[ CyberScape | MetroActive Central ]
THE SEEMEN recently invited MetroActive to a private performance near San Francisco City Hall. Normally the SEEMEN perform in Bay Area nightclubs--loosing their killer robots on unsuspecting clubgoers and nervous club managers who realize too late that they aren't carrying enough insurance. But our scaled-down performance would take place in a narrow swath of billboard throughway underneath one of the city's gothic elevated freeways.
Our contact, Sirena Irwin, arrived a bit late, decked out in an unusually heavy overcoat (this was mid-July). After quick introductions--Sirena is not only a SEEMEN member, she's an actor/playwright and appears in TV commercials for Blockbuster Video and Paramount's Great America: everyone's gotta eat--we're on our way to the makeshift arena.
It's now dark as we pull up to the curb under a hanging freeway cloverleaf. Sirena honks the car horn, and an unbelievably loud airhorn blasts in reply. Sirena hurries us along the sidewalk to a chain-link-fence enclosed alley, a "stage" barely wider than a city bus. At the fence, she doffs her wool overcoat, revealing her more sensible performance outfit: a furry Sheena-Queen-of-the-Jungle bikini ensemble.
It only gets weirder: Sheena-Sirena approaches the gate and, cooing, begins to pet a prehensile mechanical claw that's dangling over the fence. The claw is attached to heavily armored forklift. This is "Stretch," one of the SEEMEN mechanical cast members. Stretch begins to spit flames from his hovering claw, as Sirena ushers us through a narrow gap in the fence. "BAD STRETCH!" she shouts. "DOWN!" Someone hands her a whip, and now, for some reason, she's Sheena, the robot-taming dominatrix. "Open your FUCKIN mouth!" she commands, and the submissive contraption obeys. She clambers up onto the beast's priapic arm.
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