Whew! What a week …

The non-husband, going above and beyond the call of duty, designed and built a fantastic magic trick for the show last Friday. In short, we cut off the Divine Miss M’s arm in front of a live audience and blood spewed everywhere. (Those of you familiar with the antics of Crushed Velvet Rope won’t be the least bit surprised at that. *smile*)

We also ran the waxing booth during the event, which was a feat considering the heat. Rock Island has a cooling system, but there’s not much you can do when the temp outside is in the upper 80’s and the crowd inside is huge. Luckily I remembered to bring along a box fan and, with the multiple bottles of water we drank, no one suffered from heat stroke. However, I did lose four lbs. in water weight during the course of the night. I’m not kidding - four lbs! Only one lonely pound came back in 24 hours, but I don’t know if that’s a plus or not.

My special thanks go out to Alyxx Webb, the producer/promoter of the show, not only for inviting me, but for trusting me to get it all done with minor supervision on her part and major scheduling fuck ups on mine; to Rock Island and their staff for a smooth, well-run event; to R for showing up and deciding to clear up drama to ensure he could stay and help; to M for letting me use the hottest wax on him and promising there’s more to come; to The Specialists who made excellent, flirty conversation and bought me a shot to boot; and to the staff guy whose name I didn’t get who helped us load the medical cart into the van during bar close.

Mostly I thank my partner-in-crime for working so hard to get our act together (and for making the stage just in the nick of time) and the Divine Miss M for making the trek to Denver to be our victim. Couldn’t have done it without either of you!

Thanks also to the hard work of photographer Grim, the fruits of my efforts in the waxing booth and our stage antics are pictured online. The stage show is immortalized here, here, and here; the waxing booth here, here, and here.

This photo, however, depicts my wax handiwork best.

Besides, that boy is soooooo cute!

You know all that spiritual stuff you’ve read about and maybe even studied? Kundalini, energy exchange, the tenets of the Dalai Lama, and those such topics. You even created a website about some of it. You talk the big talk about eastern beliefs and universal love and maybe even win over a few converts in the process.

It’s a shame you haven’t managed to manifest the beliefs into your own sick, sad life. The truth is you’re a paranoid, narcissistic, histrionic personality with real rage issues. You sought therapy once and that only caused more trouble and pain than you could bear, so I won’t recommend a good therapist, because I doubt you’ll go that route again.

You have been warned before, in this very space, about messing with me and mine. If you wish to take me on personally, I do not have a problem with that. It’s kind of nice to know you fear me - Voltaire himself couldn’t be more pleased with that situation - but your displacement onto members of my family stops now.

One does not know the light without also knowing the dark.

I am not a creature of light.

A creature of light is like my kryptonite so, if you choose to be one - that is to truly believe with all your heart, mind, and soul that everyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, deserves forgiveness and love - you should know that is the only thing that will stop me.

If you think I mean you, consider how many people I know or have met in a lifetime … and then repeat the mantra “assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups” 23 times.

The show is this Friday night and I’m working hard on the one stage piece for which I’m scheduled. The brief production is, essentially, my Denver fetish debut, so it has to be nearly perfect.

Before and after that, though, I will be downstairs at my “sensation station” … giving volunteers and friends a taste of what hot wax actually feels like. Among other tasty treats.

Been quiet around here. That will probably end after this weekend.

Maybe it’s scientific art, but however you want to put it, the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is … well, I’m speechless. That certainly doesn’t happen very often.

Anatomist Dr. Gunther von Hagens created a way to preserve bodies in plastic. Turns out von Hagens is a genius artist, too, because not only does he preserve them using his patented Plastination method, he puts them in action poses or dissects them in artistic ways.

The best part? THEY’RE REAL HUMAN BODIES. There’s one playing soccer, there’s two figure skating. There’s one called the Exploding Human, where each part is hung from a separate string slightly apart from the whole, so you can see how it all fits together. There’s a “fetus room,” as we put it when we found it, wherein you can see tubes with human embryos in them and 3 or 4 cases with unborn babies displayed.

Remember that part of the movie The Cell when the horse gets sliced into sections? Real slices of real humans are at the show, too, from just the head or organs to an entire body in one case.

