Upcoming performances

Plus this Sunday in Lenox, MA! Visit my Performance Calendar for more details.

 

Below is the official press release from Five Guys Fighting.

I’ll be covering the event for the Knick Ledger and might try to write a feature piece to shop around. Time constraints may prevent me from following through on that threat.

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5 Guys Fighting Presents the Areas Second Full Contact Mixed Martial Arts Event

Contact: Shannon Miller5 Guys FightingCagewarsny.com

5guysfighting@gmail.com

Press Release

5 Guys Fighting and Cage Wars Ny Present Their Second Full Contact Mixed Martial Arts Event

Weigh ins open to the public and media tonight 10/25 at 6:30pm at Legion training facility located at 1208 route 146 Clifton Park Ny.

5 Guys fighting is proud to announce Cage Wars 14 the Capital Districts second amateur Mixed Martial Arts event.  Amateur athletes from around the northeast are scheduled to compete on Friday October 26th at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Albany. This will be the areas second fully sanctioned full contact fighting contest.  All the fight night action will follow similar rules and procedures as popular professional leagues such as the UFC, PRIDE, and IFL.  This event will be a followup of the highly successful and groundbreaking event held on August 11th of this year in which 5 guys fighting became the first promoter to hold a amateur MMA event in Albany.

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Contact: Kevin Marshall                                                          FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Phone: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 



“LAUGHS FOR LOVED ONES” RAISING FUNDS, AWARENESS FOR ALZHEIMER’S
Local stand-up comics join forces to raise funds for the Alzheimer’s Association of North Eastern New York at Waterworks Pub on November 9th

 

 

 

 

The area’s best stand-up comedians will join forces for a one-time event to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association of North Eastern New York.


Laughs for Loved Ones will be held on Friday, November 9th at the Waterworks Comedy Lounge (76 Central Ave., Albany). The show starts at 9pm with doors opening at 8:30pm. The cost for the event is $10 with all proceeds going directly to the Alzheimer’s Association.

 

Headlining the event are crowd favorites Jaye McBride and Ethan Ullman. Jaye has been seen literally coast to coast, from the Laugh Factory and Comedy Store in LA to Caroline’s in New York City. Locally, she serves as the co-host and co-producer of the monthly Laughs on Lark showcase, which occurs on the second Wednesday of every month at Elda’s on Lark in Albany, NY. Ethan is the host of Alternative to Sleeping, a weekly comedy program that can be heard on WCDB 90.9FM and alt2sleep.com, and has  opened for Todd Barry, Brian Posehn, and Doug Stanhope, among others.

 

Other local comics on the lineup include Kevin Marshall, Mo Haskins, Kristin VanSteemburg, Luke Donovan, and Shawn Gillie.

 

The event is being organized by Kevin Marshall. Waterworks Pub is providing the facility for the event free of charge.

 

The Alzheimer’s Association of Northeastern New York seeks to advances research, provides and enhances care and support for those stricken with the disease and their loved ones, and seeks to reduce the risks associated with dementia through the promotion of brain health. More information is available at their website: http://www.alz.org/northeasternny/.

 

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For more information, please contact Kevin Marshall at deputymarshall@gmail.com or call 518.892.0577.

Poster (1)

 

Read more here.

The whole thing reminds me of an old Mr. Show skit where Bob and David sing songs to “The Rainbow Gang,” a collection of silent minorities. They sing songs like “A White Man Set Them Free,” and say things like “you’re welcome.”

Then, it was parody and satire. Now, at least in this instance, that behavior has sadly become the norm.

Aren’t you gays just so happy for us straight people that are here to raise you up?

 

If you haven’t already, check out the story on Gawker from Adrian Chen, who grappled with and ultimately outed one of the most notorious figures on Reddit, if not all of the internet:

Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez: The Biggest Troll on the Web

I read the article and the subsequent reaction and involvement from Reddit with a combination of horror and rage. I won’t even get into the details of the material Violentacrez and others are responsible for posting, except to say that it’s the first time I can remember deleting an account on any site in reaction to something the company did. Seriously.

