I didn't know until today that the Minty song by Leigh Bowery, Useless Man, is a parody of a Pepsi ad that ran in the UK in 1973. Please note that one of these videos has
really dirty lyrics. Somehow, Useless Man is even funnier to me now.
"Lipsmackin' thirstquenchin' acetastin' motivatin' goodbuzzin' cooltalkin' highwalkin' fastlivin' evergivin' coolfizzin' Pepsi."
 The spooky, velvet-caped Powers That Be have blacklit DJ's Retrograde and Retrovirus for a DJ slot at the Convergence, in sinister Portland, over the weekend of May 25-27. We will be dusting off the black vinyl, and the records too. Keep your glassy, web-worn orbs here for details on when you can catch a set of time-tested D-rock and forgotten goffic dance hits. Please feel free to send requests, as long as it's not the "I'm Dead, I'm Dead" song. (Actual request from actual patron.) We'd love to see you there. Or, your presence might bring a wry smile to play on these world-weary lips. Or something.
 The author as sad dolly.
I am back from adventure at the 10th Sakura-Con in Seattle, where I witnessed glomping, cosplay, and filking. I have mixed feelings about mocking an anime convention, because on the one hand, it's just nerds trying to lose their virginity while dressed as Japanese manga characters. On the other, there are too many horrors to go undocumented. It is filled with teenagers dressed as their favorite anime and videogame heroes, and I don't know who any of them are, but you see the same ones over and over and eventually develop opinions about whose are better. It's like Halloween, if there were only ten options for things to be. The Sailor Moon population alone could fill a city bus. My favorites were an adorable Black Sailor Moon who knew Para Para Paradise dances, and a boy Sailor Moon, who left and came back at 1AM dressed as a rubber nurse.  I would never, ever make out with anyone dressed as Link from Zelda, nor Mario from Super Mario brothers, but I appear to be in the minority. There were a lot of Marios, but I think this one was the best. There was a little-kid team Mario and Luigi, and their mother was dressed as the princess, which I found disturbing in an Oedipal manner. Or Jocastan, as the case may be. I'm assuming that this is a cosplay of Mana of Malice Mizer, the "Queen" of Gothic Lolita. He was giant, and had large shoes, and liked having his picture taken.  This is what we call a high-commitment costume. I don't know what it is, but she was not going to speak, eat, drink, or have feeling in her hands for the day, but she looked fantastic.
  Awesome bloody nurses from Silent Hill. I don't mean it in the English slang sense. I mean they're covered in blood.
The best option appears to be making a costume at home of your favorite character, and if you have a ridiculously oversized weapon, so much the better. Duct-taped and foil covered blades abound. If you have nothing in particular in mind, you can dress as a little Gothic Lolita dolly, but if you can't get that together, you can just throw on a kimono and cat ears and call it a day. If you are dressed as a gothic lolita, other Lolitas will recognize you as one of them, and they will give you candy and tell you where stuff is.
The adorable fourteen year old on the right told me she was in love with a guy dressed as Jack Sparrow, (left) and that she had been to a doll meetup, where you introduce your doll to other dolls.
Fun* Facts about Sakura-con:
There is roughly a 30% overlap between Anime watchers and Furries. A good rule of thumb on cosplay is: the larger you are, the smaller your costume should be. Don't worry about wearing a corset that cantilevers your breasts into trembling, flat tapioca puddings. That appears to be the desired effect. Attendees at Club Sakura can't dance to anything below 240 BPM, because they are limited to conga lines and jumping up and down. A casual attendee might think that they would enjoy singing karaoke, but when you gets there, it will all be in Japanese, so give up. I sort of know the Ranma 1/2 song, and that's not gonna cut it. Dance, Dance, Revolution goes 24 hours a day, which is the only way to be sure you'll get a turn. People will line up to play console games that they played at home yesterday, because they can do it with other people. Otaku, or obsessive nerd, is not an insult- it's a goal. Any 24 hour nerd event will degenerate into games of Hearts eventually. Kid Whatever rules Club Sakura.
50% of people attending Cosplay events in their teens will be going to S&M conventions in their forties. Dancing doesn't count if it doesn't involve glowsticks.
(*= I made them up. Mostly.)
