At the very first First Frickin' Friday ever...

Employing a state-of-the-art overhead projector mikl-em focused on the Big 4 of post-9/11 humor The Onion, Doonesbury, Boondocks, and Get Your War On. Also cited were various netmemes like the tourist guy and other projects by SomethingAwful.com and others. Plus reactions from many other comedy icons and outlets like David Letterman, Michael Moore, and the Daily Show.

In the second half mikl welcomed a panel comprised of four active and incredible artists, agitators, and organizers:

  1. Violet Blue (sex educator & Woman of SRL)
  2. Mike Dingle (Event Coordinator at SomArts Gallery and a long-time SRL collaborator himself)
  3. Charlie Gadeken (Artist, Producer & Kinetic Art Enabler)
  4. Harry Haller (urban adventurer, prodigious amateur photographer, & recovering cacophonist)

They discussed the cultural fallout of 9/11, particularly from the Bay Area subculture perspective.

  • Can we still do that without ending up in court?
  • Is irony dead?
  • Is everything really different now?

postFFF UPDATES and LINKS

IMAGES OF THE FIRST SHOW

Here's an article from The Nation about Boondocks continuing dissenting voice in the months after September 2001. This interview with the strip's author Aaron McGruder is from February 2002:

When you released the strips the New York Daily News had such issues with, did you think they would be surrounded by so much controversy?

See, that's the thing. I assumed I would get cancelled permanently out of every newspaper in New York, and the question was how many other newspapers was I going to lose. Compared to that, what happened was nothing. New York never actually cancelled the strip. They just pulled it temporarily, so I was very fortunate and I was quite surprised that their response was as lenient as it was.

Check recent strips for the Return of Flagee and Ribbon!!!

The latest installment from Get Your War On features Lost Cartoons from the 1980's. You know that you are at the top of your little tiny hill, when you yourself become the subject of parody.

From FFF#1 panelist MIKE DINGLE:

Hello Out There!

As we pass the WTC/Pentagon anniversary, hoping and praying for no war with Iraq, I thought I should rearrange and expand The List. I try and visit most of the top ten on a weekly basis... particularly Harpers, This Modern World and Democratic Underground. For those who listen to radio online, there's no station anywhere like KPFA, and I do recommend GNN as a lively, and provocative alternative to CNN. But I think Dave MacGowan's newsletter, with it's comprehensive hot links to the source material, is the best overview of these troubling times to arrive in my Inbox on a pretty much weekly basis. Hopefully there is something to share with someone. Make a difference. Wake someone up! As always your comments are most welcome.

As we honor and remember those we lost last September, let us also have a moment of silence for the innocent lives lost in Afhanistan and the other arenas the empire is operating in.

Power to the peaceful, and love for the planet... MD

NOTE:  * denotes free email mailings (there may be more that provide this service than are noted)

Now go
back to the FFF homepage or miklem.com home


    Panelist Bios

  • Violet Blue is senior copywriter at Good Vibrations where she writes book and video reviews, which has her watching an awful lot of porn, and reading virtually everything imaginable written about sex. She is a sex columnist and a sex educator, and was the founding editor of the Good Vibrations Magazine. She is the editor of the book Sweet Life and Sweet Life 2 (due in October), and the author of three books, The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus, and the forthcoming Ultimate Guide to Fellatio (October) and Sweet Life 2 (April 2003). When not thinking about, writing about, or having sex, she spends her time turning a wrench in the world of mechanical art and robotics as a seven-year member of Survival Research Laboratories. Or sipping delicious inebriants from the bellybutton of a squirming lover.