So someone wonderfully pointed out that my site is turning into a movie review site. Sorry. I’ve just been seeing lots of movies and they’re on the brain.
So here comes the daily observances of foibles.
This morning I was in line to order a coffee. I do this about once a week, if that. This is what happened:
Me: “Hi can I get a small latte.”
Barista Lady: “What kind of milk?”
Me: “whole.”
BL: [not hearing me] “we have soy, skim, 1%, 2%-”
Me: “whole is fine.”
BL: “Regular?”
Me: “yeah.”
BL: “you sure?”
Me: “yes.”
BL: [realizing she came off as judgemental] “Sorry. it’s just no one’s ordered regular for weeks. I gotta open a new one.”
… ah life in California.
LATER, IN THE ELEVATOR:
Two girls walk in. They know and talk to each other. One is holding plastic bowl with a covered top. They put oatmeal in these at the breakfast place downstairs. I just stand to the side.
Girl 1: “Oooh. you got breakfast.”
Girl 2: “yeah”
G1: “What kind of oatmeal?”
G2: “Not oatmeal.”
G1: “Huh?”
G2: “Oh. No. I just crammed this sucker with bacon.”
How delcious! It’s not like I bought them or anything. Some one else did, I just ate them. St. Patty’s krispy kreme if you must know! Haha. I just watched someone who said, “GOD I CAN’T EAT A WHOLE DONUT, WHY DID PEOPLE BRING THIS IN?” go up eat five consecutive munchkins over the course of about 15 minutes. Now if you excuse me, I have to go drink some pints of guinness. … I’m kidding, it’s 10 am. OR AM I?
This monstrosity has been floating around the blogosphere lately and perhaps for good reason. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. Most of the commentary has been along the lines of “sign of the apocolypse” and “fall of western civilization… but over the last 24 hours I’ve become a little bit obsessed.
See this isn’t just your usually stupidity. This is special.
Strangely, the questions begin with the haircuts. How does someone get that haircut who isn’t a Japanese teen five years ago? They aren’t even fallout-boy-at-least-definable-by-physics-bad. What possesses someone to be that incredibly outrageous with their hair? It’s amazing. Who likes that?
Then there is, you know, the actual music. I mean, what? Apparently they have combined screamo and crunk. And appear to have done so by yelling intermittently at periods of their crunk song. For no apparent reason. Also the stunning acne. I imagine this is preventative to stardom, but what the hell do I know. I just know it illicits a gutteral response of “yick”. Then there’s the name “brokencyde” a weird mashup of a bunch of other band names that somehow make more active or relative sense than this one. It’s a kinda desperate name at that. I imagine some bad late 70’s high school band naming themselves “Led Sabbath” and that seems akin to this. But this is all the surface-y stuff. It’s like not liking frida because she has a unibrow. Actually it’s not like that all. You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but in this case it would have been really, really helpful.
Obviously, the music sucks. Not even enjoyable on some ironic level. It’s harsh and loopy and not in a pleasing way. The lyrics spare no subtext like mongol hordes spared no village. It’s audacious in some ways really. “Let’s fuck on the dance floor! Right now!” is the effective gist. Sure, it’s juvenile to a fault, but the members of this seem so inandated with their own awesomeness and not in a “our subculture actually values this” kind of way that allows me to put a lot of rap video’s excesses off the hook. There’s nothing “awesome” really happening. The range rover, the benz, the pathetic red plastic cups, the tiny party of 7 girls obviously conned into this somehow. It’s all longing to be something it terribly isn’t.
But the truly amazing part comes at around 1:50 where there is a sudden, dramatic 180 switch and the boys proceed to yell “LIAR!” at the girls and pantomime choking a Jamie-Lynn Spears lookalike. The juvenile behavior at this point reaches absurdity. Little are they aware, but the action profiles the insane, deeply rooted problem of young boys trying to “get chicks”. They espouse their sexual prowess (in reality, obviously lacking) and regard women as nothing more than vacant fuck puppets (that’s the nicest way I could put it), but their fragility is SOOOOOOOO transparent that they scream LIAR! WHORE! at a moments notice. You hurt their feelings you see!
It’s all so wonderfully poetic. They completely emasculate their own amazing bullshit.
And look. I’m not someone who gets up on a soap box and bitches about every little indignation (well. actually that’s exactly do in this blog. but not in real life… or… um LOOK OVER THERE! [runs away]). Most of the time you watch a bad late 90s rap video and kinda laugh it off. There’s kind of an aloof charm, or slickness to that stuff and a lot of other music videos in general that make it all at least OK.
