Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Moths



How do you spell the sound you make when you puke blood and shit your pants in fear at the same time? That's the one I'm making right now from that picture. Look at these fluttering air turds. You know it's bad when you're actually rooting for nasty ass spiders to take someone else down.

Picture not doing the trick? Walk outside your place right now, wait zero seconds, and pick off one of the two dozen moths that just flew right onto your face and take a look. Better yet, there's probably one face-bombing into your tv as we speak.

It's like a guitar solo you play with your dick

You're familiar with Rule 34, right? "If it exists there is porn of it." There's a lesser known corollary to that, which I just invented right now, and it states: if it has anything to do with a penis, anywhere in the world, the local news will do an awkward segment on it. Just watch this video below about Guitar Pee, a wackadoodles new item that no one will remember existed in five minutes. It's from some Brazilian marketing geniuses/pun enthusiasts. "Listen to hundreds of MPEE3" boasts their site It's like a guitar solo you play with your dick, aka a "regular guitar solo."

Like three other blogs just posted about this, but choosing between which one to credit seems like picking the favorite of my children, so let's just say I discovered this important news item.

Monday, May 28, 2012

I went to a Skrillex show by Luke O'Neil from the internet

 

I went to a Skrillex show the other night. For the lulz. Ok, for work mostly. Ok, ok I was kind of interested in going to be honest.  I wrote about it for the Boston Globe which you can read here. Words from the review and tons of pictures from this insane-ass Miami-style outdoor club it was at below.


Sunday, May 27, 2012

Florida man gets horribly disfigured, world yucks it up



Haha, some guy in Florida got his fucking face eaten off by a crazed cannibalistic killer. The guy was naked. He used his teeth to tear into the sensitive flesh of a terrified human being.  "That's just like in the movies!" said every single person who commented about it this weekend on stories like this one and this one and these people and these guys and this wacky group of jokesters, and these funsters, and these folks who have a funny pic of someone's face getting eaten off from a zombie movie LOL, and these commenters, and so on and so on. PATIENT ZERO YOU GUYS, HAHA. ZOMBIES. HANNIBAL LECTER, OTHER THINGS WE ALL KNOW ABOUT.

We get it, you've heard of a pop culture phenomenon that literally every one else in the world is familiar with. This reminds me of that one movie whose name I can't remember where everyone was predictably cliche and indifferent to human suffering. You'd probably remember it, you were the star.

Friday, May 25, 2012

The worst musical performance of all time?



Quick you guys, let's all come on over to the internet and make ourselves feel better about our shitty lives by laughing at some kids who aren't good at the thing that they like doing and didn't ask to be shared around the world. (via Buzzfeed)

Related note: Go ahead and try to think of a more Russian thing than this video. Stalin's floppy vodka dick is about all I've got.  

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Oh come on... Marylou's Coffee under investigation



This is why we can't have nice things. The Boston Globe reports that South Shore coffee chain Marylou's is under investigation by the feds because the girls who work there are too young and cute? 

Link dump: The Dandy Warhols, Summer Music Festivals, Food vs. Art + more

via

Here's the thing where I link to the other things. I interviewed The Dandy Warhols in the Phoenix this week, one of my long time favorite bands. Much to no one's surprise, Courtney Taylor-Taylor is kind of a pretentious douche. I love it. 

More on the Dandys, Gossip, summer music festivals, cooking and art, and some other shit I can't remember after the thing. 

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

NYC salons racist against men's haircuts

via

Hey, all dudes, do me a quick favor. Reach around to your back and root around in that thorny-briar patch of ape fur. Pretty gross right? Now touch your head and your girl's head at the same time. Notice anything different, like, say, a few ten thousand more hairs in an infinitely more complexly designed pattern? How about this, stick your meat hooks up around the vicinity of your looking holes. Jagged mess of cuticle meat and half-chewed hang nails I'm guessing?  Now look back to your girl's. Clean and pretty and shiny. Now ask her to scratch those nails on your back. Come on, what's the big deal. Just do it for a minute, it feels good. OK fine, just forget it, I'll use this tree branch here like a goddamned bear. 

