Everything is Terrible! returns with more gems from the golden age of video. And they want your Jerrys.
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2019 18:00:10 +0000
Costumes are part of the silliness when video-blogging collective Everything is Terrible! comes to the Fox Cabaret on Aug. 10. Don’t forget to bring your old Jerry Maguire VHS cassettes. Photo: Jim Newberry
Everything Is Terrible!
When: Aug 10 at 7 p.m.
Where: Fox Cabaret
Tickets: $16 at ticketweb.ca
Imagine, if you will, a pyramid in the Arizona desert. In it are gathered tens of thousands of VHS tapes of the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire. This marker of “our once great civilization” is the ultimate goal of the people behind Everything is Terrible!, a video-blogging site that has been celebrating, highlighting and deconstructing videotape culture since 2007. Besides sharing their finds on social media, Everything is Terrible! has opened a Jerry Maguire store (that sells nothing but “Jerrys,” as EiT! calls the videotapes) in Echo Park, Los Angeles, put together feature-length films (like last year’s The Great Satan), and toured its discoveries. We talked to Commodore Gilgamesh about the latest EIT! show and how Vancouver has contributed to the Jerry project.
Q: How is this show different from previous tours?
A: The last time we were in Vancouver was with The Great Satan. After we do a theme show like that we like to cleanse our pallet and do more of a generic introduction to Everything is Terrible!, with some of our favourite old clips mixed in with some new stuff. It’s a pretty exciting overview of the Everything is Terrible! universe. We’ve built some new costumes, made a whole new live show. It’s really silly and pretty jam-packed.
Q: Are the costumes based on ideas from the videos?
A: Yeah. We’re constantly inspired by what we see. For some of them, we’ll take a character directly from a video and then fold them into our universe. Gerbert (an orange Muppet-like character from a Christian children’s TV show) is a great example of that. I think these are our best costumes though by far.
Q: Are you getting closer to building the Jerry pyramid?
A: Every day we get closer. It’s not a project we’re taking lightly. It’s our life’s work. We need to get it up before we die. We’re pushing about 27,000 Jerrys currently. We got probably 50 or 60 last night in San Diego. So every day we get closer to our goal of getting every single Jerry that’s out there. As far as the actual construction goes, we’re looking for land right now and working with our builders and architects on the design.
Q: After the apocalypse, when the pyramid is still standing, what are future Erich Von Dänikens (author of the 1968 aliens-among-us tome Chariot of the Gods, among other works) going to think of our civilization?
A: You know, I think that’s a big reason why we think it’s important to preserve this moment of our world. Museums are trying to hang on to certain aspects, but we’re focusing on a different piece of our world to elevate, a truer relic of our civilization.
Q: And how has Vancouver been when it comes to people bringing you Jerrys?
A: You guys are great. I think the last time we were there we got 200.
Q: At the same time you’re culling artifacts from forgotten VHS tapes, YouTube is responsible for thousands of hours of new video every day. How does that square with your project?
A: I honestly think that YouTube is more temporary than VHS. There are tons of videos we love that have just disappeared.
Q: And VHS has a particular aesthetic.
A: Yeah, and our tastes have changed. In the beginning, we were really into the late eighties. Now, I’m really into the early 2000s. And our clips are probably 30 percent from DVDs now too.