PICS
Today finds me in Tokyo, the last stop of a long and eventful adventure via various points in the States, Mexico, Rarotonga, New Zealand... spent and knackered, gagging for my sweet old nasty London, unable to take in any more impressions or carry any more shopping, battling random and capricious stolen wi-fi... here I am in Tokyo, an old-fashioned wooden little house, spending the day inside all made up with noplace to go, defeated by the rain and boredom and whoredom and various other little factors that imply that today I should most certainly be at home, sewing and painting and playing dressup --- and not in Japan, sharing Origin Bento breakfast with a scraggly little cat, drinking Kirin Strong Seven, photoboothin' my scrapbook for you all to see in low quality cause I'd forgotten to pack my stupid USB cable... one of these days I'll tell you the bizarre and wonderful things that happened to me in the past month of travelling. But now allow me to leave you with a darling new video from Amanda Palmer in which I feature slightly in the crowd scenes. Play "spot the manko"!
(which is rather funny because during the shoot I was playing exactly that game with my pal Sascha, watching the dancers high leg-kicks revealing much too much fishnet-clad labia from where we were sitting. Amanda was, of course, stunning and I will forever nurture a boner in her honour.)
You know when you're very young and you've been looking at beautiful pictures in childrens books, and then you see an actual rainbow or roadkill or something grand like that for the first time in your life, and the impression it leaves on your brain is as enormous as the grin plastered all over your face for days? That's how I'd sum up my New York experience.
A constant déjà vu from films and TV commercials suddenly hit me in 3D and I was waist deep in visuals that totally made sense, only so much more animated in 360 degrees and you can smell it, you can poke it, and it replies at your shy attempts at communicating. Like the afternoon before Zak's opening I was having a mid-afternoon tipple at a fancy bar off Bowery and the tramps outside on the pavement were just fabulous. A legless fellow wheelin past with 2 unlit fags sticking out of his teeth asked me for a quarter and told me to keep my ass down, whatever that meant, but I drew him in my scrapbook (below). NYC tramps have more style than all of London's council estates lumped together. I shared my change with quite a few egomaniacal poets and spent queens. I squealed at spotting a real shortbus - the magical vehicle for the gifted and the challenged. When you find a context in which even the ugly, annoying things appear beautiful, you know you found sheer style.
Maybe it's the days of extensive hangover combined with extra drunkenness that made my brain trippy... The lights are brighter, the graffiti more vibrant, the fire escapes on the facades of buildings and drinks in brown paper bags - they all speak to you although you're incapable of shopping or interacting over Mimosa breakfasts (sorry Tim if I was completely useless). ymonster you captivated me, sweetheart. We'd made and failed endless dates in London and Tokyo and yet you stood there patiently behind my shoulder waiting for my attention for eons at Zak's opening while I yapped excited nonsense with Spooky Booty and Mary Papers... who is a fantastic peroxide blonde asian doll and talks like Lil Kim, hence I was lost in her delish accent for eternity. New York was a constant unfinished conversation between people and objects. Incredibly poetic.
Meeting people from internet is always shocking: no one looks and acts like they come across in the pictures - Yours Truly included! I'm mostly grumpy and sarcastic unless something genuinely exciting happens, and then I get embarrassingly, puppylike excited about things that the locals have long grown to take for granted.
Like that advertising posters in the NY subway are actually giant stickers, which inspires hilarious graffiti potential:
Even seeing old geezers loiter on Brooklyn stoops all night might make me grin to an extent you wouldn't recognise my sneers... But I met a generous bunch of SGs in NY and you wouldn't recognise the real piece of ass from the photos either. They're so little. So shy. Not too shabby at all, it was awright 
Did I say? ZakSmith's show was just marvelous and you can still see the gorgeous painting of me in the most prestigious spot of the room until November 29th (Frederick&Freiser, 536 West 24th St). I urge you to check it out as it was the reason of me being in NY in the first place - it is that good! 
I've been forced to tag along on many other art gigs, thanks to dating an artist (Atomic is working on series of portraits of his favourite artists). In Chinatown I met a toy artist Sucklord. who later turned up at Zak's opening in a supervillain outfit (Vektar the Intolerable), consisting of a mask, a cape and a crew of sexy ladies; he got banned from the bar (they wouldn't serve aliens); we ended up doing sketching, filming, drinking organic beers and roaming around Coney Island together.
