It is well and good that Julia was free to accompany me to Wednesday’s premiere screening of IFC’s “Portlandia,” as she is in my “peer group” and it would have been terrible to have to explain to someone younger why I was LOLing at a throwaway line about the  Jim Rose Circus during the musical segment,”Dream of the ’90s,” which opens the new sketch comedy series.

“Portlandia,” the brainchild of SNL’s Fred Armisen and musician Carrie Brownstein,  skewers the sort of crunchy, granola-y lifestyle choices and slacker ethos that have never quite disappeared, and proves their is still comedic mileage in spoofing feminist bookstores and organic, free-range farms, aging rockers and DIY enthusiasts. Especially when the vignettes hew toward the weirder and more character-based, rather than a more staid set-up/punchline formula. (Think “Kids in the Hall” or “The League of Gentlemen.”)

The event, held at the Edison Ballroom, was much like the show itself, a mix of the rock and comedy worlds. Oh, there is Jason Sudeikis (who has a cameo in the pilot as a Messianic organic farmer) and Jack McBrayer of “30 Rock,” and then look there is JD Samson of Le Tigre and Annie Clark of St. Vincent. Hey, Stephen Merchant is hanging around the back bar and Todd Barry is just sort of wandering around.

Servers dressed in flannel shirts passed around Oregon wines and craft beers, and a deliciously deadly vodka concoction made with ginger beer.

A Teaser for the upcoming season of the show featured cameos by Aimee Mann and Kyle Maclachlan.

The Portland-based band The Thermals played a tight, energetic set to cap the night.

After the band, there was definitely  that post-concert, green room vibe.  There was a bottleneck to reach the bathroom, and the famous comedians who lingered were chatting with seductive, doe-eyed, younger ladies; it was a scene that verged perilously close to one that might be comedic fodder for the very show they came to support.

["Portlandia" debuts on IFC on Friday, January 21st at 10:30 pm.  You can also stream the first episode on Hulu for a limited time.]

After the jump, watch “Dream of the ’90s,”which includes the line “Portland is a city where young people go to retire”–I mean! (Also, don’t we all secretly want a do-over of the last eleven years, like, sometimes?)

It all started one day in yoga class…

Cute tight little yoga pants, front row, right by the big mirrors for the whole class to check out my yoga poses, and something else…the dreaded…”cameltoe.” That’s where the idea for Camelflage was conceived. I looked at department stores, on-line for a solution [Oh, what she must've seen by Googling "cameltoe"!  -- Ed.] for this problem. There was nothing. There were blogs and YouTube videos posted of women complaining about the same problem “cameltoe,” and how embarrassing it was for them. They were needing a solution too. So, I designed a patent pending women’s panty that has a built in flexible, breathable, insert to smooth out her “Labia Majora” AKA “cameltoe.”

I feel like — no offense mind you — this needs to go into the “This Is a Thing That Is Real?” file.  But according to the testimonials on the website they are comfortable, and great.  Yes but HOW does it work?:

Here’s to confidence.  In tight situations.  And to not being “that girl.”  Also:  If I can take nothing else away, I will now be incorporating the term “Visual privacy” into my lexicon.  And if that graphic weren’t enough, well, seeing is believing:

So smooth!

Ladies! Until the pendulum of fashion swings back, and it is we men who are over-worried about powdering our wigs, or shimming our plumber’s cracks, trussing up our belly fat (Oh, we are doing that now already?), and obscuring the dreaded moose knuckle,  I salute your commitment to bearing the aesthetic burden, and presenting to the world flat, visually appealing labia majora.

Bonus:  Here is L7, performing as Camel Lips, in John Waters’ Serial Mom.

Today, it is American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert versus one-time child star and Incorporated Kid Ryan Lambert.  Ryan Lambert co-starred in The Monster Squad, so he’s decidedly the winner.   Join us next time for another pointless comparison.

Here is a short, amusing video by Australia’s Hungry Beast which answers the question, “What if Lady Gaga walked among us, but without…The Fame?” [Towleroad]

Last night the Discovery Channel’s “Life,” the sequel, of sorts, to “Planet Earth,” premiered in New York.

After introductory remarks by David M. Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications — “the #1 nonfiction media company!” A declaration made more than once! — and executive producer Mike Gunton, the screening of episode one, “Challenges of Life,” commenced, with the score played live onstage by the New York Pops.  The series, narrated by Oprah Winfrey, is breathtakingly shot, with eye-popping, nearly trippy close-ups of participants like the stalk-eyed fly, whose transformation after emergence from the pupa puts any Hollywood CGI shenanigans to shame.  There was a somewhat comical hippo fight, a segment featuring the adorable and wily Capuchin monkeys demonstrating their palm-nut-cracking technique, and a pair of Western Grebes, birds who express their monogamy through a graceful, kabuki-like dance of mirrored movements.

