Final Show? Maybe… Our Christmas Show? You Bet!
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Ask Dr. Hal! is coming back– at least one more time.
You can see us this Friday, December 25th. That’s
right– Christmas Day! An Ask Dr. Hal! that segues
into…
our GIANT XMAS SHOW!!
**************************
YES– YOU ARE INVITED TO OUR
Annual Christmas Show–
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25TH –
=======CHRISTMAS DAY!!===========
OUR BELOVED YEARLY ENACTMENT OF
“The Year Chicken John Saved Christmas!”
[Also known as,
“The Night Chicken John Ruined Christmas”]
PRESENTED ON OUR ASK DR. HAL! STAGE – WITH PRESENTS
AND GOOD CHEER FOR ALL, AS WE WIND UP ANOTHER YEAR!
As perhaps for the last time…
Chicken John
presents
The (Possibly) FINAL GENUINE & ORIGINAL
ASK Dr. HAL! SHOW
NOW PLAYING AT THE LEGENDARY
Chez Poulet Gallery-Cabaret
3359 Army (Cesar Chavez St.)
San Francisco, California
[Where Mission St. Joins Cesar Chavez]
PERFORMANCE COMMENCING AT
NINE P.M. SHARP! ( N O K I D D I N G)
===DOORS OPEN FOR THE SHOW AT 8:30 PM===
THE PRE-SHOW begins about Eight-Thirty. We will
be starting as close to Nine PM as we can. Despite a
long history of lagging audiences, we’ll start at Nine
anyway.
There’s just too much to cover to waste time
waiting for laggards (You know who you are)…
WE USUALLY CLOSE before Midnight, to give
our East Bay friends the chance to make it in
time to catch the last train from the 24th St.
BART Station, a few short blocks North of the
CHEZ POULET GALLERY-CABARET [Last East
Bay train departs about 12:16 AM] in S.F.’s
colorful Mission District. But this time it’s
different– this show will run on and on,
later and later, until all energy is gone.
When it nears Midnight we’ll announce it–
but we’re not leaving…
PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHY! RIOTOUS COMEDY!
GAGS! GOOFS! PRIZES! SURPRISE GUESTS! CRANKS! QUIPS!
Yes! You read it right! The original, unabridged & authentic Ask Dr.
Hal! Show (beware of derivative question-and-answer shows) goes
out with a bang– with Chicken John & all your favorite, frantic ADH
crew! With Jimson Jimmy at the door! KrOB at the controls! Pete
Goldie’s Science Scoops! David “Yo-Yo King” Capurro body-surfs
the Internet! Spy, the Christmas Elf gives you her “special treatment!”
Dr. Hal answers your queries! We’re back– and doing the show once
more! (Will we ever learn?) It’s just as if we never left! But beware– the
final curtain will fall while you aren’t paying attention– and you’ll
miss it all! We hope you can spend one LAST NIGHT with us!
The Dr. Hal Report
Vol. XII No. 10
“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one
who endures that the final victory comes.”
–The Buddha: Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, Founder of Buddhism
IT’S…
THE
LAST
ASK DR. HAL! OF THE YEAR!
AND WE HAVE NO IDEA WHEN WE WILL BE ABLE TO PUT ON ANOTHER…
COME TO BE ENTERTAINED & HAVE YOUR QUESTIONS
ANSWERED– STAY FOR THE PARTY!
WITH A GIANT PILE OF PRESENTS FOR ALL! BRING A PRESENT–
LEAVE WITH A PRESENT!
With…
YOUR BOASTFUL HOSTS,
CHICKEN JOHN
& Dr. HAL!
FIRST, we bring you ASK Dr. HAL! in all its savagery
and splendor!
THE LAST EMBER OF DECEMBER!
–AND WE START… WITH A KLASSIC KARTOON!
