Madness & Depravity at the Karaoke World Championships

I arrive in Helsinki around noon, still reeling from a three-day birthday bender in Aspen and a brutal 15-hour transatlantic flight. Hung-over, jet-lagged, and nearly twisted on Lorazepam and Tanqueray, I hop a taxi to the harbor and board the M/S Galaxy, a luxury liner offering weekend cruises to Estonia. I drop my bags in the windowless cabin that will be my home for the next three days and make my way downstairs to the Starlight Show Lounge. At this point, the Lorazepam, a prescription sedative generally prescribed for anxiety disorders and short-term insomnia, has fully kicked in, adding a foggy, surreal effect to the proceedings. As if on cue, I’m approached by a large Irish man dressed in a velvet leprechaun suit. We begin chatting, and when he learns that I’m on assignment for Penthouse magazine, he insists on buying me a drink. This is a scene that will repeat itself numerous times over the next three days, though not all my benefactors will be dressed as magical elves. The bartender pours us shots of Salmiakki Koskenkorva, a foul Finnish liqueur resembling burnt Jagermeister. The enormous leprechaun raises his glass and toasts, “E’res to ya, mate!” At the front of the large theater, the stage goes dark except for a lone spotlight, and a hush comes over the crowd. It’s just before midnight when a fleshy, egg-shaped man with a towering pompadour and white satin jumpsuit takes the stage and launches into the Presley classic Burning Love. His name is Jouni Viirtala, but I will come to know him as the Elvis of Finland. His wide, spongy hips undulate to the rockabilly beat, his voice a soaring vibrato of passion and repressed sexual angst:

Lord Almighty, I feel my temperature rising/ Higher higher, it's burning through to my soul/ Girl, you gonna set me on fire/ My brain is flaming, I don't know which way to go

While this may sound like a Vegas-themed peyote trip of David Lynchian proportions, what I’m actually witnessing is a standout performance from the 2006 Karaoke World Championships. Over the next two days, 44 participants from 20 countries will vie for the hefty prize package and the coveted championship title. Now in its fourth year, the KWC has become the world’s premier venue for competitive karaoke, which sounds like a lofty and ridiculous claim. After all, there seems to be a world championship for every bizarre pastime these days, from rock-paper-scissors and air guitar to pillow fighting and kickball. These events, however, are mostly designed to boost tourism and are not generally taken seriously. But competitive karaoke is a different beast. For one thing, it requires actual talent (sorry, air guitar shredders). It can also be a springboard to a legitimate recording career – Just ask Nashville’s Mindy McCready, who parlayed tapes of her karaoke performances into six Top 40 country hits and over a million record sales. But most significantly, karaoke has become a global industry generating an estimated ten billion dollars in annual revenue. No longer relegated to seedy hotel lounges, bowling alleys, or happy hour at TGI Friday’s, karaoke has emerged as a bona fide cultural phenomenon that crosses all social, political, religious, and ethnic lines. In Japan, 280,000 bars are outfitted with karaoke systems and 64 million people, nearly half the population, performs karaoke on a regular basis. There are thousands of karaoke bars in the US, and hundreds of thousands more across the world. And it doesn’t stop there: The Karaoke Channel is delivering monster ratings on digital cable and satellite TV, and companies like Sound Choice offer karaoke tracks for your cel phone, computer, DVD player, and iPod. Next year, CBS will launch a karaoke-themed reality show, and a number of British churches have installed the Hymnal Plus, a karaoke system that allows parishioners to sing along with their favorite gospel tunes, including a disco version of Amazing Grace. There are karaoke taxicabs in Bangkok, naked karaoke parties in Tampa, and even “pornaoke” events across the UK, where participants provide the dialogue and sound effects to vintage porno movie clips. Like it or not, karaoke has ensconced itself in all facets of our culture, burrowing its way into our collective psyches. And it’s not going away any time soon.

The M/S Galaxy, home of the 2006 Karaoke World Championships, is a full-service cruise ship making daily runs across the Gulf of Finland, from Helsinki to the medieval walled city of Tallinn. For this particular voyage, karaoke systems have been installed in every nightclub, lounge and casino, allowing passengers to sing virtually anywhere on the boat. There are even karaoke machines in the pool area and inside the saunas, which seems like a novel idea until I witness an excessively hairy, psoriatic man in a Speedo performing Little Red Corvette from the confines of his chaise lounge. Adding to the Orwellian motif, the KWC performances are broadcast on TV monitors in all the restaurants and gift shops, and the audio from the event is piped into the bathrooms, elevators, and even into the passenger cabins. As one elderly woman lamented, “I am on the boat for vacation. But the karaoke is everywhere. You cannot escape it.”

