#little replicas of name brand products. what the fuck

[scolek]

rmemeber seeing something. like, you know those little blind bag toys that are tiny little branded items? one time i saw. someone say. yeah lesbians love these.

and i was suddenly struck with how insular a lot of communities are. that yo ucould say that confidently.

[shanethvarosa]

Music Review: 2020

My blog has been a lot of things over the years, but it did originate as something I used to publicly review music; especially in the Visual Kei scene. Since I began the blog so many years ago, I had actually been hired to review Visual Kei and J-Rock music for an actual website: VKH-Press.com, work I am very, very proud of to this day. However, with not much news to comment on or work to critique, I haven’t been as active. Plus, personal issues always seem to stand in my way. However, I always take the time to discuss my passions at the end of the year. There were so many incredible releases, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and so I wanted to take the time time to discuss my favorite releases and, maybe, the not-so-favorites as well. Quick shout out to Bastille’s Goosebumps EP and Megan Thee Stallion’s Good News LP as I did not get to listen to them before I wrote up my lists, but were still excellent releases. See my thoughts below! 

Overall, there were about 75 albums or groupings of albums I listened to this year and split them between various tiers. Starting with the bad tier, there were actually only ten albums listed here and mostly just because they were seemingly unnecessary collection albums. For example, another Satsuki collection? Rides in ReVellion releasing two greatest hits LPs after only five years of work? Beyonce releasing The Lion King: The Gift again? None of those felt like necessary releases. There weren’t many albums that really screamed bad to me this year, but I really could not stand Vanessa Carlton’s “Love is an Art” or Justin Bieber’s “Changes.” The only other albums on this tier were just underwhelming compared to what I know the artist is capable of, but the “best bad tier album,” in my view, was The 1975′s “Notes on a Conditional Form.” 

The mid-tier albums had all sorts of reasons for being only mid-tier. They weren’t quite bad or outright unnecessary, but are mostly by artists who put out work that was nowhere near the caliber of their usual work or were re-releases or other collection albums. For example, Tove Lo’s “Sunshine Kitty: Pawprint Edition” or Man With A Mission’s remixes/b-sides/covers albums. Nice to have with good quality music, but I wish we’d just have had brand new EPs or LPs. 

The good-tier albums were all really excellent releases, but didn’t hit home the way anything on the “God-Tier” list did. Here, I’d like to share a quick top ten: 

10. Taeyeon’s “Purpose: Repackage” & Japanese EP, “#GirlsSpkOut” 9. Charli XCX’s “How I’m Feeling Now” 8. Miyavi’s “Holy Nights” & “Holy Nights: 2020 Lockdown” 7. TK’s “Sainou” 6. PVRIS’s “Use Me” 5. Buck-Tick’s “Abracadabra” 4. Katy Perry’s “Smile” 3. Alicia Keys’ “Alicia” 2. Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” & “Club Future Nostalgia” 1. Ava Max’s “Heaven & Hell

Without furhter ado, though, the God Tier Top 25: 

25. Acme’s We Are Visual Kei: Essentially a collection album of several songs that were b-sides that never made a full-blown album. This LP was loaded with some of Acme’s best work and shows that they are going to be here for a long time, despite Div not quite working out. Recommended tracks: Mononoke Requiem, Gekiyama Celluloid, Houkago no Shiiku 

24. Alanis Morisette’s Such Pretty Forks in the Road: Admittedly, a huge fan in the 90′s and loved her cover of Seal’s Crazy. However, before this album I didn’t really listen to much of her body of work and I can see why today’s youth might not listen to this album. It is very “adult” insofar as it deals with her struggles in marriage, parenting, religion, etc. Her vocal performance is exceptional and her song writing remains some of the best in the business. Recommended tracks: Smiling, Nemesis, Reasons I Drink. 

23. Niall Horan’s Heartbreak Weather: Not my usual cup of tea, but for some reason Niall’s music makes me feel softer than normal. He’s very cute and charming and his words are always so romantic. It feels more genuine than the music made by other members of One Direction and kind-of reminds me of earlier Taylor Swift writing, but from a male perspective. Recommended Tracks: Put A Little Love On Me, Arms of a Stranger, Still. 

22. K/DA’s All Out: I don’t even really understand what this is, but I love it. There’s something to do with League of Legends? Cartoons? International pop stars? Whatever it is, I’m totally obsessed. These songs just completely slap. Recommended Tracks: The Baddest, More, Drum Go Dum. 

21. Darrell’s Brilliant Death: This might even “officially” be a single, but there’s enough content to market it as an album. Darrell is a band formed from the ashes of Deathgaze and Ai’s solo project. Who knows why Ai didn’t just continue after his solo album, Confusion, but he decided to go back to the band-format with confusingly-named Darrell. This album is then, incidentally, mostly Deathgaze covers. It brings the production into the new era and gives you a lot of nostalgic love for old hits. Recommended Tracks: Brilliant Death, Evoke the World, Abyss. 

20. Alice Nine’s Fuyajou Eden & Kuro to Wonderland: Neither album was particularly long, in fact these were glorified EPs that could’ve been merged to one two-sided LP, but in either case... Both albums had something really special to offer and felt like a true comeback after years of name changes and finally going back to their original, kanji-styled name. Recommended Tracks: Kakumei Kaika -Revolutionary Blooming-, Testament, Replica, Glow. 

19. Mucc’s Aku: This album felt very long in the making after a series of weird singles that didn’t feel like they were going anywhere. Ultimately, a lot of those singles did not make the album including my favorite one: Taboo. The resulting album, though, did feel very cohesive and thematic and even featured one of this year’s heavy hitters: Hazuki. Recommended Tracks: Aku -Justice-, Memai, Ameria. 

18. Miley Cyrus’s Plastic Hearts: This person is absolutely one of my favorite people in music. I’m pretty sure they have comeout as genderfluid/non-binary, so I want to stick with safe pronouns, just in case. However, they’ve always been a favorite and as they’ve come out as such a champion for the LGBT, I love them even more. The album though gave me a lot of hype for something very 80′s rock, but didn’t quite give me what I expected. All in all, the music was fantastic, just a little off-beat from expectations. Recommended Tracks: Gimme What I Want, Angels Like You, WTF Do I Know. 

