I never expected to be the tattooed lady – even made it through my 20′s with just one bottle-cap crown — but then I fell in love with the Spanish/French graffiti artist Miss Van. By a stroke of kismet, I met Tina Forever, a gifted tattoo artist capable of transmuting the Miss Van magic. Now I say that my body is an inky Parisian alleyway. I regret that I don’t have more flesh to commit to inky renderings of Miss Van’s masked darlings. Every time I turn around, I’m falling in love with another one and wondering where on my body, she might feel at home.

It means my evil alter Spooky Kabuki is in a witchy crouch over Cream Scene Carnival so expect some cauldron-stirring.

Things are crazy for me now but I WILL get it together and deliver the crazy cool stuff that Spook-Kabuk has been saving up.

Such as what? Well, how bout a Mark Ryden inspired interior? Or the coolest ouiji boards ever? Plus while we got ouiji on the brain we must discuss Weegee’s crime scene photography. There’s steampunk rayguns that go up yer butt & movies that’ll scare the shit outta ya.

Ghost stories, voodoo chants, a gypsy curse or tw0 or three.

Plus, an amazing array of creepy art by a hoodoo slew of artists such as the wicked Junko Mizuno. You’ll be hearing more about that talented hag so stay tuned.

*All art by Junko Mizuno

My initial response was “Crap, now I have to watch that shit n’ shinola. Dancing with the stars? Ugg.”

Yet another reminder to never say never.

“Why must you?” you ask. Well, because I love Cho more than I hate DWTS. DUH! Don’t you?

C’mon! We gotta take Cho when and where we can get her. Whether it’s on Lifetime’s schlocky yet charming series Drop Dead Diva, doing the tango on DWTS, or live at The Paramount.

Plus we’ll get to see her mom, which features prominently and hilariously in Cho’s stand-up.

Now that I’ve resigned myself to my pitiful fate, I hafta say I’m really looking forward to seeing Cho in sparkles, sequins and spandex. While performing her stand-up, she was already sporting a street-wear version of DWTS style. She wore a loose silky tunic — one-shoulder, sequined – that showed off her gorgeous shoulder tats. She paired the sparkly tunic with American Apparel’s metallic spandex leggings in spaceship silver; grounding the get-up with a great pair of ass-kicker boots. Mmm. Rugged and mmm soft buttery leather and mmm.

Sorry. My clothes-lust kinda took over for a second there. Lemme wipe the drool from my chin and we’ll move on.

I’m gonna enjoy seeing her twice a week for as long as this lasts. Once she’s booted, I’ll be free but I’ll be bummed.

I just hope she does the Robot. Cause that would totally rock.

No go show Cho some love! Give her some sugars! Form a rallying crowd for her to surf through. Join Team Van-Cho. GO!

Meet Dot.

You’re gonna like Dot. You’re gonna like Dot alot. Just you wait.

Once you watch this, you will know how much I truly do love you. Be sure to watch it in full-screen mode!

Sleep tight, darlings. Dream like you mean magic.

Catch some Z’s like fire-flies, let ‘em light up your mind like they light up a mason jar in July.

We’ll talk tomorrow.

Shush.

Shh.

***********************

*Peewee Herman turned me onto this. I heart Peewee.

I’m nutter for holidays. I relish any opportunity for full-blown festivity. Seriously. Just ask my peeps and wait for the groans. But aside from calling my pup a PAWrate today, I really haven’t been making an effort.

Will it make up for my lack of pirate-talk if I post a picture of me-as-Plush D* in what is surely the coolest eye-patch ever?

Bedecked with outlaw bling, this sucker is a beloved treasure. Is it any wonder why? Yes, I know you are jealous. I can’t help that. Don’t hate me because my eye-patch is beautiful.

Extra points?

Extra points for being a glam wench with lotsa BOOTY? Y’know, pirate booty, like loot; jewels, gems, bling-bling, gewgaws. Oh, and ASS. I gotsa lotsa ass. AYE am an assly lass.

Happy Birthday, Hank Williams!

It doesn’t matter who you are, whatever you’re into, if you have even a modicum of cool then you hafta give it up for Hank Williams.

Hank Williams is a country legend with punk rock rising.

Hank was/is mournful country heart with gospel soul, rock & roll charisma, and punk as fuck aura. 

