RAP ALBUM SECOND INTRO-ESQUE SECOND BLOG POST INTRO: So, shit done changed. I moved to New York and started about fifteen different tumlbrs. Chad straightened up, flew right. Mad Dog finna move to Los Angeles. Price works at a sorority, as does the Honorable John Tyler Mills who never actually wrote the Bolg but HEY whatever. Nolan wears a cow suit some of the time. What has not changed, however, is our complete dedication to life, liberty and the pursuit of getting drunk and doing stupid shit. HI MOM, etc.

As most stories do, this one begins at a liquor store in Midtown. If you don’t know anything about New York (why would you), Midtown is literally the part of Manhattan that is in the middle. There are lots of offices there, and you will probably not get shot. It is very far, both physically and philosophically, from where I live in Williamsburg.[1] Its population of hipsters on this particular night was basically one, and that guy was me.

Oh shit. Liquor store. It was my friend D-Magician’s birthday, and so there was a certain need for a certain something. I will dub this the “whiskey imperative.” One bottle of Jack Daniels (NO FUCKING LIQUOR STORES IN NYC HAVE OLD CROW WHAT THE FUCK) later, the whiskey imperative was satisfied. However, as OTHER FRIEND SWEET DADDDDY[2] and I were about to check out of Alcoholsberg, I spied something that was so beautiful, so perfect, so completely fucking dumb, that I had to buy it.

CREAM. Not to be confused with QREAM, which is Pharrell’s milky vodka beverage which is basically exclusively served in strip clubs, but CREAM, aka alcoholic whipped cream that you are weirdly not allowed to refrigerate. I was a man possessed. More accurately, I was a man who wanted to possess, which is probably more dangerous. So I bought it. Caramel flavor.

From there, it was to an apartment full of dudes to pregame. Apparently guys who were in frats like to pregame separately and then game-game with girls who used to be in sororities sometimes, because that’s what happened to me on my adventures.

Once apartmented, we were informed that we might be heading out to another bar later, so D-Magician and I decided that we should probably sneak some alcohol into the bar. In our stomachs.

(So recently, I went to a DMX concert in New York, and he was like, “Okaysowe’regonnaplayagame. Thisgame. Is called. Sip. Andpass. Sip. Andpass.” And then he proceeded to make the entire front row of the audience drink from a bottle of Hennessey. For those of you wondering if a thousand colds were spread that night, alcohol kills germs, duhhhhhhh. ANYWAYS, this game is super fun, especially if you only have two people playing and want to do some property damage at some point in the evening, YOLO!)

After about ten rounds of Sip. Andpass., topped off by a healthy dollop of CREAM, the odds of me not getting fucked the fuck and acting like an idiot were beginning to approach the odds of two people having a not completely soul-crushingly awkward OkCupid date. In other words, VERY bad odds. Like, I was so drunk I stopped tasting alcohol and couldn’t feel my hands and stuff. Anyways, I ended up yelling at a bunch of people who are probs p nice IRL when they don’t have a drunk dude in skinny jeans all up in their space barking at them about whatever I ramble about when I’m wasted (Steve Albini? Sports?), and then somehow something about a sports bar and the next thing I know I’m in a cab and HOLY FUCK WHERE IS MY COAT???

That coat is gone, friends. I did, however, jump out of my cab in the middle of the LES, so shouts out to my friend for not letting me die and instead convincing me to get back in the cab. In closing, thanks for stopping by. Remember how my posts would just kind of peter out and not go anywhere? I mean, yeah.

[1] God, am I a dick for living in Williamsburg? Yeah, probably.

[2] They made those nicknames up when I hit them up on gchat and was like “quick think of a stupid nickname for yourself the floor is lava!”

Now, as you may have heard, Portland is cool. Saying Portland is cool is like saying Colin Stetson[4] is good at the saxophone, or, if you write for Tiny Mix Tapes, like saying Wittgenstein is skeptical of philosophy. Like, Portland is so cool that the whole idea of counter-culture has been lost, and now the only way to stand out is to not have tattoos, or maybe drive a car. Although that’s not quite true, because when I got hit by a car on my bike[5] it turned out the bro who hit me was a (stoned) bike mechanic. Anyways, the point is that this town is some straight-up Twilight Zone shit where independently owned coffee shops, art galleries and food trucks have stopped challenging cultural norms and instead usurped them.

