CLACKAMAS, Ore. — Local Guitar Center employee Teddy Burns was informed he would be relegated to the store’s desolate lighting department due to the fact his ponytail is not in line with the company’s established dress code, management confirmed.
“Everyone who leads in sales also happens to have a ponytail that reaches the middle of their back, it’s not lost on me. When someone comes in to buy a guitar they want to know the person selling it to them can perform amazing figure eights with their hair,” said Burns from his secluded section of the store. “Unfortunately my hair just doesn’t grow like that, I was hoping my small ponytail would at least allow me to sell keyboards, but I need another eight inches before they let me near the Yamahas. It gets lonely in lighting, the only people that ever come back here are usually just looking for the bathroom or trying to shoplift.”
Store manager Ira Greyson says the company’s dress code is clearly laid out during the hiring process.
“We want all the members of our sales team to have long flowing ponytails that scream ‘This person can play every Metallica song from memory’ and unfortunately Teddy just has this little baby nub of a ponytail that says ‘I do yoga in the park.’ We just can’t have that,” said Greyson. “Market research shows that team members with long ponytails are better at sales. We have this one guy Gary with a ponytail that nearly touches the floor. He could sell a 12-string electric bass guitar to a folk musician, he’s that good.”
Guitar Center CEO Ronald Japinga admits he is slightly confused by the positive ponytail statistics.
“When I first came on board I was shocked by the ponytail data I was seeing. Regrettably, I instituted a policy where all our salespeople had to tuck their long flowing hair into a hat and we saw our sales dip by 4,000% within two days,” said Japinga. “I’ll admit that I don’t think most of the people that work for Guitar Center have any respect for me simply because I have a standard business haircut. It doesn’t matter how well I can play ‘Smoke on the Water,’ they want a CEO that looks like prime Yngwie Malmsteen.”
At press time, Burns is looking for new employment opportunities at a nearby Trader Joe’s but worries about his ability to start pointless conversations with customers about every item they purchase.
2007 was a strange, strange year for music and fashion in the hard rock world. My Chemical Romance-influenced guyliner slowly started to disappear to the end from Warped Tour kids in favor of way-too-tight t-shirts with bright colors and obnoxiously happy dinosaurs going “RAWR.” Yes. Dinosaurs. Yes. RAWR. No. You should be ashamed of yourself if you partook in this trend. Basically, this time period foreshadowed a dark-in-the-corniest way aggressive musical future moving forward in spite of (mice & men) and its vomit-inducing neon colors. Pierce the Veil is objectively cheesy, especially at its beginning, but definitely one of the less cringey of the pack; we’re looking at you, crabcore. Hard pass. Still, this debut album is the band’s worst effort and we aren’t taking any more questions on the matter.
Taking a high-school-length break between albums makes sense for Pierce the Veil in a theoretical form given singer/guitarist Vic Fuentes’ grating-to-some soprano voice and the band’s obnoxiously loud-to-all pre-pubescent fan base. Anyway, between its breakout and yet-to-be-mentioned 2012 effort “Collide with the Sky,” PTV released the aptly and appropriately titled “Misadventures” in 2016, proving that a surprisingly long and four-year strong break isn’t always worth the effort. Bada Bing! Wit a Pipe! Puberty has its literal growing pains, and this album contains some tracks that stupid idiot superfans of the band will love, but it isn’t a gold medal ribbon-winning and consistent front-to-back listen for any outside of those circles.
Speaking of something long (THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID), 2023’s “The Jaws of Life” came out seven years after “Misadventures,” which is the combined amount of time that a 2.0-GPA student goes through college and law school, and extremely atypical for other bands in the similar flash-in-the-pan nu-screamo world. Fans of this LP will likely call this record the band’s most progressive one, but if we have to read one more article about a band’s newest record being their most mature album, we will act very, very justifiably immature and call the guilty writers and listeners poo-poo-pee-pee heads. Shit’s lazy and overdone. Still, “The Jaws of Life” is very likely the band’s best album for non-listeners who wouldn’t give more than five seconds to a prior PTV album. This one snugly feels closer to ‘90s flannel than the four other releases and was clearly influenced by much, much, much, much better music, as evidenced by its finest composition and best song title below. Milk it.
The band’s last effort on Equal Vision Records, 2010’s “Selfish Machines,” shreds harder than both Bebop and Rocksteady ever could or should, and is a fan favorite that will likely enrage ardent Pierce the Veil obsessors for this silver medal slot when it should’ve gone gold in more ways than one; if you think otherwise about its ranking, please stay away from my friends. Seriously, creep(s). This sophomore release proved the popular expression that timing is everything, and a feature from the then-stratospherically-rising A Day To Remember helped ensure that the PTV’s next album would have more eyes and ears on it. Insert sell-out joke here.
Since record sales solely gauge a record’s worth, 2012’s “Collide with the Sky” showcases Pierce the Veil’s finest hour at forty-six minutes and fourteen seconds, and is overall their best and least amount of filler LP. Like we said several times throughout this piece, stop trying hard to disagree by ranking its two predecessors higher, you misguided, off-base morons are trying too damn hard to be punk in a world that truly isn’t. Sorry not sorry. Basically, the band moved from a cult favorite second-of-four opening act to a solid big room headliner with its release, and the band’s third album had a minor hit with its O-Town and 2gether collaboration song “King For A Day.”
King has said that this is his favorite of all the novels he’s written, which is why it ranks dead last. Nothing anyone is proud of belongs on a list about Maine.
We haven’t read this one yet, but the jacket says it’s a story of redemption, so it has no place here.
