Known for his incredible strength and incredibly dense tears.
RAQUEL
VIDAL
She’s here She’s there She’s everywhere except where you need her.
JIMMY QUIZNOS
A petulant child, a bigot, a fucking fiend, and our greatest ally.
ERIN
MCGREGOR
I forgot we hired her honestly Whatever.
Trump Wins, Frats Cheer
The biggest rapists you know just had a great night
Is anything good to come out of this? As a consolation prize, take solace in the fact that your roomate’s girlfriend is mad at him. Yet remember, the monkey’s paw curls, and their screaming match at 7 PM the next day will lead to no change in their relationship They’ll be loudly fucking each other by 9 at the latest Listen to some white noise.
Johnnies Go 5-0 in Sport No One Watches
I think it’s women’s lacrosse or something
Or maybe men’s soccer. Does anyone watch that shit? I don’t actually know what we’re writing about. I heard this offhand while walking to the Marillac Subway I was going to order turkey on white, provolone, toast it, and then lettuce, tomato, onion and jalapeño. Oh yeah, and honey mustard. Yeah can I get a bottle of water with that? And this bag of sunchips Oh, uh, I’m doing meal exchange. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Have a nice day.
No wait, fuck, sorry I lost focus. Yeah I was in Marillac and I heard someone congratulate someone else for winning. 5-0. That suggests it was a blow-out. Or maybe it wasn’t if it was a highscoring sport. Is it sexist to not watch women’s sports? I feel like I should. No, it wasn’t women’s sports. It was one of the men’s teams It was a girl congratulating her boyfriend. Whatever.
Don’t Trust Our Imposters
Millions of Lives at Risk
Googling “the Thunderbird Press” will quickly find several false actors. Crisis actors? It’s to be determined The Thunderbird Press doesn’t print t-shirts and we certainly don’t print Christian children’s books (yet). Anyone who wickedly stole our name before we had the chance to use it is a villain, dedicated to serving the devil and eating feces
Is that a gunshot or just a shit car?
And why is it revving at 1 AM?
Christ, do you have anything better to do? I’m trying to sleep. I’m not asleep yet, because I’m on my computer Watching I’m just watching on my computer And I may be in a state of undress, because it is the end of the day after all, and I may not want to be disturbed. When I get disturbed my hand squeezes and it can hurt a lot Whatever it’s holding
Can you believe we actually published this shit?
I didn’t think we had it in us.
The Thunderbird Press began in a basement out of a fear shared between Owen Taylor and Raquel Vidal that journalism had too much integrity. Most news is told by people who want to tell the news Squares Boldly, the Thunderbird Press is the first ever real news organization to contain absolutely no journalistic integrity. Hell, we don’t even have artistic integrity! There is none, no integrity of any kind to be found within this paper.
I think there was, at some point, some notion of us trying In time, that notion is lost.
It’s not even good looking It looks like shit, for the most part. Just bankrupt creatively Oh my god.
My Dog, Pooby, Dies at 9
our shame
After a hard few years for Pooby, he finally kicked the bucket after ramming his 2007 Kia Sorento into a telephone pole over and
over again. He must’ve really wanted to die. He was cancelled in 2021 for lovebombing.
I Got Throat Punched at Sun Yat Sen
Motherfuckers Keep Practicing Karate In Public
Artists everywhere know that Sun Yet San has a tv display of men doing karate in front of a bunch of other men sitting and playing the drums. It’s true modern art (fuck the MoMa) and I watched it loop like 12 times. Unfortunately, while I stood there mouth-breathing, I failed to under-
-stand the danger I was in as I was joined by a freshman who, raging off the Zyn, started freaking out and flailing his arms like Muscle Man. He scampered off on all fours into the pitch black 5 o’ clock night afterwards.