It’s around 2AM on this first night of the competition and the Starlight Lounge is jumping. Japan’s Takahiro Masuda just ripped through a pitch-perfect version of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll, and now Ari Koivunen, a 19 year-old heavy metal wonderkind from Finland, is powering his way through the Scorpions Still Loving You. Borrowing from the successful American Idol format, the contest features a series of performance and elimination rounds with the top five men and women advancing to the finals. The competitors choose their own songs to perform and are judged on voice quality, stage presence, and entertainment value by a multinational jury panel. At the end of the second day, an overall male and female winner will be announced during a lavish award ceremony. These competitors, however, are not the casual karaoke singers you might find in the bar at a local Applebee’s, getting drunk with their buddies and warbling their way through Garth Brook’s Friends in Low Places once or twice a year. These are the people who perform karaoke several nights a week, the ones who take voice lessons, who wear costumes and work out dance routines in their basements. Though they are extremely talented individuals and gracious competitors, I have to believe that anyone who would fly to the other side of the world for a karaoke contest must be deranged on some level.

The competition has all the rabid nationalism of the World Cup Finals, with legions of boisterous fans draped in the flags of their countries. Estonia has the largest contingent with more than twenty supporters. They wear matching shirts, hand-decorated with the names of the Estonian performers written in sparkle dust and puffy paint. A fresh-faced, genial group, they could be easily mistaken for camp counselors or members of the high school glee club. The Irish fans, however, are not of the sparkle dust ilk. Numbering at least fifteen (including the leprechaun), they are a loud, wild, drunken mob. Though they occasionally heckle other fans, it is all in the good-natured spirit of the event. I cannot say the same about the Russians. There are only three of them, but they are a dark and menacing presence. These barrel-chested brutes with enormous Popeye forearms and neck tattoos are seated at a cocktail table next to me. One of them, a stocky 50-something man, wears an all-white tracksuit with Soviet Union emblazoned on the back in fiery, Communist red. I’m certain they are Russian mafia or ex-KGB, dispatched from Moscow to assure victory for their karaoke comrades. The group is so intimidating, with their cold dead eyes and excessive man-jewelry, that I am compelled to cheer for the Russian competitors regardless of the performance quality. When Svetlana Erukhimova finishes a tepid burlesque rendition of Feelings in which she sounds like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle, I applaud with the thunderous fervor of a madman, beating my hands together until the palms are red and swollen and tender. “Bravo!” I scream, but the only thought in my head is Please don’t kill me.

The first round of competition ends sometime after 3AM, and like many of the audience members, I migrate upstairs to the Zenith Disco because it is the only place on the ship still open and serving alcohol. And after eight hours of non-stop karaoke, a couple of prescription sedatives and a stiff drink are in order. The disco – a term I hadn’t heard since 1982 – has all the hallmarks of a small dance club, with one glaring exception: Instead of a DJ, the music is provided by karaoke. Scandinavian death metal karaoke, to be precise. The song catalogue reads like the entries in a serial killer’s diary, with cheery titles like Excuse Me While I Kill Myself, Unleash Hell, and Descending Curtain of Death. After an hour of these gloomy songs, the Elvis of Finland takes the microphone and launches into a blistering version of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, one of the poppier tunes in the library. Though he shows impressive range for a big man in a satin pantsuit, the song clearly loses some its rock and roll punch when following the likes of Triple Corpse Hammerblow and The Suicider. Unfortunately, many of these songs are performed in their native languages, so I’m not able to grasp the poetry and nuance of the lyrics. While I’m waiting at the bar, a pretty young woman cozies up to me and introduces herself. She tells me her name is Katya and that she’s 22, from the Ukraine by way of Estonia. I tell her that I’m an American journalist on assignment and she scoots a bit closer, hanging on my every word. I turned 38 just a few days earlier, and frankly, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a conversation with a 22 year-old that didn’t involve the phrases “Mocha Frappuccino” or “lap dance.” On stage behind us, a tall man in a “Jamaican me crazy” t-shirt screams his way through though a hyper-aggressive death metal song in Finnish. I tell Katya I’m writing a story on karaoke, and I ask if she’ll translate the lyrics for me. She closes her eyes and listens to the performance for a moment, then leans in close to whisper in my ear. I feel her hot breath on my neck. In broken English, she says, “The song is about, how you say, the devils? And they eat the flesh.”

