From BoingBoing.net:

“As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska.” - Sarah Palin

Pranks for Everything
Tech Space: Daily Notes on Science and Silicon
USA Today
by Angela Gunn
April 2, 2007

Joey Skaggs Launches Art of the Prank
boingboing.net
by David Pescovitz
April 1, 2007

Joey Skaggs Launches Pranks.com, The Art of the Prank
laughingsquid.com
by Scott Beale
April 1, 2007

The Art of the Prank
April Fools’ Is Always More Fun When The Joke’s Not on You
Washington Post
by Dan Zak
April 1, 2007

The Art of the Prank
About: Urban Legends and Folklore
by David Emery
March 31, 2007

The Wilson Show
Joey Skaggs Radio Interview (5:19) about Pranks.com [mp3, 1.2 MB]
WIBC, Indianapolis, Indiana
March 30, 2007

PRWEB Podcast
Joey Skaggs Interview (5:22) about Pranks.com [mp3, 5.0 MB]
March 29, 2007

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3/26/07

PRWEB Press release with downloadable podcast featuring Joey Skaggs

Joey Skaggs, Notorious Artist and Satirist, to Launch Pranks.com Web site on April 1, 2007

Summary: A new Web site and Blog all about pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming and reality hacking launches on April Fools Day. Honest!

New York, NY, (PRWeb) March 26, 2007 — Artist and satirist Joey Skaggs is proud to announce the debut of his new blog Pranks.com on April Fools Day, April 1, 2007. Here visitors will find insights, news and discussions on everything to do with pranks, hoaxes, culture jamming and reality hacking around the world – past, present and future – mainstream and counter culture.

With Skaggs as editor, the site will have submissions from many known and not so known pranksters, artists, performers, activists and writers. Pranks.com, launching April Fools Day, will provide a continuing and growing exploration into the art of the prank; the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer; and the contribution of the prank to society.

Pranks have traditionally been relegated to the realm of the juvenile bad-boy or special occasions, like April Fools Day. People typically think of the word prank as referring to funny, embarrassing, humiliating, non-redeeming acts of just plain silliness or revenge. And while this may represent the majority of pranks in the world, the role of the prankster throughout history has been quite significant and influential. Mythic archetypes such as the trickster and coyote; the jester in the royal court; and pranksters throughout literature will all be explored.

In addition, topics such as pranks in the news, the sociology and psychology of pranks; political pranks; First Amendment issues; hoax etiquette; publicity stunts; urban legends; illusion and magic; fraud and deception; hype; spin; and propaganda will all be fodder for thought. As will, of course, all sorts of practical jokes and mischief…

“April Fools Day, my favorite holiday, is the perfect launch date. This site will provide one stop shopping for anyone interested in mounting an insurrection, over-throwing a government, crashing a stock market, creating global chaos, growing hair, losing weight or keeping their horny dog satisfied. It will provide a sure way to get the federal government to tap your phone line, or, at the very least to embarrass and humiliate yourself, says artist, Joey Skaggs.”

Pranks offer an alternative palette for criticism and dissent, as well as a looking-glass into the human gullibility that results when critical analysis is suspended for wishful thinking. “I challenge personal belief systems that sustain status-quo thinking and that support close-mindedness, bias and prejudice, says Skaggs.” Key motives running throughout his personal work are to inspire people to question authority in all of its guises and to ultimately think for themselves.

With this new endeavor, launching April Fools Day, Skaggs hopes to reach a broad audience of people interested in the intersection of reality and illusion. Those interested in contributing content will be invited to do so once the blog launches.

Pranks.com will shed light on all aspects of the topic, examining the intent, content, technique, and the magic that makes a prank live. It will even include tutorials and how-to instructions. Although the site will not encourage or condone irresponsible, misguided, unlawful or unethical practices, some meaningful pranks rightfully test the limits and cross the boundaries of lawfulness. To trivialize, ignore or dismiss them for this reason would be a disservice to everyone.