There are not enough artists who employ their imagination to create not only art but also a character out of themselves; I want to see the art world flooded with extroverted eccentricity, ridiculous names and bizarre costumes. And eventually this was why my last NY afternoon was the most magical of all.
I met Rammellzee.
To my disgrace I knew fuck-all about him. Jason had a portrait date with the guy at 2pm, I couldn't wait to "get it over with" and go shoe-shopping, and yet by 9pm (when we had to rush our arses to the airport for the flight back to London) I still couldn't make myself leave his apartment in siamese proximity to "Ground Zero". Maybe thanks to the vodka+cranberry drinks of flammable potency he ordered in via intercom, though I suspect it was his gritty, hoarse voice from the depths of his mystical Ikonoclast Panzerism hip hop hell that instantly rendered me weak in my knees. That and the surreal blue rings around his brown irises. The words in his speeches I recognised but could not comprehend, although they sounded most mystifying. I'm in love, again. Boy do I have a complicated taste in men.
Unbelievably, as soon as I set my foot in London, I get an invite from my cute-as-a-button and shy-as-a-virgin graf-art mate David Walker to come check out a painting 1.5metres high of my stupid mug in a poncy art gallery. The fabulousness of musehood just won't quit. Here is me jetlagged, unwashed for days and sipping champagne next to, well, me.
And then a friend in Tokyo myspaced me a link to these darlings from New York City, Semi Precious Weapons, and I sorta feel like quite a moron for haven't caught them in some trashy venue during my visit, but that's a proof of the old rotten bastard murphy's law that nothing is perfect in life.
Had I spontaneously got to rub elbows with SPW in a dingy backstage room, I reckon that my NY experience woulda been quite 100% perfect.
And since then... Albertine was in London and we shot a brilliant new set in rainy streets of Soho, but I've had enough of typing now. Gotta go book some Lucha Libre tickets. Next Wednesday will find me on the plane to Mexico City for Dia de los Muertos. Then a lil bit of LA, a lotta bit of the Cook Islands, another bit of New Zealand and a dash of Tokyo before I'm back in London in December, all broke and adventured-out.
That's what happens to you when you find yourself still living in your ex-dream city. London you twat, how awesomely old and pricey are you. We buy you like some high class escort yet can't wait to get away from your fragrant crotch.
I'll leave you with extracts of my New York scrapbook, if you can be arsed to go into it right now.
NYC trash:
I am not that interested in humans but I enjoy cities. Cities have a mysterious effect on homo sapiens vulgaris, sometimes by giving them more sex, sometimes more style; consequently some cities make some humans bearable (homo sapiens exclusivus?).
I woke up from dreaming about New York again.
It hit me that NYC must be the last dream city left on my list, one that I know so well in my imagination but haven't yet seen in the cold light of the reality. London used to be that for me until I ruined it by moving here. I didn't care for Tokyo until I stepped through the glass door of the Narita airport: it was a blind date -turn- love at the first sight. Milan, Berlin, Paris, LA don't set my groins on fire. But I've been fantasising about New York as some magical location for decadent adventures since I learned about the Factory, saw Midnight Cowboy, etc. Over the years my idea of the city became so lucid and animated that right now, just a week before my arse lands in a yellow cab for the first time, I am mortified that New York City won't be quite all that I built it up to be in my daydreams. Warhol Superstars are decrepit or dead, smoking is universally banned, Quentin Crisp no longer listed and Basquiat graffiti scrubbed off; and what if there ain't no more well-dressed gangsters, nor tramps in drag on every corner of SoHo, what if the locals aren't refreshingly sarcastic and rude or what if they don't speak in adorable Nu-yawkese dialect; what if the place is just pleasant and not weird, liberal, artistic, gritty, sleazy, fabulous?
ZakSmith is having an art opening and at least a few of our own superstars will be in attendance. The anticipation of unveiling his painting of Yours Truly has my vanity a-tingle...
(in progress)
Come.
So fuckit, I'll stop stalling with the new entry and just come clear with you.
