Taco Bell - Realm of the Stoned, Plus Me

There’s no point in decrying Taco Bell for its lack of authenticity or its lack of adherence to national food traditions. Taco Bell is a Mexican restaurant in the same vein that Wal-Mart is a place where you can buy goods that weren’t made in a sweatshop. That is to say, to make an argument that this is so is to make an argument you’re not going to win.

Taco Bell exists in somewhat of an altered state - a junction between reality and unreality. After placing my order and waiting for my food, I found my eye being drawn to the drink machine, as its ice dispenser spontaneously dumped several servings’ worth of ice into the little tray meant to catch the spillover from your cup. My eyes then scanned the drink selection. There were the usual Pepsi products (Taco Bell is owned by Yum! Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of PepsiCo, meaning the last thing you’ll ever find at a Taco Bell is a Sprite dispenser), as well as Mountain Dew Baja Blast and Lipton Raspberry Tea, two drinks that I am yet to find in the rest of the universe.

I, your intrepid food writer, sampled them and found the Baja Blast to be aggressively sugary – more so than regular Dew – and vaguely tropical-flavored. Thumbs up. The raspberry tea was overpowered by the raspberry-ness of it all, leaving me with more of the taste of an un-carbonated red drink rather than an actual tea. Still, the thing tasted like it was comprised of only the highest of high-fructose corn syrups, so I ended up drinking an entire cup of it.

Moving on to the napkin station – which, for God-knows-what reason, is on wheels – I found packets of Taco Bell's favored “Border Sauce,” which I’m fairly certain is just the grease that gets strained out of their ground beef, with varying degrees of spiciness thrown in for fun. This totally non-unhealthy product comes in three flavors: “Mild,” “Hot,” and “Fire.” However, none of them are particularly spicy, with even the “Fire” flavor erring on the side of somewhat sweet. The most noteworthy element of these little packets have to be the messages printed on their sides. Much like Keystone Light, which has like five adages (“Unsmooth Moments,” as they call them) that they print on their cans, Taco Bell’s Border Sauce seems to have maybe six different things to say. From what I remember, these include “Marry me?” and “Help! It’s dark and I can hear laughing.” This here is Taco Bell’s Big Reveal – it caters to high people.

Make no bones about it – Taco Bell is beloved by that subculture of young people to whom I will affectionately refer as “potheads.” Indeed, when I sat down in my booth, there were two college-age males who were sitting in a booth with enough tacos, burritos and nachos piled around them to make Takeru Kobayashi give their table a second look. Neither said a word. One focused intently upon his burrito with a loving intensity usually reserved for significant others, burying his face into it in a manner more often seen in snuff films. His associate took short, staccato bites, falling into a routine that involved him nibbling a piece of taco and then scanning the dining room with a suspicious look in his eyes, making sure that he and his friend were not about to be attacked by the gigantic smiling chili pepper on the wall, and then taking another bite, carefully starting the process anew.

Why did these fellows hold this establishment in such high esteem? I have theories. For one, it is reasonably cheap, and when you’ve just blown seventy bucks on a dank zip of Bob Hope but still have to get your munch on, you’re going to be more than amenable to Taco Bell’s eighty-nine cent burritos. And there’s the whole aforementioned business of the place just being a little off, down to the crazy tables that have neon-colored triangles inlaid into their industrial plastic finishes. Finally, the presentation of the food cannot be discounted – the stuff is just waiting for you to bury your face in it and forget the rest of the world even exists. It takes a long time to eat, the employees barely care if you exist, and most of the food is covered in melted cheese. There’s nothing for high people not to like.

Drake's Sprite Commercial

Is here. In it, Drake drinks Sprite so hard that he explodes and becomes a robot, or something. Either way, I'm definitely getting some Sprite along with the gigantic Monday Morning Coffee, because I'm hoping this will happen and piss my Comm teacher off.

It's The Bonnaroo Lineup! Well, Sort Of.

Bonnaroo, which for various reasons you have to assume is staffed by a bunch of recreational drug users, decided that they were going to trickle out their lineup via the artists playing the festival themselves rather than announce who was playing the festival all at once. This is an idea that has never been tried before, mainly because it is a bad one.

Anyhoo, here are the parts of the lineup that I have some interest in seeing (bolded if deemed particularly noteworthy). Also, Paul Simon is probably headlining, which is awesome.

UPDATE: STEVIE WONDER IS HEADLINING HOLY JEEZ THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

Jay-Z
Nas & Damian Marley
The Flaming Lips w/ Stardeath and White Dwarfs, performing Dark Side of the Moon
Phoenix
Kid Cudi
Weezer
Baroness
OK Go
Kris Kristofferson
John Fogerty
Chromeo w/ Daryl Hall
Neon Indian
The Melvins
The Black Keys
The Gaslight Anthem
Steve Martin (yeah, that one) & the Steep Canyon Rangers
The xx
Regina Spektor
Mayer Hawthorne & the County
B.O.B.
Lucero
Wale
Jimmy Cliff
Baaba Maal
The National
Japandroids
Dr. Dog
GWAR
Jay Electronica

This lineup is a far cry of Bonnaroo lineups of old - whereas past lineups have been full of bands that embody a certain philosophy or theme or something, more than anything this looks like "a list of bands that people like." That said, I'll still probably attend the fest if I'm not studying abroad or otherwise precluded from going, .

