Audioccult Vol. 93: The Worst Parties You’ve Ever Been To

Light a candle. Draw the required sigils. Now, raise your arms above your head and slowly, gently, exhale your soul. You won’t need it here. This is Audioccult, and it’s time to get low. Illustration: SHALTMIRA

◊ SUBVERSION FETISH BALL: THE AWOKENING

Are you a Dark Romantic with a passion for pee-play that no God or Devil can sate? Do you desire to have your feet yelled at by the denizens of the night? Gross balls guy? Then enter our realm of whips and vampires or whatever. Pain and pleasure await…

This message is best viewed with one of the following fonts installed:
• Burton’s Nightmare: similar to the writing used in Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas
• Goodfellow: Similar to the font above.

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That’s the gist of the email I received for the first truly awful party I ever went to. Don’t everyone say, “Duhh,” at once; I was young and easily influenced by vinyl-clad older women with serious issues. So yes, I went to the bad party, the worst party. I watched in bummed numbness as Dracula pretended to spank an anime. A woman with no conviction in her eyes or voice told a man he was a worm. Soundtrack by Lady Gaga. Eroticism courtesy of nobody. I guess if you’re going to garb yourself in an ill-fitting veneer of BDSM ‘subversiveness’ then you’re probably going to half-ass the soundtrack as well, but that was the part that disappointed me more than anything. I expected something more alien; the sound of depressurized hulls, machines being kicked down stairs that lead to forced breeding pens and oxygen tents. Oh well… I suppose there’s something at least mildly subversive about bad goths acting out vanilla fantasies to Pet Shop Boys. Pretty sure there’s a Deviantart gallery about this.

◊ REAL TRAP SH*T

Nothing says ‘genuine thug’ like an asterisked swear word. I can’t really judge them for being the whitest bros in the world since I’m pale enough to be invisible, but when there’s a hundred of them hanging out in a bar with an MC who looks like Simon Pegg doing the Flocka ‘bow bow bow’ bark, you have a recipe for a night of shame. The overly-enthusiastic party photographer was using flash for every shot as well, so all the photos looked like ghosts in Supreme hats. To make things even better, the bar came with the standard sound limiter (which I’m petitioning to rename “DJ hate crimes”). Aww yeah, dog. This rap song is good as hell, but do you know what would make it even better? Turn that shit down a little bit. Nawww…lower. Mmm. Make those 808s into 404s—make ’em unavailable as sh*t. And now the bass is gone too? Homeboy.

◊ NEW YEARS BLOWOUT

Not actually a party, more going over to my sister’s house and making guacamole for her New Year’s gathering because I had nothing else to do. “I’m guacin’ here”: cool thing I say when I make guacamole. Sometimes I mix it up and say, “Guac it to me, baby,” like a New York tough guy to impress my nieces and nephew. Doesn’t work. They’ve seen me puke.

◊ SURPRISE PARTY #1

This was a surprise party for my grandpa, but I walked in the door ahead of him and everyone yelled, “SURPRISE!”, and I got really excited. I had to have a time-out for this one, too—for “inappropriate dinner topics.” Sorry, dad, but Boondock Saints fans are basically the nu-metal kids of film, and that is why the movie will never be part of the Criterion Collection. It’s like putting ‘Peel Session’ at the end of Limp Bizkit song titles. I’m the one who scratched your Blu-Ray too, fucker.

◊ SURPRISE PARTY #2

This one was actually for me, but the presents were the worst presents and soiled the atmosphere of the party. Kitsuné CDs? How about an Ed Banger record while we’re at it. A Bo Jackson poster where Bo Knows how to be tough and hold a bat behind his shoulders instead of in front, excellent present for an artistic goth kid. A beautifully-bound collection of hand-drawn Hank Hill/Al Bundy yaoi, rendered absolutely worthless due to unforgivable inaccuracies. Uncircumcised Hank? Honestly?? You dumbass.

◊ PARTY IN BED

Who says you can’t party in bed? Filter wouldn’t. Filter would yank down my pants and then say something mean about Chris Cornell, like maybe my pubics represent his mustache. Me and my Filter records, living Large and In Charge in my bed. It’s lonely at the top, and when you’re awake.

◊ YOUR BAD PARTY

For as many bad parties as I’ve been to, there’s always more—parties that list genres they never play on the flyer, parties with good music but nobody’s dancing, parties with weird smells that linger over the dancefloor and you spend the whole night wondering if it’s you. The possibilities are endless. If you have some terrible party stories too, feel free to share them in the comments section below. I’ll select one lucky local winner to spend time with me (amount of time to be decided by myself).

◊ PARTY WITH ME

A good party is like a knife… beautiful, potentially dangerous, and sticking out of my stomach. Please call help. Please help me. please call help ⁓

For more editions of Audioccult, click here.

Published February 14, 2014. Words by Daniel Jones.