photo by anonymous machine

December's featured Tentacle Session artist was spoken word herder, cartoonist, and toy designer Attaboy.

Look! Up on the stage! It's a word! It's a 'toon! It's a toy! It's ATTABOY!! The spastic-fantastic, origina-gasmic! Thatta boy Attaboy, the world's first and foremost Word Ninja, has wooed, wow-ed, amused and amazed audiences all over the Area of the Bay since he materialized in these area codes about 2 years ago. His nimble jabbering jaws, wild wordplay, and character-istic gesticulations have divined smiles and inspired awe from audiences at Popcorn Anti-Theater and the Dada Festival (sometimes on the same night), various Chicken John events, Laughing Squid's Analog Cafe, and, with his partner in wordcrime Benjamin Burke (aka "Mad Lib"), and instances of junkyard hijinks!

Most audiences only get one view of the boy called Atta--the elastic-spastic-drastic woid-moiderin' version of his self from the live performances. There's much more at work and play in the life of this man's mind.

For the benefit of the Tentacle crowd, Attaboy fills in all the details on himself as artist, ranter, patent holder, toy designer, child model, and man-about-town. He explains what those drawings and words are all about, and he gives us a look at toys like no one ever has before--the history, the industry, and his own ideas and ideals about how they should be designed. Plus a sneak preview of his upcoming solo art show at Culture Cache gallery, and a few nuggets of yummy musical goodness with special guests Burke and the Box of Crayons. All that in two hours? Well, he's always been an over-achiever.

This will be a fantastic Tentacle Session--our first in four months! Special musical guest DJ Poopy Pants starts things off in silly phat style at 7pm. Attaboy comes on at 8pm (sharp!) and dedicates two hours of his life to illuminating you on the play of his mind. Don't miss this show!!

Attaboy's book Gush, distributed by Last Gasp, has inspired the questions and answer:
"Is it a poetry collection? Is it a comic book? Well, sort of both/neither. It's a free-form visual literary jam and wholly original."

As a toy designer his work has included redesigning old favorites, other old favorites, and inventing new favorites.