Video Viscera: A Love Most Torrid.

Video Viscera is Emerald Miasma's weekly music video spotlight. Anything goes. Let's get freak nasty all up in them corners, Boo.

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Red 7 - 'Heartbeat'.

 

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There's not much of a video to this one (as in, there is no video to this one), but goddamn is this song lodged in my brain right now. This is the closing theme to the Michael Mann film 'Manhunter' aka the original 'Red Dragon'. It's the kind of song you'd expect a taut 80's thriller to end on: steamy like a Miami fuck session. Also, Brian Cox plays Hannibal Lec(k)tor in this movie, so that's fun too.
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Twin Shadow - 'Slow'.
 

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Few videos make me laugh uncomfortably more than this one. Shot like an early 90's amateur gay edition of 'Dirty Debutantes', the video features George Lewis Jr. aka Twin Shadow talking to a lurid camera dude about cars, shirtless drumming, and what looks like above the chest shots of him jacking off. It reeks of backroom exploitation, and I LOVE IT.
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Reggie Watts - 'Deconstruction'.


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Reggie Watts is a fascinating guy. The resident one-man house band of the 'Comedy Bang Bang' TV show is wildly prolific and intensely intriguing to watch. I've had the pleasure of seeing Watts live, and I can't recommend a concert more. His songs are improvised on the spot, and they're better than songs that have taken years to write. This is probably my favorite of Watts' voice-box masterpieces, 'Deconstruction' shows off what Reggie does best. His soulful, beautiful voice echoing earnest stream-of-consciousness silliness over some of the dopest beatboxing this side of Rahzel. The picture-in-picture video just helps further illustrate how talented he is, breaking down how the song is built piece by piece. One of my favorites.
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Pinkunoizu - 'Moped'.


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I usually despise cutesy, precious, twee, arts-and-crafts bullshit. Nothing makes my genitals wrench up into my lower intestines faster than cotton ball clouds on a piece of periwinkle construction paper. But I love this video, probably because it represents what happens when your sensitive introvert brother Caleb leaves his dioramas out and his alcoholic, Camaro cruising brother Dave comes in and destroys it all. THEY KICK A WATERMELON LIKE A FOOTBALL! WHAT MORE DO YOU FUCKING WANT?
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Vitalic - 'Poney Part 1'.


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DOGS! IN SLOW MOTION! This is a classic I thought I'd throw in on the off-chance someone hadn't seen it. I was listening to this song as I got a speeding ticket coming home from college. Then I got some A&W cheese bites cursed small Western Ohio towns silently in my car.
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Johnny Boy - 'You are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve'.


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Despite being an indie one-song wonder, Johnny Boy left a sweeping, dance-y knife to the ribs of consumerism in their wake. I don't know much about the group. I know they're painfully British, they're somehow associated with the LGBT community, and that this song is amazing. I wish they'd release more music, but if this is all I get then so be it.
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Kallioinia - 'Castle Pop'.


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Back story: I'm hanging out with my friends Dave and Karen a couple years back, and we're listening to music and videos online. Dave suggested this video by strangely hard to find group Kallioinia. I liked the song, and thought the video was fine, but Dave said, 'Just wait. It's about to get weird'. And weird it got. It got all sorts of green screen weird. Thank you again, Scandinavia.
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The Impossebulls - 'Bad Business'.


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My friend T.I.R.A.D.E. was/may still be in this collective of rappers, and it's another example of how lucky I am to have friends in music that are legitimately great at it, because 90% of the time your friend's band is terrible. The Impossebulls are a group of rappers from across the country that were united by Chuck D back in 2000. Thoroughly Old-School, they're just another example of why you need to get off that New-School ish, Son. Also, I highly recommend checking out the Command Pictures YouTube page. It's the video production company of C-Doc, the dude that opens up this track. Watch 'Life's Glory' one time and you will never be the same, yo.

The Week in Yeah: Rasmus Hooted as Miami Burned.

The Week in Yeah is Emerald Miasma's weekly round-up of the good, the bad, and the incomprehensible of pop culture, the world at large, and life in general, as seen by me.
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So, Week 1 of the Post-Richardson era in Cleveland was a ramshackle, sputtering success. Brian Hoyer threw three touchdowns and Jordan Cameron caught three. Chud coached like he didn't give a fuck, electing for TWO fake kicks in one quarter, one of which led to a Cameron TD. Most of all, the game was FUN TO WATCH. That hasn't happened in years. I got wasted on plum wine, at a fuckload of food, and celebrated the occasion with my friends. It was quite grand. Granted, it was the Vikings, but still they looked like a hastily assembled offensive dice rollers and a scary good defense that almost killed Christian Ponder. This was an important game in expansion Browns history. It's the first time something awful happened fanwise, and the team responded with a HUGE win. I'm looking forward to the most fun 5-11 Browns season ever.
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I've been playing a lot of Hotline Miami over the past week, and I'm pretty solidly addicted. The game is an ultra-violent, top-down action game about a nameless, mysterious man charged with several assassination missions by various masked men. You kill Russian mobsters with guns, knives, golf clubs, etc. and are awarded a score for how well you do. It's very straightforward, but that simplicity makes the game so addictive. I'm admittedly not very good, and I'm being punished for it because the game won't let me access several main story missions due to my ineptitude. The game even tells me I won't get the full story because I suck and it's my fault. Dope. Also, THE SOUNDTRACK. Fuck, the soundtrack is insanely good. Thick, heavy, foreboding dance tracks that even have coke sniffs laced into the beats. A lot of it was done by a band called M.O.O.N. that I'm not too familiar with, but the opening track is 'Horse Steppin'' by the amazing Sun Araw. I've been a fan of theirs for years now, and I was quite shocked to hear them on the soundtrack. Sun Araw is a surf-y drone band that doesn't seem to fit the mold of HLM, but it works well in context. Definitely worth checking out.
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Some genres of film are always watchable to me, no matter how terrible the actual film itself is. There are so many intensely boring giallo films out there, but I can watch any of them. If a sexy Italian art dealer stabs another sexy Italian art dealer due to some kind of repressed sexual/parental issue, you've got me hooked. Spaghetti Westerns are like this too, as well as any kind of Miami Underworld-based crime drama. Of all of these genres though, Kung Fu is probably at the top of the list. But the weird thing is that I haven't watched nearly as much Kung Fu movies as I probably should have by now. I mean, I've hit all the big ones: Bruce Lee, 36 Chambers, Drunken Master, etc., but I've missed a lot of the really cool stuff. I decided to rectify the issue by watching one of the illest of ill Kung Fu classics: Eight Diagram Pole Fighter. A later era Shaw Brothers film, 8DPF is the story of an honorable family that is massacred by a jealous opposing family, with the help of the Khitan army. The family patriarch, Yeung Yip, is killed along with five of his seven sons during an ambush by the opposing family. One brother escaped to the family's residence, but is severely traumatized by the event. The other brother, played by Gordon Liu, escapes and finds residence in a nearby monastery. The local monks are reticent to let him enter into monastic training, stating he is too violent, but he persists in extreme fashion. The monks remain steadfast though, claiming that he has not left his old life behind, and therefore cannot train and live with them. Liu finally agrees to abandon his old life, but as he does the events at home finally come back to haunt him, forcing him to make a choice between his old life and his dedication to being a monk. It's one of the best Kung Fu movies I have ever seen. The action is intense, with an incredibly adept cast of Kung Fu artists in top form. I cannot say enough good things about this film, so I'll let it speak for itself.
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor just won the Polaris Music Prize. Apparently it's an award for the best Canadian album of the year that nets the winner $30,000. 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!' is GY!BE's worst record, and it beat out Metz, Purity Ring, and Colin Stetson, all of which had much better albums than GY!BE. But I'm just excited to see what they do with the money. I'm sure it will be something viciously anti-capitalist like setting up microfunds for Angolan irrigation projects or simply burn it on stage at Bumbershoot, but I'd love if they used the cash to buy something like a Nissan Ultima just to fuck with people.
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PODCAST NEWS! I've gone back and listened to a bunch of 'You Look Nice Today' episodes this week. If you've never heard of YLNT, it's three highly literate tech dudes (Merlin Mann, Scott Simpson, and Adam Lisagor) trying to get rich quick and discussing the finer points of living in an awkward world. It's probably the best true podcast there has ever been (the best is obviously 'The Best Show on WFMU', but that's a radio show at heart), and has the highest replay value of any podcast this side of Superego. So grab an Aunt Nancy and enjoy.
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MUSIC! The new Oneohtrix Point Never further solidifies Daniel Lopatin as the best electronic musician working today. The dude is one of the few guys that truly knows how to deconstruct music, in no small part because he knows how to construct it, given his Ford and Lopatin side project. The record is full of abrupt twists and turns that heighten your focus on his subtle attention to detail. He's definitely not for everyone, but few artists are more rewarding. A surprise contender for album of the year, Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratories album Elements of Sound is simply phenomenal. It's has all the hallmarks of a Pantha du Prince release: Icy synths, sparse production, a love of bells, but this feels the most like an album. It's got an intrinsic cohesiveness that his previous albums just didn't have. It's like if your local gothic cathedral belted out a dance track from its belfry in the dead of winter. So goddamn good. I also listened to the new Disclosure album, but you already know plenty about that. Let me just be another of many giving it a hearty thumbs up. Hasta Luego, Amigos and Amigettes.

