Category: LEARNING DAY
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It’s time to stop paying for healthcare, everybody! What, you haven’t been? Great! The secret to healing has finally been revealed and it is shapes. Why didn’t we think of shapes sooner? Here, have some healing shapes; they’re based on crop circles and come in a crop circle resonance pack of 49 cards:
I know what you’re thinking: these high-quality, hand-assembled squiggles must be so expensive! Not so, my friend. It’s only $44.50 for 49 artisanal cards. That’s practically a steal when you consider they have to pay ET’s astronomical residual price for the IP.
The History Channel show Ancient Aliens featured a variety of “Alien Experts” who consider themselves an authority on stuff like crop circles. You’ve probably seen clips of the main Ancient Aliens guys like Giorgio A. Tsoukalos and Ariel Bar Tzadok, you know, the famous ones, but if you go deep, deep into the Ancient Aliens bench, you’ll find B-list alien expert Freddy Silva, creator of the crop circle resonance cards.
I don’t know if I trust a guy who looks like if cigarettes were a person to tell me how to heal myself. That’s probably why Freddy doesn’t heavily advertise his connection to the crop circle resonance cards. I only figured out they were his product because the instruction booklet directed me to cropcirclesecrets.org for additional information and most of the additional information was how to purchase Freddy Silva’s books. He primarily writes about aliens, but he also wrote one book about how dogs are cute.
On the section of his website where he sheepishly admits to creating the crop circle resonance cards, he says that while he was sharing his knowledge on detecting subtle energies at sacred temples, his audience of thousands was clamoring for a way to get some of that BHE (Big Healing Energy) without traveling to their local crop circle. Finding your local UFO landing site can be a hassle. Now you get all of the benefits of being abducted without all the surplus cow carcasses!
So, how exactly is a picture of a rejected spider man logo supposed to cure your IBS? Well, you see, the answer is DNA shapes, and so are these; therefore, it works. It’s just science, you guys. Here I’ll let the instruction booklet explain in far less detail.
This scientific word salad works for me. The ancient cultures did it, so it must be good for you! Back in the day, when a splinter could kill you, they really understood healing better than we do now. That logic is always solid.
Great news, you don’t need a medical degree to use these cards. You don’t even need to understand what an organism is. Imagine a doctor saying, “Unfortunately, you have measles but don’t worry, I have the cure; it’s three dots. Oh, those aren’t working for you? Try four dots; one has a weird little hand coming out of it. If that doesn’t cure you, we’re going to have to pull out the big guns. Yeah, that’s right, one dot.”
Using these cards is so easy you literally don’t have to do anything. The obligation to heal is placed on, as Freddy Silva so kindly phrases it, “the diseased person.” The aliens that made these crop circles want you to pull yourself up by your bootstrings and heal yourself. You have to choose the shape that will heal you the best. Pick a card, any card, but do it quickly before your appendix bursts!
So essentially, these cards are a medical Rorschach test meets Russian Roulette. You have to look at them, guess which disease you think they should heal, then hope you guessed correctly, or die. This might come out wrong, but if you’re one of those people who think every obscure blob looks a little bit like a penis or vagina, I hope you’re blessed with only genital diseases.
Again, if the healing doesn’t work, it is the diseased person’s fault. Don’t forget healing is a personal choice, and what does healing even mean anyway? Defining a healed person as someone who is alive is actually a little close-minded. Woke people understand that aliens consider death a form of healing. In fact, the Predator considers it the most efficient form of healing, and it made at least two-thirds of these crops circles for you.
If the Predator’s intent doesn’t come through the cards correctly and heal your bunions, that might not be what you actually need. According to these cards, the universe might think you need to die to learn your lesson. Wow, crop circle cards. That’s the darkest thought a one page pamphlet has ever conveyed to me. I bet Freddy Silva saw Final Destination and rooted for the inevitability of death.
Should you decide that you’re not happy with the universe teaching you a lesson by not healing you, there is a customer service email for the cards. You can just email your private medical information to the man from Ancient Aliens, and it will help you healā¦somehow. Probably by adding you to his mailing list for future cute dog books as he hard pivots away from alien healing.
