Hobo Crack Tea

June 29, 007
San Francisco

SamX is an herbalist with a double-major from the University of Colorado in anatomy/physiology and botany. She’s also a massage therapist, a midwife, and a devoted mother of two. She lives part of the time on a collective farm in Mexico, she’s got green dreadlocks, and she plays clarinet and sings in a hobo jug ensemble called That Darned Band.

But she’d tell you her main career focus right now is the 999 Eyes of Infinite Dream circus. It’s the world’s only current traveling freakshow and museum that boasts real freaks, like a lobster-claw accordion player and a half-girl gymnast. I once saw SamX feed a Madagascar hissing cockroach to a shoeless hillbilly with overalls and a mountain-man beard and a corn-cob pipe two Pedal Monsters ago. Maybe I’ve talked about that in these pages before, now that I think about it, but that was really impressive, especially because he told me beforehand it stung his tongue really bad every time he ate one, like for a day or two.)

999 Eyes cirkus: puttin the “freak” back in “freakshow”

SamX gave me this recipe for a mixture of herbs that’s meant to be made into a tisane to clean out livers, purify blood, clear away mucus, combat stress and depression, build red blood cells, lower cholesterol, shove poison out of everywhere in the body … and generally cause the drinker of said beverage to become so naturally energetic they might be tempted to dance around like a hyperactive hobo on crack, causing friends to wonder aloud if the drinker has suddenly taken up a cocaine habit or joined a smiley-face doomsday cult.

But things only get REALLY over the top if you decide to throw in the Siberian ginseng.

(P.S. Don’t mix ginseng with coffee if you don’t want to come down with … well, something that some people think is funny, but it’s really hot and runny.)

one of us! one of us!

Anyway. Hobo Crack tastes like actual tea, especially if you sweeten it with agave nectar — but milder, packed with vitamins, and more flavorful. And it makes you feel kind of superhuman, with no help from caffeine whatsoever.

So. Proceed to your favorite crunchy-granola health food store that sells dried herbs. You’ll be able to spot this section by all the Stevie Nicks clones and Wiccans with 10 feet of dreadlocks tucked under their tams milling around a shelf-row of glass jars like witches on their way to a business meeting ’round a cauldron.

Purchase one ounce each of the following dry herbs. Mix them all together in a big Ziploc bag or jar, and boil a mess of water. Add one tablespoon herb mixture per pint of water once it’s boiling, stir it, and turn it off and let it sit and steep for about 12 hours. Then strain it into a pitcher or pre-cycled water bottles and refrigerate it. It’s plant matter, essentially, so it only stays good for a couple days. You’ll be able to smell when it goes bad.

HOBO CRACK TEA

Red raspberry leaf
Dandelion root
Marshmallow root
Siberian ginseng (a.k.a. eleuthero)
Parsley – not if you’re pregnant or susceptible to kidney stones though
Oat straw
Alfalfa leaf
St. John’s Wort
Licorice root
Burdock
Horsetail
Red clover
Pau d’arco

If you can’t find some of them, that’s okay. In fact I’m sure there are other herbs to add to the blood-building, out-cleaning mix of it all (suggestions welcome). Whatever you do to Hobo Crack, the flavor doesn’t change all that much unless you add a pinch or two of rose hips, hibiscus, and/or lemon balm.

So that’s the thing Otto says you can survive on for 6 months if there’s an electromagnetic pulse or the Great War of the Californias.

And no, it doesn’t taste good with vodka in it. THAT’S JUST WRONG.

Sodom and Gomorrah; Pride and prejudice

June 27, 007
Yay Area

Several polyamorous people currently orbit my world at the moment.

One homey from the wayback resides in the in-law apartment of his five-year girlfriend’s house, where she lives with her agreeable husband and child. One couple opened up their monogamous relationship after 2 years and regularly hosts kinky parties and rope-tying classes. One snagged a new part-time boyfriend, who has a full-time girlfriend, who has a part-time girlfriend, who has a full-time boyfriend. One is finally dating the first non-bisexual man she’s been with in a decade, and wondering if she herself will now be able to date around. Then there’s those nasty, beautiful, honk-if-you’re-horny Porn Clowns.

Polyamory! Woo, spread the germs! I’ll have the staph with a side of herpes

And let’s not forget the gay one who, at Pride last weekend, theatrically banged his two (committed) boyfriends in a hallway full of men fucking, while several other single men looked on and pleased themselves. He said the best moment of Pride (besides that one) was wandering into a hotel room at the pool party to find two incredibly attractive women — one Amy Winehouse clone and one winsome blond-rocker chick — banging each other while couples of various down-south anatomies made out all around them. The Amy Winehouse one actually almost made my gay-man friend hot for women for a second there, he said, when she looked up from what she was doing, straight at him, and winked.

While I as a Southern girl lean more toward standard dating fare, I’m like Elizabeth Edwards — it makes no difference to me, if it’s all consensual. No difference at all what you stick where, inside of who and in front of who. In fact, it’s fun to hear about people exploring themselves and others that openly. Weirds me out sometimes, but other than that, I say do as thou wilt and harm no-one. (Wait, isn’t that what the pagans say? Am I going to be burned at the stake now with all the other degenerates?…)

I didn’t go to Pride this year, but have been witness in the past to the outpouring of love in all directions — thoroughly amazed and overjoyed at the multicolored, drum-beating love of a million people finally being able to be exactly who they are and shout it to the hilltops on their BirthGay.

That kind of behavior scares the fuck out of some people.

Yes, in other American towns where The Gay might try to display their pink triangle — originally a Nazi emblem, it’s worth pointing out — on the side of a dry grassy mountain … well, the judge would probably let the arsonists off easy. But this is the World Capital of Gay, and it’s rad. Once, while hosting a friend from Germany, I took a walk with her through the Castro, and the first time she saw two men greet and make out in the open on the street, she literally burst into tears of joy.

Obvious Statement of the Day: It’s not like this everywhere.

What about a couple hours southeast of the Bay, where the drunk, just-released prisoner at the bullfight in rural California attacked a straight but male friend of mine on the dance floor for being too effeminate in his movements — for “tryin’ to make [the prisoner] gay” just by existing? … That’s some hard-core gay-makin’, if a straight man can work another “straight” convict up enough to make him “angry” enough to break parole.

