Bloodhound Gang – One Fierce Beer Run (DVD)
(Jimmy Franks/ Geffen)
I just finished watching the Bloodhound Gang’s hour-and-a-half descent into sophomoric depravity, “One Fierce Beer Run” with my wife, Stacey, who has a much lower threshold of tolerance for rock n’ roll idiocy than I do. I think she summed the whole experience up perfectly when, during another blurry, ten minute stretch of empty inter-band threats(“Fuck you, fag. I’ll kick your ass!” “No, FUCK YOU. I’ll kick YOUR ass!”- there’s at least half a dozen of these here), she turned to me and said, “These guys are a bunch of rejects.” Most rock bands are, to some extent, but these fuckers probably started hearing that in the third grade, and they still aren’t ready to prove themselves otherwise.

In case you blinked and missed their brief above-ground career, The Bloodhound Gang are a bunch of Philly-based pranksters who write Zappa-esque lyrics, wrap them around a ragged bleat of quirky rap-punk, and dumb the whole experience down enough so that drunken frat boys think they’re God’s gift to assholism. Which they are. Normally, this sort of pants-down horseplay would be relegated to dorm-bound keggers, and once final exams rolled around, the band would sober the fuck up and disperse, leaving behind only hazy memories and a few wind-tunnel live tapes. Not so here. Through sheer cunning and Type A hustling, the Bloodhound Gang’s two creative forces, singer and raconteur Jimmy Pop, and bass player and resident Satan “Evil” Jared Hasslehoff managed to flood the college alt/rock airwaves and a temporarily dizzy MTV with the Beck-ish arson and apathy epic, “Fire Water Burn” back in '96-97, a move which ultimately afforded them enough success to get in a bus and run amuck all over the world for the next several years.

“A Fierce Beer Run” is what they brought back from the experience. It’s 100 and something minutes of the lowest of the low points on their Euro-Asian tour; a wretched souvenir for the band, and a funny (smelling) valentine for their hardcore fans, the Rophynol and baggy pants hold-outs from the ever-devolving Jackass nation. Said boosters for this sordid group of beer bonging self-mutilators must be legion, if the Geffen imprint is any indication, so if you’re wondering if the Kids Are Alright, the answer is right here. And the answer is, emphatically, No.

But let’s not get too carried away here. The Bloodhound Gang is not evil, in the way that unrepentant sleazebags like Motley Crue and Marilyn Manson are- there is precious little groupie abuse on display here, and the only people they actually hurt are each other- but it’s the voracious appetite they have for tormenting one another that make you believe that these boys are really not right in the head. The entire opening sequence revolves around various members of the band stripping down naked and rubbing their balls and asses on each other. There is more male nudity (and male-to-male mouth and genital contact) in this video than in most gay porn flicks, yet the band remain rabidly homophobic throughout the proceedings. One of their roadies foolishly admits to blowing a neighborhood kid at the age of 16, and they taunt him mercilessly for it, for what looks like the entire length of the tour. How holding him down while Jimmy Pop spits on his dick serves as any sort of effective gay-bashing is beyond me, but that’s one of this sequence's extended torture scenes. A little later on, Jimmy and Jared (who are the eye of this hurricane- the others seem to be merely trying to survive the tour) turn their attention to their 17 year old drummer, Spanky G, a wispy little kid who looks more like a hostage victim than a member of the band. At one point, the rest of the band hold a screaming, thrashing Spanky down while Pop sticks his finger deep into the drummer’s asshole. Then he makes the kid smell his finger, prompting him to violently wretch. That’s not even the worst of it, though, as the video compiles several minutes of non-stop Spanky torture- beatings, kickings, and enough public humiliation to send anyone screaming into drug addiction or the nearest psyche ward. Spanky's not in the band anymore, which makes me thign he succombed to one or the other right after this tour finally ended.

Jared almost gets laid on the bus at one point, and gets soaped up in the shower by a giggling blonde groupie, a couple of non-events that appear to have been strategically placed in the video just so you know the boys aren’t really gay-even if there is a rag-tag music video included where Pop eats chocolate sauce out of Evil J’s asshole. Well, ok, sure. Whatever you say, man. Otherwise it’s all sausage party hijinks, most of which involve vomiting and screaming. There’s also a smattering of BHG’s funny, almost-smart conceptual video clips too, which almost makes you think that there’s an actual creative rock band behind the chuck blowing and grab ass. Almost. Mostly, though, everyone but the most die-hard Bloodhound Gang fans are going to come away from “Fierce” thinking that these guys are a bunch of semi-retarded cretins better suited for picking up trash on the highway than for touring around the world in a luxury bus-which is either exactly what they want you to think, or exactly true.

Of course, even though I thought a good portion of this shaky, blurry, camcorder-shot mess was just abrasive, bratty tedium, I still watched the whole thing, and was richly rewarded for my patience by the final sequence, a hilariously cruel and sad prank perpetrated on Spanky G. I don’t want to give it away, but let me just say this- if the kid wanted to press charges, the Bloodhound Gang would’ve written their next album on bits of toilet paper at the local jail.

“One Fierce Beer Run” is certainly not going to win BHG any new fans, and I’m sure some of their more MTV-leaning supporters are probably gonna bail out, too- but for the adoring Bloodhound freaks out there, I reckon this really is the king hell bad daddy DVD you’ve been hoping it is. For the rest of us, it’s like Lord of the Flies played about by malicious 30 year olds, and your enjoyment or disgust with it depends entirely on how much you really wish you could go back to the 4th grade again.
-Sleazegrinder

and now they have split off into Wolfpac, which fuckin kicks ass

That settles it, they ARE homos.