The 1880

You’re Up

Hey! Castle-goers! Listen up! I know there are a great many things to do in preparation for your semester-long romp amongst the old countries, but please, humor me a moment. As you gather your things, don’t forget to pack your photographic sensibilities. For the last couple years I have had many a friend and acquaintance hop over to Europa and make sweet love to most of the EU. More often than not, these individuals have wielded shiny, new digital cameras with which to capture the action. These shots would be eagerly siphoned off on to their laptops and repatriated via Facebook. Let’s take a step back and think about these pictures.

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I Say Potato. You Say Princess Mononoke

Watch out for robots!

We all saw them wandering around Boston this week, aimlessly looking for the odd game store or Japanese food vendor. Their ears and swords and tails could be seen from many yards away as they moved in packs making weird hand gestures and speaking in pseudo-languages. Yes people, the Anime Boston Convention was taking place– the awkward and sweaty social extravaganza hit full blast this weekend. I will be the first to say that I do not know ANYTHING about anime. I mean, nothing. I think my brother used to watch that “poke-thing” on T.V. with the talking cat but other than that I am completely in the dark about this stuff. That being said, I have the automatic impression that people who enjoy anime (I mean REALLY enjoy it) and I have very little in common. Let’s look at the bare facts, shall we:

Me: likes good music and live action movies.
Anime fan: likes anime.

Uh-oh, we’re already off to a bad start.

Me: wears headbands.
Anime fan: wears some form of animal ears.

I don’t understand this. Are all anime characters part animal? Is that where the word comes from? As a journalist, I don’t feel the need to look these things up. Back to blatant assumptions!

Me: argues with friends over which Flava Flav girl is the skankiest (and thus best suited for the man himself).
Anime fan: argues with friends over which anime chick would give the best head.

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Being Broke 101: A Resource

I have never been good with what some people like to call “fiscal responsibility.” My mother frequently has to ask me whether or not I have reconciled my checkbook recently, and my usual response is “I thought we reconciled back when we were Catholic? Oh, no that was repent. Close,” (My mother also happens to be an investment banker, responsible for not only her own money but a few hundred other people’s. I cannot fathom). To compound this, I have usually held jobs which paid less per hour than your average tweeny-bopper babysitter. I had to– I was too fucking busy in high school for any real employment. Consequently, I had a few run-ins with my bank known as “overdrafts,” or “all the little minuses are more than the little pluses.” Getting to college has only made this worse. Now, there are no little pluses on my bank statement, save for a monthly interest deposit of, oh, say, four cents or so. I managed to save quite a bit before I embarked on this adventure, and was doing pretty well…until now.

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Guest Article–On the Hunt: A Response

The author of this guest article, Stephanie Appell, is a junior WLP major. She has also been called a feminist after expressing sentiments that differentiate her from a doormat, but hipster indie guys aren’t really her type. You can contact her at stephanie_appell@emerson.edu.

By now, either by word of mouth or by reading an article in this very blog, many of us have heard about the nineteen-year-old self-professed “college girl going crazy with sexual frustration.” We’ve seen, been invited to, or even joined the Facebook group it triggered. We may have even speculated with our friends as to the identity of this mystery girl. But in the interest of balance, I’d like to present an alternative view on these happenings. I think I’ll begin with a few statistics.

First, according to a study recently released by eMarketer, there are more women online than men, and they tend to use the Internet for social networking and task-oriented activities rather than as a diversion or for pure entertainment. According to the report, “females, especially adult women, are more likely to use the Internet to get things done, rather than to have fun.”

As of this moment, the aforementioned Facebook group has thirty-six members; 72% (twenty-six) of them, including the group’s creator, are male. Expanded to include the number of people invited to join the group but who haven’t yet responded, the number of total potential members increases to fifty-six, yet the percent of male members (no pun intended) remains the same.

Finally, on the Boston Craigslist Casual Encounters section, where the ad was originally posted, there are presently 4,288 results for the keyword search “m4w” (a man seeking a woman), but only 195 results for a “w4m” search (a woman seeking a man). The gender gap on the part of posters seems to hold up regardless of with whom, exactly, they’d like to have a casual encounter: There are 1,459 “m4m” results and only 152 “w4w.”

So. There are more women online than men, and they like to use the Internet for communication and to accomplish everyday tasks. Yet it appears that, for some reason, there are more men soliciting casual sexual encounters online than women - at least on Boston’s Craigslist. And the overwhelming majority of members of a Facebook group designed to at least ridicule (judging by the group’s profile picture) and at worst initiate a “hunt” to publicly humiliate a young woman who did use the Internet in search of a casual sexual encounter are male.

