He was kind enough to let me share this video of his set:

The guy’s good, huh? You can catch him on Twitter at @chethinks, and on Tumblr here.

It’ll make more sense in the video, I swear.

I have told this story in various incarnations over the years, but I happen to feel that this performance at the Moth at Southpaw in Brooklyn on Labor Day this year really nailed it. Hope you enjoy it:

If you’re interested, you can actually hear two tracks that we recorded at practice here:

Royal Quiet Deluxe, April 1998

Exotic Newcastle Disease, by Royal Quiet Deluxe

If you happen to see this today, and want to see more like it live in person, I’m putting on a show with my awesome and talented friends tonight at Union Hall in Brooklyn. There will be stories like this, burlesque striptease and a sword-swallower. For real.

Click here for show info and a cool poster: And I Am Not Lying Live at Union Hall

You can get advance tickets here.

That’s the justice system for you. They tried to break him, tried to get him to plead guilty to crimes he didn’t commit, and he stood strong. Now he’s out and I couldn’t be happier about it.

We have been writing back and forth like teenaged lovers at two different boarding schools since sometime around Halloween. As happy as I am that Tim is out, I am going to miss writing so often. I looked forward to opening his letters at my office. I’d shut my door and read them over and over throughout the day, keeping them in my pocket until I got home at night.

He’d send me little stuff from time to time, stuff that showed he was thinking about me — stuff that showed he was keeping his soul alive, too. He said it was okay to share some of these here, and I will be over the next few months.

I was supposed to be the one keeping Tim’s spirits up, but the picture and letter below really made me smile. My friend Xeni coined the term “unicorn chaser,” and I doubt she’s seen one as bittersweet as this one.

Before reading, you should know this: Tim actually did used to hammer a pen up his nose and make drawings for all takers on the streets of San Francisco. Trust me, it’ll make sense later.

(See the letter explaining this after the jump.)

Here’s a transcript for Google/readability purposes. I’ve take the liberty of making minor spelling and punctuation edits:

Jeff,

I scored some color pencils about 2 weeks ago and have been drawing quite a bit. It’s been a while since I actually used pens and pencils for anything past a rough sketch. Usually PhotoShop or Illustrator takes it over from there.

It’s been nice to physically create again. I’ve had an issue with subject matter in here, though. I mostly draw self-portraits of sorts: Me in orange, counting the days with looks of desperation or depression.

One or two people saw my drawings an now everyone wants me to draw shit for them or their lady back home. I have to say, it’s opened up my mind and my sketch pad greatly.

It kind of reminds me when I first started doing “nose drawings,” where I’d hammer a pen up my nose and draw. At first I got stuck in the studio with “what the fuck do I draw?” I took a desk out to public places and asked people what they wanted me to draw, then rendered that.

It was great practice, then eventually the performance evolved to just that – Drawing what the people wanted.

I get commissions for chips, candy bars, stamped envelopes, basic commissary goodies. Mostly I get people wanting tattoo designs. I did a nice version of “The Weighing of the Souls” the other day. A black Muslim man asked me to draw a unicorn for his wife. I tried to make a black unicorn, but it just wouldn’t come out right. Eventually the guy got a white unicorn with blond hair & blue eyes. He liked it, though.

It’s funny, ’cause when I was in jail in Virginia back in 2002, I drew a unicorn next to a waterfall, all set under a rainbow for some guy’s wife.

Anyway, all this inspired me to draw you a unicorn scene. White folks are rare in here, kinda like unicorns. At the moment in my pod of 48 guys there is only one other honky. He is constantly trying to be my pal, but he is really really fucking annoying.

He has a “Jesus” neck tattoo, which is really odd because the last white guy in here had a Satanic neck tattoo! In reality both of those guys’ God was obviously crystal meth. Enjoy the drawing, it makes me laugh – which is very necessary in this place.

