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The Volatility of a Nuclear Reactor

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September 24, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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The cover art for all of the official releases from the Glasgow synth pop group CHVRCHES are similar to that of warning signs seen plastered around nuclear reactors. The ones that scream “RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL” to remind you of the world-ending power that the energy efficient machines contain and maintain, barely. The stylized name of the group on its debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, leaps off the cover as an all-caps instruction to be wary of what lies inside. Yet, just beneath the group’s name lies the album title in an almost minuscule font size which reads as a footnote about the volatile materials contained within.

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@tueswithhorry is the name, Twitter is the game

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September 17, 2013
America, Pop Culture, Sports
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iPhone photos 556

We see you on Twitter. Come see us.

Now that I have your attention with a ridiculous picture of a large stuffed bear on a computer, it is our duty to inform you that we are on Twitter @tueswithhorry. We wanted to go for the whole thing, but apparently handles have to be less than 140 characters. Who would’ve thought? Anywho, if you enjoy what we do and/or like any of the people who have ever even considered contributing to this experiment, following us couldn’t hurt. We don’t spam, we don’t get (too) self-indulgent and we are all about the follow-back game. Every now and then, we might hit you with a petition to the White House, but last time we checked, this is the United States of America. Freedom isn’t free. Somebody’s gotta do the heavy lifting, and it might as well be Big Shot Rob, or at least the blog named after him. Happy posting in <141 characters, everyone.

That Day I Petitioned the White House

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September 16, 2013
America, Politics, Pop Culture
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It started on a Saturday afternoon watching college football. I was with a few friends enjoying some adult beverages when we started guffawing at foreign policy. In a Dr. Strangelove-esque turn of events, we started laughing at the thought of the United States putting in the incorrect coordinates for a nuclear attack. The destination of those incorrect coordinates? Antarctica. That’s right. A continent without any countries or human inhabitants that hate us. In the end, the ice caps melt due to this erroneous strike, and whole countries flood. We’ve turned this place into Waterworld, and we are no longer back-to-back any war champs. We are just all fighting for sand. The scenario was hilarious because of the implausibility of everything. Until I realized, in my drunken state, that I could petition the government, and I could get the wheels rolling on this thing with a plea for our government to do something about the one place that does not have a representative government or an established people. Hell, they don’t even have a flag, for crying out loud.

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The Aural Timeline of Mark Sanchez With the New York Jets

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September 15, 2013
Music, NFL, Pop Culture, Sports
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Courtesy of media.nj.com.

Courtesy of media.nj.com.

With this week’s conflicting reports of quarterback Mark Sanchez either being out for the season or, at the very least, being out for the foreseeable future, many Jets fans, myself included, have come to the conclusion that the rollercoaster of Sanchez’s time on the Jets has, for all intents and purposes, come to an end. What began with relatively high hopes and two straight AFC Championship Game appearances will most likely end with many CBS cutaways to Sanchez on the sidelines in a hat trying to look supportive of his apparent successor, Geno Smith. Flashes of his unkempt hair and seven o’clock shadow during timeouts will constitute the majority of the attention he receives here forth, and the announcers will perceive his happiness as having an inverse correlation with Smith’s success as the season progresses. Sanchez has taken the Jets and their fans to higher highs and seemingly bottomless valleys over the course of the last five years, and now that he seems to be on his way out of the city which had once been so keen to christen him as the long-awaited successor to Joe Namath, it is time to reminisce. Hopefully (I guess? Being a Jets fan is confusing, and not just for the idea of actually being a Jets fan), Sanchez will not make a Willis Reed-like return in the fading weeks of the season to bring the Jets to the brink of the playoffs and then go 5-21 with 4 interceptions and a lost fumble in Week 17. That would render this piece premature and really take some of the fun out of it. And yet, that would be a perfectly Mark Sanchez-with-the-Jets thing to do. In fact, it would simply be a perfect Jets thing to do, as this franchise loves to string its fans along with enough promise to keep the team interesting. Then, just when we think the team is ready to finally strangle the monkey on our back, the team realizes it is still the New York Jets, and we return to mediocrity under the most judgmental media magnifying glass in this country. With all that said, what follows is a look back at Sanchez’s span in New York, as told through the universal language that is pop music. Read More

This Land Is Your Land

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September 13, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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Photo courtesy of Rolling Stone