I nod. Flesh-eating devils.

Then she looks into my eyes and says with a sly, dazzling smile, “I make nice blowjob for you, yes? Two-hundred fifty Euro.”

When they said this was a full-service cruise, they weren’t kidding. I’ve made some bad decisions in my life (Tijuana, 1988 comes to mind), but having sex with a Ukrainian prostitute on an Estonian booze cruise at 5AM would probably take top honors. I thank Katya for her offer but gracefully decline and head back to my cabin for the night.

While there’s no disputing karaoke’s impact on global culture, there are many theories to explain its enduring popularity. Some see it as a self-help tool, providing the participants with the encouragement and adulation lacking in their everyday lives. For most of us, singing in a karaoke bar is the only time we’ll ever hear people cheering for us. It massages our fragile egos and restores our confidence. Others think karaoke is simply a revival of public singing, an age-old tradition that is hard-wired into our DNA. “People have innate desires for several things,” says Kurt Slep, CEO of Sound Choice. “Sex is one. Eating is another. And singing. People have been singing since the dawn of time. It’s natural.” Sociologists and cultural anthropologists, however, attribute karaoke’s success to something more reflective of modern society: our obsession with celebrity. Earlier in the day, I heard one of the competitors tell an interviewer, “If you aren’t somebody, you’re nobody.” This says a great deal about the value we place on celebrity, and how we use it to define ourselves as human beings. Noted sociologist and author Erving Goffman suggests that without celebrity, we “run the danger of being, in our own eyes, unpersons.” Karaoke fills this void, allowing us to become celebrities for a few moments while we’re on stage. “Everyone wants to be a rock star,” says Kristin O, a karaoke host from Michigan. “Everybody wants a taste of fame. And karaoke gives them that opportunity. ”

Though karaoke has many incarnations, perhaps none is more revealing than Porn Star Karaoke, or PSK. Every Tuesday night, leaders of the adult film industry gather at a Los Angeles bar called Sardo’s and perform karaoke for a small circle of friends, insiders, and fans. Before I left for Helsinki, I attended PSK with adult film producer Oliver Bone and a bevy of porn actresses including Monica Mayhem, star of Hole Sweet Hole, Ass Jumpers, and Fast Times at Deep Crack High 3. Curiously, Porn Star Karaoke is not a sordid affair. There is no nudity, no vulgarity, and sadly, the evening does not dovetail into a fantastic orgy: The porn stars are there to sing. Monica Mayhem, a native of Brisbane, Australia who’s been singing since she was six years old, performed stellar renditions of No Doubt’s I’m Just a Girl and Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name. “Singing is a release,” says Mayhem. “It’s a way for us to show off our other talents. It’s a way to escape.” Though her day job may include an anal gangbang with fourteen moose-cocked steroid shooters and a lazy-eyed pirate dwarf (not exactly the epitome of girl power), by night she can sing anthems of strength and rebellion, asserting her self in ways that may otherwise escape her daily routine. When she belts out the lyrics, “Oh, I’ve had it up to here” and “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me,” she’s clearly making a personal statement.

Whereas the attainment of celebrity is about shedding anonymity and differentiating oneself from the masses, porn stars do karaoke for the exact opposite reason: They do it to rejoin the masses. For three and a half minutes, the length of a Lionel Richie song, a porn star can step out of his or her skin and become an average suburban middle class American. To me, this momentary transcendence is the heart of karaoke’s appeal. And it happens every night, in karaoke bars around the world. When people sing against type – the shy, mousy accountant who sings a sexy Madonna song or the porn star who sings an anthem of girl power – they transcend themselves if only for a moment. In my younger days when I’d sing David Lee Roth’s Just a Gigolo at the Silver Cloud in San Francisco, I would transform into a daring lothario, a bold and flirtatious cocksman with all the swagger of, well, someone else. And that was the point. But when the music would stop, I’d revert back to my nebbish self, a pudgy insecure lad with wrinkle-resistant Dockers and a nine-dollar haircut.

