Courtesy Everything is Terrible
Archivist-provocateurs Everything is Terrible have been rifling through the videotaped detritus of pop culture for seven years. From children’s shows to instructional videos to straight-to-video Christian parables to the dregs of Hollywood (and to my favorite terrible subgenre, the talking animal movie), the patient, bloodshot eyes of the EIT team has suffered through countless hours of VHS tapes to bring you the best of the worst.
Wednesday night, EIT brings their latest show, Legends, to the Black Cat for a fully interactive show. The audience gets to choose their terrible destiny in a battle of terrible themes like Kids Vs. Animals or Sex Vs Violence. Legends is also the name of a three-DVD set that compiles over 12 hours of classic terrible content. Please use in moderation, as consuming this material in doses of more than a couple of hours at a time can leave you feeling in a drugged stupor curable only by sleep and whiskey.
This year the team continues their Jerry drive. Since 2008, EIT has collected VHS copies of Jerry Maguire, with the goal of owning every copy in existence. Their coffers presently hold more than 10,000 copies, but they’re still looking for more! Help out our nation’s sanctioned hoarders of pop culture if you can.
Update: A member of the EIT team was kind enough to answer a few questions:
DCist: Tell me something about your discovery process over the years. How much crap have you watched, and what percentage of it makes it into your DVDs/shows?
Everything is Terrible!: For the last 7 years of my life, I’ve only watched moving images that could possibly become EIT! material! It is pretty sad! I don’t ever watch things anymore as a normal human would! I scan movies either on my 13 inch TV/VCR combo at normal speed or scan them after capturing them at 2x speed! I probably go through on average 10 sources a week I would guess, but when working on a new EIT! feature that number will get so stupidly high! Most sources end up being used in some way for EIT either as a Vine, web short, or for one of our live shows and/or DVDs. All in all, percentage-wise, it is a tiny amount of that original source that we use! I’d say if I take a 45 minute tape, it will make a fine 1-2 minute web video and 4-5 Vines. Then about 12 seconds of that could land in a DVD, if it is lucky! What a boring existence I have!!!
DCist: why Jerry Maguire?
Everything is Terrible!: Originally, it was simply because it was the most prevalent VHS tape in thrift stores! Then out of that idea, we’ve realized that our collecting this once-beloved physical media object means so much more! Aside from what it means as a piece of cultural criticism, I think moreover it is an act of absurdity, which is our favorite kind of act! Once you see thousands of Jerrys reunited after nearly 2 decades of separation, you will never be the same! There is magic in that useless hunk of plastic and paper and we’ve harnessed it! As of now we only have 11,000! We need so many more!!
TONIGHT, Wednesday, October 28 at the Black Cat Backstage. $15. Doors at 7:30
Watch the trailer:
