The Cougar/TVLand/Wednesdays

by Oryomai

Hello cougar-lovers! Previously, we eliminated five of the guys. Now it's time to get into the details of the reality show that we all know and love (dates, moving into the house, cliques, shirtless hotties). I have absolutely no clue what the hell Vivica A. Fox is doing on this show.

First challenge: the boys get five minutes to act as Stacy's "personal trainer." I'm not sure why we're working out, but I know that there are 15 shirtless hotties. I'm not entirely sure that our cougar even gives a damn about the emotional connection with the boys. Travis (my favorite from the last episode) isn't really that good at it. One guy admits that he's a "cougar virgin." What the fuck are these people talking about? The five winners are Travis (yes!!!!), Adam, Colt, Brian, and Tom. Stacey likes herself some beta.

The first date of the season is a roller skating rink. OMG! Stacey has to send one of the boys home right from the date. I cannot think of a better place than the skating rink to try to have serious discussions about what people want in life. Travis cuts into another guy's time to give the cougar a teddy bear he won in the claw machine. He is *good*. (Full disclosure: anyone I like on a show usually gets booted right quick.) OMG!!!! Mini-kiss off at the skating rink! Tom is eliminated -- most likely due his cougar virginity.

What could the next twist be? STACEY'S BIRTHDAY!! The big four-oh. Two of the cougar's best friends show up to help her decide about the boys. The next challenge is for the boys to find her a gift. The prize? The very first one-on-one date! I don't know if there is anything more tragic than heterosexual males in their twenties shopping for a gift. No pressure on the gifts or anything, but she hates it you can probably just get the fuck out. One of the guys goes a little too sexual with the card -- she's shocked! Everyone knows that you go on a reality show to find true love not just gratuitous groping with implied sex! The winner of the solo date is Jon.

On their date, Jon asks her about her personal life. He becomes the first person to ask her if she has any kids. Jon seems shocked that she has four kids (she's got the Kathy Griffin bangin' bikini bod). Stacy's friends seem to really like the boys in the house. Tensions are (finally!) starting to rise among the men. I'm looking forward to a really fierce drunken frat boy fight. I've seen far too many pathetic cat fights (Megan kicking Brandi M in the stomach?) The surprise party fades into the second (major) kiss-off.

Stacey is sending two of our boys home. The cougar seems to be seriously upset by eliminations now -- imagine what fucking hot mess this bitch is gonna be come the end! I'm beginning to wonder what would happen if one person in that house has herpes. Stacey's kisses everyone...

YES!! TRAVIS IS SAFE THIS WEEK!!! The first guy to go is JD. Stacey is not into poetry or shy boys apparently. Jim is the other boy to go -- she doesn't think that she has a connection with him. He seems like a total dick though (reminds me of my ex actually.)

And so we end another thrilling episode of the Cougar. Who will she choose? When is everyone going to find out that she has four kids (one of whom is older than some of the boys)? Who's going to be first guy to get drunk and whip it out? I, for one, cannot wait to find out!

Fuel and Fuddle/ Pittsburgh

by Lauren Rara

It was a hot and unseasonable day; the heat brought out the half-naked Pitt girls in their way too tight Panther Paw shorts and t-shirts. Thankfully, the winter proved a stellar time for fake-baking, for otherwise I fear there would be a pasty situation on their hands. Regardless, it was a day that was too warm to cook indoors so, with a decisive curiosity, my girlfriend and I decided to try out Fuel and Fuddle. I was extremely excited about this place, one because my stomach yearned for something other than dorm food slop and two because I was anxious to try out my fake id. No, just kidding. (Maybe).

Anyhow, the dining space was small, but cozy. It kind of had this sports-bar-cum-brick-oven-pizzeria type feel to it, but when we were seated right in the middle of two other tables of overly excited Pitt boys, I was no longer impressed. Anyway, I think the best part about this whole restaurant is their beer selection. CRAZY beers. I mean stuff I’ve never heard of and could barely pronounce, let alone spell. And WOODCHUCK Draft cider. If you haven’t tried this, then do it. It’s delicious and comes in great flavors like Pear and Amber. Regardless, we got our beverages and then I saw the menu.

