Have You Met....? Monday (#18): Steam Powered Giraffe

I love concerts, I won't lie. Went to my first one when I was 15 years old - Depeche Mode on their "Some Great Reward" tour at the Oakland Colliseum - weird, the details that stick to your brainmeats. Well, anyway, to help foster a handoff of this affection, I had the opportunity to take my daughter to a concert. We'd been to one before - Duran Duran (yes, I'm an 80's child, cope with your disappointment, please) - but she was a fair bit younger and was more freaked out by the potent volume than anything else.

Now, I've been following Steam Powered Giraffe for a while now - being as we do travel and work in the same circles - but I've never had the chance to actually watch them perform. So when I learned they were doing a show near Seattle, and since my daughter LOVES them, it just seemed like the perfect chance.

It's difficult to describe the full SPG experience. The closest I've come is to say that they're like KISS, if KISS loved Vaudeville. The show isn't just a concert. It's a full performance. Stories, jokes, multimedia, dance numbers, costumes. They borrow on musical genres spanning more than a hundred years, all the while keeping the musical content and pop-culture referentiality accessible and enjoyable. They made me love an old Country/Western ballad to the classic unsung hero "Rex Marksley", they gave me a ballet dance to the heart-breakingly beautiful song "Turn Back the Clock", and they did in fact, get me and everyone else in the theater to sing along on the infectious "Brass Goggles". To those of you who haven't heard of these wonderful people before, I am not kidding you. Go check them out. They are amazeballs.

The band and their biomechanical cohorts even hosted a meet and greet after the show, and I had a brief moment to share my enthusiastic enjoyment of their production. They do put on a fantastic show, and made me want to grab a keytar or one of my drums and play along. To the lovely and talented Rabbit (I can't tell you how much I would pay to see you and Weird Al  perform a duet on accordions), the eloquent and dashing The Spine, and the potentially malevolent (and fancy shoed) Hatchworth, let me just say this: you are fantastic, your work is deeply enjoyable, and, in all seriousness, let's do have tea sometime. We should definitely chat.  

Have You Met...Monday (#12): Kato

This far into my "Have You Met....? Monday" posts and NOW I do something purely Steampunk? Well, if I'm going to make you wait that long, it might as well be for Kato. 

Kate Lambert - probably known more broadly as "Kato", or simply as "Steamgirl" - is hands down one of the more widely seen faces of the modern Steampunk subculture. As a model, fashion designer and all around handyperson, Kato embodies all of the DIY wonderfulness that makes Steampunk so appealing to so many of us.

Though originally from Wales, she's taken up residence (some say crash-landed) in the Portland area - and what a residence! She founded the company Steampunk Couture, an outlet for her cool fashion designs, inspired the look of the main character from Joe Benitez' Lady Mechanika, and has gone on to position herself as what I'm forced to describe as a fairly iconic figure in the Steampunk world. Frankly, she's kind of cool, and I'm not ashamed to admit that. Plus, she also plays the piano, and that's always been a rather endearing trait for me.

She's lately been doing more public appearances - most recently at Salt Lake City's SaltCitySteamFest and will next be hosting a whole room for her and her fellow Steampunk models at Seattle's Steamposium in September. Steampunk Posse? Dunno. 

So there she is - go check her out - - um, but don't google her from a work computer. Just saying.

Have you met....Kiri Callaghan

....Kiri Callaghan?

Author? Actress? Vlogger? Bard? Totes a jedi? Ring any bells?

I've had the immense pleasure of knowing Ms Callaghan for lo a couple years now, so it's difficult not to be excessively effusive. And, since I'm starting my new "Have You Met..? Monday" - my weekly cross reference to someone I really think you should meet - and since Kiri is already heavily featured in projects of mine both past and future, she seemed the ideal candidate for the inaugural post.

Kiri is something of a creative dynamo - like so many artists I have been coming to know of late, she comes from a variety of disciplines, all of which roll up into a broader appreciation and understanding of the many ways in which art can communicate and express the human experience. 

Plus, she's kind of awesome.

She wrote a script - "Funeral Potatoes" - a short but powerful depiction of a young woman's look at dealing with loss - and I had the opportunity to watch it performed. I'm not ashamed to tell you I cried like a baby. It was very impressive, seriously. Since then, she and collaborated on a series of short stories designed as a prelude to a dark fantasy take on the Peter Pan stories, called "Into the Dust", and since then she has also finished another full novel, titled "Alys". And during all that time, she's been a nearly full time vlogger, and was picked up last year by none other than Geek & Sundry. 

And in addition to that, I'm proud to consider her a very close friend of mine. So, yeah, I might be a tad biased, but I'll forgive myself that. 

She has some great projects lined up, some of which will be featured here (stay tuned!), but definitely feel free to follow her blog and her Facebook page - - you'll be glad you did!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave your submissions for future "Have You Met...Monday" posts in the comment section, below!