The second day of competition begins at 11AM, and the boat is rocking. Not rocking in the figurative sense, like how you might say Bon Jovi rocks (which they totally do), but actually rocking in a violent back and forth motion. A massive storm had formed in the pre-dawn hours, turning the glassy Baltic Sea into a swirling black cauldron. At this point, the ship is pitching so severely that the performers are having trouble maintaining their balance on the stage. I should probably mention that I suffer from motion sickness in all its regurgitative forms. I get seasick, airsick, carsick, and on one regrettable trip to the Grand Canyon, donkeysick. As the storm’s intensity grows and the ship’s vicious thrashing along with it, I feel the bile rising in my esophagus. Frantically, I thumb through my Estonian travel dictionary for the phrase, “I’m feeling nauseous. May I have a vomit sack?” Luckily, I remember reading that Lorazepam, the sedative prescribed for my anxiety on airplane flights, has a side effect of reducing nausea. I fish the bottle out of my camera bag and pop three of the little white pills, washing them down with a cruel Estonian vodka. As I would learn the hard way, which is really the only way to learn anything, this particular medication has the exact opposite of its intended effect when combined with copious amounts of grain alcohol and a lack of sleep. Instead of calming me, I quickly become jittery and overtly paranoid. Though my teeth are grinding and my mind is racing through a number of wildly improbable conspiracy theories, at least I won’t be blowing my lunch off the deck and into the angry sea.

In the afternoon, the top 15 men and women semifinalists are announced and surprisingly, all four Russian competitors make the cut. Perhaps it’s the narcotic-induced paranoia or just the cynicism that comes with middle age, but I immediately suspect foul play. One of the Russians, Veronica Konnova, is a true talent and easily a frontrunner among the women. But the other three performers are only average singers, placing them near the middle of the pack. Could this be a sign of jury tampering? My suspicions are bolstered when a series of mysterious technical “glitches” begin plaguing the top performers. As Malaysia’s Tham Hui Chye hits the chorus of Mama Mia, the audio suddenly drops out and she is forced to start again. Michelle Lynch of Ireland, clearly one of the strongest performers in the competition, flees the stage when her Bonnie Tyler song stalls and then skips forward. Is this the handiwork of the Russians? Clearly my paranoia is skyrocketing to dangerous Gonzo levels. Just as I feel that a complete psychotic meltdown is inevitable, my fears are allayed and I begin to come down from this miserable trip. When the top five men and women finalists are announced and the only Russian to advance is the lovely Miss Konnova, I know that all is right with the world.

It’s now 4AM, and I’ve been listening to karaoke continuously for 34 hours. The storm has finally moved beyond us, and my Lorazepam-induced neurosis has subsided. During a brief break in the action, I hit the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. When I look in the mirror, I barely recognize the person staring back at me. I’m completely strung out, my cheeks puffy from the booze and fatigue, three-days of spotty beard growth, pupils wide as milk saucers, my right eye twitching uncontrollably. Though I’ve made many errors in judgment, it appears I was right about one thing: Anyone who would fly halfway around the world for a karaoke contest must be deranged. I just didn’t expect that person to be me.

The judges have submitted their final votes, and the winners of the 2006 Karaoke World Championship are about to be announced. The contestants nervously await the decision, some pacing, others praying, their faces all strained with anticipation and exhaustion. Mark Wilson of Australia and Tham Hui Chye of Malaysia take first place for the men and women respectively. Veronica Konnova places third, and the disappointment is visibly welling in her eyes. The Russian man in the white tracksuit embraces her, plants a gentle kiss on her forehead and whispers something reassuring in her ear. In the end, the Russians were not gangsters or thugs, but rather, doting spouses and supportive friends just like you or me. For the grand finale, all the competitors, sponsors and event organizers join hands on the stage and sing We Are the World. It is a saccharine-sweet moment, free from all irony, cynicism and ill will. “Karaoke epitomizes not just a way of making music but a way of life,” says Rob Drew, author of the book Karaoke Nights and Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University. “Karaoke casts a model for how we can live every moment of every day, its Utopian ideals cobbled together from impossible dreams.” The sun is coming up as I leave the Starlight Show Lounge, and I can actually feel myself smiling. Maybe the world needs a bit of saccharine every now and again to remind us of a simpler time, when we were still young and full of hope. Of course, saccharin causes cancer in laboratory animals, but we’ll save that one for another day.

Editor’s note: Three days after the 2006 Karaoke World Championships, both Tham Hui Chyi and Badri Ibrahim of Malaysia were offered recording contracts by Sony BMG and Warner Music.

Redneck Nation

It’s July in Dublin, Georgia, but if you squint your eyes, it could easily be Mozambique or Katmandu or some other steamy, exotic locale. By late-morning, the air is thick, warm and damp as a newly soiled diaper. The sky swarms with hummingbird-sized mosquitoes and the trees buzz with the sound of locusts. Then, of course, there are the swamp leeches. I’m standing on the muddy banks of the Oconee River surrounded by camera crews from the Tonight Show, CMT, and a local news station out of Macon. We are watching with morbid fascination as Melvin Davis, a 68-year-old self-proclaimed redneck (the license plate on his monster truck says so), dunks his head into a barrel of murky river water. Finally, after a great deal of gasping and thrashing about, he proudly emerges with a gnarled pigs foot clenched between his brown, decaying teeth.

