Welcome to McCannis Institute, everyone. My name is Alyssa Stone, the Senior Director of Program and Community Engagement here, and I'm very excited to welcome you. I'm excited to have all of you for our February storytelling showcase, hosted by Corey Rosen, the host of our house. Teller lineup of storytellers this evening, who Corey is going to introduce each one. Before we get started, I want to tell you just a little bit about McCannis Institute. We were founded in 1854, so a very old non-profit. We're 107 years old this year. So this is your first time visiting McCannis Institute. What took you so long? I love this crowd. You're the best. Come back, everyone. We are a cultural center, historical landmark, gorgeous multi-story general interest library, world renowned chess program and event center. We do upwards of 15 events per week here at McCannis Institute. So we have many, many things going on for you to check out. We have writers' rooms, book rooms, classes, storytelling showcases, author talks, a film series, concerts, lectures, chess tournaments and classes, library activities, all sorts of things that you can check out. The first place to get information about everything we have coming up is on our website, milibrary.org, and we of course have flyers on the tables. Please grab something on your way out. Who are our members here in the room tonight? Awesome. Thank you, members. We are membership institutes. Being a member helps us to continue to offer these programs and services to our community. If you're not yet a member, please consider joining us so that you can have no cost, access to all of our offerings, including our full service library and chess room. And with that, I'm very excited to introduce Corey Rosen. Corey is a writer, actor, visual effects producer and storytelling teacher based in San Francisco. He hosts The Moth, Story Slams, and Grant Slams, and has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, Alice Radio's The Sarah and Vinny Show, and Kay Fogg's The Finch Files podcast. Corey is a performer at Bats and Prom, one of the world's foremost centers for improvisational theater, and is the author of your story, Well Told, Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories that Wow! and Audience, which we have on sale as well as Duel's books on sale in the back. Please grab a book. For more information about Corey, visit www.CoreyRosen.com. Our next showcase here with Corey is the final Wednesday of March on March 27th, with a special announcement. Starting this Friday, March 1st, Corey will be at Bats and Prom's The Saba Tour, so definitely check out Corey and all of his incredible work. And with that, please give a warm welcome to Corey Rosen! Thank you, Alice! Have you guys heard of the song? Yes! Great to see everybody. First question, do you guys want to keep the house lights on or make it more like theater-y and dim them back? Can we do that? I don't know. Sunday school. Now we're going to show. How's everybody doing this Wednesday night? Thank you for coming out. I've been doing this kind of series. I call it residency because it sounds more fancy. The last Wednesday of every month is starting in August of last year, so all I know is that time has passed. I've seen some familiar faces and some famous faces. In the crowd here, I know that I got up on colder, but I actually also got a year older. It was my birthday this past Sunday. So I know that. Turn 51. I'd like to kind of bunch him and button it. Once he turns 50, I think he can start counting back. I'm 49. 50 minus 1. I'm just going to keep counting that way. I'm a little baby, 100-year-old. It was a good 50th year. I had a colonoscopy. I swear to you, I've been looking forward to it because I've heard horrible things about colonoscopies. But it turns out it's not the procedure itself. It's what? The prep. This is definitely the right crowd. I have founded my crowd for my colonoscopy. We're going to go into the stories I was in the back if you want me to do it, colonoscopy. It's the prep because what you do is you have to fill yourself up so you can just clean it out. I was not dreading it because I was looking forward to being clean on the inside. It really does. It cleans you out.   And I see the inside of me. And I might be a little vain, but I remember thinking, hi, I look good. Good. I look good on all sides. Well, happy to have you guys here. We have a great show for you tonight. For those of you who are new to this, it's a storytelling series that I'm really delighted to have put together with Mechanics Institute. It's a monthly series, as I mentioned. We do it once a month on the last Wednesday of every month. It's generally storytelling focused, but not exclusively. As you've seen from those of you who have been here before, we've had magicians, we've had singers. Tonight, we have a poet. We have a lot of different kinds of performers and different kind of action here, which is great. All of the storytellers and performers tonight are people that I know or I've met recently, and I'm just delighted to share this platform, this stage, and this audience, you, with each other. And it's fun. The theme tonight is Entrances and Exits. Entrances and Exits. So I was going to say all of the stories.  So they may not all be there, but that's generally kind of a foray theme away in. And so I'll tell you a little Entrances and Exits story of my own, one of my personal experiences. That begins with the slam of a door. I'm in the Holiday Inn, Waikiki. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And the slam of the door was what woke me up. You see I'm a sleepwalker. And I've had this condition for a long time in my life. I've found myself in various places, various times in my life that I didn't expect to be. I've woken up on couches. I've woken up in other people's beds. True, true. That was college when I sleepwalked out of my hotel room, my door room, down the hallway on the door of my RA. And then found the next available door that I opened up and fell asleep in somebody else's bed, yes. So on this particular night I was in a little bit, this different situation. I made Hawaii for a wedding, a joyous occasion, and my friend was getting married the next day. And it's the night before the wedding. And so I've gone out, I've gone out to Hawaii, you know, I had some dinner, had some drinks, and I found myself back in my hotel room and I'm settling in for the night all by myself. When I have to make a decision, you see this is not just a vacation that I'm going on, but the beginning of a longer trip. This is kind of like the trip of my life. I'm 22 years old. And I have kind of saved up some resources and some time off from work. And I'm on my way to Southeast Asia for a month. So I am backpacking my way across Cambodia and Vietnam and all sort of the Southeast Thailand, that whole region for a month. And it's my very first night away from home, at the beginning of this journey. So I'm in my hotel room and I'm there. I'm like, I don't know what to do. If I sleep in like my clothes and my boxer shorts, am I soiling one of my precious outfits that I would be carrying around with me? And I do not like to sleep naked. Let me just start with that. I am not a naked sleeper. I like to feel something on me. I don't know, I feel kind of exposed. There was nobody to be exposed to. I was all by myself. And I decide to take all of my clothes off and I fall asleep. You all know what's going to happen next. As the door slams behind me, it's a hotel, people. You can't open a slam hotel room door. So I am butt naked in the 14th floor hallway of the Waikiki Holiday Inn. Thank you. And I'm looking around and there's just, there's nowhere to hide. There's nothing to do and I don't know what to do. Luckily for me, it was late enough at night that they had already delivered the Honolulu Star Bulletin newspaper. So like a picture from a New Yorker cartoon, I picked up one section. I think I had the lifestyle section in the front because that's my lifestyle right there. And I had the sports section in the back. And I make my way down to the front desk.  And I say to the gentleman working there, I go, I seem to have locked myself out of my room. In room 1402, he says, may I cease my identification? And I go, no. So ever since that day, truly, I have not slept another new night in my life. Thank you very much. Okay, we have a great show for you and I'm going to welcome up to the stage your first storyteller. This is a dear friend of mine, someone that I have shared many a stage with over the years and I'm proud to be called my friend. Welcome to the stage to the one and only Abdul Kedyah! You know who you're going to call me first. We had talked that part out. Now I was like, Abdul Kedyah! That's me. Let me just read his email. How are you folks doing? Good. You know this is African History Month.  I call it African History Month because I'm African. You can tell if I got brown skin. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about what goes on in the society that we live in. And the society that we live in is a society where people because of the color of their skin can be guilty or innocent just purely based on the color of their skin. And that's just not right. And that's what we call bigotry. And we have to get rid of bigotry and we have to get rid of discrimination. I would like to share with you a trip that I took into the Twilight Zone. See, I'm walking with five of the guys down the street.  Get your hands off! Get your hands off! I understand. I'm trying to touch the sky. You know. Get your hands off! Turn around, put your hands behind your back. Okay, so we get handcuffed and they take us to the police station. And we get to the police station. They separate the five dudes with me in one room. Did I mention that the five guys with me were European Caucasians? Okay, so they were in one room and I was in another room. About 45 minutes later, the police detective walks into the room and he looks at me and he says, We know that you're not guilty. Just tell us which of those white guys are. Did I mention the fact that this is in the grave and the police officer looked like me? He said just tell us who did it. I don't know, I don't have any idea who did it. Actually, it was my idea. What happened was, and we walked down this alleyway and there was this very expensive restaurant and it looked like the door was open. And we went there and there was just this little latch there. And so I said, I could take that latch and I flipped the latch and we went in and we stole all the hamburgers and we stole all the steaks because we'd have the biggest pizza party that you ever saw. With hamburgers and steaks there we stole all the cheese. You know, we were ready. And then we had another guy that was driving so we put that stuff in the back of the pickup truck. And one guy who was with us for some reason he kept going back to the trunk. And the rest of us were at the nightclub. We were at the nightclub where each of our friends was shooting pool and he had said to this guy, he was us man, he was going to make some money. Meanwhile, I'm in there and I see this lady and she's looking at me. I probably wouldn't have noticed that she was looking at me if I wasn't looking at her so hard. But we were looking at each other, you know. And we know we had some kind of connect thing going on. But anyhow, so we left it and we left the club and that nightclub from the police jumped out the rest of us. So I'm like, oh, I'm in jail now. I don't know what to do. I don't know anybody. I can't get bailed out. Somehow the lady that I met at the club found out that I was in jail and she bailed me out. Now the five European dudes they bailed out and they got all about me. They didn't say anything to me. Turns out that each one of these guys had a Brooks Brothers lawyer. So we went to trial. They all said that they got their Brooks Brothers lawyers with them and I have a court appointed attorney. And my attorney was like five minutes late and I remember them saying something about five to 20 years in prison for this charge and my attorney was like 10 minutes late. Okay, so you know, I got my suit on and everything but I'm kind of sweating the bullets. Finally my attorney walks in. My attorney walks in when he walks in the door said, Joe says to him, good morning, Joe Christian. How are you? My court appointed attorney is a judge. He was that same way. Not only that, he looked like he just stepped out of every magazine. You know, he had on a night sports jacket and he was just like my grandpa in the way, you know. And he smoothed out that man. He talked to the judge. He said, oh yeah, I was on vacation. They talked about his vacation in his bag for his kids and stuff like that.  I need to tell you why I was late coming to court. On my way into the courthouse, the police officers stopped me and they said they want to reduce they want to release all the charges without criminalization from my client. So, judge, okay, you can go. Cool. So, now, we leave him and as we're leaving, my attorney says to me, so, I didn't say the fact that all those guys were school teachers and we had just started teaching school that week when we got busted so we all got suspended from our job, school teacher.  I said, no, they haven't been paying me, bro. He said, look, you have not been you've been charged for the crime. If you have committed no crime, you've been found innocent so they have to pay you for the crime that you want to have. He said, oh, for the commission of the Education Office, until then, man, I said, they must pay you for the commissioners of the article that you still haven't known. Got my suit on one night and I get in there, and the secretary, I mean, I must have been 21 but the secretary looked like she was about 19 and she was a pretty. She was a little short afro thing going on and wasn't an athlete. Yeah. You know, but I'm here for business. You know, I'm strictly here for business. So I said to the commissioner, Judge said, I must be paid.  He said, I can give you a couple hundred dollars to pay the cash, but we can't pay them. We can't hire you. The only way you could be hired is to just have a petition signed by the governor. You gotta have a petition signed by the governor.  You know, and then the lady, the cute 19-year-old of the city, she said, well, you know, I know Clarice and Clarice, she worked down in the governor's office. So we called down and find out if she, if she could hear, if she could hear. No. So she called down and, you know, you wasn't living. So I go down to the governor's mansion. I go to the governor's mansion. Everybody already knows my name. I'm cold, you know, I go in. She takes me directly to the governor's office. You know, he sits at the seat.  He says, where are you from? I said, I'm from Harlem. He said, I'm from Harlem, man. You know, back in the 1820s, I used to be in Harlem all the time. Going to the clubs and stuff. I said, you ever heard the jungle room club? He said, a jungle room? I said, yeah.  But yeah, that's my grandfather, you know. He said, you tell your grandfather he just called down and visited me. I'm the governor, he'll look into anything you do. If you have anything proper, look into anything that anybody, you just let me know. And I'll take care of it. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? I've got to tell y'all what happened to the Europeans. Okay, the Europeans, each of them was given a $5,000 fine. Okay, and they signed a piece of paper to say they would never return to the island again. And if they return, they have to suffer the consequences of the charges against them. That's rough. But that's discrimination. And that's bigotry. And that's my story. I'm from New York. I'm from New York. Fantastic. I'll take another, by the way, I'll also teach a story to them. So if anybody is interested, if he's a workshop officer, amazing, you got one coming up? No, no, no. No? Okay. I can't tell a table. Okay.  Oh, yeah. He's got his paper version. Yeah, no. Okay. Next up, we have, we have Lynn Patterson. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to show you. And I'm going to show you what she got a while ago. She's been published in, it's called Pop.magazine, right? And tell me the other one. Alligori. The Berkeley Review, the Berkeley Poetry Review, and KKB. KKB, the Berkeley Review, the Berkeley Poetry Review, and we're bringing some poetry to the Mechanics Institute. So please, make some noise for Lynn Patterson. Hi, everyone.  I'm going to share one of my poems. It's so nice to meet you as well, your beautiful storytellers. I want to also just give some shine to all the other storytellers that are coming up on stage. My story is about many different entrances and exits. And before I share my poem, I'd like to tell you a little bit just about where it came from and how it came to be. But in 2017, I sold all of my belongings and decided to travel around the world for 11 months. And while I was on this journey, there was a lot of different things going on. I was feeling really lost and trying to find myself. I was also trying to solve a bunch of family mysteries and doing ancestry research. And a big reason for that is because my father never knew his biological father. And a lot of the discord in our relationship that I experienced as a young person, once I started doing my inner child healing and really understanding how my parents grew up, I understood how much that impacted my father and how much that played into the way that he chose to parent me. And so when I started this ancestry journey, I did Ancestry.com, I did 23andMe, I was searching archives, searching census records, looking for addresses of grandparents, and I was just on the hunt to track him down. Unfortunately, the story does not end with me finding his biological father and that's something that my father and I have both had to grapple with. But as a result of doing all of this ancestry research, I was able to understand better who I am and where I come from and who I come from. I also wasn't able to track down parts of my family past 1852 because my family was enslaved in the United States and there are ancestors' names that I will never know. I'll never know their stories but the knowingness that I have inside of me I know also comes from that and that's a deep place that I like to write from. But the story that I want to tell is actually about my grandfather too. It's interesting that you said your grandfather and I was talking about my grandmother too but my grandfather, when he died he had dementia and he started to call me Cora and every time he would see me he would be like Cora, Cora and I never understood why and when I was on this ancestry journey I ended up in Alzheimer, Arkansas which is a town that has 2,000 people in it even to this day and we were going through a box a shoe box of photographs and we found a picture of his great aunt whose name was Cora and she looked just like me. And so I know that though there are ancestors names that I may not know though there are faces I may not know doing that ancestry research has given me just a power of understanding myself in space and time and so this poem is called Am I to America? and it's after Langston uses I too of America and it's just about tracking my family through the census records and that journey with my father and my grandfather I am transatlantic cargo American and Irish Catholic famine American I am seeking reparations caravan along the Mississippi we will sponsor you first and second great migration American I am wave in the water even if the patient proclamation I have a dream crash epidemic hip hop raised me zero tolerance black lives matter and say her name American I am South Carolina probably but most definitely Hendersonville North Carolina American I am Alzheimer, Arkansas Iowa, Montana, Chicago, Philadelphia Seattle, Sacramento, Baltimore New York City, Oakland, California American I am military but oh beautiful for spacious skies and from every mountainside American I am slave, negro, colored, afram black and proud American I am shepherd, rancher, cowboy caretaker, secretary, cotton picker sharecropper, taxi driver mid-level manager, Air Force veteran unemployed professor becoming a doctor American I am pull yourself up by your bootstraps and also gentrification is violence American I am immigrants I am immigrants I am immigrants much love to my first nations people but not one native bone in my body immigrant, American by force and by famine I am American somewhere between I too am America and am I I have a book coming out that is about this ancestry journey and about that 11 months being on the road and my name is spelled L.Y. look me up it's a popup this is a letter and T-I-N-G-S things with its all right next up we have we have a Detroit boy Boy, anybody here from the Midwest? Yeah, right, yes. Just you, yeah. Anybody else? Anybody here from the West Coast? Who's like, yes. Anybody here from Harlem? Alright, thank you. How about Queens? I know we got at least one. Oh, okay. I'm a girl person now. Exactly. Okay, so next up we've got Detroit, by the way of Oakland. I like it in his bio, he said. I'm an educator. And tell stories in all kinds of different ways. And I am delighted to share my stage with him. So please welcome Thomas Liddell! I was trying to dig around last night when I was going to talk about it today. So in 2015, I apologize for the phone, I just wanted to make sure I didn't get in all the details. In 2015, I was living in Chicago at the time. And my dad was living out here in the back. He's been out here for about seven, eight years. And I try to come out every, you know, every enough time to show that I'm a good son. Right? And nine years ago, I came out here to visit one of my friends in college. She was performing in a show called Mighty Reel, which is a bio tape from this guy performing on the stage so best. Does anyone heard the song? Yeah. It's like this.  I see you. Yup. I ain't here to sing. And my friend Ian, she was in a small part of the show and a really small part of the security. She's a phenomenal voice who's been performing ever since then. And after the show, she hits me and was like, hey, I want to go out. You know what you want to do. Because I'm not from here. But I did hit up my tour guide or my travel guide, my dad, and said, hey, like, you know, we want to get into some things tonight. We had a good show. And what are you going to play? And so he texted me back and said, hey, you know, I'm at this spot. Come through, hang out for a little bit. And if you don't like it or you want to go someplace after, I'll have a visit to the place. And I said, oh, splendid.  So you get out of the Uber and the line to the spot was around the corner. Now, there was one important piece of instruction in the message that my dad gave me. And it was, when you get to the spot, go up to security and tell them that you are Joe's son and his plus one. So I knew he wasn't at church. I don't think he was at a park. He wasn't at a library. It was probably a party or a club or a lounge or something like that. And so we get out of the Uber and I wasn't sure if I was in the right place. And so I look around and try to see maybe if his car was parked by a club. And you know what song establishments they like to park nicer cars in the front? He's trying to see what kind of crowd he is. And so I'm looking around and you see like, there's a Mercedes over there and there's an Audi and there's a BMW and some motorcycles and all that. And sandwiched right in between about a million and a half dollars worth of cars. 2012 Ford Fusion. I said, yeah, we in the right place. And so I followed the instructions. Skip the line. Don't make friends doing that. Going to security, who made me feel like a gold feller and said, what's going on, sir? Uh, I am Joe's son. And this is my plus one. And I hope that means something to me. That's all I got. And as Joe's into the mic and started speaking security, he was just like, that's all I'm saying. He's like, you get inside. Go ahead, skip the line. You get inside, go to the desk, go up the stairs, and you shouldn't be waiting there for it. I didn't like the should, but whatever. Be on the attention line. So I followed the instructions, go inside, get to the desk, say hello, walk up the stairs, and as soon as I got inside, I recognized the music, kind of, and I recognized the aromatics of the space. And I get to the top of the stairs and my dad was there waiting for us. He was like, son, I give him a hug. This is my friend, Ian. He gives her a hug, reaches in one pocket, puts out 50 singles. So we all know. Reaches in another pocket, puts out 50 more singles and gives it to my friend. So we were at a gold club. In case you wanted to know who in this audience has been the most fearful, and was everybody who just laughed when I said I don't know who was that information that she knew. Exactly. Basically, we all are in a business circle. Good time. And so, gives the top, immediately goes to the bar, brown and gray, spent about $40 for half a shot. My dad said, when you want more money, come to me. Don't go to the ATM. I was like, cool. This is going to be a good night. Circulate the establishment, make some donations. And I'll squat. My friend, she's having a good time, too. And while we were sitting, an employee of the establishment and I'm starting to have a small talk. And I'm small talk back. And she asks us some really good questions. So I wanted to return to the favor of really good questions, also. I learned that she was a business management undergrad at the University of the Dominican Republic. That is not a real school. And what I learned after a series of a few questions is that her story got real thin. But it was like pulled on the heart strings. It was almost as if this story was designed to give you to spend more money. And so while I'm interviewing her, she interviewed me. I feel a tap on my leg and I'm here, hey, hey, hey. You ever been interviewed as a job? I say, no. I'm like, okay, cool. She's here to work. I'm here to answer your questions. So either work or let her go. And I said, that was advice from a savvy vet. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. So of course, we went to the room, got a dance, came out and circulated one more time. Had an extremely fun night. I didn't black out. So that was good. And at the end of the night we leave the establishment by getting hands and keys to the valet and says, go get my car, please. More polite than that. But to the key file sees that it's a Ford and somehow doing that for a car to go to. And I'm like literally on the floor laughing. I don't know why it was so funny to see the Ford Fusion just sandwiched between a vet and a Mercedes, but it was great.  And that's how the night ended. And nine years ago today I remembered three things from that night. And I wrote them down just to make sure I don't forget. I've been so close of falling off this stage. I was like, what was that about? That's crazy. First thing, is that money isn't everything. It can buy you the spot but it can't buy clout. Clout is a Ford Fusion part in the van. That's number one. That's number two. That's number two. Always respect people's time and don't interview drivers when they're on the class. And the third one that I really kept and why I'm really excited to tell this story and I'm going to read a little bit of this was relationships change over time. And I think that's this moment I was 24 at the time. That was when I first realized that relationships change. Prior to that moment relationship was very much father-son. We go get haircuts on a weekend when I was a kid. He claims he would talk me how to shoot a basketball. He used to go to the Detroit Lions and Detroit Business Games growing up spending time like that. And at that moment, a shift happened. And he became not just my dad but he also became Joe. He was a human. He has dislikes and likes and his opinions. He's never wrong but he's also never right. He has hobbies and interests. And you know when you look at your dad and it's like, yeah, it's like the horrible thing that's kind of what comes with being a father. But he was just as human as the rest of us and I saw that that night. And the fun that I had with him was like a really good time. And the evolution of that that father-son relationship to father and homie or whatever we got like because I don't know what the other side of it is. It's really special. And that moment I realized that like, yo homie could part. Thank y'all so much. That's my time. Thank y'all so much. Thank y'all so much. Thank y'all so much. I'm going to turn around and look behind you. The dude in the black. That's my dad right there. Yes! Yes! Yes! Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That was great to do. Good. Fantastic. Our next storyteller is someone who has shared the stage here with me before so you if you've been here before you may remember her. She is a Bay Area storyteller educator and has recently kind of fallen deep, deep in love with this whole craft so much so actually in a bio of credit to me. This is true. And my book, we're just for sale of the pack on your way out. We have a book showing that love and helping it to flourish and I'm so excited we'll talk about it after her story but she's got her own show that she has started. It's starting in April, April 13th is the first show. We'll tell you more about that after. Please welcome a big warm welcome for Theresa Latye. Fashionably late drives my husband crazy because he is on time for everything thinking on trunks. So this story is about four pop exits after we made this on trunks. It was in 1996, I remember specifically because this we were on our way to a concert at a very small venue, me and my best friend, and this artist had not come out yet. Actually his first album came out on my birthday, April 2nd, 1996. So he was virtually unknown but I heard Maxwell. Anybody know who Maxwell was? All right. Well nobody knew who he was back then because it cost ten dollars. It was here in the city in the Tenderloin, in a room that was just a little bigger than this. So it was just a small, and so we parked the car, we made our on trunks, and even though we were fashionably late, we still made our way to the front of the stage. I could touch him, right? We were right there. And Nikki, she didn't know nothing about Maxwell but by the end of the night, she was mesmerized. She swore he was singing to her. But we had a great time, great time. We stayed till the lights came on. We were talking to people mingling. Now mind you, I think the kids call it pre-gaming now before the show. You know, you might have hit a little something and drank a little something and had a little drink at the show, had a great time. So when we left, we were walking out with the people, and we were walking around and looking, looking. Looney Bale. Now, Looney Bale was my car. I got her in the 10th grade. Her name is Looney Bale, that's his name. Everybody knew Looney Bale, but my name was on the license plate. He drinks her, nice and clear. And I'm already inspired because did somebody steal Looney Bale? Where is Looney Bale? And we just walking and walking. Now mind you, it's after midnight in the 10th of the morning. It's 1996, so we can have no cell phones. I got on heels because I always wear heels. Nikki always comfortable and practical. I just love her. She was fine walking. I've been walking and walking and I'm just like, oh my goodness, somebody stole Looney Bale. I don't know what we're going to do. I'm grateful. Always walked in the middle of the night and nobody asked if we was working. So just a couple times, you know, we're getting on guard like, okay, we're not about to get taken tonight. But this man, he pulls up and he says, are you guys lost? Do you need some help? We're like, yeah, we already made up our minds. We're not getting that tow truck. We are not getting that tow truck. I don't care. We have to walk another hour. But we sat there talking to him and we're telling him, yeah, we were over there. This concert, we told him where it was. He said, he knew where that was. And if we just hit this corner over here, so he was kind of like going along with us as we were walking. And as we're talking and walking, we see this big empty parking lot with Looney Bale sitting all by herself in the parking lot. And we're like, oh, there she is.  How did we miss that it's parked right in the Safeway parking lot?  We had to be like, how do you miss that? So we get into the car like, I'm like, what if we had only when we exited, if we hadn't mingled and talked and walked with the people, if when we exited, we'd have just made a left. We were two minutes away from the front door. But we spent over an hour walking through the tenderloin. So the moral of this lesson, because Nikki and I, to this day, we both, we don't play when it comes to where we parked. We are looking at all the marks around this check, double check. Sometimes I even take a picture because I'm just so nervous about losing the car.  Idrisa's Purple Stories will be on April 13th. It will be featuring dinner and a story if you like to order dinner. It is on a Saturday in Richmond on the borderline of El Sobrante Hilltop. If you're interested in being on the email list, see me in the back and I'll get your information and we'll send it up to you. Hope you can come. Amazing, amazing. All right, we're going to shift gears a little bit to a, you know, I've been doing this since August and there's been a number of people saying, how come there's not members of Mechanics Institute up on this stage? So ladies and gentlemen, it is a first for the series. A member, one of your very own, is going to show the stage, and not only a member, a chess instructor right here. Yes, yes. So I don't know if he's up for a game after the show, maybe you can ask him, but very funny man. He has done sketch fest, performed all over San Francisco, and I'm so psyched to have him here. So welcome, Zorba, Jabon, you! So, let's get the obvious out of the way right now. C-Lo had a yard sale and I'll write it down. I've been best dressed since kindergarten. I had a pinkie ring in the incubator, you understand what I'm saying? With silk dampers. I have been, yes, the best dressed.  I'm like, sugar daddy, baby, I got diabetes. I'm actually a free uncle.  Pay your papa.  Didn't they die of? You showed me a healthy hand that thought walking around around the city. I understand. I realize one thing. I am the youngest elderly person in here. I turned 52 in March, like March 4th, coming up. And I got one question.  It just don't matter. They give their papa stuff out of all the one things and I have. I don't want to give that thought I can use like for a strip club, you know? I'm not really acclimated, but I don't feel like I'm in my kids, you know? When my parents, when they think they were in their kids, they've lived stuff, you know?  I don't feel, and I feel weird when young kids call me OG. OG knows. When I was a kid, an OG did something to be an OG. I know some of y'all listen to me like, what's the big deal about thinking too, believe me, when you're black and you make it to 52, you're old. You've made it, you've made life. Yes, indeed. I come from Kentucky. Yeah, what for? That's what I'm from. He'll go straight next to me. This is what they look like when they don't agree. Every group is doing that type. We don't mind our cousins, right? I've been dating my uncle for a while. I think I should know. I come from a place where the pigeons shoot tobacco. You understand what I'm saying? They put gun racks on bicycles to give you an idea what I'm for. I got a crazy family too. Anyone else? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I got a uncle named Tom, but we can't call him that. My dad walked out on me and my mom in 1979. Went to get a pack of cigarettes, never returned. That's messed up and he kept me from smoking. Got crazy. My grandfather had 16 kids. Very prolific man. He didn't even have a pull-out couch. I got a friend who's high class white trash. That means he got a chandelier hand from his trailer. He didn't even have a hand. I had two aunts. I got two aunts from my only child that are 8, 12 years older than me. They're like my older sisters. My grandma used to make them take me with them on their dates. Because they needed a lot of access to them. My brother was like, I don't know these people. They might have moved. I don't know. So first they'll say, that's, you want to take my, I don't want to take this one. You want to take all the dates. You go into the movies. You got to be my way in your way and her way and I had to sit in the middle. Now what's the best way to get some of that? Get to know me. So they would try to bribe me with money. They'd be like, there's a little man here that's a 20.   I sit in the lobby. You make it 80. I catch the bus home. Then you got to do with my grandmother. My grandmother did not play true story. When I was five years old, I witnessed my 60-year-old grandmother whooped my 35-year-old dad. He owed him money. He didn't want to pay anymore. He's like, he didn't want to pay anymore. Yeah, we don't know. I got eight-year-old people. I got you. No, no, no. My two-story, five years ago, I witnessed the woman because he owed him money. He didn't want to pay. He got spoiled. But he's like, hold on, mom, your trip with you to the police. This boy right here, this is my son. He's this woman right here. This is my wife.  You see how quiet I try to talk to people. We're like, even a doll pissed on itself. My grandmother takes his arms behind his back like they own cops.  He gets loose running under the bed, assuming he's going to stay. My grandmother chased him under the bed and walked him under the bed. And went off on him like a brimstone preacher. She was like, They just came over and they formed a gospel choir. They was like, And we see it that good. It looked like you didn't have to stay for them anymore. I stayed up late to watch TV. Like, did I tell you to go to bed? I got wrong. Okay, you win. You win. I live here in San Francisco now. I live in a tent alone. You gotta be talking about it. It's the only place I've been when you see an empty wheelchair. I'll be concerned about where the person is.  I walked past him. I told her to say, I'm under and so the custodian's bad for my life. She got with a lady. She got butt teeth in a week. She said, I'll make pretty babies. That's the tent alone. The racist homeless guy. He called me to work 30 minutes late. I asked him for change. I'm like, change. You just come to the ill world. I said, yeah. I saw a rat be dragged.  Goes by the name of half price. That's the tent alone. She's a blind cell phone. The guy who's had an argument is blind. On this cell phone, say these words. But I see you all messing you up on site. Y'all see the high in the tent? It's what I prefer to at the homeless blue market. Why? They set it up and try to sell it to you. One day I walked to the homeless guy trying to sell me one shoe. What am I doing with one shoe? He said, take a one step at a time. I said, yeah. I have an interesting place. I live in a studio apartment. I have a new idea. One record in this drawer. One track in Chicago.  It's got a bed and a couch. It's got an old 1980 microwave.  They've been going all over the place. Why are you so organized to mess up your reproductive work? When they come home and see my place, they're like, well, your place is small. I'm like, God, I can move it in. I got time at 6 a.m. The number for the drunken tax is on the wall about a microwave. Where do you April? I broke up with my girlfriend a couple months ago. I'm out dating again. I went out to this girl. She said, don't treat me like a date. Treat me like you were two too long.  What are you trying to discuss there? What are you saying? I understand what you're saying. Oh, am I talking to you? You sound like you're with a girl out there.  But that's why I'm trying to be a hoot. I just have this big, beautiful smile there. Oh, man. Here's what I'm trying to figure out about these holidays.  Black Beauty Month, Presenting Day, Valentine's Day, Washington Ballroom Lutheran Kings Day. Here's what I'm trying to figure out. MLK day. How do we celebrate? We treated it like 4th of July, right? Here's how I think people should treat Martin Lutheran Kings holiday. I think random white people, she come up to random black people, and hug them, and land them. And then take them home. You'll make a new friend and you'll get robbed.  I saw this in a paper recently, it's about the original bus that Rosa Parks was on, and they're going to put it in a museum in Detroit where she's from. I think that's so cool, but here's the question that I asked. Are you going to put it in the front of the museum? I have so bad, it's been three years since the pandemic, I'm so bad to see people. Because I'm trying to have conversations with my cat. Because she started to make sense. It's a valid point, you know. She went with me to go see the movie Black Panther. Now, I don't purpose. She snuck in my bag, you know how you do it. I didn't think about it, I sent it up, I did some movie theater.   If you ever try to hold a capture, two and a half hours in a movie, I think $15. We're going to see this day. So now we get home, she's spilling herself, because she just saw a cousin on the screen. She want me to know, she put her front legs on the corner of the sign.  You live on a windowsill in the Tenderloin, be cool. Be cool, man. My cat's very bougie too. She won't catch her mouth unless she comes from a rep double family. Very bougie. She'll only drink almond milk, you know. She's bougie, yeah. I got a Chihuahua. She was a very handsome dog. Tuesday you beat, he beat out thousands. Sounds like the best dog in the internet. First one. And I should cry like I had something to do with it. Run like your dog's really handsome. I'm like, I know. Get as visible as mommy. And because I'm a big guy, people see me as something I should have. Like a pit bull, I rock while I go. You know why I like my dog? I don't like getting no dog in better shape than me. It's rude, man.  I'm looking at his back, feeling bad about myself. This joke I'm going to have, this next joke I'm going to have to retire because today he's resigned. When I was going to say, I think it's time for Mitch McConnell to get out of office. But it's not for his policies.  You can't make decisions that affect the record. You don't know how to bow and break it. Let's get him to put a file in under your neck. You understand what I'm saying? They always talk about separation in Turkey State. How about separation of chin and neck? That's how I like my politicians. And now I got to retire that since he's here right now. I don't know if you could be indicted or still be a president. Apparently we're about to find that out, you know. I don't know if I won't like fighting in there, but somebody else needs to run, you know? You should run. And you better have a chance to trouble. We need somebody. You should run. I know you. I know you will. You should run. I don't want to go to lunch with you. Would you? No, no, you don't have to answer that question. You ain't got to do that. That ain't my thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It ain't Trump's thing either. He just told it for the look. You got all these people hanging out with you? All right. I won't play. I love that. People that go on me out. Hey, what's up, people in the back? I ain't know it. Is it great going in? What's going on? You got the Amigos in the back. I ain't know it. It's nice to see people with worse vision than Amigos in the area. Nice. Nice. Nice. I have had a beard since I was 14 years old. Yes, beauty hit me early. I had a mustache and an ultrasound, you know. Beauty hit me very early. You know what it's like to be able to sign your own permission since you're going to field trips. And people older than you ask them, you would buy them a beard, you know. Yeah, man. I don't know who's doing those prom circles, but I want them to be my barber. Since you can make an image of the Virgin Mary in a week, though, I know you can take her like a crazy. How many more? How much time I got up, boo? You're done. Oh, God. I was going to leave you on something funny. You can wrap it. You do one more. Do one more. One more. Yeah. Yeah, I got it. Please, yeah. Yeah, the person's on it. I shouldn't say anything else. You can be on it. I'll be on it. Just get off stage. I've got other people that want to get off. Yeah, it's been wonderful. Thank you. All right. You know what you think about that? You want to put more into this? Oh. Yeah. What do you got? More study. I am going to be at Golden Gate. I'm going to get to our Golden Gate Park. I'm going to be at the chess tournament. What is it? It's the Glotting Chess Championship. There you go. The last six? Like the pickle on people? Yeah. The last chess championship. Nice. All right. And what is that? March 30th. March 30th. That's one month away. All right. Give it up one more time. Roll it. Good on you. And now we