Even hard times can bring some happiness

I didn't want to work on my finances, but I did. And a reward came when I called my bank. One of the cool things is they hire people from different countries so I can call at 4 in the morning and talk with a human being in India, for instance.

This time I got Ashrith, (meaning, "one who gives shelter") on the phone. I could have sworn I had spoken with him before, said, "We talked about music, you had a band. You knew who the guy was that wrote the movie about the homeless kid who won the TV game show. You know the movie, what's it called?"

He said, "no, that was my friend Ashith (which means "happiness")."

Even so Ashrith and I talked about everything from music to what bands really make in India, and how it costs the equivalent of four or five dollars to hear Jethro Tull in concert iwith other bands) in Bangalore.

And then he turned me on to two bands:

Bhoomi


and Parikrama

The Kinetic King Plans to Break Another World Record, Oct. 7

The Kinetic King is on youtube!
St. Paul's very own The Kinetic King (Tim Fort) plans to break the world record for the largest amount of sticks used in a stick bomb at the Saint Paul Art Crawl, taking place at the Northern Warehouse Artists' Co-Operative, 308 Prince Street in the Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, MN, on October 7, at 7:00.  Please direct all press inquiries to lunatim@infionline.net

The Kinetic King has two official Guinness certificates for previous world records involving 2250 and 3864 sticks set in 2009 and 2010  (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/set-record/).  The Kinetic King's's unofficial personal best is 4242 sticks set last October 8th ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cskPGN5FJw ) and was an unofficial world record until just recently when a group of kids set another unofficial world record of 5076 sticks.  During the quarter-finals on America's Got Talent, the Kinetic King attempted a new world record of over 7000 sticks, but met with disaster due to bad paint and humidity. 

The Kinetic King was a semi-finalist and audience favorite on America's Got Talent this summer, making it to the 13th spot.  AGT Judge Howie Mandel states, "There is no man in America that you can hand soda cans, balls, oranges and sticks to, and he can do something entertaining with it.  There is only one man in America that can do that, and he is the Kinetic King." 

Born and bred in Saint Paul, the King earned his Bachelors in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and became a professional artist in his late 30s.  

"The number of chain-reaction techniques is virtually limitless," he says, and his kinetic gadget inventions are more advanced than domino tumbling and Rube Goldberg machines, encompassing a wide variety of chain-reaction techniques.  He has given them Dalíesque names like Experimental Polymodal Slack-Generating Apparatus #9 and Test Detonation of 0.2 Kilostick Boosted-Yield Xyloexplosive Device #1.  They explode, collapse, play musical tunes, and even have animation in them.  The Kinetic King has worked gigs from Belgium to Seattle and last year had an exhibition in the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC.