I recently saw Mindless Self Indulgence again in Los Angeles. While there I got the five star Turkey treatment and was able to sit in on an interview with the band prior to the gig while my owner, Alyssa, put journalistic skills to work. The following is the result. Pictures can be found here.

Interview by Alyssa Tucker

The band was in the middle of their Cursing in Braille Tour along with opening act, Kill Hannah. I invited my friend Renee to come lend a hand. Once back stage at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, we were joyfully greeted by all of the band, as they had remembered us from the many of their shows that we have gone to. I promptly threw my stuffed turkey, (TurkeyWithSound.com), at Little Jimmy Urine to keep him entertained and the interview was then ready to begin. It started to not feel like an interview and more like a conversation with friends. In fact, I would often forget that I had questions sitting in front of me since we would all get carried away in the fun time.

Alyssa: Ok, so how did you guys decide to tour with Kill Hannah?

Little Jimmy Urine: How did we decide?

Righ?: I dunno.. let’s ask Kill Hannah. HEY! KILL HANNAH!
LJU: “HEY! KILL HANNAH!”
Righ?: HEY!

Renee: I’m sure they all come out when you say “Hey, Kill Hannah!”

Righ?: Mat!
LJU: I dunno, try another one. Try another name. There’s a bunch of names
Righ?: Dan! Come here a minute!.. yeah, Mat come here a minute. They wanna know how we decided to tour with Kill Hannah. You wanna tell em the truth?

[Mat Devine, the singer of Kill Hannah walks up confused]

Mat: Oh, is this an interview? Wasn’t the whole like.. Ricky Martin was busy?
Righ?: It was Ricky Martin.. and we have a karaoke act together. We do Easy Lover.
Mat: Oh! Easy Lover, Phil Collins, and Phil Bailey and everyone was freakin out about our karaoke act.
Righ?: So we just thought we’d take it on the road. We brought the rest of our bands with us.

Mat: Yeah, we woulda sold more tickets as a karaoke act. We felt sorry for the other band members.
Righ?: Alright, go look cute in the other room, Mat.
Mat: Ok.

Alyssa: What do you do to entertain yourselves while on the road?

LJU: I WAS doing something else but now.. I got this. [referring to Turkey]

Righ?: It’s all about Turkey.. We do the usual.
Kitty: Play video games.
Righ?: We eat cows.

Alyssa: Is there a favorite video game?

LJU: What are you doin now? You guys are racing eachother on DS right now.

Kitty: We are wirelessly racing eachother.
LJU: With Mario Cart.

Righ?: Isn’t that exciting?
Kitty: and that’s true
Righ?: That is true
Kitty: We’re not lying

LJU: I wish I was lying. And you’ve beaten me every single fucking time!
Kitty: Wario biotch!

Alyssa: What made you guys decide to tour again instead of just doing a few shows in New York like we were originally told?

Righ?: We were told that too. What happened was we kept getting written to by people who hadn’t seen us. I guess there was some radio airplay somewhere in this nation unbeknownst to us.

LJU: Then our single being top 5..
Righ?: And our single went pretty well then all of the sudden we got all these people saying. “Are you gonna come out again? Are you gonna come out again? Are you gonna come out again? Are you gonna come out again? Are you gonna come out again?”
LJU: If I was here tonight and there were only 3 people, not only would it be a much better show but then that would be like why would we even bother?
Righ?: We wanted to stay home and pick our asses. It was by popular demand!

Alyssa What’s going on with the “Straight to Video” video?

Righ?: It’s almost done.
LJU: Almost done.

Righ?: Coming soon.
LJU: Coming soon.

Renee: That was a long time ago.

LJU: Why, were you in it?

Renee: No, but my friends were.

LJU: Well, tell your friends to chill the fuck out! Oh, by the way, we edited all the parts with your friends out.

Alyssa: Lyn-Z, who is your favorite artist?

Lyn-Z: Ooo!

Kitty: I thought you were gonna make her pick her favorite person in this band.
Righ: We know that anyway. It’s herself.

Lyn-Z: I am really excited about Camille Rose Garcia, Elizabeth McGrath, and Ron English. Yeah, those are my 3 tops right now.. Those two, I think they both live in LA too. Camille Rose Garcia. Have you seen her stuff? I know you have. It’s really good. And Elizabeth McGrath does these awesome dioramas. They are really creepy. You should check it out, seriously. Check it out. You’ll love it. I promise. And Ron English is like a legend.

Alyssa: What’s the strangest thing a fan has given any of you guys?

LJU: Given or thrown at? Are you talking about given like “Here is my Turkey”?

Alyssa: Well, that’s not for you to keep.

Kitty: Oil paintings

LJU: Oil paintings!
Righ?: That was cool but that’s not the weirdest.
LJU: That was pretty cool.
Righ?: It’s weird that they spent their time doing it.

LJU: It’s weird that they spent any time.

Renee: That’s Chelsea. I know her. I know all of these people.. but what’s the weirdest?

Righ?: I’m trying to think guys!

Kitty: We get so many weird things. Last night I got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle gum.
LJU: Yeah, every single night we get so much ridiculous shit.

Renee: I thought there would be a really weird something!

Righ?: It depends on what you think is weird. Do you think like Spaghetti O’s and chips..

Renee: Well like odd gifts you know like people are all like “Yeah, here’s a teddy bear!” that’s not weird but like other things like “Here’s my shoe!”

Lyn-Z: Someone gave me a bass to smash for them on stage and give them the broken bits. That was fuckin awesome.

LJU: I think what weirds us out is when it’s not like a goat’s head but when it’s like someone actually spent some real money and you almost feel bad like they come up to you and they give you like dvds and games and “I heard that you like liked this dvd!” and it’s the dvd you’ve been lookin for for like your whole life and you’re like “Oh my god” and they’re like “I found it on ebay for like a hundred dollars! You can have it!”

Kitty: We get journals too.
LJU: OH YEAH! [LJU bursts out in song] I GOT THE LOVE JOURNAL! AND I DON’T WORK FOR NOBODY BUT- [squeezes Turkey to make him gobble]
Kitty: You need to edit out the part where we feel bad when they give us this stuff.

LJU: We don’t feel bad. We feel fantastic! It makes my boner rise!

Alyssa: Jimmy, why did you move to Los Angeles?

LJU: Well, you know what they say. God damned expensive!

Renee: So you went from New York to like really crappy to medium crappy LA?

LJU: Well, I’m not even here. I’m always on the road so what does it matter where the hell I live? I could say I live in Bangladesh! In fact I do live in Bangladesh!
Righ?: YOU DO! You look like you do!
LJU: As of this moment I live in Bangladesh! Because really all I do is live on a bus. I live in a big giant sardine can.
Righ?: Stop Jon Bon Jovin’ that shit.

Alyssa: This one might be weird. If you guys were action figures, what would you want your action features to be?

Lyn-Z: Hmmm that is a weird question.

Alyssa: Like kung fu grip.

Righ?: No, not kung fu grip. Hmm.

LJU: NO I want like those Voltron robots where I load shit in my mouth and push my stomach and it goes CAW and shit shoots out. Or like the arms shoot off…
Righ?: I would like to be a surveillance camera.. and I would like to be fluffy cute teddy bear too.
LJU: Yeeaaah, a furby. Tamagotchi man. I wanna be a Tamagotchi rapist!
Righ?: Yeah!

Lyn-Z: I would like to fly.

LJU: Oh you wanna be like one of those Evil Knievel stunt cycles..
Lyn-Z: Yeah, I’d just want to fly.
LJU: Alright R Kelly. Have some more fruit salad.
Kitty: I think running really fast would be cool.

Alyssa: What made you guys re-edit the “Shut Me Up” video?

Righ?: Did we or why did we?
Lyn-Z: These girls are good.

Righ?: Because we are ego maniacs. We needed to be in the video. We’re like, fuck that guy man! And all those other guys! We gotta be in this video you know. Flaunting our fat selves and skinny selves and medium and..

Alyssa: But it’s mostly Jimmy.

Renee: I think a lot of people were like “where’s the band?”

Righ?: That’s what they were saying? Alright!!
LJU: It worked! Damn my uh..
Righ?: Yeah!
LJU: -My.. [Jimmy squeezes Turkey for an answer]

Lyn-Z: You can’t rely on the Turkey bird
LJU: I can rely on the Turkey bird.
Righ?: He can pretty much live off of that for a while.

Alyssa: Is there anything that you think your fans won’t rebel to?

[the bands makes “ooo” sounds]

LJU: That’s a good question. I thought this was gonna be an easy one. I was all ready and now I’m like “shit!”
Righ?: That was a good question.

LJU: I can’t even understand it. Wait.
Righ?: We’re saying you’ll rebel to anything.
LJU: Right and they’re saying is there anything they won’t rebel to.

Righ?: Yeah, but you know what she left out though?! It’s “You’ll Rebel to Anything (as long as it’s not challenging)” So HA HA HA. You answered your own question. I got the high IQ!

Alyssa: Well, it wasn’t my question.

Renee: Yeah, we asked a bunch of people outside in line.

LJU: Oh, you asked the line? These kids are smart! What the fuck?

Alyssa: Well they didn’t think about the switch up at the end.

LJU: No! That’s much better usually it’s like “Heeey uh. Duuh.” But tonight they’re like on point.

