The Angry Local Blogger Award of the Week Goes To...Justin Martinez / Also: Halloween Pick of the Day: Doggy Monster's Ball at Jazzhaus!

At the LC we tend to traffic in rather genial, loving satire of Larryville's faults and foibles, often cleverly masking the identity of our targets (Katy Seib.l). Some bloggers, however, prefer a take-no-prisoners style in which they direct their furious anger at a particular target. Take, for instance, Justin Martinez's new blog called "Horrorshow Indeed" (www.horrorshow3d.blogspot.com/ ), whose subtitle is "The slow-motion death of Lawrence Theatre, and a critique of an inarticulate Arts Culture."

Martinez is furious with Larryville's EMU theatre company due to the fact that he wrote some "interstitial" pieces for their third annual Halloween anthology show which the troupe later decided to abandon in favor of improvised material between each act. Let's look at some points from his critique of E.M.U, along with commentary from the boys.

Hernandez asserts that he was brought in to prevent a repeat of a previous dreadful performance which was "so unfunny and uninspired as to make any reasonable play-goer opt for an acid trip to the first available Christian Hell House."

Chip: "In Forttt Scottt, we love these Christian hellhouses and have supplemented the usual rooms involving the evils of abortion and homosexuality with a few to illustrate the dangers of Larryville. In one room, a group of hipsters are literally buried beneath a pile of PBR cans yet still continue to discuss the new Dirty Projectors record. And in another, a group of stoned hippies accidentally cook a baby in the microwave because they believe it's a Burrito King burrito."

Hernandez says that his witty, well-written material was dropped in favor of "an idea about the audience waving flashlights and a werewolf battling a vampire."

Richard: "I feel his pain here. For the better part of a year, the LC labored to bring our readers a remarkable meta-series about a teenage werewolf named Harry Lupus which served as both a devastating rejoinder to the current wave of toothless, sexless adolescent fiction as well as a compelling tale in its own right, yet how was our work greeted? People complained that it was 'too wordy' and basically skimmed it for the boner jokes."

Hernandez's piece also points out the unforgivably amateurish nature of E.M.U as a whole:

"Having loose restrictions is one thing, but putting actors out there on stage in front of paying people out for a night of cultural exploration, only to be molested by an aesthetic weekend-warrior, is another."

Chip: "He's absolutely nailed it here, folks. 'Molested' is exactly how I feel every time I attend a 'cultural' event in Larryville."

We strongly encourage you to read Hernandez's blog and join the debate over Larryville's arts scene (although how exactly you can join the debate is a bit unclear, since his blog doesn't seem to allow comments and is likely a one-time burst of righteous indignation that he'll never update again. But we hope he proves us wrong, because we fucking love his blog!).


---

Next in our continuing Halloween coverage is the Jazzhaus's third annual Doggy Monster's Ball, a chance for people to dress up their dogs and parade them around a bar.

Richard: "I'm dressing my puppy as a 'zebra mussel,' the terrifying scourge of the Kansas River."

Chip: "I'm dressing my dog as a policeman and I have trained him to bite hippies."