Shane Bugbee and Hell on Earth


I've been following this whole Hell on Earth "suicide show" thing for a couple weeks, now... The show went on Saturday, but whether the suicide actually did or not, I'm not really sure at this time... The show and the sucide were to take place at two separate locations... The website was supposedly "taken down by hackers," therefore nothing was aired on the website as scheduled...

Enter Shane Bugbee. Shane is a Chicagoland "promoter turned 'shock' jock..." He also promotes the book Might is Right (a book highly regarded by the Church of Satan and thousands of "white supremacists" all over the world)... Shane does an internet radio show called "Three Ring Radio" on Radio Free Satan. This week's broadcast of Three Ring Radio is dedicated to the whole Hell on Earth suicide show thing... He also claims to have the video of the show that Hell on Earth performed Saturday evening and video of what is purported to be the suicide... Bugbee also conducts an interview (actually conducted over several days prior to and after the show) with Billy Tourtelot, lead singer for Hell on Earth...

I listened to the show at 2:00am MDT, tonight. When I read the stuff about the whole Might is Right thing and such, I was prepared for the show to suck and for it to have been a total waste of time. Well, the first hour pretty much did (and was), but I kept listening, because honestly, I am intrigued by this whole thing pretty deeply... I mean, I have played a lot of music, done a lot of live shows with bands that were famous, soon-to-be famous, and never-will-be famous... and regardless of my personal views on death, suicide, or the right to die, I have never ever pondered being involved in something quite so outrageous and ridiculous as a "public" suicide as a vehicle to help promote my band... which no matter what Billy Tourtelot will say in public, he was totally using this as a way to promote his band... and it obviously worked.

At one point of the interview with Bugbee, Tourtelot actually has the stones to start talking about his "integrity" and all this crap... and how the band is not, in any way, assisting suicide (which is totally debateable - I tend to think they are, in fact, facilitating the act and would, therefore, be guilty of assisting suicide, despite what Tourtelot or his cousel would say)... he also says that "the band does not condone suicide... we think it's the weak way out... but what this person is doing is really courageous..." Y'know, if the guy had any real integrity, I'm not sure he would have been involved in this stuff in the first place... but you need look no further than some of the schlock on the band's website to see his true "integrity." Speaking of, I haven't seen a flicker from their website since I checked for it the day of the "performance."

In another section of the show, Bugbee is called by CNN correspondent Susan Candiotti (and is interrupted by about thirty phone calls from newspaper reporters)... Bugbee says that he will be airing the content sometime this week... He also tells Candiotti at one point that the hack of hellonearth.net is not coming from Hong Kong, but "from a government organization" (or so he has been told by his Internet Service Provider). He kind of fails to mention this at any point in the actual broadcast, but it's not that big of a deal... He then goes on to broadcast Susan Candiotti giving him her personal office number at CNN... beautiful stuff... (I wonder how many calls she got from listeners?)

Part two of the show kicks off with more extremely shitty music from this less-than-remotely-good band (a.k.a. Hell on Earth)... I've honestly heard my cat make better music horking up a hairball... Then he gets back on the phone with Tourtelot, discussing why and how the servers were taken down... Bugbee says that after he talked to the server people, they don't think there was any hack attempt from Hong Kong (or even a hack at all, apparently).

Tourtelot apparently has extensive knowledge of the english language, particularly the word "fuck."

Bugbee engaged Tourtelot in a bit of questioning the validity of the whole thing... He told Tourtelot that the whole thing was planned so poorly (which it was)... Tourtelot supposedly met the terminally-ill guy (or at least judging from the conversation, it is a man) only one time, ever and they then only exchanged notes through a "secret meeting place" and such... He also never discussed anything with the teminally-ill person about their family's wishes or concerns (which does strike me as odd - I mean, even if I was the dumbest fuck on the planet, I would be asking this person about their family and how they feel, how the person thinks this act will affect them, etc.). Tourtelot went on to say that he has no idea if the guy actually committed suicide the night of the show, and that he was going to place a call to (Tampa disc jockey) "Bubba the Lovesponge" asking him to broadcast a request to the person that if he is still alive to call the station and confirm he's living... Bugbee claimed that at the beginning, he thought it was "50% hoax, 50% real... we'll see when someone drags a body out of a building..." It was a bit more obvious that near the end of the interview, his tone changed a bit more towards the "it's bullshit" angle...

At the end of the show, Bugbee claimed that the end of the video footage he has (and says will air sometime this week) contains images of a person with a bag over their head (Tourtelot makes reference to the "plastic bag method" in the interview, where someone takes tons of narcotics, washes it down with alcohol and then sticks a bag over their head and passes out before they die of asphyxia)... he also questioned whether it is legit or actually just "Billy's drummer..."

Shane Bugbee might be a bit misguided in some of his views and such (at least in my opinion), but he is a smart guy and he ended up asking a lot of good questions... I was ready to write this guy off as nothing more than some hate-preaching could-be-white-supremacist (from the background I've been able to gather, I can't really tell, although his studio does sport rebel flags and such...) who got lucky enough to score his own radio show... but after listening to the show, I won't say I respect the guy any more or anything, but he showed that he is an intelligent guy, and he handled the burden of having stuff basically dumped in his lap quite well.

Will I listen to another broadcast of Three Ring Radio? Well, probably so. Thank Maynard that I have the power to judge for myself if the guy is talking shit or not... and if so, I can always just turn it off...

Now Listening to: The Mars Volta - "De-loused in the Comatorium" (2003)