![]() As we navigate back to our cabins, side-stepping a boa-strewn female body builder, a pair of Thai-speaking flame-jugglers, three Captain Stubings escorting one very hairy Julie McCoy, a posse of stilt-wearing, hula-hooping contortionists, several drug-sniffing German Shepherds, and the entire crew of Life Aquatic’s Team Zissou (drunkenly asking everyone if they’ve “seen Steve”), it becomes evident. His rim shot echoes as Paradise’s engines kick to life and the Hues Corporation tune “Rock the Boat” helps ease the ship out of her slip, setting the mood from every cheap speaker. “Well, I haven’t played in awhile, so I’m rusty.” When pressed on how long it’s been, he contemplates before deadpanning, “Two weeks.” Kliph-a former band stalker and now their touring drummer-warns, “He’s a shuffle shark.” I tell Ivins I’ve got his back if anything goes down and then casually challenge him to a game of shuffleboard on the Lido deck. But engine fires, terrorist attacks and accidental torpedo strikes from naval submarines have everyone furtively scanning the room to see who they might be partnered with in case of a real-life remake of The Poseidon Adventure. Disembarking from Long Beach, Calif., on the way to Ensenada, Mexico, iceberg fear is low. Like everyone else, he’s listening attentively to the thickly accented Bavarian woman squawking various emergency scenarios through her megaphone. Although he’s part of the main attraction for everyone onboard, the Lips’ bass player goes unnoticed while video-taping 700 other people similarly accessorized. “If we sink I wonder who will be in my lifeboat?” Ivins wonders, sitting in a glittering, mirrored ballroom aboard the cruise ship Paradise, wearing his built-on sunglasses and a Day-Glo-orange life jacket. The Flaming Lips don’t have all the answers, and never claim to they just ask really good questions. They believe truth is always stranger than fiction, and that every experience is part of the adventure. Nor are they at war with “the mundane”-they don’t believe in that word. Despite all the press, films, interviews and myths hailing their freakishness, they don’t have super powers. Heck, they hail from Oklahoma, work hard, play hard, and dress one leg at a time-though many nights dressing involves a 20-pound, shag-poly-blend pink-elephant suit.īut don’t let grown men dressed in animal costumes who smear fake blood on their heads fool you into thinking they’re shamans, sages or-in any way-above the fray. ![]() Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins and Steven Drozd are just humans with wives and children and dogs and mortgages.
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