There’s a shit ton of greasy, deep-fried, dressed-up dishes with kitschy names but they’re all pretty basic. Burgers. Salads. Sandwiches. I wanted a healthy option, so I got something called “Veg Head Pasta” with Spinach and garlic over penne. My girl got a delightfully greasy dish called “Rollafatty” which is basically just a few honkin’ pepperoni rolls. Our waitress was pleasant enough, when she actually cared to see if we were doing okay and it took a damn while for the food to come. I think her little blonde head thought that if she catered to the students accompanied by parents she’d get a better tip. I recall almost throwing myself into the aisle to get her attention for another drink, but, alas, no luck. Anyway, food came and it looked like shit. I was actually sincerely disappointed.

Seriously. The noodles were so overdone that they were sticking together and the goopy “sautéed” spinach was gritty and unwashed. I took a taste of my girlfriend’s and that was delicious, though I think most of it was masked with the pounds of grease seeping off of it. I mean, beggars can’t be choosers, but if I’m paying close to ten bucks for a dish of pasta I want it to actually taste good and not like something I would in fact get on my meal plan.
Is it so hard to ask for quality healthy-ish food? The menu boasted its availability of vegetarian choices, but I honestly wish I would’ve gotten a pizza or something else. I feel like that’s about the only thing Fueling along that Fuddy-duddy of a joint.

Flight of the Conchords/ Kent State University’s MAC Center/ April 19th 2009

by Eriq

Flight of the Conchords are not hack musicians, they just play them on TV. On their popular HBO television series, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie play a pair of bumbling idiot musicians from New Zealand, struggling to hit it big in New York City. In the fictional world of the series, only one fan shows up to their shows, played with gusto by Kristen Schaal. At a real life concert on Sunday night, Kristen Schaal was there again... but so were several thousands of other fans.

At this point, it would be pretty futile for Bret and Jemaine to continue acting like no one has ever heard of their band, especially since at several points in the show, they had difficulty talking over the crowd yelling "BRET/JEMAINE I LOVE YOU!!!!!" Also making the wise choice to drop character for the evening, Kristen Schaal performed a quirky, adorable, and hilarious opening set that included a sex scene with a pot and its lid (enough said about that, really).

Amateur theater night continued at Kent State University's MAC Center, as the Conchords took the stage in homemade robot outfits to perform their techno pastiche "Too Many Dicks On The Dancefloor." The new millenium's most unlikely heartthrobs then plowed on with a mix of old favorites from the first season of the show, new classics from the second season, and a few unrecorded "new old songs." Joined onstage by The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (a single man named Nigel playing the cello), the Conchords' compositions benefited from a live setting, with the instrumentation alternately stripping down or building songs up. The large venue seemed to suit the Conchords, whose images were projected on large screens flanking the stage, communicating their subtle eyebrow raises and smirks to a few thousand people who otherwise wouldn't have seen much of anything. Maintaining their trademark cooler-than-cool deadpan demeanor, the Conchords rarely left their singer-songwriter stools, but when they did, it was worth the wait, like the goofy dance breakdown accompanying the end of "Sugalumps." And with Jemaine pulling double duty on guitar and drums, "Demon Woman" transformed into a primal proto-Doors stomp that seemed downright possessed.

With the future of their TV show up in the air right now, the Conchords seem to be at a crossroads in their career. It seems possible that they could coast on their success and rely on their considerable cult following. Experiments with a backing band might also provide new comedic fodder for the New Zealand duo. Nothing is out of question for a couple of guys who can make a few thousand people laugh by doing nothing at all. Whatever these two decide to do, their faithful audience seems ready to follow.

Watchmen/ Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons/ DC Comics

by Chaynes

Watchmen is something of an institution right now. Over two decades since its initial release, we now have a very high profile movie, multiple over-priced “companions” to the movie, deluxe hardcover reissues of the book, and some general fervor from both the comic and non-comic communities. In all of this madness (in no small part brought on by the current graphic novel-to-movie obsession) however, no one is really talking about the book, except to say how much better than the movie it is, which is not an entirely productive position.

Many cite Watchmen as a turning point in comic history, the flagship in an invasion of very dark, very adult, very complicated stories and settings that take us far away from Peter Parker and Wolverine (not to diminish those inspiring and well crafted characters). We must then understand what exactly Watchmen is before we can understand the institution it engendered.

