Wednesday, December 21, 2011

You'll Turn 360° and Walk Away


I was so enthused after I re-read the incredible twofer I wrote a week ago that I decided we're doing Skyrim again. S'more. Only with 78% less "Arrow to the knee" jokes than the rest of the internet.

I present to you the top 5 things I hate about Skyrim:


  • After I logged around 150 game hours whenever I open up the directional menu with (B) it can take a variable amount of time for the down or left button (both on the d-pad and the analog stick) to actually function. Long enough to make me highly irritable (See picture at right). The same thing happens when I open up inventory menus whether it be looting bodies, chests, or my own sordid furniture in my house.


  • When placing loot in furniture that I own inside my house in Whiterun there is considerable lag when depositing individual items. Is this due to the large volume of stuff inside of a burlap sack under my bed or the cupboard by my door? Possibly, but why in this day and age when we have decades of computer science research into data structures can a company that makes GIANT games not have found a way to quickly and easily store data? I can only imagine that there are gremlins inside of my Xbox slowing down the spindle that turns my disc like some kind of burgeoning DJ who is attempting to scratch one of those doublesteppe records the kids like so much. I can't just throw everything I steal off the backs of the poor citizens into the moat, that would be just silly.


  • That feeling when I'm pretty sure I have "Whirlwind Sprint" equipped and I accidentally Fus Ro Dah an entire village square. The same kind of crestfallen feeling when you accidentally steal something in the alchemy shop that is frowned upon, when the proprietor seems totally cool with you stealing anything worth less than 100 Septim.


  • Why can't I climb more shit? I'm a climber. I want to climb to the very top of everything I can find, and by Talos I'll do it! I once got a job at the now defunct (thank's EA) Pandemic Studios because I shared my love of climbing with the gal who interviewed me.

    "Tell me about how you play games, Grant," she said.

    "I climb. In Crash Bandicoot I would always try to run to the very edge of the on-rails style levels and jump onto something that just got me stuck in mid air. WWF: Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain I would construct ludicrous tottering towers built with tables upon tables upon ladders upon spanish announcer tables. I only cared about one thing when a new Smack Down came out: how many tables can I screw around with? My all time favorite game is Shadows of the Colossus, a game about if nothing else climbing." I shared.

    "You are perfect, we are going to hire you! Here, go play Saboteur and write some Bug Reports." the gal offered.

    And then EA shut down the company and I no longer had a job.


  • WHY WON'T THE FUCKING DRAGON LAND SO I CAN KILL IT!?!


  • But I really do like Skyrim and I have logged almost 200 in game hours. I'll keep playing til there's new Modern Warfare 3 content or I get fed up with finding cabbage inside of sacks laying on the floor of a dungeon that no one has set foot inside of for hundreds of years.

    -G

    Tuesday, December 20, 2011

    Twofer Tuesday

    Fus Ro Dan!~ Today's twofer is about something very dear to my heart. I was a big fan of Elder Scrolls IV: Morrowind having logged quite a bit of time with my twin's help, and the sequel is no exception. Having just witnessed Skyrim win Game of The Year at Spike Tv's Video Game Awards (Yea, I was working at it and I met Charlie Sheen and saw Stifler and Deadmau5 and all sorts of cool dudes - including but not limited to Hideo Kojima and his Hiro Nakamura-esque pal and Shigeru Miyamoto. This {while a bit more interesting} is unfortunately a tale for another time.) I decided today is all about Skyrim baby.



    Occasionally you bump into glitches and bugs, especially in a game as large as Skyrim. Bethesda I'm not mad at ya, I've only gotten stuck in the geometry like 8 times and had my game crash at the load screen like 5. On this particular occasion the texture for the dragon I was battling only sorta loaded. I quickly got out my camera and began to record it for posterity, but as soon as I killed it everything became pretty again. So ends another exciting dragon battle in the cold and brutal land of Skyrim.



    I just got the Block skill to 100 and I decided I'd toast exactly how high ones levels are at 65. I'm a bad bad man. Really this video is just an internets dick-measuring contest. And yes, mine is the biggest.

    Thanks for tuning in to this weeks twofer. What's in the future? A holiday themed rap song? New Years Resolutions? TK's Birthday? Trying to convince Dan to buy us a laser that is too powerful for any reasonable consumer application? All this and more (maybe)!

