BiG TeA PaRtY in national news
"Elizabeth Fiend" <[email protected]> Tue, 03 Dec 2002 12:19:00 -0500
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.publications.phillyimc |
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This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_1379_6a6a_c7a Content-Type: text/html <html><div style='background-color:'><DIV> <P><BR><BR></P></DIV> <DIV></DIV><BR><BR></div><br clear=all><hr>Add photos to your e-mail with <a href="http://g.msn.com/8HMSEN/2022">MSN 8.</a> Get 2 months FREE*.</html> ------=_NextPart_000_1379_6a6a_c7a Content-Type: message/rfc822 Received: from 130.91.116.226 by lw10fd.law10.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Tue, 03 Dec 2002 16:55:10 GMT X-Originating-IP: [130.91.116.226] From: "Elizabeth Fiend" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 11:55:10 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html X-Stn-Info: <html><div style='background-color:'><DIV>BiG TeA PaRtY news: </DIV>1. BTP in the national spot light <DIV></DIV>2. Two BTP episodes on WYBE this month <DIV></DIV>3. Poster thieves beware <DIV></DIV>4. Support local independent media! Buy our tapes at <A href="http://www.bigteaparty.com">http://www.bigteaparty.com</A> <DIV></DIV>5. Rent BTP tapes for free! <DIV></DIV>6. Text of national article about BTP <DIV></DIV>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ <DIV></DIV>The big BiG TeA PaRtY news is that we have received an incredible article in the NATIONAL PRESS. The article, written for a nationally syndicated style column, will appear in 100 papers across the country starting with Sundays Chicago Tribune. (See full text below) <DIV></DIV>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <DIV></DIV>Two BiG TeA PaRtY episodes this month on WYBE channel 35. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>TONIGHT (VCR alert) Tuesday, December 3rd , 12:30-1:00 AM <DIV></DIV>Chew On This! 15 minutes, part of the series Philadelphia Stories <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>Tuesday, December 17th , 9 10 PM <DIV></DIV>H2 YO! 6 minutes, part of the series Thru the Lens <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ <DIV></DIV>REMEMBER!!! BiG TeA PaRtY VIDEO TAPES MAKE GREAT HOLIDAY GIFTS. <DIV></DIV><A href="http://www.bigteaparty.com">http://www.bigteaparty.com</A>VISIT OUR ON-LINE STORE! <A href="http://www.bigteaparty.com">http://www.bigteaparty.com</A> <DIV></DIV>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>OTHER NEWS <DIV></DIV>Yes, the rumors are true. Be forewarned. Someone was caught stealing one of the City Paper posters, with my photograph on it, off the subway. The perp was detained by the police, hand-cuffed, background-checked then finally let go. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>Home for the holidays? Rent BiG TeA PaRtY video tapes for FREEE! Four BiG TeA PaRtY video tapes are available, for free rental, at all TLA Video Store locations. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>****************************************************************** <DIV></DIV>BiG TeA PaRtY is produced by Elizabeth Fiend, Valerie Keller, Gretjen Clausing <DIV></DIV>****************************************************************** <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>National article: <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>Martha Stewart's punk-rock twin wants you to eat your vegetables, recycle your wardrobe, lower your water bill, get out your glue gun, and use your imagination to improve your life. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>People are always calling D.I.Y. diva Elizabeth Fiend "a zany punk-rock Martha Stewart"or else an anarchist Martha Stewart or an alternative Martha or even "an anti-Martha." <DIV></DIV>They must think it's funny, because what could be more of an oxymoron? <DIV></DIV>In fact, she could be ready to step into the rotation at a moment's notice should the real Martha's face-off with New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer over the sales of her ImClone stock render her temporarily unavailable to her fans. <DIV></DIV>But, frankly, Elizabeth (you can't keep referring to somebody as "Fiend" through a whole story, no matter what the newspaper style manual says about second and third references) doesn't think the Martha comparison is all that amusing and, truth to tell, she's kind of tired of it. <DIV></DIV>True, she does a kind of anarchist, punk-rock, thrift-shop-based, environmentally sensitive, frugality-driven, pro-vegan home-ec show on TV. And yes, her idea of craft is using kitschy kitchen sponges shaped like coffee cups and percolators to potato-print a thrift-shop pleather coat, or melting an old record on top of a coffee can in a slow oven to turn it into a candy dish that really rocks. <DIV></DIV>It's also true that her recipes tend to be for things like red vegetables with tofu or green bean casserole (minus the Campbell's cream-of-mushroom) or checkerboard cake, not pumpkin soup served in tediously hollowed-out pumpkins. And one of her best gardening ideas is pulling down all the dried-up morning glory vines in the fall and flinging them around in the shrubbery so, come next spring, the seeds will already be out there and you won't have to bother buying more and planting them. <DIV></DIV>But she doesn't see herself as the anti-Martha---and she isn't anti-Martha, either. Unlike some people, she doesn't hate Martha Stewart, or make fun of her, or hope she goes to jail. Far from it. <DIV></DIV>"I love Martha," Elizabeth says. "I like what she's doing. It might not be my thing. But I think people just want to hate her because she's too perfect and they don't like that. And I think the people who hate her aren't the people who watch her." (So what do they know about her, anyway?) <DIV></DIV>Martha, Elizabeth says, "started revolutions." <DIV></DIV>"She started a lot of the crafty things I like to do--like making wreaths. People didn't use to make their own wreaths. I think a lot of things people might enjoy doing are things she started, but they just don't know it." <DIV></DIV>And truly, the two of themMartha and Elizabeth-- turn out to have more in common than their skill with a glue gun. Like Martha, Elizabeth was a little kid who wanted to know how to do all sorts of things. Her mom was a 4-H Club leader, which gave her a head start on lots of projects. And her parents were always willing to find her a class or a workshop or whatever to pursue any of her zillion interests from painting to music to photography. <DIV></DIV>Like Martha, she wanted to use the things she knows to help other people