Many ask me what happened to your talk show? I’ve always wanted to be doing it. It’s my great love aside from my plays. It’s what I’d like to be spending most of my days on. Life interfered somewhat as did the expenses of a live show with that complexity of recording and the state of media streaming on the web at time. I was early.

But things are changing in my life and I’m hungry to et started again and hungry for inspiration and digging into where my heart leads me. This is what subvert is all about.  subvert is the new name for the show. I’m finally taking up ben brown on the great advice he gave me ages ago: I’m going to make this show as simple as possible and go from there. This means mostly doing one on one asynchronous interviews. As membership and donations and the right producer permit, I want to make the show real-time online as TummelVision has been. Then I’d like to grow the community big enough to draw enough folks to make regular live shows possible so that I can mash up larger crowds in conversation in person.

The talk show I want, the podcast I want still isn’t online. So I’m making it.

I’ll be at SXSWinteractive for the 14th time March 9-13.

I’ll be subverting the conference with a mini-alt one of my own: little conversations with smaller groups I tummel together that I hope to record and podcast later, environment/sound permitting.

SXSW is near and dear to my heart. I launched my solo performance career there. I’ve always done my own shows there but the exploding size of the conference has made the cost of renting a venue beyond my means. I started to “make my own” conference a few years ago when the quality of the panels decreased and the size of parties and the conference in general became huge and moved its focus away from making and innovation.

I’m inspired by my Burning Man campmates amazing RVIP lounge (a karaoke party in an RV) and the general move of the web to streams and flow.

So this will be a show without a venue. A minimally viable show. I’ll find little locations ad hoc and put interesting people and topics together freestyle like in the moment. It will be the conversations you *want* to have, not what a social marketing manager at a Fortune 50 company would like to push into your head. if you want an intimate conference and show experience with quality  follow me at @subverting during the conference and add me on Foursquare, I’ll include you . Tell me what you’re trying to figure out. What is pissing you off. What inspires you. Who you want to hear from and they SO do not have to be “celebrities.” Please for the love of the web, give me frickin *people.* Your authority doesn’t come from so-called “influence” or magazine covers it comes from your experience and what you care about. I want to talk WITH you.

Above: the greatest living comic authority on depression: Maria Bamford
BUY TIX

Who: host comedian Heather Gold (“Cookie”), guests Maria Bamford (Comedy Central’s Comedians of Comedy), SF favourite Will Franken (Good Luck With It), and Cynthia Levin (Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn)

What: The Heather Gold Show@SFSketchfest: Comedians on Depression at SF Sketchfest

When: Monday January 19th, 2008.  8-9:30pm,  

Where: Eureka Theatre 215 Jackson St San Francisco CA 94111 and podcats online at heathergold.com/show

Tickets: $15. Way cheaper than therapy. Available at sfsketchfest.com or 866-468-3399

I’ve wanted to do this show since I looked in my wife’s psychology textbook under depression for information and it had a picture of Drew Carey and just said ‘Comedians are depressed.’ So now I’m consulting comedians. Only the best. These are the cream of the crop. It will be neurologically impossible to be depressed during this show. We may even cure a few therapists before the night is done. I hear they need help.

Who knows more about depression than comedians? Maria Bamford (Comedians of Comedy, Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, Variety’s Top Ten Comics), Will Franken (Good Luck With It, Best SF Comedian), Cynthia Levin (Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn) and surprise therapy guests join comic and host Heather Gold and you. Is it possible to be a comic without first being depressed? Are there Americans who aren’t depressed? These and other fine answers await your participation at Comedians on Depression. Will not cause drowsiness, bloating or leakage. Cheaper than therapy.

He died at 81. This is very sad news. I loved Harvey Korman. He was brilliant comedic performer with a pitch perfect sense of camp.

My favourite memory of him is as the (Jewish) Fairy Godmother in a Carol Burnett sketch asking the knight in white armor, “You vanta blintz prince?” As one of the only Jewish kids in a small town, this scene would send me into its of giggles anytime anyone in our family quoted it. It was a fast love affair with the ridiculous, camp, comedic large life that felt right to me and that I saw almost nowhere else.

His passing has prompted me to watch a whole lotta video clips of him on the Carol Burnett Show and in Mel Brooks movies. Mel Brooksis one of my few heroes (I pour a kiddish cup for him at Seder).

I had two, no three feelings (these may seem like thoughts, but I assure you I felt em :-):

1) Damn, Harvey Korman was brilliant and why didn’t I get to see him in much these last 30 years?
2) There were so many more women that these guys performed with (Carol Burnet, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman) and so much more togetherness in that supposedly more sexist time than i see now
(insert avg. TV sitcom or summer Ferrell/Sandler/Stiller movie here)
3) Wow our comedy (the comedy of MSM) seems less silly, good-hearted and campy than the Mel Brooks/Burnett/Korman era. It’s really distant and snarky-guy based or childish without being childlike.
The stuff of the Harvey Korman era is why I wanted to do comedy in the first place. Time for more fun and comedy with heart!