PORTLAND—Local man and self-confessed “introverted-ass” Will Dobbs is pleading for a real-life equivalent to the popular text and Instagram “like message” feature, chronically online sources confirmed.
“There are a lot of ways I can imagine it working,” Dobbs pondered as he threw his phone across the room after sending a message on Hinge. “Saying ‘liked a message’ out loud. Throwing up a heart symbol with your fingers and walking away. Reaching out and double tapping the other guy’s chest. God, I’d take anything to end some of these conversations where you’re just stuck making bad jokes with someone about the weather for 25 minutes at a time.”
“And when things are serious it’s so much easier than having to come up with a thought-out, engaging response,” Dobbs concluded while shakily lighting a cigarette after noticing that two minutes had passed without a response.
Dobbs’ longtime friend Owen Gage is frustrated by his lack of effort in the realm of basic communication.
“Dude’s been like this ever since I met him. Every time I send Will something meaningful–could be a passion project I’ve worked on, a shoutout on his birthday, asking to donate to my mom’s cancer fundraiser, anything–he responds the way I would to some meme I’ve already seen twenty times. Just wants to end the, uh, conversation before it even begins,” said Gage. “Like, just the other day, I asked him if he wanted to see this band he wouldn’t shut up about ‘cause my cousin is opening. He just heart-reacted to the message. Jesus, he didn’t even say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ You could give him a Nobel Prize and he’d just send a text saying ‘lol.’”
Veteran linguist Brock Davidson mourns the demise of actual conversations and the lost art of wrapping up a friend-to-friend exchange.
“Look, I’m not expecting Emily Post etiquette here,” Davidson clarified. “But could these people act a little more lifelike? Before you know it, we’ll be a society of vague charades,” said Davidson. “They all have a soapbox where they can create elaborate threads on political upheaval and social injustices and they can’t give their friends more than two words. Oh shit, just got a text from my wife. She’s going into labor. Shit. I’m just gonna ‘emphasize’ it, I guess.”
At press time, Dobbs, pulled over for speeding, was hypothesizing how he could say “message seen 12 hours ago” to the cop walking up to his window.
Their selection of DeWalt power tools may be expensive, but what isn’t expensive is the grey hanes sweatshirt you’re using to conceal it as you breeze through the entrance doors with ease. A beep from door sensors might go off but most of the employees couldn’t give two shits to take any sort of action. They’re too busy listening to boomer Deb describing the new light fixtures she’s going to install in her in-law unit and praying for one to drop on their skull. Enjoying keeping your newly acquired items or dump them at your local flea market for some quick cash.
The company recently filed for bankruptcy due to declining sales over the past few years, or so they say. But we all knew what was leading to the downfall, you and your D-Beat friends having easy access to an endless supply of Soda Streams and an emergency exit door with an alarm that didn’t work. Also, you’d be shocked at how easy it is to walk out with a comforter underneath your arm as long as you just act confident. Beyond worth exploiting.
For some odd reason, you can still find some of these stores that put name brand shirts and jackets right by the front entrance. You can execute an in and out product grab within a matter of seconds. Remember, just because someone is wearing a referee shirt doesn’t mean they had to pass a physical fitness test to get it. Snatching shoes can be on the trickier side but is still doable. Working in teams is usually best for this. Ask for some shoes, try them on, and then have your friend distract the employee with some punishing conversation about Travis Scott Jordans. It’s like a shittier version of Ocean’s Eleven.
We here at Hard Times never played a PS5 game that we didn’t like. We also never met a Gamestop employee that was physically capable of clearing the front counter by the time we had darted out the front door with some overpriced collector’s edition game.
There is never anyone in here (including the employees). Feel free to take your time and shop around before exiting the store through the front door with B12 vitamins in your hand like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
A store with prices so outrageous shoplifting from here is more to make a political point that it is for an easy grift. They are currently having a sale where produce is currently 20% off. It turns out you can take another 80% off if you stuff the oranges in your backpack with the Wolfbrigade backpatch and exit through their rarely watched side entrance.
Important to note that ladies will have a much easier time getting in and out of here unnoticed. It is impossible for any guy to go in here solo and not look like a total scum bag. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a guy in here by himself and didn’t think that he has an active restraining order? Ladies, feel free to load up your bags and stroll out the front door. Ain’t nothin’ happening.
Almost no explanation necessary at this point. Everyone’s social media feed is peppered with footage from Walgreens getting robbed with ease and not a damn thing being done about it from staff or the third-party security guards they hired. In the realm of stores with no-chase policies, this one is a lay-up shot. Bring a friend and make a game out of how many bars of Dove deodorant you can load up in your sweatpants.