There are also displays of anomalies like an enlarged heart, a brain showing exactly where a stroke occurred, and human genitalia. That last one made me point at a female one and comment to the non-husband, “Hey … Ed Gein used to collect those in the 50s.”

Yeah yeah, I’m a sick fuck. Moving on …

My favorite part of the tour by far was the cardiovascular system. The good doctor managed to plasticize just the blood vessels of different body parts, from the smallest capillaries up to major arteries, and they are delicate, bright red and blue, and stunning in their complexity. There’s a display case of just the cardiovascular system of a lamb which had my attention for several minutes.

The show ends this weekend and tickets were sold out for the regular hours as of last night; however, the museum staff informed us that they will sell tickets for every hour that folks want to go on a 24-hour schedule this weekend, if it proves to be that popular.

So, who’s up for a 4:00am trip to see the dead come alive this weekend?

Now to find out how to donate my body to art.

I used to think Rob Brezsny lived under my bed.

Now I’m convinced that it’s Jonathan Cainer.

I don’t really believe a word of it, but it’s fun to read.

Of all the ridiculous expressions people use - and people use a great many ridiculous expressions - one of the most ridiculous is “No news is good news.” “No news is good news” simply means that if you don’t hear from someone, everything is probably fine, and you can see at once why this expression makes such little sense, because everything being fine is only one of many, many reasons why someone may not contact you. Perhaps they are tied up. Maybe they are surrounded by fierce weasels, or perhaps they are wedged tightly between two refigerators and cannot get themselves out. The expression might well be changed to “No news is bad news,” except that people may not be able to contact you because they have just been crowned king or are competing in a gymnastics tournament. The point is that there is no way to know why someone has not contacted you, until they contact you and explain themselves. For this reason, the sensible expression would be “No news is no news,” except that it is so obvious it is hardly an expression at all.

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Eighth: The Hostile Hospital

Harry Potter sucks and you know it.

The greatest beauty may, in fact, be the destruction of the self.

If I ever put these in a book, I’ll have to give the Divine Miss M. half credit at this point.

How about Police Academy: AARP? Would you prefer Police Academy: Wheelchair Brigade? Or maybe Police Academy: Breakin’ a Hip?

With all the great movie and entertainment news I’ve run across lately, I forgot that we are a nation full of idiots who’ll watch some of the dumbest crap Hollywood hands us.

Police Academy is in pre-production and set for release in 2007. I don’t know if it’s a remake of the original or another sequel (does that make 8 or 9 of the damn things?), but I do know I would have to be paid a lot of money to see it.

For a little while I forgot about the need for entertainment to cater to the lowest common denominator. I mean we couldn’t just leave it all alone after Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow (1994), could we?

Evidently not. *sigh*

If this thing flies, the LCDs win again.

I never cease to amaze myself with the ways I find to sabotage my own success.

No, I will not elaborate.

Lewis Black is the voice of a generation. He is one comedian who, time after time, tells the truth of politics, society, and religion with a passion unseen in a stand up comic in decades. I knew it the first time I saw him on The Daily Show and it was finalized in my mind after his 2004 HBO special, Black on Broadway.

A good stand-up will make you laugh, of course, and a great one will make you think. A tremendous one, however, will make you as angry and passionate about his topics as he is. And if there is anything Lewis Black encompasses, it’s anger and passion. He is firmly ensconced between George Carlin (#1) and Dennis Leary (#3 and falling, since he doesn’t do much stand up anymore) on my list of favorite comedians.

Now, according to this Wikipedia entry:

Red State Diaries is a TV show starring comedian Lewis Black being developed for Comedy Central to begin airing in 2006. Comedy Central says it will feature Black on the road exploring the red states for a positive understanding of what he usually rants against,[1] as featured for a long time on The Daily Show. This will be the second spin-off from The Daily Show, after The Colbert Report. It will be produced by Black, Apostle, Sony Pictures Television, and Jeff Stilson.[2]

The catchphrase title comes from the Showtime series Red Shoe Diaries, a late-night [soft-core porn] show from the 1990s [hosted by David Duchovny].

Go read the link under the [2] above to see what else Comedy Central has in development.

But take the time before, during, and afterward to thank the comedy gods for Lewis Black.

“And, in that moment, I realized that one of us … was NUTS … and for the first time in my life, I knew it wasn’t ME.” - Lewis Black, watching George W. Bush on television