Steff Metal

First of all – here is what I wore:

• Black lace dress with lace tail. (Smoove, on sale for 50%)
• Black leather bustier (21st birthday present from a big group of friends. One day I will tell the amusing story of how we found this corset.) It’s beautiful and very unique – I think it’s been handmade. It’s lots of little scrappy squares of leather sewn together into the bustier. There’s no boning so I won’t call it a “corset” but the stiffness of the leather gives it a nice shape.
• Red ribbed thigh-high socks, from Sock Dreams (present from wonderful Mum and Dad Metal.) They’re so lovely and warm
• Steel-cap NZ-Safety boots
• Orange scarf, gift from Mum Metal, from Australia (not many of you would know this, but orange is actually my favorite colour. Or would be, if I could see colours.)

I’ve seen Amanda Palmer before, when she came with the Dresdon Dolls in 2006, I think it was. They were most excellent then, but now, she’s incredible. Ten minutes before Hera, the opening act, was to start, she came out into the bar to give out hugs and sign stuff. I got me a hug, and one of my postcards signed. She’s tiny, and lovely. I went by my lonesome, but met up with my friend Levi and some of his friends, Max from the good ole Hawke’s Bay, sporting some fine steampunkey threads, Vince and Louisa (hi guys!) who were all very lovely. I squeezed my way to the front for the show.

Everyone’s jostling to get the three inches closer to the front of the stage, the lights dim, and nothing happens. Suddenly, everyone turns around. Amanda’s on top of the bar, dressed in a corset and star-spangled stockings, singing “he’s making whoopie” and strumming her Ukelele. She saunters up to the stage, sits down at the keyboard and hits a dramatic first note. Nothing happens. Que soundman – who manages to make the keyboard work. She opens with two songs from her solo project, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? – “Ampersand” and “Astronaut”.

If you go to an Amanda Palmer show, you can’t expect to just stand there, arms folded, and watch. It’s an entire performance experience. You, as the audience, collectively create the experience. She encourages this. One of the first thing she said when she saw two of the girls in front of me trying to take photos of the setlist (why? I don’t know) was “Don’t worry about that. I don’t use it anyway. I normally just ask what you guys want to hear. I want you to tell me “.

Next, we had “Ask Amanda” where we all wrote questions down on scraps of paper and passed them onto the stage. The first one she pulled out wanted her to tell us about the first song she ever wrote. We asked her to play it: Herein follows the delightful video evidence (poor Amanda.)

She then performed an Exorcism on the first Twilight book.

What did we have next? More song requests: “Oasis”, “Half Jack”, “Coin-Operated Boy”, a brilliant cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” (it has to be good for me to say this because I’ve never liked Michael Jackson songs. Don’t shoot me – it’s just not my thing). Then she played the song she wrote in Wellington, NZ, backstage during her last tour. I have a video of that, too.

10 Reasons Why Amanda Palmer is awesome

1. She’s a testament the power you have to touch people’s lives with music, especially when you reach out to fans over and above simply writing and releasing songs.
2. She’s a shining example of how an effective use of blogging and social media can grow your business and totally change your career
3. When she performs, she gives it everything she’s got. I’ve seen bands who “go through the motions” but when she plays, you feel as though you’re hearing this song as she writes it, with all the emotion dripping from her voice
4. She is clueless about pop culture
5. She’s beautiful, inside and out
6. She writes crazy, wild music about life in all it’s glory, beauty and folly
7. She loves Black Sabbath
8. She’s brutally honest and completely open
9. She creates am incredible live atmosphere because of her devotion to creating the show YOU want to see. Her shows are more a conversation between herself and the audience. I believe they call it “breaching the wall”. I wish more bands would embrace this – I’ve only seen one metal band do this, and that was Opeth.
10. She’s engaged to Neil Gaimen, which shows us all she has impeccable taste.

So yeah, I had a good night. How did you spend St. Patrick’s Day?

Steff

Dear Steff Metal,

So, I’m a fan of metal. Pretty obvious, really. However, my problem with any alternative subculture is that I’m trying too hard and being a poser. Yeah, sure, I could act as if I didn’t care what others thought, but that’s not true. It’s just that when people look at me, ‘metal’ is not one of the words that they think of immediately. But I don’t want to be dressed in typical metal fashion and then look like a poser. It’s like when some kid spikes his hair up in a Mohawk and wears a denim vest with pins and chains everywhere and patches sewn everywhere, and safety pins holding his jeans together…it makes me laugh. They just look like they’re putting on a costume.

I don’t want to be that person who gets laughed at because their attitude is all wrong. Metal comes with a stigma. I see a lot of metalheads where I live (Melbourne, Australia) and they all look so self-assured. I don’t have an actual question, but I hope you get what I’m trying to say. How can I wholeheartedly embrace metal culture in ways other than listening to it? A lot. Loudly. All the time. Without looking or feeling stupid and self-conscious. Something along those lines. What can I do?

***

Wow, this is an amazing question (or non-question). Thank you so much for writing. I’ve really had to put a lot of thought into this.

Since this is a non-question, I’ve cheated and gone for a non-answer. What follows is more of a musing on metal culture, fashion and being a “poser”. I also written a second half for this post – Top Ten Ways of Being Metal without Being a Poser – but you’ll have to wait for next week to read that gem.

Every one of us has heard the call
Brothers of true metal proud and standing tall
We know the power within us has brought us to the hall
There’s magic in the metal, there’s magic in us all.

Now the world must listen to our decree
We don’t turn it down for anyone; we just do as we please
Go to make it louder, all men play on ten
If you’re not into metal, you are not my friend.

Heavy metal or no metal at all. Wimps and Posers, leave the hall!
Heavy metal or no metal at all. Wimps and Posers, I said,
LEAVE THE HALL.
Manowar – “Metal Warriors”

Ah, Posers. We love to hate ‘em. Metal has its share of these universally-detested “try-too-hard” fans. We don’t want them – Manowar speaks for us all when they command the Posers to “leave the hall”. No one wants them around because … well, because they make us all look silly.

When the media does a story on metalheads or some other alternative subculture, it’s intimately the posers who end up in front of the camera, caressing their seven-foot-high Mohawks and showing off their eleven Metallica tattoos and spouting some crap about the “metal brotherhood”. They look silly, and they make metal look silly by comparison.

But metal is silly. It’s wonderful, amazing, awe-inspiring, and br00tal. But it’s also ridiculous – the stage shows, the shred solos, the costumes, the corpsepaint, the “hail Satan!”, the fans – it’s all larger than life. The overt nature of metal is what makes it so appealing – it’s unapologetic, unsympathetic, and utterly unscrupulous. It’s not music for casual listeners – you’re in metal heart and soul, or you’re not in at all.

That’s why metalheads feel extra threatened by the possibility of posers – no one wants the thing they love to become part of fast fashion, consumerist culture. Metal is what we embrace to escape fast fashion, consumerist culture.

Are Posers really Posers?

A poser means someone who wants to embrace all the trappings of “being metal” without actually being metal. A poser wants to wear the clothes, listen to the music, go to the shows, talk the talk, throw the goat, with even … liking metal. Horrifying!

I’m not sure real posers actually exist. If they do, I’ve never met one. I’ve met a lot of try-hards, though.

Sure there are people who throw the goat without being metal. There are people (Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus, especially) who wear Iron Maiden shirts while being pop stars. But they’re not real posers. They just don’t know any better. They don’t know throwing the goat is our thing. They don’t know Iron Maiden is a beloved NWOBHM band – they just think the shirt looks cool (and it does).

No, to be a real poser, one has to exert effort. And why, I ask, would a person exert all the effort to buy a closet of metal shirts and bullet belts, learn the name and release date of every Black Sabbath album, buy tickets to shows and festivals, and adopt metal vocabulary like “tr00” and “grymm” if they didn’t love the music? Who would go to all that time and expense?

I read a lot of writing advice columns, and one caveat always stands out at me: “know the rules before you break them”. Before you experiment with odd grammar, non-linear sentence structure and creative spelling, you have to understand how and why these devices are employed successfully. You can’t understand how to use them if you don’t know how NOT to use them.

The same is true for becoming part of a subculture. You shouldn’t just jump into the metal community, spiked gauntlets flailing, and expect to earn instant respect and camaraderie. You have to play by the rules.

What we call posers are generally younger people – between 12 and 17, who are trying too hard because they’re discovered this music that has changed their life and they’re excited and eager to embrace it mind, body and soul, and their friends don’t understand, their parents don’t understand, but they know there’s this horde of likeminded metalheads out there. So they jump in without knowing the rules. And we laugh at them. Loudly, while pointing, and throwing beer cans.

