Astoria-based My Left Tit, purveyors of honest musical filth

It's a tough time for music with a sense of humor. An earnest wave of boring indie bands has just tried to ruin CMJ (like they do every year), their beards matted with their own knob-slobber and playing the kind of music that wins first prize in a dick-shrinking contest. Then Hurricane Sandy left a wave of devastation and loss that turned all pop
culture into a giant Sarah McLachlan tragedy montage.

But this city likes a laugh, and if you appreciate a good novelty joke band in these storm-shaken times, My Left Tit may be your speed.

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Jason Paul Roberts

Last week in the Voice, we told you the story of Kalyn Heffernan, a disabled, queer rapper from Colorado and her shambling jazz-hop trio's October trip to New York City. Heffernan still lives in Denver, but the 24-year-old contemplated relocating to New York City a couple years ago. Having studied studio engineering at the University of Colorado Denver (a/k/a Music Entertainment Industry Studies with a Tech Focus), she applied for an unpaid studio-recording internships in New York City and New Jersey around the turn of 2010.

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American Juggalo: The scene with the smoking Juggalette

Commercial director Sean Dunne brought a six-man camera crew to this year's Gathering of the Juggalos, Insane Clown Posse's annual psycho-porn amusement park, and returned with footage of predictably lowbrow hedonism: Juggalos drinking, inhaling, whoop-whooping, hallucinogenic tripping, shooting fireworks, sucking on nitrous balloons; a green-haired Juggalette too messed up on Ecstasy and vodka to get out of a car; a pregnant Juggalette smoking. Naturally, the 23-minute web doc went viral--the biggest surprise about American Juggalo was that it took someone this long to make it.

Dunne admits that he was hesitant to be so late. "When I thought of this idea it was before the Gathering last year," the Greenpoint resident insists. "The shit hit the fan last year with Tila Tequila. And it made me be like, 'God, do I want to be this guy who goes in there and does this still?'" Since he decided to be that guy, we spoke with him about getting pulled over the cops outside the Gathering, why there may be an Illinois arrest warrant out there bearing his name, and why people should give Juggalos a break.

Tomorrow night, Insane Clown Posse headlines Hammerstein Ballroom. Tickets are still available here.

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Once again, Camille Dodero has decided to subject herself to the glorious festival that is the Gathering of the Juggalos, where she's joined by Charlie Sheen, Screech, MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and more. She'll be posting on the event as the weekend continues, but here are some photos from the Gathering so far—is it just us, or has Dustin Diamond put on a few pounds?

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Workaholics last week

Last week's episode of Comedy Central's Wednesday-night Workaholics, a first-season show about recent graduates fumbling through a post-college reality as telemarketers, took place at the Gathering of the Juggalos. From the attention to detail, it was clear creators did their homework: Juggalo interlopers called out "Whoop Whoop!"; Faygo, ICP's soft drink of choice, was omnipresent; background shots featured people passed out in the grass beside a kiddie pool, which is pretty much a microcosm of the festival. Even the few missteps--an extra who looked like the Crow, not a Juggalo; one character's Violent J facepaint was a little too Emmett Kelly; etc.--were so slight that there'd evidently been serious time invested in researching the wicked-clown family. We, as you know, can empathize.

Workaholics director Kyle Newacheck is the one predominantly responsible. Juggalo culture first fascinated the off-camera fourth-member of Mail Order Comedy, the Los-Angeles-based online sketch troupe behind Workaholics, after seeing the viral hilarity of "Miracles." Newacheck and his collaborators were particularly drawn to stoner rapping cartoons because they'd experimented with their own joke-emcee personas--wizened magicians who smoked weed and beefed with Harry Potter. Ah. . . we'll let him tell you the rest.

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Screenshot by Sir Itzkoff, just to give credit where credit's due

So friend-of-SOTC and general sweet Internet dude Rich Juzwiak recently co-engineered a fantastic montage of Taylor Swift feigning shock when she is given awards; hatched alongside his online cohort Kate Spencer, the clip attracted a great deal of attention, as you might imagine, including from someone at The Tonight Show, who reached out to Rich about it: Jay Leno would be interviewing Taylor very soon, and he'd like to show it to her on the air. Rich agreed, so long as they credited the source. The Jay/Taylor interview aired Monday. You can probably guess what happened.

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So this happened. Here we have America's favorite perpetrator of domestic violence, theatrically bursting into tears while taking on MJ's "Man in the Mirror." Just another boilerplate step on the road to PR recovery. Who'd I'd like to talk to just at the moment is the young lady seen mouthing "Oh my god" at around the 5:25 mark, whether she considered this tasteless or truly heartfelt. The oil-covered birds were a nice touch. Pretty amusing also that Brown would consent to appear in a medley that included "Smooth Criminal."

Protip: If you're ever looking to get a show shut down as fast as possible, whip a bottle at a police car. "The plan was originally for Ryan Schreiber, founder of Pitchfork, and Patrick Stickles, lead singer of the grouchy New Jersey band Titus Andronicus, to DJ at Shea Stadium from 2 a.m. until dawn," notes the Observer's Leon Neyfakh of last night's ill-fated fete at Shea Stadium, official afterparty to the Wavves show at the Knitting Factory. Instead, some clown threw a bottle, and this happened instead:

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Here we have a video described simply as "Audience member steals my watch off of the piano, July 23, 2009." The victim is Vijay Iyer, whose outstanding piano-trio record Historicity triumphed in our just-completed, fourth-annual Voice Jazz Critics' Poll. Which makes this blatant theft even more galling. Iyer first announced this violation (which occurred at the Stone) via his Twitter, though he's since noted that it cost $20 and he's not looking to get anyone killed or anything. Still, there's a principle here. Anyone with any info, just post it on the Internet, which'll take care of the rest.

Despite being stalwart defenders of all things that could possibly be called "joke rap"--from Plastic Little to Das Racist to Donald Glover--we've always found it impossible to enjoy LMFAO, the two twerps responsible for the phrase "I'm in Miami, Bitch" entering the lexicon. Not OK. It's even worse on a T-shirt. But we'd back Satan himself in a cage match with bumbling Republican and presumable 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. And in lieu of a cage match we'd even accept a series of wussy slaps, which seems to be what actually happened on an Los Angeles-bound airplane mid-Monday, according to TMZ:

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