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