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Huge shout-outs to all the cool folks that hang out on the boards.
Previously on BOTR...holy crap, they're going back to day one. There's everyone assembling in Chicago, hugging; we see DODES banging away on his keyboard; Amanda's throwing the horns and rolling away in a limo; in Cleveland, Daryl flips the bird and looks left as he makes a right turn into a parked bus; Pittsburgh; the college party when COFFEESTIRRER double-books and leaves HOLE-OH out of a gig, and Rebecca objects, and Boob is all like, "Yeah, we can do that. We just did." Jerk. There's a neat cut between Brandin yelling, "SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and DOODOO'S backup singers singing "shut up" prettily; Rebecca's cymbals are flaming out of control, and she gestures with her sticks to someone to put out the fire; Rex smashes his guitar. FLOWDES is cut from the tour. Nashville and New Orleans fly by, and ROLO plays "Blue Lie" and SHITCAKE plays on a balcony. Some highway footage rolls by, the road sign says Tampa, and we bid farewell to HARLOW. Sigh. Bye, girls! LICKERFLICK and SNACKCRACKER are left to duke it out in Miami; Beastie says his thing about "corporate yuppie rock" continuing to "reign supreme" if his band loses, and then the Dallas Goodfellas knock on his door and ask him to eat a little crow. That brings us up to speed, just about.
Here we are, season finale, 2:39 a.m. at Tobacco Road, the red-table-clothed blues bar. FUCKERFACE and BAINDESOLEIL are all knuckle-bitey and grim-faced. Oh, boo hoo! It's so rough! Being on a TV show and getting paid and all that! Let me get my tiny violin! The tour guy and gal explain the rules: The band has to eat all the worms and then lie in a coffin filled with rats and not move for thirty minutes. Just kidding. up for the bands is the Battle of the Bands, the purse for which is $5000. The audience votes on which band they like the best. Each audience member's vote is worth one point, except for a few specially-invited-by-VH1 music-industry "experts" whose votes are worth five points. Unless SUCKSOULER can raise $1,719 more than FUCKERLICK, the winner of the BoB will win the show. Wow, SC really sold a lot of fucking merch. They should open a store when they go home to San Diego. Maybe a Taco Bell franchise. Or a Radio Shack. ["Or an H&R Block, Bob." -- Sars] But wait, there's a bonus opportunity -- to play a rendition of the national anthem at a Miami Heat game. SHITSPITTER are stoked; FLICK, not so much. Corey dubs it "cheesy." Sutton says he's "psyched." And wait, there's another bonus opportunity. Sutton says he wants to win both of these opportunities, just like "we want to win everything." Maybe now's the time to think about the possibility that you may lose. Just consider it. Roll it around in your head for a while. Is it so bad? It is? Well, then, too bad for you.
In the SHAKERATTLEANDROLL van, Sutton babbles on about how he really wants to sing the national anthem and how he used to be "jealous" of people that got to sing it. Sutton? Dare to dream a little bigger. His band titters nervously. They know better than to bust on Sutton. I, however, don't care: I'm not in his stupid band. I know lots of famous people have sung the national anthem, and that it's performed before every sporting event and stuff, but! Singing the national anthem. Is. Not. Cool. And it's not cool to be all into it. Hell, every boy band and Jessica Simpson clone out there has done it. Has Weezer? I bet they haven't. So sorry, but I had to say it. SNACKCAKE practices and works out vocal parts and writes down the music and everything, and Beastie sits there smugly and says his band works so hard, and the other bands don't work and aren't focused, and he bets LICKERFLICK is just watching TV. I raise my middle finger to Baba Beastie just as we get a shot of FLICKwatching TV. Well, they sure showed me! But I still hate the CRACK. Brandin plays guitar all alone, trying to do an arrangement all by himself. The band doesn't even come with him to watch him sing.