Love,

Tim

Coincidentally, on the same day that I learned that 11 U.S. states and 3 Canadian provinces are just incontrovertibly screwed six ways to Sunday, I came across this amazing and hilarious Jack Kirby drawing from 1972 of what our future might look like after “A GREAT CATACLYSM!”:

Image taken from Kamandi #1, Via the always excellent Comic Book Cartography.

Also, Discovery Channel has a pretty cool interactive explanation of the supervolcano.
BOOM. For real.

You may know her from the NYC burlesque scene as the fabulous Cherry Pitz — she does a spectacular routine with Vincent Price’s disembodied voice. (Link goes to video that may be considered unsafe for work, but inarguably awesome.)

Now she’s working on a one-woman show show that traces her journey from a little suburban Jewish girl obsessed with Wonder Woman to a fabulous burlesque Queen in NYC.

The show’s called Wonder Woman: A How-To Guide for Little Jewish Girls.

It will be presented as part Frigid New York 2011- February 23-March 6 – learn more at
www.frigidnewyork.info

You can see the show yourself at The Red Room (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery)

Wed Feb 23rd – 8:00 PM
Sat Feb 26th – 9:30 PM
Tue Mar 1st – 8:00 PM
Thu Mar 3rd -11:00 PM
Sat Mar 5th – 2:00 PM

Tickets are $10 ($7 Students & seniors), available at www.smarttix.com or call 212-868-4444.

However, Cyndi needs to do a bit of fundraising to cover the costs of putting the show on. To make a donation, you can visit her artist’s profile at The Field and type “Wonder Woman” in the “additional information” field.

I know this thing is going to be great – Cyndi has mentored and coached me in storytelling, produced some stunning burlesque shows and produced our And I Am Not Lying Live show. Obviously she’s got skills and taste …

Apparently, a robot-armed Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, the yellow Power Ranger, The Thing, and a redheaded Reed Richards and have teamed up…

…to FENCE AGAINST THE EARTH!

And on top of this already delicious ridiculousness, when I took a closer look at their approximation of Superman:

…I immediately made this association:

God, I love this stuff.
PREVIOUSLY IN FOREIGN PLAYTIME ODDITIES: Coming to America Wrapped in Plastic and Cardboard

AND PREVIOUSLY IN AWESOME TOYS : The Longing for Lost Toys

I love our show. Each month we write a new script in sort of an on-going burlesque soap-opera.

For those of you in NYC, here is the info:

HOTSY TOTSY BURLESQUE
Tuesday, August 17th, 9:30pm
@ The Delancey Lounge
168 Delancey, — just two blocks from the F/J train stop. 9:30, $8.

Cherry Pitz and Joe Shark are unaware – but something weird is going on at the Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women. Something that only one person can understand. Dr Who. Whatever you do … don’t blink! You’ll miss the boobies!

Cherry Pitz is your host and the show features RunAround Sue, Clams Casino, Apathy Angel, Misty Lux and Billy the Id & Special Guest Candy Cory!

While I am obsessing with Dr. Who, I thought I’d share two fun videos. In this first clip, what you need to know is: The Doctor and his companion Donna Noble have gone back in time and met Agatha Christie. Problem is, people all around Ms. Christie are being murdered. The Doctor gets poisoned, but cyanide is not actually lethal – if you’re not human.

And now a Doctor Who Pole Dance. Golly, I wish I knew this girl. She would so be in our show…

And then, to get a real sense of the buckets of attention to detail, skill, love, and sheer nerdiness that went into this, watch it again with Ivan’s annotations (below). He calls out all of the character and location cameos that you might have missed, and even breaks down the typographical references in the title cards! (Pause the video each time a note box pops up.)

