Chubber! Now in Poster Form!

What's That Smell?

At long last, after much gnashing of teeth and clashing of swords, the opening of Jeffrey Wonderful's CHARIOTS OF RUBBER has been announced: It debuts in the Arena stage at Theatre Theater on Belmont on one month from today on Thursday, July 23rd!
Your friend Virginia is dancing in it, and also has recently gotten a speaking role- watch her tear up the stage as Gas Station Attendant #2!
This is the ultimate Portland Rock & Roll Musical- the stories of fate and failure in Coos County demolition derby, featuring an original soundtrack, a live band, blood, cross-dressing cops, supernatural sisters, and in general comporting itself like Grease meets Hedwig and the Angry Inch! CHARIOTS OF RUBBER is an all original, heavy-metal musical about friendship, love and loss at the demolition derby.
Written and directed by Jeffrey Wonderful, Music By Private Mike Albano performed by Jedediah Aaker, Keith Bornzin,Dylan Skiles.

Set to an ALL ORIGINAL score, Chariots of Rubber is performed by Portland rockers- Jen Shepard as the hooker Cindy "Portland's Erotic Pleaser", Donny Don't debuts as Crash, Seantos as Bow Tuck, Jarud Meyer as Tommy, and Rob Taylor as Tommy's Mother.

The running dates are July 23rd, 24th, 25th and August 13, 14, and 15!



The posters and flyers have been printed for the show, and we have been generating tags to add to the info-

*Dancing so hot, our choreographer's pregnant!
*What if I get a b*ner?
*It's a little car! You can stand on it!

Grimly Fiendish

In case you are sitting on lots of holiday cash and don't know what to do, I wanted to point out that Dave Vanian of seminal (huh huh) punk band The Damned has co-founded a high-end goffic makeup line called Illamasqua. Who better to do it than Dave? He's been blending clown white and smudging black liner since Billy Joe Armstrong's parents argued over whether the condom would hold. Anyway, Dave's makeup line is is the culmination of my dreams in many ways.


Awesome things about Dave:

1. He is married to Patricia Morrison, formerly the bassist of Sisters of Mercy, and together they are the gothest couple ever. Everyone else should give up.

2. He once threatened to beat the tar out of Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, for copying his "Vampire schtick", not realizing that there was enough of it to go around for the UK, Germany, and the States for many years to come.

3. I have been in love with him, body and soul, since I was fifteen years old. All five foot six of him.

4. Screw you, Patricia Morrison!

Postscript: Illamasqua has started shipping to the States! They can now ship worldwide for seven pounds, which I think is eleventy hundred dollars. Hooray!

Ride with the Dandies!

Come ride with the Dandies! Meet at 6:15 at Ladd's Circle to tour significant Portland sites with members of the Dandy Warhols-

Ladd's Circle, 1600 SE Harrison St
Come on a tour of sites important to the history of the Dandy Warhols, one of the most successful bands to come out of Portland, with a couple members of the band! See where their 1st show electrified the audience, where they recorded some of their highly successful CDs and filmed videos, and their Portland recording studio, where they took back control over their music and now record other bands too. We'll be blasting DW music the whole way! The ride is free, but we will make at least one stop at a cafe or bar so bring a couple bucks for a drink. The ride will end with a trivia contest.

http://shift2bikes.org/cal/view3week.php#15-577

Zia McCabe on the takeoff for the Dandy Warhols ride

More amazing photos of the riders, the ride, and the Odditorium here!

Ladies' Rock Camp and the Birth Of Furious Yellow

A nice mural of musical ladies, including my favorite, birthday girl Laurie Anderson!

For many years, I have been playing mediocre rhythm guitar. I used to play with my band, Sadly Deluded, and I would tell jokes and play songs until someone suggested that I could just tell jokes and I wouldn't have to haul a guitar around. I have always wanted to be a better guitar player, so I decided to force myself to practice guitar more by signing up for ladies' rock camp. It didn't actually work that way, and so I showed up with baby-soft fingers to play on for eight hours a day, which then hurt like bejeezus all weekend. My fault.

My former band's logo, designed by the fantastic Francisco Garcia

Ladies' Rock Camp is very fast paced- you show up, eat lunch, form a band, take a class for your instrument, and start writing a song. When asked what kind of band I wanted to be in, I couldn't think of the term for the music I like so I just said "Mope Rock". I still can't think of a better word for the music I like.
Something strange about Rock Camp is the almost unremitting positivity and support of the other campers and staff. I think now that I have been selling myself short as a mediocre guitar player, and that I'm at least an average guitar player. It was kind of uncomfortable, since I am used to stand-up, in which all friendships are based on tearing each other down in public or private.
I had a moment I think might have been life-changing- we had been rehearsing our song over and over, and for a minute I was just playing it on my own, and I thought, "This doesn't sound as good as it does with the rest of my band," and that's the first time I've ever thought anything of the sort.

We named ourselves Furious Yellow, and our lead bass player made us matching 1" buttons.
We wrote a song about breaking up, and sketched out our first EP:

Title: I Am Furious Yellow

Songlist:

Confirm or Deny
The Blood Of These Whores Is Killing Me
Doublewide Coffin (a coffin built for two)
Let Go Of The Cremains
My Hands Are Made Of Meat
I Still Have Your Knee Socks From Thanksgiving

Fun Facts About Furious Yellow:

Three members from Cali, one from Idaho, and one Portlander
We're so heavy, we need two bass players
Our lead bassist has been to Rock Camp four times, and features in an article from the London Guardian on ladies' rock camp in 2006!

