Adult Swim Fun House

If someone offered you FREE BEER AND TACOS and a FREE T-SHIRT if you stood in line for an hour and then made your way through this crazy and creepy INFLATABLE FUN HOUSE, you would do it, right? That's exactly what the fine folks at ADULT SWIM did when they brought their ADULT SWIM FUN HOUSE here to Athens, GA, last weekend (on 4-20, of course) and parked it at the end of Washington Street, right in front of the 40 Watt club. A couple of years ago, they premiered their ADULT SWIM BLOCK PARTY in Athens and this year they came back to test run the fun house that they would be taking to the SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON this July...



The fun house was set to open at noon - by the time we got downtown, it was almost 1PM and they still had not let anyone through. The line stretched down the street and as everybody waited in line, workers wearing dark MONK ROBES passed out hold harmless forms for everyone to fill out. We took a quick walk around the INFLATABLE CASTLE and then decided to come back later that afternoon after running some errands...











When we returned later in the day, the line was still long, but the mood was much more festive with the free beer and taco party going full-steam. We got in line and slowly made our way towards the fun house...















The first room we went into had these ALIEN-LIKE OCTOPI all over the walls...they were Alien-inspired versions of the SQUIDBILLIES, one of the animated shows on Adult Swim. I foolishly shoved my hand into the mouth of one of the monsters and found out, to my chagrin, that it was filled with SLIME...





In another room, we came across a mysterious person in a monks robe, sitting in a living room, watching an ADULT BABY SLEEPING IN A CRIB on television. Turns out that you could actually crawl INTO THE TELEVISION if you wanted to...we opted not to, and decided to exit through the kitchen instead...















We found the TICKET ROOM, which was encased in clear plexiglass. In the middle of the ticket room was this machine that blew all these tiny tickets around the inside of this box. You were supposed to stick your hand in the box and try to catch as many tickets as you can. Each ticket could be traded for either a FREE BEER or a FREE TACO. Lucky for us, Missy has small hands - she was able to stick her whole hand in the box and grab a whole mess of tickets. At the end of the night, we had way more tickets than we needed so Missy started to give them out to strangers, like she was some sort of magical TICKET FAIRY...





In a hellish red-lit room sat a CREEPY SANTA CLAUS with a hooded figure sitting by his side. He invited people to come sit on his lap. Another room had a flashing black light in it that cause the patterns on the walls to move like pixels in a video game...







We ran into one of the CHILDRENS HOSPITAL CLOWNS (correction: DR. ROCKZO from METALACOLYPSE) who was escorting people through this exit that forced you to crawl out from between these two HUGE INFLATABLE LEGS and then on to a GURNEY, as if you were just newly born. Having already crawled through a GIANT VAGINA several weeks ago at the BULLDOG INN ART SHOW, we decided to turn back and try a different exit:



We found the exit that had the GIANT INFLATABLE SLIDE, but first we had to make it through a gauntlet of WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MEN before climbing a rope to the top of the slide...











The exit between the legs - if you exited this way, you got a BIRTH CERTIFICATE to commemorate the occasion:



Another exit forced you into a CAGE where you were forced to sing Karaoke before they would let you out:



After we made it through the fun house, we queued up in three more lines - one for the free t-shirts, one for the free beer (we didn't drink, but traded our tickets for souvenir plastic cups and coasters), and one for free tacos, which were kindly provided by the YUMBII truck, one of our favorite food trucks from Atlanta. All in all, it was a truly awesome night. Adult Swim is doing a great job promoting their brand of entertainment, and we can't wait for the next time they roll into Athens to test out one of their crazy ideas...cheers to them!

Believe In Us - We're MUSIC+PLUS!

My first job out of high school was at this MUSIC+PLUS record store in Riverside, California. It was summer, 1989, and I was beyond stoked to get to work there. To a young dude fresh out of high school who had a deep love of music and movies, it was a DREAM JOB. Music+Plus was a chain of commercial record and video stores located mostly throughout California. In addition to selling music on vinyl, cassette, and compact disc, we also rented and sold videos on VHS and sold tickets to concerts and events. That was the "plus" part in the Music+Plus equation...

