Heavy Metal Picnic was supposed to be Jeff Krulik's big break. The documentary filmmaker behind the cult smash Heavy Metal Parking Lot has made every kind of documentary over the course of two decades. But he hasn't made anything with as big a place in the zeitgeist as the impromptu footage he and John Heyn captured in 1986 outside a Judas Priest concert in Landover, Md. When Krulik came across some footage from a totally rocking field concert held in rural Maryland in the late ‘80s, he decided to tap into Heavy Metal Parking Lot's magic one last time. Over the course of a year, Krulik tracked down and interviewed the festival's major personalities and cut those interviews with footage captured by a shoulder-cam and a CBS microphone stolen from Ronald Reagan's second inauguration. On August 6, 2010, Heavy Metal Picnic premiered to a packed house at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. Here’s what’s happened since.

August 20, 2010: Krulik emails friends and supporters, “I expect good things in the coming months and next year, and I'll keep you informed of future screenings, as well as DVD availability.”

October 25: Krulik writes on Facebook: “I took the plunge (to the tune of $800) and submitted it to a bunch of fests. God help me.”

December 6: Krulik receives a rejection from the Slamdance Film Festival.

December 7: Krulik and Heyn, who co-directed Heavy Metal Parking Lot, appear on Last Call with Carson Daly to hype Heavy Metal Parking Lot’s 25th anniversary. Carson Daly calls HMPL “one of the greatest rock documentaries of all time.” Heyn says that Edward Norton watched the film on the set of Fight Club, and Krulik says Norton called it “anthropological genius.” Midway through the segment, Krulik hypes Heavy Metal Picnic for 60 seconds.

January 8, 2011: Krulik receives rejections from the Berlin Film Festival and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Krulik emails some friends to share his disappointment. “This all started with Brendan Conway convincing me that I should enter Sundance. $1,000 later we entered 25 or so and are down to 20. I think. I've stopped paying attention. Well, not exactly. If I wasn't paying attention or caring I wouldn't be bothering you with this. Conway is not unlike the kid who made the frozen telephone pole tongue dare in A Christmas Story. And I'm the kid who sticks his tongue on the pole. Once, Conway dared me to go ask Harry Connick Jr. a question at a cable TV banquet. Connick was standing there talking to that Victoria's Secret model girlfriend of his. Conway dared me; he even called me 'yellow.' So I went up and asked. And Connick and his girlfriend completely ignored me. Pretended like I didn't even exist and I was standing right next to them.”

January 18: Krulik receives a rejection from the Noise Pop Film Festival: “Hello!I hope this finds you well! I wanted to thank you for your submissions to the 2011 Noise Pop Film Festival! While all of the submissions were wholly appreciated, we have not chosen to screen your film in this years festival.” In size 14 font, Krulik writes, “The uncoolness continues.”

January 31: Krulik receives a rejection email from South by Southwest Film Festival. “We’re very sorry to say that receiving this letter means 'Heavy Metal Picnic' did not get accepted to SXSW 2011. And we’re sorry that we have to send the news in a bulk email.” As a consolation, SXSW offers rejected filmmakers the early bird discount on admission to the festival. Writes Krulik: “All together now F**k This S**t!”

February 1: Rudy Childs, a major character in Heavy Metal Picnic, emails Krulik a hastily mocked up flier for the film. “Come see what has the critics ranting and the film festivals refusing to screen, one of the edgiest films about the 80s,” reads the tagline. In lieu of praise from critics, Childs lists one-sentence snippets of rejection emails. Krulik politely tells him to never show the flier to anyone. “It's going to be best to just let the film festival route fizzle out, and take the high road. We will have other screening opportunities, and some are already emerging.” Later, he writes me: “I would have much much much much much much much much rather gone to the racetrack with” the festival submission money. In the same email, he takes stock in the fact that the James River Film Fest in Richmond and the Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee have agreed to screen the film, noting that neither required a submission fee nor even a screener.

February 21: Krulik receives a rejection from the Vail Film Festival.

February 24: “Heavy Metal Picnic REJECTION # I'VE LOST COUNT” reads the subject of Jeff’s latest email. This time it’s the London Documentary Film Festival.

March 10: Krulik is accepted to the Frederick Film Festival, which will screen both Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Heavy Metal Picnic. “We are finally getting some screenings planned for Heavy Metal Picnic,” he writes. “Including the Nashville Film Festival, Richmond Virginia and an encore at the AFI Silver on Friday, June 17.”

March 18: Krulik receives a rejection from Hot Docs Canada and Atlanta Film Festival. “But we are in Frederick Film Festival and Nashville Film Festival and the James River Film Fest,” writes Krulik, “where at the conclusion I will jump into the James River and cleanse myself of my sins. Hallelujah!”

March 24: HMP and HMPL screen at Frederick Film Festival.

Arpil 9: HMP and HMPL screen at Richmond Film Fest.

April 16 and 17: HMP screens at Nashville Film Festival.

April 18: Krulik reports that the Nashville screening was a hit. “Word from Rudy Childs on the ground in Nashville is that the two screenings of Heavy Metal Picnic at the Nashville Film Festival were well attended and well received. The Sunday night screening was a sellout too. And Curtis Merkle and Rudy were feted and interviewed on the red carpet. I hope that footage makes it onto a blog or TV story.”

June 2: A marketing agency emails Krulik and Heyn with a request to screen Heavy Metal Parking Lot at Bonnaroo. “How much money is in this for us? Nice of you to wait one week before Bonnaroo to ask our permission,” Krulik writes back. “But at least you asked. So thanks. But how did this come about? Seems like we're an afterthought to me. I'm not sure what the upside is.”

June 17: Encore screening of HMP at AFI Silver.

