On Pandagon, Amanda writes:

I’m sorry. Plain and simple. I didn’t pick the offensive imagery in my book, but I should have caught it sooner than now. I didn’t and there’s no excuse. It was my first book, I was excited and happy, but I needed to have a more critical eye. I would do anything to remove racist images from the first printing of the book if I could, and I am relieved and happy to say that they will be removed from future printings.

Since the book is currently in its second printing, Seal Press is already removing the offensive images. They write:

Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.

As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.

Although the apology from Seal Press is not 100% satisfying in it’s wording, I congratulate them for understanding (with prompting) that these images, combined with their extremely problematic response to women of color discussing their publishing diversity, indicate a problem with them not their critics. I wish them the best of luck in addressing it.

Seal Press, if I were you, I would go straight to the Angry Black Woman or Nojojojo, both of whom I can personally attest are excellent writers (and ABW an experienced editor), and ask if either would be willing to edit a collection of articles for you on any subject she desires, even if it’s the lack of diversity in the publishing industry with an article about Seal Press in it. I don’t know if either of them would have time or inclination to take you up on it — they’re legitimately pissed at you — but if they did, you would end up with a clearly excellent collection of articles. That would just be my first step.

Alternately, if someone could help you find BFP, and if she had time and inclination, I’m certain her writings could be compiled into an excellent text.

Oh, and drop everything and go read this post from Angry Black Woman on how to promote diversity in fiction markets. It’s not 100% salient to non-fiction publishing, but it’s close enough.

I am very pleased that the book will soon be available without this offensive imagery. I’ve only excerpted from these apologies; I suggest you read further yourself.

I imagine many people will be wondering why Amanda apologized about this issue, while staying silent on her own blog about appropriation. Only Amanda can answer that, though I suspect the answer has something to do with her feeling she did something wrong here and not in the other instance. To the extent that my desires are relevant (i.e. about 0%), I’d urge Amanda to address the appropriation issue on her blog. Even if she doesn’t feel she appropriated, she could easily mention the controversy, apologize for whatever portion of it she feels rests on her shoulders (and surely she can agree that appropriation is a systemic issue, and one she and many other white people have participated in without intention or conscious knowledge, if not in this instance specifically, then surely in others) and compile a set of links to salient works by women of color. Even if those links don’t feel like direct sources to her, they would certainly be excellent reading for her audience, and what is there to lose? More sets of eyes on excellent, progressive writing by women of color? Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch.

UPDATESeal Press has updated their apology with the following:

Please note that, upon reflection, we realize that the second to the last paragraph of this post doesn’t do a good job of conveying our intended meaning. We do not want to delete it, but we do want to make a note around our intent, since its purpose was to further articulate the “what were they thinking?” question. We apologize that this paragraph undermines our apology. We acknowledge that the images are racist and not okay under any circumstances. We are wholeheartedly sincere in our apology, and the actions we’ve laid out above will be acted upon immediately.

(Feminist, anti-racist comments only please.)

The latest Disability Blog Carnival is now up at Abnormal Diversity where the theme is Abuse. I submitted a post on something that happened to me about two years ago, and there’s much more to read on the topic. Check it out.

The next Disability Blog Carnival will be on May 8 at CripChick’s. The theme will be Disability Identity and Culture. From CripChick:

Here are some topic ideas!:
• What is disability identity? If you are disabled, do you feel disability is a part of you and your experience?
• What is disability culture to you? How do you put it out there or live it every day?
• Does disability intersect with your other identities (i.e. queer person, person of color, person of faith, etc.)?
• Is pride, community, or the Disability Rights Movement important to you? Why or why not?
• How do you feel about the word disabled? Is it a political term with power to you or do you despise it?
• Do you see disability outside of a rights framework (i.e. is disability something that is more than advocacy to you?)
• If you identify with the autistic acceptance movement, the deaf community, or other groups, how do you feel about disability? Many people do not want to associate with the disability community— how do you feel about this?
• Have you felt alienated [left out] from the disability community because of racism, exclusion because of your disability, the media or other factors? How has this affected your identity as a disabled person?