The Challenges of life, then?  Survival!  Eating, fighting, and mating.  All in service of the continuation of the species.  An aspect of struggle that was taking place in the foyer of Alice Tully Hall after the screening.  The line for food was unruly, and there was an immediate run on sliders,  almost souring the vibe of the  post-show reception.  The particular breed of celebrity know as the Reality Television Star (or is it Nonfiction Media Star?), they who comprise a fair portion of the entertainment programming on Discovery’s networks, mingled amongst the executives and series sponsors, gamely answering questions from reporters.  Kate Gosselin, with her DWTS partner in tow, was the center of much of the attention, her hair looking like a spun sugar confection.  The other species native to cable television and the red carpet  included a Real Housewife of New York, a Cake Boss, the Cash Cabbie, and Shorty Rossi, the Pit Boss, with his adorable, slightly bored-looking companion animal Hercules.

Author Josh Kilmer Purcell of “The Fabulous Beekman Boys”– the show about the upstate farm and “lifestyle brand” he runs with his partner Dr. Brent Ridge–was there looking dapper.

It was easy to miss Glenn Close, standing alone eating her burger, tiny and immaculate in a black pantsuit, but the cameras eventually found her, too.

After dessert the herd had thinned, and when the lights were brought up to full, the beasts of the party were gamely ushered out, the struggles for dominance, the mating rituals having been kept mostly in check. (Though it is possible those urges were gratified at whatever after-event media types and cable executives are wont to converge upon.)

“Life” premieres on the Discovery Channel on March 21. [Photo via Discovery Channel]

The word Outré is defined as “out of the common course or limits; extravagant; (2) bizarre; outlandish”; unfortunately the new solo show at Ars Nova, Outré Island, is not quite that far gone.  At least, not yet! The workshop production, written and performed by Christoper Rozzi,is presented as a sort of meeting of the cultures between our country and Outré Island, an heretofore unknown society located a thousand or so miles away.  The citizens of Outré only became aware of the “outside world” when an autographed headshot of Don Cheadle happened to wash ashore.  Now, the idea is to build a tunnel between the island and New York (shaped like an umbilical cord), and so the audience is presented with a select group of island dwellers, representatives  intended to bridge the gap betwixt our two cultures.  And so you have the overall framework of the show.

Rozzi is an adept performer, the six characters he plays, from the mayor to a precocious child named Delmonte, to Robin Merry, a children’s book author with a mountain man beard, are well-crafted.  Though Rozzi may best be known for his version of William Shakespeare, popular on YouTube and which he reprises here. (It is the most honed and precise.)

The central conceit of the show, however, feels grafted on, and aside from a few cultural quirks the audience gleans about Outré Island,mostly from interstitial video segments — there are  jail parks, and the annual hunt for the mayor, and a mysterious, naturally-produced  blue substance (It’s a fuel source!  It’s an ingestible stimulant!) — there didn’t seem to be a reason to create a locale out of whole cloth, when it could have just as easily been set in a fictional US town, albeit one where the inhabitants are just as quirky and deluded.  The sum of the characterizations does not equal the thematic whole in this case. (Also, isn’t it terribly convenient that the Outré Islanders happen to speak English, and dress in jeans and sweaters, and have access to video equipment?)

The talented Raja Azar (of the pirate musical Jollyship the Whiz-Bang) is underserved here in his role as musical director, left to fend for himself corner of the theater, his character all hopped up on blue substance.  It felt too much like he was merely stalling when waiting for Rozzi to effect a costume change, and Azar seemed vaguely relieved, as did the audience, when Rozzi returned to the stage.  Though the two did have an easy rapport.

There is also, be warned for those of you that hate to be called upon to interact during the show, a fair amount of crowd work, which on the plus side opens up the piece to spontaneity and improvisation, but also leaves the onus on the audience to drive certain segments.

Watching the show I was reminded of something:  Were you ever, in elementary or middle school, in either a social studies or history class, presented with the tale of the Nacirema and their “exotic” customs, which after a thorough examination the whole “whoa” at the end of the exercise was that you realized Nacirema is American spelled backwards, and you’ve been examining your own culture from the outside in?  This show has the potential to go in that direction.  Or, alternately, if instead of bringing Outré Island to the audience, the performance brought the audience to that locale, letting the mores and customs unfold in their own setting, like a living travelogue.  With his residency at Ars Nova, Rozzi has been continually developing this work, so this show may yet yield different results by the end of the collaboration. As it stands now it is a fine showcase for Rozzi as a writer/performer, but not  a cohesive product. If he indeed keeps tweaking the show, and a stronger narrative emerges, he may yet tie these broad characters into something larger, a piece that is both familiar and, as the title implies, outré.

Outré Island plays a limited engagement at Ars Nova Thursdays at 8PM now through March 11th.  Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here.

Woke up this morning a little worse for wear.  [Read: hung over!]

