Avachives Dispatch, Week of September 15, 2025
Title: “Geisha House Gospel: Dylan’s Las Vegas Pilgrimage”
Byline: Marjorie Sninit, Senior Ritual Critic, Sninit Report
Review:
Bob Dylan’s Live at Budokan is not a concert album. It’s a ceremonial misfire, a rhinestone-studded séance where the ghosts of protest songs are summoned, only to be handed maracas and told to shimmy. The arrangements are so slick they squeak—horns blare like slot machines, backup singers coo like cruise ship sirens, and Dylan himself sounds like he’s narrating a karaoke night in purgatory.
But this week’s Avachives drop reframes the spectacle. Ralph Rumpelton’s reinterpretation—rendered in MS Paint with a nose so prominent it could host its own residency—canonizes the chaos. The image, titled “BOB DYLAN AT BUDOKAN”, is less homage than exorcism. Dylan’s red-tinted hair glows like a warning flare. His polka-dotted shirt evokes a failed magician. And the brown strap? A relic from a mythic guitar that refuses to tune.
Sninit writes:
“This is not Dylan the prophet. This is Dylan the lounge lizard, crooning to a crowd that forgot the revolution and remembered the buffet. And yet, in Ralph’s rendering, he becomes something else entirely—a trickster caught mid-transformation, halfway between oracle and ornament.”
The critic personas are already murmuring. Dr. Vensmire calls it “a sacred desecration.” Dale of the Brook wept openly, then demanded a stamp. Eunice Gribble declared it “a necessary vulgarity.” Eliot Varn simply nodded and whispered, “He’s finally wearing the myth.”
Final Ritual Rating:
🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️ (4 out of 5 ceremonial candles)
One candle withheld for the absence of tambourine lore.
Follow Rumpelton across the multiverse:
Ralph Rumpelton “Painting What the Earth Can’t Comprehend” - Ralph Rumpelton User Profile DeviantArt - Ralph Rumpelton Substack - Instagram
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