Lady Gaga Roasts Herself On a BBQ Spit, Gets Covered In Spit-Up at Bizarre SXSW Show

One of the most memorable moments of Lady Gaga's stunt- and shtick-filled career was when she wore her infamous meat dress to the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. And judging from her meaty Thursday performance at Austin, Texas's South By Southwest festival, she certainly hasn't gone vegetarian since then. However, there was one part of her bizarre-even-by-Gaga-standards SXSW gig that probably made even the audience's most iron-stomached carnivores lose their appetites.

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After an opening number featuring an enigmatic brunette suggestively eating sausages alone onstage (it was a sausage fest! literally!), Gaga made her grand entrance at Stubb's BBQ shortly after 10 p.m., belting out "Aura" while rotating on a giant barbeque spit, as her minions attended to her roasting flesh with basting brushes.

So, typical Gaga, then...

But soon, Gaga would be basted in another, much less appealing sort of liquid.

After an entertainingly punk-rock "MANiCURE" (during which the newly dreadlocked, proudly "unshowered" Gaga showered the crowd with Austin beer and sausage links), and a surprise appearance by Twista on "Jewels 'n' Drugs," it was time for another collaboration. This time it was "Swine," with a spooky London painter named Millie Brown.

But Millie wasn't just any sort of painter. Millie was a…VOMIT PAINTER.

Fans should've known something was up when Gaga prepared for this wild number by covering her barely-there black bikini with a Sweeney Todd-worthy apron. Then, as Gaga bashed a drum kit during the angry anthem (introduced as being about "rape and rage"), Millie guzzled a large jug of neon mystery fluid. And then, Millie rammed her fingers down her throat to "paint" Gaga in what looked like Nickelodeon-style green slime.

Yes, that's right. Millie vomited on Lady Gaga.

Thirsty for more, so to speak, Gaga and her upchucking sidekick then straddled a scary mechanical bull (well, actually, it was a mechanical pig) that looked like something straight out of a David Cronenberg flick. And a seemingly motion-sickness-stricken Millie proceeded to hurl a stomach-full of inky, staining black liquid all over Gaga's torso.

(WARNING: VIDEO BELOW CONTAINS PROFANITY, VOMIT)

At this point, executives behind this show's very conspicuous corporate sponsor, Doritos, were probably having second thoughts about this whole partnership. Because chances were no one in the audience was ever going to want to eat anything Cool Ranch-flavored again, after watching this icky spectacle.

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There were moments of the show that were decidedly more pleasant. There was a countrified, fiddler-assisted version of "Bad Romance" (the only pre-"ARTPOP" song on Gaga's setlist) that didn't quite work, but was still a cute and well-meaning homage to the Texan surroundings. There was "Monsters for Life," a sweet a cappella ode to Gaga's dear old friends Semi-Precious Weapons, the Dirty Pearls, and Lady Starlight, the latter two of which had opened for Gaga's SXSW show. And there was an emotional dedication of "Gypsy" to victims of the previous night's horrific hit-and-run tragedy, during which she said: "We all just want to have a good time and suck every bit of love we can out of life, and it's so short sometimes, and it's unfair. So I think we should take this one moment where we put our phones away and just look at each other, right now in the moment."

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But in many ways, the hourlong concert left a bad taste in some people's mouths (no pun intended) and reeked (OK, pun intended) of trying too hard. Was this the career moment when Lady Gaga, who is also set to deliver the South By Southwest conference's keynote speech on Friday, hopped on a figurative mechanical pig and jumped right over the proverbial shark? Probably not…but this weird show probably won't do much for "ARTPOP's" slagging sales. Or for Doritos' sales, of course.

Lady Gaga's full Stubb's BBQ setlist was:
Aura
MANiCURE
Jewels N' Drugs (with Twista)
Swine (with Millie Brown)
Dope
Bad Romance (country version)
Monster for Life
Applause
Gypsy

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