June 29: Krulik is interviewed by NPR’s Bob Boilen about the 25th anniversary of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and manages to “shoehorn in a mention of Heavy Metal Picnic.”

August 3: Krulik announces the DVD release party for HMP. “November 19 in Baltimore at the Creative Alliance. Unorthodox will reunite (featuring Ronnie Kalimon and Dale Flood of Asylum) and it should be great fun,” he writes in an email.

September 2: Krulik announces screening events for HMP in Coney Island, Montreal, and San Francisco. HMP screens in Pittsburgh.

Sept. 6: Peter Sallade, a programmer at the Beijing International Film Festival, emails Krulik:

Hey, so my friends own this popular American BBQ joint right by the US Embassy, which is the perfect venue for your documentary. Normally we try not to show anything without Chinese subtitles, but this'll be easy since pretty much everyone who comes to the place understands English to a degree.

I've booked it for October 17th, billing the evening as our ‘Budgetless Bombs’ night, where we show the worst movies we've ever received,” Sallade writes. “That gives me an excuse to show some unintentionally funny stuff as well. I hope you don't mind getting lumped into this category. It's all in the name of making the event promotion interesting and getting some more movies into the mix that we wouldn't be able to screen otherwise!

Krulik responds:

What kind of imbecile would tell someone they are being accepted into a film festival, but lumped into 'the worst movies we've ever received?' What do you think? Of course I mind being 'lumped into this category.' Did I pay an admission fee for this honor? Do whatever you want. Have fun.”

In an email to Heyn, Krulik writes, “I cannot wait for this year to be over so I can move on with my life.”

September 7: Salade responds to Krulik:

Ok, sorry about that! There's really no intention to offend! Some filmmakers don't mind, like Andy from Troma, who also lives in Beijing and might bring over some Troma movies! These screenings are free of course! Never an admission fee to come have a party and laugh at the silliness projected. Thanks for your patience and understanding and we're grateful for your permission to show "Heavy Metal Picnic" at the Budgetless Bombs night! It'll go great with pulled pork BBQ and beer!

Krulik responds:

Man you've got some balls, and I gotta say, I'm impressed. I called you an imbecile and it bounced off you like teflon. You've got what it takes to succeed in this business, and I'm not joking.

Best of luck with your fest and screenings.

September 23-25: HMP screens at Coney Island and in Montreal.

Sept. 28: Krulik emails supporters with reactions to the Coney Island and Montreal screenings. “They loved us in Montreal! And at Coney Island there were about 12 persons there, and they enjoyed it as well, but maybe not as enthusiastically as Montreal. Glad to hear it. Onward to DVD Release!”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

On the eve of a possible government shutdown, Bravo has announced that it is shutting down the Real Housewives of D.C. Not for nothing, either: RHDC was the worst show in the franchise, and Washington, D.C., is where reality TV comes to die.

What Bravo producers have managed to conjure up in cities across the country—Kathy Hilton’s sisters and a slew of sassy B-listers in Beverly Hills; Scotty Pippin’s wife and a gaggle of Hispanic hotties in Miami; socialites in New York; psychopaths in Jersey; pop-psychologising helicopter parents in Orange County; hellcats in Hotlanta—they could not find in D.C.’s swampy atmosphere.

The producers thought they would find something better. In lieu of women who were smoking hot or filthy rich, Bravo would elect a cast of first ladies, then subpoena their social lives and FOIA their family secrets. The results would be sexy and interesting, even if the women were not.

If you watched the show, you know that Bravo failed to entice a single power player in front of its cameras, and instead, settled for women who live near power players, as does basically every resident of D.C. and Northern Virginia. The ensuing season was boring and sad and completely unspectacular.

Real Housewives of D.C. wouldn't have been much better if its wives were married to senators, agency heads, and high-powered lobbyists—it probably would have been worse. Not only are those titles not particularly interesting in and of themselves (there are 535 members of Congress, and most of them are boring!), but also, D.C. is inherently conservative, and the best Real Housewives episodes involve people getting shit-faced and screaming at each other.

Bravo was duped. The show's producers approached D.C. with the naiveté befitting recent college grads chasing fumes of hope and change when they should have been skeptical of the city's sense of its own importance.

If a band is getting tons of buzz, a grup will normally put on a skinny tie before heading to the show

As a follow-up to yesterday's computer-assisted investigative feature on D.C. grups (and their apparent reliance on Pitchfork), Washington City Paper decided to track down an actual grup and figure out what makes him tick. Matt Frost is married and lives in Virginia. He has a bunch of kids. Dismemberment Plan played a show in his basement once. He is a grup. This is his story.

Matt Frost: OK. I figured out how to turn this on.

Washington City Paper: Shit. I was just trying to find a way to invite you to chat.

This part of Google could be more intuitive!

Frost: I'm trying to dig up the old, seminal article about grups from one of those New York web mags.

Got it.

WCP: Yeah, that's "Up With Grups" by Adam Sternbergh! That is in the best of New York anthology sitting atop my shitter.

Since you are a grup, I think it's fitting that you open up with some thoughts. Maybe a confession, or some data.

Like, what makes you a grup?

Frost: OK. First, I'll qualify my self-identification. I'm not actually cool enough to be on, say, that GQ list.

But since "grup" is like "hipster" in that nobody will admit to being one, I thought calling myself one would inoculate me against actually being one.

Like, among my most-listened to albums from 2010 is Jakob Dylan's Women and Country. That's definitely not cool.

It's not even uncool in a cool way.

WCP: No, you are exactly right! There is no redeeming Jakob Dylan!

I was thinking maybe you were going to say the new Reba album, which is good country pop.

Frost: It's not a bold contrarian stroke, like Chuck Klosterman claiming that Chinese Democracy is actually good.

Right. That would be on another level.

