after a certain date, Canada didn't).
So I put that off, then last year found an LCD monitor when the McGill students moved out.

But things have changed.  The DTV changeover in Canada isn't two years away, it's four months away.  I could live without US tv, but I'm not sure I could live without TV.  So I actually bought a new TV set, the first time in my life.  For over a decade I was using a Commodore monitor fed from a VCR as my "TV set").

The process started back in December, the prices having dropped, and in typical fashion, it took months for me to finally do the deed.  But, I got a larger tv set, 22"  instead of 19", and an LED backlight rather than CFL, and a full bore 1080 set rather than 720, and paid about 20 dollars more than the smaller set that tempted me in December.  I paid about $120 more than if I'd bought a DTV converter, but I actually get a larger and more modern tv set than the Commodore monitor.  The new set heats up less than my smaller LCD monitor (with CFL backlight).

I plugged it in with a loop antenna, and with barely any fussing, Channel 57, Mountain Lake PBS, was back, with three channels.  That in itself was worth it  I've lived with grainy tv all my life, except that period from about 1982 to 1997 when I had cable (I gave it up when I started paying for the internet),
and the neat thing about DTV is that it's all or nothing.  57 was always somewhat grainy at the best of times, that's gone. A bit more fussing, and CBS (a main channel and a weather channel) and NBC (the main channel and a second channel devoted to old movies) could be received, a great feat since the last time I saw either channel over the air was in the sixties, when I'd get up early in the morning and watch them before channels 6 and 2 came on.  the local signals wiped out the adjacent channel US stations.  I don't think I ever saw a full episode of Captain Kangaroo. Of course, back then tv stations went off the air overnight, and ran test paterns in the morning.  Some more fussing and Channel 33, Vermont PBS, came in, four channels (though only three distinct channels), a real bounty.

The movie subchannel from WPTZ Plattsburgh is like a return to the days of Joe Van's Movie Matinee in the seventies (and the varaiants when he died), movies every weekday afternoon on CFCF.  In fact, the schedlue for May had movies I hadn't seen since back then.

No sign of FOX, channel 44, or ABC, channel 22 (though apparently the latter is particularly hard to get).

It's not perfect, some dropoffs and about two weeks later I lost some of those channels, I'm assuming because the leaves on the trees came back.  I'll have to fuss later, fiddle with the antenna, but I'm assuming come the fall, when I actually want to watch tv, I can expect decent reception of some US stations.  And by then, the local stations will all be digital, so the VCR will no longer work as a tuner.

The stories I'd read suggested that if things had been grainy before, they might not be receivable now.  That doesn't seem to be the defining point.  FOX could decline very so often, but it was the strongest in the days of analog TV, yet it's the other stations that I got without much fussing.

Of course, there is disappointment to this, I was fantasizing about watching certain movies on the larger set, even had kept some aside for the day I brought home a better tv set, and then reality sets in.  Played on an old DVD player, the DVDs do not fill the screen.  I'll have to wait for a sale (or recycling bin reject) for an upconverting DVD player.

So I'll try this

I reserve the right to revert to the old ways next year, or try something else.  "Everyone is doing it" is not a great reason to follow the pack, not when I was trying to lead so long ago. But Kate thought I should do it last year,  the problem is, every time she suggest something it seems like she sees more potential in me than I do.  If  people I actually do know ignore me, then it sure seems like I don't have that much to say.  On the other hand, I don't often like what is being said, which is why I keep at it.

So I'm trying the simplest route, having waited till too late.  I don't like not pointing to pubnix.net because when I moved there five years ago after nine years at cam.org, it was deliberate, to go to the oldest local ISP, to go to a non-large ISP.  Maybe next year I'll take control.

 It's really over a month later when I start this, but there are some things I wanted to post in chronological order. 

On June 6th, Kate
said "In any case, attacking Mr. Black as a running dog lackey of the mediatized
world is, I dare say, way off target", so here we go.