Williams was regal and rebellious at once.

He had a dignified air and sexy masculinity, despite his rock-a-billy suits bedecked with glitter or musical notes.

Hank Williams, you magnificent mofo, thank you for all the gifts you’ve bestowed on us.

Happy Birthday.

In honor of Hank’s birthday, I’d chosen “I saw the light” for this weekend’s Sunday AM Punk Rock Gospel. Cause Hank is divine and ’cause it’s “I Saw the Light,” C’mon! It’s a perfect punk rock gospel selection. Thing is, Hank’s birthday is today. What’s stopping us from having a Friday P.M. Punk Rock Gospel? Nothing! That’s the best part of a temple with no walls or a religion with no rules. You do like Johnny Cash and make it your own personal Jesus, whatever “it” may be. However it may happen, you are open to illumination.

Hey, it’s a bit dim in here, can somebody hit the lights?

(Hank Williams, singing “I Saw the Light” with The Carter Family. Listen… can you hear June’s voice?)

I SAW THE LIGHT
I wandered so aimless , life filled with sin.
I wouldn’t let my dear Saviour in.
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night .
Praise The Lord , I saw the Light .

CHORUS
I saw the Light , I saw the Light ,
No more darkness , No more night .
Now I’m so happy , no sorrow in sight .
Praise the Lord, I saw the Light .

Just like the blind man, I wandered along ,
Worries and fears , I claimed for my own.
Then like the blind man, that God , gave back his sight .
Praise the Lord, I saw the Light .

CHORUS

I was a fool to wander and stray,
For straight is the gate and narrow the way.
Now I have traded , the wrong for the right .
Praise the Lord , I saw the Light .
CHORUS

I rode a horse long before I ever road a bike. Born in the nothern New Mexico mountains, I was riding bareback by the time I was 2. Too bare from the sound of it. “You were just like Lady Godiva!” my dad would boast, often in mixed company. The horse was Jack. My Dad had known him for many years and trusted him. Not one to spook, Jack was emotional, intuitive, gentle and wise. I was never afraid.

It wasn’t until we moved to Toledo that my grandpa gifted me with a sparkly Schwinn, presenting it to me like it was a Cadillac car (which it became.)  

The bike scared me way more than the horse, or at least it did for for one terrifying 1/2 hour, after the training wheels came off. I was still uncertain of the physics but my Dad wasn’t willing to mosey through the big-girl bike process. (Years later, when teaching me t0 ride a motorcycle, he employed the exact same “Now or Never, Do or Die” method.) 

Once I managed to stay up after he broke his vow and let go — WOW! A bike with training wheels is like an orgasm without a moan. The release that comes with speed or sound, mmm. The bliss of velocity, the rush of movement, oh I was hooked. I hardly missed horses after that.

And when I did, my bike became a rusty stallion; mane blowing in the wind, hooves hitting cobblestone.

A few of the roads in our little south Toledo hood were brick paved and ahhh that pompompompompom sound still thrills.

Wasn’t I just telling y’all about the furious pedaling that took place as I rode my bike home from the library?  The potency is undiluted by the years. The musty papery scent of library books combined with the snapzap of rubber & gravel.  Those memories are saturated by the heady oomph of freedom. I had a lipstick red convertible Caddy and a platinum AM EX  (cherry red schwinn, library card) It’s not surprising that I often find myself back there in my dreams, navigating those roads in a strange bike-car hybrid.

For a kid, a bicycle is always more than a bike.  To you, it’s a beater with a banana seat. To them it’s a Venice beach lo rider or a gondola gliding along the canals of the otherVenice. To you, it’s a crooked big wheel. To them, it’s a monster truck.

Kids are always peddling in a ghosty aura or otherness.

Which is why I’m madly in love with “horsey,” eungi kim’s entry in ’seoul cycle design competition 2010‘.   Kim’s design entry was shortlisted from over 3000 designs. The designboom competition was organized in collaboration with the  seoul design foundation.

Kim’s clever creation turns any bike into a magical pony.

Kim describes the product thusly:
 

‘horsey’ is an attachable bicycle ornament/accessory which makes one’s bicycle look horsey!
the ‘horsey’ package includes wooden ornaments (horsey shape body), metal parts, and screws.
the manual is very simple so that anyone can easily arrange it according to one’s needs.
through this ‘horsey’ project. I wanted to give a special look to bicycles so that people would care
about cycling not only as transportation but also as a lovely pet.

