DeAundra Peek Teenage Superstar Day *

* (restored)

Yaaaaay!
Yaaaaay!

‘DeAundra Peek (Rosser Shymanski) was the first of a long line of singing sisters featured regularly on Atlanta public access television to break apart from her kin and garner her own exclusive public television show. Produced by FUNTONE USA (producers of RuPauls earliest film and music ventures), the character of DeAundra is a perpetual sixteen-year-old musical prodigy and teenage southern belle broadcasting weekly from the community room at Odums All-Doublewide Mobile Homes Court in Palmetto, Georgia and featuring DeAundra’s favorite songs, original music videos, fashion tips, community news and recipes, and providing a broadcasting platform for the eras queer entertainers.

The Singing Peek Sisters Christmas Album Infomercial

‘Beginning broadcast in 1988, the DeAundra Peeks Teenage Music Club show would come to see several different permutations and name changes over the years, until it ended broadcast in 2004, but not before seeing a stage show, a string of musical singles, two commercially released music video compilation tapes, and a feature in the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her commercially available music video greatest hits tape (entitled “Meet Me At Odum’s,” is available, a course, at Rango Fain’s Snack Shedd & Gift Shoppe). Her latest single, a cover version of Celine Dion’s “Titanic” theme with dyno-mighty band Monkey One and backing vocals by her sisters Starla and Baby Jean, has rendered audiences practically speechless…

DeAundra Peek sings ‘What Is Love? by Delete’

‘Hey y’all, this here’s DeAundra Peek welcomin’ you! Down at Odum’s All Double-Wide Mobile Homes Court where we live, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia, stuff is happenin’ like crazy!

‘Lately I has been performin’ with the hottest band around, Monkey One, an’ has we had a great time showin’ out for people! Colonel Lonnie Fain, the leader of the band, has done got together some real professionals layin’ down songs to beat the band! There ain’t nothin’ like havin’ a live band on stage to sing with, ‘specially when they sound as good as Monkey One! Anyway, my sisters Starla and little Baby Jean has been comin’ out an’ performin’ with me a bunch lately, so much so that Baby Jean even has her second big hit single out already! Y’all may remember her big hit “PeePaw’s Dead” she done wrote after the unexpected an’ untimely death of our dear vibratious 97 year-old PeePaw. This new song has done come about on account a ’cause Miss Syngsyme done made all the kids in homeroom do reports on agriculture, an’ since Baby Jean’s chosen form of expression is singin’, she done writ her song “Corn”, what we call the new anthem for the American Grain. Darlister Epps done told me he never heard a child sing about eatin’ somethin’ like that before.

Richard Bicknell with Nana Odum sing “When the Sun Shines”

‘Y’all, our real good friend Richard Bicknell has just done come out with his second CD called “Mayflower” an’ Baby Jean & me was lucky enough to open for him at his big ole CD release party recently! The celebration was at Smith’s Old Bar (even though we’s both underage Baby Jean & me got in ’cause we was performin’) an’ was full a well-wishers an’ all kinds a recordin’ industry big-wigs (an’ I ain’t talkin’ about RuPaul neither!) chompin’ at the bit to get ahold a that polyvinyl musical tableau. If you look real close in the special thanks section on the CD cover y’all can see how much he loves the band Monkey One!

Duffy Odum & RuLa Octobrina ” Doot Doot – You’re Kinda Cute””

‘Team Odum’s continues to be the champion of the South Fulton County Regional Kickball Playoffs. Team Captain Duffy Odum can only explain the team’s success on a winning combination of big sneakers, sayin’ “We has got three players with size 12 or bigger shoes they done borrowed from they’s MeeMaws, GeeGaws or PeePaws, so we put them on the front line every game.”

‘Here’s my seasonal surprise recipe just for y’all!

