Michael Biggins
Encyclopedia
Michael Biggins is an American film actor, writer, director, and radio and TV show host best known for performing under the name of Blackout in a wide variety of pranks, prank call recordings, radio and TV shows, films, and original characters created and performed under that performance name. He has stated that Blackout is an alter ego
trickster
persona
and that he uses that name when performing various comedy or philosophical works, and his real name – Michael Biggins, when acting in dramatic or commercial roles. When performing on stage or in films as Blackout, he usually wears a hat of some type and is particularly fond of Victorian era top hats and canes.
high school radio
station WKPX
in Sunrise, Florida
when he was just 13. While in radio class and when he first went on the air, lightning struck the transmitter
antenna. The lightning strike blew the antenna in half, causing an electrical blackout
in the school for several hours, and bringing the radio station down for over 6 months. The students held fundraiser
s to fix the antenna and other repairs. Since he was the only person on the air when this happened, his teachers and fellow students started calling him by the nickname Blackout and it stuck.
Having nothing to do as a DJ during the several month period that the station was off the air, Blackout started recording original prank calls and creating elaborate stories and characters in studio B (the practice and secondary production studio at WKPX). The actual on air studio was studio A. Many students and teachers would refer to studio B as 'studio Blackout', because of the amount of time that Biggins (now referred to on air as Blackout) spent recording in it. He would record his various sketches and prank calls on huge 1/4 inch reel to reel
tape machines which were standard recording equipment for radio stations at the time and then dub
them to more portable cassette
tapes and distribute them around school and encourage people to copy and give them away. It is during this 6 month time period of 88.5 WKPX being off the air that he also procured a 1-800 number called the Kookline which was a voice mail box, that could handle 8 multiple callers at the same time. Biggins would change the prank call or sketch anywhere from once a day to once a week, and some of the messages would be in excess of 45 minutes. Callers would enter a secret code (269 which is the word BOX on a telephone keypad
) you would be greeted by Blackout saying, "welcome to my box", which eventually turned into "welcome to Blackout's Box".
prank calls in real time with realaudio
1.0, and then later releasing streaming videos and a live streaming radio show far before shoutcast
or social media sharing networks such as youtube
, facebook
, myspace
, or any other media sharing sites existed. His website Blackout.com was registered on July 25, 1995 and contains thousands of hours of his original material from pre 1995 on to the present, all streamable and free. Some of the older material is still in the old Real Audio format but can be played using a multi-codec player such as VLC media player
.
or Surreal humour
. The tracks on The Insanity Volume II are as follows:
In addition to the actual standard audio tracks, this album is a Mixed Mode CD
that had an additional 4 hours of original material that could be played when inserted into a computer cd-rom drive. In addition, Blackout signed most of these discs and very few are in circulation.
Blackout's last official album that was released and sold on a physical CD medium was entitled:
fame, Matt Cheddar, a young boy whose name is a play on the name Master Shredder, Joanna, the Southern Loving Bell operator, and John Dandel, the police officer and authority figure who holds a form of phone court to solve the mystery of who is prank calling whom. The Quanicles was very well received and garnered a huge fan base and very positive reviews from prank call fans and popular humor sites around the world such as I-mockery.com. The Quanicles can be found in several forms all over the Internet and on YouTube as well as the original 45+ minute series of calls on Blackout's official site. Many prank call aficionado sites list The Quanicles as one, if not the, greatest prank-crank call series ever made, or at least have it in their top ten lists of greatest pranks of all time. While Blackout did sell these albums, they were in very limited numbers and the material on them was always available for free on his official site and still is at the current time. His manic energy and character switching style in these calls has been compared by several reviewers and magazines to that of radio host Phil Hendrie
and actor-comedian Robin Williams
.
Blackout has also been involved in numerous notable pranks that have garnered national attention such as when he prank called actor Christian Slater
and kept him on the phone for almost an hour after he got the actors's phone number from Paris Hilton's leaked sidekick phone device. This call received notice from shock jock Howard Stern
's show where Howard Stern was quoted as saying, "this dude who runs an internet radio show broke Christian Slater's balls for 45 minutes...it was hysterical." He was also on Good Morning America
live from Times Square
promoting the Blue Man Group
,but as one of his characters - Trumpet the complimentary Dinopup. In the Good Morning America segment, Trumpet complains that he hates New York because, "it's too expensive."
