well, via the power of twitter, we hit strip club last night, and damn if a group of @amandapalmer fans in strip club isn't a joyous thing.
and people in portland, and in the northwest in general, just rock so hard, period. i love it up here so much.

about 20-30 folks showed up and for a while i felt like i was existing in a world that was a cross between twin peaks and reading rainbow.
all the love!

here's where we went....

...there were three girls rotating (quite literally, come to think of it) throughout the night.
we all picked favorites.

one looked like a cross between avril lavigne and debbie harry and had wicked tude.
one was a blond who just never stopped grinning and winking (she was my favorite).
one had enormous breasts that she could do wonderful tricks with (she was lots of other people's favorite).

no fake tits to be seen, which always makes me happy.

the girls were so comfy being strippers, there was an authentic sense of fun in the place, lots of joking and talking between the girls on stage and the folks at the bar and LOTS and LOTS of michael jackson.

i think i managed to hang out with everyone for at least a few minutes.
i felt like a hostess. in a strip club. maybe ......i've found my calling.

here's the cash register....

and here's the twitter-registry i put together on the fly, photo taken upon return to my hotel....

my hangover is doing just fine, thank you for asking.

going to spend the whole day catching up on work and have plenty of deep thoughts that i'd love to share about how awesome it is to be living in a world where you can take over a dive strip club for a night with a simple twtiter from your blackberry, but i want to announce before it gets too late:

HANGOVER NINJA UKE GATHERING TODAY!!! in PORTLAND, OREGON

bring fruit, water, aspirin, flowers, ponies, knitting, instruments, whatEVS. and neckrubs.

around 6 pm-ish.

davis street, between 8th and park, in front of the customs building.
if anyone has a good camera and mad photo skillz, bring dat shit, so we can take some group shots.
bring stuff for signing. i will play ukulele to the best of my hungover ability.
as usual, i will put out my case for donations.
musician, stripper, all the same, honey. we work for tips. and there's an off-chance that jason webley might join us... he is on a drive down to eugene to play the county fair tomorrow. life up here is just getting wholesomer by the minute.

here's a map: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=portland+davis+and+park&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=16&iwloc=A&iwstate1=dir

see you there mofos!!!!!!

XXX
Afp

p.s. speaking of all this NAKED, if you want to join in the fun "put a naked magic-markered amanda on the cover of rolling stone" art project, head over to...

http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=9094.0

...to see the magic and apply your photoshop skillz.

there's more naked there than you can shake a stick at.
i'll post some of the work here when more entries roll in. no deadlines, just absurdity.


Cross-posted here on amandapalmer.net

i often go to blogging in my head upon waking, and i usually never do it, but this morning i reached over and grabbed my mac, it was within arms reach.

morning head: i like this head, when everything is clear and new and things things things start filtering in one by one. first the magic, then the mundane.

i treated myself to this hotel room in portland after lots of relative bed-and-couch crashing.

i move my legs around in the king-size bed, feeling very lucky to exist at all, not knowing anything yet.

left leg works, rubs against sheet.
right leg works, rubs against sheet.
whole body stretches out and feels gloriously enveloped.
things, facts.
i'm in portland.
i don't have anything to do today but catch up.
i'll drink coffee.
i love coffee.
the coffee here is good coffee.
this pillow is soft.
i love neil.
his voice sent me off to bed, i remember now.
i remember how.
construction sounds outside.
the blinds are open.
what time is it?
this pillow is soft.
maybe i'll blog about this.
maybe i'll sit all day in powell's bookstore and not work.
maybe i'll go back to sleep.
because i can.
this pillow is wonderful.
should get a pillow like this.
soft soft pillow.
what would i do with it?
i can't carry around a pillow like this everywhere.
i live out of a suitcase.
and
that's the evil moment: that's when the truth caves things in.

mornings are amazing alone, like this. mornings are also amazing together. there's that wonderful thing that happens when you're in love and you wake up next to Them and your brain hasn't clicked into it's Self yet and you just become a vessel, a thing that pours love. my instinct, upon waking, to love something. but mornings are amazing alone - the body and the mind can snake around improvisational, making weird things in silence.

then the day comes, the realities materialize, and mundane takes over. the magic might only last twenty seconds, sometimes even less.

used to be when i was home in boston, especially in summer with the sun blazing through the vines in my window, i'd often have this 20 seconds of "i'm going to change my whole existence today" upon waking on an off day where i had nothing planned. i'd lie there in bed: ahhhhhh holy shit, i have nothing to do today...maybe i'll drive to maine. pick blueberries. see ships. maybe i'll sit in the boston public library all day and look at 17th century art. maybe i'll go to harvard and see what it would take to enroll. maybe i'll learn to play piano. maybe i'll go work in a soup kitchen.

