KevinSix.com

"Blood Countess" Videos

There are many technical things going on in my new play, not the least of which is video.  The characters in "The Blood Countess" communicate with one another on video.  There's a screen on stage and a camera in the house.  We will see if any of it works soon as we go into technical rehearsals and kick-start this mother.  Until then, please look at the videos we've made up to this time wo whet your appetite for "The Blood Countess".

Blooper: director caught over-acting on an off-screen voice over shoot.

  

Making a statue: part one, we encase Carla Navarro in plaster.

 

Fundraising video: PS you can give money to this production here.  Thanks!

 

Repurposed Vinyl, Recycled Records

Repurposed Vinyl.  It's about time.  How long have those records been collecting dust?  Want the song on Mp3?  You can find it!  Want something cool to hold stuff?  Made out of retired records?  Look no further! Record Holders!  (http://coolrecordholders.blogspot.com/) sells, well, cool record holders. Records made into boxes, bowls, pencil holders and... well.  It's just a really coo concept. See for yourself!  Click a photo and go crazy!

Fiber Arts Festival at the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum

Ok, so, first: such a totaly cool property.  Where else can you see steam tractors, Model A Trucks, a blacksmith shop run by belts attached to a steeam engine and old looms with people making rugs and cloth?  The answer is nowhere else than the Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum.

You need to go if you have any testosterone on your system.

I was there doing research for a production of A Middsummer Night's Dream.  No, really.  You see, my contention is that Nick Bottom, the weaver, wove the play from his own fantasy after selling some silk cloth to Hyppolita.  Think about it...

So here are a few photos and comments...

There were Alpacas giving wool. These cute little crestures hafe very soft wool.  They also have soft teeth and feet (for climbing mountains) so they're softer on the land on which they tread and feed.  

Spinners spinning.  This noce woman was working on a wheel made by her husband in the 70s.  She told me all I wanted to know about spinning, weaving and community organizing around teaching kids to spin and weave.  Lots of great ideas about The Dream...

And weavers weaving.  It was cool!  Of course you know that Nick Bottom was a weaver and it is my assertion that Hyppolita came to him for cloth for a wedding dress and started the whole fantasy upon which the dream is based. You see, he tells his friend PEter Quince to write him a ballad based on this strange dream he had in which Hyppolita was also Queen of the Fairies and he got tro hang with her (and all his friends were Fairies).  More on that later.

So my idea is to use human-powered items (like spinning wheels) to provide light and sound for the only Midsummer Night's Dream that the audience has to sun to keep up with.

So I was there to get some process going with regards to The Dream -- weavers weaving, tinkers tinking and joiners joining.  There are w few Weavers' Guilds here in San Diego county and I expect to get a hold of them and find out how they help, educate and share with us. More soon -- espeially on all the other cool stuff at the museum!  More soon...

The Wake Surfing Film of the Century

I don't need to say more.

But I will.

This film was an honor and a triumph to make. it took blood, swet, tears and a whole lotta love to produce.  Many thanks to my beloved wife, Jennie, the crew and the people of Scandia Minnesota who had a festival just for me, which they call Taco Days -- and which I call Kevin Six Presents Taco Days but that's a film to be released at a later date. 

Tonight, we bring you the wake surfing film of the century.  A little film I like to call:

The Wake Surfing Film of the Century

 

Cast:

Kevin Six..........................Kevin Six

Jennie Olson Six.................Jennie Olson Six

Sherri Mann......................Sherri Mann

Shawn Klancke...................Shawn Klancke

Katrina Nord......................Katrina Nord

Kiki Mann.........................A midget who looks just like her (no child labor laws broken)

Rusty and Tinkerbell............Themselves

 

Crew

Director, producer, writer and all around cool guy.........Kevin Six

Camera....................Kevin Six, Jennie Olson Six, Katrina Nord

Boat Drivers..............................Shawn Klancke, Sherri Mann

Water Safety.........................Shawn Klancke and Sherri Mann

Stunt coordinator.............................................Kevin Six

Executive Producer........................................Chuck Mann

Special Thanks to: The lovely people of Scandia Minnesota, the Embrace Adrenaline Trapeze Club, the Marine on St. Croix water patrol who totally pulled us over, MasterCraft Boats, GoPro cameras, Shane Foss who surfs very well but not on video and Kali Mann who... Kali, where were you?

Attention Drivers and Pedestrians

OK.  Pay attention because this information could just save your life.  Drivers first:

To the guy who drives in the passing lane - as I said it's the passing lane.  People are supposed to pass slower cars from the left.  Using the passing lane.  But if you're in the passing lane, trying to scrape together all the cool you had in the 80s, which wasn't that much, in your black minivan - yes, black is supposed to be cool but not in a minivan.  Yes you.  If you cruise with your CD of Hall and Oats blaring just one lane over, I can pass douche bags like you.  Of course at least the douche bags like you are in the proper lane.  What makes them douche bags is this...