And some topic ideas for allies:
• Why is disability important to your work or politics?
• How do you feel about the Disability Rights Movement and what would you say to activists who downplay this movement or even disability as an important social justice issue?
• How do you see disability intersecting with feminism, reproductive justice [movement that focuses on ALL people having ALL control of their bodies], and other movements that work to end oppression?
• What do you see in your role as an ally?

CripChick also provides a list of resources for anyone wanting to bone up on the topic before participating. Deadline for submissions is May 4. The carnival submission form is available here, or leave a comment with your submission’s link at CripChick’s, or email her with the info at consciouslycrip [at] gmail [dot] com.

Other recent Disability Blog Carnivals have been at Reimer Reason on the theme of The Hardest Part, Andrea’s Buzzing About on Breaking Out, Wheelie Catholic on Appreciating Allies, and Sunny Dreamer on Standing Outside the Fire.

Image description: The icon above, provided by CripChick for the upcoming carnival at her place is a color image of a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo with the words “DISABILITY BLOG CARNIVAL” in bold black type across the painting. The image is a close-up of Frida in her wheelchair from the 1951 painting “Self-Portrait with Portrait of Dr. Farill.” described in detail in both English and Spanish here.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Note: There’s a slight spoiler in the review, and in the thread here on “Alas.” So if you’re allergic to spoiliers, don’t click through to the review, and don’t read the thread here!

This review came out the same day as the “Blog About Comics” review. On Broken Frontier, Eric Lindberg writes:

Hereville also has a distinctly left-of-center approach to fantasy that I found appealing. Mirka’s stepmother Fruma challenges the view of dragons as an evil force, likening their man-eating tendencies to any other predator in nature. [Slight spoiler deleted by Amp.] These are nice offbeat touches that contribute to the individualism of this comic and its voice.

The mixture of influences is not always a seamless transition however. The placement of fantasy elements in this setting makes it a bit difficult to pinpoint the rules of the world of Hereville. Electricity and alarm clocks co-exist with monsters out of European legend. Some characters speak of trolls as if they are commonplace, while others have never heard the term and consider them a goisch (gentile) concept of no concern. Do these people and creatures truly co-exist? Is it all in Mirka’s head? Presumably, future Hereville storyarcs will more firmly establish Mirka’s world and how it works.

Deutsch’s style of cartooning bridges the gap between old-fashioned and modern sensibilities. His elongated figures with their exaggerated puppet-like expressions brought to mind the work of E.C. Segar (creator of Popeye), adding a fun and loose sense of charm to the proceedings. The sepia tone coloring lends a timeless feel to the story while the panel layout and storytelling techniques are more contemporary. This combination is an appropriate choice for the subject manner, reflecting the mix of Old World and New in the characters’ culture.

There’s more — head over to B.F. to read the whole review.

My first reaction: Whoo-hooo, I got compared to E.C. Segar! The comparison flatters me more than I deserve, but I don’t care — because I love Segar! (I have a reproduction of a pre-Popeye “Thimble Theater” strip on my wall).

My squeeeee!!-ness aside, it was a good review — not because it was positive (although I’m of course happy for that), but because it went deeper than just thumbs up or down. Thanks, Eric.

I know it’s almost a half-century old, and the woman is fictional, but still I find myself begging this woman to GET A FUCKING DIVORCE!!!!

Also, check out this article from a British paper: Marksman called in to kill Kingston’s pigeons. You can almost skip the article; I’m linking this for the comments, which are brilliant.

Finally, The New Yorker has a time-lapse video, taken from a building’s security cameras, of a man trapped alone in an elevator for 41 hours. Oddly compelling. (Curtsy: Boing Boing.)

I’m going to get back to regular posting soon. I’ve been really tired and busy over the past couple weeks, so I’ve neglected posting. Between nesting, midterm grading, sleeping, and trying to catch my breath, I’ve been a little preoccupied. I definitely want to respond to the Obama race speech…just to tease everyone a little I think there were many problems with the speech, and I want to address some of them in a post.

In the mean time, let me know what I’ve missed in the blog world.

The Sad-Faced Man is a character who has shown up in a lot of my doodles over the years, and appeared a few times in Pre-Structuralist Funnies.