We got to visit the Grand Ole Opry which was a treat.  Lots of memorabilia in the museum, lots of Minnie Pearl and Patsy Cline.  [Both of whom I still adore.  Minnie Pearl because really she reminds me of being a youngster, sitting on my grandmother's couch, probably with a snack--usually a bowl of chocolate ice cream--and watching "Hee Haw" on her big ole television console.  There was no cable at her house, only a temperamental TV antenna.]

The actual Opry House was closed, so we took a drive to the Galyord Opryland Hotel which rested on four acres.  There were four different wings, an atrium.  It was a bit out of control, like a Martian colony or something.

We left to hit the highway, where every billboard in Tennessee seemed to advertise some sort of Loretta Lynn-endorsed establishment.  Loretta Lynn’s RV Resort [Oxymoron?] and Plantation; Loretta Lynn’s Kitchen; Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch; the Loretta Lynn Museum.  [Diversify, Diversify!]

We joked about what establishments were missing:  Loretta Lynn’s Porn Emporium; Loretta Lynn’s Rub ‘n’ Tug Massage Parlour; Loretta Lynn’s Monster Truck Arena.

We hit traffic before finally arriving in Mississippi.

We were supposed to do a line-thru [imperative as we were killing brain cells left and right and needed to remember the script for our show] but the “Veggie Combo” was already asleep.  [The "Veggie Combo"* consisted of Guy, a hardcore raw foodist -- more on him TK -- and Missy, a drunkorexic who decided there was no better time to adopt the raw foods diet than while touring the country in a van.  Through many a rural space.  Where access to the staples of their dietetic demands were likely to be few and far between.  ANYWAY!]  They are definitely starting to splinter off.  Guy doesn’t possess the temperament to be road manager, I think.  [Oh, yes so!  Guy the raw foodist was also our "road manager" which meant he had some sort of nominal control over our tour van, and also the disbursement of our weekly salary.]

Oh!  I forgot to mention Lou and Missy coming into my hotel room the other night, LATE — I heard their noisy entrance even in my half-drunken dream state  — rolling me over and shaking me to semi-consciousness, only to then put a [weed] pipe to my lips and encouraging me to take a hit.  I did, then passed out again.  [We usually rotated who we were rooming with, and this night I was with our truck driver and erstwhile pot provider Lou.  Playing possum at that point was not an option.  Take the hit, roll over, try to resume sleep.]

[About;  Previously]

Rawley’s hot dogs. The Rizl Dizl (real deal).  Buttered buns and the works–bacon, relish, mustard, sauerkraut. [Oh, and:  deep-fried.  heart-healthy?  Probably not so much.]  “The greatest hot dog in the world” according to Martha Stewart.  [ While rehearsing for the tour we were based in Connecticut--Milford to be exact--and had a vehicle at our disposal, sometimes.  Ana* had with her a copy of Eat Your Way Across the USA, figuring, rightly, that if we were going to be traversing these here United States, we might as well sample some of the best regional fare we could.  On a day off rehearsal we commandeered a van and make our pilgrimage to Rawley's.]

Saw a lot of Martha Clones roll up into the place with their L.L. Bean hubbies and their SUVs.  The dogs were served by surly teenagers.  A sign above the take-out window read “This is not ‘fast’ food.”

Some hump in front of me was complaining that he’d been waiting for over twenty-five minutes to get his food, so the surly teen flipped the cardboard sign around to read “30 Min Wait.”

After eating, we went for a hike in the woods at Sleeping Giant State Park. Nature!   [How I did not gain any weight on this tour, what with our rigorous eating of barbecued and fried foods, is a miracle.  I miss when my metabolism was that jackrabbity.]

[About; Previously]

We rode into Atlanta thinking we were going to rule the school–two days free and nothing to do.  Wrong!  First, it was cold as balls.  Thirty-degree weather.  We checked in on Thursday night and I struck out on my own, unbeknownst to the others, to see a band or two play at Smith’s Olde Bar.  I had wanted to catch Freeloader, a NYC alt-country outfit, but missed them.  Caught Pontoon and Black Goldstein–two local bands.  [I remember nothing about these bands!  Though I think Smith's served a quite good burger?]

I got back to the hotel fairly early, which was good as at 8:38 the next morning we got a call saying that we had a show and had to be ready in the lobby in twenty minutes.  What?!  Apparently [the theater company] fucked up and we did not, as they’d led us to believe, have a canceled show.   The company lied and said we’d had a breakdown but would be at the venue ASAP.  [The scheduling snafus?  The lying? Standard operating procedure for the company we were working with.  Which might explain why they went bankrupt shortly after our tour ended.]

We did the show with the bare minimum of set pieces and lights.  [Oh, so! This tour, this show, was the most expensive they'd ever sent out.  We were the first group to go on the road with it.   Most shows carried their set pieces in a trailer hitched to the back of the van.  We needed a diesel-guzzling Penske truck to haul all of our stuff. It was driven by Lou, our technical director, who was never not stoned.  If one was sick of the van one would opt to "ride in the Penske" with big Lou.  "Ride in the Penske" became a convenient shorthand for "I really need to get stoned."]