“Freaxxx” is fallout and effect of all that I guess; a couple of lame ass tards’s interpretation of the baser ends of pop-culture, complete with the more transparent evidence of about 14 different aspects of arrested maturation and development. They are WELL within date-rapist territory. In short, these fuckers have problems… and I’m guessing they’re not alone.
My friend Ken had some nice input too after I sent it to him: “Way to loop and lip-synch to your own emo scream while filming against a backdrop of a McMansion development. I like how the lead “vocalist” is the only one who appears to be having a good time. The actively-disinterested blonde dancer is perhaps my favorite element of the video. The strained novelty of the dancing pig-suit gentleman is another excellent touch. It is really and truly a tragedy that the Midwest has been dragged kicking and screaming into popular culture by the internet.”
So I’m fasting today in comraderie with Yom Kippur.
Sure I’m not techincally Jewish, but like I said, it’s in the spirit of comraderie.
I’ve actually done the Yom Kippur fast in some fashion of many years now. Many of my collegiate buddies where Jewish. Many of my old family friends were as well. So it’s something of a tradition.
So what’s the deal? Why do it? What possible reason could one have for not eating for denying their body nutrition? Especially for religious reasons?
Well, it’s kind of the old adage of overcoming obstacles. Of showing willpower and fortitude. Of course it’s all kind of silly but in some ways that’s the point. Hunger is such a natural feeling and to focus through it is something of an act of self-discipline. It shouldn’t be used as a feat “look what I can do” thing. Ideally, it should be a little deeper than that.
Back in college my friends and I did one of those dumb juice fast cleanse things. Technically it’s supposed to help cleanse your colon or something like that, I don’t think any of us really believed in it with total seriousness. I think it was more curiousness than anything else. So we drank natural juice for 3 days and no food. We all made it except for one of us who nearly had a breakdown after 24 hours without a cigarette or coffee. ..It was probably good he quit the fast. But the idea is we all did it in camaraderie and maintained self-discipline.
… You know… Writing this I see this the same kind of BS that leads to group mentalities, frattyness, and communism… huh… I like to think that this is a case of those disciplines going for good and not, you know, evil.
Bud Light’s new ad campaign saying that what they have is “drinkability” is absolutely hilarious.
Why? Because they’re basically touting how much their beer stinks.
You know why Bud Light goes down easy?
Because it’s fucking water… with a splash of budweiser.
See, when I want to drink a beer, I like when it tastes like beer. Bold. Hoppy. Yet smooth and delicious. I like dark beers, amber beers, and golden beers. I like wheat beers. Domestic or imported beers. I like all beers with substantive flavor. Even miller lite has an okay tang to it. Heck, even though PBR tastes kind of like a metal tin, it still tastes like beer.
Bud Light tastes like water… the most “drinkable” substance on earth. I like water. I like it a lot. But that’s the last thing I’m looking for in my beer.
So how bout if you want something “drinkable” you just drink that and leave the beer drinking to people with testicles.
All because I knew the answer to a trivia question: what planet is closest to the sun?
The answer is Mercury!
I asked the guy if he had given away a lot of cups of coffee this morning and he shook his head sadly. “everyone keeps saying earth, I even had to put up an A, B, C”
I looked to my right, there was even “A. Venus. B. Earth. C. Mercury”
The Vodka brewed in Sommerville Massachusetts. Why not “from the cool, clean waters of lake eerie!” or “from the rolling hills of Chernobyl!”? It is the worst tasting vodka in the history of history. Poor Siberian farmers made better vodka in their toilets. Seriously, it tastes like an awkward combination of sludgy and yet chalky. Basically, it tastes like elmers glue.
But there’s a bigger story here. Cossack Vodka is tied in with the story of the worst night of my life.
It was back in College when I lived in a two floor house with my 6 of my best friends from school. The night was none other than the disparaging game 3 of the ALCS in 2004 and the Red Sox had just got their asses handed to them on a silver platter by the Yankees. My roommates were also having a party at the time. It wasn’t a huge party, but there were enough people to constitute a large get-together. And most of them I didn’t know for some reason. I was extraordinarily depressed by the game and a number of other recent and decided to take out my sorrows with the time-tested approach of copious amounts of alcohol. I’m normally quite the merry drunk, but this night was bad news bears.
