Do you remember the ALS IBC or wait ALS The Ice Bucket Challenge? Whereby, celebrities and politicians started recording themselves whilst throwing buckets of ice water over their heads, which in turn spurred thousands or maybe even millions of people to join in the party to raise awareness of ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and more importantly money to carefully selected charities who study and research this motor neuron degenerative disease in order to find a cure. Well, I personally thought it spelled out S-C-A-M from the word go. A mind control scheme including the potential fifteen minutes of fame syndrome most of us suffer from these days and the one that artist Andy Warhol had already predicted in the 60s. As well as cleverly hiding under the ever so trendy, politically correct and bullet-proof “raising the collective awareness” umbrella. A very cunning: “give a sheep just enough grassy knoll to feed on so that it can’t see the fence that’s keeping it imprisoned” type of propaganda. And if you do see it, when you do, it’s more often than not that it’s too late because you’re either dead, used up or skinned alive. That’s the way I see it.
A tad cynical I guess, but it’s my own personal opinion, backed by the facts I gather. Such as the one that surfaced, obviously much later after the craze mellowed out, whereby ALS associations and sufferers ended up unhappy at how the $115K c. raised worldwide did fuck all to change their life by one iota and more importantly neither did it speed up the research needed to find a cure or even attempted to find a cure, period. At the time, I watched both mesmerized and incredulous as friends and family across the globe joined in this social experiment with so much gusto and bravado that it made me question my own sanity and madness. I resolved my own interior dilemma, debate and crisis by scouring the virtual world for a free high-resolution photograph of people caught in the IBC phenomenon. I found an amazing one depicting an entire community somewhere in the Western world getting busy at it and in sync, no less. I then proceeded to work on it in post to vandalize it to my own taste and liking. In Rome there is a great saying used to underline foolish behavior: “Datte foco!”, which literally translates to: “Set yourself ablaze”.
So, there you go peeps: “Catch your Fire/You gonna get burned” Bob Markey sang.