HIGH ON DEATH
Alcohol Review: Special Death
10/10
by Erin McCarthy
I tried absinthe twice in my life with very interesting results, which is why I was slightly hesitant to even look in the direction of a bottle marked Special Death, which was sitting on the shelf at the liquor store. The label said it was approximately 81.6% alcohol and I couldn’t fathom how it was legal, but it was staring right back at me on the liquor shelf, as if to say, “Let’s get cray-zy!” It comes in a black, medieval-like bottle, with a big red label on the front that warns, “One taste could be your demise.” It sounded like a dare to me, and I have next to no willpower in situations like that, so I had to buy it, for at least a sniff.
Just to give you a little background, Special Death is supposedly made from fermented Morning Glories, which have hallucinogenic properties. Recently, many of these flowers have been genetically engineered so that idiots don’t eat them and poison themselves hoping to get high, but some whacked-out company in Alabama has managed to take the natural plants and turn them into looney juice all for $29.99.
A few of us gathered at a friend’s apartment and hit the bottle around nine. My friend, Bo, who has tried every substance from paint chips to weird hallucinogenic plants from West Africa, said that he tried Special Death in January with very scary results. He ended up losing all his clothes, putting on a dress, and jumping on a bus from Albany to New York City. He woke up halfway there with very little recollection of what had happened.
Special Death has the consistency of molasses. It tastes like licorice and vanilla in a saccharine sweet kind of way. I drank about four of them before I was on my hands and knees, pounding my fists on the floor, and demanding to listen to Gwar. It was very euphoric. Little pink bunnies were coming out of the eyes of my friend, Lynsey, telling me to go buy dishtowels and rubber ducks on eBay. I didn’t know anyone would bother selling either, but after Lynsey and I found my credit card, somehow the two of us managed to punch in the right numbers and ring up a bill of about $500. We also bought a hot pink mixer, which I might have purchased had I not been so utterly inebriated.
My verdict is to stay as far away from this stuff as possible. One of my other friends wound up handcuffed to the refrigerator wearing nothing but a scarf and a guitar, and apparently, Bo started coming up with plans for a bus trip to Montreal wearing a pink dress-up tutu that belonged to Lynsey’s kid sister. If the sickening taste of Special Death doesn’t kill you, the antics you pull while on this juice will. I have no doubt it will be off the market for months, but then again, don’t listen to me. I have another bottle in my dorm just in case the right moment arises.
WHAT WAS LAME IS HIP AGAIN
Book Review - The Hipster Bible
by Audrey Odhner
This just in: Burn your Hipster Handbook. Apparently “deck” has been docked, and it’s no longer widely accepted to live on handouts from one’s parents into the thirties for reasons of personal philosophical conviction concerning work and an ethical stance against doing any. These are just a couple of many new and often surprising revelations about “cool” (safe once again) from the upcoming Anchor Books publication, The Hipster’s Bible: a Fresh Take on Being the Freshest Thing on Your Bloc.
What author Dante Lacroix has really created here is a revolutionary new guide to the hip. In typical fashion, most of those currently stuck in the old throws of hipsterhood will shun this new guide, either pretending to have disapprovingly “never heard of it” or abiding by the now passé protocol that you should hate everything before you hear/read/see it so even if you do end up liking it, you’ll never like it that much. Now on the verge of underground chic, the near prophetic Lacroix claims, are those hip willing to break through unfounded Oedipal-fueled superiority complexes.
Could disaffection really be losing its glamour? Many certainly hope not, and even Lacroix himself does not seem to advocate such an abrupt and radical paradigm shift in his attempt to document the next generation of “über-cool.”
Some of the Bible’s more digestible points of concern regard the slowly changing aesthetics of hip (and really, what else has there ever really been?). While on this subject, I’ll issue a few warrants of caution to all Western New Yorkers: if you’ve been known to buzz down Elmwood Avenue on a Vespa during a summer’s day, you’re probably a hipster and you’re probably about to be the wrong kind. (A similar sentence is impending upon those whose near past, present, or future aspirations include some combination of moving from Buffalo to Greenwich Village to Brooklyn to Philadelphia).
Perhaps one of the book’s most endearing revelations, however, is that concerning tattoos. Now a strong presence within almost all subcultures, the question is not likely “if” but “what” to have permanently inked somewhere on your person. Apparently taking a cue from the often stigmatized, (sometimes) affectionately nicknamed LARPERS (“Live Action Role Players,” read: all things Dungeons and Dragons-eque for those uninformed), the new hip is marked by a sharp increase in tattoos of mythical beasts. That’s right, goodbye barcodes along the nape of the neck and quotes from Morrissey, hello Minotaur, liger, and unicorn—or, as Lacroix says, “Whatever speaks to your inner sense of blasé.”