Just before every performance begins, we screen a great animated cartoon– each, one
of the best seven-minute theatrical shorts ever committed to film. Last time we were proud to
bring you, as promised, Warner Bros. animation director Bob Clampett’s irrepressible Horton
Hatches the Egg (1942). And now, for a definite change of pace with what may turn out to be our
last performance for a while, KrOB has selected a charming product of the Fleischer cartoon
studio, Cobweb Hotel (1936). Yes, as you may have guessed, the theme is, once again, the Terror
of the Spider. (At our last show the KrOB Monster Klip (see below) featured an attack by an aggressive
nine-pounder. Wallowing in Spider-Phobia is, we admit, a persistent thread (heh, heh) in our show—
we like it because it is an epiphenomenon of the instinctive– e.g. a visceral aversion to spiders –not
cerebral, like, ideally, some other parts of our show. So, we figure the audience could use a little break,
getting in touch with feelings and reactions that aren’t on a rational, logical basis. And here we go again
with a Fleischer cartoon which, though not urbane, like the work of Warners animation Titans Clampett
and Avery, is still charged, like many of the studio’s other cartoons, with great iconic power. An evil,
hungry (and quite gleefully Sadistic) spider runs the Cobweb Hotel, which is visited by a pair of cute lil’
newlywed flies on their honeymoon. These two eventually catch on to a hideous, Gilles de Rais-type
set-up where screaming flies are fastened to web-spun “beds” awaiting their doom. But in the end the
little pests manage to defeat the hairy, adversarial arachnid. Naturally. Of course, this is a direct
inversion of reality– we ought to cheer on the spider, who’s our great ally against the fly, Man’s real
eternal enemy (it ain’t the spider). Yet an irrational and unquestioned tradition causes us to root for the
flies and hiss the spider, here a typically grotesque Fleischer villain. In the cartoon, we see, in addition
to the usual skillful and fluid animation, rotoscope effects (and why not? Max Fleischer invented the
rotoscope, still in use today in our high-tech film industry). There’s also a glimpse, at the beginning and
end, of their patented stereoptical process, where they got a 3-D effect like no other by actually building
miniature sets they then rotated before the camera. Animation by Dave Tendlar and Bill Sturm. Music
(the spider sings!) by Bob Royhberg and Fleischer lyricist Sammy Timberg.
So join us this Friday night, won’t you? –in time to catch up with yet another treasure of your Nation’s
once-flourishing but now (that the Conspiracy has dumbed it all down) mostly vanished popular culture.
Remember, our show will start right up at the very moment the cartoon ends. If you‘ve been habitually
missing these things you‘re doing yourself a disservice. So be on time! We have a huge show– you‘ll
probably leave before the (bitter) end, and we’re forced to start early. Y‘know, we‘ve carried ADH on for
many years now– and are always refining it a degree or so further, trying to ascertain what “works” and what
we have to conclude never will. The End though it may be, KrOB’s on the job, as always, brewing up new
surprises. And he‘s got a real winner this week, as the Monster Clip brings you the hideous tale of a
grotesque taxon-crossing mutant, part man and part ant, as…
KrOB, San Francisco, Presents:
ISOTOPIA UBER ALLES– Featuring MANT! THE INSECTILE ABOMINATION!
Radioactivity produces giant ants! GIANT ANTS! And that’s not all, according to this KrOB Kinematographic
Kollage Kreation. Unspeakably horrible is this eructation of perverted science– the metamorphosis of Homo
sapiens into… Homo myrmex. Yes, your traumatized eyes will behold sights which will seize your quivering brain
in gleaming, razor-sharp chitinous mandibles and send it skittering off into a necrophagous abyss of suffocating,
night-black horror, down endless subterranean corridors of wriggling, hexapodal madness. Oh, that KrOB. Now,
nearly all ants have a unique gland found on the petiole, the linking segment between thorax and abdomen (we
were classically trained) or, as they say today in Ant Science or Myrmecology, the altitrunk and gastor. Yes, yes,
insect fans– we know that the altitrunk is considered the distal component of the pre-petiolar thorax. There’s just
not space to get into that here. Anyway, we are speaking of the metapleural gland. Most importantly, this gland has
been shown to contain antibacterial and antifungal chemicals which are essential for survival in the humid, dark
nests your typical ants construct in the ground or rotting vegetation. This gland secretes an antiseptic substance,
or “gleet,” that at times acts as a repellent to attacking organisms. It is also thought that the selfsame metapleural
gland releases certain special pheromones for communication. But, you know, that’s pretty small compensation for
a guy who finds himself slowly turning into a man-ant, or mant. Hence, the drama, the pathos. You know the drill.