I am happy. I am happy and that makes it hard to write those angsty rants you like me for. I am fucking blissed out right now, and my happiness is contained in my bedroom, surrounded by sunlight and violins:
- should I make apologies for not being a trashy feisty piss-artist raping London up the arse? Fuck that. One can always be sure that Ms Misery is always lurking in the close proximity, ready to jump on you in a dark alley and bottle your guts into a bloody pulp; but for now I'm wearing a badge specially for her: "bitch if you can read it you're standing too close", and she's keeping her distance. I'm happy, and sod the rest for a while.
The kittens have been housed in a beautiful garden flat with sweet new people to own. The cat stayed with me and she's got my heart gripped firmly in her little black velvety claw. I give her chin rubs and neutering surgeries, and she brings me baby mice at 6am. In any case, both parties involved are happy with this rather sick love affair.
What else? So I'm a fully-fledged 27-year-old at last.
Heartfelt thankyou to all the sweetiepies on this site who sent me birthday presents. Some of you never even gave me a chance to thank, like the mysterious creature who presented me with "Open Up And Bleed" (but I'm telepathically snogging your face off as we speak). My lover came up with ultimate present, though - an oil painting on burnt wood by a very talented little creature who used to be a Suicide Girl here, Ms Nicoz Balboa:
Is it like tewtally splendid or what???
And so now I've started the year in which I'd always been planning to die. Hm. As far as I recall, I could hardly ever imagine myself at 27. It seemed to me a terrible time when you sign your life up to a shitty job, marriage, sprogs, and lose your freedom entirely for some highly-regarded grown-up values that head you straight to the grave like a rat on speed. I imagined that at 27 you encounter the last hole in the wall to escape from the rubbish bin, a rusty door with a flickering neon sign that reads Forever 27 Club, where you have a stiff one with the likes of Janis, Jimi, Jim, Kurt (and a few less famous names which we won't mention due to obscurity and lack of space). Anyhow, I'll make sure to schedule in another SG photoshoot before the year expires, just in case my old deathwish comes true...
But what if regardless of it all I still feel too pure and wholesome to kick the bucket within 12 months?!
Most humans seem to make a decision to age at around 25. Quit sleazy drugged up flirts, shake some hands and wipe the make-up right off. If you can carry on past 25 and not jack it in you will probably turn out ok. I can certainly feel the doom looming. I ain't blonde anymore, though there is more blue and green in my hair than on an average clown.
Speaking of clowns, I've been working on a Serial Killer Series with superstar Albertine. Recently the first image was published in a glossy art and literature magazine (and in true style of the Brit tabloid rags, I am the page 3 pin-up):
John Wayne Gacy was the first sick bastard to whom we shot this tribute. No Tears For The Clown was one of the slogans on the t-shirts that the vendors dished out to the cheering crowd on Gacy's execution day (special prize if you can get me one), so I faux-carved the letters into the bare chest of Pogo the Clown.
This full-page print is so extravagantly lush and vibrant that it instantly became my most prized modelling tearsheet to date. Buy it and frame it, yo.
Shall I pad out this unexciting entry with more product endorsements? A sweet boy I know merged a plectrum and a razorblade into a masterful piece of wearable metallurgy (jewelry, if you prefer).
The Dead Savants even promised to make a limited edition package a la Manko, so please tell them I said hi on myspaz, and also tell them you love me and that they should include a mini photo-set of Manko to go with the glorious silver plectrum razor pendant in the limited edition box.
What else was I gonna say?...
(herro old age, my ancient brain is fried)
Wait.
It'll come to me...
I know!
I wonder what does a girl do in Mexico City on The Day Of The Dead?
I am dealing with such beautiful mess.
My studio is on the ground floor of the house, and now that the summer is here (although admittedly half-arsed here in London) I often keep the French doors open to the garden. It's a quiet residential stretch of greenery, with old trees and a hedgehog living under a holly shrub, often visited by squirrels, wood pigeons and an occasional woodpecker. And even though I am no hippy nor a Snow White, visits from animals bring me more joy than from humans.
A few weeks ago a small black cat started popping in to the room. Affectionate, purry and playful, and more than eager to help me out with my tuna steak dinner. We spent a few evenings snuggled up on a couch, nursing my hangovers and watching ANTM.