I’ve also frequently doodled anthropomorphic spatulas and coffee cups. Don’t know why.

This is an open thread; use it to discuss whatever you’d like, or to post interesting links. Self-linking is encouraged.

Someone at the AP (or perhaps the Washington Post) is a brilliant geeky headline writer.

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

The Associated Press
Thursday, May 3, 2007; 3:34 PM

SEOUL, South Korea — They came from all over the world, poles in hand, and feet ready to inch more than half a mile across a high wire strung over the Han River in a spine-tingling battle of balance, speed and high anxiety.

As part of its annual city festival, the South Korean capital staged Thursday what was billed as the world’s first high-wire championship, drawing 18 contestants from nine countries for three days of supreme feats of concentration.

Hat tip: Robert at Lawyers, Guns and Money

While I’m posting, let me point out that two bloggers I’ve often disagreed with have recently written posts I mostly or entirely agree with; David at The Debate Link has written a couple of posts on Israel I mostly agree with, and Daran at Feminist Critics has been criticizing an anti-feminist attack on Mary Koss’ rape prevalence study.

Check it out.

Thank you, XKCD, for being so very, very right. This is exactly how ‘it’ works.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been in an out of federal court for jury duty.  I went in last week, and told them I could serve because of two doctor’s appointments, so they told me to come back this week.  I spent two days in court, and after sitting in the jury box for two days, I got dismissed on a pre-emptory challenge, which basically means the lawyers for the state or for the defense were able to dismiss me without giving a reason.  Below is a little background on pre-emptory challenges; they are not without controversy, especially with regard to race and gender.  I found a nice description from this website.  Here is an excerpt:

During the selection of a jury, both parties to the proceeding may challenge prospective jurors for a lack of impartiality, known as a challenge for cause. A party may challenge an unlimited number of prospective jurors for cause. Parties also may exercise a limited number of peremptory challenges. These challenges permit a party to remove a prospective juror without giving a reason for the removal.

Peremptory challenges provide a more impartial and better qualified jury. Peremptory challenges allow an attorney to reject a potential juror for real or imagined partiality that would be difficult to demonstrate under the challenge for cause category. These challenges, however, have become more difficult to exercise because the U.S. Supreme Court has forbidden peremptory strikes based on race or gender.

Parties do not have a federal constitutional right to exercise peremptory challenges. Peremptory challenges are granted by statute or by case law. The number of challenges is usually determined by statute, but some jurisdictions allow the trial court to grant additional peremptory challenges. In federal court each side is entitled to three peremptory challenges. If more than two parties are involved in the proceeding, the court may either grant additional challenges or restrict the parties to the minimum number of challenges.

Peremptory challenges came under legal attack in the 1980s. Critics claimed that white prosecutors used their peremptory challenges to remove African Americans from the jury when the criminal defendant was also African American because the prosecutors thought that the potential jurors would be sympathetic to a member of their own race. This constituted racial discrimination and a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 90 L. Ed. 2d 69 (1986), prohibited prosecutors from excluding prospective jurors on the basis of race. Under the Batson test, a defendant may object to a prosecutor’s peremptory challenge. The prosecutor then must “come forward with a neutral explanation for challenging black jurors.” If the prosecutor cannot offer a neutral explanation, the court will not excuse the juror.

The Court extended this holding in criminal proceedings in two later cases. In Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 111 S. Ct. 1364, 113 L. Ed. 2d 411 (1991), the Court broadened the Batson rule by stating that a defendant need not be of the same race as the excluded juror in order to successfully challenge the juror’s exclusion. In Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 112 S. Ct. 2348, 120 L. Ed. 2d 33 (1992), the Court held that the defense’s exercise of peremptory challenges to strike African American jurors on the basis of their race was equally forbidden. Previously, the court had ruled in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 111 S. Ct. 2077, 114 L. Ed. 2d 660 (1991), that in civil trials a private party could not exclude prospective jurors on account of their race by using peremptory challenges. This series of decisions makes any racial exclusion in jury selection constitutionally suspect.