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Male? Horny? Tall, Skinny, or Indie? It’s Time For A Hipster Booty Call, Craiglist Style

Quickly! Now’s your chance!

Someone (more specifically a girl who lives on a Boston campus, and who calls herself “attractive”–whether or not you want to trust her is up to you) is looking for a quickie from a male on campus. How do we know this, you ask? Through the magic of Craigslist, this mystery 19-year-old girl has made a public posting asking for someone to, well, bang her. Bang her, and then make like a tree and leave.

I want someone to come here, I’ll sign them into my dorm, take them up stairs, we will have sex, then you will leave.

“Then you will leave?!” What, no cigarette? No pillow talk? How are we supposed to form a relationship this way? You, mystery girl, have forgotten the kind of emotions most Emerson guys have. We’re sensitive! We need cuddling and positive reinforcement!

She goes into more detail of what she’s looking for:

you need to be safe,and clean
goodlooking ( send me a picture of your face not your genitals)
youngish - look under 25 because if someone sees us I don’t want this too look shady
intelligent
nice, or atleast curtious
enjoy foreplay

bonus

if you are tall, thin, a hipster or indie guy, a college student and definitely an Emerson Student.

I am great in bed and attractive.

I’ve already got a girlfriend, so those of you who don’t– take advantage of this one-of-a-kind offer and jump on it! Errr, come forward! Ugh. Make your move?

Nevermind. Just go and get yourself some free action. Here’s the listing mystery girl brought it down… here’s a screenshot, and here’s the Facebook group that’s spawned. And, when you’re… finished, be sure to get back to us. We have news to report.

Ted Leo and The Pharmacists - Living With The Living

Living With The Living

This is proof that time machines exist. Somebody has obviously perfected the technology, and somehow, our friend Ted Leo got his hands on it. Did this album even come out in 2007? Upon flipping the case over, the copyright logo does say 2007, but this sounds so much more like Ted Leo circa 2001. The uninformed individual, if they were to try and establish a timeline of Leo’s albums based on sound alone, would probably place this one right between The Tyranny Of Distance and Hearts Of Oak.

Largely abandoning the more punk directed sound that 2004’s Shake The Sheets teetered towards, it almost seems like Leo is playing a bit safe on Living With The Living. Had he continued in the direction that Shake The Sheets seemed to imply, we might have received a straight up punk classic. However, while bloggers/reviewers may sit around and speculate on what could have been, Leo is still going to put out admittedly strong albums like this one, even if it seems like somewhat of a stop gap.

The only extreme diversion from the time tested Leo formula is the herky-jerky, incredibly syncopated “Bomb.Repeat.Bomb,” which ressurects Leo’s spoken word skills from Hearts Of Oak’s ”The Ballad Of The Sin Eater” and throws in a chorus the size of Texas. The song is completely jarring from both a musical and lyrical standpoint, as Leo raves about an unnamed war situation as stabs of guitar fly by like bullets. “The Unwanted Things” straight up makes out with the ska/reggae influences that Leo has constantly flirted with, although it doesn’t work as well as the aforementioned “Bomb.”

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Take a Note from Frankie and RELAX!

Look! They’re doing it– and they don’t
even have a 12 page paper to write!

We are all feeling it right now. It is the end of the semester and teachers are piling it on (okay so technically they piled it on at the beginning of the semester and we just chose to wait till the end to do any of the work…but seriously it is all their fault). We are all stressed and it is starting to show in our daily lives. The circles under our eyes have now become more raccoon-ish than normal. Our daily swearing has gone up from an acceptable 25% to a frightening (and friend-losing) 80%. We forget to eat for days and then clear the fridge of anything edible when we get a spare minute. We find ourselves falling asleep almost anywhere: in the shower, in line for mac and cheese in the dining hall, while writing articles for the 1880000………

Okay, so we need to chill out every once in a while so that we are coherent for at least a few hours a day. Here are some ways that I achieve some semblance of sanity during these rough times:

1. Cook yourself dinner one night that you have about an hour to kill.
This only works if cooking doesn’t stress you out. When I cook, I literally don’t think about anything else while I’m doing it, for fear that I will burn something. The key to this one is to actually sit down and enjoy the meal afterwards and not just inhale it like a python and then get back to writing that 12 page paper due in an hour.

2. Have sex.
No seriously, Do it. It is a honest to God de-stresser (as long as you orgasm, so guys help your girls out). Sex also is considered a great exercise, lowers cholesterol, increases blood flow, and fortifies your bones and muscles through an increase of testosterone and estrogen. Now an important note to make is that babies and STDs make more stress. Use protection people! If you are riding solo right now, no worries. Masturbation also releases tension (mainly sexual, but tension is tension, right?).