They try to create in an afternoon what it has taken us (as seasoned metalheads) several years to attain. This is why posers (or try-hards) make us laugh: they’re baby metalheads who want to fly before they can walk. I can’t help by sympathise with them. Once, I was a try-hard, too.

When I finished high school and went to uni, I thought “finally, no uniform! I can dress however I want!” I wore some ridiculous clothes – a floor-length black velvet cape, head-to-toe camo gear, and spiked gauntlets all up my arms. I always looked awesome – if I were on stage or at a festival. In class, I just looked like a fucktard.

Also, spiked gauntlets are really impractical. You can’t rest your arm on the desk when you write and you’re forever jabbing yourself in the hips. Don’t wipe stray hairs from your eyes – you’ll put an eye out.

Over the years, as I went to more shows, met more metalheads and listened to more music, I toned down my clothes. I have two distinct looks – “sort of dark and odd” which is what I wear to work and when we go to visit the in-laws, and “metalhead” which is what I wear the rest of the time.

The Metal Stigma

Yes, metal does have a stigma. Deena Weinstein calls us “Proud Pariahs”. We are, and I love it.

I’ll tell you a secret – I’m not this crazy, gung-ho, “love your metal brothers” chick all the time. I’d say I am this maybe 70% of the time. The rest of the time I’m at work, or at a cousin’s wedding, or chasing ducks around the park.

I write a metal blog, which I update 4-5 times per week. I have a metalhead husband, we go to local and international shows on a regular basis. 80% of our friends are metalheads, and those that aren’t, think we’re pretty strange but love us anyway. So a large, significant chunk of my life consists of doing, thinking, listening and living metal. But not all of it.

It wasn’t always like this, either. I’ve been into metal for over ten years now, and six of those years I didn’t have a metal husband, nine of those years I didn’t have a metal blog, and five of those years I didn’t go to any metal shows or have any metal friends. It’s all grown up around me as I’ve moved and changed and learned.

If I don’t care about the stigma, or I’m in a place the stigma doesn’t apply, I wear what I want and act how I want. If I want to blend in, I blend it, and no one’s going to toss me from the hall for doing so.

Please don’t toss me from the hall.

Wacken 2009

What Makes a Person a Metalhead?

These items are in descending order. You can’t move on to the next one until you’ve mastered the last. Often, people who “try-too-hard” try and skip from step 1, straight to step 4. No, no no no no. No. You start at step 1, than step 2, step 3 and then, only then, does step 4 happen.

Step 1

First and foremost, a metalhead listens to metal. You’ve got that step down pat.

Step 2

Second, a metalhead embraces the ideals of the metalhead subculture. These ideals are:

Metal is the best and most perfect form of music known to man. Its okay to listen to other music, but nothing is ever as good as metal.
The love of metal supersedes differences of religion, race, sex, culture and social standing.
Metal is a brotherhood (and sisterhood) and we look after our own. If you’re in trouble, you can call on fellow metalheads and they will help you.
A Metalhead embraces his (or her) own strict set of morals and adheres to these morals upon pain of death.
A Metalhead is not ashamed to like metal.
A Metalhead considers the pursuit a metal an intellectual activity, and arms him or herself with as much information as possible.
A Metalhead supports the continuation of metal by making music, going to shows and festivals, buying CDs and merchandise, and otherwise spreading the word of metal.
A Metalhead is a warrior in a great metal army, who must be ready at any time to take up a sword to fight for metal.

Step 3

Thirdly, a metalhead seeks out the company of other metalheads.

Step 4

Fourthly, a metalhead allows metal to slowly pervade other areas of his / her life. Metal becomes a part of your fashion, your work, your hobbies, your friendships, your lovers, your vacations, your budgeting habits, your life.

The simple answer to your question is: don’t worry about how you look if you haven’t yet mastered “step 2” of becoming a metalhead. If you think you’ve mastered those steps, you should consider trying to seek out the company of other metalheads.

An easy way to do this is actually to wear metal t-shirts while out on your daily business – that’s actually how we continually meet . Anytime you see a metalhead wearing a shirt from a band you like, say hi, throw them the goat, whatever.

At shows, try to talk to people. It’s bloody hard sometimes because everyone’s got their group of friends. I normally chat with the people around me in the pit, if I’m standing up the front waiting for a show to start. Next weeks article has lots more ideas on how to meet metalheads and become more a part of the metal subculture.

Eventually, metal permeates your life entirely of its own accord. That’s how we’ve ended up with a house full of “metal” stuff, closets bursting with “metal” clothes, a busy schedule of “metal” concerts and festivals, a successful “metal” blog, an impressive “metal” CD collection, a “metal” wedding, and a future plan to move to Germany, land of “metal”.

I really hope this has created some ideas to think about. Like I said, this is less an answer to your question and more a musing on the nature of posers and stigma and metal itself. I apologise if it’s not very coherent. Stay tuned for next weeks exciting conclusion! (and don’t forget to reply in the comments or email me steff@steffmetal.com if you have any questions or comments)

Yours Metal-ly \m/
Steff

Someone wrote to me recently asking if they had any advice for getting out of a funk. You know the feeling – nothing seems to work out for you, you can’t seem to pull yourself up and get motivated to do something, you feel bored, lethargic, and sad. You don’t feel like anyone loves you.

I feel like this sometimes, too. So does my husband. We’re lucky, because we can always tell when the other person feels despondant, and we know just the thing to cheer that person up. Not everyone is so lucky to have someone around 24/7 helping them to stay happy, so here are 101 ideas for cheering yourself up. Lots of these ideas would be fun to do with a friend or lover, but they work just as well if you’re by your lonesome.

1. Have a pyjama party

In bed. Just you, something (or someone) to snuggle, a laptop, notebook or sketchpad, some rad music, a good movie, and a hot cup of chocolate. It’s the perfect antidote for dreary weather or cancelled plans.

2. Sushi

Buy one of those “make your own sushi” kits from the supermarket, and learn to roll your own little roundels of heaven. Once you get good at the traditional Western “chicken teriyaki”, experiment with kooky flavors. My favorite sushi is Avocado, Cream Cheese and Pinapple. No joke.

Eat your sushi sitting on the floor watching kung fu, Japanese horror, or a good ole-fashioned anime tentacle rape.

3. Send Postcards

Buy a packet of ten postcards and send a note to your friends – even the ones you see every day. Tell them how awesome you think they are, and how much you love hanging out with them. Or, if you want to be less sappy, just quote some Manowar lyrics and tell them they smell. I even make heavy metal postcards for just this purpose!

4. Share the Cookie Wuv

You are going to a gig at the local metal bar. Bake a batch of cookies and bring them along to share. You have now made 50 new friends.

5. Poetry

Find poems you like and hang them on your wall or write them on your diary. Every time I read words fitted together like an intricate puzzle, I feel like the whole world is magic. I really love the work of Catullus and Henry Wordsworth Longfellow and Richard Brautigen and Dean Koontz. Even old Aliester Crowley created remarkable imagery.

A Boat,
Richard Brautigan

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.

6. Dress Up

Create outifts of ridiculous clothes and accessories to do mundane tasks. Walk the dog in your bondage pants and Pantera shirt, vacuum the house in a tutu and high heels, buy milk at the store in nothing but a trenchcoat. (I’ll let you invent your own definition of “ridiculous”).

7. Make Magic Everyday

Learn a magic trick – it could be something a simple as a card trick or a slight-of-hand. Practise until you’re really good, and delight your friends next time you see them. Don’t give away your secret.

8. Ich bin ein Stern

Buy a packet of glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars (you know the ones). Sneak into a friends house while they’re away, and decorate the ceiling of their room. They probably won’t notice till they turn off their light.

9. Laugh

Watch a DVD of one of your favorite stand-up comedians. If you don’t have a favorite stand-up comedian, I suggest you get one! Here be my favorites: Dylan Moran, Ed Bryne, Eddie Izzard, Flight of the Conchords.

10. The Royal Bedchamber

Make a canopy and coronet for your bed. Go to the fabric store and choose luxurious fabrics – chintz and brocade and lace and satin – in your favorite colours. Gather them on the ceiling and tie them to the corners of your bed. You can attach curtain rods to the ceiling to create a dramatic canopy. If you have any leftover fabric, make a few simple pillows to match. You are now a princess.