Come to find out at check-out the next morning K., our stage manager, had gone out front of the hotel at 3AM for a cigarette and was robbed at gunpoint.  They’d taken his cellphone and wallet.  [The whole thing seems in retrospect a bit suspect, but it was at the time frightening and we rallied around our own.]  We got the fuck out town, our only brief stop the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.  Well, just the gift shop.  I can never get enough tchotchke.  [This behavior has not in any way changed.  Show me a historical monument or landmark and I will politely ask directions straightaway to the gift shop.]

The ensuing drive to Durham was hellish, everyone wearing their cranky pants.  Got to the hotel and chilled.

Drove on to Charlottesville today with a stop in Richmond. We were walking down the streets of the historic district on our way to lunch and they were filming a movie–a period piece– and there were Model Ts lining the streets.  The movie had some awful title, Iron Jawed Angels (Lock Jawed Cocksuckers?) and was starring Ms. Hilary Swank.  We saw her being fitted into her corset by wardrobe.  [That Lock Jawed Cocksuckers joke?  Terrible.  But we must have found it funny at the time.  Maybe we were trying to title the inevitable porn spoof? I never did bother to see that movie.  Anyway!   At lunch I had the most delicious salmon and dill quiche.  I still remember it.]

Doing this tour I now know why rock stars trash hotel rooms.  If you see enough of them day in and day out you just want to break something.  The level of boredom and cagey animal behavior is so heightened.  [I stand by this assertion.  For whatever reason we were only booked into Days Inns on the tour.  I've seen every possible combination of terrible bedspreads and hokey hotel wall art that chain has to offer.   Just passing a Days Inn now makes me vaguely itchy and a bit nauseated.]

Last show of the tour at a high school in Silver Springs, Maryland.  Hungover as a motherfucker.  Hurled in a trashcan off-stage during “Magi”…”good gifts” *barf” “sacrificed…” *barf*.  [This so did happen, and the big industrial-sized trash bin was unfortunately located near our unflappable stage manager, K.  I delivered my few lines in the adaptation of "The Gift of the Magi" then exited the stage to perfunctorily vomit in the available receptacle.  I believe this is known in certain acting circles as the Peter O'Toole method.]

I didn’t feel as sad ending this show, I just wanted to depart.  Hate that I was ill but c’est la vie.  We had gone the night before to Ruby Tuesday and they had a special–buy one drink get the next one for a penny. I had four glasses of the house Burgundy.  Big mistake!  I was so trashed.  Apparently I fell on the floor, though I remember none of this.  Hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much.  [Though I remembered the hangover and the performance distinctly, it was not until re-reading this entry that I was reminded it was due to terrible house wine at a terrible chain restaurant.  Serves me right?  Who quaffs the house Burgundy at Ruby Tuesday?  Oh, poor actors, that's who.]

It’s so weird that the van just drops us off back in NYC, like  we’re returning alien abductees or kidnap victims.  It’s hard to integrate back into “real life” after an experience like this.  After establishing a social hierarchy, a common language (i.e. poop jokes), it becomes necessary to dismantle all that and go back to the previously established customs and norms.  [The return to "civilian life" is jarring.  Poop talk is universal and a great bonding subject among disparate personalities.  Everybody poops!  Right?]

I hope I learned something on this tour.  Now it’s uncertainty, confusion, jealousy, frustration.  Well, until the next gig.  Do I want a next gig?  I certainly want things…union benefits, an agent.  These are goals for the new year.  [These goals were never manifest.  In fact, my next gig was as a performer with the children's theatre program at the Central Park Zoo.]

Awhile ago I was out with a friend visiting from California.  He is in possession a medical marijuana prescription and can, as he put it, charge weed to his credit card.  It is his one remaining vice, as nicotine and spirits are mine.  We’ve both winnowed down our particular youthful appetites for the headier substances.  Later on in the night, when lamenting the psychedelics we used to do, and the parties we used to do them at, he asked if I’d tried salvia.  (Remember when for awhile salvia videos were going around the internet?) I said I had not, and after hearing his account definitely will not even consider it.  He said he took the first hit and was near-instantly stripped of all sense of self, of ego, of him-ness for lack of a better word, and was seemingly flung in his mind to some sort of pre-time primordial ooze, where he like hyperwarp evolved, millions of years at a time, back to the present, at which point he’d regained enough sense to ask himself, “did I ingest some sort of drug?” He looked at the pipe in his hand and turned to the person he was with to ask how long he was “out of it.”  The reply:  “three and a half minutes.”  So, yeah, none of that.  I’m too fragile for that kind of psychic dismantling.  My personal infrastructure is held together at this point by duct tape, spit and a vague existential despair.  It did remind me of the time, however, when I too peeked through a psychedelic window to marvel at an evolutionary hallucination.