MY PARENTS WENT TO VEGAS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID CAR CRASH

In the history of all of the really terrible drivers who have terrorized America with their inability not to cause damage with their vehicle, I am perhaps the worst driver of them all. On Friday, I (probably) totaled the second car of my career, which is a shame not only because the ‘buru/Millenium Forrester/Forrester Whitaker was a most noble steed, but also because my insurance is going to go up approximately one million points.

BUT SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, this one wasn’t my fault. Here’s the sad, sad saga:

It was rainy outside. Shit was straight torrential, son. I was in Raleigh, where I didn’t know my way around so I felt significantly more trepidatious behind the wheel than usual, and let me tell you I’m not the Paul Walker of driving even on a good day. But THE SITUATION was this: it was rainy, I couldn’t see well, and I wasn’t sure where I was.

I was trying to turn left on a four-lane highway, which meant that I would have to cross two lanes of potential traffic. I had waited for everthing to clear up and it was looking pretty gravy, so I decided to creep out into the road.

I get through one lane safely. Lane two, not so much. Hurtling towards my driver’s side door at the speed of a meteor was a Saturn (pun!). I cannot stress enough that THIS CAR WAS ABOUT TO HIT ME IN THE FACE. I did not wish to see this happen, so I gunned the ‘buru to 88 miles per hour, but instead of sending me back to 1955 to take my own mother on a date, I managed to make it about five feet ahead of where I had previously been. I was fairly certain I was in the clear.

Then I looked left again, and I was all like, “Oh, shit.” And then the car hit me. I did not enjoy it.

Here is an exact transcription of all of the thoughts that went through my head directly after my vehicle had been struck.

1. This is not happening. I have been in a wreck before and it’s way worse than this.
2. If this isn’t happening, THEN WHY THE FUCK IS MY CAR SPINNING???
3. HOLY SHIT I AM GETTING IN ANOTHER WRECK AHHHHH!
4. Damnit.

Turns out what happened was that the Saturn ended up hitting my rear wheel and sent my car spinning like a top, which is generally not a thing cars are designed to do. Thankfully, there wasn’t any traffic coming in the other direction so I could limp the ‘buru onto the side of the road, where the real fun began.

The girl who hit me was, on a scale from one to ten, one being completely normal and ten being just completely batshit hysterical, about a seven. So I decided to make some moves and call the police, because you have to do that when a car crash happens. Soon enough, Raleigh’s finest showed up to assess the situation. They look at her car, look at mine, and decide that the wreck was my fault and give me a ticket.

I disagree with this, and here’s why. When the girl got out of her car, the first thing she said to me was this: “I was looking down, then I looked up, and then all of a sudden I hit you.” You know why people look down when they’re driving? BECAUSE THEY’RE MOTHERFUCKING TEXTING, THAT’S WHY.

Anyway, I ain’t no snitch so I didn’t relay to the police what my new friend told me. I called a towtruck, and then the cavalry came in the form of Ross/Nolan/Justin, who brought lots of candy, plus a car that worked.

However, the most hilarious moment of the incident occurred thusly: The police car was about twenty or so feet away from where my car was, when the girl who hit me came up to me and said in a conspiratory tone, “You don’t have anything ON you, do you?”

I had no idea how to answer this question. Evidently, I go out of my house every day looking like a drug dealer. So instead of actually bothering to engage this question, I decided to act like an idiot.

“Wait,” I said, “What do you mean?”

Her eyes darted towards the cop car. “Y’know, like, drugs.”

I replied, “NO. . . You don’t have anything on YOU, do you?”

She got annoyed and walked away. I probably need a new car. The end.

Anyway, here’s a picture of what happened to my car. My wheel is rocked pretty hard, and in all likelihood my back axle is bent. Note the jaunty angle at which my wheel is perched. I am beyond excited.

Profiles in Good - Freddie Gibbs

Stories like this are why only musicians with the business acumen of a flying squirrel sign to major labels.

Freddie Gibbs is a rapper. In fact, he is a very good rapper. He is from Gary, Indiana, former home of one Michael Jackson, and, if you listen to Freddie Gibbs tell it, current home of many murderous drug dealers. In fact, according to his music he is the murderous-est and drug-dealer-est of all of these fellows. He also hates the government and is worried that he might have some illegitimate children that no one has told him about.

He gained renown off the strength of a bunch of songs he made about the very topics of drug/woman slingin’, so it’s only natural that after signing to Interscope, he would record lots more songs about being a murderous pimp/drug dealer. However, Interscope failed to see this logic, so when he turned in two albums’ worth of such songs, they were all like, “Freddie Gibbs, we know that we signed you to our label because of how good you are at making songs about killing people, but we have had enough of that. Please make some songs about how many nice things you have.”