‘MeeMaw’s Vienner Pot Pie In-Minutes

2 cans Hy-Grade Vienner Sausages
8 slices plain white bread
1 cup diced canned cooked potatoes
1 cup diced canned cooked carrots
2 tablespoons dried onion bits
2 tablespoons corn starch
4 small aluminum pot pie pans

‘Cut crust off of all your bread slices an’ set aside crusts. Press 1 slice of bread into each pot pie pan an’ allow to set. Press remaining bread slices into flat round shapes an’ set aside. In a bowl, mix up the vienners, (keeping the juice to add later) potatoes, carrots an’ onion bits. Add cornstarch an’ mix thoroughly, adding vienner juice to desired thickness. Quickly add broken up bread crusts an’ pour mixture in equal amounts into pot pie pans, then press on bread rounds to create top. You can use a fork to make pretty edge patterns on the crust (optional). Heat on hi in hot toaster oven for 5 minutes or until bubbly. Serve in pot pie pans on plates.

DeAundra Peek’s Delicious Vienner Stroganoff Recipe

DeAundra Peek’s Imitation Pizza Pie Recipe

DeAundra Peek’s Hi Class Vienner Sausage Dessert Recipe

DeAundra Peek’s Fancy Vienner Dip Recipe

‘DeAundra Peek’s 5 Ways To Know If Your Trailer Is Haunted

5. The rats is all playing bingo.
4. When you lick all the grease off your Vienner, the Vienner gets all greasy again.
3. The underpinning turns yellow-green.
2. The sliding doors don’t never get stuck.
1. Your trailer gets pulled off by 18-wheeler truck and ain’t nobody driving the truck.

DeAundra Peek’s tribute to Madonna: “Deeper & Deeper”

DeAundra Peek sings REM

DeAundra Peek “I Eat Out Of Cans”

‘Ya’ll, DeAundra loves to get fan mail and requests and dedications for her fabulous tv show. Make sure you drop her a line in care of Rango’s Rural Delivery Service and make sure you follow the rules about sending in your dedications and requests separate.

‘DeAundra & RuPaul Y’all

‘Hey ya’ll, here’s me and that superstar RuPaul on the set of The American Music Show. And right below is a teaser for a fabulous practically life size jpeg photo of me and RuPaul at the World Premiere of Voyeur at the fabulous Club Rio in Atlanta on October 23rd. If you haven’t been there yet, the Odum’s Chapter of the RuPaul Fan Club is a fun place to visit to learn a thing or two about Ru and see some fabulous photos of him in and around Odum’s.

DeAundra Peek, RuPaul & Lahoma at the New Music Seminar NC 1988

‘Teen-Age Superstar DeAundra Peek Goes to The Vault

‘Atlanta’s 16-year-old celebrity sensation is invited to the dark and nefarious New York sex club by her out-of-town hostess, Miss Brandy Wine.

‘Message from the Manager

‘MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR THESE EXCITING EVENTS COMING SOON TO ODUM’S ALL-DOUBLEWIDE TRAILER COURT

*February 2nd: Mee Maw Peek’s Annual Groundhog’s Day Memorial Vienner Roast
*Valentine’s Day: Complimentary Hershey’s Kisses with every Potted Meat Melt Sandwich bought at Rango Fain’s Snack Shed
*March 2-3rd: Odum’s Old Men’s Club presents Peter Pan starring Duffy Odum and the Little Lost Boys of the Del Vista Rey Mar at 7 pm in the Community Room
*March 23rd: Nana Odum’s 108th Birthday Party (time to be announced)
*April 1st-7th: Impetigo Awareness Week at Odum’s’ — collaged

DeAundra Peek’s performance at Lady Bunny’s Wigstock 1993

WIGSTOCK 2001 NYC WITH DEAUNDRA PEEK

DeAundra Peek Interviewed by the legendary Jarboe of Swans!

Jarboe: At what point in your life did you become interested in performance?

