FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

MONSTER MASH - THE THIRD AND FINAL REPORT

So, it only took the better part of a week but we finally got Baby Balls to come clean on the final results of his pseudo-memorial* Monster Mashathon. To give us the dirt, the scoop, the dish, the skinny d, the jibjaw, the dirty g, the good word, the dirty word, the straight poop, etc. etmfc. We were kind of worried after his updates dropped off that the experiment had broken his mind and we'd never know the precise effects of longterm exposure to novelty songs on the brain. Fortunately, it turns out he was keeping an hourly log, so even if the last five hours were gibberish, we'd have the previous seven to see how he got there…

Advertisement

DAY TWO

Sleeping wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought. Since my tyrannical girlfriend wouldn't let me lodge my computer between us in bed, I had to set an alarm for 5 AM to reset the playlist on my mp3 player. Other than that though, the night passed uneventfully: No monster dreams, no sudden waking, no night terrors.

Getting up, on the other hand, fucking blew. I don't know if it was the 150-odd repetitions of Igor yelling "GANJ" right into my brain or just the earbuds lodged in my intertragic notches (I just looked that up) for seven or so hours, but I awoke this morning to one of the most piercing non-hangover-related headaches I can remember having. For a second I was too distracted by pain to notice the song still going, but once I sat up and got out of bed it came right back into focus. I bet this is what paraplegics feel like every morning.

Even though it doesn't keep track of the play count like my computer and therefore ruined my overall tally, I've kind of grown to prefer using the mp3 player (or "Auxilary Mode" as I like to call it). It preserves the little half-second gap between the song's end and its re-beginning so I can keep some measure of how many listens I've gone through, unlike iTunes which bleeds the last couple seconds into the intro to make the song a single unending loop (the bubbling lab chemicals or whatever at the beginning actually match up almost perfectly with the sounds at the end). Obviously, being able to move outside a two-foot radius of my laptop is also a bonus.

Advertisement

Between waking up and heading to work there was a brief flicker of coherence where I was actually hearing all the words and whatever, but after an hour the song had again degenerated beyond all meaning. One of my coworkers asked me to recite the first verse and I couldn't even make it past "I was working in the lab late one night." I'm usually pretty good with lyrics (to the defecit of my ability to remember things like paying my rent or showing up to things on time) and felt genuinely flummoxed at being unable to recall even a single verse. It was like there was a three-minute long space in my mind where all the details of "Monster Mash" used to go that was now worn completely blank from overuse. For what it was worth, she might as well have been asking me how many times I breathed in the last minute.

Over the course of the next few hours, I tried to put everyone around me out of mind and just slide into a work groove. The headache was still going strong and it, combined with having to switch headphones every time I needed to get something away from my desk, combined with people's STUPIDITY, was making me ridiculously irritable--to the point where I basically had to tell myself not to scream for no reason or punch the wall while talking to folks. Likewise, my concentration was still completely shot for anything lasting more than 30 seconds. It was like that Vonnegut short story where they make everyon's intelligence equal by startling the smart people every few seconds, whose title I kept trying to remember for a few seconds then zoning out on, which I guess is some irony for you ("Harrison Bergeron", BTW).

Advertisement

One funny thing that had happened once on the first night but on the second day became more and more frequent, was that right at the beginning when the drums come in, I could swear for a second I had started listening to some other song. For a split-second I'd be relieved, like, "Finally, something different," then suddenly horror would wash over me that I'd somehow managed to blow it before finally realizing that in fact, I was still listening to the Mash. I think this was either my brain's way of reminding me and itself what I was doing so the song didn't just become permanent background noise or my brain was so sick of the song it was trying to change the channel itself.

Somewhere around two, I came to the conclusion that I was completely worthless in my state (I get the feeling that phone calls were as weird and confusing for the person on the other end as they were for me) and decided to devote the remainder of my time to really sorting out my overall interpretation of the Monster Mash. At first, I was really hung up on the fact that in the second verse Dracula (and his son) is already partying with the other ghouls, but in the following verse he's back in his coffin and everyone's kind of afraid of him. Then I figured out that this was probably just the way Dracula partied, showing up being carried in his coffin then waiting for things to get swinging before busting out of his lid. Actually, I bet that's an established measure of a party's status in the Monster World, like if you called up Werewolf or whoever and asked how the party was going, they'd tell you something like, "Eh, pretty slow, Dracula's still got the lid on," or "Dude, get over here, Drac just came out and we're all doing whippets!"

Advertisement

After solving that little puzzle, I spent a while marveling at how well the song's narrative "flowed" (I was an English student), before finally piecing together what the whole thing's all about. What's going on, and keep in mind this is the early 60s so everything had to be in "code," is that the white music industry (the Mad Scientist community in the song) is harvesting the remains of older black rock 'n roll (graveyard) and trying to assemble them (Frankenstein) into a dance craze that can be marketed toward young, white listeners (you, the living), all with the blessings of the older black musical establishment (Dracula, who initially laments the demise of his "Transylvania Twist") who have previously sold out to honky (are undead). I guess it's a shame none of Bobby Whoever's obituaries mentioned what a gigantic racist he was.

Past this ENORMOUS revelation, the rest of the afternoon rolled by in sort of a foggy oblivion. I'd thought once I finally pulled off my headphones for good the mental glaze would recede and I'd instantly go back feeling normal. When I did though, it was like I could hear the silence, which was no less distracting. My guess is that it's like that thing where somebody's husband dies and he used to snore and the first night it's impossible for his widow to get to sleep because that presence is now gone. I'd also thought I'd want to listen to all these different songs I'd been missing out on over the course of my Mash binge. But again, when it finally came time, I didn't want to listen to ANYTHING, which I suppose is like how not all new widows want to go and get remarried right away.

Advertisement

Anyways, I feel like my brain's doing pretty well in recovery. [Writing from Friday] I'm definitely not quite up to my usual mental speed, but it doesn't seem like anything a solid night's drinking and sleep won't fix. It's a lot like the day after getting really, really stoned. I'm not in active pain or irritation, I just want a little time not to be thinking about anything. I'm not sure how long it will be before I can enjoy Monster Mash--after that sort of intimacy even the idea of listening to it right now is taxing, but I think eventually we'll be cool again.

So anyways, in conclusion, not as bad as I'd worried, but nothing I'm rushing to repeat. Someone in the comments on one of the original posts mentioned doing this for a week with Manowar, and I cannot even begin to fathom what his brain must have felt like after that. BABY BALLS

Digg it | Del.icio.us | Technorati