ANNONCE: INTRODUCING ODIE HENDERSON'S BIG MEDIA VANDALISM

by Steven Boone

I started Big Media Vandalism spontaneously six years ago, after spending an unhealthy amount of time visiting Iraq Body Count and thenausea.com's Patriots page, where I gorged on images of bloody 21st Century conquest. I was all messed up. Though I hated the word and concept of blogging (it's one of those milquetoasty terms that just plucks a nerve, like "foodie"), I suddenly found it to be the best way of venting my rage and despair. There was also room for my patented crazy talk on pop culture.


When the filmmaker and critic Matt Zoller Seitz came across my blog (probably through our mutual friend, the mad-brilliant Ryland Walker Knight), he invited me to write for his own, called The House Next Door. I had been a freelance film critic, on and off, for almost ten years at that point, but nothing I got paid to write was as inspiring to me as hanging out at THND. Just jumping in on that site's raucous comments threads was more nutritious than most articles I'd written for pay. Matt was a great mentor, instigator (in the best sense of the word) and booster for every writer of any merit he could find. Still is.


A few months into lounging at The House, I met a fellow commenter named Odienator. Odienator? What kind of a name-- at first I thought of a Garfield character as stone cold cyborg assassin. But in the comments section and his film writing, I came to associate that moniker with crystalline insight, vast knowledge of film history and merciless wit.


As Ross Ruediger once put it: "... there’s this guy called 'The Odienator', and his posts mesmerize and hypnotize in the sickest sort of sense (this is a compliment)."

Odie (right) pitches Black History Mumf.

Odie and I became frequent pen pals outside of THND, trading emails that, if printed out at this point, would qualify us for a Pulitzer Prize in talking shit. By the time we got on the phone with our madness, laughing ourselves sick, we were already good friends--good enough for Odie to pester me about my poor frequency of posting. Wildly prolific himself, he became so fed up with the way I squandered genuine reader interest that he instituted a mammoth annual Black History Mumf project as a way of provoking me to post more often. It didn't work, but the Mumf became BMV's only bona fide hit. Every year since 2008, he has performed the daredevil stunt of posting an essay here for each day of February. We are coming up on BHM's fifth anniversary.


Odie makes this silly blog worth reading, year after year. The Mumf is only the most epic of his contributions here. We have tons of other non-February "trouble-making" Odie articles you'll be delighted to discover by roaming the archives*.


And now I hand the keys to this place over to Odie Henderson completely. He is the Editor and Publisher, H.N.I.C.  From time to time, I'll contribute some videos or crazy talk, with his permission. I trust that this blog will remain a place where he cuts loose and showcases his writing at its most brilliant, personal and illuminating.






(*Roaming the archives, you'll also find hilarious textual performance art by manic Kinskichrist disciple Dirk Schlaf and at least one acidic outrage from Lady Scorpio.)