Jakob Dylan is straight-up adult contemporary, but in the closet.

WCP: Well, Dylan aside, consider yourself inoculated against vicious attacks (from me)

Frost: So kind.

But I think there's a point to make about the hegemony of Pitchfork, which is that the people who like these bands aren't just all peers of one another—they are, more or less, peers of the musicians themselves.

I mean, the Walkmen went to St Alban's. Some of them have kids and moved from N.Y. to Philly.

That's the story with tons of people I know.

WCP: Oh, I like this idea.

Frost: So I don't think it's fair to say that the Pitchfork audience is a bunch of sheep, all engaged in mutual signaling.

WCP: I didn't mean to imply that! But, how many of the people polled by GQ could name 10 of the American Top 40?

One person told me he had heard one song from AT40.

Frost: Right. That's a good point.

But I think the uniformity of opinion emerges as much from commonalities between producers and consumers as among consumers.

WCP: Katy Perry didn't go to Columbia, and one could argue that her biggest fans didn't either.

Frost: The folks on that list probably would not have hung out with, say, Daughtry in high school.

WCP: Meanwhile, I don't know a single red-blooded American who actually likes Vampire Weekend!

I mean, when did this start? Is this a Velvet Underground thing?

Frost: Good question. Probably sooner. The idea that the rock star package included the role of "generational standard-bearer" came about in the '60s.

But the more subtle, fine-grained class identification came later.

WCP: You know why I've never thought about this? Because I grew up in St. Cloud, Florida.

But please, continue!

Frost: Hey—let's start calling Vampire Weekend "The" Vampire Weekend and see if it catches on?

WCP: Now you're just being antagonistic!

You sound like Terry Teachout describing "The" Family Guy!

Frost: (For the record, I like Vampire Weekend. It's something the whole family enjoys.)

WCP: My family is big into Paul Simon's Graceland, which is what Vampire Weekend is sucking the life out of every time they pick up their instruments.

Frost: So, yeah. Maybe rock star-to-audience solidarity started at the generational level. Then as audiences grew more fractured, the bonds of affinity between performer and audience followed?

WCP: Well, did they? People seem really into their bands nowadays.

I was just grooving on this idea of educated and/or wealthy people listening to the shit they find on Pitchfork, and everybody else listening to FM radio.

Frost: Reihan Salam has a few good references and quotes about the myth of eclecticism, and how people think they are culturally omnivorous, but they really build their consumption profile via exclusion.

WCP: Of course we do! I will not listen to the Beatles or the Stones.

I just won't.

Frost: Ha ha.

WCP: And yet I still consider myself well rounded musically

Frost: Wait. Really?

WCP: Yes, really.

I will not be a reverse grup

Frost: That's hard core.

The question of Pitchfork being the FM radio of the cultural vanguard is pretty good.

Part of the problem is the search costs of new music.

Unless you're really into the cool-hunting process, you are going to need some trusted source to vet cultural products and present them to you.

So whether that's the FM radio or Pitchfork, you're still just getting a highly filtered stream of material.

But...

It's hard to really quantify how much is "out there."

So our intuitions about how much we're missing might be totally wrong.

WCP: Well, we have some tools. (One of which I am looking for!)

Frost: What if there really are only a handful of ways for a civilian like me to be "way into music."

WCP: Or what if there are only a handful of convenient ways?

Frost: Yeah, that's the "civilian" distinction I'm making.

WCP: As opposed to a tenured ethnomusicologist!

All of this, btw, runs up against the grup theory.

Frost: I knew a guy in school who was always turning us on to new (and old) stuff. He now has a really great label that cranks out equal parts old obscure craziness and new indie stuff. But he learned at an early age how to scour used bins, chat up record store clerks, etc.

How so? (I think I know, but)

WCP: Well, if a) many grups are actually following bands staffed by people in their age range and b) it would be exceedingly difficult for grups to join another "tribe" of listeners, then how is being 30 and liking The National a) their fault or b) a bad thing?

Frost: Yes! The sorting is almost inevitable, once you look at it that way.

WCP: Well, I feel like an asshole now.

And I just realized: There's more to the grup thing than music!

Frost: Now you're talking.

WCP: There are the iPods, the jeans, the hairstyles, the living in lofts with their babies in hammocks 8 feet off the floor.

All that shit is part of being a grup, too.

Matt: I think that's more Brooklyn-specific.

Making your baby wear a Misfits shirt is still cooler than worrying that having a baby will cramp your style.

WCP: Hmm, yes, being alternadad versus being an uncle!

Frost: Anyway, I think the Pitchfork grups that you ragged on today are a symptom of a cultural ecosystem that 1) prizes eclecticism and omnivorous consumption, BUT 2) is not as porous as we think it is.

WCP: I like where this is going

Frost: We think we enjoy a groovy pomo buffet of cultural offerings, and there are these master semionauts like the Beastie Boys and Kanye West who can sample like crazy, but for your average listener to really traverse the different cultural stovepipes is difficult and rare.

WCP: SAMPLES. I have no idea where my favorite ones come from. And I read about music A LOT.

You know what else is like this? Covers!

I went to college with guys who thought that Dave Matthews wrote All Along the Watch Tower

Frost: Ouch. I was just about to suggest that covers are an easier hierarchy for audiences to situate themselves in, but then there's that guy.

And ha ha, everybody knows that Jimi Hendrix wrote that song!

Let me go switch the laundry. BRB

WCP: Ha. OK!

Frost: DJs who build beats and dig up samples are busy with their own arms race of obscurity and cool. Way over my head.

But then that Girl Talk guy comes along and brings it down to a popular level, and everyone's all SQUEEEEEEEE! THIS IS THE BEST WEDDING DJ EVAR!!!!!!!