Pokémon Go fuck yourself
Stop taking over my gyms, I’ve only been in them for 20 minutes
I’m a commuter and I have to fight for my spot in the local gyms You can sit comfortably in your cozy little 200 sq ft dorm and take over my Team Valor gym while your roommate “doesn’t jerk off in the bathroom,” but I have to brave the cold northern winds with only my Metagross to keep me warm. Now I’m going to make a meme portraying my pokémon as the mogging chad wojack and your Bulbasaur as the butthurt soyjack
SantaCon is Suffering a Hillbilly
Infestation
Stop kissing your cousin, you’re holding up the line.
Vibrant, wholesome, and intoxicating. If you’ve ever stumbled your way through Santacon, you’ve probably realized that it’s full of Johnnies, foreigners, and the alright kind of millennials I met people from Toronto on line for Pink Taco and yes, they apologized for Drake. It has nothing to do with the gun I was holding to their head But while the Canadians were cool, the American rednecks weren’t because first of all, they wore cowboy
boots, and second of all because they just kept yelling at cabs. I get that they don’t exist down in Sisterfuck, Ohio, or whatever hole they crawled out of, but there’s no reason to be aggressive.
CEO Murder, aka “Being a Hero,” Deemed Illegal
It seems, of all the controversies last year, the alleged actions of innocent-untilproven-guilty folk-hero Luigi Mangione have lingered around the most Some people are wondering if he did it, most are wondering if anyone will do it again. This could also be referred to as “waiting with bated breath,” “daydreaming,” or a term considered most frightening but the American Elite, “feeling hope.”
Do I want to see more violence? I don’t think so. I’m not a violent person, I’m a pacifist, also known as a coward. I won’t do shit If any of you have a gun though, take notes.
Stop Stealing My Bagel
It cost $7
Einstein Bros. Bagels, an establishment in our community, is often a source of violent theft Bagel theft
You sick vultures need to keep your hands off my incredibly expensive bagel. The Thunderbird Press doesn’t pay their writers. I spent all my money on this.
Keep a fucking eye out
Tania Fontana New Single
andnow,foracompletesylisticchange...
TBPREMEMBERS
Ol’LouieFinallyCroaks
I honestly forgot he was still around
JIMMY“J-DOG”
QUIZNOS CONTRIBUTOR
Any liberal arts major at this here university can tell you that Lou Carnesecca was one of the most important corpses around Ol’ Louie still troted around in sweaters ‘til the ripe old age of 99, being unexpectedly taken from us only this past Sunday He was taken too soon, I say
Without having any particular malice towards the man, I gotta say I fucking hate some of the basketball fetishization at this here university I mean, Christ Almighty, that there Rick Pedoni or whatever the fuck his name is gets like a trillion dollars a game How much does he make? It’s like a shitload Quantifiably unreasonable, I think
And where did that originate? Ol’ Louie, of course Ripe with the sweaters and pussygetting attitude, he led us to victory in years past Are we still victorious? Look, we’re not garbage but it’s not even close Unfortunately, half of the donors this school gets are basketball-oriented, and the other half are from the fucking Vitamin Water guy I still drink the lemonade one, it’s pretty good, but promegranate? You’re out of your mind Stop giving Tobin nice things, they don’t deserve it
So we sit here, armed and restless, remembering a corpse I mean look at this guy Yikes At least Rico Petite has a sort of chubby Al Pacino thing going for him Got sorta fat lips Carnesecca? Trash head
We’ve been told that, in his final moments, Lou converted to Islam Good decision, frankly I always sort of considered Christianity more accurate than Judaism because it’s more up-to-date, y’know, it’s like the most recent version, but Islam is even more up-to-date than Christianity Who is more recent than Islam, like, the Mormons? I’m not going to practice that shit Scientology is tempting but I’m too broke Islam is probably right about everything, so I’ll convert to it when I die too
No one tells you, when you’re approaching the big croak, that no one remembers how you were when you were young Maybe people who knew you really well, but they were probably super old too I only ever knew my grandparents as very old, and when the passed they stayed very old in my mind Whenever I think of Lou Carnesecca I’m totally going to think of this old skeleton man, and not the other guy
That’s alright, I think Death is real, someone’s there and then they’re not and it’s not for singing about It’s not for making into art Sorry those are Mount Eerie lyrics Death is real though It takes and it takes and it takes I think that’s a Sufjan Stevens song Shit ends We’re all rapidly approaching annihilation and I think the only thing we can do is drink boba tea and wait for the next Dune movie to come out Maybe I’ll be alive to see the release of it, that shouldn’t be too hard, right? Ol’ Louie, unfortunately, will never know the thrilling conclusion to the tale of Paul Atreides Unless he read the books
Hey guys it’s me, Ol’ Louie, I can still communicate through possessing Jimmy’s fingers Sandy Hook was a hoax! That’s what I, Lou Carnesecca, wanted to say
OUR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE NEW YORKER CAPTION CONTEST
2: All of the personals are looking for someone who can “fucklikeamachine.”
