G-U Interviews: Remember when G-U was good?
Remember when G-U was good?
It was never good.
However, G-U was full of really good people and I aim to spotlight those beautiful people via interviews. Every issue I plan on interviewing what I call OG Gorillaz-Unofficial members and current discord members: This time around I had the pleasure of interviewing both Dillon Flynn, of Hallelujah Monkeyz fame, and NoodlesDoodlesBoodles, from the Gorillaz cosplay community.
NoodlesDoodlesBoodles
NoodlesDoodlesBoodles has been doing cosplay for a few years and definitely has a huge presence in the Gorillaz community. I’ve been slowly getting to know her through the G-U discord, but she definitely brings a lot of good light to the server and is a positive influence that I hope other people can strive towards.
Bran: How did you get into cosplay and how long have you been doing it for?
NDB: I have been cosplaying since I was around 13-14 years old and, my best friend had cosplayed along with some other friends and I thought: “Hey I should join in the game!”, because I was really into anime and felt like this was the time to go for it. My very first cosplay was Seychelles from Hetalia.
Bran: That’s awesome and definitely helps that you knew some people who were already into it. How did you get into Gorillaz?
NDB: It all started when I was 5 years old, and I would watch something on TV before school. MTV was on one morning, and I was laying down listening, and then all of the sudden, I am looking at the screen of some faded like video. I distinctly remember the laugh and bassline before seeing a strange man with his strange eyes, which scared me away initially, but, I kept watching because I also thought it was so cool. My cousin ended up telling me it was “Feel Good Inc.”. I would hear “DARE” and “Feel Good Inc.” a lot around that time, and I just remember dancing along to “DARE”. I asked my cousin who they were and they named dropped Gorillaz, and ever since then, it was love at first listen.
Bran: What was the spark for combining Gorillaz and cosplaying?
NDB: A few months before Humanz was announced, I wanted to explore who to cosplay and it clicked that I should do Noodle! I asked my grandma if she could help me out with the Plastic Beach Noodle, and after some hard work, I was able to take it to Colossalcon and got a lot of good feedback from people, and I have been cosplaying Noodle since then. I plan on branching out though and doing more cosplay as well.
Bran: Ever since I’ve known you, your Noodle and Little Simz cosplays have been nothing short of incredible and it seems like you get a lot of love from the online community.
Bran: Do you ever deal with people who may be critical of you (IE racists) because you’re black or has the cosplay community mindset changed enough to where that’s not an issue or one you experience much?
NDB: There hasn’t been any situation besides creeps. I learned to ignore them because I know I have such loving family online and in reality, but there are still issues within the cosplay community. People still like to bring people down, whether online or at cons and it’s not something I’ve experienced, and I have no desire to feel that.
However, most people in the community have been loving and accepting, but still people wanna change their skin color to fit the cosplay and I think that is sad. Somedays, I do get insecure about my skin because it’s dark and I feel like I can’t fit in, but I’m learning to love myself everyday and want everybody to get to that place too. Love your skin no matter what, because you are a beautiful human, and you don’t have to change your skin to fit in, just be yourself, love yourself and it takes time but soon then you will find the beauty in you.
Bran: To wind down, what are your favorite cosplay’s to do currently, favorite Gorillaz song and album, and you got something to promote?
NDB: My favorite is definitely my Plastic Beach Noodle cosplay. My favorite main Gorillaz song is probably “The Apprentice”, it just has so much soul and I really like Zebra Katz vibe with his rap. Album? It’s definitely Demon Days, because it was the album that got me into Gorillaz and the music is just beautiful. It’s the type of album that fits into all sorts of moods and I just really enjoy it. Thank you Damon, Jamie and everybody who has helped create such a wonderful group. Also, you can follow me on my Instagram, Tumblr and Amino under the name NoodlesDoodlesBoodles. Thank you for interviewing me!
Bran: It has been an absolute pleasure!
Dillon Flynn
Personally, I’ve known Dillon since the G-U days and I can honestly say there is nobody quite like him. He has been a part of this community for quite some time and is becoming a household name through his podcast with his partner Trevor called Hallelujah Monkeyz. He’s also been in the comedy scene and has dabble in music with bands such as Senator Fightmaster and has a certain style about him that may rub some people the wrong way, but I appreciate the fact that he’s a man who is willing to commit to the bit.
Bran: Thanks again for doing this! You’re a powerful man and I love you. How did you get involved with G-U and what was your username?
Dillon: About a week after I saw the “Clint Eastwood” video for the first time on MTV2 way back in 2001. I found my way to Gorillaz.com and, from there, the Official Message Board which we called the OMB for short. Back then, I went by PonchoMcGruffy. It’s an embarrassing screen-name, but I was 12 so cut me some slack. Shortly after the “Rock It” video premiered in 2004 I came back to the OMB, only to find that the old accounts had all been wiped and you had to re-register. That’s when I established myself as wazawaii, which is another cringe-worthy username, plus this time I was 16 and should have known better. I think I posted a general discussion thread about something pop-culture related that went dead very quickly, and some G-U evangelist said, “Hey, the community here sucks, if you wanna talk about this kind of stuff you should come check out Gorillaz-Unofficial.”
