A friend reminded me of this amazing night with John Brophy’s Baby Ketten Karaoke outfit when I got to sing one of my favorite Pixies songs and garnered my favorite YouTube comment, “Not bad for a fatso.” Filmed by the adorable Brendan Gill.
Despite the comforting blue “verified account” check on the @itsmorrissey account that showed up on Twitter this week and which has amassed 250,000 followers, Moz posted today on his True to You zine that he does not now and never has had a Twitter account:
16 May 2014
I would like to stress that I do not have either a Twitter or a Facebook account. I gather that a Twitter account has been opened in my name – as ‘It’s Morrissey’ – but it is NOT Morrissey. I do not know who has opened this recent Twitter account, but please be aware that it is bogus. That’s, of course, if you should remotely care.
Untwitterably yours,
MORRISSEY
Salt Lake City
15 May 2014.
Thank God, really. What would Morrissey make of Twitter? What would Twitter make of Morrissey?
Update: two days later, the twitter account @itsmorrissey was gone. Oh twitterverse! How mysterious you are.
I have known a creepily lifelike doll named Eliza Rickman for several years, and today she released a video for her song, Start With Goodbye. It’s composed of forced perspective vignettes with taxidermied animals. Please enjoy it.
I recorded a medley of Prince songs interpreted for America. Finally.
When I was young, full of hormones and Anne Rice novels, I wanted to be a vampire, because living forever would be GREAT. I would get multiple opportunities to make out with David Bowie, for one. I had watched the Hunger so many times that I wore out the rental tape from the Blockbuster in Plano, Texas. (As you know, all the most sinister people rent from Blockbuster).
If I were a wampyr, I would feel powerful and important and I would save a lot of money on food, and I would outlive all of my enemies- except for the very small percentage of them that also became vampires. When life feels like it’s full of infinite possibilities and people and combinations, this is an attractive concept. There will never be enough time to read all you want to read and see all you want to see.
Twenty years later, you couldn’t pay me to be a dirty stinking vampire! If I’m this sick of humanity and media right now, how bad would it be at 500? There’s only fifteen different kinds of people in the world, and I’m sick to death of fourteen of them- Also, if I lived forever, how many Spiderman remakes would I have to endure? Who am I going to talk to? Already, my interests and music references are met with blank looks of incomprehension by young people in bars. What about the little girl vampire in Let The Right One In? Two hundred years old, and all she gives a shit about is sucking blood and working a Rubik’s cube! Who’s gonna talk to me about Robyn Hitchcock and Twin Peaks and Heathers in a hundred years? Huh? Answer me, goddammit!
The fat man came onstage in a poncho. He took it off and spoke to us about free love.
The fat man was wearing a tie-dyed top, which he raised and began to soulfully fuck his own belly button with his finger.
The fat man took the top off to reveal a silver unitard, which he grabbed his crotch through. He left the stage to clamber up a tree.
The fat man climbed into a tree and hung upside down in a silver unitard.
The fat man asked for all the lights to be turned off, and asked for flashlights. He put one in his crotch.
The fat man got down to his underpants and sang to us. He stood onstage with the unitard pulled down to his knees and danced under the lights, his sweaty torso gleaming in the lights.
The fat man draped himself in a beige dress, which he pulls up to his tits.
The fat man produced an 8 foot ladder.
The fat man sat onstage and decorated himself in 3/8” black electrical tape.
The fat man started to climb the ladder. A roadie tried to steady the ladder while the fat man got on the top rung and was shooed away. He stood on top of the ladder, singing majestically, while I worried that he would fall off.
The fat man tried to jump off the ladder and land on his feet, but had to tuck and roll. He lays, grandiose and Dionysian, upon the stage and didn’t stop singing.
The fat man produces a tiny striped sweater. He starts trying to put the sweater on. The armpit rips out but he gets into it.
The fat man produced a box of toilet paper and threw it to the crowd, so that we could pitch it through the air in arcing parabolas, shedding twisted paper paths. I caught one but I throw it too straight and it doesn’t unravel much. I think this is because I never threw footballs. The empty box that used to hold the toilet paper is also passed around the audience, apropos of nothing, until it hits a girl in the head and we drop it. I am impressed that one forcefully thrown bog roll lands on the top of the giant truss that forms the top of the stage rig. It’s a beautiful moment but I also reflect on the fact that all of the bathrooms will be out of toilet paper by the last show, and we could have used it.
