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I swam with the dolphins in Florida and I thought that was pretty cool, but one evening at a Chemical Brothers show I met this incredibly beautiful, Northern Italian candy-girl who told me she went slow-dancing with stingrays underwater in the tropics, and it just blew me away.

I was opening for the Chemical Brothers with the Superstars of Love at the American Theater in Saint Louis, and all day long these bitchy English roadies were busting my chops, making fun of my home-made equipment. They had tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-resolution LCD projectors, and I had a slide projector mounted to an ironing board. During my sound check they kept mocking me making ironing gestures, like they were ironing the mixing board, openly telling people I was pressing the crew's laundry after the show. Even during my show, in front of 5,000 people, I'm trying to concentrate on what I am doing, simulating sex with an invisable dolphin in space wearing an archangel outfit with wings and woman's underwear, the crowd is getting into it, I look up, and these blokes are still mocking me, not for wearing women's underwear, but for the ironing board. I could clearly see them in the back, ironing the mixing board while I was trying to concentrate on my performance in front of all those people. Fuckin' guys.

So I had just finished sound checking The Future, the multimedia piece about an intergalactic lesbian dolphin fucking an archangel in space, when this woman approached me. She was from Milan Italy, an incredibly beautiful candy-girl, certainly a model, perhaps Tom or Ed's own girlfriend. In a rich Northern Italian accent she asked me, "you have swam with dolphins, yes?" I told her I actually had, and we went backstage to talk. The pissy roadies were now testing the lasers and intelligent lighting, which was flickering around unintelligently, and I could hear them cursing the "wanked yankee electrical system." These blokes hated everything about America and Americans, and had just gotten fish sandwiches delivered from McDonalds. She and I sat on crates of records, in a cavernous alcove made of huge speaker stacks and high-power amplifiers, LEDs glowing like red pearls in the depths. In this dark underworld we were surrounded by disembodied, demonic voices of English roadies cursing, "Bloody McDonalds fish sandwiches!" because they missed their fucking English fish and chips so fucking much, and thinking out loud I said, "how stupid could anyone be to order fish sandwiches from McDonalds?"

Smiling, her face lit with the other-worldly flickering of laser beams and intelligent lighting, she explained that, "Stingrays are relatives of the shark, but they are vegetarian, and have this very pliable, delicate skin, like the skin of a tomato that’s so thin you have to be careful not to puncture it. Underwater this skin feels wonderful, like the smoothest, slickest velvet. The males of the species are small, about a foot-and-a-half wide, but the females grow to be huge with an eight foot wing span. They’ve got that deadly stinger tail you know, but they love humans and would never harm you. Now what you do, is put a little food in the palm of your hand and the female will swim up, suction cup onto your hand with it's mouth, and eat the food. Then, as a thank you, this is amazing, the female will envelop you in her wings and hug you. You can feel this wonderful, silky-slick skin all over your entire body."

Whoa! I thought. I must admit I got more pleasure then I rightly should have envisioning this beautiful Italian woman being embraced by a giant velvety female sea-creature in the dark surrounded by the flickering Chemical Brother laser beams, YEA!

She continued her story, her elegant Milan accent ascending in a magnificent crescendo like a virtuoso concert musician playing a Stradivarian viola, "With the sound of bubbles in the respirator 'SSSsssooo...' of my scuba gear, 'SSSsssooo...' it actually felt as if this stingray were serenading me, and I was slow dancing with it, in some kind of strange underwater waltz like this, 'ah-AH AH AH! ah-AH AH AH!'" Oh-my-God! Under the UV lights her hair was magenta red, her face violet-blue, and I envisioned all her mucus membranes glowing orange like the neon-colored lipstick she was wearing...and I’m thinking to myself, this woman is right out of my pre-land-dwelling oceanic sexual subconscious. The charm of her story combined with the effects of the intelligent lighting transforming her, in my eyes, into some sparkling newly-hatched Cinderella siren from the lost city of Atlantis, and I am in love, "L" "U" "V."

“So then,” she goes, modulating her voice down several tones in a rich Italiano vibrato, “after the stingray is finished hugging you, it will remain suction-cupped onto your hand and fly you...and glide you...through unknown waters, protecting you from all harm with it’s deadly stinger tail.” Wow! Now I’m not Catholic, but if that is not the ultimate, primordial archetype of a loving, Mother Mary sea-creature-protector of the deep, I don’t know what is. So I thought I was so cool swimming with dolphins, but this lovely Italian candy-girl just blew me away with her story leaving me stunned and alone, and all I could do was sit back and contemplate her bizarre tale of deep-sea-creature sensuality.

So I became obsessed with this stingray, and it made me think about the power of flattery. That is, if you have that right person in your life who truly loves you and flatters you in the right way, they will, like that stingray, fly you with their flattery, and protect you from all your detractors, so you can accomplish those great things only found in your dreams.

So right now, I want you to imagine that we are underwater and I am a psychedelic stingray of love, a deep-sea-creature-protector, flattering all the special sparkling newly-hatched Cinderella candy-girls in the lost city of Atlantis. This is called the Mystical Mother Mary Blue Fairy Candy-girls...