    -G

    Bonus: Have you read TK's blog about Kate from Lost? We were having a few pints last night and he started saying much of what you can now read and it was so funny that we did it live and he wrote it. You should probably read it again.

    Saturday, December 10, 2011

    An Open Letter to the Actress who Played Kate on Lost:

    TK writes:

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I love you. Lets get for real married. I don't know if you're married in real life or not, because I'm afraid to Google you, cause I'm afraid you might be married.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I know you spent a lot of time in Oahu during production of the show, but I could totally take you to a bunch of awesome spots. I like Shiro's in Pearl City, they have great saimin.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I'm a pretty good cook, and also good at sex. I suppose it would be unfair to ask you to accept these claims on faith, therefore I am willing to prove myself. I mean if you want.


    Actress who played Kate on Lost, how are you so pretty? OMG you're so pretty. OMG stop flirting with me.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I know I'm a little late to the "Lost" bandwagon, but please do not hold that against me. <3

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, my roommate said that some of the actors on the show got DUIs during production, and that ABC reacted by killing their characters off prematurely. I'm glad that you didn't get a DUI because then you wouldn't be on the show as much and your perfect face wouldn't get beamed into my living room via Netflix.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I painted my car army green with military stencil lettering on the side. It's so rad I wanna show it to you. You'll love it.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, you lived in Hawaii when you were shooting Lost. I'm Hawaiian! OMG we have so much in common.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I just watched episode 301 and actor who played Sawyer gave you a fish biscuit. I would give you like 5 fish biscuits, real talk.

    Actress who played Kate on Lost, I work out a lot and I'm pretty handsome.

    Do you like me?
    • YES ( )
    • NO ( )
    • MAYBE ( )


    Sunday, November 20, 2011

    You'll Turn 360° and Walk Away


    A lot has been happening lately guys and lady-guys. The gang and I have been working a bit and writing a bit less and shooting even less. Why is this? Is it the economy? The 1%? My father's lingering suspicions about my sexual orientation? Nay, the answer is much simpler. Two words:
    Skyrim and Modernwarfarethree.
    Between the two of those games it is a wonder that the entire United States hasn't ground to a halt. (Fun Fact: in Japan whenever they release a new Dragon Quest game its pretty much a national holiday the next day because everyone would call in sick anyway) But you might be one (percent) of the unlucky ones who has very little money or hates America and doesn't want to play some delicious brand new software. How then will you be able to boast of your digital conquests amongst patriots and dragonborn when you are stuck with nothing but the vidya games of yesteryear? The answer is to play Nuketown. Stick with me here.

    Multiplayer is fun sure, but you need to up the ante. As a sporting man you need a challenge that will make your mates take note and perhaps even pause to consider breaking out their copy to see if they're bad enough dudes. TK and I came up with this (to be fair I'm not sure who deserves more credit because we were drinking at the time) a little bit before MW3 dropped as a way to kill some time. The rules are as follows:

    Pop in your copy of Carl of Duty: Black Cops. Go to Multiplayer-Local-Split Screen- and set up a map at Nuketown. Set the time limit to 15 minutes, the score to 30,000 points, and enemy robot to quantity 9 and difficulty to recruit. This is part of the fun because its like playing with zombies that don't try to bite you and take something like two minutes to draw a bead on you. Recruit difficulty makes them unable to tie their shoes, its a wonder they can still get the rifle pointed the right way. As far as perks,weapons, equipment and killstreaks: anything goes. Do what you have to do to get the job done marine.

    It is a lot of fun, somewhat difficult to get done and just challenging enough to make you wanna keep playing. The fun doesn't have to stop there though, make up your own variation! How many kills can you get with crossbows in 15 minutes (not 300, that shit is impossible), how many knife kills, the gun of your father only, shotgun only, the world is your oyster.


    While you're busy doing that, I'm going to go back to crawling dungeons in Skyrim and defending your freedom in MW3. That's it for now, stay tuned for some exciting new content (I swear).

    -G

    Wednesday, November 2, 2011

    sim·i·lar



    I've been thinking about writing a few articles about this for a while now. Here goes part one of an on going series on movies that are awfully similar. Was one studio just too lazy to think up an original idea? Is there some "inspired by" going on? Is America just ready for two movies about Victorian era magicians? The people cry out, and its for two movies about trains.