The thing that really gets me about these cards is we know crop circles aren’t real, even more than we know how most psychic phenomena aren’t real. Two British men named Doug and Dave admitted to producing over 200 crop circles starting when they were teenagers in the 1970s. They lived in a small town with not much else to do, and they decided to spend their weekends pranking the entire world for two full decades. That’s right, one of the greatest mysteries of the modern era was solved, and the solution was “Doug did it while he was trashed.”
If I find out one day that Doug and Dave did Stonehenge, too, I am going to be so pissed off. Of course, hardcore UFOlogists didn’t really care that Doug and Dave admitted to the crop circle hoax, even though several crop circle experts recognized them as two of the first on the scene at most crop circles ā almost as if they knew where they were because they were WORKING WITH THE ALIENS. Caught you, Doug, and Dave.
Doug and Dave showed reporters old design drawings and photographs of themselves making the circles. They presented a truly overwhelming amount of proof, but some people just weren’t willing to let the crop circle dream die because they were making big crop circle money by that point. Again, it’s nearly $50 for some cards that aren’t even laminated! There’s a whole section in the instructions on caring for the cards that basically says, “Look, these are not very well made, so don’t touch them a bunch with your greasy little fingers while they’re healing you.” If you do, call me for wet card advice, I’m so alone.
Ā
So, when you use these cards to request healing from the subtle energies of the universe, you’re not actually relying on the intelligence of a high race of beings. You’re asking two elderly dudes from rural England. Granted, they seem like smart, chill guys who would probably heal you if they could. They had a bunch of people publicly claiming no human technology could produce crop circles for two decades before they came out and said, “lol we just used a board with a piece of string tied to it.”
By the way, if anyone is spontaneously healed by these circles (or killed if that’s what healing means to you), you owe 1900HOTDOG payment in the form of one of our approved currencies. We accept Hulk Hogan hats, your deepest secrets, or Malibu Comics.
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Craig Lemoine, who is also a form of healing not approved by the government or recommended by any doctor.
The 2023 NHL Draft Lottery is an accursed video. Youād think it would be normal. Nope! Itās like if a boring regional business made a hostage video. Itās like if Dunder Mifflin kidnapped a hockey executive, and sent Scranton P.D. a threatening tape, but forgot to clear out the chintzy ball machine from Cringe Bingo Night. I canāt believe the NHL uploaded it at all. They uploaded it to their main YouTube channel. Me and more than 100,000 other sickos watched this.
What did we watch? A harried-yet-snorifying sports commissioner, describing ping pong pull logistics, whilst fidgeting between three ferns.
(Sean, please add the appropriate Gary Bettman showmanship to the attached screenshots.)
Okay maybe two ferns and a fig tree. Iām not a botanist. I am a person with a passing knowledge of sports. So I know the NHL is the worldās most prominent hockey league. A huge entertainment organization, with millions of fansā¦and apparently an allergy to entertaining. This huge NHL event is a snooze. A snooze! Even though hockey is ā not to get too technical ā a sport. Hockey is a sport. Sports are fun. You donāt have to agree with that claim, or feel that fun in your heart. Iām saying sports are by definition āfun.ā They are a member of the āfunā category. Like circuses, and pony rides, and the Ginuwine song āPonyā inappropriately played to children at a circus. Itās like how an oil painting of a bowl of fruit is art. Whether you want that on your wall or not, you would define it as āart.ā Hockey has that intrinsic āfun.ā But somebody (everybody?) involved with the worldās top hockey league lost track of that here. For comparison, hereās the look and feel of the U.S.ās pro basketball leagueās draft lottery:
Thatās a show. With an audience. Because this is fun! Those teams are playing a lottery, i.e. gambling, i.e. fun. Then after the lottery, all the teamsā fans get an awesome new young guy to root for. Itās a joyous occasion. So the NBAās draft lottery is a glitzy party. The sports drafts that follow are even bigger parties. The U.S.ās top football league held their draft in a giant public space this year, on a stage bigger than a football field, and more than 100,000 people tried to attend in person. They took over Kansas City to accommodate tens of thousands of draft goers, and they still had to turn people away at the gate. Because itās fun! I donāt watch football anymore and this still looks fun to me:
Thatās great. Thatās like if the Bellagio was a cityās main square, in a good way. Meanwhile, in hockey land:
That experience is most of this video. For sixteen-plus minutes, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman gives a medium-effort explanation of arcane draft lottery rules. The camera framing gives equal emphasis to the National Hockey Leagueās next draft and the location of this conference roomās fire extinguisher. Thatās the format for staring at Gary Bettman ā a hockey commissioner so despised, he gets booed when he attends hockey games. The NHL serves up that guy, with no pizzazz or co-host, droning about policy changes from a recent NHL board of commissioners meeting. It reminded me of that time Jason Pargin revealed the low-key kink communities of YouTube. I wondered if this videoās other viewers have some kind of bureaucracy/minutiae hard-on. I turn my love of details and facts into something constructive, thank you very much. I donāt funnel it into a YouTube video of a hockey team called āThe Anaheim Ducksā losing at Joyless Powerball.
