Okay, GIANT life update: @bandspelledbitch (woof woof bark yip yip) is releasing our album MAY 1.
@snakeeugenics brought some poodle punk doo-wop songs to @heidigruner and me at @schoolofthealternative eons ago. For years, we would just play once a year at school (or takeover a local dive bar in black mountain see iconic pic above), and we added Crystal on drums and Mara on guitar and then all of a sudden we were a real ass band.
2024 = first tour! 2025 = record/produce album! 2026 = release album!!
It would mean so much to me if you hot heathens who follow me here would visit the poodle page too.
BLESSING UPON US ALL
Okay it's fucking here, the secret SURPRISE day-of merch drop!!!!! We have hand-carved stamp printing and butt tattoos and glow-in-the-dark bags
For $49.99, the 2025 "Now That's What I Call Gown" bundle includes:
🦩Double printed tote (butt on one side, orange, pink, green, or GLOW IN THE DARK logo on the other)
🦩 EP Wool on vinyl with sleeve that is hand-marbled on one side, and hand-printed with stamps of our faces THAT VICTORIA HAND-CARVED on the other side
🦩2018 album Skin on cassette with fold out poster inside
🦩 Friendship 2xbutt tattoos! Get two temporary tatts that are an image of a butt with a Gown tattoo on the butt, share w a bud!!!!!
Bundle is $49.99, which has you saving a freaking PENNY, vs buying solo, plus some of this customization you can't get any other way! Only 12 available at most.
Otherwise we have to purchase
New shirts $20
New totes $20
EP $20 (first come first serve for the custom ones, we have 20 total including the bundles)
Friendship tattoos (aka 2-pack) $5
Tape $5
Re-used totes that turned out meh = pay what you want ~$5
Random shirts from past shows = PWYW ~15
All design of albums and logos & screen printing by Nelle!!! Butt by Emma! Dip dye by Whitney!
Photos from SotA are always really gorgeous. The landscapes are stunning, everyone is cute as shit in good outfits, the art is cool. Plus, the graphic design is SHINY with Heidi at the wheel.
But don't be fooled.
Despite this polish, we are gritty and sweaty and struggling through the muck to build a radical community every single year. These skills, which every participant — student, staff, faculty – strengthens through their time at SotA, are the skills we will need as we move further into fascism.
Which is to say: when you fund this school, you aren't just giving money for something that looks nice. You are giving money to an organization that is directly challenging the status quo and fully embodying the change we all want to see. Being able to practice this and learn from one another is deeply valuable not just to the folks involved in each session but to everyone in their communities at home, who feel the ripple effects.
As you can see from our budget slide, we are not fundraising for fancy art materials. We are fundraising to meet the baseline needs of food and lodging and scholarships for folks who couldn't otherwise afford to be here. Please give!
And if you want to give in a more fun way, buy raffle tickets. And if you can't give, share. We are pretty far away from our goal right now. But every year we make it, or we get close, and I feel really hopeful that that will be the case again in 2025.
Photo IDs and links in the comments 🌈
Here are a few things that Owen did during his 38th year, which has now ended 🎂
1: match haircuts with Elmer
2: be a huge value-add in this family bc of looks and personality, and all the incredible work he does to make the world a safer and fairer place for everybody
3: become a lawyer
4: cook us dinner every night
5: play guitar
6: a teeny bit of time w friends
7: graduate and pass the bar (see #3)
8: go on tour
9 + 10: be a huge value-add on family vacations because of capability and the Fun Factor, and all the incredible work he does to be healthy and wise
Sure do love this person @omfgerald ! Happy birthday! Arms embargo now! Love you love you!
This month was my sweet mom's birthday and now that she has entered the big world of social media, I get to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY VICKY LOVE YOU to @circustimes2 right here. So much of me comes from this kind, brilliant, bizarre, cute person (and thus so much of Odes and Elmo), and I am really really really lucky.
Bonus content of Vicky wearing a cupcake costume with a cigarette girl style comic book delivery system part of a guerilla effort at CAKE in Chicago in the stories!!!!
The annual @schoolofthealternative fundraiser is upon us!!! Link in bio :) to donate and watch our HEART WRENCHING video
For the next month, we will be working together to raise $8k to sustain this school and hold our May 2025 session. This amount is 35% of our annual budget. Hitting the goal means we will be able to hold our session again this year – including offering 12 full scholarships and small travel/materials stipends for our FULLY VOLUNTEER faculty and staff.
Please use this time to connect with this community, learn more about the school and why it matters to world-build in education, consider applying to teach/learn, share the campaign with the people around you, and (if ya can!) DONATE!
Photographers tagged! 📸Jordan Evans-Boyajian, Emília Turner, Suz Murray
Please @ me in the comments if I didn't tag ya in the post... And then share it! 🫧🩷🫧
March 2024 and March 2020. What a difference.
We still have the caterpillar sweater and Owen still loves plaid, but my entire worldview has changed. I don't believe in this system any more and am soaking up new learning like a soggy sponge to envision a different future for these two small humans, and all the small humans of the world – who deserve comfort and safety and play. I am so angry and startled by what I didn't know. I am grateful to the people who have been and are doing the work, not just the work of "change" but of full overhaul and an entirely new (to me) structure of thinking. More aware of my privilege than I have ever been: whiteness, of course, but also my citizenship my land ownership my money my cisness my legal marriage my fertility my western comfort my English my able body my neurotyptical mind more more more
#ivoted #uncommitted #freepalestine #ceasefire
"Describe your intention for participating in SotA right now" is part of every one of our applications – faculty, scholarship, student – and responses are wide-ranging. My own intention changes every year: to bond, to build, to rest, to challenge, to have fun. This year I want to find my art self away from parenthood, and get deeply grounded in anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism conversation to continue the fight against ongoing genocides. And dance in nature. What would yours be?
Photos – @santasabel and me at SotA prom 2024; me on campus in front of the blue ridge mountains.
Graphics – info about cost and scholarships, including Black Equity Scholarship deadline later this week. More in comments. 💕
