Georgina Starr

1. SERGE GAINSBOURG’S 1980 NOVEL EVGUENIE SOKOLOV (TAMTAM BOOKS, 1998)

   “Ooo, don’t come near me!” my grandmother said as I went to kiss her good-bye. “Why, Gran, have you got that flu?” I innocently asked. “No,” she said, wafting the air around her, “I just fluffed.” Since bowel movement has always been a subject of great discussion in my family, I had been dying to read famed French songwriter SERGE GAINSBOURG’S 1980 NOVEL EVGUENIE SOKOLOV (TAMTAM BOOKS, 1998), about an artist who uses the vibrations of breaking wind to make his work. It’s a funny yet tragic story, and Sokolov’s technique and the art “movement” (Hyper-Abstractionism) his gasograms inspire are described so vividly you can almost smell the —.

2. FATHER TED

   British sitcoms are mostly a pile of crap, but now and again something like FATHER TED is rerun and reminds me I can still laugh at TV. The “Song for Europe” episode, in which the chain-smoking Father Ted and simple Father Dougal decide to steal the B side of the 1976 Norwegian hit “My Lovely Horse” and enter the 1996 Eurosong contest, is the best ever.

3. 12 GOLDEN COUNTRY GREATS ALBUM (ELECTRA, 1996)

   When my ex-boyfriend sent me a tape of the Ween song that goes, “You fucked up, you bitch, you really fucked up, you fucked up, you fucking Nazi whore, you dicked me over but now you’ll pay, you fucked up . . . ahhhhh . . . ,” it became pretty clear we were over. But Ween’s mixture of deranged lyrics and the morphing style of their music is enough to make you forget the blues. Their 12 GOLDEN COUNTRY GREATS ALBUM (ELECTRA, 1996), recorded with musicians in Nashville, makes you laugh (“Now you’re up shit’s creek with a turd for a paddle”), puke (“Pack your bag, I don’t need the ag, on your knees you big booty bitch start suckin’”), and cringe (“If you really love me baby, help me scrape the mucus off my brain”).

4. “CAR-BOY’S GARDEN” IN MAX ANDERSSON’S DEATH AND CANDY COMIC BOOK (FANTA-GRAPHIC, 1999)

   “CAR-BOY’S GARDEN” IN MAX ANDERSSON’S DEATH AND CANDY COMIC BOOK (FANTA-GRAPHIC, 1999) tells a dark, haunting story: Car-Boy finds a piece of meat in the refrigerator and throws it on the compost, where it grows into two flesh-eating surrogate parents, whom Car-Boy has to take care of. The story gets more and more twisted until a little parasite (Meat Child) grows on the branches of one of the “parents” and eventually saves the day.

5. THE ARGOS SUPERSTORE

   When I was a kid I always hated that my mum shopped by catalogue. The choosing was all very exciting, especially leafing through the underwear section, but my fashion items always seemed to arrive two weeks after Village Hall disco night. THE ARGOS SUPERSTORE is the answer to my problems. There I can buy anything I’d ever want (a metal detector or a My Little Pony duvet cover), without having to wait three weeks to get my gear.

6. HORSES BY ROBERT VAVRA DATE BOOK (TASCHEN, 1998)

   After discovering that I flick through my HORSES BY ROBERT VAVRA DATE BOOK (TASCHEN, 1998) at least twice a day, I realized that I'm addicted to a type of pony porn. Between the innocent calendar dates, there are ponies waiting to seduce you, ponies fucking, ponies frolicking in poppy fields, and a disheveled pony rolling bareback in tall grass and staring longingly into the lens with come-to-stable eyes. I just wonder what Vavra had to say—or do—to get them to perform.

7. MOMUS (AKA NICK CURRIE)

   MOMUS (AKA NICK CURRIE) is the underrated and much impersonated Scottish singer/songwriter who’s been making clever, kitschy albums almost yearly since 1986. His songs, autobiographical sketches of voyeurism, role reversal, and sexual perversion, are bound together with musical styles from electro pop to vaudevillian cabaret. In “My Pervert Doppelgänger,” an eerie Theromin lures you in while a darker voice echoes Momus’s own, creating the schizophrenic signature of this Jekyll and Hyde of pop.

8. MY CHUPA CHUP LOLLIPOP HOLDER

   MY CHUPA CHUP LOLLIPOP HOLDER is a grotesque fat finger with worms growing out of its brown flesh, and there’s a hole for the Chupa Chup stick at the top of a chipped, long gray fingernail. After wearing it I dreamt that I had a motorized version on each finger which hypnotized children in the street. Groups of zombie kids started to take over the world and everyone was blaming me. The next day I looked up the Chupa Chup website and learned that Salvador Dalí designed the label in the ’60s and that chupar means “to suck” in Spanish.

9. CARE4U WEBSITE

   Waking from my Chupa Chup nightmare convinced that a great fat slug had left its silvery trail all over my pillow, I realized that it was time to do some research into “night dribbling.” I was finally led to the CARE4U WEBSITE, where accessories are on offer for virtually every bodily problem. Alongside the Bed Rope Ladder (for people with back paralysis) and Bedspecs (glasses made with prism lenses for watching the telly while laid flat out), I found the Viken Vinyl Pillow Case ($6.99), a gadget specially made for “people who have difficulties controlling saliva while sleeping.”

10. RANGA BHOW

    RANGA BHOW is a musical film from Bangladesh with a great fight scene set to music. Starting with an instrumental version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the music gets faster, and the villain—almost in time to a break-dancing rhythm—single-handedly beats the shit out of everyone. At the climax, accompanied by a drum-and-bass crescendo, the entire gang is thrown .one by one out the same window, which miraculously breaks anew every time, and each body in turn manages to land on a passing vehicle.