Hello, everybody. After spending a few days in my vacation home and going through your tweets and letters, I’ve decided to make the following statement:
I, Walker Randall “Joe Jr.” McKinley, as mayor of the modest coastal town of Harrisville, shoulder full responsibility for the disastrous Twisted Metal Festival that took place over the weekend. There is a lot of blame to go around, and many questions that deserve answers, but I thought this would be a good start. Needless to say, I will be fully funding all related funerals and automobile repairs. We’ll figure out the paperwork later.
Basically, it all just got away from us at some point.
When I dressed like Calypso and declared the Twisted Metal Festival’s official start, I really thought I had captured the town’s excitement and energy in a way I’d failed to in my previous two terms. When my Father Joe McKinley was the mayor, this was never a concern of his, and despite adapting the moniker ‘Joe, Jr.’ early in my political career, I remain dedicated to doing the things my father was unable to achieve in office, like giving back to the community and not sexually harassing a majority of the female staffers I come into contact with during my career.
Nevertheless, the positive vibes from the opening ceremony didn’t last long, as I’m sure most of you know. There’s this fella, Axel, that’s in those Twisted Metal games. He’s a tough sumbitch that’s hooked up to a couple of big old wheels and he just rolls around like that. We thought it’d be fun to grab old Bill Parker and tie him up to some of his tractor tires and have him roll out and tell everyone to have a great Twisted Metal weekend.
As a lot of you now probably know, somewhere along the way they did a bad job rigging Bill up, and no sooner did he come riding out in front of most of the town’s population then both of his arms ripped right from his body and kept spinning around, because they were attached to the tires. The medical team had a heck of a time getting his legs untied from the vehicle, both due to the spraying blood and the ramshackle nature of the zip ties used, and sadly, as you probably know, we lost Bill that day. Many of you are aware, but in case you’re not, there will be a candlelight vigil later tonight behind the A1 Party Store, next to the tree Bill used to get drunk and fool around with.
We’re gonna miss you like hell, Bill. I’m really, really sorry I convinced you to portray Axel from the Twisted Metal games for the opening of our town’s festival. I’ll always remember the last thing he said to me:
“Walker, I’ll die if you put me in this thing.”
Hindsight. It really is 20/20, huh?
There’s no way around it, that was a rough start to the Twisted Metal Weekend. I know it’s easy to look back now and say we should have canceled the event entirely after the kickoff event featured a man being Mortal Kombat fatalitied by a machine just before the middle school jazz band came out and played some selections from the PS1 classic (they did great by the way!), but in the heat of the moment, we just didn’t want to sort out refunds on top of all the stuff with the coroner and morgue, now that we had a death. It felt like the easiest thing to just let everything go on as planned than uproot an entire event over just one little death. Ask Vince McMahon.
I realize now, however, that Bill’s horrific demise was merely a subtle hint that maybe the rest of the weekend wouldn’t go off as seamlessly as I’d planned. I should’ve paid attention to the clues!
As difficult an event as that was to endure (in a Calypso costume, by the way), I still wish it had been the extent of the weekend’s unfortunate encounters.
I realize now that having real ice cream trucks as well as Sweet Tooth cosplayers wandering the festival was a huge mistake. Whatever those kids need, I’ll take care of it. Probably some therapy, and I know I have more than one clown’s medical bills to take care of. What a disaster that all turned into. And the kid’s portion was supposed to be the easy stuff! 100 percent on me, that one.
You know another thing we got wrong? The designated ‘Twisted Metal zones’ were just way too close to the parking lots. A lot of people got their vehicles really damaged, and I feel downright awful about that. It’s not necessarily as bad as Bill Parker getting disarmed while his parents watched, but it is still a relevant concern, as most of the vehicles were left in a state of disrepair and general inability to operate. As I’ve said numerous times, get your cars towed and fixed and we’ll sort it out later. In the meantime, call my office if you need a ride somewhere in town, and we’ll do our best to send somebody.
Now, while it’s true that we did think to cancel the rooftop ramp jumping contest planned for Sunday night, what I’m ready to reveal publicly for the first time today is that it was only after we fatally lost several test drivers. Several. After the first one, our head stunt coordinator said that maybe he just panicked, so we sent a few more drivers. They all just died. Did you hear all those booms in the middle of the night? Those were all stuntmen dying, just trying to test the roof jumps. So that’s another whole mess.
On the bright side, however, we would like to congratulate little Christie Buford on winning the Napalm contest. We hope you enjoy your summer at Raytheon’s new Space & Torture Camp!
In closing, we appreciate everyone’s patience as we sort this mess out, I just wanted to say that one more time. I promise to do everything in my power to help anyone that’s been hurt by Twisted Metal Weekend, and I assure you all that I have learned some valuable lessons.
Also, keep an eye out for a new series of safety regulations we’re going to be implementing to make sure that our ‘Rocket League Nights’ event in the fall goes off without a hitch. We’ll see you there!