Etc.

these things would never happen.

i would go to yoga, i would read the paper, and i would spend hours and hours catching up on email and talking on the phone. that is My Life.

this is probably what i will do today.

it's fine.

i've been feeling strange and weird and alive lately, very alive, but also totally unhinged.

i remember looking around at my life less a year ago and commenting to my best friend that all the players in the cast of my everyday life had changed: new manager, new boyfriend, new touring crew....the faces that i see everyday are totally different.

it's happened again. i feel more grounded this time, but i wonder how abnormal that is. i almost never see the same people every day. even the things that are constants, the people who keep me tethered....they're constants through the telephone, through emails, through not-being-there. i cried backstage and onstage the other night at jason's show, listening to the reverend peyton, and then my own voice, talk to the crowd about how jason has become family.

this is what we do on the road and in this kind of life....we decide with our creative minds who we want our family to be and we go out, hunt them down, capture them and then nourish them with all our mights. maybe this is something that artists are especially good at. we think things into reality, we don't accept that things have to be Any Way at all.

jason's eleventh anniversary (marking the release of his first record) was at town hall and made of love...i felt so proud and happy to be a part of something so beautiful. there were lots of songs and tomatoes and balloons and sharing.

someone put this wonderful collage of three photos from jason & me singing "electric blanket" together:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ohnobody/3686827068/

and here's a shot of the whole mob that night:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elijuicyjones/3693838436/

jason had flown four of his closest collaboarators in for the show...me, the reverend peyton, andru bemis and michael mcquilken - jason's drummer, my recent ex.

what could have been awkward ended up being healing. we've barely talked since things fell apart over the fall tour. we finally pieced our friendship back together again - though it was a weird kind of torture to be around him. my every instinct was to act like his loving girlfriend again - those impulses don't die in me, the impulse to stroke a cheek, to hold a hand. michael knows this: i've had some brutal partings, with a variety of lovers. for years i've been standing there in the shock of a break-up moment with my hand outstretched saying "but let's be friends and go eat a blueberry scone together and chat and maybe even have some nice goodbye kissing" as they're frantically thumbing through yellow pages to hire sky-writing jet planes that don't mind leaving FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING CUNT I'M NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN TAKE THAT FUCKING BLUEBERRY SCONE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS in a nice swirl of white against a cloudless sky.

usually this sentiment diminishes. but sometimes it takes years.

i've been told i infuriate with my cavalierness.

with michael, this wasn't true. this is part of why i love him so much, still. it's hard, i suppose it will always be hard.

jason was the one who connected us in the first pace, it felt symbolic to be sitting back around the scone table with the two of them.

and playing music together helped - michael and i decided to throw two songs together very-last-minute (we did "missed me" and "runs in the family" together and we didn't suck too much for only having practiced about 30 minutes). he's a damn fine drummer.

i also decided a few days ago not to go back to boston, thus driving another symbolic nail into where Home really is. Home is not my apartment anymore, i don't feel it.

Home has become where i feel drawn, in the moment. i opted instead to take an impulsive trip to boulder where my cousin is in a jam. i haven't seen him in a while. and then to neil's, where i was headed anyway, because we have to sign books books books, which are finally - praise cthulhu - going to be sent to everybody, including the signed ones to the people who ordered them LAST AUGUST.

i'm sorry guys. i know i keep saying it. but i am. you've been waiting a long time.

portland was a good place to stop in between, i had a meeting, caught up with eric my down-boy who's tour managed the dolls...and got an almost-3-hour acupuncture and shiatsu treatment from eric's boyfriend grant who is still in acupuncture school. i melted into oblivion. i traded them a bottle of wine.

i'm staying in a hotel near the strip club (mary's club all nude revue!, which is portland's first, i believe) where i penned a lot of the onion cellar script (not that that script ever got used, but o well).

portland is fertile ground for me....i also wrote "astronaut" here backstage at a dolls show at the crystal ballroom (due only to the fact that the subject of the song was coming to our show that night).

maybe there's something in the voodoo doughnuts. like robitussin, though i've heard the FDA stopped them from doing that anymore.

i might do a twitter gathering in the strip joint tonight. i'm dead serious. buy me drinks.

by the way, if you're still a twitter-cynic, i'd like you to read THIS. it's the most beautiful article about twitter and why it's real, wonderful and good.
and ephemeral (i believe that wholeheartedly, it can't last very long).

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/paul-constant-reviews-twitter/Content?oid=1774875

if you still don't believe, here is more proof that twitter makes insanely beautiful things happen...
these photos are from the last ninja-beach gathering in LA.
we ended up also shooting an impromptu cat stevens video with everyone standing frozen on the shore.

danna, who shot it out of nowhere, is still working on editing it and adding some text, will keep you informed.
the day was a magic day.

photos by the amazing lindsey byrnes.

kirstin vangsness, who looked me up out of the blue and who turns out to be a classy fucking art dame - by day she's an actress on a show called "criminal minds", which i'd never seen before - came and lent a hand.

we'd already bonded over sushi and life and she's a fucking keeper, i recommend checking out her play KILL ME DEADLY at Theater of Note in LA, runs til the 1st: http://www.theatreofnote.com/

robert, my 82-year-old cousin who was the impetus for the gatherings in the first place, FINALLY was persuaded to whip out his ukulele and play us a song,

check it:

(shot by danna)

joy to the beach. i really don't hate LA as much as i thought i used to.

now back to the world, i've got a mundane day to try to fuck up

love,
AmuthaFP

Cross-posted here on amandapalmer.net

hear ye. new blog about to go up, too...

fer now: me & michael pope iz be looking for a PRO-TOOLS EXPERT in NYC to help us clean up the sound for the lexington high school footage.

from pope:
the Technical Outline - Pro Tools Session of a 2 hour and 20 minute play, 2 nights edited into a single performance, 11 tracks of audio (4 body mics, 1 stage Left mic, 1 stage Right mic, 3 Floor mics, 2 Audience mics).Looking for: sync to picture, levels mix, buzz removal, track compression, overall mastering/compression, mix down to 2 track for import to Final Cut Pro.

want to help? e-mail audio@mediavoxnyc.com with resume and as much detail as you can furnish to give pope an idea of your skill level.

please, please only answer if you have pro-tools experience. this is primarily a volunteer effort. michael pope will probably buy you coffee or beer.

