Editor’s note – PRAISE THE LORD
Hey thotlings! Meow’s it going? Is everyone in the graveyard getting excited for the impending holidays? Yeah, neither am I.
You know what really grinds my gears? Those basic bitches who get superrr into fucking Christmas like they’re still five years old and think it’s cute to Instagram close up pictures of strings of lights and go sit on Santa’s lap at the mall. And that’s saying something coming from me because I’m into older dudes with beards, but even I have to draw the line age-wise at Wino (I’m into daddies not granddaddies). I also may or may not have extended fantasies of riding off into the sunset on the back of Wino’s motorcycle #lanamoments. But anyways, I will admit, my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend with whom I once got into a confrontation at Victoria’s Secret is one of these basics, so perhaps I’m a little biased. She’s also a Steelers fan and has a foot tattoo. Basically what I’m trying to say is that Í’d like to piss on her grave (Editor’s note – don’t we all).
So in an effort to try to shake off some of these associations and get into the holiday spirit I enlisted the help of my sister and fellow thot, Julie. In case you were wondering, she’s pretty much just like me except with an ass that you could stack dishwares on. I try to touch it regularly but she never lets me. We decided to start off by doing some shopping, but not just any shopping – we played a full-on round of record store roulette. Basically what this entails is making the sojourn to your local record store and buying those rando five dollar and under potato-looking albums with the band logos that look like piles of sticks. We’ve done this a few times before to some wonderful and horrifying results, including a really rad one man metal band from Mexico and the pagan metal equivalent to Creed.
Despite what you may expect of someone born after 1990, I still buy CDs and really value having a tangible collection. I tried the whole iTunes thing when I was like 13 and iPod Nanos were the tits but something about it always felt so unfulfilling, kinda like when you finally let that dude whose main achievement in life is tearing up the pit at the Black Dahlia Murder show fuck you after months of him liking all your pics and you realize about a third of the way through that you’ll clearly never be getting off.
The store we chose for this round of RSR is just your standard local record shop that I frequent most often, mainly because it’s only a minute away from my school and it serves as a nice cave to hide in when I can’t deal with people anymore. Baltimore actually used to have a pretty legit black metal record shop, but this past year it packed up and left for Long Beach, because, yano, the West Coast didn’t have enough nice things already.
Taking what we can get, Julie and I ventured into my bat cave armed with my last $20. I always get a little nervous going in because I’ve had a thing for one of the dudes that works there for like over a fucking year now. He has a septum ring and an inverted cross tattoo and always has kind words for whatever it is I’m buying. I swear to god he got a hard on when I finally bought a copy of A Blaze in the Northern Sky (Editor’s note – this is the general reaction to any hot babe buying black metal). I looked over at the register and, yep, there he was, eyes and nose ring glimmering in the florescent light. I Tina Belcher moaned, just remaining thankful that I was at least feeling myself in my knee socks and five inch heels. Julie and her majestic camel toe shuffled me over to the metal section, reminding me what it was I was actually there for.
This particular metal section is one of those that operates under a pretty broad definition of the genre, meaning you have to kind of have to sort through the August Burns Red and the latest Venom to get to the best potatoes in the bunch. This is yanoooooooooooo where an exclusively black metal shop would come in handy but why would us crab and Suboxone munching Marylanders ever deserve such a thing (sorry, kids, I’m going to be butthurt about this one for a while). But then again, I guess the thrill of the hunt is part of the fun. After checking for any Xasthur as per my usual first step, I began my digging until I came across two promising stick name, black and grey cover art, Hot Mail email address on the back-ass albums by Forever Lost and Endless Blizzard.
Not gonna lie, I probably could have tried a little harder, but it’s hard to concentrate when bae is watching. Luckily since Julie isn’t a dumb bitch like me she got a bit more creative. She was able to come across a German band with some OC Choppers-looking art called Undina on some rando Ukrainian label. After some type of “you’re a whore/no you’re a whore” sister-sister dispute she remained insistent that we also get some type of stoner rock by the, aptly named Sea of Green, that looked like something I’d find in our dad’s collection from the 70’s. I agreed under the conditions that we could only listen to it while baking her sort of boyfriend’s Hyundai Accent (spoiler alert: he wouldn’t let us). “I hope this isn’t Nazi shit,” Julie said while inspecting the Undina album again. I looked at my twenty spot and then longingly at the used Type O. We decided that if they sucked that at least means we have four potential gifts to give to our granny.
Julie and I went over to the backed up the ass b/c Christmas checkout line and I shuffled about all nervously b/c bae. I examined the staff pick bins to try to figure out homeboy’s name while some lady was taking her sweet time buying a $79.95 talking John Cena figurine (someone’s going to be having a killer Christmas morning). There was a Death album in Dan’s bin. Is he a Dan? Would a Dan have an inverted cross tattoo? Maybe not.
