Marc with Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips)
Backstage at the Roxy, Boston, Massachusetts
April 23, 2003
I entered a contest and was selected to wear an animal suit and dance onstage with the Flaming Lips. You heard me. The grand irony is that up until the day of the show, I didn't own a single Lips album, even though I'd always been glad that they were out there doing what they were doing. Backstage before the show actually kinda sucked, as a bunch of radio and record company people pretty much schmoozed the band the entire time (recall the backstage scene with Jeff Tweedy in I Am Trying To Break Your Heart), so I barely got to speak four sentences to anybody in the band all night (I might have been a bit more aggressive had I been a huge fan, I suppose). At showtime, I got the frog suit seen below (I wanted the dolphin suit worn by Justin Timberlake on Belgian TV but was told that it was "for Europe only") and pretty much the prime spot: as all the other contest winners and assorted hangers-on (dressed as bunnies, turtles, giraffes, etc.) were randomly scattered throughout the crowd, I was placed on the lip of the stage on the left. And man, did I dance. This picture was taken about 3 minutes after the show, during which singer/guitarist Wayne Coyne doused himself with stage blood while singing "Happy Birthday" (well, when else would you douse yourself with stage blood?). I, meanwhile, hasten to point out that despite appearances, I wasn't drunk but had merely been frugging my amphibious ass off for 90 minutes while wearing wool from head to toe. My father, upon hearing about this incident, declared, "I continue to be amazed at the various ways you can make Mom and me proud of you."