See my initial (over?)reaction on Tumblr

I don’t know whether to praise Chen on a good piece and admire the fact that he grappled with whether or not to go forth with outing the identity of one of the most reviled people in internet culture or call shenanigans on it.

Why shenanigans? Because to me, any and all moral quandaries about outing a person like Violentacrez is a construct. That puts me at odds with a lot of people online, and in particular some who are reading this. Yet I maintain that while we do have freedom of speech, that speech like anything else in life ultimately comes with consequences. If you are to argue that Michael Brutsch somehow has the right to do what he did anonymously, how does it follow that Chen then doesn’t have that right to out him for who he is in another forum?

The problem, I believe, is that many of those defending Brutsch and chastising Chen are children, either literally or mentally/emotionally. If they are not pre-teens or teenagers, they are adults who have never made the effort to get out of their own head and step out of their own circles; grown men and women for whom their world view is the only world view. To them, freedom of speech just means say whatever, whenever, with no consequences or affect on others. Which isn’t quite right. The bigger thing is that they don’t seem to have a grasp of the impact of words. To them, Anonymous is fighting for the right for them to pirate games, and that is somehow equitable to the right to petition your government with grievances or speak out against a sitting administration. It’s all slippery slopes and other fallacies.

It doesn’t help their cause any that a lot of the outcry over Chen outing Brutsch reads like the sort of tunnel vision you usually only seem from religious fanatics. It’s not an unfair comparison, because really, the logic and defense is equitable in terms of absurdity, execution, and misdirection; the only difference being the topic at hand. They say that Reddit did the right thing, Violetacrez was wrong, but that Gawker was more wrong and is more wrong in other stuff it does. It’s sort of like when you read a passionate defense of a church, where the system that not only allowed a horrible act to occur but perpetuated abuse with their actions and/or inaction is praised and defended while the author vehemently states ad nauseum that they do NOT approve of the abhorrent figure in question; then they try to deflect any criticism of the church because Penn Gillette is kind of a dick as an Atheist.

To me, this whole story and the reaction to it illuminates two  things: the hypocrisy inherent in those who cry “freedom of speech!” when called out on abhorrent and abusive speech and behavior and the folly inherent in a libertarian approach to…well, anything. Because when it comes to content the Reddit philosophy, or at least the philosophy of those defending it, tends to be very libertarian.

The problem I have with anyone who cries foul about Brutsch being outed and libertarian philosophy as a whole is that it only works in a fictional universe that resides in a firm, impermeable bubble. In real life, nothing – not money, morality, sexuality, decency, not a goddamn thing – is ever as simple as black and white. Almost everything exists on a spectrum. Libertarian philosophy isn’t just at odds with just other social or political philosophies, but with how the world has always and will continue to operate. When dealing with morals, we as human beings we should not put ourselves in the business of trying to make things simpler than they are. Nor should we combat the existence of the spectrum itself. Rather, we should determine where best a given issue fits on that line and adjust our behavior and responses accordingly. We cannot set the conditions, but we can set the degrees. Not with any specificity, but with at least some semblance of accuracy through compromise.

Some take this world view as a cop out, but I think the real cop-out is when someone rests on a predetermined view to best determine their stance and reactions to unforeseen circumstances.

In short, fuck that guy. What a scumbag.

 

(Cross-posted from theKevinMarshall.Tumblr.com, where because of logistics/time constraints most content now appears. Follow/subscribe!)

 

Well, on Friday morning I am. But tomorrow morning I’m speaking to a class at SUNY Albany (I know, what the fuck?) and I’ll likely be doing work and such throughout the afternoon. And tonight is the October Laughs on Lark (Elda’s on Lark in Albany, NY; 8pm, $5, 21+) which I hope those of you in the area will make the effort to see since we’ve got a LOT of fun stuff planned.

So I’ll likely be on radio silence here for the most part. BUT DO NOT FRET! I have really, really cool stuff queued up on the All Access and Spike tumblr pages, both of which you should follow, particularly if you’re a fan of comics/tech/gaming/what have you.

In the meantime I’ll be here, trying not to scream.