Much like its competitor Walgreens, the competition also appears to be bleeding into the realm of which store is easier to steal from. 8 times out of 10 you are probably going to run into someone who is also in the process of ripping something off. Feel free to strike up a conversation and make a new friend. You can rest easy knowing you are making connections and won’t be getting tackled by store staff.
Second floor fire escape. Just do it.
We’ve said it before ad nauseam, and we’ll say it again, again, AND again till the thin white duke vegan cows come home, self-titled LPs are tricky for many reasons, as they are sometimes a triumphant return to form. Sadly, oftentimes these efforts are whatever the antonym for “triumphant” is, and sadly this one comes immediately after their best release, which we will bow down to under a faithless crown of thorns to much later, so inevitably it was going to disappoint. Anyway, this LP is also known as “Black Veil Brides IV” for obvious reasons, but not to you hypocritical fools, and the record debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200 chart, which is no small feat for ANY act, especially a hard rock group.
Vale! Like “veil,” bros! Get it, sis’? Let’s get away from the “oozin ahhs” and la dee da dee %$%^ing “da”: “Vale,” the band’s fifth LP, is Black Veil Brides’ final major label release, and definitely not only better front to back than the one that we just mentioned, but it just sounds HUGE in the best way. If we’re being honest, which we always are, maybe the band’s finest or second best effort production-wise; thank you, John “Foxy Shazam” Feldmann of Electric Love Hogs. This is where it ends? Nah, we have four more full-length studio LPs left.
We know, we know, “We Stitch These Wounds” is not only Black Veil Brides’ debut album “We Stitch These Wounds” is not their only LP, but it’s the only good thing they’ve ever done according to the critics on the internet. The band re-recorded this album and marketed it as “Re-Switch These Wounds” during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, so we get but also don’t why/how you missed it. Anyway, this record is way more Avenged Sevenfold’s LP’s “Waking the Fallen” and “City of Evil” than shreddy ‘80s hairspray metal. Also, every time we hear the Royal his’ name, we bow towards his beautiful remains. Speaking of beautiful, it’s sweet sans Stone Sour that BVB frontman Andy Biersack’s grandfather Urban Flanders (that name is not a joke) is featured on track one here.
Black Veil Brides sophomore LP “Set the World on Fire” was truly an accurate descriptor for this record AND this band! Why are we yelling? We don’t know! Speaking of such, the band substituted a lot of growls and guttural works of extreme dedication for a lot of glam here, but don’t scream anything disparaging about their youth, whisk(e)y, musicality, or fashion or they’ll kick your arse. Want proof? Watch some YouTube videos of our favorite saviors with a ‘“u”; basically, you’ve got nothing to lose, don’t be afraid to break daw-ow-wow-wown. Love isn’t always fair, but we always and forever are, so your time has come for a new religion. So, in conclusion, this effort is the first of three medalists to be listed, and bronze just supplants BVB’s legacy as one of the better hard rock bands of the mid-aughts/2010s.
Get mad, in fact, get 516 Long Island MAD mad as Black Veil Brides’ most recent effort is listed by us at number two, making it the silver medalist in a world of marital black and motionless white. You say it shouldn’t be, but come on, you haven’t even heard it at all or in full. Rock operas often don’t rock OR opera, but “The Phantom Tomorrow” does, and does quite hard even in Ford’s Theatre; hey yo. Shout out: Lead guitarist Jake Pitts started co-producing the band’s full-lengths on “Vale,” the album prior, produced the fall eternal spectre redux of “We Stitch These Wounds” by his lonesome, and co-produced this one with Erik Ron, who sat behind the boards for recent releases from Bush, Staind, Godsmack, and Mozart. So hold your torch up high, raise your glasses/hands in the air, rather crimson skies, like you just don’t care.
This ambitious full-length concept studio LP is a no “skip it” effort and as geniuses of the world according to MENSA, we are impolitely refusing to answer any further equations on the matter… Who will tell the story of your life once your revelation lets us down? A bulletproof devil’s choir? Will you live again? We advise you and only you to make it a victory call, and Google the meaning of “abeyance,” as we have no clue what that friggin’ means. Anyway, remember to get scared to die. Not only is “Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones” BVB’s first top ten Billboard effort at #77, but in a cool literal flex, their anthem “In The End,” was featured as one of the themes to WWE’s “Hell in a Cell,” not including The Undertaker or Mankind.
