Hey, look! It’s the very first book cover of the very first publication by Sister Spit Books! Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road will be out this October, and we’ve already got some book parties lined up – mark your calendars for October 24th at City Lights (let’s take over Spec’s after!) and Pegasus Books on Shattuck on the 25th. We’ll also be doing events in Los Angeles, Portland, Santa Cruz, Sacramento and in Boston during the AWP this winter. The anthology contains new and old work by people who’ve been hopping in the van with Sister Spit since 1997: an excerpt from 3-time Spitter Ali Liebegott’s forthcoming novel Ch-Ching! (out next year on Sister Spit books), witchery from Kirk Read, art from Cassie J Sneider, a crazy European tour diary from Rhiannon Argo and a hilarious US tour journal from Blake Nelson, and waaaaaay more – Cooper Lee Bombardier (whose iconic 90s Spit art graces the cover!), Eileen Myles, Tamara Llosa-Sandor, Tara Jepsen, Kat Marie Yoas, Sara Seinberg, Elisha Lim, Nicole J Georges, Lenelle Moise, Myriam Gurba, Ben McCoy, Beth Lisick, Harry Dodge, MariNaomi and Cristy C Road. WOW! And these are only some of the people who’ve jumped in the Sister Spit van! More volumes are forthcoming, as are new works from Ali Liebegott, Beth Lisick, Dia Felix, Lenelle Moise and more! Just wanted to brag. I’m excited!

And check out Sister(Spit)hood is Powerful! – 15 Years of Sister Spit on the Road featuring Michelle Tea, Texta Queen, Brontez Purnell, MariNaomi, Nomy Lam, Tamara Llosa-Sandor and Kat Marie Yoas! Friday, May 18th at La Pena Cultural Center, Berkeley, 8pm. Get tickets here!

Hey!!!! Know what’s exciting about the SPECTACLE? EVERYTHING! Really! But right at the moment I am all revved up about our dynamite art auction! The art auction is a really important component of of annual fundraiser. I’m always blown away by the incredible pieces that are donated to us – Nan Goldin, Cathy Opie, Xyler Jane, Richard Hell – and this year it’s no different! The art auction brings in a major part of the money we need to make the Radar LAB writer’s retreat happen, AND it’s an awesome way to bring seriously brilliant art to the RADAR audience for a fraction of what it goes for in the marketplace. It’s also a joy because auctioning art triggers the same part of Ali Liebegott’s brain that enjoys gambling, so she gets really high off it and it’s a good time for everyone. So, come ready to bid! Above is an AMAZEBALLS piece by Dynasty Handbag performance artist Jibz Cameron! (All art photos taken on the fly with my cell phone – dig it!) I believe it is a weary, put-upon, hairy scrotum with bat wings; a worn-out, bad-boundaried superhero for out time! Look how bummed out Amazeballs looks, despite the triumphant banner beneath him and the little balloons of thanks and praise. With bidding starting at $50, this is a great gift for that handy person in your life who just CAN’T SAY NO!

When Tammy Rae Carland sidled up to Ali Liebegott’s truck and shadily handed over this gorgeous print, she said, “I feel like I’m making a drug deal!” Well, I felt giddy and high when I immediately tore into the wrapping and beheld this wonderful piece! The words HAPPY MOTHERS WE LOVE hanging from a ceiling against the backdrop of ornate pink vintage-y curtains – this photo just makes me really happy. It’s full of DIY family joyfulness and would be the sweetest, coolest Mom’s Day gift for a happy mother you love.

I blogged about Paul Madonna on MoMA’s Open Space blog after catching his fantastic show at the Electric Works gallery a couple years ago. Since then I’ve gotten way into his comics on SFgate and The Rumpus, had the wild pleasure of hosting him at RADAR and devoured his collected works in a City Lights collection. And now we have this giant, perfectly framed piece to auction off this evening. The above is just a detail of the larger piece – it’s a good size, an inky European landscape that tells a story of glamorous, literary ennui. My favorite kind of ennui! I love this piece!

Edie Fake is such a genius! The Gaylord Phoenix creator just showed some exuberantly sick work at our Chicago Sister Spit show some weeks ago, as well as designed our spectacular Sister Spit 2012 tour poster! And now he’s handed over this humble yet intricate piece that I am seriously salivating over. Don’t worry, I mopped up my drool. Edie Fake is the king of some new queer punk psychedelica that I am totally grooving on!

If you are not obsessed with Maira Kalman you just do not know her work. Educate thyself – she just illustrated Michael Pollan’s Food Rules her own books, And the Pursuit of Happiness and The Principles of Uncertainty are like falling down a rabbit hole of charm and whimsey and occasional tragedy – just like life but rendered so, so beautifully, in the brightest colors and with big heart. Maybe you caught her show last year at the Jewish Museum, or maybe you’ve just snagged her children’s book collaborations with Daniel Handler or David Byrne? We initially thought this sweet piece was an original watercolor (!) and lost our minds – rather, it is an incredibly high-quality, signed ink jet print that goes for $1,400 out there in the art market. I love this piece so much I got my nails done to match.