WCP: You asshole.

Frost: But really—did any of us need to be reminded of Onyx?

WCP: I have some Girl Talk on my computer.

Mainly because it's easy to collect music even if I don't want to listen to it.

Frost: Me too! It's free! And maybe against the law! So get it before they lock that guy up!

WCP: Here's what I don't understand: Why is it OK for my cool friends to like Girl Talk, which is mashed up FM hits from the last 30 years, but I can't listen to Matchbox 20?

It's like, selectively upgrading cultural artifacts.

Frost: Yeah, ironic distance is everything.

WCP: But here's the thing: I like all the artists Girl Talk samples. I grew up listening to the radio. I listened to pop radio stations when I did my homework in middle school and high school.

I'm not being ironic when I say I like the artists GT samples.

Why must we french our secret loves with acid tongues?

Frost: I decided when I was 12 that I was too cool for top 40, and switched to classic rock radio.

The notion of the "guilty pleasure" is so prominent.

WCP: Where did you come from that 12-year-olds worried about being hip?

(Mind you, in central florida our guiding light was Total Request Live.)

Frost: I think we just decided that Duran Duran were too foppy.

It's like what [Ta-Nehisi Coates] said about Prince the other day.

It takes a certain maturity for young dudes to rock out to dudes in eyeliner.

WCP: COUNTERPOINT: How do you explain sentimentalists from the suburbs putting on fishnets and listening to My Chemical Romance?

Is that like, emotional maturity?

Or maybe, "adult feelings" manifesting in less than adult ways.

Frost: Um, that's not on my radar, as they say. I'd have to google My Chemical Romance.

WCP: Oh shit! That's awesome!

You haven't heard of My Chemical Romance!

Ha. That is so cool.

And weird.

Frost: No. Hip me.

I have, like, seven minutes to get with it before I have to pack it in.

WCP: Haha, you are a dad

Frost: Are they "beatniks?"

WCP: My Chemical Romance are emo kids. Lots of makeup, loud guitars, with lyrics about being a sad bitch.

I love them.

Very, very much.

Frost: OK. I can guess the rest.

WCP: Go do dad stuff.

Frost: Yeah, I have Christmas cookies to wrap up. For real.

WCP: I have some weed to smoke.

This has been fun!

Matt Frost everybody!

Frost: Word!

This is what grups look like when they read Pitchfork.

Someone sent us a list from the Tumblr of Gentleman's Quarterly yesterday. The list is called: "Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Political Hacks’ Best Music of 2010 Lists." The lists are authored almost exclusively by white people who probably own expensive headphones. It is mostly "Arcade Fire" written over and over again.

The list was assembled by Wonkette emeritus and Air America survivor Ana Marie Cox, who works for GQ now. This list is proof that AMC has a bunch of grups in her rolodex.

A "grup" is a grownup who reads Pitchfork/buys the same MP3s as people who are in college for the first time.

Let's explore/hate on the list.

The Big Winners: Arcade Fire (11 mentions), Kanye West (8 mentions), Sleigh Bells (7 mentions), The National (6 mentions), Robyn (5 mentions), LCD Soundsystem (5 mentions) Beach House (4 mentions), Superchunk (4 mentions), Best Coast (4 mentions), Joanna Newsom (4 mentions), The New Pornographers (4 mentions).

Average Pitchfork score for the most recent album by each of the above mentioned artists: 8.7545

Mean Pitchfork score: 8.7

Median Pitchfork score: 8.65

Artist who did not make the cut that should have: Cee Lo Green (0 mentions).

Artist who made the cut but should not have: Vampire Weekend (3 mentions).

Most earnest pick: The Nation's Chris Hayes, who is going to put an Arcade Fire lyric in his book about politics:

Album of the Year has to go to (surprise!) Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs. There are so any beautiful, wrenching, sweeping, gorgeous moments on this album I can’t list them all. That line about how receiving letters: “what’s stranger still is how something so small can keep you alive.” And “when we watched the markets crash, the promises we made were torn” which i’m using as an epigraph in my book for the chapter on bailouts and the social contract. It’s a big amibitious albume that captures where we are at the end of this low dishonest decade.

Of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Hayes writes, "Not an original pick, and I actually think the rhymes are pretty weak on some tracks, but it’s the best produced hip hop album since The Chronic 2001 IMHO. The first single, Power just won’t stop psyching me up." Stay psyched, Chris!

Most obscure pick: There are no b-sides anymore and bootlegs are like herpes on the Internet (everyone has them), so it is more difficult than ever to be the guy who has heard something that most people have not. WCP's own Mike Madden is that guy! Madden listed as one of his favorite songs: "The Connoisseurs Present Wali AKA Big Wax feat. Weensy of Backyard Band, 'Don’t Leave Us Fenty,' a song anyone who wrote about D.C. politics had stuck in their head all summer despite its COMPLETELY ABSURD LYRICS AND VIDEO, produced by, and featuring an appearance by, Adrian Fenty crony Ron Moten." Nice.

General nature of the list: Sad/emo/hipster/blah.

Photo courtesy of felix venero 3mo lOver

For starters, a list of badass Q&As ‘we’ read this year. Observe the Q&A; most abused and mocked of all content/gimmicks:

This being the end of the year, and me being a sucker for Q&As done right, you can find my favorite written examples from the past year below the jump. (Including, but not limited to, Q&As that feature maggots, watermelons, and the decline of Gallagher!)

Most fucked up Q&A: “THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH,” from Vice. September, 2010.

This is a Q&A with plane-crash Juliane Koepcke. In 1971, Koepcke and her mother were aboard a commercial flight heading over the Peruvian rain forest when their plane was struck by lightning. Ninety-two people died; only Koepcke lived. She survived for nearly two weeks in the Peruvian rain forest despite some injuries before being discovered by laborers. In this Q&A, Koepcke talks with odd detachment about treating a wound that was full of maggots, which freaks the shit out of her interviewer.

