photo courtesy of Bob log iii Bob Log III is totally jamming out in a spaceman suit. Bush should send him to the moon. But before his voyage, he'll be playing Plush tomorrow at 11:30 p.m. That's late, so nobody under 21 can go.

Buzzed patrons of Plush might confuse Bob Log III - sporting his onstage getup of space helmet and shiny suit - for an astronaut tomorrow night.

Yet the closest the local guitarist will get to the orange sand of Mars is during one of his face-melting slide-guitar solos.

More people, however, have confused Log with an ape because his extremely hairy guitar hand. The furry appendage, complete with opposable thumb, is often likened to a monkey's paw. Such a comparison recently caused great confusion in a former Nazi holdout.

Prior to a stop in the Czech Republic capital of Prague, the city's major newspapers were under the impression that the one-man-band (he also plays percussion by foot) actually played guitar with a primate's hand, and they printed the faux fact.

"All these people with prosthetic limbs came to the show like I was one of their brothers," Log said. "I'm not even kidding. I show up and I'm like, "There's a lot of people on crutches here ... "

Log went on and played his usual hyper-bluesy set, but it soon became apparent to the crowd that he was not handless, as the press had claimed.

Feeling cheated and out for some sliver of justice, debris was hurled in Log's direction.

"I did get hit by a few cups, but I didn't really realize what was going on," he said.

The next day, Log's booking agent was forced to hold a press conference, complete with TV cameras and print journalists, in an attempt to reach some understanding with the physically disabled folk of the Czech Republic.

"Why had an able-bodied man substituted in for a gent with a monkey paw hand at last night's gig?" they asked.

"So now I got a bunch of people with prosthetic limbs really pissed off at me in the Czech Republic, and it's all just because my hand is abnormally hairy," Log said.

A furry hand is one of the tamer elements of Log's onstage repertoire. An avid fan of liquor and female bare chests, Log has a running tab of women throughout the world who have "boobed" his drink, "boobed" meaning that during a live set, a woman agrees to dunk her bare breast in Log's drink prior to consumption. He even has a song about the activity, entitled "Boob Scotch," that includes the lyric, "Well I think we need to sit down and talk/Put your boob in my Scotch."

"In the past year, out of 220 shows, like 140 people put their boob in my drink," he said.

Log reported international "boobings" in Switzerland, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, New Zealand and Australia.

The nipple-exposing event wasn't nearly as well-received in the Far East, however.

"Japan -they didn't even do it at all," he said. "They would take my drink and just sort of tap it to their shirt. That doesn't really count."

Despite the trend, Log smells the pungent scent of commerce creeping into his once innocent bastion of bare-breasted hedonism.

"I do think that someday, some bar somewhere is going to start boobing people's drinks for an extra 3 dollars - and I'm not going to get a fucking dime," he said.