Freddie heard this criticism, took it to heart, and then went and hooked up with Polow da Don for “What It B Like,” which I can only assume was meant to be his first single, and is about how many nice things Mr. Gibbs has only in that he offhandedly mentions owning both an ‘68 Oldsmobile (as to why he would brag about this, I have no idea) as well as a Jaguar and then spends the rest of the song threatening to kill the listener and shouting out various gangs with which he is affiliated.



It might be the best song I’ve heard in a year, and keep in mind I’ve been listening to lots of Steely Dan lately.

Anyway, Interscope got really mad at Senor Gibbs and dropped him from their label, leaving him with mountains of material, so he put out three mixtapes and called it a day. Midwestgangstaboxframecadillakmuzik has a bunch of beats that are reminiscent of the keyboard-tastic stuff that characterized No Limit/Cash Money releases in the late 90’s, except the rapping is WAY better. The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs is his best release in my opinion, with a sound that evokes early Outkast if Big Boi did all of the rapping. And then you have the 80-track behemoth The Labels Tryin To Kill Me, which has the best things from the other two tapes plus a bunch of other stuff too, but since it’s his “best of” compilation it just has a bunch of minute-long verses culled from the actual songs. The point is if you like rap music you should download The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs if not all of his other mixtapes too.

Regardless, one of his main strengths as a rapper is that he possesses a lexicon of unlimited unreal terms, and I do not mean that in a math-type sense. Here are a few examples of his magical way with made-up words:

Zip = Sellable amount of marijuana

Fuity = Marijuana

Len Bias = Cocaine (this is not a term rooted in any degree of sensitivity)

Cock = A female prostitute, because that makes sense

Dick Cheney = To shoot someone in the face

Burner = Gun, probably used for the purpose of Dick Cheneying someone

Anyway, there are more, but I have a paper due tomorrow so it's whatever.

iPad?

Saying that I keep abreast of current events is one of the larger lies that one can tell, kind of like saying that Santa Claus is real or that La Chupacabra will not attack you if you steal her eggs. For example, did you know that the State of the Union Address was last night? So it came as a complete shock to me when yesterday, Nolan informed me that Apple had managed to make a tablet, and then decided to call it an iPad instead of the much more obvious and less cringe-worthy iTab. I get that they’re trying to forge a connection with the iPod and everything, but still. The iPad?

Seriously. The iPad.

Moving on. Nolan hates most everything, so I took his claim that the iPad was nothing more than a gigantic iPod Touch with several grains of salt, especially after reading Stephen Fry’s excellent essay on how the iPad was beautiful and a dream to use, set to revolutionize the way we use technology and live our everyday lives, even going so far as to claim that Jack Bauer would one day use one on 24. While Fry is indeed an excellent writer and an extremely funny man, it is my opinion that in this matter he is incorrect.

I looked at the iPad’s specs on the Apple website, and they are admittedly impressive. Its touch screen is fancy-schmancy and seems pretty responsive, and the fact that the device looks like a MacBook Pro minus a keyboard is undeniably cool. Basically, the iPad’s selling point is that it’s this bizarre intersection between computer and iPod. Apple seems to be saying, “If you want to be on the cutting edge of technology, buy this New Apple Thing we have created.”

Okay, it's pretty. Whatever.

On the other hand, this New Apple Thing feels purposeless, kind of like when a bunch of scientists decide to genetically engineer a monkey with three arms, one leg and a set of fins, just because they can. My gut tells me that the good people at the Apple Corporation decided to create a gigantic iPod Touch with a ten-hour battery life because nobody thought it was possible.

In fact, my main issue with the iPad is that we’ve already had the such a device for a few years in the form of the iPod Touch, which offers the internet, iTunes, video, an e-book reader, email, and pretty much everything that iPad stands to offer, all in a smaller package for a smaller price.

And oh, the pricing! Placing the iPad at $500 is impressive, especially when you consider that they managed to make something so pretty-looking so affordable. But who’s going to buy it? The iPad too expensive and bulky for someone who’s looking for a music player (iPods start at $150 and, y’know, fit in your pocket), and the its storage capacity and functionality are both too limited for someone who would consider using it as a low-cost Apple computer; I feel like such a person would just spring for the $999 entry-level Mac notebook, or just buy a $600 Mac mini desktop.

Maybe this is more of a “me” problem than anything else. I use my laptop for three basic things – writing, surfing the internet, and listening to music via iTunes. As it stands, the iPad only allows me to do two of those things, because it comes without a keyboard and touch keyboards in my experience are more trouble than they’re worth. What definitively kills the iPad for me is that you can only have one application open at a time. For someone who constantly bounces between checking e-mail, writing in Word or Final Draft, and messing around on the internet, having an iPad just doesn’t make sense.

The basic purpose of technology is to solve a problem. For example, mp3 players solved the problem of how to take all of your music with you without having to lug a CD binder around with you all of the time. The laptop computer allowed us to take all of the usefulness of a computer with us wherever we went – I’m currently typing this blog in a coffee shop, which would be impossible without a laptop. However, what problem does the iPad solve?

