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Thanks for respecting us!

Thanks for respecting us!

Oh, pub crawl. Where have you gone?  I don’t know what makes drinking at a collection of establishments superior to drinking at one place, but it is definitely something. Maybe it’s the spirit of the quest. Maybe it’s the rotating locales. Whatever it is, New York City SantaCon 2011 totally reinvigorated my love of the pub crawl. And maybe, in just a small way, my love of Christmas, too.  Like an unseemly dame at a dive bar, a night of stiff drinks can really make Christmas seem appealing again.

(Let the record show that the Brass at Santa Con Inc frown upon calling Santa Con a pub crawl, warning that every time you do, a “sugarplum fairy dies.”  So be it.)

Fuck 'em.

EPISODE 7

Known at various instances as Naughty Santa, Cheapsuit Santa, Santapalooza, and my personal favorite, Santa Rampage, SantaCon is an annual celebration in which thousands of Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus by buying Santa outfits, pub-crawling around the city, and then pissing off a subway platform.

Founded by a group known as The Suicide Club, the first SantaCon hit the streets in 1994 in San Francisco. It was originally known as “Santarchy” and was influenced by the tenets of discordianism and other subversive art movements whose Wikipedia pages I was too lazy to read.  The annual movement spread to cities and towns around the world. I wasn’t able to get an exact number of the figure, but to hear some people tell it, roughly 13 billion towns have a SantaCon.

SantaCon Bismark was just a disaster

Don’t Mind the Maggots began our SantaCon journey at Brooklyn Bridge Park in Dumbo. Over 9 hours we patronized 8 different bars and one downtown bodega for tall boys.  I’ll refrain from telling you any more and let you be surprised.

We wish you the best these holidays. See you in 2012.

Hello faithful Charlie Christies! We’re back with another behind the scenes look at the creation of Charlie Christ: The Gospel According to Fools, coming soon to a theater near you!

This week’s clip focuses on the creation of the so-called ‘Army of Ron’. Through the use of a green screen and some movie magic we are going to turn the army of one you see in the video into an army of thousands!

So take a look at the clip below and get scared and prepared! The Army of Ron cometh!

Episode Six. Ok, this one is a little different.   And it comes on the heels of Episode Five: Maggots at Occupy Wall Street, which itself was different, so I’m starting to fade on what exactly a standard Maggots episode looks like.

We  never know what to expect when we arrive to cover these events. The eventual look of the episode is so often predicated by seemingly arbitrary minutia: Scoots forgot the lighting equipment, Scoots doesn’t wasn’t to get arrested protesting, Scoots has gas. These – and other similar details – play such a giant role in shaping the finished product that our pre-episode planning meetings are becoming increasingly worthless.

(Though, to be fair, I spend the vast majority of these “meetings” secretly reading Cracked on the Barnes and Noble browser, while Scoots no doubt plays an online role playing game.)

Don’t Mind the Maggots: Doctors in Love follows Scoots and I as we attempt to cover Legend Masters, a Zorro-themed, improvisational musical story-telling event at Arlene’s Grocery in Manhattan.  How any of these things are connected to the other is beyond me, but at the time it seemed like a great event because it was sufficiently weird, gave me an excuse to dress up in a costume again, and provided opportunities for direct participation.

We took care of business on the Zorro front, despite getting kicked out of the costume store for not having a permit for the camera (always keeping it professional over here at Maggots). We filmed our intros, shot b-roll, gathered up participants for interviews. We covered it like any other event but when it came time to edit, it slowly became obvious that story-telling events can’t really work as Maggots episodes. We don’t want to cut up other people’s stories without their consent, and we really don’t want a 90-minute episode.

The only way we thought  it would work is if my story went in there, in its entirety.  And not wanting a seven-minute video to feature an uninterrupted, five minute shot of me in a Zorro costume talking about penises, we decided to embellish the story with some techniques we’ve never tried before. This is ultimately why Episode Six ends up not feeling quite like a Don’t Mind the Maggots episode.

