10 Zen Monkeys’ EFF Fundraiser

Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

I had fun last night performing at the 10 Zen Monkey’s Fundraiser for the EFF. I even busted a few folks twittering during the set :-)

Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen did a really funny bit with their meshugenah ladies Carole Murphy and Mitzi Fitzsimmons and Will Franken was brilliant. We had a very fun argument afterwards about Israelis and Palestinians. I guess this is how comedians who aren’t easily categorized bond. Beats getting high and talking about failed sexual escapades and poop.

To link to the show, you can use this scooby dooby thing:

<a href=”http://heathergold.com/”><img src=’http://subvert.com/media/images/hgshowsxsw.jpg’ with=’136′ height=’48’ alt=’Heather Gold Show’></a>

Here is the RSVP page. What a 1999 web page sentence.

I’ll be vlogging + podcasting the thing as soon as editing can happen. Oh magical Internet, why can’t you make editing happen so much more easily?

SXSWi has so many people this year, there are lineups at things. Lineups I tell you.

2/9/07 Heather mixes couples counselor Judye Hess, Talmudic scholar Zvi Septimus, Google partnership manager Jason Shellen and the people formerly known as the audience. What makes a good partnership work, whether it’s a marriage between people, companies or countries? How are the conflicts and dynamics similar, and how are they resolved?Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

LtoR: Jason Shellen, Zvi Septimus, Heather Gold and Judye Hess

The more I thought about Partnership, the more I saw it everywhere. Isn’t a job like a a marriage? Great interviews are like hot dates: “You’re ideas, we love your ideas! And your rolodex, yes yes!” And then 3 months in, that same manager is wondering why you’re also “yapping up” with suggestions and you can’t just keep your head down and underline the stuff you’ve been told to find. Aren’t Israel and Palestine literally stuck together without any hot sex to keep things going?

How do you grow with someone without giving up your self?

Jason Shellen from Google (previously from Blogger) has been doing deals and relationships for a while now in the professional realm. This is now called “new business development,” a position I used to hold myself at different companies. At some companies this looks a lot like sales (aka “pimping”). What this comes down to is that both companies benefit from the relationship in an ongoing way. It’s more than fee for services (which is legally + historically, what marriage looked like). Jason is married (in a life, not business kind of way) to Alison whom his been with since they were 18.

A chevrusah is a Talmudic study partnership. The Talmud is like the literary criticism of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) and studying it is a major part of life if you’re a relgioius Jewish man (the man is a traditional thing) or a PhD candidate in Jewish studies like UC Berkeley, doctoral candidate Zvi Septimus.
Zvi talked about his most traumatic chevrusah chevrusah experience:

Me, my chevrusah Yoni, his wife and his two kids, all moved to Israel together because we thought we’d be able to study better there. And then, like, a month into it, he gave me the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech.

It always happens right after you move for them.

Veteran couples counsellor Judye Hess (who brought her boyfriend of 81/2 years) had the line of the night.

“Judye, is there any way to keep a relationship good all the time?”

“Denial”

“Does that work,” asked Zvi?

“It works for my sister,” replied Judye.

Highlights and Links

• God help my cynical roots, but here are books I found helpful. Just filter through the covers, fonts and much of the language for nuggets of truth
• > The Dance of Anger – Harriet Lerner [there is a basic dynamic that you are always part of. When you chnge, your partner will absolutely change.]
• >Passionate Marriage – David Schnarch [differentiation–holding on to yourself while in close connection with another–is the key to a healthy relationship and hot sex]
• Zvi leads study with partners on Sundays at the Mission Minyan in San Francisco
• The Cluetrain Manifesto. If markets are conversation, then all business is now relationships.
• Judye: “It’s hard to put all your eggs in one basket.” Heather “Is that why relationships are so hard?” Judye: “Yes, especially if you count on this person for everything…Nobody can really fill the bill for anybody if you’ve gotta be everything.”

We’ll be at The Ritz on the 6th Street strip on Monday March the 12th. 7-8:30 with lots of great drinks and fun.

Make a digital note of it!

The Heather Gold Show: Outside In

Friday January 12th, 2007

Bradley Horowitz‘s name kept popping up. Some programmers at Songbird raved about him, “He bought all the cool shit at Yahoo.” By that they meant: flickr, upcoming and other sundry “Web 2.0” companies that make great stuff.

As we discussed in the show, he’s like an A+R guy that the indie musicians trust. He has real spirit, which is why I thought he’d make a great guest. The passion he wanted to discuss was hacking and the sublime that comes from subverting systems for their own good. Bradley create Yahoo Hack Day. He’s an insider that got other insider’s to listen to outsiders: bringing hackers to camp on Yahoo’s lawn and bring Beck to play for them all. Super cool outside coming in. I thought so, until Anil let me know the other day about Beck’s Scientology, a “religion” that’s so insider, you have to pay to belong.

Harmon Leon is an outsider who stays an outsider by geing a fake insider. He read a piece about infiltrating a Benny Hinn faith healing hoping for release from his “bird flu” and being hurled to the ground by staffers as Benny rebuked the demons in him.

<a href=”http://www.culturalodyssey.org”>Rhodessa Jones</a> helps women who are outsiders (on the “inside,” aka prison) transform themselves through theatre. She defied cliche liberal ideas by asserting the need for prison, “some people belong in prison, okay?”

Bradley and Rhodessa were clear on one central truth. The way to connect and cross boundaries from outside in, is to really listen to people with regard. Harmon’s technique for gaining the trust of groups from the Christian right to the young Republicans? “I just parrot back to them their own beliefs.” People are happy to look f=no further.

