9/10

Who is Rocco? Who cares. What does matter are the numerous videos he decides to favorite on youtube. I have seen some of the greatest things in real life. The Grand Canyon, the birth of a child, but nothing compares to Rocco’s favorites on youtube. Rocco’s favorites are like herpes, you just want to share them with the whole world!

The videos for the most part are comedic, though others slant towards unsettling humor or are just plain surreal. Sometimes I will be up at 3am in my boxers, eating Cheese-it cereal, and yelling “What am I watching!?!??!”. I then laugh hysterically for 10 minutes as it morphs into desperate crying only to be interrupted by coughing up blood. I hope you enjoy it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/RoccoB64

-MP

Sensual BBW In Markers by The American Dream

8/10

I don’t know what to say other then I am stoked on freckles.

-sc.

Owning the entire 1957 edition Junior Classics Storybook Series for 22 years and opening for the first time today.

10/10

I live in my parents basement and I must admit it’s pretty badass to have a little man cave where I can sleep and blare Noothgrush at 3 in the morning while my parents are catching up on some Z’s. BUT whenever a girl walks into my bedroom the first thing they see is the terrible attempt at graffiti on my red bookcase. The second and most amazing thing they catch is the ENTIRE 1957 set of Junior Classics on that same disgusting bookshelf. I don’t know who these things belong to or where they came from, but since I can remember they have just been chilling out in our Cosandium mansion of quaker radness. I strategically placed them in the middle shelf so anyone who dares to look at my blizzard of shit will see them right away, IN ORDER FROM ‘FAIRY TALES AND FABLES’ straight through to ‘POETRY READING GUIDE INDEXES’. Hell yeah. Not only did I dust them off this morning, but I didn’t even read a single story. I literally skimmed through all of them to see the pictures. They have some pretty good pictures. I feel good about myself.

- SC

7/10

My car window got busted a week or so ago and my friend and band mate’s 80 gig Ipod was ripped off. They didn’t seem interested in my Sabbath tape for some strange reason. Anyway, I’ve been having to drive my sister’s smoking hot ‘95 Toyota Corolla, complete with World Peace,Tau Beta Sigma, and ‘Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History’ stickers. Outside of being a sardine tin death trap, some form of black magic has damned this automotive gem’s brakes to generate a high pitched screeching sound every time you brake too hard. This long ago earned it the loving nickname Squeals. Despite all of this however we come to the totally tubular CD deck we had installed around 2003, I was spoiled by my Buick Century’s tape deck because I was able to force feed it the future with the employment of a space aged tape converter courtesy of Best Buy for ten bucks. But now I find myself back in my high school habit of burning sweet mix CDs and digging through dusty spindles of epic purchases from a Zia Records that no longer exists. I have to say it’s actually been quite pleasant. I know it’s pretty grody to even conceive of listening to CDs in these times of analog retro chic. But I think it’s awesome that I can splice together some totally wicked jams in a matter of minutes and be on my way. I’d like to see CD’s crawl back to the top of the eternal battle for format superiority. I’d like to see a mass of discman’s and oversized Natalie Portman headphones when I walk onto ASU campus next semester. Ipods are maddeningly hard to cope with simply due to the overwhelming amount of tuneage you can fit on there. I often spend half my commute recklessly driving while searching for that perfect record amidst the tidal waves of digital vomit I have on my ipod. CDs are so cheap these days that you can pre-game your entire days listening as frequent as you want and waste no time endangering the lives of others on the SR 51. I believe there’s a case to be made for CDs and await the coming days of ebaying limited pressing demo CDs, because it’s just as fucking arbitrary in the end isn’t it?  

-RC

Opposable Thumbs

10/10

I’ve spent a pretty good percentage of today thinking about how much being able to hold shit in our hands rules. I feel like when you, say, do too many sit-ups, your stomach is really sore the next day, and only then do you realize how much you use your abdominal muscles for; however, even this pales in comparison to how many cool things you can do with opposable thumbs. For example: I shotgunned a beer a few hours ago, and how else would I have held the can? Essentially, nothing I’ve done today, apart from the nap I took earlier, could have been accomplished without the use of my thumbs, and I feel like that’s the case every day.