The point is, men and women are different in a few ways: women have more hair on their heads than we do, and their hands don't look like they just got done playing guitar and chopping lumber for ten thousand years inside a wood chipper. Who knows this? Everyone knows this. Salons know this, which is why it costs more for a woman to get her haircut than a man, and it costs more for a man to get a waxing or a manicure than it does a woman. Everyone besides nanny-state New York City officials know this apparently. THANKS A LOT GIULIANI.  

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the city is cracking down on this serious problem of discrimination, fining salons for gender-based pricing differences. 

Dear PTSOTL: OK Cupid doesn't work

real person

PTSOTL reader Nicole has been going on a bunch of dates through OK Cupid, or at least trying anyway. You'll be surprised to hear that most of the guys on there are creeps who have no idea how to approach women. She wrote in to explain the trials and tribulations of being a reasonable, attractive woman just trying to meet a normal, good-looking, decent fellow the old fashioned way: algorithm.
"I recently tried OK Cupid for the first time and was stood up," she said. "And I met a lot of seemingly terrible people. I guess I sort of knew what I was in for, so it was my stupid fault."

Or was it? There are plenty of sites out there that detail the horrors of the popular online match-making site. Like this one, rather predictably named, . 

NEW KITTY PRYDE VIDEO NOTHING ELSE MATTERS

music

Shut up. Everyone shut the fuck up right now because there's a brand new Kitty Pryde official release off her official album deep album cut great side just 'dropped' via real record labels million dollar deal big time RIAA getting 'signed' insider status rich parents 'American dream' superstar stacking paper joint jam mad beats KILLING IT, NAILING IT, SONG OF THE YEAR, big time track, that's my shit, banger, rager, lazycore, syrup beats, pancakes (cc: Kreayshawn), dreamwave, rapwave, study hall hop, backpacker rap (literally), 'hip hop', rap, rappers, white ppl. Oh wait, nvrmnd, it's just a tossed off laptop frolic, as it says here right under the video:"this is not a release please dont blog about this i just made it for my friend stop telephonin me e e e eh he he heehh ehe" Woops. Carry on. 

That beat doe, right? Jesus. It's by something called "SELA. mixed by toy trains AS PER THA USUAL KITTY BIZNIS)"

So there you have that. More of our round the clock coverage of this important breaking news as it develops here and here and here. Video below.

NEWS ITEM JUST IN. ROLLING STONE ASKS KREAYSHAWN WHAT SHE THINKS OF KITTYPRYDZORZ: 

"I saw her stuff. She's cute. I love kitties," Kreayshawn giggles. "I wouldn't say [her flow is] similar at all. Her style is super poetic and well-written. My style is more like freestyle, crazy, whatever I'm thinking of. Ponies and blah blah blah. But her shit is tight, for sure."

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY MORRISSEY

via

A very unhappy birthday to Steven Patrick Morrissey, the only singer it's acceptable to harbor a boyish obsession with well into your 30s. I just made that rule up, don't worry about it. You were born and then you lived and then, someday, you will die. Just like all of us. In my sorry way I love you.

Monday, May 21, 2012

NEW KREAYSHAWN VIDEO YOU GUYS BIG NEWS



I haven't even watched this yet because I came in my blog pants trying to fuck it onto the internet, so I can't report on whether or not it's amazing or just merely awesome as of press time. It's the new video from yr grl KRSHN called "Breakfast (Syrup)" which is a great number one good choice song name because songs titles with parentheses in them are like songs with two meanings. That's one extra meaning than you'd normally get. It's about eating pancakes for breakfast probably. Let's watch it below, shall we? Meet me in the pain cave. I hope the commercial that plays before it is that Bertucci's dough-making one. Kind of hungry right now.

Photo dump: Manhattan Cocktail Classic, M83, The Used + other dumb things I looked at


CITY IS Y'ALL'S CHURCH Y'ALL. I THOUGHT I TOOK A BUNCH OF GREAT -- woops caps lock stuck for a minute -- I thought I took a bunch of great pictures that really captured what it was like to experience M83 live in concert at their live concert, but the only one I cared about in the end was this backlit shot of the keyboard player's bum. That's music blogging at its finest.


