Getting down with Lettuce, Insane Clown Posse and Queens of the Stone Age
W Eclowned around. We got our Mardi Gras on. We received the royal treatment from some Queens.
Here’s how it all went down at three very different shows last week:
Whoop! Whoop!-ing it up
Bleeding from the forehead, Homeless Jimmy has seen better Saturdays.
Though he’s just been rocked in the kisser by a water bottle hurled at close range, that’s the least of his troubles: This burly hulk with a face full of scar tissue is about to get side-russian-legsweeped into a shopping cart laden with long florescent light tubes.
“Holy (synonym for excrement)!” Holy (synonym for excrement)!” the delighted crowd chants as Jimmy gets turned into a human porcupine, glass shards for quills.
Assorted dudes in hoodies hoist their similarly-attired ladies in the air so that they can get a better view of the bleeding.
“You can’t stop Chuey Martinez!” the announcer bellows, saluting the victorious wrestler, who climbs atop the ropes and flexes inside the ring at the Fremont Country Club on Saturday. “You can’t stop Juggalos!” Welcome to Juggalo Weekend 2018. About those Juggalos, they’re a much maligned lot, aren’t they?
Clad in the-gnarlier-the-better clown make-up, some of them sporting spiked green hockey masks and evil mime get-ups on this night, continually bellowing their trademark shout of approval (“Whoop! Whoop!”), they’re dismissed by music snobs and generally disliked by authority figures.
The FBI even classified them as a “hybrid gang” a few years back, a designation that thousands of them protested en masse with a march on Washington last September.
And so what was Vegas in store for when this bloody, two-day bash began overtaking a portion of downtown last Friday?
Fun.
Wrestling.
Intermittent Faygo showers.
The weekend was a hit: After selling out the Fremont Country Club in advance, an outdoor stage was added, creating a mini-festival vibe with 80 percent of the crowd coming from out of town, according to one of the event organizers.
A friendly, we’re-in-this-together atmosphere hung in the air along with the scent of cheap rootbeer, sprayed liberally by the evening’s main attraction, the Insane Clown Posse, who took to the stage with dozens and dozens of two-liter bottles of the stuff, some savvier Juggalos sporting rain ponchos to shield themselves from the stickiness to come.
A fierce mosh pit erupted as soon as ICP began their set just before
SOUNDING
The red carpet begins at 6 p.m. at AMC Town Square with the screening set for 7 p.m. Tickets are available at Amber Unicorn Books, 2101 S. Decatur Blvd., and eventbrite. com. Attendees are asked to bring gently used books to be donated to Spread the Word Nevada.
Those books, Stobber hopes, will “just really spark the imagination. That’s what this film, ‘Unwritten,’ also is focused on. It’s the power of a person’s imagination.”
He’s in the process of organizing three more charity movie premieres and hopes to inspire other actors and filmmakers to give back as well. “Our dreams, our passions, they’re not a competition, especially in this industry. … When you do make it, you wanna look back and root for the other people to make it and to go back and help others if you can.”
Review-journal: How long have you been acting?
Stobber: I started acting probably before I even went to elementary school. I have home videos of acting in these little Christmas pageants we would put on at home. I always loved to entertain my parents and grandparents when they’d visit for the holidays. … I remember seeing Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” when I was 7 years old and enjoying singing the songs and entertaining and putting on shows. And it was that feeling of making people smile and laugh and giving them a moment of escape from the stress and the hardships of the day. So, Disney, huh?
Even in my karaoke days in Vegas, I brought Disney karaoke CDS to bars, because they didn’t have Disney songs in the karaoke catalog. And it’s, like, these are the only songs I really knew.
You moved to Vegas in 2002, and your first break was working in “Star Trek: The Experience.” What was that like?
At the time, “The Klingon Encounter” was going on, so the actors would play multiple roles, from Star Fleet to the janitor. … We were just living our dreams, being paid actors.thatwasmyfirstrealjobas a paid actor.
What came next?
Through a good period of, I would say, seven or eight years after “Star Trek” — of being an usher for Blue Man Group, “Phantom of the Opera,” The Beatles’ “Love” — I was never living my potential. I got the chance to still be, in a way, slightly part of the experience, to see these amazing shows. But every one of those shows, I always had that desire and dream of wanting to be on stage.
How did it feel to finally act on the Strip, when “Evil Dead: The Musical” moved from community theater to Planet Hollywood?
That was a huge dream come true for me, after all those years being an usher on the Strip in these big spectacles, to take a local theater show and believe that it had the possibility of making it.
Is being a working actor in Las Vegas as hard as I imagine?
Yes and no. I would say being a working actor making a living at it in Vegas is nearly next to impossible, unless you’re one of the few actors that’s working in a show on the Strip. Then for the most you’re making money. If you’re in a Cirque du Soleil show, of course you’re making a living. … Really, for the general part of my 16 years living in Vegas, I’ve always worked two jobs. I was working three jobs at one point, going from concierge (at Aria) to Bally’s for “Divorce Party: The Musical” to “Evil Dead” at 11:30, midnight, and then starting all over again. You can make a living. It’s kind of like a puzzle, if you kind of find the space and piece it all together.
In the past three years, you’ve made 40-something movies in Vegas.
With the streaming services being the way that they are, more and more filmmakers are finding it possible to create, to make a movie, to take their story, their imagination and say that it is possible, that anything is possible. The tools and the outlets are there for us. It’s just having the courage and the drive to say, “Yes. I’m going to make this happen.”
And what made you want to turn some of those movies’ premieres into charity events?
There’s movie premieres every once in a while that pop up with short films and features and film festivals and such, but never really anything to connect it to local charitable organizations. … Why just have another regular movie premiere and be done with it and move onward when you can just really stand out and be something bigger and hopefully instill and inspire others to follow suit?
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_ onthecouch on Twitter.