Watchmen is simultaneously everything and nothing. It is both every super-hero dream you had as a kid and the sadistic deconstruction of such pathetic fantasies. Moore creates a frighteningly real fantasy world, set in 1985, in which the United States stayed in Vietnam looking for blood and total annihilation and Richard Nixon amended the constitution in order to stay in office for multiple terms beyond the traditionally allotted two. The Cold War is at a terrifying peak, the imminent threat of missile attacks is in full swing, and indeed much of the tension of the reading experience is conveyed through each chapter showing the doomsday clock one minute closer to midnight (and being covered progressively by more and more blood).

This is apocalyptic. No, this is the apocalypse.

Gibbons’ illustrations and Higgins’ coloring (a creepy mix of Easter pastels and doom) carry this foreboding throughout the book, and we are unable to shake the feeling that something terrible might happen every time we turn the page.

Moore’s apocalypse has much to do with the book’s most “super” character, Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan is everything the United States wished it had during the Cold War – the ultimate failsafe, the ultimate ultimatum, if you will. Due to an accident in a comic/sci-fi-convention particle separator/accelerator (in this case, an “intrinsic field” research device), Dr. Jon Osterman becomes the God-like Dr. Manhattan, who can manipulate all forms of matter and energy with nothing but a thought. This means that he can dissemble any missiles the Soviets might launch just by thinking about it. This also means, as we see from the book, that he can annihilate entire populations and singlehandedly destroy the Vietnamese.

Dr. Manhattan is the only “hero” in this book who has a specifically super-natural ability, and consequently he is the only one who really doesn’t care at all about humanity. Through Dr. Manhattan, Moore explores the human fantasy of creation, and all of the megalomaniacal complications involved. Dr. Manhattan, the U.S.A.’s lynchpin of foreign policy, protecting us from mutually assured destruction, becomes progressively more detached from the concerns of those he has been enlisted to protect; he eventually flees to Mars where he creates a massive glass watch-like machine from which he can observe the workings of the smallest atomic particles in the cosmos. He is as far away from us as he can get, and we spiral toward destruction in his absence. Dr. Manhattan is one pole in Moore’s complex spectrum of the doomed human condition.

The other side of Moore’s sophisticated spectrum finds voice through one of the most sadistic yet gripping characters in fiction: Rorschach. Our first introduction into the world of Watchmen comes through Rorschach, and I think this signifies the kind of perspective Moore entices us to engage through his book. Rorschach gets his name from the key feature of his costume – a mask made of a unique fabric which allows gelatinous material to form changing shapes continuously within it. These shapes manifest as if they were blots on cards during a Rorschach test. These ever changing shapes, evocative of the multiplicity of objects we see during Rorschach tests, simultaneously materialize and render spectral Rorschach’s relationship with the world he finds so disgusting. Rorschach is a mirror, we see in his masked face everything we fear, everything we have repressed, everything we have ever hoped for, and everything we ever thought we loved.

His face is our face, constantly shifting, resisting stability, rejecting any stable sense of morality we can conjure. Rorschach, paradoxically, is the most principled of our cast of heroes: he is the only one who has never compromised in his pursuit of the destruction of evil. We, as readers (as seen through the pathetic Dr. Malcolm who thinks he can “fix” Rorschach), in the face of Rorschach’s stoic purpose, are forced to admit that we are wholly unable to do what it takes to “fix” the world we have so completely ruined. We can think that Rorschach is a sick sociopath, that we could never revert to murder and torture to get the job done, but our condemnation falls limp when we understand Rorschach is us, and we are all him. Spawned from the very world of depravity he so yearns to cleanse, Rorschach is the dark secret lurking within each of us. Moore knows this, and exploits it.

The mirror held up by Rorschach’s face is reiterated during the climax of the book. The final devastating attack is not the nuclear holocaust threatened by the doomsday clock, but instead it is a hideous monster, a cycloptic octopus that crashes down onto the heart of New York City, slaughtering everything in sight. This hideous (and curiously vaginal) monster becomes almost a parody of the super-hero fantasies we associate with comics. It is every terrible creation cooked up by every villain in comics; it is every horrifying nightmare-creation causing children to sleep in their parents’ bed; it is everything we fear – fat, wet, slimy, pulsing, and filled with stench; this monster, in destroying the world of Watchmen, simultaneously destroys any faith we might have in the fantasy that there are super-heroes running around in costume dedicating their lives solely to protecting us. In creating this single monster, Moore dramatically crushes us with his thesis: he ridicules the ways in which humans consistently divert our attentions (either through cold wars or giant monsters) from what should be important in our lives, always passing the buck, never accepting accountability for our own fates.