A fun sports video should not make me wonder just how perverse the Internet can be. Especially not a hockey-related video. Hockey is more than classifiable as fun. Hockey is legit fun. Hockey is a series of supermen moving at terrifying speed, mounted on foot-swords, whilst always on the verge of (legally!) punching each other into unconsciousness. Hockey is so thrilling, they have to play most of the games in Canada, just to water down the excitement. Hockey is so cool, it made something interesting and organic happen in Ottawa. Yet when it comes time to see this videoās event, and discover the future of hockey, we get a video where almost all of the runtime couldāve been posted in a webpageās fine print footer. An elderly man in an office building in Secaucus, New Jersey walks you through the potential results of drawing two sets of lottery balls. And he kicks it off with a bang:
Reminder: we are not watching this video live. Itās a recording they uploaded later. The NHL posted this with an untouched āuncle misunderstanding camcorderā at the beginning.
Imagine making this video. I can! Iāve filmed Internet videos in office spaces at a budget of zero dollars. In that circumstance, everything around you is a tool. I can relate to grabbing all the plants in the nearby conference rooms, and distributing them spread-out-ish-ly for decor. Thatās free. That fits your budget. You know what else is free? A little verve. A bit of showmanship. A pre-taping rehearsal of the physical act of holding up todayās newspaper.
In this video, Gary Bettman holds up todayās newspaper to prove it is today. You know: like in a hostage video. That guy is essentially the CEO of hockey. Thatās a cool job. Why are we watching him do proof-of-life drudgery? It feels like he got kidnapped by the league officeās nighttime janitor.
Good news: this guy (NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman) is not the only member of our cast of characters. Our ensĆ©mble includes such thrilling stars as Scott Clark Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young. You know: Scott Clark! Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young! And Iām sure you started a-hootinā and a-hollerinā as soon as the camera panned to him, in the very first camera movement of the entire video, more than four minutes in.
The next reveal is even better. This draft lottery was attended by two representatives of NHL teams! Which is weird. Normally, in entertaining leagues, every team sends somebody to the lottery. Then those guys have some kind of active role: opening an envelope, reading their teamās name, wearing fashions the rest of us find humorous. Thatās standard draft lottery entertainment stuff. Itās what these basketball guys are doing:
Does the NHL set up less than a hundred bucks worth of logo podiums for their teams? They do not. In the NHL, they only convince two teams, out of sixteen teams, to send a guy to this event. The two guys who turned up have nothing to do. And the staging of their reveal is ānow please wave at the camera from a plastic folding table you did not think weād film.ā
The commissioner then gives that ā[not actually your uncle but we call him that] bugging youā treatment to three reportersā¦
ā¦before directing the camera back onto himself. Then, he asks if anyone has any questions. Seriously: he does a classroom teacher style āare there any questions?ā, at the NHL Draft Lottery. He even asks for questions with that Inexperienced Teacher vibe, where heās outwardly disappointed in the group when nobody pipes up.