You only broke one bone after falling from the sky?
Well, other things were found later when I saw a doctor. I had strained the vertebrae in my neck and I had a partially fractured shin, but that was a fissure only, not too bad. And I tore my ACL—which was the worst of all the injuries, actually, but I didn’t know about that until I was in a hospital bed. That’s when the swelling and the 104-degree fever set in.

So, in the jungle, you didn’t just block things out mentally but also physically.
The only thing that made me nervous, or let’s say concerned me, was this little patch on my upper arm. It wasn’t any tragic wound or anything, but it was small and open and flies had laid their eggs in it. The maggots hatched underneath my skin and ate a hole into my arm.

Oh my God.
I was afraid they might have to amputate my arm. After our dog had a similar thing—I think it was the same kind of fly too—it got infected. I was concerned and I thought, “I have to do something about this. I have to get these maggots out of my arm.” But that wasn’t exactly easy. I had this ring that was open on one side that you could squeeze together, and I tried with that. It didn’t work because the hole was so deep. So I tried with a stick, but that didn’t work either. Only after ten days, when I found a boat with a motor and a barrel of diesel fuel, was I able to do the same thing we had done to our dog—pour petroleum into the wound. That brought the maggots to the surface. Not all of them, but the majority. The people who found me and the doctor who treated me extracted the rest.

Most depressing interview: Gallagher, the AV Club. Dec., 2009.

Technically, this interview was published less than 12 months from today, on Dec. 29. So, technically, it is going on my list. This. The man who used to smash watermelons like a damn hooligan is now a grumpy, lawn-owning, 63-year-old racist. In a nutshell, this is the sad clown.

Gallagher: Comedians need meaning. We need to know what words mean, and our society now is intent on blurring the meaning of just about everything. And the legal system also! “What is an adult? What’s premeditation? What is a felony?” It’s very difficult. “What’s improper behavior?” I ask these cops. If the kids already have their pants mostly down and they’re facing a wall, how do you know they’re not about to pee on the wall? Because this is what you do with homeless guys. You would catch them with their pants half down and you would get them for indecent exposure and public urination. And the cop told me, you can’t arrest them until you see the “brown round.”

AVC: What? What’s that?

Gallagher: That’s your dick. I guess everybody has a brown dick.

Most refreshingly un-pretentious: “Return of the Woodster: The Rumpus Interview With Gary Shteyngart,” in The Rumpus. July, 2010.

Shteynart’s newest book, Super Sad Tue Love Story is not laugh-out-loud funny, but sort of what you’d expect from a book that is marketed to/by the literary hipset as “an ingenious satire” (Mary Gaitskill), “keen-edged satire” (David Mitchell), “one of the funniest and most frightening books I’ve ever read” (Edmund White), and Shteyngart’s “soulful, smart, and hilarious best” (Jay Motherfucking McInerney). But even though his bookflap makes me want to put a pillow over his face, Shteyngart’s interview with the Rumpus is so self-deprecating that I now want to get baked with the guy.

Rumpus: What surprised you about this book?

Shteyngart: That I could allow the love story to take center stage with each subsequent draft. The initial drafts read like a bad version of an Isaac Asimov science-fiction magazine. I mean, that was what I grew up with.

Rumpus: Isaac Asimov?

Shteyngart: Oh, God. [Makes masturbatory motion.] Anyway, but then it became—the more knowledge I dropped on this book’s fat ass, the less it was compelling. The more I pulled back and let this lovestory go, the more I felt confident of the book’s vitality. All I want from a book is to feel like it’s as alive as I am, but a lot of the fiction I encounter is just dead. It says, “I’m a piece of wood, but a brilliantly designed piece of wood.”

Rumpus: A very pliable piece of wood.

Shteyngart: I’m so pliable! Look at me, I’m the Woodster! Mwah-mwah!

Tie: Best interview with a dead person that was published on the web for the first time in 2010: Barry Hannah in the Oxford American, David Foster Wallace in Slate.

The difference between Wallace and Hannah is that Wallace died young and famous, and Hannah just died. In a review of Hannah’s posthumously published best of anthology, former Paris Review editor Nathaniel Rich described receiving a letter from Hannah in which the Mississippi fiction writer began a letter to Rich with, "I'm not accustomed to this kind of thing, but I'm the author of Geronimo Rex, Airships, Ray, High Lonesome. . . " Rich, born in 1980, came into being several years after Hannah had written his greatest work, “Geronimo Rex.” Ironically, the Paris Review is filled with people like Hannah: Writers’ writers. An interview he did at the beginning of the decade with OA Editor Marc Smirnoff revealed just how weird Hannah was. And an interview Tom Scocca (WCP alumnus!) did with Foster a few years earlier reveals just how normal the novelist was despite the weird persona he crafted in his nonfiction.

From the Hannah interview:

THE OA: How meaningful is criticism to you?

BH: Criticisms never made a difference in my work. They hurt other writers, apparently. I just skim the bad ones. This last one, in the New York Times, the fellow, a British guy, a film critic, thought that Yonder Stands Your Orphan—which I think is my best book, and I don't think that will change for a while, until I write my next one—was just a parade of eccentrics and gargoyles and that it was repetitive. These folks may also be eccentric, but it seems to me that privately we are all monsters, if we'd only look at our obsessions. I'm not, in other words, trying to put on a freak parade. I am trying to get to the bottom of our last, basic, desperate questions and the loves, desires, and terrible needs that sometimes may come off as freakish to others. And I certainly wouldn't want to be repetitive, but I read that, and it doesn't hurt me. I know that you need a good New York review to sell more books, but I'm changing nothing, and I'm not belligerent about that—I'm just going to do what I can in the next book. I've been in a room with authors who are physically challenged by reviewers. I mean, they want to attack them with their fists. I don't know that I've ever faced but about two critics who wanted to destroy my career. Those are curious people. But they're out there.