Biggins' also has a long list of theater / stage credits and has appeared as the lead 'Trevor' several times in Bedroom Farce
, as well as major roles in The Foreigner
, Noises Off
, Greater Tuna
, The Mousetrap
, The Wiz
, Is there life after high school?
and other plays, with his last theater role in Florida being that of skyBOY in "Grandma Sylvia's Funeral", an audience participation comedy that ran at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts
. After that, he moved to Orlando and worked for various theme park companies doing voice overs for rides and interactive character work.
and rebooted his radio show "Blackout's Box LIVE" from a studio in Manhattan
, slightly changing the name to "BLACKOUT RADIO" as well as "BLACKOUT LIVE" because he thought that "Blackout's Box" was perhaps too confusing to people or too hard to remember and spell correctly into web browsers. He wanted people to easily remember him as Blackout, and that they could always find him at his Blackout.com official website. This is when he publicly released his logo / sigil to identify and imprint his Blackout identity visually.
His show also changed somewhat from a purely comical nature to a slightly spiritual / philosophical slant, which gained some new audience members praise and annoyed some older fans who tuned in purely for his blatantly over the top prank calls and characters.
As of 2010, his radio show went on temporary hold as he decided to restructure it. Many old shows are still streamable on demand from his official website, which has been up for over 15 years since he was a high school freshman. His show is scheduled to re-open officially on his own 24/7 radio & TV blackout network on 11/11/11 (a number of supposed important personal significance to him) accompanied by a complete redesign and relaunch of the website. In NYC, he shifted his focus primarily to acting & film making and opened up a production company called Blackout's Box Studios as can be seen from his official Facebook page.
In January 2011, he re-opened his blog but put it on a separate domain Blackout's Blog (http://blackoutsblog.com) than his official site. His blog description is as such:
The blog is a combination of satirical pop culture absurdest humor mixed in with occultism and new age references.
Blackout/Biggins is currently performing in Off Broadway shows in NYC and is also very active in the independent film community on both the talent and technical sides. His IMDB listing shows him as an actor
, sound designer, and director of photography on several projects, and on his website message board and his official Facebook Blackout page he has stated that he is currently working on releasing a full length feature film called "DESTINY ORIGIN" which will be a two part sci-fi philosophical tragicomedy with the second part being named "ORIGIN DESTINY"
The two films are one story, with the names spiraling into each other like a DNA strand. Both films are being shot back to back using the latest high end high definition digital film techniques for a theatrical release. He has not stated the first film will be shot in conventional 2D and the second film in 3D.
He was the sole sound mixer on an official Sundance selection short film (AWOL) and was nominated at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
.
technology, and his new live interactive TV show, Blackout's Box LIVE! Sunday evenings from 9pm to 11:59pm eastern standard time.
In early April 2011 he also launched Blackout Radio, a 24/7 comedy & awareness or 'silliness & spirituality' radio station in a deal with a company called TuneIn
that provides a free app of the same name that allows Blackout's station and talk show to be heard wireless and globally on almost every smartphone, computer, and tablet type device as well as some newer model automobiles. At the station launch, he put up 2000+ hours of previously recorded shows from 2002 to the present into rotation. Many of the shows contain prank calls, bits, guest interviews, sketches, character monologues and much material that was never isolated and made available on the site or on his albums if you had missed it on the live show. He also put out a call for talent on his website and official Facebook fan page that he was looking for show hosts who are 'massively intelligent, funny, aware, and creative' to come up with original shows to fill the 24/7 lineup for both his TV and radio networks while he himself continues to do his live show Blackout's Box LIVE! on Sunday nighs. His show is also available 24/7 via a conventional shoutcast
128k cd quality stream.
- Michael Biggins AKA Blackout (actor / dp / sound mixer)
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
and that he uses that name when performing various comedy or philosophical works, and his real name – Michael Biggins, when acting in dramatic or commercial roles. When performing on stage or in films as Blackout, he usually wears a hat of some type and is particularly fond of Victorian era top hats and canes.
