Press, Shows, A New Makeup Set!

From MX Melbourne

MX is a free daily paper distributed on all the commuter trains and trams. I'm totally famous now for people who commute! Photo taken at Rose Chong Costumes in Melbourne.

I was also featured on www.frankie.com.au - Frankie Magazine is a wonderful and very popular culture magazine here in the land down under. I was very pleased to be featured.

You can also find me in the Drum Media in Sydney.

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SHOWS THIS WEEK

APRIL 20th - Melbourne - The Empress

w/ Lanie Lane

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108435045905814

APRIL 21st - Sydney - Red Ratller

w/ Helen Perris and Brendan Maclean

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=200829429941343

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In other news: The Kickstarter for the 'I Have Your Heart' animation passed the $14,000 mark. This rocks so much! Animation is hard, time consuming, expensive stuff and having a budget for this is amazing. Thank you to all who helped make this happen. We posted videos of champagne drinking here: www.ihaveyourheart.com

And...

We now have makeup for the project, so if you love the song The Organ Donor's March and/or the animation and/or the colors red and/or silver you should totally get this on your peepers:

$15 for two color natural makeup set

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Cora models the makeup:

The Rap of Tasmania

Backstage iphone snap while at a photo shoot for MX 

(look for it next week in Sydney and Melbourne.)

Costumes by Rose Chong's

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My musical compatriot, Amanda Palmer, wrote a song called 'The Map of Tasmania' which is about pubic hair. Mostly it's about having pubic hair, and that having a big bush is great and shaving or waxing is painful and crazy and makes you look like an 8 year old. Those lyrics are funny, and thought provoking, and also necessary in a culture where the public pubic is mostly quite sparsely hirsute.

While we were on tour together I wrote a rap for the song, the rap evolved and grew and I got better at rapping - which I'd never done before. So when Amanda decided to release a remix album with a whole bunch of radtastic folks like PEACHES remixing her song I was happy to record my rap.

Here is my 'Rap of Tasmania.'

My Name is Gus helped me record and write the beats and grooves - he is awesome.

Lyrics:

Hey Amanda I don’t mean to be rude
but I think it’s kind of nice when it’s all slippery and smooth
Some women just don’t have a lot of hair 
and to say they all look eight years old is really unfair
Yeah, I dig the jungle, 
I dig the Rubyfruit, 
just like a pirate, 
I dig the boot-y.
You say you got the map, 
I say you got the treasure, 
your hair can mark the spot 
where I can dig for pleasure.
I like it fuzzy, yeah I like it bare, 
uh-huh, but most of all, I really don’t care.
So let me clarify what I’m trying to say: 
There’s a thousand ways to shape it, 
do it your own way.

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And something I wrote for Amanda's blog about the song:

 I grew up around a lot of hippies who had an almost mystical belief in the power of the human body in its completely natural form. I don’t think anyone ever said this outright, but what I learned was that women should not shave or pluck or wax any part of themselves and to do so was an affront to nature. Women who submitted to popular beauty trends were seen as anti-feminists and idiots, subjecting themselves to the will of the patriarchy; all men who preferred their lady lovers with less body hair were porn obsessed pedophiles. The judgements were harsh and I was happy to look down from my hairy high horse at the idiotically smooth bottoms of the porn obsessed rabble below. Hair free legs were one thing, but leave the pubic mons as wild and free as nature intended. That was until I got an accidental Brazilian in Berlin (oh language barriers) which was the first step on a long road to the realization that I was a judgmental asshole who should shut the hell up about other peoples’ pants regions. We all have preferences and we all pick and choose which popular aesthetics to adhere to. 

Given my history, it is with a certain irony that my rap is in defense of the bare ‘down there.’ 

Body hair is political, but it’s also personal. And yeah, I like it all kinds of ways on all kinds of people.

You can read Amanda's blog about the remixes here: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/

Here is Amanda's fantastic and colorful original song and video:

Here's another Amanda video that Jim Batt made:

Space Barbarian and Marie Antoinette

As I reached 2,500 followers on Twitter yesterday I took a poll as to what I should do to celebrate. I had people pick a costume, and which artist's song I should play. Then I got dressed up with my friend Saint Clare and we sang "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles.

Credits:

Filmed by Jim Batt

Edited by Kim Boekbinder

Costumes by Rose Chong's in Melbourne

Shannonigans & The Bewilderbeast

Chapter One

"You smell funny." Said The Bewilderbeast, snuffling into Shannonigans hair and exhaling quickly and with such a snort that her hair flew up around her face.

"Funny how?" Asked Shannonigans.

"I have no idea," Said The Bewilderbeast, "I'm absolutely flummoxed."

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Chapter Two

"What are you doing?" Shannonigans murmured sleepily. 

"I don't know." Answered The Bewilderbeast. The train was rocking gently on the tracks. The Bewilderbeast looked up suddenly as though something had just occurred to it, "Something has just occurred to me..."

"What's that?" Asked Shannonigans letting her head flop in the general direction of the beast in her sleeper car.

"I'm confused!" Exclaimed The Bewilderbeast.

"You're always confused." Said Shannonigans.

"Yes, I know!" The Bewilderbeast looked quite chuffed, as though it had just solved a Rubik's cube with one hoof, while blindfolded, and riding a unicycle. "I know I'm always confused. I just figured that out."

"Do you find that confusing?" Shannonigans asked.

"Not at all." 

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Chapter Three

The Bewilderbeast dropped its fork, then followed the action by sweeping the spoon, knife, and bread plate all on to the floor.

Shannonigans did not even bother asking why. She knew that any answer would leave both of them perplexed.

"I know why I did that." Said The Bewilderbeast in quiet astonishment. Shannonigans's eyes snapped open extra wide and her mouth formed a perfect "O."

"Oh?" She said. "You know?"

"Yes," Said The Bewilderbeast, "I know why."

Now it was Shannonigans's turn to be flummoxed. In all her years with her beastly companion she had always known one thing for certain: that nothing The Bewilderbeast did would ever make sense or be explainable to either the beast itself or to anyone else - Shannonigans included. 

And now the beast was telling her that it knew why it had done something.

"Why? Why did you do that?" Shannonigans asked with a modicum of trepidation. She didn't think she actually wanted to know. Nothing had ever shaken her so much as this possibility that The Bewilderbeast might suddenly make sense.

"I don't know why." Said The Bewilderbeast.

"But you just said you knew." Said Shannonigans, both relieved, and aggrieved that the beast had found a new way to confuse her.

"I mean I know that I did it because I don't know why I did it." said The Bewilderbeast, and when Shannonigans looked up she saw that tears stood on the precipice of The Bewilderbeast's eyelids, perched like liquid diamonds among the lush and beautiful lashes that fringed The Bewilderbeast's opalescent eyes. 

"I know I do things because I don't know why I do them."

"It's so confusing." Sighed Shannonigans.

"Tell me about it." Said The Bewilderbeast, brushing aside its long mane while it tossed the saltshaker out the window.

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I wrote this today after thinking for several days that I should write something just because - not for work, or because it is good for my career, or a press release, or an interview. But just because I wanted to. So I wrote that.

If someone would like to do an illustration for this that would be lovely.

Maybe I will write more of these things called stories.

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This story is dedicated to Shannon Marshall (Shannonigans!)

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There is an album called "Bewilderbeast" there is also a band called "Bewilderbeast" I didn't know either of those until I said "Bewilderbeast!" out loud and then googled it.