11. Paper Hat

Wear a paper hat. You don’t have to stick to the simple boat-shape. Why not design a paper bowler hat, beret or top hat? I have a mini-top hat with a flower I made entirely from Braille paper, which I do wear out on occasion (I shall find a picture)

12. Healing Stones

Go to one of those hippy shops and buy yourself something weird – a homeopath treatment or some incense or a dreamcatcher or a reiki massage or whatever they’re got on offer. Hell, what have you got to lose?

13. Bathtime

Run yourself a bath. Gather together all your exquisite bathroom pampering treatments – all the luscious soaps and decadent shower gels you haven’t opened because they’re “special” and you don’t want to use them up. Open them all. Use them all. Take the phone off the hook, put up a do-not-disturb sign, pour yourself a glass of wine or mead, put on some relaxing music, and read a book, or stare at the ceiling.

14. Bubbles!

Blow bubbles. You can buy little jars of bubble mixture at those $2 shops, or make a simple bubble mixture at home using dishwashing liquid, water, and sugar or corn syrup. TIP: Storing your solution for a day can actually lead to better bubbles.

15. Fly a Kite

I never forget the thrill of a kite soaring through the sky, tugging at the string in a desperate attempt to be free. Some shops rent kites – CDH and I rented one from a shop on the Gold Coast once, but you’d have to google your area to find out where they are. Better yet, make your own kite.

16. Trim

Find one of those treasure-trove fabric and trimming shops with hundreds of bits of old lace and rooms of buttons and bins of fabric offcuts. Set yourself a budget – say, $15, and find a mad ensemble of items. Take them home and decorate a hat, headband, bag, necklace or bag.

17. Midnight Snackage

Invite someone over for a midnight snack – someone who makes you laugh so hard your stomach hurts. Eat nachos from the plate together and giggle. Last night, CDH and I stayed up late watching old favorites from our DVD collection and eating apple and rhubarb crumble. We caught the Simpsons – it was one of the newer episodes where Grandpa drags the family to Ireland and Homer ends up buying an Irish pub, which they subsequently turn into a smokeasy. The programme ends, as the Simpsons stints abroad tend to do, with Homer on trial. Chief Wiggan turns up to escort the Simpsons home. Therin follows a hilarious sequence where Chief Wiggam hits himself in the eye while twirling his baton, then tries to soothe the bruise with mace, then somehow manages to taser himself, and of course, once you start tasering yourself, you actually can’t stop. For some reason, this got CDH – he could not stop laughing. He rolled around for awhile and gave himself the hiccups. It was hilarious.

18. Sexy

Wear a suspender belt with stockings. All day, every day. Even if your a guy.

19. Bells

Wear bells around your ankles. You can buy ankle bells at medieval markets. I love them, although you can never sneak up behind someone to surprise them.

20. Inexpensive Pampering

Go to a shop like “Lush” and spend some time smelling everything. Then buy yourself a little treat. Many people like to buy incredible handmade soap from Etsy – I don’t, because I live in NZ and the shipping makes it horrendously expensive. Plus you loose out on the smelling – the smelling is the important part.

21. Hydration

You should drink water more often – it’s good for you and makes you feel happy. But it should also be fun. Buy yourself a water bottle – not one of those one-use plastic ones, but something grymm, like a stainless steel masterpiece or a skull-shaped bottle. Or find yourself a beautiful vintage glass bottle and use that. I bet you’ll feel like a pirate!

22. Out, out, dammed spot!

Quote Shakespeare at inappropriate moments. If you’ve never developed an appreciation for Shakespeare, it’s never too late to pick up a copy of Richard III or a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Or why not go against the grain and read some Ben Johnson or Thomas Marlowe instead? They were bloody good, too.

23. Ancient Foibles

If you really, really can’t understand the modern english, read Aristophanes – an ancient greek comic writer. He’s hilarious. Seriously, laugh out loud funny, especially if you have a passing knowledge of ancient greek culture and mythology. Try the Lysistrata, a play about a group of wives who are desperate to stop the war between Athens and Sparta and bring their husbands home to sleep with them – so desperate, they declare a SEX STRIKE until the war is over. Hilarity Ensues.

24. Presents!

Buy or make an amazing gift – like a mix CD of your favorite songs or a beautiful box of chocolates – and wrap it in a bix box with a pretty ribbon. Give it a tag saying “to you”, and place it in the middle of the sidewalk outside your window. Watch how long it takes before someone picks it up.

25. Watch-word

Change your passwords on your email, your bank, your paypal account, everything, to words that make you smile. Banana, elocution, evisceration, duped, muggle, flippant, pumpkmen, snooty, sneed, salacious … the possibilities are endless!

26. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Find a playground in your area. Swing on the swings. Better yet, if you have a backyard with a tree, build a swing for yourself. I find all the world’s problems can be solved by a little swing-time.

27. Love your Fear

If you’re afraid of something, tell yourself you actually love it. I’ve found if you tell yourself something often enough, eventually you’ll believe it. I used to be afraid of thunderstorms, until I started telling myself I loved them: the epic display of nature’s prowess, the anticipation of waiting for thunder, that feeling of being warm and safe inside. Now I love them.

28. To the Theatre

Go and see a play. No, not a movie. An actual display of live theatre. You can find descriptions of plays on theatre websites – local productions cost about the same as a movie ticket, and they often give student discounts.

You could travel even further from the norm and try the ballet. I went to the ballet once, and loved it, although it was a production of Dracula. The costumes … sigh! We are organising tickets for Sweeny Todd in June, another exciting outing for our friends. We’re hoping to go to dinner somewhere that makes pies.

I also went to the opera once, in Greece. The greek opera – sung in Italian with Greek subtitles. There were two operas on in the one night, because neither was the length of a full opera (operattes?) The second was a traditional story (my expert opera-attending buddy tells me) but the first … well, there was a man trapped in a cell with a maid singing to him while she swept the floor. The curtains at the back opened and he had a conversation with some hooded figures. His guards came and sung to him then left him alone. He sang and sang and the lights went down and the music swelled and his cell door creaked over, revealing … a pot plant. Yes. A pot plant. He picked the pot plant up and held it and caressed it and a guard came in and he shot the guard, and I don’t remember what happened after that, except I bet there was more singing.

29. Write to Your Idols

Compile a list of all the people in the world you want to meet – all the amazing artists, writers, musicians, actors, thinkers, dreamers and activists who’ve inspired you over the years.

Start emailing them and making contact. Tell them everything you’d want to tell them in real life – how they touched your life and inspired your own creativity, which of their works had the greatest impact on you, what you think of their latest project. Ask their opinion on matters concerning the world and point them in the direction of your own work. You never know, you might even get a reply.

30. Read Outside

There’s something very peaceful about reading a book under a tree, or while sitting on a wooden bench in a deserted rose garden.

31. Join the Library

I lived in Auckland for four and a half years before I joined the public library, and, although I had access to the university library, I regret my sojurn from fiction books. Now, I work right next door to the library, and I’m reading a book or two every week. Plus, you can use the itnernet there for free, and they run fun events and readings and competitions.

32. Break from Technology

Stop watching TV for a week. Unplug the modem. Live in the real world totally and utterly for a week. Sometimes I feel as though we live too much of our life online, and we make contacts, but no real connections. Get out into the world and experience RL for a week – if nothing else, you’ll have something interesting to write about when you get back to your blog.

33. Hiaku

The very act of focusing your thoughts into a hiaku relaxes and empowers you. (For those of you who don’t know, a hiaku is style of japanese poetry: the first line has 5 syllables, the second line 7, and the third line 5. Write all your emails in hiaku.

34. Krieg Up your Wallet

I bet you keep your money in a plain leather wallet, don’tchya? Well, find something cooler. What about this fleur-de-lys Stone Hinged wallet? Or this Steampunk Gear leather wallet? Or a gothic cigarette tin wallet?

35. Re-create your Food Lust

Think of your favorite food at your favorite restuarant. Now, scour the internet and all the fancy cookbooks for a likely recipe. Buy all the fresh ingredients and attempt to make your fave dish at home. You probably won’t succeed, but you might come up with something even nicer, or, at the very least, a new appreciation of the skill of your favorite chef.

I love this tofu pad thai gai at the Thai restuarant across the road from my office, but I cannot find a recipe that comes even close to it’s deliciousness. It doesn’t help I have no concept of what to do with tofu.

36. Metal Green Thumb

Buy a weird plant and take care of it. By weird, I mean a deadly nightshade or venus flytrap or sarracenia or nepenthes. Check out this gothic garden livejournal community for more ideas.

