Jon Ronson - Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

ALSO BY JON RONSON

Them: Adventures with Extremists

The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright 2012 by Jon Ronson, Ltd.

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Published simultaneously in Canada

Previously published pieces: Have You Ever Stood Next to an Elephant, My Friend? (Guardian, October 9, 2010); Doesnt Everyone Have a Solar? (US GQ, March 2011); The Chosen Ones (Guardian, August 5, 2006); A Message from God (Guardian, October 21, 2000); The Names Ronson, Jon Ronson (Guardian, May 10, 2008); I Looked into That Camera. And I Just Said It (Guardian, October 2, 2010); Im Loving Aliens Instead (Guardian, April 19, 2008); First Contact (Guardian, March 6, 2010); Stanley Kubricks Boxes (Guardian, March 27, 2004); Santas Little Conspirators (Guardian, December 23, 2006); Phoning a Friend (Guardian, April 19, 2003); Who Killed Richard Cullen? (Guardian, July 16, 2005); The Sociopath Mind Guru and the TV Hypnotist (Guardian, May 20, 2006); Death at the Chteau (Guardian, January 8, 2011); Ive Thought About Doing Myself in Loads of Times... (Guardian, November 22, 2008); Blood Sacrifice (Guardian, April 6, 2002); I Make It Look Like They Died in Their Sleep (Guardian, May 12, 2008); Is She for Real? (Guardian, October 27, 2007); The Fall of a Pop Impresario (Guardian, December 1, 2001); Amber Waves of Green (US GQ, July 2012); The Man Who Tried to Split the Atom in His Kitchen (Guardian, February 3, 2012); Lost at Sea (Guardian, November 11, 2011)

ISBN 978-1-101-61242-2

To Sarah Vowell

Contents

PART ONE

THE STRANGE THINGS WERE WILLING TO BELIEVE

Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?

Violent J, Insane Clown Posse

Have You Ever Stood Next to an Elephant, My Friend?

M ilwaukee. A bad part of town. From all around, thousands of young men and women, wearing clown face paint, are descending upon a disused indoor swimming pool that has been transformed into a music venue. They are juggalos, fans of Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, the rap duo known as Insane Clown Posse.

At first glance, it might not be obvious why Im so excited about meeting them. You might dismiss them as just unbelievably misogynist and aggressive, and it is true that their lyrics are indeed incredibly offensive. Take, for instance, at random:

Im hating sluts

Shoot them in the face, step back and itch my nuts

Unless Im in the sack

Cos I fuck so hard itll break their back.

ICP have been going for twenty years, always wearing clown makeup, which looks slightly lumpy because its painted over their goatees. Theyve been banned from performing in various cities where juggalos have been implicated in murders and gang violence. ICP have a fearsome reputation, fostered by news reports showing teenagers in juggalo T-shirts arrested for stabbing strangers and lyrics like Barrels in your mouth, bullets to your head / The back of your necks all over the shed / Boomshacka boom chop chop bang.

All of which made Violent Js announcement a few years ago really quite astonishing: Insane Clown Posse have this entire time secretly been evangelical spiritualists. Theyve only been pretending to be brutal and sadistic to trick their fans into believing in God. They released a song, Thy Unveiling, that spelt out the revelation beyond all doubt:

Fuck it, we got to tell.

All secrets will now be told

No more hidden messages

... Truth is we follow GOD!!!

Weve always been behind him

The carnival is GOD

And may all juggalos find him

Were not sorry if we tricked you.

The news shook the juggalo community to its core. While some fans claimed theyd actually had an inkling, having deciphered some of the hidden messages in several songs, others said they felt deeply betrayed and outraged: Theyd been innocently enjoying all those songs about chopping people up and shooting women, and it was Christian rock?

Violent J explained himself unapologetically to a New Jersey newspaper: You have to speak their language. You have to interest them, gain their trust, talk to them, and show youre one of them. Youre a person from the street and you speak of your experiences. Then at the end you can tell them: God has helped me.

Of course, one might argue that twenty years was, under the circumstances, an incredibly long time for them to have pretended to be unholy, and that, from a religious perspective, the harm they did while feigning unholiness may even have outweighed the greater good.

Ive come to Milwaukee because ICP have just released their most audacious spiritualist song to date: Miracles. In it, they list Gods wonders that delight them each day:

Hot lava, snow, rain and fog,

Long neck giraffes, and pet cats and dogs

... Fuckin rainbows after it rains

Theres enough miracles here to

blow your brains.

The song climaxes with them railing against the very concept of science:

Fuckin magnets, how do they work?

And I dont wanna talk to a scientist

Yall motherfuckers lying and

getting me pissed.

Ten p.m. Upstairs, thousands of juggalos are getting drunk in readiness for the show. The atmosphere is riotous and exciting. ICP have a gimmick of throwing gallons of cheap fizzy soda into the crowd, and many juggalos are crushed into the barrier in the expectation of getting soaked and sticky. Backstage, ICP arrive to meet me. Theyre wearing their full clown makeupthey refuse to meet journalists without itand are immediately delightful. They smoke, but considerately blow the smoke away from my face. Oh, Im sorry, let me put that out. Thats some bullshit on my part, says Shaggy 2 Dope when he sees me flinch slightly away from it.

But they also seem melancholy and preoccupied with the negative critical response to Miracles. Saturday Night Live just parodied it (Fuckin blankets, how do they work?), and the Internet is filled with amused and sometimes outraged science bloggers dissecting the lyrics. Violent J and Shaggy have been watching them, they tell me, feeling increasingly saddened and irate.