For instance.

Do you know who the Insane Clown Posse are? Do you know what a Juggalo is?

This is the band Insane Clown Posse

And these are their die-hard fans, Juggalos (a pregnant one to boot–a Preggalo, maybe?)

As long as there are bands like the ICP and their Juggalos out there carrying the liberty torch everything will be ok.

The WSJ broke it to me here.

Just let me get fat in silence. That’s all I ask.

I don’t feel like writing a book review here because I’m not very good at writing them and no one would read it anyway. Instead, I’d like to quickly talk about a subject that’s covered in great depth in Four Fish, the blue fin tuna.

The Atlantic population of blue fin tuna has declined by nearly 90 percent since the 1970 

I vaguely remember my grandparents telling me that the week I was born in Boston in 1980 there also happened to be a near world-record blue fin tuna that had been caught that week and was on display down at the wharf, or whatever it’s called. Perhaps that’s where my interest in the fish comes from. Anyhow, they’re an amazing animal. There are so many unbelievable factoids associated with the fish that you can’t not find it fascinating

• Atlantic blue fins can live up to 30 years (but overfishing makes this rare)
• They can reach a maximum length of 14 ft.
• They raise the temperature of their blood at will
• Their bodies remain still while their tails fluctuate at incredibly rapid speeds
• They dive to depths of 3,000 ft and can swim hundreds of thousands of miles in a lifespan

They’re an amazing fish that we probably won’t have around much longer if we keep eating them. Tuna, unlike other fish that have localized habitats, roam vast swaths of the ocean. Because of this, it makes it very hard to pass laws that would regulate the fishery. When it comes to commercial fishing of the high seas, only complete moratoriums seem to work. Like the one passed in the 80s that outlawed commercial whaling.

The Japanese are huge recalcitrants when it comes to abiding by sensible fishery law. They continue to practice whaling and are, by an order of magnitude, the largest consumers of blue fin tuna.

At this point, the only thing we can do to protect blue fin tuna is to elect not to eat it. Don’t get sushi that’s made using blue fin, don’t buy the tuna steaks, and don’t order it at a restaurant. 

Anyone who eats fish should be familiar with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch List.  

The New York Times printed

Looking back, I think it was the mob-glam suits Robert DeNiro wore in the movie Casino that made me realize how transfixing a slightly over the top tailored men’s suit could look, even if it was in hellishly dizzying monochrome. My interest in men’s suits continued to develop throughout high school, reaching its apogee my Senior year. I remember appreciating the tastefully commanding iridescent fabric of Stone Phillip’s Dateline haberdashery. And never mind David Letterman’s very expensive 3 piece double breasted bespoke jobs. I’m sure they all cost far more than I ever imagined, and these guys were wearing a different one every night, almost. The closest I came to getting a righteous suit of my own was when I visited my fried Scott at Legigh University in Easton, PA in 1998. At the time, in addition to harboring a Crayola Factory and flocks of post-steel, impoverished crack people, Easton boasted an impossible number of pimp suit shops, which sold all sorts of zany Michael Irvin Deon Sanders suits. These suits weren’t too far from the ones Bobby DeNiro wore in Casino. I wanted one, but I needed to buy beer and $50 worth of fastfood that weekend so it didn’t materialize.

Tonight I’m sitting here watching a very old David Letterman doing his monologue and he’s not wearing one of his signature,  razor-sharp 3 piece getups. Instead, he’s rocking a baggy 3-button thing you’d expect to see on a pimply, post-creatine bloat ivy banker douche riding the 6 train.

If I wanted to buy a cool suit now I could, but I don’t even want one.

Here’s an old 90s video of  D Letterman in a fine suit introducing the equally once fine band, Megadeath!

NetSpend stinks so bad.

This is why, I imagine, the braintrust at NYC-based Best Made Co. have decided to roll out a line of high-end axes and, dare I say, a very, very nice axe sling.

Granted, the axes are probably very well made because they’re made in Canada, but I’m willing to bet the only thing Best Made Co. does is paint the handles. I like the idea of people learning how to use tools, but this is a little too foppish for my tastes.

Way back in the year 2000, before railing against high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was cool, I was reading about the history of the cloying viscous liquid in Eric Schlosser seminal book Fast Food Nation. More than debating how humans metabolize HFCS and whether it’s that much worse for us than real sugar, Schlosser used the story to show how inefficient (insofar as energy and resource intensiveness) and f’d up big agribusiness is. Thanks to a raft of monstrously large subsidies passed in the 60s (I think) corn became incredibly cheap; this also made HFCS cheap, really cheap. So cheap that it was an obvious replacement for regular sugar in a lot of our packaged foods. That kind of unnatural food selection is bad—this was the big point.

FFWD> 45 years and HFCS is in nearly half of the shit on grocery store shelves.
Lately, HFCS has found itself in the crosshairs of the we-take-no-responsibility for our actions and our bodies movement in America. It’s beginning to look like more people think HFCS is bad because it makes us fat, not because it’s highly processed. This is a problem. HFCS is not making us fat, calories are. Soft drinks and cookies sweetened with real sugar will make you just as fat as those with HFCS. There is not a single study that suggests otherwise.

The fact that people think it’s HFCS making us fat, and not consuming too much, is perfectly emblematic of how our culture is going off the rails.
For example, Google High Fructose Corn Syrup and you’ll find that many of the top results are coupled with key words relating to the controversial soda tax they’re trying to pass in New York State. Some people are suggesting that we won’t need a soda tax if they switch back to real sugar in our sweet drinks. This is utter nonsense to anyone with half a brain.
Even if it is lobbyists who are propagating this myth, more and more people are buying into the logic. I say let’s get rid of the corn subsidies; the Band-Aid has got to be ripped off sooner or later. But let’s not be mistaken, removing the HFCS from our food will likely have zero impact on our obesity epidemic.

I read today that Hollywood is apparently losing its appetite for overly plastic surgeried women. Fake boobs and taught lips are on their way out as casting directors  begin to look for natural sag and those actors who rock what they’re born with. This made me think about all of the young, impossibly perfect women (and some men) who go out to LA and hack themselves to bits trying to achieve some kind of Barbian archetypal body. eg Heidi Montag. And now, like getting a tramp stamp of the Backstreet Boys in 1999, what they’ve done to their bodies, has gone out of style and they’re stuck with it. Serves them right.

#2 MGMT on SNL this past weekend. I think it’s awesome that MGMT decided to put out a slightly less accessible, stranger, basically, record for their follow-up to the hugely popular Oracular Spectacular. Congratulations is a ballsy 2nd record and should shake off some of the fans who would have surely led to MGMT playing sold out shows at Madison Square Garden within the next year.

Check out the rad song “Brian Eno” from their performance the other night