Early life and education
Biggins was born in Queens, New York, and moved to Florida at a young age shortly after his parents divorce. He got the nickname Blackout and made his debut as a performer on Piper High SchoolPiper High School (Florida)
Piper High School is a public high school located in Sunrise, Florida, one of the nation's fastest growing cities. The school is a part of the Broward County Public Schools district....
high school radio
High school radio
High school radio within the United States is almost as old as radio broadcasting itself. Simply defined as a radio station, with its studios located at a high school and usually operated by its students with faculty supervision, stations fitting this description existed in the mid-1920s...
station WKPX
WKPX
WKPX 88.5 FM is a non-commercial educational high school radio station owned and operated by the Broward District School Board and is located at Piper High School in Sunrise, Florida. The station broadcasts with the talent of Piper High students, school days from 7:30 am to 6 pm...
in Sunrise, Florida
Sunrise, Florida
-Overview:Sunrise is a city in southwestern Broward County, Florida, United States. It was incorporated in 1961 by Norman Johnson – a developer whose World Famous Upside-Down House attracted buyers to what was then a remote area...
when he was just 13. While in radio class and when he first went on the air, lightning struck the transmitter
Transmitter
In electronics and telecommunications a transmitter or radio transmitter is an electronic device which, with the aid of an antenna, produces radio waves. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the antenna. When excited by this alternating...
antenna. The lightning strike blew the antenna in half, causing an electrical blackout
Power outage
A power outage is a short- or long-term loss of the electric power to an area.There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network...
in the school for several hours, and bringing the radio station down for over 6 months. The students held fundraiser
Fundraiser
A fundraiser is an event or campaign whose primary purpose is to raise money for a cause. See also: fundraising. A fundraiser can also be an individual or company whose primary job is to raise money for a specific charity or non-profit organization...
s to fix the antenna and other repairs. Since he was the only person on the air when this happened, his teachers and fellow students started calling him by the nickname Blackout and it stuck.
Having nothing to do as a DJ during the several month period that the station was off the air, Blackout started recording original prank calls and creating elaborate stories and characters in studio B (the practice and secondary production studio at WKPX). The actual on air studio was studio A. Many students and teachers would refer to studio B as 'studio Blackout', because of the amount of time that Biggins (now referred to on air as Blackout) spent recording in it. He would record his various sketches and prank calls on huge 1/4 inch reel to reel
Reel to Reel
* For the audio technology, see "Reel-to-reel audio tape recording"Reel to Reel is the debut album by Grand Puba. It was Puba's first solo venture, following group projects with the likes of the short lived group Masters of Ceremony and Brand Nubian. Both of the group’s albums were critically...
tape machines which were standard recording equipment for radio stations at the time and then dub
Dubbing (music)
In sound recording, dubbing is the transfer or copying of previously recorded audio material from one medium to another of the same or a different type. It may be done with a machine designed for this purpose, or by connecting two different machines: one to play back and one to record the signal...
them to more portable cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
tapes and distribute them around school and encourage people to copy and give them away. It is during this 6 month time period of 88.5 WKPX being off the air that he also procured a 1-800 number called the Kookline which was a voice mail box, that could handle 8 multiple callers at the same time. Biggins would change the prank call or sketch anywhere from once a day to once a week, and some of the messages would be in excess of 45 minutes. Callers would enter a secret code (269 which is the word BOX on a telephone keypad
Telephone keypad
A telephone keypad is a keypad that appears on a "Touch Tone" telephone. It was standardised when the dual-tone multi-frequency system in the new push-button telephone was introduced in the 1960s, which gradually replaced the rotary dial....
) you would be greeted by Blackout saying, "welcome to my box", which eventually turned into "welcome to Blackout's Box".
Early career
Biggins is best known on the internet as his Blackout persona, and for being the first to streamStreaming media
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
prank calls in real time with realaudio
RealAudio
RealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...
1.0, and then later releasing streaming videos and a live streaming radio show far before shoutcast
SHOUTcast
SHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...
or social media sharing networks such as youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
, myspace
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, or any other media sharing sites existed. His website Blackout.com was registered on July 25, 1995 and contains thousands of hours of his original material from pre 1995 on to the present, all streamable and free. Some of the older material is still in the old Real Audio format but can be played using a multi-codec player such as VLC media player
VLC media player
VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
.
