F*** it Fridays
The Black Sheep brings you...
“Because you know you checked out on Wednesday...”
Friday, August 12th, 2011 ISSUE 31
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LOLLAPALOOZA ‘11 OUR REVIEW OF THE EPICNESS
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www.theblacksheeponline.com
WHAT DEBT PROBLEM? A CHALLENGE TO WASHINGTON
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THE REPORT CARD
RISING APES AND RASPBERRY BREWS
I Think My Life is Bad, Then I Watch TLC KIRSTEN STEUBER WROTE THIS We all have low points. Times when we look around at our lives and think, “Gosh, I’m a dirty no good. I wake up every morning around 1:30, roll over, watch Netflix, and bring nothing new to humanity. What a waste of space I am.” You avoid calls from your parents because you’re tired of thinking up lies about interesting stuff you did this weekend, when really you stayed up all night alone making an Admiral Ackbar hand puppet.You peel your sad blob of a once proud body off the carpet and drag it to the couch. Raising your lousy mitt, you strain for the remote. Whrrrr the T.V. comes on.You zone out dreaming of a life full of friends not mocking your pathetic lifestyle, then you hear a man’s voice proclaim: “The sound you are hearing is blood flow in Jane’s clitoris right now,” and you think “Oh, I thought it was gas.” You hit the info button panicking that you somehow are accidently paying for HBO, a luxury for the rich and opulent. But no, the show is Strange Sex, and the channel? TLC. The Learning Channel. You know how carnivals used to charge wide-eyed tourists a nickel to see a man with three jaws? Well, TLC built a network upon him and, thanks to them, viewers across America can now feel superior from the comfort of their couch. Fair enough, you do learn a great deal about strange people, diseases, addictions, and throbbing pain, but like the apple from the garden, that knowledge comes with punishment. An innocence within us has been lost which will never be unlearned, unseen, or unheard. Who knew the events of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant were possible? But once you know, you can’t forget. There will never again be a moment of certainty in your mind that you are not pregnant. Never. TLC makes you unable to look unquestioningly at the once harmless people in your life. The old lady that lives next door could be buried
alive in everything from clothes to cats. Does my boss have a crippling addiction which forces him to consume up to 27 feet of dental floss a day? Sally is on the computer all the time because she’s battling a sex addiction which forces her to watch videos of humping turtles for hours a day. Whoever it is, whatever it is, TLC programming may take away security and trust, but what it gives in return is one thing: hope. Well, and entertainment. But mostly hope: hope that you are not the lazy slob you see in the mirror.You are a luminous being who eats people food and has no collection of doll heads. One of my favorite TLC programs is Hoarding: Buried Alive. I like it mainly for two reasons. 1) It makes me feel like Mr. Clean’s clean wife, even as I sit amongst my own filth. 2) It brings back fond memories of that cute junk lady from the Labyrinth who carried all her furniture on her back. She was so cute with her little round nose and squeaky voice. And that’s the way most of the TLC shows work for my friends and me. “We can look at these real crazy people and think, ‘I may have a large rock collection, but at least I don’t eat spoons like this guy.’” You’re really picky about food and people say you’re difficult? At least you’re not a Freaky Eater. Unplanned pregnancy and your parents are freaking out? At least you knew you were pregnant. When all of your friends complain that you will be the worst parent ever, just sit them down for a marathon of Toddlers & Tiaras. Sometimes you wish you could stop and just be normal, like everybody else. Luckily, TLC is there to let you know that everyone else is much, MUCH worse.
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Review: Lollapalooza 2011
KYLE HASSETT WROTE THIS This year marked the 7th year in a row that Chicago’s Grant Park has hosted Lollapalooza, the massive three day music festival, and it was also my 4th straight year of attendance. Now that I’ve established my massive credibility, let’s see what went down in 2011’s version of the one and only Lollapalooza. On Day 1, I went through the entire musical spectrum. My friends and I felt it would be best to attempt to wake ourselves up for the weekend with a quick visit to the Perry’s DJ tent to see the last band standing winner Narcisse, where we proceeded to give our best efforts to dance to dubstep. These efforts failed miserably. After about an hour of raging our faces off, we were ready for the best weekend of the year to begin. We checked out a few small bands that we pretended to know called Young the Giant and Reptar, and while waiting for one of the bands that we actually knew (Smith Westerns), the melodic voice of a beautiful temptress filled our ears. It was none other than Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. We all instantly fell in love, girls included. Grace Potter was tearing it up on vocals, shredding on guitar, and banging out the tunes on her keyboard. And she was doing it all in the shortest dress and the biggest heels I’ve ever seen. One school-boy crush later, the Smith Westerns started their set. They’re comprised of three kids out of Chicago that are all 20 or younger, which made me wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life. I now wish that I hadn’t seen them live because I could defi-