 

Video Viscera: Stiletto Nights and Sapphire Dreamz.

Video Viscera is Emerald Miasma's weekly music video spotlight. Anything goes. Let's get freak nasty all up in them corners, Boo.

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Games (aka Ford and Lopatin) featuring Laurel Halo - 'Strawberry Skies'.

 



Let's start off with probably my favorite song of this short decade. An ode to the golden age of late-night sensuality, this comes from the minds behind Oneohtrix Point Never among countless other amazing projects. Lots of found footage of flirtatious 1-800 girls doing things 1-800 girls would do in 1992. It's the perfect song for a Miami coke party that's just starting to die down. Cindy, call me up.
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Gaytheist - 'Stomach Pains'.



Better than their silly name would suggest (whatever, I like it), Gaytheist is a stoner metal band from Portland, and you can tell they're from Portland because the video was directed by the awesome Portland director Whitey McConnaughy and features awesome Portland comedian Ian Karmel as the convenience store clerk. Teeth Kickin' Good Stuff.
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Skeletonwitch - 'Bringers of Death'.



Athens, Ohio's own get vicious with some furries vs. zombies action. Lots of ripped stuffing and a fuckload of METAL. Originally released on an Adult Swim compilation, this was one of their only videos for the longest time. This is why dudes like metal.
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Liam Lynch - 'On Waves Low and High'.



Liam Lynch is one of the fucking coolest dudes ever. He helped co-create Sifl and Olly. He directed the Tenacious D movie, as well as Sarah Silverman's 'Jesus is Magic'. He was one of the inaugural students at Paul McCartney's musical academy. He was one of the first people to create a video podcast (or any podcast for that matter). But he's probably best known for his music. He's played in Tenacious D, Queens of the Stone Age, and Eagles of Death Metal, as well as writing the minor hit 'United States of Whatever'. While known primarily for writing comedy songs, this is one of his 'serious' songs, and it's goddamn beautiful. One of the few truly genius creators out there.
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Thee Oh Sees - 'Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster'.



The preeminent name in garage rock today, Thee Oh Sees are just a great band. They've never made a record that was even average. Out of the park every time they step to the plate. This is a song with serial killing and scared grocery shoppers. Dope.
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Xex - 'Fun in the Sun'.



Chilly fuckin' coldwave set to an old 50's horror film? I'm down.
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Czarface - 'Air 'Em Out'.



Dope track set to an incredibly unsettling video. 7L, Esoteric & Inspectah Deck team up to make the rap track of the year and then pair it with a video about how to tie up loose ends in a high level crime syndicate. Violent, but still kind of funny.

A Browns Fan Defends the Richardson Trade.

And Cleveland wept. Trent Richardson was sent to the Colts yesterday for a first-round pick next year. Everyone is sad. How could this happen? Another cleaning of house only two weeks into the season? US BROWNS FANS DON'T DESERVE TO KEEP HAVING THIS HAPPEN! I agree, but feing about this year aside, this move shows a massive level of competence and insight from the front office. This is probably the best thing the expansion Browns ever did. Trent Richardson was a bold play from the beginning, and it took the boldest trade of the decade to reverse that decision. AND I LOVE IT. I personally never liked much of anything about Richardson's tenure as a Brown, and I'm glad Jim Irsay found that last bottle of Gentleman Jack in time to award the Browns with a chance to bail out BEFORE shit goes down for once.

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It all started when Richardson was drafted with the 3rd overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. The Browns were faced with an issue. They had two first-round picks that year, along with several others they were willing to deal to the St. Louis Rams (who were picking second) for Robert Griffin III. They offered 5 total picks for RG3, but the Redskins still managed to out bid them. It happens. The Browns still picked fourth in the draft though, and had their eyes on Richardson. Picking ahead of them though were the Minnesota Vikings. Now, the Vikings have a running back named Adrian Peterson. Though he was coming off of season-ending knee surgery from the year prior, AP is the best running back of the last decade. So, being the smart front-office they are, the Vikes threatened to take Richardson at number three. This sent the Browns into a goddamn frenzy for some reason and gave up THREE picks to move up one spot. The Browns took Richardson, and the Vikings took who they wanted from the start, offensive tackle Ryan Kalil. Right from the start, Richardson was supposedly worth FOUR FUCKING PLAYERS.