From the DFW interview:

Q: Like I know it's on a left-hand page toward the bottom. But that doesn't happen. Like I get lost in your stuff. How hard do you want the reader to have to work?

DFW: You know what? To be honest with you, it's not something that I—I don't really think that way, and I don't think that way because I just don't, I don't want to go down that path of trying to anticipate, like a chess player, every reader's reaction.

The footnotes, the honest thing is, is the footnotes were an intentional, programmatic part of Infinite Jest, and they get to be kind of—you get sort of addicted to 'em. And for me, a lot of those pieces were written around the time that I was typing and working on Infinite Jest, and so it's just, it's a kind of loopy way of thinking, that it seems to me is in some ways mimetic.

I don't know you, but certainly the way I think about things and experience things is not particularly linear, and it's not orderly, and it's not pyramidical, and there are a lot of loops. Most of the nonfiction pieces are basically, just, look, I'm not a great journalist, and I can't interview anybody, but what I can do is kind of, I will slice open my head for you. And let you see a cross-section of just a kind of average, averagely bright person's head at this thing.

Q: How much gag writing do you do? To what extent when you're doing these things do you try to be deliberately humorous, and how much do comic effects just sort of arise from the thought processes?

DFW: I'll tell you. I think another reason why I'm not doing any more of these for a while is, by the end, I think the last one I did was the Lynch thing, there really was kind of a shtick emerging. And the shtick was somewhat neurotic, hyper-conscious guy, like, showing you how weird this thing is that not everybody thinks is weird.
I think it's more that kind of trying to—trying to notice stuff that everybody else notices but they don't really notice that they notice? Which I think a fair amount of good comedians do that, too. I don't think, I would never go, oh, it's time for a gag, and just stick in a gag or something.

These are just a handful of the ones that really stuck out for me. If I could find a link, I’d add John Mayer’s interview with Playboy. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

But now I suspect that the Germans would not be bothered Wojnarowicz’s exhibit because they love art even more than we Americans. Also, piss-play:

What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic drugs? Soma, Carsten Höller's current installation in a former railway station in Berlin, purports to be offering exactly that. A pen running the length of the Hamburger Bahnhof, now the city's contemporary art museum, contains 12 reindeer, 24 canaries, eight mice and two flies. Giant toadstool sculptures are planted on a mushroom clock that the reindeer can turn with their antlers, and at the centre is a mushroom-shaped "floating hotel" – a bed on a platform complete with minibar, yours for €1,000 a night. (There's also a raffle giving away free places.)

The twist is that this is meant to be a scientific experiment, in which half the reindeer have been fed "fly agaric" mushrooms, which they consume naturally in the wilds of Siberia. It makes their urine hallucinogenic (some people believe that this is the origin of the story of Santa Claus's sleigh being pulled by flying, red-nosed reindeers).

The urine is collected by handlers and stored in fridges by the walls, which also hold both dried and fresh fly agaric mushrooms. By day they're locked, but at night the fridges are opened, allowing people staying over to sample the contents. However, because only half the reindeer are fed the mushrooms, it's impossible to know which bottles, if any, contain hallucinogenic urine.

By comparison, bugs on a crucifix is downright tame. And can you imagine the prudish outcry if a large publicly funded American museum gave away psychedelic deer piss?

Carl Cephas has spent the last 10 years of his life fighting his one-time employer, the Library of Congress. Last Christmas, the Library fired Cephas after placing him on unpaid leave for almost six months and 27 years as an employee. This Christmas, it rejected his appeal of his firing.

Cephas first stirred up trouble in the late '90s by keeping a serial-killer trading card set and a copy of Going Postal on his desk. The two items together weirded out his colleagues, so Cephas underwent a psychological evaluation to prove that he was, in fact, just a harmless musical archivist with a weird sense of humor.

I wrote about Cephas in November 2009. This is how I laid out the series of escalating arguments that got him put on leave the previous summer: There was the time he told his supervisor Mary Wedgewood, “Fuck you, go suck eggs,” after she served him with a written reprimand. The time he “engaged in a long and very loud” phone conversation about the dead mice he’d trapped in his apartment, which some of his co-workers believed was “intended to disgust everyone in the room.” There were the many times he refused to clean up the cultural curios that cluttered his work area, his penchant for introducing the word shit into conversation, and his habit of greeting his friends by bellowing, “Hey motherfucker!”

Shortly after our story came out in 2009, the Library concluded its investigation into Cephas’ behavior. Then they fired him. In September of 2010, Cephas had his appeal hearing. That investigation is apparently over as well, and the Library has not changed its mind.

Cephas, who also also runs the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, sent me an e-mail update late last night, invoking Wedgewood, the supervisor with whom Cephas frequently butted heads:

The Library of Congress rejected my plea. I've lost my final appeal there. Sue Vita said that my coming back would be devastating even though she has never worked with me. Now, I have to find a proper legal team because now I can sue the L.C. Every one there knows that the L.C. hired Mary Wedgewood as my babysitter. She even made a character up that does not exist. She told a co-worker (who wants to remain anonymous) that her sole purpose there was to get rid of me. Perhaps out of revenge for the Going Postal episode which I was also innocent off. This is one royal mess. All I need is for the right people to hear my story. They won't be intimidated by the L.C.'s bullying.

I've written a few notes to show you how absurd this thing really is. If something should happen to me, please forward these notes so that people will know the truth. I am not a bad man. I don't deserve this maddening treatment. Thanks for listening.