When we were living in The House, across the way was a friendly, if rednecky, guy we’ll call Jake.  Jake was a few years younger than my roommates and me, not going to college, just working.  He lived with his mother and his much younger sibling, and toiled I think as a waiter.  He drove a blue Ford Mustang, and would often be out in his dirt driveway washing the car down, shirtless.

When we first moved in I was excited by the idea of having someone new to hang out with, someone that wasn’t embroiled in the petty quotidian dramas that existed in my current circle of friends.  Being in a highly competitive and rigorous program, we were all so trapped in our little bubble.  This neighbor, he was someone new.  Nice.  Normal.  Straight.  Or, so I thought.  Then he began to drop some strange hints.  And once when we were over at his house, no one else was home and he had to retrieve a thing from his room, he had left open on his computer, I’m sure for the benefit of me and my roommate Jay, a gay porn website.  This, to my mind, was not how I’d wanted the neighbor scenario to play out.  Outwardly I was a happy-go-lucky pansexual libertine, but inwardly I was panicky about my sexuality.  Panicky about my own worth, attractiveness, about labeling myself or being labeled.  It was like this gauntlet had been thrown down by this blonde ne’er-do-well.  Petty as it was, I thought then I’d be in competition with Jay.  For one of us would have to make out with/grope/sleep with this wild, tacky, ecstasy-abusing ruffian, would we not?   It turned out not (though there were some aborted attempts at parties), and towards the end of our occupancy at the Pink House I’d soured on Jake as he’d borrowed a handful of my cds, returning them to me scratched and unplayable. And so I found, if I may insert the lesson into the middle of the story, that when one is ingesting, as many of us were at that time in that house, a fair amount of mind-altering substances, one finds judgments can be clouded, minor slights blown way out of proportion.  The body language and covert signals you are certain your personal antenna is receiving, they are not real.  I’d concocted and let myself get wrapped up in a fantasy.  To adapt a saying:  Sometimes a blunt is just a blunt. Anyway!  Carrying on.

Down the street from our little rural bungalow was a pasture.  We had once gone out hunting for mushrooms, which Jake confirmed did indeed sprout there, in the ripe cow patties.  It was a night following a rainstorm that the roommates and I, dressed in black, gathered our flashlights and under a starry sky stalked through the damp grass hunting our bounty:  it felt a bit like capture the flag, only the prize was not another team’s scrap of cloth but hallucinogens.  We were not successful but a short time after that, Jake and some of his neighborhood cohorts, scrubby delinquents who could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, showed up at our door one Saturday bearing a plastic pitcher of  “shroom tea,”  made with grape Kool-Aid.  I want to say it was around eleven in the morning, and I ‘d just finished a bowl of cereal.  (Cheerios?  Special K?)  That I had hardly rinsed the bowl out in the sink and was about, after a mere half-second of deciding, to drink a cup of funky shroom juice gives me pause now.  But that is what I did, gulped it down, all slimy and with little fungusy bits of flotsam bobbing at the rim of the glass.  Of course the series of events that follow are if not outright lost then muddled beyond piecing together, save one.  I had an anxious need, about an hour into the trip, to get out of the house.  Jukie had not partaken in the day’s festivities, so she agreed to drive me, in my banged up white Honda Civic, to the 7-11.  I desperately wanted, desperately desired, a Coke Slurpee.  I remember Jukie standing in front of me, in her gray hoodie, gesturing for me to follow her out the door.  But when I looked at her, it was as if I saw her entire evolutionary make-up, from monkey ancestor to twentieth century college gal, her whole genetic lineage shifting and swirling like a vivid diorama.  I apparently asked her repeatedly if she was indeed she, and to her credit she gamely assured me she was indeed my friend, occupying the temporal space of the right now, which was the driver’s seat of my car.  At the convenience store I know I managed to pour my Slurpee, but when I got to the counter I froze.  I tried to hand the man his payment but I’d forgotten the concept of money.  I had these coins, and these slips of paper, and they might as well have been wampum.  Jukie, trying to keep up appearances, prodded me to hand the man my money.  I just shrugged, agape.  Lost under the harsh florescent lights of the store.  Finally Jukie snatched a bill from my hand, thrust it at the guy behind the counter, retrieved my change and hustled me back to the car.  I pestered here the entire short drive back again to confirm if she was indeed my friend, or an evolutionary counterpart somehow shifted here through space/time.

