As a connoisseur of underground hip-hop, I know an Aesop Rock song when I hear it. The internal rhyme structure, the critique of capitalism, the beat that sounds like it was made by a 1986 scratch DJ who only samples Squidward clarinet solos. You can imagine my surprise upon hearing such a specific landscape of sound emanating from my local bodega, only to find that it was not someone playing “Labor Days” from their speakers: It was just some schlubby white guy in a ballcap muttering to himself real fast. Could this genius be the next Aesop Rock? I decided to follow him around NYC and find out.
After a few minutes of watching this potential genius waddle around, he starts beatboxing super fast near the assorted jerkies. Then he spins around and says “CARBOHYDRATES, ketones on a pie plate, make my tummy vibrate.” Just as I was about to ask him what these lyrics symbolized, the dude just starts violently binge-eating all the store’s display donuts til the owner kicks him out.
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps this guy wasn’t spitting elaborate metaphors about American society, and was actually just craving carbs. But as an Aesop Rock fan, I knew there had to be a deeper meaning to all this. After all, if there is one thing Aesop Rock cannot resist, it’s making a huge impact then taking a mysterious hiatus. That’s basically the hip-hop equivalent of eating all the display donuts in a bodega and immediately getting kicked out. The parallels were just undeniable at this point.
After trailing this future rap superstar for a few blocks, I finally mustered up the courage to ask him where he gets his inspiration for such dope rhymes. He looked me dead in the face and dropped some of the illest bars to ever bless this earth: “Shmibity-Shmallet, I’mma steal your wallet.” Then, in a probably unrelated act, he punched me in the face and stole my wallet.
To this day, I don’t know where he took my wallet, but I assume it was to go to a recording studio and definitely not to buy more of whatever drugs he was on. Meanwhile, I have the rest of my life to try and figure out what metaphor he was trying to convey. Even for underground lyrical scholars like me, some musical mysteries remain unsolved.
Just a nice, semi-romantic lakeside ghost tale. Not a drop of piss. Oh actually no there is one. Hmm.
Tugs at the heartstrings a bit maybe but just not that scary. Still a few more drops of piss though, curious.
A ‘90s teen twist on the legend of The Headless Horseman. I swear it wasn’t scary and yet there are clearly fresh piss drops here. Am I just like slowly leaking piss all the time and just now noticing? It’s soaking through multiple layers.
This one is honestly more whimsy than horror, and whatever issue I was having with piss seems to have righted itself. No wait there it goes again, what the fuck I just changed my underwear!
What could be scarier than an art class?! The answer is obviously lots of stuff. Okay, there’s a straight-up spot now. Did I put on dirty underwear by mistake? This is a Stephen King-sized piss stain, I don’t know what’s going on.
Jeffrey Dahmer lived in apartment 213, is she meant to be his neighbor? This Large Marge light story I would call spooky, but not scary, and yet the spot is bigger! Definitely not just the underwear, something is up with me.
This was a weird one and I’ve always appreciated the campiness of it, but in terms of fear there should be zero piss in my shorts and there is more than that, I could probably fill a water balloon at this point. Am I drinking too much water?
This one scared some of the piss out of me for sure. Not this much piss though. Some of this piss is definitely not fear-related, I’m a little alarmed. Could I be diabetic?
You never forget the taste of fear. You never forget the smell of fear either. It smells like piss. Okay yeah, the piss-to-fear ratio is way off here. Way off. Maybe a quick peak at WebMD is in order.
Definitely a few solid jump-scare moments in this spooky graveyard tale. One of them gave me a little spritz, but then several full-on spurts after that I can’t really explain. I’m 29, this is not right.
Okay there’s a lot more pee this time, but look at that guy. He looks like some kind of piss demon. I’m gonna just chalk this one up to the episode. I’m gonna go get all my piss out before the next ep, change underwear one more time, and hope that whatever was going on with me is done and I can stop worrying.
This one was a lot scarier back when I was a kid and librarians were still a force to be reckoned with, but watching it through adult eyes… God, more piss? I like, JUST went. What’s wrong with my body?
Scary stuff, but if I had to pick the scariest wizard I’m dealing with right now, it would be ME! Wizzin’ all over the goddamn place! I am straight-up damp. This is not normal. Am I still on Mom’s insurance?
This ghost story centering around the mystery of a girl killed on her way to the prom in the ‘50s warrants some urine, but this?! It’s getting on the couch now!
Here’s a scary story for ya, the tale of the soggy bottoms. Jesus, I am a MESS, piss-wise.