There’s also the much darker story — whispered DPW lore or buried truth? — about the time at Burning Man when the perimeter guards caught a few guys trying to sneak through the outer fence, crawling on their bellies all military-style, dressed entirely in nighttime camo and ski masks, armed to the teeth with guns and explosives. The rumor states that for hours, Gate crew detained these guys and sort of interrogated them with the authorities, but they refused to say word one about why they were there. Since it was Nevada and the Soldiers of Fortune hadn’t done anything yet except try to sneak into the event with their personal caches of scarily sophisticated weaponry, the Gate crew had to let them go.

So. Sodom and Gomorrah, they say. San Francisco — and Black Rock City, by extension: Teeming buckets o’ sin.

I’ll be a warrior for Christ, the Soldiers of Fortune think. Or Allah, or whoever other dude probably never commanded me to kill fags in the first place, but I’ll just skip the research and tell myself he did cuz really, I just hate that I want to fuc– er, LOVE TO KILL fags. GOD HATES FAGS. He told me so. Just like Son of Sam’s dog.

Sodom and Gomorrah. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase in church growing up — usually paired with the words “San” and “Francisco” — I’d have collected enough money to build my own GOD LOVES FAGS float at the Pride parade. Shit man, the Yay Area is the place where the creative, sensitive, misunderstood, and picked-on outcasts of America (and the planet) come to escape the tyranny of oppressive xenophobia. Something about all that stuff makes the people here pretty nice and open.

My friend, the Mayor of Awesometown, actually HAS researched the Bible. He’s a known Jew who also swings “that way,” so he’s studied heavily on what actually went down in those twin cities of despicability:

Sodom and Gomorrah had spiraled out of control. Not with gay-ness, but with lawlessness. Complete and utter chaos. Not the good kind. Ttotal disregard for human life. So God sent two angels to Sodom to talk to Lot, who was supposedly the last good man in Sodom.

Lot welcomed the angels into his home, and in the night, the men of the city surrounded the house and demanded Lot send the strangers out so the men could rape them. Fresh meat!, they cried. Give it over! … Lot refused. Funnily enough, he even offered his DAUGHTERS in place of the strangers so the crowd could rape THEM instead.

Don’t even get me started on that shit or I’ll get WAY off-topic.

So, the Mayor says, the real sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality, brutality, and the betrayal of strangers’ trust. Wolves preying on sheep. God didn’t take kindly to his angels being cornered by a wild pack of predators, so he raised Lot and his family up on out of there and then smote the fuck out of everyone else.

So the Christians who say San Francisco is the next Sodom and Gomorrah, doomed to be the first to get smote — they don’t really read stuff so much as they listen to the preacher’s hearsay and interpret it through a thick layer of their own sexual discomfort.

But be that as it may, Otto once told me the best time to attack the enemy was at pre-dawn — when they’re asleep, drunk, or otherwise partied out.

Sex and play are vulnerable states. So is the debauchery of wine, pharmaceuticals, and song. Thus, within our explorations, it might do us well to remember that while good and self-realized people are busy enjoying life and trying not to harm anyone … evil, petty, insecure, angry people are lurking, watching jealously in the dark, plotting ways to take advantage of the big-hearted and unsuspecting.

So I’m kinda thinking maybe we COULD be doomed unless the peaceful degenerates start learning how to strap up more.

No, the OTHER kind of strapping up. See? This is what I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter, people. Pay attention. Lesser beings want you dead.

(Wow, my brain just got really dark back there. Sorry about the bring-down. I think I need to eat some ice cream and watch Andy Kaufman videos.)

Worst album covers of all time

Linda forwarded this link to Cyclecide. Enjoy your hump day.

——-

P.S. One question: Is there really a difference between getting a massage and getting beat the shit out of, except for the order and tempo in which the human body is pulverized?

This is your brain on a legal, readily available substance

June 25, 007
Yay Area

I’m not racist against booze or anything. In fact I think it’s written somewhere in the Cyclecide Bike Rodeo bylaws that members aren’t allowed to talk smack about fermented beverages. But some friends and I were discussing public health issues over the weekend, and this topic came up.

Remember those “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” commercials with the egg and the frying pan? As stupid as they were, they kind of worked. At least on all the kids I knew growing up. Between public service announcements like that and a stiflingly restrictive Southern Baptist upbringing, we stayed pretty innocent until pretty late.

On the other hand, there is an ugly truth to alcohol that is never told in the media. Never. Why? I’d guess because unlike your local Bolivian marching powder salesman or mushroom dealer, alcohol companies buy metric shit-tons of advertising space.

Drunk-driving accidents are listed off as rote in the news, but other than that, alcohol is a land where strikingly gorgeous women in low-cut clothing flirt heavily, giggling at everything you say with straws cocked seductively in their laser-whitened teeth. Two girls for every boy.

Nobody shows the “after” picture, where the dude in the background’s got his face in the toilet and his pants around his ankles, horfing up his dinner while shitting uncontrollably on the tile floor and drunk-dialing his ex-girlfriend from college. Or one of the laser-teeth ladies blacking out and distributing messy blowjobs backstage while her cleavage-heavy companion falls off her barstool unconscious, and the security guard trying to kick her out reaches to help her and accidentally grabs her boob, and the guy who’s been trying to slurrily hit on her all night punches the security guard in the neck, and it all degenerates into a pile of broken bones and vomit.

Not that that happens every time. But I’ve been a bartender for a decade.

I’d watch the hell out of that commercial.

Starter kit for the Apocalypse

June 22, 007
SF

Sitting around talking about the Apocalypse, as we do, I once told Otto about my ongoing fantasy of packing a basic survival kit. Why have I not done that yet?, I asked. I can quote lines from Mad Max 2 and Tank Girl like any good DPW woman can, but for some reason I have not yet taken the first step at home to ensure my own survival (except the knowing-my-firearms part).

my little ponys. i pick the muscular Conan-looking one

It’s easy, Otto said — go get a camping backpack or a rolling airplane pilot’s suitcase from the thrift store, and just throw all this stuff in there and you’re basically good to go. And I got out a pen and paper and he rattled off this list to me.

