Awright mates! Thee Bluebeard here to give you the bitter end of the recap for Gearbox Fantastique II. It was a rainy night in April at Reggies Rock Club in Chicago. The year was 2012. I brought my hat. I looked amazing mates! V for Villain was there and they were so damn pumped with bad guy energy, loud music and sinister fanciness I thought I would melt with jealousy! They even wear masks! Who DOES that?!! Check them out mates. You’ll be glad. Then you’ll understand.

So we also had Hellblinki. How does one describe this trio of ‘dear-gods-what-is-that?!’ as they perform their signature tunes? I will say bouncy and light while driving a sad funeral march mosh pit sound into your day. Listen to them. You’ll understand and you’re welcome.

Now then mates we had freaks. Not the fellas at the wharf talking to themselves about wales in the middle of the night but really funky looking folks with some physical anomolies and talents. Let’s just START with The Squidling Brothers Circus Side Show. They have a sword swallowing hottie called Betty Bloomerz who also eats fire and smiles like a beautiful broken toy. Matters Squidling himself puts mouse traps on his tongue and plays the trombone while the Illustrated penguin(you have to see him…) hung weights from his head. Their performance was hosted by Jellyboy The Clown who loved the joy of dance and the ease of surgical tubing passing through orifices. AND THAT WASN’T ALL! The show leaves you crying for . . . well probably just crying.

And a fella goes by the name Sir Pinkerton Xyloma brought out his band o’ misfits and musicians all the way from Milwaukee. A strongman aptly named Titano. He was a mountain of a man with a bit of ink done TO HIS FACE! A half man that did things that defy gravity and my understanding of upper body strength. Sir Pinkerton himself had one of the most gorgeous mustaches I’ve ever had the pleasure to put my own mustache next to! It was not epic, it was not boss, it was not amazing, it was Xylomic. Yes, I said it.

But now you think to yourself, “I missed that?! Damn my shift at Starbucks! I should have quit to go see that show!” And I answer you a loud resounding YES! You really should have if you did not. The Lord Barron Vourteque, mast head of Steampunk Chicago and looking fantastique (even though he has no mustache), Jellyboy and myself, Thee Bluebeard, all had a wonderful time introducing the acts to the beautiful chaos that was Gearbox Fantastique II. If you missed it you are not to despair but rather wait . . . patiently. There is more to come.

Did you see the video?! The girlie with the camera, Daria Melnikova, who filmed it just gave you a visual made of shooting stars and awesome! What the hedge-row are you reading this for?!! WATCH!!

For those who were in attendance last month at our monthly Steampunk party, Mr. Automatic has recorded part of his mix from the night.  For those of you who couldn’t make it, enjoy the eclectic mix of new-school Electro-Swing and classic jazz remixes along with a few surprises.  Click on the downward facing arrow in the player below to download a FREE copy!

Mr. Automatic live Electro Swing set at Clockwork Vaudeville March 2012 by Mr. Automatic

After listening to this awesome mix, join us this Saturday Night at Ace Bar, where Mr. Automatic will be playing with the Lords and Ladies DJ’s. Also featuring:

The CHICAGO premiere of San Francisco’s neo-classical, steampunk, electro-cello-ist…

UNWOMAN
Unwoman!

Also the mad-cap bizarreness of…

THE LORD BARON’S FAMILY COCKTAIL HOUR
“A show somewhat unlike other shows that happen to be mildly like it.”

Also enjoy your stage manager…

Earnest D. Moxy!

Video by Daria M.
Photos by Mr. Wes

Vending by Altered History!
Altered-History

Drink specials of Harrison Bourbon & Desiree Vodka from Tipton Spirits!
Come early for the dinner specials and half off appetizers. Stay for the show!

My terribly clever wife Liz circumvented my impending mid-life crisis when she bought me a penny-farthing bike for my 40^th birthday. She knew that it would be an affordable substitute for a Ferrari or Porsche.  As the Chicago seasons rapidly change, the time for bringing the hiwheel out of winter storage is nigh.

She bought it from Rideable Bicycle Replicas. They shipped the pieces to her at work and she had the good staff at Rapid Transit Cylceshop assemble it. I have been informed that pretty much all of the staff took it out for a test ride, you know, just to be sure everything worked.

It’s great fun to ride! Passers-by wave and announce, “Hey! Bike guy!” with a jolly gleam in the eye. The public reaction is one of merriment, to which I carefully tip my hat and offer, “Good day!”