 

I think “horsey” is a magical ode to dreaming. I have just two concerns.

1) Will this horsey actually be sturdy enough for the kind of galloping I’ve got in mind?

2) When will you be launching a unicorn version?

Cause I’d like to order one of those suckers in either black licorice or pink neon. Hmm. What do you think? Black unicorn or pink unicorn?

It was Christmas Eve and we were stuffing stockings.

I’d brought a big pack of butcher shop stickers, from the store. Mom opened the pack and began passing them out amongst the family members.

Rack of ribs for Sutton, a slab of bacon for Sky.

She held up the big, pink, bone-in ham, “Who gets the ham?” she asked and the normally quite Robot piped up.

“Dia!” he exclaimed, like DUH!

And everybody laughed and laughed, including me.

Yep. Ham, I am.

Painting by Mark Ryden. Go to his website, where you will be filled with an unbearable longing, thinking to yourself “How can I hurry up and get rich so’s I can someday afford a Ryden???”

(Yes, IPhone, yes Twitter. Groan. “Long Story,” sighs The Lusty Luddite.)    

But no one was saying the obvious which was “OMG! Gaga’s gone real life Ryden!”    

Check out that white flaxen hair!

Being the selfish little writer-chick that I am I decided to save my “OMG!” for y’all. Except then I couldn’t get online for the umpteenth time (boy, the free wifi from my next door coffee shop sho’ ain’t whut it used ta be.) By the next morning, several people were pointing it out, including Ryden himself. (On Twitter. Hence Twitter.)    

Look, no one’s calling Gaga a Ryden rip-off or at least I’m not. It’s still super cool & mad genius. Once again, Lady Gaga used costume as an artistic and spiritual medium; stirring our own frockful fantasies; probing own throbbing architectures of mythos & meaning. So yea, it was pretty much awesome. After all, the girl in “Incarnation” isn’t a real-life girl with stepped-one toes. She was a fantasy, up for the taking.    

Gaga plucked that sucker from the tree of meaning and took a big juicy bite. Oh, wait, let’s try that again. >>I’m a bit rusty due to my recent sabBRATtical. << Gaga fillet’d that fucker from the flank of id and toothesomely tore off a hunk of bloody flesh.    

It was brilliant, really, I loved it, except… well, it would’ve been much cooler if she had given Ryden a big old “Yea, baby!” shout-out rather than mumbling some vague, tired shit about feeling like a piece of meat or being seen as a commodity or bla bla bla. Shaaaad up, Lady Bla Bla.    

Look, the whole feminism “feeling like a piece of meat” thing, I get it. I just don’t buy it. Not from Gaga.    

Lady Gaga is an absolute expert at letting her meat hang out. If she were really troubled — feeling like a piece of ass – she’d probably cover that ass.     

Nah, I think it’s much more likely that Lady Gaga, just like the rest of us, has spent hours agog and drooling over Ryden’s paintings, searching for ourselves from among his feminine archetypes.    

I’ve often blamed Ryden’s meat paintings on pop culture’s current carnivorous phase. At the store, as customers went nuts over steak bath-mats and bacon band-aids, I’d just chuckle at Ryden’s far-reaching influence. People may not know that Ryden’s the reason they’re craving meaty gewgaws but he is.    

Mark Ryden put meat on the muther-fuckin’ map. Mark Ryden made meat cool.    

I dunno but I’ve heard that if you wanna get more followers on Twitter, you need only name-drop bacon.    

And vagina.    

And penis.    

And there, folks, is all you really need to know about WHY we are so obsessed with meat.    

We are meat. Sometimes we forget that we’re meat. And sometimes we long to remember.    

Mark Ryden probes that soft, bloody, fleshy place inside of us. And we…respond.    

Lady Gaga wasn’t saying “How dare you treat me like a piece of meat!” Puh-leeze. She was shouting, “Hey, everybody, look at me! I’m meaty!”    

"Broken Label" with Mark Ryden

Gaga was acting on an impulse that wasn’t as wholly original as many non-Ryden fans might think. In 2009, freaky fashion blogger Tatianista gave voice to that Grade A urge.    