NYC area is pretty essential, so you can work side by side. if you're further afield but REALLY GOOD, he might hit you up.

what it is, y'all

x
AFP

so, i said it and i meant it.....we're going to get together on the beach AGAIN. spread the word:

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1st at 4 pm

a few blocks down this time....end of 21st street, hermosa beach, California.
here is a faithful and trustyworthy google map for you to get directions...

this time i pretty much SWEAR my cousin robert (who's now 82) is finally going to bust out his ukulele. he's a MASTER. i even taught him a radiohead song and we might do a duet. i'm also working on a sinead o'conner cover. and am taking requests on twitter. i have one day to learn.

the deal: try to come by 4. i think i'll play, read stories from the new book and hang until around 5 pm and then we'll do another huge-ass group photoshoot with the super-talented lindsey byrnes (the same photographer from last week). the LA times is apparently coming to cover the event, because they are amazed by the power of AFP, twitter and music. so look good, fellow geeks.

....info....
-bring fruit, cake, shareable foods, water, blankets for the gathering
and
-dress in aristocratic/tacky prom/formal attire that you are not afraid to destroy in salt-water for the shoot.
and
-bring flowers, bring balloons. bring weird shit. whatever you bring we'll use in the shoot. lindsey plans to shoot us IN THE WATER. prepare thyself.

i'll also be signing stuff if you want things to get signed, just bring...and bring pens.

here's a perfect group photo from last tuesday, via lindsey:

come come come come come!!


currently loving life,
xxxx
AFP

i am going to write the worlds fastest blog while sitting in this coffee shop in ojai.
i have had the best few days of my life. you know this whole Time Off thing....there's something to it.i'm also a huge fan of the Being In Love thing. neil and i are definitely starting to irritate people on twitter with our disgustingly cute PDA (or...virtual....VDA)?which is a sign to me that the relationship is heading in the right direction, the same way i know if it's a good record if the critics are slamming it hard.the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
but as much as i would love to lay my insides bare and talk about how happy and fuzzy i feel inside, it will wait until a later date because right now i want to catch up on the beach gathering, the show at the troubadour, and all the other awesome things that have happened in the last few days....shit man, shit's going faaaast.

................

in good business news: the twitter blog i wrote got picked up by tons of tech and music websites and is making the rounds. it even got translated into german, fuer alle die deutsch-sprechnden leute: http://www.gulli.com/news/amanda-palmer-19-000-us-dollar-2009-06-25/ and there's an argument going on over at tech-dirt about whether i even have any musical talent, please feel free to go defend me: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090623/2337095343.shtml#comments

i'm really glad i took the time to write it and it's inspiring me to spend a great amount of care and time on my Huge State Of The Music Industry And How Everything Is Going To Have To Change blog that i keep promising. remember that courtney love email that made the rounds about 10 years ago?...where she laid bare all all of her bank statements and showed exactly how it was possible to sell hundreds of thousands of records and wind up broke? it's going to be like that, updated for the future, and including what fans can do to support the artists who are currently drowning in the possibilites of the future (the upshoot: there's hope and we're far more empowered than poor courtney love and her fans were). here's a picture of courtney love, being almost-naked, because, as we know, almost-naked is awesome.

..................

speaking of almost-naked, the NINJA-BEACH gathering was such a massive success that i think i'm going to do an encore.
actually, i should be honest. the reason i want to do it again is because i want more ponies and chocolate to take back to boston.no, seriously. the reason i want to do it again is because the reason i did it in the first place (to get my 82-year old cousin robert to play ukulele on the beach with me) didn't pan out.robert kept saying he WOULDN'T DO IT even though he SLAYS at ukulele and i kept bugging him and he was like NO NO NO NO to the point where i BELIEVED him. little did i know he was totally lying and actually showed up at the beach WITH his ukulele and he never played. his wife, my other cousin katherine who's like an aunt to me, told me to NEVER believe when he says he's NOT going to play the ukulele. anyway....we're going to do a beach redux with more ukulele, more ponies, more chocolate and more people.lindsey, the awesome chick who did our huge group photoshoot, is going to come back and i think we're going to try a huge group shot IN THE WATER this time.
bring prom dresses and tuxes, or at least fancy clothes and suits that you don't mind getting salty.i'm shooting for wednesday around 4-6 pm, might have to be tuesday though. follow the twitter feed if you want to get the update, i'll also blog it.
here are some shots from last tuesdays gathering. i bought 5 chinese dresses that morning at a thrift shop and gave them away to the 5 hot girls who wore them for the group photoshoot, but i also took donations in my ukulele case and so i came out ahead.

(burns!: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mykalburns/sets/72157620362601437/)

here's another great flickr link.....HUGE props to this guy michael, who came FULLY DRESSED AS A NINJA:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/miss-lujansky/sets/72157620433100798/

go look, some of the photos there are just amazing and it gives you a great sense of the joyousness of the day....