Rosser: My Mom says that I’ve been performing all my life. Perhaps it started the time I got ahold of her “Really Red” lipstick when I was 4 years old and smeared it over my entire face. Today’s cast of characters began because I was asked to dress up in early 1987 as a part of “The American Music Show”, the longest running public access show in America, which I’m still very involved with.

J: Who are some of the earliest performers you saw that you feel made an impression upon you – and for what reasons?

R: The first record I ever bought was Lily Tomlin’s “And That’s The Truth”, she floored me with the many characters she was doing. I was fascinated with one person’s ability to become so many different people. Most anything from “Laugh In” got me because all those people played so many different funny characters. Elton John was another big influence, his wild image changing from one season to the next had me cutting articles about him out of everything I could find. Later on, RuPaul’s influence fundamentally affected me ever since we met and became friends on the set of “The American Music Show” in 1983 (it’s where he got his start too!). Over the years Ru has reinvented himself more times than Madonna!

DeAundra Peek sings Stacey Q’s “2 of Hearts”

J: How does one measure fame?

R: Well, that’s all relative to your particular place in the world I think. Somebody might think that being mentioned in the church bulletin means fame. Somebody else might think real fame eludes them even though they’re in the papers every day. I’m a mixed bag really, when I go to my watering hole here in Atlanta I feel hugely famous because nearly everyone there knows me, but if I go somewhere else it’s a different story. Oprah once said that she always knew from childhood that she was going to be famous, she just didn’t know exactly how she would get there. It’s been the same for me, I’ve always known that I stuck out and I’ve learned how to channel that knowledge into something positive. I remember feeling most famous the day after I appeared on “The American Music Show” for the very first time in 1983, a clerk in a bookstore looked right at me and said, “I saw you on TV last night!” I was hooked.

Back in college my drag name was Drucilla Emeraude. All my friends called me “Dru”. Our gay group occasionally would do drag shows at one of the bars in town to raise money for various things and I’d do lip synched songs for tips. I didn’t actually become a total character and sing live for anything until DeAundra Peek was born in 1987, and that was mainly due to the fact that DeAundra was never expected to sing on key, ever! I am really good at singing off key.

DeAundra Peek’s Tribute to The Pet Shop Boys

J: Who and/or what influenced this?

R: DeAundra Peek was the first of my current character cadre, coming about because I’d been a guest just as myself on “The American Music Show” for some years, talking about my artwork and crazy antics around town. I’d idolized a group of girls on the show called The Singing Peek Sisters, girls who absolutely could not sing on key but tongue-in-cheekishly said they were driven to the stage by their “God given talent”. The group broke up, but in late 1986 one of the sisters, Wanda Peek, wanted to reform the group, so they asked me to be the first boy to play one of the Peek sisters. I thought it’d be a lark and would mean doing it one or two times, but here I am today not only being DeAundra but also about 10 other characters as well. Today the Peeks are yet another combination of sisters, with one of the original Peeks, Starla, and our little sister, Baby Jean, taking it to the stage and screen.

DeAundra Peek sings Mariah Carey

J: How much of yourself is in your characters?

R: There’s kinda a part of me in every character I play, most of them have some sort of crazy edge to them. I think I get to burn to a crisp things from behind the facade of a character that maybe I keep to a simmer as myself. DeAundra’s a really sweet trailer park ingeneu but terribly naive. Boompah Bailey is a horny old man after anything at all (he’s got so little time left you know). Nurse Macworld is always trying to give out some kind of “medication” to ease the pain. Ryanne Cannon (“I’m not just Dyan Cannon’s younger stepsister!”) is a deluded Hollywood wannabe. Your Aunt Roz tries to be commonsensical between the cocktails and coffee. Ashley Briquette Goulet is a strange child with behavioral problems. Dr. Peedeen Hunkapillar wants to be a good veterinarian but he’s almost too busy working on his announcing career to effectively check your cat for a urinary tract infection.

DeAundra Peek – “Desiderata for Teens”

J: What in your view contributes to some people’s need to become an entertainer with multiple personas/characters?

