Goodbye

Heaven is Censored

http://bgr.com/2014/02/20/internet-censorship-world-map/

While surfing the web, I realized that Asians are probably the luckiest human beings on the planet. Relating to the internet, they’re essentially inmates of what they can or cannot view. Now, to the unsocial minds of Americans this idea might sound a bit absurd. However, look at you. You can look at anything, at any time, and you do. You stuff your face with Cheetos and smoke pot in front of your laptop until your eyes bleed. You may wonder what goes on outside of the computer, but the 4.299 billion Homo sapiens in Asia are experiencing it at this very moment. Life. Not pornography, real sex. Not torrents, tangible information. Not social media, live communication.

As American citizens, we are free to lose our minds. Stop rotting and start listening.

 

Pitchfork is Nothing Without R. Kelly

Over the past three years, I’ve seen my fair share of shit at Pitchfork. Fearing for my life at Odd Future and finding God at Toro Y Moi fail in comparison to the majestic beauty that is R. Kelly.

Sunday, July 21, 2013, I headed to Pitchfork with this schema that every performing artist was going to amaze the fuck out of me; I couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as I got there, I decided that MC Tree would be a good place to start. For a while, I thought Danny Brown was the worst live rapper that I have ever seen due to how incomprehensive and molly’d out he was, but I take that back. Tree takes the award. On stage there were about eight useless ass people in knockoff McDonald’s uniforms, untimely chanting “Tree” and some shit about “Soul-Trap.” It grew kind of ridiculous after about the third song. 

After waiting an impossibly long and tiring four hours until Lil’ B, I got to see the Based God with my own two eyes. As much as I would love to say that I turned the fuck up, me, my homie Charlie, and our two lovely ladies stayed in the background where the 35-year-olds could merely bob their heads and whisper “swag.” Exciting, huh?

Next was Toro Y Moi; need I say more? If you’ve read about my previous Pitchfork experience you will know of his magnificence, and this time was nothing short. I feel like I could put M.I.A (whom I saw afterward) in the same paragraph because she was pretty fucking dope too. This shit live was almost too much.

Finally, the moment that we have all been waiting for. With the intent to watch R. Kelly for a measly 20 minutes then slide over to TNGHT, I wasn’t predicting to have my mind blown; but right off it came. Once this man walked on stage, I was immediately blinded. Not particularly due to the fact that he was in front of me, but because of all of the fucking ICE he had on! If Chief Keef thinks his wrist is sloppy, he needs to step his weight up. Being around a bunch of smiley, 70-year-old black people really changes the mood. Even Abbey, the whitest girl I know, was gettin’ down. By far, there is nothing more baby-making than this.
After about 20 minutes we ended up walking to TNGHT like we said we would, but immediately hiking right back because all we wanted to do was make sweet love (with our clothes on of course, there were children around). I couldn’t imagine a better place to end the night. Trust me, If R. Kelly is ever in your town you’d better go see him, no matter how much you despise urine.

I Came Up On Too Much Chillwave, Take It From Me

I’ve been on a 24-hour psychedelic splurge, and I’ve decided that I’m not going to individually write some overly-descriptive paragraph relevant to nothing at all. Instead, I just want you to have these:

My Ex-Roommate is Afraid of Beach House

I feel like I talk about SIU quite often, possibly due to the monstrosity of a school that is Southern Illinois, or maybe because the institution guides their students to excellence. No…it’s definitely the first one.

During my time there I met a few individuals that have completely altered my perception of humanity forever. Here’s one of them:

Meet Jesse Keifer. This El Paso, Illinois native was far from anyone that I’ve ever met in my life. I’m talkin’ Hollister all the way down to his socks, Air Force 1’s, and pussy-shielding Axe cologne. I thought I’d only seen guys like this on Disney channel, but I guess I was wrong.

It was amazing to witness such an evolution of a human being. Although he never strayed away from his typical wardrobe and mannerisms, his lingo definitely expanded. After a full school year of hanging out with city-boys, Jesse eventually learned the difference between a blunt and a bowl, and began to use such terms as “fasho,” and “turn up.” I’m so proud of him.

However, one thing that will never change is his deep-rooted fear for Beach House’s “Lazuli” visual. It became ritual to get high in our dorms and watch videos on the internet for hours seeing as how there was never anything better to do. But as we all have come to learn living in Carbondale, Jesse cannot watch this. He describes it as “some crazy hippie shit.” Oh, you country folk…

*Hopefully he was never touched by a weird uncle named “Lazuli” growing up because then I would obviously feel bad.

The City That Never Fucking Sleeps (Twin Peax Tour)

New York City is a beautiful piece of shit.

