Tom Waits, once said "I got the sheets but not the bed, I got the jam but not the bread. But hey, I'm big in Japan."
We've been channeling that rusted nail of a hero all morning after we found out that the Beams store in Shibuya, Tokyo is showcasing Freakers from now until May 10th! So this is a call to action for our Japanese counterparts: Go say Konnichiwa! to these fine folks and get your freak on!
Freakers for all! With a side dish of unlimited high fives!!
Look at those fine chaps!
There was only one piece of this equation that confused us: These freak-crusaders are doing such amazing work Freaking everything in sight, so why are they so fully clothed?
BAM! Just like that one episode of the Japanese Power-Rangers In Space, they read our minds!
So yes! Stop by Beams in Shibuya and kartwheel your way into freak glory!
We love you!
This report is a little late, but it's taken us a couple extra days to mentally process what went down last Saturday. April 7th, 2012 was the one year anniversary of launching our Kickstarter campaign that propelled us into space.
For those of you who have only recently been inducted into the Familia de' Freak, let us rewind for a hot second: Kickstarter is an online platform that provides funding for creative projects from people like you (and you! and you and you you and you!)
Freaker USA ended up raising $62,770 in 60 days, and 95.4% of we have done since last June was made possible by this campaign (SO THANK YOU! We love you! Unconditionally!) This was our pitch video:
Fast forward 365 days: we've since reached our Kickstarter goal, bought a boxtruck, converted it into a house, travelled the country for 4 months throwing free grilled cheese parties for the masses and recruiting an army of joy-warriors.
How does one begin to celebrate such an anniversary!? In the most American way possible. This is what we came up with:
The first thing on the list of "Most American Celebrations" always involves taking off your pants in public places.
...And also signing waver forms for travelling in three dimensions with risk of paralysis.
Onwards! We armed ourselves with pastel helmets & adequate security-padding-vests to set up a memorial for Aunt Jemima.
After that deliciously syrupy feat, we embarked on an upwards journey....
Our dear friends at Kitty Hawk Kites are certified freakified and invited us to the Outer Banks for a hang-gliding adventure quest! Saying "no" would have immediately transformed us into something resembling a combination of all the "bad guys" in every Will Smith movie to date. And who can team up against Will Smith? The correct answer: not us, dear friends.
Evidently, we cannot propel our bodies into the air WITH an American flag.... so we made LeighVoli hold down the patriot-fort as the rest of us hovered above her screeching George Michael's "Careless Whisper."
As the day turned into night, we dined with the Kittiest of all Hawks and all was merry... until we found an abundance of "Yoohoo and Friends" temporary tattoos. To give you a point of reference, this, fine chaps, is Yoohoo and Friends:
Oh, JOY!
What better way to celebrate the moment of our company's conception than to defile our employees with "temporary"** tattoos of characters named "Giggles"....on their FACE!
**Not as temporary as the name would lead you to believe.
Lauren was so ecstatic about her new tribal tendencies that she kart-wheeled over a fire and singed half of her bangs away!
Things got weird and she started mumbling something about "her boyfriend, the rapper Drake," so we quickly recovered our American flag and decided that any higher degree of celebration would finally end in the paralysis that we were warned of only 12 hours earlier.
...So thank you, Kickstarter and all of our wonderful supporters for making April 7th, 2012 a resounding success and April 8th, 2012 a horrible realization that somebody needs to start a crowd-funding campaign for more effective face soap.
It took us a whole 24 hours to realize that not everybody somehow "became" pregnant yesterday.
You sure did fool us! But meanwhile, we were fooling ourselves with a very special "fool the senses" dinner party! Don't understand completely? Here - maybe the official invitation will clear up the fuzzies (don't mind the part about smelling ourselves. That was... that is... somehow... irrelevant.)
By "Bill Clinton," Mr. Mellan actually meant "his mom," whose all time favorite holiday is April 1st! Festivities abound!
For those of you readers who are particularly hunger, let's take care of that problem:
Some of the specialties included vegan vomit (avocado salad!), hotdogs (that were actually cooked carrots! ahaha! fooled!) and of course, poo (brownies!)