Grandma Arbuckle is in retirement and now a greeter at Wal-Mart, with a very low likelihood of workplace violence. The only thing anyone could blame her for was gossip. She absolutely lives for it. It’s actually caused problems with some of the customers, since her questions are far too probing. A manager at the nearest location was having an affair with someone in the warehouse where she worked, and that gossip alone absolutely made her month. It was like instant Christmas for Grandma Arbuckle. Besides occasionally pocketing batteries for the “clicker,” Grandma Arbuckle is mostly harmless.
Yes, this is Garfield’s teddy bear and best friend. Innocent, right? Wrong. Never disregard potential threats in the office. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones that suddenly lash out with a stapler. There’s mischief brewing in those lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. They might not respond to your email out of spite. They might not even talk to you. Then again, Pooky can’t talk. The worst you might get is a passive-aggressive door slam, if Pooky can even reach the knob.
Who doesn’t love Odie? Sure he can be mischievous towards Garfield, but this is often in retaliation for some annoying-as-fucking prank Garfield has pulled. He mostly wants to just hang around you and happily drool. The worst Odie might do is accidentally rummage through your desk looking for treats or chew your desk calendar up. Property destruction and vandalism is never tolerable. He’s a dog, what do you want?
Lyman disappeared from the Garfield newspaper strip in 1983 and hasn’t been seen since. Every company worries about that one distant disgruntled past employee unceremoniously fired, the one who promised to return while being carried out by security. Who else has been sending your office cryptic threats pasted together with individual letters cut from People magazine? It has to be Lyman, with his classic antagonist mustache and misleading smile. Report any tactics of intimidation, especially if Lyman begins standing across the street from the office “reading the newspaper” wearing nothing but a peacoat and mirrored sunglasses.
When you work in service and people don’t tip, it is understandably upsetting and tempting to seek revenge. That’s what lands Irma in trouble every time. She has thrown mugs at non-tippers, has even followed them out screaming. She has poured cement mix into gasoline tanks, and has not washed her hands when serving rude customers. Any minor upset with staff will result in her giving a month’s long silent treatment, as though conversation with her was a fucking treasure. Best just to nod and smile at her small talk. Do not accept her Facebook friend request.
Garfield is likely too lazy to ever actually cause any harm. He is mostly a constant grump, which honestly fits into most American corporate culture. But he also has a long memory and is constantly biding time for his own revenge. He has these ominous lists in his room, scribbled on the back of long CVS receipts, new names added each week after any minor altercation. What is he planning on doing with those lists? You go out of your way to be nice to Garfield, but it doesn’t seem to work. Nothing makes Garfield happy, except when it’s 4:59pm, when this lazy cat becomes an Olympic runner heading for the door.
Garfield’s Mother is the one that’s been around forever, employed since day one. And somehow she is the biggest bully of them all. Nearing complete bitterness and dripping with cruelty, Garfield’s Mother is every judgmental co-worker that you’ve ever worked with. They call you unwanted nicknames. They talk about you behind your back. But they also eat garbage from the back courtyard of an Italian restaurant, so you try not to judge. There’s clearly something wrong going on here. They smell like old halibut. Despite their personal hygiene, Garfield’s Mom is still employed since the company somehow can’t function without her.
Everyone knows a short king constantly trying to prove themselves, and that’s Squeak the mouse. Way, way too sensitive. Always getting into fights in the parking lot, or challenging people over any perceived threat. Overdoes it with the cologne. One time at a work conference, Squeak pulled a dude’s clip-tie off and threw it into a corporate fountain. You don’t think Squeak would ever actually get into a real brawl, but he’s reckless. Too reckless. Squeak was an unfortunate choice as a new “work lunch friend” during the first week or so. You’ve avoided him ever since, even though he hits you up on Slack all the time about your lunch plans.
Jamey and the boys somehow missed the memo that your self-titled album is supposed to be your first while you’re still in your awkward my-stepdad-said-we-could-practice-in-his-basement phase and not ten years in. I know they say don’t judge a book by its cover but the opposite rules apply for albums. The art on this looks like the designer was getting paid by the number of Photoshop layers they could add and the music has that same “we recorded all the ideas at once” vibe.
“Here’s to burning out and here’s to fading away – Fuck you both, I just put it to the torch.” Probably the best line on the album and I don’t want to say that Hatebreed is either burning out or fading away on this one but the flames rising off their logo might seem a little dimmer. I may be alone in this but sometimes standing for what you believe means standing alone. I heard that in a song once. 
2020 was a hard year. And I don’t really mean Covid, the riots, the rise of global fascism, or just the general unraveling of everything decent and sane about society. The worst part was the lack of new music. So it was great that we got a new album from Hatebreed. It was a nice temporary escape from the shit storm but much like a lot of things from 2020, it’s not really something you need to revisit.
What’s the most badass way to start an album? If you said anything other than a reprise of the mosh outro from your previous album you are dead wrong. Trying to capture the same secret sauce they had on “Perseverance” there are a lot of the same tricks here. Unfortunately, just like how I’m crashing from drinking all that Monster Energy, this album runs out of steam the further on into it you get.