The Supreme Court has also forbidden peremptory challenges based on gender. In J. E. B. v. Alabama, 511 U.S. 127, 114 S. Ct. 1419, 128 L. Ed. 2d 89 (1994), the Court ruled that striking jurors on the basis of gender serves to perpetuate stereotypes that are prejudicial and based on historical discrimination. No overriding State Interest justified peremptory challenges on the basis of gender. Permitting gender-based strikes could also have undermined the Batson holding, because gender might be used as an excuse for racial discrimination.

In an extension of Batson, the Supreme Court of Connecticut ruled that the Equal Protection Clause barred the prosecutor from striking prospective jurors based on their religious affiliation. The court, in State v. Hodge, 726 A.2d 531 (Conn.1999), distinguished religious beliefs and religious affiliations. It held that litigants could strike prospective jurors whose religious beliefs would prevent them from performing their duties as jurors.

I have a friend who used to live as a homeless heroin addict on the streets of San Francisco when she was a teenager. Periodically, she writes about her experiences. People in workshops tend to respond by telling her that the experiences aren’t “realistic.”

So, it’s interesting: narratively, the fake homeless teens of our popular imagination seem to have grown stronger than the reality. Homeless teens look like they do in Charles de Lint, we think. When presented with the real thing, we balk.

Another friend of mine calls it the “tyranny of the middle class.” We have this narrative about what life is. Contrary data is discarded. The power of story, of the narratives we tell ourselves about the world, trumps lived experience from the world itself.

Would we recognize reality if we saw it?

Why do I write? I write to present the subaltern points of view. Why don’t I write realism? Because realism is only another set of formalized conventions, and subaltern life already seems unreal.

If you’re a fan of Rumi, this new anthology, on the poetry sections of which I collaborated with primary author John Moyne, is one you will want to get. A Bird In The Garden Of Angels is also a wonderful introduction to Rumi for those new to his work, or those who may know of him but don’t know much about him. Containing essays by Moyne on both Rumi’s life and Sufism, A Bird In The Garden Of Angels is further divided into five sections, one for each of the genres of poetry and prose that Rumi worked in. Some parts of each section have been translated into English for the first time; some of the poems were originally translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks, but appear in this volume in new versions. You can order the book from Mazda Publishers’ website or any online bookstore. (It’s also on sale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art!) If you want to read some samples from the book, visit my website.

Yesterday, South Carolina representative Jim Clyburn, who is the house majority whip, told CNN Bill Clinton has got to chill. Apparently, Bill Clinton has been getting a little too feisty with Obama and has made some criticisms that Clyburn thinks are innappropriate.

While I’m sure others were focusing on the substance of Clinton’s attacks, my first reaction was geeze Hip Hop has become really mainstream. When the House Majority Whip invokes EMPD, you know Hip Hop is an integral component of contemporary American culture.

For those who don’t know, here’s the EMPD video for the song, “You Gotz to Chill.” I’m dedicating it here to my homeboy (not) Bill Clinton.

This has got to be one of my favorite Hip Hop songs of all time. Where are Eric and Parrish these days?

I’m having a database problem at work that I don’t know enough to fix. If any “Alas” readers who know database stuff can glance at this and tell me if they see what my problem is — my problem involving the database, that is, I may have many non-database-related issues that there’s no need to bring up at this moment — I’d appreciate it.

Heck — I’ll do a cartoon of any celebrity or any “Hereville” character of your choice to anyone who fixes the problem!

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a the latest of a series at my blog, usually consisting of an amusing visual image about disability. Visual descriptions are meant to both assist those who cannot view the image well, and encourage discussion when others see something different.

Visual description: A one-pane comic, drawn very simply. A stick figure stands next to a sign posted on a wall that reads “Third Floor Office” with some Braille just below those words. At the top of the comic: “I learned to read Braille a while back, and I’ve noticed that the messages on signs don’t always match the regular text.” The stick figure touching the Braille signage has a thought balloon translating what she reads: “S-I-G-H-T-E-D P-E-O-P-L-E S-U-C-K … Hey!”

Comic source

h/t to Andrea at Andrea’s Buzzing About

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

Come join Persian Arts Festival as we celebrate the publication of Roger Sedarat’s first book of poems, Dear Regime, which won the 2007 Ohio University Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Dear Regime has been praised by writers such as David Lehman, Kimiko Hahn and Nahid Rachlin, who has written that it is “a stunning collection of poems that vividly captures all aspects of Iranian culture.” Roger Sedarat is a professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College.