Back then there was a real cultural elitism surrounding the plebeian, witless mongrels on the OMB versus the noble scholars over at G-U. Looking back it’s very silly, but I certainly did more than my part to play into and perpetuate that way of looking at things at the time.
Bran: Oh man, I won’t lie, I definitely felt like I was a part of the cool kids club when I joined G-U and definitely was a part of the elitist attitude that G-U was slinging in the OMB’s face. Do you remember any particular interactions that you had on G-U? I remember at one point you also wrote some articles for the website, how did that come about as well?
Dillon: I wrote weekly editorials about the band throughout much of Phase 2. Topics were all over the map. I think I did one where I ranked the ten worst Gorillaz songs, and I know I looked into whether 2-D’s voice actor, Nelson De Freitas, was a real person or a pseudonym of Damon’s, which was a popular fan conspiracy at the time.
As a High School Sophomore, I certainly didn’t have a body of work or any qualifications to boast, but i did have plenty of hustle. I wrote one or two sample editorials on spec and sent them in to 2-J, the founder of G-U. I can’t imagine why he said yes as there’s really no defending the quality of my teenage writing, but I admire my audacity and hustle, and I think it must have helped that at the time the front-page was just a news crawl. Having an opinion section made the site feel more like a proper digital publication, or something. For some reason, what always comes to mind about life on the G-U forums, were the absurd profanity filters. Somebody at the top decided it would be funny to change a bunch of common, innocent words into naughty ones. If you wrote a post with the word “great” it was changed to “shit,” “cake” was changed to “cock,” and etc. There were some esoteric ones, too. I remember the word “strange” got filtered as “snrang” for reasons lost to history.
Shortly after “November Has Come” came out, a subset of the community was very amused by the word “jawn” because MF DOOM says in that song “the villain on a Gorilla jawn.” These two buzzwords were combined to form a short-lived community catchphrase, “Jawns are Snrang.” There were even t-shirts made if you can believe it. I’m sure reading it now it sounds insular and absurd and obnoxious, but at the time it felt like a secret treehouse club. The lingo was a big part of it. We were all so tightly knit.
Bran: I specifically remember the 10 worst Gorillaz songs article because at the time you put Left Hand Suzuki Method as the worst song and I really loved it at the time so I was heartbroken to see as #1.
Bran: You met fellow Hallelujah Monkey Trevor via G-U, do you remember your first interactions with him and how did your friendship develop into what it is today?
Dillon: Trevor and I got acquainted back in 2005. At the time he played a complicated role within the community. He was something south of a bully but certainly north of a gregarious man of the people. But he had great taste in music, and I found his “Your opinions suck and so do you” schtick to be really funny, so we hit it off. When I started drifting away from G-U towards the end of Phase 2 we stayed in touch, but we only really reconvened around major album releases to compare notes. The podcast is what kicked off our love affair in earnest. I can say this: getting close to Trevor through Hallelujah Monkeyz has been such a joy.
The tricky thing about adult friendships is that if you don’t have a shared social backdrop like school you really have to put in the effort to get to know a person and be very intentional about nurturing that kind of emotional intimacy, and I think the fear is that you’ll get six months into doing that and go “Fuck, I don’t even like this guy.”
Let me tell you something: I lucked out big time with Trevor. The dynamic is endlessly entertaining to me. Half the time we couldn’t see the world more differently and the other half it’s like we share a brain. He’s one of my favorite human beings, full stop. If you feel like your social circle is getting a little dusty the best advice I can give you is to start podcast with Trevor Ikrath.
Bran: I don’t have much else to say or ask at the moment but is there anything else you wanna say or plug?
Dillon: Yeah, I’ve got something I want to plug — my ears so I don’t have to listen to any more of your shitty questions, Brannon! Nah, just kidding, I mean if anyone reading this hasn’t listened to Hallelujah Monkeyz I think they totally should. Late last year we did an episode that was literally a G-U meetup cut together like an audio documentary, so that one in particular is probably of community interest. Am I allowed to ask you questions? I wanna know if you had any G-U crushes or enemies back in those Phase 2 forum days.
Bran: I’ll let you simmer on those and maybe if I do a profile on myself I’ll ask you to maybe be the interviewer next time around.
If you want to know more about NoodlesDoodlesBoodles and her cosplay work with Gorillaz and other stuff, check out her instagram @noodlesdoodlesboodles !
Hallelujah Monkeyz is a podcast hosted by Trevor Ikrath & Dillon Flynn. It features Gorillaz news, album reviews, and exclusive collaborator interviews. No wonder that Damon Albarn himself once called it “the number one Gorillaz podcast in the world.” Check it out at hallelujahmonkeyz.com!