Every year the staff of Amoeba Music in Hollywood get together for a no-holds-barred musical cage match called Amoebapalooza...20 Amoeba bands get as crazy as possible onstage for 10 minutes each!

How crazy IS possible?

Very crazy was the answer this year...and/or very glamorous, creepy, rockin', shockin', wild, wonderful, and dancetastic! One of the most wonderful and insane Amoebapalooza lineups of all time took the stage at the King King on Sunday night and showed how it was done. Surely any unsuspecting patrons to walk in from Hollywood Boulevard must have thought they had stumbled onto the set of some kind of psychedelic rock opera written by Andrew Lloyd Webber's brain-damaged evil twin, and hopefully they stuck around to enjoy it with the rest of us.

As our lovable and pants-wettingly funny host Brently Heilbron put it, it's the last Amoebapalooza of the decade...soon we won't have the Oughts to kick around anymore, and it'll be the Teens! Taking this temporal warning to heart, the musical freaks of Amoeba made sure they sent the Oughts out with a kaboom. Have a drink with me and let the show begin...

The lights went down on the red velvet curtain, and the festivities began with a Jaco-Pastorious-on-PCP solo bass guitar odyssey from gangly wunderkind Ben Ricci, bravely kicking off this night of strangeitude. Is the bass meant to make sounds like that? Dunno. Ben's bass wizardry was closely followed by the hard-charging sounds of Thin Lizzy tribute band Emerald, with one Sam Rodriguez channeling the spirit of the late great Phil Lynott. Sorry if I'm leaving anything out...the next thing I remember was the always mind-blowing cabaret fantasia of Cream Puff, the one-man show of antique futurist foppington Joey Jenkins. There really is nothing like Mr. Jenkins...jigging, chanting and prophesizing from the stage, in his knickers and mountaineering headgear, he makes you feel like you've wandered into one of David Lynch's weirder dreams. He ended by collapsing in a grand death scene, instantly growing a marvellous flower from his heart. Showbiz!

"A master recording comes along every once in a while," confides Amoeba auctioneer/standup comedian Brently Heilbron, tongue firmly in cheek, at one of the Hollywood store's ongoing Saturday afternoon fun fueled auction-for-charity events. Brently is holding up above his head the long out-of-print Canary Training Record, a limited pressing 7" EP released some years back "by Howard's Mountain Bird Seed Company," he informs the clearly amused crowd gathered at the store for this auction that is unlike any other auction.

The novelty item is just the latest from a stack of items on the Amoeba auction block being sold to make money for several worthy charities. Items sold range from the quirky, to rare record label promotional items, to collectable artist-signed CDs/records, to sought-after concert tix for the Hollywood Bowl, etc. The one-hour Saturday afternoon Amoeba auctions, which have developed somewhat of a following since they began back in September 2005, started out initially as a direct response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and a way to help the victims in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in its aftermath. Since then the auctions have continued but the causes have broadened to benefit numerous other needy local and global relief efforts. Perhaps most noteworthy is the fact that Amoeba not only hosts these events and donates most of the items on the auction block, but additionally matches every winning bidder's donation, up to $1,000.

This Saturday is the first Saturday of the month and therefore, it is time once again for Amoeba Hollywood’s Auction, hosted by the inimitable Brently Heilbron.

Amoeba Auctions started as an on-going event to help raise money for the Gulf Coast Relief Efforts. Our auctions have included every conceivable kind of memorabilia from the entertainment world and beyond. Collectibles, promotional items, concert tickets, tour jackets, t-shirts, celebrity underwear, puzzles, toys and all kinds of swag that can make your heart go pitter-pat, have been won. And on top of that, Amoeba matches all individual donations and winning bids up to $1,000. Everybody is a winner!

There will of course be many interesting items to bid on this week, but we have one very special item to auction: An autographed copy of the classic comedy album, Weird Al Yankovic In 3-D.

Weird Al Yankovic was spotted in the Amoeba mezzanine perusing DVDs by yours truly. I mentioned it casually to Brently, who sprinted off as only a former track star and Texas State Champion can do, and I have to say Brently accosted Mr. Yankovic in the most courteous and polite manner I’ve ever seen. Weird Al gladly autographed the record even as we twisted one of his arms behind his back. Actually, he was incredibly gracious and happy to sign an album for the Amoeba Auction, personalizing it, “To the lucky highest bidder.” That can be you! Yes, you sitting at your computer! So come on down this Saturday March 1st @ 4PM. It's not everyday you get to bid on a rare chunk of vinyl, actually autographed by the artist as they shopped in Amoeba while at the same time helping the ongoing relief efforts for the Gulf Coast. Thanks, good luck and happy bidding.

I aint sure if this has anything to do with Amoeblog, but when a girl feels that special love for a man, sometimes she don't think straight. 'Specially when she gay and all that.