About Joey Skaggs: Joey Skaggs has been a doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian chief. Hailed as an entrepreneur extraordinaire, he created a bordello for dogs, was the proprietor of a celebrity sperm bank, and founded an organization to wipe out fat. He has saved the world with his cockroach vitamin elixir and was the first and only person to ever windsurf from Hawaii to California. As a pedaling priest with a confessional booth mounted on the back of a tricycle, he took confessions from politicians at the Democratic National Convention. As a real estate developer, he created the Final Curtain cemetery theme park mall and time share program for the dead. And as a computer scientist, he revolutionized the American Judicial System using a series of super computers that meted out equal justice to all.

Although these and other illustrious activities have been presented as truth in the annals of the international news media, in reality they have all been hoaxes, products of his imagination. For over 40 years Skaggs has been an artist and a satirist with a serious message. He has used the media as his canvas, creating performances to bring to light many of the difficult and complex socio-political issues of our day.

A life-long educator and performance art practioner, Skaggs has taught at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons/New School and he lectures and does presentations at schools, festivals and conferences around the world. His commentaries on media literacy and creative independent thinking are hilarious and thought provoking and have reached millions of people on a global scale. He has been hailed as The World’s Greatest Hoaxer.

To add to his bag of tricks, he recently designed and manufactured the Universal Bulls**t Detector Watch (a real product) to enable people to humorously call it as they see it. Available online at www.bswatch.com, it flashes, moos and poops. It also tells time.

And, if that’s not enough, New Yorkers are encouraged to attend prankster and performance artist Joey Skaggs’ 22nd Annual April Fools Day Parade. The press release is available in the News Flash section of joeyskaggs.com.

About Pranks.com: The pranks.com Web site is designed by David Bunde of DGB Design using Wordpress software, and hosted, by Laughing Squid.

Download Portofess Photo

Photo caption: Father Anthony (aka Joey Skaggs) peddles Portofess, his portable confessional booth, because the church must go where the sinners are. Religion on the move for people on the go!

Contact:
Joey Skaggs
212-254-7878

###

You are invited to submit any original or pre-existing material you feel is relevant to the topics and categories. Length is not an issue as long as the piece is interesting and compelling. The following formats are acceptable:

Non-fiction
Fiction
News
Links to other sites
Video (preferably linked from another site)
Podcasts (video or audio)
Photographs
Cartoons
Illustrations
Audio clips

No matter what the format of the material you submit, please provide a title for your post and either a summary or your personal comments to frame the item for the pranks.com site. Materials submitted without a title or your framing comments might not be selected to be used on the site (this is true of plain links too). Please also, wherever possible, include photographs or illustrations with your text.

Any work that you submit will be credited to you and to whomever else you indicate should receive authorship credit. We will assume that all contributors will do their best to honor the intellectual property rights of others. Providing correct attribution is your responsibility. Pranks.com will function merely as a “pass-through” and will not be responsible for any intellectual rights that are not our own. Please act responsibly in this regard. If ownership of any materials is contested by a third party, they will be removed from the site until the rights ownership can be clarified.

All submissions will be reviewed by one or more editors before being mounted on the site. If your material is deemed appropriate and acceptable, it will be uploaded as quickly as possible. If you do not see your postings, please do not be discouraged. There could be any number of reasons. And, you are encouraged to continue submitting materials you would like considered for posting.

Pranks.com is intended to be interesting to people of all ages. Even though parts may be controversial and somewhat subversive of status-quo-run-of-the-mill thinking, contributors are requested to be mindful of the use of offensive language that might cause parents to censor the site from their children. To have a future filled with full-functioning, responsible, independent adults, positive examples of critical thinking must be available to the young!

Please submit all materials to Pranks.com. Include your first and last name. If your material is not verifiable (i.e., if we can’t tell if it’s true or not, but we think it’s interesting), it will probably be placed in the “Truth or Fiction: You Decide” category.

Thank you in advance for sending us your interesting and inspiring contributions.

Below is a list of books and films about topics covered on The Art of the Prank. If you click on the name of the item you will be able to purchase it from Amazon.com or other booksellers such as RE/Search Publications.

