Many of you may not know this, but I’m a pretty well-read guy. I’m not implying I’ve read any particular library of classic books – I’ve made it a point to never read a single Charles Dickens book no matter how many I was assigned throughout high school, I have a particular disdain for Ernest Hemmingway and, frankly James Joyce can suck my hog (I assume based solely on his name that he’s of the homosexual persuasion). However, I do read the news every day. The real news. The New York Times – not Metro NY, The Post, anything posted on CNN or any of that other silly hogwash. (Morris Day and) The Motherfucking Time(s). That shit is the MAD notes!
Anyway, I was reading an article yesterday about Michael Jackson’s memorial (Michael Jackson: The Memorial, rather) and I came to a phrase that was totally worthy of a tweet, however Twitter tells me “Arrow_on_red” and to “watch a video,” which I never do. So, unable to share this hilarity in my normal manner for quips of such insignificance, I decided to let it stir for an entire day and be evacuated from my body in a long form post. My original tweet will be followed by my elaboration:
yesterday the ny times referred to the michael jackson memorial as an ‘orgy of mourning’ http://bit.ly/ZSqkY sounds like an awful goth band
(Note how I refuse to use proper punctuation for my tweets.)
Indeed, Alessandra Stanley decided to equate the ramblings of a bunch of aging stars and the sobbing of a child to a sex act involving three or more people. For this, I cannot fault her. I’m almost positive it’s the first time I’ve ever laughed while reading the Times – unfortunately for me, I was drinking hot coffee and ended up with second degree burns inside my nose, but that’s neither here nor there. What I can fault her for, is the exact words she used. An orgy of mourning carries a ton of possible connotations. For one, had her left pinky slipped and hit the shift key, she would have ended up with an “orgy of Mourning,” conjuring images of retired Miami Heat basketball star Alonzo Mourning having all kinds of kinky sex with other people with the last name Mourning.
Pimp.
As my tweet above will inform you, though, this was not my initial reaction. At first, I thought it sounded like a bad high school “goth” band. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what the term goth actually means. In middle school I know we used to call anyone who listened to KoRn goth. I don’t think I used it in high school, but if I did, I’m relatively certain it was in reference to the fat asses who watched Anime (and by association Hentai). In college, I realized both the definitions were wrong as I became more entrenched in what I know as “metal” and listened to idiot girls refer to other idiot girls who happened to be wearing a black t-shirt as goth.
Now, I tend to associate it with darker rock acts and (at the risk of upsetting either a frigheningly fat or skinny mongrel of an outcast) some more feminine black metal acts and people who still insist on wearing trench coats and ponytails. (Ghaal, I’m looking directly at you.) With that, let me set the scene for how Orgy of Mourning came to be:
Greg Schmidt (or Devastatorious as he liked to be called, not realizing how retarded and off-base it was) was a skinny lad, aged 15. At one time, he was very much into N*SYNC, but never told anyone. As a direct result, he was driven head first by the denial of his own homosexuality to black metal. First it was just once in a while, when he was bored of his Metallica CDs, but with the advent of high speed Internet and P2P networks, he found he needed to own and know everything about every band ever, which brought him to his current position in life – trolling message boards, blogs and news sites to point out whenever someone forgot to mention the latest Abigail Williams release.
One particularly rainy afternoon, Devastatorious was ham-handedly playing something resembling a ham-handed Mayhem song on his Line6 Pod Pro, which he got on eBay for “like half of list price.” As he came to what some would call a chorus, his buddy Mike Shea (Khhal for our purposes) came running down with a great idea, “Let’s start our own band!” Of course, this sounded like a great idea to Devastatorious. “Ok, well first things first – we need a totally bitchin’ name,” he explained.
“Well, yeah of course. What should we call ourselves?”
“The most dark and hardcore thing ever.”
“Nothing was darker than when my mother mourned the loss of Sprinkles (the shivering family Teacup Something or other).”
“Fuck yeah, the idea of mourning is deep as hell.”
“What else should we include?”
“How about something sexual? Not because we’ll end up having sex six months from now, or anything.”
As he said this, Greg shot a look to the right to avoid eye contact with his new bandmate. Mike continued looking at him awkwardly for a moment before breaking the silence:
“This might not be cool, but check it out.”
“Ok”
“Remember that totally gay band from back in the day Orgy.”
“Yea, they suck.” No they don’t, he thought to himself.
“Well, how about we take ‘Orgy’ back and make it cool again?”
As if they had both sprung rods simultaneously, Greg and Mike looked up from their in-progress black painted nails and exclaimed triumphantly:
“ORGY OF MOURNING!”
-END-
And that’s how I imagined that going.