nitely tell that the lead singer was a cocky A-hole, which is what I’ll think about every time I hear one of their songs. This is ironic because I know I would be the biggest douche out there if I was playing at Lollapalooza at that age, too. After that, I saw The Kills and The Mountain Goats, both of which were very impressive but they were all just time-fillers while we waited for Skrillex to come on and kick our asses with his ridiculously loud music. I could probably write an entire other article about how insane the Skrillex show was, but you’ll have to just settle for a quick summary: high school dropouts moving through the crowd selling “stuff,” more failed attempts to dance to dubstep, and lots and lots (and lots) of sweat. Once our faces were sufficiently melted, it was time to start camping out for the headliner, a grueling but necessary part of Lollapalooza. That night, it happened to be Coldplay, who put on an amazing show. Despite the fact that I may have shed a tear during “Clocks,” I’m proud to say that I was able to be confident with my manhood throughout the majority of the show. On the morning of Day 2, I awoke to the sound of a thunderstorm. Shit; a Lolla-goers worst nightmare. Before leaving for the train station, I took a good long look at my umbrella, but decided not to. After the night before, my bro-status was already under heavy scrutiny. I was ready to sack-up. Unfortunately, the
email us at f***it@theblacksheeponline.com rain stopped shortly after arriving in Chicago, so my bro-ness had to hang in the balance for a little while longer. As with the first day, we darted straight for Perry’s to shake off any remaining sleepiness. And after a scorching day of standing and head banging, there was a lot of sleepiness to go around. This day was essentially all about the headliner for us: My Morning Jacket, the band that we had all been listening to on repeat since the lineup was first announced. On days like these, camping out is an absolute must. We were prepared to do whatever it took to get prime real estate for the final show. But we knew that Eminem and Pretty Lights were also playing that day, which was great news. All the kids that hated their lives and wanted to be wannabe gangsters would be heading to Eminem, and all of the kids who were rolling the whole weekend would go to Pretty Lights. Perfect. Like I said before, we started off at Perry’s with a DJ called L1GHT, and afterwards made our way over to wait for Phantogram, a little band from New York that I had been swearing by for weeks, so they had to come through. And they did. They put on a haunting but melodious set that everybody loved, so I felt I did my job there. Next, we sauntered over to Fitz & the Tantrums, who also delivered in a big way with high-energy tunes that we could dance to. That gave us the strength we needed to battle through the sweltering heat. After some extremely overpriced food from Chicago’s finest eateries and a good amount of Bud Light Lime, we began to make our way to the north stage which would soon be graced by My Morning Jacket…in four hours. So we chilled for a little bit, drank a whole mess of water in order to not die, checked out Local Natives and Ween (both awesome), and soon enough, it was time for us to make our move. We knew that no matter how dense the crowd, we were getting up close. Real close. Once Ween ended, the crowd began to leave, and then they continued to leave, and then they kept leaving, until there was a huge amount of space right in front of the stage. So much for battling through hordes of drunken and foul-smelling people. After a quick sprint to the porta-potties that would make Oscar the Grouch puke, we were ready to have our minds blown. And blown they got. M.M.J. rocked the non-existent roof off the non-existent house. We sang every single word to every song, and damn, it was good. Just seconds after it ended, we mutually decided that what we
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just witnessed would certainly be the best show of the weekend, if not our lives.Yeah, it was that good. We decided to go to the third and final day, anyways. On the final morning of Lollapalooza, it was raining again. Then it stopped again soon after, for the time being…(Evil laugh). We kicked the day off with some crispy stoner tunes from a band called Iration who hailed from Hawaii. This was a pretty nice/chill way to start off our final day, but then the DJ tent came calling again. So we scampered off to check out Daedelus, who was as awesome as he was hard to look at (very). Then, it was time for some local spice in the form of The Cool Kids, one of the few modern-day rap artists that I can tolerate. After upping our street-cred, we moved on to Portugal. The Man and the Arctic Monkeys, both of which were superb. But this is when the great storm came. Right before the Arctic Monkeys were scheduled to begin, the sky opened up and we were forced to endure Mother Nature’s wrath. The ground was already in extremely shitty condition from the previous two days, so when it ended, we found ourselves ankle-deep in mud, which may have been cool for some people (hippies) but certainly not for me. However, there was still the matter of regaining my manhood after geeking-out to Coldplay. So I put on my “I’m here to party” face and awaited the Foo Fighters performance. It kept pouring until about halfway through the show, at which point I looked down and saw how effed everything below my waist was. My pants were covered in mud, legs were totally caked, and I couldn’t even see my shoes anymore. But I sucked it up and watched the Foo Fighters put on a hell of a performance, with Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell coming out at the end of the set to a warm round of applause from the crowd. In a word, it was awesome. As quickly as it had come, it was all over. Lollapalooza 2011 was a “great success,” as my personal friend Borat once said. I had the privilege of seeing 25 bands in three days for about $9 per show; tell me that’s not a good deal. I hope to see you all at Lollapalooza 2012, which will be the last Lolla ever if you believe in a certain extinct civilization’s doomsday prophecy. So I implore you to come on down to Grant Park on August 3-5 of next year to check out one of the greatest festivals on Earth, unless of course you hate music, in which case I wonder why the hell you just read this article in the first place.
