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Autumn Speakeasy


Sunday, October 25th, 2009
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Mt. Hollywood Underground
4607 Prospect Avenue, Los Feliz
Admission: $15.00






Bookmark artist: Sarah Heller



Surrender to an autumnal evening Sunday, October 25, when LA MetroBlogger and Creepy LA creator David Markland takes the helm to create our first ever haunted Speakeasy. Enjoy live ghost stories from Will Campbell, Michael Imlay, Joe Oesterle and our own esteemed audience*. Play Jamie Antonisse’s new interactive video game, Spectre, and take home an original, commemorative artwork by artist and architect Sarah Heller, AIA. Live music from Odious Ari & the Syphilitic Syncopaths, sweets, savories, sumptuous coffee from Cafecito Orgánico and stimulating conversation await you!

Meanwhile, trick or treat yourself to the Spectre Trailer.


Password: “I fear to remember, but I dare not forget.”

See you there, if you dare…

*Should you have a paranormal tale you’d like to tell, pitch it to us that night. David will choose three lucky attendees to share their stories.

 

Why socialize on a Sunday? Because mingling is good for your mental health.™

 


Who’s Who

Jamie Antonisse/Spectre On a quiet winter night, Joseph Wheeler stares up into the snow and tries to recall the nine moments that shaped his 73 years of life. Travel through Joseph Wheeler's memory and relive those nine moments, choosing how his life will be remembered. Spectre is a recombinant narrative platformer, a game that tells the story of an individual's life. The landscape before you is not a physical world, but 73 years' worth of Joseph's memory: moments of joy and fear, light and darkness. As you navigate through his specific recollections, similarly themed events will glow bright. If you succeed in these moments of play and follow a glowing path, you will find a theme uniting his experience, and uncover a little more of his fading memory. If not, your nightly story will end in confusion.

Will Campbell Lifelong Angeleno and lover of all things Halloween no matter how old he gets, Will has two favorites from all the October 31s he's enjoyed. Make that three: 1) Winning a costume contest at Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills as the Jolly Green Giant back in 1970-something (he still has the trophy!); 2) Trick-or-treating in Hancock Park and having Mayor Tom Bradley open the Mayor's Mansion door bearing a huge bowl of delicious candies; 3) Renting the billowing cloak worn by Liam Neeson in "Dark Man" and then almost killing himself with it when it got caught up in the chain of the motorcycle he was riding like a phantom from one party to another. Fortunately only it was destroyed (along with his deposit). His bloggings can be found at Wildbell.com and LA Metblogs.

Sarah Heller, AIA, is a Kentucky-born artist/California-licensed architect living in West Los Angeles. To her, architecture and painting are synonymous. While practicing architecture as a career in L.A. for the past nine years, she has always painted privately. The waste of construction sites and her walks to work in West L.A. produce an endless supply of found objects that will inevitably end up in her art. She will often come home from a job site with paint samples, materials, or any discarded object that she finds beautiful. Heller's artistic focus is using the principles of proportion, composition, and color in combination with found objects to create a newfound aesthetic appreciation for their proportions and beauty, as well as an awareness of their disposability within American culture. While living in Los Angeles, nature has become what is outside the door- the concrete streets and alleyways, littered with discarded objects, after usefulness or beauty has faded in the eye of its beholder. This includes not only scraps of papers and textiles, but metals, wood, and ceramics, tossed away and left to disappear beneath or beside the unseeing footsteps of pedestrians.

Michael Imlay is an L.A.-based freelance writer fascinated by local history and legend. For nearly a decade he has made a hobby of researching our region's most historic ghostlore, and is currently completing a book about his personal favorite, the infamous Feliz Curse. When not prowling forgotten haunts, mission archives and library basements, he authors the Dateline>City of Angels weblog at mimlay.com/blog1.

David Markland started CreepyLA.com in 2007 as an excuse to discover and explore Halloween events other weird and paranormal related news and places around Los Angeles. He's also a frequent contributor, and previous "city captain," for the Los Angeles Metblogs, and occasionally consults for theatres, non-profits, and marketing firms on social media and citizen journalism, and freelances in event and entertainment production.

Odious Ari & the Syphilitic Syncopaths are Ari DeSano (banjo/vocals), Clint Heidorn (baritone), Andrea Baker (violin), Rod Cumming (drums), Leah Harmon (accordion), Lisa Dee (percussion/vocals), and Andrew Duncan (trumpet). Influenced by dirty, down-trodden, Depression-era jazz, Ari writes songs about last century's Depression, the current Depression, her own depression, and other dark subjects. Oh no! But the tunes are presented in an upbeat, melodic package making it all easier to swallow! Depression never tasted so yummy! http://www.myspace.com/odiousari

Joe Oesterle is an award winning writer and illustrator, but what he often fails to mention is that many of those awards were won on a New Jersey boardwalk, shooting a water pistol into the mouth of a plastic clown in an effort to be the first to pop the balloon. Joe has been the Art Director and Senior Editor of the National Lampoon, and his work has appeared in television, radio, books (including Weird California), magazines, and web sites. Joe also has a number of years of experience in both the apparel industry and the advertising world as an Art Director. He has remained relatively unharmed by the experiences. Intrigued? Visit JoeArtistWriter.com.

 

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Smart Gals Productions is a 501-C3, non-profit, public benefit arts organization, dedicated to creating original events in unlikely places, inspiring fruitful interaction, and cultivating the greater cultural community of Los Angeles.