...............................................................................................

i coined a new term: TWITCHHIKING.
that's when you twitter to save cab fare.
i wound up getting a ride from @devilsnight aka morgan night, a filmmaker who was kind enough to transport me & sarah's keyboard (yes, the sarah who i found on twitter and who loaned me her axe) from hermosa beach to hollywood.
morgan had the new iPhone that takes video and we experimented with trying to instantly upload a clip from his car of our twitchhiking expereience (upshoot: very positive, no rape, no murder, all love): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRinrvoVKOE&fmt=18

...........................................................

the show at the troubadour was sold out and brilliant. it felt like a wonderful living room.....

there was a wonderful, heavy energy in the room because of all the Dead that day.
i found out michael jackson died about 30 minutes before i left our hotel room for soundcheck, while i was practicing.

michael jackson was a giant in my life, "thriller" was one of my first tapes. he was one third of my young holy trinity (in my mind, the rock star triumverate was prince, madonna and michael jackson). watching his life devolve was hard for me. it's frustrating to think that teenagers now can't understand how powerful he was in 1985, how perfect and beautiful he seemed...and full of life and sex and energy and jesus christ TALENT...and the fact that he was BLACK and that EVERYBODY liked him...that he crossed all the borders, it was just huge back then. he changed the world of music. i wore one sparkly glove for most of second grade...it was like that.

but as bob lefsetz put it...he missed his childhood and now he’s gonna miss his old age. how fucked up is that?

anyway, i can't wax too long about micahel jackson since this is supposed to be the world's fastest blog. i wanted to do something in homage and so i quickly donwloaded the lyrics to "billie jean", scrawled them on a piece of paper and whipped up a cover for the show....a very spare cover with lots of mistakes, but i tried:


(click here to watch it in HD)

in a wildly poetic strike of fate, one of my OTHER childhood heros came out to the show...weird al yankovic. we'd been emailing and following each other on twitter since ben folds e-introdcued us a while ago (they're buddies) and i was so so happy to finally meet him and his wonderful wife. he's an incredible guy. i feel so grateful to be able to meet all these people who had such a profound influence on me as a kid. so grateful and so lucky.
here we are, backstage at the troubadour, looking for UFOs:
http://twitpic.com/8mmwl

so.........thank you al, who's alive, thank you michael, who's dead, and thank you world, which casts no judgment either way.

......................................................................

the other highlight of the show was covering "complicated" by avril lavigne with my opener, jenny owen youngs, but i'm not going to get caught in the youtube web search of doom right now. i'll find it later. it was awesome, avril is awesome, jenny is awesome, & i bet it's out there somewhere.
.....................................................................

after the show, neil and i signed for a while and then crashed out like two dead people.

then we woke up and got in our awesome silver convertible mustang (i shit you not: neil's idea). neil took this of me in an antique shop in burbank.....this is a PLAYER TOY PIANO, amazing, but sadly it was broken. will have to hunt one down on ebay.

after, we drove to harlan ellison's house. we spent the afternoon with him, his wonderful wife susan (who's 25 years younger than harlan, and they've been together for 25 years, giving my age gap with neil some welcome perspective).

mr. harlan ellison is now 75 is if you don't know him he's a prolific sci-fi and beyond writer ... it's impossible to list the extent of his works here, so go look at his wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison.

he's a wanky old bastard in the best way. listening to him yelling into the phone "BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T SENT ME THE GODDAMN DRAFT YOU COCKSUCKING PIECE OF DONKEY DUNG" at his agent was the highlight of my day. he's a one-man show of the highest caliber: the other highlight of my day was when he took me out into the street and told me the story of how he went over the a car full of four little old jewish ladies who had stopped their drive to admire his cool-looking house. he told the lady in the passenger seat that it was a half-way house for lepers. the old lady said "here? in the hills of los angeles around all these rich houses?" "sure" said harlan "why shouldn't they have this fine quality of life, on their way to the leper colony in south carolina?" "i suppose" said the woman "...do you work here?" and that was when harlan said: "oh no, my dear, i'm one of the half-way residents..." and he reached out to grope her and the car screeched away at full throttle and he laughed them all the way down the hill. he's a class fucking act. he also told the story of how he sued the production company that made "the terminator" for lifting the idea straight from writing he did for the tv show, "the outer limits". it was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money but they damn well gave him the acknowledgement he deserved at the end of the film. go harlan!

fast-blogging cannot do justice to the actual house (that he's dubbed "ellison wonderland")....but god GOOD i can try....

imagine a house that came out of the dream-mind of god on windowpane acid throwing a gala dinner party for all the dead brilliant artists in the world and you only START to get an idea of this joint.
set in the side of the hills of somewhere remote in los angeles...27 rooms, 11 of them only accessible by secret entrance. not a single inch of space on wall or ceiling left uncovered by kaleidescopic mind-blowing art or curious and story-laden artifacts...entire gaudi-esque walls covered with chess boards that spiralled into carved chairs for the players to face each other, exploding colors and old movie posters and stacks upon stacks of glass that reflected towering collections of books, ceilings molded out of psycho-trip, heavily blissed-out carved wooden doors with trick handles, hidden shelves and feet-deep table tricks at every turn that went deeper and deeper into spiraling shag-carpet paths that led you into entirely new tiny-city worlds after you thought you'd come to the end of earth 5 rooms ago....i wish i didn't have to get up in ten minutes because i could go on about this house for hours. but HOLY shit. it makes MY uber-trippy house look like an ikea showroom.

apparently i had met harlan on a plane when i was 3, by accident, when my mom sat next to him. she had once told me the story that she met a famous writer and didn't know who he was, and he was affronted. and apparently she kicked his ass at gin rummy. harlan argued the veracity of my mothers story. i challenged him. he won five games out of five, fair and square. cocksucker.

proof of ass-kicking, photo by neil:http://twitpic.com/8i8rn

............................................................................................

