Stiv's Enormous....

Stiv Icon, originally uploaded by Theresa K.

"There's a fine line between clever and stupid."

That's a line from one of my favorite movies, This is Spinal Tap, and it is uttered between "Nigel Tufnel" and "David St. Hubbins" in a memorable moment when Spinal Tap's publicist "Bobbi Fleckman" admonishes them for having "a woman naked up to there... forced to smell the glove." You know the scene. Its priceless.

So, yesterday, as I was perusing my statistics, I noticed that a few people who found my website did so via a search engine when they searched the topic "largest penis ever photographed." It made me laugh in the same way that Spinal Tap did. I found this so hysterical that I told hundreds of people about it.

The search led my reader to a post about Stiv Bators.

Stiv's legend is enormous. Jimmy Zero proudly talked about it in an interview he did with the Cleveland Scene when they were covering the Dead Boys Reunion. Even Stiv's dad would talk about it with fatherly pride.

This fodder is a tried and true staple of the brand of immature humor that really drives rock n roll. Its all about sex. It's what scares parents, it's what lures teenagers...it makes the world go round.

So, Stiv's enormous penis... I don't have a photo of it. I'm not that kind of girl! (that is, I do not always smell the financial upside of a picture.) However, I am happy to give you this link to my LA compatriot, Brad Elterman, who indeed photographed the Dead Boys when Stiv did his famous penis pose. Brad asked me recently if Stiv did this just for him, or if it was part of his routine.

I wonder if Brad was disappointed that it was part of Stiv's routine. Stiv's routine was simply to get attention. He would try anything once to see if it was shocking. If it got a reaction, the trick stayed in the act. So, the dropping his pants, the goose-stepping, the faking his death by hanging by the microphone cord from the lighting rig....all schtick and show-biz.

This well-known portrait of Stiv, which I took in 1979/80 as he was recording "Disconnected" shows him as a demented, bug-eyed rat. The truth is, he was a kitten.