You might have noticed a Toilet Cobra shaped void in the Mishka Bloglin lately. Maybe you thought I went into hiding or that I was in the hospital. Perhaps you believed I’d got a dose of amnesia and couldn’t remember my password to the blog. Perhaps you thought I accidentally died from sexphyxiation. Maybe you thought I was arrested. More likely, you didn’t think of me at all. But that’s just fine, I try not to think about me either. I’m a bummer and a half lately.

I’ve been busy staying indoors and struggling to eke out a living doing the only things I’ve ever been even remotely good at. Sadly, working during every waking hour isn’t enough and with each day I grow increasingly broke and insane. The insanity creates more brokeness and the brokeness returns the favor by tossing a few more logs onto the fires of my increasing insanity, the flames of which will soon consume all of my reality, leaving only the smoldering foundation of what used to be a man.  So that’s what’s why you haven’t heard from me lately.

This is my friend Carleigh with some animals, a cat and a fish. I pulled out my camera and we played around with taking photos, as evidenced in the photos above, which involve a cat and a fish. Sitting around got old so Thomas and I put on our leather jackets and headed over to Monster Island/Secret Project Robot. It’s that venue/gallery space on Kent that  has more names than Jackie Joyner-Kersey.  Golden Triangle were playing a show with some bands they didn’t know to celebrate the release of their new record, Double Jointer, which I wrote the press release for. I showed up feeling groggy and the evening felt like  a weird dream. In the darkness there were familiar faces but I lacked the focus to say or do anything meaningful and all of my interactions felt shallow and pointless, even while I experienced them.

This is Seva and Alaina. They are everywhere you want to be, like credit card commercials. Seva runs MyOpenBar and Alaina works at Market Hotel as well as  all of the other unlicensed venue spaces in Brooklyn. Seva fell over drunk while loudly playing “Who would you do?” in a fashion where he was pointing to them and saying “yes” or “no” directly to them as they walked by.

The bands were playing in the basement but I was distracted by a show of fine art on the main floor  This life size sculpture of monster people reminded me of the cover art for Marilyn Manson’s Portrait of an American Family.

Raul was DJing upstairs while dressed as a big boobed goofus. Check out what that girl next to him is doing. She is twiddling around.

This is the cutest DJ setup I’ve ever seen. It sounded blown and awful in a way that was pleasant and helped the transitions between the dissimilar songs he put on after the previous ones. I was coveting this set up hard.

I met a woman with burgertits. I love this dress, it’s so beautiful. I like how I look un-fat here. Check out that big paper mache hand behind us. High five, Big Hand!

Descending the stairs to the basement could no longer be avoided and I ventured into the dark, hot performance space where it’s too loud and too dark to see or speak to people.  It’s like being put into a state of isolation where you’re aware of other beings but can’t communicate with them. You only shove them and get shoved by them.  That T-shirt on the left is a T-shirt I drew for Golden Triangle. You can buy it on their imminent tour.

Here’s a more detailed view of the thing.

This is what it looks like when you see a show at Monster Island if you aren’t right up against the stage.  So I pushed through the bodies to get to where the action was.

Everything was beautiful and confusing.  Around this time I got kicked in the head.

This picture of OJ reminds me of Doritos. The next record should have the band members dressed as cowboys and hanging out with horses. The title should be Cool Ranch.

Golden Triangle did a great set of songs. As has happened to me in the past, the noise, heat, video projections and fake smoke combined into a beautiful nightmare…My hopes and failings were all laid in front of me and I was horrified. Then I got kicked in the head some more.

Thomas and I then gathered ourselves up and headed over to Don Pedro’s, the best bar in Brooklyn. You can do whatever you want there, but be careful or you’ll get hurt.

Charly and Thomas engaged in an awesome spitting contest. You can’t tell when the photo’s this small but Charly’s spitting beer like a lawn sprinkler in all directions. Look at that arc of spray.

- Toilet Cobra