    Monsters and Troll Hunter (English title, LØL) are two pretty fresh movies. Both are shot with a very low budget (Troll Hunter being the higher of the two, but still very small relative to bigger movies.) and filmed in a way that uses very unsteady Cloverfield flavored camera work, with the digitally inserted critters as the star of the film. In Monsters this is simply because of the guerrilla style shooting they did with little to no crew or permission, and in Troll Hunter we are watching "found footage" from a Norwegian community college film crew who decided to bother some poor man who murders trolls for a living (I find the whole found footage genre very insulting, much like Firespinners and Dub Step, but I digress..).

    Let's take a look at some stats:

    "Troll Hunter":
    Budget: NOK 19,900,000(around 3.5 million USD)
    Release Date: October 2010
    CGI Monsters: Trolls. Lots of 'em. Big fuckers too.
    Plot: Follow around some guy while he tries to kill or avoid trolls.
    Rotten Tomatoes: 82%
    Longest Name in Credits: Torunn Lødemel Stokkeland - Hilde, veterinär
    Trailer:



    "Monsters":
    Budget: $800,000
    Release Date: October 2010
    CGI Monsters: All sorts of scary alien creatures. Big fuckers too.
    Plot: Follow around some dumb girl through Mexico back to USA while killing or avoiding aliens.
    Rotten Tomatoes: 71%
    Longest Name in Credits: Kenia Guadalupe Dominluez Yamas - Little Girl in Pick-Up Truck
    Trailer:




    Both movies are very cool and worth a watch. I learned about Troll Hunter from a painter who worked on Top Chef with me (shout out to my boy Bean) in Texas and I thought he was kidding. He replied "Nay, verily it is a thing." and asked if I had ever seen Monsters because he felt that it had a similar stylistic approach. Monsters is not only a cool giant creature flick, but it combines subtle unertones of political commentary and relationship drama to make it not just an exploitative "Lookit the creature" type deal but a film with some real substance. Troll Hunter (pic on right related, it is a troll) takes the rather formulaic "found footage" genre and does it the way it should be done. You could compare Apollo 18 (neat) to Cloverfield (meh) as an example.

    -G

    BONUS: Have you guys seen our new vidya? We made it the other day. Shit is very fresh. Also we filmed it on Ryan Neal's SLR camera. Holy-depth-of-field-Batman.

    Tuesday, November 1, 2011

    Twofer Tuesday

    This one is almost too easy. I spent hours a few minutes pouring over the HotDamn archives to make sure we've never covered this meme. This one is serious you guys. Like Leeroy Jenkins and Nintendo 64 Kid serious.



    This one is the grandpappy of them all. What song is he enjoying the fuck out of? What language is that? Urdu? Farsi? That Africa-language with all the clicking and shit? I'm not even sure but it is incredible. This video spawned zillions of imitations and tribute vidyas, each one more delicious than the last.



    It took months of planning and countless hours of hard work (read: playing Call Of Duty: Black Cops) to decide what the perfect companion video for the original was. The trololol guy got a similar treatment on some kind of Danish variety show (pretty awesome in and of themselves) where they upped the ante and did the song REAL big. Big like Guns 'N Roses with a full orchestra. Big like Meatloaf big. I dunno what this is from but its the Numa Numa song performed in an operatic style. It is good , oh yes, it is good.

    -G

    Wednesday, October 26, 2011

    EntertainMENt

    After days and days of failed attempts to fight the boys away from the TV, I finally acquired it as Grant was passed out and TK was out of town. Let us bask in the glory of silence for awhile...

    ... ah yes... no angry reports of gunfire from our speakers from Call of Duty: Black Ops... no awful AWFUL B movies Grant found on Netflix about dark carnivals and/or Kung Fu and suchlike. A moment to myself. Now I get to do girl things...

    Who am I kidding, I'm not very good at being a girl. I didn't watch a chick flick, or invite the ladies over. PSSH No way. I was supposed to be at work... that work being an extra gig in which I am at a bachelorette party looking shocked and awed at my girl the bachelorette's wild and crazy behavior. Yes, I found it on craigslist. Yes, it's for a porn. And yes... I chickened out. But only because I wasn't able to get ahold of my dad in time to ask him how ashamed he would be of his depraved daughter's behavior getting facetime in a porn. But that ship has sailed, and now here I am, luxuriating around the apartment and applying for jobs to fill that void of the would be $140 of ill gotten sustenance.