“No bad albums” isn’t the hardest feat with only five full-lengths. But it doesn’t change the fact that Trap Them put out no bad albums. Ranking this album last is like saying wolf cubs are the 5th cutest animal. Does it mean they’re not cute? No. They’re so cute. THEY’RE SO CUTE. But have you seen red pandas? Baby raccoons? Pallas cats? MY DOG?!?! All so cute, your brain explodes. Wolf Cubs are also adorable. “Blissfucker” is a killer album. There are no real complaints, other than it’s just not the Trap Them album we instinctively reach for when we wanna listen to Ryan McKenney shred his vocal cords for our enjoyment. But this album still slaps the hell out of your taint. It’s a real taint-slapper. And the unrelenting blast beats of “Former Lining Wide the Walls” are worth a listen on their own.
For a lot of folks who aren’t as cool as us, this was how they first heard Trap Them. And honestly, it’s a great intro to the band. The first two tracks “Fucking Viva” and “Targets” are the perfect sample menu of the band. The former being a great example of their slower, heavy, almost noodley songs that we’ll call “dread bangers” and the latter being an example of their one of their furious, breakneck speed types of tracks we’ll call “anger splooges.” This album established the band in the larger scene, with some claiming them to be torch-carrier-on-er of the buzzsaw sound of Entombed. Which is fine. The influence is there. But there’s a stank on this record that doesn’t sound like any of their “influences.” Or maybe it sounds like all of them, dead in a pile? I don’t know. It’s just a pretty swell record. Also “Mission Convincers” might be the best dread banger they have.
“Darker Handcraft”? Probably should’ve named it “Heavier Awesomesongs!” Nailed it.
Sometimes a debut album sets the bar too high to ever reach again. Other times is a skeleton blueprint, hinting at the future heights a band will hit, but you never really wanna go back and listen to it. But “Sleepwell Deconstructer” threads the needle in between both. There’s a (yeah we can’t believe we’re saying this either) youthful energy to this one. Shorter songs and the feeling of “fuck it, we gotta record this in a weekend” is spread throughout the whole thing. And here’s something weird: it’s the only Trap Them album that feels almost… fun? Don’t tell them we said that. They seem like they wanna come off very mean and scary. And mean and scary guys don’t have fun. But this album is kinda fun.
Always nice when a band goes out with a bang, and “Crown Feral” is a hell of a bang. Similarly to “The Great Muppet Caper,” this album is much more nuanced than one might initially think. For one, the move to have Kermit and Fozzie be identical twins who are journalists is genius. And Gonzo as their photographer is a no-brainer. The film also has one of the all-time great Muppet songs “Happiness Hotel” named after the eponymous hotel where our three main leads stay. Besides a villain in the legendary Charles Grodin, there are memorable cameos from John Cleese and Robert Morley, among others, as well as an always-welcome Sesame Street crossover from Oscar the Grouch. In the end “The Great Muppet Caper” is the best Muppet movie to exist and…shit. My bad, we were talking about “Crown Feral.” Yeah, it’s their best album.
Absolutely not. This man is a convicted sex offender. What would the neighbors think if your new roommate had to go door to door to tell them all that he served time for exposing himself to an 8-year-old? Is it possible that The Jesus had some sort of back story in his spinoff that explained this away as a misunderstanding? Maybe. We didn’t watch it because some guy on reddit said it wasn’t very good.
Uli is one of Bunny’s costars in the porn industry. He is the leader of the gang of nihilists she hired to help fake her kidnapping. As a nihilist, Uli believes in nothing, and is loyal to no one. We wouldn’t be able to keep track of who he was scheming with or who he was double crossing on any given day. This ferret-wielding thug is only a slightly better option than the sex-offender bowler. And that’s not saying much.
This is the rug-pisser who started the completely avoidable series of events in “The Big Lebowski.” Everything that happens to The Dude and the unfortunate saps around him can be traced back to Woo’s inability to handle conflict without resorting to waterworks. Imagine forgetting to pay the electric bill and he decides to micturate on something of yours instead of writing a passive aggressive note like a normal roommate.
As confident as he is incompetent, this is another hired goon bringing chaos to The Dude’s life. This unnamed thug slightly beats Woo on our list because at least he only destroys property that belongs to the landlord, whereas Woo went out of his way to destroy The Dude’s personal property. And that rug really tied the room together. We’re going to pass on this one because he seems to be a package deal with Woo.
Nobody wants an incompetent criminal living in their house. Especially not one that would blast German techno-pop and trash the house with a cricket bat. We get it, you were in a band in the ‘70s. Good for you. How are the royalties on that uninspired Kraftwerk ripoff treating you after splitting them three ways? Maybe you should focus some of this energy on finding a real job? Or at least harassing someone for money that isn’t unemployed?
Ok, this character’s name in the credits is “Nihilist #2,” but that’s fucking Flea! It would be kind of cool to have a celebrity roommate, right? And as far as the nihilists go, he doesn’t seem to be very influential in their decision making. He mostly just agrees with Uli and provides comedic relief. We were seriously considering Flea until we remembered the strict “no bass players” policy in our house. And unlike the nihilists, we believe strongly in some things.