I know you are familiar with this iconic shot of our hero, Harvey Milk. Dan Nicoletta, the beloved photographer who shot this as a teen (and was later portrayed in Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk) donated a print to our auction. It feels like not only a terrific piece of art but a real piece of history – and it is. I’m sort of jittery just sitting in the same room as it! What queer (or, like, totally awesome queer ally) wouldn’t want this hanging in their home?

That’s not all – as I type, Sara Thustra, one of my most favorite artists ever, is putting the finishing touches on a piece she’s making just for tonight. You know Sara, right? Check this out -

An installation at Needles and Pens. Sara Thustra is a world unto herself.

We’re also eagerly awaiting the UPS delivery of a piece by Amanda Kirkhuff, who we at RADAR are rabid for! Did you catch her incredible show at 2nd Floor Projects? It was mind-blowing! We don’t know what she’s sending it, we only know it will be a masterpiece.

Right? This one is called Waitress. Thank you, Amanda Kirkhuff. Okay, I got to run to Arizmendi Bakery and pick up a bunch of donated pastries for you bitches to snack on tonight! Oh – want to know some of what we’re raffling off? A bunch of books from MCSWEENEYS, multiple ACUPUNCTURE sessions, rentals from LOST WEEKEND, BURRITOS, gay flag dog blankets hand made by ALI LEIBEGOTT’S MOM, dog training classes from PAWSITIVE TAILS, gift cards from CLIFF’S VARIETY, gorgeous first editions from WAVE BOOKS, tote bags and books from CITY LIGHTS, a $75 gift card to BI RITE MARKET, PILATES or REIKI, a FRAMELINE membership, multiple family memberships to YBCA, 2 VIP season passes to HARD FRENCH, 2 year-long passes to PORCHLIGHT, and MORE! This is RADAR’s 4th-annual NO SEX TOYS raffle! We are very proud of ourselves, grateful to all who donated and psyched for the winner!

Okay, see you TONIGHT! There will be tickets AT THE DOOR, come on down!

Chris Vargas and Greg Youmans make one of my favorite art projects in the world – Falling in Love . . . With Chris and Greg, a sitcom-style video series that explores that explores the foibles of contemporary queer living through the romance of a nerdy, oft-clueless cisgendered fag (Greg) and his radical, oft-bitchy trans fag boyfriend (Chris). The series is hilarious, too real,  earnest, heartwarming and, again, hilarious. Chris and Greg came to the Radar LAB last year to work on a script, and they’ll be premiering the short this Friday night at the SPECTACLE!

Michelle Tea: What person, place or thing is the biggest spectacle?

Chris Vargas: Chris: Cirque du Soleil. Especially “Immortal”: the Michael Jackson tribute. Imagine all these crazed French-Canadian acrobats flipping and contorting their bodies all over the stage, then lapsing into sentimental moments when giant kid-aged Michael Jackson puppets emerge crying and looking all sad and sweet.

Greg Youmans: I second that. It was quite a show. My runner-up though is the Les Misérables 25^thAnniversary special that they’ve been playing as a pledge drive on KQED. I get sucked in whenever I’m flipping channels because I was a total musical theater gay in high school. Nick Jonas does the part of Marius and his voice is not up to the task. You can see him straining for the high notes. But then, after it’s all over, they bring all the people who’ve ever performed in major productions of the show on stage, including Patti Lupone! She sings “I Dreamed a Dream” and I almost die.

CV: No one who isn’t a musical theater gay knows what you’re talking about right now.

MT: What is the biggest spectacle you have each witnessed the other making of himself?

GY: For me it was when Chris played Marty in The Searchers reenactment in “Road Trip! TV Special” (Episode 2 of Falling In Love). He was such a ham! I fell even more deeply in love with him that day.

CV: Every time I go to Costco with Greg, I witness him make a spectacle of himself whenever he sees a free sample station. He insists on waiting in long lines for defrosted bacon-wrapped figs and bad flavored fudges. Then he hates himself for it. It’s adorable.

MT: What spectacle-wearing person do you most admire?

GY: My first spectacled role model was Brainy Smurf. Much later I saw a French version of the cartoon and the other smurfs (or “schtroumpfs” in French) are not only dismissive of him, they physically beat him. No joke. So now I can never drop him from my pedestal.

CV: Sally Jesse Raphael. Same thing: she gets beat up in France and she needs my support.

MT: What will you do at the SPECTACLE?

CV: We will debut a new Falling In Love…with Chris and Greg video that we actually made for another RADAR event, but could not complete due to being giant failures.