    AND THUS will I resume my routine - put on a movie, fire up job search engines and craigslist on my laptop (Grant, it's a macbook PRO thank you. Quit hating.) and try once again to be a grown up.

    THIS MORNING'S MOVIE IS...
    (haha morning? I woke up at 1PM)

    "Amadeus"

    It's old and it's mainstream, so I'm probably boring you but get over it because I have a huge hard on for this movie. Here's a few reasons:

    It won 8 Oscars in 1984, including Best Picture. (Not a big deal) and Film composer John Strauss won a Grammy for producing the soundtrack.

    It's silly!

    Dudes dressed up as birdies singing an opera:



    Mozart's redonkulous laugh:



    The characters are very compelling and the acting is spot on. The story is about Mozart and what a complete asshole he is while he dominates the Vienese (and thereby "world" - that is - european) music scene. BONUS: It also follows the vengeful and jealous story of his contemporary Antonio Salieri, which is very moving and dramatic:




    I am a big European history nerd, so I geek out like crazy over this. Here's some neat stuff to keep in mind as you dedicate 2 hours and 40 minutes to the director's cut. DO IT ANYWAY, don't puss out because of big numbers.

    IRL - Mozart's requiem was never finished, he died before it could be completed. The music had someone else's handwriting on the several pages leading up to when it stopped.

    "Requiem" was commissioned anonymously - it was later discovered to be commissioned by an Austrian aristocrat, Count Walsegg, who had an established pattern of paying well for anonymous works from composers and taking credit for them.

    In the period leading up to Mozart's death, he became very ill and whilst working on Requiem was quite convinced that he was poisoned.

    Salieri and Mozart were known rivals. Mozart has several correspondences with friends in which he indicates Salieri may be up to something nefarious.

    Salieri was committed to a mental institution for dementia.

    Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II was known for being a patron of the arts, but with little knowledge of music. Jeffrey Jones' portrayal of him and his scripting is perfect.

    Note: Most of these infos are paraphrasings from me having watched the featurette documentary from the Director's Cut DVD, internet investigationry on Wikipedia and it's sources (some people click them) and me being smart and shit. Yeah, I took the AP Euro test and got a 4 without taking the class - NOT A BIG DEAL. I'm not a grown up though, so I'm not gonna spend the time finding the sources again to cite them after Grant closed my shit while I was working.


    -B-Tans

    Grant writes:

    Couldn't let Brandy have the last word chums. You were probably thinking to yourself "Self, we finally made it through a hotdams toasting that wasn't about Insane Clown Posse! Neat! Theres no way Grant or anyone else for that matter can figure a way to tie ICP and Mozart together." But wait, there's more:



    ICP and Jack White (yea, that Jack White from the White Stripes) recently collaborated on a song entitled "Leck Mich Im Arsch". The melody for the song was written by Mozart back in 1776 or some shit, and then a few million years later Jack White did some producering to it and then ICP laid down some words on top of it. Its not a big deal. ICP sold the track on vinyl for a limited time on their website. Stranger than fiction. Mozart bitches.

    -G

    Saturday, October 22, 2011

    Even More Pictures of Clowns Juggalos and Soda Pop!

    For your viewing pleasure please feel free to browse all 225 pictures that made the final cut from our shoot at Insane Clown Posse's American Psycho Tour:



    Don't forget guys the tour still has a few dates left! Also this just in straight from Psychopathic Records:

    ICP has been celebrating Halloween night for the past 17 years by throwing a massive party in Detroit called Hallowicked. This coming October 31st marks the duo’s 18th Annual Hallowicked show, which promises to be super exciting with performances by ICP and their label mates Twiztid and Blaze Ya Dead Homie. Dancing Zombies + Insane Clowns + Musical Horror Stories Rapped Over Catchy Beats + Face Painted Juggalos Covered in Faygo + Most Entertaining Event on Halloween night = HALLOWICKED!!!!

    Hallowicked will take place at the Fillmore. The official Hallowicked after party will immediately follow at St. Andrews Hall, which will feature JCW matches and a performance by Wolfpac. We regard Hallowicked as a national event, as Juggalos from all over the US and Canada are always in attendance. This year we’re making Hallowicked available for Juggalos and media world wide! So, if you are not able to attend due to location the show will be broadcasted live via internet pay-per-view at www.psychopathiclive.com.

