IT’S OKAY TO LOVE SOMETHING UNCONDITIONALLY EVEN IF IT IS FLAWED or Send Me to Prison Where I Belong

It’s hard to overstate the role Saturday Night Live and its first breakout stars played in my childhood. I was born seven months after Saturday Night Live first aired and grew up in its outsized shadow. 

As a child Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live epitomized adult comedy for me. I longed for the day when I would finally be old enough to experience their sophisticated grown-up pleasures for myself. Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, John Belushi and my personal favorite, Dan Aykroyd, weren’t just popular entertainers or movie stars to me: they were Gods of cinema. 

I grew up uncritically adoring their movies whether they were good or not. Then I became an obnoxious adult and contrarianism set in. Were these movies really great or was my perception hopelessly clouded by nostalgia? 

Then I reached a place in my spiritual and emotional journey when I realized that IT’S OKAY TO LOVE SOMETHING UNCONDITIONALLY EVEN IF IT IS FLAWED. 

That’s because EVERYTHING IS FLAWED, with the exception of the movie Groundhog Day, so you have to embrace flaws if you’re ever going to love something with your whole soul and being. What is life without that kind of love and passion? 

I am DEEPLY flawed yet I like to consider myself worthy of love all the same. I suspect the same is true of you as well.

I love The Blues Brothers because it is a very funny movie. But my intense emotional connection to it also has a lot to do with John Belushi being the preeminent comic martyr of my childhood. My love of The Blues Brothers is inextricably wrapped up in childhood nostalgia and my intense, complicated feelings about my hometown of Chicago and Saturday Night Live and Second City and the blues and the 1980s and my relationship with my dad and my deep immersion in the overlapping worlds of comedy and music and comedy music. 

I feel so passionately about The Blues Brothers, a silly, self-indulgent movie made by stoned twenty-somethings nearly a half century ago, that when I learned that there would be a Blues Brothers Convention in Joliet Prison I knew that I had to be a part of it. 

It’s gonna be insane! There will be live performances by blues musicians and a climactic live show by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s brother, James, as well a massive Q&A, closing screening of the film, and, surprisingly, a fair amount of activism involving people in prison for marijuana. 

The Blues Brothers convention is taking the place of the Gathering of the Juggalos for me this year. As much as I love the Gathering, I feel like my readers might be interested in something a little different from me this time around and, truth be told, this looks like much less of a hassle than the Gathering.

But I need YOUR help to make the magic happen. The media, sadly, refuses to sanction and/or finance this manner of buffoonery so I’m taking to the people with a GoFundMe. 

We hit our goal within 24 hours so we raised it to 2000 in honor of everyone’s favorite Blues Brothers movie, Blues Brothers 2000. 

Get onboard this worthy endeavor and send me to prison, where I belong. I’m on a mission from God! 

Send me to prison where I belong! I just launched a GoFundMe for the first ever Blues Brothers Convention at Joliet Prison, which you can be a part of by donating over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-nathan-to-the-blues-brothers-convention

Pre-order The Fractured Mirror, the Happy Place’s next book, a 600 page magnum opus about American films about American films, illustrated by the great Felipe Sobreiro over at https://www.gofundme.com/f/send-nathan-to-the-blues-brothers-convention

The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s first non-"Weird Al” Yankovic-themed book is out! And it’s only 16.50, shipping, handling and taxes included, 30 bucks for two books, domestic only! 

Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop

Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al  here and The Weird Accordion to Al here

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