17. Rina Sawayama’s Sawayama: I didn’t expect to fall in love with this girl the way I did. My boyfriend recommended “STFU” to me as kind of a joke because the song discusses a lot of Asian racism that I’m always criticizing people in my life for falling into, but then the song was so bad ass I checked out the album. There were so many different types of music on it and she really did a good job with all of them. Then, with the deluxe edition coming out and the hardcore club banger “Lucid” being involved... Just really brought it all home. Recommended Tracks: Tokyo Love Hotel, Lucid, Fuck This World. 

16. Amber Liu’s X: This was just an EP, but every song on it was great. Amber Liu was from f(x), a K-Pop Icon Group, but she always seemed like the odd one out. She was such a tomboy, so silly and funny all the time, and didn’t really behave like other Korean idols. I mean, really, she isn’t actually even Korean. I believe she’s Chinese American. In either case, the EP really noted some of her own personal strugles in the business and also remaining pretty fun at parts too. I saw her live in Philly before COVID-19 and she was truly excellent. Recommended Tracks: Numb, Stay Calm, Other People. 

15. Blackpink’s The Album: Not much of an album at only 8 tracks, but that’s K-Pop for you. I bet next year I’ll be putting “Blackpink’s The Album: Repackage” on my top 25 list. The quality of the music was pretty dope though, all things considered. It was a very solid debut effort with all of their previous songs being somewhere in the same lane as this one. I still kind of believe they are a reminder of what 2NE1 could have been, but they’re doing well enough on their own. Recommended Tracks: Ice Cream, Lovesick Girls, Pretty Savage. 

14. Hazuki’s Year Over All: Kind of a weird way to word it, but Hazuki basically released two albums this year in different formats. His work with his band, Lynch., was pretty magnificent. I’m not one to usually dwell on a Lynch. album. Their singles or featured tracks are what I usually get into, but the actual album (Ultima) really did a good job of showing how versatile Hazuki can be. His solo album, Souen -Funeral-, was an entirely stripped down, gothic orchestral album of Lynch. covers and other J-Hard Rock artists. Hearing it done like this was almost transcendental. Recommended Tracks: Xero, Idol, Ray, D.A.R.K. 

13. Sam Smith’s Love Goes: They had me scared that their album wasn’t coming this year once they pushed it back, back in May. Then again, at the time, an album called “To Die For” was probably super tone deaf. In any case, literally every single released for this album had me in love. So, when they all got included in the final version, I was thrilled. Sam gave us a bonus song after the album as well, but I can see why that one didn’t get on. In any case, this is a huge step up from “The Thrill of it All,” which I didn’t really care for. Recommended Tracks: Another One, Dance (’Til You Love Someone Else), Forgive Myself. 

12. Troye Sivan’s In A Dream: I love this kid. He’s so gay and so not shy about it and it really makes me smile. The EP comes after his last LP, Bloom, where the title track basically talks about bottoming for the first time and this new EP deals with a few other queer issues over weirdly produced beats that just... make sense. Recommended tracks: Stud, In A Dream, Easy. 

11. Matenrou Opera’s Chronos: Unfortunately, this band just lost their guitarist again. Their original, Anzi, was basically the most consummate guitarist in the visual kei scene that wasn’t Hizaki and he left them. Their sound wasn’t quite right since and they seemed to just get it back with Chronos when Jay left them. I guess we’ll see what they do next, but I think Chronos could be their last great release. Recommended Tracks: Chronos, Silence, Reminiscence. 

10. BoA’s Better: A very recent release that hasn’t had much time for me to digest. This is strange for me to put it so high on my list for that reason, but BoA is one of my all time favorites. She never disappoints me. This album was no different. It wasn’t exactly up to par with “Woman” or “Watashi Kono Mama de Ii no Kana,” but it definitely gave us some new and very iconic Queen BoA bangers. Recommended Tracks: Cut Me Off, Start Over, Temptations. 

9. Kesha’s High Road: A semi-step down from Rainbow, only because a lot of the same melodic elements and, sometimes, even beats were used on this album too. However, her vocal performance was outstanding and she even gave us a new dirty-pop song with some interesting indie-pop tracks to go with it. Plus, who doesn’t love a Big Freedia feature? Recommended Tracks: Resentment, Raising Hell, Tonight. 

8. Lady Gaga’s Chromatica: Anyone who knows me knows I don’t really love Gaga anymore. After all the drama with Madonna and her experimentation with “Joanne” I didn’t think I’d ever like her music again. However, she definitely won back big points for me on Chromatica. It was finally fun, weird, dancey, and then simultaneously emotional and I was really able to get back into it. She’s always had the voice, but on this one it also showed us that she still has what made us love her. Recommended Tracks: Rain On Me, Plastic Doll, Enigma. 

7. Koda Kumi’s My Name Is... Angel + Monster: She is, very likely, my Japanese Pop Queen. She always makes these absolutely outlandish bangers of dance tracks that have such a great attitude and beat and when she released re(CORD)... last year? 2018? Who can remember... I thought she could never outdo herself. Then she released “Lucky Star” and I was floored. I was a bit disappointed when they were only to promote a “My Name Is...” collection album, but then, to my surprise, a full set of new tracks came out just after that just blew me entirely away. Guess the last 6 albums must be pretty great, huh? Recommended tracks: Killer Monster, Work It!, Alarm. 

6. Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene: I’ve never been a big fan of Grimes, but when Violence came out I was really looking forward to whatever album this was going to end up promoting. The song is actual fire, but then the LP ended up being some kind of experimental Gothic Pop with Asian Pop influences I never expected. I doubt I’ll ever find something she does this good ever again, but it was really a musical light in the darkness of this year. Recommended tracks: Darkseid, Delete Forever, Violence. 

5. Kylie Minogue’s Disco: Admittedly, my draw to Kylie has always been that she is like some kind of Australian Madonna. Madonna being one of my all time favorite artists... In fact, number 2 for all women I listen to, Kylie has some big shoes to fill with her sometimes generic pop that she puts out. However, I haven’t really truly loved a Kylie song since “Get Outta My Way” and then this album comes out filled with tracks to love for the rest of time. Recommended Tracks: Miss A Thing, Till You Love Somebody, Magic. 