Rules do not exist. Garbage, piss, and graffiti plague the unswept streets that gods walk across. I promise you this: whether you turn your head right, left, up, or down, you will be surrounded by supermodels. It’s a gift and a curse at the same time because as much as everyone loves to drop their jaw and admire these beautiful fashionista creatures, nothing that you say is important enough for their attention. Everyone thinks that their existence is so unique and substantial, when in actuality, someone thirty feet away is doing the exact same thing. New Yorkers live their life in such a little social media based bubble that no one ever takes the time to actually feel anything real. The amount of card-exchanging and never-ending meetings about repeated nonsense is almost a joke. When walking to a photo shoot five minutes away, we counted 87 people with iPhones. That would seem all right if at least someone would have noticed us counting each number as loud as we could, pointing fingers at the people wielding the man-made monsters. But instead, nothing. Everyone is too busy staring at their phone to even attempt to make human interaction. It’s kind of fucked up, but hey, it’s The City That Never Sleeps, right?

While we were in Brooklyn, we ran into someone you might be a little familiar with:

“OMG it’s Chance The Rapper! This website must be cool!” White girls these days…

To cap it off, The nonstop Vice reading, bowl smoking, and Subway eating van ride across the United States will forever be implanted in my brain. I’ve gotten to experience the world in a new light, and I guess that’s just a glorious part of growing up. Thank you to everyone who’s let us crash on their floor, in their enormous mansion, or in their shitty motel. I love you all.

Too Many Tracks, Too Little Time

The lovely people at Mom And Pop Records decided to give us a bunch of CD’s, so thank them for these first two tracks.

I got the chance to chill with this dude in NYC the other night and besides the fact that he let us crash in his ritzy downtown hotel room, he can fucking rap too. Peep Matty Rico.

I Thought High School Was Over…

After four brutal years of beerless cliques, gossiping bitches, and sexually-separated get-togethers, I thought it was all behind me, but apparently not in Washington D.C.

Finding out that it was a house show, everyone was stoked as fuck. Obviously, when I think of a house show I envision hundreds of beer cans being shaken and sprayed about, sweaty women dancing around, and a dozen bloodthirsty men trying to rip my head off in a mosh pit. Despite what you may think thus far, the D.C. show definitely supplied all of the above, but simply the parental advised PG-13 version. Instead of hundreds of beer cans spraying around, one of the entire twelve beers at the venue fell on the floor and sprayed my leg. Instead of sweaty women dancing around, prissy sixteen-year-old girls stood still. And instead of a dozen bloodthirsty mosh pitmen, I was involved in a shoving party with two or three boys.

After the set, which in spite of everything I just mentioned went surprisingly well; I got my fake ID taken. I bet my mom will be happy. Apparently, everyone in town knows not to go to THIS liquor store, besides me. Thanks for the heads up guys.

The highlight of my day however, was this man: 

No idea who he is but all he did was smile and take pictures; seems like a chill dude.

In case you haven’t already, peep Twin Peaks’ newly released music video to “Fast Eddie”

 *Oh, also: Shouts to Quinn and Luke for showing us around and shit, we ended up eating at that chili spot and it was flame. Gracias.

Everyone Stop What They Are Doing and Download Yeezus, Now

 

Literally, a self explanatory title. There is too much on here for me to fathom.

http://www.audiocastle.net/albums/view/398-Kanye-West-Yeezus

The Rebirth Within the Forest

As much as I would love to say that seeing Boston and passing such monumental viewpoints as Fenway Park and Harvard has changed my life, I can’t; I hate baseball and Harvard resembles nothing more than a run-down mess of bricks. However, the townsfolk definitely know how to show a little hospitality. As soon as we arrived to the venue, we were showered with beer and free meals at their newly-opened steakhouse, The Sinclair. I could fuck with that.

After Twin Peax’s set, we stayed for Paws and Fucked Up to play. There’s something oddly entertaining about an enormous shirtless man screaming his lungs out on stage.

Once the show ended, we took a little vacation to their buddy Ben Kramer’s country-side slice of heaven. Being young, dumb, and turnt we decided that this was probably the best place to digest the poisonous mushrooms that we’ve kept hidden away in the van since the beginning of the tour: a great choice on our part. From what I’ve seen up until this point, no place was as relaxing as Sheffield, Massachusetts. I mean, if you don’t believe me, take a look at this dude’s backyard:

Deep in the forest I witnessed the evolution of man, probably the stereotypical mushroom trip, but the deeper I thought I finally realized that this trip that we all worry about, is nothing to fear at all. It’s just life. Seeing as how I’ve never done a hallucinogen, I figured that I’d see all types of crazy shit, but that wasn’t the case. The only thing that I could conjure up in my head was “Oh, this is it?” Maybe a bit existential, but what how else is there to think in a world where all we do is wait around for nothing? We talk to someone, ask what we’re doing later, maybe drink a beer, then repeat the process. I don’t know, maybe this is all just shroomy babble… I guess we’ll just have to see what Brooklyn brings; but until then, fuck with Plastic Beach.