37. Hang Windchimes

I’ve always loved the tinkle of winchimes and crystals. I lined the entire length of my window in my room at my folk’s house with various chimes – ceramic bells I strung up with beads, clear crystals that sparkle in the sun, blown glass droplets which make an incredible sound when they clink together, a ceramic wind chime, dreamcatchers, african animals with bells … it’s so colorful and cheery.

38. Re-vocabise

During my second year of uni, a friend and I embarked on an important and dangerous mission: to banish those horrid words “like” and “totally” from our everyday vocab, when used as a sentence filler “You’re like totally kidding me?” or “I want to, like, find that shirt I lost” or “Metallica were, like, my favorite band ever”. So every time I’d say one of those words, she’s interrupt me and I’d have to say the sentence again, without using “like”. After awhile, your brain gets sick of being interrupted all the time and you stop saying them. It worked for a good two or three years. They’ve crept back into my vocab, and my writing, but I aim to remedy this!

39. Learn Braille

Yes, you read correctly. You’re probably not blind, but you could learn Braille anyway. First, you learn to read the dots with your eyes and interpret them as letters, and then you learn contractions “ed” and “and” and “st”, etc. It’s super easy, like learning a secret code, and will make trips in elevators more fun.

Also, you learn something of what it would be like to lose one of your senses. You understand that, no matter what happens to you, the world keeps turning, and dragging you with it. You can survive anything.

40. Alternatively, learn Sign Language

For the same reasons above.

41. Wear a Mask

If you’re feeling lonely and self-conscious, why not hide your face with a mask? If you want to hide away, hide behind a wall of latex or leather or sequins or lace. You can find venetian masks at Masquerade Magic or cyber masks at Obscuria.

42. Exercise

You know exercise is good for you, and it makes you feel good. So exercise! Run around the block, do star jumps in the living room. Find the local ice-skating rink or rock climbing wall, hike through the park, practise yoga, salsa dancing or burlesque (you can find lots of free lessons on youtube).

43. Archery

I am legally blind. I can barely see three feet in front of my face. Yet I love archery. Strutting around with a massive bow and arrows in your quivver feels awesome. I’m constantly posing like I’m in Lord of the Rings. Archery takes concentration, a steady hand and a keen eye (or a good spotter). It’s a sport you do outdoors, rain or shine, by yourself or with a friend. There’s no shouting, no balls flying everywhere, no team rivalry … just you and a bow and your own internal challenges.

44. No One at Home

Change your voicemail message to something hilarious. Mine says “Hello, you’ve reached Steff’s cell. Unfortunately, I can’t come to the phone right now, as I’m preparing for the imminent zombie apocalypse. If you’re listening to this, I suggest you find yourself a sharp implement and head to your nearest shopping mall.” All the messages I receive begin with the callers giggling.

45. Worship a new God

Go to a religious service of a religion you don’t belong to and don’t believe in, (only if this is allowed and you’re not offending anyone). Really embrace the experience with an open mind and try to learn something about who these people are, who they believe in and how their faith affects their everyday life.

46. High Heels

Make yourself a pair of stilts. All you need are two sturdy planks or wood, and two wooden squares to act as footholds. Bolt / nail / glue the squares to the wooden planks, sand down the rough edges and practise your high walking!

47. Paricipate in Operation Beautiful

Operation Beautiful’s mission is to put up annoymous notes in public places for other women to find. The notes say “you are beautiful” and give the Operation Beautiful web address. I’ve put up a few around Auckland, and I hope they made somebody’s day.

48. Music

Dig out your favorites – the music that makes you feel the world is full of wonder. Play loud, sing along, dance on the bed, throw your arms around, headbang, smash something, slow dance with your cat. My feel-good favorites: Metallica – Ride the Lightning, Iron Maiden – Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Manowar – Kings of Metal, Venom – Black Metal, Arch Enemy – Doomsday Machine, Bif Naked – I Bificus, The Dresdon Dolls – Dresdon Dolls, Blind Guardian – Nightfall on Middle Earth.

49. Realise a Lifelong Dream

Have you ever had a dream come true? I can’t describe the feeling – like everything in your whole life has lead up to that moment, and nothing will ever make you sad again.

I’ve wanted to see the Great Pyramids since I was … ooh, about seven. And when I stood there, and I touched them, and I went inside, I cried. Not very metal of me, I know. But they were more incredible than I could ever imagine. So get out there and make a lifelong dream come true.

50. Decide on a Lifelong Dream

Maybe you’ve never had a dream come true because you don’t have a dream … or you don’t think you do.

Write a list of things you wish you could do before you die. Keep the list nearby you and ad items to it constantly. Even write down the dreams you have for other people. Do you want to see your child succeed or your partner quit their job and pursue a lifelong passion? Add that to the list, too.

You’ll discover certain items on the list tug at your heart-strings more than others. These are your dreams. Knowing what they are is your first step to achieving them.

51. Indulge a Guilty Pleasure

Whatever it might be. I am partial to eating Tim Tams and watching Dr. Phil, or listening to the Rasmus. Be proud to be silly.

52. Have Something Delicious Delivered to your House

Don’t go for the normal pizza – see if your favorite italian or moroccan restuarant do deliveries? Will the bakery send you out a fresh-baked loaf? Bask in the glory of ringing someone up and having hot food arrive on your doorstep. It’s a womderful world we live in.

53. Tourism!

Dress up like a tourist (shorts, shirt, camera, “bum bag”, ridiculous hat, guidebook in back pocket) and go do something really touristy: whale-watching, the tourist bus tour, or go to the over-priced amusements. Talk loudly, take hundreds of photos.

54. Clothing Attack

Find all the clothes in your wardrobe you don’t really like and attack them with hundreds of studs and spikes. I bet you like them better now, right?

55. Invent Music

Buy a silly instrument – a harmonica, a tin whistle, a recorder, a djambje, anything as long as it’s inexpensive and makes noise. Be loud and enthusiastic in your playing.

56. Feed Ducks

Make a “feel happy” soundtrack of your favorite songs, and stick it on your MP3 player. Put on your favorite walking clothes. Walk to your local park or river, stopping at the dairy on the way to pick up a loaf of bread. Walk through the park listening to your favorite songs, a find a good stop to sit down a throw morsels of bread to the ducks and geece.

Ducks are my favorite animals, besides cats. Ducks have it all – they can float, they can swin, they can fly and they can waddle adorably.

57. Secret Squirrel

Find a secret place. Your secret place should be high up, with a great view. Look for tall trees in the park, abandoned buildings with easily-scaled roofs, or unknown nooks and niches above bridges. Take yourself there when you feel blue, listen to music or read a book and watch the city unfold around you. Be careful climbing to your secret place – falling from your favorite tree won’t cheer you up!

58. Buy Silly Slippers

In the cold of winter, your feet need all the warm they can get. A pair of ridiculous slippers – shaped like dogs, penguins or Eric Adam’s loincloth – cheer you up.

59. Otherwise Know As …

Decide on new nicknames for all of your friends. Send them a text or email to let them know their new nickname, and call them that from now on. The more outrageous the nicknames, the better.

I have had many nicknames over the years: Scopes, Steffocles, Double F, Squints, Blinkin’, Blinkie Bill (I detest this), Steffy, Steffy-waffles, Titi, Dozer and Beaker (those last two gens are from my husband. Such a caring fellow.)

Nicknames make a person feel loved, like they’ve reached a new level of intimacy with you.

60. Rise and Shine, Sleepyhead

Changing your morning routine can alter your whole day. If you shower at night, try showering in the morning, just after you wake up. What do you eat for breakfast? DO you eat breakfast? We need to change that? Do you open the curtains? If not, open them wide! Do you get up too early? Too late? Change up your routine for a week, and measure the affects on you whole persona.

61. Wake-up Call

Change your alarm clock to something fun. On our epic Europe adventure we had “Morning Manowar”. I tell you, nothing makes you more excited to get up and explore castles than “Hail and Kill” at 7am.

62. Find a Totem

A totem is an emblam representing a creature or object you feel a strong connection with. Carrying a totem on your person gives you the sense of being able to draw power from associating yourself with that creature. It’s a little new-agey, but I also think it’s quite metal.

My totem animals are cats, and birds – specifically ravens and ducks. We made friends with ravens in Norway, and ever since, I’ve fallen utterly in love with them.

63. Experience New Things

Find a list of “what’s on in your town”, and for a week, do something new every day. Alternatively, search travel websites for reviews of off-the-beaten track things to do in your area – sometimes backpackers find the gems you’d never otherwise discover, because their hearts and minds are actively searching for those experiences.

64. Lego

One day I was feeling crap (I can’t remember why), and CDH snuck out of the house. He returned 20 minutes later carrying a huge box. What was inside? A lego viking ship!

