Nathan's Gathering & RNC adventure!
Donation protected
Howdy, y'all,
My name is Nathan Rabin and I have been writing professionally about pop culture for about twenty years, primarily as the head writer for the A.V. Club, where I am still a columnist.
I have specialized in trying to find the value in things society tells us are worthless. To that end, I started writing about Insane Clown Posse, their fans the Juggalos and their annual festival of arts and culture, The Gathering of the Juggalos, most notably for in my book YOU DON'T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ME.
I am beyond excited to be attending and writing about the Gathering again (this will by my fifth time there), this time with my long-lost brother Vincent, who recently showed up at my front door unexpectedly with a homemade sword he'd made me despite not having seen me in 19 years.
But THAT is not what makes this Gathering unique and amazing. No, what makes it unique and amazing is that it is happening two and a half hours from, and on overlapping days, as the Republican National Convention.
That means that I will be able to cover both the Gathering Of The Juggalos and the Republican National Convention in the same surreal 7 day stretch. At the risk of hyperbolic, I feel like this is what I was put on earth to do.
I cannot imagine richer or more fertile journalistic territory than comparing and contrasting the deranged carnival that is the Republican party under Donald Trump and the parade of debauchery that is The Gathering of the Juggalos.
It's a big idea, and I plan to write a short book (somewhere between 10 and 20,000 words) entitled SEVEN STRANGE DAYS IN OHIO: THE TRUMP TRAIN, THE GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS AND THE SUMMER THE WHOLE GODDAMNED WORLD WENT INSANE.
The tone will be similar to my last book, YOU DON'T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ME, but with more of a political bent, since half of it will be about my experiences at the Republican national convention.
But I need your help to do so. This time around, I'm going to do things a little differently and reach out directly to my readers and see if they're interested in riding shotgun with me, symbolically speaking, while I embark on one of the craziest and most exciting and weirdest and most wonderul weeks of my life. At least I hope it is.
You not only have a chance to make this crazy experiment/bookish-type entity happen. You can also be among the first people to read the results of this adventure.
Exciting! And a little terrifying. But primarily exciting. It's a new world and I'm trying to my damnedest to keep up.
If you help me achieve this crazy dream I will be incredibly grateful and will use the money to pay for transportation from my home of Marietta, Georgia to Cleveland (where the convention will be held) and Thornville, Ohio (where the Gathering will be held) and motel rooms, and transportation from my hotel to downtown Cleveland, which will be super expensive. I've put this on my credit cards and am bleeding money right now. I don't necessarily need to make money from this (a fiscal attitude that may help explain why I live in my in-laws' basement, despite having written four books) but I would like to at least not go broke in the process.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to capture a particularly insane moment in American political and pop culture history, and I very much want y'all to be the Shaggy 2 Dope to my Violent J, or possibly vice versa.
My name is Nathan Rabin and I have been writing professionally about pop culture for about twenty years, primarily as the head writer for the A.V. Club, where I am still a columnist.
I have specialized in trying to find the value in things society tells us are worthless. To that end, I started writing about Insane Clown Posse, their fans the Juggalos and their annual festival of arts and culture, The Gathering of the Juggalos, most notably for in my book YOU DON'T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ME.
I am beyond excited to be attending and writing about the Gathering again (this will by my fifth time there), this time with my long-lost brother Vincent, who recently showed up at my front door unexpectedly with a homemade sword he'd made me despite not having seen me in 19 years.
But THAT is not what makes this Gathering unique and amazing. No, what makes it unique and amazing is that it is happening two and a half hours from, and on overlapping days, as the Republican National Convention.
That means that I will be able to cover both the Gathering Of The Juggalos and the Republican National Convention in the same surreal 7 day stretch. At the risk of hyperbolic, I feel like this is what I was put on earth to do.
I cannot imagine richer or more fertile journalistic territory than comparing and contrasting the deranged carnival that is the Republican party under Donald Trump and the parade of debauchery that is The Gathering of the Juggalos.
It's a big idea, and I plan to write a short book (somewhere between 10 and 20,000 words) entitled SEVEN STRANGE DAYS IN OHIO: THE TRUMP TRAIN, THE GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS AND THE SUMMER THE WHOLE GODDAMNED WORLD WENT INSANE.
The tone will be similar to my last book, YOU DON'T KNOW ME BUT YOU DON'T LIKE ME, but with more of a political bent, since half of it will be about my experiences at the Republican national convention.
But I need your help to do so. This time around, I'm going to do things a little differently and reach out directly to my readers and see if they're interested in riding shotgun with me, symbolically speaking, while I embark on one of the craziest and most exciting and weirdest and most wonderul weeks of my life. At least I hope it is.
You not only have a chance to make this crazy experiment/bookish-type entity happen. You can also be among the first people to read the results of this adventure.
Exciting! And a little terrifying. But primarily exciting. It's a new world and I'm trying to my damnedest to keep up.
If you help me achieve this crazy dream I will be incredibly grateful and will use the money to pay for transportation from my home of Marietta, Georgia to Cleveland (where the convention will be held) and Thornville, Ohio (where the Gathering will be held) and motel rooms, and transportation from my hotel to downtown Cleveland, which will be super expensive. I've put this on my credit cards and am bleeding money right now. I don't necessarily need to make money from this (a fiscal attitude that may help explain why I live in my in-laws' basement, despite having written four books) but I would like to at least not go broke in the process.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to capture a particularly insane moment in American political and pop culture history, and I very much want y'all to be the Shaggy 2 Dope to my Violent J, or possibly vice versa.
Organizer
Nathan Rabin
Organizer
Marietta, GA