So, for unique, bulbous Big Bug thrills, get a load of what the indefatigable KrOB‘s prepared for this week! Right–
yet another in a series of unforgettable KrOB “Edits!” Scientific! Educational! View it all on our Giant Screen.
Come one, come all…
Read the latest hard-hitting interview with Dr. Hal on Laughing Squid’s Blog:
http://laughingsquid.com/a-conversation-with-hal-robins/
NO BAR– BUT YOU CAN DRINK! (JUST BRING YOUR OWN)
Not counting the inevitable Fernet Branca shots for the (un)lucky.
With Venom Mango Energy Drinks given away– on the house!!
PETE GOLDIE PROVIDES OUTER SPACE FRISSONS!
Our Science Segment…
Did you know top N.A.S.A. scientists often attend the show? It’s true! Our show begins
with an actual narrated presentation of the latest astronomical findings. To participate in
the receiving of new scientific knowledge is rightly considered a privilege, as we see it, by
those unencumbered with an excess of credulity, superstition and fanaticism in their inner
makeup, those who understand that the self is strengthened and renewed by its ongoing
transformation by means of the introduction and accommodation of new information and
ideas, i.e. Learning. And so it is that Pete Goldie, our own Boffo Boffin, though eternally
baited by Chicken, illumes and educates with his unrivaled Cosmic Revelations, his heroic
hebdomadal presentation for your eyes and minds. A quondam NASA consultant, real
“Science Superhero” Dr. Goldie, a contemporary Prometheus (bound to suffer the vulturine
gnawings and pangs of Chicken‘s heckling) who brings unworthy humanity the sacred fire
of Celestial truth, is, paradoxically, a down-to-earth kind of guy. He can tell you everything
about the tiles on the Space Shuttle– and on your bathroom floor! He‘s also a raconteur,
artificer and craftsman, and a delver into mysteries of natural philosophy. He arranged for
Chicken‘s name (and ours) to be shot into space aboard the Dawn Explorer on its mission to
the Asteroid Belt! We think that says it all. The well-known bon vivant and astro-science
specialist gives us astonishing pictures from worlds never before viewed by human eyes—
transmitted by robots who are even now, right this minute, busily exploring Outer Space.
You‘ll be spellbound as, with their assistance, Pete will set before your bulging baby blues,
burnt-sienna browns or gemstone greens, rare pictures of strange worlds in our own Solar
System. And, via computer-jockey David Capurro‘s abilities (see below) he usually also neatly
illustrates his presentation with those rare pictures. A Dr. Hal Show Extra-Special Featurette.
CAPPY COMBS CYBERSPACE–
TO SLAY ‘EM WITH SIGHT-GAGS!
The Visual Dimension…
Our very own dementedly devoted David Capurro, in his alternate identity as Yo-Yo Pro, has performed in
multiple venues, yo-yo-ing for astonished audiences.Now, yet another time, he returns to Ask Dr. Hal! As of
old, he vivaciously vivifies our Show with a kind of visual, Virtual yo-yo-ing: even as Dr. Hal is speaking,
David’s dexterous digits flash across his keyboard– and, Wow! A confirming (or at least, ideally, congruent)
image appears on the screen! (Usually, filthy, but that’s showbiz…)
THEN, WHEN ALL THIS STUFF IS OVER WITH,
WE SLIDE RIGHT INTO…
OUR ONCE-A-YEAR XMAS X-STRAVAGANZA!
Our longtime audience knows the drill. Bring a wrapped present– leave with a different, or several
different presents! The luck of the draw! Interact with Dr. Hal, Chicken, Spy the Xmas Elf (R-rated)
and enjoy, or endure the ultimate KrOB Moment– that goes on all night long! It’s an orgy of excess!
An endurance fest! A personal test! Be our guest!
ONGOING SHOWS
“THE PRODUCTIONS OF TIME”
–Dr. HAL’S CURRENT ART SHOW!
For everyone who missed Dr. Hal’s last art show, some of the images shown there are now featured again,
together with new and previously unshown works. It’s all happening at the Mercury Café, 201 Octavia Street (at Page). The opening party featured entertainment by Dr. Hal and KrOB. Keep watching this space for our
announcement of the closing party, which will happen in about a month, in addition to another appearance
by the demented duo, will present a live performance by Dr. Hal ably assisted by KrOB’s visual and auditory magic!
