Just when you thought it was safe to venture out into the night, here come Zazoo and Satori, more gaudy and obnoxious than a 2 for 1 display at your local Kmart store. So where did these two Alien-Muppet hybrids come from and why are they here? The truth is out there (but don't expect to hear it from us).

Zazoo was born October 31, 1997, as an explosive reaction to his conservative hometown of Cincinnati. He was the un-Cincinnatian, opening closed minds as he stomped his way through Cincinnati nightlife, upsetting the locals and disrupting the tranquil balance of boredom that enveloped the city. At first, he was alone in his quest. But in time, he developed a cult following that culminated in his own special club night, Zazoo's Freakfest, a convention for the unconventional. The event was a smashing success, giving new rise to freakdom in the least likely of cities.

Of course, behind every great freak is a great frock, er, friend. For Zazoo, that confidant was Satori, the technology wizard behind the scenes, capable of balancing 35 Slinkies on one's head and other such gravity-defying feats. In September 1999, Satori started donning some freaky fashions of his own and became Zazoo's partner in crime. And believe us, dressing like this in Cincinnati is a crime.

It's really no surprise then that they spend much of their time crashing parties in cities like Chicago, New York and LA. They've left their footprints at some of the most legendary parties of the last decade. And with those shoes, their footprints leave a lasting impression.

Today, the Club Creatures are recognized the world over as some of the freakiest fashion designers in clubland. Their outrageous costumes and platform shoes will be featured in the 2003 movie "Party Monster", starring Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, Lucy Lui, Marilyn Manson, and Natasha Lyonne, to name a few. Zazoo and Satori will also appear in the movie as extras, alongside Richie Rich, Amanda Lepore, Sophia Lamar, Astro Erle, Walt Paper, and many other renowned club personalities.

The Club Creatures have also appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including Genre, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Social, Boi Magazine, Ocean Drive, along with such websites as Berlin, Caffeine Culture, Club Makeup, Club Cherry, Crobar Chicago, Motherboards, Red Party, Remote, What's Up Chicago and Wigstock. They've been photographed by Christopher Makos, Rob Hollis, Nancy Stone, George Saint George and a host of other noted photographers.

So where are these creatures of the night during the day? By day, Zazoo is a mild-mannered Clark Kent (or in his case, Clark Bent). He moonlights (daylights?) as a writer at an advertising agency. Satori is an account executive at a design studio, where he specializes in promoting beauty products. Appropriate, no?

To view our creations visit our website:

http://www.TheClubCreatures.com

We take the majority of the photographs, design and maintain it ourselves. "°

I have enjoyed for some time (as a lurker!) "This week's brit gossip" in the New and News topic in the The Versailles Room Forum ... In fact I keep a PopIt! going for this topic, just to read "This week's brit gossip". To learn you are from Ohio makes this even more interesting ... Do you know Drew Cary or Mimi? ;-)

I've just been poking around ... http://www.theclubcreatures.com/
You two are just too creative ...

Last night, I printed your topic to read at the bar. This is not as hopeless as it sounds. On Wednesdays, I meet with a few other artists on the Lower East Side for happy hour at a bar called Swim. A good friend spins the greatest collection of rock/pop called Rock Lobster and a half dozen or so cartoonists, musicians, etc. show up every week. We drink, we talk, we do Mad Libs, we draw group comic strips, we pop into Make-up Mania next door, we wave to RevJen with her elf ears on her way to the Collective Unconscious Theater for her Wednesday night gig, etc.

Anyway, I was reading your post and I started clapping silently to myself as I found it so amusing. And, of course, me clapping to myself got the attention of my mates. So I read them a few lines from your intro and they too started applauding. So now you know ... your introduction started a percussive jamboree halfway across the country in just under a day!

Glad to have you two ArtMakers in the forum!!! I have been working on the ArtMaker interview the last few days and can't wait to learn more about you. It will be coming along by the end of the week!

Oh please make sure to vote for an ArtMaker banner!!

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 08-08-02 at 01:19 PM.]

As club-fashion designers -- I was wondering ... what are some the most difficult materials you've worked with in your creations? Or what are some materials you've used that a few hours out and about didn't work out as you had planned?