    -G

    Tuesday, October 18, 2011

    Twofer Tuesday

    This week the two-fur comes to us from the loftiest heights of the interbutts. One was a leftover from the twofer grab bag (where I save videos I've found myself or I've forgotten whom I stole them from) and the other was foisted upon me by none other than Dan Beam (the guy who is going to buy me and TK a laser that costs like $1,000.00 because he loves us).





    Bad commercials are incredible. The first sentence under the next video is going to say the same damn thing. Now a days people seem to be trying to make their videos bad intentionally to gain a bit of intertube celebrity. But from one E-Personality to another I must tell you a secret: There is no money on the internets. Sort of like girls, just not there. Also real talk we're going to go visit this guy and try to figure out why he won't taxidermize pets.





    Bad commercials are incredible. This commercial is totally fake and not even a thing but it is still pretty awesome. If I only owned a VCR I would call this number and try to turn it into cash. I love the internet.

    -G

    BONUS: The laser Dan is going to buy for us.

    Saturday, October 15, 2011

    Drinking Game: Sunshine



    Real talk, Sunshine is easily one of my and TK's favorite films. Danny Boyle is a master of the post/near apocalyptic genre. Also for an added bonus, the soundtrack is incredible and has been featured in motion pictures and television recently (Kick Ass for one). Everything is fundamentally awesome. Get some beer and peel your peepers cuz this is one hell of a movie.

    Step 1: Get a hold of Sunshine (holy shit the BLU-Ray is prettty)
    Step 2: ???

    Rules:
    Drink Whenever the following is said or heard:
    Capa
    Sun
    Icarus
    Units of time (14 hours, 10 seconds, 8 minutes anything with a number and a unit)
    Payload

    Drink Whenever the Following is seen:
    Sun
    Killian Murphy Sulks
    "Icarus"
    A crew member dies
    Someone drinks
    Flash frames of other crew members

    NIGHTMARE MODE:
    Waterfall whenever Pinbacker vision happens (that trippy wax on lens, double camera shit that happens whenever Pinbacker is on screen)

    Finish Your Drink When:
    One of the Icarus II's crew dies

    Final Thoughts:

    RYAN NEAL:
    My favorite part was when those two guys were totally gay. You know. Those two guys kept giving each other looks. You know. The Captain and Capa. They totally had something going on. Shit was obvious. The movie was great. The game was drunk. And.. if you're looking to watch a good movie and enjoy a good beer... The rules were very good. Aaah... Ya know. I got too drunk to think of anything actually appropriately funny. I think that you would get drunk and enjoy a great fucking movie at the same time. The rules get you thinking that male characters had sex with other characters. Maybe they did. Maybe they didnt. There were too many Capas. The Sun was making eyes at everyone. Capa and Mace were definitely fucking.

    BRANDY "B-TANS" TANNAHILL:
    Don't try this with wine HHGGGGNNN... It was difficult to keep track of things at the beginning, but it made sense at the end, which is not typically how it works. That ho should not be so mopey (Rose Burne), that made me mad. The guys should have operated the switch with the suit on and then floated over, but that did not happen so I was mad (referring to when Icarus I gets cut off from Icarus II and there is only one space suit). Excellent movie, Excellent game, not a good idea to play the game the first time you see it.

    TK:
    Its one of those drinking games where a few rules give you consistent drinks. Almost too much though, almost on par with the Conan drinking game. However being one of the best films ever made I willl Allow it. Also I am drunk. And Rose Burne is the sexiest female alive.

    GRANT:
    Ryan Neal is so high. This is easily the best movie ever made. The drinking game was good. I can't believe TK and I have watched this movie so many times and this is the first time we've actually put pen to paper and made the game. Feels great though. Try NIGHTMARE MODE for an added challenge!

    There was some kind of huge hullabaloo with the soundtrack. Apparently they never copyrighted it or only one of the guys from the composing team did or whatever. But they never really released an official soundtrack apart from an iTunes release. Anyway, listen to some of the delicious music:


    BONUS: Every other time we've watched it we just drank until we couldn't feel feelings, which is always a great way to appreciate some mother f'ing cinema. :3

    -G

    Friday, October 14, 2011

    More Stuff about ICP!