Dropping an album this good twenty years into your career shouldn’t even be legal. Not resting on their laurels for even a fucking second this is their most overtly metal album with a variety of influences on full display. There are moments of both ‘80s thrash and ‘90s groove metal and actual flesh-melting solos making this their most musically diverse album. Oh, and what’s that? They forgot to bring the mosh? Try again, motherfucker.
Five angry white guys screaming the word “supremacy” in 2023 would probably be unadvisable but in 2006 it was forgivable. Limp Bizkit once had a cringe-tastic hit with “Break Stuff” which I would assume is about being a full-grown ass adult who has no impulse control and throws a temperature tantrum over a slight inconvenience? Hatebreed seems to set those clowns straight with how to actually do it here with “Destroy Everything.”
I mean, I mentioned it in the intro so of course it was going to be in the top 2. A lot of the olds out there would tell you this is their best album and they really have a strong argument. For better or for worse (in some cases much worse) this was the album that gave the world metalcore. This is surely the soundtrack for many old hardcore dudes who find themselves crowd-killing in their car alone while inching along in traffic on the way to their soul-crushing bullshit job (hypothetically speaking.)
Vin Diesel jumping out of a plane with a snowboard attached to his feet while guzzling a SoBe energy drink so he can somehow defeat the bad guys in “XXX” while “I Will Be Heard” plays in the background is the peak moment of the 2000s and maybe even just human history in general. The production of this album is in that sweet spot of being just raw enough to give it street cred while actually mixed well enough so you can hear everything. Jasta loses the negativity to his lyricism from Satisfaction and switches gears to become the hardest motivational speaker you’ve ever seen. Fuck you, Tony Robbins.
That red and white striped sweater and beanie in your closet may have been helpful in years past when you needed a last-minute costume, but it’s going to be useless for getting out of jury duty. You’ll just look like any other millennial liberal arts school graduate with a day job and the capacity to fulfill their civic responsibilities.
Bob Ross is always a solid costume thanks to the requisite wig, but if you show up to the courthouse as Bob, not only will you have to serve your duty, they might also ask you to make courtroom sketches. Better roll up the sleeves to that button-down shirt and have fun deliberating over whether or not to convict someone for their happy little insurance fraud accidents.
If you own a neutral-colored blanket and the $9.99 it takes to buy a fuzzy pink pig nose and matching ears on Amazon, you’ve got yourself a costume. Once you get to the courthouse parking lot, strap those things on and wrap yourself up as tight as you can in the blanket. There’s no guarantee this will help get you excused from the jury, but if you must serve, at least you’ll be all warm and cozy.
No matter what princess you dress up as, you’ve got options. As Snow White you could claim to have food poisoning, as Aurora you could cite narcolepsy, et cetera—get creative with it. But if that doesn’t work, you’ll just have to say you’ve got a child’s birthday party to appear at and hope the judge shows some compassion.
How effective this costume will be depends on your state of residence. If you’re in the Midwest or parts of the South, chances are dressing as Dorothy won’t help you much. Unless of course you start clicking your heels together and chanting, “I want to go home! I want to go home!!” That should do the trick.
While active duty soldiers may have to serve jury duty, general officers, commanders, and trainees are automatically exempt, so pull on those combat boots, strut yourself into the courthouse, and look in command. Hopefully they won’t bother asking you for verification, but if they do and you actually have to serve, at least you can go get a 10% discount somewhere when it’s over.
This “easy” costume is nothing short of a logistical nightmare in a courthouse. They’ll make you take the sheet off to walk through security, then you’ll have to take it off again to have your picture taken at the reception desk. But if you insist on dressing as a ghost, you’ll just have to really commit and say you’re the victim of the murder committed by whoever is being tried that day—which is a dark thing to say and this is civil court, but do you want to get out of jury duty or not?
Dressing as Stereotypical Barbie could be helpful since men in power would question your ability to manage your lady emotions and jury a fair trial, but if you dress as Civic Barbie and say your favorite accessory is bias, the chances of your duty being waived are decent.
Carmen Sandiego founded the Villain’s International League of Evil, which “seeks to commit incredible thefts and/or cause chaos in other ways,” and is not a job one can be expected to just take a day off from to be on some dumb jury. Besides, you have to be a United States citizen to serve jury duty, and with that classy red get-up, no one will know where in the world you’re from.
As the saying goes, “no shirt, no shoes, no service,” so how can they possibly expect you to serve when you’re shirtless, finned, and shimmering in the glow of the overhead lighting? You’re too much of a distraction to solve a crime. See, you knew getting into an eBay bidding war for that tail wasn’t a waste of time and money after all.
