Over and over, fat people are the butt of jokes, and it must stop. To add insult to injury, Comedy Central and Tosh.0 are using Substantia’s photo illegally. Substantia is a professional photographer who features professional models and every day folk celebrating their beauty and life.

To have Mr. Tosh or anyone steal these photographs for the explicit use of mean, snarky jibes continues a cycle of bullying culture. We wonder why people, especially women, have body image issues, yet the fat shaming entertainment industry encourages this belittling of people. It perpetuates a myth that one cannot be beautiful at any size, and it encourages trolls and bullies to believe what they write is actually funny. It’s not. It’s angry, spiteful and hurtful.

You can do something about this illegal, immoral activity. Please contact comedy central to protest Daniel Tosh’s theft of intellectual property:

Phone: (212) 767-8600
Fax: (212) 767-8592
Email: mail@comedycentral.com

It may not seem like a big deal in this day and age where we right click on photos and share them like toys in a sandbox, but Comedy Central and Daniel Tosh make money off stolen images like this. Reach out, stand up for artists, and help renounce sizeism.

___________

UPDATE

Lindy West at Jezebel reports the post has been removed from the Tosh.0 blog. Thanks to all who wrote or called in. Kick ass.

Jezebel article by Lindy West

THE BUDGET

$2100 covers production expenses. I’m paying actors, a sound engineer, and an associate producer. It’s a shoestring budget, and because the theater space is the Lower East Side I don’t have the overhead of theater rental, which would typically add another $15,000 to the budget.

$2878 is goes to hiring a press agent and printing. You may ask, “Why isn’t this line a round number?” It’s because I must cover the payout to businesses of goods and services for each journalist or reviewer who takes the journey. The press ticket is free, but I still have to pay for food and classes for any person – including press.

Finally, Kickstarter takes 5% of the total raised. In reality, I must raise about $5500 to cover all my expenses. Obviously, Kickstarter is a make it or lose it situation, so if I don’t reach my $5000 goal, I don’t get anything, which means I’ll be footing the bill for most of it and I will end up doing my own press hustling. It would be great to not have to personally take on the financial burden or hustle of garnering press so I can spend time creating the best experience possible.

WHAT DO YOU GET?

Some have asked what you get for the experience, and I think it’s a great deal. Participants get a yoga class, a drink from a bar, a special from a coffee shop, an item from a retail store, and a meal at a restaurant. They also get what I think is a sexy and provocative story that kicks off an 18 month transmedia narrative. It costs less than dinner and a show, and you get so much more with NY_Hearts: LES.

THE BIG PICTURE

In comparison to what Amanda’s raised my goal is meager, but it all goes somewhere and I don’t see much back. The monies from ticket sales in July go straight back into the project, which is an 18 month endeavor, including the NY_Hearts neighborhood experiences, a web series and another live experience for the winter of 2013-14. In addition to those three tent pole productions (which really feel more like seven productions once all five of the neighborhood experiences are complete) I’m including morsels of story through visual art, music, and social media platforms to color and shade the narrative.

Right now, I’m at $800 of my $5000 goal. I have 22 days left. Please, consider pledging. You can get 30% off tickets if you’re an early bird donor at $40, and if you pledge only $25, I’ll integrate a sentence about someone you love or loved into the NY_Hearts: LES experience.

Thanks tons, and hope you can pledge your support today:

NY_Hearts: LES KICKSTARTER

NY-HEARTS.COM

It’s been a while since I’ve invited people to support my work, but now I’m reaching out again. I’m proud of the creation, and I’m just about ready to share it.

Now, I’m in the final phase. I’ve launched the Kickstarter campaign for my transmedia theatrical project, NY_Hearts: LES, which opens in The Brick Theater’s Game Play Festival in July 2012. I’m partnering with local small businesses to offer an immersive experience in which the audience gets to see, feel, taste and smell the same things the characters did in the story.

Contribute $25 and submit a sentence about someone you love or loved, and I’ll integrate it into the story. You can also get 30% off the regular price if you pledge $40 for limited early donation discount tickets. Once this deal is gone, you can still reserve regular priced tickets through Kickstarter.

Thanks to all who have supported me throughout the years. This is a big new chapter in my career, and I hope you’ll not only contribute now but also come to check out NY_Hearts: LES this summer. After all, the most important part of creating work is sharing it with others.

DONATE ON KICKSTARTER

Me, preparing for our project presentation at last week’s StoryCode hackathon. Yes, I ate all those pizzas behind me. (Big up to Amanda Lin Costa’s article on PBS’s Mediashift where the shot is featured.)