“I’m good at three things,” says Davis, choking up pints of stagnant water. “Lyin’, chasin’ women, and fetchin’ these pigs feet.” He tosses the hoof aside, then dunks under for another go ’round. Davis is demonstrating the fine art of pigs feet bobbing, one of the key events at tomorrow’s 10th annual Summer Redneck Games, the backwoods parody of the Olympics that draws thousands of fans to this remote region every year.

Since the end of the Civil War, rednecks have been characterized as conservative, working-class Southern whites with a rebellious nature and a near-fanatical sense of patriotism. But in recent years, there has been a renewed fascination with their throwback culture that extends well beyond the Mason-Dixon line. Thanks in large part to Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian who built an empire off “You Might Be a Redneck” jokes, his protégé Larry the Cable Guy, and their wildly popular Blue Collar Comedy Tour and TV show, the redneck phenomenon has achieved mainstream, international appeal. Last year, Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” ruled the country and pop charts and nabbed a Grammy, and barefoot Southern rocker Bo Bice nearly became our American Idol. The new Dukes of Hazzard movie crushed its summer box office competition, while NASCAR continues to deliver blockbuster ratings across the nation (this year’s Daytona 500 was watched by more one million people in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan alone). Mix in some Skoal Bandits, a John Deere trucker’s hat, and a pair of Confederate flag underpants, and you’ve got the makings of a full-fledged redneck revolution.

Dublin is a quaint, postcard-pretty village nestled halfway between Macon and Savannah, and on my first afternoon in town, I dropped into local radio station WQXY to meet with program director and Redneck Games founder “Mad” Mac Davis. Davis is a menacing wall of granite and muscle, with a head shaved bald and a sinister-looking goatee. He extends his cartoonishly large hand, and begins to inform me about the origin of the Games.

“Back in ’96 when the Olympics were about to happen in Atlanta, a lot of people were saying that we were just a bunch Southern hillbillies who couldn’t pull it off,” says Davis. “So I said, ‘If that’s what they think, let’s give it to ’em.’”

Davis and then-program director “Big Charlie” concocted an Olympic-style festival that would play upon redneck stereotypes. “We expected 500 people to show up, and instead we got 5,000,” says Davis, as he unconsciously wrings his big ham fists. “After the first year, I started seeing families coming from all over the country. They’d plan their vacations around this weekend, and it amazes me, because it ain’t Disney. It ain’t Six Flags. It’s the Redneck Games.”
In the first nine years of the Games, more than 95,0000 people have attended, and media from countries including Holland, Chile, and Australia have covered the event. Perhaps more importantly, the Redneck Games have brought much-needed revenue into an economically devastated community where 23 percent of Dubliners exist below the poverty level, more than double the national average. “These Games bring a lot of money to the businesses in Dublin,” says Davis. “Especially the convenience stores where they sell ice and beer. That’s money this town never would’ve seen.”

Towards the end of our conversation, I notice a gaudy, bejeweled championship belt hanging in a glass case on the other side of the room. When I ask Davis about it, he tells me that in addition to his duties at the country music station and managing the Redneck Games, he is a professional wrestling champion with the fledgling Georgia Independent Wrestling Alliance. He invites me to “Redneck Rampage,” a popular wrestling event happening later tonight at the Farm Bureau. It’s the official kick-off to tomorrow’s Redneck Games, and one of the city’s most anticipated entertainment events. I’m initially ambivalent about going, but when Davis tells me that grown men will climb into a steel cage and beat each other with folding chairs, I have a change of heart.
With the Games less than 24 hours away, it becomes apparent that I need a crash-course in redneck culture after I attempt to order a chai soy latte from the diner near my hotel (the nearest Starbucks is 90 miles away). “You want a Chachi who?” says the pubescent waitress, snapping her gum. I decide to seek some guidance from the Godfather of all rednecks, Jeff Foxworthy. Unfortunately, Foxworthy declined my request for an interview because of a long-standing feud with the founders of the Redneck Games. When I ask Jeff Kidd, the events coordinator of the Games, about the origin of the dispute, he tells me they’ve invited Foxworthy for a number of years and he always refuses to attend. “He’s just a prude little rich boy from Atlanta,” chides Kidd.

