The online place in which I compile the different things I write for the different people and places for which I write them. Also videos of my parents' new dog, when possible.
Showing posts with label Insane Clown Posse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insane Clown Posse. Show all posts
This was inevitable, probably. Once you get enough people to believe that George Washington was somehow a megachurch-y libertarian with a staunch opposition to any taxation at all, the next step is clear -- book a vacation, and just totally ruin things for everybody else.
They stand in the crowd listening closely as the costumed actors relive dramatic moments in the founding of our country. They clap loudly when an actor portraying Patrick Henry delivers his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. They cheer and hoot when Gen. George Washington surveys the troops behind the original 18th-century courthouse. And they shout out about the tyranny of our current government during scenes depicting the nation's struggle for freedom from Britain.
"General, when is it appropriate to resort to arms to fight for our liberty?" asked a tourist on a recent weekday during "A Conversation with George Washington," a hugely popular dialogue between actor and audience in the shaded backyard of Charlton's Coffeehouse.
Standing on a simple wooden stage before a crowd of about 100, the man portraying Washington replied: "Only when all peaceful remedies have been exhausted. Or if we are forced to do so in our own self-defense." The tourist, a self-described conservative activist named Ismael Nieves from Elmer, N.J., nodded thoughtfully. Afterward, he said this was his fifth visit to Colonial Williamsburg.
Salem County stand up! Okay, now please sit back down. You're terrible. Please sit.
Tom Bissell has a long essay in the most recent issue of Harper's that tries to unpack the discomfiting thing that is Tommy Wiseau and The Room. (It's subscriber-only, but the whole issue is pretty great and worth a newsstand buy) While the best parts of the article are mostly just Bissell struggling to describe Wiseau's brain-damaged-vampire personality and his baffling film, Bissell also comes surprisingly close to accomplishing the incredibly and obviously futile task of figuring out what, if anything, the whole deal means. "Surprisingly," because The Room's cult following is so manifestly the result of an idiot echo chamber that there is, ultimately, not really a whole lot there to write about besides how inexplicable Wiseau and his film are.
It's not that I don't find this stuff funny, and Bissell's descriptions of those two foundational weirdnesses (and of Wiseau's face) are very amusing; it's a good piece. But beyond the obvious point of The Room being resistant to criticism is the fact -- the ontological truth -- that the film exists at a level beyond and beneath any sort of analysis. The simultaneously simple and irreducibly complex fact of its existence is what's most interesting about it, and there's only so much than can be said about that.
All of which is kind of a long way of saying that Gallagher is performing at this year's Gathering of the Juggalos. AND I QUOTE:
Awesome Dre: Gallagher up in this bitch, though? Smashing watermelons with the sludge-o-matic (sic) and shit?
DJ Clay: (Medium-sized beat) Is that the real Gallagher?
Awesome Dre: Man, the original Gallagher, man, not that fake-ass Gilligan motherfucker, neither.
Good thing it's The Real Original Gallagher, because he has really taken his act to some unique and terrible new places. Also, Ron Jeremy will be telling dick jokes and Afroman is performing and Tila Tequila will be onstage at Ladies Night (sic?) (and also went to high school with Sweet Sugar Slam?). The words "If you like midgets" are uttered in the video, and both Superfly Snuka and Todd Bridges will be wrestling. It's kind of corny that the profane-but-crypto-populist rhetoric of the last Juggalo video has been replaced here by some intra-demographic synergy for ICP's long-awaited greasepaint western, "Big Money Rustlas," but... anyway, the judgments don't matter. They aren't even really possible. There is nothing to say about any of this. There is nothing to do about it. It simply is, and the fact of its existence is challenging enough. The 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos is like humidity.
This weekend, I'll be eating at TGI Friday's. Or at the very least drinking there. I made a reservation and am very excited! Because it's one of maybe two restaurants near where my friends are getting married, the pre-wedding pre-party -- after which, as you know: hotel lobby -- will be held there. And I'm totally fine with that, because I love whimsical meat appetizers my friends and they do in fact serve beer there.
And in all honesty, I actually have always really loved potato skins -- even though I don't really know if I've ever actually enjoyed eating more than one of them -- and as far as I know TGI Friday's still serves those. They might be filling them with fettucine alfredo now or something, but I believe they're still on the menu. No, the only real issue here is that I could, in some fashion, be seen as supporting Juggalo-ish human photo negative/"food dude" Guy Fieri by patronizing the restaurant chain for which he does commercials. At least, I assume this was intended to be an advertisement for TGI Friday's.
Kind of wound up being an advertisement against hairstyling products and tanning beds and humanity in general, though, no?
