Ever Since I was 10 years old and saw a t-shirt with the cast of “The Simpsons” made to look like “The Sopranos,” I knew t-shirts were my calling. Today, I am the proud owner of Whack-Eyed Tees, the most cutting-edge t-shirt shop in all of Venice Beach, but I’m just getting started.
I need to grow my humble little hut into an empire and to do it, I’m going to need some help. I’ve decided to partner up with someone from the most successful group of people I know, the cast of HBO’s “Succession.”
After a lengthy interview process, I’ve ranked every character from the hit financial drama by how much they can bring to the T-shirt hut game:
53. Grace
This woman shows up, briefly alludes to having a kid with Roman, and then vanishes from existence. I need people who are going to be on time, not disappear from reality.
52. Ewan Roy
Dude was offended I even approached him. “Your entire enterprise is the exact sort of hollow, pedantic, lowest common denominator drivel eroding the human spirit like a cancer from the inside, all in the name of the almighty dollar” were his exact words. We sell t-shirts, bro, chill.
51. Jeryd Mencken
With the exception of Roman, the overt Nazis on “Succession” are low on this list, and Jeryd Mencken is the lowest of the low. This dude dismissed someone for crying at their father’s funeral, he’s not someone I want to see when I stroll into work on molly.
50. Alessandro Daniels
His entire marketing strategy was that I should call my dad? I don’t even know my dad.
49. Marianne Hirsch
She spent the whole interview telling me I need to strategize, but she wouldn’t strategize with me! Then she told me I need to talk to Ewan some more, and that guy hates my ass. She’s out.
48. Nan Pierce
Weirdest interview ever. She stared at me making passive-aggressive small talk the whole time as her staff brainstormed and printed a shirt design. Then her maid handed it to her and then she handed it to me and said “This is my shirt that I made.”
47. Ray
All we know about Ray is that Logan once told him to piss in a bucket and he thought Logan was serious. I don’t know if he was intimidated or he’s really that literal, but either way, he doesn’t have what it takes to make my t-shirt shop the top on the boardwalk.
46. Lukas Matsson
Matsson sent in some physical prototype shirts wrapped in a very fancy package, but unfortunately, they were terrible. One was a shirt with the Teletubbies with dicks on their heads instead of shapes and the word “Not Teletubbies.” The other just said “Gay.” He also sent me some blood?
45. Peter Munion
I don’t know where this guy gets off. He spent the whole interview asking who else I knew on the boardwalk and saying he would love an introduction like I owed him something. Screw him and his cheese knobbies.
44. Maxim Pierce
Imagine what an incompetent pariah you need to be to wind up playing second fiddle to Connor Roy.
43. Tellis
The dude’s only previous job experience was at The100, a company that never got off the ground. Pass.
42. Mark Ravenhead
Mark’s shirt design was a swastika, and he spent the whole interview telling me that it was a Tibetan swastika that had nothing to do with the Nazis.
41. Sylvia Ferreyra
Willa’s Mom spent the entire interview walking around the shop and announcing how she planned to redecorate. Did you know our vinyl press station would be the perfect spot for a chaise lounge?
40. Sophie and Iverson Roy
Kendall’s kids decided to work together as one creative team. Unfortunately, all their design pitches involve dead rabbits and parental neglect. Either of those subjects can be funny, but these kids just don’t have it.
39. Michelle-Anne Vanderhoven
The failed White House press secretary to t-shirt hut pipeline is more significant than you think, and it doesn’t usually work out for anyone involved.
38. Rat Fucker Sam
The boardwalk t-shirt shop game is a competitive, cutthroat world. I thought I could use his skill set to dig up some dirt on my neighbors over at “Tee Myself and I.” Unfortunately, his design pitch, a shirt featuring a cartoon rat with an enormous human penis and no caption, was terrible. He could be an asset, but only if I keep him in his lane.
37. Rava Roy
Her pitches were all plays on “Live Laugh Love.” “Live Laugh Divorce,” “Live Laugh Chardonnay,” “Live, Laugh, Overreact,” etc. Kinda played out, Rava. You’re too online, and mostly Facebook mom groups from the looks of it.