However, there are certain details that separate it from the usual bike ride. It is fixed-gear, with the pedals directly connected to the wheel. You can’t break and you can’t coast. On a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo, I had to walk the bike over the Chicago River along Webster. The hilliness on either side of Ashland was unpedalable. I’ve avoided Damen north of the Vienna Beef Hot Dog factory for fear of a coronary on the bridge. My choice of destinations tends to be limited.

I also have to accessorize for my rides. Of course, I enjoy being steampunked out for the occasion. Unfortunately, I tend to throw caution to the wind. As much as I know that I should wear a helmet, it just doesn’t match. A bowler looks much better, but it doesn’t offer the same sort of cranial protection.  For security, I also use a Fabric Horse u-lock holster, but this necessitates trousers with a belt. My Frontier Classics with suspenders or morning suit with the adjustable waist do not allow the convenience.

My apologies, but if you see me riding, I will not let you try it. You will break it. This happens every time. Accustomed to standard bikes, you will try to start pedaling. The wheel will not move and you will wrench the handlebars out of place. I will have to take it to Rapid Transit to have it readjusted (again). To take off, it is necessary to glide along the bike and let your feet to catch up with the moving pedals.  Maneuvering will be odd. You will use a lot more upper body strength for steering. My shoulders usually ache a bit after the first few seasonal trips. Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy offers excellent advice on riding a penny farthing in The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One.

Now I must tip my hat to you. Good day!

Yikes! Pothole!

History ain’t what it used to be! Steampunks mash up the past and present while looking to the future. Altered History and Alternate Histories are two websites that have fun scrambling the past.

Captain Kit Kaboom (aka Abbey Manalli of Milwaukee, WI) designed Altered History to be “a world that never quite existed. This is a world of airships and trains, steamships and submarines.”

The site has buttons, postcards and stickers for the travelers of the yesteryear that never was.

It also has patches and bronze pins for the explorers and mechanics of the fleet.

Alternate Histories at Etsy.com offers prints with incongruities. Pittsburgh, PA artist Matthew Buccholz (via New York and Arizona) presents a world “Where the Past Comes Monstrously to Life.”

Dinosaurs roam a young America. Zombies and monsters feature in old cartography. Giant robots and Godzilla threaten a familiar city (hint: it’s not Tokyo).

Take the alternate route.

This article first appeared as Steam Erotica and Other Things I’ve Been Reading for Work at Liz’s Masonic Lodge Blog.

This revised version was printed in Caboose #8 reDraft Picks.

Maybe you’ve jokingly looked at someone’s clothes and announced, “I am drooling over that accessory.” You want to own it and wear it, which to some degree means you want to consume it. Maybe if you’re being silly you might even say “Oh my god,  I totally want to have sex with those clothes.” You’re not serious about wanting to actually literally have intercourse with the items. But in “lusting” after some garment or accessory, there is a desire to in some way own and therefore use the item for one’s own liking, whether to wear or to decorate. Steampunk lends itself to playful genre-specific fetishization. People get really into the clothes, the accessories, the gadgets, the gears. So it makes sense that within the steampunk fiction genre there’s erotica. Bionics, opticals, a heart made of a time piece, machine arms in place of real arms — all of these things are various levels of robotics or cyborg-like devices that in costume or real-life, create a steampunk-identified identity which is created by consuming of fetishizing.

On a symbolic level, in customizing the accessories and machine parts to one’s costume, it’s as if devoted steampunk enthusiasts want to “consume” the gear, the clothes, all that – in a way, to “customize” the old to create something new. The term for the process food undergoes after you consume it, when it becomes part of your body, is called assimilation. This seems like a symbolically effective term to label what happens when you customize something steampunk-esque to work into your own appearance. Maybe there’s a welded piece of jewelry. Maybe there’s multiple jewelers lenses screwed onto frames. Maybe there’s multiple broken timepieces dangling. These are all modified objects that are customized, consumed, assimilated. These are all activities that can to some degree also describe “consumption” in ways that are sexual. Think about the word “consume” in any way you want. And also consider that when one reads something, they can also “devour.”

And so that brings us to the anthology of short, sexy steampunk stories edited by D.L. King entitled Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica. Some notable items of interest: A woman visits a doctor about sexually based ailment. There is a Doctor Watson. There might have been at least one monocle. There are varieties of sexual preferences. As true with any anthology, some stories are more compelling then others. “Human Powered” by Teresa Noelle Roberts is the most compelling in terms of narrative, which is probably why the anthology starts with this story about two scientists working on a lust-powered machine. Some of the stories subvert cultural traditions, such as “Mutiny On the Danika Blue” by Poe Von Page, wherein a woman on deck of the ship has no rights, but in the bedroom quarters below, she is the captain, a bossy dom who demands the ship’s captain call her “sir.”

