A dark future. A fucked up Apocalyptic mess. An apocalyptic future in which we still hated the Russians and information was still stored on "tapes."
I was reminded of Tank Girl. Well, technically I was reminded of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and Robot-Jox, but that doesn't lead me to short-haired chicks. But, and this is important, the fucking apocalypse happened, accept it.
Tank Girl was an iconic image of all that's great about short-haired chicks, she's an independent take-no-shit grrrrl who's ability to cynically brush off any serious situation gave her the upper hand in a future with evil warlords looking to abscond with the last of earth's water (aren't they always?).
I forget much of the concept of Tank Girl except that she roams the post-apocalyptic future in a tank and meets up with lots of half-kangaroo men and throws around a lot of snarky comments on serious situations, and there's Malcolm McDowell (isn't there always?)
But that's not the point here, the point is, THE APOCALYPSE HAPPENED!
War has been outlawed and all disputes are settled by men in giant robots and women in Tanks. Conner Kalista and Sandy Marshall put together the staged reading of Robot-Jox and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn for It Came From The Neo-Futrarium V: Bride of the Neo-Futurarium.
Man was it fun, we are such 33 year old children living out our childhood fantasies. Which we've been doing it for a while, we dressed up as the cast of WKRP for the New City Photo shoot, we got to play the cast of Up The Creek for our last gig at It Came From The Neo-Futurarium, we're playing Lollapalooza, just a bunch of big kids. I guess anybody who's in entertainment who's not a big kid should probably leave.
At the end of Robot-Jox Sandy and Conner come out as the Robots while Justin and Joe Dempsey pretended to be the robot operators inside the robots. We wanted to dress the Sandy & Conner up in shitty box costumes, the idea was ditched due to time constraints, but I couldn't have that. Just having Conner and Sandy boxing wasn't funny enough, so a couple hours before the show I quickly put together some shitty robot costumes out of U-Haul boxes for the bodies, soda boxes for legs, and Brita and a Space-heater boxes for their heads. It was hilarious. Sandy was wearing real head-gear and I told him to slip the space-heater box over it because it was funnier, but Sandy liked how all the red matched which is a weird rationale. Conner, having much more respect for comedy, ditched the headgear for the Brita box, very funny.
They made Tank Girl into a movie in 1995. I guess they were down to the bottom of the barrell, all the other comic books had already been turned into movies, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, so Tank Girl was next. Lori Petty has to be one of the best bits of casting ever. She really is Tank Girl.
That's Naomi Watts as Jet Girl, FYI
So the audience was wearing thin, they were laughing less and the combo of Metalstorm and Robot-Jox was starting to drag on, too much of a good thing. But the final showdown between the two big robots, Conner and Sandy, was finally here. At first the two robots lumber towards each other in robot fashion.
And then after one robotic punch, Conner returns with a real human punch and then Conner and Sandy start beating the piss out of each other onstage for real. The audience had that rarity of shocked laughter, Conner took one to the face knocking Brita box off (at this point I regretted telling him to go for the Brita box, but it was funnier), and a sweaty Conner returned a shocking blow to Sandy. The audience gasped and then laughed because it was such a disconnect from this heretofore calm staged reading and yet completely within the theme. Great ending, violent and hilarious.
Lori's obviously on her way to a Cure concert there, or perhaps just breakfast. I found a lot of old pictures of Lori because she's basically a dude now.
But she is an artistic dude and I'd have no problem with a paint-splattered artist Tank Girl running around my loft making art that I have to pretend is good to get a little Tank Girl nookie. But I don't think Lori likes guys. The point is, the apocalypse happened.
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