Juggalos make headline again on national television, this time on ABC’s Nightline. The topic up for discussion was involving Juggalos and the association of the music linked to the recent rash of brutal crimes and murders across the country where all of the suspects called themselves “Juggalos”. This time ABC’s Martin Bashir sat down with Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope to get to the bottom of things.

I personally think this was a pretty shitty interview and was heavily edited in favor of the network’s angle. It’s really the same report every news station runs on ICPs and Juggalos ever since the whole culture hit the mainstream about 13 years ago. But I didn’t care because of all the HD concert and backstage footage that ABC aired along with the interview.

Violent J even chimed in a little bit about his thoughts on the interview after airing via his twitter.

10 million a year? What the fuck? Who the fuck makes 10 million a year? In my experiance 90% of the media is fake bullshit. Its scarry. 10 million a year? Who the fuck makes 10 million a year? Martin Bashier maybe. Not us.

I’ll just leave you with the Nightline episode for now. I’ll be back soon with more news from the underground and even a juggalo spin on a favorite Bloglin segment. So keep your eyes peeled and your faygo chilled ’til then…

Earlier today in Berlin, a group of armed robbers stormed into a poker tournament and took a reported €1 million. From AP:

A heavily armed group stormed a poker tournament in a German luxury hotel Saturday afternoon and made off with a jackpot, a police spokesman said.

Several participants at the tournament in Berlin’s Grand Hyatt hotel were slightly injured when they panicked and fled following the daring afternoon heist, Carsten Mueller said.

The B.Z. daily quoted witnesses as saying that the robbers were armed with automatic weapons, machetes and hand grenades.

Machetes? So gangster.

The plot thickens! Here’s a video of Beetlejuice (as we’ve dubbed him) AKA Michael on Wild 94.9 giving his side of the events from last week’s epic bus beatdown with Tom “Tom Slick” Burso AKA Epic Beard Man AKA I AM A MOTHERFUCKER! In case you missed it last week, here’s Epic Beard Man’s vietnam flashback take on what happened.

I don’t know, this dude sort of looks like the guy from the video, but it sure doesn’t sound like him. I don’t remember Beetlejuice being as well spoken as this guy. Regardless my main question remains, what the fuck was up with the I AM A MOTHERFUCKER T-shirt, who made it and where can we get one!?

So as it turns out, you are quite possibly a very blurry projection of the ‘real’ version of you.

Let me back up a bit.

Crook sent me a one-line email this past week that said:

This seemed like your type of article to post about.

I looked at the permalink and saw the words ‘our world may be a giant hologram’ and quickly surmised that he was right. It did seem like something I’d post about. I promptly flagged and forgot.

Later that evening—or maybe even the next day—I got around to reading the thing, and, well, I have been living in a fog ever since. As a matter of fact, the article, it’s subject matter, and the way in which it attempted to frame the core idea: that we live in a world that is merely a fuzzed-out shadow of something else.

This something else, without quoting huge excerpts of the article itself, is quite simply the realer, sharper version of all information—all energy—contained within the Universe as we know it. Because that real information—that real energy—exists beyond the event-horizon of our ever-expanding Universe, and as such, is necessarily something that we can never know.

In other words, we’re the footprint, not the foot.

Granted…this is all theory. Theory that in many ways is being anecdotally substantiated by the findings of a German experiment designed to detect the gravitational signature of ’super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes.’ But Jesus. What a mindfuck.

For me, this kind of stuff is so much fun because half the challenge—you know, aside from actually understanding half of the nuance of what’s going on—is figuring out how to talk about it like a normal person. This one has me stumped.

Fast-Forward/Rewind to the day I read the article…the day my life changed forever. We are all—truly—nobody, floating through the universe together.

I’ll be upfront in saying I have not read Axolotl Roadkill by Helene Hegemann, and the mere thought of reading a 17 year old author’s debut  on clubbing and drugs, makes me cringe… I don’t care how highly praised it is.

But that isn’t the point of this post. The New York Times had a great article today about the controversy young Helene’s book has stirred. You see, while initially released to glowing praise, certain passages and chunks of Axotol Roadkill have since been accused of being lifted from a variety of sources. Helene Hegemann’s reponse to these allegations has simply been this:

I myself don’t feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me

The problem is that Helene never at any point cited in her book the original source material nor stated from the outset that she would be “sampling” existing prose. Her excuse was that she didn’t understand she needed to (oh how 17 of her!). She says her “sampling” of text was just a byproduct of her generation and the youth culture, comparing it to DJing.