A Few Words About The State Of Our Jay Electronica

In hip-hop, there’s a sense that out there within the ethereal boom-bap there lies in wait a rapper who’s on the cusp of being “the next big thing,” who can release a song that brings about a sea change in the type of rap that’s legitimately popular – we’re talking “radio” popular, as opposed to “sell out Cat’s Cradle” popular. One after another, dudes come along with talent, wit, and beats to back it up, yet inevitably fail to live up to the hype. Generally, I enjoy these rappers much more than, say, Soulja Boy, but on the other hand, these artists are yet to release a song nearly as catchy and awesome as “Turn My Swag On.”

Enter Jay Electronica, toting “Exhibit C,” the track that has become his calling card. This could (okay probably not but it’s fun to think so) be hip-hop’s paradigm shifter; hip-hop’s “Smells Like Teen Sprit.” It’s produced by Just Blaze, who offers easily his best work in years, a soaring soul sample that manages to knock while retain a certain elegance, and Jay raps hard without posturing. This is one of those songs that doubles as personal myth-building – in it, Jay alludes to being homeless, claims that an angel gave him his name, references Nicola Tesla and raps a few lines in Arabic because he’s a Five Percenter like that.



Pitchfork backhandedly claimed he was “the next Nas,” then contradicted themselves and implied that he was slightly better than Nas, which is obviously bullshit, mainly because the last rapper that Pitchfork anointed as the next big thing was Gucci Mane, but also because we don’t need another Nas. There already was one. He put out Illmatic. It was awesome. We have to move on from that – someone has to advance hip-hop from a position of popularity, and there’s just a shimmer of possibility that it could be Jay Electonica.

There is, however, an issue. Does dude have popular appeal? The hip-hop industry seems to like him; he has co-signs from pretty much everybody, including Diddy. But now that “Exhibit C” is finding itself on radio playlists, will it stay there?

Certain roommates of mine (cough, not mentioning any names) have questioned Mr. Electronica’s image, dubbing him a “hipster rapper.” Well, John Tyler Mills, in my opinion you are incorrect. First of all the term “hipster rapper” is meaningless, something that gets applied to rappers who neither want it nor have any use for it, as almost a way to deny them their masculinity and imply that they are somehow impotent because they don’t talk about how they sell drugs or murder people for fun, or can be used to denigrate a rapper based on his choice of dress, implying that he is seeking an overtly fashionable image, an accusation that's the last thing a rapper wants to face.

That definition is troubling, to say the least. What about rappers such as Gucci Mane and Freddie Gibbs, who don’t fit the “hipster rap” definition but are two of the very small group of rappers who consistently receive positive notes from “hipster” music sites like Pitchfork and The Fader? Or Jay-Z, who often speaks about his love for Grizzly Bear and is reported to have sought MGMT’s help for his most recent album? Or early rappers who emerged in the early nineties who count hipsters as a large part of their current audience? Certainly any of these rappers could be saddled with the term "hipster rapper" depending upon how you define it. If anything, the term “hipster rapper” should be applied to rappers who self-identify as hipsters and whose music often contains ironic or contrarian meanings, such as Das Racist. Das Racist are a bunch of hipster-ass motherfuckers. Here's a video for their newest song, which isn't nearly as good as the one about the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

Profiles In Goodness - "Beat Bop" by Rammellzee and K-Rob

THIS SONG CAME OUT IN 1983???

The Newprint

We blogging about real shit or we blogging about blogs?
You blogging about web hits Or you talking' about mine?
What we blogging about?
Cuz I ain't got time for what people be blogging about all the time
What we blogging about gucci Or we blogging about fendi?
You blogging about hugo? Hold up pardon my givenchy
I'm blogging about life (3x)
And all I hear is
Oh yeah he keeps blogging about clothes
I ain't blogging about profit I'm blogging about fame
I'm blogging about despair I'm blogging about shame
of once being a part of this whole damn Game
I ain't blogging about KOF I ain't blogging about Slam
I'm blogging about real shit those blogs playin'
What is you blogging about? I don't know what y'all typin'
People keep texting about Mark take it back
I'm doin' better than before Why would I do that?

Mark Sabb – What We Blogging About


First let me say thank you Drew for giving me the opportunity to escape the force that is business bloggism (I am writing a book on it soon).



Industry rule #4080 – Industry people are shady.


I don’t really like intro posts with no substance, no one cares about the writer, we care about what he is writing about.


So here’s what I am writing about:
(Yo there is no way I am writing the essays Drew writes, homie is kinda nuts)


Over the past few years leather and denim jackets have made a huge comeback which can be attributed to the 2008 blockbuster smash Hell Ride that critics cosigned like Drizzy Drake’s balls. The leather jacket of choice among the fresh is the Schott NYC biker, which has been made in America for almost 100 years. The Levi’s Denim jacket has made an equal impact on street wear cultures from the ‘OC’ circles to the guys that run stores like Wish.