Photo courtesy of Rolling Stone

After having gone through the PBR&B rabbit hole, and after many rotations of the mixtapes House of Balloons and Echoes of Silence, we have come to a point at which we know what to expect from the Canadian producer and singer Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd. His feelings seep through every word and coo, often reverberated heavily with tinges of extreme sadness. “Wicked Games,” in particular, became a YouTube sensation, hitting over 25,000,000 views and becoming the quintessential Weeknd song, complete with an eerie, hypnotic beat, heavily altered drum patterns and vibrato vocals full of fear, detachment and a longing for companionship. Since 2010, when Tesfaye began releasing songs to the Internet under his current pseudonym, he has become buddy-buddy with Drake and gotten signed to Universal Republic Records and, finally, released his first studio album. Read More

“They Have a Palooza for Everything Now”

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September 1, 2013
Pop Culture, Sports
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Many Saturdays ago (because I’m horrible at timely blog posts), Rory and I decided to take advantage of the great weather and venture forth into the greatest city in the world. Living in New York means that you’re never at a loss for something to do, so we hit up the Twitter Machine to see what adventure our day could be, and BOOM.

Pogopalooza.

Intrigued, we set off to Tompkins Square Park for what would prove to be an afternoon of pure bliss. We walked into the park to find . . . people doing tricks on Pogo sticks.  I don’t know what I expected, but somehow, the absurdity of the afternoon swept me up, and I was cheering my heart out for “Wacky Chad,” “the Man Child,” and some kid whose name I can’t remember but was never mentioned without also mentioning that he was “all the way from Saint Petersburg, Russia!” I’ve never been one for “X-TREME” sports (I prefer the slow, steady rhythm of a baseball game), but I was completely fascinated watching these young men who clearly trained for and were passionate about X-Pogo.

After the “Big Air” qualifiers, it was time to break some world records. Yes, we actually watched people break world records. Try it sometime. Even if it’s something as ridiculous as ten guys on pogo sticks doing a backflip at the same time, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of watching something that’s never been done before.

I didn’t feel qualified to write about this unless I tried pogo-ing myself, so I tried it. Note: It is very difficult, I was not very good, and I sustained some large bruises in strange places. But anyway, since the internet is an asker, and I’m a giver, here is a picture of me on a pogo stick:

Pogo

Orange Is The New Black: Litchfield’s Best Womances

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August 23, 2013
Pop Culture, Television
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OITNB

Let me start off with a simple sentiment: if you’re not watching Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black, you’re doing it all wrong. Netflix has been nailing it with their original programming and OITNB may be their best series yet. It’s dramatic, it’s hilarious, it has forbidden love, a guy named “Pornstache,” a theme song by Regina Spektor and a cast that is freakin’ adorable on Instagram… basically, everything it takes to make a show critically acclaimed and popularly successful.

It feels like everyone is talking about OITNB (or maybe I just feel that way because I’m talking about it all the time to anyone who will listen), and for good reason. There’s a ton of interesting discourse to be had regarding the criminal justice system, the prison system, the LGBT community, the dynamics between inmates and correctional officers in a women’s prison, et cetera, et cetera. But the real draw of this show is its characters. I could write odes to the adorable, lovesick CO John Bennett and rants about the psycho, Jesus-obsessed Pennsatucky and essays on the enigma that is Crazy Eyes. But what’s even more entertaining than the characters themselves is their relationships with one another. The show explores so many different facets of female relationships. There are romances, there are fuck buddies, but most of all there are some truly awesome besties in Litchfield Federal Prison. Here are some of OITNB’s most excellent womances (like a bromance, but for girls. Get it?):

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The Rule of Three

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August 19, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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From top to bottom: CHVRCHES, London Grammar, and HAIM

This past summer, pop radio beat listeners to death with Daft Punk’s return from Studio 54, Robin Thicke’s perceived predatory tendencies, and Miley Cyrus’ problematic appropriation of black culture. But the heavy radio rotation of the aforementioned songs seemed to reveal that these were summer simmers rather than jams; a few mild tracks rather than ones that brought any real heat. Yet, in the background, three buzzworthy trios released hits that are the lead ins to their highly anticipated September debuts. CHVRCHES, London Grammar, and HAIM all have different pop stylistic approaches that use a semblance of electronic instrumentation to get there.

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