āAre there any questionsā is a bonkers agenda item here. Why bother? How would that impact anything? Also, all the people in this room are either league officials or reporters. If they ask a question, they are presenting themselves as incompetent at their job. All the less-than-a-dozen guys in this stale room are paid salaries and health insurance to know this eventās āinside puckballā details. Donāt bother stopping to ask for questions, Gary. Thatās like if a Taylor Swift show ground to a halt to make sure everybody knows the name of the sparkly lady.
After that beat of āis the class even paying attention?ā, we get a thrilling twist. We meet our storyās handsome young lothario. I say ālotharioā because I assume that word is a contraction of ālottery technician.ā Gary brings in lottery technician āMartin Gorba[muffled].ā Martin enters the frame, to operate the ping pong ball device. This entrance is when the leagueās flair for showmanship sparkles:
Oh heck yeah! Letās let āer rip!!! Iām on the edge of my seat for the [reading that video screen as it is staged] 202023 DRDRRAFT LOTTETERY. I gotta say, bit of a wonky text alignment with the machine there. But hey, who couldāve predicted a glass cylinder would bend that image? No time to resolve that! The NHLās burliest setup interns arenāt on hand. Theyāre several floors away, scavenging a fourth decor ficus.
I do want to celebrate Martin. Heās wearing black on black on black on black, in a way that visually highlights his industrial lotto machine speed-changer. Or maybe they asked him to dress like a hockey puck? Either way, heās both manning the machine and navigating the erotic charge between himself and Gary. Sparks fly as Gary and Martin enjoy enough physical space for them to walk around each other, but only sort of enough physical space.
Martin is the third person in this video with a job to do. The second was Accountant Scott Clark Of Accounting Firm Ernst And Young. And after Gary and Martin select a few balls, we find out who gets the first pick in the draftā¦right? That would be what any viewer wants. But nope, not right, not yet. You see, the balls are not the teams. The balls are confusingly linked to a coded numbered system, in a way that ties the statistical odds of a lottery win to the inverse points standings of the previous hockey seasonās [you skip ahead seventeen paragraphs in this article] and finally, read to Accountant Scott Clark. Scott Clark hears these numbers, then quietly looks at a stapled packet of paper. Then Scott whispers a city name to the commissioner. The commissioner then blurts that city, louder, to us, while mid-pivot. That is the dramatic reveal of which hockey team won the draft lottery. This lottery is legitimately a big deal! But itās got all the thrill of your boss remembering to tell you thereās a package in the mailroom.
Bonus points to Martin for punching up this moment, by doing slick mob stuff with his jacket and hands. āYouse pickinā foist Chick-agh-goh. Youse pickinā foist.ā
Let me pause the column for the non-sportsheads among you. The above screenshot is an earth-shaking moment in hockey history. It is the moment when Chicagoās hockey team got the first pick in the annual draft. That is a big deal. Itās an especially big deal this year. This year, scouts say the likely top pick is the best player of his generation. So everyone knew this draft lottery had Actual Lottery For Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars stakes. Itās major news which multi-million human fanbase gets to root for that super-talented guy, and which other multi-million humans will settle for a different consolation Canadian. Yet for some reason, the NHL chose to under-undersell this event. Again, Iāve made videos with zero dollar budgets in office buildings. Iām both upset and thrilled that I couldāve done this better. Heck, itās even easier to shoot than the basketball version. Itās hard to keep a whole basketball player in the frame. Look at the most recent basketball draft. The spooky pallid āshortā man in this photo stands six foot three.