-JS

The Leafy Sea Dragon

10/10

Just look at this guy. He is an underwater bro that looks like seaweed. This is how he survives from predators. It reminds me of cartoons when people would wear a bush and sneak around only cooler unless you know someone that IS a bush. He also kind of floats around motionless like a piece of seaweed so if you are underwater swimming and seaweed slaps your face don’t smack it away because you might kill one of these little guys….you jerk. He also has a less popular relative called the Weedy Sea Dragon, but they are very similar looking. There is a Leafy Sea Dragon festival, whereas the Weedy Sea Dragon doesn’t have one, but I give them both a 10.

-MP

Seeing Your Band’s CD at a Thrift Store

3/10

Seeing your band’s cd in a thrift store might be cool if you are a local band that is fairly unknown because then you’d be stoked that someone bought your cd in the first place, but if you’ve had notable success it would bum you out. Or at least it would bum me out. I mean I have seen my band’s cd used at record stores around here and that’s cool, but I wonder if the dudes from Alien Ant Farm get bummed when they see their album without fail every time they go to the thrift store. I mean not only are they seeing their cd there, but being at the thrift store in general must be a humbling experience for them. He might even return home feeling pretty sad and say to his wife “Honey, I saw ‘ANThology’ again at the thrift store…this time next to a smurf cup and evangelical cassette tapes.” After all, they had a fairly popular single that they still gather royalties from, along with MTV appearances, but now that the fame is over they are probably scrounging for used Levis with the rest of the working class joes. Personally, I love thrift stores, but I bet that guy from Alien Ant Farm thinks they are gay. I mean, realistically, the guy from Alien Ant Farm is probably still doing alright financially. My point is seeing your cd in a thrift store more often than not means it’s pretty much over. I mean when people are donating your cd that means that even the soccer mom that likes every band MTV shits out doesn’t want your cd anymore. I remember seeing a Backstreet Boys t-shirt at Savers a billion years ago and I stopped and smiled because I knew it was finally over for them. Of course this only really applies to an Alien Ant Farm type band, which this review is targeted to. I mean if you see a Beatles album it’s not really suprising or negative. They were obviously just so popular that their albums made it everywhere, rather than an Alien Ant Farm cd, tossed aside like a used condom.

As an extra bonus to this review I give looking through photo albums at thrift stores an 8/10. It would be higher, but these days they are pretty good at cleaning those out before they get to the shelves. I have found some interesting things in those. Also listening to people’s answering machine tapes is pretty fun too.

-MP

Red stuff all over my body. 

6.5/10

It is normal for people to get eczema when the weather starts to change because of a basic allergic reaction. Everybody knows that. About a month ago I started getting what I thought was eczema on my legs. Normal shit, whatever. Well it hasn’t gone away. It’s still hanging out, just mellowed out and shit… Reading a book on the lawn outside the library type shit. So I went to my doctor and he gave me some pills to take. They made me feel weird and kind of speedy. They didn’t help so he gave me some other pills. I ate those pills for a week and they didn’t help. So I went back to the doctor for the second time and he gave me some other pills. I ate those pills for a week and they made my stomach hurt all the time. So now I’m all out of pills and I’m still red. Now contrary to popular belief, having a horrible breakout all over your body isn’t all that bad. While I might itch in places I cannot reach, I have reasons to wear jeans and long sleeve shirts while is 85 degrees outside. Another great reason I feel like I’d like to keep this ailment from leaving my body is the fact that when it is exposed people seem to stay away from me, especially girls. Good thing. The worst part about it is that my knees are really itchy and usually scratching at your knees is the greatest feeling in the world, but I just flake everywhere and it’s kind of gross. 