Albums / discography
Blackout has hundreds upon hundreds of prank calls and sketches, most of which have only been released for limited times during his live radio show or on his website. All of Blackout's material has been or is currently offered free on his site. He has mostly been financially supported by fan donations and by several different corporate sponsors and friends who helped keep the site going for so long and in paying for the extreme bandwidth costs. While currently there is nothing for sale from his site (the store is still there but the order links don't work), he did put out three albums for sale of what he considered to be some of his best prank call material:Blackout's Box - The Insanity Volume I
A 70-minute CD, originally released in 1998, which contains the following tracks:- The Dog Beaters
- The Sins of Kilty O'Neal
- Grandma & Jacklyn
- Gimme a Smart One
- The Rrrrrrooksnitchzien Society
- The Hair Catastrophe
- I've Got Talent Part One (starring Mikey Christopher Lewis)
- A Crackhouse Christmas (bonus track)
Blackout's Box, The Insanity Volume II
A follow up CD released about a year later that is considered a much darker album, with pranks that take on a slightly more serious, if not somewhat harassing, tone at times compared to most of Blackout's other pranks which are more along the styles of theatre of the absurdTheatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
or Surreal humour
Surreal humour
Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...
. The tracks on The Insanity Volume II are as follows:
- Are You Crazy?
- Take Your Medicine
- Hello Motherf&*ker
- Gimme a Smart One
- Corporate Shit
- Malcolm & the White Boys
- Yoyoyoyoyo
- Chen Lee and the Burning Pot of Fire
In addition to the actual standard audio tracks, this album is a Mixed Mode CD
Mixed Mode CD
A Mixed Mode CD is a Compact Disc in which two different data types are combined. Typically the first track is a data track while the rest are audio tracks...
that had an additional 4 hours of original material that could be played when inserted into a computer cd-rom drive. In addition, Blackout signed most of these discs and very few are in circulation.
Blackout's last official album that was released and sold on a physical CD medium was entitled:
The Quanicles – The Quan Chronicles – The Greatest Prank Call of All Time
It is one album with one track, wholly dedicated to one single 45-minute recording that is a series of prank calls to one family with a son named Quan, where Blackout takes on the roles and voices of four characters in real time, trying to convince Quan that a battle is still raging somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam, and that Quan must come and join his brother and fight. Blackout plays four different characters during the call and often talks to himself as the characters with some taking sides with Quan, and some against him. The characters that Blackout improvises on the spot are: Master Shredder, an ancient Ninja master from Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists...
fame, Matt Cheddar, a young boy whose name is a play on the name Master Shredder, Joanna, the Southern Loving Bell operator, and John Dandel, the police officer and authority figure who holds a form of phone court to solve the mystery of who is prank calling whom. The Quanicles was very well received and garnered a huge fan base and very positive reviews from prank call fans and popular humor sites around the world such as I-mockery.com. The Quanicles can be found in several forms all over the Internet and on YouTube as well as the original 45+ minute series of calls on Blackout's official site. Many prank call aficionado sites list The Quanicles as one, if not the, greatest prank-crank call series ever made, or at least have it in their top ten lists of greatest pranks of all time. While Blackout did sell these albums, they were in very limited numbers and the material on them was always available for free on his official site and still is at the current time. His manic energy and character switching style in these calls has been compared by several reviewers and magazines to that of radio host Phil Hendrie
Phil Hendrie
Philip Stephen Hendrie is an American radio personality. He is best known as the host of The Phil Hendrie Show, a comedy talk radio program that is syndicated throughout North America on Talk Radio Network...
and actor-comedian Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
.