Also, that is a nice photo. Basketballās whole operation tends to be well-presented. They celebrate their new class of talent with a well-lit parade of beauteous slendermen. Hockey celebrates their version with a hostage video. The room is so beige, and the camera is so inert, it approaches the vibe of sad pornography. It also super, super doesnāt feel like pornography (Martinās too angelic). But the action on camera feels obligatory for all involved. And at the end, it achieves full Hostage Mode:
Thatās right: the NHL bothered to post and share this piece of mandatory legal evidence. The actual announcement happened on U.S. and Canadian sports channels. Iām guessing they let the sports show anchors make it funner. Maybe they light a fireworks array that spells āChicagoā, or pull the news out of a hot dog with too many vegetables on it. You know: showmanship! This entire video is not that. They taped this to prove their draft lottery happened in a not-rigged way. It is a grim exercise in airtight legal surety. And it does make sense that the National Hockey League taped that. Thereās a history of other leagues, such as the Slenderman Association, allegedly rigging these lotteries. The theory is that they rig things so the cool and big teams get the cool and literally big players, because itās more lucrative for New York and Chicago to beat Podunksville and East Podunksville. That suspicion clouds all sports draft lotteries. The NHL wanted to avoid that. So they posted this, and achieved that purpose. Weāre all sure this NHL draft lottery was not rigged. Right? Right. Right! That must be the end of the column. I do see more words below this, but surely thatās the end of MY DEAR HOTDOGGER: I am thrilled to report the NHLās video made me more suspicious of their draft lottery, not less. There is a yawning, gaping hole in their proof of above-board drafting. Because this video puts every element of the draft lottery process on screenā¦until the exact moment when they are pulling the balls.
Shocking twist: a fourth guy has a job here! A person we never see gets told to turn around and not look, and then call out the timing of lottery ball selections. We do not see him turn around. We just trust that he did that. Also the NHL wants us to believe my beautiful giant son Martin couldnāt get a ball machine with a gizmo that picks the balls for you. Those exist! But instead, they used a mysterious off-screen ball-caller. And then this draft lottery hands a generational hockey player to the huge-market hockey team in Chicago. Fun fact: Chicago won this lottery at an all-time low point in the team’s public image and reputation. Not to mention, a time of looming Chicago Hockey Team name change pressure. They havenāt even begun to address those problems. Chicago really, really needs a piece of good news to cushion the pain of all that. And oh, wow, they happened to leapfrog two worse teams to get that good news. Itās fishy. Itās fishier than the gross mollusk-based āhat trickā tradition in Detroit. And more than a hundred thousand of us saw the evidence. So thereās our accursed element, folks. This video isnāt just the dopiest anti-entertainment Iāve ever seen. Itās also the source of a grim, plausible NHL conspiracy theory. We thought weād only consider this footage for a day. Instead, weāll wonder if that guy turned around and looked away from the ball machine for a lifetime.
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Brianne Whitney, the Martin Gorba[muffled] of the San Quentin M[muffled]m Secu[muffled] Pris[muffled] intermediary co-ed [muffled]ball team from 19[muffled] to presen[muffled].
1987. Flora, Illinois did not have a lot going for it. It was a farming town of about 5,000 people, where you spent your life getting drunk atop a thresher and your retirement plan was getting too drunk atop a thresher. Flora needed help, and there was only one solution: have the entire town execute escalating publicity stunts to appease a power-mad governor who gifts prisons.
You know, that old chestnut. A tale as old as this country, practically Americana. āGonna start me, HUH / a hot air balloon raaace / just to get a prison / put up in this place, rock onā sang John Cougar Mellencamp, in the original draft of āJack & Diane.ā
Today we think of American prisons as a maelstrom of societal failure, but to 1980s Flora it just meant jobs where you didnāt dry-drown in a corn silo. So when mad emperor Governor Jim Thompson started distributing prisons to his favorite jesters, Flora petitioned him through official channels. Twice. It didnāt work. If you want a new castle from Nero you donāt write the motherfucker a proposal, you paint his name on a cow, slaughter it in front of him, and hope he claps.
The next time the prison raffle came up, they knew it required a grand gesture, so the civic leaders of Flora, Illinois got together and came up with an idea: Serenade Governor Jim Thompson with a pleading country song in the style of a whiny toddler.
A sound plan, but you need an insane mogul to appease another insane mogul. Itās like how you can only get rid of a monkey infestation by unleashing more vicious monkeys. They enlisted the help of oil tycoon Bill Snyder, who wanted to get into country music the same way Elon Musk wants to get into the public zeitgeist: unwanted, but willing to spend a fortune to find that out. He paired up with the townās former police chief, Ed Guyott, why the fuck not, and together they formed Chief Ed Guyott and the Long Arm of the Law Band. They cut a single called āAll We Wantāsa Prison.ā
It sucked in ways you can never expect, a country dirge sung by a fussy baby, with prideless lyrics utterly debasing themselves before the Ra-like might of an Illinois governor.
