NZ Web Fest Film Festival has nominated “Joey Skaggs: The Early Years” (14:57), as BEST SHOW (INTERNATIONAL FACTUAL).

This film is the first episode and pilot for the new oral history series, “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond“.

It’s available to screen FREE from November 7 to 13, 2022.

Register here to receive a free link to watch the film whenever and wherever is convenient during that time period: https://nz-web-fest-2022.lilregie.com/booking/attendees/new

New York”™s spectacular April Fools”™ Day Parade kicks into its fourth decade of hilarious irreverence, poking fun at the past year”™s public displays of hype, hypocrisy, deceit, bigotry, and downright foolishness.

In honor of this 30th anniversary, 30 lucky revelers, picked at random from the crowd at the end of the parade in Washington Square Park, will receive free cartoon interpretations of their favorite taboo religious icons.
 
 
Details of this year’s planned floats and celebrity look-alikes are here or here.

See 30 years of annual press releases here.

Join the fun! Check back for updates.

The Police Raided My Friend’s House Over a Parody Twitter Account
by Justin Glawe
Vice
April 18 2014

Jon Daniel woke up on Thursday morning to a news crew in his living room, which was a welcome change from the company he had on Tuesday night, when the Peoria, Illinois, police came crashing through the door. The officers tore the 28-year-old”™s home apart, seizing electronics and taking several of his roommates in for questioning; one woman who lived there spent three hours in an interrogation room. All for a parody Twitter account.

Yes, the cops raided Daniel”™s home because they wanted to find out who was behind @peoriamayor, an account that had been shut down weeks ago by Twitter. When it was active, Daniel used it to portray Jim Ardis, the mayor of Peoria, as a weed-smoking, stripper-loving, Midwestern answer to Rob Ford. The account never had more than 50 followers, and Twitter had killed it because it wasn’t clearly marked as a parody. It was a joke, a lark””but it brought the police to Daniel’s door. The cops even took Daniel and one of his housemates in for in-depth questioning””they showed up at their jobs, cuffed them, and confiscated their phones””because of a bunch of Twitter jokes.

Now Daniel”™s panicking. Read the rest of this article here.

via: Peoria Mayor and Police Violate The 1st Amendment Over Twitter Parody; Twitter image: TheStoopKids

Steve Ben Israel, a Living Theater Performance Artist, Dies at 74
by Paul Vitello
The New York Times
June 16, 2012

The young Steve Ben Israel was a longhaired, card-carrying pacifist, anarchist, comedian and performance artist who toured during the 1960s and “™70s with the Living Theater, an avant-garde repertory group. He had leading roles in many of the company”™s cheerfully seditious productions, including “Paradise Now,” in which the cast, naked, exhorted audience members to seize the theater, form anarchist cells and overthrow the government.

Making anarchist performance art was a hard way to earn a living even back then, when millions of young Americans were dabbling in revolutionary ideas. But Mr. Israel, who died of lung cancer on June 4 in Manhattan at 74, kept at it for the rest of his life, friends said “” a one-man revolutionary cell delivering jokes, stories and poems aimed at undermining capitalist society. He did not advocate overthrowing the government much anymore. He was trying, he told people, to foment a mass uprising of compassion. (more…)