Count651 Posted February 24, 2019 So if any of you guys read Masters of Doom, you probably remember the bit where Id's display booth was an 8 foot tall vagina with rows of dildos for teeth and a decapitated OJ Simspon head hanging from the top. Does anyone know if there's any photo or video evidence of this thing's existence? I've scoured the web long and hard and nothing comes up. I find it hard to believe that such a spectacle could exist and not be immortalized in video or photo form. The vagina was lined with dozens of dildos to look like teeth. A bust of O. J. Simpson’s decapitated head hung from the top. As the visitors walked through the vaginal mouth, two members of Gwar cloaked in fur and raw steak came leaping out of the shadows and pretended to attack them with rubber penises. The Microsoft executives were frozen. Then, to everyone’s relief, they burst out laughing. 4 Share this post Link to post
Revenant100 Posted February 24, 2019 (edited) This clip from Computer Chronicles shows a little footage of Microsoft's Judgment Day event: However, the famed dildo-lined vagina doesn't make an appearance. To give a bit of extra context, the display was actually constructed for id's room by the band GWAR, so perhaps delving into GWAR's history might lead to some photographic evidence of the lost vagina monster, assuming they used it more than once. A cursory Google search suggests that the band regularly fed audience members to a vagina monster (possibly not the vagina monster in question) over the years, but I wasn't able to quickly find any pictures or videos. As a disappointing discovery, it appears that Alex St. John, the creator of DirectX at Microsoft who coordinated the whole Judgment Day event, posted image galleries featuring the event on his personal blog years ago, but the blog is now down, and virtually none of the images were archived on the Wayback Machine. Nonetheless, here are John's two posts where he covers the event in detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20130217103402/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/02/15/judgment-day/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130227012620/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/02/16/judgment-day-continued/ These are the only two images that were archived from his Judgment Day galleries: 5 Share this post Link to post
Count651 Posted February 25, 2019 (edited) Awesome, thanks for sharing those two articles. I was going on a bit of a google safari last night trying to find info on the Judgement Day event as well. Definitely gonna give those a read. - Just read both articles and wow what a spectactle. Its truly a shame that there seems to be no recordings of the haunted house, I would pay to see something like that. Edited February 25, 2019 by Count651 0 Share this post Link to post
Revenant100 Posted February 25, 2019 (edited) Some additional searches have yet to yield any photos of the fabled giant dildo-lined vagina monster. I did come across a book called Game of X: The Long Road to Xbox which includes a section dedicated to Judgment Day that seems to feature a few photos of the event, but I can't tell if id's GWAR room is shown here. Nonetheless, the book does include an amusing passage describing how id first met GWAR and why they chose the band to create their sponsored room at Microsoft's event: Quote "The tunnel led to the GWAR room, sponsored by id... and the dildo monster." GWAR was a notorious group, known for over-the-top performances of extremely questionable taste. (If you've never heard of GWAR, look them up. Words can't adequately describe their act.) The guys from id first encountered the group, who were fans of DOOM, when they went to one of their shows together. As former id producer Mike Wilson remembers it, "We all went out to a GWAR show together once... the only time I remember John Carmack going out for anything remotely social in those days... to a bar in Deep Ellum <the area with the highest crime rate in Dallas County and perhaps some of the most interesting acts>. I remember my wife Melissa and Adrian Carmack's wife Ami being fed to a giant maggot onstage and emerging from it a few minutes later in just their jeans and bras. Fun times. I think John Carmack kept his GWAR-spew colored DOOM T-shirt unwashed for a good while." The idea of bringing GWAR to the Microsoft party came in part because nobody at id had time to design or develop an installation, and if they wanted to make an impression—especially a not-Microsoft impression—what better than the spectacularly irreverent GWAR? Edited February 25, 2019 by Revenant100 7 Share this post Link to post
Komenja Posted February 27, 2019 (edited) So I looked through my copy of "Let There Be Gwar," a history book of the band and it's Slave Pit scene; unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any mention of the Judgement Day event. But there is a prop they had created beforehand that I think they may have re-purposed for it: the Flesh Column. It was a massive suit that required three people to operate and was made for use in their movie Skulhedface in 1994. The only picture I can find on google of the suit is a work-in-progress one. It does have a big vagina mouth lined with teeth, and the book mentions Gwar also used an O.J. Simpson costume they would butcher for live performances around this time. It's possible they stuck the head of that O.J. costume onto it, replacing the Skulhedface dummy. Edited February 27, 2019 by Komenja 2 Share this post Link to post