GY: Being giant failures is actually the theme of the episode, so it all works out for the best.

Catch Falling In Love . . . With Chris and Greg at the SPECTACLE Friday night! Get your tickets here!

Michelle Tea: Okay, for as long as I have known you, you’ve wanted to make movies. Do you remember when this desire hit you? Was there a movie you saw when you were young that inspired you? What was it?

Sini Anderson: Jane Campion films had a big impression on me: Angel At My Table, Sweetie, and other shorts by her. Before I’d seen work that was experimental I thought my visions or the stories I was interested in telling would have no place in ‘film.’But I have to say music has always been a catalyst; I can’t write anything without listening to something, and I can’t listen to anything without visuals. So, no matter what work I’m making there has always been a desire for content with music and visuals.

MT: Can you remember when you first learned about Kathleen Hanna? 

SA: In Chicago, IL when I was a little heroin addict roaming the streets, I saw this club with all these girls hanging out on the curb and I slipped my way in and it was a Bikini Kill show. I’d never seen anything like it, and was totally shocked and excited.

MT: How did you meet her? 

SA: I think it was the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in 2002? Kathleen and I were roaming the woods with Johanna Fateman, drinking bag-in-a-box of white wine. We hit it off right away. Then she promptly kicked my ass in a wrestling match that was not my idea. I think she was wearing a geisha kimono.

MT: How did the idea for a documentary come about?

SA: She was talking to me about the Le Tigre On Tour film, which they were about to make. I thought it was and awesome idea, but I asked her when she planned on telling her story. She was uncomfortable with the topic right away (she’s been historically pretty tight-lipped in the press about her personal story) and I told her she should think about it. Two or three weeks later, she asked me to come to her studio and said, “Fine, I’ll do it. But you have to make it.” I quit my job two months later and started organizing the film.

MT:I would think that a documentary about Kathleen would get so much support and help, as she is so super beloved. Is this true? What parts have gone easy and what has been hard? 

SA: It’s true that she is beloved, and the support has been so great. We did a Kickstarter to raise money for our edit and we had SO much support, we raised 62k in 4 four weeks. So fan backing has been awesome. Nonetheless, funding a film is incredibly hard – especially documentary—and it costs a lot more than 62K. Most of the costs have come out of my pocket, actually, and I’ve also relied on the expertise of people who love her, and have been willing to donate their time and skills.

For better or worse, I have high production values: I wanted two directors of photography and I didn’t want to skimp on anything. So that makes for a very expensive process. I haven’t been able to bring people with money to the project to finish it or cover any of the budget so far. So money is hard. The art part has been more inspiring than I could have dreamed.

MT: Does Kathleen sign off on the footage? How involved is she with the film?

SA: Kathleen is not that involved with the final product. I mean, she is in the way that this is a film about her. But as far as signing off on footage, she’s only seen one rough cut and given a couple of notes. I’m impressed with her ability to turn over her story to us so freely.

MT: Who was the funnest person you got to interview for the film?

SA:Kathleen. We spent so much time with her and she’s so fucking funny. Everyone else we interviewed, we did in a couple of hours, or in some cases just a few minutes. Johanna Fateman is very funny and so is Adam, Kathleen’s husband. Of course, it was also a total pleasure and honor to get to chat with Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, Tavi Gevinson, and everybody else we interviewed.

MT: What did you learn about filmmaking from this project?

SA:Well, it’s a documentary, so I’d have to say I learned to listen more. I had some idea of what Kathleen’s story was, and I was looking for it. Over the course of a year, the story I had turned out to be so far than what I originally thought. I also learned a lot about opening and closing an interview, and how important it is to keep rolling when nothing is happening.

MT: What’s your favorite Bikini Kill/Julie Ruin/Le Tigre song?

SA: I can’t just name one, so here’s two from each of these projects:

Bikini Kill: “Rah, Rah Replica” &  “Feels Blind”

Julie Ruin: “Love Letter, “Apt #5” & “Aerobicide” (sorry that’s 3)

Le Tigre: “The The Empty,” “My Art” (this one saved my life) 

MT:What about Kathleen do you think audiences will be most surprised by?

SA: How dirty her fingernails are.

MT: What sign is Kathleen and how is she like her sign?

SA:Scorpio, and she is just like a scorpio. 

MT:What will your next project be?

SA: I have four on the table right now, but I guess I’d have to say whichever one gets funding. They are all film projects, both documentary and narrative. I really want to do so much; I can’t imagine being bored, ever. Knock wood.

Catch a glimpse of Sini Anderson’s The Punk Singer at the Spectacle, Friday May 4th. get your tickets here!

