As the dusty, sunburnt Coachella minions pour back into L.A., their teeth still chattering from something that rhymes with “Ollie” and their Instagrams flooded with “#takemeback” hastags and selfies with Aaron Paul, the tales of weirdness follow them. Every year at Coachella seems to blow out the previous year on the WTF-Richter Scale, and the first weekend this year was no exception. In order to be sure that it actually happened and that it wasn’t all a dehydrated hallucination, the cultural filter over at IHC has distilled the best moments for you in this week’s installment of Top Five.
1. Drake and Madonna touched weirdly
By now, we’ve all seen the pictures. Drake brought out Madonna during his headlining performance, she made out with him, he was horrified, and she was very YOLO about it. Her exact words were “Bitch, I’m Madonna.” Which is about the swaggiest thing anyone has ever said. The crowd, understandably, was like “……………………..”
But what hasn’t received nearly enough attention is that Drake had a Fern Gully themed stage. Yes, the Canadian child actor/rapper had a stage designed after the second scariest children’s animated film after The Brave Little Toaster. And not only that; he rapped on a waterfall. He’s really appealing to our emotions right now.
2. AC/DC headlined Coachella, your dad was HYPED
Why hasn’t this turned more heads? This is absurd. It’s AC/DC … playing at Coachella.
As two girls eloquently put it in line at a Palm Springs 7ELEVEN on Friday night, flower crowns preemptively resting atop their heads just in case someone did a surprise set in the candy aisle:
Girl 1: “I don’t even know who Ack Dick is.”
Girl 2: “I think it’s AC/DC. They’re really old, it’s ironic or something.”
And then, shaking her head and musing on how wondrously strange life can be sometimes:
Girl 1: “Oh. Yeah, it’s like a TBT.”
3. Fergie rose from the dead, all hail Fergie
Remember Fergie? She was there, just, like, walking around watching shows like the rest of us. Stars: they’re just like is.
It was as if that whole thing where she was in The Black Eyed Peas never happened. She was just one of us, all casual like “Yeah, I’ll meet you at the main stage after the Port-O-Pottie line” and we were all like “Uhhh, you’re Fergie.”
Riveting.
4. Eric Andre played theremin with a giant dildo at the Mac DeMarco show
During the Mac DeMarco show comedian Eric Andre took to the stage to play the theremin, but instead of using his hands – ya know, the way you normally play instruments – he decided to use a big ol’ rubber dong. It was so, so beautiful and painfully arousing.
But the most WTF part of the whole thing: there aren’t pictures of it on the internet. Other than Andre’s Instagram, somehow this didn’t meet the incredibly low standards of what should be photographed at Coachella, so for now we’re savoring this precious shot of Eric Andre swinging a dildo around and making music with it.
5. Hippo Inc.
The iconic imagery of Coachella each year is usually one of their towering pieces of installation art set in front of silhouetted palm trees – think of last year’s moon man. However, the most “Wait… what?” art this year certainly won’t be used in their promotional materials: Derek Doublin and Vanessa Bonet’s “Corporate Headquarters,” a small three-story office building run by Hippos, complete with helicopter pad. You could even get on the phone with one of them and be put on hold for a while, which was so conceptual we almost splatter-painted our B.A. degree out of respect for art.
Maybe next year there’ll be an Enron sensory deprivation chamber? It’s good to have goals.
