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| During her Bacchanal performance last weekend, Taylor Swift can be seen holding a handgun she later used in an attempt on QCurl Sharif's life. |
By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya
FSN Sports
In a normal year, though “normal” is a word that has never appeared before in a story about the annual Bacchanal to the Future, the highlight of the three-day festival usually involves the performances of the musical guests. This year was no exception, except that the performance involved an attempted assassination — by musical guest Taylor Swift — of Bacchanal co-founder QCurl Sharif. Even by Bacchanal standards, this was not a normal year.
On Saturday afternoon, as Sharif sang onstage with Taylor Swift and a reanimated Warren Zevon, Swift produced a 9-millimeter Baretta pistol and fired three shots into Sharif’s chest. Two other bullets, apparently aimed at the Bakers owner, instead struck Zevon, who was pronounced re-dead at the scene.
Fruit of Astarte security forces, joined by Sharif’s own Israeli-trained praetorian guard, quickly surrounded a dazed-looking Swift and led her away in handcuffs. Amid wails and shrieks from the crowd, Sharif lay prone for nearly 30 seconds, then miraculously rose to his feet and demanded that the show continue.
Though some initial reports attributed Sharif’s apparent lack of injury to the intervention of friend of the team Shiva the Destroyer, sources in the Bakers’ organization later explained that Sharif had been wearing a bulletproof Kevlar vest at the insistence of PR maven Faith Popcorn. The sources gave no specific reason why Sharif was asked to wear the vest, but as one of them said, “I could think of at least a dozen reasons just on one hand.”
It was the third confirmed attempt on Sharif’s life in the past 10 weeks. The troubled and charismatic Bakers owner survived two botched car bombings this fall, at least one of which apparently involved an Islamic extremist group.
Adding insult to literal injury to Sharif was the Beelzebubbas’ 166-117 shellacking of the Bakers in the annual tilt that has come to define the league’s sordid and often brutal past as well as its freewheeling, free-thinking ethos. In many seasons, the game is regarded as a distraction from the Bacchanal — to the point that key players and coaches from each team have skipped the football contest in favor of the festival.
After the latest attempt, when he returned to his feet and order was restored, Sharif urged the crowd not to worry about Zevon. “While we will miss him for the rest of the weekend, Warren would absolutely want the party to go on,” Sharif said. “And there’s no doubt he will be back in 2013. Warren is a beast. He never misses a Bacchanal. In fact, his last words before he re-died were, ‘You have to let me race the chariot next year.’ That’s a promise I made to him.” And with that, the band launched into Zevon’s “Life’ll Kill Ya” followed by “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which he had cowritten with NFFA founder Dr. Jorgé Linardo.
Throughout the day Sunday, league investigators pieced together the surprising and sordid story behind Swift’s murderous act, following a trail that led them to the formerly criminally insane owner of the Fidalgo Island Sea Hogs and to North Korea.
Before undergoing curative therapy at the Betty Ford Center for the Criminally Insane, Tirik O’Bobber had hosted the then 13-year-old Swift aboard his yacht, the Fatal Attraction II. Apparently against her will, Swift was taken to North Korea, whose leaders had formed a working partnership with O’Bobber. There, in a plot that would be familiar to viewers of “The Manchurian Candidate,” the singer underwent hypnotherapy and was trained as an assassin, to be planted back in the United States as a “deep-sleeper cell” with no memory of her experience. A specific cue — the word “monkey” sung in the presence of Sharif — would activate her to attempt to kill the Bakers owner. Swift produced her gun and fired minutes after Sharif and Zevon sang “Porcelain Monkey,” Zevon’s tribute to Elvis Presley.
As the shots rang out, Sharif appeared to adopt a yoga-based defensive position immediately. Following the final strains of “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” he knelt on the front edge of the stage, accepting hands, gifts and many flowers from the relieved crowd. He spoke to them, reminding everyone that he had, in fact, been the inspiration for J.D. Salinger’s short story “The Laughing Man,” in which the central character wore a mask made entirely of rose petals, and who had been shot multiple times in the heart, only to regurgitate the bullets from his mouth at the feet of his enemies.