Despite the naysayers, I enjoyed my time in the theater, watching Watchmen translated onto the screen. But seriously, a bomb just doesn’t cut

Mastodon/ Crack The Skye/ Relapse/ 2009

A good friend told me recently that “Mastodon is too metal for non-metalheads, and not metal enough for metalheads,” and I think that this sentiment points us toward the true function of the band. Mastodon systematically deconstructs any stable understanding of “metal” we can create.

Metal, as a genre, is plagued by categorization; multiple and varied sub-definitions spawn almost infinitely. Hardcore, grind, stoner, death, black, fantasy, doom, funeral doom, and progressive are all possible prefixes for metal. The thing that makes Mastodon fascinating is how seamlessly they integrate elements from all of the above categories to produce something that is always simultaneously too metal and not metal enough. Within a span of one minute, in any given song, Mastodon can make you weep or melt your face off, and they don’t care which.

Crack the Skye, Mastodon’s most recent exercise in face melting, is their most perplexing, beautiful, haunting, and brutal opus. During the anthemic climax of the titular track, “Crack the Skye,” Troy Sanders wails “Deep within this endless void/ searching for a sign…Weight of worlds is on your shoulders/ hear the voice of gold.” These words pull us into the complex concept behind the album’s construction and the true influence of Mastodon on metal: severing the signified from the signifiers, and leaving the world and reason behind to be carried into realms between time and space. Here we encounter demons, Rasputin, a Tsarina, the devil himself, and all of the dark places in our very souls. The currency here is golden souls and mystical transformation, and we watch as our understanding of the world around us falls crumbling to the ground. Mastodon have already proven their ability to craft delicately brutal concept albums, from Leviathan (a retelling of Moby Dick) to Blood Moutain (epic battles with monstrous intergalactic alien beings), but Skye finds them more deftly creating a musical setting that complements their intellectual conceptions.

Mastodon defies all conventional modes of metal composition, juxtaposing sailing parallel guitar arpeggios (in major keys) against growling yelps (helped of course by Scott Kelly of Neurosis fame) and primal drums. The construction of overarching atmosphere in the composition of Skye surpasses their previous albums, and Mastodon is able here to literally transport us into the world they create, forcing us to forget that we are listening to five scruffy dudes playing instruments. Each song is structured individually, adapting and responding to each new theme presented, giving us the difficult task of keeping up with rapid harmonic, thematic, and structural shifts.

Skye does what all other Mastodon albums have strived to do: force controlled immersion into a fantastical world that stretches our ability to negotiate our relationships with ourselves and the world around us. As we are pushed into the “realm of mystic majesty” Mastodon orchestrates a beautiful symphony of crushing breakdowns and spectral melodies, disrupting our ability to pin down their conceptual project, and providing us with a fully engrossing listen.

- CHAYNES

Tough Love/ Vh1/ Sunday Nights

by Oryomai

We are now up to lesson six in our Tough Love boot camp. So far we have learned that sexy doesn't have to mean slutty, don't be a gold digger (or if you are, don't let people know about it,) and that it's totally worth making a total ass of yourself on national TV for the love of a man. This lesson is about secrets and how you reveal them and how that is just as important as what you're revealing.

Oh...the thrill of public humiliation!

Steve takes the ladies to a game show called "Cute or Crazy" in which the demographic of MANswers gets to decide about the ladies' qualities. Everyone has a good time except Abiola. This is because she's a total fucking psycho. Highlights include the fact that she uses her cat to decide on potential boyfriends and that she married herself (and wears a ring). I would rather watch Arian throw herself face first into the crotch of the next man to walk in the room than listen to Abiola talk about how she's a princess.

The challenge today is to reveal secrets to the people the ladies have been seeing. Steve decides to bring out all the girls secrets in group time because our sadistic matchmaker did not have enough fun humiliating them in front of a group of strange men. Most of them are pretty tame: loser guys, family members in prison, short term dating...blah, blah, blah. We finally hit scandal with two of them: Abiola and Jaclyn. Abiola was married before?! How in the hell did that happen? (Side note: does marrying whatever guy and then marrying herself, count as being married twice?) Is this divorce the thing that drove her to cats and tiaras? The worst, however, is Jaclyn. Turns out, she is completely supported by her parents (trust fund slut...bet she wears Juicy Couture sweatsuits with Ugg boots in July). She thinks that this is totally okay because her grandfather thinks that girls shouldn't work. Wait...it's that easy to justify? Why haven't I just gotten married and sucked enough dick to get myself a pair of True Religions?! Fuck this real world thing -- I'm going into legalized prostitution.