Good morning! Today’s blog is a giant ad for RADAR’s upcoming benefit, the Spectacle! Dear reader, I don’t want you to miss out on this awesome show, because let’s be real – if you are reading this blog, you will love it. And while we’re being real, let’s be really real – the Spectacle is for a wicked good cause, and we need your dollars and your bodies! Once a year RADAR throws this big party to raise the money we need to stage our writers’ retreat in Mexico, the LAB. The LAB is open to anyone who has ever performed at RADAR or with Sister Spit. People submit a work-in-progress and it is evaluated by a trio of judges  – this year Beth Lisick, Tao Lin and Jewelle Gomez – as well as RADAR staff. The LAB lasts for one month and RADAR pays for ground transportation, housing and all meals; once there the writers work for 5 hours a day. If we catch them on Facebook, we feed them to the barracuda. Kidding! There really is barracuda, tho.

Last year we at RADAR were talking about shortening the LAB, bringing less people or perhaps finding some busted University dormitory to hold it in for free or cheaper. But by the time the session was over we had vowed to keep it in Mexico and to bring even MORE writers in 2012! The LAB changes people’s lives – it strengthens their relationship to their writing and their sense of their self as a writer; it brings them deep into community with other writers (queer ones!), and it does it all in the most breathtakingly beautiful environment, it’s like the Goddess herself is patting you on the back and saying – your struggle and rejections, your poverty and routine humiliations, the daily vulnerability of being a writer is, as dear Alan Ginsberg would say, Holy!, and so here you are. Work, and enjoy your work. And it works! People become totally rejuvenated about their novels, they finish their novels, they start a whole new novel. I didn’t go to college, but the LAB is as close I’ve come to what I imagine that experience is, at it’s best:  bonding with a group of fellow writers and supporting each other through the scary, exhilarating process of creating new work.

And, oh, yeah – airline tickets being what they are and the income of RADAR writers being what they are we are offering all attendees $200 towards their flights this year. And RADAR gets no funding for this project – we hustle all year and throw this mad performance and art auction, the Spectacle, in order to make the majority of our dollars for this ambitious project. But anyway – what’s in it for you?

How about Peggy freaking Noland?! Clothing designer and textile artist Peggy Noland is famous for her insane Kansas City boutique, Peggy Noland Kansas City – its facade covered in teddy bears and an interior that shifts in accordance with Peggy’s latest batch of crazy costumes. Peggy made the awesome stage attire of CSS’s Lovefoxxx, and styled The Gossip’s Men in Love video, directed by The Ssion’s Cody Critchloe. She’ll be at the Spectacle giving insane, Spectacular makeovers! And Lydia Daniller, one of my fave photographers, will be there to capture new look forever! Here is an interview I did with Peggy for Ironing Board Collective, and here is a picture Lydia took of my boyfriend!

Get ready for your close up!

Armistead Maupin! Our local living legend, author of the Tales of the City series, which was made into not just a TV miniseries but also a musical! Is anything more spectacular than a musical? Armistead was the original chronicler of San Francisco’s queer milieu, and by queer I mean in that great San Franciscan way that includes not just homosexuals and the like but also slutty straight party girls, too! Reading Tales of the City makes you really proud to be live in San Francisco and to be part of this awesome legacy.

Who is this funky space queen? It is Mirah! The beloved musical darling of the Northwest and beyond! Mirah keeps indie music real because Mirah herself is so real; a harmonic convergence with her will leave you charmed and bewitched and maybe with the illusion that you are now in fact best friends with Mirah! But is it an illusion? She is really, really nice . . .

You’ve probably heard that writer and Sister Spit co-founder Sini Anderson has been working on a documentary about our hero Kathleen Hannah! Well it;s true, and the film, called The Punk Singer, is currently in post-production, and Sini is treating us to a sneak peek of a clip of it! I am really excited about this movie and quite proud to be screening a bit of it at RADAR!

Oh la la! Chris Vargas and Greg Youmans are Falling in Love . . . with Chris and Greg, a video series documenting the odd couple love affair between a sort of mopey, naive cisgendered fag (Greg) and a sort of huffy, radical trans fag (Chris). It is one of my most favorite art projects of all time – Chris and Greg and brainy and hilarious and their videos – structured like an episodic sitcom – slay you every time. They came to the LAB last year to write a new script, and we’re going to get to see it at the Spectacle! Yeah!

Hey, I love Annah Anti-Palindrome! She uses all sorts of gadgets and gizmos to turn herself into a one-(wo)man-band! Her music is emotional and odd and melodic, her ethos is DIY and her philosophy – being anti-palidrome – is all about breaking patterns, something I think we can all get behind!

Listen, that is just the PERFORMANCES you are going to get at the Spectacle this year! I haven’t even touched on the art auction, which will feature works by Maira Kalman, Tammy Rae Carland, Paul Madonna, Zara Thustra, Amanda Kirkhuff, Edie Fake and Jibz Cameron! But I bring more about that to you soon!

The RADAR Spectacle happens May 4th at the Verdi Club in San Francisco. Get your tickets here!

