and are here to run down ten of their favorite freaks in advance of , their new monthy show at saki (which I help them promote and stuff). FREAK HAPPENING is tonight, Friday August 30th, at 8pm. Hope you can make it!

Nick: What's the opposite of being a freak... Being a norm? BORING! I consider my closest friends freaks. I wanna be weird and I think you should too.

Stand out from the pack. Do what you wanna do, regardless of the law, as long as you're not hurting anyone.

Don't decorate your apartment as if you're living in the fetus of an IKEA and Hobby Lobby whoopee pie. Frank Zappa spoke rather well on the subject stating, "Freaking out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricted standards of thinking, dress and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his environment and the social structure as a whole." I got a shovel, if you can dig it.

In no particular order, here's a few freaks that I've admired over the years:

When I was a kid, back in the 90s, Andy Roy was one of my favorite professional skateboarders. Dude not only RIPPED, but he was missing a bunch of teeth, had that goddamn spiderweb tat on his skull and generally found himself constantly getting himself into trouble. So much so, that he ended up in up in prison for shooting junk (OOPSIE!).

While in prison he gave an interview where he claimed he was more or less raping so many inmates that everyone started calling him the snuggle bandit. Within the last few years he's managed some clean up, kinda, and then posted a video online where he's in charge of a children's skate camp. Terrifyingly freaky!

Born in Grenoble, France, André René Roussimoff became one of my favorite people ever! He suffered from acromegaly, which causes excessive growth, but that's not why I consider him a freak. I'm not down with calling someone with a disease a freak and you're the asshole for assuming I would do such a thing. No, I've included him here because according to legend André once drank 156 beers in a single sitting.

According to The Faboulus Moolah, he once polished off 127 suds puppies in a Pennsylvanian hotel bar and then passed out in their lobby. Due to his size, no one working could move him and they had to let the big guy sleep it off right there in the lobby. Awesome!

Vito Acconci

I went to college for art, what of it? While in school I became fascinated with Vito Acconci. Despite having pieces where he more or less stalked people and bit himself, he is perhaps most well known for 1971's Seedbed. He built in large wooden ramp extending across the entire floor of the Sonnabend Gallery. As guests came to visit the studio he laid underneath the ramp masturbating, while vocalizing the fantasies he had about the vistors, involving him "having a cunt pushed down his throat" or perhaps having a guest "ram their cock in his ass." The piece went on for a few weeks and he cranked it for close to eight hours a day! High brow freaky deeky art y'all!

Kool Keith

Kool Keith aka Dr Octagon aka Black Elvis aka Dr Dooom is perhaps the finest ass loving rapper of all time. Not only that, but he's got his helmut on, you can't tell him he's not in space! If you're not on board this this guy you're BANNED from our show cause frankly, you're tripping hard!

Former child actor, B Film horror star, Calvin Klein fashion model, GG Allin back up vocalist, front woman of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and performance artist Kembra Pfahler is an inspiration for anyone looking to be schooled in cool. And also, she's clearly a fucking freak. Always colorful (some performances have seen her cracking paint filled eggs with her vulva!) she explores the blurred lines of human interests, through really freaky media. Her take on nudity and getting the weird out is a huge inspiration. If ya ain't a freak, your shit is weak.

Goodrich: This is in no particular order because freakyness is an intangible state of mind and can’t be constrained by numbers, rankings, phylums or any of those trappings of the system, MAAAAAAN!  

Bootsy Collins

I already discussed this a little bit over at The Nicest Guys in Town but Bootsy is a dude who loves bass, the funk, space, and being freaky-deeky. Anyone who has the confidence to tell a bass manufacturer “I need a star bass from space Bibble Bobble!” Is a great freak in my book.

James Joyce 

This guy isn’t a freak because he wrote Ulysses and no one knows what the fuck was going on in that book because it was so goddamn freaky, this guy ranks up in the top freaks for me because he was really sexually into scat stuff. Like, you know, poo. That’s some pretty freaky stuff to get into. Take for instance this passage in a letter he wrote to his wife Nora about their “arseways” intercourse:

You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

Claiming you could pick your lover’s fart out of a lineup is pretty freaky, all right.

Joseph Merrick aka The Elephant Man 

This guy was the original freak-for-pay.  When you have severe physical deformities in the late 1800’s not many options exist for you in the job market. Joseph found the only thing he could do to pay his way in the world was tour around as a human novelty exhibition.  The showmen in charge of his traveling “freak show” dubbed him the Elephant Man: Half-Man Half-Elephant. Which is weird mostly because that would mean one of his parents was a human who fucked an elephant.

In reality, he suffered from what was later called Neurofibromatosis type 1, which makes your cells develop differently. I think, I don’t know a lot about medicine obviously, but this guy had the toughest life as a freak for sure.
 

The Monks 

 So some GI’s get discharged in Germany and start a band. Their plan for a gimmick: LET’S DRESS LIKE MONKS!  This look inexplicably included shaving a patch into the middle of their heads (which I don’t know why that hasn’t come back into style! This could be the new Skrillex cut y’al!). has a nice short briefing on the band's story.

Divine 

One of the most iconic members of the John Waters (a great freak in his own right) world, Divine is the original drag-queen camp icon of pop culture. Divine made film history by being the only person to ever eat fresh dog shit on camera. One of the freakiest claims to fame one could have.

-Nick Rouley & Goodrich Gevaart