3: It says right here that Pooby died doing what he loved, crashingcars
4: Seems like the Circuit Wars are reaching a standstill. though that doesn’t do any justice to the millions of lives lost. Clearly, these electronic men have lost their lives for nothing, destroyed in the pursuit of robo-nationalism. What ableak,drearyday.
ADVICE COLUMN
Q & A:
Dear Thunderbird Press,
I want to look cool in front of my friends but I don’t have a fake. How do I get into Parsons without one?
Dear Concerned Minor, Tell the bouncers you ’ re 19 “ on God,” instead of 18, and you should be good. I am extremely afraid of the hobos in the Hillside area. What do I do?
Dear Freaked About Tweakers, There’s not much you can do about that but wait for the government to make them mysteriously disappear In the meantime, play “Zombie Horde Sound Effects” off Youtube and enjoy feeling like Rick Grimes. I once punched someone ’ s grandma because she got too close while I was jogging to this In my defense, she was wrinkly as hell and I thought she was going to gum me down. Aside from that, it was a great run and I beat my PR.
My manager at Applebees is drug testing me next Tuesday!!!!1
Dear Devilish Druggie, Offer him some of the weed as a “ peace offering.” Also dm Thunderbird Press where you got it
Where’s the clit?
Dear Bonafide Bonery Bozo, I don’t know
Tragically, my boyfriend of the past 6 months just broke up with me. It came out of nowhere! We had just gone out to see Wicked, and I thought we were having a good time, but as we got out he kept saying that Ariana was “horribly miscast” and that Cynthia “couldn’t hold a candle to Ms. Idina Menzel.” I was shocked! Bad takes aside, I had no idea he cared about theater like that. The next day, instead of waking up to a “good morning” text, he ended it, right then and there. What should I do?
Dear Elphaba and Gaylinda, The lack of a “good morning” text is tragic. I usually make my men send me videos of them loudly cumming, you were really only asking for the bare minimum here. But look, when analyzing this break-up there’s really only two possibilities for what his whole deal is. The first is that he’s gay, honestly your best bet. The second is that he’s metrosexual. Christ, how sorry I’d feel for you.
Do you know how wildly fucking annoying heterosexual theater men are? That’s Hell on Earth. Matthew Broderick hit and killed someone with his car man, that’s nuts. I knew guys like that in high school, the two of them, one kind of chunkier and the other lean and Dennis Reynolds-esque.
This breakup will be the best thing that ever happened to you, trust
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL:
BYRAQUELVIDAL
Give them all your money
I went to go see Cirque Du Soleil Ká this weekend in Las Vegas and I would give them all my money. I didn't have to because my grandma is loaded, but I would I witnessed the impossible A man literally defying gravity by sheer strength, positive relationships with native cultures, a teepee transforming into a rudimentary airplane, and a man making jump rope look cool There is no question as to their talent. They are the best acrobats, the best dancers, and the best performers But even then, I have questions Like do they paint their abs on?