Instead, I dial-up redneck expert Ben Jones, who played “Cooter” on the original Dukes of Hazzard TV series. Today, Jones is the proprietor of Cooter’s Place, a museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee featuring memorabilia from the show (including pants worn by Catherine Bach). “The redneck movement is a return to the pioneer spirit of America,” says Jones. “There’s not much difference between the Duke boys and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. It’s the same American mythology, and those are the ideals America was founded on. Even if you’re a dusty old cowboy, you can still live your life how you choose.”

Jeff Kidd adds, “We’re down-home people, but we’re not backwards hillbillies. It’s a return to simple values that people are looking for in this day and age. And that’s what being a redneck is all about.”

But even within a culture boasting simple values, there are layers of complexity. Diana Itson, who owns a consignment shop in nearby Cochran, Georgia, explains the caste system that exists within the redneck universe. “There’s different degrees of rednecks,” says Itson. “There’s town rednecks who wear rebel flag T-shirts and listen to Charlie Daniels on the 8-track. And then there’s county rednecks like us, who get out there and have grill-outs and porch parties with the neighbors. Then there’s dirt-road rednecks. Them folks don’t take a bath for a week and they never wear shoes. Most of them live off the land. And they got four teeth, and two of them’s in their pocket.” She pauses to light up a menthol cigarette, taking a deep drag. “There’s poseur rednecks, too. You can spot ’em because they don’t know how to ride a four-wheeler or shoot a gun.”

It’s dusk, and I’ve made my way across town to the Farm Bureau for the big Redneck Rampage wrestling event. About three hundred diehard fans are in line, mostly families with young children. As we enter the cinderblock building that resembles a grade-school gymnasium, Rowdy Thigpen, a friendly fireplug of a man, explains that the venue is normally used for castrating sheep and hog auctions. At the center of the room is a tattered ring where strips of duct tape conceal rips in the Nixon-era canvas.

The low-budget event has the aura of a high school production, and the acting makes Hulk Hogan look like Olivier in Othello. In most cases, these wrestlers have regular jobs outside of the ring to pay the bills. By day, they might work at the mill or pour concrete for the county. But at night, when that bell rings, these blue-collar men become superstars with names like Loco Motive, Sugar Daddy Osborne, and Velvet Jones (who is the only black wrestler on the card and dresses like a pimp). For a brief, shimmering moment they experience the adulation and recognition that escapes their daily lives. It’s like karaoke, but with groin smashing.

The highlight of the evening is the steel cage match, where a bevy of wrestlers, including “Mad” Mac Davis, enter the cage (really just a heavy chain-link fence surrounding the ring) and proceed to pummel each other with an assortment of chairs, garbage cans, and random pieces of lumber. The crowd is whipped into a Budweiser-induced, orgiastic frenzy. One woman, 60-ish, with brassy stained teeth and an impressive mullet that’s bleached white and feathered at the sides, unleashes a torrent of screams at a 500-pound spandex-clad wrestler called the Professor: “Get that sum bitch! Stomp his throat! Stomp it good!” Of course, professional wrestling matches are scripted and the blows are staged. Yet this crowd believes what they are watching is real because they want to believe it, the way one might believe in Santa Claus, leprechauns, or the musical talent of Mark McGrath. There is something beautifully simplistic and hopeful about a group of people giving themselves over to a common ideal, and I find myself cheering right alongside the frothing masses.

The next morning, I arrive at East Dublin’s Buckeye Park for the 10th annual Summer Redneck Games. The grounds are situated along the shore of the Oconee River and surrounded by dense swampland. The area is a breeding ground for mosquitoes, West Nile Virus, and wild carnivorous hogs, and locals tell me that the murky waters are teeming with alligators. In other words, it is an ideal location for a gathering of inebriated adults, their half-naked children, and the family pets. The crowd, which will swell to nearly 7,000 (down from previous years because of expected thundershowers), streams in on foot, by car, and by boat, with beer coolers and barbecue grills in tow. On the north side of the park is a large stage where most of the competitive events will take place. To the south, there are numerous food and merchandise vendors.

At noon, the crowd converges on the stage to witness the ceremonial lighting of the barbecue grill, signifying the start of the Games. A man named L-Bow, who is barefoot, clad in overalls, and missing all his teeth, carries the official redneck torch—a flaming Budweiser can on a stick—through the crowd where he is greeted like a celebrity. He leaps onto the stage, flames up the beer-can torch, and lights the enormous grill in mock Olympic fashion. The crowd roars, and the Games are under way.