last installment of world's quickest blog (neil is now staring at me and reminding me that the world's quickest blog has taken almost an hour, but he's gotten lots of writing done so he's not too grumpy).....
the party we had on friday night at my friend jaron's house (some of you will remember jaron as my sound guy and tour manager, often known as "god"). the idea was to get all of my LA friends and all of neil's LA friends together in one place and drink mojitos. SUCCESS for sure.
best thing would be to go back and look at my twitter feed, we took pictures all night, but here are some highlights.....
the TWITPLATE (everyone who had a twitter at the party contributed):

and my favorite party pic....
this is (from left to right) gerard way (from my chemical romance), happily groping his wife lyn-z (of mindless self indulgence), jill tracy (a great LA cabaret singer), mr. neil gaiman, AFP and david j (from bauhaus).

http://twitpic.com/8jskn (photo by the amazing @bethofalltrades, who flew out to LA just for me, the show and the party....)

AFP & lyn-z......

...who looks DAMN fucking hot for having a baby one month ago....many congrats to her and gerard.

a few more....

this is brady, pixie's BF. upon his arrival neil apparently ran around to verify his identity to make sure he wasn't a party crasher. pixie thought that maybe neil was just scared of clowns.

brady had just come from performing in Cirque Berzerk....and you should go check out their show if you're in LA, i was very sad i couldn't make it...

and possibly my favorite picture of me and mr. man ever taken....

.....thank you @pixievision.

my fastest blog ever has taken over an hour and i'm full of shit, but i got everything in i wanted to.
we're heading over to roger avary's house for breakfast (we had dinner there last night), where there are fresh eggs laid by a chicken named afro-peeper. incredible. then out to my family's for dinner and sad goodbyes tomorrow, we won't see each other until the west coast later this month.

mad love.
AFP.

p.s. jazmin, whoever you are, you're amazing. i just found this on flickr......

Cross-posted here on amandapalmer.net

From: Amanda Palmer
Subject: twitter power, or "how an indie musician can make $19,000 in 10 hours using twitter"

this story has just been blowing people's minds so i figures i should write it down.

1. FRIDAY NIGHT LOSERS T-SHIRT, $11,000

about a month ago, i was at home on a friday night (loser that i often am when i'm not touring, i almost never go out) and was, of course, on my mac, shifting between emails, links and occasionally doing some dishes and packing for a trip the next day. just a usual friday-night-rock-star-multi-tasking extravaganza.

i twitter whenever i'm online, i love the way it gives me a direct line of communication with my fans and friends.

i had already seen the power of twitter while touring...using twitter i'd gathered crowds of sometimes 200 fans with a DAY'S notice to come out and meet me in public spaces (parks, mostly) where i would play ukulele, sign, hug, take pictures, eat cake, and generally hang out and connect. this was especially helpful in the cities where we'd been unable to book all-ages gigs and there were crushed teenagers who were really grateful to have a shot at connecting with me & the community of amanda/dolls fans.

i'd also been using twitter to organize ACTUAL last-minute gigs...i twittered a secret gig in LA one morning and about 350 folks showed up 5 hours later at a warehouse space....i played piano, filmed by current.tv, and then (different camera crew) did an interview with afterellen.com.
the important thing to undertsand here is that the fans were never part of the plan..,i basically just INVITED my fans to a press day, the press didnt' plan it...i did.
i was going to be playing in an empty room and doing q&a with afterellen on a coach with only the camera watching.
it was like....why not tell people and do this in a warehouse instead of a hotel lobby or a blank studio? so i did.

it cost me almost nothing. the fans were psyched.

but back to the bigger, cooler story....

so there i am, alone on friday night and i make a joke on twitter (which goes out to whichever of my 30,000 followers are online):

"i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER, motherfucker."
9:15 PM May 15th from web

one thing led to another, and the next thing you know there were thousands of us and we'd become the #1 topic trend on twitter.
zoe keating described it as a "virtual flash mob".

the way twitter works (if you don't have it) is that certain topics can include a hashtag (#) and if a gazillion people start making posts that include that hashtag, the topic will zoom up the charts of what people are currently discussing. it's a cool feature.

so anyway, there we were, virtually hanging out on twitter on a friday night. very pleased with ourselves for being such a large group, and cracking jokes.

how do you "hang out" on the internet? well, we collectively came up with a list of things that the government should do for us (free government-issued sweatpants, pizza and ponies, no tax on coffee), AND created a t-shirt.
thank god my web guy sean was awake and being a loser with me on friday night because he throw up the webpage WHILE we were having our twitter party and people started ordering the shirts - that i designed in SHARPIE in realtime) and a slogan that someone suggested: "DON'T STAND UP FOR WHAT'S RIGHT, STAY IN FOR WHAT'S WRONG". neil gaiman and wil wheaton joined our party. the fdnas felt super-special.

by the end of the night, we'd sold 200 shirts off the quickie site (paypal only) that sean had set up.
i blogged the whole story the next day and in total, in the matter of a few days, we sold over 400 shirts, for $25/ea.

we ended up grossing OVER $11,000 on the shirts.
my assistant beth had the shirts printed up ASAP and mailed them from her apartment.

total made on twitter in two hours = $11,000.
total made from my huge-ass ben-folds produced-major-label solo album this year = $0