He says, above all, travel light, and make sure you’re in good enough shape to walk 10 miles each day, and that you know even just a little bit about weapons. But failing that, if you’re an Indoor Kid and you meet a Karate Kid out on the move, you’d better have your gear together enough so you can trade a fresh cup of coffee for some ass-kicking backup.

So here’s Otto’s cursory list for initial survival:

——

Water and electrolytes, salt

Tea — not just for calories and minerals but for staying awake. Coffee has fewer minerals etc., so tea is better, but if you’re an addict pack some pre-packaged grounds, too

Food — Avoid dehydrated food like MREs or dried fruit because you have to add water, so if you eat it it will dehydrate you, especially if you’re in a situation where you can’t add water because a nuclear weapon has gone off. Canned foods and preserved jar foods are your best bet, and salted nuts in sealed bags (airplane nuts, not pretzels)

Mirror, for reflective surface to signal — the international SOS signal is three flashes or three fires, and this is one situation where it’s OK to build smoky fires

Knives, ax, scissors, razor blades, Leatherman (or similar multi-tool), hammer, a handful of nails (taped together so they don’t go everywhere)

Sharpening steel and flint (very very important to start fires) — hard rock and water will sharpen knives also

First aid kit

Gun and ammo (no speeches please — like Steven Colbert said, the 2nd amendment is there because it has the 1st amendment’s back)

Tent and Gore-Tex sleeping bag

Multifaceted work gloves (weather, climbing)

Bear spray or mace

Single propane stove item and iron skillet (doubles as a weapon)

Metal cup, utensils, cheesecloth or screen for straining water

Candles, matches in a waterproof case

Flashlight and batteries — batteries stored separately in case of nuclear attack or electro-magnetic pulse

At least 100 feet of thin high-tensile nylon or hemp rope — no big stuff

Fishing net

Hand-cranked radio

Rain poncho — also useful to collect water / morning dew — or heavy trash bags or tarp alternately

Sewing kit (including leather awl and thimble), leather and denim scraps for patching

A few pairs of socks (and if you’re female, contrary to what they tell you in the movies, be sure you don’t try to negotiate the Apocalypse in 5” stilettos)

Meds for your particular conditions, and any warning bracelets you should put on immediately

Compass, grid map of the local area, angle protractor (the round one, not the circle-drawing one) and grease pencil

Conversion charts, weather stuff, prevailing winds, almanac stuff

And of course a diary and pen; and some large paper and a Sharpie and tape, in case your band or circus plays somewhere after the shit hits the fan and you need to flyer.

the other three horsemen are teething, and they’re pissed

Also, did you know you can survive 21 days on just water alone? That’s what Otto says. If you can make tree bark tea, you got about 6 months. If it’s got chunky hard bark (pine and maple), it’s good, but strip bark (eucalyptus, birch) is bad. Boil it well to make sure you have enough nutrients to get you by.

Sometime next week, I’ll publish the recipe for SamX’s “Hobo Crack Tea” — made exclusively of herbs and tree bark — so you can put some o’ that in your pack too and live like a fancy hippie Marine …

Colors flying

June 20, 007
SF to Chino’s

Doyle got tipsy a couple months back when he was in San Francisco and left his colors at Amnesia. The 6′6″neo-lightweight is mostly on the sober train these days and can’t hold his liquor any more, and he likes to dance, and dancing in such a hot place as Amnesia requires a certain amount of disrobing, I guess. Being a member of the Black Label Bike Club and not Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, Doyle could’ve potentially been in big trouble if someone else from Black Label had found his colors that night, and not a Cyclecide clown.

you should see him in a diaper

Most bike club members would agree that anybody who leaves their colors behind somewhere deserves to get f’d with — sweet Jesus, did I just doom myself to misplacing my own vest? — but out of all the mutant bicycle organizations, Black Label’s the one that takes the colors shit real serious. They would’ve made him suffer before they gave them back. We only messed with him a little.

Black Label — our direct ancestors, and the fathers and mothers of the tallbike joust — just held their Chino’s run this past weekend. An annual gathering of the chapters outside Minneapolis, this Bike Club event is nothing like Bike Kill … it’s more like their version of Bohemian Grove. Card-carrying members only. They all meet in Minneapolis and go to Palmer’s and ride bikes to a campground and trade secret handshakes and hold confidential meetings and drink lots of beer. And it was to this event that Katy Bell sent Doyle’s colors, via air mail, to another Bike Club member’s MPLS house. No doubt the Black Label kids verbally abused the crap out of Doyle upon the jacket’s ceremonial return.

Word on the street is that some hardcore Bike Club members would’ve preferred to confiscate Doyle’s colors for a painful amount of time, as this is the second time he’s lost them. They’re also known to drop full members back down to prospect status for certain offenses. Of course, this tough-talk rumor might also be some Black Label-style hardcore lore.

All Cyclecide did was to sew a clown nose on the outside, and to beer-elf the inside with Sharpie, and to smash blobs of white greasepaint in the pockets so when he reached in his pockets he’d get clown makeup all over his fingers and then (hopefully) unknowingly smear white all over his face and clown-elf himself.

That’s okay, right?

They’re not going to kill us, are they?

Pedaling; monsters

June 15-18, 007
Bayview, Potrero Hill, the HaightSF

ITEM! The Heavy Pedal Cyclecide Bike Rodeo’s annual PEDAL MONSTER has been confirmed!! July 13-15, 2007, at locations throughout San Francisco, expect a mutant bicyclist gathering of epic and idiotic proportions.

Black Label Bike Club (everywhere), Dead Baby Bikes (Seattle), C.H.U.N.K. 666 (Portland / NYC), Rat Patrol (Chicago), Chaingang (San Fernando Valley), Skidmarxxx (lotsa places), Choppercabras (LA), Banana Bike Brigade (St. Louis), Chopaderos (San Diego), Sprockettes (Portland), Cutthroats (Richmond VA) … I’m talkin’ to all yall. Time to buy plane tickets (or ride yer bike) to SAN FRANCYCLE for some ILLEGAL MAYHEM SO DANGEROUS AND MAYHEM-TASTIC I CAN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT IT ON THE PAGES OF THE INTERNETS WITHOUT BEING SUED BY EVERYONE ELSE WHO WON’T HAVE AS KICKASS OF A TIME AS WE WILL.

