Tag Archives: bodypaint

Spatter The Clown

January 10, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Spatter the Clown was feeling glum. He’d had a really bad day. He lost his job. His car got towed. His wife turned out to be gay. He walked the streets a homeless drunk. “Nobody loves me!” he said. So he stuck a handgun into his ear and blew out the side of his head. That’s when he had a funny thought…..

***This is an image from my newest book, ‘Marsha Mellow’s Creepy Clown Coloring Book’ and a poem from ‘Bludgeon the Clown’ which I am currently preparing for publication in the spring. I’ve often said that this is not a political blog…and this time I really mean it. There is no connection to the recent election of our latest worst president and the state of mind of the electorate…not political. -Marsha

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Second Skin

January 3, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Mick was always an awkward fellow. He tried to be a regular dude like everybody else but it never really felt right. He did his best to dress normal, he had an average haircut, dated respectable girls…even got a boring middle management job in a large corporation, just as everybody expected, still, Mick was never quite comfortable. He had the constant urge to break out of the box, jump up and sing, to run about, dancing with joy to be free. He struggled with it every day…and sometimes he slipped; He would catch himself about to smear his face with lipstick and crack lewd jokes – or smash his bosses face down into the banana cream pie he accidentally brought to work – or pull out the condiment bottles he had in his trouser pockets (for some strange reason) and paste everyone in the board room with goopy ketchup and mustard. Worse, some days he would get all the way to work and realize he’d worn one striped sock and one plaid sock (weird). And every day it just got harder and harder to fight the urge to shred his dull grey business suit, to peel off his own mundane skin and release the amazing, passionate (spectacular) monster that was trapped inside…..and one day, when he no longer had a reason not to…he did just that.

***The first post of 2017. Peel away all the crap and crud and wash off the slime of last year so you can be clear headed and ready for the clusterfuck that’s coming. The image above was adapted from an Analog Mag. spread John did in 2013.

Clowns

Fritz The Clown

December 27, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

There once was a clown named Fritz with a festering face full of zits. They filled up with goo ’till they finally blew in a gush of putrefied bits.

For my last post of the year, this one jumped right out at me as the perfect image to exemplify 2016. Happy New Year. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Open Mike

December 13, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Mike stood on stage in the spotlight…..terrified. Something about it seemed to be working for him. They probably found his trembling voice charming as he spoke sincerely about his life…his completely bizarre, absolutely strange, totally unlikely life…and the cynical way it came across. The crowd laughed at the tragic death of his wife in a mundane laundry incident. They howled at how the wind blew her ashes into everybody’s mouth at the funeral. And the five-day-old lasagna in a broken fridge, causing a vivid conversation with Lucifer, left them in stitches. Every word he spoke, every glib anecdote, felt like a hole being ripped open in his soul, allowing his demons to spill out – only to be consumed and obliterated in the laughter of the audience…and when it was over…Mike stood open and bloody and spent and…..completely relieved. It was better than therapy, better than liquor or sex or CHOCOLATE. And he walked off stage to a standing ovation feeling light as a feather.

***This post is another excerpt from our ‘Body-Oddies’ book project and the art will be available as an original art print soon. I am rewriting ‘Bludgeon the Clown’ and John is reworking the layout so it will be published and ready for sale in the spring of 2017. Find our 2 books at www.sallemander.com or search ‘EEW Books’ at Etsy.com and Amazon.com. They make a great gift. -Marsha

Clowns

Red State Blue State

November 8, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Democrat? Republican? Who can fuckin’ tell? Red state, Blue state? Die and go to Hell! Argue ’bout it all you want, knock each other out. ‘Right-Left’ bullshit ain’t what its about.

***”We must remember that when we choose the lesser of two evils, we still choose evil” (-Hannah Arendt). I won’t vote for evil… for neither the corporate Democrat, nor the corporate Republican. All the fear mongering, doom and gloom they project to insure our compliance in their bankrupt system is already a reality. Pull your head out of your ass, we live in a broken society. We owe it to those who come after us to do more than just vote ‘D’ or ‘R’ like “Good Germans”. We owe it to them to get off our lazy asses and resist the corporate state. Vote your conscience…and then get out, join a movement and rebel. -Marsha Mellow

body-oddies

My Favorite Place

October 18, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I really can’t think of a favorite place but I love the idea of flavored space, which happens to rhyme with ‘baby face’ like the horrible growth on my cheek.

I like the idea of an ‘open mic’ as long as I’m never the Mike. Exposing my guts to a crowd if you like might make some people freak.

I never accepted an open ‘Hand Shake’ though I don’t mind a hand made cake. Swallowing fingers is awful to take but easy to grasp – so to speak.

But my favorite place is up my nose where adorable ‘nose hair’ grows, which is usually better than ‘smelly toes’ ’cause its cute and fuzzy and chic.

***Lets take a little break from the national disgrace of our elections for something light and adorable and wholesome. This little ditty makes John giggle like a tickled toddler every time he reads it. He’s done rough sketches of all the ‘Body-Oddies’ it mentions so far(even though we only used ‘baby face’ for this post). Our EEWbooks Etsy store is getting some good sales and attention. Go there, fave our shop and help us get it off to a solid launch. Thanks. -Marsha

Clowns

Uprising

August 9, 2016 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

The Clowns rose up in anger one day deciding enough is enough. They poured out into the streets en masse, yelling and juggling stuff.

