Real Meat of Multimoog
12.27.06By Collin DavidEvery year, it seems like I have an annual ‘get my life the hell together’ rush before yet another year comes and goes and chokes me half to death with the cold, skeletal hands of failure. This usually involves a massive cleaning of my living spaces, apologizing to slighted persons (both deserving and undeserving), and putting incriminating digital files onto DVDs, which are far easier to hide under the bed.
In this frantic cleaning, I usually unearth scores of things that I once passionately collected and have somehow forgotten about, usually behind more recent piles of passionately collected items. This year, I found two precious samples of real Multimoog meat tacked to my wall. Thankfully, somehow blessed with that beef jerky-like gift of immortality, it had not gone bad. Perhaps because this meat was, in fact, foam rubber.
What, I’m sure you’re asking, is a Multimoog?
Well, it’s about 550 meters tall, inherently evil, and before its demise, it wrestled space bugs and kung fu soup cans. Such is the world of Kaiju Big Battel, the traveling pseudo-Japanese monster movie wrestling extravaganza, created by Boston’s own Studio Kaiju. Kaiju Big Battel is essentially the reason that foam rubber was invented, since nothing greater could possibly be achieved with the substance. It has reached its pinnacle in Battel. Intricately crafted monsters battle in arenas throughout the world, executing dazzling moves and exhibiting terrifying superpowers, and when the dust clears from the toppled metropolitan areas, one monster emerges victorious. Or sometimes, it has babies. With Kaiju, the mating ritual is kind of ambiguous.
Alas, in such violent conflagrations and flagrancies, not all monsters survive! Should a monster fall in battle, the Kaiju Regulatory Commission sees to it that the monster’s adoring fans are not left without a memento of that monster’s stellar career. The deceased creature is systematically dissected into hundreds of small pieces and made available for purchase, 
along with certificates of authenticity, a small biography, and an indication of which monster piece you’ve just added to your morose collection. A morbid artifact, yes, but to own a genuine piece of your hero’s flesh is a rare opportunity. You didn’t see them doing this with Andre the Giant, but you just might find me casketside with a carving knife when Lou Albano leaves this mortal plane. I’ll be testing a theory. A theory that totally has nothing to do with an army of tiny Lou Albano / porcupine hybrids, so stop reading my top secret notebooks.
Me, I’m the proud owner of both an arm and torso slice of Multimoog. Also available are pieces of Midori no Kaiju and the more recently slain and sold-out Sky Deviler, all located in the Kaiju Mall, alongside a plethora of t-shirts, stickers and all manner of propaganda, including real Battels caught on video. A battle-scarred section of monster costume meat is a great addition to a growing collection of screen-used props.
Is it a part of a pop cultural phenomenon? Is it a reason to build an enormous monster foot-proof bomb shelter? Is it performance art gone awry? Is it a religion, a way of life, a cult?
All of the above.