    So we were at the ICP show at The Grove last weekend, doin all sorts of science. Psychopathic Records was shooting a music video, here read their description:
    "...with no preparation, no budget, and no planning they shot a music video on the fly to go along with the track at the venue in LA! In addition to ICP, Twiztid, Blaze, and Big Hutch the music video features cameos by some of Psychopathic’s homies who had randomly stopped by to say hello at the LA gig. This includes Johnny Richter of the Kottonmouth Kings, Ron Jeremy, and Dennis White of Charm Farm AKA Static Revenger. But really, the biggest stars of the video are easily the Juggalos..."
    -InsaneClownPosse.com
    Sounds pretty serious, I know. There is one thing they forgot though, Brandy is totally in this music video. Stand by for her worldwide debut as featured talent:


    -G

    BONUS: Check out the video!

    Saturday, October 8, 2011

    The Show Must Go On

    (Click on me for full glorious resolution)

    Once in a while the moon and the stars align and something pretty rad happens in this great nation of ours. Psychopathic Records has pulled out all of the stops to bring a spectacle (the likes of which hasn't been seen in ages) to your big town. HotDamnTV had the very serious privilege of being invited to witness this spetacle when the Dark Carnival creeped, slithered, and slid through Anaheim, California (known to some as the county made of oranges). Coming to you (more dead than a)live from The Grove at Anaheim, we are proud to present Insane Clown Posse's American Psycho Tour.

    Right coast staples of the wicked shit (and your one-stop-shop for a good portion of the folks that used to roll with the Bloodhound Gang) Wolfpac opened up. Daddy Long Legs and the boys no doubt entertained the shit out of the Juggalos in attendance with their blend of bad ass hip hop and "strippers" that fail to fulfill one of their primary jobs in life (removing clothing). I've seen these guys do their thing many a time and I am never disappointed. They always take the time to send a few representatives out to their merch table to give daps to all of the ninjas that came out. Unfortunately, we missed their set due to traffic.


    Blaze delivered a solid set. When you go on a tour that is one Hatchet Warrior shy of Dark Lotus, you can expect to be entertained. He played all the classics like "Nasty" and "Hood Rat" and "Saturday Afternoon". The dead man had everyone's hands waving back and forth for "Escape Artist". A lot of Blaze's stuff is written with a hype man involved, but to save Mr. Grundy a bit of breath, he just wrapped his parts and then let the playback take care of the rest of the vocals. Notably absent were ABK or The ROC, who usually take the stage with him to lay down the hype. When you have this many acts sharing the same stage, some artists would just opt to hang up a banner, but considering Blaze only had the first 5 feet of the stage to work with, they put together a pretty cool backdrop (a giant clock riddled with bullets).


    Next up were the Monoxide Child and The Multiple Man, collectively known as Twiztid! They opened up laughing like a lunatic with their song "Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha" from their album w.i.c.k.e.d. The Juggalos popped like The Rock had just hit The Rock Bottom on a jabroni. They moved right on to "Die Motherfucker Die", and the whole crowd was screaming back the lyrics at the top of their lungs. My photographer asked me about the lack of crowd surfing and mosh pits (which she had come to know from seeing Twiztid in Hollywood). My best theory is that there were just too many people packed into such a small area to even get that kind of mayhem started.

    Segueing right into an old school and somewhat obscure favorite, the fearsome twosome showed off their skills with "Murder Murder Murder". They played through a huge portion of their discography with tracks like "Sex Drugs Money and Murder", "We Don't Die", "Bussyoheadopen", "So High" and "They Told Me". All great stuff.

    Some of the stand outs from their set were "Afraid of Me" as well as the songs they did when Blaze Ya Dead Homie came back out to lay down his part of "4 Thoze of U" and "How I Live". This was a rare treat, and the performance of this track was made even fresher because it was a special remixed version of "How I Live".


    Right before ICP was scheduled to hit the stage, JCW super star Corporal Robinson came out with a camera crew. The crowd was ready for the clowns, and he went on to whip them into a frenzy to film a little bit of a video for a song by (the myth, the legend) Legs Diamond. Fans of the Clowns will recognize Legs from his instrumental and vocal work all over ICP's catalog. Rumors have been floating around about him working on an album since I was a kid, so I can only imagine the project is nearing completion.