Kalil goes on to be a Pro-Bowler in his first year, AP comes back with an unprecedented season on the ground, and the Vikes are set up with solid young talent for a while now (with the glaring exception of Christian Ponder). The Browns got a running back in a passing league where the next highest selected RB was Boise State's Doug Martin at number 31. This draft also included David Wilson (32), Bernard Pierce (84), Lamar Miller (97), Vick Ballard (170), Alfred Morris (173), and Daryl Richardson (252, which is one pick away from the final pick in the draft). All of whom have either played significant time since entering the league or are currently starting RBs for their teams. Keep that in mind as we go forward.
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So the Browns have their guy. Its at at a great, useless cost, but they still have their guy. But on August 9th, 2012, Richardson had to have surgery on his left knee to remove cartilage fragments. He misses the whole preseason. But he's on the field for Game 1 against the terrible Philadelphia Eagles. He managed 39 yards on 19 carries, but this is to be expected from someone recovering from a knee injury just a month prior that missed the whole preseason. He bounces back the next week and gains 109 rushing yards and 36 receiving yards with two touchdowns. Problem solved, right? Well, the reality is that Richardson has a very up-and-down year. He finishes with 950 rushing yards, 367 receiving yards and 11 touchdowns. However, the production is incredibly uneven. 134 yards against San Diego, 19 yards against the Colts, 124 against Baltimore, 31 and two scores against Washington. He breaks his ribs mid-season and was listed on the injury report in all but two games. Often times he looks lost in the backfield, missing lanes and generally being indecisive. He also lacked explosiveness behind what was at the time a competent offensive line. On 267 carries, he had two plays of over twenty yards or more, the same amount as Robert Turbin and Lamar Miller and less than Pierce, Ronnie Hillman, Ballard, Wilson, Martin, Daryl Richardson, Brandon Bolden, Bryce Brown, and Morris (again, all of whom were drafted after him). 950 rushing yards was 18th best in the league and was 3rd best amongst ROOKIES. But his 11 touchdowns are clearly his biggest achievement from last year, and that's what was important. This made Cleveland going 5-11 tolerable.

Everything could be blamed on Cleveland's other first round pick, QB Brandon Weeden, who looked unplayable quite often, or Pat Shurmur for poor coaching decisions and not getting Richardson the ball enough (even though he averaged about 20 touches a game), or Mike Holmgren because he didn't provide talent around him. So the Browns clean house. New Owner, GM, Head Coach, Offensive and Defensive Coordinators. Complete fucking overhaul of the entire organization. Everyone is excited because, you know, new guys, when Richardson gets fucking hurt again. Same fucking knee, same fucking story. No preseason. On top of that, now he has a hamstring issue and he injured his shin. But he again would be ready for the season opener.

So, as the season gets under way and it quickly becomes apparent that Richardson wasn't the biggest injury on the team. Not by a long shot. The biggest injury was that of starting guard Shaun Lauvao, because the Browns offensive line was shredded by the vicious Miami pass rush, led by Cameron Wake. Tackle Oneil Cousins played out of position to fill in for Lauvao, and his inexperience was obvious. Throw in a huge regression on the part of second year tackle Mitchell Schwartz, and there was little hope of any offensive success. Richardson does little in the defensive shootout, and then the complaints began. Richardson is upset in his role on offense, saying he isn't getting the ball enough. This sentiment carries over into another ugly loss to Baltimore, where suspended WR Josh Gordon became the sorely missed playmaker as no Browns receiver (especially Greg Fucking Little) could get separation from Baltimore's defensive backs, leading to multiple Weeden coverage sacks. Richardson now has 105 yards and no touchdowns through two games. This is when the Colts came calling. They offered Cleveland a chance to hit the refresh button on a guy with no noticeable burst through the line, an extensive injury history, and a discontentment for his new system.
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I'd accept in a heartbeat and send him a fruit basket full of cheap bourbon.
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The point I've been leading up to is that great running backs are relatively easy to attain. Great QBs are not, and they are the more important position in the league today. So few top tier running backs are drafted in the first round anymore. You can get great running backs in much later rounds these days. Fuck, you've got 7 picks in the first four rounds, get two if you want to hedge your bets. The priority is QB for the Browns. Seriously, LOOK AT THIS LIST OF NONSENSE. The Browns need to great an elite QB, and they need it NOW. The AFC North looks like a nuked graveyard at this point. Fuck, even if the Browns lose again on Sunday, they're still likely only one game out of the AFC North lead, with Baltimore playing the Texans and Cincy playing Green Bay. This division is going to be down for a while, and the Browns have enough around them to make that run to the top. 

People have begun to remove blame from Richardson for ONLY GAINING 105 YARDS IN TWO GAMES THIS YEAR. I say fuck that. Oh, he had a bad O-Line and no passing game? Tell it to fucking CJ Spiller, Doug Martin, Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, and Darren McFadden, because they all seem to find a way to move fucking forwards every once in a while, and those teams can do dick in the air. Maybe he's having trouble because he's just a moderately above-average player that is quickly realizing that the NFL isn't fucking Alabama, where the holes are as wide as a five lane highway. 

Oh, and good luck with the O-Line in Indy. Did you know that they only dressed seven linemen last Sunday, and that one got hurt and the other was Anthony Fucking Castonzo? The Colts aren't winning the Super Bowl anytime soon. That defense has been terrible for years, and there is no plan to fix it. Fuck, this team may not even make the playoffs this year. Their schedule is fucking brutal, and with the Chiefs making a resurgence this year, the division is not nearly as clear cut as it would seem. Cleveland may very well end up with a mid-first round pick when its all said and done.

Browns nation is furious right now. I've never in my life seen so many people declare that this is it. They're done being a Browns fan. This is what sealed the deal for them. On that, I obviously call bullshit. You've watched Brady Quinn bury 30 balls in the dirt in a single game, Brian Robiskie drop pass after pass, and Gerard Warren get pushed around like he's on roller skates and you're telling me THIS is what ends your fandom? Fuck you. This is nothing. You want to keep being considered some hardscrabble tough town that's loyal to it's teams despite the lack of collective championships? Then don't abandon a team because they traded away Reggie Bush 2.0. You can't have it both ways.

THIS ISN'T A DAY OF MOURNING, PEOPLE. Perk up. You are better than that. Who cares if they tank the season? They were going to win 4 games anyway. The Richardson trade mattered so little to this season that the fucking Vegas line didn't even change after he was traded. EVEN VEGAS THINKS THEY WERE GOING TO SUCK WITH RICHARDSON. So you wait another year. Who fucking cares? Your Richardson jersey's useless now? Hang it up next to your Quinn and Frye jerseys, suck it up, and stop buying jerseys you fucking weirdo. You are a Browns fan. You got your franchise back after that cunt Art Modell stole it, and now you want to abandon it? I say no, and you will too when Sunday rolls around. Waiting For Next Year actually means something for once. Keep the faith.

And anyways, the Tribe's only a half game back in the playoffs.

The Week in Yeah #5: Cutthroat Circus.

The Week in Yeah is Emerald Miasma's weekly round-up of the good, the bad, and the incomprehensible of pop culture, the world at large, and life in general, as seen by me.

