By: Sean [2001-08-26]

More San Francisco Weirdness

ok here's filler

I'd gone to the Covered Wagon many times before. Every Thursday night is an event called "Stinky's Peep Show." Usually on Thursdays they'll have good rock or punk bands, so I was no stranger to the event. I was, however, a stranger to the peep show, until recently.

Stinky's Peep Show is, as they say, "home of the large and lovely go-go dancers," where, in addition to the large girls dancing on the bar top between bands there is apparently also a peep show in the back room. One night a few weeks ago, on a trip to see Captured by Robots with my good chum Amber, she made the comment that she thought she wanted to see the peep show.

Usually going solo, I'd never been to the peep show, but I was willing to check it out. A lone loser on his own slinking into the peep show screams "I want to see boobies." A fellow waltzing into the peep show with his female friend says "Hey, ha ha, I'm here for laughs, NOT BOOBIES, I ASSURE YOU."

So when the time came, we got in line for the peep show. It only cost a dollar, and Amber even paid my way in. The theme of the evening was Chandra's Electric Tits. "Only fifty cents a nipple," the man at the door kept barking. "Drink and smoke as much as you like!"

We went in and made our way to the back of the room. It had some tables set up in the middle and fuzzy red wall paper. I had to admit that it was classy. There was a little stage up front, sitting on which was a wooden electric chair. When the room was full, the door was closed and the show began.

A girl wearing a short skirt and halter top was led in and strapped into the chair. The lights were dimmed and the crowd went silent. The announcer took up position to the right of the stage and introduced us to Chandra.

We weren't told why Chandra was being executed, but nobody in the crowd, which was about equal parts men and women, seemed to care. When the switch was flipped, Chandra began convulsing wildly, as anyone would with a gajillion volts of justice surging through their system.

In order to illustrate that Chandra was, in fact, being electrocuted for real in front of our eyes (and why shouldn't we believe that she was? When they instruct the crowd to "drink and smoke as much as you like" in a state which has outlawed smoking in all bars and restaurants, we're forced to conclude that they take the law into their own hands) he withdrew a fluorescent light tube and waved it around in the air. Every time the tube came near Chandra's flailing body, it started to glow.

In order, I guess, to convince anyone who still didn't believe that Chandra was actually frying right there before us, he set aside the light tube and withdrew a torch. As we all know, torches burst into flame when they come into contact with electrified human flesh. Extending the torch out carefully to Chandra's twisting belly. As soon as the end of it made contact with her skin, FWOOOOOSH! Fire!

"And now..." the announcer said, "I'm going to touch the torch to the softest, most sensitive part of her body. How many of you want to see me light the torch off the wettest, softest part of Chandra's body?"

The crowd seemed to like the idea, and let the announcer know. "OK," the announcer said. "But first, we're going to need a little contribution..." and he passed around a hat. People placed their crumpled-up dollar bills into the hat, or just threw them at the stage. I, getting caught up into the moment, hurled a handful of pocket change up to the front of the room. When the hat made it back to the announcer, it was time for the finale.

Brandishing the torch, waving it around with a great deal of ceremony, he extended one arm behind him and the torch out toward Chandra and touched it to... her tongue. "Didn't you guys know that the tongue is the most sensitive part of a woman's body?" the announcer said.

Then Chandra took off her top, and for a mere three dollars anyone could get a polaroid taken of him or herself with Chandra's electric tits.

Captured by Robots was good. It's one guy, three robots. Originally he built the robots because he was lonely and wanted someone to play music with him. Then the robots took control, ripped out his entrails (which hang before him on stage) and now force him to play humiliating songs with him. GTRBOT666 and DRMBOT0110 run the show, hurling insults to the crowd and to JBot, their poor captive human, allowing him to stop playing only long enough to tell the crowd that all humans are "dumb ass-fuckers" every now and then.

The only kind words ever spoken to JBot come from The Ape Which Hath No Name, the large mechanical monkey he secretly built for friendship and tambourine playing.

The robots aren't pre-recorded, either, and DRMBOT actually plays the drums. I'm sure the drumming is sequenced, but the insults are live. At one point during a CBR show, an audience member shouted "You suck, drumbot!!" to which DRMBOT immediately replied "Yes, I will suck the blood from your dying corpse."