Ahem.

And if I forgot any mutant bike clubs I’m sure yall won’t hesitate to let me know.

yes, GORGAR the vain and belligerent urine-eating monster will be there. Tremble in your toe-clips

Also.

ITEM! Cyclecide and the Mousetrap and the Disgusting Spectacle all appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel Show as part of his taped segment on the Maker Faire! Takes a while to load the page but it’s worth it. (P.S. CRAP, I HAD NO IDEA THE EEPYBIRD MENTOS AND DIET COKE GUYS WERE THERE. That’s how slammed we are during shows. Who wants to join Cyclecide? We need some interns so we can wander around and look at stuff occasionally.)

So. This past weekend? Naaaa.

I didn’t go to Simone and Dave’s RoboGames/Combots (a.k.a. “Robot Wars” even though we’re not supposed to call it that because of some copyright issue but that’s what they are) — even though I had free passes because last year members of Cyclecide clowned for the robots and their masters in between battles, clattering around in cardboard robot costumes (the boys) and Beer Can Can-Can ™ skirts made of repurposed barley-soda aluminum. And Dannygirl went all the way, painting herself silver and walking around like a robot all day in a silver helmet and go-go skirt. Last year. This year, we were too overextended from all the see above.

A friend in the Vau de Vire Society / Xeno could’ve gotten me into a special Scion show on Alcatraz, in which they opened up a portion of the world-famous prison that had never been seen before, not even on private tours — the porcelain hose-down-the-crazy-prisoners room and the meds room. My friend played a junkied-out inmate trying to get his meds while a hula hooper went off in the background, ostensibly symbolizing his brain on drugs. And shit! The A’z were there. Yadadamean? That song gets stuck in my head about as often as the Trunk Boiz’ Scraper Bike track currently blowing up cyclists’ email lists.

So. The weekend? Naaaaa.

Tora and his rock’n’roll band Tiger Honeypot played “Double Delicious” at ArtSF. The show feted the release of SF author Virgie Tovar’s Destination DD: Adventures of a Breast Fetishist with 40DDs. So that meant breast-themed art, breast-themed food, breast-themed erotica readings, breast-themed history, and local rock’n’roll bands who very probably enjoy breasts and looking at breasts.

(This is the part where my dad, barely able even to listen to the events I’m recounting so far without rolling his eyes, would shake his head and bemusedly mutter: “San Francisco … the Land of Fruits and Nuts.”)

Even though I’m already a fan of Tora’s wife Trinity Cross’s Field Day Fashion brand clothing line, I only just made friends with Tora Thursday night, when riding in the back of the Waaahmbulance with a bunch of goons, going to the noise metal show on some bus somewhere in Potrero hill. I showed him the Urban Cowboy method of staying upright while sitting on the floor in the back of a van that’s speeding through the hills of San Francisco like the chase scene in Bullitt: Lean in the opposite direction your body’s trying to lean, and stretch at least one arm out for leverage. Just like riding a mechanical bull.

See? I went out. Thursday night. Another atypical punk rock slash crusty event, complete with secret meeting spots and repurposed vehicles and oogles sitting around on the sidewalk with 40s in paper sacks. The bus — was it a MUNI bus with a loft built up on the back of it? … whatever it was, it was awesomely ghetto — pulled up and everyone swarmed it. Short attention spans and the threat of a cover charge determined that we didn’t stick around for the bands to set up. Not when Lowtech was appearing at 5lowershop’s monthly jungle night at UndergroundSF for free.

That’s when the magic happened.

It’s always entertaining when a crowd of well-adjusted partygoers befuddles the Asshole In The Room into spinning out early. It reminds me of electrons and protons and neutrons all colliding with each other — the thing with the negative charge gets pushed away with equal force, bounces off something else, which also pushes it away, so it bounces harder…

One of the gals in my party fell victim to this asshole neutron’s masochistic attention-getting ploys.

“STOP GRABBING MY BOOB,” she thundered, standing safe amid a patio full of peaceful people smoking peaceful plants. Asshole neutron then drunkenly boinged over to me. Puffing on a Camel, he glared at her from across the way.

“He was grabbing my ass earlier,” another Amazonian hollered from a corner. Big girl. Brave dude.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I smiled.

“You’re That Guy, aren’t you?,” I asked him. “You just can’t wait to get your head kicked in.”

He smiled back, stubbed out his cigarette, and went inside. Ostensibly in search of other body parts to fondle on the countdown to the ambulance ride.

Sure enough, half an hour later, I was standing again in the same place, and so was he, and some girl’s boyfriend smashed a pint glass upside his head.

And rather than lunge for the smasher, Asshole Neutron acted as if nothing happened. While the boyfriend yelled, and boyfriend’s friends held him back, and the electron tornado swirled and grew, Asshole Neutron’s countenance morphed from surprise to ecstasy.

Fewer things are more surreal than a zombie lurching next to you, strafed and bloody, casually smoking a cigarette with pieces of broken glass pointing out of his face.

I mean yeah, I feel for the guy. I really do. We’ve all been wasted. But seriously? He kinda got off easy. If any of my male friends had been up in the club, they would’ve dragged him outside and used the sidewalk to ground the glass down into his skull.

But this way … it was sort of … poetic. Never have I seen a man be such a willing slave to his own self-loathing. Also: GO TEAM ALCOHOL.

What’s the point in going out for the weekend when the finale already happened on Thursday?

Using The Force: A stupid but powerful example

June 14, 007
SF

It was nigh bout three years ago in San Francisco, at a barbecue at the Haunted Barn. After dinner, everyone else but us had gone to shoot fireworks on the toxic beach overlooking the power plant by the nuclear wasteland out back. My date and I, already overstimulated from a day of sunshine and jackassery, chose instead to relax on the couch in Mark Perez’s old room.

We had just watched Brian Greene’s Nova special on The Elegant Universe a couple days previously — a triple feature with Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth and the cheesy-yet-somehow-quite-inspirational What the Bleep Do We Know? (I call the latter an “after-school special for adults”) — so we were all fired up on the fact that soon, we might be able to see through The Matrix. Any day now, with just a little bit of faith and brain exercise, we’d be able to use Jedi powers to stop bullets with our minds and divert policemen from illegal Bike Rodeo shows.