Critical success
Blackout and his website / radio show was the main focus of an 8 page South Florida's New Times. and has also been commented on and interviewed in many local, national, and international magazines, newspapers, and websites. The first world wide notability being a full color full page review/interview in the 1998 internationally distributed UK based magazine .NET (a magazine very similar at the time to WIRED magazine). Issue 44 Spring 1998, page 13 has the article, and additionally Blackout.com has held the number 2 humor spot since 2002 to current (2010) in the largest selling actual printed (2 million + copies) internet guide book of all time: Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages. Harley Hahn's review of Blackout is as follows: "Every time I visit Blackout's Box I end up laughing and laughing out loud. This Web site features crank phone calls made by a wonderful, talented actor. These recordings are, by far, the funniest such calls I have ever heard. If you need a good laugh right now, you know what to do."Blackout has also been involved in numerous notable pranks that have garnered national attention such as when he prank called actor Christian Slater
Christian Slater
Christian Michael Leonard Slater is an American actor. He made his film debut with a small role in The Postman Always Rings Twice before playing a leading role in the 1985 film The Legend of Billie Jean...
and kept him on the phone for almost an hour after he got the actors's phone number from Paris Hilton's leaked sidekick phone device. This call received notice from shock jock Howard Stern
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
's show where Howard Stern was quoted as saying, "this dude who runs an internet radio show broke Christian Slater's balls for 45 minutes...it was hysterical." He was also on Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
live from Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
promoting the Blue Man Group
Blue Man Group
Blue Man Group is an organization founded by Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton. The organization produces theatrical shows and concerts featuring popular music, comedy and multimedia; recorded music and scores for film and television; television appearances for shows such as The Tonight...
,but as one of his characters - Trumpet the complimentary Dinopup. In the Good Morning America segment, Trumpet complains that he hates New York because, "it's too expensive."
Film contest and after
In 2007, Biggins worked in the movie Film Contest? in which several filmmakers are competing to win a 5 million dollar budget to make the movie of their dreams. Biggins plays the character Milton Butterfly, one of several competing film makers vying for the 5 million dollar prize. He is credited as actor Michael Biggins in the film, but thanked as Blackout in the official film credits and on IMDB. Ironically, in the movie, the character he plays, "Milton Butterfly," is an eccentric Willy Wonka looking type DJ / Film Maker. The film won Best Feature in the 2009 Delray Beach Film Festival.Biggins' also has a long list of theater / stage credits and has appeared as the lead 'Trevor' several times in Bedroom Farce
Bedroom farce
A bedroom farce or sex farce is a type of light comedy, centered on the sexual pairings and recombinations of characters as they move through improbable plots and slamming doors...
, as well as major roles in The Foreigner
The Foreigner (play)
The Foreigner is a play by Larry Shue.Set in a resort-style fishing lodge in rural Georgia, the comedy revolves around two of its guests, Englishman Charlie Baker and Staff Sergeant Froggy LeSueur. Charlie is so pathologically shy that he is unable to speak...
, Noises Off
Noises Off
Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
, Greater Tuna
Greater Tuna
Greater Tuna is the first in a series of 4 comedic plays , each set in the fictional town of Tuna, Texas, the "third-smallest" town in the state. The series was written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard...
, The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. It has the longest initial run of any play in history, with over 24,500 performances so far. It is the longest running show of the modern...
, The Wiz
The Wiz
The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is a musical with music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls and book by William F. Brown. It is a retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the context of African American culture. It opened on October 21, 1974 at the Morris A...
, Is there life after high school?
Is there life after high school?
Is there life after high school? is a musical with a book by Jeffrey Kindley and music and lyrics by Craig Carnelia. It is loosely inspired by Ralph Keyes' best-selling book of the same name....
and other plays, with his last theater role in Florida being that of skyBOY in "Grandma Sylvia's Funeral", an audience participation comedy that ran at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts
Broward Center for the Performing Arts
The Broward Center for the Performing Arts is a large multi-venue theater and entertainment complex located in the heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA....
. After that, he moved to Orlando and worked for various theme park companies doing voice overs for rides and interactive character work.
Current activity 2008 to present
After about a two year hiatus, he relocated to New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and rebooted his radio show "Blackout's Box LIVE" from a studio in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, slightly changing the name to "BLACKOUT RADIO" as well as "BLACKOUT LIVE" because he thought that "Blackout's Box" was perhaps too confusing to people or too hard to remember and spell correctly into web browsers. He wanted people to easily remember him as Blackout, and that they could always find him at his Blackout.com official website. This is when he publicly released his logo / sigil to identify and imprint his Blackout identity visually.
