Supporting Tommy Johnagin at Helium!

I’m so excited to be visiting Portland’s Helium Comedy Club  to support the hilarious Tommy Johnagin March 6,7,8!  I won’t be at Bridgetown this year, so this is your only chance to see visiting Portlander Virginia Jones until next year!

Postscript: It was a fun week of shows, although Ian Karmel came out to run his late night set and that made me feel like a schlub, which is usually how I feel in my hometown.

Baby Wants Pole

poledancer

Baby Wants Pole

It’s honest, is what it is. A cheerful, grinning pole dancer is the only female role model America really wants. That’s why Miley Cyrus got on on a pole at 16 at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards, and why she was cheerfully twerking on Robin Thicke’s crotch at the VMA’s in 2013.  (And don’t worry, everyone acted like they were outraged in 2009, and her Dad acted embarrassed and said “I don’t know where she learned that” and the answer was, then too,  “from her choreographer that painstakingly created the routine.”)  

That’s why Britney was on a pole when she was 18 and one second. We might be living through another Republican White House if Sarah Palin had just dropped the soundbites and climbed a pole. These things don’t come from nowhere and marketing doesn’t lie.  Don’t pretend you’re shocked.  Don’t pretend to be surprised when teen idols play strippers, again and again-  Performers do what is asked of them.  Feminism has fallen down gone boom and we all need to pick it the fuck up.

For one second, think about whether you, as a person with lady parts, have ever said “It’s fun to go to the strip club an’ get attention from the dancers!”, or said “Those Suicide Girls seem pretty self-actualized, because having tattoos means you’re your own person!” and realize that you might be part of the problem. Being comfortable with your own body and sexuality has gotten confused with being porn-positive and chauvinist-friendly to an uncomfortable degree.  Moby tried to bring up how misogynist the Robin Thicke video for Blurred Lines was, and everyone shouted him down like he was an asshole.  I’m not talking about suppressing freedom of expression, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t do exactly what pleases you- I’m just saying, if you don’t like the society we’re living in, own your part in creating it.

And girls, you don’t have to let boys grind on you at a club if you don’t want them to.  You don’t have to send them nude pictures on your phone.  And for chrissakes, don’t laugh at them if they aren’t funny.

Hey! Serious for a second! That was weird, huh.

Besides, the VMA’s are where fake scandals are made.  Sacha Baron Cohen putting his balls in Eminem’s face.  Kanye cockblocking Taylor Swift.  Russell Brand joking about the Jonas Brothers.  Diana Ross grabbing lil Kim’s boob.  Madonna humping the floor.  Courtney Love dissing Madonna.  Madonna kissing Britney.  Lady Gaga wearing a meat dress.  What’s it gonna be next year?  More importantly, how long are you rubes gonna keep walking down the midway?

Competitive Erotic Fan-Fiction: Laura Palmer

Mom, pretty please don’t read this one either.  I’m sorry.

This was my entry for the second round of Bryan Cook’s amazing show, Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction at the Nerdmelt Theatre on 7/16.

 If you’re not familiar, it’s a show where the first half is talented writers and comics who have pre-written amazing prose, and the second half is crazy people who have had an audience suggestion assigned to them.  It is released in podcast form here, please go listen and attend this show!    Bryan is taking it to SF, and it’s been to Seattle, Portland, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, and just all over.  It is hilarious and deeply disturbing.  My first show was just posted, which was a filthy story about Touched by an Angel.  This time, I wrote on a random pull of topic “Laura Palmer”, in 18 minutes.

First of all, the subject-I love Twin Peaks, it’s my favorite, it was the first show I saw every episode of, and there hasn’t been a second- but it’s a pretty weird topic for Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction.  Twin Peaks was pretty much erotic fiction on its own.  All in all, it’s like saying, write a really dirty version of Deep Throat.  So, this story will be the only one that doesn’t have an orgy in it.  Don’t be confused, you’re still at CEFF.

