All the crap is still in my van; I don't even want to think about it.
It's Monday morning. The clown-carload of Yankee SubGenii who crashed at the SubGenius Mansion have just driven off, back to NYC. (Rev. Jimbo, Rev. Exmortus, Televangela, and Rev. Phloighd.) Dances with Rockets is probably taking Dr. Legume to the Cleveland airport, and Rev. Toth is probably driving Rev. Dr. Onan Canobite to the Akron airport. General Boy is probably still sound asleep.
I really don't want to haul all that crap out of the car, but I must, because it's getting hot again.
And, the Hour of Slack is two days late -- but that's so normal that the term "late" probably no longer applies.
This week was one of the most fun and productive ever for This Old Scribe. The Church made some money, and I made some too, which means the Church has to pay me less. Souls were saved in Cleveland, Akron, and NYC; swag was moved; hearts and bowels were moved. None asked "Bob" to wipe their asses for them.
I haven't looked at any of my snares in a week. The Cleveland Hts PO Box, the IRC, the email, the newsgroups, the web "clubs," for all I know those traps are full of game that's starting to go bad, so believe me, I'll be checking 'em.
But for now I am going to bask in this in-between state of bragging about what great fucking fun this Church of the SubGenius can be, especially for ME!
Early last week I finished the recut of Media Barrage 5 JUST before leaving for New York City to perform the wedding of Rev. Chuck Varga (aka The Sexicutioner from GWAR) and the beautiful Andrea Polli. This wedding took place at sunset on a historical ferry boat docked at Pier 25, about 4 blocks from Ground Zero, aka the former World Trade Center site.
For Sexy's wedding I combined elements from the Lil/Thea wedding, the Andrew-the-Impaled/Erin wedding, and the I/Wei wedding, plus some Revelation X readings on True Yeti Mate Love, and by Gobbs if it wasn't just about the slickest yet. I got to meet several of Chuck's old friends including Sleazy P. Martini and his lovely wife, who gave me a lot of helpful advice on wedding videography, a field I left long ago but have thought of returning to because it pays 5 times better than CONDUCTING weddings.
While in NYC I visited the Twin Towers cavity, which now looks like a very big construction site. The tourists and the graffiti everywhere make the more interesting viewing. I gazed at this Hole of Ghosts and couldn't feel anything, not even the ghosts, not even Hate. It just drew a blank. Hard to "grok." The media in NYC is building up to an orgiastic frenzy of mawkish memorialism as the 9/11 anniversary approaches, but most of the New Yorkers are already disgusted with it; they've had to live with the rubble, the clean-up, and the trauma for a year and most don't seem to feel the need for a hideous week or two of reminders.
After the wedding I caught most of a strange, retarded, yet funny movie on cable called "Idle Hands," about a stoner kid whose right hand becomes Evil and starts trying to kill everybody around him. One of the actors spends the whole movie with a broken beer bottle sticking out of his forehead, where the hero's evil hand planted it.
I wasn't in NYC for long. Saturday morning, and into late that night, was the third annual DEVOtional, the "DEVO convention" held in Cleveland at the Starwood Center over by my old neighborhood.
I desperately needed the DEVO con, in order to flush Elvis Costello songs out of my head. A week ago I got Elvis' first three albums off Gnutella. I had memorized those in the 80s, when they were current, and upon hearing them again, I found I could NOT shake them out of my head. The entirely of ARMED FORCES would loop through mentally, followed by MY AIM IS TRUE, and then THIS YEARS MODEL -- and those are some DEPRESSING though catchy tunes. So I was very glad to hear "UNCONTROLLABLE URGE" and other catchy but not depressing DEVO songs crowd out the Elvis.
It prompted me to compose some new rantful observations about the beneficial nature SPAZZINESS in general -- in rock bands and in behavior, indeed in the very sexual orgasm itself.
The DEVOtional was mostly organized this year by Rev. Toth Wilder, Blinkerboy from the DEVO list, and Rev. Scott Orsi, with lots of great displays and devolutional spirit from Michael Pilmer (of Silica Gel) and Jade, the founder of the DEVO museum in Tampa, where all my main DEVO momentos now reside. Folks came from all over the country; there were even GIRLS there! (A relative rarity at DEVO events, compared to SubGenius events, which look like Swingers' Conventions lately.) General Boy and Jungle Jim Mothersbaugh gave talks, I met a Casale brother that I didn't know existed, and we got to watch DEVO-influenced and/or cover bands including Will Black's Gadgetto, The Legion of Incredibly Strange Superheros, CD Truth, and The Spudboys -- a combination of the event organizers and Prof. Von Marko from DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE, perhaps the foremost DEVO research and emulation group.
Wei and I spazz-danced ourselves to deep spazzfullness.
There were a couple of hours of very rare video, including a recent DEVO concert at a private party (such a concert costs $125,000, if you were wondering why we don't bring them in for X-Day), and a hilarious interview with Rev. Mark Mothersbaugh in which he goes on at length about how Dobbs mind-controlled DEVO totally for many years, and finally caused them to almost completely sink their own careers.