The Activist Cookbook, by Andrew Boyd, United for a Fair Economy, 1997

The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum, by James W. Cook, Harvard University Press, 2001

Big Book of Hoaxes: True Tales of the Greatest Lies Ever Told!, by Carl Sifakis, DC Comics, 1996

Comments on The Society of The Spectacle by Guy Debord, Verso, New Ed edition, 1998

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, by Benjamin R. Barber, W. W. Norton, 2007

Don’t Believe It!: How Lies Become News, by Alexandra Kitty, The Disinformation Company, 2005

Encyclopedia of Hoaxes, by Gordon Stein, Gale Research Inc., 1993

Essays on the Blurring of Life and Art, by Allan Kaprow, University of California Press, 2003

Other Books by Allan Kaprow

Fakes, Frauds & Other Malarkey, by Kathryn Lindskoog and Patrick Wynne, Zondervan Publishing House, 1992

Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, 1982

Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet, by Graham Meikle, Routledge, 2002

Happy Mutant Handbook: Mischievous Fun for Higher Primates, by Carla Sinclair, Gareth Branwyn, Mark Frauenfelder, Riverhead Trade, 1995

Herzog on Herzog by Werner Herzog, Paul Cronin (editor), Faber & Faber, 2003

Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People by Anne Elizabeth Moore, Soft Skull Press, 2004

Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. by Alex Boese, Harvest Books, 2006

Hoaxes, by Curtis MacDougall, Dover Publications; 2nd Edition, 1958

Hoaxes and Deception: Library of Curious and Unusual Facts, Time Life Books, 1991

Hoaxes, Humbugs and Spectacles: Astonishing Photographs of Smelt Wrestlers, Human Projectiles, Giant Hailstones, Contortionists, Elephant Impersonat, by Mark Sloane, Villard, 1990

How a satirical editor became a Yippe conspirator in ten easy years, by Paul Krassner, Putman, 1971

How To Draw a Bunny (2002), DVD, by John W. Walter, Palm Pictures, 2004

Impropaganda: The Art of the Publicity Stunt, by Mark Borkowski

Jamming the Media, by Gareth Branwyn, Chronicle Books, 1997

Jay’s Journal of Anomalies: Conjurers, Cheats, Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters, Impostors, Pretenders, Sideshow Showmen, Armless Calligraphers, Mechanical Marvels, Popular Entertainments, by Ricky Jay, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001

Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits, by Jason Salzman, Perseus Books Group, 2003

Media Hoaxes, by Fred Fedler, 1989

Media Virus!, by Douglas Rushkoff, Ballantine Books, 1996

Media Wizards: A Behind the Scenes Look at Media Manipulations, by Catherine Gourley, 21st Century, 1999

The Messenger’s Motives: Ethical Probelms of the News Media, 2nd Edition, by John L. Hulteng, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1985

Mischief Marketing: How the Rich, Famous, & Successful Really Got Their Careers and Businesses Going, by Ray Simon, McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, 2000

The Modern Con Man: How to Get Something for Nothing, by Todd Robbins, Bloomsbury, 2008

Modern Primitives, by V. Vale, RE/Search Publications, 1989

The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright, Abacus, 2004

More Scams from the Great Beyond!: How to Make Even More Money Off the Creationism, Evolution, Environmentalism, Fringe Politics, Weird Science, the Occult, and Other Strange Beliefs, by Peter Huston, Paladin Press, 2002

Mount Analogue, by Rene Daumal, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2005

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Weschler, Vintage, 1996

The Museum of Hoaxes, by Alex Boese, Orion, 2004

No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, by Naomi Klein, Picador, 2002

Pranks!, RE/Search Publications, 1987

Pranks! 2, RE/Search Publications, 2006

Publicity Stunt, by Candice Jacobson Fuhrman, Chronicle Books. 1989

Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within, by Jeff Sparrow and Jill Sparrow, Vulgar Press, 2004

The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 2006

Spite, Malice and Revenge: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Even (3 Diabolical Volumes in 1), by M. Nelson Chunder and George Hayduke, Random House Value Publishing, 1988

Spook Country, by William Gibson, Putnam Adult (August 7, 2007), Putnam Adult, 2007

Stories of hoaxes in the name of science, by Irving Adler, Collier Books, 1962

True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, by Farhad Manjoo, Wiley, 2008

Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity , by Anne Elizabeth Moore, New Press, 2007

U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life?, by Bruce Grierson, Bloomsbury, 2007

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, by Michael Shermer, Owl Books; 2nd Rev edition, 2002

The Wolf Files: Adventures in Weird News, by Buck Wolf, Globe Pequot, 2003

More Coming!