There is a sin that my fellow fashion buddies keep committing. It’s a deadly one, one which if fewer people made the ones doing it would seem as stylish as Pops from the Wayans Brothers Television show. Me being in the position I am to spread positive energy I must stop the negative…


Stop making your denim’s match! If you are wearing denim suits, meaning your jacket and jeans are an exact match, I must tell you that you are not fresh, or ill in anyway…actually you thought you were ill but found out you was…ILL

Yes, Avatar Looked Real. No, That Doesn't Make It Any Good.

I apologize in advance to Tucker Mills for this post, because I’m about to do some Ultimate Hating Intimacy on Avatar, which the other night won approximately one billion Golden Globes, a number to be honest with you I’m not particularly pleased with.

First off, I’d like to register my disappointment that Roger Ebert, a critic I genuinely respect and admire, gave Avatar four stars and said it was like seeing Star Wars in 1977. The fact that he actually did see Star Wars in 1977 notwithstanding, Avatar is no Star Wars. The thing that made Star Wars so great is that George Lucas came up with this great, amazing galaxy full of these fantastical creatures, and it was only when he started actually making the movie that he realized that he had no idea how the fuck to make the images in his head become the images on the screen, so he and his boys at Industrial Light and Magic invented a whole bunch of new technologies in order to make that happen. After having seen Avatar, on the other hand, it just feels like James Cameron wanted an excuse to invent a bunch of fancy moviemaking toys that he could play with, AND THEN he was like, “Oh shit, I have to have a story along with this technology that I just invented.”

While I'm on the subject of Star Wars, I should mention that part of me feels dumb for writing about my problems with Avatar. On some level it feels like someone just having seen Star Wars and then complaining about how everyone seems to be able to communicate perfectly with Chewbacca even though he just kind of grunt-yells at them and why if he can understand English and people can interpret what he says as coherent speech why the hell he just doesn’t speak Real English already. But on the other hand, I’m mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

Before I lay into Avatar, I realize that what I'm about to say isn't the most wildly original analysis, but what I've got here are a bunch of problems that I (and, um, lots of other people too) have with it. Mainly I was bored and didn't want to do homework today so I wrote about this buhshit instead.

I'll start by admitting that James Cameron succeeded – he made Avatar look real as hell. The blue, nine-foot tall Na’vi people of Pandora might as well have been sitting next to me they were so for rizzle. On the other hand, in thirty years some film is going to come along with such dazzling visuals that it’s going to make Avatar look grossly pedestrian, and Avatar will just be remembered as an average-looking – if at the time groundbreaking – movie with a stupid plot and vaguely racist undertones.

This is the problem.

In fact, there are several problems.

There's the whole thing about the movie’s anti-corporate, anti-technology message. I found it to ring particularly hollow, seeing as the movie reportedly cost a QUARTER OF A BILLION DOLLARS TO MAKE AND REQUIRED THE INVENTION OF A NEW CAMERA. It’s the issue of agency. It’s hard to reconcile having something tell you to go out and not support big business, especially when a bunch of conglomerate-ass-motherfuckers are getting paid by the very presence of your ass in the movie theater seat, not to mention the countless tie-in money that dudes in suits are making due to the Avatar video games, action figures, Happy Meals, et al.

And Another Thing: why are they making Avatar Happy Meals? I would have totally shit my pants if I’d seen that movie when I was still into Happy Meals, even though the implication of selling an Avatar Happy Meal is that you should totally take your kids to see this movie, preferably several times until they can’t sleep because of the nightmares of gigantic red pterodactyls swooping down upon them and eating them. Because I did a scientific study, and that’s the exact dream that kids have after they see Avatar. Not cool, guys. Seriously. Just go to Wendy's instead.

And then there’s the issue of the central conceit of the plot, which is Jake, this ex-Marine who can’t use his legs (aka FUTURE LIEUTENANT DAN), is sent to go be an Avatar and hang out with the Blue Cat People, learning their ways so that he can figure out how to best destroy them. BUT. He falls in love with Uhura from the new Star Trek movie, saves the Na’vi and becomes one of them. That’s the entire plot of a two-and-a-half-hour movie, summarized in seventy-six words. In addition to being astoundingly slight, it’s also wildly unoriginal, openly cribbing vast swaths of story from Pocahontas, Ferngully and Dances With Wolves and playing into a bunch of tired tropes about race that I’m going to talk about now.

Even though Avatar is decidedly Pro-Blue People, it remains Pro-Blue People from a stance very much rooted in white condescension. From a plot standpoint, there was absolutely no need for the Na’vi to need Jake’s help in taking down the Big Evil Corporation Run By Giovanni Ribisi Playing Ari Gold. Instead, they could have done it all by themselves and it would have been a nice little story about how the underdog can take down the bad guy if they try reallllllllly hard. Instead, the filmmakers had to bring Jake The White Dude in and save them.

Jake is no ordinary white dude. He’s the most awesome and best white dude our culture can produce. He’s tough – a Marine, as the movie constantly reminds us – smart without being a whiny intellectual, and willing to sacrifice himself for the betterment of others. He comes in, learns how the Na’vi culture works, and then uses his knowledge of his own culture in order to help the Na’vi beat them back and continue their way of life. Basically, the movie is saying that without Jake The White Dude helping them, the Na’vi (the “other”) would have been helplessly crushed when the bad guys knocked down that gigantic tree. By doing his movie like this, Cameron says that while the culture of the “other” may be more pure and good, it can’t survive without a little help from White People Culture.