It was not immediately clear why Sharif was the target, but team officials noted that O’Bobber had tried at least one other time to assassinate the Bakers owner by planting a bomb in a pair of ostrich-hide boots he gave Sharif to wear to an NFFA owners meeting at the Cherry Bomb Café. O’Bobber, who had an All-Excess pass to the Bacchanal and was relaxing with Vice President Joe Biden, James Spader and several “Vestal Virgin” hostesses in the VIP Lounge at the time of the shooting, was shocked to learn that he may have set the chain of events in motion.
League investigators apparently were satisfied that O’Bobber, who witnesses said was upset to learn of his connection to the day’s events, had no memory of kidnapping Swift or arranging for the murder of Sharif. “Ironically, it seems that the therapy worked so well that Mr. O’Bobber forgot everything about his past life,” Popcorn said Sunday. “We just hope there aren’t any other landmines buried out there.”
Other than Saturday’s hitch, the rest of the Bacchanal IX celebration was as big a success as the festival organizers had hoped. With “Nashville” star Hayden Panettiere in the role of Aphrodite and Powers Booth serving as Charon, the Bacchanal’s opening ceremonies included a symbolic journey to the underworld, lavishly produced by the firm that staged the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics and complete with a $20 million hydraulic system that lowered the Dionysus Stage into a subterranean chamber that had been excavated for the event.
Rumors of a botched artificial insemination within that chamber have surfaced in the local press, a rumor vigorously denied by the NFFA Office of Public Relations. While it was been confirmed that screams were heard from the underground chamber, both Booth and Panettiere have indicated they were screams of delight — perhaps fueled by the sudden and unexplained reappearance of broadcaster Megyn Kelly, who had vanished during an election-night party at Sharif’s West End Tree House, and perhaps by a mushroom-maté drink championed by Sharif and originally concocted by Dr. Linardo. (Linardo announced that guests in the swank Palenque Room at Club Gitmo will receive free mushroom-matés if the Beelzebubbas defeat the Black Dogs in their regular-season finale.) In related news, Sharif denied published reports that he is the father of Kate Middleton's baby. "I've seen London, I've seen France, but I haven't seen any underpants," said Sharif in a statement.
The chariot race, which has become a crowd favorite since the Bakers and Beelzebubbas made a civic gift of the Centennial Park Hippodrome in 2008, offered a welcome return to horse-drawn chariots. Last year, because the chariots had been impounded by police as part of the investigation into Sharif’s Bobberhead Lodge, the race was staged with tractors. Sharif was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing in the affair, and, as further vindication, his team’s entry in the race, driven by a reanimated Charlton Heston, edged the Beelzebubbas’ chariot driven by Vin Diesel. After crossing the finish line, a clearly excited Heston fired off a number of celebratory rounds from an AR15 assault rifle, wounding the race’s honorary flagman Zac Brown.
“The race was our shining moment,” Sharif said later. “I think next year, though, we should definitely re-enact the crash of Masala from the Ben-Hur movie. Everyone was thrilled to see big Chuck up there driving his team — it would have been a nice touch to have of the charioteers to dragged around the Hippodrome. I mean, by this point, the fans really want to get to the heart of the weekend.”
This Bacchanal musical lineup placed an emphasis on first-time performers who had been unable to crack the roster in previous years. Among the Bacchanal initiates for 2012 were Jack White; Eddie Vedder; Ludacris; a reanimated Andy Williams; Umphrey’s McGee; Ray Wylie Hubbard; Mojo Nixxon and Skid Roper; Sir Elton John; Snow Patrol; the Beach Boys; Morrissey; Will.I.Am; Burl Ives; and Alice Cooper.
The surprise crowd favorite among the newcomers was a reanimated Johnny Paycheck, who was designated as Honorary Grand Marshal for the weekend. Thousands in the crowd were seen two-stepping as Paycheck performed highly charged versions of “Satin Sheets,” “11 Months and 29 Days,” “Pardon Me, I Have Someone to Kill,” and “She’s Got a Drinking Problem.” Sharif joined Paycheck for “If I’m Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom)” before Hank III accompanied them both oin “I’m the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised.” Near the end of his hour-long set, Paycheck led the audience in singing “Take This Job and Shove It,” before launching into a diatribe with Ginger Baker, who was waiting in the wings and who broke Paycheck’s nose in the ensuing fistfight between the two.