When & Where

Wednesday, 1/16/2008
6:00-8:00 PM
The Bowery Poetry Club (click for location and directions)
308 Bowery @ Bleecker Street
$12 cover buys one drink

Information
www.persianartsfestival.org

To sign up for the open reading, send an email to PAF’s Literary Arts Director, Richard Jeffrey Newman: poetry@persianartsfestival.org

Shab-e She’r at the Bowery Poetry Club will run from 6-8 PM on the third Wednesday of the month through May 2008.

Is there any question that waterboarding is torture? Someone at the “Straight Dope” forums decided to investigate this question by waterboarding himself:

I am incredibly fit and training for a 100 mile endurance run. The main thing about such an event is ability to tolerate pain. I am good at this. I am trained.

I also have experience with free-diving from my college days. I once held my breath for 4 minutes and two seconds. Once, while training as a lifeguard I swam laps without breathing until I passed out, so that I could know my limits.

First he tried out “simple” waterboarding, and then tried it with a wet rag preventing him frmo breating through his mouth:

I can see where this would get very unpleasant if you lost control, but still, not terrible, not torture, per se in my book. It wasn’t as bad as my vasectomy or last root canal…

Then he tried it the way the pros do it, with saran wrap:

Next up is saran wrap. The idea is that you wrap saran wrap around the mouth in several layers, and poke a hole in the mouth area, and then waterboard away. I didn’t reall see how this was an improvement on the rag technique, and so far I would categorize waterboarding as simply unpleasant rather than torture, but I’ve come this far so I might as well go on.

Now, those of you who know me will know that I am both enamored of my own toughness and prone to hyperbole. The former, I feel that I am justifiably proud of. The latter may be a truth in many cases, but this is the simple fact:

It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself.

Read the whole thing.

But remember, Republican attorney generals just can’t tell if it’s torture or not.

The story of Katie Jones has been circulating slowly on disability listservs and blogs since the December 9 article in the Chicago Tribune. FRIDA provided an early link to the story, and since then Crip Chick, Shiva, Bint, Trinity, Brownfemipower have all addressed aspects of Katie’s story and the larger issues. Comments everywhere have been… illuminating.

I haven’t written about this before now because these sorts of articles from the mainstream media — this one involving children, parental control of a child’s well-being, disability prejudice, personhood and consciousness, health care in the U.S., living with the aid of machines, “special needs” schooling, and “right-to-die” versus the right to not be coerced to die — contain so much information that is either misleading, incomplete or biased that I can’t think where to begin.

Katie Jones is a second-grader in Lake County, Illinois, who has severe cerebral palsy and whose parents have sent her to school with a DNR order (Do Not Resuscitate) prominently attached to the back of her wheelchair. Taking that much at face value, the implications for Katie, her parents, her young classmates and school employees are complex and profound.

Add to that some mind-boggling facts about both the case and the media coverage of it: The Tribune article portrays cerebral palsy as a terminal disease, and while I’m not well-versed on the very wide range of abilities and medical issues people with CP possess, none of the many people I have known personally have ever been about to drop dead. So that portrayal is dangerously and cruelly incomplete. The Tribune article doesn’t discuss the fact that Katie apparently does communicate thoughts and feelings beyond those independently interpreted by people around her. You must dig to the caption of photo 4 at a sidebar link to even learn she is capable of expressing her feelings at will. And this, at the article’s end:

Before the bus arrived, Beth Jones weaved a French braid into the school girl’s long brown hair, while Allie [Katie’s four-year-old sister] held up a feeding tube. A machine could do the job, but that makes group hugs difficult.

Besides, anything that beeps isn’t allowed in the Jones house.

“When we took her home from the hospital, where there were so many machines, we made the no beeping rule,” Beth Jones said.

