Attaboy's mind travels to places we don't want to go. But we do want to see where he's been, and we can, because Attaboy is an illustrator and artist as well as a teller of bizarre tales. His garishly colored hypercartoony characters -- vengeful flowers, frightened clowns, mutant crabs, one-eyed octopi -- are pure joy layered with a thick coating of imminent terror. He's the co-publisher of a magazine called Hi Fructose that collects the images and words of like-minded sickos. Attaboy has attempted to scare us even more with the title of his recent book: You Might Be a Monster. That's also what he's calling Thursday's reading at the Dark Room. More than a reading, though, it's an event better described as a group transformation.
Real live non-mutant people, who've never been inside Attaboy's head (that we know of), embody his wicked critters while they read. Thursday is the first of two appearances -- and this week also on hand is the all-female dance troupe the Devil-Ettes, who probably need no further mutation.
And you, dear audience, do more than bear witness to this spectacle -- there are "monster mouths" to strap on. Be warned, though: They could be a kind of mutation starter-kit. You might wake up the next day in a giant flower pot with eight legs and a cartoon "X" over your left eye.
You Might Be a Monster starts at 8 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 13) and again on Oct. 20 at the Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission (at 19th St.), S.F. Admission is $10.