We spent the afternoon making it up and having high seas viking adventures. Best. Cheering. Up. Ever.

65. Write a Personal Manifesto

Who are you really? What are you about? What makes you tick? What morals and beliefs do you follow?

Write yourself a personal manifesto – who you are, who you want to be and how you’re gonna get there. For more info on manifesto writing (an artform in itself) read about Nothing Elegant’s Blog Manifesto project (pssst, you’ll be hearing a lot more about this soon).

66. Open an Etsy Shop

If you’re a creative type, why not see if you can sell some work online. Etsy is a great place to sell handmade crafts or vintage collections. You don’t have to try and make millions selling your work, but list a few of your best pieces and see how you go.

TIP: The key to success on Etsy (as far as I can tell) is to list lots of items, so your stuff shows up in more searches. Try to list an item a day for 30 days – you should start to see more regular sales once you have over 50-100 items in your shop (which is what I’m currently working towards). It’s only 20c to list an item, so you not going to bankrupt yourself.

67. Make Someone’s Day

Mark Twain said “the best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up”. The man speaks truth. Call an old friend up, just to say hi. Text someone and tell them they’re awesome. Take any idea from this list and do it for someone else, instead of for yourself.

68. Gratitude

Write a Gratitude List – I do this sometimes on the blog. It’s called Up the Irons! and it’s a shout-out to everything good in life. Sometimes, when you concentrate on the bad, you forget all the little things making up the world of good.

69. De-Clutter

Clean out a drawer, cupboard, desk or room you’ve filled up with stuff. Pile up old clothes and books to give to charity shops, and toss the rest away (or recycle it, if you can). You don’t need so much stuff, and having a clean desk/room/drawer feels like having a clean start. I feel instantly fresh and inspired after cleaning my eternally cluttered writing desk.

70. Light a Fire

Don’t you find something oddly comforting about a live, roaring fire? My family has always had open fires blazing throughout winter – I’ve never owned a heater till I moved to Auckland and lived in a hostel. We would sit round the fire at night and eat dinner, do our homework, watch TV. Sometimes, Dad would cook crumpets or pikelets on the fire, or we’d roast marshmallows.

If you have an open fireplace, light a fire in your living room and curl up next to it with a book and a bag of marshmallows. Hot chocolate, pikelet mixture, jam and chocolates work a treat, too.

If not, can you make a fire in a drum in your backyard? (check your local law about this). Pull up a chair, a can (or horn) of mead and a steak sandwich. Taste the night air on your tongue.

71. Fresh Fruits and Vegetables

A diet of highly processed foods deprives us of much-needed nutrients, and nutrients make us happy. So give yourself a nutrient feast – find your local farmers market and spend up large and the freshest, most delicious fruits and vegetables. Toss into a salad, bake into a pie, boil up in a big vat of soup, or just enjoy raw with olive oil and hummus.

72. Play Board Games

You’re going to need a partner for this. Dig out all your “old school” board games – Monopoly, Hamburger (my favorite, cuz it’s about food), Mousetrap, Trouble, UNO, Blackgammen … whatever you had as a kid, and play them all. Make fairy bread and drink orange juice and wrap yourself in big blankets.

73. “Get Away From It All”

I’ve never been an advocate for this method of dealing with an issue, because you’re bound to find the issue waiting for you when you return from your sojourn.

But sometimes, you just need a break from the world. If you know you need to “get away” for a few days, really get away. Skip town, and don’t take your cell phone. Go bush. Pack your tent and billy and find a corner of the wilderness unpopulated with human life. Relish the stillness of a world untouched by urban living. In the clarity of fresh air, all your muddled thoughts sometimes become crystal clear.

74. The Old Fashioned Way

I bake bread every day. EVERY DAY. I don’t use a breadmaker, or any prepackaged mix. I make bread the old-fashioned way – the way humankind has made bread for 10 000 years.

Throw away your modern conveniences and learn to make something to “old-fashioned” way. Can your own tomato pasta sauce, squeeze your own orange juice, make your own beer (I’m doing a home-brew course this year – exciting!), bake a loaf of bread from scratch … kneading that bread is theraputic, trust me.

75. Build a Fort

Need I say more?

76. Up in the Air

This isn’t cheap, but I guarantee it will cheer you up. Go on a hot air balloon ride.

We took a hot air balloon ride over Cappedocia in Turkey. Not cheap (wiped our Middle-East budget clear out) but worthwhile. I never expected the sensation of being inside a hot-air balloon to feel like it did – everything is still. You can’t feel wind. You just hang, and bob along. You can hear everything happening on the streets below. Amazing

77. Beach

Maybe it’s just a New Zealand thing, but nothing says relaxing and good times like going to the beach.

Go to a deserted beach – they’re easy to find if you know where to look. Pack a picnic lunch. Roll the legs of your pants up and run through the surf. Clamber over the rocks and find little fishies in the tide pools. Build a sandcastle. Watch the sun set over the water.

78. Adopt a Pet

If you feel lonely, give part of your home to an animal without one. Every day, the SPCA and other animal shelters rescue hundreds of unwanted, neglected pets, and if no one comes to adopt them … you know what happens. It’s shameful and we should all do our bit for these animals.

Scientists have proven stroking a cat enduces healing and reduces feelings of lonliness and anxiety. Pets love unconditionally, and they always know just what to do to make you laugh.

79. Karaoke

Who thought up such a ridiculous idea? And yes, as silly as karaoke seems, it’s immensly popular and lots of fun.

Can’t sing? Neither can anyone else. Just do the best you can. Ham it up, be OTT ridiculous. Death growl if you have to.

80. Sparklers

Wait until fireworks go on sale in November, and stock up on these little packets of joy. Bring out a few sparklers to light up your BBQs over summer, or just dance around the backyard when you feel a little feral. Spell naughty words in the air, have a dual against a tree, or just pretend you are a fire fairy. Sparklers rule.

81. Ice Cream Parlour

Find your nearest ice cream parlour, and order the largest, most ridiculous sundae on their menu. Eat it all. Don’t feel guilty.

Or, better yet, make your own concoction at home. Give it a hilarious name, like “Steff’s Epic Metal Sundae Mountain of Doom”, cover it in whipped cream, frosting, crumbled biscuits, cut-up Mars bars, nuts, sprinkles, chocolate chips, cherries, bananas, blueberries, sauce, fudge, sherbert and anything else you can think of. Eat it all. Don’t feel guilty.

82. Old School

Go to the library or a second-hand bookshop and find some of those series books from the nineties: the ones you undoubtedly read: The Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, Pony Club, Goosebumps, Fear Street. Read them all again. Damn, weren’t they terribly awesome?

83. Community Classes

CDH and I are taking German classes at a nearby high school. It costs us $89 for seven 2 hour lessons, with all materials included. The school runs classes in everything: from burlesque dancing to Metalworking to Indian cooking. They are cheap, they are run by enthusiastic, experienced teachers, they are filled with interesting people, they enable you to learn new skills. In short – community classes are awesome.

84. Notebook

Buy yourself a fancy notebook, and a nice pen. I love Black Spot Books and Bibliographica who handbind journals they’ve created using recycled leather and found materials. I also like Immortal Longing’s Shakespeare-inspired journals. Lots of people adore Moleskeine journals, but I honestly don’t see the difference between them and any other notebook.

What will you use your notebook for? Oh, the possibilities!

writing poetry
sketching
doodling
a gratitude journal
song lyrics
inspirational quotes
funny lists
love letters
things you want to do before you die

85. Random Club

Open your gig guide, close your eyes, and point. That’s where you’re going tonight. Dress inappropriately, and make the best of it.

86. Starry Night

Find your local observatory or planetarium. Show up for one of their evening lectures – they normally set up telescopes so you can look at celestial bodies. Better yet, take a course in astronomy. Amaze yourself at just how busy it is out there.

My clever husband can navigate a boat by the stars.

87. Sleepy Time

If you can spare the dough, buy new sheets and a duvet for your bed. Find something completely luxurious in a your favorite colour. Make Over your bed, and you make over your sleep.

88. Facebook Friends

You know all those random “friends of friends’ who keep adding you on Facebook? Strike up a conversation with one of them. You know you already have something in common, and they added you so they can’t think your a serial killer or anything. Who knows, a “friend of a friend” might turn into an actual friend.

89. Dinner and a Movie

By Yourself. Yes, go out on a “typical” date all by yourself. Eat at your favorite restuarant (and don’t bring a book. You don’t need to distract yourself from your own company), and then go to a movie you really want to see. Buy yourself all the treats YOU want to eat, sit wherever you want (I love sitting right in the front row, and I fold all the armrests up and lie down. Cushiney!)