Now, we get to watch the ladies go on dates to reveal their secrets. Remember: they have to tell something tragic/dark/embarassing but put a positive spin on it. How hard can that possibly be? Most of the ladies do pretty well. Jessa's date is our matchmaker. He can't figure her out, so he decides to surprise her with a lie detector test. Wait a goddamn minute! WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY?! He is *not* our VH1 lie detector guy! I don't even know if I'll believe his results. He claims that Jessa is telling the truth...she just doesn't like Steve. So..apparently...Jessa doesn't reveal anything?

Ah, the group review. As if we all just didn't watch it. Taylor wins this week. She managed to cover her tits long enough to make a connection with someone. Go team! Jodi meets her guy's son (get 'em into reality shows while they're young!) Who's in this hot seat this week? ABIOLA! It's not from her date and how she revealed her secret, but the fact that she was a total moron on "Cute or Crazy." Steve lets us know that she (and many other women) suffer from a common problem: overthinking. Ooooh...I have so much more to learn from you Steve!

The Cougar/ Premiere Episode/ TV Land/ Wednesdays

The Cougar…a show after my own heart (full disclosure: I plan on becoming a cougar at the point when it wouldn't make me a child molester). Nothing says fierce quite like a hot piece of young male arm candy. I wasn't aware that cougarism was a "cultural phenomenon," but I am thrilled to help Vivica Fox beat down the double standard.

Our cougar seems to be ripped from Desperate Housewives or possibly one of the older rejects from Rock of Love. The amount of botox on her face might be enough to poison all 20 boys there. The boys she's bringing to the mansion are a welcome batch of eye candy in the world of STD laden ladies of VH1 (Hotlanta, I don't believe that was a pimple. That was herpes.) Isn't it amazing that these mansions appear out of the woodwork for reality shows? Do the owners spray them down to attempt to rid them of Chlamydia after?

The downside to this show could be how incredibly fucking stupid boys in their 20s are (one guy tells her she "has the right to remain delicious.") If those are their best lines, this is gonna be a long show. We start the show off by having the men line up to try and wow this cougar with their best first impressions. The first boy pops a bottle of champers and says he's sharing one of his first legal drinks with our cougar.

Oh!!!! THERE ARE TWINS!!!! Fuck yes.

The huddle of hunks is like driving through Oakland in the morning during the warm weather -- sexy boys every which way you turn. Champers boy (Travis) wins the first impressions challenge. And it took all of 26 minutes for a boy to strip and dive in the pool. Yes please. We spend the rest of the episode watching the cougar meet the boys. You can watch it on mute.

Don't worry -- we have all the male stereotypes. There's the twins. The unemployed but loveable beta male. The ex-Marine. The bartender. The shy guy. You want it in a 20-something male, this show has got it. Now, I know what you're thinking, what cheesy gimmick if the cougar going to use to show the men they get to stay in the house? Keys, champers, clocks, backstage passes? She becomes the classiest of all: the kiss off. If you get the lips you stay, the cheek you go. Who will she eliminate -- the twin? The military veteran? I think it's against the Patriot Act to kick him off right away The unemployed but lovable beta male? As we all know, the first people off a show are completely forgetable and we don't know who they are on reunion shows.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! She eliminated one of the twins!!! DOES SHE NOT KNOW THAT IT IS EVERYONE'S FANTASY TO HAVE TWINS?!?!?! Apparently, the cougars have not kept up with how awesome the beta males are, and our beta-est beta is sent home as well.

Overall, this show attempts to be a classy version of all the reality dating shows we know and love. Travis (champers boy) is my early favortite. He's got a little beta in him, and I like that. This first episode was basically meet the eye candy. The “serious” competition is forthcoming.

- Oryomai

Recipe/ Guacamole

by Cacia Y. Pepe

Feel like dipping into something Mexican? Well I’m flattered, but I’m also Italian. I created a delicious ‘Oh-So-Simple’ Guacamole. It was recently featured on Atlantic Shore Living. Try it. It’s yummy. Throw it on your chicken or eat it with blue corn chips. Do it. Do it now!