Laura Palmer’s postmortem diary- Fire, Go Fuck Yourself

I’m Laura Palmer and yeah, I’m dead, wrapped in plastic, sooo kinky, as imitated at Halloween by girls who want to sweat off a few extra pounds in Saran wrap. That’s the opening credits and the whole goddamned show is a smear campaign against me.  A lot of claims were made about be before, during, and after the show.  Recently the internet has claimed that I took off my top at the Glastonbury festival, but that was Amanda Palmer, who married Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, so fuck her. The whole two seasons are about how I f*cked everyone in the show and was eventually murdered by a malevolent spirit who took over my Dad, Leland Palmer, who used to sing as he went nuts, like Ophelia,

Does eat oats and mares eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, a kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?

This is a heavily whitewashed version.  What my Daddy really used to sing was:

Whores eat c*ck and mares eat c*ck and little lambs are fuzzy, my kid’ll eat p*ssy too, wouldn’t you?

Everyone thinks I fucked my Dad, and he went crazy from the guilt, but he was slowly going crazy because he spent most of his time licking mercury out of broken thermometers.  Everyone has a hobby.  Sexually, my father was ahead of his time, he was a Bronie.  He went mad drawing graphic illustrations on legal pads of Twilight the Pony being f*cked in all her pony holes, her tail held aside and grasped for purchase.

The only person in this town who I might have had sex with was the FBI agent assigned to my case, unfortunately he showed up after I died. I looked down through the Douglas Fir trees and I liked what I saw.  I’d like to just f*ck his chin, just once.  But it’s all over for me.  Dale Cooper had hair as black as shoe polish and was even hotter than he was in Dune.  He loved coffee and pie and poor little rich girl Audrey Horne, who appeared to be 17 and three quarters for their whole relationship.  I’d like to lick his licorice hairline and rummage through his files.

Audrey Horne, a busty brunette, had the sweetest cherry pie in all of Twin Peaks.  She nearly f*cked her dad one time when she was going undercover as a prostitute at One Eyed Jack’s, but that wasn’t her fault.  She was just trying to get a good review at work.

I supposedly f*cked James Hurley, the adorable boyfriend of my best friend Donna Hayward, but he wasn’t interested.  James was a furry.  He was only interested in people dressed as cum-covered wolves.

I supposedly f*cked Dr. Jacoby, my therapist, and honestly I tried, but he couldn’t maintain a hard on when he wasn’t wearing a lei and listening to the music of Don Ho, and I was simply not that kind of ho.

It’s true.  Sometimes my arms bend back.  It’s because I’m a contortionist and acrobat, which is part of my job as a cheerleader.

Supposedly I had an affair with Bobby Briggs, but honestly he was only interested in watching films of people in business suits taking a shower.  Reputedly I had an affair with his lover Shelly Johnson, the hot-ass waitress in town, who would put on a wool suit and get down in the shower for Bobby, with blonde hair cascading, and I was supposed to have slept with her murderous drug dealing brain dead new-shoes loving trucker husband Leo, but I didn’t have sex with them.  I couldn’t stand those guys.  Besides, Shelly was a fecal freak and Leo preferred to be beaten with footlong novelty gummy rat candies while being penetrated with a Tootsie Roll bank he had bought at Disneyland.

I was accused of having an affair with Diane, whom agent cooper sends microcassettes to.  She’s not even a person, she’s a figment of his goddamned imagination!  He’s a hot ass crazy person!

I supposedly had sex with Jaques Renault, the Canadian drug dealer, but he was only sexually interested in women farting onto cakes.  Also, as a Quebecer, he spoke French like a slow child and English like someone who once saw something in English.

I supposedly had sex with a backwards-talking dwarf who danced weird and was obsessed with gum, but honestly, who could?  WHO COULD?

One woman could.

But It wasn’t me.  I met my maker with a slit so tight you could whistle through it, like when you blow across a fresh green blade of grass pulled taught between your thumbs.

My c*nt looked like a goddamned paper cut on a crisp white business envelope and honestly it’s a waste.

I’m a scapegoat, when I died it was seen as a way to keep the peace and knit this broken little town torn apart by its secrets back together.