And then I wanted some potato chips from on that counter over there. But the counter got built way far away from the couch where I was busy lounging, embroiled in wanton relaxation and Obi-Wan fantasy. I scrunched my face up and reached my arm out toward the chips in the international bratty pose for “gimme.”

I really wanted those chips. Needed salt and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. To go with the Pabst.

So why not try it out. I held my arm there. Reaching, reaching, bony elbow overextended, fingers crawling into the air towards the chips.

“What, are you gonna use The Force to float those chips over to your hand?,” the date said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes I am.”

I wasn’t sure if I was kidding … then I told myself I wasn’t. Reach, reach, reach.

Silence in the room. Bemused look on date’s face.

“There’s nobody here,” he said. “Listen to the fireworks outside.”

“Still,” I said. “They shall be mine. Oh yes.”

“I’m not getting up off this couch to bring those chips to you,” the date said. “That’s not how it’s going to work.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Mind your own business.”

“You’re gonna have to gimme a dollar when you fail as a Jedi,” the date said.

More silence and bemusement. My confidence started to falter. Then, remembering Brian Greene’s cheerful explanation of there being 11 different dimensions, it turns out, instead of the 3 or 4 or whatever … I reached further.

Just then, a figure walked past the doorway. We were facing the door, and it was ajar, and we hadn’t heard a sound, and yet — was it a ghost? … No. It was Rominator X. I think she was laying down barefoot in the costume room next door, because she was CREEPING. She paused, and leaned back and cocked her head in the doorway, wondering about the silence and my strained position on the couch.

She stepped inside the room and looked from my hand to see the object of my psychic one-hand-jazzing … and she looked to the chips … and to my hand … and to the chips … and pointed at the bag and raised her eyebrows. Do you want these? her face said. By way of nodding yes, I intensified my gaze and drew my outstretched hand into a powerful kung-fu wizard’s claw of absolute concentration.

So she grabbed the chips and walked over and handed them to me.

I smiled victoriously, and turned to my flabbergasted date.

“I win,” I said. “Gimme a dollar.”

Phone saved by Love

June 13, 007
Yay Area

I thought my phone was stolen.

But it wasn’t stolen. It was returned to me by a homeless man named Love.

It didn’t get taken from the taqueria when I put all the stuff in my pockets on the counter so I could sit down and eat. It fell out of my sweatshirt later on the walk back home, when I was looking through some girly shoes discarded on the side of the street in my neighborhood. I discovered the loss and re-traced my steps, of course, but by that time, Love had already spotted the phone on the sidewalk by the shoes and picked it up for safekeeping, and waited for the owner to call so he could return it.

Did I mention he’s homeless? As in, needs money really bad?

Love. My phone was returned to me by a homeless man named Love. And here I was all pissed off about how fucked up the world is. After all, someone HAD walked into our house this past weekend while there were 4 people at home and swiped my housemate’s computer from the front room. Talk about balls (or tubes).

I thought my phone was gone daddy gone, just like the computer. Or did I?

Funny thing is, I’ve been trying to play with The Force recently — “creating my own reality,” or “manifesting”, or other terms that make my friends’ eyes roll. Hell, they make my OWN eyes roll. That’s why I usually just refer to quantum physics and call it The Force.

So on the steps-retracing mission yesterday, I firmly told myself that the phone WAS on the street somewhere, not stolen, and that I would indeed find it. That the universe was not THAT fucked up. That just because I live in an economically distressed area of town, not everyone is a douchebag. Really, I was telling myself this. My phone is not gone. My phone is not gone.

Then, it seemed my phone was gone. It WAS gone. Bummed, I went home and called the phone company and suspended my service and emailed out a bulletin asking all my friends for their numbers again.

Maybe I need to have a little more faith in the universe.

Hey, but at least I only suspended my service. Something told me not to cancel it. The same something that told me not to go to the phone-store for a new phone just yet today, to do random paperwork instead, to avoid leaving the house. To call my phone one more time, if only to see if the battery had died or if there were any new messages.

That’s when Love answered.

What’s your name? I asked. Do you know whose phone this is? … Hold on a minute, he said, calm down now, don’t talk so loud, honey. Love. I’m Love. Everyone just calls me Love…

So maybe I need to have a little more faith in my faith in the universe, then.

I met Love in the 7-11 parking lot last night. The most handsome of his friends, and intimidatingly big but good-natured, he shone, with clear eyes and sparkly white teeth and a clean white shirt and pressed clean clothes. The first thing he gave me when I got out of the car was a big hug. I returned it willingly, and handed him a large to-go container of my leftover lentils and rice with chipotle, and $40, which is more than I can afford by a mile, but I wanted to brighten his day the way he brightened mine.

Oh yeah, and I’m not supposed to mention that he’s black, right? But listen up, all yall racists and don’t-even-know-you’re-racists and everybody’s-racist-cuz-we’re-conditioned-by-the-media-and-each-other-to-be-racist-readers out there: HE’S BLACK. And he’s HOMELESS. And he RETURNED MY PHONE. He lives in the Bayview, San Francisco’s most murderous ghetto, and he went out of his way to return my phone to me.

And most “religious” suburbanites I grew up around, and some people out here I know now even, would cross the street to avoid him.

Think about that the next time some college-educated white guy snags you in an online identity-theft scheme.

Was this a visitation from God?

Do I have any reason to believe that it wasn’t?

Don’t they say God is Love?

Extra Steampunk Cheese Pandemonium Station

June 11, 007
Yay Area

Thursday night, the Extra Action Marching Band threw a “Cock-Out Rockout” at the DNA. A Guns’n’Roses cover band called Rocket Queens played (only Appetite for Destruction songs, mind you), and Hot for Teacher gave good Van Halen, and we missed I Yearn for Maiden, sadly. My companion wore my black shiny vinyl pants, a bandana on his head, and my Lynyrd Skynyrd studded T-shirt with a lady with big boobs in a rebel flag bikini on it. I drew a mustache and glasses and a beard on the lady, and gave her a heart tattoo on her silicone implant that says BACON.