There were also some very peculiar character foolings,
Here we have "Slick Rick" who enjoys golfing under the influence & driving cars even though he has been legally blind for 45 years.
And this here is Wily Willy, who spends his free time hunting invisible squirrels & fly fishing in the nude.
And what do we have here?! All aboard doppleganger express (that was awful... please forgive us.)
This is Oliver Mellan who enjoys everything. Especially that hat.
A couple weeks ago, our very own Oliver had a birthday extravaganza. We realized just how strangely the evening had devolved when we came-to in a laundromat at 1:30 am dancing in costumes that included but were not limited to: a unicorn, Sexy Sax Man, and the cast of a Lifetime movie about British runaways from 1983.
Welppp. This past Friday was Lauren's birthday.
...The worst part about birthdays is that you give full control of your day to somebody who is probably going to be reckless. Lauren is the perfect candidate to this theory, but she surprised us all with a new game: acting like civilized a-dults. Hokay. We'll give it a try.
For Zach's birthday, he was blindfolded and kidnapped to Hooters. It went so smashingly, we considered replaying the scenario (mostly just the Hooters part) with Lauren but she insisted that she wanted nothing to do with food and that 3pm was "rumble time" whatever that may mean.
She wanted the trashiest dive bar in Carolina Beach to be her celebratory "spiritual bar connection." So we played Taboo and made a fun game of making Justin roll around in the tobacco-stained sand when he messed up.
Alisha said something about accounting, so we symbolically fired her. Obviously, a grand time was had by all.
Where to next? WWACAD? (What would a civilized adult do?)
A drive to her parent's house in the peaceful countryside to munch on a peaceful dinner. With forks. Or whatever.
Things were going well until sommmmebody (blame Alisha.) decided to have a not-dry adventure in the marsh. Search & Rescue to commence!
And that's when we realized - after x number of years living in Wilmington, we are finally living in an episode of Dawson's Creek.
After the WB epiphany, things went downhill.
Our general conclusion was not that we failed at our goal of being "real adults," but rather that more adults should Superman each other and thus we excelled in imitating their responsible antics!
So happy birthday, Lauren. You are a toot.
And a gold star goes to everyone involved ... no unicorns were harmed in the making of this weekend.
Yesterday Oliver built a ray-gun time-machine while Zach played dress-up. (Not lying, pinky promise.)
But our Mini Plasma Disk broke at 8:45 pm. Home Depot (the natural habitat of all Mini Plasma Disks) was to close in 15 minutes and our time machine couldn't properly function so we were in quite the sticky science spot. We were forced to use meer peasant technology and speed-drive to our beloved Depot Home.
We have obtained the Mini Plasma Disk Device with t-1 minute to spare! Onwards! To VICTORY!
Not everyone was as thrilled with our resounding scientific success. Haters gunna hate.
Back to the lab, Frank! We must continue our work. Our science work.
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Epilogue:
At the conclusion of the science, an unexpected side effect floored everyone involved in the experiment. Pete The Dog suddenly transformed into an 79 year old Russian babuska.
We got our very official US Patent in the mail today!
It has a gold stamp and swirly typography! That's how you know it's good.
Celebratory patent dances abound!!!
Unfortunately for the US government, patents look suspiciously like coloring books. It took all of our self-restraint to act like adults... but I'm going to warn you right now, government employees, 6 year olds can apply for patents too and they won't give you the same respect.
Our office toilet has been broken for two days now and our plumber has, for some odd reason, decided to succumb to property management bureaucracy. This is what we have:
And this is what we want:
So we added "Go find us this potty" to Zach's errand list for the day. His search for a new fancy Japanese button potty was a failure. So he bought donuts instead.
No toilet, more donuts? The universal placater.
Unfortunately, the plumber also shut off our water before he went on his plumbing-heirarchy sojourn. So now we get the honor and the pleasure of this hot donut mess for the rest of the day.
(Also, I think this is an appropriate time to showcase the magic-mirror in our office's bathroom. Because. You know:
