The internet is weird.
I generally just sit complacently while my blog does nothing, like every other blogger on the planet, so long as "blogger" is defined with "someone who at one point has posted something on a personal weblog." Every once in a while (or in late February after the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Bracket is announced) something will shock me out of that complacency.
This is one of those things.
For those of you who mercifully were paying attention to much more important things in the late 1990's, Insane Clown Posse is just astoundingly awful as a musical act. Terrible, "we're riding this gimmick into the ground" cartoonishly-violent rap/coulrophobia jamboree. I suppose I should say here that I have nothing against cartoonishly-violent lyrics. Murder Ballads is a good example; I will listen to Nick Cave talk about carving people up until I somehow destroy the mp3s from overuse. It's not a "rap vs. rock" thing either. I do require my violent music to not also be terrible, which is where ICP fails. According to wikipedia, they concluded their "themed album" series (can a clown-based rap group have a non-themed album?) with some sort of confusing attempt to claim that all of their work is actually Christian rap. I know. I don't get it either.
Their devotees (Juggalos), are just as incomprehensible to me. I don't actually begrudge them their weird fandom, because people like bizarre things that I find terrible. There are devoted fans of the third and fourth seasons of Heroes (I presume). Lorenzo Lamas has a reality show, and there are in all likelihood people who can't get enough. Of course, those latter two groups aren't defining their entire life by the media they consume, investing in Faygo and makeup and pretending that their obsession is controversial and interesting, but I rarely interact with them, so whatever makes them happy, I guess. I'll never understand why they are still listening to ICP, but good for them.
It's a lot harder for me to ignore it when the laughably terrible duo makes a Western of all things. Watching the trailer, they seem almost aware of the absurdity of the whole thing. They have to be, right? They're making a goddamn Western in clown makeup. They seem to be affecting some manner of accent. I'm pretty sure it's more unsettling if they were intentionally trying to do this. I really want to believe that someone named Shaggy 2 Dope is doing this as an elaborate prank to see how far they could push the clown thing without their fanbase calling them on it. I'm not sure I can believe that, and I'm not sure how one would sit through the entire movie. I think it's probably enough to do what FilmDrunk does; acknowledge that it's been over a decade since ICP was even tangentially relevant to pop culture, that an Insane Clown Posse Western is something that exists, as opposed to being the sort of stock phrase to indicate unspeakable terror that H.P. Lovecraft might have used if he were actively writing in the late 90's, and try to hope this isn't one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
