As I arrived at the House of Blues will call window, I noticed the hoardes of kids slinking by in clown makeup and prison blues. The guy behind the counter issued our tickets and then flashed a sudden furrowed glare at me.

"Have you ever seen these guys?" he asked, somewhat cautiously.

"Haven't even heard their music, just wondering what the deal is."

"Okay--just...watch your camera," he said. That's when I noticed the dozens of signs that had been tacked up around the box office.

"WARNING: PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE ENTERING. While viewing tonite's concert, you may get sprayed wet or even soaked with soda pop and water by 'The Great Milenko'... House of Blues Management assumes no responsibility for any damages you may incur to your personal property. ENJOY THIS INSANE SHOW!"

You know you're in Orlando when even the concerts come with splash-zone warnings. Christ. We headed inside with renewed curiosity and just a hint of trepidation. Opening act Watershed had just finished their set. Sorry to have missed them, but we were ah--busy getting toasted elsewhere. You live--you learn, you move on. South Bronx rappers Myzery showed up at 10:30 p.m. with some impassioned, if not raw and repetitive throw-downs. With ICP due onstage at 11:15, I was slightly aware of the many greasepainted faces that began to dot the dance floor. Clowns to the left of me. Clowns to the right of me. That's when I noticed the copious amounts of plastic that covered the balcony railings on the second-level. The folk art nearest the stage and the sound booth had been likewise protected. Nothing totally clicked. And why should it have? I was baked. Watching a mosh pit erupt during the break, I talked with T-Bone--one of the HOB security guys who guards the stagefront at the shows.

"You takin' pictures tonight?" he asked.

"Yeah--first three songs--I know." I replied, citing the venue's rules of photojournalistic conduct.

"I'd take them from back there," he said, pointing at the bar a safe distance away. Damn--what sort of motley shit had I walked into this fine fruity evening? 11:15 struck and the lights winked out. Time to know.

An ominous, rolling blast of low frequency synth ebbed out of the speakers as a sinister voice greeted the crowd. The Dark Carnival had begun, it stated--and we were apparently about to witness the most diabolical, twisted and out-of-control exhibition of insanity ever devised by a pair of white closet-KISS fans. The voice then introduced Insane Clown Posse as "the only band in the world that ripped off Donald Duck's beak and shoved it up Mickey Mouse's ass!"

For a split second in there, it turned into a fucking Who concert. The patchwork curtains opened up. I started snapping pictures.

The huge stage was home to a garish carnival set that included warped and wavy fun-house mirrors adorned with skulls, two big-top platforms, a container made out of rib-bones and the huge leering head of the Great Milenko himself. Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J each stood chained to a rack with black hoods over their heads. The music pulsed and intensified as two men in white coats worked to free the duo--with a resounding and dramatic blast of sound, the hoods came off--revealing the painted faces against a blinding background of strobe lights. Guitars crashed as the duo greeted the frenzied crowd with the title cut of their current album. Angling for shots amidst the bodies, I caught a look at one of the security guys waving me off. I pointed at my photo badge and shouted, "I've been cleared for this!" He leaned in close and whispered something about my camera.

Now, not all of the security personnel at HOB seem to understand the concept of a photo badge, and there have been shows where I've had to exchange words with one of these guys while some performer is practically posing right in front of me. I was leaning over, attempting to explain to him that everything was kosher, when I felt a tug on my shirt. A security supervisor was wagging his finger at me to "come here". Wondering what the hell was up, I followed him up the stairs towards the bar and was about to pitch him the scoop when he turned around and pointed his finger at the stage.

I turned. My jaw hit the floor and smashed into a million pieces.

Violent J had a two-liter plastic bottle of Faygo orange soda in each hand. Shaking them up with a manic flurry of dread locks, he aimed both of them at the crowd and let fly with a thick spray of syrupy liquid. As the stream petered out, he began to shake each bottle like you would shake catsup over a burger, letting big--gushing torrents of beverage fall upon the heads of the people in the pit. When each bottle was spent, he casually flipped them into the crowd and barked a few words into the mic before heading back to the bone box to grab two more.