Let’s just get all the nameless thugs out of the way. No matter which millionaire they work for, whether or not they practice nihilism, and even if they are in the film so briefly that they don’t merit being considered as individual characters, we’re not interested in any of their bullshit being brought into our house. These two merely perpetuate the ongoing problem of rug violence in The Dude’s life.
What kind of response was that? Your fare asked you to change the radio station and you physically threw him from the cab? Over the Eagles? This aggression will not stand. That’s why this cab driver is the lowest ranked character who isn’t a hired goon or pederast. We need a roommate who won’t try to fight us while blasting “Hotel California” when we get home from a long day. We hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man.
With behavior like this, the Chief of Police might as well be another thug working for Treehorn. The Dude begins their interaction by asking for a lawyer. We’ve seen enough “Law & Order: SVU” to know that the conversation that ensues would be inadmissible in court if the chief had wanted to arrest The Dude rather than beat the shit out of him at the station. This NiMBY police chief needs to worry more about his own behavior than the beach community he claims to protect if he wants to rent from us.
We don’t really know much about this guy except that he’s willing to ignore The Jesus’s sex crimes to stay competitive in their bowling league. Maybe he also has a backstory in “The Jesus Rolls” that would help us make a more informed decision about his worthiness of renting out our extra room. But we still haven’t watched it because our friend Trevor called it a shitty attempt to cash in on the original movie’s cult appeal.
This seemingly carefree woman is the connection between every character in “The Big Lebowski.” It was her debt that led Jackie Treehorne to send thugs after the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski in the first place. We don’t want a roommate that has to fake her kidnapping to get ransom money from her own husband just to pay the rent. We’ve got enough of our own problems to deal with.
What a compassionless prick. Our expectations are low for the personality of an LAPD detective investigating the theft of a stoner’s car, and this guy still wouldn’t meet them. If this stoic cop moved in with us, there would be nothing but judgmental looks from him across the room. Ok, maybe we should have put away that bowling pin-shaped pipe before the cops came over, but weed isn’t illegal anymore, man. Doesn’t he have some real crime to worry about? There’s been a kidnapping!
To simply call this man a chauffeur would be to ignore the fact that he’s willing to resort to violence and, ironically, kidnapping on behalf of his employer, the fake millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski. We don’t want a roommate that will throw us into a car and drive off while we’re interrogated in the back just because he was too impatient to stop and ask WHY we got high and ate the leftover pizza he was going to take for lunch.
We don’t have room for an iron lung in our living room. Even if he wrote the bulk of the series “Branded,” of which we’re enormous fans, it just wouldn’t work with our aesthetic to have a comatose man hooked up to a machine in here. While we’re on the subject, how does this man have a teenage son? We’re to assume he’s been in this iron lung for decades. Is Arthur even Larry’s real father? This man needs to get his own life in order before we’d consider sharing a house with all that drama.
The only positive about the millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski as a potential roommate would be his wealth. But even that was all a farce. His mansion and all of his plaques and trophies conceal he fact that his daughter controls the family trust. The Big Lebowski would just be another old capitalist screaming about how the working class deserves to be poor for not working harder. And he’s not above having you kidnapped if you don’t return his calls.
We get it, it’s a thankless job hunting down the owner of a stolen car and meeting him at the junkyard to fill out paperwork. But at least wait until after the car’s owner leaves to make jokes about his poor car being used as a toilet. The Dude asked a serious question, are there any leads in this case? And this cop’s response was to laugh in his face? This man would not be an ideal addition to our house, but at least he’s not violent.
While we think Jackie Treehorn would throw one hell of a party, this is probably going to be a pass from us. He’s rich, but he’ll drug your drink and throw you out of the house if he doesn’t like you. He’ll lend you money, but he’ll send thugs to piss in your house if he doesn’t get it back. How this man makes his money is none of our concern, but this pornographer’s lifestyle is more than we can handle.
Walter is too out of control for our liking. He’s a loyal friend but he escalates every situation he’s involved in, or invents his own problems when he can’t find them organically. We acknowledge the severe PTSD that Walter suffers from as a result of his time in Vietnam, but we’ve got enough trouble keeping the peace around here without a lunatic trying to win an argument by threatening to shoot a man over a bowling match, even if it is a league game.
Sure, he’s a good man, and thorough, but there is a limit to what we will tolerate from a tenant in our house. It’s not just that he colluded with Maude to surreptitiously determine if The Dude was a good candidate to have a child with. It’s this doctor’s violation of privacy that bothers us so much. Has this man not heard of HIPAA? This flagrant dissemination of The Dude’s protected health information goes against a number of laws.