have a second place on the chess. He's got some up to sleep. So he will be a very entertaining chess partner. All right. We are up to our last storyteller for the night. Glad to meet you. Glad to meet you. He was running a little late when he was here. And he's a new friend of mine. That is some just amazing energy. And I'm just proud to welcome you to the stage. Welcome. He goes by Play Ball Rockstar. Give it up for Play Ball. Play Ball Rockstar. I'm a rock artist. I'm afraid about Play Ball Rockstar. This is a story about Del Mar Mosley Davis. Del Mar Mosley Davis was born on August 24th, 1994. He was born to a mother named Denise Mosley. She was very beautiful. She is very beautiful and loved me. She has a drug addiction. Denise Mosley had 10 kids. We all went to foster care when we were young. I was a younger, always one of her family. I never could find one. Music as a way of depression was filled with stress. It changed my life. It screwed my life over. I was 15. I went when I was 19. I didn't come home until I was 29. I just came home seven months ago. I went though during my incarceration. And I was a change. I wanted to change everything about myself. I wanted to change all of the things about myself. And I wanted to adopt a different personality, a different belief system. And I wanted to be able to help. I knew that I was the problem. And I didn't want to be a problem anymore. I wanted to be. I could do that through a new idea. I got really better at music. I graduated from college. I have a college degree. I graduated from a state college. My college degree in fitness administration. I really got good at threatening my crime. I came home from prison. I ended up doing 10 years instead of doing 30. I write back the word. From the studio. He's my photographer. And I'm a videographer. And I'm just doing really good now. But I mean, this is a story about Trump. Because a lot of kids out there that went through. Or it's going through now. A lot of kids who are in foster care right now. There are a lot of kids who felt the way I felt. Felt depressed. Felt like they didn't have nobody. Felt like they needed somebody. And nobody wouldn't get it. Maybe because I wasn't nice enough. Or maybe wonder why I was so mad.  And your brother was a broken apart. When you'd be angry, too. If you were to be abandoned. When you'd be abandoned. A week of doubt was because I didn't understand myself. I'm going to be the best photographer. I'm going to win a brand. That's Michael. Thank you guys for your time. I thank you for everything. If y'all want to look up my music. You go to Playball Rock Star. And you can look up my new song, Real. It's popular right now. Yeah. I'm still trying to get up and to put myself on camera. I'm not really used to this. Everything is new to me. It's a journey. I'm here for the ride. Thank you guys for your time. This is Michael. I'm here for the ride. I'm here for the ride. People who love the EP. It's called Small Circles. I should be dropped next month. I actually got a song done. A couple days ago it was called Noni featuring Nokia O tense.  Playball Rockstar. Not Playboy. Not Playboy, Courtney. I'm not Playball Rockstar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Cool. So as they are coming out, just a reminder, we do this every month. So I'm so delighted to have you guys all coming and supporting Live Storytelling in the Bay Area. So give it up for yourselves. Thank you for coming out. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to the people. I know I've just got a book in the back here. It's $20. Another book in the back here. It's $15. And anybody else that wants to talk to me?


Hello, my name is Susan. I have been working at a job as a journalist for almost five years, as a part of a team that tried to archive strange occurrences or absurd pieces of media, like broadcasts such as the Bud Dwyer incident, recordings of airing that had the emergency alert system interrupting regular scheduling, and disturbing news reports. Plus, my team tries help investigating reports behind missing and exploited children. On the archive side of the investigation job, we have all of the tapes and disks backed up in a vault somewhere, so anybody who tries to intrude the building would be able to get through the vault. My job as a journalist is pretty hard work, since I have to interview the people who have come across any of the suspicious activities, and I have to watch some of the archives, so I can write down what occurred in the archives I'm currently viewing. I mostly specialize journaling about what goes on in strange tapes or DVDs people find. Now, enough of my backstory, and on to discussing what happened during one of my first investigations. It was around September of 2017, where I got a call from my boss saying that a group of teenagers went missing, and the only clue of their whereabouts is this disk that they found. I immediately went down to the area I worked at and I saw my boss at his desk. Sitting across my boss's desk was a girl who seemed to look like she was between 9th and 11th grade.  Black shorts, green leggings and she wore white sneakers. I was asked by my boss to take her into a special room, so I can ask the girl about the disk, and how she came across it, which I did so. As soon as I took the girl to the investigation room, I offered her a beverage, since she seemed pretty worried and frantic when she entered our station to which she accepted. I then sat her down and asked her about the disk, and how she found it. To which she responded with that her and her four friends were taking a walk around the city in their area, and that they were going to take a shortcut to one of their friend's houses, to which they walked into one of the allyways in the city, until they came across the disk with a case that had white paper as the cover of the case. Written on it with marker was barely readable gibberish that said, Little Shop S4 DVD, with crude stick figures that were of animals I can barely make out. I immediately assumed it was that animated 90's show, Little Shop, which was based off the famous horror movie, Little Shop of Horrors, but I was wrong, when I turned around the case, it contained an episode list. The episodes that were on the DVD go by the name steamed, guilt tripping, the tortoise and the air, two peas in a podcast, go figure, pet napped, Little Shop of Horrors, paint a picture, it will last longer, and parts one and two of Little Shop Street. When I realized that this was a Little Shop DVD, I asked the girl, if she and her friends watched it and she nodded her head. When she confirmed that she did watch the contents of the disk, I asked her to explain it to me. She explained that the content on the disk obtained all of the episodes I have mentioned however, each episode had very poor looking quality, and the audio sounded heavily distorted with it occasionally cutting out along with the screen cutting to black every few seconds. She said that she saw some really messed up imagery, when she and her friends watched it. She also stated that, after her friends watched the disk, she haven't seen them at school since. I asked if she can elaborate on the content of the disk, but she began to get choked up, before she could even describe what she saw. I assumed that it was either to disturbing or, because she missed her friends. I also asked, if I could see what her friends looked like to file a report, just in case they have gone missing to which the girl agreed and showed me a group picture on her phone. The friends in the group picture that accompanied the girl were two females and a male. The female on the girl's left, had brown hair, brown eyes, in which her hair was tied in a braid with a pink colored scrunchie, and she was seen wearing a red short sleeved shirt, a pink skirt, white leggings and blue dress shoes. The other female on the girl's right, had orange hair, blue eyes, and was seen wearing a purple short sleeved shirt, with blue pants, and black sneakers. The male has short brown hair, brown eyes, and was seen wearing a green T-shirt, brown corduroy's, and white sneakers. The girl stated that this picture was taken the day they found the disk and watched it, and asked me and a few of my associates to view the contents of the disk, to which I agreed to and said that, if she has any updates on her friends to come back to us and give us an update, so we can further our investigation. After the girl left with her aunt, me and my associates decided to insert the disk into the disk slot that I plugged into my computer as the disk began to start. As the disk booted up, it began to start with the main menu with the only options being play, or episode select. I decided to select a random episode and that being the tortoise and the heir, and the girl was right. You could barely make out what the characters were saying, and you can't even make out what was going on in the picture, since it cut to black mostly. So, I caught myself skipping episodes, until I made it to the episode paint a picture, it will last longer, on the episode selection screen, since all of the episodes were nothing but a glitched out mess. When I selected it, the episode immediately played. The first half of the episode started off as a normal episode of littlest pet shop. I should know, since I watched it with my niece a couple of times, when she was younger. The only thing that seemed strange was that the audio was still distorted, and the video quality looked like something from an old VHS tape that collected dust from sitting on a shelf for almost a decade. Other than that, things seemed to be normal, until the biscuit twins confront glide on the painting Minka made after Josh showed the entire school her painting, which was when things felt a lot different compared to how I remembered the original episode, since this was one of the newer episodes I remembered watching with my niece. The audio quality became a bit better and you can understand what the characters were saying, but it still sounded muffled and hard to make out. The picture quality also got a bit better too, as the new scene was about to occur. When it cut to the next scene, it didn't start the next scene like how I remembered the original episode. It was instead a new scene with Minka, but she was in the middle of the day camp in a fetal position with a paint brush on the floor next to her, and paint splatters were all over the floor and on the walls. The other pets were nowhere to be seen in the day camp with Minka for some unexplained reason. Minka was mumbling to herself, but since the audio quality was very poor, you could barely make it out. What I could make out was the music in the episode. The music was of a broken church organ, and the melody was the same five keys playing over and over again at a fast tempo. After 30 seconds of seeing Minka like this, it then cuts to the biscuit twins and Blive having their usual conversation, but as soon as they enter the day camp, they see Minka on the floor in a fetal position. They then look up at the paintings that Minka made that she plastered on the walls which looked very different than I originally remembered. Instead of the paintings being diverse and based on a situation going on, while Minka was painting like in the original episode, it was