R: Billions of people live in this world with us, each of them is a different character. That’s practically an unlimited field of being, a wealth of inspiration for somebody like me. You see somebody on the train and you say, “Wow, now that’s an interesting person, I wonder what they’re like.” It’s a challenge and a joy to come up with a new personality, somebody that the audience actually begins to believe and interact with as a real person. It takes me outside of myself so I can be lots of different people as well as just me, and I think it increases my view of what reality is to other people. I also have an insatiable lust for making people laugh, and luckily I seem to be able to do that.

J: What message do you try and send out through your performances? I see so much more than entertainment or zany spoof. To me, your work is very “David Lynch-ian” ART. I would love to see your characters fully realized in a David Lynch film. OR -Am I completely off-track here ?

R: I like David Lynch and am especially glad that he’s made a place for himself out there. His films are pretty crazy and of course I’d love to work with somebody who’d let me go nuts on film. That’s basically what I have now, a great support system of friends who essentially tell me to “go for the gusto” all the time. We sometimes say about DeAundra that “they’s a whole lot of ways of bein’ smart”, and I think maybe that’s what I try to express somewhat in all of my characters. Everybody’s got something they’re good at, and all of my characters specialize in some kind of craziness that makes them different. The bottom line is best expressed in the FUNTONE, USA motto, “If it’s not fun, don’t do it”.

J: How much does Vaudeville factor into your aesthetic?

R: I don’t think it’s so much my surface familiarity with Vaudeville as it is the influence Vaudeville has had on the people around me. Our natural tendency when we began doing things together was to mix the music and the comedy into one big thing so that you couldn’t separate the two. The songs we do enhance the comedy, and with our band Monkey One these days we’ve been able to really make that hit home since the effect of a great live band on stage is always compelling. Combine that with a bunch of laughs and you’ve got the perfect brew for a great evening.

DeAundra Peek “Justified and Ancient”

J: What is something you see as a source of inspiration?

R: The fans are my most precious inspiration, and I’m telling the truth! When we connect, when the audience sees me on stage and gets the joke–or at least laughs at it–that’s the ultimate. It makes you want to get up there and do it over and over again. Sometimes I run into people at the grocery store, they’re looking at me funny and then suddenly recognize me and light up. Hearing people say, “You have got my Aunt Helen down to a tee!” or “God, I had a scary grandfather who was just like that guy” turns me on so much. It’s an affirmation of a communion between us and makes them feel something they might not have felt in years, or maybe ever before for that matter.

J: What are 3 things in your life you embrace as truths?

R: Three things I embrace as truths, jeez!
1) Laughter IS the best medicine.
2) Talent is in the eye of the beholder.
3) You gotta be true to yourself to really be happy. Discovering and then admitting what you really want out of life can open doors you never knew existed. Be free enough to go for your gusto!

J: I’ve got to ask…..Do you think DeAundra would ever consider singing with ME?

R: Lord YES!

Ask DeAundra Peek

An Evening with Teen Sensation DeAundra Peek on The American Music Show

The Best of DeAundra Peek, Back-to-Back

 

 

 

