You’ve seen that girl – the one with the hopelessly outdated hairdo, the blue eye shadow, the gold stretch pants (which her ample body strains against) and the glasses that were even ugly when they were popular in the early ‘80s. And surely you’ve noticed the sweater. It’s covered with sparkly appliqués and is the type of garment you would find on a grandmother cruising the aisles at your local K-Mart or swap meet.

She looks like the sour faced 4-H drone who gets pelted with spitballs in high school. She looks like the macraméing Dairy Queen employee who draws unicorns on her school notebooks. She’s awkward. She’s strange. She’s tacky.

And she is also an underground hip-hop star. Not to mention an unlikely heroine to her steadily growing legion of fans. And if you missed Leslie Hall at Club Congress last Thursday or in Bisbee last Saturday, you are about to start kicking yourself.

Watch and learn as BeDazzler stock climbs steadily as the tour progresses.

Leslie and the Lys hail from Iowa and travel in her RV, which doubles as a museum to display the fruits of her “gem sweater” collecting addiction. Her pigtailed, ‘80s neon sunglasses-donning DJ has her “turntables” strapped to her shoulders – which are made of cardboard. There are slides and videos projections – generally of infomercials and Hall’s videos, which have helped make her the overnight Internet cult sensation that she is.

And then there’s the gem sweater pageant in which Halliholics line up on stage to show off their thrift store sequined finds. Hall provides the opportunity to her mimickers to have their sweaters christened – they prostrate themselves before her and she gives the ensemble a colorful name with much fanfare and applause. The participants, visibly moved, then shuffle off stage, wiping tears from their eyes. This is a taste of what a typical Leslie Hall show is about.

Hall headlined an early pre-Optimist Club affair at Club Congress on Sept. 21, in which locals DJ Buttafly and Fuckin’ Kenny warmed up the stage. Now normally Thursday nights at Congress are a late night affair – things don’t even really get going until about midnight, but on this evening they were out in shimmering bejeweled droves for the early performances. This is truly an example of the power of the Internet and MySpace in particular. If you have music savvy friends, you’ve surely noticed that a good chunk of them have the rapidly morphing image of Leslie in about 100 gem sweaters as a MySpace buddy.

Fucking Kenny were dressed in matching brilliant green tracksuits and featured their very own beau beau (Beau Beau was the hyperactive human pogo stick whose only job was to dance around on stage while punk band Avail played). F’n K’s beau beau pranced about with a giant cutout of Owen Wilson’s face on a stick. Hmmm. They powered their way through a set of simple, silly, pop-punkish, energizing numbers that were heavily laced with high school era humor. They did this all with big smiles on their faces. The bass was more than a little high in the mix and the guitar was more than a little low, but it didn’t slow them down a bit. Their precocious and bouncy performance looked like it earned them a healthy handful of new fans.

Leslie Hall took the stage to a packed, frenzied house and danced, rapped, panted and worked the crowd like a seasoned comedian. And then she did it all over again two nights later in Bisbee, interacting with the elated crowd between high energy, goofy and infectious raps (about gold pants, gem sweaters, zombies, etc). The vocals are layered over computer-generated retro beats that are spiced with piano, opera style warbling and even slide guitar. Frankly, it’s not the most stunning music in the world, but fortunately Leslie Hall is not just about the music – she’s about the attitude, the look, the live experience and the bizarre twist on the cult of personality.

She was mobbed post-show each night by fans that attacked her with autograph and photo requests normally reserved for British royalty or hotel chain heiresses. All groupies’ requests appeared to have been fulfilled, especially judging by the number of fans who changed their MySpace photos to one of them posing with her.

Why do people foam at the mouth for this artist, who to an uninformed observer would appear to be creating outsider art? Probably because performers like Hall encourage people not only to reckon with their inner/former dork, but also to get out there and flaunt it. To make all things nerdy and tacky into an exhilarating and freeing art form. Hall isn’t out there trying to fit into some unattainable image of a pop star with perfect hair and 115-pound body. Instead, in Hall there is proof that one can go to the opposite extreme, that they can ugly up and geekify themselves to an extreme and still be worshipped. Now that is power.

You go, girl.