I bought the best painting on earth in a vintage store in Nashville this weekend:

There is a toy ambulance glued to the top and a plastic dog glued to the bottom and it reads:

Elvis did CPR on a dog to save his life.

My Uncle Jimmy used to own the world’s biggest Baby Ruth bar, one of the first Asteroids machines and a whole bunch of antique cans full of antique lard and sprinkled with Fillmore-era psychedelic rock posters. I used to help him haul the contents of dead people’s houses back to his auction house and hoist up WWII antiques, old metal trucks and ’60s board games up and down the aisles in the back of the store he and my aunt owned while the whole town of Smithfield bid on them to his spitfire gravel drawl.

The weird seeds planted in me early and grew real big. I’ve got a zombified Elvis karaoke robot with its rubber face torn off and a giant painting of King Kong made out of roofing tar in my house, and I can’t stop dragging stuff home like an ant with psychedelic antiques hoisted over its head.

The queen of my nest is not always impressed. She says I need to throw stuff out before bringing more in, but look.

Are you going to stop taking communion just because you’re on a low-carb diet?
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The general consensus is that The Avengers is one of the most massively entertaining and satisfying summer movies ever. I’m right there with the Internet hive-mind on that one, but my screening was extra-special — it featured a live brawl right there in the jam-packed theater.

Somebody sparked a blunt about halfway through the movie and smoked the whole fricking thing, Cape Fear-style.

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The ever-increasing election coverage, combined with the Star Trek marathons that have been taking place at home, have made it hard for me not to see these resemblances:

References for the less nerdy: Tuvok / Gul Dukat

Images yoinked from TotallyLooksLike.com.
Font: Bajoran Regular by Eric Oehler.

I took a year off from producing my monthly Burlesque show and I missed it! Storytelling is certainly one of my favorite things but I also really love performing naked (or in g-string and tassels)

If You were at the last And I Am Not Lying Live, my story was about that and also about the difference between exploitation and fun in sexy art-forms. This month my Hosty Totsy show makes fun of that same struggle.

Hotsy Totsy is an ongoing burlesque soap opera. Each epsisode takes place during the “monthly fundraiser at The Home For Wayward Girls and Fallen Women” and in each show there is some back stage drama that plays out between the burlesque acts. This month gangster Nickles Lugo (Played by Nelson Lugo) attempts to take over the Home and to turn it into a money making venture (AKA a strip-club and brothel.) The girls fight back wanting to keep things playful and sweet the way we like it!

When asked to describe my burlesque show HOTSY TOTSY BURLESQUE, I tell people it is like the Muppet show if you substituted puppets with naked girls. Read the rest of this entry »

Because it’s Friday, and somewhere some bastard is still trying to bring you down:

(Just to be clear – in this scenario, I believe that you are the Jedi.)

GIF via Jonathan_Eilenberg on mlkshk.

This doesn’t require much in the way of explanation. But if you want to feel bad as HELL, think on it while listening to this live version of “Goin’ Out West.”:

I saw this at the Bowery stop on Friday night:

There’s a whole lot going on Tuesday for the worldwide Occupy movement – a performance/march with Das Racist, Tom Morello, and more, and even more listed here.

I’m pretty curious, and would love to participate. The thing is, I’ve got a big show that night, and I can’t risk getting locked up. If any of you guys want to come over afterwards, we’d love to see you.

The last few weeks have been a blur of shows for me, Brad and Cyndi. All this performing is like training for a fight: you hit that bag hard for a month so you can bring it HARD when the bell rings for real.

All this is to say that it’s time once again to leave a pair of smoking rubber tracks on stage at Union Hall with the And I Am Not Lying LIVE show, cock-rocking the NPR crowd with the best comedy, storytelling and burlesque in NYC.

If that tiny bit of promo copy that I half-assed during a conference call was enough to make you want to get tickets already, you can do that here: And I Am Not Lying LIVE at Union Hall on May 1.

Here’s a poster, more on the performers after the jump:

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If you’re coming here via Jason Zinoman’s piece “Telling Tales With a Tear and a Smile” in this morning’s New York Times, stick around.

If you’re reading this as a long-time follower of this blog, none of this material is going to be new to you. I’m re-flogging some older stuff, so maybe this is a good time to push away from the computer and go enjoy a nice spring day outside.

I want to shamelessly take full advantage of the mention to show off what the And I Am Not Lying show is all about here. Because frankly, not only am I proud of the work that we do and thrilled to see the storytelling world getting a little credit … I want to put asses in seats on the first Tuesday of every month at Union Hall.

Brad Lawrence, Cyndi Freeman and I put on a monthly show featuring storytelling, comedy, burlesque and sideshow — and I want to share some of the stories that we’ve done there. We’ve only had a residency there since February, so we’re still building up some steam. But all of us do a TON of other shows around town, too.

Consider this a primer, dive deeper if you want. Today is functionally a Friday anyway, so go ahead and watch all of these at work.

Al Sharpton vs. Royal Quiet Deluxe, Chicken Band

These are two stories by Brad Lawrence:

Gift From A Chimp In Saint Louis

Sometimes Cyndi ties her burlesque acts to her stories, and the end result is bigger than either piece seperately. So here’s a story by Cyndi Freeman, with a pretty direct tie into the burlesque act immediately following:

Here’s the aforementioned burlesque act from our show, featuring Cyndi Freeman, Brad Lawrence and Apathy Angel:

We have comedy guests, storytellers, and sideshow performers, too – including a bullwhip/lasso expert and a sword swallower.

You can follow us here, on Twitter @andiamnotlying or on our Facebook page. And I hope we see you soon.

Somewhere around the spring of 1991, my friend Frank Benson played the Cramps for me for the first time. He said “hey, check these guys out, I’m going to take a shower real quick.” By the time he came out of the bathroom, my head was full all kinds of sweet and rotten mutant fruits.

A year later, his mom took me and him and a date to see the Ramones at the Boathouse in Norfolk, VA and nothing was ever the same again. My glasses got knocked off and ground back into sand during the first 5 minutes of the show, and I took a boot to the face by the second set. The next day, I was half-deaf and limping around the house, clutching the walls to feel my way to my bedroom and all I wanted to do was get up on a stage and be Joey Ramone.

A week after that I quit the rec league soccer team by throwing my shirt in the coach’s face. During a game.

Something didn’t add up, though. Me and Frank were scoring acid from drag queens at the Rocky Horror Picture Show and had a direct line to all the best music this new burning world had to offer. With all this newfound punk rock swagger and the confidence of finally being down with the coolest guys in school, we figured girls would finally start paying attention.

As it turns out, it took a little while. We had no idea why.

Frank Benson has hit his stride by now, and I guess I’m okay, too.

Anyone who tells a teenager that “these are the best years of your life” is only telling half of the truth. In my experience, we got to taste the potential that the world had — but actually feeling it fall into place day by day and year by year is even better. Frank and I hang out now. We both live in Brooklyn, but we’re both busting ass on our own art careers.

We don’t see each other as often as people who live three miles away from each other might. But every time we do hang out, one of is getting the other one really excited about some cool new stuff. We’re still kicking each others’ doors wide open.