I sent Cephas an e-mail asking for more details and will update when I hear back.

Bonus: Cephas, who is big into theatrics, made some extranormal videos in which characters talk about Cephas’ travails in the third person. (Sample dialogue: “His cracked tooth got the better of him. His body is becoming septic.”)

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Two weeks ago, New York Times book flogger Michiko Kakutani pretended to be Brian the dog from Family Guy in order to review a biography of Marilyn Monroe's dog, because apparently doing it like a normal person just does not do it for Kakutani anymore. Other people saw Kakutani writing poorly while pretending to be a dog, and this got the internet started on a conversation about failure. In particular: Failing at affecting some other thing's/person's style in order to review books from a different perspective.

Here is some of the badness:

Brian the dog here. You know, the talking dog from “Family Guy”: best-selling author, actor, television writer, movie director, song-and-dance ace, civil rights crusader and, yes, animal companion. Because of my sterling literary credentials, I’ve been asked to review this British pooch’s new memoir: “The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe,” ghosted by this novelist guy Andrew O’Hagan.

This pup scored some rave reviews in England, and no doubt about it, he has a fabulous story to tell. His owner was no ordinary family guy, but Marilyn Monroe — yes, that Marilyn Monroe, the doomed star of the silver screen, the blond bombshell and movie goddess, the woman Marx (Groucho, that is, not Karl) called “Mae West, Theda Bara and Bo-Peep all rolled into one.”

In Kakutani's defense, the internet consensus was that all such attempts are normally embarrassing for everybody involved. There is an exception, however, and it was published right here at the Washington City Paper in April of 1998. That month, Eddie Dean impersonated punk legend and annoying activist Henry Rollins:

Hey fuckface, I'm author Henry Rollins. You may remember me from such kickass classics as Pissing in the Gene Pool, Black Coffee Blues, Art to Choke Hearts, and Solipsist. I wrote and published these books myself, and you can find them at your favorite record stores. Tower has a whole shelf of my books next to books by my hero Charles Bukowski. He was ugly as shit and he didn't take care of his body, but he was a brilliant fucking writer. His books are about him. My books are all about me and things I think and the things I like to do, like drinking black coffee that burns my throat and makes me shit a lot. And playing music with my punk-metal band so I don't want to kill people all the time. And lifting weights. And lifting weights while I listen to CDs by the Stooges. But mostly, my books are about things I fucking hate. Like people with fake smiles and brightly dressed college kids. I get so pissed off about stuff that I tear at my dark clothes and write about my fucked-up feelings. How it hurts a lot in my head and how most people make me fucking sick.

Now a New York publishing company is collecting my writing in one volume–selected chunks of raw Rollins in one big book. The cool thing is that for once I don't have to publish it myself. The company is doing all that stuff. All I had to do was write an introduction. But I still feel a bit like a beat-up whore for selling my writing to some company. The way I justify it is I'm fucking glad that now my writing is gonna be sitting like some crazy ticking time bomb in some shitty library in some shitty suburb. And then some kid will read it and start lifting weights and using his fucking head.

I wanted to show you a raw, quivering chunk of writing from the new book. It kicks ass. You can love it or you can hate it. I don't give a shit. I bet that cops probably hate it. They drink coffee and lift weights like me, but they're pigs, and I hate their fat Dunkin Donut guts and sick-fuck looks of superiority. Let them crucify me. I will burn in the fire of their hatred, and we will be blood brothers in our mutual contempt.

You're welcome.

IT'S TIME FOR another conversation between Your Favorite Columnist and God.

YFC: Hello? Anyone home? This big hall is so empty.

God: I am here, sonny.

YFC: I can't see anything, just a voice that sounds like Morgan Freeman. Or is it George Burns?

God: Heh-heh. I have my invisible cloak on. It is more fun than a Lower Merion school computer camera. Wait a sec. OK, turn around, sonny.

YFC: There you are! Why are you in that?

God: Baggy white T-shirt, Timberlands and droopy pants? I want to get jiggy wit' it.

YFC: You were in a white robe the last time we talked.

God: It itches.

YFC: Got it, dude.

There's more after the link. If the plight of daily newspapers doesn't make you feel better about your hemorrhoids/ugly family/empty wallet, then you are either dying of something incurable, or work for a daily newspaper.

Don't strain yourself. I'll be here all week.

Disclaimer: Stu recently got punked by someone pretending to be Keith Olbermann. I work for that someone!

It’s 7 p.m. on a Thursday, and a short round woman in a floral skirt is wheeling two battered suitcases along H Street NE. She stops beneath a painting of a happy dog and heaves a deep sigh. Then she pushes through the double doors of the Palace of Wonders and says hi to Brad, the bartender.

“This place is so clean,” she says.

“I’ve had a lot of time to clean,” Brad says.

The woman walks down a narrow hallway to a tiny dressing room separated from a tiny stage by a tiny see-through curtain, deposits her luggage, and then retreats back to H Street for a cigarette. “This place is so important,” she says. “This is my life.”

This is Mab, Just Mab, and the Palace of Wonders is breaking her heart.

For the last four years, Mab and the other members of D.C.’s sideshow scene had a home at the Palace, the only place in town where you could see fire-breathing, glass-walking, razors in mouths, nails in noses, curvy chicks in bowler hats, and white dudes in turbans, as well as James Taylor’s museum of freak memorabilia and some pretty tasty burlesque, four nights a week, sometimes five. Tonight’s show aside, the Palace of Wonders is no more. Thanks to the allure of synergy, D.C.’s home of variety is merging with next-door indie-rock venue the Red and the Black.