They wanted ‘equal rights’, they said, to be ‘taken seriously’. An end to random giggles and leers. They wanted respect, you see.

Snarling traffic with mini Clown cars, squirtling flowers and ties, their strike turned into a riot (of sorts) pelting police with pies.

They overwhelmed the barricades, storming the walls and ditches and made their way up to capital hill, leaving the cops in stitches.

But as they breached the chamber doors, their smiles turned into frowns, for the senate was already occupied by Idiots, Mimes and Clowns.

I wrote this piece and John illustrated it almost two decades ago. I thought, for sure, things MUST change for the better by now….. -Marsha

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Freaky Uncle

May 31, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

We never spoke about Uncle Dixon. Our whole family tip-toed around the subject…but I could tell there were powerful feelings just under everybody’s skin. He was a horrible pariah. The black sheep of the family.

We kept him straight-jacketed in one of the padded cells in the catacombs below our cabin. He was never allowed out in the light of day (lest one of the neighbors spot him), only after midnight on stormy nights and always tightly chained, gagged and bound in one of those psycho metal hockey mask get-ups. He got wheeled around in a steel cage on a hand truck under constant, heavily armed guard.

As if that wasn’t bad enough…Uncle Dixon was never allowed to go wilding with the rest of the family, never allowed to invade homes, to rape and burn and shoot folks in the face with shotguns or dismember them with his best machete before skinning and roasting them on the Bar-B-Que for the family feast…..how sad and dull.

I felt bad for him. What possible meaning could his life have? I always wondered what awful thing he could have done to deserve such treatment – until I overheard Pappa Ripper telling old cousin Head-Stomper that Dixon was a pacifist, an atheist and… a vegetarian (whatever that was). He also said that he had NEVER murdered a baby in his whole life – actually refused to do it!!! Eeeeew! What a Freak!?!

***Every family has at least one crazy relative that makes Thanksgiving an unforgettable event rivaling any ten episodes of The Jerry Springer Show….and worth 6 months of therapy. I think my illustrator, John, serves that role in his family. John’s illustration is from our book, ‘Bludgeon the Clown’, scheduled for publication in 2017. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction

Say It Isn’t So

May 17, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

“Oh no!…Say it isn’t so!!!” Willy whined, staring down at his belly in horror. “This is just getting weird…” His therapist told him time and again to let his ‘inner child’ out but THIS was ridiculous! What began as common heartburn blossomed into something completely bizarre.

Willy was the typical modern American man; A politically connected (racist), deeply religious (extremist), highly educated (affluent) corporate executive (dullard) – a completely normal, well adjusted person in a desperately broken society. So naturally, he was quite fucked. It was no wonder he developed chronic aches and pains…and over time they became rather terrible.

Willy’s doctors found nothing wrong with him, no infections, no disorders, no cancers. They told him it was ‘all in his head’ (it was actually in his torso, an inch above his liver and just to the left of his pancreas) but his shrink found him just as fit as his peers. Still, the pain got worse and worse until finally, at his absolute breaking point, Willy had…..a breakthrough.

He woke up one night from a juicy steak and alcohol-induced stupor to find a finger sticking out of his belly (and the complete absence of pain). It was so weird he thought he must be dreaming and dropped off again but by morning a whole arm had emerged while a pair of feet proceeded to push out of his back with a gooshie spluck. He was so freaked out, he fainted…..and when he got up again, he could do nothing but watch as a whole person emerged form his torso, front and back.

“Holy crap on a cracker!!!” he screamed. But the Willy in his belly, who looked just as frantic, hollered, “Shut up, old man!…How do you think I feel?! Oh no…Say it isn’t so!!!”

***We spent the better part of two days in the NJ motor vehicle gauntlet this week, getting licenses renewed and title, tags and registration done for a car. John did this sketch while we waited which perfectly captured the experience in one shot. -Marsha

body-oddies

Its All Speculation

March 22, 2016 Marsha Mellow 1 Comment

Herbert had been prone to rashes since he was a kid. He caught them all, like a rash magnet…it was inexplicable. He had at least three rashes on any given day of his life. As a sickly nerd, he never had friends…..so how the heck did he get chicken pox? He never had sex, so where did he get crabs? Hell, he had rashes no one ever heard of. He was a spotty, itchy, miserable pariah (though he was a delight to his dermatologist).

Anyway, when the ‘Speckles’ showed up, Herbert was neither surprised nor alarmed…but when they became an infestation, weird stuff started happening. All his old rashes now had a rash of their own. The Speckles definitely did not respect other rashes’ turf. His chicken pox grew feathers and beaks, his goose bumps grew long necks and started nipping and spitting at other rashes and his scarlet fever?…WOW!… well…lets just say that when she reached puberty…things got REALLY awkward.

The Speckles went on to occupy every inch of Herbert and ousted all his other rashes – which would have been good except that each Speckle became enormous, grew a face and took on a personality of its own. They started talking amongst themselves – argued with each other constantly (about religion and politics, ugh!) and sang bawdy songs at all hours. It made things quite uncomfortable for Herbert, though not as bad as the realization that they’d become stronger, smarter and cooler than him. It wasn’t long before Herbert diminished completely into the shadow of his own brilliant speculations…

***Oh, how this reminds me of my teenage years…though my speckles were quite amiable and we were into the same music. Meanwhile, my new book, “Marsha Mellow’s Blue-ish Freaks” is nearly ready for release, probably next week but if f you want to buy an advanced copy, leave me a message here… -Marsha