A ton of DEVO memorabilia was displayed, and sold; I could easily make this week's Hour of Slack entirely out of heretofore unaired DEVO rarities and covers, and I might.
And finally, on Sunday, everybody (it seemed) went to Akron for Rev. Toth Wilder's Akron Devival at the Lime Spider, which was a huge success and a worthy successor to the legendary 1990s Akron devivals organized by Rev. Genenia Grinder. The surprise hit of this devival was the closing band, The Amino Acids, a group specializing in EXTREMELY high energy surf rock, but with a lot of psychotronic tweaks -- theramins, tape-playback, etc. -- they've been described as a cross between Dick Dale and DEVO. I am an aficionado of many modern surf bands such as Los Straitjackets, The Wipe-Outers (which is actually half-DEVO), The Insect Surfers, Rev. Horton Heat etc., but I have never heard it done with such thrash-like energy. Also, they perform in wacky costumes and have crazy names and come from outer space -- LIKE JUST ABOUT ALL THE BANDS THAT I KNOW!!!
Saint N and Hellena Handbaskett performed their techno-torch all-SubGenius hits; it's getting to where I can hardly imagine a SubGenius show without them!
And ESO, now Einstein's Secret Outlaws, delivered a similar set to the ones at 5X-Day and Starwood, kind of country-punk with 3 guitars and a second drummer replacing the violinist, and even Dr. Legume on harmonica. I wish to God that I could get a DECENT recording of these guys, but lately I have been limited to my blind old Video-8 HandyCam for location recording.
Dr. Legume ranted -- actually he recounted the true story of a legendary ORNERY CUSS whose defiance of the norm-worms in his small New Jersey town resulted in high drama that is inspiring to any SubGenius. Hopefully my recordings of the spoken word ranting will be good enough for airplay.
Rev. Dr. Onan Canobite got the crowd to join him in a truly rousing singalong involving a brand new Church song of X-Day... that is the recording I MOST can't wait to check out.
I opened and closed the show. This show was a challenge because when I gazed out upon the audience, it was clear that at least 75% of these people had been at Starwood, X-Day, the Beachland devival, the Indivival, Winterstar, or (fill in the blank) and had certainly heard everything in my This Year's Rant folder. So I sort of mixed up all the pages in that folder, and then abandoned it, and ranted straight from the gut, or off the top of my head, which at the time seemed to me to be all confused and wandering, and not evocative of laughs in exactly the right places; but, apparently, that was only the way *I* saw it -- I glowing compliments from lots of folks, so who know, maybe rambling and unrehearsed IS the way to go... after 22 years of this, that WOULD be easier. Maybe it's only semi-incoherent to ME.
Wow, that was a long sentence just then.
Anyway, from ALL the feedback I've heard so far, it was a just-right devival, along the lines of the Quijibo Cartel's Indivival.
The swag sales were very good. the news DOBBSFILM SHORTIES animation video was being displayed on two of the club's 4 monitors, and I sold out of those. Pater Nostril helped Wei/I immeasurably by spelling us at the Swag Table -- truly he is a Great Swaggart.
Mainly it was like a huge family reunion. It seemed like everybody from NE Ohio, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and NYC was there! In truth only about half the SubGenii from those places were there, but that's still a big family of weirdos. An all-black-sheep family. Like at X-Day, there was a small SEA of beautiful gals for an old lech like me to eyeball. Even the BOUNCER of the CLUB was a Connieite Doll, although I don't think she has been fully recruited yet. I was gratified to see Rev. Samantha, who came all the way from Tucson for the DEVOtional and devival. There were lots of new people from the Akron area, too, many of whom I met and gabbed with. Because I only had to perform at the very beginning and very end, it was easier to socialize without fear of blowing out my voice-box or exhausting myself.
One thing was missing -- the band INDIAN ROPE BURN. They used to play every Northeastern devival in the 90s, but the lead singer, Rev. Clay Animation, was prematurely Ruptured by cancer a few years ago. Rather than have a moment of silence for Clay, we dedicated the Moment of Noise to him, which I'm sure is far more appropriate.
Everybody got paid, and Toth didn't lose his ass. A FINE DEVIVAL!!
Like I did with the Indianapolis and Amsterdam shows, I'll probably wait until I get the best possible recordings accumulated before I try to put this on the radio.
These are the facts, and this is the Pragmatic Day-After Stang Report on the various events. As with X-Day, other participants will probably post more specific remembrances of special surreal details. I'll probably add to this myself after I look at the digital photos that Wei and I took, and check out the recordings, and, you know, sleep and eat and all like that.
I am a happy Sacred Scribe, but, god damn it, now I have to go unload all that crap from the van. No more shows that I'll be driving to for awhile, which suits me fine. I need to work on my house and SubSITE and those new books and videos and the FIST and so on. And my Pappy (an ordained SbGenius minister) is coming for a visit next weekend, which means I better straighten up the clutter, lest I be shamed before The Progenitor.
Original file name: NYC-DEV)-Akron Repor.txt - converted on Thursday, 29 May 2003, 16:43
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