36. Tom Wambsgans
Tom may have “won the succession” and he’s a company man through and through, but he brings absolutely nothing to the table creatively. He did offer to go to prison for me several times, but unless he can deep fake himself in that video of me setting fire to “Beach Tees and Beyond” I’m going to need to keep exploring other legal strategies.
35. Connor Roy
Connor’s pitch: A cartoon drawing of Napoleon with a visible erection captioned with “Napoleon Bonerapart.” He emphasized that the length and girth were “100% historically accurate.” Not the issue Con.
34. Sandi/Sandy Furness
You would think a father/daughter team would be relatively wholesome, but no. The t-shirt design pitches that twisted old man whispered to that woman to relate to me were some of the most depraved things I’ve ever heard in my life. There was one involving a catheter and an orphanage that will haunt my nightmares forever. We like to be edgy at Whack-eyed Tees, but the things this man wanted to print would get us shut down and possibly arrested.
33. Lawrence Yee
10 years ago Lawrence would have made the top of this list in a heartbeat, but he’s a little too stuck in the VICE era to make it in today’s t-shirt game.
32. Daniel Jiménez
If this guy couldn’t beat Jeryd Mencken in an election, how is he going to help me push out those yahoos over at Patriot Tees?
31. Frank Vernon
“I went for three jobs, I didn’t get them, my vineyard was a write-off and now my trophy wife is sucking some waiter’s dick in Palermo and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Make that four jobs Frank, we’re passing.
30. Hugo Baker
Hugo’s inept opportunism is the opposite of what we need, and his t-shirt pitches left something to be desired as well. One was a dog with his face saying “Woof Woof” and another had a pilot script for a zany sitcom starring him printed all over it.
The Used’s seventh record “The Canyon” is almost universally known by the group’s fans as a meh and way-too-long misstep for the band, but 2017 itself had a huge gaffe and was doomed from the start being that it was Trump’s first year as President of the United States, which seems to have really worked out for him. Anyway, this is The Used’s sole effort produced by nu-metal paladin Ross Robinson, the record doesn’t get repeated spins over and over again, but it still has some solid tunes.
2012’s “Vulnerable,” The Used’s fifth studio album, is the band’s first non-major label LP effort and hit stores almost exactly ten years after the four-piece’s breakout debut. While it is (wait for it, wait for it) a VULNERABLE-in-the-best-way overall listen, and “I Come Alive” is a hell of an opening track, the remaining eleven songs sadly aren’t in the same league overall, and provided the act with less of a chance to shine. It’s hard for any band with such an expansive catalog to consistently wow everyone, but “This Fire” and “Now That You’re Dead” are both literal bangers and silver medal song entries even though, as Ricky Bobby said in a different fashion, “Second place is the first loser.” Still, you should check both of those tracks out again, and immediately thereafter shake/bake!
Real talk that may cause force without violence: “Cry” is the band’s best post-major label single from 2010-the present day, and we’re not taking any further questions on the matter, as our love is not a battle, it’s a ticking time bomb. Yeah. 2014’s “Imaginary Enemy” is The Used’s best Hopeless Records release, and despite the fact that you didn’t realize that the band had a song newer than 2004’s “All That I Got,” it even charted at number one on the Independent albums chart. That’s not make believe! Said stat probably caught you off guard as you’re so deep. In closing, this album is also longtime guitarist Quinn Allman’s last with the band.
This album from The Used definitely has the band’s best LP title and album cover. “Toxic Positivity” has a solid flow front-to-back and features a diverse array of tones and textures throughout its eleven fruitful tracks. Speaking of the word “fruitful,” there’s nothing toxic about cherries unless you’re allergic to them. The prior sentence makes sense (as well as so many other brilliant ones here) if you deep dive into the band’s colorful catalog, which is so much more than strictly blue and yellow. Sky. Pee. Toxic positivity. Easter eggs are great for our headspace. Anyway, this album is the band’s shortest full-length, with no individual song being longer than three-minutes and thirty-five seconds, so if a particular tune offends you, and we know that at least one or more will for you punk rockers, you can make it through the rest quite quickly instead of giving up.
