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This week in
Big Silver to White Water
and
Hard to keep a good clown down A visit with the Arkansas Juggalo Family.
W
hile e-mailing back and forth to arrange a meeting with a few area Juggalos, the moderator for the Arkansas Juggalo Family website seemed a bit hesitant about submitting to
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CLOWNING AROUND: Detroit horrorcore rap duo Insane Clown Posse (above) have spurred an unlikely nationwide legion of face-painted fans called ‘Juggalos.’
By John Tarpley
Sinful Sunday
yet another article about local fans of horrorcore rap-metal clowns Insane Clown Posse, this time in advance of the band’s Dec. 2 show at The Village. “I am concerned about what the overtone of your article will be. The last few times that the Arkansas Times has taken interest in Juggalos, it was to mock them,”
wrote Josh Malcome, nom de clown, Payaso. No doubt he’s right. Robert Bell’s critical review in the Times of last year’s Insane Clown Posse show at The Village brought the “family” out in force to our Rock Candy blog, provoking a string of responses that ranged from belligerently
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defensive to aimlessly pissed. (http://bit. ly/icp_review) Since then, things have become bleaker for Juggalos (or “ninjas,” as they sometimes call themselves) demanding respect. What used to be an inside joke between the pop-culture savvy became a nationwide occasion to point and laugh after a couple Juggalo-baiting skits from “Saturday Night Live” went viral and brought Juggalo-mocking to the mainstream. Then the community of fans returned to the media eye when part of the 20,000-strong crowd at this year’s annual “Gathering of the Juggalos” bloodied reality TV star Tila Tequila by pelting her with rocks, bottles of Faygo soda (ICP’s notorious drink of choice) and, reportedly, human feces harvested right out of a Port-a-Potty. Yikes. So with a mountain of bad press behind their backs and another suspect writer approaching for yet another article, seven Arkansas Juggalos, decked out in Insane Clown Posse clothes, jewelry and tattoos, kept a video camera cued in on me during our meeting in Conway. You know, so I don’t misquote anyone. If you hadn’t gathered, Juggalos are a unified front of self-defined misfits and outcasts. “A Juggalo is someone who couldn’t fit in with any other group, but ICP and the other Juggalos have given people a place to come together and be part of this and now I’ve got hundreds of thousands of friends I can call family,” says DJ D.O.E. of local hardcore act Intoxxx. “It’s awesome.” “We’re a bunch of outsiders that decided, ‘Hey, we’ll be a family. I got your back, you got mine, we’re not going to get picked on anymore,’ ” says Ouija Voss, a Juggalo out of Conway. It’s hard to deny the primal need for community and the necessary sense of self-worth that comes from being aligned with a group of the similarly minded. But it’s even harder to wrap one’s head around just how and why a nation of ostracized Continued on page 29 www.arktimes.com • NOVEMBER 25, 2010 19