Tag Archives: freaks

Art & Poetry HAHA!

February 21, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

tepid-the-clown-37

Tepid the Clown had really bad gas. He made ’em strong, and made ’em to last. He could fly around town propelled by his ass, could leap a tall building with just one blast.

But ran out of luck with a wet squirty one and at ten thousand feet he was done and hit the street like a jelly-filled bun but, by golly! Wasn’t that fun?!!

***I may have posted this one last year but here is again…see, the darndest thing happened recently when the owners of The Rectangle Studio & Gallery invited us to be part of their inaugural ‘Art and Poetry HAHA!’ show. I figured they must be crazy people if they liked John’s horrible clown illustrations…but John will be reading a piece or two of My work too, so they obviously have good taste. The show is on Saturday, Feb. 25th at The Rectangle Studio & Gallery, 540A Freeman St., Orange, NJ 07050. Open mike is at 6:30p (RSVP only) and open house is from 7:30p to 10p with froo-froo wine and snacks. Find it online at http://www.therectanglestudio.com/. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Foot In Mouth

February 14, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

I woke up this morning feeling disheveled. I must have tossed and turned all night and tied myself into a knot, because when I woke up I fell out of bed…tied in a knot. I didn’t know I could do that…and survive. Worse than that, when I finally got myself untangled, I realized I had a foot where my hand used to be, my tongue was attached to an elbow and my hair had migrated down my back to my buttocks. One of my hands had switched places with my wiener and one was dangling from an armpit but for the life of me, I could not find my other foot. I wasn’t in any pain but the sight of it all made me want to scream…..except, when I opened my mouth…well, that’s when I discovered where my other foot had gone…

***This exact thing never actually happened to ME…but something resembling the ‘foot in mouth’ part definitely happened to the last loser who tried to pick me up in a bar, which…come to think of it, happened a few years ago on this same minor holiday celebrating the Marquis de Sade or something…..Valentine’s, whatever! We’re too busy finishing our new book (‘Bludgeon the Clown’) to worry about it right now. -Marsha

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Zebulon the Wizard

February 6, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Zebulon The Wizard

Piscataway, NJ. Zebulon the Wizard (formerly Joey the Clown) was about as common as clowns come…but with a knack for burgling. He was the best: clever, adaptable, insightful – qualities still highly regarded by the clown community. Once a petty thief, Joey changed his stars by stealing a magical Christian spell book from a secret Vatican warehouse. With the recipes in his new book, he was able to build a ‘time cauldron’ through which he could reach forward – or back – in time and steal more stuff…..better stuff.

Zebulon let me use his cauldron a few times to document some of the great historic clowns from the deep, dark, misty past. Its how we know so much about Saint George the Clown (from 299 A.D.) and Barge the Giant (circa 1330). Zeb got me a Tubakazoo for Christmas last year, its a popular folk instrument from the year 2232. It makes a (terrible) whining wheeze like the sound of a horse being strangled…while gently farting (I got him that red wizard costume).

***”Zebulon” is a page that just got cut from the latest draft of my new book ‘Bludgeon the Clown.’ I’ve trimmed it down from 186 pages to 100, so I can keep production costs low enough to sell it to real people. I hope to have it published and ready to bring to Comic Cons in the spring. John and I thought it would be harder to cut our own beloved writing and art out…..turns out there was a lot of crap and fluff and redundancy in the older drafts. The new book is better now and Zebulon will work better in a different project. The image was originally a commission for a 2 page spread for an issue of Analog Magazine. -Marsha

Clowns

Monster Truck

January 31, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Flippy the Clown drives a truck. What a big ugly mean stupid fuck!?! He tools around town running poor people down ’till his tires are pasted with muck.

***Oh damn!!! I had a scathing political piece to share this week about our new worst president, ever…but John didn’t have a decent image of a train wreck for me to use, so I had to settle for this. Never mind, this one is a page from my new “Creepy Clown Coloring Book.” You can find it (and buy it) on Etsy, just follow the link to our website above. Thanks. -Marsha

body-oddies, Flash Fiction, fragment

Splitting Headache

January 24, 2017 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

Hey!… Do you remember that thing? You know…that THING?? Oh, you remember. We saw it the other day when we were doing the other thing…..what’s-is face was there. Oh, you know who I mean, the one from… oh gosh…from over yonder with the thing-ummy-thing on his who’s-is-what’s-it?…And we laughed and laughed about it the whole time? But he wasn’t so amused. He took the issue up with…oh, you know who, the one at the place…..um, the place right next door to the other MAIN place? And she went totally ballistic about everything, especially that one thing…..but not the thing I’m talking about. I meant the OTHER thing. Yeah! The thing with the thing-a-ma-jig…Yes!!! You know the thing! UGH!!! I seem to forget EVERY thing…but I definitely remember THAT!

***This conversation isn’t all that unusual. It happens more often than I’d care to admit. What amazes me is how often we completely understand each other whenever we do…..whoever it is. -Marsha

Clowns

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

Clowns, Flash Fiction

Winter Weather Advisory

December 20, 2016 Marsha Mellow Leave a comment

It was June and sunny. The first sunny day he’d seen in months. Standing atop a 60 foot snow drift, Santa surveyed the landscape of Death Valley, Nevada. This was no way to spend his vacation. Where were the buzzards and the fire ants? Where were the salt flats and sand dunes? This place looked too much like home this year…how awful!

Well, what did he expect? This is where things like consumerism, waste, greed and stupidity get you – and he had to admit, he played his part. Ever since they hired him to sell capitalism to the huddled masses, back in the 30’s and 40’s…..a snowpocalypse was inevitable. Mother Nature swings like a sassy pendulum, knocking the idiots aside with the good ones. Maybe the random survivors will come through smarter and better this time…but he doubted it. Oh well, he still had to find sunscreen for Mrs. Clause or she’d have his head.

He got back into his sleigh and flew off in search of a frozen supermarket, hoping the looters left some Twinkies…or some milk duds…

THE SANTA (an excerpt from ‘Bludgeon the Clown’) Possibly the best known clown of all and the greatest Christian icon in history. Santa is the hardest fellow to meet. When I flew to the North Pole for an interview I found nothing there but a giant peppermint flavored pole…and simply planning to intercept his holiday flight got me a visit from Homeland Security (again). Frankly, I couldn’t confirm he existed at all (I was crushed). Yet somehow, he still manages to deliver the most fabulous gifts, each year, to the most affluent (undeserving) children in the world…..maybe its just as well I didn’t find this clown. -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