These are my homeboys Clay and Evan. This is at Zuzu, one of my favorite bars, in what I like to call the old guy's timeout corner where you can stand and not be in the way of all the damn wiener kids dancing to their rock music and/or punk rock musics.



I got a new 'piece' you guys.

 

It looks much more meaningful/emo when it's bleeding. That's not right after I got it, it just bleeds from time to time on some stigmata shit. I'm the Jesus fucking Christ of questionable 'body art' decisions. LIKE A BILLION MORE PICTURES -->

The least metal thing ever


I'm not really sure what counts as METAL anymore. Don't think I ever knew actually, on account of pledging a lifelong allegiance to false metal (via I went to see The Used this weekend + <3'd it). Here are a couple ideas, however, for things that I think I can say, within a pretty high degree of statistical significance, are NOT METAL AS FUCK:

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Songs of the summer: Icona Pop, Toxic Avenger, Julio Bashmore + more


Everyone is already losing their collective pants for this track "I Love It" by Swedish(?) duo Icona Pop. Kind of slept on it for a minute despite people I like telling me how good it was. It doesn't count as good if I didn't find it myself though, so you see the problem here. Anyway, you'll probably dance around your apartment to this like ten times in a row next time you're getting ready to go out. Where are going all the time anyway? Wouldn't you rather stay in with us and have a nice roast?

Friday, May 18, 2012

Another Boston dive bar closes. RIP Packy Connors

(Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff)

Another month passes and bar eats shit. This time it's Packy Connors in Roxbury, who've finalized the sale of their liquor license to the group behind "upscale" "concepts" like Gem, which I wrote about a while back. Woops, looks like is going to be obsolete sooner than I thought. Then again, I sort of predicted that in the intro when I said most of the places in here would be gone before long. Oh well, it's not like Roxbury needs bars, right? Let's jam them all over into the waterfront. Here's what I wrote about Packy's in the book below: 

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Science: White people soon to be extinct

This is how Americans will have to commute to work in ten years.

Bad news, white people, or as me and my census buddies like to call you, Non-Hispanic Whites, because your days are numbered. All things considered you had a pretty good run, what with the overwhelming global dominance in the areas of commerce, warfare, Pinterest boards, and giant sacks of gold coins with $ on them, but the party is over. At least according to liberal scientists. "America hit a demographic milestone last year," FOX News reports, "with new census figures showing for the first time more than half the children born in the U.S. were minorities." Not sure how a majority group can still be called minorities, but maybe they just think minority means really tan over there? 

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

GOOD MUSIC THING GO TO IT WEB-SITE PHOTOS BANDS


Our man Aaron has a web-site called Meet Your Beat where he posts tons of photos and videos of the bands he shoots around Boston. He shouted us out today on the site with four videos JUST FOR YOU GUYS, (but actually for me) -- wait why was I writing in the third person plural there for a second? I was looking around for a minute for a shot of a primo alt QT to post as the header image here but I got distracted by , so I grabbed one of the next best thing, a <3 cigarette <3. Four EXCLUSIVE videos from some of PTSOTL's favorite bands, You Can Be A Wesley, Bodega Grillz, Moe Pope, and another one called Radio Control I just heard of but sound pretty good by me I don't mind telling you that, after the jump. #MUSIC. #BOSTON Oh wait, he's having a thing at the Middlesex next week, May 23.  Details below. Total thing.

This is why we can't have nice things. WFNX being sold to Clear Channel UPDATE



Anyone in New England will instantly understand how sad this news is. For those of you who don't know, 101.7 WFNX is a legendary radio station here in the Boston area that to this day, well, not this day I guess, continues to surprise and excite me with the new music they play and the chances they've been willing to take to expose listeners to new music, to support New England bands, and to keep the spirit of what radio used to be about alive -- even if they did play one too many Chilli Peppers songs from time to time to keep the []'s engaged. The Boston Phoenix, who own the station, .

Tuesday, May 15, 2012


]


What's going on with this new "upgrade" on Facebook where I get a notification every time someone posts in an event to which I never replied saying I would attend (aka felt bad for my promoter friend so wanted to "support the scene" by artificially making it look like people were actually going to his thing.) This shit is driving me insane.