    There are a few times during the night when the crowd got so loud it was deafening. The first time was when the house lights cut off to signal the start of ICP's set. The speakers thrummed with bass and a record slowly spun up in vaudevillian fashion. The curtains opened, and the lights came up to the tune our National Anthem. And oh say, I could see: a stage covered in pristine unopened Faygo 2 liters, and a patriotic interpretation of the letters ICP as tall as the entire backdrop. The crowd is in a total frenzy at this point, screaming for the clowns. Shouts of "ICP" "Family!" and "We Want Faygo" are battling for supremacy over the general roar. Then, out come Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J on tricycles pimped out in styles both patriotic and psychopathic.

    The crowd was beside themselves, or at least they would have been if there was any room in the pit. (They
    were packed in there like Vienna Sausages.) ICP opened with "In Your Face" off of Bang Pow Boom, and immediately the clowns had the audience right where they wanted them. After a few bars, Violent J grabbed the first 2 liter of the night and the crowd went (pardon the pun) insane.


    For those of you who don't know, an Insane Clown Posse concert is like a baptism in Faygo. You don't attend the concert so much as tread soda pop the entire time. Tonight, the true believers were ready for their sacrament. ICP does not disappoint, they even have "Faygo Breaks" periodically during the show (during one of which I had to dive in front of my photographer to save her very expensive camera from a high velocity sample of Faygo Diet Rootbeer that was being fired from a water cannon). What is it like to be at one of these shows? Awesome. Fucking amazing. I have lost count of the people who have told me they hate ICP and then have gone to a show and can't stop raving about how much fun it was.

    Trying to write notes on the set list and what ever else was going on, (even when hiding behind a speaker stack) was difficult at best. You know that scene from Forrest Gump when he is in Vietnam, and he's writing that super fine gal from The Princess Bride letters about how the rain falls sideways and falls up and there was hard rain and soft rain and all that? Well imagine that but with thousands of variegated flavors of diet Faygo and that is a pretty close approximation.

    The set list had a very good sampling of some of the fan favorites. "Hokus Pokus", "Dead Body Man", "Bitches", "The Show Must Go On", "Tilt-A-Whirl", "Birthday Bitches", "I Stab People", "Fuck The World", "Miracles", "Down With The Clown" (Remix), "Marsh Lagoon", "The Nedden Game", "Let's Go All The Way", "Homies" (w/ Twiztid), "If I Was A Serial Killer", and finally "Bang Pow Boom" for the Faygo Armageddon at the end of the show.

    ICP's stage show is quite elaborate (as if rapping and throwing deelicious 2 liters onto the masses wasn't enough). For "Dead Body Man" they had a crew of zombies come out who would alternately grab Faygo and just flop around dead on the stage. For "Chicken Hunting" they threw feathers all over the crowd (and soda, don't think I forgot) and I feel like there was some sort of racist redneck effigy that was hurled out there too. For "Birthday Bitches" streamers were thrown, and most ended up tangled in the lighting grid. For a special treat, Twiztid even came out to share the stage and do their verses from "Homies".

    The final number was quite a spectacle this tour. For years ICP has ended the show on a high note and brought out everyone on the tour (as well as a whole heap of their pals) to throw the last of the soda. This is known as the Faygo Armageddon, and for good reason: if you weren't wet before, you will be by the end of this thing. ICP's thing is all about the packaging. Mainstream artists sell 200,000 units on iTunes, do a shitty arena show and then go home, but not the clowns. On this tour, ICP began offering VIP packages for the first time, which includes a Meet & Greet, Tour Shirt, CD, and (but wait there's more) the chance to participate in the final number, and help dump soda on your fellow ninjas in the pit. Breaking down the barrier between artist and fan is what separates Psychopathic from the majority of big label acts and even a lot of the independent ones.

    A BIG thank you to Psychopathic Records for inviting us to take part in one of their biggest and baddest tours to date. Another thank you goes out to the staff at The Grove of Anaheim, especially all the poor bastards that had to clean all that crap up. Stay tuned, we'll be posting more pictures on a flickr for all your observing pleasure as soon as we get 'em all watermarked with our Ace photographer Brandy's name all over 'em.


    Here is a quick sample of what you are missing if you don't go see this show! (This was shot in another state, earlier on the tour.) Buy the ticket, take the ride my friends.


    -G