It will also be an opportunity for those who are interested to purchase a limited number of Dr. Hal’s books, The Meaning of Lost and Mismatched Socks (which is becoming quite a rarity– Random House is now out of
them), Dinosaur Alphabet and a one-of-a-kind collaboration with legendary Comic Book Artist Spain Rodriguez, Alien Apocalypse 2006, including autographed and dedicated copies.
This may be the last best chance to get some of these.
Art Prints of many of the pictures can be ordered from
Studio Reflex of San Francisco– pick up a form at the show.
The Mercury, serving organic and fair trade coffees as well
as locally produced foods, can be reached at (415) 252-7855.
THE LAST HOLIDAY HELPING OF THOSE AMAZING,
AMUSING… PUZZLING EVIDENCE YOU TUBE CLIPS!
Did you know you can watch some of the show right this minute? Well, thanx to Puzzling
Evidence, you can! Go ahead– plant your peepers on a few of the hi-lites from previous episodes of Ask Dr. Hal! –on You Tube! It’s easy! It’s fun! It’s time-consuming! And it’s technologically au courant, and absolutely
the next best thing to being there in person! You need to visit his wonderful site, with rare video of the Lost Galleon La Contessa and many wonders unrelated to our show– HELCO from Burning Man ’96, various festivals
and performances (and behind the scenes) of all your faves– as well as our stuff –from the links below. How? How, you say? You do? Why are you talking to your computer? Go ahead– just click, clickety-click, on these handy URLs. Remember, if it won’t play, try watching in High Quality…
Pedro arrives just in time for America’s Angle, the Space Science Report, but then the “InnerNet” breaks–
and Pete Goldie (impersonating FDR) drops into a gamma ray rut. Anyone care for a FREE Venom
Mango-flavored Energy Drink? December 11th (Pt. 1):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s7bA8NM5MY&feature=channel
Space Science continues, as infinite and unending as Space itself… But Dr. Hal does eventually enter, on
December 11th (Pt. 2):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc_hJ89ZL4E&feature=channel
At length, and in the Fullness of Time, Dr. Hal channels the late President, Richard M. Nixon
December 11th (Pt. 3):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5eH4tRf6w4&feature=channel
Nazis invented ZIP Codes, and more awesome revelations, not to mention the dread KrOB Moment
December 11th (Pt. 4):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wnhGinFX44&feature=channel
The Norman Conquest occurred in 1066 AD when William the Conqueror, as described in William of
Malmesbury’s Historia Novella in 1142, successfully defeated Harold Fairhair and his forces. The same
scribe also wrote of the lives of the Saints. Excerpt from December 11th (Pt. 5):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DG3j3pQNIE&feature=channel
The stirrup improved military technology— and we also speak on our ongoing need for more and more
Plastic Dinosaurs, that December 11th (Pt. 6):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzx-CuqRT1U&feature=channel
Pete Goldie shows us the Milky Way –not the candy bar –as ADH commences on December 4th (Pt. 1):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvNobMER6qU&feature=channel
More hardcore Hard Science— Chicken muses about Gravity and the agony of Toenail Loss–
then Dr. Hal enters with some Dylan Thomas December 4th (Pt. 2):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlcTICc6Q_k&feature=channel
Optimism about the Future— will we hunt rabbits in Dolores Park? Pete loses, then finds, his
LASER. Never climb inside an abandoned refrigerator– even to see if the light stays on! That was
December 4th (Pt. 3):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CDGXGBV4S8&feature=channel
The Smoke-Pot Guys, Ken Karefree and Phineas T. Smokepott, are seated with honor in their own
box seats, a historic milestone of December 4th (Pt. 4). Obo Martin is seen for an instant at the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dndHT8qwRI4&feature=channel
How the 70’s went wrong and many other perturbations are perused December 4th (Pt. 5):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wea5ETsJEtY&feature=channel
See all of Puzzling Evidence’s video realm at Puzzling Evidence TV.
See you one more time at the exclusive
CHEZ POULET GALLERY-CABARET
Happening This Friday Night– Dec. 25th!
…AND AFTER THAT, WHAT WILL HAPPEN NO ONE KNOWS…