"Holy shit!" I gasped. The security guy never took his eyes off the stage. "Didn't want your equipment to get messed up--that's soda water they're throwing."

See, nice clowns only pretend to douse you with water--it usually turns out to be confetti or something innocuous like that. But since these are evil clowns, they get all aggro about it. And not even water, but cheap, sticky soda that costs sixty cents a bottle. Those in the pit apparently knew this was coming and received each baptism with frothing glee. J got creative with his modes of delivery, either body slamming the bottles on-stage--creating a sort of fire-hose velocity blast, or setting one upright on a monitor and stabbing it with a knife so that it slowly irrigated the crowd. All I could think of were the poor starving children in Ethiopia who would give their left nipple for a glass of Faygo. Fairly amused--it was time to get into the sounds.

Much of ICP's music owes a debt to death-metal as well as gangsta rap. With a running theme of horror, whores and horticulture (weed, that is), the boys alternately invoked shades of Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys along with sporadic moments where every song sounded like something by Green Jello. "Chickin' Huntin'" is a sort of goofy number that sort of went nowhere, but was given a kick when two bandits walked on-stage and fired pistols at the rappers. They came back to life with "Dead Body Man" off the album "Riddlebox". Further delving into the macabre with "Southwestern Voodoo", the pair were joined on-stage by a trio of flag-waving ghouls, whose real purpose--it turns out--was to re-stock the Faygo arsenal and collect the empties that the rowdy crowd had lobbed back on-stage at the act. The amusing "What's A Juggalo?" explained Shaggy and J's basic mission statement in a disarmingly adolescent fashion while songs like "How Many Times?" and "Piggy Pie" actually seemed to make an attempt at social commentary: "The first little piggy, his house is made out of wood/he lives in a chicken piggy turkey neighborhood/he likes fo fuck his sister and drink his moonshine/a typical redneck filthy fucking swine."

Well. Almost.

Notoreity is an old-fashioned doubled-edged razor. It aids in the cutting of your competition to shreds, but with every snicker-snack, the blade bites backwards--exposing the real meat beneath the paint. Violent J and Shaggy wield their weapons of propaganda and sensationalism well. The greasepainted twosome lord over an imaginative universe in which they play the part of chosen prophets. Ordained by the Carnival Spirit to be ministers of the street, each album and tour is themed to one of six joker's cards, "Milenko" being the fourth. After the revelations, a period "followed by the crumbling of time itself" will take place. "A dark carnival sweeping across the land as a shadow, plagued with destruction." Cool.

Strip away the make-up and the fancy set--you get two angry white guys who aren't nearly as creative as a Coolio or Chuck D. Hell--New Kids On The Block have busted fresher rhymes than dis.

But then, there's the whole soda thing. Half-way through the show, after a couple of impressive stage-dives by Shaggy, the two brought out the heavy artillery; water balloons and super soakers that shot streams of pop fifty feet into the second story seating area. If what was on-stage bored you--there was always the gallery to watch. There were bodies flipping head over heels at any given time on a sea of supportive hands. I would've moshed if it wasn't so damn slippery down there.

On the whole, it wasn't a wasted evening. No, the boys can't sing--and most of the time, they lip synched, which is kind of sad. But, in this rare case, the theme won out. Grand guignol and rap are great bedfellows and it beats hearing one more boast of money, mansions, gin and juice. It also introduced a bold new concept in stage performing. When all else fails or is commonplace--throw beverages.

"Orlando will no longer be known as home of Walt Disney World, but the home of Insane Clown Posse--we're making you guys an official 'Clown Town'!" said Violent J, eliciting cries of "Fuck Disney!" from the crowd. All in all, the severance should work well for both parties and perhaps Da Mouse and Da Posse will settle their differences one day.

Maybe Disney could get them a wholesale break on sodas.