SF, Ep. 36

December 10, 2010 — Mad-libbed, choral renditions of holiday favorites “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” decided the unprecedented ending of LDM SF's Holiday Bloodbath Special.  In the spirit of the season, Jamie DeWolf plowed the competition for all gingers great and small, pimples and all!

The air was thick with dub jazz and Christmas lightcicles, when the show started with a bang – a spiked heel, that is. The dues ex machina Devil wearing Prada splayed stiff hostess, Alia “Va-va-va” Volz across the stage with a stiletto pumped into her skull.  Her frantic co-host, M.G. “Going Going Gone” Martin, realized that the only way to save the vixen was to play upon the heartstrings of the crowd, and he led all hands to clap her into a fantastic resurrection that had Tinkerbell weeping in the eaves. 

LDM Champ Jamie DeWolf: quite obviously "bringing it" (Click image for more LDM SF, Ep. 36 pictures!)

No devil, no matter how couture or corporate, could keep the Mad Men-styled diva down.  Alia introduced the Bay Area legends on the Judge panel: Blag Dalia, front and center (of The Dwarves punk rock infamy) commanded the performance category.  He was flanked by the morbidly curious Loren Roads (Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues) on literary merit, and the dot communist himself, Ron Turner (founder of The Last Gasp Books and Comix,) on intangibles, dressed the part as a shipwrecked Santa in a jolly beard and button-up skull shirt.

R1: The battle Noelle began with a conversation between clowns – Guinevere Q and Steven Gray – versus the morbid conjectures of San Francisco writer and photographer Richard Kadrey.  Rosy-cheeked Guinevere Q showed off a thick Midwestern accent as the bubbly suicide hotline operator clown.  Ms. Q's quirky banter juxtaposed with the guitar-strumming, sad-faced Gray, whose tortured “hold” music underscored the mood of contained unrest.  Kadrey stepped up his response with a haunting tale of dissatisfied gods and urban mythology.  Ripe with Campbellian comparisons, his pictorial of a plagued world without Ed Gaines, won over the judges.

At this point in the show, M.G. acknowledged that this would be his last Bay Area LDM, as his soul had been sold to the NYC LDM’s crew.  Alia shut down his sissy sobs with a good, bloody, chest stapling, then called out: INTERMISSION IN THE INNER MISSION!

R2 commenced full throttle with Sara Fran Wisby taking on Jamie DeWolf.  Sara’s powerful Clytemnestra spoke of her dark times with humor--a time when one “...couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a prophecy,” and of how “…tiresome it is to be followed by a Greek chorus.”  It helped that half the crowd answered her as a Greek chorus!  Suicide King, Jamie DeWolf bestowed the crown with two spoken word performances that had the audience gripping the safety breaks of their seats.  Judge Blag spoke, confounding the hosts and electrifying the audience: the judges unanimously decided that the ROUND 2 contestants had both spanked ROUND 1 – Wisby and DeWolf must lock horns in the final round in an LDM upset!!!

The stage was set: in the left corner stood Wisby with her back-up singers and the mad-libbed version of Frosty “with two eyes made out of placenta” the Snowman, against, in the right corner, DeWolf and his merry band singing of Rudolf’s proclivity to “flatulate in any blue games.”  Between them stood the super-special guest judge Mike Skott of Ink Publishing. To keep him honest, the hosts blinded him by dumping an entire bucket of blood over his head!  In the end, the grinning gargoyles chose constellation-faced DeWolf as the father of the new literary race.  Here, here! 

by Heather Grout