WC: People mention it every night. What is it that they do? Have sex with teddy bears? Well, we act like that's part of it. No one actually hits on the rabbits. I wish someone would hit on the rabbits. Those suits do get action, though. We have different fans dress up as the rabbits at every show, and occasionally a hippie college guy and gal, they'll be high and they'll be Flaming Lips fanatics, and they'll try to have some form of sex while they're in the costumes. But we usually just tell them to knock it off.

7. Do you have any fetishes?

WC: The only thing that I can think of -- and I don't think it's all that weird -- is when I smell suntan lotion, it's a trigger. But I would think that's probably true of a lot of people, just because suntan lotion means bodies and summertime and all that. You wouldn't be too far removed from the idea of desire.

8. If you had to open the Flaming Lips Museum of Sex, what would be on display?

WC: I think the sexiest we ever got as a band was when I took a picture of Michele in her underwear for one of our CDs. She had some reasonably long pubic hair. I don't mean long, but you know how some women will just cut it all off? That's very hip these days. There was a while there that her pubic hair would stick out of her underwear. And that's sexy, because you never see that anymore.

9. Do drugs enhance sex?

WC: Not for me. I can see how they let people loosen up a little bit. When my wife gets drunk, it's fun, but it's fun without the alcohol as well. I can understand how things like Viagra would enhance it. But hallucinogens fuck you up too much. It just gets too bizarre. I don't like hallucinogens, even though people must think I take them every day. I just get too troubled. I start thinking about death and isolation and insanity. Sex is like eating ice cream -- it's just so much fun and so good the way it is, you don't need to mess with it.

10. Do you watch porn?

WC: We've never really fucked with it that much. That's a weird way to put it, isn't it? There's really nothing that we've ever watched where we thought, Damn, let's try that. It also depends on the porn. Sometimes porn is so brutal. Like the woman is eating a sandwich and saying, Are we done yet? Who wants to watch that?

11. What's your favorite part of a woman's body?

WC: To me, it would really be the face. But the thing I like best is when women have tan lines. She's been out, and you get to see what her bikini covered. That's revealing something. I don't fantasize about it, but when I see it, I'm reminded of how hot it is.

12. Is there anything better than sex?

WC: No. If you can't enjoy that, the measure by which you judge everything else is totally skewed. With sex you can totally escape into oblivion. If it's really going well you don't even realize you're alive, and you can live in the moment and you can exist in the perfect realm of what humans are all about. That's why people crave it so much. It's not just the deed; it's where it takes you psychologically. But when you're in that state of love and lust, you don't have a life, and luckily that disperses after a while. That's when you remember to do your ironing.

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Photo: Warner Bros. Records