Each year the Redneck Games has a special celebrity guest, and this year it’s Steve Schirripa, who plays Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on The Sopranos. This might seem like an odd choice—an Italian from Brooklyn—but he’s a good sport and participates in all the events, nearly winning the redneck horseshoe competition (tossing toilet seats onto a plunger). “Don't tell me I'm no redneck,” he yells to the crowd. And that’s part of this event’s appeal: anyone from anywhere can be a redneck, regardless of social or economic status.

“People love rednecks because it’s a natural way of life,” says Tracy Giddens of Cochran, Georgia. “You don’t have to comb your hair or dress a certain way. You can be retarded or deformed, and still be a cool redneck.” Sue Radcliff, who made the 1,500-mile trip from New York City, adds, “We’ve got rednecks in Manhattan too, you know. But we call them alcoholics.”

The competitive events at the Redneck Games are almost an afterthought, and though a few hundred people gather to watch bobbing for pigs feet champion Melvin Davis defend his title, most are simply content to be eating, drinking, and mingling with their brethren. The event that draws the biggest crowd is the mud-pit belly flop, where a parade of fantastically obese men and women hurl themselves into a vile ditch of stinking orange muck. Afterwards, I hit the concourse in search of lunch, because nothing whets an appetite like the combination of mud-caked cellulite, man-breasts and rippling back fat. The food vendors are hawking every kind of charred meat imaginable, including Polish, Italian and hickory-smoked sausages, deep fried pork rinds, cheese steaks, and alligator ka-bobs. Unfortunately, I do not eat meat, and soon realize that I’ve stumbled upon Dante’s 8th level of Vegetarian Hell. I settle for a bag of hot boiled peanuts and a deep-fried Twinkie, nutritious snacks that go down well in 110-degree heat. Additionally, there are only eight Porta Potties for the thousands in attendance, and the lines stretch back to the river. Many people venture into the swamp to relieve themselves. I consider this option, until a young boy emerges from the bog with several enormous leeches attached to his leg. His mother, who is simulataneously smoking and chewing tobacco, takes the lit cigarette from her mouth and proceeds to burn the engorged parasites off, one-by-one. “Quit squirming,” she tells the boy, squirting a bit of tobacco juice as she speaks. “This one’s dug in real good.”

I expected the Redneck Games to be a rowdy, drunken, bawdy affair but it’s remarkably family-friendly and wholesome. At one point, a belligerent man who repeatedly says “fuck” within earshot of a group of children gets hauled away by security. For cursing. At a redneck festival. Many families set up large, colorfully decorated tents to provide refuge from the sweltering heat. Paul Schneider from Tampa (who won the mud-pit belly flop contest), his gorgeous girlfriend Lucy, and their baby Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards) invite me into their double-wide tent for beer and barbecue with the entire extended family. They are kind, funny, and generous, handing me one Budweiser after another from an oversized cooler. David Green, the elder statesmen of the clan, offers a frightening demonstration of his award-winning hog call. Though the deafening, high-pitched squeal conjures images of Ned Beatty and the hillbilly-rape scene in Deliverance, I am more concerned that it will attract bloodthirsty razorbacks from the swamp. Their cousin James Estes, a proud redneck from Wrightsville, Georgia, asks me if I’ve ever “met the Lord.” When I say no, he hands me an enormous jug of Lord Calvert’s Canadian Whiskey and invites me to join him for a shot. I am goaded into doing whiskey shots with each family member as my indoctrination into the fun-loving clan.

At its heart, the Redneck Games is really just a large county fair, but with a decidedly Confederate twist. And when I say Confederate, I mean white. In fact, it is difficult to find a single black person at the Redneck Games, which is disconcerting when you consider that Dublin is more than 50 percent African American. One look around, however, and it’s easy to understand the conspicuous lack of diversity. The merchandise booths offer a wide variety of racially-charged products. If you’ve ever wondered where you could purchase a rebel-flag speedo or a 16-inch hunting knife engraved with the words, “White is Right,” this is the place. One booth sells bumper stickers with slogans like, “If I’d known this is how it would turn out, I would’ve picked my own cotton.” It is these types of racist overtures that cast a pall on a seemingly good-natured event.

“Bein’ a redneck is not about hate,” implores Mandy Evans of Cochran, Georgia. “We just like to drink our Purple Panty Pull-downs (a concoction of vodka and Kool Aid) and have a good time.”
“It may seem like harmless fun, but an event like the Redneck Games has insidious undertones,” says Dr. Susan Glisson, a professor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. “To promote an event that consciously or subconsciously excludes half of the community is inherently racist.”

