Flutterby™! : Juggalos and more 2008-05-06 17:00:10.504186+00

Juggalos and more

2008-05-06 17:00:10.504186+00 by Dan Lyke 14 comments

Had to make a trek down to Fresno this weekend 'cause of family issues. Charlene had drive down earlier, so I grabbed the Amtrak bus over to Martinez and took the train down. On the train I got into a cool conversation with two young ladies of... well... a different economic and social background than my own, who were headed back down to Bakersfield after a visit to the Mendocino area. They called themselves "Juggalo"s, a term with which I was not yet familiar, but of which I learned something. Wikipedia reminds me that these are fans of Insane Clown Posse, a "horrorcore" rap group, with a predilection towards Faygo soda.

We had a good conversation, I gained some cred by knowing some Tech N9ne lyrics, learned about Twiztid and King Gordy, both in the horrorcore genre, and which I'll save in my repertoire because sometimes it's nice to be able to tell a 15 year old that I do kind of remember what it's like to be a teenager, and "Aesop Rock", which I'm still searching for a definitive link for, but which was my favorite of the groups I hadn't heard of before. At least played through a cell phone speaker there were some interesting lyrics there that sounded listenable. Rap and hip-hop generally aren't my thing (except when I'm driving at 2 AM and need to stay awake), but I keep finding flashes of "there is something deeper under here", and "Aesop Rock" had some of that.

One of the tasks in Fresno was trying to set up an easy to prep dietary plan for a diabetic heart patient, so on Sunday, Charlene and I spent quite a while trolling the frozen foods sections of Wal*Mart, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. This is definitely an area we'd never normally go into, and we came out with an extreme case of "what else can we suggest?". Alas, we left my notes down there, so I can't speak definitively, but the thing that totally blew me away was that as we got to the so called "healthy" brands, quite often the salt content was off the charts, and they replaced the fat with corn syrup. In the end we came back to "how can we make other tasks easier so that there's more energy left for preparing food that might actually be nutritious".

Martinez Amtrak is a 5 minute walk from my house. Ping me next time you're making that run if you have a little time to kill.

Hah! They used to carry RipIt energy drinks at my local Sam's Club. I picked up a case just to try it out, but it was a while 'til I got to it. Good stuff, actually. But when I went to pick up a few more, they'd stopped carrying it. :(

Nathan, next time I'll arrange for a layover. This time I was rushing from driving sag for the Wine Country Century to get down to Fresno as quick as...

Shadow, oddly, she was drinking what looked like some mundane strawberry pop with the "Faygo" name on it. She offered me one, but that much sugar in the evening would have seriously screwed my sleep patterns. The daughter of a friend of mine is working for the group behind "Hyphy Juice", my impression is that energy drinks are like hot sauces were in the late '90s, everyone's got a specialty label, but it's so not my genre that I haven't explored it any.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-05-07 10:23:07.365732+00 by: meuon [edit history]

The easy diabetic diet is simple: protein and veggies. No carbs, bread, rice, taters beans.. A zap/fry/broil/grill a hunk of meat/protein and zap some frozen veggies. Nancy gets tired of it and has gone on wonderful home cooking binges, but she keeps it pretty healthy.

In reality, if you are good with most of meals, you can have have whatever you want (1 very small scoop of ice cream) when you really want/need to, you don't have to be militant all the time.

The other factor: long slow steady caloric burns. Not 20 minute intense cardio workouts.. but 2+ hour long steady mild ones. Bicycling and really long fast walks are ideal.

For easy-to-prepare healthy meals, I found there are only a few choices - soups (there are a couple different brands that aren't overloaded with salt if that's a worry), and well, that was about it. A friend of mine and I made up a bunch of "homemade TV dinners" from a cookbook she had (I don't have the name - will try to dig it up) and froze them up.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-05-07 13:48:45.721695+00 by: Dan Lyke [edit history]

Yeah, we found one brand of soup at Whole Foods that was fairly low sodium (wish I could remember what it was), other than that we're pushing as unprepped ingredients as possible, even if that still means frozen veggies.

And like all diets, this one will be a compromise between what the patient should eat, what the patient will eat, what the caregiver has the time and energy to cook, and what's available. We were hoping to find a brand of frozen dinner we could just say "go with that" (our neighbor works at Amy's, his niece is Amy, so I was really hoping that their "low sodium" line would work out so I could report a success), but no dice.

Kaiser did offer a bunch of what they'd be serving her if she were in the hospital as frozen entrees, not our first choice but the caregiver has leaped on that, and, Dave, I'm way interested in a cookbook like that.

Exercise-wise, I think recovery will start with half-hour walks around the block. The other thing this has taught me is that the folks who are nailing out circa six hour Centuries at 70 years old have a big leg up in recuperation over those who aren't...

#Comment Re: some kewl horrorcore(?) made: 2008-05-07 17:57:45.707655+00 by: ghasty

Check out an AT artist called Bloodhag sometime...they did a public library tour a while back...deathmetal, kinda, with all songs about famous authours. Kind of a mini-biography in 60 seconds. word.

I've pinged her for the name, Dan. Feel free to remind me if I haven't passed it along by Monday.

Deathmetal, Horrorcore and diabetic diet advice mixed together. Only on Flutterby. l33t. xl00sive.

Apparently there wasn't a single cookbook my friend gleaned the recipes from. The instructions I just got are: "Google for 'once a month cooking' and you'll find a lot"

Chron had a piece today on ICP and Juggalos. The comments are especially worth reading.

Yeah, Diane, I was trying to figure out what to say there. I thought the interesting comment was the backlash to:

When you've got biological parents who've completely abandoned the hard work of parenting then, yeah, this is a group that provides that feeling of communal safety. Yet rather than humiliating the parents who ran away from their responsibilities, the commenters attack the kids who are looking for a little safety and stability as "retarded".

And, just to make sure it's here for posterity, here's the comment I posted there:

On a train trip down the central valley recently, I shared a table with a couple of Juggalos and had some very interesting conversation. You can mock the notion of "family" in the fan base of a band all you want, but in this case, at least, it seemed that their biological parents had abandoned any responsibility that could have them labeled "parents" for more than just genes, and these kids were finding their community and security where they could. Rather than mocking those seeking what sense of belonging they can find as "retarded", if we're going to denigrate the experience these fans are finding then let's point our ire towards the real villains, the so-called "parents" who've abandoned the responsibilities of supporting and nurturing their children. If someone who "... walks through the street winkin at freaks / Wit a two-liter stuck in his butt-cheeks!" is preferable to the people you grew up with, that says more about them than you.