His show also changed somewhat from a purely comical nature to a slightly spiritual / philosophical slant, which gained some new audience members praise and annoyed some older fans who tuned in purely for his blatantly over the top prank calls and characters.
As of 2010, his radio show went on temporary hold as he decided to restructure it. Many old shows are still streamable on demand from his official website, which has been up for over 15 years since he was a high school freshman. His show is scheduled to re-open officially on his own 24/7 radio & TV blackout network on 11/11/11 (a number of supposed important personal significance to him) accompanied by a complete redesign and relaunch of the website. In NYC, he shifted his focus primarily to acting & film making and opened up a production company called Blackout's Box Studios as can be seen from his official Facebook page.
In January 2011, he re-opened his blog but put it on a separate domain Blackout's Blog (http://blackoutsblog.com) than his official site. His blog description is as such:
- One man with a hat saves the world through serious silliness. Welcome to Blackout's Blog, where pop culture meets spirituality. These are the insane rantings of a trickster from the Trifid Nebula trapped in an outsane world. All writings are Holy Texts from The Thrice Great Book of Stink (the first two Holy Books of Stink were lost)& The Sacred Holy Teachings of the Thrice Great Okapi. Father Franker Fatter O.E.O.O.OH
The blog is a combination of satirical pop culture absurdest humor mixed in with occultism and new age references.
Blackout/Biggins is currently performing in Off Broadway shows in NYC and is also very active in the independent film community on both the talent and technical sides. His IMDB listing shows him as an actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, sound designer, and director of photography on several projects, and on his website message board and his official Facebook Blackout page he has stated that he is currently working on releasing a full length feature film called "DESTINY ORIGIN" which will be a two part sci-fi philosophical tragicomedy with the second part being named "ORIGIN DESTINY"
The two films are one story, with the names spiraling into each other like a DNA strand. Both films are being shot back to back using the latest high end high definition digital film techniques for a theatrical release. He has not stated the first film will be shot in conventional 2D and the second film in 3D.
He was the sole sound mixer on an official Sundance selection short film (AWOL) and was nominated at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
2011 Sundance Film Festival
The 27th annual Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20, 2011 until January 30, 2011 in Park City, Utah, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ogden, Utah, and Sundance, Utah....
.
Blackout TV & Blackout Radio launch 24/7
As of 01/01/11, Blackout redesigned his website and began the beta test phase of broadcasting Blackout TV 24/7 on his site and on smartphones using LivestreamLivestream
Livestream, formerly known as Mogulus, is a live streaming video platform that allows users to view and broadcast video content using a camera and a computer through the internet...
technology, and his new live interactive TV show, Blackout's Box LIVE! Sunday evenings from 9pm to 11:59pm eastern standard time.
In early April 2011 he also launched Blackout Radio, a 24/7 comedy & awareness or 'silliness & spirituality' radio station in a deal with a company called TuneIn
TuneIn
TuneIn is a privately held company based in Palo Alto, California, founded as RadioTime in Dallas, Texas in 2002. The RadioTime program guide is available as part of consumer devices such as the Logitech Squeezebox. It is also part of software products produced by Sonos, Cisco, Kodak, and Microsoft...
that provides a free app of the same name that allows Blackout's station and talk show to be heard wireless and globally on almost every smartphone, computer, and tablet type device as well as some newer model automobiles. At the station launch, he put up 2000+ hours of previously recorded shows from 2002 to the present into rotation. Many of the shows contain prank calls, bits, guest interviews, sketches, character monologues and much material that was never isolated and made available on the site or on his albums if you had missed it on the live show. He also put out a call for talent on his website and official Facebook fan page that he was looking for show hosts who are 'massively intelligent, funny, aware, and creative' to come up with original shows to fill the 24/7 lineup for both his TV and radio networks while he himself continues to do his live show Blackout's Box LIVE! on Sunday nighs. His show is also available 24/7 via a conventional shoutcast
SHOUTcast
SHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...
128k cd quality stream.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Power Play | Host |
| 20 Something | Host | |
| 2007 | Film Contest? | Milton Butterfly |
External links
- (Blackout.com - Blackout's Box) - Official Website of Blackout
- Michael Biggins AKA Blackout (actor / dp / sound mixer)