The making of a disaster
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In April, 2000, an advisory panel was
assembled at the Radisson Hotel Roberts in Muncie, Indiana to create an
entertainment web portal that would be known as UncleMonster.com.
Figures from various industries were invited to participate and the
organizers were quite optimistic. Hopes, of course, are meant to
be dashed. By the end of the conference, the police had been
called three times, paramedics once, and the staff of UncleMonster.com
was politely asked never to set foot in the hotel again. How did
it come to this? |
Our
first mistake was allowing a man named Victor to organize the event.
Victor claimed to have numerous ties to the entertainment field and
proved it by booking Peter Noone, formerly of Herman's Hermits to
assist us. We were quite excited. We were all big fans of
oldies music and who can forget the classic Naked Gun version of "I'm
into something good"? We were pumped to meet Peter. Our
guest turned out to be a Peter Noone impersonator who had learned all
of the songs phonetically. His native language was Portuguese and
he was one of the biggest stars on the Brazilian Karaoke circuit. |
Ted
(last name withheld) came to us by way of Hollywood. Ted had been
involved in a number of hit movies as a producer and as an agent,
working with such names as Robert Dinero, Joe Pesce, Al Pacino, and
Pauly Shore. Ted had connections with most of the major studios and
wanted to deal with us to distribute original movies through the
Internet. Unfortunately, Ted's dealings with the stars he had
mentioned turned out to be lawsuits. Ted had never actually worked with
any of the actors, but rather had threatened them if they didn't make
movies for him. The hotel manager recognized him from America's
Most Wanted and the police soon arrived to escort Ted away. |
Michelle
Talbot is another of our rather dubious guests. Michelle's specialty
was interpersonal relations. We were led to believe (by Victor,
of course) that this involved dealing with corporations and large
groups of people to facilitate compromise and results. We're not
certain whether Victor was lying or simply didn't understand just how
interpersonal Michelle tended to become with her clients. We
found her in a closet with the Peter Noone impersonator attempting to
facilitate him for fifty dollars. The hotel manager, once again, called
the police. He was becoming quite upset with us. |
Admittedly,
the most fun member of our board was an Irish poet named Marcus Ryan.
Mr. Ryan had met Victor while on a speaking/drinking tour of the United
States. He regaled us with stories of the various pubs and bars he had
been forcibly ejected from over the years. He had been kicked out
of establishments on 5 continents and was planning to visit Brazil soon
to see the rain forest, write some very profound verse on man's
treatment of the planet, and get booted from a Brazilian watering
hole. Oddly enough, Mr. Ryan, though intoxicated beyond belief,
was the most polite and pleasant guest at the conference and never
caused a single problem. However, his only contribution was a
series of Haiku about a concrete chicken he had ridden in Tennessee. |
It
is unclear how Victor managed to land Takashi Miike for the panel.
Takashi Miike is one of Japan's leading film directors and is beginning
to gain a following among mainstream American audiences.
Discussions between the Uncle Monster staff and Takashi were
progressing quite well, until a bored Victor began playing with Krazy
Glue (tm) and a computer mouse. Takashi quite generously agreed
not to file a lawsuit and it was agreed that the police would not be
required. However, there will certainly be no collaboration between
Uncle Monster.com and Takashi Miike. |
Joseph the
hotel manager did not find
Victor's joke amusing at all.
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And
then there was Victor, the author of this madness. After gluing the
mouse from the front desk computer to Joseph's ear, Victor made a hasty
retreat. The paramedics were able to remove the devices from both
Joseph and Takashi Miike, but the police were unable to find any trace
of Victor. In fact, there is no actual record of Victor
anywhere. He never rented a hotel room, never used a credit card,
and never made a phone call. The only lead we have comes from
Marcus Ryan, who tells us that Victor seemed very interested in the
giant chicken. Perhaps we'll hear from Victor again.
Hopefully not. |
See the Giant
Chicken everyone is talking about
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