Oh and before I go do homework, here are a couple more things about Avatar that were stupid: The wild and crazy planet was called Pandora, the bad guys tried (and failed) to snag some sort of material that, in a wildly original move, was called “unobtainium,” and for some reason Sigorney Weaver’s Avatar looked twenty years younger than her and had to wear a belly t-shirt.

JERSEY SHORE POWER RANKINGS, ATLANTIC CITY EDITION

Woo-Ha, my fellow juiceheads! This week’s ep of JERSEY SHORE was a doozey if I’ve ever seen one. A double episode?!?! Is MTV trying to give an entire generation alcohol poisoning? For those of you who don’t know, there is a JERSEY SHORE DRINKING GAME. Here’s how you (not me, drinking’s bad) play:

• Every time someone says the word “Situation,” take a drink.

• Every time you see a bare abdominal muscle, take a drink.

• Every time there is a physical altercation, chug a beer.

• Drink heavily throughout the rest of the episode.

It’s clear that you the reader actually didn't play this game, because if you had you would have woken up dead on Friday morning. That is all. Let’s rank some narcissists.

7. THE SITUATION: Young Michael Sorrentino was about one excessively-gelled hair away from having a complete fucking nervous breakdown this week. Rather than come to terms with the fact nobody in the house liked him, he became a raging asshole and did something to piss off every member of the household except for Pauly, who was probably too busy spinning the wheelz of steel to get angry.

6. Sammi: For the second week in a row, she made Ron Ron get in a fight in order to defend her honor. Stop making Ron Ron do bad things, Sammi. Go flirt with The Situation.

5. Ronnie: Ron Ron should really consider a boxing career after the show ends, because homeboy knocked a motherfucker out cold in one punch. It would be perfect! Sammi could be his trainer, and as long as somebody talked shit about her before the match, Ronnie wins every time. But seriously, how funny was it to see Ron Bon Jovi went from being all, “One shot, baby! One shot!” to “Why no officer, I did not assault that gentleman” in like 0.7 seconds?

4. Snooki: Schnooks has given up on doing anything but trying to get some and having her feelings hurt by The Situation. Homegirl will be getting her own dating show, and it will definitely be called SNOOKING FOR LOVE. I am not the first to propose this hypothesis. Also, wouldn’t it be great if she and The Situation hooked up during the finale? I’m pretty sure the preview for next week implied that this was going to happen.

3. JwOwW: I’m glad somebody finally punched The Situation. On another note, I can only imagine what’s going to happen when JWoWW gets older. Will she have jwowwls? Which is the JWoWW equivalent of jowls for those of you taking notes at home.

2. Vinny: HE HAD SEX WITH THE SITUATION’S SISTER! HE HAD SEX WITH THE SITUATION’S SISTER! HE HAD SEX WITH THE SITUATION’S SISTER! HE HAD SEX WITH THE SITUATION’S SISTER! That is all.

1. Pauly D: Pauly D learned so much about Jewish culture this week it ain’t even funny. Like, did you know that if you’re a Jewish, you can’t have sex until marriage? In completely unrelated news, Pauly D is now an antisemite.

Okay, that wraps it up for this week since I’ve got hellof homework to do. Check back soon for a post that’s not about JERSEY SHORE for once.

JERSEY SHORE POWER RANKINGS, ROUND TWO

There were a few questions regarding my criteria for ranking America’s favorite functioning alcoholics, so before I get into the power rankings I’m going to clear some stuff up.

• Everyone gets ranked from best to worst, one being the best and seven being the worst. I think this week I’m going to go in descending order to make things more dramatic.

• Pauly D is the best person on the show. He always will be. It would be boring to rank him at number one every week, so he gets graded on a cruve.

• Everyone else is ranked as to how interesting they were that particular week, as well as how much I hated them.

• I tweeted sixteen times about Jersey Shore last night. Sorry, everybody.

• Werewolves can smell vampires.

So without further adieu, here are this week’s JERSEY SHORE POWER RANKINGS:

7. Sammi – At some point, we’re just all going to have to admit it: Sammi is incredibly self-absorbed. She got in a fight with Ron because he made fun of her toes? What? Sammi, you lose.

(SAMMI ONLY CARES ABOUT SHORTS WHAT ABOUT RON RON)

6. JWoWW – Was the Shore’s favorite chronically unfaithful girlfriend even in this episode? I don’t remember her doing a single thing. But it’s okay, at least she wasn’t a grenade like Sammi.

(JWOWW FACT: On her website, under the section labeled "My Beauty," there is a link to her plastic surgeon. This explains everything.)

5. Ron Ron – After Ronski’s stellar showing last week, he turns around and pulls some shit like this. I’m deeply, deeply disappointed in you, Ron Ron. On the other hand, his nickname is the most evocative of simian imagery, which is good because in his heart, Ron Ron is a lovesick gorilla. Homie got into a fight pretty hard this week, but to be fair he was baited into this one. I also read on the internet that he got arrested for fighting that guy, but the charges were dismissed so it's whatever.