We didn’t have much of a choice. The liquor stores were closed and all that was left was a bottle of “Cossack Vodka” that had been sitting around for some reason. My good friend Little Mike and I decided to start taking shots in effort of comraderie. We started of with 3 quick shots to get that “quick drunk” buzz. What struck me immediately was the horrible taste in my mouth. It was Epic-Fail bad. The horror-striken taste was totally analogous to the terrible night. So we started drinking more in an effort to stop tasting it. It started an epic streak really where we consumed 11 shots in 30 minutes. I proceeded to take 4 more in the approaching 15 minutes to little mike’s two. That means in 45 minutes I had 15 shots of horrible vodka to Little Mike’s 13.
That’s a lot of awful booze.
Apparently somewhere during that home stretch we were going back and forth at our neighbors house. I don’t really remember much anymore, though I did remember this stuff the next day.
Anycrap, flash-forward a half an hour and I feel awful and I make my way to a toilet, to perform my santicmonious duty of throwing up. I immediately start thinking “this is good, just get it out, you’ll be fine”.
Thirty seconds into the proceedings Little Mike is being pushed into the same bathroom after throwing up on our friend. Needless to say, she wasn’t amused, but she was being a good sport. So there I am throwing up in the toilet as Little Mike pukes (rather messily) in the sink. It sounded like two horses dying in heat.
This went on for hours. It was not one and done. It was puke-fest 04. Getting up constantly in the night to hurl. All the next day, to hurl. I couldn’t get it off of the lining in my stomach. It was horrible. And all the while, I tasted that awful chalky texture of Cossack vodka.
Maybe the worst part of all of this was that Little Mike somehow still uses this as night where he “beat me” in a drinking contest. The first problem with this is that the drinking contests with myself and Little Mike didn’t develop til later on in the semester, all of which I won handily. The Second problem is I drank two more shots of vodka. The third is if I knew it was a contest I could have easily handled the next thirty seconds and held it in. Fourth, I never would’ve puked on a girl. Ssssssssssorry Little Mike.
The only good thing about it is I think of it like my “baptism by fire” and the Red Sox went on to do the impossible, win 8 straight, win the world series, and lift the curse.
But damn. When I think back to that night. I can still taste it.
A bunch of video game designers were sitting around in their awesomeness and went:
“Hey let’s invent the greatest party game ever!”
“Okay, how about a game where you play simplified musical instruments collectively as a rock band”
“And we can use popular/totally awesome songs!”
“Cool, and we’ll make different difficulties so you can totally show off or if you’ve never played you’d be okay after two tries!”
“Or even play when you’re drunk!”
“Especially if you’re drunk!”
“And we could actually make the drums give you some of the same skills needed to drum”
“Not the guitar though”
“No, not the guitar”
“And you wouldn’t even really have to know the words! Just the basic tune!”
“And we’ll have the vocals real low so people’s awful, awful voices don’t ruin it!”
“And we could actually teach people the value of pitch since it’s the only thing the mic could measure!”
“BAD ASS! LET’S DO IT”
“Dude, be sure Gimme Shelter is one of the songs!”
***
Sure there were 2 versions of guitar hero as the progenitor to this so it was really just the next logical step in the evolution, but I still like this version of the events.
I have a temper about the weirdest shit. It rarely, rarely, rarely comes out and it’s almost never directed at humans. Why not humans? Cause I can usually understand the fallacy of human error and chalk it up to individual interest (basically objectivism). No, what usually gets me angry is incredibly stupid stuff like traffic patterns, or in the case of today: THE SAME FUCKING DEFECTIVE COFFEE LID.
This is BS man. I got some coffee (which again, I rarely do) and didn’t even fill it up all the way. I put the lid on. Walked outside. INSTANTLY SPILLING OUT BOTH SIDES OF THE CUP. Luckily, I was smart enough to bring napkins this time to help take care of the mess. I had to pour out a bunch of the coffee out into the trash to even get it mobile. Lo and behold, I get into the elevator and the lid starts spitting out coffee when I’m pretty much perfectly still. My hand continues to burn and I finally get upstairs to my office. I pour more out (i have like 1/2 a cup by now) and finally sit down to drink this thing because I’m tired and desperately need caffeine.
I check to be sure the lid is on extra tight again. I raise it up… instantly spilling out from underneath the lid and onto my jeans.
Needless to say I hurled that fucking cup across my cube. Yes, it was at my trash can and it went in, but coffee is now everywhere. I made a half hearted attempt to clean it up but now it just smells like coffee.
Now this is usually the point where you suspect someone has an anger problem. But like I said, I only do about the weirdest shit. And I don’t even care, cause that coffee lid can totally kiss my ass. How can we not make coffee lids that work?!??!!
So why don’t you analyze me interwebs! ANALYZE THIS!
Posted by mgss 
Posted by mgss 
Posted by mgss 