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Oh cable, you are a beautiful, awful bitch. You make me put off watching 30 Rock and The Wire and countless other critically acclaimed shows in favor of disposable nonsense. Most of it is completely pointless 'Reality TV' that is meant to be forgotten seconds after consumption. Some of it isn't even fun to watch (Amish Mafia), but some of it is fascinating. Case in point, Cutthroat Kitchen. This is one of the 50 competitive cooking shows on TV today, and the 10th or so hosted by indelibly fastidious geek icon Alton Brown. I like Alton Brown. He has that assured swagger that nerds are sorely lacking more often than not, and I think he's a affable, yet occasionally biting host. The premise of this show is spite, as far as I can tell. Four chefs start with $25,000 and one minute to grab as much product as they can to make classic dishes. Then Alton auctions off sabotages to the contestants to give them a competitive edge. It can range from stealing another person's product to making someone use a camp stove to cook their entire meal to replacing pizza dough with a pre-baked pie crust. It's brutal, and I FUCKING LOVE IT. Chefs, more often than not, are bitchy perfectionists full of professional jealousy, and this show turns all of those baser instincts loose and REWARDS THEM FOR IT. The last chef standing get to walk out on whatever cash they haven't spent, which is usually like $400. The sabotage is often brilliant and absolutely dickish. One chef stole all the bread in a sandwich making challenge. Genius. That chef follows me on Twitter now I think, which is dope. If you're reading this Chef, I admire you're tactics.
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I mentioned Amish Mafia earlier, and I've watched this dumb show for two stupid fucking seasons now. It's not good. It's actually quite awful. I don't derive any enjoyment from it. Ten minutes into every episode, I immediately revert to dicking around on my phone instead of changing the channel. That said, there was some sort of marathon of the show on Discovery Channel the other day and I couldn't find the remote, so I watched like four straight episodes before giving enough of a shit to change to an Tribe game or something. The show centers around a few groups of Amish/Not Really Amish ne'er-do-wells in Pennsylvania and Southern Ohio (specifically the intensely dull Holmes County, which is a place that is only good for apple butter and crippling depression) protecting Amish interests with force. They claim that since they were not baptized into the Amish church, they can work on the fringes of Amish society and fix wrongs the church can't. So they hustle protection money, break stuff, set fires and kill people (or so its strongly implied) all to keep the precious Amish holier than everyone on Earth. First of all, it should be noted for anyone who hasn't lived around the Amish, the Amish are awful people. They hate you because you don't shackle yourself to outdated lifestyles to prove your loyalty to God. That's not a generalization, you are lesser than them in their eyes because you have a goddamn telephone. But their disgust of women, homosexuals and different races are totally cool by their standards, to say nothing about the God thing. And then there's Rumspringa. Fuck Rumspringa. For those of you that don't know, at some point before you join the Amish church for life, you have what's called Rumspringa, where you go out into the dreaded English world to see if you like it. It can last as long as you want, but once you come back you're there for life. Think about that for a second. You take a kid with no knowledge of the outside world, openly tell them to sin all you want for as long as you want, and that once you return, all of that shit will be forgiven and you'll never have to worry about it again. Needless to say, they go fucking apeshit. They do drugs by the fistful, they buy cars and get speed into telephone poles, and generally become walking powder kegs that the rest of the world has to deal with. But I digress, back to 'Amish Mafia'. The show is obviously fake, and not in a 'We all assume that all reality TV is fake' kind of way. Everything is staged and recreated to the point of absurdity. Anything illicit is met with these half-rent Mafioso telling the cameraman to stop filming, only for their Lav mikes to 'inconspicuously' pick up all the sordid backroom details. To top it all off, a cursory Google search reveals all the show's protagonists are just petty criminals with minor records, far from the major players of the rural underworld that they'd have you believe. The season finale airs next week, or maybe it already aired. I'm not sure, but I'm sure I don't care.
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One of the most fascinating figures in cult cinema today is Sion Sono. The Japanese poet/director got started directing in gay porn. The fact that he even has a semblance of a career after such a taboo beginning (which is even more taboo in sexually conservative Japan) is a testament to the caliber of work he creates. His work seems very influenced by gay culture. There's an incredible air of dignified camp to his work, not unlike drag theatre, so that even the most over-the-top, fantastical moments in his films (of which there are several) don't seem like the brazen acts that they are. There are certainly John Waters-esque elements to his work, but they're muted by his more Gothic tendencies. The style in his films are impeccable as well, and his sense of the world around him is wildly intriguing. This is the point in my Sono discussion that I demand that you all go out now and watch Suicide Club. It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and if you know anything about Japanese culture, you realize what a scathing indictment it is of life in the highly trendy nation. But I'm not here to discuss Suicide Club (but I could for hours), I want to discuss Strange Circus. Strange Circus is a psychological thriller in the absolute loosest sense of the term. It centers around a young girl that is systematically abused by her father and tortured by her mother. She's forced to watcher parents have sex while locked in a cello case, gets assaulted by her subsequently jealous mother, and is eventually driven to attempt suicide. But, not all is as it seems. This girl was actually the product of a reclusive author's imagination. But, is that also as it seems (LAYERS!)? The film, like all of Sono's work, is beautiful and upsetting. The twist ending is a bit predictable, but that doesn't make it any less disturbing to
watch. Definitely recommended.
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Podcast News! The Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction Podcast is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows. Hosted by the snide and probable sexual deviant (not really) Bryan Cook, the show consists of two rounds of prurient story-time, round one being written in advance and round two being audience suggested stories, written by comics, writers, and performers. This is a platform for the comedy world to be as fucking filthy as possible, and they rarely disappoint. The show has drawn the likes of Kyle Kinane, Matt Braunger, Jackie Kashian, Rob Delany, Dave Hill, Kurt Braunohler, and Erin Gibson. The topics vary from innocence wrecking nightmares like Clifford the Big Red Dog, Winnie the Pooh, and Rugrats to sacred nerd cows like Spider-Man, Magic the Gathering, and Star Trek to the fucking insane like Florence Nightingale, The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, and H.P. Lovecraft. It's fucking awesome. If you're looking to start somewhere with this show, may I recommend a Round Two show with Ian Karmel (Toddlers in Tiaras), Christian Ricketts (Dumbo), Sean Jordan (Frasier), Steven Wilbur (He-Man), and Shane Torres (Saved By the Bell). So goddamn awful. So goddamn wonderful. Amen.
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Music! The Journeymen's 'Mount Us More' is the brainchild of the dudes at the Superego podcast. If you've never heard the absurdist masterpiece that is Superego, its three guys (Jeremy Carter, Matt Gourley, and Mark McConnville) doing probably the best radio sketches out there today, and The Journeymen come from their weird cast of characters. As the story goes, outlaw-country crazy person Shunt McGuppin met another outlaw-country crazy person Mutt Taylor in a bar fight, and decided to get a couple more crazies (Cubby Lauderbourne and Jimmy Blades) and make an album. Its basically the best album I've heard all year. How can you not like songs like 'If Lovin' You is Black', 'American Woman (Navajo Bitch)', and 'Red Meat and Depression'? Think an even more deranged version of Ween's '12 Golden Country Greats'. Demon Queen is the side-project of Black Moth Super Rainbow's Tobacco and Zackey Force Funk, so you probably know what that means already. It features Tobacco's hauntingly syrupy synths and creepily sexual posturing, but this may be his darkest release yet. The dude bleeds neon, but his synth work is getting icier and more confrontational with every release, and I fucking love it. If you love BMSR, you'll love this. In a year that needs some more good rap to balance out the double headed monster of Jay-Z and Yeezus, Homeboy Sandman delivers. Sandman serves as an excellent counterpoint to the bombast and self-righteousness and hypocritical self-inflicted martyrdom of the Throne Watchers. This is rap at it's most minimalist. The beats are not overpowering, and only help to feed Sandman's calm, yet speedy delivery. Its hard to make even-keeled rap that doesn't come across as backpacker nonsense, but Homeboy makes it wildly intriguing. This is what real confidence sounds like.