A boy inherits a key to a magical world where he and his dog need to fight vague evil. Since the evils in question don’t consist of black flies, gas station pizza, and 8-month winters, this one misses the mark on capturing the horror of living in Maine.
Many of the books on this list do not take place in Maine, and that has no bearing on their ranking because it was still the trauma of living there that inspired them. This one, however, takes place in Florida, an entirely different place of evil.
This novel features Holly Gibny, a minor character in several other King novels, now as her fully realized best self trying to solve the case of a young girl. The prime suspect – and seemingly normal couple harboring a dark secret. While nothing is more Maine than people harboring dark secrets, no one there is their fully realized best self, so this one ranks low.
A horror/fantasy that draws its fantastical elements from Greek mythology, King himself has described “Rose Madder’ as a “stiff, trying-too-hard” book, which is why it ranks low on our list. No one who chooses to live in Maine tries too hard. They just like, stand there.
Somehow laboring under the delusion that he just hadn’t published enough books, Stephen King dusted off a copy of this pre-Carrie manuscript, tightened it up, and published it in 2007. It centers around Clayton Blaisdell (get it?) and the bond he forms with a baby that he has kidnapped from its millionaire parents. Since it features an adult connecting with a child, it ranks very low on our list of horror found in Maine.
A shadowy organization is kidnapping kids with psychic abilities, and keeping them imprisoned in a palace known as The Institute for nefarious purposes. It’s a scary premise, but not Maine scary because at least these kids are getting an education.
Stephen King teamed up with his son to spin this tale about a future where women cocoon at night and transport themselves to a better place. It ranks low on our list because it presupposes that sleep can offer an escape to someone living in a state where the number one pastime is Lyme disease.
A girl is given a mysterious button box by a stranger who warns her that if she presses any of the box’s buttons bad things will happen. It is here at 55 because unlike most people in Maine at least Gwendy can control something, anything.
12-year-old Jack Sawyer walks from New Hampshire to California on a quest to find a Talisman that can save his dying mother. Along the way, Jack finds himself in “The Territories,” a Medieval parallel universe that mirrors our own. While more fantasy than horror, it is clearly inspired by Maine, a place that refuses to acknowledge what year it is. Maine is similar to our world, but everywhere you go people are playing something called Def Leppard from something called a radio, and the Starbucks are all called Dunkin Donuts, and everyone who works there is an old sea captain.
A grieving man is pushed over the edge of sanity after a proposed interstate highway threatens to demolish his home. An unstable man with a gun standing his ground in the cold is very “Pine Tree Ttate,” but it ranks low on our list because Maine never updates its infrastructure.
If It Bleeds is a collection of four novellas. The titular story centers on a TV news anchor with a suspiciously uncanny nose for viewer-grabbing tragic events. Tragic events are bad, but the horrors of Maine are more bleak than newsworthy.
This one is more of a full-on fantasy lacking real horror elements. It shares a few threads with the Gunslinger series so everyone talks weird, but they’ve still heard of the letter “R” so the horrors of Maine are not accurately represented.
While not the scariest Stephen King novel or even the scariest entry in the Dark Tower series, it features a lot of junkies and racism, giving the reader a reasonably accurate picture of life in Portland.
When a journalist threatens to expose a famous author’s pseudonym, the author decides to get ahead of the story and out himself, but it turns out the alter-persona won’t go out without a fight. It comes to life and commits a series of horrific crimes. This novel perfectly encapsulates Maine’s state slogan: “Keep your nose out of my dark secrets or I will fucking murder you.”
In the future of 2025, Ben Richards agrees to be on America’s favorite reality show, The Running Man. If he can elude capture and execution by police and bounty hunters for one month, he’ll get the money he needs to cure his daughter’s terminal illness. Published in 1982 the book is extremely prescient, and the game presented is barbaric, but it is still a form of entertainment so it doesn’t quite represent the horror of Maine.
Stephen King tackles the divide tearing our nation apart with a good ole “Can’t we all just get along?” It may take place in Castle Rock but spiritually this book is about as far from Maine as you can get.
A new antiquities shop opens in Castle Rock that seems to have exactly what everyone desires, and the customers don’t pay with money, they pay with IRONIC TWISTS! Sort of like how when I moved to Maine I thought “At least the lobster rolls will be good” only to find out that their version of it is cold lobster meat and celery mixed with mayo served on stale bread with lettuce. Oh, except that shitty lobster roll cost a lot of money.
After a night of kink gone wrong, Jessie Burlingame is left alone handcuffed to her bed. Trapped and alone with her thoughts she is consumed by the demons of her past. I think anyone who lives in a state where it’s almost always winter and everything closes at 9 p.m. can relate to Jessie.
A suspicious death in a Maine island community prompts suspect Dolores Claiborne to confess her life story, a tale of tragedy, injustice, and unspeakable family secrets. Throw in a plate of fiddleheads and you’ve got everything you need to know about New England’s most haunting state.
There is, of course, no one living in Maine with basic compassion, let alone a Christ-like ability to heal people, but if there was they would for sure kill them.
A group of travelers is lured to a small, dying town and must thwart an ancient evil unearthed by minors. This novel speaks to the deep, yearning desire in the heart of everyone with the misfortune of being born in Maine. For someone, anyone, to come and vanquish the repressive, miserable, intangible ether of misery that haunts the very air they breathe.
A terrifying story of a suburban Ohio neighborhood where suddenly all of the houses are transformed into log cabins and no one is allowed to leave their house. The Regulators explores what might happen if Maine were allowed to spread.
The humble beginnings of what would become The Dark Tower series finds Roland trekking through a wasteland where he tangles with mutants, horny church ladies, and people who talk really weird. It’s sort of a love letter to Bangor.