A final word to the wise: this book is the jump off, and if you wear a scarf more days than not per average year, then you need to jump on before it’s not even cool to be hip anymore. All I can say is thank God Generation got its hot little paws on this number before you did. But shh… you didn’t hear it from us.
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
Technology Review: iTreopod
8/10
by Shinko Suzuki
So, what’s new with technology these days? College students, get your credit card, ‘cause there’s a new cell phone coming out. This one’s called the iTreopod, and I got to experience this new technology thanks to a college student who accidentally lost his iPod and Treo 650 around either Capen or Law Library. Using a “Roadkill Café”-style idea, just bring them your stolen goods, and they’ll hook you up like you wouldn’t believe.
Constructed with duct tape wrapped over the two parts (by a trained professional), the iTreopod’s sound was just incredible. This is so much better than the regular iPod, and with the phone and iPod together, I don’t have to worry about losing one of them.
When Palm and Apple first worked together, their prototype used masking tape. This lesser tape failed because it wasn’t strong enough. Frustrated and confused, one of the Palm company employees had a bright idea: use duct tape. After that idea took off, the rest became history. Soon, instead of duct tape, they decided to use Krazyglue. I must say, the Krazyglue is much better compared to the duct tape. It looks more fashionable than ever.
This is much better than the Sidekick with those unnecessary noises and flicking up the frame. Instead, I just have to turn it around depending on if I want to talk on the phone or listen to my iPod.
Is it affordable? Of course it can be, with 300 easy payments of $23.74. If you are going to create your own iTreopod, there is a warning out there. They may suffer possible damage and may get arrested if they don’t have the money to buy two different machines. If you tape them together too tightly or loosely, it may either break or malfunction. So, why be a poser? Just get the real thing!
I LOVE THIS ALBUM
Album Review - LoveQwest: I Got The Chips Stacked Against Me
10/10
by Joe Speranza
If there is an ass in the general vicinity of LoveQwest, watch out, because they will totally kick it.
With the release of I Got The Chips Stacked Against Me, LoveQwest has proven that their 2004 debut album, Why Am I Still Alive, This Sucks, wasn’t a fluke. In their latest, the band sticks to the decent guitar riffs and soft, sweet lyrics that made their first album such a hit.
The album starts off with a bang with the song “Splash of Sunshine,” an up-tempo tune that features the Taylor Hanson-esque voice of lead singer Billy Love. “Is it wrong of me/ To wish you were mine/ Your skin is like/ A splash of sunshine,” croons Love during the chorus of the song. A lot of their songs reflect the band’s personal lives, and “Sunshine” is no exception. Though it hasn’t been confirmed, the rumor is that Love went through a tough break-up with his high school sweetheart and, eight years later, still hasn’t moved on.
The third song on the album is perhaps the most indicative of an ugly ending. At just over four minutes long, “I Loved You, Why Did You Break Up With Me?” is a slow song that questions the sincerity of love. “I thought we had something/ I know you did too/ I loved you so much/ What did I do?” begs Love during the chorus of the song. “I Loved You” is LoveQwest at their finest: simple drum beat, catchy chorus, and high-pitched vocals.
Though their lyrics are relatively simple and straightforward, the band tries to avoid being perceived as one-dimensional. That’s why, on track five, guitarist Jimmy Love abandons his Gibson for the seldom-used triangle, which is featured throughout the track. Titled “This Can’t Be Happening,” Love once again sings about love found and love lost. “What did I do to deserve this/ This can’t be happening to me/ My heart longs for your tenderness/ But yours just wants to be free,” complains Love to open the song.
The eighth track on the album is their single, “Leaving You is Hard.” If this song sounds familiar, it is probably because they performed it on the hit television show The O.C. It is arguably the best song on the CD, and clocking in at over five minutes long, it’s also the longest. “Why you left me is like geometry/it’s very hard to understand/leaving you will be hard/you’re the prettiest girl in the land,” sings Love during one of the refrains.
While LoveQwest may not be overly talented, it is their energy and heart that propel the album. “I Never Thought It Would Come To This,” the final track on the CD, is a rollercoaster of a track that tackles the issue of a relationship gone bad. In true LoveQwest fashion, the music isn’t anything amazing, but the emotional angst and heartache present throughout the lyrics makes the song insanely listenable.
“Take Your Own Life” isn’t overly impressive when you look at it from a strictly musical standpoint, but with lyrics like “When I’m not with you I feel empty/ Your eyes sparkle like a crystal ball/ My life is worthless without you/ You broke up with me at the mall,” you’ll find it hard to stop listening to the album.
THE NEXT BIG THING IS OLD NEWS TO ME
Concert Review - AIDS Wolf
11/10
by Bobby Ellis
Over spring break I had an unbelievable opportunity to see a performance by an up and coming group in the avant-indie scene. It’s really just a matter of time before these guys hit it big, and I count myself lucky to have seen them very early. Hopefully not too many people find out about them too soon so they consequently sell out just like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah did. That’d suck.
