Kevin Shamel writes bizarro books when he’s not busy working on a pot farm or chasing around Australia with his gorgeous amazing wife. He loves his kids and his dog. He recently bit into a wasp that was in his aloe beverage. He found it sour and was thankful it was dead. His latest book is Not Safe for Kids (illustrated by Jim Agpalza).
DA
What are some of your most important aesthetic influences?
KS
Spirals, trees, the smell of bacon and coffee (not necessarily together), dogs, bugs, dirt, puppy-ear scent, combinations of nature and machines or constructions, solar flares, social experimentations, my wife, eclectic music mixes, geometry, chaos, water and how it expresses itself in every living thing, Australian Aboriginal art painted on tree trunks really hits me hard.
DA
What’s your view on fracking, if done by elbow?
KS
Elbow-fracking, in my experienced opinion, is far superior to knee-fricking in every manner. Fracking without the elbow is akin to badmitten without the shuttleCOCK. (I just learned that my puppy hates Nico. He is fine with The Velvet Underground, but he is whining now that she is singing. Sorry, Nico.) Fricking, as we all know, is the sexy cousin of fracking, related to freaking, flipping, and fucking. She brings the party to the family, which isn’t always legal or good, and therefore, while falling into the general scheme, she remains apart to a degree. Included, but not so much aloud. So, the elbow-frackers are number one. Knee-frickers are second place. All other frackers are frakkin’ frakkers.
DA
Would you like this interviewtf more if it had another title, like “No, Sir-iously,” or “’Have you explained your pupils to the cloud?’ I asked my ex-mom. But she was without vigor, she just stayed very calm and revised myhermy strangeness over and over again”?
KS
There is no possible way I could like this interview more than I do now.
DA
You don’t have to be gay to find penises fascinating. The comedy „Superbad,“ for instance, features some funky dickophilia moments. What do you think about enhancing (or encocking) classic films the way you enhance (or encock) newsies? Oskar Schindler smoking a dickarette, for fuck’s sake?
KS
Honestly, encocking classic films could be a funny thing. As long as the cocks don’t speak or want to get jobs or fly jet planes. Just flopping out a few cocks in a Charlie Chaplin film, putting them in some Laurel and Hardy cream pies, or having Lucy get a few stuck in her hair would be fine and good.
DA
What is the most (experimental) piece of art you’ve ever enjoyed?
KS
When I was nineteen and newly homeless in New York City, I met a street artist named Scary Mary. She sold t-shirts based on her dreams. She invited my friends and me to her movie premiere on Halloween, 1990. It was held in a reclaimed warehouse operating as an artist’s commune-type thing called “Go No Rio” during a dress-up Halloween party. I had no costume so I painted an eye on my hand with my friend’s mascara, called it my all-seeing eye and got in as a psychic. We sat in old church pews when it was time for the film screening, facing two TVs with VHSs hooked up to them. I sat beside a guy dressed up like a hair-metal rocker doctor. He turned out to be Mary’s brother, a med student at NYU. His costume was his scrubs plus a wig. We congratulated each other on getting in dressed like we dressed every day with one added touch. He asked if I had weed. I said, “No, man. Sorry.” He handed me a huge fat doobie. Scary Mary (dressed as a witch) and her friend pushed “play” on the VHS players like deviant ballet dancers in perfect synchronicity and we were treated to an experimental film based on a dream, written, directed and starring the artist/dreamer about aliens impregnating her and then stealing her baby when it was born. I lit up and enjoyed the show. It was weird, wild, and perfect for All Hallows Eve in The City. Everything about that night was experimental and I very much enjoyed it.
DA
If 100 divided by 2 were 42, what would 3 times 1°1 be?
KS
That appears to be one segment of a centipede with the leg of the preceding segment. So, three times that would be half a centipede.
DA
Who/what is the biggest dick in the universe? Whose asshole would it fit perfectly?
KS
Whoever programmed the Universe with egomaniacs and all their derivations—psychopaths, dicks, as well as useless consumers and their masters, robotic brainwashed idiots, non-critical unaware vehicles for bacteria and mitochondria. Other dicks include mosquitos, wolverines, nearby gamma-ray bursts and snails. Orcas are kind-of dicks, too, because they’re just huge dolphins that eat other dolphins. And they play with their food. It would all fit perfectly into my wife’s ex-husband’s asshole, since he is just one HUGE asshole (just sayin’) (“just sayin’” is antilegalese for, “This is my personal opinion and in no way should be intended as slander or in any manner a legal declaration. No one is bound to agree and no further opinion should be formed based on my personal one.”).
DA
One TED talk a day keeps the _____________ away?
KS
Brainworms? Nephites? What ARE Nephites, anyway? I hope they stay away.
DA
Which role will (or should) male genitalia play in the far future – dick-hacking, ass-splicing, bio-junk, interstellar engineering?
KS
Bio-dick-hacking-interstellar-ass-junk-splicing engineering.
DA
„?“
KS
Plink?
DA
At which point does Bizarro become an unacceptable transgreßion?
KS
I suppose that would depend on who is doing the accepting. I think it matters who is doing the labelling as well. Bizarro is a growing movement. It has blossoms all along its branches. We’re flowering, sexing, seeding, and spreading every day. I love being a part of something so odd and natural in the world. I’m happy to have a voice there to blend with the harmonies of the genre and all its transgressions.
DA
Is it possible that music is totally overrated? Could one say the same about athlete’s dick? What would you rather have invented – the Ö or the 1?
KS
No, that is not possible. Even using all combined equations, it could not be proven even as a possibility that music is totally overrated. Athlete’s dick falls within acceptable realms of rating. I can’t type the first symbol that I would rather have invented. Does that mean I can’t invent it? FUCK!!!!
DA
Why doesn’t the Canadian tech-metal band Martyr get the attention they deserve so much?
DA
I believe the fault lies with Nico. (My puppy gave me that answer.)
DA
How many spiders are needed to creep out one level-4 arachnophobe?
KS
Oh! Trick questions! I love them. Ummmm … Hold on a minute. I swear I can get this one. Wait. No, really, wait. Don’t leave! Don’t leave me! Not again. Not like last time. Damn. ONE. It takes one.
DA
What is your favorite ____________?
KS
This is the best question in this interview for me. I have no favorites. Blank is the answer. Well done.
DA
Bonus question: What’s your take on the following 8 Nonsemes?
A devil from Jewelry:
Luther preaching to the Sniffs.
A dujj from Tantalle:
Lutzor freaking to the Stiqqs.
Unfortunately may never experience its mother,
a woman that must stick to her coil.
She had already awakened the old spirit
of her grandfather’s Boldd.
There is no pig in Silberstein.
Silberstein is taboo anyway.
But if it weren’t for the taboo,
then there would still be a lot of kung-fu.
Since death tends to end life,
which thusly has never existed, ever …
No suffering, no joy,
no Einstein, Harry, droids.
Confused wives’s ankles
rub against Kogel.
Kogel, however, has got 1 bird.
Kogel wants to drive it “home.”
KS
That there are only five of them and that many people named Steve have sucked in my experience. But also some have been okay.
DA
„!“
KS
PLINK!
Image source: (c) KS