The History Of Gothic Lolita
Lolita Background
I have an unreasonable interest in the Japanese Lolita cosplay subculture.
Whether the Japanese girls are dressed as little maids, little vampires, Victorian baby dolls, or a maid who is for some reason dead, it makes me smile. I had to stop buying the Gothic Lolita bibles after the fifteenth, because I ran out of bookshelf space. I like watching trends run through Lolita-land in Harajuku. One Summer, inexplicably, everyone had a bloody eyepatch, like the dolls had a fight.
I made a Lolita dress for myself two years ago, and I am still waiting for an event where a six-foot tall Western lolita might be appropriate.
Strawberry Switchblade
Last year, I wanted to do Strawberry Switchblade with my extremely easy-going spouse. I don’t think there’s another hetero male in the world that would agree to dressing as half of a defunct Scottish girl-group. Here’s my initial sketch and a reference picture-
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Strawberry Switchblade were an adorable Scottish pop duo who had a hit with “Since Yesterday”, and later a minor ripple with a cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
They were best friends who later split up messily. Rose McDowall went on to work with Death in June, Coil, Current 93, Nurse with Wound and Psychic TV. I think that Jill is driving a cab in Glasgow.
Here’s how our costumes turned out:
During my research, I noticed that there were a lot of photos of Strawberry Switchblade touring Japan in the early 1980’s. I also found a pic of an early Visual Kei group, Velvet Eden, that used to dress as Strawberry Switchblade, and covered their songs. Half the group, a drag artist named Dada, is also involved with/models for Lolita clothes label Arachnophobia. Which brings us to the question: was anyone dressing like a doll who was not first into Strawberry Switchblade?
What does it all mean? Did Strawberry Switchblade invent Gothic Lolita?
Battling Robot And Bulldog!
Here is a brief film documenting the challenges our French bulldog had with the floor cleaning robot, Roomba.
Eventually, she killed that Roomba by jumping on it until the wiring broke. Broken robot was replaced by a functioning robot that Hazel and her brother Chico hammered out an uneasy peace with.
Update: this is STILL my top video on Youtube. 50K people watching an old grainy recording from our first digital camera, which I bought on Overstock.com, of a now-dead dog barking at a now-dead Roomba. Life is weird.
An Evening With Jandek
Spooky music? You think you like spooky music? You ain’t heard spooky music until you’ve spent an evening with a six foot blonde moaning to a discordant guitar. He’s self-pressed some 40-odd records, most of them mentioning suicide, European jewels, and/or janitors.
It was great- there was a lot of Jazz/Skronk flavored “jamming” with local hero Sam Coomes and drummer Emil Amos. Jandek asked the audience that if they wanted to leave, to please do so between songs, so there was this herding phenomena when songs ended after ten or fifteen minutes.
He was everything I thought that a middle-aged outsider musician could be, and more. Songs about love, depression, and the speed at which his friend Eddie the Wino can down a bottle of Wild Irish Rose.
He helped me solve a lot of problems I have when trying to sing and play guitar at the same time. His solution is: when he is singing, the guitar hangs limply around his neck. When he is done singing, he plays his guitar some more.
The Jandek-loving masses wandered out of the theatre in a daze two hours later. I really did feel hypnotized. He was totally un-charismatic, but in a hilarious way. No chitchat, very little acknowledgement of the audience. At the end he got a standing ovation (mostly in stunned amazement) while he packed up his own guitar and got his lyrics sheet and walked out the door.
For a weirdo ex-Texan, seeing Jandek perform was a little like seeing the tooth fairy.
Japanese Snapshots
I have a cool friend who is doing contract work in Japan, and because he knows I am obsessed with Gothic Lolitas, he was kind enough to send me photos of Japanese teenagers in full plumage that he took in the park. I have realized too late that I need to develop a skill set that will get me contract work in Tokyo.
1. Yuki’s friend believes that she is pushing a cart in an invisible supermarket. Yuki believes that she is a Scottish show-pony.
Photo 2: Two tiny maids tolerate a photo with a Blue Blocker-wearing nerd.
Photo #3: You have to be careful, because when the combination of dreadlocks and platforms results in nose breakage, people tend to point and laugh.
3A: Worst mashup ever – Rasta-goth.
Photo 4: Hey, that’s my pose! Bitch stole my pose!
If A Double-Decker Bus
Spouse had an exciting Johnny Marr sighting last week at his place of work: He was purchasing an XTC record.
Today was even more exciting when Spouse was driving down a major street and stopped short at a door swung open on a red Mustang, and found that he had almost killed Johnny Marr, the king of jangly, layered guitar. I’m really glad he didn’t.
Post 2: I’ve decided I’m going to keep all my nerdy Marr sightings here. In the Spring of 2009, I got a call that Johnny Marr was at Nike, visiting shoe overlord Parker Green. I was so excited, I hid in a cubicle and took very bad pictures with my phone. He was travelling with his kids, who also got shoes, and as he walked out (towered by his children) a woman asked “Who’s that? Is that the Jonas’ brother’s dad?” Yes, that’s who it is. It’s funny working somewhere that Kobe Bryant and Lebron and Michael Jordan regularly show up, but I don’t care until Johnny Marr appears, and then nobody else pays notice.
Dec 2010- I made plans for the Helium open mike with Stacey Hallal, picked up spouse at Crossroads records for dinner, and suddenly in walks the mushroom haircut of the Marr. I froze like a rabbit in the path of a freight train. I had to move away from him so that I would not start blathering smart-sounding dumb things about music. He talked to Spouse about a record he was looking for, and that he had been working on soundtracks. Spouse said, oh, how do you find that? and Johnny said, well, you know I did the Inception soundtrack, and that went alright.
200 Rounds!
I guess the most important thing to know is that our neighborhood is still ‘in transition’, so when we were working in the front yard yesterday and Spouse found 200 rounds of illegal hollowpoint handgun ammunition stashed in our lavender bushes, we were not entirely surprised. We called the police, who were pretty casual about the ammo but who were glad to come pick it up, and who let us know that we might also be on the lookout for a gun, and not to touch it. It’s nice that they reminded us not to handle, or get fingerprints on, a strange gun. It’s all fun and games until someone gets shot!
NYC Visit, 2006
The spouse and I have just returned from a trip to NYC, celebrating our fourth wedding anniversary.
It’s not so impressive that we have been married four years so much that it’s been consecutive. I celebrated a lot of it by following him from record store to record store.
A high point of the trip was seeing Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper, and Nellie McKay in the Threepenny Opera. Alan played Mack the Knife as a bisexual hustler. Nellie was fantastic as Lucy, and Cyndi looked foxy in her Pirate Jenny hooker-wear. Costume design by Isaac Mizrahi. I thought, I could put rubber pants and a priest’s collar on a chorus member as well as he can!
We had a great time attending a party for the Ron and Fez XM radio show. We sat in on the show the following Tuesday. If I had not looked at the message boards afterwards I never would have realized that I am an ‘unfunny hole’.
Our celebrity sighting this trip was Russell Simmons, enjoying a vegan brunch with an attractive lady the day before his break with Kimora broke in the Post.
We saw the Munch exhibit at MOMA, which included a painting that was just discovered in 2004.
We saw The Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt at his DJ night at the Beauty Bar, where we were showered with candy and girl-group hits, so it was really a nice time all around.