4. Chanmina’s Notebook/Angel: I don’t have really any way of knowing how popular Chanmina is in Japan or if she is as popular in the Japanese Queer Scene as she should be, but god damn does she know what she’s doing. Her music is raunchy, bitchy, and condescending at it’s highest and deeply personal at it’s most mellow. There is no “lowest.” “Notebook” was a two-sided album and “Angel” a strong follow up EP, but all the recommended tracks are from “Notebook.” If you have not listened to “Picky”.... go do it now, I’ll wait. Recommended tracks: Picky, Baby, Lucy. 

3. The Weeknd’s After Hours: Incidentally, I got into The Weeknd after someone said something shitty about him here on Tumblr! I took their likely-valid criticism and went to check him out for myself and I gotta say, I love his work. The beats are literally always on point and his voice is like silk. This album provided more than a few iconic songs and I always can’t wait to see what he does next. Recommended Tracks: Alone Again, Heartless, Blinding Lights. 

2. Halsey’s Manic: The singles and features she did between Hopeless Fountain Kingdom and Manic gave me such insanely high hopes and I was not disappointed. HFK was a strong album of course, but this was near perfection for me. I think the production of this alt-pop album was the star of the show because it wasn’t all one way, there were heavy-bass songs, interesting piano riffs, striaght up punk rock, all of it. She really made an album quite like it’s namesake. Recommended Tracks: Ashley, Killing Boys, Still Learning. 

1. Dexcore’s Metempsychosis: A newcomer to the visual kei and death metal scene, they’ve been putting out single after single for years in preparation for their extemeley long and multidaceted debut album. With a total of about 33 songs, the entire second disc was rerecorded singles from their early days and some even got new lyrical treatment. The main series of songs were, of course, also totally flooring and all of the recommended tracks are the new ones. If you haven’t checked them out by now, you have to! Recommended tracks: Cibus, Scribble, Period.

[cottonwren]

A Well Dressed Woman | T.S. | Part Three

Summary: Don’t anger the gods - heed the warnings you’re presented with

------------------

“Ms. Pine. I thought you were going to send someone to make the deal?” Tommy asked as she walked over to him, taking his cigarette out of his mouth and letting the smoke slip gently from his mouth. He had gotten no sleep, and it was the way his head was plagued by two people, none that he’d met before, that kept him awake and made him turn to the poppy seeds once again. Two adults, one woman and one man. The woman, he could identify as Jamie’s mother. Dark chestnut hair like hers, almost a replica, except this woman did not smile. She did not smirk. She glared and snared and Tommy had almost been scared. The woman told him to betray Jamie to further his own business, she told him it was right. The man, he was nothing like either of them. He had blonde hair and chestnut eyes, and he told him that he’d regret hurting the Pines.

It didn’t take a second more of  thought to wonder who he was, but he blocked them both out. It was business, and he was sure that he would be at the business end of Polly’s shotgun if he didn’t go through with it. At least with this option, he had a chance of getting away clean and with more than enough snow to enterprise upon, with a ‘missing’ storage container on his hands.

“And let someone mess it up? Nah. Plus, Tommy, this could be the start of a good partnership” Jamie smiled, folding her arms around her chest and holding out her leather gloved hand “So, you’ve got the documents?” She had remembered to insist on documents for Linn, though she knew that they would be of no purpose.

“I have” Tommy nodded, passing her them from a worker “When does the protection clause end?” He asked, watching her slide the envelope into her coat pocket, looking him dead in the eye with the same eyes that had haunted him all night. God, his dreams were getting really out of hand.

“When you screw me over, Thomas. So hopefully, it won’t end” Jamie told him, a jovial smirk on her lips, the same that had taunted him many times before and he hoped would continue to in the future. “Unless you don’t heed my warning” She reminded him.

“You can trust me, thought you’d have gotten that by now” Tommy told her, leading her to the docks “Come on then, let me show you around. Unless you’re satisfied and ready to piss off and leave me?” He teased, beginning to walk across the dirty path with her, the dirt imprinting on the bottom of her oxfords.

“No, no, I think I can handle a few more minutes away” Jamie told him with a smile, forgetting to be snarky. For a second, Jamie was just happy to be with him, and as soon as she realised that, she put her walls back up. “Can’t have anything going past my nose, can I?”

“Of course not” Tommy shook his head, heart palpitating as he saw her smile - toothy and full of life, Tommy regretted the actions he was about to take before he took them. He had her sold, though, and it was imperative for the plan that she was completely sold.

Tommy gave her a tour of the docks and showed him her large shipment container, branded with Shelby and Pine. Jamie liked the way their names looked together, but made no comment. Tommy did too, and he had toiled over the order of the two names but wouldn’t tell her. No chance.

“If that’s all, Tommy, I shall be on my way.” She told him, standing only a few inches from him, the cold biting into her cheeks, making them pink. Tommy had a strange urge to take her face into his hands, holding her and pressing his lips to hers until the warmth had returned to her skin. Thank god he could resist his urges.

“I look forward to our partnership, Ms. Jamie Leanne Pine” Tommy nodded, shaking her hand. “Give all my best to your sister”

“I will.” She smiled, then turned and walked away from the docks, getting into her car and driving back to her office in Small Heath, doing her best not to speed back. An unfamiliar feeling was settling in her stomach, and if anything had happened to even slightly threaten Linn’s life, she would be driving into Small Heath with the fury of a thousand men to kill all of the Shelby brothers single handedly. What’s worse was, she wouldn’t lose an ounce of sleep over it.

She parked and got out, entering the offices through the back, happy to find Linn sitting at her desk, a smirk on her face as she removed her glasses.

“Did it go well?” Linn asked, setting her glasses on her desk and setting her papers aside for a second “Well?”

“It did. I have a dreadful feeling, Linn, that I’ve made a slip in my judgement. I don’t think he’s going to betray us.” Jamie admitted, closing the office door behind her and sitting down.