Andre Bermudez, contributor
Entries (0)

Hailing from the oft maligned New Jersey, I was raised as an only child up until the age of 15 (then my family unit decided to multiply and give me 3 more siblings…there went Christmas). Striving for more attention, I diverted all my energies towards creative exploits that would lead me to the journalism department at New Jersey City University. I currently also contribute to PC Magazine’s sister sites, Gearlog.com and Appscout.com where technology holds claim to my very dorky soul.

Andrew Boyd, contributor
Visit Andrew’s Site | Entries (4)

Andrew Boyd is an author, humorist, and a 20-year veteran of creative campaigns for social change. As “Phil T. Rich,” he was Schmoozer-In-Chief of the 2004 media sensation “Billionaires for Bush.” He has written a few books, including two books of “serious” humor published by W. W. Norton: “Daily Afflictions” and “Life’s Little Deconstruction Book.” He’s at work on two others: “Wherever You Go, They’re Already There,” about the ironies of adventure travel when there’s no elsewhere anymore; and “Enlightned Machismo,” about the odd challenges men face in a “post-feminist” world. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The Village Voice, Salon.com, and elsewhere. For part of his bread and butter he does trainings and speaking engagments at campuses and conferences across the country. For another part, he’s a founding partner in Ruckus Productions, a “subvertising” agency specializing in cutting edge New Media support for environmental & social justice campaigns. Last year he co-produced “The Oil Enforcement Agency,” a mini-mockumentary on global warming (think Inconvenient Truth meets Spinal Tap). He lives in Brooklyn with his wee laptop.

Albert Cahn, contributor
Entries (1)

Albert Cahn is a Senior at Brandeis University where he is majoring in politics and philosophy.

André Gattolin, contributor
Visit André’s Site | Entries (5)

André Gattolin is an independent researcher based in Paris and working on hybrid activism and unconventional forms of communication. A former research and marketing manager in media companies, he has concurrently contributed to the development of various contestational and underground movements against commercial propaganda. He regularly publishes essays on these subjects in Multitudes (a French critical review) and on alternative websites (www.hns-info.net & www.poptronics.fr). He is currently preparing a Phd at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle on how hoaxes penetrate and modify the mediascape practices in Europe and in North America.

Beauvais Lyons, contributor
Visit Beauvais’s Site | Entries (2)

Beauvais Lyons is a Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in the United States since 1985 where he teaches printmaking. Lyons received his MFA degree from Arizona State University in 1983 and his BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. See his web site for information on his projects as a fake curator through the Hokes Archives. Lyons’ one-person exhibitions have been presented at over 40 museums and galleries, including recent exhibitions at EyeDrum in Atlanta, Georgia; Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia; and Nowy Oficia Gallery, Gdansk, Poland. He has published articles about print theory and pedagogy in Contemporary Impressions and Printmaking Today, about art censorship in American Universities in the Art Journal and about his studio work in Archaeology and The Chronicle of Higher Education. His prints are in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. PA, and the Tennessee State Museum. He has been active with the Southern Graphics Council, serving as President, Editor of Graphic Impressions, and helping to organize their conferences in 1992 and 1995 in Knoxville and 2002 in New Orleans. In 2002 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznañ, Poland and coordinated the IMPACT 4 International Printmaking Conference in Berlin and Poznañ in September 2005.

Charlie Todd, contributor
Visit Charlie’s Site | Entries (23)

Charlie Todd is a New York based actor, comedian, and prankster. He is the founder of Improv Everywhere, a New York prank collective that has been profiled by The New York Times, SPIN Magazine, and Rolling Stone (where his work was named “Hot Comedy” in the Hot List Issue 2005). Charlie has given interviews about his pranks to news outlets around the world including The Guardian in London, German Public Radio, and NHK TV in Japan. He brought Improv Everywhere to Aspen, Colorado in 2006 as part of HBO’s US Comedy Arts Festival.

Charlie is a teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, where he has written, performed, and directed comedy for the past five years. He has created many shows at the UCBT including PAID PROGRAMMING, FOUND ON CRAIGSLIST, and THE MP3 EXPERIMENT (all of which were Time Out New York critic’s picks). He currently performs at the theatre every Saturday with the house team Reuben Williams and every Thursday with the UCBW, a ridiculous wrestling league he created.