You should know before I even began that Towson, Maryland is where John Waters set his film Serial Mom, about a suburban mother who cracks and starts slaying everyone in her Real Housewifes-esque environment. Sister Spit says, Well done! What a creepy enclave! Though our show at Towson University was awesome, should one find oneself in Towson, one should not step foot off the campus. First, one of our male tour members using the restroom in PF Chang’s wound up with a hand full of ejaculate when he went to grab some toilet paper! Yes, dear readers, ejaculate! A huge gob was on the toilet as well – I know, because another tour member bravely went into the bathroom and photographed it. We spent much of our dinner speculating on which employee did it. As a group of people who have masturbated on the clock, we felt certain it was an employee! However,  our solidarity with a wage slave taking a little ‘me’ time was eroded by their disgusting sloppiness and disregard for others. What a jerk off!

We all wolfed down our desserts in order to make it into the Towson Town Center (a mall that is putting on airs) to buy toiletries at Sephora and get haircuts. We all met up in the mall’s center, in front of this, um, beautiful display of some classical signifiers of wealth and abundance. ‘Marble’! Sweeping staircases! Cheeubs! We were snapping some pictures of Erin posing with the little angels while waiting for Jerry Lee, when suddenly . . .

We were set upon by Mall Cops! They were quite hostile and acted as if we were skateboarding off the faux-marble or sliding down the bannisters. We were told that we could not take any photos and that we had to leave the mall immediately. The mall was closing, and we were on our way out anyway, but they were being super intense and unfriendly about it, especially when there were still people walking all around us, sitting at the food court and exiting stores. We turned and walked toward the exit, steaming at this rude treatment!

Rather than just send us on our way – we were being very obedient, this isn’t a 90s Sister Spit tour, after all – they escorted us out like a pack of criminals! As you can see there on the left, other shoppers were allowed to walk to their vehicles in a dignified manner, with no interference from the mall cops.

I took a few photos of these power-mad mall cops with my phone as some sort of evidence of whatever was happening – it felt really crazy! They then threatened to take my phone and arrest me! One demanded to see my phone and I told him that cops need warrants for such things. I listen to enough Jay-Z to know my rights! The man cryptically replied, “We’re not cops.” What sort of rogue code were these rent-a-cops operating under?!

They trailed us menacingly all the way into the garage, where they ran our plates and called us – I shit you not – retarded. One of the very sweet queers from Towson University was super outraged, an we wanted to get their badge numbers or something but they were such wild, threatening d-bags we thought it best to just climb into the van and let them escort us off the property with their lights flashing, as if we were criminals and not simply people who spent too much money at Sephora.

I wrote a passionate plea for justice to the powers that be at the Towson Town Center, but I have yet to hear back! Thankfully, we have all recovered from the incident, and I do believe that my love of shopping and of malls has not been too damaged. Still, I think Sister Spit deserves an apology, and some gift certificates to Sephora! Yeah.

Let’s not!

Here’s our trusty Merch girl, Cassie J Sneider, proudly hawking our wares in Toronto! Look at all that great stuff! Our Merch Table on this tour has been referred to as the Sister Spit Skymall; also the Sister Spit Yard Sale (after some garbagey bullshit of questionable origin – plastic sunglasses?) showed up for sale. For tonight’s totally awesome show in Durham, North Carolina we were the Sister Spit Candy Store because of the case of candy cigarettes Cassie found at some god-forsaken roadside America hole-in-the-wall and is now selling for a dollar, or free with a purchase of her book Fine, Fine Music.

Smoking does make you look cool. Cassie read her whole story tonight with a candy cigarette clutched in her knuckles. Badass.

This was Jerry Lee and Brontez’s room at the amazing Gladstone Hotel in Toronto! The rooms are all designed by a different artist and so they’re all one-of–kind! It was very a-pro-po that the boys got what was essentially the bedroom of a hormonal thirteen year old in 1981, the walls covered with pics of Matt Dillon, Kristy McNicholl (hey, my busted computer is so busted it won’t let me open a new tab so I can spell check Kristy’s name, sorry! OH, and Kristy just came out! As a lesbian! Which we all already knew forever and ever but it is always cool to be able to say, See World, some celebrities really are gay and we gay people can often spot them, okay????? Now, if fucking Peppermint Patti would just cop to it we’d all be thrilled)  - oh, and unicorns! And Ralph Macchio. It was a great room. Me and Erin got one that was very woodland, with a stack of chopped firewood (really) and giant branches wedged into the corners. Justin’s was a very glamorous, silvery room with multiple vanities, and Cassie and Kit’s was like a boy’s room, with puzzles glued to the wall. It was as if the very hotel had read our personalities and gave us rooms that matched our souls. Though my inner tween would have preferred Jerry Lee and Brontez’s crib, for this reason:

Formative.