“Our man on the inside said he would, and he told us how. He overheard, Jamie, and you know that he wouldn’t dare slip up. Not with your reputation, and your pay. He won’t get a job like this ever again from anyone else. I know you don’t want him to, but he will betray us. We have done the right thing” Linn assured her, putting her glasses back on once Jamie handed over the envelope. “You’ve checked it, I assume?”

Jamie was silent - she’d forgotten to check the fucking papers. There could be pictures of Karl Marx in that envelope and she would have been none the wiser. Fuck.

“Right, you didn’t check it, but it’s obvious that he expected you to” Linn sounded relieved as she opened the envelope carefully and opened up the documents “They’re legit. Jamie, you need to be more careful - the next deal, he’s going to expect you to not read them”

“Which I won’t” Jamie considered “But I know what I’m looking for”

“You do - and, Jamie, you have me reading everything. Nothing goes past me - the council thinks we sell feminine products and medication, and has never been any the wiser. Present yourself as both of us, remember? Take the best bits and turn into Ms. Pine. Not Jamie, not my big sister, not the person who read me bedtime stories up until I was thirteen. Ms Pine, who has sold more drugs than anyone in the world and holds her customers under a razor blade with her brain. Ms Pine, who Tommy Shelby can wank to and lose to”

“Who are you and what have you - Linn Bonnie Pine, is that blood on your palm” Jamie screeched, taking her hand and examining it “It better be someone else’s”

“It is. A peaky blinder watched you leave the office, so I went through the back, as you usually do, and I wrapped myself up in my overcoat, and I asked him where I was. Like a lost little lamb, and he said the exact location. Which meant he wasn’t from around here, obviously. So, I knocked him out and hauled him into the alleyway. He’ll recover soon enough” Linn told her, giving her account of the affair, eyes alight with menace and excitement. Jamie wanted to run for cover. She herself had never enjoyed the dirty work, and she had hoped that Linn never would. A hitman only existed in dirty trades like theirs, but an accountant could go anywhere. If Linn had a taste for fighting, then it would only be so long until she began doing it for fun, and then word would get out, and then there goes her little girl’s future.

“I know you don’t want me fighting, so I’ll only do it when it’s necessary, I promise!” Linn giggled, filing the papers away in her drawer “So, what are you going to do about Tommy?”

“Well, I’m going to go to the races, as planned, to talk to that MP and make a deal, but also to sit near him and see what he does” Jamie told her “The peaky blinder that you decided to bludgeon will no doubt remember your face, meaning that it’d be dangerous to put you in the same place as fifty of them.”

“I’ll hit him again” Linn shrugged, setting her glasses on her head “He went down fairly quickly”

“That’s because you punch like a fourty year old brawler, love. You can’t punch bullets, and the idea of you even close to danger makes me feel sick” Jamie rolled her eyes, then continued “As I was saying - if Tommy hasn’t betrayed us, he will ask about the next shipment…. And, if he doesn’t say anything, he will have stayed silent.”

“Someone’s going to be tight lipped then. The deal with the MP, it’s just a regular trade, right?” Linn asked, pulling out the list “Fifty Grams of coke. Usual rate, plus a hundred to ensure confidentiality”

“Yes. Personally, I don’t know where he thinks that one hundred pounds is going to get him in bribery, but there we go” Jamie shook her head softly “I will be going in my three piece - no man will make deals with anyone wearing ruffles. Sexist and a shame, but there we go. Truth sucks”

Over in Small Heath, Tommy was exhilarated. The shipment container was being opened, standing proud in his warehouse. He stood back with Arthur, who had told Linda that he was doing paperwork. As Isaiah and Finn pulled back the door, they stepped back and let Tommy take over. Inside the container were crates upon crates, but what was more interesting was the note on top of the first crate they pulled out, marked out with a P and a little tree logo. Pine Pharma.

Slipping his nail under the wax seal, he opened it, passing the envelope to Isaiah and unfolding the parchment.

‘Hello there, Thomas’ read the neat handwriting. Ah, fuck. Tommy let out a loud sigh and then carried on reading.

‘I expected you to do this. I knew you wouldn’t heed my warning, and I have tried to memorise your pretty face, for when it gets ruined. For all of your brilliance, how have you not accounted for this? Enjoy the flour, sweetheart.

Lots of love,

                   J. L. P.’

Tommy threw the paper down onto the floor, running his hands through his hair “Fuck me” He groaned, pacing “Isaiah, get one of the fucking crates open” He barked, his world falling to shit.

His chest burned and he wondered how the hell she had managed to do it. She had fallen for him, hook, line, and sinker, hadn’t she? Tommy could forsee most things, but this was something else. She was something else.

“Tommy, this ain’t snow” Isaiah told him with a wince, opening yet another crate of self raising flour “Unless you wanna make a cake, this is useless” He added, having dabbed a bit onto his tongue and been sufficiently disappointed.  To be fair, he should have realised that it wasn’t cocaine from the looks of it, but he was still allowed to be hopeful, right?

“Fucking hell” Tommy groaned “Fucking woman. Fuck. How the- fucking hell. Isaiah, Finn, Arthur, get rid of the flour. I’m going for a fucking drink. Fucking hell” He grumbled as he stalked off, lighting a cigarette. How he’d break the news to Polly was another thing. He could hear her now ‘How did you let her do this, Tom?’. He could hear his own reply, defensive and honest. God, he needed a drink.

As he practically stropped through the lane towards The Garrison, it started to rain - not the light rain, either, but the heavy kind that thunders on you and bruises slightly. Tommy really wandered what god he’d pissed off some days, and he laughed to himself when he realised that she was.

[adambstingus]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,‘” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165238661882

[jimdsmith34]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,'” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

source http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/09/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash.html

[samanthasroberts]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,’” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

[allofbeercom]

5 Terrible Tragedies Exploited By Cash-Obsessed A-Holes

Everyone loves a good scary movie, but wouldn’t it be great if you were actually living in a scary movie? That’s the business model in play for some luminaries out there, who think you really want to relive some of history’s most horrifying moments. They’re convinced that the tragedy-junkie dollar exists, dammit, and they’re going to get that green, dammit. So what’ve they come up with?

#5. Haunted Houses Based On Real Serial Killers

People who go to haunted houses are getting increasingly jaded — once you’ve chained live, naked actresses to the floor, there aren’t many places to go — apparently prompting the sort of people who design haunted houses to ask themselves, “What about actual murder?”