To the douche bag who speeds up as I'm trying to pass - what are you trying to prove?  That your Honda CRX can beat me?  Wow.  I'll bet the woman in the car with you couldn't care less.  Women are impressed by how much faster than the guy trying to pass you (who has been trying to get the douche bag in the black minivan out of the fast lane for the last five minutes) exactly not at all!  Quit being a douche bag and let a brother pass.  If you really wanted to go fast you'd already be doing it.  And here's a little note: she wasn't impressed with the CRX either; and she wouldn't have been in the late 80s either.

Now to the idiot who drives in the ingress/egress lane - follow the links to the definitions or take it from me: ingress means entering, in our case the freeway.  Where people go an average of 65 miles per hour.  OK now for the other one.  Now it begins with the same letter so don't get confused: egress means exit.  As in the freeway.  People are coming and going here.  Coming and going.  Not cruising, listening to Billy Joel and letting the fog from the last bong clear.  Lots of activity, get the holy shit out of this lane unless you're involved in ingress (remember? entering the godammned freeway) and egress (remember? leaving the godammned freeway).

This is a special one for people who change lanes.  Because the passing lane is on the left and the ingress/egress (exiting or getting-off-the-freeway) lane is on the right; you can assume that people going right are slowing down and those going left are speeding up.  If you do the opposite of this it might be why people are honking, waving and calling in to question the relationship (cousins?) of your parents before they had you.  People.  Go faster when you change lanes to the left and (wait for it) slower when you change lanes to the right.  Everyone the fuck else is doing this, why aren't you?

Talking on the phone, driving - and gesturing with your free hand - not advisable. Especially if there's a Big Gulp or a cigarette there.  But really. 

OK, now for pedestrians... Now, I know that not everyone does this, but when someone does yield the right of way to you (which is morally, legally and socially the correct thing to do) don't wave them on.  They have already slowed down for you, just cross the mutherfucking street!

If you have started out and then see me slowing down (the key words in this scentence are slowing and down), then keep on truckin'.  If you stop, I can't go; this is called "you're an idiot".  Do not buy a car and try not to go out withour your plastic helmet.  Just keep going!  I've already slowed way-the-hell-down.  You'll live.  Go!  Just go!

Parking lot people.  Yes, it's called a parking lot and people come from and go to cars there.  This does not make you indestructible.  Walk along the side of the aisle.  You and I can both fit and, if you're on the side, you won't be hit by a car.  Just thought that one up on my onsies.

OH!  Back to drivers!  You thought you were off the hook? Not of you turn right from really far to the left you're not.  Look, the line is there and a fucking Mack truck can fit within it.  You can turn a much bigger car than yours from within this line.  Do you want to know how I know?  I drove a minivan for ten years.  That sumbitch will turn on a dime.  So will a Ford f-150 and just about anything smaller than a 10-wheeler.  Does your car have fewer than ten wheels?  No? Then turn right within the lane.

Special note for people turning right when there's not a line: same rules apply.  You can make it.  When you swing wide people who are trying to go around you want to kill you.  This is always the case.  They don't kill you but imagine the Karma points wracking up on your incapable-of-turning-right-in-one-lane soul...  One day someone is going snap and you're the one they're going to go mad-dog on.  Turn as close to the curb as you can.  The life you save might just be your own.

And speaking of cars going close to the curb - and thit is back to the pedestrians again - why are you standing with your toes over the curb?  Are you more important than a 2,000-pount car?  Are you really?  And what about your friend who's in the street before the light changes?  When he gets hit, his brains are going to splash all over that rainbow sweater you stole off your grandmother. 

Now, when you're with an asshole who j-walks, making me stop; I'm actually stopping for you too.  So stopping and looking all apoligetic is going to get you less than nowhere with me.  In my mind, the asshole is the smarter one in the equation.  At least he knows the law: drivers must yield to pedestrians even when they break the law and, I would like to add, even when they are douchebags.  So don't wait and let me pass.  As I said: I've already stopped, you lame-ass idiot with a lame-ass boyfriend/husband/baby daddy!  The only acceptable behavior from you besides taking off after the asshole who, I must repeat, already stopped traffic, is getting into my car and asking me to take you to a divorce lawyer STAT.

Thank you.

V-Day

Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday.  Probably because it's one of the few times it's OK for prople to say "I Love You".  The V-Day movement chose this time of year to tell the world about a something that continues to hold the human race back from love.