Among the other highlights of Bacchanal 2012:
• Annual favorites Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, reunited with Steely Dan regular Jeff Skunk Baxter, electrified the crowd with a 30-minute jam version of “Bodhisattva,” and were joined later by Dr. Linardo, who delivered dramatic readings of “Josie” and “Throw Out Your Gold Teeth.” That, too, was a reunion of sorts; according to Fagen, Dr. Linardo provided the inspiration during their L.A. days for “Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More.”
• The reanimated and reunited Ramones, another favorite, performed “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “I Just Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away” before sending the revelers into a frenzy with “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg (My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down).”
• Near the end of their set, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings were joined by a reanimated Muddy Waters, who performed “Champagne and Reefer,” as Sod Bakers employees sling-shotted sample bags of their signature “Green Caviar” product into the waiting crowd. During the resulting frenzy, new NashVegas resident Johnny Depp and Black Dogs coach Jim McMahon were spotted atop the Parthenon. Each wore a pink toga and matching Doc Martens boots, and fired souvenir Bacchanal t-shirts and Sod Bakers gift bags from an air-powered bazooka.
• Former President Bill Clinton, who led the opening Pledge of Allegiance with Bacchanal impresario Haven Hamilton, joined George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Funkadelic for ”One Nation Under a Groove” and “Atomic Dog.” After their set, both Clintons boarded the Mothership, which had been hovering above the stage and sailed over the western horizon.
• The Nashville Symphony, led by a reanimated Kenneth Schermerhorn as guest conductor and joined by the Red Army Chorus from Moscow, performed the "1812 Overture" near the end of the musical portion festival Saturday night. The piece’s climactic sequences were accompanied by real cannons, which were trained on the home of country singer John Rich atop nearby Love Circle Hill. On Sunday morning, a “Mission Accomplished” banner was on display in front of the smoldering ruin of Rich’s home.
• Village Green team owner Dave “Goodrow” Goodridge joined The Village People for “YMCA” and “In the Navy” before announcing that the band also would be playing for the “after-party” at his Goodrow-a-Go-Go. After last year’s experience, when Goodridge fell into an alcohol- and narcotics-induced coma and was partially reanimated by mistake, extra security was assigned to shadow him during the festival. Though they prevented a recurrence of the 2011 debacle, Goodridge, dressed as a cowboy, with his chimpanzee Gonzo in Native American garb, did have to be restrained for frightening the horses during Sunday morning’s chariot race. He was said to be so distracted by the festivities that he started two inactive players in his victory over the Corsairs. “I was trying to prove a point … I think,” said an obviously inebriated Goodridge afterward. (Later, Goodridge seemed to leave open the possibility that he would make an annual tradition of playing short-handed against his division rival. “After sweeping them in the regular season every year, it might be the sporting thing to do,” he admitted.)
• AC/DC’s performance of “You Shook Me All Night Long” that accompanied a re-enactment, using reproductions of first-century naval vessels, of the Battle of Actium on Lake Watauga.
• An unannounced reunion of REM, whose performance of “It’s the End of the World (as We Know It)” induced the crowd of 80,000 to sing along and was declared by the Ghost of the Ghost of Boyd X. Biggs as the Co-Official Theme Song of the Bacchanal — an honor it shares with Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), which Sly & the Family Stone perform each year to open the show.
Near midnight on Saturday, all the performers joined on one stage to close the show. First, the Ghost of the Ghost of Biggs thanked the crowd for coming before asking Nick Lowe to lead everyone in “What’s So Funny about Peace Love and Understanding,” which he dedicated to Dr. Linardo. Then the concert closed with the traditional singing of “The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
Moved by the closing scene, Sharif tearfully thanked the crowd for "not just standing by the Bakers and the Bubbas during these trying events, but by the entire NFFA family."
