And why are they calling themselves Alice In Chains? Jerry Cantrell could have just put out another one of his way underrated solo albums with Innez, Kinney and whoever that new dude is. How about naming this band something else? That’s not Alice In Chains…

THIS IS:

R.I.P. Layne

Ease and I are in Berlin for Bread and Butter. Well sort of… we don’t have a booth here or anything, just some meetings with distributors and such. But we had to still check out the exhibition though!

Right next to the High Snobiety booth was a German bike messenger bag company that had this cool time trail machine hooked up to these toy track cars. I kicked Ease’s ass, even though it kind looks like he is peddling faster!

Check out my twitter and Ease’s to keep up with some of our antics. We will be posting a billion pictures by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

P.S. In the video we are rocking the ultra limited HS x NEW ERA BBB caps!

Hey now! I love smoking out of fruit. One time when I pulled a smoking pear out of the freezer my homie’s homie said, “I don’t know how I feel about smoking out of fruit.” This kid is kind of a douche anyways, so I wasn’t surprised. But really, is there anything better than fruit for smoking out of? No. Plus if you’re riding dirty, you just put the apple in with a bag of regular apples, and no Law Enforcement Officer will be the wiser.

So, the next best thing after fruit is wood, and after that I’d happily accept a ceramic something-or-other fashioned to look like fruit. There you have it, my third favorite smoking apparatus, fashioned to mimic my first favorite. Holler at Lisa Sitko. Maybe she wants to send me one to review?

***Bonus Beats (Some that I’ve used)***
Kiwi
Lemon
Lime
Grapefruit
Apple
Pear
Watermelon
Swiss Chard
Carrot

Really dude? This flick popped up courtesy of a fellow board member at what will remain an unnamed record nerd forum. I didn’t know who it was at first, but someone pointed out that it is in fact Merlin himself, the Barfingest Sailor-Tattoo crapneck motherfusker of fashion: Teh Christian Audigier (no Don). Some master of code needs to re-write Moonwalker so we can kill this dude at the end.

Now that you’re an adult and actually know how much a box of ziplock bags costs (and that you don’t get like 100 in a box, you get like 16 or something) you use less of them, don’t you? When you were a kid, you’d have a single cookie or something like that, and you’d use a bag without thinking. Even if it was just to take it to school and eat right away.

Same goes with cereal—5 bucks for what can only be called 3 bowls of cornmeal?!—razor blades, and of course batteries. Them shits are expensive, and totally taken for granted when you’re ‘little’.

Well, add one to the list: Greeting cards. Greeting cards—in addition to being totally lame, but I’ll get there in a minute—are anywhere from 4 to 7 dollars apiece. For a card. A card that you give away. Even as a person who—clearly—has more discretionary income than he knows what to do with, this strikes me as ridiculous. It makes every thrifty nerve in my body tingle a little bit. And no, not in the good way.

As mentioned before, not only are greeting cards super-duper expensive, but they are, on the whole, super-duper lame. They don’t—for some reason—put things like Calvin & Hobbes or Godzilla or even AT-AT Imperial Walkers on the things, so why in the hell would I ever care about them?

Well, Greeting Cards Have Redeemed Themselves with me. For Now. Nothing—and I mean nothing—says Happy Birthday like a 7″, glossy, embossed Slobulus staring up at me.

It does make me take pause, however. To empathize with Cornbluth (whose last post is now gone for some reason, weird): why does getting one of these IMMEDIATELY make me want to go out and get more/all of them. Why is this one, meaningful, impulsive item that simultaneously communicates birthday wishes AND a gentle, knowing glance at my innermost personality unable to stand on it’s own?

Probably too deep for the Bloglin, but yes. A greeting card made me do it.

Abner Jay – True Story of Abner Jay (2009) [Mississippi] // Grade: B+

Abner Jay has described himself as “the last great Southern black minstrel show”. From the 1930’s until the late 50s, Abner Jay was a member of a variety of different minstrel shows in the South until going solo for the rest of his career where he traveled the South as a one man band with a banjo, guitar, harmonica and a PA system performing a blend of Folk & Blues. His repertoire ranged from his own songs, American standards, spirituals and even comedy routines. He’d set up shop in a town, preform his show and sell some recods and cassettes to the crowd before moving on to the next town.

True Story of Abner Jay collects many of Jay’s best tracks from his many self-made albums, omitting the various comedy routines and monologues that would often times litter many of them. Since his death in 1993, Jay’s records have been a hot item with various private press collectors and this compilation is the first real opportunity for the rest of the world to not only share in the songs of Abner Jay, but to experience it uninterrupted by comedic bits.

This is an amazing slice of Americana that transcends simply being good Folk & Blues. Jay is a captivating storyteller who’s rudimentary playing creates the sort pastoral backdrop wherein his tales of love, sorrow & drugs become that much more heartfelt and transfixing.

P.S. I apologize but neither Abner Jay or the record label who put out this release have a website or Myspace page. I’ve linked to an article about Jay in the UK’s Guardian and a Wikipedia entry about Mississippi records in place of actual sites.

Is it a colony of worms? Or just someone trying to sleep?

Rick Mercer – Talking to Americans

On a day where I’m proud to be a Canadian, I share with you all how slow you, my neighbors to the south really are. We take a brutal beating on T.V. and movies all year long from you Americans. We are always the butt of your jokes. Well all I have to say is this, God bless Rick Mercer! Happy Canada Day everyone.

I know it’s 45min, but its the best shit you will ever watch! Go get some food, and pour some Maple Syrup on it and enjoy.

The Citizen Kane of bear sightings.

Man, being a kid must be rough nowadays. I was thinking about what I would spend my time doing when I was 14 & 15 and it usually involved either skateboarding, surfing or blowing shit up. Now kids just develop carpal tunnel at an earlier age playing online games. Kid’s gonna have an ulcer at 17 mark my words.

As a follow up to the last post.

This just came out last week, so no Prolly’d status for me.

Also this follow-up