One morning, though, we found the little dear waiting outside the door to be let in, only she wasn't alone. She had brought a tiny shaky blue-eyed baby kitten along. A few hours later it was joined by a sibling. They could barely walk. Their tails were triangular and their head made up for half their body length. The little black furballs were adorable to the point of crying. We were adopted by a feline family!
Thing is, I never allowed myself to have a cat. Although I'm fascinated by the feline monsters I simply travel too much right now to have a decent relationship with an animal. But I guess she chose us, so we had to take it as a compliment and deal with it. I decided against calling up a cat shelter, the kittens were now my little blue-eyed superstars and too good for a depressing amonia-reeking cage kingdom that most shelters are. My studio was converted into a kitten nursery - we hacked a hole in the french doors and installed a catflap. Litter tray and food bowls replaced piles of my shoes, and there I was being retardedly blissed out on my unplanned parenthood of sorts.
Within days, however, we had to leave for Berlin. A week later we came back to a lovely thankyou present in the middle of my studio (predictably spoilered to help you keep your lunch in):
The little rascals were twice the size (gosh, they grow by the hour!), ready to move to solid foods, wrestling each other up the curtains and being the most beautiful creatures I've laid my hands upon. Now I'm no mother material, but it made me beam with pride to witness their first poop as much as their first purr...
Kung-fu kitten?
In a few weeks I'll need to find home for the little ones, so consider this journal entry as an ad.
I just can't look after a pride of cats long-term - I have a sneaking suspicion that the little slut has been knocked up again and is displaying evidence of brand new kitty-buns in her furry oven, so to speak. Hex on irresponsible owners who can't be arsed to neuter their cats and just chuck them out when they get pregnant!
panic
No, REALLY! I can't look after a bunch of cats! I was planning to stay out of this scenario at least until I'm 50 years old! Save them or I will give them ridiculous names! I already call this girl 'Teddy Bear'!!!
My life has indeed been full of interesting endeavours and acquaintances, cats aside even. Recently I shared fish'n'chips with legendary New York photographer Leee Black Childers who is one of the most charismatic darlings in mascara I've ever met.
After seeing the epic Chapman Brothers exhibition Fucking Hell (runs til 12 July if you're in London), he indulged me for hours with amazing stories from the Factory days, anecdotes about my idols - Warhol Superstars, his best pal Jayne County, the curse of the MainMan Records... Boys and girls, I could tell you stuff about the likes of David Bowie that'd make your hair curl. But now I have to run downstairs and have a punching match with my fabulous kitties. I'm gonna finish this with a photo of my eternal crush Candy Darling (which Leee kindly signed for me). Leee took it at Max's Kansas City, when at the very end of the night the proprietor would start playing Sometimes It's Hard to be a Woman by Tammy Wynette. It was a sign for the dragqueens to leg it while the flattering red light was still on, because once the song was over the harsh white light would come on, exposing laddered tights, disheveled wigs - and - horror of horrors - a stubble cracking through the makeup! This image is the White Light shot while Candy covers her face and hisses: "Leee! Don't show my muff!"
Classy 
As the delightfully fragrant lilac blossoms flap at my window, the black dye is casting its toxic glamour on my hair. Its pungent chemical smell strangely compliments a cup of espresso and the Japanese-brand cigarette smouldering in my lips.
It seems we're back in London... Nothing new in this town, everything's fucked as per usual.
Can't drink on public transport, can't murder anyone without papers butting in, what's a girl to do here?
I'll tell ya what. Get roped in to do catwalk for some dodgy punks, get bladdered on a quart of JD backstage and start smashing bottles in the backstreets of Hoxton. Then you get given a silver baseball bat and push around some bitches onstage. Rolling on the catwalk in spiky heels in a staged cat-fight whilst camera flashes right up your gash...
Drama culminates in snogs and scratches on your boobs just over the strips of black gaffer-tape, and then you swap skimpy outfits with a hot tranny in the back alley, feeling up her tanned £4500 tits while cabbies drive veeerrry slooowly past you...