Two blue-eyed, two green-eyed, one brown-eyed lady.

Five band members, and THREE tap dancers! What are the odds?

I was given a rainbow guitar strap, which I thought was appropriate to use because although I am not gay, my Telecaster is at least bi-curious.
After the show at Satyricon, Furious Yellow was very tired and stinky and our fingers hurt, so we drank alcohol until we felt better.
If you like music and are a lady, I really recommend this camp. It is approximately the most fun thing ever.

San Francisco's Finest Comes to Portland!

I rang in 2008 with a show in San Francisco by the world's finest Smiths cover band, This Charming Band, and I've been keeping my eyes on the skies for the news I finally got this week- they're doing a show in Portland at the Wonder Ballroom next Friday, May 29th, with Depeche Mode project Black Celebration and New Orders inspirados Love Vigilantes. The only sad, sad omission is Portland's finest Cure cover band, The Exploding Boys, but maybe sometime in the future we can bring these powerhouses together.


Clear your calendar. Find your winklepickers. Let's go!

Family Time

I was so excited to do stand-up in Austin, TX with my mother and sister in attendance. That feeling cooled as soon as I took the stage and every thought in my mother's head fell out of her mouth. Sometimes in life, you get heckled- but rarely by someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally.

And don't worry, I am throwing that dress away. I thought it looked cool and breezy and casual, but I look like a big silver building.

A New Dance!

A talented young comic in the area has developed a new dance for use at Suki's, called the slip-and-fall. I thought perhaps you would enjoy it. I find watching Christian fall down over and over again to be sort of hypnotic, so please don't do it while operating heavy machinery.

There's a brand-new dance but I don't know it's name
Oooh-ha. Ricketts.
The people at Suki's do it again and again
Ooooh-ha. Ricketts.

The Dangers of Fun

I am back from Austin, TX, where I had a lovely time performing alongside New York's Selena Coppock, Amy Albert, and sketch troupe Skinny Bitch Jesus Meeting, along with a compendium of one-woman shows, improv troupes, cabaret acts, and local luminaries. I had the opportunity to hang out with some long-lost friends, and of course members of my family, who are always exciting to be with. They nearly did not attend my show, because it sold out and advance tickets had not been purchased- I can only imagine because my sister thought something more important might come up at the last minute that would trump seeing my act.
My mother heckled me for a large portion of my set, prompting admirers to ask where I had gotten such a talented plant, to whom I could only weakly respond that it had been my actual human mother. I will have film up soon.
The LAFF festival had a dinner event on Saturday night at Vivo, a restaurant on the long list of local eateries that my sister Laura has been fired from, and I drank the most delicious margarita ever. It was full of fruit and tequila and an orchid and evil. Having consumed a single beverage, I saluted my fellow funny ladies, and went to meet my family.
After I left, I got on the highway and was mildly disturbed at the smell and sound my rental car was making. Since I was nearly to my destination, and since it was a rental car, I decided to persevere despite the thumping and odor, until I got to a stop light and a tramp on the highway on-ramp walked up to my car and pulled a valet parking cone out from underneath it, with a gesture of disgust.

Austin, you continue to kick my ass.

Bridgetown PostMortem!

My brother and I got a cheap one-way ticket out of town, just for the rest.

The Second Bridgetown Comedy Festival is over, and the only thing that happened is that hundreds of comics, fans, and locals had the BEST TIME EVER for four days.

Pictures of Portland comics, out-of-towners, famous people, and random stuff is in the Flickr Bridgetown pool here.

High points:

SHIRTLESS RANDY LIEDKE
VS.
THREE OF PORTLAND STRONGEST STRIPPERS- Liedke wins!

Brody Stevens called out a drunk "trustafarian" for peeing in the green room hallway. It was an amazing event, where ALL the comics converged on this guy and the situation. He eventually had someone go grab him from the bar next door. He was subject to questioning, audience beat down, and a good final judgment from Todd Glass.

The AMAZING Reggie Watts did shows on Friday and Saturday, and appeared on the Podcast Sounds of Young America, although seeing him in action is really a treat.

A guy yelled "Better be funny!" at Brody Stevens, and Jimmy Dore tore over and screamed "YOU'RE NOT FIT TO LICK THIS MAN'S BALLS!" or something very much to that effect.

Gabe Dinger says: David Koechner yelled at me from across the street to give me my notebooks that I left at the previous show, we met in the middle of the road and he said "How could I forget a name like Dang-gerr?" when I told him it was Dinger he said it was ok, no one gets his name right ether. Then we almost got hit by two cabs simultaneously. Lesson? Never ever under any circumstances correct David Koechner or you might die.

Veronica Heath says: Hanging out with Janeane backstage at the Hawthorne show where she educated me and we talked about botox, grapefruit juice, sweat, powells books, and the Bay Area. I'm so glad she wasn't an asshole. Very down to earth, very nice, and much tinier in real life than I had imagined.

And everybody, local and out-of-town, has been talking non-stop about the hilarity of Dax Jordan's Comedy Robot. I am heartbroken to have missed it. If I could only be at two places at once, you know? But I cannot.

It was awesome seeing my brother John have some great sets, and introducing him to my friends and associates. I hope one day we will do a double act that will make people very, very uncomfortable.

Many thanks to Andy Wood, Matt Braunger, the dozens of volunteers who all worked hard to keep things running on Festival Time, i.e. half-hour to one hour late, and a special thanks to LiveWire's Courtenay Hameister, who gave us some awesome press and who took over special Twittering duties.