2. WEBCAST AUCTION, $6000

a few nights after that, i blogged and twittered, announcing a "webcast auction" from my apartment.
it went from 6 pm - 9 pm, my assitant beth sat at my side and kept her eyes on incoming bids and twitter feed.
while we hocked weird goods, i sang songs and answered questions from fans. we wore kimonos and drank wine. it was a blast.

people on twitter who were tuned in re-tweeted to other fans. the word spread that it was a fun place to be and watch.
we had, at peak, about 2000 people watching the webcast.

at the suggestion of a fan early in the webcastm anyone could, on demand, send us $20 via paypal and we would chew,
sign and mail them a postcard. we sold about 70, and we read all those names at the end of the webcast and thanked those
people for supporting us. here's how the sales broke down:

all the items were signed by moi and hand-packed by beth and kayla.
the items and highest bidders were as follows:
hilary, ukulele used on the european tour: $640
jake, "guitar hero" plastic guitar controller used in album promo shoot: $250
lary b, copy neo2 magazine, plus two post-war trade slap-bracelets & a crime-photo set: $230
devi, glass dildo, with subtley-sordid backstory: $560
liz b., "hipsters ruin everything" t-shirt, made by blake (get your very own here!!!!): $155.55
shannon m., my bill bryson book, a short history of neary everything: $280
nikki, huge metal "the establishment" sign, used at rothbury festival for the circus tent i curated: $450
j.r., purple velvet "A" dress used in the dresden dolls coin-operated boy video shoot: $400
jessie & alan: who killed amanda palmer vinyl: $100
nikki: wine bottle, auctioned BY REQUEST!!! $320
shannon w., torn-to-shit vintage stockings used in the who killed amanda palmer/ michael pope video series: $200
jodi,
school-note-book break-up letter, written to amanda from jonas woolverton in 7th grade (i still haven't emailed him about that....): $250
daryl, ANOTHER wine bottle, by request, that we had LYING AROUND: $320

and..............

reto emailed, having barely missed the wine bottle, and asked us to send him "something funny" for $129.99. we sent a heath ledger statuette.

total made on twitter in 3 hours, including the postcards, was over $6000.
again, total made on my major-label solo album this year: $0

3. TWITTER DONATION-ONLY GIG, $1800
a few days later, i twittered a guest-list only event in a recording studio in boston, to take place a week later.
the gig lasted about 5 hours, all told, with soundcheck and signing. i took mostly requests and we had a grand old time.
first come, first served. the first 200 people to ask got in, for free. i asked for donations and made about $2200 in cash.
i gave $400 back to the studio for the space and the help. we sold some weird merch. i think we should call it an even 2k.

total made at last-minute secret twitter gig, in about 5 hours = $2000
major-label record blah blah blah = $0

.....and for fun, and to thank my fans for being awesome, i've been doing some twitter perfomance art, including answering their questions by magic-markering my body until it's covered, and displaying time-lapse make-up application advice....but that's another story.

TOTAL MADE THIS MONTH USING TWITTER = $19,000
TOTAL MADE FROM 30,000 RECORD SALES = ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

turn on, tune in, get dropped!!!!!

love,
amanda fucking palmer
http://www.amandapalmer.net
http://www.dresdendolls.com


p.s.
if you want to read the full blogs and see the pictures from the #LOFNOTC events, i blogged here:
the friday night that started it all:
http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/111667948/twitter-the-beautiful-losers-lofnotc
the webcast and magic-marker/make-up mayhem:
http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/127401792/wasnt-this-supposed-to-be-my-fucking-week-off

................................................................................
and.....and i twittered looking for a keyboard when i landed in LA, since i decided i needed to practice, and a few hours later....voila. this awesome and lovely girl sarah showed up with one in her trunk. i love my fucking life....

(here's sarah in my cousin's house, delivering the goods...)




god bless her.i practiced this morning for an hour because i felt to guilty not to.
i'm so excited for the show thursday, very excited to see jenny owen youngs after almost a year of not seeing her...and very excited to see my wonderful neil tomorrow, because i miss him when he's not around.

going to get ready for beach gig.

must find sunblock.
loveAFP

coffee bean and tea leaf, stealing internet, hermosa beach, CA.

Cross-posted here on amandapalmer.net

eeer, yes. but who gives a fuck.

oh, oh, oh, it has been an exciting week of non-stop drama and fun.

i have learned this about myself: i do indeed abhor a vacuum.

my idea of time off is calling up random friends and running around in parks and drawing on each other and videotaping that and calling it art.

but hell. i remember two years ago when i was supposed to take a week off in bordeaux. i booked a place to stay with no internet.

i brought books and DVDs and blank paper and a rented a piano and was all set in my little villa to create and consume art.

i went totally crazy after two days of reading and drinking wine and eating chevre salads and riding my bike around.

i made friends with the guy at the bar down the street, booked a show for the upcoming friday, and spent the remainder of my week off promoting the show and practicing for it.

poor rock star, very confused without purpose, she is.

so many wonderful things have happened this past week....and many perilous things. i will tell.

but first off, some bidness:

.....................................................

