Culture - Page 11

Representatives for the Southside music venue Track 29 announced earlier today that it would begin to only host acoustic shows, without additional amplification, in order to address complaints from nearby residents and landowners that certain concerts are too loud.

“We have a great deal of confidence that this will be a successful change in format,” said venue representative Devin Wasserstrohm. “MTV’s all-acoustic show Unplugged has been wildly successful for years, and Nirvana’s set on that show is considered an all-time classic performance.”

“This may sound like a drastic measure, but be assured that all your favorite artists will still want to play Track 29, like Jack White, Julian Casablancas, Bassnectar, The Flaming Lips and Girl Talk,” said Wasserstrohm. “They’ll just be unplugged.”

“I hear that Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk is quite good on the clarinet,” said Wasserstrohm.

Wasserstrohm also explained that although audience clapping and cheering were not going to be prohibited, the venue will encourage attendees to snap their fingers close to their own faces instead, to keep volume levels low.

Local residents who live in the vicinity of Track 29 were pleased by the decision.

“This is great news,” said Adams Street resident Beverly Nunan. “I was sitting in my living room during that Bassnectar show, and car alarms were going off and I swear my tits were shaking like bowls of jelly in a dune buggy.”

After the engaged celebrities Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher announced today that they were expecting their first child, Kunis made the shocking revelation that the father wasn’t Kutcher but instead was a gnome named Winkle McTwinklebuttergingersnap whom Kunis met while visiting Rock City last December.

Kunis apologized for her infidelity, and Kutcher has committed to being a loyal husband and raising the child as if it were his own.

“It all happened so suddenly,” said Kunis. “While Ashton was signing autographs for people in the Goblin’s Underpass, I went on ahead to Fairyland Caverns.”

“I just have this weakness for tiny, bearded, pipe-smoking, pointy-red-hat-wearing men,” said Kunis. “And I’ll be honest with you. Filming Black Swan really kind of screwed me up, and I haven’t been the same since.”

McTwinklebuttergingersnap could not be reached for comment.

As part of the second annual Chattanooga International Film Music Festival this weekend, the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera will provide a live accompaniment to a special screening of the modern classic 1995 film Showgirls.

* Seven 1995 Golden Raspberry Awards

In 2007, conservation biologists at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC) were alarmed by trends seen in field data, showing dwindling populations of local geek life, which they attributed to the gradual loss of the natural habitats and ecosystems of geeks, such as video arcades and comic book shops.

The biologists realized that geeks were facing extinction, and in order to propagate the endangered geek population, they made the bold decision to organize an experiment, called “Con Nooga,” which is now in its seventh year.

“Con Nooga was created in order to foster captive breeding between male and female geeks, who previously had limited opportunities to intermingle,” said UTC Biology professor Dr. Emery Rackley.

Rackley further explained that male geeks were largely engaged in non-social activities, such as watching Japanese tentacle anime alone or painting metal miniature figurines of wizards using tiny brushes, and their rare social activities were typically limited to playing Magic: The Gathering with other male geeks.

Female geeks, Rackley explained, didn’t fare much better, favoring activities such as reading Anne Bishop fantasy novels or binge-watching Doctor Who, and venturing outdoors only to visit cemeteries to take photos and write goth poetry.

While marketed as a “Multi-Fandom Convention” devoted to science fiction, fantasy, cosplay, comics, anime, horror and gaming, the true purpose of Con Nooga is to offer geeks the rare, annual opportunity to pair up and reproduce, and after last weekend’s Con Nooga event at the Chattanooga Convention Center and Chattanooga Choo Choo campus, preliminary field statistics show favorable and increasing rates of geek impregnation.

“Corsets, cleavage, neon-green alcoholic drinks, and a shared fanatical admiration for Joss Whedon shows: all these help reverse the trend toward geek extinction,” said Rackley. “This year, the Necronomiprom at the Choo Choo was like the geek version of a frat-house Halloween party. Caligula would have blushed.”