I quickly began to realize as I approached the front of the line that the real game of roulette was that I was either going to get checked out by bae or some rando ladyworker I had never seen before over at another register. “I can help the next customer,” the ladyworker’s voice called out. Fuck. I turned around and violently pushed Julie, who had some shit of her own she was buying, in the lady’s direction. “Okay, okay, okay,” she said, clearly knowing my intentions.
Bae only got to about “I can help” before I ran, or probably more like baby giraffe trotted, over to him. I was too overwhelmed at the time to remember much of our exchange, but I do know that much to my disappointment he didn’t compliment my selections this time (although I can’t blame him for not recognizing potato sticks right off the bat) and I was giving it my all to stop shaking when I had to hold my paw out to collect my change. The Tina in me wants to say it was the best fifty seconds of my life. “Did you say anything to him?” Julie asked, waiting for me by the cooler of that Peace Tea shit the kids drink to help with that cotton mouth brah. I told her that I thought I just moaned but I couldn’t really remember.
We got in my car and I tried my best to get the seal off the Forever Lost album despite my press on nails, but my mind couldn’t stop thinking about how I dingused out with maybe-Dan yet again. I think Julie and I then proceeded to scream at each other for five minutes about how she thought I should just give him my number but I thought it might be weird and blah, blah, blah. Long story short, I ended up scribbling my digits down with a lip pencil along with an impulse pentagram and somehow the duty of giving it to him ended up being delegated to her. I slid Forever Lost into the CD player while I anxiously watched her make the delivery. She hopped back in with a hesitant smile and I booked it the fuck out of there.
“He said he was flattered, although I’m scared there was a ‘but’ coming and I just ran out too fast.” Isn’t that always the way. It wasn’t long until my phone vibrated. “Oh man, oh god, oh man, oh god,” I said, throwing it at her so she could read the text for me. It was him. Basically the gist of it was that he thought I was cute too buttttttttttttt he has a serious girlfriend.
Welp, that’s it. Love is dead. I started driving super erratically and yelling about how every dude that hits me in the feels these days always turns out to be a white supremacist, a junkie, or fucking married (or some combination of the three). I swear to god people were pulling over to get out of my way. Julie swore she’d find me a nice man on OkCupid, but Crazy wasn’t buying it. If any good came from that car ride, though, it was that the album wasn’t half bad, although it was more metalcore than I had hoped.
Once we got back to Julie and her sort of boyfriend’s place we decided to switch to the Undina album and to make it a true holiday spectacular, work on their gingerbread house kit. Let me tell you hwhat, that shit is not easy. I ended up just eating the gum drops and being a sad panda while they took charge of the engineering. “This music is making me want to draw swastikas on the roof,” her beau said, clutching the icing bag. After a while Julie made the observation that they had switched to speaking Russian. Apparently we got our hands on some type of special German-Ukrainian-Russian snowflake. It took a folk kind of turn and what do ya know, Undina pulled a Type O and came in hot with a rendition of Carol of the Bells out of nowhere. Merry fucking Christmas.
Next Julie made us listen to that Sea of Green shit. Musically it actually exceeded my expectations, but the vocals were a little too 1999 and not in a good way. I think I ended up sitting on a footstool and staring off into space. It’s funny how stoner rock can make you useless when you’re not even high. Ugh, I don’t even know. I struggle with this topic so much because I enjoy doom so very much but when the fine line is crossed into trite, uncreative jam band shit you’ve lost me for good.
But if nothing else, I think this was a good opportunity for Julie to get out more pent up anger about her Phish head ex. God, Phish is terrible. There are only two people out there that like Phish: 1) thirty-something year old dudes with patchy beards that live in their mom’s basements and would otherwise be Sleep fans but aren’t quite smart enough, or 2) little high school bitches from the suburbs that decide they want to be creative spirits and plaster Rasta stickers on their Jeeps (i.e. the girls that blow the dudes that drink the Peace Tea). That good will towards man is really flowing through me.
After that adventure I was in desperate need of a twerk break. If you’re in need of one too I highly recommend thumping “I’m Back” by Famous Amy. I listened to that shit about fifteen times a day back around the time I was taking the LSAT. I wouldn’t say it made me do better, but it made me feel better about doing shitty. Jazzed up from the butt-shaking, we decided to have a little impromptu photo shoot. Julie takes all my pics, for the record. Since she’s also my creative director I asked her professional opinion on if I should take my shirt off. “Yano maybe, just maybe, you should keep it on this time,” she said. I tied it up as a compromise.
After freezing my puss off outside it seemed appropriate to try our final bullet, Endless Blizzard. I would say that this was the best potato of the bunch. I mean it wasn’t anything particularly groundbreaking, but it had all the black metal accoutrements you could ask for for $4.99. It also made a nice soundtrack as bae and I attempted to make friendly convo. I actually told him about Drunk in a Graveyard….so ummmm…..if you’re reading this Jon, hey what’s up, this is really awkward.