Do you know who it really was?  Who screwed all those people, who catered like a slave to their strange afflictions and affectations and who simultaneously brought this town together and tore it apart?

The log lady.  Her log saw things.  Her log did things.  Awful things.  There’s splinters from that log in every tw*t and a**hole in this town, and from skull f*cking poor Nadine Hurley’s empty eyesocket, her eyepatch abandoned on the couch.  she cradles her log and fingers the edges worn smooth from activity, sometimes smelling it and reliving memories and looking into the past and towards the future.

There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark, or in the city of Twin Peaks- It’s because, as  Pete Martell said, “There was a fish in the percolator.”

Tori Amos Lamest

 

Tori Tribute 025  Speaking of, here’s a picture my friend Tara took five years ago, which is what it looks like when I am drunk enough to think I look like Tori Amos.

London invasion and Bowie Exhibit!

byronbowie

A Nice Visit

I went to London last week to see the David Bowie Is exhibit at the V&A, to visit my sister Emily, and to experience 32 degree weather and a light dusting of snow during the week everyone usually calls Spring Break. 

We hit Camden market, ate some vegan food, and enjoyed the Tate Modern, but the most important thing was the exhibit I flew across an ocean to see.

The Main Event

The Bowie exhibit had sold tickets by time slot, in order to have some semblance of crowd control. 

The show sold out before it opened. My sister and I were late, because the exchange for the green circle line closed, and a man with teeth that splayed out like a water spigot told us that there would be a bus along in only 25 to 30 minutes.

Luckily, I got in without crying or striking any marble countertops.

Photos are prohibited at the show, which at first seemed like a bummer. However, when LACMA opened the Kubrick show to photos, it made the whole thing feel less special.  The image is not the thing itself, but sometimes it feels like the thing.

The show itself was arranged in rough chronological order, but mostly as clusters of influences and connected things interesting information.  There were famous outfits, but also amazing Berlin era paintings of his friend James Osterberg, instruments, handwritten lyrics, stage props and designs, and other ephemera.

The show stayed away from gossip about Bowie’s drug use, love affairs, and mental problems, but returned again and again to a main theme. Bowie is an editor, collaborator, and borrower, always consuming, interpreting, and composing music and image that is consistently ahead of its time.

Speaking of Kubrick, Space Oddity was a pun on Space Odyssey.  Seems obvious now.

I was glad to see the SNL footage of Bowie with backup singers Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias that was used in the great documentary The Nomi Song. I was also amused to see photos and drawings of  English music hall artists that Bowie’s sculptural outfit was drawn from, which Klaus’ outfit was a simplified version of.

Other Things I Learned

The Alexander McQueen jacket from Earthling that I had always assumed was a shiny vinyl thing was, in fact, a distressed and torn Union Jack frock coat- and it was inspired by Pete Townsend’s mod Union Jacket.

I learned that when David Bowie was writing Suffragette City, he was rocking a 26 1/2″ waist on cocaine.

Bowie has always been a fan of the mash-up method of songwriting, but in recent years, he’s written a computer program to do it.

Bowie’s a better mime than you are.

The reason I just started seeing the amazing video for “Boys Keep Swinging” with Bowie in various drag is because it was too kinky for RCA records and they banned it.

The wiping-off lipstick gesture from the video was something that came from Weimar-era burlesque, and that would later be quoted in the video for China Girl (written by his friend James Osterberg).

The Space Oddity cover used a photo of Bowie superimposed over a painting by Victor Vasarely.

The close of the show was a wall of “influenced by” images, including The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding in his makeup and silver jumpsuit, Annie Lennox in all her androgyne glory, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig, and dozens of fashion pictorials. 

Many musicians have made careers out of things that Bowie used for a week or two and abandoned- I’m looking at you, Marilyn Manson!

Selfridge’s had a new David Bowie pop-up shop, and three makeup looks by Illamasqua’s Alex Box!

birdguhl

Illamasqua

The other thing I made sure to do when I was in town was to take a makeup class called Drag Superhero at the Illamasqua store on Beak Street, where we did this amazing natural, no-makeup look!

