Wednesday, August 21, 2013

'Blurred Lines' And Robin Thicke's Weird Lawsuit

"I've been following that Leprechaun for days and I still can't find him!"


"Blurred Lines", otherwise known as the song that disappoints me every time I hear it and realize it's not Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" is officially the "song of the summer." I don't know who decides these things but according to everyone in the world besides me that is an unassailable fact. Personally I don't think it's a very good song, but for the purposes of this article, that is beside the point. I won't go into the details of why I don't think it's a good song because I am operating at a level that is so far above the level most other people are operating on that it would be like Einstein trying to explain theoretical physics to a nose tackle*. Pharell is an undeniable force as a producer, Robin Thicke is a pretty good singer, and TI is a rapper. 

READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Posted by Jake Zavracky at 4:57 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: "stop snitching", 1984, 22 year old strippers, Blurred Lines, ghostbusters, got to give it up, huey lewis, Huey Lewis and the News, i want a new drug, marvin gaye, ray parker jr., Robin Thicke

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Is this the best or the worst pizza marketing ever?



NICE! Came home today to find a box of pizza waiting on my doorstep for me. What the fuck is this? Who cares, SURPRISE PIZZA. 

NOPE. 
READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 3:15 PM 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: marketing, pizza, restaurants

Young Men Engage In Sex Acts At Eminem Concert, Pictures Go Viral

via



Explicit pictures from an Eminem concert at Slane Castle in Ireland over the weekend . In the photos two boys are shown to be engaging in separate, unrelated sex acts in the middle of the crowded field. As you might expect they quickly went viral. While the identities of the boys in question have not yet been revealed, the internet has been trying to track them down.

The photos are a distressing reminder of the state of contemporary malehood, one in which outward expressions of sexuality are encouraged and celebrated. One has to wonder where the parents of these boys are? It's disgusting that we live in a culture in which young men feel like they have to resort to such attention-seeking stunts in order to be valued by society. The hyper-sexualized music of artists like Eminem has no doubt had a distressing effect on the psychology of children too young to know that they have more to add to the world than just their penises.

It's a shame that these images will follow the two boys around for the rest of their lives, but then again, if they didn't want to have their picture on the internet, perhaps they shouldn't have instigated sex acts in public? Everyone, even teenagers, or, perhaps, especially teenagers, know that anything you do could end up online forever.

Posted by Luke O'Neil at 2:49 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: #slanegirl, Eminem

Monday, August 19, 2013

Twerk craze gives Boston some much-needed bounce

 
Neil Contractor

If you’ve paid attention to music news of late, or have spent any time in the company of a teenager or club-hopping 20-something, you’ve probably heard the term “twerking.” A lot. Like most slang, the word has evolved from its origins over a few pop culture cycles to a point where it’s largely divested of all context by now. As such, twerking has become a catch-all for an overtly sexualized style of dancing wherein one manipulates the hips and posterior in an often hypnotic and physics-defying bounce. And while twerking has been a mainstay in the club scenes of the South for years now, it’s finally wending its way into the crossover territory, where all subcultures go to get played out.

You may remember back in May when a few dozen high school students in San Diego were suspended for filming themselves twerking in a YouTube video. More recently, Miley Cyrus stirred up controversy with her video for “We Can’t Stop,” in which she and a team of backup dancers performed a sort of twerk — the latter considerably more successful than the slight-of-frame Cyrus. This past month, Big Freedia — the breakout star of the New Orleans bounce world, a style of electronic hip-hop characterized by its frenetic pace and call-and-response vocals rooted in Mardi Gras chanting — was in the news when she toured with the decidedly more staid Postal Service. Many uninitiated fans took to social media to complain about the “shocking” performance with none-too-subtle racial undertones.

Posted by Luke O'Neil at 1:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Boston Globe, music, twerking

Critics Need to Stop Coddling Restaurants

Roger Lim/iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Much like every other field of criticism, professional restaurant writing has been severely battered by social media. As longtime Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema points out in a thoughtful piece this week on Eater, the Yelpification of food culture has put a great deal of pressure on him and his brethren. Now that everyone with Internet access is an amateur restaurant critic, readers expect restaurant reviews to arrive at the frenetic pace of Web publishing rather than the leisurely stride of print. “As a rough estimate, I'd say that much print criticism occurs one to two months after the debut of a new spot, whereas the standard was formerly three to six months,” Sietsema writes. “The public wants to know about new places, and it wants to know about them fast.”

This sped-up review schedule is widely seen as a grave ill among professional reviewers. A restaurant supposedly takes time to find itself, and its opening weeks can be a time of trial and error during which the intricate craftsmanship of applying heat to food syncs with the delicate artistry of placing it on a plate and bringing it to a table. It's unfair to subject a restaurant to criticism during this period of midwifery, the argument goes, because it hasn't yet blossomed into its full potential. The idea of giving a restaurant time to mature before you review it suggests romance, generosity, appreciation for serious artistry. And like most holdovers from the bygone glory days of print publishing, it’s a notion whose time is long past.