"Stop complaining about it" says that one dude who invites you to lots of things. Or "turn off event notifications altogether." Well, good point, but I don't mind being made aware of happenings in my "local scene", and in fact I like having an events page to scroll through when I'm actually looking for something to do.  I just don't want to have to fight against the incessant tyranny of the red number all day for the privilege; it's like bailing out a boat with a hole in the bottom, and through the hole you can see the floating, water-bloated visages of the corpses of your friends' boring creative aspirations. 


FUCKKKK YOUUUUUUU


If I'm going to move my wrist three inches upward to point at something on a screen so I can click on it and make it disappear it better be because someone I barely know was mildly amused by a joke I wrote in three minutes to impress people I barely know on the internet. Otherwise it's just not worth the time investment. 

I've searched the settings on Facebook high and low for a way to disable this without any luck, so if any of you computer nerds want to sort me out here I'd be happy to repay you by not inviting you to any of my special projects for like one month. Three weeks tops. 



Sunday, May 13, 2012

Stop eating fast food on the bus you fat fucks (repost Sundays)

PTSOTL headquarters



Riding the bus is probably the most quintessentially PTSOTL-y thing a person can do. I'm gonna be on the bus to New York again in a couple hours, so just to get myself prepared, and so I don't have to write this same exact post later, here's a pretty good prediction of what I'm going to be up against from the List archives.


We've covered that whole fat mess situation you guys have got going on over there pretty thoroughly here what with your eating at the movies, eating at sporting events, eating at places for eating, walking down the street with meatball subs falling out of your pockets all the time like a guy who just won the meatball sub lottery... But when you transfer that phenomenon into an enclosed space filled with total strangers it's taking things up a few notches. And you guys know how much I like to keep things precisely in the appropriate notch they started off in.


Having a shitty mom would be weird (repost)


That would be weird, right? Mother's Day is stupid on a lot of levels, all of which revolve around buying worthless shit, having brunch, being in any kind of gift store, and feeling obligated to do things, all of the same stuff that make every other holiday a waste of time. But unlike, say, Christmas, or St. Patrick's Day, or Valetine's Day, or birthdays, I can actually get behind the premise here, which is telling your mom thanks for not murdering you in the crib, or any of a thousand other times over the course of growing up you made her life a miserable hell. Not me, mind you.  I was a golden boy, but the rest of you litttle shits probably had it coming.

James Thurber on the damp hands of melancholy


I have known writers at this dangerous and tricky age to phone their homes from their offices, or their offices from their homes, asking for themselves in a low tone, and then, having fortunately discovered that they were “out,” to collapse in hard-breathing relief. This is particularly true of writers of light pieces running from a thousand to two thousand words.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Homophobe of the month award




Evan Kenney isn't scared of crazy people, he just doesn't think they're part of God's plan. He writes in with a guide to the craziest person/homophobe of the month who went way off her meds at a Lincoln, Nebraska City Council hearing this week. Video via Gawker.

This woman ate too many bites out of her crazy burrito one morning and decided to write up the strangest anti-gay rant in history. There is a lot of info regarding "homos" to take in here, but I am pretty sure that she states that gays make for terrible shoplifters, which I guess you have to be straight to excel at? Other important observations: 

Use your words: Karmin, Active Child, Mother's Day, cider, drinking, support local radio

Karmin, 'getting paper,' one presumes

For you perverts who like things that I write about things, here's some of the amazing stories about engaging people doing creative things with their unique talents that I wrote about elsewhere this week. Karmin, Active Child, Downeast Cider, hand-select spirits barrels, Bats in the Belry on WMBR and Mother's Day drinking below. 

Real talk from your writer

SPEND HOURS CRAFTING PERFECT LEDE. DESTROYED BY EDITS IN 30 SECONDS.

I guess . Go follow it or reblog it or whatever it is you kids do on Tumblr. I can't even really figure out how to respond to questions on there yet. Tumblr, I want to point out, is still making us stupid.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Terrorist baby stopped from boarding flight at the last minute

via

Everyone is up in arms today about this 18 month old girl Riyanna [something Muslim-sounding, I'm guessing] who was stopped from boarding a Jet Blue flight. There are conflicting reports about whether or not it was the TSA who flagged the girl or Jet Blue, but the fact remains, everyone involved is owed a huge debt of gratitude. Not for keeping us safe from terror, but because no one wants to fly with a goddamned wiener kid on the plane. 

