NO AMERICANO IS DISTINCTLY AMERICANO

So, this song happened. And I didn’t know it was a thing. But apparently it’s a thing having been appropriated by my two favorite representations of quintessentially American high and low culture.
1. The Jersey Shore

This video made me laugh the first time I saw it. Let’s just say the sun was down, and I was feeling…receptive. Anyway, that high voice in the beginning borders on terrifying, but the earnest, childlike joy that the castmembers are experiencing with a simple isight just warms the heart. Then when they realize they can go in and out of frame it turns more into one of those Hannah Barbera montages where the kids from Scooby Doo are all running in and out of doors in a hallway chased by a Mummy. Only the Mummy is Angelina and Scooby is Pauly D.

2. Awesome film/dance/art

Michael Flatley, you just got served. God I love the choreo in the middle section.

TONY HAWK 3 AN UNDERSTATEMENT

I never thought I would see the day when the shit you did in Tony Hawk 3 looked downright pedestrian. “Oh that’s cool, you hit a sick grind and then did a 1080 christ air into a nose manual? Congrats, you’re about as good at skateboarding as my kid brother, he’s 2.” Peep this and LOSE YOUR MIND.

Gorgeous.

Thanks to Tristan for this one.

DRUNK GIRLS: PLEASE TAKE ENGINEERING CLASSES

wait for it. wait for it.

I know there’s like a thousand of these videos online, but doesn’t that make you think that there’s an endemic problem here? I guess what I’m saying is, ladies, before you go to bust a move, take earnest stock of the relative stability of load bearing objects around you.

This has been a public service announcement.

CRAZY GIRL CAM

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical and generally about 18-24 inches away from a computer screen.

I will post the real version of this video at the end of this. I originally posted this and invoked the most culturally relevant opening line in all of 20th century poetry (challenge) because I wanted to talk about something. When do I not want to talk ad nauseum about something you ask? Rarely, you ass. Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking.

I wanted to talk about something and then I got distracted by this which considering the source, is a surprisingly incisive take on the sprawling ‘counterculture’ that seems to invoke and include everything ever to some degree or another. I just think you should read it. It’s fluff at its core, as is all color-commentary of culture-at-large, but it’s interesting fluff. About as enduringly meaningful as the halftime report when you listen to Boomer talk about how the losing team needs to keep the ball and score more points but really all you can do is look at Shannon Sharpe’s tie knot and be like “he has to custom order that, right? there’s not enough material on any tie i’ve ever seen to craft something on that scale.”

The link comes courtesy of Monica Westin, smartest lady in all of the Chicagoland area. The video is courtesy of the NYNeoFuturists, whom I love and will forever continue to admire.

And now, the prestige:

TRUMPET PLAYER DEFEATS NAZIS

Standard bullshit eye-grabbing title aside, this is actually one of the cooler things I’ve seen on the internet recently. I feel like most people will skip right to the video, which is fine, go right ahead. For those of you that didn’t and are still reading, I wanted to actually reflect on something kind of funny. This site is, for the most part, a curatorial experiment featuring the weirdest and strangest stuff from the, shall we say, “danker” parts of the internet. And I’m not talking about “I got tha headies bro” I’m talking moss and humidity and caves and darkness. “Sifting through the abject filth and detritus to bring you golden curiosities from 4chan to 7chan and everything in between” should be our tagline. We also tell funny stories and make crude graphics for them (I’m working on another cheesbugermelt post, but nothing that interesting happens to me on a daily basis…so). But anyway, I say all this because it’s easy to forget that the internet is not just a snark infested den of sexually frustrated teenagers, gays and extremists from both sides of the aisle sipping (nay guzzling) on haterade, it is in fact an end user network. No one controls how you see it, or where you decide to pitch your tent or build your house. So everyone gets a little corner. This is one corner I’m glad I wandered into.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SANTAS

I mean, cause like, women should just shut up, right guys? Poe’s Law?

STAR TREK IS THE NEW BLACK

Reading Rainblows, STARTREK FTW

LORD OF THE DANCE: POP, LOCK, GLIDE, FLOAT AND KICK ASS

Big up to Laura K Nicoll, amazing dancer who I would very much like to see do this.

This shit blows my mind. I mean blows my fucking mind. But like, what especially gets me, aside from the amazing kinesthetic abilities of these dudes, is their tacit invocation of modern and ballet. I mean at one point, the dude in the black coat basically uses the dude in the red coat to perform a low arabesque that travels him fluidly, laterally into a glide through a puddle. Also, at one point later on, the same dude does a pirouette.

THIS SHIT IS DAHNCE.

BRETT FAVRE APPRECIATION MILL

Via my Wisonsin born-but-not-bred girlfriend and her born-bred-and-very-well-armed Dad. *Gulp* Oh hai.

OH HAI: RAMEN, GRILLEDCHEESEBURGERMELTS AND ME

Ok, so I’ve been remiss in posting. Carter has been picking up the slack, but I’ve really left him in the lurch since our beautification project came to fruition. But now I’m back and I’ve got some realness bombs to drop on you. You read that correctly, explosive devices comprised of hot beefy reality, coming your way.

Today’s tale begins last night. Carter and I were gchatting into the wee hours, and I was gulping eagerly away at a bottle of Jameson carrying on my half of the conversation mostly with myself. I awoke this morning to a mild headache, mitigated by a giant slice of pizza I have compelling forensics and only a vague recollection of eating. I’ve been locked in or out of my apartment since Saturday, since soberly breaking my key off inside my front door lock. Waiting for another key to be made (it’s a fucking process I’m not going to get into), my movements have been confined to sorties out the propped open back door. I can make it to the pizza place and the liquor store on my block and back with relative confidence that no one is going to un-prop the door in my abscence, but I have to sprint. So I’ve been rationing pizza and whiskey since a few days ago, like I’m under siege or involved in the battle of who could be the worst sniper in WWII.