Fieri has always been a tough case for me, because the idea of his Food Network show, "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," is actually pretty cool. Or I should write, the idea of his first Food Network show, since he's now bringing his burnt sienna magnetism to his own cooking show on the network (I should really start another blog just to detail what that show's set looks like, but in the interest of time: imagine a taxidermied crocodile wearing Oakleys that is also somehow a hubcap with a clock on it? Then fill a whole set with shit like that and proceed to make, like, "Guac Caipirinhas" there) and to a network game show so guilelessly cleavage-leering and sub-retarded that it would stand out for its dumbness on contemporary Italian television. And while there are periodically interesting places featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," Fieri is always there to ruin it -- barging onscreen dressed like a fucking hot rod, sunglasses at the ready on the back of his head, taking some gigantic ketchupy bite of something and robustly high-fiving the startled-looking Greek guy who runs the diner, drive-in or dive in question. The whole weird '90s-fetishizing-the-'50s/"Cruising Night In Upland, CA" aesthetic of the thing is a turn-off, too: the show's general vibe, despite all the interesting restaurants (and, to his credit, Fieri will go to some interesting places and mash some interesting food between his ghastly orange jaws), is that of a nostalgic Route 66-themed commercial for McDonald's. It takes a lot to make me not want to eat a sliced-meat sandwich, but dude does it weekly and still finds time for extra work.
Extra work like designing the menu at his own restaurant, the currently closed-for-remodeling Tex Wasabi's Rock-N-Roll Sushi BBQ in Sacramento, CA. (In re: the website, you should beware of sound effects, nauseating cowboy-on-carp animated .gif, everything else) Beneath the exhausting good-timey tone of the menu -- those aren't really koi fish tacos, j/k! -- and the misspellings and the weirdnesses is a really baffling food sensibility. It's one thing to grill some chicken and dump it on some salad -- call it "Hidden Chicken, Crouching Salad" if you want (he wants), but it's been done and it can only get so bad. But... okay, I'm just going to cut and paste this:
NEW! Screaming Gobbler $7.95 Roasted turkey, jalapenos, pepper jack, avocados, green onions, mayonnaise and sriracha mayonnaise wrapped in sushi rice and tapioca paper. First you’ll gobble, then you’ll scream.
That is just a different thing entirely. And while it's nice that Fieri's innovating (it's not really nice that Fieri's innovating), there's definitely a point at which one should look at oneself in the mirror -- one's automotive-themed, flame-motif, rock-n-roll mirror -- and just be like, "Dude, just because TGI Friday's pays you does not mean that you are obligated to make TGI Friday's look like Le Fucking Bernardin." One would think that one would do that. One would hope.
Also: Tex Wasabi's drink menu is amazing. It's like a Mad Lib. I mean, this particular drink is like a 15-year-old girl's liquid nightmare:
County Fair This one will bring out the animal in you. 99 apples, vodka, midori, sweet & sour and sierra mist.
But for the most part the drink menu is like a Mad Lib. As I learned during my stay at a friend's place in Los Angeles, it's easy to play this game at home. Name a food item or two, two liquors/liquers and an ill-advised garnish, then put it in a 64oz. glass and jam a twisty straw into it. To wit: The Hole Ninety Nine Yards This one will make you regret that humans evolved opposable thumbs! Real Dunkin Donut donut holes floating on a raft of Sweet Tarts set rock-n-rollingly adrift on 64 ounces of 99 Bananas, Triple Sec, Welch's Grape Soda and Georgi Vodka. Cowabunga!
Try it yourself! I plan to order it on at TGI Friday's and see how it works. I wonder how much Apple Pucker a potato skin can hold.
Even after a beautiful-looking first episode, I was already perilously close to saving Treme for accidental Saturday-afternoon watchings. This is due to reasons I've already written about and for reasons I might write more about later, after I actually watch the third episode and make that opinion relevant. For all the problems with the show, though -- almost all of which come down to writing issues -- the one I feel worst about is John Goodman.
He does a good enough job, but he's so big, and whatever he's doing performance-wise is so hidden beneath his own sad bulk, that I've found it difficult just to watch him gasp and waddle around. He was obviously never a svelte guy -- well, he was once, back in his CHUD/Big Easy period -- but he looks like he has gained 80 pounds since "The Big Lebowski." His size and apparent illness -- he looks like a bag full o' whiskey and roux -- makes it hard to imagine him giving another performance like the ones I loved in not only Lebowski but even in less memorable, goofier movies like "Fallen." He does a hilarious Mick Jagger impersonation in that which I don't think he'd be mobile -- facially, even -- to do now.
What I'm saying is, I liked him better in the "Miracles" video and Big Money Rustlas. (The image is from here, and I took the link from Videogum)
Well, this just about settles it, I guess, as regards the whole "Miracles" thing. Professor Violent J puts it all in perspective, sort of. I'm about to link to an Insane Clown Posse official website called "The Hatchet Herald," by the way. This is that link. I know, I know:
I mean, yeah, we get it. It’s funny to people on the outside lookin’ in, seeing two clowns rapping about space and shit, while floatin’ around in an orgy of screen savers. And SNL’s parody was off the hook hilarious. But when you step back and really look at all the genuine hate it got from everyday people, it’s hard to believe that so few got it.
Yes, most of the miracles we mention can easily be explained away by science, that’s why we say the line “fuck scientists.” Their factual findings sometimes explain away the Earth’s cool mysteries...Part of me doesn't want to know how they really make crop circles.
Not included: the last word on fucking magnets. Or the controversy surrounding fucking magnets. Incidentally, this is how magnets work.
This was inevitable, probably. Once you get enough people to believe that George Washington was somehow a megachurch-y libertarian with a staunch opposition to any taxation at all, the next step is clear -- book a vacation, and just totally ruin things for everybody else.