And if your mind remains somehow unblown, here is the crazy long list of sources for this mashup:

Man and the Moon, Flash Gordon (Deadline at Noon), The Phantom Planet, Rocketship X-M, Star Trek (The Cage), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Flying Saucer, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The 27th Day, Superboy, The Wasp Woman, Outer Limits (Demon with the Glass Hand, The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, The Invisibles, Chameleon, Zzzzzz), Anastasia, Underworld USA, The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Worlds, The Avengers, Captain America, It Came From Outer Space, Invasion USA, King of the Rocketmen, Zombies of the Stratosphere, Radar Men from the Moon, Die Nibelungen (Siegfried, Kriemhild’s Revenge), The Man with Nine Lives, The Thing from Another World, Dr. Cyclops, The Marvel Superheroes (Hulk), Der grüne Bogenschütze, William Tell, Batman (Shoot a Crooked Arrow), The Eagle, The War of the Colossal Beast, The Gnome Mobile, Thunderball, The Dirty Dozen, Captain Scarlet, Fantastic Four (The Phantom of Film City), Our Man Higgins, Attack of the Puppet People, Land of the Giants (The Clones), Yilmayan Seytan, Tales of Frankenstein, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Das Rheingold, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Airport, Demetrius and the Gladiators.

Previously, Ivan released “premakes” — all viewable on his YouTube page — of Ghostbusters (1954), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951), The Empire Strikes Back (1950), Forrest Gump (1949) and Gone With the Wind with vampires (1939).

It shows three Masters of the Universe figures that belonged to my brother and I — Jitsu, Tung Lashor (in the Land Shark) and Battle-Damage Skeletor — lined up against the wood panel & linoleum backdrop of the trailer-with-added-rooms that we grew up in, and I f*cking LOVE IT.

I remember the spot where this photo was taken, and I remember that just down the hall under our bunk beds, and under the desk in my father’s “office” there were plastic tubs and wooden boxes of other action figures and vehicles… Transformers, G.I. Joe, Hot Wheels, Marvel Secret Wars, DC Super Powers, M.A.S.K., M.U.S.C.L.E., Battle Beasts, Centurions, and probably others that I’m forgetting. We also had a giant-sized bin of LEGO blocks, all jumbled in together like an 8-bit plastic gumbo. I can remember the feel of the blocks’ corners and the shooshing, tinkling sound as I rummaged through them looking for just one more clear red dot to cap off the wing of my spaceship.

We still have a few of these things in a closet at my mother’s house. (Or we will until I steal them this summer. Heads up, Mom.) But the bulk of them were given away to our nephews or other kids-of-friends-of-the-family, and from what I hear, many were promptly broken. (*single tear*)

So in pining for my lost clumps of cast plastic and rubber, I decided to fire up the group nostalgia engines. I asked my fellow contributors Jeff, Brad and Cyndi if they had any thoughts along these lines to share, and indeed they did…

CYNDI:
“Where did my Dawn Dolls go? In 1960′s and 1970′s. My friends and I had all the accessories, The Dawn Disco, The Dawn, Beauty Pageant. We would take our Dawn dolls with us for play dates and so my Dawn doll got out and partied. My dawn doll enjoyed the fine art of strip tease – after I saw Gypsy. My accessory? A Dawn Doll purse. It was a plastic purse that had compartments for Dawn (with a sliding window so she could breathe) and room for her clothes. Plus a section in back for your wallet etc. Here is an amazing promo video that was probably used in trade shows that shows it all!:

Where did they go? I’ll never know. I imagine that great doll disco in the sky.”

BRAD:
“I don’t have a lost toy story… but there was a giant box of Peanuts books, those $1:50 (in the late seventies/early eighties) mass market size, pulp books of comic strips.

Every time we would go anywhere, garage sales, grocery store, Wal-Mart, I would beg my Mom to buy me one of these. By the time I was in high school and not reading them anymore, there were about three hundred of these in a cardboard box. By the time I was in my twenties and old enough to be nostalgic for them, that box was gone and nobody knew what happened to it. I still look for it when I go home.”

JEFF:
“I’ve had this Han Solo since 1981/1982. Chewbaccas came and went. I once lost a Chewbacca in the yard and found him a year later, his arms and legs turned green. Now he’s gone.

I was fiddling with this photo while listening to Slint’s ‘Good Morning Captain’, and started imagining Hoth Han here as the ‘captain’ in the song, sending a message via a dying camera to a lost Chewbacca.”

What about you, readers? Drop your nostalgia in the comments.