Violence and especially violence against women.

And that's why The Vagina Monologues are performed in February all over the world.  The celebration/lesson by Eve Ensler starts off not-so innocently enough, with women talking about their vaginas -- it'a a celebration of that which is the gateway to creation of the most profound kind.

Then you go to intermission and, when you get back, you see what some people have to go through just because they own one of these amazing things.  There is a price for owning a little bit of the power to create.

And, over the years, there have been reasponses to the Vagina Monologues.  A man by the name of Derek Dujardin had such a response to the show that he wrote The MENding Monologues to show the women of the world that men are listening.

He wanted to make it funny and keep the pieces light but sometimes, it didn't work out so well.  There is just so much to think and feel about the concept of violence towards women.

So I joined the cast and we are invited to write our own pieces in response to the Vagina Monologues.  And it's been powerful.

Not a laugh riot; not always fun; not a great way to think and feel.  But it's a way to show hope.  That there are men who won't buy into cheap shots at women, won't accept the status quo; and who stand up for the right of women to be safe.

And there's a third production that takes Derek Dujardin's work one step further.  A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer is a response from famous writers and performers.  This response to the Vagina Monologues, the movement and the fact that there is violence in the world was put together by Eve Ensler and features some of the best writers working today.

And, like the two shows that preceded it, it contains things that are monstrous and beautiful.  Well-written, passionately performed and containing a valuable message.  This is why I am involved this year and why I am inviting every one I know with children to come to this event.

To these people, I say:vsee one of these performances for your children.

It is one evening out of your life.  It will take you on a rollercoaster ride of emotions.  It will show you that the world is not neat and tidy, that people are capable of perpetrating horror; and that other people have not taken the news silently.  It is a way to see the darkness and the hope in the world.  Something you should not have to tell your kids about but exists.

Something that I believe in.  So please come and see what the world is.  Know that you won't be the same after seeing it but you will be informed.  Know that there is hope and you and your chuldren represent that hope and know that the money is distributed to the onranizations where it can do the most dood.

Thank you and love,

Kevin

Meeting Anne Rice

I drove to Warwick's Books in La Jolla, California last night to meet one of my favorite writers.  Favorite because reading her books is like breathing; because she makes monstrous people so human; because I really feel like I know her.  I have read everything she's written, and that's a lot!

After picking up her latest two books in her Songs of the Seraphim series, I'm well on my way to ingesting all Anne Rice has ever written.  I still haven't been able to want to read Called Out of Darkness, her memoir about coming back to the Catholic church.  That's probably because she and I feel pretty much the same about God the The Church: you can have one without the other.

Anne Rice lived for a time in La Jolla and I used to surf in the pacific hoping she would see me while writing her novels.  I think and think while on a board in the ocean and have thought up many fascinating things.  Some of them even about vampires. Anyway, here are some photos of the Anne Rice Book Signing for her latest book Of Love and Evil.

Chapter 5. After Dinner

Leticia Walker Reed retired to her room on the second floor of Waterwood on the top of the hill overlooking Walker’s Mill.  She actually scampered, she noted, so full was she with girlish enthusiasm.  Her creek-side room offered a view five miles downstream, past the cattle range, over the fields and down into a grove of trees that ran into Walker’s Mill.  The Mill used to grind all the grain from the many farms in Placer County.  The railroads changed the business of the town – that and the fact that every acre of land was owned by a Walker or a Reed and had been for fifty years.  The Walkers, who owned the mill and most of the land around it, gave the property on which Waterwood was built to the Reeds as a wedding present.  This was before the Walkers died, leaving the rest of it to their daughter and son in law.

Except for six seasons at University, Leticia had lived in this room her entire life.  Now that she had taken all the University of California could give her, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Language and a Master of Arts in English, Letty didn’t know what to do.  She knew what her fantasy was: to run off with a handsome, intriguing stranger who would totally devour her.  She hoped that she wouldn’t end up like Darling Emily, too weak and too smart to do anyone let alone herself any good.  She thought she might like to work in the family business but couldn’t really get excited enough about any of it. 

Then she decided that she needed to go incognito, to hide out between the musty pages of a well-written book.  This is what she had always done.  She was 12 or thereabouts before she realized she was rich.  Just after she stopped being Clementine and right after she saw how deferentially the townspeople treated her, her mother and father – and anyone named Walker or Reed the first time she rode to town in her mother’s Brougham. 

Leticia Walker Reed rarely went to town.  Tutors had come from San Francisco to teach James and her.  She was always the favorite, he always trouble maker.  After studies, James would run wild on the property, ride his pony or get someone to take him into town but Letty would retire.  Sink into the depths of leather and language.  All her books were brought by the tutors, many of whom never lasted more than a year.  Then, during her fourth or fifth year of studies, she asked a question Miss Olson couldn’t answer.