Me, I wore the kids’ Harley-Davidson red white and blue shirt I got from the thrift store, cut cleavage into, and shredded tassels into the bottom of and put white and gold beads on the ends like those SHARK ATTACK shirts available for purchase in Myrtle Beach, SC in the ‘80s. (Bonus: On the back, the beads spell out the word METAL.) Also, red glittery legwarmers with baby blue leather elf boots with gray bunny fur on the top if you fold them down. And a black and white tiger-skin bandana in my hair all ratted to the sky (inspired by Silent but Violent’s obsessive IM-ing me pictures of Bret Micheals earlier that day).

Oh and light blue Daisy Dukes with the lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” written all over them in Sharpie.

Sometimes I think I’m so cool. (eyes roll)

Anyway.

The Marching Band … sigh.

Blink blink blink.

They’re. Just. So. Fucking. Awesome.

Then Saturday night was the Steampunk party at N.I.M.B.Y., during which Spy performed her one-woman, one-song, one-triangle act where she covered the Golden Girls’ theme song and we all screamed along. (Well at least I did.) Then she did the other show she does, the Kinetic Steam Works “cooking” show where she smashes things in the Dingus, like shaving cream and mustard, and Stephen mixes them altogether in a bowl while Spy punishes food products and everyone gets splattered. Especially her and Stephen. I tried to be supportive and yet at the same time shield myself with a large posterboard. Oh and there were two steam engines, and a carousel, and tons of machines shooting fire and ice and propane and steam and yada yada whackety shmackety. You know. The usual.

I had no idea Steampunk was a thing. Not just the name of a treehouse that Sean Orlando and crew are trying to fundraise and build and bring out there to the dirt rave in the desert this year. I was completely unaware that there was a movement or a literary genre or a fashion sense or an adjective describing anything having to do with modern adaptations of H.G. Wells and pre-electronic sci-fi adventures and Victorian-looking gadgets with polished brass accents and Goths with corsetry and dreadlocks. Or that it was all called Steampunk. Or that it’s even got its own magazine. Learn somethin new every day on the Internets.

All I know is, I’m pretty sure I can tell you where to find the kings and queens of Steampunk. And they’ve got the coolest toys I’ve ever seen (along with Cyclecide, of course).

Then Sunday night the Cirkus Pandemonium kids did a show in an abandoned Southern Pacific railroad station in Oakland. Which couldn’t have been any more picturesque if it were a fabricated Hollywood set. First we heard the building was slated to be torn down, but then we heard the yuppie-kennel developers didn’t win over the neighborhood anti-gentrification petition and door-to-door campaign. So the building stays. So there’s hope in the world.

Members of the Bread and Cheese Circus performed too. Aerialists and hula-hoopers and jugglers and acrobats and rope-walking and fire spinning and clowns and a big guy in a pink unitard and little top hat and silver crinkly cape. They’ve been going to Kosovo for 4 years now to entertain war-torn children and teach them circus arts, you know. They have actual clowning skills, unlike most of us Bike Rodeo clowns in Cyclecide. Then we climbed onto the roof of the train station and looked out over the twinkly lights of Oakland and the shipping-container cranes on the water.

I’m terribly hung over on propane. Seriously, it’s an actual ailment. I’ve been around pyromaniacs long enough to know. So much more stuff happened, but I’m feeling lazy, and too spread-headed from inhaling carcinogens to recall it all or find the words.

My adrenal gland hurts.

I gotta go wash the mustard off my clothes now.

—

P.S. HATS OF MEAT dot com? Are you serious?

More about how awesome The Sword is

June 7, 007
In a plane somewhere over America

Disclaimer: I am a MUSIC NERD, to an embarrassing degree. As one of these, I adore infecting my immediate population with something amazing when I’ve heard it. Chalk it up to my roots in the evangelical church, but there are some musical compositions I just can’t keep to myself. Especially when said compositions are albums more kickass than anything I’ve heard since my high-school boyfriend (yes, the one) played me Jane’s Addiction’s XXX for the first time.

Finally, that kind of descent into obsession has happened again.

I bet I’ve burned 2 dozen copies of The Sword’s Age of Winters for people since a friend first made me a mix tape with “Freya” and the epic “Lament for the Aurochs” on it and then I pirated the whole album from another metalhead. Someday I’ll buy the CD in the store, of course, just to give The Sword the royalties they deserve. But as for now I hope they’ll forgive me for being broke.

I call it “metal church” when I put The Sword on the stereo, though I know there’s an inferior band out there of the same name. Age of Winters gathers all the best elements of heavy metal and amalgamates them into one super-album — a super-album so perfect to me that I’m already experiencing anxiety about whether or not we’ve finally got our generation’s Led Zeppelin, or whether the Historically Troubled Sophomore Album will just suck.

It’s as if Ozzy and company time-travelled to hang out in Austin with people who don’t care as much about vocals, and then bought a shitload of new-style sound-enhancing gear at the music store and transported themselves back to the ‘70s. Sludge, doom, stoner, arena, black, death … all the metal in the world, spiked and leaded and wrapped up in boiling tar and plopped on a trebuchet, ready to be flung over the gates of testosterock to melt the skin off all shirtless lockjaw rockers who dare to try their hand at making music in the realm of The Sword. Yes, it’s derivative, but while other new rock albums founder in their derivativeness, Age of Winters stands atop the Misty Mountain, clad in animal skin and swinging a flaming cat’o’nine tails around its horned helmet, calling to the alchemists and smearing (someone else’s) blood on its face and howling at the moon.

They’re like the Highlander of metal. There can be only one.

My friends and I adore The Sword I think in part because we’re aggressive people. Viking and otherwise mythical themes abound in their lyrics, and we like shit that sounds like banging around in caves and clubbing people over the head and dragging them round by the hair. As well, we, and The Sword, are drawn to all the middle-Earth stuff for reasons other than being obsessed with The Hobbitt as children. We also love it because Ronnie James Dio loves it, and because Led Zeppelin loved it. Some in our generation can’t help but echo things, even as we improve upon them. But while Tenacious D horses around with dark-knight imagery in a wink-wink “meta” sort of way, The Sword pretty much just strips away all theatrics and affectations and distills the Hrothgar and Valhalla stuff to a crack-rock density. Which lets — nay, commands — the listener to concentrate on rocking out.