Chuck's Honey BBQ/ Special Register Display/ $4.50

Many Midwesterners, especially those who have an insatiable urge for porcine dishes, enjoy barbecue sauce as a part of their usual diet. In fact, since Louis Maull started peddling his crimson cream out of a horse-drawn cart in St. Louis over a hundred years ago, Americans from coast to coast have experienced an altered palette, and different varieties of the sauce have become popular throughout our country. Until a few weeks ago, my personal favorite was Roberts County Pork Producers BBQ sauce, made famous at country rendezvous such as the Rosholt Area Threshing Bee and the Fort Sisseton Historical Festival. Well, times have changed and my tangy allegiances have shifted. Chuck's Honey BBQ Sauce now wears the crown as my number one.

Chuck Braun - who, I admit, is my second cousin - recently introduced a barbecue sauce to the northeast South Dakota market. I discovered it in the place of my own origin, Rosholt, S.D., which also happens to be Chuck's town of residence. Luckily it was Easter evening when I arrived back at my house at school with my new bottle; I had plenty of leftover ham, which became guinea pig meat. I quickly chose cheddar cheese and bread to be my companions on my local sauce, barbecue ham adventure. A few lighter options to avoid complicating any first impressions.

Some of the biggest names in sauce, such as Dorothy Lynch - my go-to - started small, like Chuck's current operation. (I used to be a Western French dressing fanatic, but some listed ingredients have put me off a bit.) According to the company website, Ms. Lynch and her husband lived in St. Paul, Nebraska, and in the late '40s they began mixing up what eventually grew to be the Dorothy Lynch Home Style Dressing enterprise. Thinking about it, the Braun family, which I am a part of through my mother, shares these Nebraskan roots. Maybe something in the soil down there has resulted in its residents' ability to craft a phenomenal liquid meal additive. Maybe not, but Chuck's is one heck of a sauce.

It hit my tongue easy and presented no huge initial surprises. But it was like a warm peanut butter bun or fresh toasted bagels topped with whipped berry sour cream - I wanted more and more. It didn't have the overly strong bang of a common Thai sauce, nor did it have the boring one-liner approach of a typically watery steak sauce. Chuck's was just right: Peppery, but not weak. Ketchupy, but not too tomatoey.

I am listening to the deep tracks station on satellite radio as I write this, and when I started, Eric Clapton's "Slunky" came punching through my TV speakers. The song's flavor shares many of the subdued yet strong qualities of Chuck's Honey BBQ Sauce. I had never heard this selection from Slowhand, but my exposure to it paralleled my primary time with Chuck's.

My only complaint? No background on the back of the container. A transformed, red racecar truck monster grill watches over Chuck's lawn in the summertime. He has one of the most impressive outdoor cookers a person could ever see; contextual facts so bad-ass should get some mention, if not a visual reservation on the packaging.

Since my pioneering test run with the sauce, I have added Chuck's to a buffalo burger, hamburger helper, and some minute steaks. It has yet to disappoint. Nice work, and keep it up Chuck. (Sorry, couldn't resist.) I intend to keep a stock around in my own cupboards, and I think all you out there in readerland should give it a try sometime, although you might have to travel to a town of 400 in South Dakota to buy a bottle.

- Mitch LeClair

Grizzly Bear/ Veckatimest/ Warp Records

Listening to Grizzly Bear’s upcoming release Veckatimest is the aural equivalent of waiting for the sun to dip beneath the treetops so you can sit on the back porch and drink tea in the glow of summer sunset and watch the day lull slowly into twilight. Grizzly Bear brings out my worst Wordsworthian tendencies, but I’ve accepted this.

This album is a perfect companion to their 2006 release Yellow House, an album that simultaneously invokes the out-of-body, transcendental, mystical communion with a metaphysical Higher Power (you know, if you’re into that kind of thing) and the dialectic between the cold crispness of white breath and fallen leaves of an autumn morning in rural Pennsylvania (you know, if you’re into that kind of thing).

But this review isn’t about Yellow House. YH deserves mention because Veckatimest is a stunning complement to the previous full length. It’s difficult not to regard them as two pieces of a greater whole. If you insist on making a comparison, a good way to consider the qualitative difference between the two is that Veckatimest allows itself to smile once in awhile. Even toe-tap.