“Well.  I’ll have to go into town the next chance I get and order a book on the subject,” said Miss Olson in response to a question on American History.  The fact that there were books that would tell you all you wanted to know – and that you could just go to town and order them – was a turning point in Leticia’s life.  She determined, from that moment on, that she would learn everything there was to learn from every book she could get her hands on.

Then, after an informative ride into town with Miss Olson, and, after she learned exactly how much money for books she had at her disposal, Letty went a little wild on books.  Finally, her parents came to understand how much money was being spent on books – it was after Letty had discovered such things as catalogues and newspapers and libraries.  It was Uncle James who had the idea of putting Letty to work to earn her book allowance.  She did sums for the bookkeepers, filed correspondence, took notes and, finally, wrote all the correspondence for her father and uncle.  When she left for University, Abolphus and James Reed had to hire two secretaries to handle the workload.

The library in Walkers Mill is named after Leticia Walker Reed who insisted, just before she was accepted to the University of California, that the other children in her community have access to the books she did.  Every purchase Letty made from the catalogues at the general store held the twin thrills that of devouring it’s contents and that of giving of the knowledge to untold thousands of people after her.  Her mother taught her that books can live on after she grew out of them and her mother oversaw the building of “Letty’s Library after she went away to school.  Sometimes Letty ordered two of the same book, knowing well in advance that she wouldn’t be able to part with it when the time came.  All of her books – even the duplicates – reside in “Letty’s Library” now.  All except the large black-leather-bound journal she now held.

And what a book it was!

How It Will Be

There are lots of people writing for money now and even more just writing that novel.  The problem with writing in English is that 300 million or more people can do it too.  So there's some competition, zall I'm sayn.

I recently read a Saturday Evening Post from 1972 with a fantastic short story by Kurt Vonnegut in it.  Which current magazines let you read fantastic short stories by the best writers of the day?  I can't think of even one.

And now with the death of print...

But here's How It Will Be:

People will slowly begin to be creeped out by social media.  It has to do with all social media being commandeered by companies. Then extremists on both sides. Pretty soon you're gonna feel like you spilled Pepsi on yourself and stepped in Taco Bell when you roam the social landscape.

Then something cooler than facebook will come.  People you know who are cooler than you have already joined this movement -- it's not a social networking sight, it's a movement.  That's how cool it is.

And they aren't telling you about it yet because you're so, well, facebook.

All the photo- and video-sharing sights will be replaced with software that can etch images onto the retinas of people who sign up online.  That and a message about "the real thing".  Yes, talk about branding.  Your cornea will momentarily become a billboard for one.  You.  You are that cool.

But then something strange will happen.  All those odd people who work at sandwich shops and coffee carts who support the Steam Punk movement will become incredibly cool.  It all has to do with Brad Pitt playing someone with a handlebar mustache, a bowler and lots of girlfriends.  And, get this!  He reads.

Books.

The best part?  The film comes out not in 3d, not in HD, not in Dolby but... in Nickelodeon.  Not the TV network, the actual early film experiment where thousands of pictures are strapped to a wheel and you pay a nickle to crank it once.  You have to view literally hundreds of these to get the whole story: Brad trimming his mustache, Brad driving his Pennyfarthing (you know, the bike with the big front wheel) to work, Brad working some infernal machine, and, finally, Brad rollerskating with a beautiful actress with cupie-bow lips and bid doe-y eyes.  The experience is so radical, so far fetched that it's months before everyone figures out that they've spent one hundred nickels for a production that cost just over 100 thousand dollars.

Soon Sean Penn is directing Nickelodeon films.  Nickelodeons are found in every store in every building in every city on Earth.  There is a run in American nickels.  Canada makes them cheaper.

There is a whole trend backward.

And then?  And then?  And then!

People read again.  Not just the subtitles in Nickelodeons, either.  People discover they want newspapers back.  Books too. And! Finally!  Magazines that you can get great short stories in.  And then, I'll become a published short story writer and, because short stories are all anyone can think of, because each Nickelodeon film is about five minutes long, I'll become rich and famous.

But I will resist growing a handlebar mustache.

And this is how it will be!

Prayer Answered

There's something to this!  The car had a $20 hose wrong with it.  A little labor, a little hose and I'm back on the road.  Bullet dodged.

Of course I don't know which Jesus to thank so I will thank them all.  Autobahn, Motor Oil, Wayward Driver and all other Jesuses.  Thank you!

I will be a better car owner.