Dec. 6, "2014" - Stone Tavern, Kent, Ohio

Photos by Princess Wei 'R.' Doe

Stang's Next-Day Report:

It was like a little X-Day Drill! It went way better than I expected, because I expected the bar to be too small and the bands to be too large, but everything was just right!

Two major things I was reminded of when I skimmed the photos:

There sure were a lot of purty gals there!

and

I look totally bald when lit from behind. Time for the comb-over?

I am majorly bashed and fashed and fagged, to quote Alex The Large. It reminds me of the last night at last Starwood -- I can keep up an energy burst all night long if I'm having fun, and after the 1 hour drive home I was still jazzed up enough to unload the iVan. But when I woke up this morning my entire body was thrumming and buzzing from that weird kind of pleasure-pain that comes from being incredibly stiff yet happy to be lying down flat.

The show/party went great especially if you know most of the people there. It really was like an indoor X-Day Drill in that respect. It was almost Standing Room Only -- I guess the lack of a cover charge helps in that respect -- and like most good SubGenius events it was a baffling cross section of humanity: very old people to very young ones, bikers and nerds, sexpots and hippies, square-looking Secret Mutants; all "races" besides Australian Aborigines were represented.

Wei and I were happy to see so many old friends, and we met lots of new ones. I talked to 4 Chinese youths who must be exchange students or something -- they seemed to be enthralled by the whole spectacle and appeared impressed that I knew words like GOMBIE!" ("Cheers" as a toast before drinking) and "PEEJO" (Chinese for beer or basketball, depending on how bad your pronunciation is), and that I knew people in Beijing and Shanghai.

We met Rev. Toth Wilder's new True Yeti Mate, which made us very happy for him. iDRMRSR brought Littal iDRMRSR, his son, who is autistic and doesn't always handle new places or crowds well, so it was pretty special to have him around at a SubG event. He seemed to be having fun although I think he got over-stimulated about halfway through so they had to leave early. MAN, does that kid have an eye for the ladies! He was not shy about approaching gals and -- in his own bizarre way -- asking them to write their names down. He collects the written-down names of people he likes. Wei and I see this kid almost every Friday so we speak the rudiments of his personal truncated language. I wonder what he thought of me standing on a stage in a crazy suit with crazy projections, hollering into a mic. He is much more used to me just sitting in a restaurant eating, or watching movies on his dad's big TV.

We had a celebrity! -- Jane Hash, Mutant Documentary Movie Star. A bunch of our pagan and ACE friends showed up too -- Kent has a lot of them.

We got to see a couple of people notice the artwork in the Stone Tavern -- which is full of artwork -- that depicted the Kent State shootings, and realize, "Oh -- this is THAT Kent." Weird to look at those images in light of all the police-shooting-unarmed-people controversey lately. It was a reminder that The Man has been known to mow down unarmed, totally innocent white people too, albeit not in nearly the same percentages.

I have to admit that several times I caught myself thinking, "DAMN, those background projections of CGI SubG animation look GREAT! -- Oh wait -- it was ME that did that animation! Wow! They look a lot better on a big screen off the DVD than they do on YouTube or my computer! I guess I'm pretty good at psychedelic hippie Dobbshead animation after all!"

We took in $350 in swag sales (that's at least $200 actual profit) and Rev. Peas finally got his Number Two stickers!

Rev. Heathen gave me a treasure trove of spare parts for my heating system! In return he removed some parts of my brain.

The audio of my rant and Rev. Peas' rant sounds good at first skim. The audio of all the bands sounds pretty terrible. The bands sounded good but the recordings don't. Goes with the territory. I had the recorder on me when I was preaching and Wei recorded Peas from some very good position in the room. The rest of my recordings are kinda spotty.

Praise be to Rev. Steve-O DevO (or however you spell it) and Rev. Squeaky Fromage, and the Stone Tavern, and the bands and ranters, and audience, for making this such a fun devival!