*

p.s. RIP Peter Brook.  ** David Spiher, Hi. Thanks for the add. Everyone, David Spiher suggests this worthy addition to the Sport post: ‘No Matthew Barney? Athletics with a popsicle up the butt surely goes here…’ here.  ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Yes, the Chapman bros split. Almost a trend what with the Coen brother parting ways too. Thanks for the beef up. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic has a late addition for you too: ‘Douglas Gordon’s film of the great footballer Zinedine Zidane is online here on YouTube.’ Thank you, buddy boy. ** Robert, Hi! Excellent. Everyone, and Robert too: ‘Reminds me of this. My brothers and I used to always get in trouble when we were kids because we’d try to climb on the exhibit like a playground.’ ** David Ehrenstein, I wonder if there’s a relationship between fetching and ‘fetch’ as in asking a dog to retrieve a ball. I’m happy that I barely know anything about Jordan Peterson other than that he’s a bad guy. ** Billy, Thanks, Bill. ‘Berg’ the novel is killer. I didn’t know there was a film of it. Hm, that title change alone gives me pause. You good? ** Justin, Hi, Justin. Welcome. I don’t know the Victor Solomon work, but I’ll hunt it down. And, yes, for absolutely sure about Hammons. The only reason he wasn’t there is because I did a post about him recently. Thanks a lot. What’s up with you and yours? ** The bic, Thanks very much The bic. Nice name. Like the pen? ** DANGUSFLAZE (toot), Toot following fart, I see a trend. That is a nice coincidence. I wish there’d been a time machine so I could have preemptively slotted your show in there. Well, you definitely have to video your gig. Something we/I need to see. Happy and productive preparing, etc! I’d mosey into a bubble tea backroom, you bet. xo. ** Dominik, Hi!!!! Welcome back! I’ve missed you! Yay, so happy the festivals and trip in general gave you the appropriate buzz. Not cool about the sick-part obviously. Things are okay here. Quiet, seen some old friends, working on stuff. Barreling to try to get the funds by the August 1st deadline, and it’s a little scary, for sure, but trying our best. Thanks for the reading list. ‘Rohypnol’ is the one I don’t know but will. Ha ha, I do recall thinking that youmakemehatethishit’s bod seemed suspiciously pristine. Love staging a Russian coup and replacing Putin with DeAundra Peek, G. ** Suzy, Hey, Suzy. Thank you for the ‘excellent’. Ooh, now that’s an add if I ever saw one. Everyone, And Suzy has scored this most excellent Sport add-on for y’all: Werner Herzog interviewed by a skater magazine. I can’t remember the last time an art opening was anything other than stressfully genteel on the surface. I did a post here some years ago about people who make terrariums. Maybe it will help somehow? It’s here, if so. Your self-amusement project sounds amusing externally as well if I count. Me? Mostly, yeah, trying to raise the last funds needed for Zac Farley’s and my film. It’s a nightmare. Luckily nightmares end happily if reality counts as happy, so hopefully ours will follow suit. Otherwise, I’m working on the text for my collaborator Gisele Vienne’s new theater piece, which hasn’t been especially fun so far, and fiddling with some short fiction pieces and thinking about a possible book of them, and course that’s fun because, you know, writing = many things including fun. Great luck with your week ahead. ** Steve Erickson, I agree. Yeah, I didn’t find any snowboarding-related art, now that you mention it. Huh. I think Joel told me that the place where he shoots the wresting photos is in this small arena that has … what do they call it, scaffolding, aerial walkways used by workers attaching the lights and stuff, and that he went up there, giving him a bird’s eye view. Is the culling proving to be easy? In the vinyl days you could’ve used the discards as B-sides. Well, I guess it’s still the vinyl days, but you know what I mean. ** Misanthrope, Nearly always the case, I think. I loved the Jurassic World movie. It’s a fucking ride, man, give it some slack and join the escapist fun seekers. Oops, sorry about that evil gelato. Well, evil implies sentience, but … ** Brian, Hi. Which one was Peake’s … oh, right. The only sports figures I can remember ever having lust crushes on were the Russian gymnast Alexi Nemov, a footballer on the Dutch team Ajax in the mid-80s named Jonny Bosman, and the young Rafa Nadal. But I’m probably forgetting. See, spending the 4th with Dario Argento and his work’s body fireworks seems a fine way to celebrate, especially under the current circumstances over there in the US of A. What does your week portend, do you reckon? ** Okay. I only just remembered that it’s the 4th of July over in my abandoned homeland, and yet it seems like  an appropriate day to have restored today’s post-encompassed paean to the legendary DeAundra Peek. Celebrate accordingly, and I’ll see you tomorrow.