Like I said, I never know where these things are going to end up, and I certainly didn’t think this was going to end up with me searching in vain for an Insane Clown Posse t-shirt at a thrift store. But it did. And considering the spirit of DMTM, I guess that’s the point.

Hope you Enjoy!

PS. In case you were wondering, the story “Doctor’s in Love” (which some of you – I know – have heard) is mostly true. The host of the event was adamant we tell true stories, and ignoring a few flourishes I threw in there almost at random, I accommodated her.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go have a talk with my parents.

Hello everyone, benvenuti!  For those of you who did not view this video I would like to share with you again my tour of Toronto where the Charlie Christ crew did something with their motion picture film. 

Hello NPeachers!

While today we’d normally have a video to post we’ve gotten a little behind schedule.

For the past couply of weeks we’ve been hard at work putting together an event so special it’ll make the hair on your neck stand on end.

On Saturday, November 19th we will be hosting a keynote event to share how close Charlie Christ: The Gospel According to Fools is to completion.

If you’re in the Fairfield County area we urge you to come with your friends for an exciting day full of amazing announcements. We do have a limited amount of seats so please register for the event by clicking over to the event’s page.

But! That’s not all!

On the very special day of Novermber 11th, 2011 – 11-11-11 – we have something suitably special planned. What could it be? Could it be a blimp? A new type of diamond? You must check back this Friday to find out!

Stay tuned! Register for the event! Long live Charlie!

There was considerable in-house debate on this latest episode. The Occupy Wall Street movement is simultaneously perfect and inappropriate for Don’t Mind the Maggots; it’s an unusual, salient and widespread event born in New York City, but it’s also a hyper-political, fundamentally unfunny rebellion. A beard and mustache competition this ain’t. The last time Scoots and I tried to cover an event with unruly political undertones – The Church of Earthalujah Wikileaks Easter Egg Hunt – it was a total failure. We decided then to cover only good-spirited events that fit our lighthearted, inclusive tone.

Then Occupy Wall Street happens and becomes the zeitgeist, and now covering any alternate event becomes awkward. Why settle for a zombie pub crawl or another oddball theatre show when this is going on right in our city?   The more and more Scoots and I bitched about not being able to find any decent, different events, the more and more the subtext became “why don’t we just do Occupy Wall Street?”

Truth is it was one of the easiest shoots of the series. Strip away the politics, and the occupation of Zuccotti park becomes an ambiguous microcosm, a sustainable community with a library, a medical tent, and a store. There is a hierarchy of leadership. People doll out chores – sweep the park, clean the dishes – in exchange for food.  All of this going on in a park the size of a football field, adjacent to the unrelenting progress of the new World Trade Center, a jaw-dropping edifice that looms like the greatest testament to capitalism in the history of the world.  How is all that – voided of politics – not absolutely perfect for Don’t Mind the Maggots?

The challenge for Scoots and I was to find a way to cover the event apolitically, to cover it Maggots-ly if you will. And it wasn’t as difficult as we imagined. Despite what a hardliner may want to admit, there is a lot of funny shit happening down there.  We didn’t have to look long for it; twirl the camera in any direction and we found someone in a V for Vendetta mask checking his Facebook.

Granted, we went on a docile day. There was no march or no grand demonstration, no stand-off on the Brooklyn Bridge. But it was probably better in regards to our show. No matter how skilled Scoots and I may be getting as these events, I don’t think we could have turned police brutality or mass uprising into funny, lighthearted fodder.

Greg: So where do you like...go to the bathroom?

The result below is no doubt different in tone and execution then previous episodes, but it is not wildly different. If you’re hoping for a profound look at the spirit of the Occupation, or perhaps an in-depth expose on the current economic or political climate, then you have come to the wrong place. (Please still click the link and leave the video running while you use the toilet or something. We need those hits, baby.)  But if you’ve enjoyed Don’t Mind the Maggots up to this point, we believe you will not be disappointed. And that’s really the best we can hope for.

Enjoy!