Getting Down With the Clown!

The other night I just zoning in and out of another predictably underwhelming new episode of Saturday Night Live when I can across one of the most interesting sketches in a long time. Aside from being pretty funny (a most definite rarity in this the third decade era of the show), it surprised me with its acute esotericness. I certainly didn't expect this sort of random Gathering of the Juggalos bashing coming out of the SNL writer's room.

When it came on I was briefly taken back a couple of summers ago when I first came across a youtube clip advertising this surreal Insane Clown Posse themed Woodstock. Everything about it just seeming mesmerizingly terrible and fascinating at the same time. From the seemingly endless list of "underground" (i.e. obscure) random psychotic clown rap, horrorcore, rap rock, death metal acts, to the bizarre yet strangely fitting integration of backyard wrestling, carnival games, camping, and stand up comedy; it all seemed like some sort of mythical event of unfathomable suck. Even the venue city, Cave-In-Rock, IL, seemed like a fantasy location. Despite it being the Faygo soaked polar opposite of every musical, cultural, artistic aesthetic I enjoyed, deep in the back of my mind I kind of wanted to go just to see how much worse it could be, to really embrace the pure unadulterated awfulness.

Looking at the latest, psychotic, mud caked infomercial for the 2009 gathering below, I am pleasantly disturbed that even though the SNL sketch was obviously exaggerated for comic effect, I still find the real thing to be even more surreal and nonsensical.



So anyone up for a road trip to Cave-In-Rock the 11th annual next summer?