Itās exactly what a power-mad narcissist would love. It should have worked. Instead, the prison went to a town that painted their football field for Thompson and sent his secretary flowers.
Flora had to be ready for the next prison raffle. Jack Thatcher, owner of the local newspaper, gathered the Flora braintrust and started planning. They needed novelty. Attention. Something not just praising Governor Jim Thompson, but also prostrating themselves. Something stupid, embarrassing, and very public.
It was 1987. They were white people with no rhythm. You know exactly what they were going to do.
They were going to rap.
It wasnāt a fun, impromptu thing. They strategized every detail of this, they had the entire marketing plan locked down before they even wrote the song. It had to be bite-sized so it could fit into desperate ālocal colorā news segments. Theyād exploit Jack Thatcherās news contacts to get it off the ground. They studied the media landscape daily to ensure their release date wouldnāt go up against some major breaking news.
Bill Snyder, still the areaās foremost oil maniac, wanted to get into the rap scene in the same way Elon Musk wants to be respected by his father: Unwanted, but willing to spend a fortune to find that out. He formed all the civic heads of Flora, Illinois, into a kind of boy band. Snyder carefully crafted their lyrics to match their personas: Mike Springstein, newspaper editor, would be the young buck. Jack Thatcher, newspaper publisher, would be the wild card. Former police chief Ed Guyott was the sensitive one. Mayor Charlie Overstreet would be the streetwise hustler. Probation officer Bill Ridgeway would be the wild card. Current police chief Willie Thompson would be the sexual powerhouse. And railroad man Frank āMeatballā Zimmerman? Pure wild card.
There was just one problem: Bill Snyder knew nothing about hip hop. There was just one more problem: Each rapper would only have a single rhyming couplet. There were just several more problems, weāll get into them.
It was enough to start, anyway: They roped a local TV station in to shoot the video, the entire town was given an unofficial day off, school was canceled. Its name was Flora and it was here to say, it likes to hip and hop in a very cool way.
They were called The Barbed Wire Choir, and their single was āIs We Is Or Is We Isnāt (Gonna Get Ourselves A Prison?)ā Maybe there are racial problems with that phrasing. Maybe Flora should have been petitioning for a school instead. But thatās not important in the face of moves like this:
Thatās Mike Springstein, newspaper editor and youngest member of the choir by an order of decades. Heās here to bring that youthful energy as he croons-
Itās desperate, itās soulful, itās how the least popular BTS boy would ask for your panties, understanding a āgrossā is inevitable. Itās followed by the kind of saxophone solo that has to pay child support. This is the right way to kick off a rapping plea to a power-mad governor for prison construction.
HONK!
You better hide your girls and your 36 oz. steaks.
Rollinā up Boss Hogg style, complete with hat whomp, itās Mayor Charlie Overstreet. You know itās the mayor by the stunning white Cadillac, the enormous steer horns, and also the tiny āMAYORā sign handwritten by a corn-hooch drunk silo orphan.
Wearing an all-white suit is a power move when you drink this much barbecue sauce. Drop your verse, high-roller.
Thereās a sick synth breakdown, whoeverās rocking these beats is doing it like it might be their last act on earth. I canāt wait to meet the DJ spinning this shit.
Itās a fitting intro for wild card Jack Thatcher, who spits his words with peak Beastie Boys attitude, by which I mean daring the camera to question his hat choice.
Next up is-
Next up is the whole choir rapping that funky chorus. Theyāre collectively older than a redwood and their flow is downright laminar.
Letās take it down a notch with the sensitive one, former police chief Ed Guyott.
Even in a novelty prison rap openly begging for state scraps, itās still Edās job to be the embarrassing one. Somebody has to lay on that sword, and Ed has the unshakeable confidence of a man who wears transition lenses.