So are they kidding? Are The Sword, to metal, what the Black Label Bike Club is to the Hell’s Angels, or what the Power Tool Drag Races are to … well, to drag races? Or are they really, truly … like that?

Is there even a difference any more, post tower-collapse, between sarcastic adoration and actual adoration? Haven’t we come full circle, to where we couch every sentiment in a thin (or thick) veneer of self-conscious tongue-in-cheekiness, like the British have done ever since they were massively humbled when their most important city went under siege in WWII?

In summary, when I’m old and sitting in a nursing home’s front yard, pointing hairdryers at passing cars with all the other girls in the Bike Rodeo and somebody throws Age of Winters on the sound system (in my future, nursing homes have colon-detaching 5lowershop sound systems), I’ll just close my eyes and tilt my head back and involuntarily wet my pants out of joy. Yes, to me, Age of Winters feels less like an album and more like a new chapter in the annals of music history.

I can’t get over how metal it is.

Here’s a list of other rock albums I’ve felt this way about, in near to chronological order:

The Xanadu soundtrack
Duran Duran – Duran Duran
Jane’s Addiction – XXX
Nirvana – Bleach
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
Smashing Pumpkins – Gish
Metal Flake Mother – Beyond the Java Sea
Jeff Buckley – Grace
Archers of Loaf – Icky Mettle
Built to Spill – Perfect from Now On
Turbonegro – Apocalypse Dudes
The Go – Whatcha Doin’
Wolfmother – s/t
Balkan Beat Box – s/t

And you? What albums have you obsessed over, written wide-eyed sappy poems about, and foisted on people as gifts they didn’t even ask for?

Discuss.

So anyway, last Saturday night

June 6, 007

Michelle and I arrived to Lost Vegas late and underdressed. Despite the rain earlier, the Drunkyard still showed good attendance for its purported last show (sniff), and nearly all comers outfitted themselves in Vegas-worthy garish-wear. Brian Doherty looked handsome as he dealt at the “Crap” table; Belinda the Junkwoman held court behind her Valueless Prizes booth, decked in Santa garb and talking shit.

Lily from the Yard Dogs, who always gives good costume, radiated Nevada / Hollywood cheese — sky-high rich-girl bouffant; piles of gold accessories; bronzer liberally applied; ridiculous white lounge-singer dress. Her lipliner broached her lips’ borders by a mile, while her lipgloss gave her the appearance of just having guzzled bacon grease. In other words: perfect. Later on that night, her amour — one-half of the Wink and Yoni show when he’s not the lead singer of Rube Waddell — would glance at her lovingly from the stage, bedecked in a white suit and plastic lei and terrible wig, plonking out painfully earnest Vegas versions of forgotten radio hits, crooning in his dime-store Elvis vibrato while she blew him kisses. Ah, polyester love.

Kimric Smythe built some new steam-powered thing that served as yet another too-elaborate way to cook hot dogs for the drunks at the Drunkyard (remember Flash and Victoria ironing weenies at the Power Tool Drag Races?). Below the contraption, which every so often spit out little hot dog remnants, Cloe’s intrepid puppy lingered and licked up the spoils from the years-old layer of automotive oil and PCBs and other chemicals on the pavement.

Beside this dog-eat-dog spectacle, the Ramp of Death — over which Otto was to “jump a Harley Davidson … ON FUCKING FIRE” — loomed 9ish feet high and 30ish feet long. All-star pyros like Jim Mason and Steve Valdez and Mark Perez readied the hut they’d built at the base of the ramp, through which Otto was to ride after it’d been set ablaze (and therefore catch fire himself), on his way to the top of the ramp and Valhalla beyond. Where’s he going to land?, I asked several gamblers. Nobody knew.

ramping up. Photo by Scott Beale / laughing squid

Cyclecide had our two-seater Ferris Wheel set up, and of course I gravitated towards it for most of the evening, aiding Linda as she ran the ride and sassed the riders and cheekily turned people away for lack of whiskey to share. Behind us, the Rev. Dr. Howland Owll of the Church of Subgenius officiated short-term wedding ceremonies in a covered trailer which doubled as a chapel. Moses and Spy — who won a precious can of rust from the valueless prizes table, and carried it around all evening like a baby — got married until Wednesday, and Jarico and Linda wed each other (in clown noses) for 24 hours. Just to try it out.

Sparkle Motion, San Francisco’s most “real” dance troupe, showed off their day-glo animal-print thrift-score unitards and performed a synchronized routine to “Eye of the Tiger” — which reminded me (as I’m sure it did many other chicks in the audience) of my own childhood, choreographing steps to Billy Squier with my friends at slumber parties and drawing from the three holy sources of inspiration: cheerleading, Solid Gold, and the Soul Train.

I brought Otto the good-luck charm I’d found on the street at the Love Parade (of all places) months ago: a poster of a bearded, mulleted biker on a Harley that read RIDE FREE TO ETERNAL LIFE with some Bible verses underneath it. “Don’t die, Otto,” I said, “because we need an Otto and because my friend ___ was serious about the blowjob after the show.” (She was.) He stuffed the poster into his sock and smiled.

Then it was time for the finale. In true showman style, Chicken John emceed the crowd into a froth, backed by a full band, three women dressed as Elvis and singing the Otto Von Danger theme song accordingly, and a handful of go-go dancers in sexy nurse uniforms. Before the stunt could begin, the nurses needed to “check” Otto on a gurney on a raised platform behind the stage and the hoopla.

suspiciously like all the other Ramps of Death in our immediate social circle… but much, much taller and stupider. photo by Scott Beale / laughing squid

From the back view, perched on the Cyclecide HQ mezzanine in the rear of the Drunkyard, Moses and Linda and Spy and I saw the magic happen. I won’t give away the secret, for fear of retribution, but I will remind you (as Moses did me) of the televised “disappearance” of the Statue of Liberty — a magic trick in which David Copperfield brought his spectators out to a platform on Ellis Island, showed them the statue, surrounded them in curtains, and orchestrated a glitzy razzle-dazzle hullaballoo … during which time the platform rotated evverrrr sooooo slowwwwly. So when the curtains dropped, the statue had disappeared … because it was just over there behind those other curtains to the side. The audience bought it.