I honestly think it’s a pretty intriguing concept that, if done correctly, could be giving new perspective and purpose to old ideas. Our modern Pop Culture says sampling is OK, and so sampling back from itself to create something “new” should in theory be acceptable, or shouldn’t it? How is it really all that different from countless generations looking to and appropriating religious ideas, archetypes, and text in creating their own works? Of course those never actually lifted whole passages and pages, but that was then and this is now. Sure some may poo-poo the idea and impact of Pop Culture as inspiration, but like it or not, it’s quickly becoming the dogma of choice for each incoming generation.

Now in regards to Helene Hegemann, I feel she should have always been upfront about her intentions and use of material not her own while constructing this story… but my question is how do you all feel about the concept of sampling for works of literature?

Just in time for the weekend the UK announces that it will be trying out new pint sleeve materials throughout its pubs and bars in order to try and reduce some of the injuries caused by the nearly 87,000 glass attacks recorded annually.

“Violent incidents involving glasses and bottles cost an estimated $158 million in health, police and court costs each year.”

Although Liam Sharratt (above), 27, who was hit in the face with a glass while out drinking with friends in a Manchester bar in November 2007 will find this new development comforting I somehow doubt Begbie will be as excited.

Back in 1988 a 15 year old girl arrived at a hospital in Lesotho, South Africa with all of the symptoms of being pregnant. The only problem was she was born without a vagina. Just recently doctors began speculating further about this brain tickler by examining the girls full medical records.

It seems she was admitted to the hospital some 278 days previous to the supposed ‘pregnancy’ for knife wounds she received from an ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend became enraged when he found the girl practicing oral sex on her new boyfriend and the situation escalated to knife play. Some believe the girl may have become pregnant because the spermatozoa (load) gained access to the reproductive organs via the injured gastrointestinal tract. This is only the speculation of some but still worth a mention in my book. The full story is here.

Do not have any kind of sex while you are in Africa…ever.

This video starts off good and then gets really good again right around the 2:21 mark! Goddamn you Tom Campbell, goddamn you to hell you fiscally conservative poseur!!!!!!

So I know I’m not pictured here. In my underwear. And I know that these are not photos of guns, knives, Guitar Hero controllers, and other things you may expect to see in photos (at least if you’ve been a Bloglin reader for a while).

But, well, this is the kind of thing I take photos of. I am addicted to collecting photos. And I am addicted to thinking about collecting copies of The Catcher in the Rye. So I have started my own little hybrid collection: Photos AND Actual Copies of The Catcher in the Rye.

I have been doing this for 2 or 3 years, and in fact, I had a great time looking for copies of this book in Japan. I found 3. It is officially universal.

More than anything else, this book taught me that it’s ok to type how you talk. I know that’s a bit of a ‘hiding in plain sight’ concept, but if you read your average email out loud, you realize that it sounds pretty square. Catcher showed me that people communicate through grammar and tone, and, well, I am forever grateful.

I have gotten several emails so far (from people who know of my little collection-within-a-collection) and I’ve been happy to tell them that I’m not sad at all for Mr. Salinger. I’ve never taken the time to really try and dive-deep into his mythos; I’ve always been content to let him stay mysterious in my mind. Seems like he wanted his peace more than anything, and I’m bittersweetly happy for him that he (hopefully) has it now.

And yes, I concur with Mars, Oh Mars: If you can hear us—be you on high or down low—please buy a guy a drink. He earned it.

RIP

One of my favorite things that Vice/VBS.TV does are their guides to various exotic locales most of us have never been or will ever go to. VBS has sent correspondents to document goings on in places like Baghdad, Tehran, and Darfur, and created a magnificent series on North Korea where Vice co-founder Shane Smith snuck his way in and videotaped his trip into the country. This time Shane Smith heads into Liberia, where he interviews former child soldiers, tours the drug dens and brothels, visits with murderous warlords, and encounters an endless stream of victims of the country’s civil war who are trying to piece their lives and region back together.

Timed nicely with the ongoing trial of former Liberian President (and accused war criminal) Charles Taylor, episode two focuses on the Liberian ex-warlords who still wield power and influence in the region. Shane Smith and his crew speak with General bin Laden (named such to inspire fear) at his compound shortly after he is sprung from jail by his supporters.

The Vice Guide to Liberia is broken up into 8 parts, with the remaining 6 episodes airing for the rest of this and the following week over at VBS.