If the taste I gave you of the 10th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos yesterday left you hungry for more, I’ve got good news. There’s a full 14-minute infomercial that covers the upcoming event in greater detail:
Paste magazine goes into a little more details about the infomercial in their article Thirty Reasons Why the Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos Infomercial is the Greatest YouTube Clip Ever.
I don’t normally vandalize signs, but I’d make an exception for this special case:
Stefan Arentz, a co-member of HacklabTO, sent me the photo. He says that it was put up by a Dutch cafe owner to ban accordion-playing gypsies.
Every now and again, I get an email or a phone call from someone doing a story on technical evangelism, community-building or some other Tipping Point-y matter. I’m always happy to answer their questions, and they usually take my answers seriously until they ask me for examples of people, organizations or groups that have been successful at community building. When I mention Insane Clown Posse, they think I’m pulling their leg.
If you take a couple of guys who started out holding wrestling matches in their back yards, put them in clown make-up, have them rap while backed by a metal band, all the while giving a GWAR-like performance, you get the rap-and-wrestling act Insane Clown Posse. They know how to put on a good show (yup, I’ve been to one), and they know how to reach out to their fans, who are referred to as Juggalos (which comes from the name of one of their numbers, The Juggla). Juggalos are a very loyal and tightly-knit group, which comes from their being outside the mainstream. They appear in droves at Insane Clown Posse’s shows, host gatherings for other Juggalos and evangelize Insane Clown Posse to people who don’t listen to them. They are true believers, the sort of audience that any band, author, performer or even brand would kill to have.
(Okay, I’ll admit it. In my collection of mix CD’s and my MP3 collection, you’ll find mixed CDs and playlists for long car trips, and in those playlists, you’ll find a selection of Insane Clown Posse songs. There’s something about a combination of carnival barker-style hip-hop combined with circus music, wailing guitars and shotgun blasts that I find enjoyable when behind the wheel. There. I said it. Commence your mockery.)
One of the ways Insane Clown Posse reach out to the Juggalos is through the Annual Gathering of the Juggalos, a big camping event with a carnival atmosphere. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Gathering of the Juggalos, and they’re doing it up in grand style. Check out the promo video for this year’s Gathering:
I have to admit that I’m intrigued by:
I’ve already booked a trip for the weekend of the Gathering of the Juggalos, and even if I hadn’t, it would be impossible to sell this idea to The Missus. I did mention it to my friend Pete Forde, and it piqued his interest. Were I single, I think I could’ve convinced him and a couple of other people to make a road trip down to wherever Cave-In-Rock, Illinois (population 346) is and spend a weekend in the mosh post drenched in Faygo.
Saw this stuff for the first time last night at the grocery store — “Spicy Szechwan Kraft Dinner”:
(For readers in the United States, what gets sold as “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese” where you’re from is sold as “Kraft Dinner” in Canada.)
I can’t imagine it being any good, but I feel compelled to give it a try, just once. Maybe at my next grocery run.
This scan from the August 1985 issue of Ebony features their prediction of what Michael Jackson would’ve looked like in the year 2000 (which, back then, seemed like a time in the far-off future):
“At 40,” the caption reads, “he will have aged gracefully and will have a handsome, more mature look.” Tacky 80s-era clothing aside, it’s a good look for him. Very Lando Calrissian.
Keep in mind that this photo was altered in the time before Photoshop, when you had to do it with knives, brushes, paints and a very steady hand.
It’s easy to laugh at the prediction in hindsight, but this was the mid-80s, before the accident while shooting the Pepsi commercial and well before celebrity extreme meltdowns were more commonplace.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.
Jon Udell – the developer, information architect, author who wrote about social software before we started calling it that, blogger and Senior Tech Evangelist at Microsoft – will be in Toronto next week and he’ll be at a couple of events that I’m attending.
On Tuesday, John will be at the 21st edition of DemoCamp, the show-and-tell event for people in the Toronto tech community, where entrepreneurial developers, designers, marketers and businesspeople get together to talk about what they’re working on, exchange ideas and get to know each other. We’re about using the power of technology and creativity to make Toronto (and the world) a better place to live, work and play. And yes, Yours Truly will help host the event.
Watch this blog for more details about next week’s DemoCamp, including the demos and Ignite presentations that will be featured that night.
On Wednesday, John will be at Science 2.0, a conference exploring the ways in which computers and the internet are changing the way science is done. Speakers and presentations at Science 2.0 include:
John will have a talk at Science 2.0 in which he’ll cover the elmcity project, a community calendaring system running on the Azure platform and how it “tackles the challenge of social information management and aims to democratize the computational way of thinking that enables us to wire the web.”
I’ll be taking notes at both events and will post them on this blog.
Here’s some amusing Photoshoppery featuring the current Snickers ad campaign. Click the photo to see it in its full-size glory:
Photo courtesy of Adam Conover.