Cakes In The Home

Crash Course In Science!

Day of the Dead (Malls)

What is it that's so addictive about Labelscar and its attendant Flickr page, and by extension the drive to track down and document dead malls across the nation/world for the public record?

Going beyond a retail history, socioeconomic, or even an architectural standpoint, there is something charged and visceral about viewing and obsessively cataolguing these rotting cathedrals slashed across our landscape. The "living time capsule" aspect is surely a huge part of it. "What transpired in this place ten, fifteen, twenty years ago?" we ask ourselves. "Who tried on clothes under these light fixtures, amidst this stucco and wood paneling? Who cried during their smoke break on this loading dock, now overgrown with weeds? What Sophoclean dramas played themselves out in this food court?"

For this blogger, though, the most enthralling aspect of the dead mall sites is the way in which they reveal and obsessively elaborate on hideous emptiness. An abandoned mall suggests something more than a mere ghost town. A bright, loud, exapansive enclosure catered entirely to the needs and desires of the American human being that has been cast aside and left to decay is both pitiable and frightening. "Please enter us," these malls said before they were shuttered. "We can give you so much, we want only to help and serve you, we can make you happy"; shadows of echoes from the past, now, that are sucked into a yawning void.

Outrage!

It's an old cliche that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I regret to report that after much soul-searching, I can find nothing in myself but disgust and indignation at the usurpation of my nom d'URL by the dream pop band "Beach House."

I understand that, as artists, Beach House probably find the fact that they must put any effort into labeling the utmost expression of their very souls to be unnecessary and superfluous, even perverse; the name of the band itself attests to this fact. But to appropriate the name of their favorite blog without so much as a word of notice to its creator is really beyond the pale. While I'm glad that you enjoy reading this site, guy and girl from Beach House, I must express my disappointment that you could not even acknowledge me in the Thank Yous section of your album's liner notes.

In short: :(

Just Make Sure You Flush Staten Island

Hello and welcome to the first and last installment of Das Vidanya's "Remember The Daze" series. Today we address Soap shoes.



These shoes were once worn by many people at my middle school who would grow up to not be ashamed of owning a Trapt CD. There was a gnarly rail in the back of this middle school, and the same five or six guys would be out there Soapin' it up each afternoon. This rail has since been skate-stopped, but since the cream of the crop of this group could only average about a foot per grind, it doesn't really matter.

Soap shoes, as the reader has no doubt realized at this point, had a brilliant invention on their hands. They provided a common-sense solution for every young man around the turn of the century who fancied himself a latter-day Bart Simpson but who could not afford the risk of having his skateboard confiscated while carving it up on school property. Of course, now every kid worth a damn has those shoes with the wheel on the back of them, and Michael Jackson is dead.

Taylor Swiftboated

So who saw that Pitchfork best music videos of the 00's list? What a crock, right? No 99 Problems or Hurt for one thing, but they also missed these masterpieces:







Speaking of Yelle, she's amazing right? I mean, Rihanna is good and everything I guess, but how much better would the "Umbrella" video be if she was wearing french fry sunglasses and a McNuggets blouse? And if Jay-Z was wearing a Sacred Geometry BAPE jacket?

Institutionalized

Whenever life gets me down, I just turn to this video and remind myself that things could be much, much worse. You should probably watch this:



You see, it only takes one viewing of that video (that is if I can mentally prepare myself to watch the entire thing) to remind me that whatever my problems might be, they can in no way compare to those of Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies. What a burden it must be to have parents who are genuinely interested and concerned in the mental well-being of their son; they even go so far as to commit the heinous act of letting Mr. Muir know that they are there for him if he needs to discuss his feelings. The breaking point, as you have no doubt seen through your tears, comes as Mike's mother cruelly informs him that she will not wait on him hand and foot. Truly a punk classic!

Everything In Moderation

At work the other day I made a moustachioed man a protein smoothie. While I cleaned the pitcher, spatula, and other implements used to make the drink, the man departed the smoothie bar to pay the cashier four dollars. As I scrubbed away the stubbornly caked-on protein powder, I saw the man return out of the corner of my eye.

"I don't know if you're the manager on duty or what," the man said, "but you need to start implementing some cross-training at this gym, because I just had to wait for this guy at the front desk to figure out what kind of smoothie I'm buying and what I had to pay for it. This is BULLSHIT!"

I stared at the man without responding. Less than a minute had passed from the time he left the smoothie bar to the time when he began his rant. He stormed off.

This sort of thing happens almost every day where I work. I don't like seeing things like this on the news.