TICKETS FOR BOTH THE UK SHOWS (london! edinburgh!) ARE ON SALE!!!!

i'm going to be traveling jack-kerouac-style through europe with neil this summer and only playing 2-3 shows (possibly adding one in germany, stayed tuned)

and that's it. it's very possible that in edinburgh i'll be twittering last minute gigs and gathering, so once again (broken record: make sure you're following me and signed up for the e-mail list)

August 22nd in EDINBURGH!!!!
at the HMV Picture House, with The Indelicates (who are awesome). buy tickets HERE.

it's prettttty:

September 12th in LONDON!!!!
at union chapel, with Polly Scattergood (who is also amazing). buy tickets HERE.

it's VERY VERY VERY pretty:

please, please, please, please for the love of god.....
buy tickets in advance so that you are not sad when show day comes and they are gone.
esp. london, the venue is quite small (only fits 800).

other upcoming stuffs:

i'm playing on JULY 3rd with jason and a bunch of our freinds for his special 11th year anniversary.

tickets are ALMOST gone, but give it a shot: advance tickets

.....

the san diego show with Vermillion Lies isn't sold out yet (i don't think)....

and it's for a great cause: it's benefitting the comic book legal defense fund.

get tickets HERE.

i'll have copies of the book at the show. i will be signing SOMEWHERE at comic con but not sure where yet....

if you haven't pre-ordered it yet and want a copy, some are still available HERE. you should get it, it's pretty:

speaking of which....

the NEIL GAIMAN/WhoKilledAmandaPalmer BOOKS are - LITERALLY - on their way to american on a slow boat from china. hot. i just got a brand new package of apology/photo cards for those who got ass-fucked in the pre-order and received xerox copies. we are working on getting them on their way to you. i hope and pray that we're almost out of the book woods.

................................

life?

underneath it all, the stability of being in love (and not hiding it from the world anymore) has anchored me in a way i've never felt before.

i've been in love a few times, but this one feels different, in a gross, delicious, very adult sort of way....it feels stabler. done-er. invitabler.

time will tell. it's very nice to see all the well-wishing for me and neil coming in from the world of the internet and in person at my show last week.

it's also sort of convenient (i now realize) to have a boyfriend who you don't really need to introduce to lots of people, since lots of people already know him.

for the people who don't know him, i get to say "he's a writer" and watch people's sympathetic reactions.

we had dinner with some old friends of mine in new york. they didn't know who neil was (at all, he was just getting dragged along as the amanda-boyfriend) and they smiled and nodded throughout our whole meal tolerantly as he explained that he actually was able to make a decent living writing books and touring around reading from them out loud in front of groups of strangers.

what are you supposed to say in moments like that? ("jane, meet me me in the bathroom so i can give you the real low-down on this guy. i swear he's not lying.")

though neil is deft, and wise. he, graceful man, can work "i am on the new york times bestseller list, and therefore real" casually into dinner conversation without sounding at all like a wanker.

by the time dinner was over, they'd obviously decided i wasn't dating a jobless homeless man with dreams of grandeur.

...............................

two friday nights ago i was home alone trying to catch up on work and went on twitter to find that i'd forgotten that there were still #LOFNOTC (my trusty club of Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers) hold-outs waiting for the party to start again.

i was certainly very exciting about not working and fucking off instead.
and perhaps starting another internet party...but i didn't want to repeat myself.

so i decided to try to communicate my thoughts through body-markering:


this, however, devolved into a Q&A session conducted via body-marker and twitter that became quite fun......

@nitonale twitpics:


AFP responds....


@alykathleen twitpics:

AFP responds....


@kaylaconspiracy twitpics:


AFP responds....

.....and by the end of the night things had gotten quite out of control....

if you want to see the full-on naked one of the finished product, go HERE. i dare you. just barely work safe. depends where you work.

it was quite popular on the internetz: http://twitpic.com/79p29

ALL HAIL #LOFNOTC!

by the by, the SHIRTS that were developed in the original #LOFNOTC mayhem arrived and look awesome.

they're all sold out, but the 400+ people who bought them will now always feel special:

the world is just getting stranger and stranger.

and better.

a few nights later i played the secret little show at my friend owen's brand new recording studio (http://www.thebridgesoundstage.com). for those old school boston folks here, this is the old fort apache (one of them, it moved a few times).

it was stiflingly hot in there, but a fantastic time was had by all.....the openers (walter sickert and the army of broken toys) entertained with gusto and a little 4-year old girl helped me decorate my keyboard and also loaned her interpretive dance/ninja skills to the first few songs. in the photo below, she is simply hiding - cleverly - behind the piano seat....

(photo: justin moore)

i played mostly just requests and a few new songs - setlist was:
lua (bright eyes cover)
dear old house
ampersand
trout heart replica
oasis
australia
guitar hero
strength through music
i goooogle you
the bed song (a new one, i asked it not be video'd)
girl anachronism (thanks to theshadowbox.net for always providing me my setlists, which i never keep fucking track of, i love you guys)

i gave away about 200 tickets, totally for free, via twitter. there was no other way to obtain them.

we could have technically charged for the show, through paypal or something, but i wanted to do a little experiment and see what would happen if we just passed the hat.

people generally donated about $10, some gave more, some not at all.

i didn't give my impassioned "this is your one and only chance this year to directly pay my rent" speech, which might have made a difference.

this stuff just fascinates me.

i truly believe that we're heading into a musical economy that will rely on more of this kind of model: fans being directly called upon to support their artists.

fanagement.

more on this later in the Epic Music Business blog i keep promising.

meanwhile, the gears of the musica business tuirned freaky as i deciced to use my web powers for good?/evil? and hold a webcast auction, with wine, and beth, and beth's girlfriend kayla, in my kitchen.

we had NO FUCKING idea if or how this would really work but basically we used beth's computer to take bids over gmail and then had people pay using paypal immediately.

everybody was honest and after a few glitchy moment with the stream at the beginning, it was one of the most surreal and satisfying experiences of my life.