How was it so easy for seemingly necessarily underground trends that are only cool because they are in opposition to a lamestream culture to just become real-world equivalents of The Strokes[6]? Well, not having any culture in the first place is a great start.[7]

Xzibit A would have to be the statues commemorating Portland’s tumultuous founding and subsequent heart-wrenching militaristic victories that can be found in the downtown area. Observe the graphic detail with which every iota of passion that makes Portland great is controversially, yet undeniably brilliantly, encapsulated in one sole monument:

Xzibit B is the city’s migration patterns, which I am way too lazy to look up right now. From what I can tell, Portland doesn’t have schools. One time, I thought I found a public school because I was biking near a field at 3:30 in the afternoon on a weekday and I saw a road that was closed off and had a crossing guard on either side. Not letting the prospect of running over children get in the way between me and a vegan bakery, I tore through the street at a minimum of 7 mph, but instead of children, I saw somebody doing Carrie Brownstein’s makeup. Yes, I had accidentally fulfilled the “Portlandia” biker stereotype and biked through a filming of “Portlandia,” not through a school letting out. So yeah there are schools in Portland somewhere, but they’re kind of in the shitter and my guess is a lot of the people moving here aren’t concerned about setting up families because they are either in their twenties and drinking microbrews every night[8] or in their thirties and drinking microbrews every afternoon. When people move to a city just to hang out, they probably aren’t planning on staying very long or settling down, and this endangers a long-lasting sense of community and kills any chance at a shared history. As this slowly begins to change, I’m curious to see what effects it will have on the town, but equally afraid to see what effects it will have on the Next Generation when they find out there’s a real world out there.

Xzibit C is Mount Tabor, which brings us to the title you thought was just a witty quip unrelated to the content of this post. Mount Tabor is a volcano. It is well within the city limits of Portland. It’s inactive, but, as my buddy KStein put it, that’s only because it’s in Portland. Portland, then, is a city with a volcano. There are not very many cities with volcanoes. Only one person here has talked about Mount Tabor, and he is my friend from home who was hanging out here for a few weeks. What’s cooler than having a volcano that you can take an easy bike ride up to and picnic on for an evening? Being too cool to care.

Now I’m all for apathy and irony[9] in the face of a global situation we are all terrified to enter in a few years, but I’d like to think that even the most Carrburntout of the Carrburnouts has a breaking point. When, back in Based God’s country, I see a cigarette fogging up horn-rimmed glasses as it sticks out of a patchy beard, I can at least safely assume there was some level of effort that went into this present-day ennui. For the townies, this comes from Actually Having A Job, something that Portland seems firmly opposed to, both from unemployment rates and an unearned sense of entitlement that our generation admittedly owns the shit out of. For the students and former students, this comes from reading a thousand pages of critical theory a night for a few years and then realizing that it’s all bullshit and giving up on ever amounting to anything. So while both of these states lead to a person who looks dead behind the eyes and baffles the lamestreamers with their seeming ability to care about nothing other than the next Group Doueh[10] release, and while I don’t want to sound like an asshole by saying these folk have earned their place in the world, at the very least I can say they weren’t (all) thrust there as a result of being born into a fortunate financial situation and never doing anything on their own. Obvz, Portland has a whole lot of exceptions, but as a city without a dominant university, a high unemployment rate and the aforementioned overwhelming amount of cool shit that requires minimal levels of engagement on the part of the consumer[11], it’s less of a sweeping overgeneralization than most of my opinions about things that aren’t Xiu Xiu.[12]

Now, if I wasn’t going out of my way to prove a point here, I could talk about how I’ve never been in such a widespread community before that cares so much about the arts and individual expression, and how the accepting nature of the city literally permeates everything from the vegan options at taco trucks onwards, but life isn’t all about ironically going to see Taking Back Sunday with your friends. Without a sense of being grounded in something real, that punk rock feeling of rebellion that turns something as simple as your style of throw in Canhole into a lowercase ‘s’ statement loses its cosmic significance. Come to think of it, it is precisely this fear of excess and lost ambitions that Portland’s ancestors were warning us against when they plopped this baby in the heart of the Pearl District:

AckLOLedgements:
I have been in sPortland for two months and Chapel Hill/Carrboro for 19 years. Maybe my point of comparison isn’t quite unbiased and I am missing something. Don’t think I didn’t catch that. Also, all the local bands I’ve seen here have been bafflingly mediocre.