If they already have abs, why do they need more abs? Is the guy who flies around giving girls flowers single? It can’t be born out of insecurity. Some of these performers fully have their buttcheeks out with only what could easily be described as a dish towel covering their modesty in the front It can’t be that they don’t HAVE muscles because you need muscles and discipline to perform all the stunts they do No muscles, no flipping another man through the air with your feet. These guys clearly pack in the protein and eat their vegetables
The only logical answer is that they want me and are trying to impress me personally by appealing to aesthetics Nothing in Cirque du Soleil is done for the purpose of function They aren’t flying through the air and sprinkling flower petals on you to get to work quicker, and I don’t think those guys have their cheeks out because they’re just slutty like that They go out of their way to immerse you in their world They cross violin strings across ceilings rooms wide to have costumed musicians play the room They invent their own language for one show. They force underpaid ushers to wear show makeup Cirque du Soleil goes out of their way to exaggerate the world and make it even more beautiful for you Give them all your money!
Also, no phones I saw them throw a dude into what I think was a volcano over it
I ALMOST FOUGHT A MAN, HE KEPT GETTING IN MY GRANDPA’S WAY
The man is 80 years old and trying to walk through a doorway after his wife Why are you racing him? Also how did you lose?
Post-decimation-of-Drake, local hater and American hero Kendrick Lamar released his long-awaited album, GNX. Surely riding the high of his successful defense of the superior style of rap, Lamar released a snippet for the song “Squabble Up,” which gained the thenupcoming album a lot of attention on social media and earned it 380 million streams upon its release. On interviewing rap fans, however, we discovered that reviews were a mixed bag:
To quote one superfan, resident TBP-writer Jimmy Quiznos, “if I don’t get tickets to the next Kendrick tour I’m going to kill myself. Also, give him another Pulitzer or I’m going to kill myself.” Yikes! Seems like suicide is on the menu for more than just Drake fans. This begs the question though, is GNX truly a worthy addition to Lamar’s catalog?
Here’s an answer: yes. Yeah. It rips. It’s really fucking good, and pretty obviously so. Are you stupid? What kind of questionisthat.
Lamar’s discography has a lot of conceptual, spacey, interlude-laden music. GNX isn’t like any of that. It’s pretty tight and short, just like your mom. It’s not as bloated as the past dozen-or-so Drake albums either.
So it’s good. Some other records were good, some notasmuch,including...
OTHER RECORDS WORTH THINKING ABOUT FOR
GEORDIEGREEP’S THENEWSOUND
You wanna hear something weird? I could write something about how it’s harmonically interesting and says something about masculinity or whatever, but that’s not why you should listen to it. You should listen to it because it sounds fuckingweird.
TBPRating:9/10
CHARLIXCX’S BRAT(ANDALLOFTHE BRAT-OFFSHOOTS)
I liked this album the week it came out and then I had to pretend to give a shit about the deluxe edition and the remix album. I get it. I was a fan of Charli before this fucking summer and I wish she changed the cover art of her past records back to normal on Spotify
TBPRating:360/365
CHAPPELLROAN’S MIDWESTTHING
THEDARE’S WHOLETHING
I think I want to kill this guy. I’ll listen to his music and I’ll enjoy it but I don’t know if I should. Maybe I shouldn’t? He makes New Yorkers sound like the most annoying fucking people on the planet though, so as a magazine from Queens we should probably hunt him down.
TBPRating:JamesMurphy
Not even a 2024 album, but no one listened to it in 2023, so now we’re here. Probably our best gay popstar at the moment, substantially better than ShawnMendes.
TBPRating:2023/2024
CONTRIBUTOR
OWENTAYLOR
MARY IN THE
JUNKYARD
The UK’s hottest
group makes their US debut
This isn’t journalism, it’s proselytizing. I’m going to introduce this group, and when I interview them, you’ll get it
But at first, I’m gonna be explicit, as explicit as I possibly can: Mary in the Junkyard are the best band in showbiz right now They’re entirely fucking unmatched. Formed whenever
by vocalist Clari FreemanTaylor, multi-instrumentalist Saya Barbaglia, and drummer David Addison, this band will make you want to shake booty and cry with their unique blend of fingerpicked electric guitar, frenetic drumming, and the use of violin in a non-Yellowcard way “That’s impressive,” you say to yourself, “I never thought
violin could be played in a nonYellowcard way. Certainly this band has to be a little emo!” Jokes on you, tthey’re not really that emo, but they are associated with the Windmill scene, so they probably like Slint
The Mary’s released their debut EP in May of last year, this old house they called it, and man what a collection of rock songs. Do yourself a favor, throw on some fucking “Goop ” Barbaglia’s violin on that track is like a siren, weeping past the tight groove formed between Freeman-Taylor’s bass and Addison’s drums. “Teeth” is another violin stand-out, listen to it. Recently they’ve put out some new singles, “This Is My California” and “Bear Walk,” which I discuss with them later
Great new bands are one thing, but great new bands who can tolerate our interview are another, better thing
What does Mary in the Junkyard make of all this?
