2000-02-20 01:35:00

By Mr. Bad

I first heard of Jerkcity a couple of months ago from Crackmonkey. I was entranced and repulsed from the get-go. Jerkcity is an online comic strip, cut down to the minimum amount of actual semantics needed to keep you coming back.

The strips center around four characters:

• SPIGOT, a beatnik
• RANDS, an alien of the variety known as "Zeta Reticulan" or "Gray"
• DEUCE, a non-descript Mummenschanz-type character in a gigantic polynesian war mask
• and PANTS, a 20-eyed frog-creature with a grass skirt and a weight problem.

There are a number of other characters that walk on from time to time: NET (some guy), ATANDT (possum?), BUNG (a big cat), DICK (a big dog), HANFORD (guy with a bag on his head), and a very occasional (one-time?) female character, HARRIET. Oh, and there's some other guy who looks like he's from Asterix or something.

But the real stars of Jerkcity -- the whole strip's goddamn reason for being -- is COCKS. DICKS, PRICKS, BONERS, DONGS, etcetera etcetera you get the picture. The strip revolves around the male organ, and other male people licking or sucking said male organ in any number of different ways, for any number of different reasons, in any number of different bathrooms.

I don't know if it's homophobic, homoerotic, homophilic or what. Fuck. I'm just the reporter here, folks. But I do know that it's really funny. Ha! Cocksucking! I love that! It reminded me a lot of LeisureTown... actually, a little TOO much like LeisureTown, if you ask me.

Anyways, I like Jerkcity, and I was poking around on the site's about page and there was a link that said, "Press should contact root@jerkcity.com." And I thought, "Hey, that's ME! I'm a Professional Journalist, dammit, and that makes me the FUCKING PRESS." So I sent them some mail.

I got mail back from Rands, and we did a lot email back and forth, and then we picked a date to get together in San Francisco. I pulled together an INTERVIEW TEAM, with questions and a photographer and a great location (The UPTOWN, which is a great bar. Go to the Uptown when you visit San Francisco, FOLX! It's the shit.) and all that stuff. I took the day off from my day job at the sardine factory.

And get this: THE FUCKERS NEVER SHOWED!

MotherFUCK! I had to go to this bar, with ICBINJ, who was all excited to meet the Jerkcity folks, and reserve a big section of the bar, with great big couches and stuff, and THEY NEVER SHOWED. Damnation! I was forced to get stinkers drunk while waiting for them.

I left that bar vowing REVENGE. FUCK if I'd ever let that rinky-dink ONE-JOKE comic strip get ONE INCH OF INK from PIGDOG JOURNAL. Bastardos! I wished them nothing but ILL, in my wobbly and unpleasantly-pickled way.

And then after a real bad hangover, I thought about it some more, and I thought, is that what Walter Cronkite would do? What about Hunter Thompson? Would he just GIVE UP on a story, just because he got stood up? What about John Cassady, the photojournalist in "Salvador" who gets strafed by American warplanes in a Central American village, but whose dying words as he gives his film to James Woods is, "I got... *cough* *splutter* I GOT the SHOT." Dammit, I couldn't give up! That's just not what Journalism is all about.

So, I swallowed my pride and got back in touch with Rands, who probably due to a guilty conscience failed to return my email. And then failed again. And again. And again. Failure, over and over! I got to the point of sending DAILY MAIL for weeks on end, until finally the bastardo relented. We agreed to meet, with Pants, in Pigdog's IRC channel, on a given night at a given time. Me & Tjames planned on interview, but Arkuat, Enigma (photographer from the original meeting), Pao Tzu wandered in and out during the questioning.

So, here it is: our interview with Jerkcity, featuring the pencil-necked cock-gargling asswipe RANDS. Yippity FUCK. James Woods, come stick this page in your ass and smuggle it across the border: I got the fucking shot.

---

Tjames

howdy

Hola

Rands

Mr. Bad

Hey, rands!

Tjames

Mr. Bad is having server problems, I think.

Mr. Bad

Rands

Mr. Bad

What's up! You have, like, a s00per sekrit excellent hostname [mousehole.jerkcity.com] et. al.

Mr. Bad

I can see the mousehole! I pulled back.

Mr. Bad

Haw haw haw.

Pants fault, not mine...

Rands

Mr. Bad

Is pants going to be on?

He's out of town. You can either beat up on me or we can reschedule OR BOTH

Rands

Tjames

We can just make up stuff and claim he said it.

Mr. Bad

Yeah, that's a great idea!

Oof.

Rands

Tjames

That's how we do most of our articles.

HLRGRHTRLHGLRLG

Mr. Bad (imitating pants)

OK, that's kind of cheating.

Mr. Bad (imitating pants)

We could do a lot more interviews if we used that nefarious method, but I think the Board of Journalism would bust our ass real bad for it.

Mr. Bad (imitating pants)

I'd hafta agree.

Rands

Mr. Bad

Hey, so, why don't we just beat the crap out of you, two on one, and then we'll log it and let pants add stuff in later.

Groovin'

Rands

Mr. Bad

Kinda like those commercials where Gene Kelly dances with a vacuum cleaner.

Mr. Bad

Or whatever.

Mr. Bad

Heh.

Tjames

So, I have to be honest. I never saw your site before last night. Mr. bad said, Hey, come do this interview with me, and I went and looked around for a couple hours. It's fucking crazy. You guys are great. But what was the idea behind the whole thing, like in 1998? Was it like one of those four AM IRC ideas that actually came off?

1998... I guess that's about right...

Rands

Mr. Bad

Yeah, it's on the Web site when you started.

Tjames

That's th earliest in your archive, anyway.

Mr. Bad

It's like, the only fact on the entire site.

First off, let me say how bizarre it is to have a normal conversation on a chat room

Rands

Tjames

Yeah.

Mr. Bad

Well, we kind of figured that you were all big IRC fanatics, and IRC'd all the time and stuff.

The idea for jerkcity came from a private chat room that four of us have been hanging out on for ?four? years now.

Rands

Mr. Bad

Which 4?

It's not an IRC channel, it's a homegrown HACKED PIECE OF WACKY PERL that Pants wrote

Rands

Spigot, Deuce, Pants (and Bung), and, eventually me

Rands

Mr. Bad

Wow! Wait, so JerkCity runs on that, or on IRC?

They are two different things... Jerkcity is a the website COMIC GAYNESS and the "chat room" is private place that old friends hang out at

Rands

Mr. Bad

Oh, OK.

Tjames

Yeah, shut up, dumb Mr. Bad.

If Pants was here (AND FAT), we'd see if it was cool to chat about the room...

Rands

ASK HIM L8R

Rands

Mr. Bad

See, the Jerk City comics bear an unpleasant resemblance to this Microsoft program, Microsoft Chat.

Mr. Bad

So I assumed you guys just got on MS Chat and went to IRC and said some stuff about gayness and prison rape, and then did a screenshot.

That was my idea... we were having this outrageous conversations in this room... I mean, no holds barred graphic horrible discussions that were fucking hilarious

Rands

Mr. Bad

Hey, how come we never see any of that funny stuff on Jerk City?

Mr. Bad

Kidding.

Mr. Bad

Hah.

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oarsman@pigdog.org