When the work permits get straightened out and the dust settles, the two venues will be known collectively as the Red Palace. The Palace of Wonders’ second-floor balcony and museum display are already gone, and the wall between the two venues’ second floor has been knocked down to create a larger performance space, which features a much larger stage than either venue contained pre-demolition. The old Palace’s first-floor stage and dressing room—where Mab, L’il Dutch, Swami Yomahmi, Thrill Kill Jill, Tyler Fyre, and other denizens of D.C.’s sideshow set spent so many nights over the last four years—will become a kitchen.

Technically, the old Palace held its last show on Sept. 30. But construction upstairs is held up in a bureaucratic quagmire. “We’ve had inspections but we just don’t have the appropriate permits from the city,” says Steve Lambert, who books the Red and the Black, in addition to Rock & Roll Hotel and DC9. “We can’t open if we don’t have the right permits.” That means no stage (and a host of cancelled indie-rock shows). And no stage means business at the Palace bar and the Red and the Black has been terrible, so the owners reopened the tiny Palace stage for a few October shows.

Hence all that time to clean.

In attendance tonight: Mab and the cast of the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow minus Calibano, The Beast That Walks Like a Man (a two-legged Chihuahua rescued from a West Virginia puppy mill); Taylor, the owner of the Palace’s oddities collection and founder of the now-defunct American Dime Museum; Palace photographer David Schmid; and a smattering of regulars. The mood is more death-deferred than glorious-reunion, and Schmid is doing his best to improve the group’s spirits with a stuffed orangutan he found at Fell’s Point in Baltimore. Schmid holds the creature in the crook of his arm and activates its noise box. Mab smiles and strokes a tuft of orange fur.
The source of the group’s sadness isn’t just change; it’s what the changes will hold for the old Palace’s ecosystem.

Taylor, dressed in a copper-colored three-piece suit with Gen. Ambrose Burnside-inspired facial hair, has no qualms about riding the elephant in the room. After going to see a local man about a two-headed crow, Taylor slips past a velvet rope and up the stairs to explain the problem facing the sideshow performers.

He bounds up the steps of the soon-to-be unveiled stage, whips off his wide-brimmed hat, and leans forward.

“Have you ever seen a sword-swallower?” he asks me.

Then he throws back his head and pantomimes dangling a sword above his face. Just when it seems the sword is hanging perfectly perpendicular to his open maw, Taylor jerks his arm, sending the invisible blade into space.

“Not gonna happen,” he says, his bushy face bunched with concern. “You’ll hit a goddamn rafter.”

He’s right. The ceiling looks too low for sword swallowing. Also out: juggling and fire poi tricks. And forget about aerial work. “You’re not gonna have anything that demands real altitude,” Taylor says.

Which means you’re not going to have a lot of sideshow acts.

According to Mel Afzal, the Palace of Wonders’ booker, burlesque and sideshow currently make up only 5 percent of the new venue’s calendar. For business reasons, indie and national rock acts will get the lion’s share of dates on the new shared stage. “It makes sense to build the reputation with music,” Afzal says.

Between burlesque—you know, pasties and g-strings—and sideshow, burlesque will get most of the dates that don’t belong to bands. Mel says that’s because there are more burlesque groups than sideshow groups, but Taylor attributes the decision to burlesque’s overwhelming popularity. “If there ain’t no burlesque on that stage,” he says, “the audience is not one-fifth as happy as it could be.”

Not everyone feels that the Palace’s merger with the Red and the Black is a raw deal. Brad the bartender says that by moving performances upstairs, his bar no longer has to charge the Palace of Wonders’ $10 ticket price to have a drink or check out Taylor’s oddities collection, which Brad says will soon be liberated from storage. And a kitchen will mean that the Palace can finally serve real food, like just about every other bar on H Street. The bigger stage upstairs will mean more people can watch the variety shows without resorting to the fuzzy camera feed that serves patrons who can’t see the first floor’s tiny stage from the other side of the room.

Mel stresses that just because variety shows will have less time on the stage doesn’t mean they’re going away altogether. “Some performers are really excited about the new stage,” she says. “And all of our people are willing to come along for the ride.”

Taylor, who helped Joe Englert, also the owner of Red and the Black, found the Palace of Wonders in 2006, isn’t worried, either. “It’s gonna work. Any time you open a place, there are problems. There were problems with the Palace in 2006,” he says. “But the audience—these people—they love this shit. If I had had this audience at the American Dime Museum, we wouldn’t have gone under.”

Luckily, when Baltimore’s museum went under, Taylor was able to move a large chunk of his oddity collection to the Palace.
Besides, he adds: “Variety performers are willfully bitchy and annoying and a pain in the ass. I love them for it.”

Sure enough, the ground floor of the Palace is standing room only 30 minutes before show time. Brad the bartender is doing brisk business. Mab has changed into a bowler, clown paint, and an eye-popping corset; tonight, she’ll walk on broken glass. At 9:20 p.m., the doors to the Palace close and circus music begins to play. “Do you want to come and play?” a jeering voice asks. At 9:30 p.m., Taylor takes the stage to introduce the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow—and sell the changes to the Palace’s diehard audience.

“I need everyone to close their eyes,” he says. The audience doesn’t blink. Taylor says it again, slower this time, and the two people sitting next to me close their eyes.

“What I need you to do is imagine a stage four times bigger than the one I’m standing on,” Taylor says softly into the mic. “One we can do amazing theatrics on. I need you to imagine a soundboard bigger than you’ve ever seen,” he says, his voice getting louder.

“And I need you to imagine many, many, more bodies in the room!”

The crowd goes wild as Taylor flaps his arms in the air.

Then, without further pomp or circumstance, he introduces the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow’s frontman Swami Yomahmi, who, after providing the audience with a brief history of sideshow in America, hammers a four-inch nail into his left nostril, pulls it out, and sucks it clean.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.