Dead People Party Interlude -- AKA Crisis on Infinite Earths

Eoin Forbes: Warning: this might become incoherent and poorly written two sentences from this one (save the jokes, Mr. Funnyman). I slept less than an hour last night, my eyes are burning, and my neighbors dog is entreating me to KILL. Psychedelic Insomnia, aka lying in bed for seven hours straight, too ascairt to get out of bed and play DS/read Thomas Pynchon/send the Duff sisters fanmail because I think I feel it. I could fall asleep...any...second.... Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours, and, ultimately, the result is the hollow chrysalis of a man. This room is spinning.

It was a previous bout of insomnia (see, I'm going somewhere with this) which inspired the Dead People Party series of posts. I began the

(I don't want to say bold, because the word connotes foreshadowed achievement; so let's settle on industrious)

series after spending a night in that immensely frustrating limbo between superlative drowsiness and perfect awareness. Some time before dawn -- and that's the rub, let me tell you: stay up all night sleepless, denied entry to the Land of Nod, only to gain access less than an hour before your alarm clock rings. I feel the same way vis a vis adulthood and wet dreams, by the way -- I dreamt that I was at the release party for the Wu-Tang Clan's new album, their latest in nearly six years, 8 Diagrams

Naturally, as dreams of mine are wont, reality was a tad skewed. Raekwon was three-feet tall, wearing rainbow-colored suspenders, a jaunty bowler atop his watermelon-shaped head; Inspectah Deck was a cyborg, Method Man a witty raconteur who amused all in attendance with anecdotes of a year and a half spent aboard a whale ship with Julia Child (or maybe it was Chris Childs; I don't remember); Ghostface, perhaps ironically, was the phantom bartender from Kubrick's The Shining; U-God was a woman -- a fairly attractive one at that -- teaching children how to whistle with their fingers. Rounding out the Clan (mostly, for in both dreams and wakefulness, Masta Killa has proven elusive; and ODB is dead and Cappadonna is Olivia from The Cosby Show), GZA, dressed as a skeleton, threw water balloons at late stragglers, while RZA, holding a lorgnette, viewed (NYC)everything from a bulletproof opera box.

This dream, it would turn out, would be prophetic. I'm used to, for lack of a better term, fucked-up shit happening while I am asleep; but something about this particular dream left a profound impression upon me. I awoke (wose fwom my gwave is more like it) utterly convinced that 8 Diagrams would be a terrible album. I shall reiterate: not a mediocre album, but an album that would quite possibly kill hip-hop, or at least the zeitgeist of those of us who are still clutching with hope upon hopes that a seismic shift, no matter how minor, could yet occur. And who better to to bring about its resurgence than the fellas who rebuilt the matrix the first time, the Wu?

I should have known.

The Wu-Tang Clan hasn't been relevant for over ten years, good for half that. On lyrical skills alone you will find none better, and the stars truly were aligned when, 15 years ago (damn I feel old), nine men orbited the Sun, aka RZA. And that is an apt metaphor, because without him all nine planets could not survive within the same solar system: not GZA (Jupiter), Raekwon or Ghost (Saturn and Uranus), Method Man (Mercury), Inspectah Deck (Pluto), U-God (Neptune), ODB (Mars, natch), Masta Killa (Venus; clouds, see) or Earth...(us, the fans).

And here's where it gets tricky. And here's where the Sun becomes a quasar.

When your home planet is threatened by an extinction-level event, what do you do? (Or, when your groundbreaking producer becomes impotent as both a beatsmith and a life coach, from whom do you seek sustenance to maintain your growth?)

The immediate answer is complex: a) you pull a Kal-El and seek exile in a galaxy where your strength can be honed and further marvelled upon (Ghostface), b) you break out of orbit and hope that you may someday reunite with the denizens of your fallen brothers (Raekwon, U-God), c) you pull the planetary equivalent of the Jonestown Massacre by slowly cannibalizing yourself (Inspectah Deck), d) you fall asleep during the apocalypse (Method Man), e) you -- word to Mike Tyson -- fade into Bolivian (GZA), or f) pretend you never were planets to begin with (Masta Killa and that taxi driver), and thus become fat kids in a pickup game who are just happy to be chosen, regardless the team. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. G) you implode (ODB).

Envy ODB for dying, because whatever brought the Wu-Tang Clan back together -- read: cash, money -- certainly didn't reunite them. In fact, it has divided them more than ever. You can save yourself the time reading about the recent back-and-forth between RZA and Raekwon -- who pulled a Bill Cosby Leonard Part VI and might probably never see Cuban Linx II released as penance -- over the new album's merits or lack thereof. The Chef is right: 8 Diagrams sucks eternal balls.

How bad does it suck, though? So much so that I find myself bereft of adequate metaphors to compare to its phenomenally amazing suckage, that's how much.

(Still, I shall try.)

8 Diagrams is that time you thought you just had pimples on your shoulders and they turned out to be shingles. 8 Diagrams is 6 degrees of stupid plus 2. 8 diagrams is every retarded chain mail letter you've received in your inbox times infinity. 8 Diagrams made my turtle Dexter die to return as a giant turtle of feces that swallowed the Earth and shat out itself. 8 Diagrams is the reason you were born with Down's syndrome. 8 Diagrams is the reason I'm listening to Idlewild right now, wondering whatever happened to magic. 8 Diagrams is responsible for every remade film that sullied your fondness for horror cinema AND the Star Wars prequels. Furthermore, 8 Diagrams is to blame for every derivative pop reference joke I make on this hallowed site AND every one I miss. 8 Diagrams causes bowel discomfort in babies, toddlers, children, adolescents, teens, adults, senior citizens, and slow mutants. 8 Diagrams built Ilsan on rock & roll. 8 Diagrams is an effective means of birth control on the African continent. 8 Diagrams wants my mind, soul, and my body (or maybe that's the Illuminati; same difference). 8 Diagrams killed Biggie, Tupac, and Dave from Wendy's. 8 Diagrams caused the HAL9000's meltdown, and, likewise, several inept film majors'. 8 Diagrams, 8 Diagrams, Dalton Ames.

Goodnight.