the same painting of Blive and the pets, but something seemed off as the episode focused on them. As it zoomed in on the center painting, the sound quality began to grow worse and worse until the center painting engulfed the entire screen. Then it focused on the painting of Blive and the pets staring expressionlessly at the viewer, but then the painting changed ever so slightly after 30 seconds. After 30 seconds of the painting being focused on, me and the people watching the episode noticed that Blive and the pets were starting to ooze black paint out of their eyes, just like when a woman cries and you can't see the mascara dripping down her face. What's even more unsettling is, as more black paint oozes out of Blive and the pets' eyes, the more they began to blink. What's even more creepy is that their pupils began to follow the cursor as I began to move it. After focusing on that disturbing drawing for a minute or two, it then cuts back to the biscuit twins who were the only people in the currently dimly lit and desolated day camp, and they looked scared out of their wits looking at all of these paintings that Menka made in the day camp. They were surrounded by the same painting of the same person and of the same pets watching them, watching their every move. The biscuit twins tried to escape by opening the door but to no success. They were stuck in the same room as these deranged portraits, and as they realized that the two twins start to huddle in fear and started shaking immensely, as it then cuts back to the painting of Blive and the pets with them still blinking as their pupils follow my cursor. However, something was different about the painting. We noticed that Blive and the other pets started to smile and their grins expanded the more the episode focuses on it until their grins were from ear to ear. After another 30 seconds of focusing on the painting, it then focused on the walls that had the paintings and it do something that honestly freaked me and my associates out. The wall then began to morph all of the paintings into one giant painting. Then Blive and the other pets began to come to life in the painting by crawling out and near the biscuit twins with the same deranged expression on their faces which caused the biscuits to try to run but Blive ended up grabbing the twins by their ankles as the instrumental of the guilty tango song plays. However the instrumental was half an octave lower as you hear the two twins screaming which was the loudest sound in the episode. After the twins get dragged into the painting by Blive and the pets, it then cuts to black but it then showed one final image that was the worst image of the entire episode. The image was still of Blive and the pets staring at the viewer but they had a different facial expression. Instead of them staring expressionlessly at the viewer they were staring down at the biscuit twins and their facial expressions were filled with anger, disdain, and malice as the biscuit twins stare at the viewer with tears in their eyes as they were in fear of facing their fates of being forever stuck in a painting. Never to be heard from again. What's even more disturbing was that as the instrumental of the guilty tango grew softer there was a sound that grew louder and louder as it focused more on the painting. The sounds were of women screaming in agony, pain, and distress. The screaming grew louder and louder as it focused on the painting until it finally turned to static. After I saw that episode I began to feel pretty unsettled by how creepy that painting was and how unsettling that ending was but I immediately shook it off since someone must have tampered with the episode heavily since it did look fan-made but the way they edited that painting felt way too real to be a fan-made project. Whoever made that did a pretty good job with the editing. However, I had to view the rest of the episodes without the glitches and see if there is anything off with the other ones. Either the person who made the episode must have edited it to glitch out like that on purpose or the disc might have been heavily scratched. Just to be sure it didn't have any scratches I decided to go to the disc repair machine so I can buff out the scratches on the disc and that helped out a little bit so I can see the episodes much clearer. The other episodes were still normal except for one thing. In the episodes 2Ps in a podcast Go Figure, Steamed, and all of the other episodes that had the biscuit twins in them on this DVD the biscuit twins were noticeably absent from the episode but whenever a scene were bled or anyone would interact with the biscuit twins the scene would still play out as normal but the biscuit twins would be absent. So, it would look like life was talking to herself in some instances. A couple of weeks later me and my associates called up the girl's aunt and asked her to bring her to our station since I caught her aunt's license plate number and a fellow associate of mine used said license plate number to trace her address so we can give her a phone call to which her aunt didn't agree to and instead told me to come to her house or at her workplace since she said her niece had school which I agreed to. During the aunt's work break I decided to sit with her at a table with a cup of coffee and I had her giving me some info on how her niece was doing after she watched and found the disc. The aunt told me that from what her niece told her that two of her friends that watched the disc with her haven't showed up at school since. I told her that I will have my friends and associates figure out where her friends are after we finish our coffee. I decided to ask the girls aunt about the names of the girls friends and jotted them down on a notepad. After the girls aunt and I finished our cup of coffee I decided to head back to my job so I can find the homes of the two missing teenagers so I can ask their parents. I first went to the house of the brown haired girl and I asked her father about what happened to her and if she is okay. The father shook his head and he said that she was in the mental hospital due to the contents of the disc that she saw. But he didn't know about the other girl with orange hair so we investigated by going to her mom's house. I asked her the same questions but the girls mom said that she hadn't seen her. It might be most likely that she ended up missing. I told her that we can help find her but deep down. I knew that the investigation might not end well and I was right because I had yet to find the orange-haired girl's location until recently which was why I am sharing my story now. I found words on the street that the girl who we were looking for a few years ago had died but the most disturbing part was how she died. The girls parents called up another group of detectives, ones that one of my associates worked with for a while and they told him that they did find the girl in the woods but she was not found alive. She was hanging from a tree like a pinata and her body had bruises and cuts all over her. From what my associate described, it sounded like someone must have beaten her before or after she was hung. But the most disturbing part was that the girl's stomach was cut open presumably after she was hung. It has been a few months since the school broke the news to the class that the girl turned out missing which means that her body had time to decompose since the area she was found at was a very secluded area and nobody even bothered to check on her. I was beyond disgusted from what was described to me by my associate. I wish that we found the girl sooner because maybe we could have saved her but I knew it was too late. I don't know how I should end this article but all I can say about this is if you ever find a mysterious DVD, VHS or something very sketchy and shady online, you know who to call. Feel free to contact me by email immediately if the Department of Investigation is closed or if they are busy. I can try to help you find out who has been behind the contents of the tape or disc even though I have yet to find out who made this bootleg littlest pet shop episode but I am still trying to crack this case to this day. If I find anything, I will keep you guys up to date once I find who the culprit is and get him to answer my questions. Now, if you excuse me, I have an unfinished case I need to crack.


So, hello, everyone. My name is Roberto. I'm a senior software engineer in Red Hat and today we're going to talk about chocolate cakes. So, I like very much all of them. And, you know, many people have lots of allergies and tolerances.  Usually go to the ingredient list, right? And the thing is, how do you know that you can trust that ingredient list? Well, usually there's lots of food supply chain regulations in every country. There's guidelines on how to handle food. For example, if you touch something that contains nuts, then you should not touch something else in a restaurant. So, usually we don't get sick from eating food in that state. So, this is actually very similar to what a food supply chain is very similar to what a software supply chain looks like. So, this is like a typical software supply chain, very simply outlined. Everybody consumes artifacts made by these kinds of pipelines. Basically, even if you have one of these smart electric toothbrushes, chances are the software in it is getting built by one of these pipelines. So, yeah, if it gets some malicious code, then you're not brushing your teeth today, sorry. Yeah, and basically every time you use GitHub Actions or some GitLab CI or Jenkins jobs, you're probably using one of these. It can get really, really complex. So, trust me, it can get super complex. And each item that you put into the pipeline makes it more vulnerable. So, yeah, basically each of the triangles represents a kind of thread to a software pipeline or software supply chain. No need to read all of them. Basically, no need to read anything in this presentation. Yeah, and imagine if, for example, in the build, if we could, in one of the builders, put some small script that would detect when the build is triggered and would input some malicious code into the code that you're building. This is actually a real case. It happened to SolarWinds in 2020. And it was very famous case of supply chain, software supply chain attack. So, what Solsec comes to solve is how do I make sure that the code that the developer wrote is what it's actually being run in your computer, what the binary actually contains, and it was not tampered in some way. So, this is, Salsa is a set of incrementally adoptable guidelines. It's of course a guideline. It doesn't make your pipeline or your software supply chain like unbreakable, but it should help with hardening it. So, basically, what it brings is a common language. Words are kind of easy to trick, and companies can usually do it very well. So, it's safer to say, hey, I'm compliant with Salsa level one because the specification is super clear on what it means than whatever kind of company talk you can do. It's also a way to evaluate how much you can trust that the code that the developer put together is what you're running. I've actually seen in the Arc Linux user repository, I've seen people trying to get Salsa certification for some of their packages. Actually, the most important thing is that it actually helps you improve the security of your software supply chain, making it less likely that the software, the artifacts generated by the supply chain, contain malicious code. And there's many security standards that you need to comply in many cases. One of them is NIST Secure Software Development Framework. There are executives ordered in the U.S. being released that make compulsory to comply with this, but they usually only tell you these standards, other standards, usually only tell you what the final stage should look like and not how to get there. So, to start with talking about Salsa, most part of it, it's about provenance. There are three key words here, verifiable, where, when and how. It's actually four words. Basically, provenance, in plain words, it can be whatever you want. But it could be a JSON file that states how some artifact was built. For example, if you have a C program that you're building, you're compiling, which command was used with GCC, which flags were used, which dependencies are we using, where did we download those dependencies from, what the digital signature of those dependencies are, digests, all of these connects.  