So, for the last few years, haunted houses have begun reenacting the real murders of notorious serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. One New York production even featured an exhibit of the creepsters’ personal belongings, donated by a murder memorabilia collector who requested to remain anonymous. Let the speculation begin!

It’s always the quiet ones.

If you haven’t cottoned on to what’s wrong with that, here’s a hint: The victims’ families are still alive! And lo, they aren’t thrilled about jump-scare peddlers using deceased loved ones as props. (And at $30 to $60 a ticket, wildly profitable ones.) To really rub it in, some houses are specifically focusing on local killers, just to make absolutely certain that someone will stumble upon their worst nightmare.

For example, a Sacramento house tried to cash in on the local notoriety of Richard Trenton Chase. For those of you who didn’t live through Chase’s serial killing spree, the short version is that he killed six people.

Then he mutilated and ate them.

Among his victims was a pregnant woman whom he shot, killed, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and drank the blood of, in that order. And her husband was the one who found her when Chase was done. So you could imagine the husband’s horror when he found out that 36 years later a local entertainer was selling tickets to staged re-creations of his wife’s murder. The only good news to come out of this story is that the Sacramento house shut down their fun little show when the victims’ grieving families complained.

Also, there’s a warm seat in hell reserved for this newspaper layout editor.

And the only reason the horrific story above is considered “good news” is because Rob Zombie didn’t have the grace to do the same thing after people complained about Rob Zombie’s Great American Nightmare in Chicago, which featured a Gacy room.

When the Gacy victims’ families complained about a haunted house room featuring a clown blowing up balloons while surrounded by child-sized dolls dressed as Boy Scouts, Rob Zombie said he thought the room was “funny.” And in case you’ve forgotten John Wayne Gacy’s shtick, it was raping and murdering at least 33 Chicago-area young men. To be fair, everyone who’s seen his Halloween remakes knows that Rob Zombie is a renowned authority on comedy.

Finally, London recently opened a Jack the Ripper museum that — not even fucking kidding here — initially branded itself as a new “museum of women’s history.” The museum’s press release invited visitors to experience Jack the Ripper’s crimes “through the eyes of the women who were his victims,” by which they meant “take selfies with their mannequin corpses.”

#TransformationTuesday #dead

No, really: “A picture with Jack in Mitre Square together with the body of Catherine Eddowes” was one of the advertised selling points. The museum’s spokesperson insisted that the morbid selfie station was “done in a very respectful way,” and those words somehow didn’t sound like nonsense when he heard them come out of his mouth. In another statement issued by the museum, they explained that they just wanted women to “be able to experience the London of 1888 in the presence of Jack the Ripper.” That’s a good point — where else could a woman ever experience the fear of violence just from walking down the street?

#4. An Annual Nazi-Themed Christmas Party

In 2014, a Minneapolis newspaper received a photo of a literal Nazi party, complete with cheerful swastika flags hung between Christmas lights over a group of men in SS uniforms. The anonymous sender provided no other information, making it seem like a really vague and bizarre threat, but the newspaper’s reporters eventually discovered that it was not, in fact, a Shining-style snapshot of a ghost ball but a group of historical reenactors partying like it’s 1939.

After the local Jewish community issued a call to shut down the event, its organizer made a statement, insisting, “By no means do we glorify the edicts of the Third Reich,” before pulling out the smelling salts in case he got a case of the vapors at the mere suggestion.

“We just like to get drunk and spend the evening heiling, like any fun-loving American.”

This little group just likes to get together for a bit of wholesome Nazi fun every Christmas and hand out swastika T-shirts to the restaurant staff, that’s all. Another partygoer explained, “Because they dress up like Germans from World War II, it’s cool to go to a German restaurant, eat German food, and drink German beer.” Dude, cultural appropriation is not the problem here.

As for why it was necessary to actually hang up Nazi decorations and give out Nazi party favors, they’re, uh … really into method acting? He compares it to “a Star Trek convention but for WWII enthusiasts,” failing to grasp the galaxy-sized difference between those things. He may not win any awards for cultural sensitivity, but he gets first place in self-dug holes.

#3. There Are Two New Titanics In The Works

Apparently, there are people who watch Titanic over and over for reasons other than Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and the furious masturbation they inspire. Indeed, the ship that famously claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people has enough fans that not one but two actual-size replicas are being built.

One will be a functional cruise ship that its commissioner, Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, fully intends to sail, because some people have no fear of irony. Of course, the construction of Titanic II will comply with modern safety regulations, and it’s set to sail a completely different path. Don’t wanna tempt fate too much.

Crewmen shouting, “Iceberg! 2,500 miles north!” while not exactly in great taste, is a lot more reassuring.

The people building the other replica, however, are actually counting on it sinking. That’s because it will be part of a “6-D” Chinese theme park where people can experience the sinking firsthand with a simulation featuring an orgy of special effects and/or go insane exploring the two dimensions beyond time itself.

The guy funding it excitedly gushed that visitors “will think, ‘The water will drown me; I must escape with my life,'” unwittingly unmasking himself as a robot with no comprehension of the human concept of fun. Aside from the questionable judgment of using a tragedy as the basis for a freaking theme park, what is even the point of a Titanic simulation that doesn’t include Kate Winslet’s nipples?

#2. A Reality TV Show Simulating Life In Nazi Germany

If you could travel back to any time period and experience how people lived in that era, what would you pick? The Ren Faire types might choose Renaissance Europe, the chemistry enthusiasts might choose the ’60s, and so on. That covers both of our readers, which means none of you picked Eastern Europe in the 1940s. Huh, why might that be?

“OK, before we set up the time machine, who votes ‘Hendrix concert’ and who votes ‘Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia’?”

Even though everyone knows what life was like in that particular place and time — to wit, super horrible — that hasn’t stopped those paragons of taste, reality TV producers, from bringing us The Real World: Nazi Europe. It was actually a short-lived series in the Czech Republic called, for serious, Holiday In The Protectorate. There was no time travel involved, just a modern family shut in a house with little food and period-appropriate accommodations while fake Nazi soldiers prowled outside, because they had a really weird idea of leisure.