Charlie has made appearances on LATE NIGHT WITH CONAN O’BRIEN, BEST WEEK EVER and VH1’s 40 GREATEST PRANKS. He has worked on pilots for ABC and TBS, and he will soon appear in the THIS AMERICAN LIFE pilot on Showtime.

Charlie was named one of the “10 Funniest People You’ve Never Heard Of” by New York Magazine.

Dino D’Annibale, contributor
Entries (4)

Dino is very good at writing bullshit about himself in the third person in order to give the appearance of an unsolicited quasi Bio and partial list of highlights, amazing accomplishments and other random unverifiable bullshit in order to subtlety impress the reader without being so obviously disingenuous as to illicit a question of its voracity. An alumnus of the Betty Ford Treatment Center in Palm Springs, California, Dino is currently in the Witness Protection Program. Dino is very active in the community and is a member of several organizations including, Charter Member of the People who Hate People Party (he has spent the last eight years painstakingly trying to arrange a party member meeting); Bullshit Detector Owners Group; and Lesbians Trapped in Men’s bodies, to name a few. Dino enjoys reading Camus, long walks on the beach and sushi. Turnoffs: Virgo’s, kids who scream at the theater, Espadrilles with black socks.

Doug Harvey, contributor
Visit Doug’s Site | Entries (1)

Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about the Los Angeles and International art scenes and other aspects of popular culture, primarily as the art critic for LA WEEKLY, the largest circulation free weekly newspaper in America, and Art issues, the highly respected LA-based journal of art and contemporary culture, which ceased publication in 2002. His writing has also appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Modern Painter, ArtReview, and numerous other publications. He has written museum and gallery catalogue essays for Jim Shaw, Jeffrey Vallance, Camille Rose Garcia, Tim Hawkinson, Lari Pittman, Georganne Deen, Margaret Keane, Big Daddy Roth, Thomas Kinkade and many others.

Harvey’s curatorial projects have ranged from many traditional gallery exhibitions (including the October 2005 First Annual LA Weekly Biennial: State of Emergence at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles and the forthcoming Aspects of Mel’s Hole at Santa Ana’s Grand Central Art Center) to CD compilations of sound art, programs of found and experimental films, performance events, experimental radio, artist’s comic books and zines (including Less Art which continues to be published sporadically, and is currently being transformed into a cable access television series), and an LA solo gallery exhibit determined by raffle. He has also been part of the curatorial collective creating the exhibition content and design at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. Mr. Harvey also continues to maintain an active art career, exhibiting his visual art (painting-based multimedia) locally and internationally, and participating in international experimental sound, radio, and filmmaking communities. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

David Moye, contributor
Entries (3)

David Moye is Senior Editor of Wireless Flash News Service, a pop culture news agency specializing in weird news. He believes in coming up with a story and than finding someone to parrot his point.

Dadara , contributor
Visit Dadara’s Site | Entries (1)

Dadara (1969) is an Amsterdam based artist, who got known beginning of the nineties by designing lots of flyers and record covers internationally for the then burgeoning house music scene. Most of the time he is painting, but apart from making animations, designing baby-shaped loudspeakers and campaigns for Greenpeace, he also occasionally builds huge boats, which he ships to the States from Amsterdam to burn in the desert, or big pink tanks on roofs, which he blows up with explosives. Always fighting against the new Superhero of our society: the Greyman, who between 9 and 5 combats all that’s colorful and creative. Dadara erected a 9 metres high statue for this anti-hero in his hometown: The Statue of No Liberty.

David Strom, contributor
Visit David’s Site | Entries (1)

David Strom is one of the leading experts on network and Internet technologies and has written extensively on the topic for nearly 20 years for a wide variety of publications, including holding several editorial management positions for both print and online properties. He was the former editor-in-chief for Tom’s Hardware.com and Network Computing magazines, and has appeared on the Fox TV News Network, NPR’s Science Friday radio program, ABC-TV’s World News Tonight and CBS-TV’s Up to the Minute news broadcasts. He is also the author of two computer-related books.

Erin Clermont, contributor
Visit Erin’s Site | Entries (2)

Erin Clermont, seen here in front of her winter palace, is a writer and jack-of-all-trades editor. Since 1991 she has been an online host of Echo’s Movies and TV Conference.

