Album: Big Boi — “Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors”

Album: Big Boi — “Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors”
Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday by far, makes us engage in behavior that under normal circumstances would appear crazy. This sociologically-documented phenomenon stretches all the way back to the first Thanksgiving on Plymouth Rock. Instead of serving Pocahontas’ and Squanto’s tribes a small pox cocktail like they usually did, John Smith, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan shared a meal of turkey, fried green bean casserole and Stove Top stuffing with them, piling all of the food into a giant cornucopia. No muskets were even brought to this feast. Isn’t America great?
In modern times, these behavioral transformations are more subtle Continue reading
On a Sunday afternoon this summer on my way to a coffee shop, I parked my car on the side of West Beaver Avenue, a road that cuts through a leafy neighborhood adjacent to downtown. The residents are primarily college students, you know, real salt of the earth inhabitants. Rather than measure worth by monetary gain, stature is gauged by seconds spent standing upside-down atop a keg, or by swiftness of movement after lighting a couch on fire in the middle of the street. The simplistic beauty of this lifestyle reminds me of late 19th-century America, when men and women lived off the land and daily alcohol consumption stood at about a liter per capita.
I live a half-mile away from the student neighborhood in a subdivision known as College Heights. The neighborhood, for the most part, houses professors and their families. It’s kind of quiet. It is famously where Joe Paterno lived for most of his life. The houses and the inhabitants are old, the structures and the humans dating back to the 1930s.
Trash pickup here is on Monday mornings. Yellow bags rest on yellowing lawns. There is nothing else to the curbside landscape. The opposite is true in the Beaver Avenue neighborhood. Trash heaps, nearly every week of every week, are like free stores. I’ve seen skis, computer speakers, mattresses, dressers, desks, lamps, Dodge Vipers and actual vipers. Whatever does not work for you will work for someone else. One man’s venomous snake is another man’s treasure. Continue reading
Fifteen years ago, a mogul who’d lost his best friend to murder and had his name implicated in the murder of an enemy changed the world of rap music despite the fact that he could barely rap. Remember? Maybe the glare from this glimmering jumpsuit will refresh your memory.
I took this picture on Friday night. Tweeted it to a public and media that were growing increasingly frantic about any hint as to whether a jury would make its decision or deliberate deeper into the weekend.
The picture displays Jerry Sandusky leaving his house for what would be the last time, Continue reading
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Cereal: Frosted Toast Crunch
When I was younger, maybe five or six years old, my mom refused to let my brother, sister and I eat sugary cereals. She reasoned we ate so much sugar during the day, during the rest of our meals that an added significant dosage at breakfast would make us grow up to become bank robbers. This might have been a fair argument. But we were young. We didn’t know any better, and those damn commercials with cartoon rabbits and the fluorescent glow of cardboard boxes perpetrated our minds, alluring us to the sugary side. We begged nonstop.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Album: “In My G4 Over Da Sea” — Neutral Bling Hotel
In February 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea”, a seminal concoction* of lo-fi indie rock.
*If you’ve never listened to the blown-out guitars on “Holland, 1945″, well, do so right now.
After the release of the album, Neutral Milk frontman Jeff Mangum more or less disappeared for the next decade. He stopped releasing music and only showed up to play live shows within the last few years.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
A certain segment of the population knows Lena Dunham as the New York-bred, tattooed creator and protagonist of the HBO series “Girls”. But I, myself, must admit I’ve never seen an episode of the ultra-trendy (and maybe sort of controversial*) series. (Blame my schedule and lack of an HBO subscription.) Continue reading
The summery, lamb phase of the spring has arrived. Brunch will be served at outdoor tables. Someone will actually buy a Bartles and Jaymes beverage. Tops will come off convertibles and spray-tanned meatheads. And I will begin wearing jerseys, Champion replica NBA jerseys and Starter replica NCAA jerseys, mainly those of obscure players, like Kerry Kittles, and teams, like the Nets, who I care nothing about, because I dress like a hoopster.
Deadspin began cataloguing the emergence of this cultural fashion movement two years ago when it ran pictures under the tag “Look At This Fucking Hoopster.” After Lollapalooza, they featured a photo gallery of many a hipster rocking a jersey. The New York Times then ran one of their Style-section trend stories about hoopsters, which prompted Deadspin to announce that the trend was over.
For me, it was never over and still isn’t. I may dress like one, but I’m not a hoopster. I’m original. I didn’t just wear the jerseys, I wore them with my yellow Guatemalan shorts or nylon warmup pants, sometimes with a head band, and I have the clear-cut, non-sepia-tinged random tight pic from a 2006 night out to prove it. And yes, that is a Clippers warm-up jersey atop the St. John’s jersey.