The Extreme Animals Sit Down show, Music is a question with no answer, last night was pretty rad. Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman (Extreme Animals, Paper Rad, You Can't Do That on Television) kept it fairly casual and presented about an hour of video, mix-taped with music/sound that they were playing and mixing live. I knew we were off to a good start when the boys opened with a Youtube video that showed a little girl crying about how much she loved Justin Bieber. Check it.

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Extreme Animals have a brand of performance that is nothing short of hyper-aware in regards to the internet and how it can simultaneously make images fun and engaging but can also displace them in a way that can cause isolation, confusion, paranoia and narcissism. That all sounds more serious than the vibe of the show though. It was, for the most part, a laugh-out-loud experience that, in my opinion, oddly enough brought the audience together. I found myself exiting the theater smiling, and nodding to other TBAers (I just created that nickname for you TBA goers, you like?), and thinking "Yeah, that was great right? We all get it, right?"

Hmmm... but after ruminating on it more, I began to think that Extreme Animals didn't really present anything to "get". In fact, I think they dwell in confusion, purposefully. They want you to know confusion, and feel the intensity of this daunting and epic landscape (the internet) that we are all trying to stake are our claim in.
That might be a bit esoteric however, especially for a show that ultimately was working to make people laugh. They finished the night after all, with another video in which Justin Bieber bemoaned the rape of the natural world, and blamed us all for our crimes against mother earth. Very funny. Very fucking funny indeed.