It was fun and I enjoyed working with my makeup artiste, a Brett from Sheffield, where all the good music comes from.  When we were done, I was asked if I wanted a towel to take the look off with, and I was a little surprised at the shock that I would walk back to the hotel with my “face” on.  I explained to them that I was not visiting weirdoland, that I had been weird for quite a long time. My sister did insist on a re-do for dinner.

After going out for drinks, my sister Emily and I were plumb tuckered out and we went to bed.

sisters

Don’t bugg Me

bodybugg-on-marines-arm-0011

This is my arm with the Bodybugg on it.  Yes, I’m very pretty.

  Since my relocation to glamorous SoCal, it has come to my attention that some of my sassy trousers and dresses had gotten a little tighter than they used to be, so I have re-installed a small chirping robot on my arm called the Bodybugg.  After losing 20 lbs with the Bugg last year, I abandoned it when I started going out on dates.  Something about the psychic magnetism of people’s hands means that whenever anyone touches my arm reassuringly or in a flirty manner, it lands right on my robot.  I move the robot up, it gets touched.  I move the robot down, it gets touched. 

  It’s always off-putting when a stranger accidentally grabs your robot, so here are the lies I have told about it:

1. It’s for diabetes

2. It’s a symbiotic parasite that allows me to read minds (half true)

3. It’s for house arrest.

4. My car won’t start without it.

Bodybugg is a shiny black square on an elastic band.  It uses a pedometer, thermometer, and skin conductivity to measure the actual calories I burn every day. If I want my ass to be smaller, I will know precisely how much to feed it.

  I was born of Irish potato-eating stock that prepares for the ever-looming threat of famine generated by the ruling British class every day of my life, so I have to watch what I put in my face pretty closely. 

  I think that the real meaning of adulthood is not paying taxes or volunteering to help the aged, but looking at a chart on a computer that lets you know you can’t eat a cookie until you’ve finished doing your sit-ups, or else you’re not going to get to wear the jeans you want on Friday.

All that being said- this is the only weightloss thingy that has consistently worked for me.  It’s hard facts, no flinching allowed- Robot+food logging (UGH what can be duller)+math.  Also, it has kind of a Tamagotchi element. When I take it off to shower or sit in a hot tub, it lets out a little “where are you” chirp, and when it is back on my arm, it sings a little self-congratulatory song.  That makes me feel like the little robot is happy to live on me.  It may be sucking energy off of me like a vampire.  I can’t be sure.

Gaultier Vs. Dame Darcy

  While wending my way home from Portland, I stopped into the De Young Museum in San Francisco to see the Gaultier exhibit that originated in Montreal last year.  JPG was a favorite designer of mine through my highschool and college years, and it’s neat to see so many of his couture pieces mounted as an art exhibition.

The show also features artists that JPG has worked with/for/collaborated with, including Herb Ritts, Andy Warhol, Pedro Almodovar, Pierre Cardin,  Madonna, Pierre et Gilles, Luc Besson, and others, both more famous and more obscure-

Creepily animated JPG introduces the exhibit- his face is projected on a white mannequin, and looks amazing!

Jean Paul Gaultier loves Leigh Bowery , and so do I.

Punkity punk punk!

The show also has a very wonderful coffee-table book with some amazing photographs and essays about Gaultier’s influences and collaborators that I recommend highly.

If you distill it all down, Gaultier’s design career has been made of:

1. Mermaids

2. Punks

3. S&M

4. Sailors

5. Dolls

6. Corsets

7. The Madonna

8. Madonna

At the exhibit, I was reminded of the obsessions of the amazingly multitalented illustrator/musician/dollmaker Dame Darcy:

1. Mermaids

2. Sailors

3. Witches

4. Horses

5. Dolls

6. Dark Fairies

7. Saints & Goddesses

8. The Madonna

9. Siamese Twins!

I think this sounds like a collaboration in the making-

Meat Cake #17 by Dame Darcy - front cover

At any rate, I heartily recommend them both!