Then again, kids are getting awfully brazen with their attempts to bring weapons onto planes this week. Maybe we're better safe than sorry.


Man vs Goose with lightsabers


One of nature's most long-standing rivalries reaches its epic conclusion. This is already better than the last three Star Wars movies. Original after the thing. [via Boing Boing]

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

OH SHOOT KITTY PRYDE VIDEO DROPS


MISS THE DAYS SOMETIMES WHEN KITTY PRYDE WAS OUR LITTLE SECRET. LIKE, A WEEK AGO.

Picture dump. Cool stories, bro, from my dumb life

  


You guys, it was my birthday the other night.  My life is most likely half over, if I'm lucky. I woke up to the most Massachusetts birthday a middle-aged man could ask for: Dunkies iced coffee, a donut with a candle in it, and scratch tickets. I am loved. I did a bunch of other amazing stuff too in the past couple weeks. Lots of COOL STORIES, and super slick photos after the thing.

You know nothing, American voters. Game of Thrones characters as US politicians

this is like another thing, but you know, same thing. via

Normally this would be the spot where I'd recycle some jokes I've used ten times already and affix it to someone else's thing so it didn't really seem like I was just re-blogging it without 'adding value', but I'm in the middle of a lot of actual work, well, what passes for work where I work, and this is already a little old, so fuck it. It's already pretty much perfect as it is anyway. Forbes via The Escapist, who say:

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The real meaning of bravery


Yesterday a construction worker who watched his co-worker fall tragically into a vat of acid made the heroic decision to jump in after him and pull him out. Presumably they were building some sort of abandoned industrial factory setting for Batman to fight bad guys in.  Not sure on the details. I think we can all agree the guy who risked his own life to save his friend is a goddamned hero, and I'm not afraid to admit it, 10 times the man I'll ever be. But that dude is already old news, because this shit happened all the way yesterday, and today there's a new hero on the scene setting an example for all of us, AnnaLynne McCord, main TV-person, who defiantly presented her un-seasoned grill meat on the world's eye plate, in a pro-Twitter move legitimate news sources are calling "brave." One can only assume McCord suffered from some acid-related incident of her own, based on how horribly disfigured she appears in the above photo.

It's a real game-changing move, and an eye-opening revelation for all of us, but especially fucking idiots who somehow still have no idea that the fancy people inside the picture box are made of the same person sausage and bone as the rest of us disgusting pigs.

I'm not racist, some of my best fictional friends are black



Much to no one's concern, I haven't weighed in yet on the most important issue of our blog times, the controversy over hipster racism, and whether or not that one HBO show I haven't seen is racist. (I've always been a fan of Barf's, by the way. Who hasn't?) The reason is I honestly don't know which ideological sports team I'm rooting for here. On the one hand Jezebel and friends really are a bunch of over-sensitive concern trolls spoiling for a reason to be outraged, but the other side, represented, I guess, by the place I used to "work" for, Street Carnage can be, uh, how do you say it, literally racist.  Despite many other shitty points, Street Carnage makes some decent ones here, writing in character:

Monday, May 7, 2012

In which I interviewed Kitty Pryde in Vice today


Remember Kitty Pryde that one music person from the internet I wrote about the other day, saying I didn't know anything about her? I talked to her today, and now I know some things, things which I made into words on the web-site Vice. Go check it out there. Here's a little taste below. Probably not a good idea if you're over the age of 19. It's on some high-pitched dog whistle shit they use to keep unruly kids from loitering at the mall or whatever. I got a headache trying to figure out what the eff was going on.

Of course it doesn't hurt her impending online lovefest, already well underway, that her subject matter is all so internetty. It's not hashtag rap, but reblog rap, ideas dragged and clicked over from one page to the next, assembled in incongruous collage—like an unfolding Tumblr of seizure-inducing gifs and the contradiction of a cute animal pic followed by a porn gif followed by a violent film still broadcast from within the frame of a teenager's messy bedroom. “I don't do it on purpose,” she says of that meme-style. “Maybe I just think in internet. Oh my god, that's horrible.”