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Up In A City That Likes To Go To Sleep

By morning, everything starts
to look like this.

Welcome to crunch time, kids. Days fly by in a zombified caffeine-driven haze and all of your print credits are violently being torn from that little piece of plastic with the picture of you with your goofy freshman smile. These are the times where you do anything you can to procrastinate: from alphabetizing every book you own, to making posts on the internet (ahem). It feels like you’re spending more nights in a given week awake than asleep, and once you finish all of your work, you might as well stay up. Pass out now and your alarm will be no match for your groggy sleep-deprived ass. What to do? Boston is one city that is far too keen on what time of day it is. But that’s not to say that we don’t have our share of twenty-four hour establishments. Here’s an all-nighter’s treasure map. Most of these places will provide you with some form of nourishment, keeping you fueled until you next get the chance to collapse in bed. Everyone knows how to get to their local CVS and Shaws, but sometimes you need something a little different.

Reader James Capobianco chimes in with another IHOP:
16 Eliot Street, Cambridge
Bova’s Bakery
134 Salem St, North End
South Street Diner
178 Kneeland St, Chinatown
IHOP
1850 Soliders Field Rd, Brighton
Boston Bowl
820 Morrissey Blvd. Dorchester
Dunkin Donuts
350 Washington St Brighton
111 Causeway St, West End
Home Run Deli
1252 Boylston St, Fenway
Bread and Butter
2245 Massachusettes Ave, Cambridge

And what’s the perfect soundtrack to an all nighter? That’s a question that really does deserve a post all its own, but one thing in particular does come to mind. The Kleptones, one of the UK’s premiere mash-up producers, released a two-disc concept album last year titled 24hours available HERE for free direct download. The album’s 30+ tracks loosely follow an individual through a twenty-four hour day, painting soundscapes in samples from popular music, movies, TV, and ancient R&B B-sides. The rolling out of bed, drunken shenanigans ’round midnight, and even that uneasy feeling you get as you sober up around dawn are all represented in individual time-coded tracks. Not to say this mimics your night of preparing presentations and pounding out papers, but it’s still choice listening. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to take care of before the sun comes up.

Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future

Klaxon’s album, Myths of the Near Future

I kind of feel bad for Klaxons, as they have garnered a monolithic tower of press attention in an extremely short amount of time, mostly from the extremely hyperbolic British press. The reason this is a bad thing is because with such emphasis comes a metric ton of expectations. Basically, the odds are stacked against this band very high, and to be blunt, this album shows them caving a bit under the pressure.

First order of business: A message to the British press, and for that matter, the American press as well. STOP WITH ALL OF THIS “NEW RAVE” TALK. This term makes no sense. If you truly embraced all of the aspects of rave culture that the music press seems to attatch Klaxons to, and actually did Ecstasy while listening to this album, you would probably dance like a prick (to steal an Ali G phrase), but you’d also probably freak out and cry and have a huge existential dilemma at the same time. Klaxons aren’t that smooth of a band. So get that pacifier out of your mouth and change out of those ridiculously huge pants, because rave has not returned.

Let’s address the actual album. First off, it’s coming out way too soon. 2006’s Xan Valleys EP got so much acclaim because it stood on the shoulders of two absolutely amazing singles, the admittedly rave-like “Atlantis To Interzone,” and the anthemic “Gravity’s Rainbow,” both of which re-appear in re-recorded form. Problem is, these are the two best songs on the album. The spanking new studio sheen makes these two songs absolutely crush everything surrounding them, including their old versions. Jamie Reynolds’ new and improved bass tone spews venom all over these songs, giving them a much harsher kick that the EP lacked. However, those going in expecting 12 tracks of this caliber will be quite dissapointed. There is almost a feeling that the band saw the success of Xan Valleys and booked it into the studio to try and satiate their rabid fans. A noble cause, but a bit more time could have developed these songs a bit more.

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Classic Cocktails Vol. III

Welcome back, you alcoholics! This time around we’re going to take a look at three more classy cocktails; the Mojito, the Sidecar, and Pimm’s No. 1 Cup.

The Mojito

Once enjoyed by Ernest Hemingway, the Mojito is a traditional Cuban cocktail known for its crisp, refreshing citrus and mint flavor. It’s best enjoyed on a hot day. It’s also a little known fact that the Mojito is one of the most hated drinks by bartenders - It requires significant time and elbow grease to prepare, and when it’s a busy night with lots of people waiting in line, it can be a pain.

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