“You have your Survivor, we have ours.”

The global Jewish community wasn’t impressed, namely because of one tiny anachronism that the director, whose stated goal was “to show life in another era while ensuring the highest level of authenticity,” had absentmindedly overlooked: The very real threat of death, which claimed 82,309 Czech Jews. The greatest danger faced by this family, on the other hand, was a falling stage light. Luckily, that means there was an easy way for the producers to make everyone happy: Just abduct one member of the household every week, never to be seen by their family again. For some reason, they went in a different direction.

#1. 9/11 And Trayvon Martin VR Games

It’s not a mind-blowing revelation that people like to play video games to live out fantasies, the most famous of which is pretending to be an Italian man who’s addicted to psilocybin and tortoise murder. There are also all kinds of Counter-Strike maps that allow you to play out real events, like the Boston Bombing and the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. They’re taking some pretty massive liberties with the facts, however. For example, the setup for the wildlife refuge includes fictional hostages the terrorists never took.

Apparently, long diatribes about the Bureau of Land Management don’t really work in a first-person shooter.

We already base most of our shoot-’em-up games on real wars and the like, so that’s only slightly below par for the course. Then there’s the 9/11 virtual reality game.

The plot? You’re not making a mad dash for survival. In fact, not dying isn’t even an option. You start out in an office in the North Tower, where you receive a few commands to fetch files for your boss and things like that, but once the first plane strikes, you just go where the game takes you. Where it takes you, in fact, is to the office of a stranger who quickly becomes so distraught that he jumps out the window. Then you watch your boss call her mom to say goodbye before you both suffocate from the smoke.

That’s it. Just 10 minutes of watching people cry, and then you die. It’s bleak as shit.

In terms of sheer pointlessness, though, the winner is — no, seriously — the VR reenactment of the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The experience is reconstructed from the 911 calls placed by George Zimmerman and, later, members of the community from inside their homes. So that’s the viewpoint we take. It’s literally just a bunch of people on the phone in their living rooms. We never see or hear anything of the actual shooting except for a flash of gunfire and the boy’s real screams for help. The designers insist that reenactments like these could be helpful to investigators, but failed to explain how animated phone calls starring the goddamn Sims tells anybody anything.

“We didn’t see anything because we were drowning our kids in the pool.”

Ready to learn about some more incredibly dickish people? Then check out The 8 Most Shameless Attempts to Cash In On 9/11 and The 6 Most Clueless Assholes To Ever Exploit Tragedies.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/11/5-terrible-tragedies-exploited-by-cash-obsessed-a-holes/

[bigjoesound]

Fanatic or Follower: What It Means to Be a Music Fan in 2017

Convenience. It is the sensation audio provides when the stirring spirit may relieve. Audio may embrace when no hands have been in reach, when comfort and tranquility are essential a buddy whois always there. Existence is saturated in levels and levels; successful conditions and unlucky occasions wait with each dawn and audiois there through heavy and slim. How is it feasible not when minds are full of their masterpieces to drop efficiently in deep love with the designers?

The emotions of commitment and enthusiasm which are associated with being fully a enthusiast start with only one song. a simple report to experience attached to the performer is taken by It only. They are adored by us to the lifestyles due to their share. When you have a heavy understanding for that artwork in the end, it’s simple to be enthralled. You purchase the CDs, attend the exhibits, even buy their apparel to nurture the sensation of distance between your artwork and performer and study all of the posts. This is exactly what it means to be considered a lover, finding artwork therefore significant that you simply trade you were quit by several bucks for that invaluable experience this individual with.

Atleast, that is what I believed.

Enthusiast is for lover brief, a that completely catches when finding a brand new performer, the severe excitement experienced. So what can begin as casual hearing and creative understanding includes a method of getting heroworship and compulsive appreciation. Eminem’s “Stan” is a fictional tale, however the personality was centered off an overwhelming attachment that entered the point between idol and worshipping.

The craze surrounding designers that are particular could be conspiracy-like. This isn’t a brand new idea unique towards the internet-age, but craze of followers is visible unlike Beatlemania of the first 1960s in ways. Is a SoundCloud along with develop a hive of followers and a social networking consideration to achieve followers.

19-year old XXXTentacion knows he’s fans who care profoundly about him fans, and his audio -esque in subordinates and dimensions. In his meeting Without Any Jumper, and much more lately stated by Micah Peters within an exemplary new item for The Ring, XXXTentacion described the distinction between followers and what he views to become accurate fans:

“If you’re gonna be considered a lover, that’s diverse from being somebody that helps me. If you’re a lover which means you follow everything that you help what I actually do towards the fullest degree, and that in my opinion in. … I’ve a conspiracy group of followers; I don’t possess a fragile butt enthusiast base.”

What XXXTentacion explains isn’t being fully a lover, it is more cult of fans than following. Is a demand help and to follow his motion and every term, his every perception towards the fullest degree although not only in audio. There’s no space for essential or questioning evaluation within the fandom believes and does. 

Xis demand is a dangerous one when the majority of stated following is impressionable and youthful. Tentacion it has drawn the interest of additional teenagers and is just a teen and youthful adults—he has got the childhood in ways much like The Inventor Tyler and Peculiar Potential within their first stages. Actually the audio is comparable in both quality and surprise. But X isn’t some kid in his cellar speaking against capitalism; you will find severe, chaotic accusations encompassing him. I’d seen an image of the lady overwhelmed black-and-blue with XXXTentacion whilst the accused attacker before I possibly could even pronounce his title. The following month , test for aggravated battery of the lady that is pregnant battery by strangulation, fake experience that is imprisonment and – severe costs that are tampering—all for which he pleads innocence. in vehement contract with him stating that all of the accusations are designed to maintain his celebrity from glowing their fans stay.

Independently, all of US may choose our stance on XXXTentacion, however the debate surrounding him suggests the query: What does it mean to be considered an enthusiast in 2017?