There were two eras of the early part of the pandemic (or plandemic if you nasty): The oft-forgotten-like-his-character-in-“Castaway” Tom Hanks’ self-quarantine period in Daniel Johns’ Australia, where The Used vocalist Bert McCracken currently resides, and the impossible-to-erase-from-your-mind-no-matter-how-hard-you-try rise of Netflix’s incomparable sleeper hit “The Tiger King’.’ 2020’s “Heartwork,” the band’s best non-major label release, was released shortly after the big, wanna-be Joe Exotic’s original “country” music caused the internet to have a permanent bloody nose from the metaphorical accident known as his two LPs. What a weird time to be alive! In closing, “Heartwork” is current guitarist Joey Bradford’s debut effort with the band, and the four-piece’s first for label Big Noise.
Fun fact: The band originally wanted to work with Weezer’s extremely lovable/hateable/revered/doomed frontman Rivers Cuomo on their fourth album “Artwork,” but ended up not exactly settling with platinum-and-then-some-producer Matt Squire for this one, the band’s first non-John Feldmann production effort. This eleven-song record is without question the band’s best sans Feldy, and their most underrated body of work altogether. Sadly, it seems that this album’s then-label Reprise Records showcased that they were born to quit just as the album cycle started, as the band had a chance to release only one single from “Artwork” before the suits quietly gave up on the other ten songs and the entire LP as a whole. We suppose that the relationship between Reprise and The Used was meant to die a short and painless death after a lucrative run, but there will be forever blood on the hands of the conglomerate label. You cigar-toting bigwigs with no semblance of taste know who you are!
Lunacy fringe from us: For the next three LPs listed, we don’t recommend skipping ANY tracks, so read on, loser. The Used’s second album “In Love and Death” is their biggest seller to date, but it’s set in stone in the bronze medal spot here, and could stay a while. If you feel differently, your opinion is wrong. That blunt posit wasn’t hard to say, and moving forward, you need to update yesterday’s feelings with more quality control. Anyway, if you were at a tour date for this record in the fall of 2004 with The Bronx, Head Automatica, and Atreyu opening like we were, you were both on the right side of the bed and history. This frenetic-in-the-best-way album was eventually reissued with an Adam Lambert feature on a My Chemical Romance cover with Bert Bowie, but smart and astute readers like you already knew that.
This one’s a ripper: 2007’s “Lies for the Liars,” The Used’s third studio record and first without current Rancid drummer Branden Steineckert, is a extremely diverse and beyond solid introduction to the band for those who missed the first two LPs for whatever reason and/or were born after Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson. We stand by our 100% factual opinion that this record is their second most underrated just after its follow-up “Artwork,” and hope to find a way for you to feel exactly the same about this non-subjective point of possible but unjustified contention. The record sounds like it utilized the biggest budget allotted to the band over the course of its twenty-plus year career in the best way, as it sounds HUGE AF and so, so lush. The four-piece pulled out all the stops on this one, that’s for sure! Time has been kind to this album as it still holds up like the next-to-be-mentioned AND kills.
A post-9/11 concert trump card was witnessing The Used open for H2O as direct support and Box Car Racer in the headlining slot on their only fully national tour. If we’re being honest, it’s a daring, daring move to have your debut album be a self-titled one, but The Used excels in Word’s bold and italic fonts. This may get us canceled, but so will everything that we say and don’t say: The Used’s 2002 LP known as “The Used” is one of the best debut rock albums to be released this century and that wasn’t meant to be funny. If you have any further questions, you’re gonna have to ask nicer than that.
God, what haven’t I tried?! I was a flying drone guy, a guy whose always working on his truck, a guy whose always talking about buying a boat, I even watched college rugby for a year. None of those hobbies really reflected the hollowness I feel inside at all times.
I grew up in a community with a really thriving hip-hop scene. I struggled to fit in because music and words never interested me. Then I noticed all of the hip-hop people wore shoes and I was like “Hey, I can do that!” Now, everyone calls me “The shoe guy” and I’ve had sex more than once. Life is pretty great.