I do love London in some sick destructive fashion, I love the cunt from the bottom of my tarry hateful heart. But only recently that heart was lost in kitschy S&M love hotels of Osaka...
So yes, Japan was fabulous as usual. To get you in the mood let's start the report with just some random visual hilarity and weirdness.
Manko fruit porn:
Fashion: observe Jizo, Buddhist patron of aborted babies, sporting a "Cheerful Little Kids Club" bib.
And of course some obligatory pornographic purikura stickers:
I experienced hanami, the spring festival when sakura blossoms snow on the land and the entire nation (usually so proper, orderly and well-behaved) decide to spend the whole week camped in parks under the blossoming trees, sitting on the blue plastic tarps, eating, smoking and drinking to the point of vomiting. Here is the view you might get from their spot:
And as the fine decadence and excess unfurls you realise that you can't even see sakura anymore through the stalls that sell most bizarre foods - from deep-fried Italian spaghetti dusted with icing sugar to custard-filled pancakes shaped like a fish.
Here's me gorging on one in Osaka:
I spent a lot of time on shinkansen, positively bulleting my way from Tokyo to Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima... At times I felt like I was a character in Almost Transparent Blue - urban towns under overcast sky flickering between steaming mountains; druggy feeling in my clammy claw squeezing a ballpoint pen with neon-green fingernails, scribbling stream of consciousness in my Nippon scrapbook - about the nostalgic smell of stale cigarettes in the upholstery of the seats; the carriage full of smoke and oyaji, balding liver-spotted old geezers, all with a can of beer and a fag, hacking up their tired lungs, sucking on hard sweets. It's so romantic I could die. The blue nostalgia, flashes of town names like Yokohama, flashes of sea as grey as the sky, flashes of wilderness with landscapes seemingly crafted by most talented gardeners; Pocari Sweat factory amongst the rice paddies. The conductor quietly crosses the carriage, he turns back at the doors and takes a small bow even though nobody's looking up from their beers, manga magazines or super hi-tech mobile phones. I'm wired and already drunk at 9am. Let me give you a couple of tips about the fastest train in the world. Firstly, you can always get a seat in one of the smoking carriages. Secondly, the disabled toilets are pretty spacious and having sex at 200km per hour is highly advisable.
Extreme mysticism of Kyoto, wandering in the rain under endless red tori gates, bringing inarizushi as a gift for the stone foxes who wear better makeup than mine.
I don' know what I was thinking, flying over to Japan five years running and never leaving Tokyo. Osaka is the fucking shit. If Tokyo people were London, then Osaka people would be Rome. The fashion styles are shamelessly hysterical, and I'm not talking about prissy Tokyo Lolita! (Lolita is dead but more about that later) Girls are dressed in micro shorts, patterned tights, polkadots, leopard print and lace all at once, they smoke cigarettes and look like they can rip your eyes out with their over-decorated acrylic claws. Girls are baaaad but the boys are WORSE! Big hair, skinny ripped jeans and designer wallets on chains, outrageous bling, pointy snake-skin shoes with golden spurs, pseudo-yankee plaid shirts with rolled up sleeves, embroidered bomber jackets, giant Vuitton handbags... Unisex pair look is big, sometimes the only way to tell a guy from a girl is that the guy is the one with bigger hair with more highlights.
In Osaka I also had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant illustrator Rockin' JellyBean (he draws sensational, fleshy, cum-dripping babes and if you haven't seen his work you have seriously missed out). JellyBean showed us some good rockabilly eatin'n'drinkin' establishments, the sweetest love hotels Japan has to offer, and the one most fantastic secret place I've laid my eyes upon for 26 years of me being on this planet - but I won't blab about it on the internet... I'm sure you'll understand, fantastic secret places are secret for a reason. I also got to witness a bizarre and wonderful artist duel between JellyBean and Jason Atomic, my other beloved artist. I filmed it and here it is - for the art lovers out there.
Let's do some more brash name-dropping, shall we? Here I am buying sake from a vending machine late at night with Junko Mizuno, yet another superstar of the art world.