Alyssa: I dunno if I wanna ask this one.

LJU: Yeah you do.

Alyssa: So, how many fans do you think you’ve made out with?

LJU: Oh my god. I dunno. Tonight there’s gonna be a couple.

Alyssa: A couple?

LJU: I.. I don’t count. I don’t keep count unfortunetly.

Alyssa: Do you get a lot of diseases?

LJU: I dunno. You wanna find out? [Jimmy smiles and raises his eyebrows a few times as if he is trying to be all suave]
Righ?: Hahaha. Dude that was friggin rauncy. Woo!
LJU: It’s cause I haven’t shaved yet.
Righ?: Oh God, that was really like.. I was gonna buy some fruit from you on the side of the road.

Renee: That spic stache is workin good.

LJU [with an accent]: It’s my spic stache. And you know it’s true because it does not connect. OK gringos! Ask another question! We’re all amigos here! Damn gringos with their questions.

Alyssa: How do you feel about the kids on your message board?

[band makes “ooo” sounds yet again]

LJU: What do you think about this Lyn-Z?

Alyssa: They told me not to ask you.

Lyn-Z: They told you not to ask me? Why?

Renee: Because we know how you feel about it

Lyn-Z: Well, you know. You work your ass off and you hurt yourself. My lungs exploded on stage. Steve’s hip has shattered and whatever. You’re just working your ass of and you love what you do and you get excited and you’re like “Yeah!” and really feel good about what I’m are doing and you look at your own message board that YOU pay for and people are on there talking shit about you. Retarded shit like “She looks ugly! Look, I can prove it” and they put like disgusting pictures of you that it’s stupid.

Alyssa: The own band that they love?!

Lyn-Z: Yeah! The own band that they love.
LJU: It’s all me. Putting those pictures up there.

Alyssa: They also like to hurt eachother. Like, I’m afraid to go on there and ask an important question for fear of being scorned.

Lyn-Z: I think new people should go on our message board.

Alyssa: I’m not new but yeah, they should go on.

Lyn-Z: Yeah, like why don’t you make a message board like “I Fucking Hate MSI” and I’m just gonna go for it.

Alyssa: Join that one.

Righ?: And you pay for it.

Lyn-Z: Yeah, and you pay for it. We pay for that and it just sorta hurts my feelings. It’s frustrating. Especially when you have my niece going on there and she’s like “Aunt Lyn-Z, people are mean”.

[It’s time for the next “question” and I consult Renee to see if she is up to the challenge]

Renee: I dunno if I could do that. It’s like an impression of a Saturday Night Live skit that my friends told me to do.

Alyssa: I’ll do it if you won’t do it.

Righ?: Do it! Come on! Do it!
LJU: Do it!
Righ: Do it!

[This heckling continues for a while]

LJU: This is kinda what it’s like on the message board.

Renee: I feel like I’m back in high school again.

Alyssa: Ok, I hope you guys understand this one.

Righ?: I understand everything.

Renee: Really?

Righ?: No.

Renee: Ok, do you guys watch Saturday Night Live?

Righ?: Yeah!

Renee: Ok ok, it’s like Harry Carey. You guys know who Harry Carey is?

LJU: Oh my God!

Righ?: Yeah, of course.

Renee: Hey! We all know that the moon is not made out of green cheese but what if it were made of barbecue spare ribs. Would you eat it?

Righ?: What’s the one with the hot dogs?

Alyssa: If you were a hot dog-

Righ?: Oh yeah! If you were a hot dog and you were starving would you eat yourself? I know I would! I’d put some brown mustard and lay it on.

Renee: Would you guys eat the moon if it was made out of barbeque spare ribs?

LJU: I didn’t understand the question. I was so busy listening to you doing the impression and fuck it up.

Renee: I’ll read it normally.. Hey! We all know that the moon is not made out of green cheese but what if it were made of barbecue spare ribs. Would you eat it then?

LJU: If it was at Rudy’s? Yeah!

Righ?: I would, duh!

LJU: Come on that’s a nobrainer!

Renee: Was that it?

LJU: That was the big ender?

Renee: You want a better question?

Righ?: No but actually if you wanna act out more skits from SNL that would be good. We don’t have a TV in here. Can one of you be Jimmy Fallon so I can punch you?

Alyssa: Here’s my Christopher Walken. Jimmay, wazzup?

[Everyone laughs and Jimmy nearly falls out of his chair]

Righ?: That’s the best.

Lyn-Z: You girls were the best interview ever.

LJU: [In a funny voice] Give yourselves a round of applause yeah! [Jimmy starts talking to Turkey With Sound] Alright Turkey, it’s been fun… I know, I know. I’m gonna miss you too. I know! I know! I won’t eat Turkey, I’ll just eat burgers! I do it for you.