"Violence is never the answer," Sharif said. "Well, maybe never is too strong a word. Sometimes violence is the answer, but not here, not in our house. We love you all — and please, don't eat the brown acid. Eat the purple stuff — the one with the commemorative Bacchanal seal on it. Drive safe and see you next year in Jerusalem."
 |
| QCurl Sharif (File). |
Fruit of Astarte security forces, joined by Sharif’s own Israeli-trained praetorian guard, quickly surrounded a dazed-looking Swift and led her away in handcuffs. Amid wails and shrieks from the crowd, Sharif lay prone for nearly 30 seconds, then miraculously rose to his feet and demanded that the show continue.
Though some initial reports attributed Sharif’s apparent lack of injury to the intervention of friend of the team Shiva the Destroyer, sources in the Bakers’ organization later explained that Sharif had been wearing a bulletproof Kevlar vest at the insistence of PR maven Faith Popcorn. The sources gave no specific reason why Sharif was asked to wear the vest, but as one of them said, “I could think of at least a dozen reasons just on one hand.”
It was the third confirmed attempt on Sharif’s life in the past 10 weeks. The troubled and charismatic Bakers owner survived two botched car bombings this fall, at least one of which apparently involved an Islamic extremist group.
Adding insult to literal injury to Sharif was the Beelzebubbas’ 166-117 shellacking of the Bakers in the annual tilt that has come to define the league’s sordid and often brutal past as well as its freewheeling, free-thinking ethos. In many seasons, the game is regarded as a distraction from the Bacchanal — to the point that key players and coaches from each team have skipped the football contest in favor of the festival.
After the latest attempt, when he returned to his feet and order was restored, Sharif urged the crowd not to worry about Zevon. “While we will miss him for the rest of the weekend, Warren would absolutely want the party to go on,” Sharif said. “And there’s no doubt he will be back in 2013. Warren is a beast. He never misses a Bacchanal. In fact, his last words before he re-died were, ‘You have to let me race the chariot next year.’ That’s a promise I made to him.” And with that, the band launched into Zevon’s “Life’ll Kill Ya” followed by “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” which he had cowritten with NFFA founder Dr. Jorgé Linardo.
Throughout the day Sunday, league investigators pieced together the surprising and sordid story behind Swift’s murderous act, following a trail that led them to the formerly criminally insane owner of the Fidalgo Island Sea Hogs and to North Korea.
Before undergoing curative therapy at the Betty Ford Center for the Criminally Insane, Tirik O’Bobber had hosted the then 13-year-old Swift aboard his yacht, the Fatal Attraction II. Apparently against her will, Swift was taken to North Korea, whose leaders had formed a working partnership with O’Bobber. There, in a plot that would be familiar to viewers of “The Manchurian Candidate,” the singer underwent hypnotherapy and was trained as an assassin, to be planted back in the United States as a “deep-sleeper cell” with no memory of her experience. A specific cue — the word “monkey” sung in the presence of Sharif — would activate her to attempt to kill the Bakers owner. Swift produced her gun and fired minutes after Sharif and Zevon sang “Porcelain Monkey,” Zevon’s tribute to Elvis Presley.
 |
| Warren Zevon before the shooting. |
League investigators apparently were satisfied that O’Bobber, who witnesses said was upset to learn of his connection to the day’s events, had no memory of kidnapping Swift or arranging for the murder of Sharif. “Ironically, it seems that the therapy worked so well that Mr. O’Bobber forgot everything about his past life,” Popcorn said Sunday. “We just hope there aren’t any other landmines buried out there.”
 |
| Aphrodite Hayden Panettiere. |
Rumors of a botched artificial insemination within that chamber have surfaced in the local press, a rumor vigorously denied by the NFFA Office of Public Relations. While it was been confirmed that screams were heard from the underground chamber, both Booth and Panettiere have indicated they were screams of delight — perhaps fueled by the sudden and unexplained reappearance of broadcaster Megyn Kelly, who had vanished during an election-night party at Sharif’s West End Tree House, and perhaps by a mushroom-maté drink championed by Sharif and originally concocted by Dr. Linardo. (Linardo announced that guests in the swank Palenque Room at Club Gitmo will receive free mushroom-matés if the Beelzebubbas defeat the Black Dogs in their regular-season finale.) In related news, Sharif denied published reports that he is the father of Kate Middleton's baby. "I've seen London, I've seen France, but I haven't seen any underpants," said Sharif in a statement.