It's very important, the concept of provenance. Basically, it's a document that explains exactly how the artifact was built, and you can verify that this is actually true. So, Salsa is divided into three tracks, one for each kind of thread, source track, build track, and dependency track. Each track has four levels of certification. The current state, Salsa version 1.0, was just released in April 18th this year. So, it's early stage, and it only covers build threads and the build track. And actually, for the build track, we only cover until level three. Level four is probably coming very soon. But yeah, creating a specification of this kind is not very easy. Basically, if you read any RFC spec, you probably saw that words are super precise. They are actually intended to mean what they are exactly intended to mean. The Salsa working group is also prioritizing stability. They don't want to put any requirements for each level that is not achievable or that they do not agree that is secure. And basically, everyone involved in this, there are many organizations involved and individuals, has to come to an agreement on what it means to be secure. So, yeah, it's kind of tricky to reach all of that. For example, well, for the build track, we basically have here the requirements for each level. Basically, for level one, you only need that the provenance document exists. It doesn't have to be verified, signed. It doesn't, you know, just document, provenance exists. For level two, it also requires you that you have hosted build platform. This is because usually when you have a build system that is very specific, it's usually easier. The attack surface is reduced and it's easier to harden it. If you have a system that only works for one specific thing, that's why it requires hosted platforms. And it also requires you to prove that the provenance is authentic, which means probably in most cases, digitally signed by the builder. And for level three, it also requires you that the builder is, all of the builders are isolated between each other so that credentials or private keys for the digital signatures cannot mess around with each other. The cool thing about Salsa is that you're not on your own. They provide a lot of tooling. For example, if you have an action job, then it's, in my opinion, personal opinion, it's kind of easy to, if the workflow is not super complex, then it's kind of easy to actually get salsa certification for your artifacts. They're also doing a proof of concept in Jenkins and they of course provide salsa verifier. So yeah, you're not on your own, as in other standards that just tell you, hey, you have to be like this in the end, but they don't tell you how to get there. As for community, it's an open community. Anyone can contribute. They're a GitHub. You can feel free to create comments, issues, merge requests. They have monthly meetings. You can basically attend. I think they are basically a video call, so anyone can go. They have mainly Salsa L. And yeah, it's probably not the golden standard yet, but in my opinion, it has pretty good chance. And even if it doesn't become this super important standard, then the actual measures that you implemented in your workflows will help you protect the supply chain. And also, being very early in stage of development, it also allows you to new contributors to actually influence the specification. So if you think something is wrong in the specification, feel free to go to their meetings and tell it or to create a GitHub issue. And also for the tooling, you can create new implementations for maybe for the Jenkins that we just saw, or I don't know. So yeah, that's everything, and thank you very much. If you have any questions, maybe we have some time? Okay. Any questions? Go ahead. It's self-certification. Well, you check if you comply with the requirements. You have the Salsa Verifier to check if the provenance is generated correctly. Yeah, I guess that at some point, we will have some certificators that will certify your pipelines for auditors. Yeah, thank you. Any more questions? Go ahead. For S-bombs. They are both independent things. You can have Salsa without having S-bombs, but you can very easily generate S-bombs from Salsa provenance. And it's usually S-bombs are generated in a non-verifiable way, right? Having the provenance makes it actually verifiable. So yeah, both things go well together. Thank you. Any more questions? If it's self-generated, you will ultimately hit up something like a chain of trust problem. Yes. How the Salsa Working Group thinks it's deferred to be addressed later? Well, basically, the consumer of the software decides who did they trust. So basically, has any other certification authority that you have on your browser, you're deciding or Firefox is deciding for you, or Trump or whatever, who do you trust? So it's very similar structure. Thank you. Any more questions? Okay, if you have any more questions, I'll be outside probably. And if you want to take...


I've never done this before. You see me? My hair is still wrapped. I'm like kind of chilling. And I just wanted to get on here because why not? I'm at home. I'm just kind of editing some stuff on the computer and trying to get ready because I'm about to go out. So I said, let me answer this question that I saw. So the question was asked if you can work without first getting your seat. And so if you don't already know, there is a new platform that we started called Get That So University. So go check it out at GetThatSoUniversity.com. And subscribe to my channel, you guys, because you're going to get great content on here. And I'm going to start really doing some more of these like impromptu kind of weekly check-ins with you guys because I have the time to do so.  I do have some time within the day to do that. But anyways, back to the question. It was asked if you can work without first getting your seat, meaning can you work as a PA without being certified? And I mean, like the longest short of it is yes and no, right? So can you work? Yeah, like there are places that will allow you to work. But do you really want to work at a place that allows you to work when you're not even certified to work there? Because that's really what it is. Like if something were to happen while you were waiting for your certification to come through or while you were just a PA, meaning that you graduated from physician assistant school, but you have not yet passed your boards. And let's say, I don't know, something detrimental happened or something bad happened, whatever the case may be. And the person now comes to sue you and says, well, they weren't even certified to provide the care that they were trying to provide for me. You're in trouble, right? Like that's a problem. So yes, you can work. Like you can do a lot of things that you shouldn't be doing that you're not supposed to do. But when it comes to getting your seat first, like this is not one of the places that you want to do that.  Like in everything is how it should be. So when it comes down to it no, you should not be working without first having your seat. And I know like that's kind of confusing for people because we just kind of use the acronym or like the two letters PA to describe a physician assistant, even if you're certified or not. But I do want to make it very clear that once you graduate from PA school, you are a PA, right? So you can practice as a PA once you get certified, not once you graduate. So just having the title doesn't mean that you are credentialed or certified to provide the care that you may be doing or may be asked to be doing. And it's the same thing like being an MD, right?  There are many people that graduated med school and are doctors, but they haven't like passed the necessary board exams to actually say like, okay, I can now practice or gone into a residency to like hone those skills and become, you know, an emergency medicine physician or surgeon or whatever the case may be. So just having the title because you've gotten the schooling doesn't mean that you can actually perform the skills or are certified or not necessarily qualified but warranted in providing those skills. So that's really the answer to that question. I mean, I don't know what else you may want to know about that, but I talked about the certification process.  But when it comes to actually being credentialed to work in a hospital or in an office, that's like a whole nother ballgame in and of itself. But just a really quick answer for you guys. I'm like in my room just trying to like get myself together. I got to like do my eyebrows and stuff, like make sure that that's together. But I hope you guys are doing good. You know, it's almost time for Thanksgiving.  So please, you know, Thanksgiving. Responsibility is the responsibility right just like how they say drink responsibly like Thanksgiving responsibility. So I mean so please you guys like Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving responsibly. Okay, like, you know, make sure that you guys are taking the necessary precautions to ensure that not only your family is safe but the families that you may come contact with at your job or something like that are also safe. Okay, so I hope that you guys kind of got the answer from that question from this video. Leave some more comments and questions for me because I will not only make main videos like my Sunday videos about them but some of these weekly videos I will try to do as well. Alright, if you haven't already done so go on over to Instagram and follow me on Instagram at AdanaThePA and follow JTCU on Instagram at Get That C University and go ahead and like this video and subscribe. Join the family. Come along. Join me on this journey for those of you who've been like rocking with me from the beginning like from the beginning beginning like A&A Reacts beginning. I appreciate each and every one of you and all of you thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Could it be here without you guys to support continuing on this YouTube journey? So thank you so much for it. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye!