Bitches got crunk in Toronto. There was theft and belligerence, and sly attempts by inebriated tour members to have sex with strangers in their hotel rooms! Bringing a trick home to the room you are sharing with a fellow tour member is even more illegal than food hoarding! Cite the precedent-setting 2007 case Georges vs. Argo if you’d like more information. Anyway, here is everyone hungover and shame spiraling the next morning. It took us about 45 minutes to get out of these poses and hit the road.  And for the record, Cassie J is not hungover – everyone else’s debauchery had given her a migraine.

Look you guys, it’s Niagara Falls! God made this! Look at the majesty! We idiotically stopped here on our way to Pittsburgh, getting us into Pittsburgh too late to stop at the hotel, so we all had to take whores’ baths in the restrooms at The Warhol Museum. But it was worth it, because we all had to pee and why not pee in nature?

For all the excellent places we get to go on tour, we never really get to see anything. We pull right into our hotel, head to the venue and then leave the next morning. So it actually was fun to have a family vay-cay moment at the Falls.

I took this awesome picture of Jerry Lee’s butt totally by accident!

Hell yes.

Brontez thought the falls would be a lot bigger – he told his mom on the phone that they were only about two stories and he totally understood how someone could go over them in a barrel and live. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still impressed,” He clarified. I’m actually obsessed with the bird next to Brontez and was making him get as close to it as he could without freaking it out. It’s a red-winged blackbird – when it flies it’s wings are so cool!

Girls gone wild.

Being in the van in the rain is sort of cozy and sweet. Not that I’ve been getting a lot of sleep, but even when I am well-rested it’s hard to stay awake. The motion of the van and the stillness of your own self sort of lulls you. Today we listened to a lot of Modern Lovers, my favorite road trip album ever. We stopped at a Panera near Qunatico for smoothies. We tried to eat at a Waffle House but church had just gotten out and it was mobbed. I tried to read Vanity Fair but then started falling asleep so I laid with a sweater as a pillow and tried to nap, but then I was writing a story in my head and thought, Well, what if this is some sort of great book and I don’t write it down and I lose it forever?! So I plugged my dying computer in and wrote like five pages of a new novel. Cool. So now I have three novels in progress. In case you think this makes a person feel like a Real Writer, let me assure you it does not. It makes you feel like a Real Fake Writer who can’t finish a freaking book so you keep starting new ones. Anyways…

Truck Stop Bathroom Art

Secret Puddles Markey in his dressing room.

I was too busy running around at our show at the amazing Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to see much of the galleries, but I loved this weird shot of Andy with Albert Schwartzenegger and Grace Jones all hanging out together.

The women who did ASL interpretation for our show at the Warhol were so awesome, and total champs about interpreting Brontez’s nasty-ass stories!

Jerry dressed dandy for Andy! Respect.

Our Tour manager, Beth Pickens, swears by outing the whole van as gay as the best way to get through customs easily. When the eventual ‘How do you all know each other?’ question came from Border Patrol, I piped up, ‘Artistic collaborators – and we’re all gay.’ The guy waved us right into America! Maybe it works in the same way it worked for Justin Bond to tell V’s boss that V had to miss work to take V’s sister for an abortion, when in fact V had to go to the clinic to get some medication for The Clap. People just don’t want to know. All our Passport photos are pretty embarrassing, save for Cassie J Sneider who just got hers last week and is looking great with perfect cat-eye eyeliner, per usual.

Sister Spit would like to welcome Anne Heche to the Van Library, where she will be among such company as the Silence Of the Lambs audiobook, Tracy Morgan’s I Am the New Black audiobook and Jon Benet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Detective Steve Thomas, read aloud. All 400+ pages of it.

Beauty daredevil Cassie J Sneider plucks her brows in a moving van!

At some bar down the street from our Oberlin, Ohio show, I sent Jerry Lee upstairs with my camera to come back with a photo and show us what we were missing as we sat downstairs eating tater tots and salad. There you go.

Erin Markey swears by the maternal, new age victim-blaming soothsaying of prophetess Louise Hay! Though I resent her claim that I brought my yeast infection on myself with bad feelings about my vagina, I really dug listening to her audio meditations, where she likened our negativity-prone psyches to frying pans that have so much gunk on them they need to soak in the sink for a while, but the sink is positive thinking, and when you soak your brain in it all the negativity soaks off! #METAPHOR

Found in a CVS in Pittsburgh. One of many items not for sale in San Francisco. You have to come to AMERICA for these!

NEXT TIME: Sister Spit gets kicked out of a mall in Towson, Maryland!