When I greet my friends and ask how it’s going, I often get the answer, “Busy.” Typically, they follow the response with a heavy sigh or a diatribe about the pressure they’re under at work. I’m conscious of giving this canned response to people when I’m asked the same question. If I do feel the need to tell people how busy I am (I live in New York – like I’m ever not busy?), I try to let people know it’s a “good busy.”

Last I wrote here, I was gearing up for the first ever transmedia StoryCode Hack: Beta offered by StoryCode, a new not-for-profit supporting transmedia/cross-platform projects. For the past couple years the group has been just that: a Meet Up group that gave speakers a forum at which to share case studies of successful projects. When Aina Abiodun and Mike Knowlton incorporated, they fashioned this mission:

StoryCode is a non-profit community hub for independent immersive and cross-platform storytellers; supporting, incubating and showcasing projects created by them.

Aina Abiodun and Mike Knowlton introducing the StoryHack presentations.

Their action shift was the incubation directive. Transmedia Meet Up groups the globe over offer panel discussions and speakers showcasing projects, but StoryCode kicked it up a notch. They’re in the business of cross-platform story formation. StoryCode realized creators are tired of talking and want to get their hands dirty, fail and learn from those failures.

I’m not going to go into the details of the Story Hack here. My super awesome US Maple hackathon teammates, Randy Astle and Carrie Cutforth-Young give great analyses here, here, here, here and here.

The hack home stretch before presentations.

What I want to acknowledge is the community created. Real community can’t sustain unless its members feel fed, and this past weekend, 27 storytellers, developers, game designers, filmmakers, and theater-makers devoured the challenge, nourished themselves, and grew into a team of transmedia creators.

It was the most fulfilling artistic experience I’ve had this year.

On top of all this, last week I announced my new project, NY_Hearts: LES, which is part of the Game Play Festival at The Brick Theater. StoryCode provided the platform for me to share this exciting project and ask for immediate essentials I need. I sought an associate producer, a geo-tagged location based storytelling platform, and small business partners in the Lower East Side. With this assistance, I’ve fulfilled several of these needs. You can read more about one of the new developments on the NY_Hearts blog.

It’s challenging to make new work, and thanks to StoryCode and The Brick Theater, I’ve been busy. Very good busy. And I hope to continue being good busy for the next several months.

StoryCode is blowing up. Between its new residency at Lincoln Center Film Society, partnerships with Kill Screen Magazine, becoming a legit company, and the creation of new programs like StoryCode Immersions — monthly small group “deep dive” sessions into focused topics like tech, fundraising and entrepreneurship — StoryCode supports the transmedia community like no other organization in NYC. In addition to offering case studies and environments from which creators may learn, StoryCode fosters environments in which creators can, well…create.

RELEASE THE HACKATHON
Like so many companies, StoryCode is implementing the hackathon structure to create new work and bond its members. Like the 24-Hour Plays (or the 47:59 Play Festival for which I wrote a few years back), this experience plans to fast forward the story creation process. Over 24 hours, teams of four work to develop a brand spanking new transmedia project pitted against other teams. Storytellers, producers, video artists, and programmers converge to birth and present projects in hopes that judges proclaim their team winner of the first ever StoryCode Hack.

I’m super psyched to meet all my team members tomorrow at orientation and head into next weekend’s hackathon with fire and fury. The competition is fierce. Friends will become enemies. Platforms will be compromised. And one team will reign victorious

Check out our cheeky team description below, and follow Team U.S. Maple on Twitter or Facebook for more on this madness as it develops.

OFFICIAL (UNOFFICIAL) U.S. MAPLE PRESS BLURBHow do four strangers, who have never licked each others’ faces, unite to create an epic transmedia spectacle that unfolds on three platforms in only 24 hours??? Armed with only two Panasonics DVX-100s, A CASE OF RED BULL and a DREAM, TEAM U.S. MAPLE will document their entire experience where they collide together to accomplish the seemingly impossible (but not quite impossible and therefore definitely attainable ONLY due to this motley crew’s MAD SKILLZ) for Storycode’s Hackathon’s TRANSMEDIA CHALLENGE. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter as we update LIVE from inception to conception AND BEYOND.

FOUR STRANGERS!!!! THREE PLATFORMS!!! TWO PANASONIC DVX100a’s!! ONE EPIC TRANSMEDIA STORY EXPERIENCE LIKE NO OTHER! = TEAM U.S. MAPLE smacking down at Storycode’s Hackathon. ROOT for them ONLINE (throughout the week on FACEBOOK & TWITTER) and IN PERSON at the Lincoln Center April 28 & 29th.

To learn more about the challenge the team faces visit hack.storycode.org