It’s not a good idea to blindly follow anybody so when I noticed XXXis demand, it advised me of the 1978 Jonestown Massacre that required the lifestyles of 918 people. John Jones, the revolutionary conspiracy chief of the Individuals Temple, notoriously required their groundbreaking destruction and toxin was consumed from the prepared and reluctant. This might appear to be an intense assessment, but X have and Johnson cult followers by description. By relinquishing home-believed, it starts up the chance protect and to check out any exercise and procedure. There’s an power about assistance that is great is obvious with only a fast look into Reddit—but or Facebook what seems on-line can easily advance into anything poisonous in actual life. You risk pernicious influence whenever you shed oneself in someone else.  

“Although many people, and ideally I, might discover strangling a woman to become substantially more heinous than regular angry attack against, state, not a lady that was pregnant, an enormous following that appears to differ has been grown by X. There’s an opportunity that is good he’s accomplished something incorrect might be even denied by them. This following’s primary has a tendency to discover his achievement or incidental is impeded by his increasing listing of charged fabricated to towards his music’s satisfaction. In or you’re all-out.” – Micah Peters, XXXTentacion Doesn’t Deserve the Internet’s Compassion

Followers may proceed the exact distance due to their beloved designers. Remember the Drake followers who named Philadelphia’s Section Attorney seeking that Meek Generatoris breach of probation result in incarceration? They were requesting to have a man’s independence over a reputation beef. Drake didn’t demand this type of disgusting motion, however they required the effort due to their fav. It speaks lists how seriously the shenanigans may operate, the measures to which fans may choose jokes and boasting rights. Chance The Rapper has enough impact to merely request his big following of followers to help in obtaining his single radio revolves, and Nicki Minaj doesn’t have to request her Barbs to produce a loading cheat code therefore that her diss tunes may chart; their love for Nicki is so deep they do not even need a demand to dedicate this type of farce. That is when fans become truly fanatical, heading the additional kilometer due to their famous superstar out-of some feeling of neighborhood and belonging―doing it within their recognition.

Visualize if somebody energy-starving could develop a cult-following, for significantly more than promoting seats and product utilizing their impact. Kanye was ready to contact a boycott against Louis Vuitton in 2013, not due to racial profiling or perhaps a horrible encounter in the Ny shop, but since he desired to display the top of LV that he had energy and impact. Revenue in his shop he might quit having a twitter. It’s a risk although he didn’t follow-through on-but boosts the query: Might company really quit? It’s egotistical to actually think he might, if Ye stated so that followers might hear and take his phrases. The stark reality is, he may be correct. 

Cautious isn’t a term I’d utilize to explain the first period of Peculiar Future―defiant, energetic, and vulgar are more sufficient adjectives. But on Tyler’s first recording Goblin, he displayed a little of carefulness, a acknowledgement of circumspect. The Inventor begins the tune having a requesting that fans not dedicate any steps stated inside the report before “Radical” might start. He’d to say this being a type of protection burn shit, “Kill individuals, fuck school” maintained a threat of being obtained not and being a cry of revolt as words drenched in shock-value. Small Tyler was unpleasant however a misfit who had been against traditional thinking and discovered reputation whilst the ideal method to talk about his worry, idiotic, edgy but safe. Having a bark, other outcasts who noticed a worth support were achieved by him. They desired to follow in his rambunctious, although secure actions. A separate commitment is to his tune, every term lyric, and he was CONSCIOUS OF had become conspiracy- like conscious that there is of what might occur fear. He did not wish to direct the Peculiar Future revolution, although he desired to be-famous.

Since he merely desired to end up like his beloved rapper Macklemore’s dependence on trim started. He noticed the audio concerning the ripped what he noticed saw the dual mug and noticed. It occurs to all of US; the just reason I’d a fake hoodie in 10th-grade was due to Muzik” music-video, attempting to mimic my personal favorite rapper.

Fandom can result in replica as well as result in modifying morals and beliefs—becoming an individual you aren’t for somebody you idolize—but it willnot create that conduct necessary. You may benefit from the audio and admire the performer, but nonetheless possess a speech to call-out the poor, exactly the same method your speech enables you to shout the great. There’s a concept that is fake that you simply can’t be crucial of one’s preferred performer, that you need to applaud their every turd as though it glistened like platinum. It’s false. Being truly a lover isn’t one-sided submission, it is keeping them to some greater standard and remaining objective. The individual to that you provide your appreciation won’t that is time and be ideal, therefore let us not handle them as a result.

Fairly, can’t assistance and all of US need to choose what we are able to but we don’t need to conform and protect particular steps due to who dedicated the work. Being truly a lover doesn’t imply you quit being fully a individual, and you should not quit thinking on your own. Don’t consume the Kool Aid since one were told by your preferred performer to.

You may be but don’t be considered a fan although you may be a stan.

By Yoh, aka Yoh Carroll, aka @Yoh31

from big joe sound http://bigjoesound.com/fanatic-or-follower-what-it-means-to-be-a-music-fan-in-2017/

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: We Went to Gabriel Orozco’s OXXO

Gabriel Orozco Kurimanzutto Gob. Rafael Rebollar 94, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec 11850, México D.F. On view until March 16th

What’s on view: An exact replica of an OXXO (the ubiquitous Mexican 7-11 competitor) except without monetary exchange. Visitors are instructed to pick out three free objects, so long as they aren’t marked with the artist’s own sticker (because those products are artworks for collectors, despite being otherwise identical to the other goods in the store).

Whitney:  Through the wooden barrier which separates the gallery from the street, past the door guard and the gallerists, we entered into a minimalist shi-shi open air courtyard, and then through the sliding doors of an OXXO, which seemed normal because OXXOs are everywhere. Ryan and I turned around to go find some art upstairs. But Michael, being the seasoned critic, knew. It’s not a real OXXO. It’s commentary.

Michael: I honestly can’t think of another artwork that straddles a weird indoor/outdoor space to such uncanny effect. I had heard a lot about this show and thought I knew what to expect, but I too was caught off guard. Whitney, you and I have seen more than our fair share of fake-businesses-as-artworks, from visiting a seedy massage parlor in the Lower East Side to helping run AFC’s pop-up gay bar in Miami Beach. I’m sure we’ve been to many a fake business at art fairs we don’t even remember. But there will be no forgetting this day. Gabriel Orozco has elevated the fake-business-as-medium to the next level in so many ways.   