Damn, thereās another nasty synth breakdown here, some cutting guitars burst through it like a Miami Vice chase scene. A speedboat one. We need to meet this DJ-
-before he passes beyond this earthly realm.
Yeah, DJ Walterās got an AARP card: Ass Assaulting Rap Punisha. Yeah, heās also got a normal AARP card, there are some good deals in there.
Those ancient beats break and scatter like the ladies of Shady Pinesā hipbones after Walter finishes his set. Because here comes the new hotboy in town ā Iām talking about Floraās chief willie, Chief Willie Thompson.
Chief Willie knows heās packing 260 pounds of love in a 253 pound body. He moves like the Bee Gees were stung by many bees, and heās got the kind of saucy jaunt you only learn from a lifetime of busting truck stop prostitutes.
Youād better check your melanin levels, because here comes some police brutality:
Oh shit, he went for the latina headwobble! Chief Willie Thompson is an ethnic changeling, absorbing the powers of any minority he busts.
He tagteams with Bill Ridgeway, rapping probation officer, who brings to mind the filthy slyness of an Eazy-E.
Okay, maybe a Flavor Flav. But he knows how to work a crowd. The whole jury chimes in-
Before voting to unanimously indict Bill Ridgeway for improper use of courtroom resources.
Throw it to the choir.
Hell yeah, I havenāt seen that much broken joyless hopping since I accidentally stepped on a frog as a child. It haunts me to this day, much like Jack Thatcherās hip hop hands.
It looks like weāre pulling out-
Something Frank āMeatballā Zimmerman never does! He didnāt wring 9 children out of a Protestant wife by respecting the pullout. Distorted sicko effects warp his voice for one final-
I lied. The final words of the video go to a cow.
Who gently whispers the title on our way out, as a mother would to a beloved child she just rocked to sleep.
If art is the act of debasing yourself before clueless, unappreciative wealthy patrons ā and it is ā this is art. All thatās left was to give it to the world. The Barbed Wire Choir called TV stations, using Jack Thatcherās savvy media contacts toā¦ get repeatedly and instantly rejected. Only WGN Chicago knew they had history on their hands. They ran it as local color, ABC brought it national, and before they knew it Flora was being invited on Good Morning, America. They decided to send Mayor Charlie Overstreet and Chief Willie Thompson, because a plantation cosplayer and an authoritarian sexual tyrannosaurus were their most relatable members.
The story blew up. America went crazy for rural white men in their ā60s rapping. It was the Northern Boys without the irony or talent. The town of Flora itself landed a manager and a record deal. They cut an album.
They sold T-Shirts. They wrote a cookbook! It has been lost to time and I will eat what surely must be the whitest taco recipe ever penned if somebody can find it for me. I bet thereās gelatin in it.
Flora, Illinois fucked up. People wanted to exploit these hicks, not negotiate with them. I mean that literally, People Magazine wanted to run a profile piece on the town but ghosted as soon as they heard a manager was involved. Flora went bigtime and it took all the charm out of their story.
But the real question, one asked a thousand times and never once coherently:
Is we is?
Governor Jim Thompson loved the idea, he loved the execution, he especially loved how embarrassing it was. But he did not love that Flora got more attention than heād get in his entire career, and they did it almost overnight. He couldnāt say no, heād look like the bad guy. So he just suspended the entire contest, awarded nobody the prison, and waited for fifteen minutes to count down.
Which they absolutely did. There was an āIs We Is?ā parade, which has been lost to time, and I will dance what surely must be the whitest choreography ever staged atop a tractor if somebody finds it for me. They made a mini documentary. Good Morning, America did a brief followup piece, but the magic was gone. Fame faded quickly, and Governor Jim Thompson gave the prison to another town. Maybe one that put on a small stageplay for him. They could have written a Prison Mambo. Bought his maid an electric trimmer. Who knows? We donāt know what works on Governor Jim Thompson, we only know what doesnāt, and thatās making the concept of institutional injustice fucking rock.
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This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Benjamin Sairanen, who likes to think of himself as the Frank “Meatball” Zimmerman of Professional Speedboat Racing.