Not horrible, just emblematic of how young people see the world now. How young is she though, because, uh, my friend wants to know if he's even allowed to like her music.

“Exactly that's the point. I kind of like the mystique of nobody knowing my real age, so I'm not going to tell you,” she says.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Avengers was a giant dump

Alien army attacks. Fights back with pistols, arrows


Marvel's Avengers film, you may have heard, divorced many millions of people around the world from their money this week. By all objective standards, including financial (it's already made about $450 million worldwide), and critical, (94% on Rotten Tomatoes) it's an overwhelming success, with reviewers calling it "The perfect comic book movie." 


That's nice. 

My friends I went with and I thought it was basically a giant dump. Granted, sometimes taking a dump can be highly enjoyable -- I don't want to brag or whatever, but I'm really pretty good at pooping myself -- but the end result is still a piece of shit no matter how you look at it. Or even worse, you sit there grinding it out it and pushing and can't even muster up a decent excretion for your troubles. I really, really wanted to poop this one out, so to speak. It's rare that I ever even go to a movie anymore,and I was willing to be thrilled by magic, but I just couldn't pull the pleasure trigger in my fantasy butthole. It wasn't for lack of effort.

Asking a girl how much she thinks drugs cost

Asking a girl how much she thinks drugs cost is hilarious. Like when they always interview George Bush or Mitt Romney or whoever about how much they think milk costs before elections and dudes are like, uh "$400 a gallon?"

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Stop wishing people happy birthday on Facebook (repost)

via
I posted this last year. Not sure I still mean it, but I'd hate to miss any tiny opportunity to reel in a few more pageviews.

This Slate article by David Plotz from yesterday is causing a pretty big uproar, as Slate articles tend to do. In it he describes how he changed his birthday on Facebook to three different days in the same month just to see who was paying attention and who would wish him a happy birthday every time. Not surprisingly more than a few people fell for it. 

It reminded me of what I said about birthdays around the time of my own last May when I put Your Birthday on the list.  

Bear In Heaven and Blouse are bands that were good bands

Blouse

I went to see Bear In Heaven and Blouse the other night at Brighton Music Hall in Allson. Both bands are bands that were good at being bands. I reviewed the music that I saw with words, which is an easy thing to do because the words make sounds and it's like you can hear the music through the words. Check out the words below, and a couple videos, and make sure to always read the Boston Globe music section because they are good at words about music over there. 

Friday, May 4, 2012

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys dead / the dream is over



Adam Yauch, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys has passed away at the age of 47. Coming in the wake of another one of my childhood heroes , it's been a bad couple of days for fanboys who grew up in the nineties.

I'd say that my thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends but I'm pretty sure his family and friends don't read this blog so that would be empty pandering to make myself feel like anything I could do would make a difference in anything, so let's not do that shall we? Still though, sorry to see him go.

Cinco de Mayo


Kind of having a hard time working up a good head of hate steam on this obviously irrelevant holiday that regular people use as an excuse to pretend they aren't regular for one day. Why don't we just all save each other's time and go ahead and re-read the bit I did on St. Patrick's Day, but replace all the jokes about the Irish with ones about Mexicans? Actually that sounds homophobic against Mexico. Hey! Get me, I'm from Arizona.

Mexicans are basically just this century's version of the Irish so it should all make sense. The only difference is I'm allowed to make fun of the Irish. No, not because of some politically correct shit. It's because the Irish can't read the internet.

OK, how about let's just say if you consume a Corona or tequila on Cinco de Mayo with air quotes around your face and/or wore any kind of fun hat or popped any sort of thematic Mexican boner then it looks like we're gonna have to let you go. You've been a valuable asset, but we've decided to go in a different direction moving forward. Don't think of this as an ending, think about it as an opportunity for you to go out and begin a new journey toward realizing your goals. Your goals of being a cliche.



