The Blood Ritual (B&B)

Entrance
The Big Paranoia Gallery is packed with guests clutching plastic cups of wine. A side table is loaded with cold dishes of lobster, broth jelly, a whipped mousse of smoked salmon (garnished with tiny shrimp and seasoned with green tomatoes in the Mexican “coulis” style), rows of fantastic little sandwiches, an apple pie, various salads and creams, pudding with cognac plus bowls of salted peanuts and chips. The spread is sponsored by GEXR delicatessen.
Billy No Name, the nude man wearing the metal chain with the bathtub plug around his neck, looks a little nervous. His eyes are red as a rabbit’s. As usual: Billy is an albino. (By the way, a pop quiz: How long would it take for everyone on earth to become albino? Answer: Two and a half million years. Billy is still rare.) Billy No Name is an important action artist and performer. A real big name. His performance today is entitled The Blood Ritual. Dr. Macea van Lutea, art critic with Flesh&Blood magazine, opens the event with a short introductory speech: “When twelve years had passed on Malabar Coast under king Kalikatu, he declared a state holiday. All the local people gathered around and large sums of money were spent on food and drink. Scaffolding was erected in front of the cathedral, covered with silk curtains. With music playing, the king went to bathe in a sacred tub. Then he climbed the scaffolding. In front of all his people, he took out a sharp knife and cut off his nose, ears, lips and limbs. He hacked off as much meat from his body as he could. Everything he cut off he quickly threw away. When he had lost so much blood that he was about to pass out, he cut his own throat. Coming from two completely different positions, Billy No Name is…” (Etc.)
Mr. BeavisTM and Mr. ButtheadTM meet up in the gallery’s toilets, having not seen each other for a long time. It seems some of the guests feel obliged to come late, on principle. If they are not late enough, they kill time at the porcelain sinks.
Butthead (sporting a pseudo-psychedelic 60s look): What’s up? Heh-heh Uhmmm How’s your wife?
Beavis (wearing a triple-breasted, dacron-polyester, olive green twill suit with a glossy green Rooster tie over a yellow shirt): Urghhhh Thanks for asking. Looking at this basin here, I now realize how long it’s been since I stood in front of Duchamp’s Fountain. Uhhhhh
Butthead (wearing plastic pink gloves): I’ve read somewhere that the urine of geniuses contains a lot of nitrogen than the average. Yeah Heh Heh Heh M Hum Hum
Beavis (suffering from yo-yo syndrome): It seems to me that there’s too much ambrosial gas here. Do you smell it? Huh huh huh huh
Butthead: Yeah Heh M Hum Personally, I prefer tomato juice to sour wine.
Beavis: Do you think anybody here wants to be publicly castrated? Huh huh huh It would really give me a boost if I could vomit today.
Beavis: When I was here last time Heh heh M heh, Dorothy Dunning exhibited her flour worm shooting machine. Cool That was fantastic. You still playing video games? Huh huh hun
Butthead: Indeed I am. Sometimes I play a futuristic shooter in which hundreds of monsters are attacking you right from level one. He-heh Uhmmm Cool
Beavis: Uhhhhh I just played Messiah III, and it’s one of the most idiotic games I have ever played in my life. The point is to save the world from Satan. Satan has infected everyone’s souls. Sucks
Butthead: Oh, you should try Wild 9. It’s the first computer game ever that allows you to torture your victims before you kill them. Cool

(Cut to the gallery)

“This is no longer simple ambivalence, it is complexity with multiple dimensions of meaning. Proclamation. Appeal. The pornography of naked truth… And this is where I’d like to end my opening speech. Thank you.” (Applause.)

Butthead: He-heh Uhmmm So tell me, what do think about those samples from Mars that allegedly contain living organisms?
Beavis: Maybe it will get people thinking about death. Heh-heh
Butthead: Cool James Dean used to say: Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Ughh-hhm
Beavis: Mmm. And how about Toxin’s new collection of foot-painted images? Uhm-huh-huh
Butthead: Oh, that. It’s ostentatiously decorative, breezily sensuous and excitingly existential. It’s art in the go-go style. But to tell you the truth, I wanted to vomit. It sucks
Beavis: Damn straight. Uggggh Some hack artists should get one arm chopped off for each painting they produce. Do it
Butthead: And what about Psion Microsoft? How do you like that? Heh-heh
Beavis: What I like is that in fact it is able to marry reality and myth. L’enchanteur enchante. A mythical marriage of concept and product. Hermetics call it a Great Work of Art. Ughhhhhh
Butthead: They say that instead of sperm he shoots liquid mercury at canvases at orgasmic moments. Cool He’s said to have gilded genitals. And, significantly enough, that would mean his balls as well. Cool
Beavis: Real gold or some kind of fake? Heh-heh-heh
Butthead: Golden flakes! Both high and low. Ughhhhhhhh
Beavis: Agony is ecstasy. Ugly is beautiful. Keep cool
Butthead: I love kitsch. Heh-heh Ughhhhh I adore the sublime, which you know is in sharp contrast to the intellectual and elitist work of the late avant-garde.
Beavis: I’m getting goose bumps on my prick. Uhm Hum hum M
Butthead: I like it when things explode. Do it!
Beavis: Uhm Hum hum The entire world just wants to blow up!
Butthead: It’s beautiful, a hallucinogenic era… Cool
Beavis: Huh-huh … thrilling with authentically chaotic experience…
Butthead: …when everything mates with everything else… hybridization … I’d like to see machines having sex. What are you doing tonight? Do you want to go somewhere? How about Vortex? Huh-hum
Beavis: Uhm Hum-hum You know, I can’t. I’ve got great plans for tonight. I’m going to go home and bite my nails. Urghhhh When I was a kid, I could sit all afternoon watching the tips of my shoes. Eight hours straight… Heh-heh Uhmmm
Butthead: Cool Right. No sex, drugs & rock’n’roll, but masturbation, grub & TV … Bulimarxism is cool.
Beavis: I tell you, life’s disappointments fill me with deep joy and hope. Yeah
(Frantic applause in the gallery. Some shouting)
Butthead: Oh no! Quick! We’ve missed it… (Shaking) Do it!
Beavis: What’s the hurry? There’ll only be going to be more ketchup than blood. Sucks

(Beavis is washing his hands thoroughly. Butthead is slowly and lazily blow-drying his. A photoelectric cell sends their urine down into the complex of tunnels and channels of urban water under the city. The two finally enter the gallery. Beavis heads directly for the shrimp bowl.
Beavis: I have to say, the most beautiful corpses I have ever seen were wasp corpses. Cool
(An old lady rushes into the gallery and goes over to the crippled exhibitionist as tomato juice gushes from his body.)
Old lady: My child is dead, they killed my child, my baby’s dead! My love is dead!
Butthead (patting the old lady on her shoulders): Keep cool Your child will get better, ma’am. The others are much worse off.
EXIT

(Note: BeavisTM & ButtheadTM are the trademarks and exclusive property of MTV.)

01.01.2001