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The Suck Foundation #2: Get Trashy.

The Suck Foundation is Emerald Miasma's journey through the insufferable, forgettable and bland music of Blitz's youth (namely 1997-2003). Ranked from still moderately listenable (Five Stars) to absolute trash (Zero Stars), these songs make you realize that sometimes a trip down Memory Lane isn't a pleasant one. Enjoy.
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Since I started this a week or so ago, this column has been the main focus of my free time. I've sought out old mix tapes, scanned tons of YouTube videos, and done a lot of soul searching over the last couple days, and I have no idea how I came to like what I like today. I don't want to mince words, but I was a goofball. A whiny putz listening to any dumb thing I saw on MTV or VH1. I'm guessing that it was the Wu-Tang Clan and Fugazi that steered me to the music I like today, but I think it was more sheer luck than a conscious decision to explore more interesting stuff. I always had an intellectual curiosity about music, and by process of elimination logic should dictate I would get there eventually, but after going back to a lot of the music I loved in my formative years, I really don't know. By all rights I should be sitting at some suburban bar playing some deep cuts off of the first Tantric album, talking about the great guitar work of Todd Whitener. What a beautiful asshole. Hey, speaking of Tantric...

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Tantric - 'Astounded'. From the 2001 album 'Tantric'.

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Jesus Christ. Music really doesn't get dumber than this. This has all the trappings of a bad early 2000s band. Is it overwrought? Are the band members four different, but essentially socially acceptable polished rock dudes? Do they say 'fuckers' for no apparent reason to seem edgy? Yes to all. The band rose from the ashes of Days of the New, a band that I never listened to as their name was utterly repellent even to 13 year old me. They formed Tantric by adding the growly voiced lead singer you see in the video, who is apparently doing ASL to the deaf members of the audience (THOUGHTFUL!). They're also from Kentucky, which makes perfect sense in retrospect. I listened to this band a lot. Too much actually, which of course is more than once. This song was on many a shitty mix tape of mine. That guitar was revelatory at the time, (SOOO EASTERN INFLUENCED!) and of course that 'stupid fuckers' line hooked 13 year old me. NO ONE GETS ME! But looking back, this is such a bummer, man. Generic rock, plastic women and a drummer that looks like he'd rather be playing with Dokken. This is post-grunge at it's most bleak and beaten down. Even though all the band members are gone except the lead growler, Tantic still somehow sadly exists to this day and plan on releasing another terrible album later this year. This is one of the biggest musical regrets I have.

BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG ONE STUPID FUCKER OUT OF FIVE.

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Ma$e - 'Feel So Good'. From the 1997 'Harlem World'.

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It's hard to imagine how Ma$e ever got famous. Even as a friend of Sean 'Puffy' Combs', the maestro of the biggest rap enclave on earth at the time, Combs should have known to not made this guy a superstar. Despite being in a rap group with Cam'Ron, Ma$e is a liability on mic. It's not being relatable or charming, he's awful. He has the delivery of JaMarcus Russell after being locked in a Rite-Aid for a week, and the voice of and confidence as a 17 year old high school athlete being interviewed for public access television. For someone that postures like he's a fucking Gambino, he looks and sounds like a contest winner. He also may be a worse dancer than Puffy, which I thought was physically impossible. This album went platinum four fucking times on the back of this single, which is batshit. Considering the fact that the East Coast/West Coast battle was centered around Bad Boy and Death Row is astonishing now. Bad Boy had ONE solid artist for the length of the feud, Biggie Smalls, and I'm not even a huge fan of his. Bad Boy has an impressively awful track record. Outside of Biggie and Janelle Monae, their next best record may be by The Lox. That's not good. Ma$e has famously been in a contact dispute with Bad Boy for years. He's retired to become a minister, been cockblocked by Diddy from joining 50 Cent's crew, released, resigned, and so forth. There have been bidding wars over Ma$e, which I think is nuts. He seems like an OK dude in his personal life, but Jesus he can't rap.

Here's a true story: I owned a lime green FUBU jersey with a crimson '05' on the front, in honor of Bad Boy's garish aesthetic. I wore it to a Bob Evans family breakfast once, and all of my older cousins knew that I was essentially wearing a neon 'Kick Me' sign around in my everyday life. 

"Doesn't his shirt look nice, Josh?", my mother asked in an insistent tone to my cousin.

"Yeah, it's great", he said holding back his laughter.

The rest of the table chuckled derisively, even my dad I think. I need to add at this point that this was sort of this shirt's unveiling, and it was ostensibly a safe zone, racist church-goers stewing over their sausage gravy bowls not withstanding. I went to Catholic school, so I wore a uniform and never got a chance to wear this monstrosity around my peers. That is until we had a dress-down day. Dress-down days are like fucking Mardi Gras to Catholic kids, and the peacocking that takes place is astonishing. We've had months to plan this day, and it can spell disaster to anyone that is easily swept up in the fads of the time. So the day arrives, and this is the ensemble I landed on:

-FUBU jersey

-Green cargo pants with zip-away knees to turn them into (GASP!) cargo shorts, frayed at the bottom with a bungie cord belt

-Bike chain necklace

-Wide Wire-Rimmed glasses

-Spiked hair

-Shawn Kemp Reeboks

That's unacceptable. It's totally idiotic, and it didn't take long for me to be rebuked by the upperclassmen.

"Hey Blitz! Whassssup, Homeboy? You Gettin' Jiggy with some hos later tonight? HAHAHA!"

Yeah, I deserved that.

BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG ONE FISH EYE LENS OUT OF FIVE.

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Powerman 5000 - 'When Worlds Collide'. From the 1999 album 'Tonight the Stars Revolt!'.

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Rob Zombie is one of the most important rock stars of the 90s. With his band White Zombie, he transitioned from pretty good garage rock band that few people cared about, to hard rock superstars that set the tone for dozens of other bands to follow, to a solo career that was just as successful as his band was, to directing grind house movies that people consider pretty good that star Sid Haig and Chris Hardwick, to doing atrocious remakes of beloved horror classics. All in all, he's probably the most successful heavy rock/metal/whatever star of that era. Spider One, Rob's younger brother and frontman of Powerman 5000, is not. PM5K was in the same vein as White Zombie, Korn, Etc, but with a space twist. While Rob's music was very horror movie centric, Spider's music was very campy sci-fi centric. Their albums were full of space imagery, but the DARK SIDE OF IT, BRO. I wore this album the fuck out. I actually liked this album a lot more than any of Rob's work, and I'd say that still holds true to this day. Granted, that isn't saying much, but I feel like that would get me stabbed if I said that around some of my former restaurant kitchen co-workers. Like many albums of this era, there was one very calculated, tossed off curse, this time in the middle of a lazy interlude. This phenomenon was brought up on the excellent Low Times Podcast during a discussion of The Most 90's Song of All-Time. In the discussion, the panelists bring up several interesting Nineties songs tropes, one of which was the idea of the pronounced, calculated inclusion of a single curse on a hit single to give a band some unearned credibility. That's what I have come to understand over the years, and was put into very sharp focus during the Low Times discussion. This stuff is ALL VERY CALCULATED. There are no happy accidents with these types of songs. This is all passed through filter after filter, from engineer to exec to A&R guy to manager to MTV to advertisers all to create a thoroughly agreed upon consensus of acceptability. This sounds cynical, and it is, but I don't think that's necessarily an assuredly terrible thing. Don't get me wrong, it usually is, but every once in a while the MAN will spit out a 'SexyBack'. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've seen PLENTY of hipster women jamming out to the Gin Blossoms. Anyway, to get back to PM5K, the band continues to release albums with varying levels of success. They even have another coming out sometime next year. I know I haven't ragged on this song nearly as much some others, and its because I don't really despise this album like the rest of these entries. The video isn't gross and sickly like so many other videos of that era. It's cheap, harmless and fine.

BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG THREE LASERBEAMS OUT OF FIVE.

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Dexter Freebish - 'Leaving Town'. From the 2000 album 'A Life of Saturdays'.

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Of all the forgettable bands of this era, this is one of the most forgettable. Honestly, do you actually remember Dexter Freebish? If so, are you in Dexter Freebish? Because I've never heard anyone talk about this band, even during their 'heyday'. They must have had fans other than myself, because this song reached #22 on the pop charts back when that meant something. For such an innocuous band, they actually have a moderately intriguing back story. You see, this isn't just some ordinary straight-to-VH1 song. This was selected as Song of the Year in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest back in 1999. This contest, which was started by Yoko Ono in 1997, features past winners of note such as Dexter Freebish (which, if you're wondering why they chose the dumb name, comes from a Houston rollercoaster) and several bar bands. This launched them into moderate obscurity and got them signed to Capitol Records back when that also meant something sort of. The song is an ode to a loved one's shattered dreams essentially. The singer talks about how his significant other is leaving town (imagine that), and how he'll be here when she fucks up and has to come home. It's one of the most spiteful songs I think I've ever heard, which is strange considering how poppy the song is. What sounds like a fun, forgettable pop song meant to be disposed of quickly is actually a pretty big Fuck You to anyone with aspirations outside of what seems to be a Gold Rush ghost town, according to the video. Seriously, What kind of asshole tells a person he loves, "Hey, I'll be here when you INEVITABLY FUCK THIS DUMB DREAM OF YOURS UP. Get me a pack of Camels on your way back, too. Peace, Bitch." I actually owned this album. Yes, I was the one person. I bought it at a Sam's Club and made my parents play this in the car all the time, which sounds like a
Good Charlotte lyric, but it's actually a true life thing that happened to me. I was actually more a fan of their song 'My Madonna' from the same album, but this was the song with the half-rent video, so that's why it's here. After this minor hit, they went on to license a lot of their songs out to video games and even played at the fucking 2004 Republican National Convention (!!!). Must be the Texas thing. They still exist, I guess. Who really knows why? After doing research on a couple of these bands, I'm shocked that 90% of these fucking bands are still together. Maybe they're trying to ride out the unhip part of their existence until the disgusting 'ironic love/nostalgia act' phase of their career begins. It's certainly not because they love music.
BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG ONE SPITEFUL LOVER OUT OF FIVE.

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Eiffel 65 - 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)'. From the 1998 album 'Europop'.
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Speaking of bands in their nostalgia phase, long before Iron Man 3 there were just two brothers that adored eurotrash techno music. My brother and I will never get the fucking year back that this album took from us. YES. I SAID 'ALBUM'. WE LISTENED TO THE WHOLE FUCKING ALBUM ABOUT 100 TIMES. There's not a lot going on with this song, but there's certainly a lot going on with that video. First and foremost, LEATHER BASEBALL CAP. No one can wear that. Not even a spray-tanned male prostitute that was wrangled from Ibiza's sunny shores in a ketamine haze and deposited in a German recording studio that smelled like clove cigarettes and stale cum to lay down some nonsense in mangled English over a Real McCoy B-Side. Secondly, The video looks like a PS2 Oddworld game palate swapped to blue with a blond dude Hadouken-ing all over the place. Thirdly, it takes Leather Ball Cap about two minutes to realize that he's playing to a crowd of blue aliens. Perhaps it's the ketamine again. Finally, as my friend Jeremy pointed out years ago, blond dude doesn't actually play that keyboard in the concert. He just waves his hands like an asshole. NOT BUYING IT, EIFFEL 65. The band is credited for pioneering the use of Auto-Tune in their work, so you can thank them for that. They also tried to do a half-assed virtual band by introducing the character Zorotl (you would know him as one of the blue aliens in the above video). So they were on the cutting edge of a lot of useless non-musical music tropes. The band released two albums after this one that tanked pretty hard, and the band disbanded in 2010. But fear not! The band reunited two years later and announced a still unreleased fourth album. Maybe Iron Man will inspire them to complete their quest. Either way, I don't really care. This is usually a go-to guilty pleasure for most people my age, so I guess it's not all that shocking that I liked it. That doesn't make it any less dumb.
BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG THREE BLACK TURTLENECKS OUT OF FIVE.

The Week in Yeah #4: Long Carly Iced Tea.

The Week in Yeah is Emerald Miasma's weekly round-up of the good, the bad, and the incomprehensible of pop culture, the world at large, and life in general, as seen by me.

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As I write this, I'm stranded in my school parking lot, waiting fruitlessly for AAA to come. Why? Because I'm an idiot. I tried to make it 20 miles on 1/16 tank of gas, and I missed it by about 100 feet. This is what school does to people. You often forgo common sense for the sake of higher learning. You buy hundreds of dollars in textbooks that have a higher level of designed obsolescence than a pack of Juicy Fruit, you accumulate thousands of dollars of debt for the promise of a higher paycheck that may never come, you become addicted to Adderall to finish your thesis only to lose your future job because this is a drug-free environment. But you do these things to try and better yourself, or perhaps more accurately, to be better than those around you. 80% of people hate their bosses, and 20% of people are liars. But YOU. You're different. You'll turn this company around when you're in charge. But secretly you know you won't. You just want to dick around, drink on your lunch hour and still get paid more than anyone. That's the real allure of college. You want to work obscenely hard for 4 to 8 years so you'll NEVER EVER HAVE TO WORK HARD AGAIN, and to be honest, that's not a bad goal, because the only thing that sucks worse than school is work.