The line between rednecks and racism is blurred even further by the Confederate stars-and-bars symbol that is synonymous with this culture. The Redneck Games is a vast sea of Confederate flags, proudly displayed on people’s hats, t-shirts, bikinis, beer cozies, and even baby diapers. The majority of Southerners will tell you that the rebel flag is a symbol of their history and nothing more.

“The Confederate flag is about heritage,” says Redneck World magazine founder Frank Fraser. “There are many great great grandfathers who died on those Civil War battlefields. The flag is a way of remembering them.” Ben “Cooter” Jones adds, “The Confederate symbol is the Christian cross of St. Andrew and not a symbol of slavery or hatred. You can’t expect us to lower our flags. I mean, the KKK wears white sheets, but it’s not like we’re gonna stop putting them on our beds.”

“The problem with the heritage-not-hate argument for the Confederate flag,” says Dr. Glisson, “Is that Southern blacks and whites have a shared, interdependent history. And if we’re not willing to include the interracial nature of our Southern heritage into the conception of who we are, racism will continue to exist.”

After searching the park for the better part of two hours, I locate the only two African Americans in the throng. Both are friendly women working at a Pizza Hut booth, and one of them, a 55 year-old grandmother named Marsha, speaks to me with a clarity I have yet to witness since my arrival in these parts. “Here in Dublin, things are polite between whites and blacks,” she says. “But it’s all on the surface. If you’re a black person in this town, you have your place and don’t you cross that line.” She pauses to serve a slice of pepperoni pizza, and continues. “Things go on here you wouldn’t believe. There are rich white people in this town who make black workers enter their homes through the back door, like it was the 1920’s. Through the back door.” She wipes her hands on her apron, scanning the white crowd.

“I’m old enough to remember when blacks weren’t allowed inside the same restaurants as whites. And this still exists today for a lot of black people.”

David, one of the few non-white business owners in Dublin, reiterated this point over breakfast this morning. “There’s only one bar in this town, and black folks know not to go in it. Everything is controlled here. Everybody knows where you can go and where you can’t. There are invisible walls all over this city.”

I ask Marsha if she feels nervous or uncomfortable about being one of the only black people at the Redneck Games. She stands up tall, and says in a loud, clear voice, “This is a public park, and my tax dollars pay for it. So I have a right to be here. My spirit is very strong. And when you’re standing with the truth, nothing can hurt you.”

Later, I ask Freddie Baugus, president of the East Dublin Lion’s Club—the main sponsor of the Redneck Games—what efforts, if any, are being made to increase diversity at the event. He tells me in a lazy, molasses drawl that the Games are open to everyone and that all races of people attend. Wink wink. When I tell him that I counted only two African Americans out of 7,000 attendees, he deflects the issue. “Look, this is about good people getting together to have a good time. Are we finished here?”

By mid-afternoon, the sky darkens as ominous black clouds roll in, unleashing a deluge of wind and rain. Thunder crackles and lightning streaks the salmon sky. People scatter for cover, many returning to their cars and heading home early. The organizers cancel the remaining events—the armpit serenade, hubcap hurl, and the butt-crack contest—to the dismay of hopeful participants. I huddle under the Pizza Hut booth for shelter, chatting with Marsha.

“You know, I volunteered to be here because I thought it was important,” she says. “I believe that by standing tall and proud, I am breaking down the racial barrier. And I will be here again next year and the year after, and I will tell more black people to come. You are going to see a variety of people here next year, and black people will be participating.”

We share a smile, basking in this moment of optimism. But as we’re exchanging contact information, two shirtless teenagers pass in front of us, wrestling over a half-empty beer bottle. One says to the other, “Gross, dude. Don’t nigger-lip the thing.” And I am suddenly jolted back to a world where African Americans aren’t welcome at the only bar in town, and black laborers are forced to enter white homes through the back door. I want to chase down the teens and make them choke on their thoughtless, hateful words. But instead, I do nothing, pretending not to hear the remark. The truth is, aside from my dietary considerations and my aversion to handguns, I may not be so different from these rednecks after all. I live in San Francisco, one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse cities in the world, but I don’t count a single black person among my friends. In fact, I don’t really know any black people at all. Though I’m not consciously part of the race problem in America, I’m certainly not part of the solution. I wish Marsha luck with her crusade, and then I turn and walk out into the fine, steady drizzle, where you can’t tell me from anyone else in the crowd.