HELLO EVERYONE, except hopefully my mom. A couple of weekends ago I took molly in Las Vegas and went to one of those BWAH BWAH BWAH BWAH BWAH CHINGALING CHINGALING CHINGALING BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH clubs full of button-down shirts and structurally unsound dresses and obnoxious music. (House? EDM? Are those different things? Why are those different things? Is it one of those fake differences like Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, or is it one of those real differences like Carl’s Jr. and food?) Anyway, it was fucking spectacular, family (except my mom, hopefully)!
I was always dubious of this shit, by the way—Vegas, molly, EDM (house?)—and I still am dubious of it. I don’t like Las Vegas. It’s inescapable and insistent as fuck. It gives me social anxiety. Everyone looks like they’re dressed up for an anniversary dinner at the nicer of a town’s two Cheesecake Factories. I’ve never enjoyed clubs; the forced social hierarchy is stupid. Indistinguishable strata of cell-phone salesmen angle and urge and pry in an effort to gain the opportunity to spend way too much of their income on liquor that will end up tasting just like the cheap shit after the third round of the night. The weird light shows, the smoke machines, the lasers—everything seems like somebody is satirizing a Prince concert from 1987.
House (EDM?) music flummoxes me. I can’t really tell two songs apart. I’m not going to blame the music—people say that shit about rap music, too, and it’s obnoxious. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying I can’t tell an EDM song from a house song. NOT MY CUP OF TEA. IN FACT, I PREFER ACTUAL TEA TO THAT KIND OF MUSIC AND I HATE TEA BECAUSE I AM A PATRIOT.
Molly… molly was pretty cool… apparently it can kill you, though, so I don’t fucking know. Definitely don’t take drug advice from me. My general physical appearance is that of someone featured in a “Gone Too Soon” montage. My molly was intended to be ingested by a millionaire, so if you can get some of that stuff… get it, I guess.
My point, I suppose, is that my life is way better than my fucking ex-girlfriend’s there are certain things you might think you’d hate that become amazing given the proper context. There is a cultural terroir (feel free to throw a boomerang at me for using the term “cultural terroir”): If I was ever going to enjoy a club, and that kind of music, it was going to be in Las Vegas.
It’s like seeing the Ramones in New York (don’t pretend like that’s some kind of insult to the Ramones—you bought that shirt at the mall). It’s like oysters at the coast. A month ago I got to see Big Freedia in New Orleans and it was astounding how dope it was. The room was full of twerking and civic pride, and I’m not a big fan of sissy bounce, but that night I was, and I didn’t even need any weird European club drug to understand that. It’s my goal now to do more of that—experience culture in its natural habitat, in the environment that raised it and nurtured it and supported it. It’s the best way to take that culture in. (Oh, by the way, I’ll be headlining Helium Comedy Club July 3, 4, and 5.) @IanKarmel
Molly? In Vegas? Very bad form. Booze and cigarettes all the way, baby!
Pretty sure I ate some Molly McButter as a kid…does that get me any street cred?
#NotAllHouse
Ik,
Did you feel you had to write a column this week? You really did not have to.
Molly (aka ecstasy) started getting popular in Vegas in 1994, when the strip still consisted of old people in matching t-shirts carrying buckets of nickles. Amazing dance parties were held in warehouses and then an independently owned club on the strip called Utopia, it was the only place where locals and young people partied on the strip. The hotels caught on and before you knew it every hotel on the strip had a shitty dance club and every douche bag from around the country made a b-line for Vegas. Kind of like what’s happening in Portland now, just substitute psychedelic drugs for craft beer.