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I've spent the last several days watching a fuck load of Spike TV. Why? Because I'MA MUTHAFUCKIN MAN, BRAH! WOOOO! WINGS AND TITS! BUD LIGHT PLATINUM! OK, enough of that. I've watched about 20 episodes of 'Bar Rescue' this week, which is sad in a very immediate way. A guy named Jon Taffert takes shitty, unprofitable bars and makes them boring, somewhat more profitable bars. Inevitably, the bar in question made a big splash when it first opened, only to start really fucking up and going into massive debt shortly thereafter. Then Taffert comes in to strip all the roaches and charm out of the bar and make it a bland, unrecognizable places for men in chinos and poorly appointed women to swill the Ruby Tuesdaysest of Ruby Tuesdays cocktails. In a way you feel bad for these hapless bar owners. They have no idea what running a bar actually entails. All they wanted to do was have their own special place to drink. But then I always remember that THE BUSINESS PLACE HAS NO USE FOR YOUR DUMB WHIMSY.  One bar that was almost a million dollars in debt was a fucking pirate themed bar. Then Taffert came in and renamed it something like The Corporate Retreat, I think just to punish them. Good. Fuck this pirate bullshit. National Talk Like a Pirate Day can suck my cock. Pirates are now short-hand placeholder 'jokes' for dipshits that think they're hilarious. Same with ninjas, monkeys, and anything else Hot Topic wants to screen print onto a bumper sticker. You do know they are RAPISTS, right? They force people to fuck them against their will. And they still exist! Try waiving your cutlass and yelling 'Avast!' at One-Armed Bashir. One-Armed Bashir doesn't fuck around. He'll kneecap you with the AK he stole from a dead man, cut your parrot in twain with his machete and skullfuck you with your freshly vivisected bird friend. Then he'll sell you to a Brunei prince to get violated in unspeakable ways until you die screaming. Don't fuck with pirates.

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You know what's good for drinking? iCarly buckets.

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My friends and I later filled it with Jameson and Ginger Ale because we know how to fucking get it. 

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Podcast News! The Fogelnest Files celebrated its One Year Anniversary this week, and Jake released a Best-Of show to celebrate. There are few shows that take an impossible sounding premise and makes it amazing. It has a Talk Soup/Tosh.O format where Jake shows YouTube clips to a guest and they discuss it. Since this isn't a video podcast, it shouldn't work. But Jake is one of the best curators of outsider pop culture on Earth. These are videos you not only have never seen, but would NEVER think to look for. Anal Breathing Instructional Video? Yeah, he talks about it. The best thing about the show is that Jake is supportive of everything. A lot of the clips are played for laughs, but its never in a mean-spirited way. He recognizes that passion is the engine that drives anything worthwhile, and is one of the few people that uses his public platform to appropriately celebrate people that love the things they love. He is truly the anti-Tosh. Jake exudes positivity, shows crazier clips, and the final product is so much edgier than any hate Tosh can spit at his prospective targets. He even showed one of MY suggestions on his shows, and I'm not ashamed to admit I squealed in delight like a 10 year old girl at a One Direction concert. Jake is my Harry Styles is what I'm saying, I guess. I highly recommend this show for anyone that knows the different between weird and Weird.

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I'm a fan of proto-Stoner Rock movies. Van Nuys Boulevard comes to mind immediately. Electra Glide in Blue, Easy Rider, any movie about a bunch of dudes in denim jackets in vans and motorcycles smoking weed really. That's why I'm surprised I hadn't seen Werewolves on Wheels before. It's a movie about dudes cycling around being degenerates. They stumble upon a Satanic church and get turned into werewolves. Simple premise, just how I like it. It's a pretty fun movie with a good soundtrack and some great bullshit mysticism (again, just how I like it). So dope.

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MUSIC! Tony Touch's The Piece Maker 3: Return of the 50 MCs is a great Deltron style team-up of 50 of the best MCs in history over some dope old-school beats. The list of rappers is too staggering to mention, but just imagine the best rappers alive today, and they're on it. Highly Recommended. Nails' Abandon All Life has been atop many Best of lists so far this year, and for good reason. Their rise reminds me of Tombs. They release a monster of an EP that everyone buzzes about, only to follow it up with a full-length that's even better. This is just straight-up, stripped-down blackened grind of the highest order. 'Pummeling' is a great word to describe it. So is 'Brutal'. It's almost refreshing to hear an album that's so lacking in the usual coterie of cross-genre flourishes that metal dudes love these days. Very entertaining.

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The Suck Foundation #1: The Worst of Times.

Welcome to our new feature, The Suck Foundation, a column about all of the forgettable, bland, awful and inessential music that I was exposed to in my formative years.