PS: The fact that this is my stupid birthday prevents me from ever being able to enjoy going out for a goddamn peaceful dinner in the city without doing a slalom run between over-excited bros eating burrito runoff in reverse off the sidewalk. Thanks for nothing, mom.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

New Tumblr alert: Real Talk From Your Editor/Writer

WHEN SOMEONE TELLS ME IT’S NOT PROFESSIONAL TO HAVE WHISKEY IN MY DESK DRAWER


A couple of my beloved editors just posted links to this super funny Tumblr . It details all the injustices and travails of the job of crushing spirits/devouring souls editing words. Naturally, I started a response Tumblr, because this is how the internet works, and I'd rather fuck around with movie gifs than actually work on one of these four deadlines I have tomorrow. Check it out now because I'm probably going to lose interest in updating it in like five minutes. . 

Being from Boston isn't an accomplishment?



One of our longstanding pet-peeves here at PTSOTL is the idea of Civic, of National pride. Nationalism, or its slightly more shit-fermented cousin jingoism, are basically the two main planks of the conservative movement in this country (via xenophobia/racism/Freedom Fries/bombing the shit out of the world). Any other country ever, actually. Hometown pride is basically responsible, along with religion, (which is just a form of national pride for a magic country you're planning on moving to someday), for every war that has ever been fought. My country is better/more deserving of resources/purer/holier than yours, therefore swords and rape and sword-rape. That's history in a nutshell, right? 

I wrote a while back that  civic or national pride is arbitrary and illogical unless you play an active role in actually shaping your city or country, and let's be honest, if you're reading this blog you most certainly do not. You know how stupid you sound when you act proud of the patch of dirt you fell out of a vagina onto by random happenstance, right? 

But. But... the city I happen to be from? I love it! That doesn't mean I think it's the best one in the world, not by any stretch. It's just the most Boston-y.  


What's it like to be an internet meme? Chuck Testa, Antoine Dodson, and Double Rainbow Guy explain

Success Kid is going to be there you guys!
 
ROFLCon is this weekend at MIT here in Cambridge, and it's a pretty LULZY/interesting lineup of internet pop culture and panels featuring people who think really seriously about the unserious stuff on the internet. I wrote a piece about it in the Globe today, which I've excerpted some of below. But the best part is the memes I got to talk to. I was oddly much more excited to get on the phone with Double Rainbow Guy and Antoine Dodson than I have been for any of the "authentically" "talented" people I normally interview. Read , then come back for the longer transcript versions of the interviews, including ultimate homeboy Chuck Testa of Ojai Taidermy.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Kickstarter is the future, the pathetic future

I've always had an uneasy feeling about Kickstarter, the platform where under-funded artists and entrepreneurs go to solicit donations from their supporters, splitting the difference between an aggressive busking panhandler and NPR pledge drive fund levels of shamelessness.  I feel like it's like throwing a birthday party for yourself and reminding everyone to bring presents. In a lot of cases, it works out brilliantly well, like for a couple of my countrymen and women in the Boston rock world. The Sheila Divine pulled in a cool $13,000, a lot more than they asked for, to fund their recent album. (I got a nice piece of vinyl out of the deal myself.) Amanda Palmer, as you've no doubt heard, raised something like $250,000 in two days this week for her latest project. Check that, holy shit, it's already up to $360,000

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Courtney Stodden KILLING IT with new single that DROPS today


I guess the worst possible thing that I can say about this HOT NEW TRACK "Reality" from REAL FEMALE WOMAN NOT A TRAP CLICK HERE MEET LOCAL GIRLS Courtney Stodden is that I don't even really hate it/like it enough to even realize I just listened to it. Did I even? Hard to say. One thing the answer to that question and Ms. Stodden have in common is that no one fucking cares. And they both have fake boobs. (Think about it). 

Jesus this song is such a mind eraser it broke my ability to type words no good. I have to get off the internet. REALITY. (Or is it?) IT IS.

Listen to it down there if you want. I'm sick of going over this with you again and again.

Homophobes are gay



Are homophobes actually self-hating gays? That's long been the suspicion among anyone with, what do you call 'em, eyes and ears. A new study, detailed in the New York Times recently, and summarized here in Slate by my homeboy Dan Engber, seems to suggest that there may be a scientific basis for the belief that the only thing gayer than being gay (and Christmas) is really, really letting everyone else know that you're totally not gay. Did we really need a scientific study to prove that?

Newer Posts Older Posts Home