I’m not sure if it was this time or another that when I urinated a Technicolor rainbow rose from the toilet bowl, like a choreographed water fountain show.  I know that the neighborhood kids had since left, along with Jake, and after a few hours the shimmery tendrils of the trip receded.  It was by then late afternoon, blustery, the sky purple and yellow like a bruise.  The house had begun to fill up with a bunch of our other friends for round two, the night’s revels.  They were smoking weed, oblivious to the psychedelic delusions that’d gripped the early part of the day.  I took  a hit or two to take the edge off.  By the time we left the place, to see a terrible Doors cover band (Called I think Crystal Ship?  Also apropos in retrospect!)–not my choice but then sometimes you made the choice, like to ingest shrooms before noon, and sometimes you let others, for the sake of community, dictate the entertainment for the day–I was only a little stoned.  And firmly in the present.

It was the final night of my week-long visit to Los Angeles and I was to spend it dressed in thrown-together motley, cavorting onstage at a rave being held at the Henry Fonda Theater. It was not how I had envisioned my Saturday evening in the city, but when you arrive in town without an agenda, at the mercy of your friends and their cars, things can often take an unexpected turn.

Sally had received the invitation on Friday, from someone I’ll call Karnage, a fetish model and entertainer she’d met at Burning Man the year prior. He’d been hired for the event and was rustling up talent to go-go dance on stage from midnight until four A.M. There would be payment involved for her services. Reading the message aloud, she asked if I’d be interested in attending.  “It could be fun,” I said noncommittally. She e-mailed Karnage back, explaining that I was visiting and to see if I could somehow get on the list. His response: I could get in free but only if came in costume. Otherwise, admission to the party was forty-five dollars. I weighed my options. I could either not go, and thereby not spend the last night with my host and best friend, who’d kindly let me crash on her couch the entire week; I could pay the forty-five dollars, which I didn’t really have to spend at this point in the trip; or I could play dress up. (A point I should clarify: these were not to be your standard-issue circus clowns, but sexy clowns, alternative clowns, Klowns with a “K” — more nipple rings than Ringling Bros.)

Drew, a lanky musician with a handlebar mustache, was more than game. When I got back to the apartment from dinner Friday evening, he and Sally were discussing characters. He was thinking of doing a version of an old-fashioned circus strongman, but with disco balls for barbells. It was either that or a creepy, bespectacled creation he had dubbed Insane Clown Fosse.

Though not without reservations, I decided that I’d tag along. Sally, Drew and I spent Saturday afternoon shopping for costume pieces in the discount bazaars of downtown Los Angeles, traversing fabric stores and the catacombs of cheap goods, combing through stalls that sold plastic jewelry for a dollar and panties and t-shirts for three. We spent the early part of the evening prepping, Drew finally abandoning the strongman idea and settling on a garish polka dot and striped ensemble that made him, with his facial hair and beanpole frame, resemble an even more creepy version of the Purple Pieman from Strawberry Shortcake. Sally was busy assembling her red and white ensemble: red panties, red corset, candy striped tights, and fishnet gloves. The plan was to finish dressing at her place and then meet up with the rest of the crew at Karnage’s house for face-painting, before caravanning to the club to make a grand entrance en masse. Both Drew and Sally had a “look,” but what to do with me? I was handed a pair of turquoise plaid polyester pants, an impulse thrift store purchase of Sally’s that rode high on my waste and fit a little too snug around the crotch. I took an old white button-down dress shirt that I didn’t want anymore (one less thing to pack), stained it with coffee and burned cigarette holes into the fabric. I capped off my look with a ratty wig. The elements assembled, I had created a sort of greasy substitute teacher-slash-child molester aesthetic, an image which I was assured could be emphasized to the fullest with the judicious application of some make-up.

The first person to greet us upon arrival at Karnage’s was a petite girl in a bra and harem pants. She warmly embraced each of us and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Butterfly.” It was like being welcomed into the Hare Krishnas, but instead of a being handed a flower or a vegetarian meal you got a noisemaker and a red nose. Karnage emerged then from his bathroom, face half made up but already resembling the main character in the movie Mephisto. He was tall and lithe, with floppy blond hair. He was shirtless, his alabaster, hairless chest exposed, and he was sporting a pair of silver pants with a demented-looking rubber mask affixed to the crotch with safety pins. Drew and I were introduced to him, real names first. “And what are your clown names?” Karnage asked, quite seriously. Sally opted for her default stage persona. Drew was Insane Clown Fosse.

Karnage turned to me. “What about you?”

I fumbled. “Uh, I’m not sure.”

Drew swooped in and rescued me. “How about Jaeger,” he offered.

Despite being dressed in second-hand clothes and an old wig, for some reason I decided to be picky about my new identity. “It’s a little fancy to go with my costume,” I said, fingering a cigarette hole in my shirt. Though I thought Drew was right to go with an alcohol motif. “I’m more like Schlitz.” It was a split-second decision, but it seemed to fit; I looked like the type of clown who’d be named for a 40 oz. malt liquor. “Schlitz the Klown.” Karnage nodded in approval, and led us into the kitchen to make us cocktails, where we pressed him for details on who exactly was throwing the party. It was a rave for the upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah. The crowd would be mostly L.A.-based Israelis. It was an answer, but it didn’t necessarily satisfy my curiosity.