3.5 hours of complete clown-gasm. we ended up auctioning items by request, like my wineglass and the bottle we emptied, and a song request (won by marci, for $500)....which i played in my bedroom, pretty nakedly (it was hot!!!) on my piano...quite tired/drunkenly, but pretty well i gotta say for a girl who didn't know she was going to wake up in staggering pain the next day with a kidney infection - note, ladies: always pee after sex.

so....we did it like this:
i would introduce an item, give the backstory, display/model/chew on it, and set a starting bid. then beth would update the viewers about how the auction was going while i sang ukulele songs and answered random questions via twitter.
about 2000 people tuned in.

all the items were signed by moi and hand-packed by beth and kayla.
the items and highest bidders were as follows:
hilary, ukulele used on the european tour: $640
jake, "guitar hero" plastic guitar controller used in album promo shoot: $250
lary b, copy neo2 magazine, plus two post-war trade slap-bracelets & a crime-photo set: $230
devi, glass dildo, with subtley-sordid backstory: $560
liz b., "hipsters ruin everything" t-shirt, made by blake (get your very own here!!!!): $155.55
shannon m., my bill bryson book, a short history of neary everything: $280
nikki, huge metal "the establishment" sign, used at rothbury for the circus tent: $450
j.r., purple velvet "A" dress used in the coin-operated boy video shoot: $400
jessie & alan: who killed amanda palmer vinyl: $100
nikki: ninja wine bottle $320
shannon w., torn-to-shit vintage stockings used in the who killed amanda palmer pope video series: $200
jodi, school-note-book break-up letter, written to amanda from jonas woolverton in 7th grade (i still haven't emailed him about that....): $250
daryl, THE wine bottle: $320

and..............

reto emailed, having barely missed the wine bottle, and asked us to send him "something funny" for $129.99. we sent a heath ledger statuette.

here are some screen-shots:

OM NOM NOMming the guitar hero controller....

OM NOM NOMming the bill bryson book....

OM NOM NOMming (ok, deep-throating) the glass dildo...

showing off my gams with the torn-to-shit-stockings....

reading the very very very sad 7th-grade break-up letter.

(thanks to angryinch on theshadowbox.net for throwing these up)

we also sent signed postcards, which we chewed and planted lipstick kisses on, and mailed, for $20 a pop. i finally have my rent paid off. i was wicked behind.

then i spent all of this past week catching up with old friends and taking care of business. going to yoga. cleaning house. tidying up the ins and outs and ups and downs of my life.

and dealing with a very unpleasant urinary tract infection that turned into a kidney infection (i keep telling you, you have NO idea what you're missing on the hourly twitter updates).

those pills that turn your pee orange...they're fascinating. i was actually be glad to be put on the antibiotics because it gave me a 100% foolproof excuse not to drink at night and therefore spend until 2 am frenetically emailing.

does this make me

a) an alcoholic?
b) a workaholic?
or
c) an undisciplined idiot?

there are viable arguments to be made for all these things.

another friday night rolled along and i was pretty much OVER the #LOFNOTC thing (#LOFNOTC was like SO two weeks ago) but i wound up sitting upstairs with pope and lee, just chattering and doing some work and thinking about going to bed and some poor girl twittered (jokingly, possibly, but god it seemed earnest) that she had put her make-up on JUST for #LOFNOTC time.

this got me thinking.

so i suggested we do as losers do....and put on make-up for no reason. and then sit around being lovely. and lonely. on our computers. and take pictures.

got some lovely pictures in from the twitterverse:
@jinx81558

and i gave a time-lapse, step-by-step tutorial of fucked-up-amanda makeup (which you can see if you just go to my twitpic site, there's too many to post here)....

here's a couple leeetle ones:

and VOILA!!!!

we all toasted and went to bed (at least i did. well, sort of).

i think the internet and us undisciplined exhibitionist workaholics were simply made for each other.

i'm heading out to LA tomorrow, to hang with my family, spend time with neil, play the troubadour (sold out!) and i do plan to do another secret show, this time open to all and on the beach (probably near hermosa).
i will twitter it.

bring ukuleles, and marshmallows. and love.

and if you want things SIGNED, i probably won't be signing after the troubadour show (for good reasons, i promise), so bring stuff to the beach. then you can get things signed AND go swimming and get all salty. which is always good.

see you out there

and i love you,

Afp

p.s. i made a ridiculous video today with cassandra long and her sister crane...to regina spektor's new song "eet", but will have to blog about that later because i need to pack and collapse.

hola everybody!

just a quick note to inform y'all that i'm going to be doing an experimental webcast tomorrow night (monday) at 6 PM EST, including a LIVE auction of Weird Shit From My Apartment.

YES, that's right. as i clean out my life here on this rare island of off time, i've been finding some Freaky Shit. AND i need rent money. SO...tour ukuleles, video costumes & props, other bizarre items AND a copy of the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book (i'm hocking my proof copy) will all be on the block and yours truly and beth will be breaking out the wine and entertaining ourselves (and hopefully you, and probably beth's girlfriend) for about an hour or two in our revealing kimonos. if this and my cambridge rent party go well, i won't have to tour for at least another month....off time is not financially romantic.

make sure your computer is ready for a workout, because you'll need two windows open to bid/watch.

bids will be taken in the chat window of the broadcast!

webcast info:

partyontheinternet.com

Monday, June 15th, 6 pm (to around 8 pm) EST.

xxxxx

AFP