[2] This song seriously comes into my head every time I hear the word ‘lost’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ7lMcNnFCI

[3] You haven’t heard of this band

[4] See footnote 3

[5] Don’t worry, my tattoo of Scott Stapp reading a book was fine

[6] Negate footnote 3

[7] Bromeo, if that was too many words, you can change that sentence to just read “white people”

[8] The grocery mega-chains here all sell microbrews

[9] In at most three months, Apathy and Irony will be a reference to footnote 3

[10] Did you know you could use WXYC’s phone number as your VIC card contact info at Harris Teeter?

[11] DID I MENTION THAT LIKE NOBODY HERE EVEN WEARS JORTS? GAME-SET-MATCH CARRBORO

[12] Chad and I first became friends after seeing each other at a Xiu Xiu concert and each having the distinct thought of “damnit, I thought I was going to be the only one here who wasn’t a thirteen-year-old Hot Topic girl”

I am working at Target, which is cool!  I sell electronics to old people, and if I’m lucky I get to sell to MILFs.  LOL!  It doesn’t pay very well, but the economy sucks a big one right now so I guess I just have to do it…  I get to work with many people in a different social cast than me so that is kind of cool though.  I’m learning a lot about different cultures such as black and hispanics.

Chillin’ at the pool (kiddie) a ton, I might upload some pics of how tan I am later if you’re lucky :p .  No school so it is basically an all day party.  Me and Cameron stayed up till 10 a.m. the other day!  WHOA!

Moving into Carrboro tomorrow and can’t WAIT to change my Facebook profile to match my new location!  Entry level to alt in the click of a button.  Come visit and drink some beers soon.

Anyways, check ya later!

Sup y’all! I live in New York now! Right now I’m sitting in the back of a classroom watching two web designers explain, um, web design, but mainly I am thinking about how DREW YORK, while it features many fine memes and YouTube videos coupled with decontexualized Potheads lyrics, contains no actual “this is what I’m doing in New York” type stuff. So instead of updating my Tumblr, I decided I would just update The Bolg!

I’ve been an official denizen of New York for about two weeks. I live in a neighborhood called Williamsburg, which is in Brooklyn. If you don’t know all of the connotations of the previous sentence, Williamsburg is, to borrow a favorite phrase from Portlandia, where young people go to retire. It is basically a self-sustaining ecosystem where everyone manages to survive through working at a record store/vintage clothes shop/tattoo parlor/music venue/bar/having their parents give them money.

On my street, there is a record store, probably three bars, a music venue, a vintage clothing store, and a heavy metal-themed hair place called “Hair Metal.” Also, there is a CVS. Across from my apartment is another apartment. Every Saturday, the five people who live there set up lawn chairs on the sidewalk, drink PBR and try to sell broken toys to whoever walks by them. I’m not sure whether they’re kidding or not.

The program that I’m enrolled in is, well, the type of program that was probably not designed for me. Here is the gist of it in a nutshell: high-powered magazine industry professionals come and talk to us about”networking” and “turning magazines into brands” and “making people pay to read things on an iPad.” The last thing that any of these people are concerned about is what actually shows up in a magazine, which is disheartening to say the least. They always refer to it as “content,” and it is always secondary to everything else. The only dude who was seemed to feel otherwise was the Editor-In-Chief of The Atlantic, whose message was essentially, “There’s no need to bombard people with crazy bullshit if you’re giving them good writing, because they will read it and then advertisers will want to advertise with you and then you will still make money.” That was heartening, but his message was lost upon many people in my program, because he did not have a super neat PowerPoint presentation like the dude from High Times had. Also, the dude from High Times came and spoke to my program. I talked to him for a couple of minutes. I did not smoke pot with him.

I’m not gonna lie. At first, I was kind of bummed that my program turned out not to be Thing A instead of Thing B, but I’ve since become pretty okay with it. If nothing else, this program has helped me understand that in order to do what I want to do (write, specifically to write for magazines), I’ve got to make some guap or I’ll just end up working in a record store/vintage clothes shop/tattoo parlor/music venue/bar/have my parents give me money. That means I have to be able to (a) market myself, and (b) understand what “industry people” want from someone they’re giving their Demon Illuminati Advertising Money to. If I do that successfully, my reward is I can go off and write from a monastery in the Himalayas (or whatever).

Regardless of the debatable suckitude of my program, New York is awesome! This week is fairly air guitar-centric, as I’m going to watch Mystery Meat rock out at in Manhattan tomorrow night, and then on Thursday I’m going to compete in the Brooklyn leg of the US Air Guitar regionals. I have not practiced. I will be wearing those tiny stripey pants.

