63.2% of Statistics Are Completely Made Up

Tastes Like the Occult

I bought the Vapor Shark four or five quit smoking attempts ago. Going cold turkey didn't help, the gum didn't help, the patch didn't help, acupuncture didn't help, hypnosis didn't help, I'm allergic to Zyban and Chantix is a story for another day. Everyone I knew who vaped swore by it as the ultimate quit method. It didn't take much convincing. I marched my butt on into that vape store and went nuts. I bought a pen, a charger, extra batteries, extra mouth pieces, refillable oil cartridges and a snazzy case to carry around the whole lot. $75 later, I was feeling really good about this decision. I was all set to join the ranks of ex-smokers who think they've beaten their nicotine addiction. (Seriously, y'all just traded one addiction for another. Prove me wrong and throw that thing in the drink. You don't need it anymore. You haven't smoked a cigarette in five years. Just, you know, get rid of it. Go ahead, I'll wait.) My resolve...

Carole is Beautiful

Carole King is beautiful. She is majestic and brilliant and talented and legendary and she has great hair. I was still young and living in the city the first time I listened to “Tapestry” all the way through. I had already heard every song a thousand times, except “Beautiful”; this was the first. It is positive, upbeat, motivational; it’s fake it ‘til you make it; it’s see it and be it. It was the worst song I could have listened to back then. New York City will always be glamorous and exciting to anyone who has never lived there. Everyone needs to see it, at least once. Every Long Island kid needs to live there, for a least a year. In short, New York City is necessary. It also sucks; it is depressing and it sucks. Consider the city from the perspective of someone who can just barely afford to live there. Your small studio apartment is nothing more than a box; it is a small box within a large box. (I never actually did the shoebox studio, but work with me on this one.) You wa...

Nirvana, The Beatles and Pretty Woman: Make the Connection

At the time “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released, my musical tastes were already reasonably eclectic. I was digging classic rock, metal, Motown, easy listening, disco, 80’s pop, new wave etc. etc. I had never heard of Nirvana and grunge wasn’t really a thing. Cliché as it sounds, that video changed everything. (Good fucking heavens, that really is a cliché. This whole article is going to suck because of it.) The fact that I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard that song/saw the video is not the slightest bit impressive. I was a 15-year-old with one friend and no life. What else would I have been doing beyond sitting on my bedroom floor, painting and smoking a cigarette, while engrossed in my own loud thoughts? (A thoroughly exciting existence. I fancied myself a tragic artist with the depth of a poet and no need for a curfew, because I never left the house. I was a rebel, goddamnit. I played by my own rules!) Needless to say (but I’ll say i...

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