Before I get any comments may I just quickly have a micro-rant? People keep telling me how "lucky" I am to be spending time in Japan. There's nothing lucky about it! If I hear another one of you whine to me how much you love Japan and how jealous you are of my adventures I'm honestly gonna slap you, so be warned. Here's a suggestion: stop wasting your money on overpriced hello kitty shit from ebay, SAVE UP. If you're lucky enough to have a dreamland which is just a plane ticket away then get off your lazy arse! As of this autumn you'll need ID cards to buy booze and fags from vending machines. Tedious reality is constantly catching up with our dreams... I keep meeting girls who are lost in futile daydreams about joining the frilly flock of kawaii Gothic Lolitas in Harajuku. Sisters, you've pissed about too long, lolita is dead. The only frilly dresses I've seen this year are on desperate overweight office ladies and a few gaijin kids looking very lost and confused. Fret not, Harajuku is brilliant again thanks to the return of the live bands lined up by the Yoyogi park, and the rockabilly gangs hanging out on sunny Sunday afternoons... Clad head to toe in leather, the rockers roar up on their shiny bikes to loiter, comb their quiffs in front of a full-length mirror and dance to each other next to a boombox, whilst their girlfriends look away bored; the girlfriend is just a status thing (like bikes and shoes and outfits) to show up other guys, it's such an amazingly peacock "sexless gay" scene.
Anyway. Travelling is exhausting but typing about it is even more tiring. I shall wrap this up with a tip for my aesthetically gifted readers - I've got some fabulous art prints up in the sales group.
And so I've been trying to tie up a few loose ends.
One of the projects long overdue has been putting my old radio segments to practical use, and so this week I baked a little CD compilation, a Best Of my work on SG Radio.
It inhabits 11 segments and a bonus track - really just a start considering that between 2005 and 2007 my voice fouled Indie 103.1FM radiowaves in at least 87 different ways... But I had to make a start on wrapping up my [dubious] radio career somewhere, right?
TRACKLIST
It's a hand-made self-publication, obviously... Therefore those who want one for themselves should expect a very limited run, the limiting factor being my patience to burn CDs, waltz to print shop, cut/staple booklets and reapply red lipstick for kiss traces.
(PM for ordering info)
Secondly, I've been arranging my FANART folder into groups co-referencing to my photosets. It's fascinating how one picture can trigger multiple drawings. Thanks to all the fabulous creatures contributing to the collection.
All this plugging my "fabulousness" might come across as rather big-headed of me, so how about we knock it down a notch..... EDIT: here I tried to show off that I had a hate-site created in my honour, but it turned out it wouldn't be appropriate to give them any more promotion. Idiots are already good enough at advertising themselves and making sure they don't go unnoticed.
I was pretty ecstatic of the fact that some internet strangers invested their time to establish my stardom and celebrity. Sadly after a few dealings with the sad old shit behind the profile I became most disappointed. And what did I really expect, a verbal chess game with an intellectual equal?.. Naive, naive little Manko. Once taken up on their bitching, "haters" turn out to be juvenile ex-fans who'd thought I was supposed to be lovely to everyone by default, even better!- that I have attitude problems because I'm more beautiful than everyone else. (an actual quote) Makes you wanna weep, no?... If was ugly like an arsehole infested by hemorrhoids I would despise you just as equally. Well I guess it was an amusing experiment which culminated in my realising that most people are ever so dilettantish in hating that they barely know how to spell the word, that they wouldn't know hatred if it spat them in the face. And also that they don't deserve my time wasted on despising them (even though to be honest that does give me a certain pleasure).... ahhh. I think I'll take the advice of one of my pals who said " It's not just that I realised the damage people like this can do, even if it's just by forcing you to dedicate them some of your daily time; I also understood how much good can come to you from radically different people. Especially true, when you think that the people with a good influence on you are very far and between, thus making every single second wasted on idiots more than a crime."
And with that inspired thought, the hate site was deleeeeeeeted. For cyberbullying, aparently, and slander as far as I'm concerned, but above all for the crime of wasting my precious seconds.
Let's introduce some balance into this love/hate situation.
This girl loves Manko so much she want to be Manko, and who's to say that she isn't, in her fucked up little head and in the ether of internet. I find this particular fake Manko profile incredibly adorable so please don't go and scare her off - roleplayers scuttle away like cockroaches as soon as you shine some light onto their secret nasty deeds...
