Borat\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s been around for several years. Now every American-Idol watching idiot in sticksville is going to have a Borat t-shirt and what was once funny will be lame.\n<\/p>\n
\nPosted by Pfc. Leftard | permalink
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\non 10\/25 at 07:37 PM<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nMy first reaction was to think, “what a wanker,” but then I remembered when I was a hip, young person, and a similar thing happened to me.\n<\/p>\n
\nEverybody knows them now, of course, but when I was in college I used to drive across the river into White River Junction, VT, to The Dive to watch an upstart band, The Smuggles. At that time, they were scruffy Johnny-Come-Latelies, scrappy newcomers from Nowheresville. Everybody was into Punk or New Wave, but I and a group of my friends were grooving to a different style of music, that we called “Funkabilly,” and the Smuggles were it. The Dive was a dingy, beer sodden place near the railroad tracks. You’d pay a $2 cover to the bulldyke at the door, and immediately be assailed by the heady scent of day old puke and Rolling Rocks, $8 to the bucket. The rail liquor gave a bad name to paint-thinner. There was a jar of pickled eggs on the counter next to the register, and a baby wombat in formaldehyde next to that. There was a mirror ball with one side caved in on the ceiling that lurched about as a result of its disfiguration above the dance floor, casting bizarre patterns on the knotty pine walls. And there was Jennie the bartendress, the prettiest girl with one-third of her teeth missing in all of Vermont.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Schnauzers used to open for the Smuggles on a regular basis. Alvin Scheffler was the manic guitarist. People would set beer down in plastic cups on the edge of the stage for him to kick into the audience. It was heaven. Every half hour or so there would be a “power failure,” and you could hear people taking advantage of the lack of light by the sound of nasal inhaling.\n<\/p>\n
\nOnce in awhile the Schnauzers and even the Smuggles themselves would come over and hang at our table. It was me and C-Mo and Barry and Bakes. Skanky Alice and Smaller Large Dave used to show up sometimes, too. Little did we know that it was all about to end.\n<\/p>\n
\nMarvell Kite had graduated a year before, and we’d still kept in touch. She was working for Spin<\/i>, and had come into town for the Winter Carnival. I ran into her in the basement of Delta Chi, and said that she ought to come out to hear The Smuggles when they played Gamma Delt. So we walked down fraternity row to check it out. It was one of their greatest shows, and the end of an era. She was blown away.\n<\/p>\n
\nShe had a friend who was the manager of Tad Magenta and the Mean Drunks, who were big in the East Coast College Circuit, and she recommended the band to them. Tad Magenta was an asshole, but he knew talent when he saw it, and after seeing the Smuggles show the next night, he signed them to tour with the MD. They never looked back.\n<\/p>\n
\nOh, yeah, you know the story. You’ve seen it on VH1. After they put out their extraordinary Gulag Goulash<\/i> CD, Magdalena Queef overdosed and Orville McCloskey stairdove to his death. And I blame myself. I’d gone to see them when they played the Orpheum a few months before. Magdalena had sent me tickets and a backstage pass. But I hardly even got to say hello, they were so busy with the press and their more glamorous city fans.\n<\/p>\n
\nAfter they’d made it big, they’d asked the Schnauzers to open for them on their national tour, then pulled the rug out from them at the last minute. The Dive closed in 1984. Tad Magenta succumbed to AIDs in ‘92. Angela left me for some guy with a future. Reagan died. I lost money on AOL during the stock crash. Olivia Newton John got breast cancer and put out a CD. I lost all my connections for psilocybin.\n<\/p>\n
\nFuck the Borat film. I’m just not ready to have my heart broken again.\n<\/p>\n
\n![](\"http:\/\/www.sinemafanatik.com\/gladiator\/gladana.jpg\")
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\nAre you not entertained?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having read the Podhoretz piece on the Borat film, soon to be released, I made the mistake of expressing my enthusiasm to see the movie, and a commenter set me right: Borat\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s been around for several years. Now every American-Idol watching idiot in sticksville is going to have a Borat t-shirt and what was once funny will be lame. Posted by Pfc. Leftard | permalink on 10\/25 at 07:37 PM<\/p>\n