Date: July 19th 2010

So we are building a boat and we need to have a little fundraiser because it's fucking expensive and it's kicking our asses.

We booked a dinner at the Chez Poulet on Wedensday the 21st, some people are flying in for Ephemerisle and it would be nice to have a meet and greet for them.

We decided to do the Ask Dr. Hal Show for the entertainment part. We're good at it, and it's been ages. We will start up again doing the show regular at some point, but for now this is what we have.

Dinner and the show together is $35. Just the show is whatever generous donation you can give. Mable is cooking. $$ goes to the boat thing. We need it! Really!!! We really need help.

Dinner starts at 8:00 and the show starts at 9:00. I"m now going to spout a bit, just to amuze you. But I didn't wanna put the dinner and the show thing at the end of a long rambling email that only 50 of you will ever read.

So....

So I sold the Odeon 5 years and 3 months ago under the full moon in the month of May.  I sold the bar, and went on a trip around the world, as I had never left the country before. The world is quite large, actually. But that's another story. I spent the last of the Odeon money running for Mayor. The rest got frittered away on all 4 failed attempts to start an arts organization/social club. But that's another story. This story is the story of the Hong Kong Shaft. Which sounds like something oddly erotic. But it's not. It's a ghetto way of moving a boat through the water. In Thailand, I saw these Thai boats with longtail motors. They look like this:

They track through the water perfectly. You yank an engine out of a car and you turn the drive shaft into a prop shaft. It's the ultimate in weasel tech. Makes SRL look like Playskool. Or Tampax. Boating is so... disconnected. It's all so hidden and so... expensive. Exclusive. Or something. I saw these boats and saw an opportunity that I wouldn't define for 2 years. But when the opportunity arose, I implemented building a longtail with a Hong Kong Shaft and did it on the cheap and we were all hooked. The problem with boats is efficiency. If you didn't know, a boat gets like 3 GALLONS per mile. But with this design, if you go diesel, you can easily get 2 MPG. That's a huge difference. We went about building with garbage, of course, and then even running some of them on gasifiers. Which was a disaster that only Jim Mason could have designed... but that's another story.

We built stunning boats out of trash. We made contraptions that challenged the idea of boating, and with the destination of a functional venue that was also a nautical vessel it was an opportunity for fun and activism. No one had ever heard of an art boat. We dragged the idea around the planet a bit, and inspired a new wave of punk rock disasterism. But that's another story.

I just wanna tell you why I like boats. Boats are real. They are an immersion in the real. It's all actual. Driving in a car is like all comfy and climate controlled. But a boat is different. You are constantly faced with physics, nature, geometry and everything else. Boats are windows to the biggest problem of our time: disperfection. Being on the water is being alive. There is no numbing, there is no boredom. You are constantly gonna die. You teter on the edge of oblivion and you like it. Your existence is that of a mosquito on the rump of a beast or less in this world, although we think ourselves mighty and full of grace and importance... the open sea can just flick you away like a gnat. But it's also soothing. Being on a boat is like therapy. Resolve. You get an understanding that is hard to describe. And you get that being on any boat. But... but but but... but if you build your own boat... this is even better. All of it. I would write about it more if I understo od it better. But my intention is to just build this boat and be able to share this experience with other people. That is the destination of this boat. To create a venue of sorts. A vessel for a totally unexplored art realm. We're kinda excited about it. There is more here than any other place I've ever been.

And I totally wouldn't have gotten that had I not seen the Thai boats with the Hong Kong Shaft. That kind of accessibility. That kind of direct connection to the machine. That abruptness. I can still remember sitting on that water taxi and just being mystified by an inline 6 Isuzu engine putting along. Form and function. We put so much effort into shutting ourselves out of the connection to machines. Tucking everything away, and leaving only sleek lines with plastic covers on everything. I wanna know how everything works. I wanna build my own rollercoaster. I wanna chop down a tree and make it into a guitar and write an albums worth of songs about people who have cleft chins. But that's a whole other story...

People have been saying that I've been tight lipped in the last little while. I spent the winter writing a book about failure that I have failed to publish. I poured thought and conviction into that, and there isn't much left to go on and on about over here.

But things are good. The boat is nearly done. The event on the water is Saturday, the 24th. Full moon. Friday we'll be in Lock, at a bar. Saturday we'll be on the water and have an epic show booked. 

And of course, we have a fundraising dinner and show on Wednesday with a preview of the upcoming run of the Ask Dr. Hal Show. Which is gonna be super fun.

Here is the URL for the Kickstarter for the boat which is currently 50% funded:   http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2115247821/the-relentless-artstead-boat-project

Here is the URL for the event that is NOT Ephemerisle:    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=126532500718931&ref=ts

Here is the URL to buy tickets for the dinner and Ask Dr. Hal Show:    http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/120234