Brandin walks down the hall, not skipping, not clapping, not all happy like he usually is. Even his white belt sags. In the audition, he sings a very sad but pretty rendition of the anthem. The judges clap. No "woo"s. CRACKSOULER are hanging around, licking their chops, grinning hugely. Beastie asks animatedly, "Did you smash your guitar?" What a dick. Brandin hangs out as they go into their rendition, which it kills me to say actually was pretty rockin'. Those fucks! But they did a good job. I still hate them, though! Not getting soft on you! The Miami Heat guys throw them a bone, saying they've heard hundreds of renditions and theirs was great. Okay, SOULCRACKER did a good job, okay? OKAY! Am I fired now? ["No. I liked their rendition too." -- Sars] They totally win it, Brandin says he's "relieved" to not have to do it, and we cut to a hysterical interview with Rex (who is looking quite mad, you know), who says, "Let me tell you a little story about bonus opportunities. THEY SUCK. Pure SHITE." Hee! And the VH-1 censors totally don't catch the word "shite," so it's unbleeped. Heh.
Bonus opportunity number two: "One of the hottest clubs" in Miami is "re-opening," and the first band to find this so-called hot club and confirm their booking gets to play the party. Oh, and models will be prancing around. At that salacious detail, Dom pricks up his ears. I mean, his cock starts stirring in his pants. I mean -- oh, there's no way around it. Dom runs and runs and leaves Rex and Brandin in his cologne-soaked wake as they wheeze, "No running!" Rex says, "Our lungs were BURNING." Hee. Sutton and Beastie duck into some restaurant and get help from the locals. Dom peers into a darkened nightclub just as Rex finds a flyer on the ground with the club address -- and they realize they've gone the wrong way. Rex and Brandin hop into a cab and collapse against each other all Patsy-and-Edwina-ish, Brandin gasping, "I'm gonna die." Beastie runs into the club, pushes his tongue against the club owner's anus, and confirms their gig. Fuckers.
The oh-so-steaming-hot-like-poo nightclub is called The Goddess, which sounds like a Chinese restaurant. It should be called The Panda Goddess, or The Golden Noodle Goddess, or something. Beastie salivates about how cool it is, and Fletcher and Dominic say defensively that hey, they were INVITED and are going to hang out "with the models or whatever." Hey, if they didn't go, I think I'd worry. But Dom takes his Valtrex twice a day, like the ad says, and can go swimming and horseback riding and to parties with models just like a normal person. SHITSPITTER takes the stage to a roomful of very thin, all-black-wearing, arm-folded, tight-lipped, rosy-cheeked-yet-severe-looking "beautiful" people. They plug their upcoming BoB gig with their "buddies FLICKERSTICK," at which Corey and Rex barf down their sleeves. "Buddies" -- yeah, right. Then they start playing that song that goes, "I'm a JERK, leaving you all by yourself," and the models prance out, and it has to be the most mismatched models-to-music I've ever seen. And I watch Fashion File a lot. It's just a bad match. Dom drools at all the scantily-clad females. Apey says they played a good set and that "people liked [them] even though they weren't a typical rock audience." God, Apey is so goddamn smug! He can tell everything about a person just by looking at them! Dom tries to hit on a model named Monica, but gets yelled at by the stage manager. Hey, he really needed to talk to her! It was important! Then Apey earns my pity by saying that they "got to look at really hot models" when they were done playing. "Look"? AP, there's this magazine called Vogue. You can "look" at models there. But when you're in the same room as a person? You can actually go up and talk to them. Maybe even dance a little, like Corey and Bob and Beastie and Ramsey are doing. See? You too can interact with members of the opposite sex! But don't do that little shooting the pretend gun, blowing it off, and sticking it back in the holster thing that Beastie does. That's just lame.
FLICKSTICKER decides to drive to Fort Lauderdale to try to get a gig to promote the BoB. Things are tense in the van; Rex's head is bobbing like one of those taxicab dogs. Dom's passed out drunk, and Corey yells at him. Dude, Dom's sleeping. He can't hear you. They roll up to a bar called Cheers, where a band is playing a twangy song. The lead singer/bass player is wearing a headset mike and HA HA HA HA HA! Sorry, I think Janet Jackson is the only person that can wear one of those and not make me laugh. FLICK sets up half-assedly, Brandin says to nobody in particular that Rex is in the van trying not to boot, and the band plays a terrible-sounding set (with Rex, who has apparently conquered the urge to speeyack). They have really bad sound. The bass drops out, the guitar drops out, and Dom is wasted. They start to fight on-stage. Oh, no. It's really bad. A lady walks up to the stage and asks if they "know any Offspring." Dominic, how about you? [rimshot] Thank you -- stick around for the reunion show recap! Dom keeps yelling, "It's falling apart!" A guy in the crowd shakes his head. Dom storms off-stage.