Meet Nadia Abdelrhman, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of March. Look for her reports daily on Slog and Line Out. —Eds.
My date and I arrive at Central Cinema early, before the Terrible! festivities begin. We wait for the booze, while on the big screen, Sonny Bono weaves a cautionary tale against youthful marijuana use whilst adorned in a glistening pair of golden, satin pajamas.
Lucky for us, the main event is a creepy video pastiche entitled Everything Is Terrible!, and Everything Is Terrible! = The promise of Dolph Lundgren's icy stare and Angela Lansbury's crotch colliding in a primordial stew of post-'90s video. And it is a roiling vat of video, one that sounds like my eardrums somehow took a wrong turn into your mom's liposuction surgery.
Fortunately, for the Central Cinema viewer, sound is adjusted to slightly less than ear-deafening levels, after the announcer probably realizes his eardrums hurt too; unfortunately, as the audio/visual issue is resolved, timing falls flat on a montage of children's programming gone horribly awry.
In terms of video quality, not even the greasy handlings of a late night infomercial camcorder can diminish the rippling physiques of a group of bodybuilders swapping muscle secrets, and when one is asked, "How'd you get those calves?" the video cuts to "homoerotic" behavior, i.e., a man riding another man's backside in search of the buffest calves ever; each man wrapped in the spandex of his desires.
According to the Stranger (I'm paraphrasing here), Everything Is Terrible! is an irreverent videography, one rooted in the collective miasma of our perpetual electronic abyss—or bliss if you are into the idea that Everything Is Terrible!, and if you are, there are plenty of foul-mouthed Juggalos and earnest televangelists to laugh at.
Recommendation approved if you are under the age of 40, and/or really, really like having your senses assaulted. Plus, Central Cinema has beer and food. Go there.