As with any event in this crowd, the vehicle malfunctioned, and Chicken was forced to replace the Harley with a motorized scooter. Ghetto-ass Evil Kneivel shit. “Otto,” now fully “checked,” putt-putted through the crowd and into the cardboard-stuffed wooden hut, which the pyros ignited. Fully ablaze, “Otto” shot from the hut and up the ramp and … split half in two. Half fell onto the asphalt; the other half of “him” got stuck on a nail or something at the top of the jump, and burned quietly while chaos ensumed below. The pyros, now armed with fire extinguishers, put “Otto” out, creating a cloud of white dust through which nobody could see. His red-white-and-blue jumpsuit burned and torn, Otto emerged from the wreckage, victorious.

And I was all scared for nothing.

Rubes. Sometimes I’m one of them. I’m glad, after all I’ve seen, that I can still get conned.

to the victor go the spoils. (and maybe the blowjobs too; i’d rather not imagine it)

Cheers in heaven

June 3, 007
Memphis, TN

We’re going through her things now. My mother and her brother and my cousin and me, divvying up the little trinkets from the house where we all grew up, at least part of the time — things to take home and put on the shelf and remember her (and him) by. I wanted the wall-mounted widemouth bass my Grandaddy caught, but my uncle got those. I scored a duck-caller and a compass and a few necklaces and a plastic gold-painted American eagle.

You know it’s this family’s kind of affair when my grandmother’s burial service earlier today consisted of 75% music. About Jesus. And very little talking. All about Jesus. But that’s the way she would’ve wanted it. She looked good, too — like before she was sick, back when she was still teaching Sunday school and hosting Servicemen’s Dinners in the Fellowship Hall at church.

I got the ring. No, not the diamond ring Grandaddy gave her at their wedding ceremony over 60 years ago — Mom inherited that long ago. I got the sparkly Avon-bought cubic zirconium monstrosity, the one that would be offensive if it were real. In her later years, Nanny wore this one instead, because she didn’t want to lose the larger, real-rock ring Grandaddy gifted her after years of good wifery. Mom didn’t think I’d want it, since she knows I think diamonds are sort of gross and I avoid even the appearance of evil unless it’s an acessory made of obvious total drag-queen rhinestone overkill. So they were going to bury her in it, and that’s when I saw it, and Mom saw me see it, and insisted I should have it. The soft-spoken man in the dark suit at the funeral home pried the Avon ring off her finger just before they closed the casket during the service.

And, naturally, it took an awkwardly long time to get the damn ring off her unrelenting hand. Kind of creepy, and when the patently sympathetic dark-suit-man walked over to hand it to me in the front pew before the preacher started talking, I felt like the black-sheep morbid weirdo of the family (again). But I’m glad to have it. It covers the tattoo. And it reminds me of … grandma’s hands. (DAMMIT now the Bill Withers song is stuck in my head AGAIN.)

Finally. Finally, she got to shuffle off this mortal coil that had long been of no use to her for some time now. I imagine Grandaddy was waiting there for her at the end of the tunnel, smiling and winking in some rumbly old truck, waiting to fly her around outer space to show her the sights he’s seen in the past 8 years since the cancer ate him up. Of course, out there in the Milky Way, she’ll have her nose stuck in the romance novel stashed inside her Bible cover the whole time, and he’ll playfully jibe her for not taking in the sights, but he won’t really mind.

o, come, angel band… come and around me stand… o bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home. Amen and amen

Otto didn’t die Saturday night in San Francisco at the Drunkyard. Thankfully it was another Chicken-orchestrated affair, so cheaply and cleverly done. Otto and Chicken both got everyone all worked up — when asked about safety measures, Otto would launch into a detailed explanation of the angle he’d take, the speed he’d go to ensure he’d land aright, the flame-proof gel with which he’d cover himself before the stunt.

Of course Chicken picked Otto (or Otto volunteered, whichever) for the “stunt” because Otto is indeed the type of person that would say “sure, yeah, okay man” to jumping a Harley Davidson over a Ramp of Death on fire, for real. Because he cares less than most whether he dies or not. But it wasn’t for real, it was showbiz.

What a relief — because another one of the beloved characters in our scene had just come thisclose to meeting her maker on a motorcycle the night before. And as we all pictured her lying half-crushed, pre-surgery, miraculously still alive and cracking wise to the nurses in the ICU while we partied in the Drunkyard, we didn’t think the idea of another of our friends doing a super-dangerous motorcycle trick ON FIRE was very funny at all. But the way it happened, it was sort of … cathartic.

he made it! (photo by RICK!)

Right now here outside of Memphis, in our family’s permanent-until-tomorrow home base, there’s a passel of male relatives moving furniture and female ones packing up gewgaws and books and china. We’re dispersing the stuff among friends, neighbors, and the Salvation Army. Thank goodness there’s nothing of real monetary value in the house; there’s no fighting.

Myself, I want to take weird shit, like all my Nanny’s silk and acetate scarves, a book of inspirational poems my great-grandmother gifted her in 1921, a piece of flowery wallpaper from their bedroom, an old toolbox with my Grandaddy’s initials carved into it … Not every child gets to grow up with her own personal superhero, in the form of a fort-building babysitter Navy aircraft repairman automotive genius whom small children and animals would literally flock to like some kind of modern-day cerulean-eyed saint. And his wife, my mother’s mother, the picture-perfect Christian homemaker party-host moral-compass chef-seamstress-teacher supreme.

Now they’re together at last.

I’m so glad my other friend on the motorcycle bounced. My witchy friend says it’s important at times like this to throw some prayers and well-wishes her way, to surround her with good energy while she recuperates in the hospital. This time, I’ll bite my sarcastic tongue and go with it.

Jan Pehechan Ho!

This makes me happy.

Of course it’s from the opening credits of Ghost World, so Silent but Violent and I have seen it a million times … that doesn’t make me any less happier when I watch it again. And again.

You know, marijuana grows wild in India and was rumored to have originated as one of Shiva’s dreadlocks. I’m just saying.