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Music is essentially the most important thing in my life. It's been that way for decades, and I cherish thousands upon thousands of songs, bands, and albums. Of course, that means that as an angsty teen, I was insufferable. My formative years were from roughly 1997, when I received my first album (Everclear's 'So Much For the Afterglow") to my freshman year of college (when I bought Boards of Canada's 'Music Has the Right to Children', Bonnie Prince Billy's 'I See a Darkness', and the Super Furry Animals Singles Compilation in one outing). This was the heyday of not just Total Request Live, nu-metal, emo, cheezy R&B, shiny suit rappers, post-post grunge dickheads and the boyest of boy bands, it was also the Napster/Aimster/Kazaa Era. This means I could fill up countless blank CDs with the worst mixes you could ever imagine. For every one song I still listen to from that time, there are about 3,000 that make me shutter with the force of a million Fukushimas. Not only did I have the worst taste in music, I considered myself some kind of 13 year old tastemaker. This next statement is 100% true. I once told my classmates that I had discovered Eminem after seeing the 'My Name Is' video two weeks before everyone else in my VERY SUBURBAN grade school in Ohio (and I must once again stress that Ohio is not this desolate taste wasteland everyone that's never left Park Slope insists it is. That said, this grade school was because it was a grade school). Long story short, I have countless musical skeletons that no one should be proud of.
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All that said, I think it's important to be brutally honest with yourself. I could bury this stuff forever, but at one point quite a lot of this music meant something to me, and countless other hapless kids that knew they had a passion for music, but weren't exposed to anything better or in some cases not ready for the IMPORTANT STUFF yet. That time is really important to a kid/teenager. Everything sucks, you're angry and you don't know quite why, and you don't realize that there's something outside of you're own awful, self-indulgent bubble of you. Also, if you still love the music I'm going to be talking about, that's obviously cool too. The world's hard. You need to have something to love no matter what anyone else thinks about it. With that in mind, don't take it personal when I rip most of this music to shreds, because A.) it's going to happen shortly, B.) it's never a personal attack (at least with me), and C.)it's staggering the amount of 'trashy', 'derivitive', 'boring', 'soulless', and 'idiotic' music I listen to. Hell, I just professed my love of that fucking Farrah Abraham album, so take that for what you will when I start lacing into Hawthorne Heights.
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These are all going to be songs released in that 1996-2003 range, which was not only the worst time in modern music history (arguably), but gave us a huge glut of said awful music. This is the peak of the record companies' stranglehold on popular culture, as well as the beginning of it's precipitous downfall. I've also assigned a rating system to the songs I'm going to talk about. It's your standard five star ranking. Five stars means I would listen to this today and enjoy it. One star and it's unlistenable. Pretty simple. But to start out, I'm going straight for the most humiliating bullshit that I listened to REPEATEDLY. These are the worst songs I listened to dozens of times. This is going to hurt. BAD.
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Alexisonfire - '44 Caliber Love Letter'. From the 2002 album 'Alexisonfire'.
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I told you I was going to be brutally honest. Jesus, this album was so important to this beautiful little snowflake. Seemingly super-underground, screamo self-righteousness with two Catholic schoolgirls in a switchblade fight on the cover? Yeah, I was the twat this album was made for. Oh, I openly rejected the emo lifestyle, but I was a ball of directionless rage and high energy that needed to be the center of attention AT ALL COSTS, so this album hooked me through my sub-consciousness' back door. I listened to this album repeatedly, especially driving home from football practice (CONTRADICTIONS!!!) with my friend Andy and my brother. I thought I was the paragon of emotional depth and complexity. Windows down in my RAV4. Sleeveless weightlifting shirt flapping in the open air. Alpine bumpin' something so BEAUTIFULLY GODDAMNED TRAGIC you'd think it was written in tears of blood. It was quite a sight. Alexisonfire are from Canada, and formed only ONE YEAR before releasing this momument to being different in an inconsequential way. They futzed around doing whatever the fuck this is from 2001 to 2011 without making much of a dent in popular culture before disbanding without much fanfare. The band's guitarist went on to form folk group City and Colour, which is odd. The rest of the band hasn't done much. The other guitarist formed a band called Black Lungs, and the drummer joined a band called Cunter, which is pretty great. Also, the band's official website was theonlybandever.com, which is unforgiveable.
BLITZ GIVES THIS ONE CATHOLIC SCHOOL GIRL JUMPER OUT OF FIVE.
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American Hi-Fi - 'Flavor of the Weak'. From the 2001 album 'American Hi-Fi'.
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Everything about this video is a lie. An obvious parody of the 15 minute idiot masterpiece 'Heavy Metal Parking Lot', American Hi-Fi is so thoroughly not metal that it makes Britny Fox sound like Pig Destroyer. This all screams, 'Give us some completely unwarranted street cred, please!'. The hot lady in the cut off Saxon (!!!) shirt, the whiskey guzzling, the pixelated middle fingers, it all comes accross as trying WAAAAAY too hard for a band fronted by a dude who looks like a less threatening James Van Der Beek (That dude, by the way, is Stacy Adams, former drummer for Veruca Salt and Letters to Cleo. That's batshit crazy). This was the first song I ever burned onto a CD. That mixtape (dubbed 'The Arby's Pirate Mix' because I'm a fucking idiot) had some mind-numbingly idiotic stuff on it, and this now seems an appropriate lead-off cut to my inaugural slapdash collection of jackassery. GIRLS DON'T FUCKING GET IT, MAN! THAT GUY'S A DICK AND I'M ALL SORTS OF AWESOME WITH MY POLITE CHARM AND MY RAV4 COVERED WITH 311 AND ALKALINE TRIO STICKERS! HI-FI FORUUUURRRRRVUUUUR! It really set the pace for what was to come. Am Hi-Fi released a follow up to this album that I didn't even care about back then, but they're still together according to my intense research on Wikipedia and are maybe making their fifth album this year. Bully on ya, Stacy.
BLITZ GIVES THIS TWO TRANS-AMS OUT OF FIVE.
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Bloodhound Gang - 'Mope'. From the 1999 album (SIGH) 'Hooray For Boobies'.
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There's no reason to like this band if you're not thirteen. Good thing I was thirteen when this came out, right? Even though 'Hooray For Boobies' was WAAAAAAY more famous for the single 'The Bad Touch', this was always my favorite song from the album. It's a pastiche of really childish bullshit. The Falco, Metallica and Frankie Goes to Hollywood breakdowns (that seem to come out of nowhere) were a revelation to me at the time. As was the ridiculous Pac-Man breakdown, which I would quote CONSTANTLY. This hit me around grade 7 or 8, and this was almost tailor-made for my idiot friends and my sensibilities. In a sad and strange way, this could be one of the most important songs I ever heard. It's dense with pop culture in-jokes that made me curious to seek out what they meant. The album brought together (in a very basic way) several different genres of music that I was inspired to check out. They were also one of the first band of straight dudes to address the homosexuality issue. Granted, it was due to perceived homophobia, but lead singer Jimmy Pop went out to write for a gay porn magazine (of course it was a porno mag) and come out saying that he was pro-gay. Sure it's INTENSELY childish and often played for laughs, but to a kid in the late nineties surrounded by intense homophobia (look, Ohio's cool, but some things are accurate about it), even that kind of childish affirmation was huge, especially to a straight kid that was frankly afraid to support something that could cause you to be instantly shunned by your classmates. I know how insane all of that sounds, that's because it totally is. That doesn't make it any less tragically truthful. Bloodhound Gang continue to this day, and actually just got into an international incident when they descerated the Russian flag while on tour in the Ukraine, something I'm sure none of you care about. I shouldn't still like this song. It would be humiliating for someone who champions Riot Season Records and John Hodgman and Mikal Cronin and The Holy Mountain and other ultra-chic, hip, insightful artists and generally thinks he's above dick jokes to love this song. But, I then again...
BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG FOUR PAC-MEN OUT OF FIVE.
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K-Ci and Jo-Jo - 'Tell Me It's Real'. From the 1999 album 'It's Real'.
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It's about time to touch on my obsession with schmaltzy-as-fuck R&B. NAME ONE HUSKY WHITE KID THAT OWNED K-CI AND JO-JO'S FIRST TWO RECORDS. You can't? Because I certainly can. K-Ci and Jo-Jo represents the most over-the-top, dripping with earnestness R&B of this time, and I fucking couldn't get enough. Listen to that shit. That angelic-as-fuck string section soaring over the raw emotion emoting from those two men. Fucking glorious. What can I say? I was a hapless romantic. Not anymore though. Now I'm a sexless automaton, pistons firing on pure confidence and a metric fuckton of American Spirits. Not unlike the hair metal bubble that popped when the world realized Nirvana existed, this type of buttery-smooth crooning disappeared out of nowhere one day. Probably the day Sisqo left Dru Hill and made 'Thong Song'. This burst bubble hit K-Ci and Jo-Jo hard. They released an album in 2008 that only came out in Japan, which is appropriate and depressing. Now, since this entry isn't nearly humiliating enough, I'll say this: I once tried to serinade a girl to their hit 'All My Life'. It didn't work, mostly because I tried to do it in my bedroom, with my brother just outside the door, as well as both of our parents in our kitchen. For something so thoroughly planned out, it was SOOOOOO poorly planned out. Oh, also K-Ci was arrested for indecent exposure for exposing himself onstage in front of both adults and children. HE'S LIKE THE BLACK JIM MORRISON!
BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG THREE EXPOSED COCKS OUT OF FIVE.
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Bad Ronald - 'Let's Begin (Shoot the Shit)'. From the 2001 album 'Bad Ronald'.
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This one's particularly painful. I don't suffer bad rap anymore, but Bad Ronald is proof that I not only suffered it at one time, I fucking loved it. There's nothing redeeming about this awful video. The video is Pre-Crank Yankers/Wonder Showzen/Avenue Q, so the dirty puppet/kid show thing was new to me at the time, but even then I knew that it was a dumb idea. But easily the worst thing about the video would be the girls. Whatever the fuck THAT is isn't sexy. It's infantilization to the point of being almost pedophilic. It looped itself around and became an ouroboros of upsetting. It's not surprising that these guys weren't around long. This was their only record, and there's been nary a word about them since they folded up shop. Probably because of the creepy fucking video. Just a guess. But there's an odd catchiness to the beat, and I am mesmerized by that turtle furry kick-sliding on the dance floor for some odd reason.

BLITZ GIVES THIS SONG TWO ONESIES OUT OF FIVE.