The Good, The Bad, and The Awkward
Friday, April 30: 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm in Room 26-100

With Mike Bender (Awkward Family Photos), Jonathan Standefer (Lamebook), Helen Killer (Regretsy), Douglas Chernack (Awkward Family Photos), Brad O'Farrell (Play 'em off Keyboard Cat).
Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom) [Moderator]

While we didn't bring Goatse (sorry/you're welcome about that), ROFLCon would be remiss to not spend a moment talking about the awkward on the web. Bringing together some of the folks that have done the most to commentate and celebrate that unique kind of fail on the web in the recent year, this panel examines the role that awkward things play on the web culture.

monochrom: let's network it out
Saturday, May 1: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm in Room 56-180

monochrom is a worldwide operating collective dealing with technology, art, philosophy, and crap. Chances are high you've seen one of their projects on the net and didn't even know they created it. Among their projects, monochrom has released a leftist retro-gaming project, eaten sausages made from their own blood, invented Massive Multiplayer Thumb-Wrestling, buried people alive, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with the Thomann Project. Johannes Grenzfurthner will give a brief introduction in the world of monochrom, context hacking and the powerless powers of guerrilla communication.

Our favorite Austrians are back in the USSA to celebrate the release of their newest phonebook sized collection of random text. Johannes is here in LA and along with contributors such as Jason Brown, John Wilcock and me, will be doing readings from the book on Friday night at Machine Project.

There is sure to be talk of assorted deities and assorted diets, assorted sexual practices and assorted practical sexutices. Don't know what a sexutices is? You'll just have to come and find out. There will also be all sorts of riveting international politics and possibly something about rivets.

More info can be found here. Friday April 16, 2010, 8PM – 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles

"A good way to describe John Wilcock is to say that he is a talented bohemian counter-culture journalist who once played a major role in the emergence of America's underground press. Born 1927 in Sheffield, England, he left school aged 16 to work on various newspapers in England, and on Toronto periodicals before moving to New York City. There in 1955 he became one of the five founders of the Village Voice in which he and co-founder Norman Mailer wrote weekly columns. Wilcock called his column "The Village Square", an intended pun. He and young Mailer were not quite friends, although Wilcock was at times annoyed, but always amused, by Mailer's monstrous ego." (From the preface of Manhattan Memories, by Martin Gardner)

The phatzine monochrom #26-34 (Goat of 1k Young) is an impossibility in an impossible universe -- an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. 500 pages (60 ounces) of outrageous printed bestiality.

In March our prolific friends at monochrom released their latest book "monochrom #26-34, Ye Olde Self-Referentiality". They are currently doing a book release tour with upcoming stops in Los Angeles on April 16th at Machine Project, San Francisco on April 21st at Noisebridge, New York City on April 27th at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe and in Munich on July 3rd at Department of Volxvergnuegen.