Annna is gone for the week. Perhaps tomorrow I will wow you all with the tale of another peep show, and Pedro & the Heartbreakers, the insane street performer in North Beach. And perhaps it will be better than this update, but that's not likely.

xoxo,
Sean
Sean... [2001-08-27 01:18:20] König Prüß, GfbAEV
I have to ask you, perhaps it was the red flocked wallpaper, but do you know the name of the hills in San Francisco that have the Pacifica transmitting towers? Hmmm?
Hmm... [2001-08-27 01:31:27] Jonas
You'd think that if you're bombed, the taste of stout wouldn't bother you. But funny enough, it does more than if you're sober. And you would not believe how long it took me to write that.
stout? [2001-08-27 01:49:06] staniel
stout tastes good. if you ask me, the effects of progressive drinking on the tastes of various beers are as follows: lager gets worse, ale gets better, and stout stays about the same.
"Coffee?" "Beer." [2001-08-27 03:27:46] Jonas
I drank Molson Canadian like water tonight. Not my fave, but it was there in plenty. The stout was 11% homebrew, dark as night, and there to be drunk once all the rest was out. All the mints in the world won't help me now. Mayhaps I might actually read the article afore I start posting comments...
Robots [2001-08-27 03:38:08] Jonas
Captured By Robots sounds like a cool band: they seem to have snappy comebacks, and that can beat musical ability any day (I hope, for my sake). Hey, there's a link! Perhaps I will check it out. But not right now: way too drunk and tired.

On a completely unrelated topic, does anybody here know classical Greek?
Wow [2001-08-27 06:35:44] Riff
Classic carny ten-in-one show action! Nice.
whoa. [2001-08-27 08:17:27] staniel
I'm surprised they call it Molson Canadian when they sell it in Canada.
#5 Orange [2001-08-27 09:49:29] König Prüß, GfbAEV
There was a bar in Vancouver named The Number Five Orange that had good draft cheap. There was a kid here whose dad worked for the Canadian embassy that used to bring us free cases of Molson. I guess that they tell you it's Canadian so you don't get it confused with Labatt's. Lot's of microbreweries here, much and many good beers. One brewery has one pretty good beer that they give all the proceeds of that kind of beer to the homeless. They should give the homeless free beer, too, so that they would piss all over the place, then people would give them a place to go. They got Low-Calorie Lite Beer, but if somebody could invent a Low-Piss Beer, they'd make a fortune!
Rabbit [2001-08-27 23:45:38] König Prüß, GfbAEV
I found a Wallace Stevens poem called, A RABBIT AS KING OF THE GHOSTS
rabbit! [2001-08-28 00:29:02] staniel
I couldn't find the poem itself, but there are a few pages about the poet with other works of his. you gots link, or were you looking in actual physical books?
success! [2001-08-28 02:30:34] staniel
this is the poem, and this, I think, is a pretty good visualization of it.
Yep! [2001-08-28 05:55:08] König Prüß, GfbAEV
But that wall hanging of the rabbit will have to look out for the macrame owl!
Rabbits!! [2001-08-28 06:16:00] Lou Duchez
Goddamn, I missed the rabbits. Tell me about the rabbits, George!

Speaking of such, this weekend I found myself playing Balderdash with my kin. This is a game where the dealer picks a card out of a deck, reads an obscure word or name or date off it, and everyone has to write down their answers as to what it is. Then the dealer reads the answers along with the correct answer, and people have to guess which one is the correct answer.

I discovered this game is a lot more fun if you don't try to win. Far better to come up with answers that make people wet their pants.

This springs to mind because of the rabbits, and my response to the date 2/11/1930. My answer as to the historical significance of that date: "Slow-witted itinerant worker accidentally crushes mouse."
Steinbeck [2001-08-28 06:31:40] König Prüß, GfbAEV
The other night I was listening to NPR radio at 1:30AM, it was on the FM, not AM; and there was a damned incredible lengthy analysis of "Grapes of Wrath" that sounded like a US Labor Manifesto. I thought, "No wonder Steinbeck was hated in some quarters!" One line from the book that hadn't previously impressed me but which is now forever remembered, "Well, if wanting 30-cents an hour makes you a Red, then I guess that I'm a goddam Red!" Before, the part about the semi-starving migrant laborer getting a can of peaches and it making him sick was what I remembered most. The re-make of "Cannery Row" with Nick Nolte is funny. And I only recently found the location of the barley farming
in "Of Mice and Men"
The Angry Raisins [2001-08-28 07:25:37] Lou Duchez
(That's how "The Grapes of Wrath" was once accidentally mistranslated into Japanese.)

I suppose one can interpret "Of Mice and Men" along pro-labor lines, just as one could read it as pro-rabbit. But people will read whatever they want into literature; just look at what they've done to Christianity.

Ironically, this effort to assimilate "Of Mice and Men" onto the pro-labor side just kills any impact it might have on middle-of-the-road America. Most people can feel sympathy for George and Lenny (as soon as they get past the realization that Lenny = Abominable Snowman), but as soon as you tell them (rightly or wrongly) that they've been reading far-left propaganda, they'll tune it out.
OM&M [2001-08-28 12:16:05] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Well, it was a very anti-Lenny book!
I hate meeses to pieces [2001-08-28 13:36:59] J Speed
What was its position on Squiggy?
Pro-Squiggy [2001-08-28 15:58:20] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Pro-Sqiggy, but rather ambiguous on schlemiels, schlimazels, and schlubs.
Petey Poetry [2001-08-28 20:02:12] Lou Duchez
This was written by one William Blake of Rogers, Ark.:

The Rabbit

Rabbit! Rabbit! Hops in fright
In my dreams throughout the night,
What sadistic butcher's eye
Envision you as recipe?