The fat man announced that it was the last song. I was caught admiring the tendrils of toilet paper everywhere and missed the moment when he laid the folded-up ladder on top of the crowd, climbed atop it, and made rowing motions until the people below began transporting him through the crowd. I walked over to where it was happening and was amused by the sea of people taking photographs of the event. We could probably make a 360 degree hologram of it at this point in composite.
It was amazing.
I am close to taking my Summer Sabbatical, which is not really what it is, but it makes my Mom feel better when I say “I’m Taking A Sabbatical” instead of “I’m quitting my job and hanging out all Summer”. I thought it was time to get my list of “OTHER” skills together and post them on the Internet.
If you feel like you read a slightly different but kind of the same list as this one, it’s because my site was hacked and my service restored from last week’s restore point and I lost it. It’s because SOMEONE was very jealous of my 70 hits a day. Eat it, haters!
1. Pit Toilets: I’m very good at using pit toilets in Asia. You just have to pretend you’re camping, which you kind of are.
2. Sleeping on Airplanes: Also work related. I can sleep bolt upright on a red eye to Turkey and emerge as fresh and ready as if I had slept in a garbage- filled car.
3. Tap Dancing. I’m not the world’s best tap dancer (SAVION GLOVER, because we can really only have one famous tap dancer at a time), but it’s the skill that took the most time and expense to learn, and which has the lowest street value. I’m considering trying to make people pay me NOT to do it.
4. Bemani. It’s no longer fashionable but I can totally do it- I get more points for style than accuracy on Dance, Dance, Revolution, but Karaoke Revolution is my bitch.
5. For that matter, I can lead in six count swing, and I can lead about five things in Lindy hop- I’m a good Lindy follow- I like a lot of dances.
6. I can make dance parties happen. I can make people do it. At karaoke, at coffeeshops- most of the time.
7. Karaoke. I’m good at it. I don’t have the most amazing American Idol style voice, but I know my range and I will perform the SHIT out of a song. I like to work a crowd. When I do it in Hong Kong they are upset with the dancing and eye contact.
8. Comedy. I do it for money and for free. Mostly for free. Don’t ask me to tell you a joke, I’ll make you laugh, m-f. Just you wait.
9. I can draw- I haven’t for around five-seven years, but I probably still can, right? I’m sure I can. I have an art degree. I can blind contour the shit out of something.
10. According to the Munsell test of Color Acuity, I am a Superior Color Discriminator. I will discriminate the shit out of your color. I need a lab coat and a light box with a true North setting. But I will do it.
11. I can make patterns and sew. Again, I usually don’t. But I can make seriously obscure and fucked up Halloween costumes!
12. Goth Makeup and Fantasy Make up! I have an airbrush and I’m not scared to use it, including airbrushing a fake tattoo on you!
13. I’m really good at telling long, involved, interconnected stories to people on acid. I can be on acid or not, it doesn’t matter.
14. I can tell a fake art history lecture at the drop of a hat, especially if the hat is from a particularly evocative period
15. I’m really good at making one kind of vegan chocolate chip cookies. Just one kind.
16. I’m really good at maintaining a blog for 8 years that only my mother consistently reads!
17. If I had just bought my first guitar, I would be a crazy natural guitar playing genius- however, I have had my own guitar for a decade, and play it occasionally. I’m mediocre, but proud!
18. I’m really good at steering an oversized Costco shopping cart with my elbows while eating free BBQ nuts.
19. I’m a good trivia team member- I don’t know that much about television or sports, but I’m very good at arbitration to try to determine the likeliest answer. Also, I like to win but I don’t care if I do.
20. I’m really good at running a White Elephant party. I will whip the crowd into a frenzy over Scratch tickets and a rubber garden gnome. Blood will flow!
21. Despite all the above, I’m really good at not going to Burning Man! I haven’t gone every year it’s happened! Consecutively!
With this kind of skill set, I’m gonna destroy this job market!