I think the most difficult thing I ever made a costume out of was leaves from a roommates potted plant collection (see Post Modern Dame topic for image). As I can tell an entire tale about that outfit (I called it Eve), I thought you two may have some great "creation" tales to tell.

What a great question! No one has ever asked us that.

We were making our hats bigger and bigger for a while... We've got about 4 or 5 that were never worn more than once...

One hat made out of 35 slinkys gave Zazoo a horrible headache, and kept getting stuck on people in the crowd... one slinky was stretched halfway across the dancefloor, and came snapping back towards his face. We cut our losses and left early. That one got the best of us. (LOL) You can see in the picture that it looks like it hurts:

Another hat was made out of large oil funnels. We really didn't think about the "wingspan" on it. it just about knocked out a few people. We have to reserve it for dancing on platforms now


We've learned from early mistakes, and make slightly more sensible headgear.

You know one material that I've had no luck with is bubblewrap. I've seen several designers use it for dresses. I've tried to make coats twice with no success...

One thing that also took a lot of trial and error was to find the right glue to stick rubber to rubber...

(psst I use E6000)

XXXOOO
Satori

By the way, your story about the slinkies made me spit my coffee out in laughter while onsite with a client yesterday. (It was worth it.)

LOL!

Maybe we should have our own Fox Network Special:

"When Fashion Attacks!"

XXXOOO
Satori¿

From The Club Creatures Zazoo and Satori:

"He was the un-[conventional], ... opening closed minds as he stomped his way through ... nightlife, upsetting the locals and disrupting the tranquil balance of boredom ... alone in his quest ... he developed a cult ... culminat[ing] in his own special club ... Zazoo's Freakfest, a convention for the unconventional ... a smashing success, [it] giv[es] ... rise to freakdom in the least likely ..."

The original post reads slightly differently; Zazoo - would love for you to bring FreakFest to ArtMaker, must it exist only in Cincinnati?

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 08-23-02 at 12:09 AM.]

A bit of explanation...

Mark Twain is said to have once wrote:
"When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always 20 years behind the times."

This still holds true.

We were asked to host a night at a local gay club here in Cincinnati about a year after Zazoo was "born." we agreed, but only on our terms...

What did this mean? Well...
1. Good music.
2. No crappy Drag Queens badly lipsyching to 3 year-old songs.
3. "Freaks" got in free

They reluctantly agreed to all terms, but to accomplish this, we had to:

1. Bring in our own DJ (for free)
2. Have substitute acts (for free)
3. Bring in our own crowd

The first two weren't too difficult. The third nearly killed us. We spent 7 weeks going to this club on Fridays and Saturdays(paying cover and for all our drinks) handing out flyers and promoting. We made 14 new costumes so that Zazoo would not be seen in the same one twice while promoting. We went to the local straight alternative clubs later on each of those evenings to covertly promote...

The result? The 2nd biggest night that the club had seen in about 10 years. (No way we could compete with Ms Debbie Harry.)

We had one incredible night of clubbing in Cincinnati... For one night we got a break from "Celine Dion Nation." People dressed up, the dance floor was packed from about 11pm to 3:30am. People STILL come up to us and talk about how that night stands out as one of Cincinnati's best club nights ever.

We had anticipated teaching the club how to do it. And letting them promote their own nights, and hire the DJ that we introduced them to, but it didn't happen. We got $100 for all our efforts. We've never gotten in free at the damn place...

After a few weeks the new people we had brought in got sick of the crappy Diva-House and jeans and khaki crowd and stopped coming back. After it was clear that we would have to wait another 10 years or so for Cincinnati to catch up, we decided to travel A LOT.

We have been on the cast of dancers at "Warehouse", and "Venus" has asked us to host a night, but the law of inertia holds very true here. Cincinnati is a body at rest, and it's not getting up to shake it's groove thing any time soon.

What people in larger cities take for granted, we have to hunt and work for. We don't get choices. It's not like we can say... "Hmmm. Do you feel like going to Brooklyn, or staying in the East Village tonight?" or "Hmmm. Feeling more like 'Berlin' or 'Exit'?"

And, what we do is not appreciated here. Believe it or not we get nothing from any of the clubs we go to in the tri-state area. i.e. We pay all covers and pay full price for all our drinks. "Warehouse" is the only exception.

What am I trying to say? I kinda got lost in the rant...