The group hug part is completely untrue. I’ve had a feeding tube for two years now, and I can say with absolute certainty that there is nothing about attaching a thin plastic tube to the end of it and running that tube to a machine that makes it hard to hug or be physically close to people. It’s actually less a problem for physical intimacy than an IV in the top of the hand would be, whether that IV is connected to a hanging bag or a machine. Feeding through the tube manually is a perfectly reasonable way to use the tube since basically this just entails using a giant syringe or holding the tube up and letting gravity allow nutrients to travel gently into the stomach, but attaching falsehood and phobia to machines that do this same task contributes to the pervasive ableist belief that people are better off dead than using medical technology for the long-term.

And the “no beeping rule”? There’s the real reason for the DNR right there. Better dead than using a machine that might make some noise.

I understand machines are scary. I get that because I’ve needed to make my own adjustments to them and also because I see it in peoples’ eyes every day. And I do understand people have different points at which they might choose not to live beyond, though I’ll add that there seems to be little reflection upon or respect given to the people who live quite happily beyond those points.

I’d like to hear much much more about the Jones’ “no beeping rule.” Is it because Katie is terrified of the beeping? Does the beeping represent an identifiable point beyond which Katie’s parents don’t feel they can handle her care? Or is the beeping too public? Too intrusive? Too medical? Why is an alarm that can signal a problem that should be addressed juxtaposed against the myth that without machines Katie will die “peacefully” from choking or suffocation? Why is this type of beeping so forbidden in our technological age where cellphones and dozens of other machines chirp at each of us all day long?

It’s not really the beeping, of course. And the answer to Trinity’s question:

Now why is [info that Katie shares thoughts via a communication device] tucked away in the photoshoot and not right there by the article, which is written in a way that suggests she is not aware what is happening?

seems to be that it didn’t seem relevant to the point of the article. Katie’s consciousness and feelings were not important in an article about whether or not she lives or dies and whether or not she gets to go to school in the meantime. What her thoughts about all this might possibly be is not once pondered in the article.

Further discussion can also be found at Wrong Planet, an online forum for people with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade

I started out blogging on livejournal where 90% of posts are whining of some kind.

I feel the need to subject you all to my whining.

(”Whine” by Ursula Vernon of Metal and Magic)

I got strep throat earlier this week, and while my immune system was busy trying to fight off the strep, I developed about 30 canker sores on the top of my tongue, the bottom of my tongue, and the bottom of my mouth. It feels significantly worse than I remember feeling when I had my wisdom teeth removed — and my bottom wisdom teeth were impacted so they had to be carved out of my gums.

Doctor gave me vicodin, which is keeping the pain in check better than ibuprofen was.

So, so far this semester, I’ve had colds, bronchitis, strep throat, 30 simultaneous canker sores, a bleeding lesion in my ear, and stuff I’m sure that I’m forgetting. Jeez, immune system.

This has been your regularly scheduled whine.

Since I posted this at The Gimp Parade last June, Boys on Wheels has been a fairly major contributer to my site’s daily visitor hit count — easily 30+ hits per day. Obviously people are fascinated enough to Google. So, what do you think?

Funny or not so much?

Direct YouTube link here.

(I can’t seem to make the video embed correctly here at Alas without it messing with the formatting of the whole page. Anyone know how to correct this?)

The lead singer of Boys on Wheels is Jesper Odelberg and he is a guy with cerebral palsy, as well as part of a Norwegian comedy show. The four-minute video linked above is a montage of rock songs with lyrics slightly altered. Subtitles are provided in the language each song is sung in. For example, the first song is in Norwegian, the second is a spoof on the ’80s hit by Norwegian band A-Ha: “Take On Me,” instead called “I’m Not Gay.” Bryan Adams’ ’80s power ballad “Heaven” has been altered so the lyrics begin:

Baby, you’re all that I want, but you’re living on the fifth floor.
I’m finding it hard to get there, in my wheelchair.

Bon Jovi’s “Living On A Prayer” is spoofed as “Living In A Wheelchair.” Three men in power wheelchairs sit on a stage with dynamic colorful lighting. Sometimes the two backup guys do some dancing with their wheelchairs. Odelberg’s costume changes to match the song, with ’80s-era Bon Jovi hair and clothes for the last song.

Also at YouTube, Boys on Wheels singing “My Balls are OK” and “Making Love in a Handicap Toilet”

Cross-posted at The Gimp Parade