90. Love Letter

Write someone a love letter in chalk on the steps up to their apartment or the pavement outside their flat. Use several colours. Hide and watch their reaction when they see it.

91. Signature Cocktail

Pull all the liquer bottles out of your cabinet and line then up on the bench. Now, go to the fridge and pull out all the liquids and fruits. Do the same with the pantry. Now, line up all your shot glasses and start mixing! You’re searching for the perfect signature cocktail. This involves lots of taste-testing. Be daring, be crazy. Give your drink a wacky name.

This is an excellent way to use all those liquer bottles people have left with half a centimetre of liquid inside.

92. Road Trip

Road trips kick ass. A car, good music, an adventure, bad food, what more could you want? I love a trip when you know roughly where you’re going, but you don’t have a specific schedule, so you can stop and look at random things on the way. On the last road trip I went on – up to a campsite by a lake – we stopped to take air-guitar pictures outside a picturesque white chapel in the middle of a rolling field. Next, we made faces underneath a duck-crossing sign.

93. Collect something Interesting

It could be anything – I collect miniature trinket boxes (I want to start collecting pill or snuff boxes exclusively), and fossils, and I used to collect locks of hair. CDH collects vintage books about trains. I have a friend who collects typewriters, another who collects statues of elephants.

Once you’ve decided on your collection, spend hours scouring eBay or Amazon and making a huge wishlist of all the items you want to add to your collection. You probably can’t afford to buy them all, but maybe splash out on just one.

94. Pay off Debt

Owing people money stresses me out. I feel like a failure if I haven’t budgeted accordingly to be able to pay for something in cash, or I have to borrow money from a friend.

So sit down and make a plan. Many people find great success in Dave Ramsey’s “Debt Snowball” plan: you write a list of all your debts in order of how much money is left on them. You make sure you’re paying the minimum on each, except for the one with the least amount left to pay back. You throw everything else you’ve got at that payment, and as soon as you’ve paid it off, you throw everything at the next smallest, and so on. It’s not the most cost-effective way (if one of your larger payments has a much higher interest rate) but most of debt repayment is about staying focused, and it’s hard to stay focused if you don’t see any results. Getting rid of each payment is like a little present for all your hard work – you stay motivated.

95. Paddle

You can buy a decent-sized paddling pool at the Warehouse or Para rubber or whatever the equivelent house-of-plastic-crap is in your country. Fill it with water (warm or hot) and bubble bath. Pour yourself a glass of wine and have your own private paddle spa in your backyard. I like to do this at night when you can see the stars.

96. Celebrate random holidays

You might have realised by now, I’m a big fan of celebrating random and made-up holidays. I’ve written before about remembering Dimebag Darryl and having a metal Christmas, but I’m sure you can think of lots of ideas for random or made-up holidays.

Celebrate the birthdays of your favorite writers, musicians and artists. Celebrate crazy religious holidays – Gala Darling wrote about celebrating Holi – a hindi festival where everyone throws coloured powder over everyone else. It looks like the most fun ever.

97. Let Go of Useless People

On a couple of occasions I’ve had to let go of friends who were hurting me. They were good friends and good people and I loved them and didn’t realise what a negative effect they had on my life, until it was too late. Sometimes, loving someone isn’t enough, when they expect you to carry them too.

Let go of the people who cause you pain. Set them free to find themselves. Be the hero – be the person brave enough to say “this isn’t working and it has to end.” Letting those people go was like a huge weight lifting from my chest.

I’m a firm believer that if the friendship is meant to be, it will come back, stronger than ever. And ending a friendship doesn’t undo all the wonderful, amazing good times and experiences you had together.

98. Embrace another Culture

Choose a culture or time period you don’t know anything about, but have always been fascinated with, and start reading books and websites. Whether you choose ancient Egypt, Communist Russia, Imperial China, the Maori or the Inuit, start a love affair with another time or place.

99. Mmmmm, Sprinkles

Bake a cake for a friend, or for your colleagues at work. For no reason, except “just because”. I find the act of baking theraputic – no matter what’s going on in the world, you still stir the batter, lick the bowl, and make your house smell amazing. Plus, you get to surprise someone with cake.

100. Hug someone

I love hugs – they’re my favoritest thing in the whole world. If you hug someone (a friend, a parent, a lover, a stranger), chances are, they’ll hug you back. Yay, hugs for everyone!

TIP: If you ever meet me, give me a hug. I will love you forever.

101. Talk to Steff

Even if no one else cares, even if no one in the whole wide world wants to listen to you moan or growl or cry or scream or laugh or sob or growl or smile – I do. Shoot me an email at steff@steffmetal.com – I always answer.

Phew! I’m all out of ideas now. What do you do to cheer yourself up?

Steff

Laura of Laura Zindel Ceramics creates the most incredible ceramic dishware with hand-painted line drawings of bugs and creepy-crawlies, inspired by Victorian Cabinets of Curiosity. She’s just been written up on WebUrbanist, who describe her “transferware” process – a common 18^th century ceramic method not commonly practiced today. She first draws her intricate designs in pencil, then prints them as enamel transfers which are collapsed into the raw pieces and fired.

From Rock n’ Roll Bride, a Perfect Picnic Wedding. You can tell there’s a little magic in the air – I would love to recreate this shoot with friends, good food and a deserted forest. Although, there’d be no beige suits in sight.

There would, however, be one of these amazing cakes.

Also, an elegant, dark, vegan goth wedding.

Several students from the Aaron O’Keefe music school in Ohio recorded a cover of Pantera’s “Cowboys from Hell” Guitarist Joe Hubbell has used some of Dimebag’s solo and incorporated a few of his own ideas. Dimebag wouldn’t have minding – in fact, he would have loved to jam with these kids.

Also in Pantera “news”, ex-vocalist Phil Anselmo spoke to Bloody Disgusting about his favorite horror films of all time. The man has good taste, and there’s a couple on that list I haven’t seen and will have to get my hands on.

Leatherette.

Sister Wolf over at Goddamit, I’m Mad, considers Ordealism: theperformance art form involving putting your body through pain and humiliation. The artist she’s referring to, Abramovic, is having a retrospective exhibition at MOMA, where performance artists are recreating her most famous “pieces”, including the one where she scrubs a room filled with rotting, maggot-infested cow bones on her hands and knees, sobbing while video’s of her parents were projected on the walls. The comment thread on Sister Wolf’s blog is, as always, priceless.

A very thought-provoking article on Decor8 about the increase in DIY Duplicate-it-Yorself projects and how they hurt designers. Princess Lasertron offers a personal look at how this Duplicate-it-Yourself ethos has affected her.

Following on from my post last week on No Clean Chicks Singing, the boys at NCS remembered another good female-fronted metal band: Bloodshoteye. Check them out!

Starry Knights: 14 Star-Shaped Fortresses. These are all on my must-see-next-Europe-adventure list.

From ProBlogger, the go-to guide for blogging success, how to choose a blog niche. This is nearly the exact process I go through when I start a new blog or help a client set up a blog.

Alexander McQueen’s final collection has an ethereal, medieval flair.

Over at Yes and Yes, Sarah brings the funny with a few quotes from comedian Mitch Hedberg. I’ve never heard of the guy (who sadly passed away a few years ago) but he’s brilliant.

My apartment is infested with koala bears. It’s the cutest infestation ever. Much better than cockroaches. I turn the lights on and a bunch of koala bears scatter. I’m like, ‘Come back! I want to hold one of you, and feed you a leaf.’

What of you, good readers? Anything interesting going on in your corner of the internet? Feel free to link to cool things in the comments.

Your Cowgirl from Hell
Steff

I got it! I finally got it!

I am wearing:

Corset, from Velvet Mechanism, made from an upcycled pair of WWII army spats.
black shirt, the Warehouse
black skinny pants, Just Jeans
pirate belt, Supre
leather pouch – the case from my binoculars
boots – Jeffrey Campbell
cross necklace – brought from an amazing little gift shop in my hometown. I’d originally brought it to wear at the wedding, but when I put my wedding dress on, it didn’t actually need a necklace.

I couldn’t be happier with the corset. I perhaps ordered a slightly smaller size than I should have, but it still looks amazing (I tied it myself in these photos, so it’s quite loose). It’s not a tight-lacing corset like my Gallery Serpentine one, but it does give a very nice line to the upper torso, especially because the stiff canvas fabric doesn’t have much give. I love the dangling straps and grommet detailing from the original spats. If you want one for yourself, there’s still a couple left in her shop, last time I checked. These spats are quite rare, so I’d hop to it, if I were you.

We’ve just been out to buy a DVD from a horror film – Deathwatch – CDH saw years ago and can’t get out of his head. I am head to desk, finishing off some copywriting work (I’m so late! It’s been a hectic week) and working on my novel. I am not emerging from my office till I’ve fixed 100 pages of text. I’m on page 36. It will take awhile.

Have yourself an amazing weekend \m/
Steff

Faith from One Black Carnation is a mistress of distress. Distressed clothing, that is. She’s written a tutorial on studding and distressing a pair of jeans for us all.

A really cool pair of distressed jeans can run you into a good $200. Want some studs on it? PAY EVEN MORE! Seriously, who can pay for that? I know I can’t! So, what’s a stud feign to do?

All you need is a old pair of jeans (Stained? Even better!), a knife, Sandpaper/nail file, chalk/washable marker, a pack of studs, a small nail, and pliers/tweezers (Depending on the size of your stud).

Once you’ve got your materials together, you’re ready for a crash course on jean distressing.

Distress 101: Types and techniques:

The Slash

The slash mark is achieved by rubbing a knife up and down on the jean fabric. To make sure that you don’t make a hole, completely stop after a few slashes and check your handiwork until you get the look you want. These usually appear in the wrinkle zone, or the area where the leg meets the hip.

The Fray

Rub a knife from side to side along the seams around your pants pockets, zipper, and foothole. Remember to stop regularly and check out your work.

The Hole

For a hole place a hard round object (Like a stone) underneath the area you planned hole to appear. Rub   with the nailfile until a hole with fuzzy edges appears. You’d likely see holes above, at, or directly below the knee area.

The Fade

To get the fade look, the easiest thing to do is to rub the area with sandpaper or a nail file until you start seeing those white threads, then continue up or down depending on where you marked. Keep a close eye on the area you are distressing as you wouldn’t want all those glorious threads to snap! Fades appear from midthigh to the area directly below the knee.

Now that you know the techniques, it time to plan out the look. Check out pictures of distressed jeans to get a feel of where the distress organically occurs. Put on your jeans and start drawing where you want your holes, fades, frays and slashes.

Be sure to wash your jeans after you have distressed them, to get the true wear and tear look. In the end they should something like look like this:

 

Now for the studding section.

First you need studs. To buy studs at cheap prices check out Crust Punks, Studs and Spikes, or Angry Young and Poor, where you can buy them under five dollars in bulk. Absolutely do not bother buying the bedazzler (Just saying.)! Also try holding on to those old studded belts, studs can be recycled.

First mark out where you will place your studs (Around pockets and on the seams are great places). Hit the web for some inspiration if you are stuck. Once you know where you are putting your studs, it’s time to put them in.

Take a look at this picture of some studs.

Note that the underside of the stud has two spokes. You are going to place the stud over the place you plan to put it with the spokes poking out the underside of the denim. Push the stud really hard and note where those little spokes left a mark. Use a small nail to open the lil holes up. Push the spokes through and turn to the underside. Use your pliers or tweezers to push those spokes in so that the underside looks like my favorite emoticon : >.<

Continue to stud along your marking until you are finished

Enjoy your new jeans!

You can find Faith’s other DIY projects and “Look of the Week” posts over on her blog.

Happy studding!
Steff

It’s a long-held belief among self-righteous metalheads that girls can’t do extreme metal. Extreme Metal is probably the most aggressive, angry, violent form of music there is, and every study ascertains its audience as overwhelmingly male. There’s a kind of “lost boys club” surrounding extreme metal, a sort of grymm forest treehouse with a badly handwritten sign on the door: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.

But is this assumption true? Can girls growl, scream, grunt, rasp and shriek as well as you blokes?

It’s a good question, and one I attempt to answer in my post No Clean Chicks Singing, which is up at No Clean Singing, if you care to have a read.

I’ve been investigating underground female-fronted extreme metal for the last couple of weeks, and I’ve found some wicked new bands. You can hear a few over at No Clean Singing, or wait for the upcoming Metal Mistape.

Goats Cheese and Satan’s Knees \m/
Steff

Dear Steff Metal

Prom is coming up soon, and I’m really worried about it. I don’t have a date, and all the girls in my class are making such a big deal about it. My best friend has asked the guy I have liked for ages, and my group of usually-close friends are all pairing off, and no one has asked me, and I feel yuck and nervous about the whole thing.  

I don’t have the money to buy expensive dresses or shoes, and I’m clueless about makeup, etc. I want to wear something really awesome, but there’s nothing in the shops around town. Our school has strict rules on what can be worn – no low-cut necklines, no mini-skirts, which cuts out lots of the Lip Service stuff, etc.

Do you have any advice?

***

Let me preface by saying we don’t have “prom” in New Zealand. We have a “School Ball” which is pretty much the same concept: it’s for yr 12 and 13 students only (the last two years of high school – Juniors and Seniors, I think you call them), there’s a theme and a committee and everyone dresses up and gets horribly trashed at the after party. They are a big deal, and a lot of time and effort goes into planning them (even at my high school, which was a poorer public high school in a tiny town), but they probably don’t compare to the hype surrounding Prom at US high schools. So, while I’ll try and answer as best I can, I’m only working with my own experience and what i know about Prom from reading Sweet Valley High books.

Prom isn’t really an “alternative” or “metal” thing. You dress up in pretty, feminine dresses, or a suit or tux, spend a lot of time and money on jewellery and makeup and hairdos, you slow dance or shuffle to pop or ballroom music, you drink punch from plastic wine glasses, pose demurely in front of painted backdrops, and you do this for about five hours before you finally get to go to the after party and get shit-faced.

Everyone makes a big deal out of Prom because:

1. As little girls, we all watched Disney movies like Cinderella and always wanted to dress in ball dresses and dance with a prince. It all seems so lovely and magical and we would love to forget about the difficulties of our life and experience that magic for one night.
2. As guys, we do these things for girls becuase we know the after party is the best party of the year and the girls are in that fairy-tale mood which means we’re probably going to be out all night, if you know what I mean.

The dream is nice. The reality of Prom is a little different.

 I shall tell you about my two school balls: The first one, I had a boyfriend, but he was in year 11 and not allowed to go. my BFF Linley had a boyfriend, Trev-a, who was two years out of high school, and thus allowed to go. So she hooked me up with a friend of hers, Ben, who she’d “always wanted to take to a ball”. We’d met briefly before and he seemed to be a nice - although shy - guy.

So I was to be taking this Ben guy, and Linley was taking Trev-a, and all was right with the world. We got ready at my house (in the same town as the ball) and then were staying the night at Linley’s house in the next town over. We would not be going to the after-ball, as we were too unpopular to be allowed to buy tickets.

My dear Mother Metal got stuck in Ball-fever and decided to make my dress, as she knew (rightly) no ordinary ball dress would do. My dress (which I still own and still fit) is a beautiful burnt orange, with a full skirt of tulle and satin, a corset-style top, and a stole. it’s gleaming and luminous and totally not what anyone else would wear, and I loved it.

There were no digital cameras back in the day, so I don’t have a picture, I’m sorry :(

We brought shoes and black pearl jewellery and had a makeup lesson and brought makeup and gold wire hairbands and all up spent a small fortune (I won’t say how much in case Father Metal is reading this blog and has a heart attack). It was really fun shopping for these things and being excited about something with my mum, who really does “get” me.

Unfortunately, she’s not the most organised lady in the world, and was, in fact, still sewing my dress the night of the ball. But that just makes me smile.

You can probably guess how the evening played out. Linley and Trev-a danced and whispered sweet nothings to each other, and Ben and I awkwardly shuffled and tried to have a conversation.

We had nothing in common. I mean, nothing. I thought Ride the Lightning was the best album ever recorded, ever. He liked christian worship music and thought a song from the point of view of a biblical plague (“Creeping Death”) was blasphemous. I loved horror films, he liked romantic comedies. I liked art and history and archaeology and dinosaurs and classical writers, he believed the world was 4000 years old and played soccer. Awkward silence ensued, and didn’t leave for the rest of the evening.

(I’m not against anyone having the above beliefs or hobbys, just trying to show how little we had in common.)

Everyone looked amazing, but they were still the same people I went to school with. They ignored me or sniggered about the colour and style of my dress, save a few nice people who went out of their way to say something nice (there were several “nice”, more popular girls who never did anything to hurt anyone and were always nice to me and my ilk, but just had so many friends already they didn’t need us. There were several people who just found us too weird, and several who were outrightly mean.)

The music was shite. The theme was “Wild Wild West” and the decorations consisted of hay bales strewn about the place. If you weren’t dancing, the music was too loud to talk, so we just stood around, nodding and drinking more and more of that non-alcoholic punch and counting down the minutes till I got to go home.

After five hours of this, you start wondering what’s wrong with you. Everyone else is having a blast, why can’t you? Why can’t you be the princess? Why can’t you fit in?

I repeat: balls are not for alternative people, just like one of those popular people would feel out-of-place at a metal show. They’d stand at the back and wonder why they just don’t get it. You can’t dress everyone up in nice clothes and expect them to become different people – you’re still the weird person, and they’re still whoever they are.

When the ball came around in my seventh form year, I decided it had to be different. I no longer had a boyfriend, but had acquired a much larger group of about 20 friends, made up of various outcasts and not-quite-rights. We were drama geeks, Christians, pagans, goths, nerds, gamers, genuine weirdos, and one rugby player who preferred our company to his own herd.

I didn’t want to take a partner for the safe of having a “partner” again, so I just went alone. Alone but not alone, for we all gathered at my place for pre-ball drinks, nibbles and photos. I’d found an amazing deep purple medieval-style velvet dress to wear, complete with lacing and bell sleeves and D-rings galore. I curled my short hair into tight ringlets and wore flat, comfortable shoes. Trev-a brought me a corsage. We took humorous photos and piled into my uncle’s vintage cars for our ride down to the ball.

We danced all night – with each other, in big circles, in a weaving “walk-like-an-egyptian” line through the crowd. We invented silly dances, and headbanged to the slow songs. We took silly photos. We took nothing seriously. One of my friends, Iris, got voted the princess of the ball, and we cheered for her loudest of all.

The five hours sped by, and we returned to my house for our own afterball, an all-night party just for us. Mother Metal stayed up with us too, making chilli fries and chicken nibbles, and Father Metal cooked a huge breakfast in the morning.

One ball was horrid, one was awesome. The difference was my attitude. You have to make the ball experience fit you and who you are.

Be yourself, and realise no one changes just because they’re dressed up nice. The cool kids are still cool, and the weird kids are still weird. Instead of lamenting it, embrace it.

Buy a dress you want to wear: try Sisters of the Moon or Gloomth or Dare Gothic or Fairy Goth Mother, or find someone to sew you one. Remember Lip Service cater to a specific market – they sell a lot of PVC / fetish / industrial style – if that’s your thing, roll with it, otherwise, what about a more medieval dress? A Victorian or Edwardian ensemble, a 1940s pin up outfit, something covered in skulls, or even a steampunk costume? If you don’t like dresses you could always go in a tux - I went to a ball with my BFF Shane once, where he wore a beautiful pink dress and I wore a top hat and tails. I will find a photo of that and post it later today.

Instead of the usual accessories, brandish a steampunk ray gun, wear a top hat, carry a fan, add some devil horns, wear stripy Alice stockings, buy day-glo dread falls - heck, just do whatever you want.

Organise a pre- and after-ball for your friends, one where you can do what you want - don’t sit around and watch the popular kids get drunk. Be silly, be weird. Hell, you’re expected to, right? You might as well live up to your reputation.

If you don’t like makeup, don’t wear it. No one will notice. If you want to wear your New Rocks under your dress, do it. What are they going to do, kick you out? If so, sounds like a dumb party anyway. “I got kicked out of Prom” makes a great story for the kids one day, don’t you agree?

The music is going to be crap, so make up some crap dances to go with it. We love doing the “egyptian” (you know how it goes!) and lining up along one wall and doing the box step, all in unison. It looks like we’ve choreographed it. I have a signature dance called the “jittery pengiun” and my BFF Shane is a particular fan of the “Cat Burgler”.

Did your best friend know you liked this boy before she asked him? Has she asked him to go out with him or because she was afraid to go without a partner? If you go as a big group of friends, everyone constantly swaps partners on the dance floor, so you’ll probably have time to dance a little with that boy you like. Don’t waste that chance – tell him he looks amazing, smile and have a great time. Be the life of the party and even if you didn’t get the guy, you might have intrigued the guy enough that he might find opportunity to get closer to you in future (unless of course he and your friend are genuinely falling in like, in which case disregard this paragraph).

Lastly, don’t go to the after-party just because it’s meant to be the best party of the year. Go if you get on okey with half the people attending the party. Otherwise, it’s going to blow chunks. Have your own party, or why not go to a show or club instead? Be with your people, and sod all the rest.

I sincerely hope you have a wonderful time and I would love to hear all about it and see photos, if you cared to send them in! Other Steff Metal readers, I’d love to see pics of you in your prom / ball getups, metal or goth or no. Send to steff AT steffmetal DOT com.

Don’t forget, I can only keep writing this column as long as people email me with questions. So if you want advice on something, anything, no matter how serious, no matter how trivial, shoot me an email, and I’ll see what I can do.

Horns Up \m/
Steff

Urgh, apologies for being a little late with the ole Linking Horn of Apocalyptic Thunder this week: I’ve been a bit snowed under with work. Novel edits are going incredibly slowly since CDH gave me a fascinating book on a certain incident in history that can be manipulated into my plot to make it 5 kinds of awesome, but involves moving the whole thing ten years into the future and adding maybe 10 000 words. When / If you get to read it, you will thank me (I hope) because it’s quite fun.

You can buy your very own set of Bates Motel Towels. One day, we will own a set of these, to go with our blood-spattered bath mats.

Slightly bondage fashion shoot from Tush Magazine. Some of this is NSFW.

As a writer, I follow the developments in the publishing industry closely. Everyone’s talking about ebooks – when will they become our evil overlords? Personally, I am looking forward to the impending ebook apocalypse – while print books will always have a place in the market, the publishing industry can be very wasteful, and I’d love to be able to travel with a device the size of one book that could carry thousands of books. Plane rides would just fly by (oh dear). Anyway, Agent Nathan Bransford agrees. Read his response to e-book skeptics.

Gothic / Tribal fusion bellydance clothing from Black Lotus. Wow.

March is Metal Month over from EMI. Over on Metal Insider, they’re giving away the Megadeth reissue back catalogue (US residents only, poo) and you can download an 11 track sampler album for free, featuring rare, unreleased songs from Fear Factory, Five Finger Death Punch and Lacuna Coil.

In wedding porn, Offbeat Bride’s featuring Ouiji Board Save-the-Date cards. I think StD cards are stupid – it’s like sending a “pre-invitation”, but these are cool. The idea could easily be adapted into other ephemera. Also, here’s a punk / rockabilly bridal shoot and some Poe-themed wedding invitations. Nevermore as a wedding theme? Ok-ay.

I used to love Pestilence. They’re doing a tour of the US, their first in 16 years. Who said the US doesn’t get any good metal?

Female Illustrators of the mid-20^th century blog. Doubleplus Wow.

Baroque Bleak Brutal dissects a concert flyer, to the amusement of all (except possibly the poor band who made the flyer). Br00tal

“Heavy Fundementalism: Music, Metal and Politics” the ebook is available for free download. Written by an international team of academics, the ebook includes such stirring works as “Metal Community and Aesthetics of Identity”, “Machine Guns and Machine Gun Drums: Heavy Metal’s Portrayal of War” and “I’m a Metalhead: the Representation of Women Letter Writers in Kerrang! Magazine”. This looks like the sort of thing I’d love, and I’ve got a few nights home alone this week, so I’ll see if I can get a review up for y’all.

Haute Macabre reports a rumor that Gareth Pugh will be taking over as fashion director of the Alexander McQueen Fashion house, after the latter’s suicide last month. I couldn’t think of a more fitting successor.

No Clean Singing’s post on heavy metal cats. Yes, that’s right. This is why No Clean Singing is made of Awesome.

What are you reading this week? 

Horns Up! \m/
Steff

I know it’s been a week, but I took these before the Rocky Horror Picture Show hen’s night I went to last weekend, and totally forgot to post them.

I am wearing:

• white shirt with ruffly sleeves, Farmers
• satin slip nightdress, present from mum
• black dress, from Salvation Army op shop
• black shirt, from Salvation Army op shop
• black wool stockings, present from CDH-in-law
• Jeffrey Campbell boots, present from Mom and Dad metal :) (love you guys!)

I am meant to be Magenta, although I am more like “Magenta after she’s had her hair straightened.)

I am re-re-re-RE-editing my novel before it goes to the editor (hopefully end of March-mid April) and adding more paintings to the shop. What are you up to today?

Steff