I'm an extremely curious person. I love interviewing people. Bluntness sometimes alienates people. However, eavesdroppers love listening to "other" people being asked blunt questions.

Give me a genuinely strange person or an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances and I'll happily grill them for you. In fact, I've been doing exactly that lately.

I wandered into a gay street fair in Philadelphia on May 1,2005, with my new Sony HC42 mini-dv video camera and soon found myself interviewing merchants, artists and all sorts of social and political hucksters.

I became fascinated by the way art and commerce intersected on that special stage we call a street fair. I spent several months filming interviews at a dozen different events in three states.

This material is the raw footage I intend to meld into a documentary. I'm mainly just the recognizable nasal voice behind the camera. In my many incarnations as a social activist, I've done my time in front of cameras answering a lot of stupid questions.

Now, it is my turn to ask questions. I've resolved to let my subjects tell their stories. I'll not abuse them. However, if they're into abusing themselves, I won't object.

I'm starting this blog so it can be a print extension of information about videos I'll be postings as vlogs over the next several months. These videos will be short snippets of more extensive interviews, consider them a trailer for the movie I'd like to make.

So, curl up inside my camera, and we'll visit NYC's S&M Folsom Street Fair; archivists of NYC's fading wall advertisements; a Vet specializing in message therapy for dogs and cats; mermaids and mermen showing off at Brooklyn's annual mermaid fair; a professional woman boxer campaigning to get women's boxing recognized once again as an Olympic sport; human bears; a t-shirt salesman who specializes in protest slogans sold only in Union Square; creators of the first human public mummification; nudists holding a costume contest; healers using the power of stones; and all kinds of other good stuff.