How utterly fabulous would it be for an underground fashionista like myself to have wearable meat a la Ryden to add to my ever-growing, glamorously eccentric wardrobe? So fab, in fact, that someone far more clever thought of it long before I did.    

Tatianista waxed poetic about the Nagi Noda / Mark Ryden collaboration, which launched Noda’s ”Broken Label.”    

The first and only collaborative fashion collection the two artists produced…will likely be as highly collectible as just about anything else Ryden has produced…even more-so now that Noda, whose broad body of work included everything from popular music videos and commercials to sculpture, conceptual art and “hair hats” died tragically young last year. She left this world wearing her favorite Chanel boots, Victor and Rolf black lace eyelashes and one of her own Mark Ryden dresses.    

In February of this year (2010) the prescient Schadenfreude Pony declared of the meat dress in Ryden’s “Incarnation”    

GaGa will be wearing it next week.    

Unlike Tatianista and Gaga, I’ve never felt an enormous need to wear a meat dress. I’ve always been more into Ryden’s more mythic maidens, all filled-up from the inside with story & secrets.    

 I was obsessed for a time with creating a t-bone steak clutch, perfect accessory for the LBD, but was too lazy and never got around to making it.    

The ground chuck bag was a Ryden collab with Paul Frank. I’m not sure who did the pork slab but isn’t it the ideal briefcase for bringin’ home the bacon?    

My someday steak purse would not be a real t-bone, of course, cause I can barely stomach raw meat when preparing it for the grill (and my stomach.) My meaty fashion forays would be more figurative than real life soon-to-be rotting flesh.    

Such as these folks did for a Mark Ryden opening. (She’s in stilts, I think, which is all kinds of circusy spectacular)    

Man in a meat at Mark Ryden show

Though I give Gaga big props for keeping it real. I mean, look at these shoes.    

They look like they’re ready for the oven not the VMAs.    

One sultry June night in Toledo, I met my friend Dan McGuire — my Precocious Dandy — at a gritty east-side club. Dan was joining a local band, The Porn Flakes, on-stage. As a steak. All 6 feet and 5 inches of Dan had disappeared into a giant foam-rubber t-bone. Back stage, in the tiny yard behind the club, Dan stripped outta the steak and changed into a giant cow.  I dropped down onto the discarded steak, lounging like it was a carne-chaise. In a tiny pinkey-orange sundress & pink boa, with a nice marmaladey tan, I was feeling pretty luxurious, pretty damn cheeky. Things were going great, until one of the Porn Flakes began to eye me hungrily.    

“What?” I playfully glowered. “What am I? Just a piece of meat?”    

“I dunno, nah,” he drooled, “But you sure do look like a golden, buttery mushroom to me mmm.”    

“Hey, hey! ” Dan hollered. “That’ll be enough of that. Have a little fuckin’ respect, why don’tya?   

While Dan railed and ranted – protectively, possevively – I lounged extra lasciviously on my meat chaise. I batted my lashes as Dan hurried to pack his things. I smirked as he reached for my hand, yanking me up, pulling me away from those perverted Porn Flakes. I giggled as I caught up with his long aggravated strides, glancing back at my starving admirer. Then I leaned lovingly into Dan’s sturdy ribs as we ran excitedly down the dirty street, a trail of pink feathers behind us.    

*All paintings/art by the crazy gorgeous genius Mark Ryden. Check out his dot.com  

*For another meaty anecdote, read “Ham, I Am”

OMG! I love you so much!

Hey… is that a big spliff yer smoking? Wow. That explains a lot. Well, like my friend Dan sez, “Don’t treat me like yer step-sister, I like to bake too.”

Roald Dahl is a patron saint of childhood, along with Dr. Seuss. His birthday was September 13th. He would’ve been 94, had he not died in 1990.

There were days, coming home from the library, where I could not pedal my bike fast enough, so eager was I to curl up and crack open a new Roald Dahl book. The papery whiff of  absurdity that wafted from the page was a powerful intoxicant.

If you have not read the stuff Dahl wrote for grown-ups, then you have not know true creepiness. Go! Start with some short stories from The Best of Roald Dahl.

If you have not read the stuff Dahl wrote for kids, well, what is your major malfunction?

Go!  Post haste! James and The Giant Peach awaits.

Check out the bitchin’ Roald Dahl website, complete with tips for kids & parents on how to use Dahl to increase childhood literacy.