Weigh in on the The Great Fargo Debate.

Joey Skaggs, editor
Visit Joey’s Site | Entries (22)

Joey Skaggs is an artist and satirist who has used the media as his medium since the 1960s. Summaries of his hoaxes and performance pieces are available at joeyskaggs.com.

Ethan Persoff, contributor
Visit Ethan’s Site | Entries (2)

Ethan Persoff is a Austin TX-based sound artist and cartoonist, known best for his SPREE recordings, his comic book collaboration with Al Columbia (POGOSTICK, Fantagraphics Books), and for his series of TEDDY stories. He maintains a widely read Internet archive of unique and obscure “government comics”, “drug comics” and other “comics with problems”, and is currently assembling an archive of the entire 146 issue run of Paul Krassner’s classic and important The Realist magazine. He can be reached at http://www.ep.tc/ and at http://www.ep.tc/music.

Homer Fink, contributor
Visit Homer’s Site | Entries (3)

Homer Fink likes to refer to himself as “Publisher, Altruist, AMERICAN”. He claims to have “been a blogger before there was blogging”, a reference to the fact that The Fink File, which started as a fanzine in 1991 has been on the web in one way or another since the mid-90s. Fink also tried podcasting for “one hot minute” but quickly grew bored with it. “It’s like having another job, feh!”

Fink also alleges to have been part of the roadcrew for the late 80s punk band Enema Priest, but no documentation of that can be found.

Fink continues to publish The Fink File, but is now spending more time on his “serious” effort, Brooklyn Heights Blog. He’s also the capo of Brigate Bocce, a bocce team in the FloydNY league.

Additional Link: brooklynheightsblog.com

Podcast: homerfink.wordpress.com/

KDM and CLM , contributor
Entries (1)

KDM and CLM have spent most of their lives devising pranks. “I guess it’s some kind of genetic mutation,” says KDM, “That I’ve always been driven to pull a fast one.” Most of their work involves photography because it’s easy to entertain themselves and others with a digital camera. They are trying to figure how to make a career out of pranks, because as CLM says, “That’s got to be better than doing 9 – 5 like mom and dad.”

Kate McCamy, contributor
Entries (12)

Kate McCamy was raised in lower Manhattan by bohemian artist parents and grew up surrounded by creative minds. She has worked in film and theatre all her life from off off Broadway to Hollywood films. She is a published and produced playwright, screenwriter and songwriter, has been employed as a script doctor; taught playwriting at Julia Richman High School in Queens for Theatre For New Audiences; ran an improvisation workshop and was a Teacher-Director for the Circle Repertory Company Arts and Education outreach program. She studied film and screenwriting at New York University, but has learned the most from the school of life, traveling the world and working in the “Business”.

Kembrew McLeod, contributor
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Kembrew McLeod is an independent documentary filmmaker and a media studies scholar at the University of Iowa whose work focuses on both popular music and the cultural impact of intellectual property law. Associate Professor McLeod has written refereed journal articles on copyright and music, and has published two books on the subject: Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership and Intellectual Property Law (Lang, 2001) and Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity (Doubleday, 2005), which received the Oboler book award from the American Library Association. McLeod’s documentary, Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music (2000), was programmed at a variety of film festivals, including the 2002 South By Southwest Film Festival and the 2002 New England Film and Video Festival, where it received the Rosa Luxemburg Award for Social Consciousness. He is currently working on a feature length documentary about digital sampling titled Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport, as well as a second documentary, Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property, which focuses on free speech and fair use. He is an occasional music journalist whose pieces have appeared in Rolling Stone, Mojo, Spin, The Village Voice and the New Rolling Stone Album Guide (Fireside, 2005). Additionally, McLeod was involved in Carrie McLaren’s traveling Illegal Art show, which traveled to New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., and was hosted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Gallery in 2003. His scholarly and creative work can be accessed at kembrew.com.

Matt Besser, contributor
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Matt Besser has always been an asshole and managed to turn that into a living by calling himself a comedian. He is a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade and can be seen at their theater in LA every weekend in their improv show “Asssscat”. The UCB have always pursued a mission of spreading chaos by incorporating prank elements into their sketches. As a solo performer Besser has teased the papers in Chicago (1989-96) with fake letters to the editor; in New York he attacked people dialing his apartment seeking customer service, and in LA he jerked the chains of cocky pundits on his fake debate show “Crossballs”.

