Tuesday, April 19, 2016

04/19 ACTOR MARK VALLEY, MICHAEL GERBER, THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER

ACTOR MARK VALLEY JOINS MIKE AND PAUL IN STUDIO TO CHAT ABOUT HIS  CURRENT PROJECTS

Mark Thomas Valley (born December 24, 1964) is an American film and television actor, known for his role as Brad Chase on the TV drama Boston Legal, Oliver Richard on the NBC drama Harry's Law, as FBI Special Agent John Scott on Fringe, Christopher Chance in Fox's action/drama Human Target, as Tommy Sullivan in ABC's Body of Proof, and as CIA Director Gabe Widener in NBC's Crisis.

Early life
Valley was born in Ogdensburg, New York, and graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and engineering. He then served in Berlin, where he played rugby for the U.S. military team, The Berlin Yanks Rugby Football Club. He served in the military during the Gulf War. He has a daughter, Sherri, born in 1987.

Career
Valley obtained his first role, on The Innocent (1993), while serving in the U.S. Army in Germany.[1] He landed the role of "Father Pete" on Another World in 1993. He later took over the role of Jack Deveraux on the NBC Daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives from 1994–97. In 2003, Valley played Detective Eddie Arlette, an American police officer in London, on the short-lived Keen Eddie.

He played Brad Chase on Boston Legal, a spinoff of the television series The Practice. Valley also appeared on the television series ER as Richard Lockhart, Abby Lockhart's ex-husband. In 2008 he appeared on Fringe, as FBI agent John Scott. Valley played the lead inFox's drama Human Target.

In July 2012, it was announced that Valley would be joining as series regular on ABC's Body of Proof. He played Det. Tommy Sullivan,Dana Delany's love interest. He also co-starred alongside Delany in her short-lived series Pasadena in 2001.


MICHAEL GERBER - PUBLISHER OF THE NEW HUMOR MAGAZINE, THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER - THE KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN FOR THE 2ND ISSUE

NEW HUMOR MAGAZINE THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER RETURNS FOR ISSUE #2

Decades after The National Lampoon and SPY ruled the comedy world, a dream team of writers and artists have resurrected the classic print humor magazine as a new quarterly publication - The American Bystander - www.americanbystander.org

Founded by Michael Gerber, Brian McConnachie, and Alan Goldberg, The American Bystander launched in late 2015 with an enormously successful crowdfunding campaign.

“Reaction was euphoric,” says Gerber. “We made our Kickstarter goal in just four days. And the moment people got issue #1, readers asked, ‘When can I buy #2?’  We were astounded. People aren’t supposed to like print anymore — but they do.”

Hence, issue #2 is now available via a Kickstarter campaign - http://kck.st/22wcKBa - stretching from March 23 to April 21.

If Bystander reaches its $25,000 goal, it will then be available in bookstores and Amazon. As with the first Bystander, issue #2 is a large format softcover book featuring material from some of America’s funniest writers and artists, adding to the dream team assembled for issue #1.

Bystander #2 boasts SNL’s Jack Handey and Brian McConnachie, Letterman’s Merrill Markoe and Steve Young, Slate’s Mallory Ortberg, a whole raft of New Yorker cartoonists young and old, The Simpsons’ Mike Reiss, Onion writers Todd Hanson and John Howell Harris, and a sterling lineup of comic book veterans from Howard Cruse and MK Brown to Rick Geary and Shary Flenniken.

The first issue was a 146-page, full-color softcover book filled with contributions from The Simpsons’ George Meyer, Reiss and Al Jean; Handey and McConnachie; New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, Liza Donnelly; legendary illustrators Seymour Chwast, Edward Sorel, and R.O. Blechman; a crop of stellar younger talents like Ortberg, Simon Rich, and Kate Beaton; and a humorous essay by Monty Python’s Terry Jones.

Bystander was created to provide something America’s been missing for almost twenty years: smart magazine-style humor. Bystander offers classic writers and formats that used to be found in Esquire, Playboy, The Atlantic, even on the Times Op-Ed page, as well as humor magazines like The Realist, and National Lampoon and SPY both which went under in 1998.

The editors of Bystander think of the quarterly as the comedy equivalent of “slow food,” a format meant to be savored. From parody to satire, short stories to multi-page comics, there’s something in the magazine to suit every taste.  And more importantly, Bystander showcases the kinds of stuff you don’t see on the web, or can read on your phone.

Gerber stated, “Our goal is to provide an outlet -- connect all these talented writers and cartoonists with the audience. But we can't do it like a big corporate magazine; newsstands are dying, and comedy makes print advertisers nervous. So that's why we went to Kickstarter, directly to readers.”

Behind all the comedy, there’s also a serious purpose; the demise of mainstream publishing has been especially financially tough on these writers and cartoonists, who are the first to be trimmed when budgets get cut.  Editor McConnachie noted, “Here’s a novel idea: We are going to pay our contributors a fair wage, plus let them keep all the rights to their work.”

But the money has to come from readers, not advertisers — currently the Bystander doesn’t accept paid ads. “Humor magazines are the Bernie Sanders of the media world,” Gerber says. “Corporations hate them. They’re grass-roots, eccentric, human-sized. If readers keep loving us, we’ll be fine. If not, we probably shouldn’t exist anyway.”

THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER 
MICHAEL GERBER is a million-selling parodist and publisher living in Santa Monica. BRIAN McCONNACHIE is an Emmy-award winning writer and actor who was a co-creator of the legendary National Lampoon Radio Hour, living in New York. ALAN GOLDBERG is a TV writer/producer and documentarian living in New York City.

WWW.AMERICANBYSTANDER.ORG