A significant relationship with another human being. Next Question.
Oh, I have a ton of other interests, I just like wearing expensive kicks as a status symbol. Plus I’m earnestly a huge fan of inflated overhead costs and barbaric child labor.
Vintage. Air. Jordans. I’m just gonna keep repeating that until you go away.
Funny story actually, I used to be obsessed with model trains. One day I asked a store clerk where the trains were, and he thought I said “trainers,” as in sneakers, and I was too shy to correct him, so I now I do this.
Before my sneaker obsession, and you might wanna sit down because you’re not even going to believe this, I was a DJ!
Technically I’m also a father, but I’m non-practicing.
Cocaine. It just wasn’t expensive enough.
Oh, I’m still a lot of other things. I’m an entrepreneur, an obsessive-compulsive, and a stalker.
Playing basketball. I was never very good at it, except for the part where you buy the shoes, so I leaned into that.
Look, I know it’s lame, but this is the least violent way my neurosis can manifest itself so just let me have this.
BEST: Cancerslug
BEST: 36 Crazyfists
BEST: Gatecreeper
BEST: Pallbearer
BEST: Testament
BEST: Cephalic Carnage
BEST: Hatebreed
BEST: Foreign Hands
BEST: Death
BEST: Mastodon
Originating as a project to cheer up Mike Watt, we guess you could call this their, thankfully brief, concept album phase. It’s essentially a one hour long tribute to Madonna where even the self-deprecating moments feel congratulatory and the cringe is seemingly endless. Listen to this one and you’ll see why they didn’t release it under their own name.
Can you still be punk while creating deep, melodic tracks? No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. So, with “Bad Moon Rising,” Sonic Youth began to cast off the shackles of genreism (is that a word? If not, can we get credit for creating it?) and began defining a unique sound that would inspire post-grunge about 10 years later. Okay, maybe that’s not such a good thing.
A certain clout-chasing writer for a website we won’t name here tried to boost his profile by giving this album a zero. While by no means in the upper echelon of Sonic Youth’s body of work, the review was an obvious publicity stunt that conveniently overlooked the fact that SY had to start from scratch after all their customized gear was stolen. And we all know when your gear is stolen so is all your creative energy. It’s kind of like when a witch curses you.
Look, not every debut album can be [Don’t forget to add iconic debut album of highly influential band.] This one is their most rooted in the No Wave scene that they emerged from and, thankfully, left behind. There’s an almost sinister sound to this one. Maybe too sinister. Like, hey, my life might be in danger, kind of sinister. But of course this was back when you had a not insignificant chance of getting stabbed in the Lower East Side of New York.
This one feels like Sonic Youth’s most introspective work and I guess that’s kind of fitting for their penultimate album. While they wouldn’t break up for another five years, this one has an “Abbey Road” type feel to it in the sense that you get the sense that they’re all kind of sick of each other. Had we listened to the lyrics a bit more closely, perhaps we’d have caught on that Thurston and Kim’s marriage was in trouble.
Fun fact: “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” was originally named for Mariah Carey, but they had to change it for legal reasons. We’d like to think Mariah would’ve been cool with this given her appreciation for alt-rock that Ed Templeton liked to use in skate videos, but this was coming not long after “Glitter” so you can forgive her for not being in the best headspace for playful ball-breaking.
SY’s second album for Geffen and first post-“Nevermind” isn’t bad per se, but feels more as if Sonic Youth is trying to replicate the bands that they inspired rather than the other way around which is why it’s not ranked higher. Check out the Spike Jonez-directed video for “100%” to catch a pre-movie star Jason Lee skateboarding.
When released, we weren’t aware this was going to be Sonic Youth’s final album as of the time of this publication and it received average to good reviews. Much like David Bowie’s “Black Star,” this one is worth reevaluating and is much better than the tepid reviews of the time will have you believe since most critics, not us though,, suck at life. This was also the only album featuring Mark Ibold as an official member of the group.