improve their lives. Also like Marthaand this is something Martha gets too little credit for--she wants to show them how to use imagination and skill and energy instead of just buying a lot more things. <DIV></DIV>"The mission is to help people live a better life," she says. "There are a lot of simple things you can do on your own that are just better for you and better for the planet. Society is evolving in a way that we're very greedylook at all the corporate CEOs getting arrested for cooking their books. But maybe the way to go isn't greed, maybe it's better to be a little more simple. <DIV></DIV>"But," she says, and this is key, "it doesn't have to be boring." <DIV></DIV>Boring is not one of Elizabeth's problems. If it were, Big Tea Party (www.BigTeaParty.com), her so-called "anarchist home-economics show" would never have made it to the small screen. <DIV></DIV>Take her rather dramatic sense of personal style, which owes nothing to the kind of personal stylist that keeps more conventional TV talents looking white-bread bland. <DIV></DIV>Her hairstyle changes constantly, but tends to resolve into an explosive blond updo that looks like it ran into an eggbeater. She likes adding things to it: barrettes, bows, clips, feathers, decorations. (One how-to session showed you how she organizes her million hair accessories with clear zip-lock bags.) <DIV></DIV>She favors vintage 1950s catseye glasses, preferably a-glitter with rhinestones. (Since they got trendy and disappeared from thrift shops, she's been reduced to buying them from vintage stores and antique shops, but she resists paying more than $25 per pair.) <DIV></DIV>Much of the rest of her extensive wardrobe still comes from thrift shops; the rest is hand-me-downs. "People will see some funky thing at a thrift store, and buy it," she explains,"and, after two or three years, realize they don't have the nerve to wear it. So they think, 'Oh, I'll give it to Elizabeth, she'll wear it.' And I do." <DIV></DIV>She loves vivid colors and assertive patterns, and she likes mixing them, usually in "unusual color combinations" and pile-ups of florals, plaids, checks and polka dots. <DIV></DIV>In general, she likes more better than less. It's why the punk-rock band she plays slide guitar inwhich provides all the music for Big Tea Partyis called "More Fiends." <DIV></DIV>She's a "more" fiend. (Hence her adopted name.) <DIV></DIV>Not that she's into acquiring more stuff, she's quick to explain. She disapproves of littering the earth with additional unnecessary objects. What she wants is to be open to more experiences--and she wants that for her audience, too. <DIV></DIV>People started telling her she should be on television because she was always doing something they wouldn't have thought oflike growing her own grapes and figs in her tiny city back yard, or turning an old bedroom mirror into a tabletop, or bringing her checkerboard cake to a party. <DIV></DIV>Or making six empty soda bottles into a stained glass chandelier with nothing but some tape and a glue gun. Or pressing a record with More Fiends and dreaming up a marketing campaign for it. <DIV></DIV>Turned out one of the friends who said she should be on TV was a film editor with free access to editing equipment--always handy when you want to put on your own TV show with no money. They put together a proposal and presented it to DUTV, the public-access TV station at Drexel University in Philadelphia. The station gave them film, lent them cameras, and suggested they start with a three-minute showthe perfect length for filling out the last three minutes that most TV producers leave for commercials, and that public TV stations with no commercials have to find a way to fill. <DIV></DIV>In 30-odd episodes, Elizabeth showed readers how much fun it is to have a clothes-swap party with your girlfriends, how to make vegan French toast and meat-free Philly Cheese Steaks, how to use a digital pitch shifter to make your voice sound really weird, how to store chopped fresh herbs in ice cube trays in your freezer, how to make a necklace out of Colt 45 bottle caps, how to lower your water bill, and lots more. <DIV></DIV>She'd like to expand Big Tea Party from 3 minutes to 30, and she and the two women who produce, direct, shoot and edit the show are working on it. But it's slow going because they all still have day jobs. <DIV></DIV>Elizabeth, for instance, is a bibliographic specialist at the library of the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania's business school. Such a citadel of capitalism might sound like an odd place for an anarchist to find herself. But she points out that a library is not a bad place to work for a person who likes knowing things. Even as TV, despite what you might think, is not a bad place to work for a person who wants to share what she knows with a lot of other people. <DIV></DIV>You can see how serious she is about unearthing and sharing information in some of the reporting she's done for DUTV. Her documentary on the demonstrations protesting the Republican Convention in Philadelphia two years ago was pretty much the only coverage I can remember that actually told you what the protestors were protesting. <DIV></DIV>It also had a funny section of Elizabeth standing next to an unsuspecting police commissioner. On the videotape, he seems to be asking her adviceand later suggesting to the mayor by phone that they should stop arresting people and turn the city over to the protestors. "Elizabeth's given us good advice before," he says. <DIV></DIV>Well, you can tell he isn't really saying it. Somehow, Elizabeth's TV oeuvre manages to combine such flights of fancy with straightforward arguments for her own opinionsher documentary on AIDS makes it clear from the outset that she thinks health care is a basic human rightand substantive, you-are-there reporting. Nobody else on TV does all three of those things at once. <DIV></DIV>Besides being an entertainer, she says, "I am a person of substance, and I like to know why and how things happen: why things are." <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>© copyright 2002 Patricia McLaughlin <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>If you want off this list, email me. <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>Love, <DIV></DIV>Elizabeth Fiend <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV>writer / host BiG TeA PaRtY <DIV></DIV>it's cooking, crafts and anarchy! <DIV></DIV>visit our web site: <A href="http://www.bigteaparty.com">http://www.bigteaparty.com</A> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV> <DIV></DIV></div></html> ------=_NextPart_000_1379_6a6a_c7a--