Rabid for Rabbits

I was trolling for myself on PIPL, which is THE place to find out if your blind date has a history of sex offenses, and found, lurking on the internet, a ten year old treatise on rabbit-hating. I really think it’s just as true today.12.30.99

Rabbits are Bad: A Poem By Melissa Favara

Dear Miss Favara;

I am a representative of a group called H.A.R.E., Hate A Rabbit Evokation. Our group tries to educate the public: rabbit references in literature, art, and film are undesirable in the extreme. Far from their cleverly honed public image as cute, silent, harmless animals, egg-gifting, carrot-nibbling cuties, rabbits are in fact fearsome, tusked and armored beasts that roam the midwestern plains in search of toddlers to eat. Your poem’s assertion that you should talk to them represents a public health and safety hazard . However, I find that I still liked the poem, once I had thoroughly exised the word “rabbit” with liquid paper. Unfortunately, I can barely see anything on my monitor these days. Oh, will this be displayed on the Internet? Oh, Rabbits.

All Hail Baby Ketten!

I can’t keep my love a secret anymore. I can’t hide my love away! Among the many things that make Portland awesome, there is a karaoke organization called Baby Ketten that is rocking the best book in the business! You think your karaoke has a good book? Seriously- suck it. Have you ever wanted to sing Siouxsie Sioux’s apocalyptic lullaby, Metal Postcard? Probably not, but I did, and I sang it at Baby Ketten! Bauhaus’ Kick in the Eye? Think you can keep an audience through Pulp’s bump and grind classic, This is Hardcore? Find out! Do you think singing Laid by James will get a singalong going? Can you handle Tori Amos’ Crucify? Do you think you can step to The Strangler’s Peaches? Holy crap, this is a great book, and the crowd and KJ’s are all wonderful people. You can talk to them on their Facebook event page: Baby Ketten
Brian Perez Jr. Jr. Jr. and John “Baby Ketten Daddy” Brophy, at the Dunes, when I first met ’em

 

OK, to whet your whistle, here are just a HANDFUL of the items available for singin’:

*Siouxsie and the Banshees*Metal Postcard*Echo and the Bunnymen**Killing Moon*Senses Working Overtime*XTC*Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves* Gavin Friday*Quiet Life*Japan*This Charming Man*The Smiffs*Replacements*Alex Chilton*Nick Cave*Red Right Hand*Proclaimers*Sunshine on Leith*Beats International*Dub Be Good To Me*Belle and Sebastian*Funny Little Frog*Joy Division*Atmosphere*Nine Inch Nails*Something I Can Never Have*Pixies* No. 13 Baby*Beautiful South*Rotterdam*Pulp* This is Hardcore*Psychic TV* Godhead

You like singin’? THIS is hardcore!  They’re also the only karaoke establishment that I know of with its own app, called the Baby Ketten app, which offers the full songlist in your phone, and also will give you a kamikaze list to sing on demand!

The first night at the Woods was a jam-packed, scintillating media event- the venue used to be a funeral home, and it feels a little like singing in a friend’s living room. Full of GHOSTS!
A Baby Ketten favorite, Ryan Sablan, brought the crowd to its feet by singing a Turandot aria in an AC/DC shirt. That is the magic of Baby Ketten.

edit: The Woods is now just a memory, as is Beauty Bar and Dunes, but wow, there were some great shows and some great BKK events there, including evenings where we sang all of Abbey Road and Doolittle by them Pixies, and BKK now has all of Radiohead’s OK Computer, which will execute sometime this Spring.  For a karaoke addict, there is nowhere else.  Nowhere in the WHOOOLLLEE WOORRRLD!

BKK’s regular roster is currently:

Tuesdays at Mississippi Pizza, which has a wonderful full bar and vegan pizza (and regular pizza too, calm down)

Second Thursdays at the Alibi, Portland’s most tiki-riffic karaoke establishment, where the regulars are slightly flummoxed by the Karaoke selection, but is getting into the groove

UPDATE: Baby Ketten is now FULL TIME at their new location!  See details HERE!

Grimly Fiendish

In case you are sitting on lots of holiday cash and don’t know what to do, I wanted to point out that Dave Vanian of seminal (huh huh) punk band The Damned has co-founded a high-end goffic makeup line called Illamasqua. Who better to do it than Dave? He’s been blending clown white and smudging black liner since Billy Joe Armstrong’s parents argued over whether the condom would hold. Anyway, Dave’s makeup line is is the culmination of my dreams in many ways.
Awesome things about Dave:

1. He is married to Patricia Morrison, formerly the bassist of Sisters of Mercy, and together they are the gothest couple ever. Everyone else should give up.

2. He once threatened to beat the tar out of Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, for copying his “Vampire schtick”, not realizing that there was enough of it to go around for the UK, Germany, and the States for many years to come.

3. I have been in love with him, body and soul, since I was fifteen years old. All five foot six of him.

4. Screw you, Patricia Morrison!

Ladies’ Rock Camp and the Birth Of Furious Yellow

For many years, I have been playing mediocre rhythm guitar. I used to play with my band, Sadly Deluded, and I would tell jokes and play songs until someone suggested that I could just tell jokes and I wouldn’t have to haul a guitar around. I have always wanted to be a better guitar player, so I decided to force myself to practice guitar more by signing up for ladies’ rock camp. It didn’t actually work that way, and so I showed up with baby-soft fingers to play on for eight hours a day, which then hurt like bejeezus all weekend. My fault.