(While Ronnie may not have clearly defined abs, he does have a clearly defined nipple piercing.)

4. Pauly D – the only thing that saves him from a really low Power Ranking is that when he was consoling Snooki about having been left by her “friend” who was more interested in finding a non-midget to get his mouth-slobber all over, he accidentally made a Flannery O’Connor reference when he said, “A good man is hard to find, Snooks.” Also I think he’s the one who said they had been “Italianizing” Michael Cera, but I can’t remember because the episode was like two days ago and I’m too lazy to re-watch it.

(Michael Cera: "I've made a huge mistake.")

3. THE SITUATION – I am supremely conflicted about THE SITUATION. On one hand, he is clearly a lecherous asshole. And for the second week in a row, he caused Snooki to get punched in the face. On the other, he is the catalyst for most of the mayhem that occurs on the show. Much like Angelina the bartender, he does great things. Things like calling one hundred girls in a night, only expecting to talk to like ten of them and get maybe three of them to hang out with him, and once he does manage to trick a female into getting within a hundred mile radius of him, he then refers to them as “zoo creatures” and “grenade launchers.” He would have gotten ranked higher, but he was mean to Vinny. Don’t be mean to Vinny.

(TANGENT: If we could, for a moment, visit the academic tomes of Jersey Grenade Theory: A girl who’s a buzzkill is a grenade. Should the “Grenade Launcher” be that which spawned said grenade? No. Stop using logic. A Grenade Launcher is just a really, really big grenade. Duh.).

(THE SITUATION in simpler times, when he was merely a male stripper with a heart of gold.)

2. Snooki – SNOOKI GOT PUNCHED IN THE FACE AGAIN. And then she gets left by some dude so he can go “creep” on chicks with the rest of the fine, upstanding male members of the JS house. I feel so bad for her. If I could marry Snooki, I would. Well, I wouldn’t actually marry her, but you get the point.

(Snooks is only four-feet nine, but she's fifteen feet tall if you add the spunkiness and hair together.)

1. Vinny – I think every episode, one Guido gets their shot at a humanizing themselves. Except with Vinny, that episode is most episodes. Dude is a walking, talking ball of normal. Living in that house must be like his personal One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Usually his normalcy (word to Warren G. Harding) manifests itself in Vin Vin getting approximately zero screen time, but this week he had so much to do. He got not-fired for hooking up with his boss’s special lady-friend, he introduced his mom to the world, and he called out the rest of the dudes for their suspiciously vain “GTL” habits. For those of you who ain’t already know, “GTL” is an acronym that stands for “Gym, Tanning, Laundry.” Which is exactly what Pauly D, Ron Ron and the Situation do every single morning. Anyhoo, Vinny also took the Sitch’s sister out on a kind-of date, but he was afraid of her because he didn’t want the Situation to beat him up.

(This picture makes me wonder if Vinny is an amputee. Look at his left leg. WHERE IS THE REST OF IT???)

Here’s to hoping that next week, when the gang takes the sparkly, gelled show on the road to Atlantic City, that Ronnie and Sammi get in a fight, the Situation is creepy and awesome, Pauly D says something deeply profound on accident, and Snooki finally hooks up with somebody. Woo-ha.

A Polk County Foxhunting Ballad

It begins with a Subaru. I had taken Forrester Whittaker to get worked on at Stott’s Ford, and decided to grab a breakfast sandwich at the Trade Street Café (though I’m rarely awake for though, I love me some breakfast sammiches). While I was waiting for my food, I just so happened to grab a copy of Appointments – The Hoofbeats of the Carolina Foothills, in order to entertain myself.

In addition to having the worst (or best) title in the world, Appointments is a newsletter put out by horse people, for horse people, about, well, horse people. As I skimmed through the magazine, I happened upon an article that claimed that once upon a time, Polk County was considered “one of the best horse and foxhunting counties in the world.”

As far as I knew, Polk County is and has always been Horse Country. But as for fox hunting…let me put it this way. In the seventeen years that I have lived here, I haven’t seen a single fox, except for the stuffed one in the lobby of the bourgie mecca that is Red Fox Country Club.

At first, I didn’t believe this article. How could Polk County be such a great place for fox hunting if there aren’t very many foxes left? OH WAIT. BECAUSE FOX HUNTERS MUST HAVE KILLED ALL THE FUCKING FOXES.

In the unlikely event that you’re a fox hunting enthusiast and reading this, please forgive me, for I know not of what I speak, and I mean no harm to you, just like you mean no harm to those adorable little foxes.

Now I might just be saying this because I have no idea what I’m talking about, but isn’t fox hunting cruel to animals? Because of how you have to, like, kill the fox? I looked it up on the internet, and fox hunting works like this: A bunch of people get together, jump on some horses, and follow some dogs while the dogs chase a fox. The dogs then kill the fox, and the “hunters” (who, let’s face it, really aren’t hunters as much as they’re followers) then have tea and talk about the latest ways to oppress the proletariat. And then, there’s the type of fox hunting where they take an already-dead fox, hide it somewhere, and let the dogs follow the scent to it.