Whitney: This triggered a Supermarket Sweep fantasy I didn’t realize I have been actively repressing every time I go shopping. You’re allowed to take three items (as long as they don’t have stickers on them, but not many do), so immediately all of us starting weighing the best combinations.

I went for the cookies first, but then it turned out there was beer, and that we weren’t allowed to drink beer in the courtyard without cups, so that knocked out two of my items, and then I got distracted by the gum at the checkout counter, so there went the cookies. After we’d checked out, I think we all got buyer’s remorse. Michael probably should’ve gotten water for his house. I remembered condoms and toothpaste, but luckily those had stickers.

Now I’m hungry for cookies and debating running to the actual OXXO across the street while Michael writes his response.

The bags of dog food with the circle motif are not available—they’re art. The unmarked cans of dog food are free, however.

Michael: One of the most impressive things this piece accomplished: it made us consider the act of shopping differently than any of its myriad artistic predecessors. I’m literally in an OXXO at least once every day (it’s where most Defeños do everything from paying utility bills and refilling drinking water jugs to buying cigarettes and Doritos) but with the aspect of monetary value removed, yet another set of limitations imposed, an almost-mania set in as we tried to adjust to a new value system.

Ultimately, I settled on a beer and two Kinder Sorpresa chocolate eggs. I figured I could have a snack, and still get an “object” as a souvenir. I grabbed two of the “niña” chocolates (even candy is gendered?) because Molly Rhinestones introduced me to the fact that the girls’ toys are usually little glamorous figurines that look like white versions of RuPaul. When I opened my eggs, however, they contained art supplies. “Art supplies” in the old-school sense—one came with a watercolor set in the shape of a frog and the other held colored pencils in the shape of a teddy bear. It felt like the most meta end to this Russian-doll of a game. I like to think Orozco rigged this detail somehow—and in his OXXO, all children’s candy prizes contain gender neutral art stuff that could theoretically yield a traditional “art object”.

Whitney: I think your sense of wonder shows what immediately sets this apart from a zillion other art-as-commerce shows. A convenience store populated entirely with art viewers with Canon cameras and little backpacks doesn’t sound so exciting now that we’re officially past the relational aesthetics wow factor.

But what sets this apart from so many Creative Time commissions, art fair projects, and pop-up gallery-stores is that it’s not a fake store where you can’t get anything, or a fake-real store where you have to buy art, or a real store where you have to “perform” capitalism, or a store manned by the unpaid intern, or a store that provides fake jobs for a month. It’s that this is sponsored by OXXO, and you can get the stuff you want, rather than playing an in-the-know game that doesn’t meaningfully relate to commerce anywhere outside the art gallery. This is a real OXXO store.

It makes me think a lot more about what I consume, for one. (I now have cookies from OXXO). But it’s also not a smirky reveal.

Michael: Exiting the “store” from the opposite door, we found ourselves in an unsettlingly conventional gallery environment. I honestly wouldn’t have lingered among these color-coordinated products—devoid of any implied interaction—if it weren’t for the super-enthusiastic, frank, and helpful gallery attendant who gave us the backstory.

Whitney: This person told us that OXXO’s parent company Femsa is treating the show as a promotional opportunity, so it’s provided the workers, the shelving, the fridges, and all of the products. The stark difference in environments, from the colorful store for regular people to a fluorescent Stanley Kubrick vacuum for elevated people, highlighted how art caters to an entirely different set of consumers, which I think is why art-store projects usually don’t work, because in the end they’re not really for us.

Michael: But I am more interested in the economics of the gallery’s products than the giveaway nextdoor. Orozco has calculated a pricing scheme wherein the first edition of the series (his own artist’s proof) is valued at $30,000 (USD). The next collector to buy a set of these art-stamped OXXO products pays half—$15,000. The next collector pays half of that, and so on and so forth until the last edition only costs $60. The price drops the more “demand” there is for the product (opposite the logic of rarified art objects). It’s an economy of scale, not unlike Tesla’s ambitions to engineer accessible electric cars from the luxury market on down, or the fact that mass-produced shit costs so little because it’s mass-consumed (and, of course, exploitative labor, etc.)

Orozco’s relationship to the market (both high and low) is a smart one. He seems to be playing everyone by just blatantly playing by capitalism’s own rules. There’s not necessarily a critique here that’s so explicit a multinational corporate sponsor would be scared off, but he shines a light on the absurdity of the commercial art world by applying other market principles to the weird, weird system in which art operates. Namely, the power artists and dealers wield to assign arbitrary monetary values to objects that could cost much less, or in this case, be free. And in the bizarre era of late-capitalist neoliberalism, I suppose approaching a sponsor that sells nachos and bags of pre-cooked refried beans feels downright democratic in comparison to the usual art-world check-writers: luxury car brands, LVMH labels, overpriced champagne manufacturers…

Whitney: Completely agree. Orozco’s making a game out of buying with the high-low pricing structure, and your understanding of the rules depends on where you are in the economy. I personally consider the first buyer (of the $30,000) to be the loser and the last buyer (of the $60 work) to be the winner, as the bargain-getter. That’s funny because the only rationale for spending the most money on the same item is to be a winner: buying value which has no real meaning unless all the rich people agree that it does. So I think most people would consider the biggest spender to be a complete idiot, but it doesn’t matter anyway because our opinions literally count for nothing and theirs count for $30,000.

I think the Russian doll is a really accurate metaphor. The larger concept of speculative economics for the super rich is wrapped around the economy of goods, something tangible which the rest of us can understand.

It was a good show.

Michael: My only complaint is that I couldn’t take the Juan-Gabriel-Orozco:

More recent Mexico City coverage:

SLIDESHOW: Mexico City Galleries, Part 1

Museum Punk Show in Need of A Sound Guy

Material Light on Substance, Heavy With Dick Pics

Slideshow: Zona MACO, The Art Fair Where Commerce and Politics Make Strange Bedfellows

We Went to Mexico: General Idea at Museo Jumex Restored Our Faith in Art For Fuck’s Sake

We Went to Mexico: Barbara Kruger and Juan Pablo de la Vega Take the Subway

The Timelessness of Sex, Violence, and Portraiture: Otto Dix at MUNAL

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