As the group made their US debut in December of last year, I had the chance to interview them for our debut issue I had been intending to contact them online for a minute, but emailing anyone makes me want to eat glass shards, so I kept dragging my feet. With my luck, I had a chance encounter with Freeman-Taylor at the bar of TV Eye shortly before Mary in the Junkyard were set to open for beloved industrial rock group Model/Actriz, and was able to rendezvous with the whole band prior to their headline show at Baby’s All Right the next day
As co-editor Raquel Vidal and I snuck into their green room, functionally just a tarp, we got their takes:
David, Clari, Saya, how are you on this magnificent evening? [it was fucking frigid outside]
David: Amazing, yeah!
Clari: Doing so well, thank you
Saya: Amazing
So you guys are from the UK, how are you finding America so far, in general?
Saya: It’s big.
Clari: Everything is really big, and-
Saya: -Very squareClari: -It’s all square
David: ...up and down.
Even the people are square, would you say?
Clari: The people are cool Are they cooler than in London?
Clari: Mm, no
Okay, I do take that as an insult.
You guys have famously played at the Windmill in Brixton, beloved UK venue, I have two questions: what is your go-to drink order, and what’s the nicest toilet?
David: A Guinness The toilets are all horrible, piss in the garden I guess
Clari: Yeah, Ginger Beer and Whiskey, um, and the toilets...
It’s too horrific a sight, you can’t even conjure imagery about it, it’s just, it’s just destitute.
Saya: The women’s toilets have a really squiggly mirror, which is really cool And my drink is tap water
Nice, just full-on sober. I couldn’t-
Saya: -Oh, noOh no, okay, I wasn’t trying to make a lifestyle judgement, or anything. I’m drunk right now.
[At this point I attempted a bizarre question about, if we consider the Song of the Summer to have been Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” what could we consider the Song of the Winter to be?]
David: I think it’s, the Song of the Summer is Jokerman by Bob Dylan.
Ooh.
David: I think
Clari: That-that wasn’t
Saya: -That was not
[The Mary’s consult each other for a moment]
That’s a better answer than what I had though.
Clari: Um, We’re Walking in the Air from the Snowman
David: Oh yeah, it’s a great tune
Saya: In, um, in primary school, we sang in the choir a song called “This Must Be Christmas In New York-”
Clari: [whispering] “This Is My California”
Is that by Sting? Do I- wait no I’m stupid as hell, that’s “An Englishman in New York-”
[The Mary’s remark on my confusion for a moment] What do you think of Sting?
Saya: Ouch.
Ouch? Like a bee?
David: Don’t trust him
Well, who could?
David: Ehehe, my brother was at a Fatboy Slim concert and he turned around in the crowd and there was Sting And then Sting put his finger to his lip like this [makes shushing motion] and then, like, disappeared into the crowd
Like “don’t let them know, don’t let them know that Sting from the Police is here.”
David: Exactly
Everyone’s favorite band of the 80s.
[I also briefly asked about David and Clari’s stint in indie pop band Second Thoughts]
Do you consider pop music to be the work of the devil?
All members: Yes.
Here’s a question, literally yesterday [at the time of this interview] you released a new single, “Bear Walk.” I listened to it right as it came out, the production starts fairly minimal but gets increasing intricate, especially as the track gets all confused and dreamlike at the end. Any interesting details to notice on a second listen?