Hey you guys! Doesn’t Jerry Lee look scary rest stop hot in the new America glasses he picked up in Iowa City this morning? We were told to get coffee at the little coffee bar inside White Rabbit, a boutique I was about to write off as a DIY shop with, you know, electrical tape wallets and apple cozies but NO, this place was seriously good shopping! I got a pair of dead stock asymmetrical $5 sunglasses that I think are too something for me – hip hop, electro, new wave, young? – but at that price and this level of shopping deprivation I couldn’t say no! I also bought excellent some stone jewelry by Raw Earth, and Jerry Lee bought these here incredible aviators. Now he fits right in with the USA!

Look at Cassie J Sneider hiding behind an oppressive wall of other people’s vices. After our pretty great show at Butler University in Indianapolis tonight even I was hungry, which meant that everyone else on tour were starving because unlike these sad, weak people I tour with I don’t have to slow my roll with food. I was pretty excited to eat spinach etouffe at Yat’s but the place was closed so we picked a place that sounded exciting – a gay 24-hour diner called Ollie’s Downtown. Ollie’s is basically like the most uninspiring dive gay bar you can imagine, filled with the cigarette smoke and they serve food. It was like eating in a big, gay ashtray. Jerry Lee kindly offered not to smoke at the table, but Justin Bond took a stand – after all these nights having to take V’s cigarettes outside, the tables had turned! If we wanted fresh air, we would have to go outside, she said, and lit up a Marlboro Light right there at the table! The only thing that soothes the grotesque pain of sitting in a room of second-hand smoke is smoking, so I adopted a When-In-Indianapolis attitude and smoked one of Mx’s cigarettes. It was pretty disgusting but worth it to see the looks of shock and horror when my non-smoking tourmates came in to the bar/diner/hell and saw me smoking and sipping a Sprite (I had asked for a Ginger Ale!)

Cassie looked pretty depressed by the atmosphere and I asked her if she was having body memories of being locked in sealed environments with chain-smoking parents, and she lit up with the glow of being seen and said yes. I was, too.

My true love came to visit me on tour. Perhaps she just wanted an excuse to go shopping for faux coonskin hats at truck stops, but I don’t care. Steve Perry said it, the road ain’t no place to start a family. Having a conjugal visit with my true love is of the utmost importance. That dude who plays Don Draper on Mad Men won’t allow his Hollywood lifestyle to separate him from his woman, that annoying actress from that Friends with Kids movie, for more than two weeks at a time and I am swearing by this as well.

In Portland we went to The Alibi, an epic tiki bar, for karaoke. It was our first and only karaoke on tour so far, and it was a really good one! Our guest that night at Lewis and Clark College was Cooper Lee Bombardier, who came on the very first Sister Spit tour ever in 1997! He also came on a later tiny tour up the west coast, and when me and Sini Anderson took the van to get cleaned we took Cooper’s duffel bag out of the back and then left it on the street by accident! At the shady car wash on Portrero in San Francisco! A lifetime of leather pants, perfectly worn western shirts and classic rock Ts, gone in an instant. I can’t believe Cooper even talks to me after that. That’s forgiveness.

This was Dorothy Allison’s first trip inside a karaoke bar! She didn’t sing, but, you know, baby steps! It was brave enough for her to endure Cassie’s ferocious Iron Maiden, my trembling Stevie Nicks, and Chelsea Starr’s Courtney Love. If she was going to sing, I think she would have done Janis Joplin. There’s always tomorrow.

Speaking of Sister Spit Alumni Chelsea, check out her fancy phone! Way to dodge a brain tumor and look cute! I also enjoy the rhinestone cellie on the table, the wad of cash and the bottle of digestive enzymes.

Plaid Attack, Chicago

That’s a  Char’d Polish on the left and your classic Cheese Dog on the right. Chicago, duh.

We all miss Dorothy Allison so much! Having her in the van was sweet and magical, and hearing her every night was a devastating rapture. For reals. We love you, Dorothy!

In Minneapolis we really needed a mic cord that was locked inside this cabinet. I had a feeling Cassie J could pick a lock, and when I asked her she said, “What kind of lock?” Then she pulled a bobby pin from her hair and got to work. It’s so great traveling with criminals.

Watching Season 2 of Dynasty in the Redwoods, California

Erin Markey is just WILD about Dill Pickle Potato Chips!

Okay, more soon, I got to go to bed! We’re getting up early to do a Sephora run before our Whole Foods run before heading to Oberlin College. Excellent!

Hey! Our Road Manager Jerry Lee ran out to get some dollars in Tucson and wound up falling into Toxic Ranch Records and finding a Seven Year Bitch 45! Look at all that punk happiness on his face. I understand – as awesome as our Tucson show was, and it was AWESOME, very, very, very AWESOME, I couldn’t wait til it was over so I could dash over to the Goodwill and buy two winter coats, a skirt, three blouses (One is Norma Kamali! Score!) and a necklace. Let’s be real: Tour is about hitting thrift shops across the USA and maximum karaoke.