Posted by Luke O'Neil at 1:25 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: critics, food writing, restaurants, Slate

Proof Charlie Brown and Morrissey Are Really the Same Person



Considering it's probably the most famous comic strip of all time, Peanuts was never really all that, you know, comical, was it? On the other hand, The Smiths were always a lot funnier than you'd expect for being the quintessential purveyors of misery and woe. One thing both cultural icons share in spades, however, is a pervasive sense of alienation. Charlie Brown was Morrissey before Morrissey: put upon, isolated, eternally frowning and frumping. Perhaps that's why the two have made for such a delightful match in , a Tumblr that overlays Peanuts strips with The Smiths lyrics. Like all such pop-cultural mashups, it's an idea that seems so perfect it's a wonder no one has ever done it before. In the strips, we're reminded that there's a little of Morrissey in all of the characters — Lucy's barking attitude, Peppermint Patty's gender-fluidity, Linus's all-consuming sincerity, Schroeder's uncompromising pretension, and Snoopy's contemplative idyls, daydreaming of a better life than the dreaded ordinary world.
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 1:23 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Charlie Brown, Esquire, morrissey, Peanuts, the Smiths, TUMBLR

Saturday, August 10, 2013

How to Kiss a Girl
How to Kiss a Girl 
(via FeedBuzz)
Stand facing her face.
Do not tell her your intentions.
Do not ask permission to kiss her.
Look dreamily into her mouthparts.
Keep your left forepaw on the hilt of your scabbard.
This is a dangerous by-way, one never knows.
You may hold her right scallop peg in your right lobster claw, if you wish.
READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 3:49 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Feedbuzz, how to do things, kissing

Friday, August 9, 2013

Did I Just Get Scammed by Dunkin Donuts Or What Here?



Being a salt of the Earth, blue collar, hard-working family man who gets into his truck on one leg at a time, and is the fuel that drives the American economy, I'm partial to the milky sugar water at my hometown franchise Dunkin Donuts. But because I'm also an economical sort, I will often eschew a daily visit to my local septuagenarian Armenian social club and hash brown factory here in Watertown, and stock up on K-Cups for use at home. This being New England, of course, I take my coffee like I take my my winters: icey and regular. Also my dick. So I brew the K-Cups directly into a leftover large iced cup that I save for a few days. Granted it makes the coffee a little watery, but what can you do? 

So you can imagine my delight when I saw this package up above in the stack of pods this morning. Sweet! Coffee that's meant to be brewed as ice coffee. I'm not even clear on what the possible difference could be, but I'm not one to turn down a bullshit marketing scam when one is presented to me. I just didn't realize how bullshit it actually was. 
READ THE REST OF THE THING>>
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 12:30 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: coffee, Dunkin Donuts, scams

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

In the Future, All Cops Will Be Made of Cardboard

In a time when local police departments around the country are outfitting themselves like paramilitary squads and attempting to dispatch flying robots to monitor and potentially assassinate citizens, police in Cambridge, Mass., are looking to a hallmark of the soil-stained past to deal with their local menaces: the scarecrow.

Sort of. The MBTA transit police recently placed a cardboard cutout of an actual police officer at the busy Alewife transit hub long prowled by bike thieves. Weird? The weirdest part is, the scarecrow—or scarepig as some might call it—actually seems to be working.

At any given time, Alewife station can have as many as 2,000 bikes locked up, giving it the highest concentration of bikes, and bike thefts, in the whole MBTA system, says Deputy Chief Robert Lenehan. To cope with the problem, the cops have tried a number of more traditional security methods—a bike cage, a patrolling officer, awareness campaigns with bikers, undercover operations, video cameras—but none worked.

Read the rest at Esquire. 
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 12:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Esquire, police, Uncanny Valley

FAQ: HOW TO HAVE A BEARD


You remember the old bromide about fatherhood, right? Any fool can make a baby, but it takes a real man to be a father. But did you also know the same is true of growing a beard? A beard, much like a kid, also takes a lot of upkeep and maintenance; perhaps more so, although I'm not a parent myself so this is arguably up for debate. In any case, there's a lot about this most basic rite of manly passage that no one ever explicitly tells you about ahead of time, perhaps owing to that thing I just mentioned about fathering being a magnificent pain in the ass. That's why I'm here, to explain what the Lamestream Beard Media won't tell you.

How do I grow a beard?

Step one: Exist.

Step two: Wait. (Wait times my vary.)

Read the rest at Esquire. 
Posted by Luke O'Neil at 12:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: beards, Esquire, my dumb face
Older Posts Home
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)