Great sex scene. And by great I mean FILTHY.

I awake, wait for the rain to die down and then head out to the locksmith to finally (hopefully) replace my key that I’ve been missing for the last 4 days. I am fully aware that A) I hadn’t eaten anything yet and B) If this doesn’t work, I’m going to be locked out in a terrible rainstorm. After taking a nerve racking amount of time to find the place, they can’t find the key. Then they can’t find the name. Then they find someone else’s name, with the same key in it, so they give it to me. It’s very likely that someone is going to Brookline Locks right now and throwing a FIT. So I left the locksmith feeling like I had just set up shop an estate in a ethical grey area when I realized I was hungry as FUCK. I had a monkey on my back and that monkey wants what any good hangover monkey wants. A bowl of delicious RAMEN.

This is no joke, bro.

Now if you’ve never had a bowl of delicious ramen after tying one (or 10) on, you don’t know how to treat yourself. I mean that. You’re obviously abusing your body for some reason. Like, really, do you hate yourself? Are things ok at home? What about work? Is there something you’re frustrated about? You should really go drink a half liter of whiskey and then wake up the next day and have a bowl of ramen. You should do that.


Megalixir - refill hp/mp of entire party

Look at that delicious. So I walked on, for about a mile, knowing there was a place on the horizon called Zenna Noodle Bar. I remembered that the last time I went on a ramen hunt, it was a viable option. You see, ramen is all over New York like disaster is all over New Orleans, but there appears to be some sort of turf war happening in Boston. The Japanese are welcome, as long as they stay away from the soup portion of their cuisine. They are allowed sushi and tempura but the buck stops there. You see, the culinary embargo comes at the hands of the tenacious Vietnamese, whose Pho restaurants pepper the Western portion of Boston like an overzealous bus boy on his first day at Friday’s. Don’t get me wrong, I loooooove pho, but that monkey wanted ramen dammit and I was fit to oblige him. So after walking the mile uphill to the noodle bar, I was borderline unsurprised to learn that it was, in fact, not a Japanese noodle bar, but a Vietnamese fusion restaurant that organized it’s menu by the elements (stupid). Dejected and now eying my own appendages like cartoon characters on a desert island eye each other, I remembered there was an bangin Italian deli just a couple of blocks away. I set my resolve and trudged on through the rain, cold, hungry, but now picturing the towering stack of delicious cured meats in my future. As I turned the corner onto Harvard St. I noticed something, that I had seen only once before. They opened up this curious new establishment where there used to be a bank or something.

Friendly’s Express you say? That sounds….streamlined. I’ll have to go there the next time I want a Fribble. “Oh I do love Fribbles,” I said to myself as I walked by and then “AU-WAHT?” I was stopped dead in my tracks. I recognized it immediately because it had been posted on THIS VERY BLOG a couple of weeks ago. That towering edifice of ill-health, the monster that haunts the dreams of the gluten-allergic and lactose-intolerant alike.

THE MOTHERFUCKING GRILLEDCHEESEBURGERMELT

I immediately texted Carter. SHOULD I GET THE GRILLEDCHEESEBURGERMELT? No response. I was looking to him for either encouragement on journalistic grounds, or the common sense to walk away. I don’t want to be fat. I don’t want to die young. But all of these thoughts were cast aside when I stared deeply into it’s glistening juices, the cheese cascading down the sides of the bread. Once I stared at it long enough it became like staring into the bottom of my own soul. I was it, and it in turn, was me. We were reflexives of each other, parallel existences created only to enact a brutal dance of consumption and ecstasy.

Turns out Friendly’s Express is just their version of Johnny Rockets only with no singing. Which makes it kind of lame. But everyone there was super nice, especially the cashier who indulged me while I espoused my entire inner monologue, specifically regarding what I thought of the place I was in and what I felt about ordering what I can only assume MUST be the most ludicrous thing on the menu. I mean, there’s NO WAY IT GETS CRAZIER THAN THAT (If I does I have to commend Friendly’s for having a particularly deep bench). I ordered it furtively, like it was some sort of secret between him and I. We were engaged in illicit doings, a back alley deal, which when you think about it was true. We were conspiring to murder my good health.

I took my seat, put my tag in the little salt-shaker-tag-holder thing and in about 8 minutes, there it was. AND. I. WAS. PSYCHED.

Hello Gorgeous.

I know how to turn a phrase, but there aren’t really words to accompany the symphony of experience that was taking my first bite of this unholy union of lunches. Vile. Delicious. Insatiable. Butterific. Tremendoculous. Language itself begins to break down in the description, losing all meaning in the face of such pure overwhelming sensation.

I finished it in less than half the time it took them to make it. I didn’t even touch the fries. I slammed down 2 cokes, my right eye started twitching, I muttered some gibberish to the girl who took my plate away about never having had anything like that. I don’t even know if it was true. Full disclosure: they aren’t full pieces of bread that comprise the grilled cheese, as you can see from the photo. But it’s not really the bread that’s so incredible about the thing, it’s the cheese, it’s the burger, it’s the surprisingly fresh vegetables that act pretty much like complicit bystanders to the brutal assault on your interior. Everything was so soft, and tasty and fucking bad for you. I loved every minute (all 3) of it.

I actually had such an acute guilt about it that I walked the 1.6 miles home at a moderate hustle, thinking to myself that while this may be all the atoning I can do now, I will work tirelessly to make this little dalliance up to myself. I may not be going back for a while, but as long as a little bit of that superburger is somewhere inside me (and it will be for a long time) I’ll always crave it, and the day will come when I will fall like the Berlin Wall back into its savory embrace.