My story begins in my beat-to-hell 98’ Jetta. My five like-minded friends (my only friends; I try to stay very exclusive) packed into the car with three 30-packs of PBR, a couple cartons of cigarettes, and six iPod’s worth of our amazing musical tendencies. Traveling down the highway in the freezing mid-day March sun, we were all so excited to be able to see the band AIDS Wolf in one of their earliest post-release performances in Toronto. The show was to start at 7 p.m., but the opening bands were your typical twee/freak-folk opening pairing, and that just didn’t gel with the art-core freak-out we were all anticipating from AIDS Wolf. We instead decided to stop at my aunt and uncle’s house in Amherst for dinner.
My friends and I sat at the dinner table with my aunt, uncle, my nine-year-old cousin Joey, and his “girlfriend” Kelsey. After some playful teasing of Joey about having a girl over for dinner, the main course was served: stuffed shells. My aunt makes some amazing stuffed shells, let me tell you.
After the delicious dinner, my friends and I were all ready to leave, when suddenly, we were sidelined by an amazing noise coming from the basement. The sound was coming from my cousin Joey and his brand new Casiotone SA-75, which he had recently received for his birthday. We should have left for the show, but we were hypnotized by his lugubrious low-notes and his unbelievable use of atonality to express his vision of the bleak future that he was growing into. Like many of my favorite new bands, he didn’t have any titles for his tunes, and, for the most part, he didn’t even really have discernable songs, as his transitions seemed to be flawless. I hurried to my car, grabbed the tape recorder I was planning on using to boot the AIDS Wolf show, and quickly set up mics to capture the performance. About a half-hour into his nonstop assault, he brought up Kelsey to assist him. Her percussion on a pot with two pencils was charmingly sloppy, and was more of a statement on the current state of the punk DIY attitude than it was a proper accompaniment.
The show hit its climax when Joey and Kelsey fully joined together in a boy-girl vocal pairing similar to that of early Rainer Maria or Mates of State. Their final meditation on spaghetti was enchanting, and further cemented their complete grasp on what it is to be a child growing up in post-9/11 America. I’ve made about 100 copies of the tape and have labeled each of them with my own cover-art inspired by MS Paint drawings I found on Joey’s laptop. I’m selling them for $10 each, and I can’t recommend them enough. Catch this group before they sell out too It’s only a matter of time.
GOOD VIBRATIONS
Vibrator Review - The Snow Leopard
10/10
by Daniele Hauptman
Recently, a novelty manufacturer called Babeland Toys came out with a new vibrator. Its name: The Snow Leopard. Its pledge: total satisfaction. Now, I’m no kinky sexpert, but that was one guarantee that sounded way too good to pass up. I ordered one online, and it arrived five days later in a discreet brown package, saving me the dreaded eyebrow-raised stares in the mailroom.
Upon returning to my room and opening the box, I realized that this vibrator is quite possibly the most innovative piece of sex toy technology to hit the market. It looks extremely complicated, but comes with a thorough and easy-to-read set of directions (in three languages: English, Spanish, and Japanese), complete with illustrations for the slow learners. The vibrator is six inches long and just the right thickness to fill you up while not leaving you sore. It is white with black leopard spots, virtually silent, and waterproof (hello, shower). It has a smooth rubber exterior with rounded ridges and a claw-shaped clitoral stimulator. The main body curves out for maximum g-spot access.
The first thing that you should know about this product is the various settings it proudly features. Anyone can tell you, it’s always crucial to be in control of what your vibrator is doing down there. The slowest setting is called Frustrating Post-Coital Snuggle, and the speeds increase to Dr. Ruth, Throbbing Gristle, Uppercut to the Taint, Mauled By A Bear, and finally, Outta Space. Personally, my favorite setting is Dr. Ruth—she really seems to know her way around some cooch. The varied settings, however, are only the tip of the pleasure iceberg.
For those of you looking to spice up your bedroom routine, this vibrator has a truly unique feature. The inside body can actually be removed, and the extremely stretchable outer section can fit like a glove over the penis, doubling as a vibrating, reusable condom. This is perfect for environmentalists (read: tree-huggers), as it is much less wasteful and just as effective. When I asked some fellow students for their opinions about the Leopard, they were more than willing to comply. Sophomore political science major Victoria Burhans said, “I think that eventually this vibrator will cause the penis to become obsolete.”
While most guys would disagree with this statement, their disgust with this revolutionary product is further evidence that Burhans is not far from the mark. While ultimately, the penis may still be used in Third World countries where the market for sex toys is small, innovative technology like the Leopard will cause the penis to be used solely for reproductive purposes. Even then, artificial insemination is a proven alternative to the uncomfortable and awkward process of natural reproduction. Compared with the stamina and versatility of sex toys, the penis almost seems pointless. Why would anyone have sex with a normal penis when you can just put a vibrator over it?