At one gas station, Dorothy was told by the man behind the counter that they no longer had a microwave because druggies from the halfway house down the block would come in to microwave their pee before they had to go for a pee test. We don’t know if this actually works or if it is the sort of idea that comes from a person who also thinks there are bugs crawling out of their pores.

I like to lay down in the van and sort of sleep but also just listen to everyone talking. It gives me this cozy, safe feeling I used to get when I was a kid and half fell-asleep under the kitchen table when we had company over. Company was generally my grandmother and an aunt and a few cousins chain smoking and gossiping with my mother, and I would pray they’d just leave me there half-snoozing and totally eavesdropping on the floor, and they usually did. Today in the van Dorothy was playing her iPod and we listened to James McMurty and the Heartless Bastards, which sounds like a contemporary country music Violent Femmes, and then the theme to All That Jazz, plus some poems. It all prompted Erin to sing Jesus puts his money in the National Bank, the national bank, the National Bank / Jesus puts his money in the National Bank/ And that’s how Jesus saves! And share how she sang this song her dad taught her at her Youth Group ski trip and everyone just stared at her.

Today on the drive from Oakland to Arcata we passed the Army recruiting office where Dorothy’s son almost registered, and the Pier 1 Imports parking lot where Dorothy waited for him. The Army recruiter came out and said, ‘Mother Allison, you’ve got a fine boy,’ and what Dorothy was all, ‘Get the fuck away from my vehicle, I am here under protest.” Wow, did you really say that?! We all gasped. “I wanted to,” She sighed, “But you don’t want to embarrass your boy.”

Dorothy Allison told us a story about Janis Joplin’s old girlfriend Linda, who’d lived in Northern California. Linda told Dorothy that when people OD’d they’d bury them in hollow of a Redwood grove and cover them with dirt and flowers and wine, and say about them ‘They went to the trees.’ “She’s the one who was selling Janis’ underwear on Craig’s List. Not that they were actually Janis’ underwear. You know Janis wasn’t wearing Calvin Klein underwear so you knew she was just fucking with them. You got to make a living somehow.”

“Did you all know that Thomas Kincaid died this weekend?” Jerry Lee asks.

“He was lying in a bathtub with a bowl of gravy next to him, like Whitney Houston,” Erin said.

“Can you imagine if your last meal was a bowl of gravy fries?” Jerry Lee asked.

“I’m going to make it my artistic mission,” Said Erin.

“I hate that we live in a world where you can’t just have a movie about Julia Child, you have to splice in a blogger.”  – Brontez Purnell

Erin Markey missed out on My So-Called Life because she wasn’t allowed to watch MTV because of the kids who set their house on fire after watching Beevus and Butthead.

In the front of the van Cassie and Dorothy negotiate Dorothy’s iPod for maximum Springsteen. “We’ll start with Badlands,” Dorothy says. “This is one of my favorite songs to sing at karaoke,” Cassie says. “I bet you’re good,” Dorothy says.

Sippin Syrup is the opposite of an energy drink – it is chock full of every herbal downer you can think of: Kava Kava, Hops, Valerian, Poppy, Melatonin and more. Jerry Lee drank some during the day and was then too wasted to drive the van. Cassie drank some after dark and Kit made the mistake of spiking his with Vodka. Says Jerry, “The ‘sippin’ is for real! You do not want to drink that, you want to sip it! I was seriously snoozed out. It’s carbonated. You can’t taste any of it, it just tastes like grape soda. All three of us who took it had a real doped-up experience on it.” Note the use of the word ‘took’ instead of ‘drank’.

Even better than the free tampons at the UC Santa Barbara Women’s Center are the buttons that say Don’t grab my ASS! It’s sexual assault!

Brontez’s reading materials. He says that he’s the kind of woman that The Feminine Mystique says you’re not supposed to be. Also, Cassie brought a copy of The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years for us to watch on the DVD player in the van, after we watch the 2nd season of Dynasty, which Jerry Lee brought.

Jerry Lee’s latest Doritos adventure: Doritos Dinamita. “Look, they’re rolled Doritos! Let’s smoke them! ‘It was all fun and games until Jerry Lee got hospitalized for smoking Doritos.’” He eats them. “Oh my god oh that’s goooooood. It’s limey! The red ones are making me feel crazy, though.”

Stopping at the drive through tree is becoming a Sister Spit tradition – though the audience at our Arcata show said that Trees of Mystery is the area’s best tourist trap. Brontez did not get out of the van at this stop. “I’m gonna stay and sleep,” He said. “I seen a tree.”

At Tomo, the delicious sushi restaurant inside the Arcata Hotel, they’ll hold onto your chopsticks for you. Isn’t that cool?

I tried to upload a video of Jerry Lee losing it while holding a animatronic animal called Justin Beaver that sings Justin Bieber songs, but it didn’t work so you will have to visualize.

We’re off to Portland! Come see us at Holocene!