I loved this job, but left after a couple of years when the chain got bought out by a bigger, national chain (I think Blockbuster bought us out, but I can't remember exactly). Music+Plus had always been a freewheeling, partying kind of company (and how!) and I remember the new company having all these new rules and regulations that I was not down with. The party was over and it was time to move on. Several years later, I would use my formative experience at Music+Plus to get a job with the cool indie record store in town - MAD PLATTER - which was literally around the corner from where Music+Plus was...



I had many great memories here. I remember squirt gun and water balloon fights between the employees, in the store, during business hours; I remember how much it sucked to be in the display window during the summer when it was hot, sweaty, and stuffy - the sweat would roll into your eyes as you tried come up with new and interesting ways to staple 12" flats (2-sided, 12" x 12" square promotional posters) to the display boards; I remember ETTA JAMES pulling up to the front of the store in her tour bus and then basically buying out our entire jazz, soul, and R&B sections - on cassette; I remember having to close the store early the day the L.A. Riots happened - I remember pulling the gates across the windows before rushing home and then hoping that the store wouldn't get looted or smashed that evening; I remember when the company rented out Disneyland for their Employee Appreciation Day; I remember going to see Andy Bell and Vince Clarke of Erasure at an in-store meet-and-greet at a different Music+Plus - I remember really wanting to meet Vince Clarke, but only ended up meeting Andy because Vince was sick that day; I remember being able to score great seats to great concerts for myself because I knew how to work Ticketmaster like the back of my hand; and of course, I remember the countless parties after we clocked out, and all the wonderful people I had a chance to work with...the photos above look like they were taken at sunset, and that's exactly the way I want to remember the store. Since then, I've seen that store become a Container Store and then a store that sold blinds and curtains. I haven't been back to Riverside in a while to see what has become of the old space now...

Below is a photo of the back of the store where we stored all our video rentals. Customers would bring up empty movie boxes encased in plastic sleeves off the display shelves and then we would retrieve the actual VHS tapes from our library and put them in the boxes for checkout. One of my old managers, Jennifer, is standing behind the counter (she's the one wearing the Music+Plus vest, which was part of our "uniform"). All these photos were taken from the Music+Plus Alumni page on Facebook, and they were originally posted by Darrell Dooley. I don't know why, but I never took photos in the store or took photos of the store, so I don't have any of my own to show. I was excited to see these photos surface on the internet, and I just wanted to be able to share a bit of my history with you all...



Some old commercials that ran during the time that I worked at Music+Plus:

Weekend Wind-Down #162

Last weekend, Missy and I headed out to Atlanta to take care of some business and to check out ICE ATLANTA'S modern vintage marketplace - SALVAGE. We got to the sale early and got in line with all the other folks hoping to score a free swag bag...









Once we got inside the Ambient + Studio, we scoured the vendor tables in search of something special to take home. We showed incredible restraint considering all the great stuff that we came across (we're kinda in the process of purging items from our house, so we tried to keep our purchases to a minimum)















On the way home, we could help but stop at an antique shop and dig through evan more vintage items...































FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - I liked gardening in the back yard.
RAOUL - Adult Swim Fun House!

FUNNIEST MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Climbing out of the fun house with Raoul!
RAOUL - Adult Swim Fun House!

MOST POIGNANT MOMENT OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - When I kissed Jumbles on the nose.
RAOUL - Ummmm...watching Boston rejoice after the bomber was caught.

WORD OR PHRASE OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - "Free Tacos!"
RAOUL - "Name...that...PUNKY!"

FAVORITE MEAL OF THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Free tacos from the Yumbii truck!
RAOUL - Dinner at Cali & Tito's.

MAIN GOAL(S) FOR THIS WEEK?
MISSY - Work on new color schemes.
RAOUL - Blog in a more timely manner.

PERSONAL SOUNDTRACK FOR THE PAST WEEK?
MISSY - Unrest, Black Atlantic, The Sundays, NPR, Studio 360.
RAOUL - Rodney Dangerfield, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Luscious Jackson, The Sundays, Unrest, Blast Off Country Style, Beirut, Animotion, Alphaville, Howard Jones, Information Society, Olivia Newton-John, Jan Hammer, Lisa Lisa, The Carpenters, The Fat Boys.