NY POST...By WILLIAM NEUMAN ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There were a pair of wacky, ad-libbed additions to last night's Grammy Awards. [...] Later, a shirtless man with the words "SOY BOMB" painted in black on his bare chest, did a trippy, robotic dance onstage while Bob Dylan performed his tune "Love Sick." An unflappable Dylan stood two feet from the dancer, later identified as Michael Portnoy, who was hustled off by security after about 30 seconds. The organizers decline to press charges, police said, and Portnoy was released after being booted from the Music Hall. Portnoy, 26, told The Post he was hired as a back-up dancer, but conceived his prank as "an act of pure revolution." "It's my path toward superstardom," said Portnoy, who called himself "a multigenre mastermind artist." Portnoy, who described himself as "almost a vegetarian," said "SOY BOMB" means "sort of life and death and explosion."
From: aburnett@socplas.org Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 12:19:11 -0500 To: karlerik@monet.no Karl Erik, just saw this at Most New York So File a Complaint, Portnoy! Bob Dylan fans have struck back at "Soy Bomb" man - the guy who disrupted their hero's Grammy number last week. Performance artist Michael Portnoy reacted a lot less coolly than Dylan when he got upstaged on Saturday. Portnoy was doing his "piece" at P.S. 122 when three Dylan devotees began heckling him. They called his show "garbage." They called Portnoy, who was wearing red tights, a feather boa and flowers on his face, "soy bitch." Annoyed, Portnoy pulled a knife from under his tutu and started chasing one of his antagnonists through the theater. Portnoy, who claims the knife was a plastic toy, says: "They were just a bunch of jerks. If you want to come onstage and outdo me, I welcome you . . . bring all your friends and put on an opera. They were just drunk and stupid." Portnoy is already thinking ahead to his next awards drop-in. "I'll get a prosthetics person to get me into the Oscars, disguised as a movie star. Maybe Ben Affleck."
Portnoy's own page about the event
