Don't forget The Montreal Fringe site
If you want to get the word out, don't discriminate against browsers, and don't issue stupid error messages based on browser type, especially when the website actually doesn't need a fancy browser. (And on June 19th, I accidentally type in the URL instead of The Mirror's and find I no longer get the error message. If we weren't a disfunctional family the error message never would have appeared.)

See my page about upcoming used book sales, now expanded to include some other local book activity

Apollo 8, having put on weight, orbited the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, setting the stage for the final run to the moon seven months later. I have no memory of watching the live broadcast 40 years ago, though I must have seen it. One can see what was handed out at the Imperial Theatre in May of 1968 when "2001" opened up here. There is a big distance between fiction and fact, but at the time "2001" seemed to offer what would happen as the space program grew. December '68 was a great month, not only did the crew take that photo Earthrise that I think landed on the cover of the Whole Earth Catalog at some point, but the computer mouse and associated technology were given a big demo earlier in the month; they are linked by Stewart Brand, editor of the WEC and who filmed the demo

We were stuffing envelopes at Studio 303 on Dec. 18th, and one thing had a brief bit about Doris May dying in October. The notice that ran in The Gazette is here. She was the very embodiment of The Fringe Old Timer's Club, having helped out for at least 8 editions of the festival, and of course being over thirty before the Fringe began here. I only saw here each year at the Fringe, yet there seemed to be other spaces we had in common. It was only a few years ago that I read somewhere that she was involved in Studio 303 in the early days, and while I got there late, I've been to most of the shows there since October 1993.

The Fringe in The News 2008

The Fringe Diary returns for 2008

The Fringe is now about "discovery", something I wrote about way back in 2003: Festival of Discovery

I should have put it up months ago, but Emru Townsend needs a bone marrow transplant. He's the Real McCoy, an expression I didn't know the meaning of until he posted about his Black History page back in February of 1997. Details are all over the place, but I suppose Heal Emru is as good a source as any. Apparently, you can win the lottery twice at one time, finding a match for anyone and then finding a match for Emru, since they have found a match but registration should continue.

Sadly, Emru died in early November, he got the bone marrow but the cancer still won, I think it was because the leukemia had gotten too far. But that doesn't mean the campaign was useless, he did get a donor, and they got a bunch of people signed up in the registry. And the next time someone needs a bone marrow transplant, it may just be easier because of the campaign Emru's sister Tamu did to get the issue into public view. She built a good foundation for the next time.

Don't forget the Bring William Shatner to the Fringe Campaign

Volunteers hard at work in 2005, putting the Fringe away. It really is lots of fun. I've done it for ten years straight, and this will be my 11th. If one of the oldest Fringe Volunteers can do it, so can you.

The Myth of the Beer Tent

Is this The End of Studio 303?

There's no excuse for a troupe to not have a webpage
see a sample of a simple webpage

List of all the Montreal Fringe shows 1995-2004 here

Good Riddance to CAM

One can email me using this link mblack@pubnix.net

Tobias Brox on Why Attached Microsoft Documents Are A Bad Thing

Maybe not fully implemented yet, but free WiFI access on St. Lawrence Blvd. See story

Check google for Fringe Festival news planetwide

Don't forget the veterans who went to Spain 70 years ago to fight for the Republicans, I was playing with one of their grandchildren recently. The Canadian veterans have a website at www.macpapbattalion.ca

Read Lys Steven's Taking the Leap, about putting on shows. Grab the PDF

Check the forecast here

The Fringe and the Internet have great similarities, both supplying a framework for individuals and small groups, and giving them a place to reach an audience. Both diminish the distance between the audience and performer, and allow for great interaction. And both require working the crowd.

Yet while the Montreal Fringe has been online (see a history) since 1995, neither it nor most of the companies have taken full advantage of the internet.

This is an admittedly late attempt to show some of the potential of the internet, as it applies to the Fringe Festival, and in fact to other situations. It is not "under construction" but it will evolve, because I am doing it on the fly and my intention is to show that a webpage should not be static.

While I'd read a bit about making webpages, this was my first attempt at doing something real, back in 2000. I just set out to learn what I needed in two days, which I hope will be an example that this isn't difficult. It takes longer to create the content than it does to make it into a webpage. This page provides some simple ways of making webpages, and outlines the path I've just taken to get here. The effectiveness of the Web (and the internet in general) is lost so long as people perceive it as a difficult space, and worry about making something perfect so they don't even make a first attempt.

There will be a link from this paragraph about how the internet could better be used. I think some of the problem arises because people come to the internet for a single purpose, seeing it as a utility rather than a community space. But effective use requires looking at what's already out there, seeing what's good and bad, and feeling connected.

You can have a webpage somewhere, and unless you tell someone about it, nobody will know that it exists. A webpage is not a billboard next to a highway; it is only a text file on some hard drive somewhere. If you want to work the crowd, you have to promote the webpage, getting it's location out into the public eye. Thus a webpage isn't publicity, but a means of conveying whatever it is you want, to others. So you still need flyers to reach the audience in the first place, but the webpage gives you a whole lot more space than a simple flyer or poster.

And the internet helps the postering process, by it's very ability to share. Some comments about postering.

However, the ability to link webpages together, creating a web, is rather like the Kevin Bacon Game (as featured in "Bizarre Love Triangle" at the Montreal Fringe in 1995). The connections between various things are already there. But the ability to link pages explicitly shows that connection.

Someone who knows about the Fringe Festival will most likely know that there will be reviews in the various papers. But once those reviews are online, the ability to link means that those reviews can be read effortlessly.

But the Fringe website has not been much of a cluster of things Fringe-related. For most years since the first website in 1995, their website has been nothing more than the paper program online. Thanks to nagging, it has changed a tad in recent years, but the point still seems to be missed. We own the space, we own the words, yet few are taking advantage of it. We can expand the audience, target specific audiences (every show has an audience, reaching it is a different matter), reach Vermont and who knows what else, if only the Fringe website was strong, being useful beyond the paper program and with content that makes people return.

Have a Chocolate Chip Cookie

It's June 7th, 2007. A quarter century ago, we walked into New York City (that's really a lie, we were in the South Bronx the day before and spent the night at a church in Harlem), having taken two months to walk there from Montreal (and other routes took far far longer). We went to the UN, where the UN Special Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament was starting, and the Assistant Secretary General greeted us, and then we crossed the street. I know there were plenty of speakers that day because I have news stories, but the only one I remember was Coretta Scott King, sounding like her husband but yet her own person. I still have the shoes I wore for most of the walk, bought in Plattsburgh when I realized hiking boots were the wrong thing. I don't suppose they'd still fit.

Be sure to check out The Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre on the WWW

Thanks to Emmett, Coyote, ComCo and The Diggers