Hello everybody! Watch this video to find out how to recover data from a hardware raid based on a motherboard controller, how to replace a hard disk, and what to do if the motherboard in your computer has failed. Hello friends! If you need to recover deleted data, view or restore removed browser history. Hetman Software products will help you. Follow the link in the description, download the necessary program for free, install it and analyze the disk. The utility will show you the data you can recover, so you will be able to view it or get it back. In our channel and blog you will find solutions to any problem, from installing an operating system or configuring it to fix impossible bugs and errors or optimizing mobile gadgets. Our specialists will answer any questions you ask in your comments under the videos or articles. Raid systems are widely used all over the world as they offer a considerable performance boost and improve resilience. Many users choose Raid to ensure higher data safety for important files. All that being said, loss of data from a raid system is something that you can't absolutely exclude. It may happen due to several factors, such as power failure, unexpected shutdown, hardware failure, administrator's error, and so on. Regardless of what happened and finally caused the loss of data from a raid system, the first question to answer is how can we recover information from such a disk array? Let's find out what to do in each of these cases. If the motherboard you have used to build a raid system is down, if you have not chosen the wrong disks when configuring or creating a disk array, and if you have removed by a disk array by accident, if one of the disks within the array is out of order, the raid status information will be displayed before building the operating system, and you will see that the array is degraded, which means it's damaged. In my case, this is Raid 5. To replace the faulted disk with a new, healthy one, open the Intel Rabbit Storage Technology menu, and do it by pressing the key shortcut Ctrl plus I, or when the computer is booting. You will see the list of all your disks, and you can tell which one of them is down by checking their serial numbers.  After that, connect a healthy disk instead and turn on the computer. Open the Intel RST menu, and it will be suggested to repair the damaged array by adding a new disk for rebuilding. Select a disk, press Enter, and the raid status will change into Rebuild. Below, you'll see a message saying that volumes with rebuilt status will be rebuilt in the operating system. Select .6 in the menu above to exit and boot the operating system. If you have accidentally chosen the wrong disk for rebuilding or excluded disks from a raid array, such disk will be damaged and all the information stored on it will become inaccessible as soon as the operating system boots. Use Hetman Radio Cover to extract data from the damaged array. It is capable of restoring data from inoperable raid systems or from disks that were used to build a raid. It can read all the information about the motherboard used to create the disk array, and then rebuild the damaged raid system to copy all important data from there. As you can see, the program has identified the properties of a damaged raid system, calls it automatically, and now it is displaying the detailed array information at the bottom of the window. Before you start the recovery process, make sure you have a disk with the same or larger capacity than the amount of data you are going to recover. Right-click on the array and start Fast Scan. The program has found and displayed all the remaining data. Now select the files you want to restore, click Recovery, specify the directory where you'd like to save the data, and click Recover again. When the recovery process is complete, you'll see all the files in the specified folder. If the Fast Scan can't find the missing files, then go for full analysis. This is going to take much longer, but in the end, you'll be able to see all the information still remaining on the disk, including the files that have been deleted. In case of a hardware failure, when the motherboard breaks down, you may choose to connect the drives to another computer, but accessing the information without specialized data recovery software is hardly possible, because another operating system won't be able to identify that the drives have been used to build a raid storage system. In the Disk Management window, you'll be suggested to initialize or format them for further use. No matter what, don't agree to anything. This can raise the remaining data. Instead, use our utility to rebuild the lost disk array automatically using the available drives. After that, scan the array and recover the files you're looking for. Hetman Red Recovery will help you recover data even if your raid system is completely removed in the Intel RST menu. As you can see, even in this scenario, the program was able to identify the type of the damaged array and rebuild it automatically. All you have to do now is to scan it and restore the data you need. If the program fails to rebuild and damage the array automatically, use the raid constructor. Select Manual mode and click Next. Then specify all the information you know about the lost disk array. Rate type, the order and size of the blocks it used to consist of, select them from the list and specify the order. Fill the missing space with empty disks. After all the settings are complete, click Add and it will appear in the Drive Manager immediately. Scan the array and recover the files you are looking for. Rate 5 remains operable if one disk fails, but with two disks down, the array becomes completely inoperable and there is no way to access the information from such a storage system. However, with Hetman Red Recovery, you will be able to recover information from an array lacking two or even more disks, but a part of that data will be damaged. After all, any raid type is vulnerable to damage and may fail due to a variety of reasons. That is why it is crucial to have a backup copy of the data so that all your files can be recovered without affecting the workflow. Yet, if things go from bad to worse, Hetman Red Recovery comes to the rescue with a bundle of features to make data recovery from faulty damaged or formative disk arrays simpler and easier than before, and it supports full popular raid formats. With this tool, your lost data will be back without a sweat. And that is all for now. Hopefully, this video was useful. Remember to click the Like button and subscribe to our channel. Push the bell button to receive notifications and never miss new videos. Leave comments to ask questions. Thank you for watching. Good luck.


It's Matthias Brotner from Simplest Innovation and we just won the best business model award. Feeling pretty humbled by the award, it's really great to get the recognition from the international community and it kind of seems like we're doing something right, something right down in the South in Africa. So thanks for the time, I appreciate it. I recommend it to anyone. I think the network and the connections that you can build at an event like this are invaluable and not just from a business perspective but I think from an investor perspective, from a networking perspective, having seen the shortcomings of what we have in Africa and the technology advances that the guys here in Korea or in Asia have, there's such a huge connection, there's so much synergy between the two that we can definitely strengthen partnerships. I've seen the shortcomings in terms of the language barrier as an example, which is the only barrier for Korean companies to enter a place like South Africa and if we can assist with that and forge those partnerships, I think globally we can go strength to strength, it'll be great, I think, good experience.


This is a song I do to help so the kids can do conducting as well as singing the song. Some other items that you work on in this are a pattern. In this case we have a pattern, a B, and then back to A. You also have same different, so the A section actually repeats. So we have the same color, same picture cards. The contrasting middle section has a different picture and a different color. And then we come back and repeat the A sections again. And it also, as I said, it's also for conducting. So when it's time for the students to show the students to conduct, here's what we do. We put them down as we're singing the song. Then when the conducting starts, you go back to the beginning. And when you actually move in front of the picture as the song changes, I would actually have a student say it on this side when it's time to bring them up. One on this side and then one on the other side as two. So they're facing each other. So you can get two students at one time. And then you'd go back to the beginning or you'd choose two new students or even better, let the students pick the next two people. You saw I added hand symbols on the middle one there. If you can get the kids doing that, create something that they can do that adds to it and helps them learn the song as well.


I FEEL LIKE I'M WATCHING THE FIRST SEASON AGAIN! Not only did you get my last reaction to an Attack on Titan episode, but today is the last time I'm reacting to an Attack on Titan song. Think about that. I don't know if that depresses you, but it depresses me. I want you guys to let me know down below right now. What is your favorite Attack on Titan opening and your favorite Attack on Titan ending song? I'll make a video later this week saying my favorites ranking my favorite endings and openings, but other than that man, let's sit back. Let's try to relax. Let's try to get the st- the t- the- um, puretis depression by watching more Attack on Titan, but then you get even more depressed when it ends so it's like an ending cycle, just like the episode, just like the story of Attack on Titan. It's a cycle. Can we have it back? Can we have it back bro? I want y'all to list down below three enemies that we can trade just to get Attack on Titan back. Or maybe an anime set off in the future 2,000 years into the future three animes for one Let's do it, bro. Put your top three down below in the comments.   You're teleported back. I mean for me It's like a year, but for y'all it's probably like 10 12 years You hear that voice is the sound of like the beginning of the end and now we just got the end yesterday But still god damn man here and this is so sick. Their voices are so beautiful Band is so good Timeless man. They had to come back ready ending Why didn't they show this in the episode man? It's more of a tribute.  Anywhere else besides now probably not Like as far as an opening goes I feel like I'm listening to this the least out of all of them But it's more of a tribute and like a thank you for all of the years And we're here now bring it back the group that started it all and Now it's ending it all and There's showing like a time lapse to show when everything has happened throughout the whole story of attack on Titan It's more of a celebration rather than something to be like That was a sick shot. Wait a minute.  They're doing it differently in attack on Titan This just looks so sick to look at man. I'm loving the vision God why is it over man?   Oh This is artsy and this is already my vibe with that piano dude.  Oh, that's a big spoiler for anybody to see why would you be here then? Why would you be here? Aaron's a bird get spoiled He transitions See this I would love to listen to alone. I'd listen to this beyond this video For the sake of storytelling I'm happy this didn't happen because like world destruction just it was better for the story man It's just it was cooler. Let's face it.  That's not Aaron That's John now Oh And I high Gucci comes back bro, she did No, she akuma. No, no, she did that one too.  Oh my god.   I'm gonna watch that episode again I'm gonna make a few videos on attack on Titan this week One will be a three-hour plus reaction of my favorite moments of attack on Titan My best reactions to those moments including this last episode.  It made it even better and completed it It's a masterpiece a modern-day masterpiece. It's a yama Thank you. Arigato. Good. I must senpai. Is that you call him senpai? I don't know bro I think I'm Japanese.   It's really over and just that thought alone makes me depressed really depressed if you depressed We're together we're together in this bro. It'll be alright


It's a privilege to be a black business in a city that I've grown to love. Being the first generation here from the West Indies, it's important for us to be a part of the historical impact that comes with DC. I'm Sharika Winter. I'm Shalyn Thomas and we're the founders of TW Tote.  And that's when the TW Tote was born. One of the issues we had as a business is just understanding what happens next. We knew there was a market out there but unfortunately nobody really knew us. Attending Grow with Google Workshops helped us learn smarter ways to optimize our business as well as be found online. They drop a lot of nuggets on us from trends to insights. It really helps us to better understand our customers in a competitive space. The mission of our program is to level the playing field for black and Latinx small business owners within local communities. We want to help them grow their business and reach more customers online. Integrating that product into the culture is why people love the brand. It's really a community where people are supporting each other openly and honestly. You know that's really important to us because we develop other people around us and push them to be great. And in return your company ends up being great. I mean as a minority woman it's scary because we're laying the concrete and it's not dry yet. But knowing that this could be the beginning of something for other people it makes us keep going. We're not going to stop.


The African Union's top health official, John N. Kengasong, says he wants to get the world's first malaria vaccine to African children as soon as possible. In Pakistan, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in the southwestern part of the country kills at least 20 people. At the United Nations, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demands evidence from Ethiopia after the country expelled seven UN workers it accused of wrongdoing. And in Sweden, officials award the Nobel Prize for Literature to Tanzanian writer Abdul Razak Gurna, who wrote about colonialism and the lives of refugees.