There are a few moments where some of the stories feel like McDonald’s Drive Through Steampunk Porn. That is to say, some of the pieces have a tang of erotica with steampunk machines and images name-checked in it. Make a list of steampunk things: goggles, a dirigible, gears, experiments, British accents and so on. Now open this book to any random page. You will probably find something on that list mentioned. On one hand, genre pieces belong to that genre because they each share certain characteristics. On the other hand, if a story is merely name-checking conventions or motifs of the genre, they become less compelling. How do you write something genre-specific without sounding like you’re using a genre cookie cutter?

Let’s say that you wished to perform improvisational sex steampunk comedy (you know, in the event that you happen to be in that situation). You could use this book; open to any page and you will probably find images that are totally steampunk genre-specific. For example (and for laughs), I just opened to page 170 and my finger landed on this:

“Of course, the amount of electricity harvested depended on each boy’s stamina and level of sexual voracity. Some subjects produced almost twice the amount of electrical energy as others.”

I kind of want to take these random quotes and preposterously act them out for an audience. Has anybody done steampunk comedy yet? I have seen elements of humor incorporated into the genre, like music, literature, music videos etc. Would that type of performance get old quickly though? Punchlines are funny if they’re short. Is steampunk humor better as a passing reference rather than in its totality? Hopefully it would be backed up with good writing.

And then I got to thinking about the steampunk genre in general, issues that occurred to me: Should genre-specific stuff regarding certain details of physical objects and conventions of literature be incidental more than pronounced? Should the story exist first or the conventions of the genre exist first? Do the references to goggles and dirigibles get tired fast? Is that why some of these stories feel like someone wrote a sexy story but then their work was solicited by the editors who were like “Here’s what steampunk is! Now go write one of your sexy stories and add in these genre-specific details!”?

When I was done with the book, I noticed in the back of the book an ad for a book called Steamlust. The subtitle on it was “Erotic Romance,” whereas Carnal Machines is “Steampunk Erotica.” Is there a difference? Does it go back to distinguishing the difference between erotica and romance? Or porn and erotica. Whatever. Or was it just that there’s a lot of steampunky material out there and not all of it would fit in one book? I noticed the books each have different editors.  I’m curious to know, how did both books come to be? Or maybe both of the editors were both really knowledgeable and know lots of people who write these types of stories and the publisher (Cleis) was like, “We cannot fit all this in one book?! Let not all of this go to waste! Let’s just do more than one book!” Or perhaps Cleis was like, “Steampunk is super big right now! And sex is always big! Sex and machines! Like a David Cronenberg movie but without shitty special effects and way more optical devices! And with much better behaved characters who also happen to be better dressed!”

But most importantly, my priority above all else, was doing a Google search to see if somebody got to the clever before I did. That is, had anybody coined steampunk porny stuff as being “SPUNK?” Because really, all anybody really wants is to get credit for making up a clever turn of phrase, myself included. So I found some stuff. Sort of. There was one reference to “steamspunk” but it wasn’t quite regarding sex, on regretsy.com on their “Not Remotely Steampunk” section, but what was particularly funny is that they found all this hilarious stuff where the crafters mistyped it (I assume) because sometimes they label stuff as “streampunk” or “stempunk” and so on, which I found hilarious. Streampunk? (Like it’s fish! Is that like steamed fish? To eat?). Also there was at least one spelling “staempunk.” In case you’re curious, it was a vender selling a “Staempunk (sic) accessory Greek Sheild (sic) Tassle” which I thought was hilarious. Anyway, there are a lot of sexy steampunk toys that come up when you google “Steampunk sex SPUNK.” My sexy computer is getting a virus as we speak. Also what comes up with a google search of that nature are all manner of steampunk sex toys like a death ray vibrator or a “steamvibe” (which, I noticed when looking at the picture of it, an ad solicited me for a “Spyware Remover Download,” which I thought was humorously poetic on a variety of levels.) But! So! Considering that the google search for “Steampunk sex SPUNK” pulled up 160,000 hits and I don’t want to spend a whole day looking to see if someone was more clever than me, I abandoned the investigation. If someone hasn’t used the term “spunk” in reference to porny steampunk then they can use it now. I found lots of hits that were just people calling steampunk “spunk” but not any in my immediate search that used “spunk” as being sexy steampunk.

more writing by Liz Mason can be found at lizsmasoniclodge.blogspot.com