Tonight, Seattle! From the Stranger!

Chuckletown, USA

Shows That’ll Help You Laugh at the Traveling Freak Show Your Family Becomes at Christmas

by Cienna Madrid

Postscript: Another fun show by the amazing Rick Taylor! He made this lil button for me, which made me feel famous:

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THURSDAY 12/15

HOLIDAY HULLABALOO 2011
“As a gay man and a comedian, I’ve always found it funny that those worlds—comedy and being gay—[couldn’t] intersect more,” explains Hullabaloo producer Rick Taylor. “So [my partner] and I created this show to bring the comedy community over to the drag community and introduce them.” The Holiday Hullabaloo that results is charming: Local comics like Derek Sheen and Barbara Holm (and her ukulele) perform 10-minute sets, holly-decked drag queens strut their stuff, and Taylor recites his annual rendition of “‘Twas the Night Before Gay Christmas” (“‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the gay bar/All the creatures were stirring because that’s how gays are/The condoms were hung by the vending machine with care/In hopes that leather Santa soon would be there/The twinks were dancing and wearing their Keds/While visions of sugar daddies danced in their heads…”). Best yet, the show benefits the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Abbey of St. Joan—those immensely compassionate, beautifully scary nuns who raise money to help homeless and queer youth, among other social service projects. (Another reason to love the Sisters—they draw the line at celibacy. We all have our limits.) Julia’s on Broadway, 8 pm, $20 adv/$25 DOS, 21+.

Hack the TEMPTU

OK, this post is pretty specific.

I have been working on how to refill the TEMPTU pods with more dramatic makeup and wanted to share my results. This post probably won’t be interesting if you don’t use airbrush makeup and aren’t a goth with time on their hands. I will, however, show you how to airbrush a spider on your face. Also, please don’t look into the infinity of the mirrored hallways. You may travel backwards or forwards in time, but I really have no way of knowing which.

Update:  As per commenter Jon, hooking up the pro SP-35 to the pod system is easy- The hose that comes with the pod system has a large flange at the end that plugs into the wand. Just cut off that flange and press the hose right onto the barbed connector that comes with the SP-35. Works great.  Thanks to Jon!

Updated Updates: I ordered the new SE-50 lightweight gravity-fed gun for $75, and it has options for attaching to either the Temptu compressor or the Pro- Free yourself from the Pod and let go!

Updated Updates Updates: Now that Temptu is no longer at Sephora, if you buy the Pod system on Ebay and cut off the hose, you can use any airbrush gun and have a pretty cheap makeup airbrush system! 

Take a bit of time to experiment, so far no liquid makeup has worked as well as the Temptu makeup, but I’m sure you’ll find some!  The best consistency for base, highlighter, and color is  the consistency of half and half or whole milk- a little thicker than milk and not as thick as cream…

  I have owned two of the Temptu-sponsored airbrushes and can advise that  SE 50 is smaller and more lightweight, the smaller size means it’s a little more fussy/needs to be really DETAIL CLEANED over the big old SP35, which is better for body art and large areas-

Also, my new favorite thing to do with my airbrush is to paint my eyebrows on- find a nice brown color two shades darker than your hair and spray paint them on!  It looks so graphic!

My Beloved Chariots Of Rubber Recap


Jeffrey Wonderful and “Private” Mike Albano’s lovechild, Chariots of Rubber, has completed its first run, and it was a rollercoaster of fun and excitement at Theater Theatre.

They say that the rougher the dress rehearsal, the better the first show will be- in our last dress rehearsal, this young man, the lead in the play, broke his nose on a prop car:

During the first show, an audience member joined us onstage to take her clothes off until her boyfriend and Jordaina helped her offstage, him murmuring “You’re not in the show. You’re not in it.” During the second show, another audience member came onstage during the same scene. I guess it just…moves people? The best backstage line was dancer Kimberly’s immortal remark as she was about to go onstage, “Omigod, I got no panties on!”
Second run: (on tiny leather panties) “Are these too slutty for the show?” and the answer is: NOTHING is too slutty for this show.
For dress rehearsal as Cindy, I was told my dress was “not whorish enough”, which is the first time that’s ever happened.

All in all, we sold out three shows, entertained members of the Dandy Warhols, Karaoke from Hell, and other local luminaries, broke a prop bed, passed a headcold to each other, and generated 5000 watts of ROCK. I’m already looking forward to the reprise in August!

How Children Ruin Halloween!

I Love Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. I think it’s tailor-made for girls- who doesn’t like dressing up and being rewarded with candy? Maybe I love it because I snared my first boyfriend in 8th grade at a Halloween party while dressed like Cleopatra and kicking serious asp.
In college, I rocked an Egyptian Cat Goddess (Bastet for the nerds) look with face fulla paint and a head fulla acid and met a different guy. We made a date for a couple days after, but I didn’t keep it when I realized he did not actually know what I looked like. Of course, being a suburban gothgirl meant that the day after Halloween was the optimal time to head to Michael’s MJDesigns and stock up on cheap-azz clown white and fishnets. Day of the dead, indeed!


Historical Document from 1987.