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A Challenge to Washington… and China TOM BURSON WROTE THIS If you don’t know much about the current U.S. spending, it’s simple; we spend significantly more money than what’s available. And it entirely makes sense that rather than subtly increasing taxes on the billionaire in Manhattan who wipes his dick with Benjamins or even say, “Ya know, I don’t think we have the money to completely support the countries of Greece and Ireland, while overthrowing Libya, and investing a hundred-million in Tic-Tacs,” the U.S. government approved a bill that would simply raise the debt limit—what constitutes “in debt.” By that logic, I’ll call MasterCard and be all “I understand I haven’t paid a bill in months, but if you just let buy this new plasma-screen, the entire Snicker’s section at Costco and a bucket of Crisco, this debt will slip away in no time.” Anyways, we owe a whopping $15 trillion to people ranging from foreign governments we established, overtook and deemed tyrannical, then reestablished (false alarm, bro) to Mexican drug lords and the old folks who need these magical, Mexican narcotics. Of this $15 trillion debt, a tenth belongs to China. How do we combat this debt to China? Apparently, outsourcing and “buy American” didn’t work on them either. Well, here are some ideas: Profits in Chinatown (every Chinatown) go to China: Although some of Chinatown’s restaurants or little shops—littered with twelve dumplings for a dollar and “Gucci,” “Prada,” and more predominately “Wal-Mart” bags—may be American owned, I think the American economy can sacrifice the eighty-five dollars a day earned by each Chinatown—not counting the dollars from
those shady “tax-free” shops. I’m sure Obama will miss cheap dumplings, cat, and profits from duck feet, but I’m confident not only debt will diminish but the E. coli rate as well. Return the rights to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and every Kung Fu movie made in the US (except Kung Fu Panda, that’s our shit): A movie made by the Chinese, for the Chinese, and in Chinese, yet, American production company, Columbia Pictures, assumed the rights to Chow Yun-Fat’s karate-pact drama. The film grossed a mere $215 million worldwide, and, as far as I can tell, it’s still the number one box-office hit in Beijing. Still more, just wait until the sequel Run, We Found the Fucking Dragon hits theaters. Couple this with Jackie Chan and the U.S. will make a serious dent in their $1.5 trillion deficit. If all else fails, sell plasma and semen (or eggs): If college has taught me anything, it’s that extra cash (booze money) can easily be made in exchange for blood ($45) and babies ($50/sperm deposit and $3000-$5000/egg cycle). Imagine if this cash shipped to China. The U.S. deficit would not only evaporate in a year, but American’s would be happier. Studies show depositing a load— whether blood or semen—acts as a relaxant. Along with a more relaxed America, a revitalized and newly stimulated pornography industry evolves. And we all know a boost in porn erects a rise in affairs (ask Mr. Woods)…and lotion. With an increased divorce/ court rate generates cash flow into the gullet of the United States legal system. China, watch out. America’s coming.
Report Card Movie Review Name:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
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A-
Starring: Andy Serkis, James Franco, Frieda Pinto, John Lithgow My fellow collegiate scholars and more casual class-going drunkards, this past week brought a film that, if your parents raised you right, will bring a bit of nostalgia. Now, I’m not talking about the great period piece, Captain America, the cash-grab that is The Smurfs or the apparent Freaky Friday remake that is The Change Up. No, the movie I’m referring to is none other than Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It’s a movie trying to put a new spin on an old franchise. Does it bring new life into the impending chimpocalypse or is it just too silly a concept? Now if your parents deprived you of the joy of science fiction movies as a child (the fools!), you probably haven’t seen the original Planet of the Apes starring Charlton Heston. The original tells a tale of some astronauts that crash land on a planet ruled by, you guessed it, apes! They soon discover that apes have been ruling the land for ages and humans are their slaves. The movie climaxes with Heston’s character discovering that the planet they landed on is really…EARTH! The sci-fi camp and history behind the revolution is fleshed out afterwards in four sequels that reveal mutants, time travel and a plot that connects everything back together in the end. In 2001, Tim Burton decided to remake the original with darker visuals and tone (shocker) but although it had impressive visuals, as whole the movie failed to make its mark.
Beer Review Name:
Railyard Raspberry Wheat
B-
Brewery: Mt. Pleasant Brewing Company The Beginning: In the midst of a move, I bring you BEER. The modern world does many things good for us. I mean, you’re reading this on the internet, and that’s pretty cool. But there’s just something boring about moving in a car, with an assist from a buddy with a pickup truck- you pile stuff in, you carry cardboard boxes, you drive. Wouldn’t it be neat if it was like the old days, when everyone had fancy leather luggage and rode on trains from place to place? When the women wore fancy dresses and the men wore bowler hats and monocles and you could smoke cigars wherever you pleased? OK, so that would be a little bit lame, because you’d have cholera and live to the ripe old age of 50. But still, I like trains, and I like gambling, and this is brewed in Mt. Pleasant (home of Soaring Eagle casino). The Brewer’s Pitch: This isn’t a raspberry beer, in the sense of being made from raspberries. Instead it is a simple American wheat blended with raspberry juice during the brewing process to blend the flavors. The brewer recommends it to go with fresh fruit salad or dessert- or even to be dessert in and of itself. Nevertheless, they say it’s far from a “powder-puff beer” and will appeal to all drinkers, even the most rugged.
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