Thank You Based God. I’m out for now. Gonna start updating The Bolg with more stuff again. Promise!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJtDJcF7FBU

FAQ: 1. OMGWTF is this? A) I somehow got into the final round for Charlie Sheen’s #TigerBlood social media internship contest (a 2-min. YouTube movie). 80,000 people applied. Now there are 50. I’m going to win. I’m answering question #3: “How would you advise a candidate running for public office to leverage social media in his or her campaign for election?” More.

2. Is that a real mixed-race baby? A) Yes.

3. Is that girl’s hair really pink? A) Yes.

4. Is Charlie Sheen actually going to watch this? A) Yes.

5. How can I get involved? A) Check out the Facebook cause page and like the video on YouTube. Also, donate cash, checks, or money order to Ross Maloney, 702 Sykes Street, Chapel Hill, NC. Together, I can win this internship.

Cast and Crew:

Ross Maloney/Mad Dog…. Ross Maloney; Writing; Editing

Glen Dawson….Narrator; Host of ‘The Glen Dawson Show’; Writing

Alisha Gard, Katherine Indermaur….Chloe and Candy, respectively (Ross’s “Divinities”)

Baby Kaden….Himself/Mixed-Race Baby

Kate Sawyer, Ryan Stancil and Lexington….Couple in quad with adorbs dog

Alex Perrien….Cameraman; Audio Mixing; Writing

Sally Fry….Graphic Design (Pie Charts)

Matt Scruggs….Publicity (Actual Social Media)

Phil Pallen and Brett the Intern….Inspiration

“CHECKTHESEX”TRAS:

Banner Child

Anarchist:  I don’t know, I would say that I am the best anarchist.

Banksy:  Tell me about your average day, Anarchist.

Anarchist:  I usually rise about 6:00 a.m. because I like to listen to the Russ Parr Morning show in its entirety.  I like his alternative approaches to many social and politcal events going on in the U.S., and I appreciate hearing the African American perspective.  After this I go to work at…

Banksy interrupting: How often do you wheat paste?

Anarchist:  Not too often anymore… I’ve kind of moved on into some other mediums at the moment, in an attempt for my message to reach a wider audience.  I’m working on a line of sticker…

Banksy interrupting:  Do even know how much I wheatpaste?

Anarchist:  I’ve seen all of your stuff, and I assume that you spend…

Banksy interrupting:  I WHEATPASTE EVER FUCKING DAY BRO.  Do you know why I was not at the Oscars?  I was pasting some fucking wheat.

*This story is true.

Anyway, here’s the new Lil B song called “Base For Your Face,” featuring Jean Grae and Phonte with 9th Wonder on the beat. Not tryna talk shit about Rapper Big Pooh, but wouldn’t it be the best is Little Brother reunited and they subbed Big Pooh out for Lil B? The problem with Phonte is he gets too self-serious at the expense of being self-aware, so this would basically solve all of his problems and make him tolerable in full-length form. Plus, both Lil B and Phonte both like to pretend they’re singers, so it’s perfect. THINK ABOUT IT.

Base For Your Face ft. Jean Grae & Phonte

Oh, and in case you forgot here’s a review of Lil B’s 676 track mixtape that like half of The Bolg did for Reese News. It sent feral, which to paraphrase Chad’s dad, is like going viral except a whole lot less impressive.

Also I am posting this two days after I wrote it, whatever yall.

SWAG

The other night Adele showed me an episode of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. I had some complicated thoughts about it.

I do not understand this TV show. It stars mildly famous people, some of whom look like people who are more famous. Someone is dead. Another person is blind. It is probably my new favorite show.

The basic premise, as Adele has explained to me, is that there is a group of five teenage friends, all girls, all of whom are pretty and have secrets. One’s secret is that she used to be fat and is hiding a really foxy drifter bro in her basement. She kind of looks like Taylor Swift. Another, who looks like Selena Gomez, is dating her English teacher. Then there is Spencer, whose secret is that she made out with her sister’s husband one time, and her sister’s husband may or may not have killed her friend. There is a lesbian on this show, too. Her secret is that she is a lebian. And then there is Allison, whose secret is that she was brutally murdered. Oh, and someone named “A” sends everyone else text messages telling them to do things. A is probably Allison, but also probably not. Basically the point of the show is that everyone is trying to figure out who killed Kenny Allison while also trying to hide their secrets from the world, which is a good metaphor for life in that we have all killed people, but a bad metaphor for life in that we do not really have that many secrets.

I guess I should just break down each character’s strengths and weaknesses and then tell you what happened in the episode.