With the history of Ben & Jerry's slightly funny celebrity 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. Send your entry with name, email, and physical address to this address (theedge@news.oregonian.com) by April 2nd. Some of my ice cream concepts that are less than Oregonian-ready are:
1. Morrissey's William, It Was Really Nothing Like Sherbet 2. Anna Nicole Smith's Double Methadone Tragedy 3. Prince's Purple Rain...Bow Sherbet 4. John Popper's Blueberry Traveller- Now, with hidden arsenal flavor! or, John Popper's Obese Gun Nuts. 5. Robert Smith's Icing Sugar Smoothie 6. Michael Richard's N is for Nougat Swirl 7. Britney Spears' Oops, I'm Nuts! 8. Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animal Crackers 9. Bin Laden's Rocky Roadside Bomb 10. John Travolta's Thetan Crunch 11. Beck's Mellow Golden Caramel 12. Prince's Caramel-Colored Funk or Prince's Under The Cherry Spoon 13. Nick Drake's Pink Moon Pie
14. 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 nineteen-seventies, before you could watch mediocre teenagers sing on television and vote for them on your phone, people were so desperate for entertainment that sometimes they'd host " baby fights" at private homes, where two babies of similar ages would be dumped onto an ugly bedspread and forced to battle for dominance. The winner took home Similac and a college savings bond. Fortunes were won and lost in off-license betting. Here I am, about to destroy someone named Sarah, as an anorexic ref looks on.
 Holy Vernal Equinox! I saw an undeniable sign of Spring this morning- two squirrels fighting in a tree. They're chittering away at each other in a ferocious manner, circling and chasing around on the branches, and I know they were telling each other "No, YOU get out!" in squirreltalk, but they sounded like furry knitting needles, and were approximately the least threatening thing ever. They only fight during mating season, because each squirrel is trying to keep his bachelor pad sleek and sexy and free of other males, and stocked with fresh nuts and Zima for the ladies. Just like you do.
 Well, yesterday's post was so debauched that today I'm going for "cute." One of the kids I read with as a part of Oregon's SMART program (above, missing six baby teeth) told me today that once he learns to read and finishes school, he's going to China and training to be a Ninja. I think it's so important for today's youth to establish clear and achievable goals.
 The picture below is NSFW, peepsHello there! Did you ever wonder what happened to the pictures that you and your friends took naked, playing pool, in your parent's basement in 1996?
You stuck them into a 7" by SF straight-edge band, "Resist", that you later sold or was stolen or something. Surprise!
The most unfortunate thing is that these fellas are str8-edge, 'parently, so they took naked basement pictures totally sober. These boys just could not "Resist" nudity. Click on the "clean" picture to see the "dirty" one. And it really is NSFW dirty, not joke dirty.
 I just ran across this event coming up in Portland on March 13th: You've got yer Nick Cave music and your Sydney Dance Company modern dancers and you mush it all up with costumes by Imitation of Christ and that's what you've got. Remember that it's Friday the 13th that's unlucky, not Tuesday. Here's a really over-compressed short video about the show.  Some of the songs included in the program are: Wild World, Mercy Seat, The Carny, The Weeping Song, The Ship Song, Stagger Lee, and Death is Not the End. The dance opens with a reading from his novel, "And The Ass Saw The Angel."
Songs Least Likely to Appear In A Nick Cave Dance Program: Scum, 6" Gold Blade, and Little Empty Boat.
 Postscript: Wow, was I wrong about not using Stagger Lee in the program! When it started as a very intense, Apache-style duet between the brute and the maiden, and the first F-bomb dropped in, I heard the row of nice fifty-year old ladies in front of me take in breath sharply, and I thought, "wait until we get to the line about crawling over fifty good p*ssies to get to a fat boy's assh*le." A couple disgruntled ballet fans walked out, but I think the fifteen year old dance students were pretty psyched about a getting to hear a filthy dirty song.
My review of the ballet is a million, jillion gold stars, flecked lightly with blood. It was so super, I can't tell you. If you hear about it coming through your town, I highly recommend it.
Oh, and any Nick Cave fans should know that the album by his new project, Grinderman, will be available on April 10th, and the website has a nice monkey animation on it.
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