Gonna make you sweater

>> Leslie and the Ly’s rule the Web
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GEM, truly outrageous: Leslie Hall

By LORRAINE CARPENTER

“I just wanted it really, really bad,” says Leslie Hall, 26, flashing back to her race for high school prom queen. She made posters, she buttered up the prom committee and she wore a Goodwill gown and neck brace in the homecoming parade, winding up on the front page of the local newspaper for her trouble. “I went for ‘crippled, poor and innocent,’ and people loved it, they just ate it up. It’s amazing what a little creative campaigning can getcha.

“The crown, actually. It can get you the crown.”

A different kind of reign has befallen Hall in recent years. Her electro rap videos have scored millions of hits on Atom Films and YouTube, and she leads a campaign for net neutrality alongside fellow online phenomena the Tron guy and the Peter Pan guy, making Hall no less than queen of the Web. Cewebrity is the name of her next album, her third since 2005, and even though her MySpace “Record Label” section reads “Please sign us, we need cash!” (and she’s seeking funding for online TV shows and short films), she says that independence is where it’s at. Her hometown of Ames, Iowa, is also where it’s at.

“Cheap rent allows me to focus my energies on Internet fame and glory, which is perfect. The Internet is like a giant Wal-Mart where dreams come true,” she says.

Hall initially attracted attention in 2004 with her online museum of gem sweaters, which continues to generate fandemonium. Hall is known to followers as Mother Gem, and they are Junior Gems—with their help, Mother’s sweater collection has ballooned to over 400, leaving little room for people in the Mobile Museum of Gem Sweaters, a touring RV that was recently retired.

“I’m hoping that, one day, some museum of modern art, or Hard Rock Café, will wanna put it in their collection and it can live on,” she says. “People were being educated through its vessel.”

Likewise, Hall recently had the opportunity to learn a thing or two from one of her idols, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who read a poem on Hall’s track “Zombie Killer,” as Vincent Price did for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

“She’s like a teacher, I am a student. Oh my God, it’s so perfect—two divas, our bouffants. But out of respect, we didn’t wanna out-diva one another, so we both kept it cool with casual ‘day wear,’ if you will. We both rock our day wear, and when it comes to the nightlife, we flip a switch and you just don’t know what hit you. We are both forces to be reckoned with when it comes to being presentable and shocking and delicious.”

And with Hall’s campaign history, she doesn’t doubt that she could affect the Democratic primaries by spreading some of her deliciousness their way.

“Oh my God, yes,” she enthuses, “I would vote for anybody in a gem sweater! I tell you what, boys look good in gem sweaters too, so if Obama or Hillary decided to become fashionably aware and Internet-savvy, I would totally point them in my direction and say, ‘Here is a market to rule the streets with.’

“If I make the world a more glamorous place, then that’s truly the greatest gift I can give to all.”

With Donzelle at Zoobizarre
on Friday, Feb. 8, 9 p.m., $10