-K

 

motherjones:

Mitt Romney’s Stake in Chinese Stocks

The GOP candidate invested in 10 Chinese companies recently—including ones that embezzled, partnered with Iran, and stole US trade secrets. The lowdown is here.

Well, in fairness, there’s not many American banks and big corporations that Romney could invest in that aren’t crooks and liars and cheats.

That said, from an observational standpoint: I’m surprised that the Obama campaign hasn’t been hitting him harder on this. And not just the investments in particular, but also the potential outsourcing of jobs. Really they should be hammering this point home since all his speeches and his statements in the debates were all “jobs jobs jobs.”

On a more personal level, I’m getting more and more disturbed by the tone both campaigns are taking against Chinese corporations. Not just because it seems hypocritical given the abuses over the course of the last two decades that led to the global economic collapse (emphasis intentional). I also mean because it’s an obvious, and in my opinion hollow, attempt to recreate a Red Boogeyman for the sake of scoring easy points on foreign policy on voters who can’t be bothered to understand the intricacies of it.

Now, I’m not of any false pretense here when it comes to the Chinese government and its abuses, both in terms of economics and human rights, as well as how that extends to their expansion of the private sector (people often talk about corporate corruption and power as a sliding two-dimensional scale from free market to socialist but it’s far more complicated than that and arguably that scale doesn’t really matter; but that’s another discussion entirely). What I am saying is that there are worse companies and threats here and abroad, and though criticism may be warranted, the emphasis comes across as hypocritical and duplicitous.

 

Laughs on Lark is back next week for its October installment. Details on the poster below.

LoL is a monthly showcase on the second Wednesday of every month at Elda’s on Lark in Albany, NY.

Check out the event page and also be sure to like Laughs on Lark on Facebook.

 

From the Romney Campaign’s blog: 7 Incredible Personal Stories About Mitt Romney You May Not Know

Well, it IS incredible. Incredible how a rich kid took ecstasy at a rave, crashed at someone’s house and was found through a tip line:

In 1998 the 14-year-old daughter of one of Romney’s partners at Bain Capital, Robin Gay, had disappeared after attending a rave party in New York City. The distraught father was beside himself with terror of what may have happened to his little girl…

A break came, after media publicity of the search, when a teenage boy called a tip line asking if there was a reward. He hung up, but not before the police traced the call to a home in New Jersey. The girl was found in the basement of the house undergoing withdrawals from a hit of ecstasy.

Romney, through his efforts, had saved the girl’s life.

Emphasis mine.

You have to read the rest of them. Story number two tells the tale of how Romney, after making an awkward joke that might have offended some people, had to apologize by buying a VA hospital milk. The sixth story tells a time when Romney and his sons saw a family drowning near their lake home and didn’t just watch them die.

This isn’t a knock on Romney, but the dolt who wrote this. See, there are other stories that genuinely are acts of charity, such as his paying for the college tuition of two quadraplegic students. If it had just been those it may have helped humanized the guy. But they’re muddied by nonsense and stories of just doing what any halfway decent human being would have done.

 

 

Last night’s dream:

I met a woman, dark hair tied into her back. She asked me if I wanted to go to Austria with her. I said yes, desperately.

First we had to run down the coast toward New Orleans, then we’d be flown there. The catch was that we literally had to run there on foot. She suggested we stick to the shorelines, because running on the sandy beaches was easier on our feet and knees.

The dream clipped the run but we made it, though at times we would break into a shuffle until one of us would push the other to continue on. On the run, we overshot one of our stops and ended up running the length of a highway that ran into the Northern part of Louisiana. We took a roundabout way getting back, but finally made it.

To New Orleans, anyway. The dream ended before we could make it to Austria. But when we did arrive in the Big Easy, I made it a point to tell her that I’d always wanted to go there, and always had a strange, magical affinity for it.

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It’s 2:00am. Still up because of a mid-afternoon nap that I took in-between a funeral and family visit and work. By work I mean promotional work for my stand-up and stuff for Spike TV.

I’m going to bed now. I hope I find her and hope I get to Vienna.