Oh, yes. "The Motherboards" themselves are already the online "convention for the unconventional." Chi Chi and Johnny have created it,and we love being members. It is the most remarkable way of interacting with others similar to us all over the world.

And the results for us have been direct and measurable.

The biggest being our involvement in the "Party Monster" movie. There is no other way that we could have known about Michael Wilkinson's need for costumes, and no other way we could have gotten the right contacts to get the opportunity to be extras.

So, not to squash the idea completely, if you've got an idea on how we could create a niche on here that could be more specialized we'd love to hear it and work on it!

XXXOOO
Satori

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 08-22-02 at 11:39 PM.]

People really don't know ... and a good story to boot. And you are absolutly correct. I was fishing so to speak. I do that -- I have some odd techniques to get folks, especially artists, talking. We are still pre-launch and although topics are in place, and more are coming. I am mixing it up a bit to see what we can come up with and what people's expectations/needs are.

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 08-22-02 at 11:45 PM.]

Hey:)

There has been an update at TheClubCreatures.com:

-- Satori's gallery is back online
-- Party pages has been updated with a new gallery
-- The links have been updated

XXXOOO
Satori

So nice to see you back on the boards! As you can tell, there is much catching up to do in ArtMaker!

When will you be heading to New York next?
How has your traveling been?
Any new outfits?

In Satori's Gallery -- love themile4.jpg!

Saw the links page. What links are new? (FYI -- I've been considering redesigning my home page to keep it more in tune with my current creative exploits, now I see I have to!!! After all we cannot have anybody linking off TheClubCreatures.com page to anywhere even slightly not fierce!)

Hey

Oh, I've been keeping up via Popit... just haven't had much time to post

Hmm. Next trip to NYC. We'll be heading up for "Muppetfest 2003" if it indeed happens in NYC in 2003. This spring or summer they are planning so far. Jojo will be coming up with us too.

Our luck has been really good and really bad lately. We've been getting 50-50 good/bad on trips. Gotta get out the tarot cards to find out what's going on and when this will end

There haven't been a lot of new outfits that I have pictures of (yet) We've been lacking big themed events as of late, and haven't been forced to start from scratch. I have updated a few of my older looks... like this one is fairly new:




From Jojo's hallway Labor Day weekend. That one kept people at bay... should have worn it to Exit...

And this one is fairly new, although I've added silver pinstriping since this was taken. Oh... pinstriping is my new favorite customizing tool. You can pick up all kinds of colors and thicknesses at your local auto shop. It's only like $5 for 40 yards.



XXXOOO
satori

Cheers!

I have been out of touch, but not too-far out of mind, (been reading avidly JoJo's posts on Greer, and am completely fascinated.) I just closed the September ArtMaker poll (I'll have to ask Chi Chi today at the convention about archiving it.) Anyhow, I was thinking about a new poll for ArtMaker for October and I thought I would ask if you two would be interested in the creative challenge of coming up with one ...

Love this BTW ...

quote:

---

Oh... pinstriping is my new favorite customizing tool.

---

howabout something like:

My favorite way to express myself is:

-Visually
-By performing
-Musically
-Nude
-Orally
-Orally with someone nude nearby

do you see this poll with graphics ?

--I do believe I have/can generate some comical images to go with that within a day or two ...

--or do you have an inclination to make some graphics of your own to add to it?

Everything's better with graphics.

They're more your thing

XXXOOO
Satori

AND BRING jOjO !!!

actually just a funny semi-waking dream I had this morning.

--actually caused, most likely, from watching the performance tape from the womb show, which I had not forced myself to sit through yet. After much pulling my hair, groaning, talking very loudly and repetitively to myself and pacing about the living room, I got through it. But what I realized is that YOU TWO twats were the ones to go into shock and hustle with tons of bustle off the floor when my audio came on! Actually, watching that, was the most enjoyable part of seeing the tape and helped me laugh the rest of it off as I got through watching it. There is this one genious moment where even I have to appreciate the joke, it is one where I am singing to this little Japanese girl (the size of a gnat compared to me) and she is taking picture after picture after picture like five inches from my face. It's just sick. Anyway... I have had your poll on the back of my mind for the last few days and have come up with a concept I can work with (a knock-off of a subway campaign that caught my eye) that I'll be adding to your questions by the weekend. Considering the late start and how interesting your questions, perhaps we should run it through November?

