“You might notice I just reviewed another title called ‘The Faggiest Vampire.’ Now we’ve got ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug.’
So there’s this section of Powells in Portland that I always feel calling to me from across the continent. It’s one set of shelves, all small press, and a lot of it pretty weird. There’s the zine-y stuff like ‘On Subbing’ or the beautiful weirdness of Trinie Dalton. And there’s also a big gob of Bizarro.
What’s Bizarro?
Rose O’Keefe from Eraserhead Press calls it the book version of the cult section of the video store. “Basically, if an audience enjoys a book or film primarily because of its weirdness, then it is Bizarro. Weirdness might not be the work’s only appealing quality, but it is the major one.”
Bizarro delivers.
Sure, there’s times when you can’t help but feel like it’s being weird for the sake of weird. But hey, people are a lot of ways for the sake of being a lot of ways. I’ll take weird over a lot of other stuff.
Every time I go to Portland, I make sure to grab a couple titles from that shelf.
Here’s where this gets fun.
I’m at Barnes&Noble last week. We don’t need to get into it, but some pretty heinous shit went down at work. My boss, who is pretty cool, said it was alright if I left for the day. “You know, when something like this happens, I say you have to do something that feeds your soul.”
Which is how I ended up at the bookstore. And when I saw, somehow, by some miracle there was bizarro on the shelf at my Barnes&Noble, which is exactly 1,210 miles away from that shelf in Portland. Somehow, some of it made its way here.
What I didn’t consider, when I picked up a book called ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug’ and another called ‘The Faggiest Vampire’ is that I’d actually have to check them out.
I have this very old blog post I wrote once about an equation I invented. Basically, it describes the curious fact that the more embarrassing your purchase, the more attractive the checker will be. You can buy toothpaste a hundred times and you won’t even notice the checker. Then, you buy Preparation H, and for whatever reason you end up in line at the grocery store, and the checker is the most beautiful person ever. Behind you in line is a modeling scout, and he’s about to make the find of a lifetime. Right after you buy your hemorrhoid medicine.
Of course, such was the case at Barnes&Noble. Of course, it took several scans to get in ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug.’ The machine wouldn’t cooperate. It was nerve-wracking, then a little fun because I was imagining that the lady would have to call out a price check, across the room or maybe even over a loudspeaker. I know it was hoping for a lot, but still.
Anyway, my soul was fed. My twisted, awful soul.”