In Defense of the Insane Clown Posse... sort of.

Not a fan. Like, at all. The war paint is pretty cool though.

Fuckin War Paint. How does it work?

ICP is too often the butt of jokes in the Hip Hop Community, and why not? The rhymes are tired, the flow is generic, and the beats are boring. And the lyrics are stupid. That, and they went to war with the invincible Slim Shady (that never goes well for anybody). They never miss an opportunity to make themselves look willfully ignorant - maybe even stupid.

So what's with all the fans?

They exist by the thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Juggalos (hope I spelled that right). And don't diss the Clowns within earshot of a Juggalo; they carry hatchets. Dedicated superfans, every one. How?

Fuckin magnets. That is all.

Yes, those of us who wish the ICP would just go away probably outnumber the Juggalos at least 10 to 1. As my friend - Hip Hop / Comedy Activist and Media Assassin Jack Wilson - put it, we don't accept the ICP as a part of Hip Hop; they are their own thing and that's it.

From where I'm sitting, the situation defies reason. Rappers with no discernible talent for rap, rhyming over beats that pretty much suck, picking fights with giants and losing... It's kind of the American Dream, minus the sucking and losing part.

You may have noticed all the subjective language so far. There's the problem. *I* think they suck. Those legions of fans? They don't. Statistically there's a better chance there's something wrong with *me* than with the ICP. Or their fans.

That spooks me a little.

Seriously. There's nothing wrong with me. Except all that stuff.

I dunno. Judge not lest? Something like that. No, really. We got better things to do than hate the Clowns or the Juggalos. It's a waste of time and energy.

Besides... Without ICP, miracles would go sorely under-appreciated. Who would stand in awe of the mighty rainbow? Who would take the time and imagination to understand fuckin magnets? Who would question the motivations of scientists to explain it all?

We'd have to rely on these two.

Yeah, I went there.

Where Are You From?

I get this question from time to time, and never know how to answer it.

Let's assume for now that the question is a purely geographic one. Even though it isn't.

Born in Toronto, didn't see it again for more than 20 years. The first 5 years of my life were spent bouncing from Toronto to Edmonton to Ottawa to Yellowknife to Iqaliut to Qikiqtarjuaq & back to Yellowknife. When I was 6, my folks settled in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. We stayed there for 20 years. So if I'm from anywhere, it would be there.

Then again, while we were based in Fort Smith, I also went to school in Thorsby, Yellowknife, Rome and a small town about an hour out of Boston. Then moved back to Yellowknife.

After all that, I moved to Peterborough, Ontario. While I kept coming back there for about a decade, I was moving around again - to Iqaluit, Ottawa, Combermere, Toronto... You get the idea. Not exactly homebound. And while living in all those places, I was falling down all over North America too.

These days I'm in Toronto. After regaining my faith in education (bit of a story there, but for another time) I read through some audio school websites and picked one; it closed and kept my registration fee, so I picked another one, which led directly to having a great year with some of the coolest people in the field of audio and music (Steve Sauve, Trevor Marshall, Jeff Wright, Darius Szcepaniak, Eb Reinbergs & Teppei Kamei, to name a few). Guess I dodged a bullet with the first school.

A year later I was interning at Euphonic Sound with James Pew & Shawn Daley. Still working there in a kind of freelance capacity, with the crappy day-jorb to pay the bills. It's good, but I want to do more; "going pro" is a lot of unpaid work, and the whole shelter-and-sustenance thing really eats up a lot of time. But that is, again, another story.

So much for the obvious.

The point I'm getting to here is, "Where are you from?" is not just a geographic question. It can be an ideological, socio-political, gang-related (ask B Real), or spiritual question.

With the 14 years I've spent rambling around Ontario looking for my destination, a lot of things have changed inside me. The people I've met along the way have slowly knocked bits off me, and things have happened to me that really took me out of the well-lit prison of what my mind could include at the time.

Used to subscribe to a kind of conservatism I now loathe. Used to be a small-town kid, but now can't deal without a subway system and access to espresso. Used to be a devoutly religious guy with aspirations to the priesthood; the language of the liturgy doesn't speak to my understanding of God at all anymore. Used to dream about landing a fat record contract and effortlessly riding the beat to fame and fortune (dodged another bullet there too... who knew depression could be so useful?). Used to think music had all the answers...

Okay, that last part hasn't changed at all.

But the things that have changed me aren't just a part of me now; they're part of where I'm from too. If a thing is who you are, then it had to come from somewhere; and if it wasn't you 20 years ago, then it came from somewhere else. You could be from somewhere you've never physically been, so long as it's had a lasting effect on you.

Where are you from? Geographically I'm from Canada, and that's about as specific as it gets. In every other way I'm a result of the universe colliding with itself.

And so are you.