When I asked my neighbor, Tom Devlin, what he thought of the show, he said two things: “it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen,” and more poignantly, “the first 10 minutes ruined my life.” I would hazard a guess that this last statement is pretty indicative of most people’s experience down in the basement that night. As I remember saying, we became instantly jaded. After you’ve seen somebody squirt chocolate syrup out of their ass and drink one another’s urine, what else could they possibly do to top that? That one thought is potentially what kept many of the audience in their seats for the whole show.

It started out fairly tame. Two guys in suits screaming into microphones under colored lights while a manic and eerie soundtrack wound its way around the room. As Ed Cooper would later admit, “the soundtrack made everything.” This is true. If I could get my hands on a copy of the soundtrack music without the French rantings, that would be one hell of a creepy Halloween mix. It was kind of like those educational films of the seventies that try to show the down side to doing LSD and snorting angel dust during math class. That music you’ve never ever heard in your head while tripping, but if you did, it would send you to the nearest corner, sniveling and raving about bugs! and ghosts! potted meat conspiracies! and THEM!! Of course, some of us don’t need music for that.

I must admit early on that I was not on the front lines. I negotiated a tentative perch on the stairs, the only exit that I knew of. Spineless lizard that I am, I just couldn’t bring myself to go around the corner into the main bowels of Ed’s Basement, thereby placing Costes between me and escape, because I had the feeling that if I eventually wanted to get the hell out of this room, I would not want to take my time about it.

The actual performance can be summed up simply for someone who doesn’t speak French: they ran around screaming, they got naked, they fucked a doll (while yelling “fock the baybee! fock the baybee!) they shat chocolate syrup out of their asses, ate it, threw it up, pissed on each other, drank that, mutilated vaginas with box cutters, fake- raped the girl like three times, and on and on. But at the same time, it was technically a “play” that attempts to tell a story, or make a point about something. Most of the performance that wasn’t related to shitting, pissing cutting or sucking I found to be rather comical. Perhaps this is because it was mostly in French and no one knew what the hell they were saying. After checking out Costes’ website, however, I decided that to hear it in English might not have been that funny. Costes claims to be the most persecuted artist in France and currently has several lawsuits pending against him for hate speech against Blacks and Jews. This situation is further complicated by the fact that Costes was supported by Prairie Pusher rock star performer Max Eisenberg, who paid for the USA tour with his bar mitzvah money.

At some point, one has to wonder how much of this spectacle is a pure attention-grabbing publicity stunt based on extreme shock value, and how much is it just Costes being a French weirdo. Reading his website, several questions crossed my mind: Was he molested? Is he gay? Were his brothers murdered? Is he a tortured genius? Does he have a legitimate point to make? Who fucking cares. When you stick a flute up your ass and do a handstand, it kind of detracts from any serious plot development you might be attempting to convey. And so, for those twenty or so people who were witness to the display of body-boundary transgression overload, that was basically all there was to be gleaned from the experience. In essence, it was somewhat childish. But there we were, glued to the screen, willing to see what was going to happen next, tentatively eager to view the madness but hoping it didn’t drip, spray, or get wiped on us personally. Perhaps it was all an exercise in self-validation; as one attendee noted, "I found real comfort in the face to face realization that there are people in this world that are significantly more warped than I." For some, though, “face to face” encounters like this aren’t the way to go. Fred Kesler, local psychological vaulting master and party hero, explained his reluctance to venture down the steps: “If I want to look at scat porn, I’ll look at it on the internet where I don’t have to smell it.” According to Fred, the “French funk-ass” smell wafting up from the basement was not much competition to the free-flowing Moonshine being passed around the kitchen.

Personally, my opinion is split. I think Costes is a freak. But in some screwed up experience-junkie kind of way, I’m glad I saw the show. The down side is that some of those images will require many years of mind scrubbing to eliminate them from my memory. But that’s just my mind, at least it wasn’t my house. In response to the show, one member of the household, Dan Jaworski, replied, “I support the First Ammendment wholeheartedly, but if you are going to shoot chocolate syrup up your ass, don’t do it in my bathroom.” As nasty as it was, the shock and absurdity of it all was enough to keep our attention. As I watched the video playback, staring at the screen, somewhat re-flabbergasted, Ed says to me, “tell me when [to turn it off], it’s mesmerizing.” True, but I hope to God I never have to again witness a naked Frenchman chanting into a microphone “do you love your daddy?” while dry-humping a baby doll's face. Wait, actually, that part was funny as hell. I just don’t want to have to try to understand why.