Here is a headline you don’t see every day: “Tila Tequila hit by onstage battering at the Gathering of the Juggalos festival in Cave-in-Rock.” In fact this is one of those classic sentences in which you know what every word means (with the possible exception of Juggalos) but in this order it makes no sense. Lucky for everyone that I am here to breakdown the sentence bit by bit, possibly even diagramming it in the manner that the nun who taught me English in fifth grade would have preferred it.
Tila Tequila: Born Tila Nguyen she initially rose to fame as one of the most popular people on MySpace. She became one of the most popular people on MySpace by a) selflessly promoting herself, b) accepting every friend request and c) continually posting pictures of herself in which she lacked clothing. Ostensibly this was done to promote her music career despite the fact that no one has ever heard any of her songs. She grew even more famous (though not actually popular) due to being the prize for two seasons of “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila” in which straight men and lesbian women competed for her apparently bisexual interests. It’s important to note that even with this surprising setup she was easily the least interesting person on screen at all times. Best known recently for being “engaged” to Johnson and Johnson heiress Casey Johnson whose death caused her to mourn publicly on Twitter for a good 48 hours before she was photographed going to nightclubs sans undergarments.
Hit by onstage battering: While taking the stage this weekend Ms. Tequila was apparently faced with a brutal assault by crowd members who may or may not have done any of the following: 1) thrown rocks, 2) thrown “huge stone rocks” per Ms. Tequila as though there are any other type of rocks, 3) thrown beer bottles and 4) thrown lit firecrackers. Pictures do seem to indicate that she was cut by the debris thrown in her direction. Now this raises the question as to why a performer would be assaulted by the very crowd that she is performing for (and who theoretically paid to see her perform? For that we turn to…
The Gathering of the Juggalos festival: A music festival put on by the Insane Clown Posse whose fan base are referred to as Juggalos (or Juggalettes in the feminine). Best known for their wearing of clown makeup and love of Faygo soda Juggalos can best be compared to Deadheads if Deadheads would, well, wear clown makeup and love Faygo soda. As fans of horrorcore hip hop they would seem to be the absolute opposite of whatever audience Tila Tequila would be trying to reach. In fact the British bookmaker Ladbrokes had placed the odds of a riot occurring during her set at two to one and the odds that “an asteroid would strike the stage in an event that would prove even the almighty’s disapproval of Ms. Tequila’s act” at 150 to one. It is interesting to note that for several years Vanilla Ice has performed at the festival without incident and to much acclaim.
Cave In Rock: A state park in southern Illinois very near the Kentucky border that has hosted the Festival of the Juggalos for several years. I anticipate that the head of the Illinois state parks is going to have a very long Monday explaining precisely what happened and why the state is renting out its ecological landmarks to, well, a bunch of clowns.
Best of 120 Minutes: I’ve decided I’m going to start doing something different here. I am going to go back to this week in 1993 and post one video from that night’s show and do that on a weekly basis. Why 1993? Because I was turning twenty, Alternative Nation was nearing its height, and the only thing good that was happening in my life was new music Tuesday at the record store. So here is Camper Van Beethoven with “Take the Skinheads Bowling”
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Son Volt “A Retrospective: 1995 – 2000”
2) Drive By Truckers “Live from Austin, TX”
3) Coldplay “A Rush of Blood to the Head”
4) Wilco “AM”
5) Neko Case and her Boyfriends “The Virginian”
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