I did have a notion I thought I'd run past you two ... maybe we can send it "on tour" around the boards and have it spend a week in each forum and see what it comes back to ArtMaker with... I'll have to ask Daddy and the Empress of course ... but I think it would be an interesting and low maintainence MBoard event/experiment ...

And by the way, I truly believe that with a pair of scissors, a magazine and some tape you could actually make far more apt and entertaining graphics than I for something like this.

Ok... the setup.

We were back in New York for the first time since '99... we had just gotten in that day,Settled in, and took entirely too long to get ready... We drove across 14th to share a cab with Chi Chi. (not knowing 14th was under construction.)

Poor Chi Chi was waiting on a street corner for probably a half-an-hour...

We got to the club maybe 10 minutes before you came on... Walk into an unfamiliar club, just to see our faces all over the monitors... We manage to skarf down one drink and watch Andro burning up the dancefloor in some really fierce heels...

We decided that we were way overdressed to be standing on the sidelines... Started getting into the groove... and then your performance started.

We figured that it was a faux pas to be on the floor when it was yours... (we're conditioned to leave the dancefloor in Dayton because it raises from the ground to become a stage)

So, it SO wasn't you or your piece. We were all off balance.

We wouldn't run now we promise

---------

We'd love to come up for the Anne Rice bash... if only...

--------
The poll idea sounds great. I can't wait to see what you do with it!

XXXOOO
Satori

No! A dancefloor is everybody's always!!! And I did love watching it--you two running off!! You couldn't pay people to look so jarred!!

And the faux pas is mine. The theory was to make an interactive imprmptu video. The problem (well technically there were several glitches) but the biggest being -- the music is not yet appropriate for the dance floor, perhaps even to ears. If it was, people wouldn't have been so confused. But I got through it and had to laugh myself at the mockery I made.

Regardless, no matter how I manage to put together just all of what is in me to do -- and it will include the audio aspects because the full impact of what I create is empty to me without it -- I will always want to be on the dancefloor with people.

At Jackie 60 past, Johnny pulled me up on stage inturupting the lovely House of Domination and all I felt was a great deal of tension. I do not shine in the spotlight. I'm more of an ultra violet variety. And my ability to entertain -- to really generate energy and make people feel good about themselves -- is on the floor.

But enough about all of that ... my apologies, I indeed just carried 'a one' from the single digit column of my age to the double digit column about an hour ago. And it is indeed making me reflective (and I think far too much as it is!)

----Lastly tonight at Mindless Self Indulgence I was amazed. If I ever wondered about kids still being abe to find subcuture outside of 'Hot Topic' I was witness to it tonight. Those MF'ers had sold out Irving Plaza to mostly a 21 and under, screaming at the top of their young little bi / straight / gay / gender nuetral / gender variant loungs -- "I've been denied all the best ultra sex" over and over until I thought the roof itself would burst off that building.

And I do believe each and everyone of those kids has a clue what that song is referring to. Pink everywhere, trianlges, stars I saw in t-shirts and in logos -- it's a queer new world.

And although I miss seeing that boy crawl under a table at CBGBs in sweatpants and big dirty cross dangling on his chest (and staying there for a song or two) playing to oh, 6 or 7 goth-to-alt girls that must have been his high school posse --and doubly surprised several years later to learn that Mother's own DJ St James was somehow part of the act ... what those people are up to ... inspires, amazes and thrills me. It is a great feeling to take with me as I begin my journey though the next 10 years until that digit in the tens column changes again.

Perhaps on that note, I'll go watch some porn, after all I am now old enough to be a complete pervert without need of a flushed face, so i might as well get on and get used to the perks of aging.

but my brother jay-jay and i have a gig.....we are the hilton sisters for halloween. and i will be doing a instalation for the club WHITE STAR. and performing with my bro and judging a costume contest...but back too my buddies zazoo and satori this is an art forum .....and you should see what they can do with a tupper wear bowl and action figures. It all good... i love their looks.... we go shoping sometimes when the are in chicago and we make fun of each other and what outfits we can make out of ordinary things that people wouldnt think of. it is an art ....i once made a doll out of a screen door on