The art collective Everything is Terrible! will assail the public’s senses with its live show “Kidz Klub” at Puscifer the Store in Jerome on Saturday, July 29, at 7:30 p.m.
EIT will be combining found footage with a costumed stage performance to promote their new movie of the same name.
“This is such a special [show] for us because Puscifer hit us up years ago,” EIT founder Nic “Commodore Gilgamesh” Maier said of the store, which is owned by Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan. “We grew up as fans of Tool, and to learn that there was some mutual love and respect there, it was really exciting for us. So we’ve been meaning to make this show happen for years now. We’re just so stoked that it worked out.”
The group has developed a signature style of videography that involves taking thousands of clips from forgotten VHS and DVD films from the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s and juxtaposing them for comedic effect. Their performances are targeted at adults who grew up during those time periods.
Their montages examine the messaging directed at American youth, ranging from the banal, such as the importance of good hygiene, to the sinister forces of American consumerism.
“We view the live show as the next level of involvement in the cult of EIT; it’s an escalation,” Commodore Gilgamesh said. “There’s an overwhelming aspect to the show, [but] it’s grounded by our performance, which we refer to as a song and dance spectacular that would make Ice Capades look like a stupid piece of trash. Because we built elaborate costumes and put on this universe that helps kind of soften the blow of what a horrible media landscape we are all wading through.”
“Kidz Klub” is the group’s eighth feature-length film and will be a sister piece to its 2018 film “The Great Satan.”
“With ‘Satan,’ we were putting forth our collective fears, and ‘Kidz’ is more collective dreams of what the perfect world would be like,” Commodore Gilgamesh said.
He added that the cultural shift to content streaming has reduced people’s sense of community, as physical media curation helped foster bonds between people, while corporate media consolidation can be anti-consumer.
“Now it’s just the corporations selecting 10 movies for you to watch [with streaming], and that’s a big loss,” Commodore Gilgamesh said. “We fully lost control, although I don’t know how much control we had when millions of ‘Jerry Maguire’ VHS tapes were being pumped into our homes.”
One of Commodore Gilgamesh’s favorite things about taking EIT on the road is the connections that occur between people during performances.
“Sitting at home with your computer screen like a moth flying to the light isn’t, for me, the same as being in a room with a group of people who are screaming in horror and laughing and rolling around in the aisles,” he said.
“We’re all neck deep in this thing, and sanity is elusive in an insane world,” Commodore Gilgamesh continued. “One of the ways I keep sane is there’s some property where I’m building an earthen house, just south of the Grand Canyon, so I spend a lot of time out there just totally unplugged from media and computers … I was just making jam from fruit that I just picked on the street in Los Angeles. I go back and forth between fully being immersed in brain-melting horrors, and then I go spend time with flowers so I don’t go insane.”
Beyond the ephemeral nature of content streaming and its efforts to develop a “DIY puppet show movie,” EIT has sought for years to house all of the world’s remaining VHS copies of Tom Cruise’s 1996 movie “Jerry Maguire” in a three-story pyramid in the desert.
Financial hurdles and legal roadblocks have prevented its construction so far, but Commodore Gilgamesh said they’re looking at the Grand Canyon State for the site, citing an easier building process compared to California.
“It’s the problem with having really stupid, stupid dreams that are big and stupid,” Commodore Gilgamesh said. “We joke about how it’s the most American dream ever.”
For the last 15 years, EIT has been accepting every “Jerry” they can find via donations for housing in the eternal pyramid. The collection now contains over 40,000 VHS tapes, with an additional 3,000 anticipated to be added during the forthcoming tour. DVD copies are not accepted.
“The pyramid is just a growing collection of ‘Jerry Maguire’ VHS tapes right now, and a dream,” Commodore Gilgamesh said, explaining that EIT will continue to accept copies. “Until we’re dead or the pyramid rises from the ashes of this cursed civilization, whichever happens first.”
However, Commodore Gilgamesh observed that time has tempered the group’s outlook.
“Fifteen years in, we’re in this more subtle space of, there are systems at play that we want to tear down, by, I guess, drawing mustaches on them,” Commodore Gilgamesh said. “But the world is beautiful, and we can hold on to that.”
General admission tickets for the show are $20 and can be purchased at the group’s website everythingisterrible.com. Puscifer the Store may be reached at (928) 639-3516.