Mark Borkowski, contributor
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Mark Borkowski and his 30-strong agency BORKOWSKI PR are among the London media industry’s most talented practitioners of the craft of publicity, with Mark widely acknowledged as the contemporary authority on public relations.

He trained in theatre publicity at the Wyvern Theatre, Swindon, and subsequently with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal, Stratford East. Borkowski PR was founded in 1988, and grew rapidly by representing a broad spectrum of leading arts and entertainments stars, from the left-of-field (Archaos, Cirque du Soleil, Stomp, The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow) to the mainstream (The Bolshoi Ballet, The Kirov, The Royal Albert Hall, Sir Cliff Richard), to landmark TV (The Word, Spooks, Cracker, Our Friends In The North, Never Mind the Buzzcocks) and current theatre (Cabaret, The Glass Menagerie, MAMMA MIA!, Treats, The Last Laugh, A Model Girl).

What distinguishes him from other publicists is the showmanship of his ideas. This is a man who has commissioned interviews with tap-dancing dogs, publicly auditioned parrots, cats and crocodiles, and was once frog-marched from the BBC for letting scorpions loose in a Green Room. There’s more; cow pat flinging competitions, sword-fighting workshops with Douglas Fairbanks, driving cars on two wheels across the Albert Bridge, a dull cheapest–ever book launch in a dirty launderette, an Action Man party in an NCP car park, a Vivienne Westwood dress for a doll, and a ballet for radio-controlled vacuum cleaners. He’s created a newspaper column written by a cat, and once walked an elephant into a fish and chip shop with the Andrews Sisters.

Although the agency’s clients have included products and companies as diverse as Vodafone, Peugeot, Virgin Megastores and JCB, links with the arts remain strong. The roll call of major international stars includes Noel Edmonds, Michael Flatley, Macaulay Culkin, Damien Hirst, Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers, Eddie Izzard, Mikael Gorbachev, Graham Norton and Boy George.

To publicise the agency’s tenth anniversary, Borkowski PR produced an exhibition and a book entitled Impropaganda: The Art of the Publicity Stunt.

Mark is a regular performer on television, commenting on all matters concerning PR. In the spring of 2004 he presented the BBC 3 documentary How The War Was Spun on the use of censorship and cover-up during the 2nd Gulf War. Mark took to the stage of the Edinburgh Festival fringe in August 2004 with his show Son of Barnum: A Stunt Too Far? the history of the forgotten Hollywood publicists. Mark was then commissioned to write a book on the subject, due for publication in 2007.

Margaret Engel, contributor
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Margaret Engel is the managing editor of the Newseum, the interactive museum of news in Washington, D.C. She also is the president of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the nation’s oldest journalism writing fellowship. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She is a board member of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and a longtime member of Investigative Reporters and Editors. She has been part of the reporting staffs of the Washington Post, Des Moines Register and Lorain (OH) Journal. She has written for Esquire, Saveur and her book, “Food Finds,” co-written with her twin sister, is in its sixth season on The Food Network. She co-authored a Fodor’s guide to American baseball parks with her husband. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland and is a board member of the Montgomery County Community Foundation.

Mike Ibanez, contributor
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Cultural Sniper and spanish radio-personality, Mike works through the mediasphere. He created the cult radio program La Rosa de Vietnam for Radio-3 (1983), Moonlight & Muzak for Radio PICA (1990-1995), and Psikotroniko Berriak for Radio Vitoria (2001-now). Mike also wrote ¡Zap!–Caos, capitalismo y televisión (Futura Ediciones, 1995) and pOp cOntrOl. Crónicas post-industriales (Glenat, 2000). His hit in TV is Subliminalia, a 1998 shockumentary about the subliminal kingdom in movies, advertising… In 1995 Mike set up Mess/Age, a subversive agit-prop-oriented media agency (or so).

Masakazu Kobayashi, contributor
Entries (0)

Masakazu Kobayashi is a Japanese freelance journalist(writer). So far, he has written 7 books, none of which sold so well, but all of which were published by prestigious publi