The drink of the night was watermelon vodka with cranberry juice as mixer. I was thankful for the liquor, it helped to take the edge off. I hung back while Drew and Sally readied applied their make-up in the living room, using the large funhouse mirror leaning against the wall to put on their clown white.

More people arrived, including Karnage’s roommate Randy. Randy with his ghostly pallor and blonde dreads was dressed in black leather pants, a black t-shirt and motorcycle boots. A peek into his room revealed a black and maroon color scheme, and there was a Barbie doll suspended upside down from the ceiling by a chain — it looked like the feature spread in “Goth Homes and Gardens.” Yet when he spoke, he sounded like an alt-bro from Long Island, which struck me as jarringly out-of-context. His girlfriend, while fishing a long blue wig out of her bag, introduced herself as Ghetto Rainbow Brite. I have a hard enough time remembering  names upon introduction as it is, now I was going to have to remember both a combination of real names and assumed ones. Everyone gathered in the living room was talking about this year’s Burning Man, which had just ended. Who’d been and who hadn’t. How it had changed and how it had not. A guy who looked to be mid-to-late thirties, tall and a bit paunchy, sat lounging on the couch. He hadn’t been this year, but explained that he was a little out of it as he’d done five hits of ecstasy the night prior.

I returned to the kitchen seeking more booze, out of instinct, nervousness and lack of anything better to do. I re-filled my plastic cup then made a surreptitious trip out front to smoke a cigarette and kill time. It felt reminiscent of so many evenings of getting ready to go out when I was back in college, me standing around while the girls obsessed over the minutiae of their wardrobe and hair in the bathroom.

The Klowns weren’t shy, that’s for sure. At various points I saw Butterfly’s breasts and crotch as she got ready. One short fellow dropped trou and shimmied into tight bell bottoms, transforming himself into a pimp clown, complete with afro wig. The stream of arrivals continued, mostly petite, punky girls in their early twenties. The surly guy from the couch (Ultraviolet) had outfitted himself in a polka-dot jumpsuit. He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his make up kit, where he swathed his face in pink before he studiously applying green dots all over, like he’d been infected with circus measles. He motioned to me. “What’s your name again?”

“Mike,” I said.

“Someone needs to start doing Mike’s make-up,” he announced to no one in particular before returning his attention to the mirror. For all the drinking and chatter, there was still a seriousness of purpose. People were sharing eyelash glue, or white face powder, and passing liquid liner back and forth. I was odd man out. Luckily I wasn’t the only one, a writer from Australia, with whom I shared a cigarette outside and who was also in town visiting a friend, was being made over into Emo Klown. Sally found me and began to apply my face. I didn’t go full white, just black circles around my eyes, ringed like gun sights, and a blood-red tint applied to my lips, outlined in black and then smeared. I was now, for better or worse, Schlitz. A squishy foam nose, offered by one of the girls, completed the look. Someone named Taint arrived, with name tags for anyone who wanted. I took a colored gel pen and scribbled my new moniker on a card and slung it around my neck.

I received a text from my friend Jay. He’d had to work that night and wasn’t going to meet up with us, but his message said “If you hate the party and want me to pick you up, let me know.” It was an option, but where else could I go, in my ill-fitting pants and creepy swath of make-up?  Besides, I’d committed, and however dubious the enterprise, surely I could find a way to have fun.

We were given a fifteen minute warning, the clown van was moving out. Sally had hoped to ride with everyone else, but that meant leaving her car at the house, which meant coming back to get it at night’s end, prolonging my chance to get a scant few hours of sleep before the morning and the trip to the airport. I thought of the early flight I had to catch from  Burbank and silently hoped we’d end up taking her car to the club, so we could at least go straight home afterwards. After a spirited back and forth about the situation with Sparkle, who was acting as Karnage’s lieutenant, it was agreed we’d be taking our own car.

We circled the block several times to find parking, then made a pit stop at the 101 Coffee Shop for a quick pee break, to the stares and confused whispers of the patrons, before trudging the few blocks to the Fonda. There was a line formed around the front, but we couldn’t find our entourage. As Sally was beginning to dial Karnage on her cell, the air was pierced with the sounds of whoops and whistles and a parade of clowns appeared around the corner. Someone jabbed a noise maker into my hand and after getting a wristband from the bouncer, I followed our posse inside. The people queued up outside were cheering us on. Our conga line of clowns circled the dance floor, noise makers bleating, stirring up the dancers, before we were led back through the curtains to the stage.

The stage was U-shaped, with the DJ stationed in the center. There were a few benches at the back wall, which we commandeered to stow our gear and regroup. It was barely midnight, but the venue was filling up quickly. Our complimentary bottle of Ketel One emerged, courtesy of a promoter sporting a large mohawk. Sally managed to surreptitiously snag the bottle before the others noticed, and she, Drew and I passed it back and forth, taking greedy sips.

