Video Drones

The bloggers/video scavengers of Everything is Terrible! go live with Magick and monsters.

by Lauren Macaluso

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Published: Jul 27, 2010

Ashley Macknica HERE, THERE BE MONSTERS: Everything is Terrible! is a blog composed of seven friends with a penchant for VHS treasures.

[ too terrible ]

Sifting through bins of VHS tapes in thrift stores and yard sales is exactly how the folks of the blog Everything is Terrible! (everythingisterrible.com) choose to spend a Saturday. After one of these outings — where they search for infomercials and workout tapes from the '80s — they scavenge the footage for the funniest parts and start editing.

For the past year, the EIT! bloggers have mastered their editing skills and experimented with psychedelic visuals to present a feature-length mash-up of their best clips called 2Everything2Terrible2: Tokyo Drift, which the seven friends have taken on a tour dubbed The Quest for the Magick Crystal. Oh yeah, and before they screen the movie, the bloggers waddle out on stage dressed as big-headed monsters. 

Therein lies the difference between EIT! and other blogs devoted to editing found footage: full-body, foam-rubber suits. "The whole shtick is that we are weird creatures from the Internet who fell out into this world and we don't understand it at all," says Katie Rife, one of EIT!'s founders. "To us, Everything is Terrible! is the world so now we have no idea what's going on." But the performance aspect isn't about focusing attention on EIT! writers, Rife says; it's about further highlighting the videos and the forgotten medium of the VHS. EIT!'s passion for video oddities has become its own form of pop-culture commentary, like "Moms on the Net" in which three women discuss exactly "what the heck's the net" while using "www." before most of their sentences, demonstrating the prevailing ignorance of the Internet in its early stages.

EIT! bloggers — who post under pseudonyms like Commodore Gilgamesh, Defenestrator III and Rife's Future Schlock — began archiving their finds after they graduated from Ohio University in 2007. "We started the blog to make each other laugh and goof off with each other," says Rife. "Turns out there are a lot of other people who think it's funny, too."

The Magick Crystal Tour has stopped in several cities already, where the EIT! monsters have performed different shenanigans each time. But there is actually a role the EIT! crew would like Philly to play in their live show: Bring a pair of sunglasses — bonus points if they have neon sides.

Commodore Gilgamesh began the trend at the show's sneak preview in L.A., asking the audience if they knew what a fabled shade-tip actually was. He was met with bewilderment. But here's a heads-up: When The Commodre counts down, push that sucker low on your nose and proudly yell "Shade tip!"

Why? Because it's the Terrible thing to do.

(lauren.macaluso@citypaper.net)

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