Monday, July 26th

Porchlight Presents Our 8th Birthday!

It's our birthday! Join Beth, Arline and Marc as we celebrate eight years of monthly storytelling joy. Our theme: Magic Eightball.

Featuring stories from:

Mythbuster Adam Savage with "Reply Hazy, Try Again Later"

Hemlock Tavern booker Anthony Bedard with "Don't Count On It"

Poet Arisa White with "Better Not Tell You Now"

Humor writer Kari Kiernan with "Outlook Not So Good"

Animator Scott Kravitz with "Without a Doubt"

Tech genius Jawad Ali with "Yes, Definitely"

Writer/Performer Ben McCoy with "Very Doubtful"

and special musical guest Jesse DeNatale

DETAILS:

Monday, July 26th, 8 p.m. (doors open at 7 p.m.)

Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco

General admission tickets: $12.

Purchase advance tickets here.

Ages 21 and up.

STORYTELLER BIOS:

Jawad Ali designs technology for the Silicon Valley. Last year he developed two solo performance shows that he's performed at half a dozen venues in San Francisco. One is about his adventures as an earthquake rescue worker in Pakistan in 2005, and the other is about helping monitor the elections in Lebanon with Jimmy Carter. Both are comedies.

Anthony Bedard is a 21-year denizen of the San Francisco music underground. He once played drums for the panic-rock ensemble Icky Boyfriends and currently sings and breaks strings in the proto-punk combo Hank IV. His checkered employment history includes stints at the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library (where he catalogued Sacco and Vanzetti's death masks), the international economics department of Bank of America , and also a brand marketing agency where he worked alongside the person who single-handedly invented the "Super Size" fast food concept. His current day and night jobs involve booking bands for the Hemlock Tavern and producing albums for his upstart comedy record label, Talent Moat. Bedard is also the co-founder of C.A.R. (the Coalition of Aging Rockers).

Kari Kiernan's birthday was four days ago. She jsut thought she'd mention it, in case you wanted to wish her many happy returns or buy her a drink or something. She is a humor writer whose work appeared most recently in The Morning News. In her more regularly paid professional life, she has worked in both nonprofit theatre and education. Last year, she received a Master's degree from Dominican University of California, after which she continued to be a school secretary. Only now with debt. She too is puzzled by this choice. If she owned a Magic 8 Ball, perhaps this sort of mystery would be cleared up.

Scott Kravitz is an independent animator and film maker. His work has appeared in dozens of features, including Madagascar 2, The Matrix Trilogy, and Superman Returns. For television, he has contributed to shows such as the PJs and Robot Chicken. His short film, Loom, premiered at the Hiroshima Animation Festival and was chosen for competition in over thirty festivals, winning several awards along the way. Loom, as well as his other films, can be seen on his website, www.scottkravitz.com.

Ben McCoy is a writer, performance artist, and short film vixen. McCoy has has performed one person shows in both San Francisco and Boston. Currently located in NYC, McCoy is presently working on ‘the Novel'. Dipsomania, despair, and desire all slam together in the scarf-covered handbag over McCoy's shoulder. Stories that may pull at your heartstrings or encourage a well-manicured fist to be raised (along with a well-arched eyebrow). McCoy tells you what it's like to live life on the T-list. Through recent experiences, a vision quest revealed that Ben's animal totem spirit is none other than Lindsay Lohan. Hey, girl!

Adam Savage hosts "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel. A lifelong  maker of things, he built a spaceship in his mom's closet when he was 10 and grew up to build spaceships for "Star Wars" and "Space Cowboys" at ILM 25 years later. Adam taught five semesters at the Academy of Art college in San Francisco. He's talked about things close to his heart at various conferences around the world including E.G., Porchlight, The Harvard Humanist Society and, yearly, at James Randi's Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas. Recently he's started W00tstock -- a kind of geekapalooza -- with friends Paul and Storm and Wil Wheaton. The geeks can be seen on July 22nd in San Diego at Comic-con.  Adam is thrilled to be talking again with Porchlight, where his storytelling career began two years ago.

Selected by SF Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List, Arisa White is a Cave Canem fellow and holds a MFA from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is author of the chapbook Disposition for Shininess. She has received residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, University of Western Michigan, and Fine Arts Work Center. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005, her poetry has appeared in numerous journals. She currently lives in Oakland, CA.

More storyteller bios coming soon.


MUSICIAN BIO:

Celebrated singer songwriter Jesse DeNatale lives in Northern California. He has released two critically acclaimed albums, Shangri-La West and Soul Parade. He has toured both nationally and internationally performing in festivals, clubs and theaters. The creative relationship between mythology and everyday life is pivotal to his songwriting. He learned guitar from listening to Ramblin Jack Elliott records. He received his first piano lesson from the brother of a girlfriend who was playing with Willy Deville. He plays harmonica with the same proficiency as he did when he was five. But it is his way with words, as well as their marriage to simple, tuneful and mysteriously soulful melodies that has kept the diehard fans, including Tom Waits, novelist Michael Ondaatje ("The English Patient") and former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins in DeNatale's corner. His new record Hallelujah Rain will be released in the winter of 2010.

"He's good, really good. " — Nick Hornby