Moving to the edge of the platform, I looked down at the sea of revelers tossing beach balls back and forth, their glow sticks shining. They were clearly enjoying the High Holidays, or more likely just the high. I didn’t know if this party was indicative of the recently touted “new rave” movement, but it certainly captured the trappings of the old one: the toys, the wide pupils, and the grinding of jaws. It reminded me of college in Florida in the mid-nineties, where the clubs were reigned over by superstar DJs.  Though something about this party felt…off. Yet! I managed to be caught up in the fervor; I shook and swayed, even if it was merely from muscle memory. I enjoyed being above the crowd, mingling with the few “VIPs” who were on stage with us, particularly the brunette who kept tweaking my spongy clown nose. I was cast in my role and tried to play it to the hilt. There were costumed stilt walkers, also hired by the promoter, careening through the crowd.

Since I wasn’t on the payroll, I opted to take a break, following the ornate stairs of the Fonda Theater up to rooftop patio for a smoke. I lit a cigarette and moved toward one of the go-go clown girls, who had apparently snuck up here for a respite as well. When in unfamiliar surroundings, gravitate towards your own kind, even when in this case “my own kind” was girl in clown face with pasties on her nipples. She was surrounded by a few clubgoers so I lingered nearby, my clown nose in my hand. (It’s not easy or advisable to smoke a cigarette with a clown nose on.) A young, muscled guy approached.

“Are you faggot?” He asked, in a thick accent.

“What?!” My ears still ringing from being so close to the speakers downstairs, I couldn’t quite believe I’d heard him correctly and needed confirmation, which he supplied as he repeated his question with a hint of menace.

“Are you faggot?”

I looked him in the eye. “Try.  Another.  Word.”

“Are you gay?”

“Sure am,” I said as I exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke. At least I got him to use a more acceptable appellation. A Pyrrhic victory.

“You go over there,” he said, waving me away as if I were an annoying insect. I took a small step to the left, In case he was going to try to strike me, but otherwise I was willing to hold my ground. It didn’t matter. Having asserted his manhood, he turned his attention back to his friends. I finished my cigarette slowly, deliberately, while he and his companions tried to hit on the clown girl.

I marched back downstairs, fuming. Fuck him and fuck this fucking party, I thought.  Not that I missed the cuddly, candy raver days of pacifiers and group gropes, but at least there was a sense of inclusion. This “rave,”  as I had the displeasure of observing throughout the night, had a decidedly misogynistic, aggressive vibe. Though I guess anyone that pays forty-five bucks feels entitled to be a dick. I wanted to go home. It didn’t make me feel better that the next time I went upstairs to smoke, with Sally and Drew in tow, an entirely different person labelled Drew a faggot. Maybe everyone not in designer jeans and a striped button down, a hand on some vapid girl’s ass, could be construed as a faggot?  (Or entertainer=faggot?)  If I had wanted this kind of moneyed misogyny and entitlement, I might as well have just stayed in Manhattan and sucked down a few drinks in the Meatpacking District.  By now the buzz I’d acquired from the Vodka crans and the few shots of the Ketel One had dissipated, along with my good will.

We were soon hustled from the roof deck by the promoter to liven up the crowd, as the featured DJ of the night, Kilowatt or Ener-G, or some name that was meant to be connote an electric excitement, was about to spin. I dutifully tossed a beach ball out to the crowd. I put an inflatable pool toy around my neck and acted the fool. But at this point I was merely going through the motions, killing time until we could leave, out of some bizarre sense of loyalty or duty.  I noticed our ranks were thinning. Emo Klown and his friend had disappeared. I looked at the time– it was 2:45 A.M.– there was well over an hour yet to go. Sparkle, on mushrooms, was maniacally taking pictures with her digital camera. As was an older guy in suit, hired by the promoter; he kept swooping in and around the girls, who gamely dry-humped in pseudo-lesbian poses, the only acceptable display of non-heterosexual affection.

I made more and more trips out to the back alley to smoke cigarettes, away from the beats and the partygoers and the shirtless guy who was enjoying the carnal embrace of his girlfriend on a suspect-looking leather couch backstage. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. My pants were beginning to chafe. On every trip I made to the bathroom, I’d surreptitiously remove more and more of my makeup with water and brittle paper towels.

At a few minutes until four, Sally received her pay.  We left through the lobby, past a smarmy scenester in a suit, his hands cupped around one of the clown girls’ breasts (which one I didn’t know, I couldn’t keep them straight at this point). Near the exit, I had to wait while numbers were exchanged with some of the other go-go dancers, networking I supposed. The floor of the lobby was littered with plastic cups and torn paper wristbands. Through the doors, I could still see Karnage onstage, dancing away, an orange glow stick twirling in each hand.