Highlights and Links

• Harmon Leon – first infiltrated on a dare to himself that he had to get and lose a job within 3 hours, all the while working in a bad fake foreign accent. It took many efforts to get the fast food place to fire him. The clincher was shoving a vanilla shake and fries in his mouth, and spewing it on the floor by customers. “Ich been sick.”
• Rhodessa’s story about working in a peep show in early 1970’s San Francisco and recognizing ptron’s Richard Pryor and jazz great Mose Allison. She was playing Mose’s music and when he approached her she recognized him, and he took off.
• Rhodessa Jones’ Medea Project

1/12/07: Heather conversates with creator of Yahoo Hack Day Bradley Horowitz, undercover satirist Harmon Leon, theatrical midwife Rhodesa Jones, Founder of The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women and the people formerly known as the audience.

What allows people access to each other and places that they’d never otherwise go? What is gained by the outside/in perspective?

Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)

What happens when you get a pharmaceutical venture capitalist, a trans punk performer and a Sudanese refugee together over baked goods? Plenty.My first guest Antoun Nabhan struggles with the issue of heroism and courage in everyday life. In his office and plane-bound job, he wonders how and where the Courage shows up.Lynnee Breedlove demonstrated and some immediately, performed an excerpt from his solo piece One Freak Show about his genderqueer experience using public bathrooms. If he’s in the women’s bathroom, he gets told “there’s a man in the women’s bathroom.” The men’s bathroom is, apparently easier, in part becasue of the lack of eye contact and direct behaviour. You’ll have to listen to the podcast to catch all the nuances. We did have quite a discussion about bathroom behaviour. Lynnee demo’d the “piece- de’ beau” (I’m not sure how one spells it) that allows him to pee standing up. Look out Justin Timberlake, Lynnee’s got his own special present.Gadet Riek gave a new meaning and insight to everyday courage as he spoke about escaping Sudan on foot with his older brother. The greatest power of his story comes from the everyday nature of his act he reveals in the context of its time and place. No matter what questions he was asked by any of the guests or audience, his answers came back to the simple fact that it was the reality in which he found himself. There was no great moment, no epiphany, no John Willliams soundtrack letting him or anyone else know the greatness of his acts. “There was no time. We had to keep moving.”

Highlights and Links

One man in the audience asked Gadet about his feelings about his fellow students at USF. “They don’t realize how privileged they are.” Gadet responded by saying he does not resent or begrudge his classmates a thing, nor does he feel they should make their lives and different than they are. he himself would have accepted a life that came with more physical ease. Judging them “would change nothing about my life.”It was clear from the discussion and the connection between Lynnee and Gadet that courage is not about life without fear. It is, in part, about complete acceptance of oneself and life the way it is. With there is no need or inclination to judge others.

• Lost Boys of Sudan
• Save Darfur

Saturday November 11, 2006

i first heard about my first guest, love artist Kathe Izzo, during the Intimacy show, when Michelle Tea mentioned experincing intimacy when she was being loved by Kathy at a tremedous distance, across the country. “It just made me feel so good to know that three was someone out there loving me,” she said.

That seemed fascinating to me at the time, in an anthropological way. I didn’t understand that on a visceral level until I was injured just weeks before the Receiving show, and experienced asking for and receiving love at a distance from many people while recovering from my elbow surgery (I broke my funny bone. Comic karma).

Kathe takes love to new depths and certainly breadths. It is literally all she has done for years. She is a performance artist from the visual art tradition of installations. Her interest in the boundary between life and art drew her to the area of love and she had for years loved people, of every stripe in person at museum installations, at their homes for a day, or even at across the country while they are working at a bookstore, (as Michelle Tea was) sending them loving emails that come from a completely present place of loving acceptance.
While Kathe acknowledged that she is comfortable giving, the topic of Receiving was a challenge sh is working on. She has receintly been loaned a sum for career investment by a sweetie who wants to take care of her, a new adjustment she is making with her decision to value herself as she does everyone she will love (which is anyone)

Former San Francisco 49ers Tight End Dr. Jamie Williams gave a profound life and football receiving lesson. He picked a random woman out of the audience to teach who turned out to have quarterbacked her Nebraska high school team’s powder puff team. (I love how the midwest tries to mix a cosmetic term in there to make it seem like the girls aren’t really playing football).

Jamie had great chemistry with Kathe which I really enjoyed. I love it when the show brings together people who might not otherwise meet. Both Kathe and Jamie seemed to be coming at life questions in some similar ways, despite their very different pursuits in film and football (Jamie) and performance art (Kathe).

Shanan Carney, also known as the Voice of Tivo discussed her recuperation from her recent knee surgery. A neighbor kindly agreed to bring her ice every day to fill a special machine which cooled the swelling. This small act of kindness has prompted Shanan to soon launch a vlog called “Random Acts of Kindness” based on the premise that vrey small, meaningful acts can make a huge difference. Both of us, based on our injuries, agreed that receiving can make one feel compelled to give. Shanan called her doctor to find out who else had a surgery and needed ice. She later came over to my place, complete with elf costume, cohort and camera crew to loan me the ice machine and ice to cool my elbow, prepping for the vlog.

Audience regular Scott brought a fabulous Linzer tort. I will ask him for the recipe to post here.

Highlights and Links

• Even though Kathe has gone to the home of complete strangers in New York City to love them for the day, she has never felt unsafe. “If I am giving them everything they need,then what more can they want?” She has held her ground by clearly taking care of her own needs and letting those who are emotionally needy that her own aegis matters.
• Jamie Williams – “To catch the ball, you have to want to catch the ball.”
• Kathe Izzo’s True Love Project
• In order to truly receiv one has to not give back to the giver right away. This is something of a refusal of the kindness (and whatever else being given to you). If you feel compelled to give yourself, then as people say, “pay it forward.”