Selena Gomez

Strengths: Is really skinny, into books, looks like a famous person.

Weaknesses: Parents are divorced, is so skinny that she might have an eating disorder.

Spencer

Strengths: Is resilient, kind of a slut.

Weaknesses: Hangs out with potential murderers, is really boring and I forgot she existed, turns out she’s not a slut after all.

Taylor Swift

Strengths: Blonde, looks like a famous person, is really good at hiding drifters.

Weaknesses: Used to be fat, is secretly poor.

The Lesbian

Strengths: Both Asian AND a Lesbian, so yeah. Representation! Identity!

Weaknesses: Fails to escape the specter of “the male gaze,” used to date an ugly girl.

Allison

Strenghts: Was the boss of her friends, is dead so you’re not allowed to say anything bad about her anymore.

Weaknesses: Seriously though it seems like this girl was the worst.

So in this episode we start with how Foxy Drifter got Taylor Swift some sort of owl-based piece of jewelry (OR DID HE???), and then Selena Gomez discovers that her dad and mom have been hooking up on the reg despite the fact that they’re totes divorced and also her dad looks like one of the Hoos from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Lesbian is sad about her ex, and Spencer’s room is now getting searched by the police because her sister’s husband told them to.

Some bullshit happens, and then Spencer holds hands with the boy who used to be the primary suspect in Allison’s murder, The Lesbian is still sad, and then it turns out that Taylor Swift’s Foxy Drifter is the world’s first Combination DRIFTER HUT/HACKER BELL who is giving information to a blind girl using the owl, which is secretly just a flash drive.

Unanswered question: if this girl was so blind (definitely was blind) then how come she needed all this information on her computer? HUH??? Questions like this are why this blog once got a hundred hits IN A SINGLE DAY. THINK ABOUT IT.

Regardless, this was by and large Selena Gomez’s episode. First, she sends a sexy text to her English teacher (who’s named Ezra As Of Now Unknown Last Name Kill Them All) that gets accidentally sent to her mom, who (again) has been shacking up with her dad even though her dad was a big fat cheatbag for a really long time. Mom is all like “Let Selena Gomez send sexy texts to whoever she wants” and HooDad is about ready to get his shit out and cock it on somebody (this is a metaphor for guns NOTHING SEXUAL) until Mom reminds him that no matter how many charm bombs he can drop on her he still cheated on her like a bajillion times and they’re still mad at each other.

The episode ends with Mom having reached Critical Mad all over Dad’s face, which draws the heat away from SelEzra (who despite their zero screen time together are definitely the CUTEST COUPLE EVAR), the cops deciding that Spencer had to have all her stuff taken away for no reason because they found some fibers of Allison’s sweater on her stuff, and Taylor Swift is now mad at Foxy Drifter Boy even though he’s pretty clearly in love with her and still VERY foxy. Oh, and The Lesbian got back with her ex. At least someone’s happy.

The whole shebang ends with A using a hammer to smash a heart with the word “Hanna” written on it and then mailing it to her, and the Big Reveal is that Taylor Swift’s name has been Hanna all along and I am and idiot for not having figured this out earlier. Which brings me to…

Who Probably Killed Allison This Week???

Ian: Ian is really smarmy and a total douchebag to Spencer, so logic would dictate that it might have been him, but that would make way too much sense and so it would kind of be a letdown.

The Lesbian: The Lesbian made lots of comments about murdering people, and it’s implied that Allison tricked her into coming out of the closet, so she has a motive. So, uh, maybe?

Spencer: Spencer has fibers of some sweater that Allison was wearing in her shit that the cops took, which also means tangible evidence that she could have done it, meaning it probably wasn’t her.

Selena Gomez: My gut tells me it was S.G., because Allison probably knew about SelEzra and in S.G.’s eyes that was probably a murderable offense. Off with her head.

Of course, it’s all very possible that Allison just pulled a Bunny Lebowski and fake-killed herself in order to fuck with her friends, but you would think we’d have found a toe by now if that were true. Either way I HAVE TO FUCKING FIND OUT I AM WATCHING THIS SHOW FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN USE FOREVER STAMPS TO MAIL THINGS AKA UNTIL 2013 OR SOMETHING.

Anyways, that’s all I got for now. Peep the style again soon, and until then LOCK YOUR DOORS PEOPLE ARE COMING IN AND TOUCHING YOUR LEGS AND THEY ARE PROBABLY JOHN TYLER MILLS[1].

GIVE US A GRANT

SERIOUSLY