The chariot race, which has become a crowd favorite since the Bakers and Beelzebubbas made a civic gift of the Centennial Park Hippodrome in 2008, offered a welcome return to horse-drawn chariots. Last year, because the chariots had been impounded by police as part of the investigation into Sharif’s Bobberhead Lodge, the race was staged with tractors. Sharif was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing in the affair, and, as further vindication, his team’s entry in the race, driven by a reanimated Charlton Heston, edged the Beelzebubbas’ chariot driven by Vin Diesel. After crossing the finish line, a clearly excited Heston fired off a number of celebratory rounds from an AR15 assault rifle, wounding the race’s honorary flagman Zac Brown.
“The race was our shining moment,” Sharif said later. “I think next year, though, we should definitely re-enact the crash of Masala from the Ben-Hur movie. Everyone was thrilled to see big Chuck up there driving his team — it would have been a nice touch to have of the charioteers to dragged around the Hippodrome. I mean, by this point, the fans really want to get to the heart of the weekend.”
 |
| Jack White tips his hat to the crowd. |
The surprise crowd favorite among the newcomers was a reanimated Johnny Paycheck, who was designated as Honorary Grand Marshal for the weekend. Thousands in the crowd were seen two-stepping as Paycheck performed highly charged versions of “Satin Sheets,” “11 Months and 29 Days,” “Pardon Me, I Have Someone to Kill,” and “She’s Got a Drinking Problem.” Sharif joined Paycheck for “If I’m Gonna Sink (I Might as Well Go to the Bottom)” before Hank III accompanied them both oin “I’m the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised.” Near the end of his hour-long set, Paycheck led the audience in singing “Take This Job and Shove It,” before launching into a diatribe with Ginger Baker, who was waiting in the wings and who broke Paycheck’s nose in the ensuing fistfight between the two.
Among the other highlights of Bacchanal 2012:
 |
| Donald Fagen (left) and Walter Becker on Saturday. |
• The reanimated and reunited Ramones, another favorite, performed “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “I Just Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” and “The KKK Took My Baby Away” before sending the revelers into a frenzy with “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg (My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down).”
 |
| Johnny Depp backstage. |
• Former President Bill Clinton, who led the opening Pledge of Allegiance with Bacchanal impresario Haven Hamilton, joined George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and Funkadelic for ”One Nation Under a Groove” and “Atomic Dog.” After their set, both Clintons boarded the Mothership, which had been hovering above the stage and sailed over the western horizon.
• The Nashville Symphony, led by a reanimated Kenneth Schermerhorn as guest conductor and joined by the Red Army Chorus from Moscow, performed the "1812 Overture" near the end of the musical portion festival Saturday night. The piece’s climactic sequences were accompanied by real cannons, which were trained on the home of country singer John Rich atop nearby Love Circle Hill. On Sunday morning, a “Mission Accomplished” banner was on display in front of the smoldering ruin of Rich’s home.
 |
| "Goodrow" onstage with The Village People. |
• AC/DC’s performance of “You Shook Me All Night Long” that accompanied a re-enactment, using reproductions of first-century naval vessels, of the Battle of Actium on Lake Watauga.
• An unannounced reunion of REM, whose performance of “It’s the End of the World (as We Know It)” induced the crowd of 80,000 to sing along and was declared by the Ghost of the Ghost of Boyd X. Biggs as the Co-Official Theme Song of the Bacchanal — an honor it shares with Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), which Sly & the Family Stone perform each year to open the show.
Near midnight on Saturday, all the performers joined on one stage to close the show. First, the Ghost of the Ghost of Biggs thanked the crowd for coming before asking Nick Lowe to lead everyone in “What’s So Funny about Peace Love and Understanding,” which he dedicated to Dr. Linardo. Then the concert closed with the traditional singing of “The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
Moved by the closing scene, Sharif tearfully thanked the crowd for "not just standing by the Bakers and the Bubbas during these trying events, but by the entire NFFA family."
"Violence is never the answer," Sharif said. "Well, maybe never is too strong a word. Sometimes violence is the answer, but not here, not in our house. We love you all — and please, don't eat the brown acid. Eat the purple stuff — the one with the commemorative Bacchanal seal on it. Drive safe and see you next year in Jerusalem."