Veckatimest is haunted by the existential grieving of Ed Droste’s and Daniel Rossen’s pleading voices that linger somewhere between quavering strings and fearless choirboys. The “you” of the song lyrics may be, literally, a lover, but ultimately these are men singing to the stars. Consider the darkness of “Dory,” where Rossen sings that he should “drop her down to the bottom/…drop her like she’s nothing,” later followed by a slow, swaying declaration that the singer “can’t be here all hour,” as if to abandon her to depths punctuated only by the soft roll of a drum.

If any song betrays the darkness that lurks under even the lightest sounds on this album, it’s “Foreground.” Fans of YH will say, “Wow, Grizzly Bear sure can end an album.” (Listen to the song “Colorado” and you’ll know what I’m talking about.) The last song will dispel any doubts about the psychic space this album inhabits, despite the relative lightness of the wonderful “Two Weeks” and the crashing theatrics of “I Live With You.” Over a spare piano line, Droste sings about “walk[ing] another road” and “something…muffled,” and the telling observation, “something about this light.” Half-sentences, thoughts only partially articulated, march on to end the album. The very name of the song invites the listener to consider it closely, preferably with your heart prepared for rending. Not that you could miss this song if you tried. Not that anyone should try, ever.

-Imogen V. Shahrazad

Do You Want Fries With That?

By Max Gold, Age 13

There’s a quiet little town, in a world, on about a 78 degrees angle from Venus, about 2389329 miles away from Venus, full of really, really, really fat people. These people loved to eat; they would eat everything, from liver to asparagus, from chocolate to Sticky Cheese, and from Jelly to Jam. Now these people were happy people and no one ever put them down.

Outside Earth, there’s this gigantic space ship. This space ship looks exactly like a hamburger, with seeds every few yards and all. Their salt and pepper guns were loaded, and ready to hit this planet full of fat people (although they the McDonaldians didn‘t know they were fat.) The King Grilled Chicken stood up on the ice cream cone pillar, ready to make a speech.

“Hello My fellow McDonaldians” The King Grilled Chicken said. “Today we march down to earth, and we fight to death!” he screamed.

This got much applause, especially from a Chicken nugget, named Crispy Gangsta. “Yeah let’s show dem homies we gunna pop a soda cap up their-” But he was cut off when the king threw a ketchup packet at him. “Shut it. Now unleash all flamin’ hot sauce!” The King screamed.

Down on Earth all the fat people were having a “we-ate-ten-thousand-pieces-of-chicken-day.” Now as we all know that’s a huge celebration, everyone who’s anyone goes there.

Then, out of nowhere, it started raining salt and pepper. Then the sound of hamburgers the size of pillows ringed in everyone ears. Then… a giant pillow sized hamburger flew down from the sky. It was Crispy Gangsta ready for action.

Unfortunately a boy named Chungy saw Crispy’s ship and got over excited. He ran at the hamburger full force, and swallowed Crispy Gangsta whole. Then he tore that hamburger down and ate the entire thing in five seconds, and wanted more. Then the rest of the space ships came down. In half an hour not one scrap of food was left. Except the mother ship which had landed.

“I come to you humans in peace and hope we can make a fair agreement, and-” but he got cut off when Chungy got a little too hungry. He swallowed the king in one gulp. The poor McDonaldians had no idea what was coming… But the voluptuous folk on the ground sure got a lot of fun out of eating the mother ship.

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About Us

Dinner is Foreplay for Cityfolk brings the fucking back into making love. Our purpose:

1. Every meal should begin with light creative quotes, poetry or text which will be extraordinarily appetizing.


2. Food should be enjoyed and worshiped. It should be prepared by hand and eaten with orgasms. And when it’s straight up paid for, it better get you wasted.


3. Remind readers reality television is worth watching if you remember it is the equivalent of your lover nibbling on your neck for hours. Unless it’s Toddlers & Tiaras.


4. Let music seep into your ears and sway down to your soul. Let text envelop your eyes and eat away at envy.

We at Dinner Is Foreplay For City Folk have multiple purposes for presenting our opinions of others ideas, and most of it redonk(ulous), and we're 100% O.K. with that.

The Team is presented below:

Editor-In-Chief:
Cacia Y. Pepe

Staff Writers:
Armon Burnside
Eriq F.
Chaynes
Imogen V. Shahrazad
Oryomai
Mitch LeClair
Eugene Zambrano
Lauren Rara

Resident Artist:
Eryn Rose

For comments, questions, or inquiries about submissions and if you’d like to sign up for our mailing list, please write to: Diffcf AT gmail DOT com