SAN FRANCISCO– The live version of the Ask Dr, Hal! Show (not the Radio Valencia radio program) will take place on Saturday, January 3rd at Viracocha, 998 Valencia St. (at 21st) at 8:30 PM.

Admission is on a sliding scale of $10 to #$20.00 (but no one turned away for lack of funds)– your payment helps make many shows and performances possible in this special local arts space. This door deal, the club has stated, reflects its need to survive in the neighborhood and continue to provide a community-driven platform for performers.

Come early and enjoy the upstairs area and Piano Bar– doors will open, as they did for our last show, at 7:00 PM. The show will end to give enough time for attendees to enjoy other night-life activities in the now-fashionable Valencia Street Corridor.

Hosting the Ask Dr. Hal! Show will be seasoned RadioValencia.FM Director Emeritus and  Show Host John Hell, whose history with the Show stretches back unto its very glory days.
Other featured guest performers will include Spy Emerson, whose ongoing project “The Hook-Up Truck” has provoked wide commentary and engaged national attention through various media outlets in 2014, including Fox News, TIME Magazine and The Huffington Post among other news sources.

We also boast Dr. Fiasco of Radio Valencia fame, who will create vital visual accompaniment for the main portion of the show, poet-in residence Rusty Rebar, primed to do a short and pithy spoken-word set, and musical sensation Karlyn DeSteno. 

Karlyn has spent most of the last decade on an odyssey of sorts, finding musical home-bases in Oakland, Brooklyn, and Saint Paul. After years of honing her popular, intimate live shows, she is finally documenting her songs for a full-length album, due in March.

Karlyn’s bi-coastal career has included recent sets at “You’re Going to Die” — both at Viracocha and the Make Out Room. Her distinct alto voice, guitar, songwriting, and storytelling occupy a spare, no-frills style that trail-blazes new emotional territories and themes, both dark and light. Often associated with New Folk and “Americana,” DeSteno’s work resists identification with any one genre. While taking heavy influence from the “expressive and experimental” language of folk forms, her songwriting is equally at home in long, weird narratives, gospel- and bluegrass-style hymns, and in what critics have called “new old standards.”

http://petaluma.opositivefestival.org/musicians/karlyn-desteno/
http://www.karlyndesteno.com/
http://vimeo.com/103141469

The entirety of the show happens to an aural background produced by the show’s long-running music specialist and editor, the incredible KrOB (also known as KrOB, the Incredible, somewhat along the lines of Varan, the Unbelievable).

Other surprises are promised, in the Bulldada vein of Monster Movies and Cartoons, the former being KrOB’s mind-altering “edits,” narrated by Dr. Hal.

The chief feature of the evening’s entertainment is of course the Ask Dr. Hal! Show‘s centerpiece, Dr. H. Owll himself, who, accepting tips, will answer any question from the audience, rewarding the best of these with Bardic Recitations and esoteric, oracular commentary.

The Ask Dr. Hal! Show has run, on and off, for sixteen years in San Francisco. In 2012 it was awarded Best of the Bay by the S.F. Weekly–

“The gang is back: … KrOB and Dr. Hal come together to astound and amaze… dispensing trivia and Fernet
while accepting gratuities from one and all (‘One dollar gets you an answer. A few dollars gets you a great
answer. $5 gets you a masterful and poetic summary of the relevant information. $20 gets you one of  Hal’s
“Bardic Recitations.”‘) Bring your good questions — do not bring your bad questions — and, as always,
“Please do not get KROB stoned before the show.”
–SF Weekly, Calendar

“We went to see The Ask Dr Hal show. Its kind of like Pee Wee’s Playhouse for super smart people. I loved it!”
–Jennifer C.P.’s Reviews

“Accompanied by strange sounds and visuals, the Church of the SubGenius’s astonishing orator Dr. Hal will
answer any question posed to him, and will do so in the most entertainingly purple, poetic, and potentially
profound manner possible. The more money you include with your question, the funnier his answer will be,
and a twenty will get you a ‘Bardic Recitation’ –an amazing, on-the-spot response in full verse. Ask early and
often!”
–SF Weekly, “Best Fortune-Telling Show”

We’ll see you when you come in and see us on Saturday night– January 2rd, 2015! –and bring your friends!

For Viracocha information: (415) 374-7048   

Listen to the Ask Dr. Hal! Radio Show Friday nights on RadioValencia.FM, 10 PM to 1:00 AM Saturday Morning. All shows available as podcasts: http://radiovalencia.fm/podcasts/?show=ask%20dr%20hal