-SC

6/10

Being out of the loop has it’s perks. For instance I don’t know who this Bieber dude is. So much so that I might have not spelled his name right. I see his name everywhere and I don’t know who or what he is. He could easily be a political pundit, but the fashion in which his name is used leads me to believe he’s someone else. Truthfully though Bieber inspired me to write this, because I finally saw a picture of him and he is some little kid. I still don’t know why people are talking about him, but I now know he isn’t some hot brad pitt type bro that stars in romantic comedies. I also don’t know what 3G and 4G is. I know it’s related to cell phones. I know it’s better to have 4G because ‘4’ is a bigger number than ‘3’, but that’s all I know. Being out of the loop is a bad thing sometimes though. Like if people are giving away free shit. However, I wonder if the irritation of being exposed to pointless and garish media personalities is worth any perks from being in loop. At least I remain in the loop with music…and I mean good music either mainstream or “underground”. Like the other day I heard of this band The Muse and…..

-MP

6.5/10

So I was visiting a mall in Brooklyn the other day to look at things in Guitar Center with my friends Quinn and Benji. We were under time constraints, as we had to be elsewhere to see a movie, but we had passed a Cold Stone on the way into the mall, so we set aside the time to get something from our favorite overpriced-but-delicious ice cream chain.

As we walked from Guitar Center to Cold Stone, I was already considering whether to get my “usual,” cheesecake ice cream with peanut butter cups and strawberries mixed in, or to try something new. I guess Benji was doing the same thing, as he absentmindedly referred to the shop as “Stone Cold Creamery.” This immediately took my mind to a vision of Steve Austin looking tough and eating Cold Stone, then to a vision of Steve Austin behind the counter, dressed in apron and visor, telling an indecisive eight-year-old to hurry the fuck up and pick something.

I fully realize that in 2010 (or 2009 at the time), Stone Cold is far from a household name; however, when he was dominating in the ring, I was about eleven, in fourth grade, and all my peers were seriously into pro wrestling. There were wrestling-themed birthday parties at which I gave the gift of wrestling action figures or Stone Cold sheets or something, and definitely a few occasions in which I myself was the recipient of an action figure. (The most notable being Chris Benoit, something I absolutely wish I could find now.) I didn’t get cable, so I had to ask around to see whether Undertaker had beaten Goldberg the night before or something, but when someone referenced Stone Cold Steve Austin 3:16, the toughest of all wrestlers, who invariably had demolished anyone daring to face him, my fourth-grade self got pretty fucking stoked. As such, if this had been an idea when everyone gave a shit about the WWF (now WWE), I would give this a solid ten and be on the phone with the Cold Stone people ASAP.

For this reason, my mind immediately zoomed to Stone Cold at Benji’s slip of tongue, but times have changed: Steve has been out of the game for a while, to my knowledge, and his last public venture, the 2007 WWE film “The Condemned,” was a commercial and critical failure. Pro wrestling itself, meanwhile, has seemingly been eclipsed by UFC, a REAL contact sport. Cold Stone is clearly at the top of its game, and, while not quite being the dominant force in ice cream that, say, Starbucks is with coffee, I never see a Cold Stone doing anything but brisk business regardless of temperature. As such, a cross-promotion would do much more for Stone Cold than it would for Cold Stone. I had initially thought this idea was about a 9, but this alone knocks it down to about an 8.

This, however, is not all. Cold Stone’s primary audience appears to be families, not wrestling fans. A promotion involving a still-tough Steve Austin could drive away loyal customers, while a toned-down Steve would only confuse fans of Cold Stone and draw scorn from fans of Stone Cold. For this I knock it down to a 7. Finally, let us consider the product: ice cream. If there were a Cold Stone Beer, this would be a very, very feasible idea, but ice cream is not inherently “tough,” which may be nitpicking, but is still grounds for a .5-point deduction. This brings my final rating to a 6.5, which still sounds sort of inflated to me, but optimistic Jack Schoonover really, really wants this to happen. I declare this to be a passable idea.

JS