My former band’s logo, designed by the fantastic Francisco Garcia

Ladies’ Rock Camp is very fast paced- you show up, eat lunch, form a band, take a class for your instrument, and start writing a song.

When asked what kind of band I wanted, I couldn’t think of the term for the music I like so I just said “Mope Rock”. I still can’t think of a better word for the music I like.
Something strange about Rock Camp is the almost unremitting positivity and support of the other campers and staff. I think now that I have been selling myself short as a mediocre guitar player. I’m at least an average guitar player.

It was kind of uncomfortable, since I am used to stand-up, in which friendships are based on tearing each other down in public or private.


I had a moment I think might have been life-changing- we had been rehearsing our song over and over, and for a minute I was just playing it on my own, and I thought, “This doesn’t sound as good as it does with the rest of my band,” and that’s the first time I’ve ever thought anything of the sort.


We named ourselves Furious Yellow, and our lead bass player made us matching 1″ buttons.
We wrote a song about breaking up, and sketched out our first EP:

Title: I Am Furious Yellow

Songlist:

Confirm or Deny
The Blood Of These Whores Is Killing Me
Doublewide Coffin (a coffin built for two)
Let Go Of The Cremains
My Hands Are Made Of Meat
I Still Have Your Knee Socks From Thanksgiving

Fun Facts About Furious Yellow:

Three members from Cali, one from Idaho, and one Portlander
We’re so heavy, we need two bass players
Our lead bassist has been to Rock Camp four times. She features in an article from the London Guardian on ladies’ rock camp in 2006!

Two blue-eyed, two green-eyed, one brown-eyed lady.

Five band members, and THREE tap dancers! What are the odds?

I was given a rainbow guitar strap, which I thought was appropriate because my Telecaster is at least bi-curious.
After the show at Satyricon, Furious Yellow was very tired and stinky and our fingers hurt, so we drank alcohol until we felt better.


If you like music and are a lady, I really recommend this camp. It is approximately the most fun thing ever.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Recently Tivo recorded a film for me based on my interest in art stuff and Robert Downey, Jr., and so I watched a movie I’d never heard of called “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The main message that I took away from this film, loosely based on a book based on a rumor based on the photographer’s life, is

Q: How can one discover one’s own artistic voice and vision?

A. To truly discover oneself as an artist, but one must first befriend, fully shave, make love to, bear witness to the suicide of, and then wear a coat made from the hair of, a dog-faced boy.

Q. Do you mean that metaphorically? Like, broaden your horizons?

A. No. I mean it literally. Go find yourself a dog-faced boy.

Q. Okay…thanks.

It was weird, and coming from me that’s saying a lot.

The Portland Invasion Of Damien Hirst’s Brain

damien hirst brain slices

A Damien Hirst exhibit got me out to the Portland Art Museum’s modern art branch, the Jubitz center (Paid for by the people who brought you The World’s Classiest Truck Stop!)   It’s really nice, with four floors of famous and less-famous artists, bringing Stumptown face to face with its first Kenny Scharf, Philip Guston, Francis Bacon, and more. It’s great to have a contemporary art wing to the sometimes fusty and provincial museum.

Once I had enjoyed Oldenberg’s giant, breathing icepack (later visited its brother in the lobby of Cedars-Sinai hospital when my friend Lola broke her leg), a nice assortment of Duchamp stuff, and the Longo crawling-drowning-yuppie sculpture, I made it to the top floor of Hirst pieces. Two of them were giant, one Pharmacy installation and a glass display of many, many animal skeletons. The other two pieces were a drug-spot painting and the above painting of sliced brains, that looked a lot like homemade seitan.

“But for me, from my point of view, I don’t mind if it falls over… if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.” – Damien Hirst

It’s good for me to go to the museum, not only because I love art, but it’s also a helpful reminder of how tired my whole nosering-and-glasses, bob-haircut, art-chick schtick is. It’s like coming to the place in Battlestar Galactica where all your identical Cylons live.

2015 Update: I was excited to see the Away from the Flock at the Broad this week.  He’s beautiful and sad and it’s like meeting a celebrity who is also a dead lamb in formaldehyde.

Crispin Lovers

Crispin Glover was in town at the Clinton Street Theatre last weekend, presenting the oddest film I’ve seen for awhile, called “What is It?” It deals with Crispin’s rejection of the censorship involved in corporate backing, and his continuing interest in the “aesthetic of discomfort.” Almost all of the actors in the film have Down’s Syndrome, and although both Shirley Temple and a minstrel performer are in it, there is zero tap dancing, which I consider a tease. Crispin is on tour presenting his movie, which for various reasons is unreleasable, alongside his slide show presentations and readings from some of his books.

The evening started oddly when Crispin headed out onto the stage and immediately fell off the one-foot drop at the Clinton Street, hard. The audience held its breath, but when the actor sprung up and started reading from Ratcatching, we laughed in relief that he had executed a pratfall. Later, when he told us that he had really fallen and hurt his elbow, we felt badly. We didn’t know any better. We’re just an audience.

All in all, it was kind of nice being in a small room with Crispin and letting him make a world. He’s interested in Victorian novels, cut-ups, madness, films, sex, and animal skinning. Here’s a reading from the event from an unpublished book, Round My House.

For no reason, I’d like to point out one of my favorite Crispin trivia facts- He was George McFly in the first Back to the Future movie, but declined to be in the rest of the series. When the director opted to make up another actor in prosthetics to imitate the appearance of the original George, Crispin successfully sued for trademark violation. No matter what the pod people think, you can’t steal another person’s face without their permission, both written and verbal.