Me, I see no difference. Either way you end up with a dead fox.

JERSEY SHORE POWER RANKINGS

God, do I love The Jersey Shore. Those lovable guido boozehounds are going to fight and/or creep on the entire population of New Jersey before the show is over, but not before I start my weekly tradition of the JERSEY SHORE POWER RANKINGS. Here’s the cast, ranked from best guido to worst. Sadly, Angelina seems to have quit the show ever since her boyfriend dumped her, which forced her to skip work. Or something.

1. Ronnie – Ron Ron really came into his own this week. He declared everybody in the house a family, stood up to THE SITUATION at the dinner table, had Sammi (his main smush, if you’ve forgotten) meet his mom, and just acted in a way that was all around non-troglodytic. When he was introduced, we all thought Ronnie, with his faux-hawk, clearly steroid-enhanced muscles and seeming aversion to sleeves, was going to be a complete and total trashbag. However, Ronnie then fell in love with Sammi and through his love, worked his way up from the bottom to the top of the guido heap, just like Spartacus except with hair gel. Look for him to fall from grace next week, though, since the previews show him punching somebody, which will make it the third episode in a row that somebody has gotten punched in front of a Jersey Shore cameraman.

(Guidos do not have armpit hair.)

2. JWoww – When we think of matriarchs, the name Mother Theresa comes to mind. Or Ghandi. Well, JWoWw is like Mother Theresa and Ghandi rolled into one, if Mother Theresaghandi punched people when they called her friends fat. Regardless, JWao really stepped up and mothered the shit out of Snooki when that dude punched her in the face, even going so far as to magnanimously get drunk with her at 1:00 in the afternoon.

(JWoWW with Michael Cera, because that makes sense)

3. Pauly D – By now, it should have already been established that Pauly D is the ultimate guido on this show, which makes him harder to rate due to the fact that he clearly exists at a higher plane of Guido-ness than the other Jersey Shore housemates. So instead of rating him according to whether he did better or worse things than everybody else, let’s look at his journey on his quest to become self-actualized. Even though he was technically “employed” at the Shore Shop, was Pauly D doing what he REALLY wanted to do? No. He was not DJing, which was detrimental to his self-esteem. So he called up some club and booked a spot spinning the wheels of steel from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m., which seems awfully early to be working the ones and twos at a nightclub. I guess they party harder on the Jersey Shore than everywhere else in the world, or that was the only time slot the producers of the show could get him on such short notice. Also, if you peruse the little snippet about him on Wikipeia, Pauly D is 28 and “owns a tanning bed in his house and spends around 25 minutes daily on his hair. As a DJ, he is very confident around women.” He’s 28? Holy fuck. That tanning bed must keep him looking perpetually 23. Furthermore, I was not aware that being a DJ was a personality trait that imbued oneself with confidence. At least he claimed that his hair was soccer-proof.

(HE HAS A CADILLAC TATTOO HOW CAN ANYBODY COMPETE WITH THAT?)

4. Snooki/ Vinnie – Let’s talk about how nobody knows Snooki’s real name. She might as well just legally change her name to Snooki, since everybody calls her that when they’re not calling her “Snickers” or “Snookers.” Homegirl’s nicknames have nicknames. She seems to be recovering nicely from getting socked by that guy, and the house has definitely rallied around her recovery.

(Snooki, wearing the wallpaper)

This was a big episode for Vinnie. In fact, this so far has been the only big episode for Vinnie, who after showing off his shaved eyebrows and getting pinkeye in the first episode, has quietly been acting like a normal human being. But on Thursday he committed improprieties up and down that boardwalk. On one hand, he was leading the charge to fight that guy who punched Snooki and had to be held back by the police, PLUS he made the utterly progressive (if only in terms of the way that The Situation and Pauly D see things) observation that, “Some girls you have to treat like human beings.” On the other hand, he hooked up with his boss’s wife in front of said boss, so he may not be long for the Shore.

(Vinnie is the opposite of a "ballin'" dude)

5. Sammi – The main problem with Sammi is that the show depicts her as kind of a wet blanket to Ronnie’s awesomeness, which probably isn’t true in real life. However, she didn’t really do anything of note this episode other than take like two hours to get ready, which pissed Ron Ron’s mom off. And if there’s one thing this show has taught us, if Ron Ron’s mom ain’t happy, nobody happy.

(Sammi, probably telling Mike to go away)

6. THE SITUATION – When the show began, I was perversely interested in Mike because he was so ridiculous and acted in a manner that wasn’t at all consistent with the rest of humanity. Simply put, I loved THE SITUATION because he couldn’t possibly be real. As time has worn on, it turns out that he is real – a real trashbag, that is! Ba-zing! First, he hits on some random chick while everybody else is tending to a recently downed Snickerdoodles, and then he has the audacity to not clean his plate up after dinner? Dude is quickly turning into the heel of the Jersey Shore. Damn it, THE SITUATION, stop making me hate you.