Modern Adult Costumes

I like that in America, adults still get to dress up, although women’s costumes are limited to some combination of Goth girl and whore.

Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s not a giant difference between the two. But really- I’m a sexy witch, I’m a sexy maid, I’m a sexy corpse- and then the guys are all sumo wrestlers and ketchup dispensers? How is a sexy witch supposed to hang out with a sumo wrestler? All the guys are so into pirates, but they’re not into dressing as hobos, the disabled, cross-dressing transient muggers of today.
It’s not fair.

But my point- and yes, I have one.

Children Ruin Halloween

1. There is a new horrifying phenomenon when sometimes lazy, whorish Mom’s outfits are handed down, so you see an eight year old dressed as Spooky Nurse Fuckalot. Here’s some candy, honey. No, I don’t want an enema.
2. Halloween is about fantasy, and children don’t need any more fantasy. I’m tired of hearing their bullshit stories about what supposedly happened at Grandma’s.
3. Kids refuse to keep their costumes on. Last year, I met a ninja who had lost his sword and taken his hood off, so what we were dealing with was: a little person in black pajamas. I ask you. Pirates have their eyepatches upside down on foreheads.  What kind of commitment is that to a “look”? No commitment at all.

Trick or treat is a farce, and as far as I can tell, it’s our fault.

The little ghosts and goblins are home having their stashes rifled through by their paranoid, chocolate-starved parents by the time the street lights come on.  Let me say- most of the time that candy is, god forbid, poisoned, it’s the kid’s own parents who do it, and I’m sure they have their reasons.

Goth Juice: The Most Powerful Hairspray Known To Man


I don’t know the last time I was just an out-and-out shill for something, but I was pretty excited to pick up a container of GOTH JUICE last weekend, the new hairstyling product from Lush. It’s purple, it’s powerful, and it’s inspired (along with a companion product called King of the Mods) by the fantastic UK comedy, The Mighty Boosh.  Each tub claims to be “Made from the Tears of Robert Smith.”

Confidential to Gabe Dinger and Pete Ellison: Robert Smith is *still* not a member of the Smiths. Oddly, none of them were called Smith, which makes them the opposite of the Ramones, who were all named Ramone.

POSTSCRIPT:

I loved this product and used it when my hair was short, and then one day, I went to Lush to pick some more up and my friend Andrea, who is now the lead singer of the great band Holy Grove, had to break the news that it was discontinued, and comfort me because I was crying in a soap store.  Zen teaches us that loving something means one day you will lose it, and you must always prepare yourself for that loss.

Celebrity Ice Cream

With the history of Ben Jerry’s celebrity ice cream flavors, starting with Cherry Garcia and Phish Food and Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream, the name of Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobbler is disappointingly average. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian tries to counter the mediocrity with a celebrity ice-cream naming contest for a nominal prize.   Here are my entries, don’t steal ’em.

1. Morrissey’s William, It Was Really Nothing Like Sherbet

2. Prince’s Purple Rain…Bow Sherbet

3. John Popper’s Blueberry Traveller- Now, with hidden arsenal flavor! or, John Popper’s Obese Gun Nuts.

4. Robert Smith’s Icing Sugar Smoothie ( a joke for the real ones)

5. Michael Richard’s N is for Nougat Swirl

6. Britney Spears’ Oops, I’m Nuts!

7. Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animal Crackers

8. Beck’s Mellow Golden Caramel

10. Prince’s Caramel-Colored Funk or Prince’s Under The Cherry Spoon

11. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon Pie

13. Snoop’s Doggy Chow

Postscript: Well, the results came out and the winner of a motorized ice-cream scooper was for “Dick Cheney’s Go Fudge Yourself.” I guess the world’s not ready for the truth!

In The Bowery

Dear Reader;

We have started making plans for Halloween, and I wanted to emotionally prepare you for it. Last year, I made my husband dress as a girl for the costumes, but this year we are both dressing as the (male) costumer and performance artist Leigh Bowery.

Leigh_Bowery was a larger-than-life Australian who relocated to London in the 80’s. His club, Taboo, was the subject of a Boy George-starring musical that was a big hit in the West End, but tanked in the States and cost Rosie O’Donnell a pile of money.Leigh Bowery in Costume

Leigh was constantly changing up his “look”, and influenced Michael Alig, Damien Hirst, and a young Alexander McQueen- although the last two have not yet killed anyone. (Sad postscript: Alexander McQueen has now killed himself.)

Michael most noticeably lifted the Polka-Dot Man look from Leigh. Leigh’s cast-aside material has been used to craft entire personas and careers for other people. Leigh’s band, Minty, had an extremely dirty song as a hit in the Netherlands , “Useless Man.”
The photographer Fergus Greer did a book of portraits of Leigh over six years called Leigh Bowery Looks.
Leigh is also one of best-known portrait sitters.
There’s a great film that documents some of his projects and his attempts to elevate life to an art, The Legends of Leigh Bowery.
This is a shot from the excellent UK sci-fi comedy show in which David Walliams portrays a Leigh Bowery-type character called Vulva. Strangely, when Boy George vacated the West End stage, the other half of Little Britain, Matt Lucas, took over as Leigh.

Thanks for coming on this wee journey of Leigh!