In what Ozark hinterlands
Would they sell thy meat and glands?
On what goal did Pelphrey seize?
What the nut dare rabbits freeze?

And what the parent would conclude
His childrens' pets to sell as food?
And when they carved thee up for meat,
What good then, thy lucky feet?

What the mallet? What the blade?
Could prep thee for to be filleted?
What suburb of Little Rock's
Produce the blue-and-yellow box?

When they "raised" thee on a "farm,"
Then slaughtered thee by knife and arm,
Did they smile with manic glee?
Did they laugh 'til they had to pee?

Rabbit! Rabbit! Hops in fright
In my dreams throughout the night,
What sadistic butcher's eye
Envision you as recipe?
Wow! [2001-08-28 21:19:32] König Prüß, GfbAEV
That's a remarkable poem, Lou! I would like to watch Sean's nekkid lady in an electric chair while listenting to a reading of that poem.
hell... [2001-08-28 21:32:58] staniel
I'd like to see a naked electric lady give a reading of it! when she needs to be emphatic, they could crank up the juice a little. then [zap]SLAUGHtered thee...
Blake [2001-08-28 22:18:34] Lou Duchez
Thanks! "The Tyger" is a great poem, if for no other reason than its metric perfection. To put it differently, it lends itself quite readily to modification. And, if there's an especial lady in your life, you might wish to re-work the lyrics in her honor. Drives 'em wild!
Aaliyah [2001-08-29 11:27:30] Danielle
What, no black background following the death of one of the greatest minds of the 21st century? Such a horrible loss.
Weeeeeeee! [2001-08-29 20:32:10] König Prüß, GfbAEV
http://www.threebrain.com/weeeeee.html
argh. [2001-08-30 00:50:40] staniel
no new update, and I just read about the stileproject kitten thing on SA forums... ugh. I can deal with starving people eating cats in order not to die, but the fact that the people involved made a video bothers me. and stile, despite his disclaimer saying it's educational, that nobody who eats meat should be offended by the meat people from another background eat... to hell with him. he posted it on his site to get more hits, and nothing else. exploiting evil deeds for one's own benefit is almost as bad as committing them yourself, and though I know there won't be any legal recourse, I hope he loses a ton of money on the trial.

so I'm bored and depressed.
The Tick [2001-08-30 05:02:33] Riff
"If you're so evil, then... eat this kitten!"
"What?! That's just wrong!"
A Better Mousetrap [2001-08-30 08:12:32] König Prüß, GfbAEV
You might be able to build a better mousetrap, but kitty cats are nice, and they purr, too. Cats seem to like hunting, that's ok. But I don't see a lot of sport in shooting deer with a rifle, it'd be better if they just used bows. It's more primitive, so it fulfills that hunting urge. There is an Indian guy who chases deer down. If you run long enough the deer will get tired and just stop. But man is a pack hunter and an omnivore, it's not eat everything but cats. But too, almost all tribes and cultures have prohibited foods. Philipines like adobo dog, but Moslem's consider dogs unclean animals and usually don't even allow them in there houses. If I had a dog sled team, I'd eat the slow ones; it would make the other dogs run faster.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! [2001-08-30 10:45:44] Lou Duchez
For my money, the feline may well be God's finest work. Besides defining grace and speed, and being damn good at what they do, they have a host of personality traits that the human race desperately needs.

First and foremost, cats know enough to pursue comfort and happiness, without letting pride get too much in the way. Aggravate a cat and it will generally retreat to a secure location and fall asleep. Aggravate a human and it will plot revenge for years. I think felines win on this one.

Plus deep down, cats recognize that they are complete beings in and of themselves. They may enjoy the company of humans, but unlike humans, you won't find a cat getting into a bad relationship just because it feels it can't live without companionship.

How much to be admired is the feline? So much that God himself has chosen to employ the same blueprint over a wide variety of sizes and geographic locales, with only minor adaptations to the terrain. You really can't argue with that ...
Groovy, baby [2001-08-30 11:13:53] Riff
Everyone knows cats are cool - that's why they call 'em cats, y'dig?
meow [2001-08-30 15:32:02] staniel
yeah. I think I said before that cats are the only proof that there is some higher power that wants there to be beauty and perfection in the world...
if I were to hunt, it wouldn't be for the thrill, it would be for clean meat. so the answer is GUN. I don't know that I'd be into it, though, since you can get rabbit and venison at the store.
Equal Rights [2001-08-30 21:05:33] König Prüß, GfbAEV
Equal Rights for Wombats, sez I!
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