Clari: There’s a bit in the song where David goes [black metal voice] “yir shtall derfintal” and if you reverse it, it says “under the fir tree.” You should reverse it actually, it sounds really funny I will do that
Clari: It’s like [thrash metal voice] “under the fir tree!” [Checking through the recording, I believe this occurs at least once around the 1:52 mark, pay attention to the right channel and reverse it as requested ]
Alright that’s fantastic. I don’t think we have any other questions, do you have anything you’d like to leave the world off on?
David: Come invite us back to America
Saya: We really like cheese, andWould you like Americans to send you cheese?
Saya: We love cheese, we love every type of cheese
Clari: The cheese in America is not so good
Saya: -huge cheese board
I was about to say have you played in France?
David: We have
Clari: We had a cheese board!
David: Yeah in the dressing room there was a cheese board
It feels like if you’re in Paris you have to have cheese in the dressing room, because otherwise why the fuck else would you be in Paris? To eat snails?
Clari: It’s really, it’s really bad for singing Really?
Clari: If you have, like, a cheesy voice.
We ended our interview, and I wished them luck on their performance. Seeing the group twice in two days proved to me, about as strongly as it could, that whenever some big bloated moron talks about the “death” of rock music, they should be completely ignored. Rock music is in a fantastic state when bands like this can fill in a New York venue without having any presence in America two days prior
Phonetography
A spectacularly low-resolution interview photo
David Addison (left) & Saya Barbaglia (right)
Clari Freeman-Taylor (left) and Barbaglia (right)
DISCOGRAPHY GUIDE
Everything that you need to know to get into Mary in the Junkyard.
They have one EP. And a couple singles. It’s not that complicated.
[clockwise
In truth, dear reader of the Thunderbird Press, we had considered doing some form of “ranked songs” or “top 5 tracks” or some other bogus listicle thing, but it’s hard to do that when they have like 8 songs. I mean there’s the this old house EP, the “Tuesday” single (which they include at the B-side of the EP’s vinyl release, quite polite of them), and then the new tracks, “This Is My California” and “Bear Walk ”
If anything, though, that’s more of an excuse to check them out. Shit man, you can get through their entire discography in like half an hour Do you know how much music the Beatles put out? Far more than that, it’d take you all day I once took the chunnel from Paris to London and I tried to just listen to Beatles records the whole time and I still only got through Help!, Rubber Soul and Revolver That’s way too much music, they should’ve been more considerate. The Mary’s over here (I never checked if they hate being called the Mary’s or not) are way more polite, just a handful of tracks, and rumor has it (if we can count watching their recent Instagram stories as a rumor) that they have a handful more on the way 11 new tracks, I heard? Doubling the size of their discography and then some, but still short enough that you can blast through all of it on the chunnel That’s what I’m talking about, that’s some polite music releasing
But I think, more than just a polite discography, there’s something exciting about listening to something that feels new Are there audible influences? Probably, I wouldn’t be shocked if the group liked Big Thief or OK Computer, maybe Arthur Russell and Glenn Branca, and possibly other Windmill Scene acts like Black Midi or Black Country New Road, but I don’t think they sound wholly like any of these artists I think they sound like Mary in the Junkyard.
this old house
from top left] Tuesday, This Is My California / Bear Walk, Ghost, Swamp Dream debut EP
A BRIEF TRIBUTE
A letter from the editors:
I’m asking for mercy. Good will. Perhaps a handout. Listen, this is an entirely student-run magazine. We aren’t affiliated with anything, we’re barely affiliated with each other, and we’re brittle. We could fuck this up really quickly without your support, which is why I’m here, on my knees, chin-up, mouth agape, and ready to beg.
The Thunderbird Press can be found on Instagram @thunderbirdpress, and can be emailed at thunderbirdpressmag@gmail.com. You can also text gore and penises to Owen’s number. We’d love to gain new writers, cartoonists, critics, and field correspondents. If you can think of something that should be here, don’t be lazy, fucking add it.
