The looming end of South Park?

Anyone who saw this week’s South Park witnessed this uncomfortable exchange between Sharon and Randy Marsh. The argument, which ultimately ended up in the couple’s divorce, ended the episode on an uncharacteristically unresolved note. It was obviously a thinly veiled metaphor for Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s feelings toward their long-running Comedy Central show (now in its 15th season).

All good things have to come to an end sometime, I guess. And here I thought South Park would stay long past its welcome and just exist for an infinite amount of time, never leaving the public’s consciousness. Kind of like The Simpsons. But, to quote Jeff Goldblum, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” And apparently, with only 7 episodes left, it’s South Park’s time to go.

The ubiquitous Tyler making a subliminal appearance in the episode.

The moral of this week’s episode was that you can’t go through life being a cynical a-hole because it only leads to unhappiness. Sure, it’s fun to complain and say things suck, but negativity only breeds more negativity. Before you know it, everything sucks and everyone’s sick of you. I’m reminded of Conan O’Brien’s closing thoughts on his last aired show on NBC. His words will always stick with me, probably because his delivery was so transparently genuine and honest.

Maybe all the years of cynicism caught up to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. No matter the case, South Park is truly one of the greatest and most influential shows of all time and, for better or worse, helped mold our collective sense of humor.

Probably worse. But I’m okay with that.

With South Park gone, hopefully Robyn will be able to find work elsewhere.

-Sully

Intolerant Rant of the Day!

Old people kind of suck.* It’s unsettling how the elderly secretly despise anyone under 30. They harbor nothing but contempt for kids who squander their childhoods in front of monitors, with their Grand Theft Autos, MyFaces and SkypeBook Pro’s.

Fact of the matter is that old people are just useless.

They probably aren’t the biggest fans of The Simpsons either.

I go to Anytime Fitness a couple blocks away. It’s nice and spacious but I carefully evade the locker room like it’s guarded by that dog from The Sandlot. On the few occasions I’ve had to begrudgingly pee because I couldn’t hold it any longer, no less than 6 wrinkly, mole-caked, shameless old men are wandering around in there completely naked like it’s no big deal.

Hey gym geezers: If I wanna be exposed to exorbitant heaps of geriatric dick, I’ll go to med school and become a doctor. Thanks.

There’s a memorable scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where some random eavesdropping a-hole gets annoyed because Jimmy Stewart doesn’t kiss the girl he’s flirting with. He obtrusively proclaims, “Youth is wasted on the wrong people!” and storms off. He effectively throws all romantic cuteness of the moment out the window and ruins everyone’s night, including mine.

We’re to infer that if the old guy were in Jimmy Stewart’s shoes, he’d have forgone conversation for going to town on the chick. But there would’ve been an inconsistency in character development had Jimmy Stewart kissed her at that moment. Duh. Clearly that dude didn’t read the script.

Holla atcha outdated movie scene references.

I haphazardly use the above illustration to make a point that old people dislike the young mostly because, if given the chance to switch places, they would spend their youth differently than us. They wouldn’t “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way,” but replace heedless irresponsibility with productivity.

If some magnanimous blue genie voiced by Robin Williams strolled by and miraculously gave old people what they wanted, I guarantee they’d fail to follow through 100 times out of 100. When I’m old I’ll probably regret my current apathy, sure. But if I could actually go back and do it all again, I’d waste just as much time, if not more.

Real talk: Youth is meant to be spent frivolously.

Childhood’s great because it’s a time before you have to worry about anything real. It’s when the hardest part of life is getting sunburned or doing 20 minutes of homework. It’s a time when bicycles are the preferred mode of transportation and your mom cooks dinner for you that you can smell from outside. It’s not about being competent cogs of society. We’ll have the rest of our lives to do that crap.

If you’re reading this, and you’re still a kid, neglect everything you’ve ever been told about wasting your childhood (likely by those conniving elderly, no doubt). Go sleep til 2pm and eat Kettle chips and gummy worms every other meal. Go have boxing matches underwater and play GTA for 11 straight hours. Go do hoodrat stuff with your friends. Take your youth completely for granted.

You’ll wish you did later on if you don’t now.

This rant was made possible by a mean-looking old lady who bellowed something resembling a growl towards me today in a grocery store. Maybe it was indigestion, but I interpreted the noise as sheer hatred of my youth. Also, that she was speaking for everyone her age.

*As a future old person, I love old people. The non-judgmental, gentle, generous ones like your grandparents, specifically. And Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, and WWII veterans. But that’s it.

-Sully

WHY? - Fatalist Palmistry

Download the mp3

Lyrics are usually the last thing I care about when I’m listening to music. T.S. Eliot could recite “Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” over a Timbaland beat but I’m not gonna give it a second thought if the hook sucks or it sounds like it was thrown together in 4 minutes on ProTools. But this song by WHY? is lyrically substantial AND catchy. Eat it, Eliot.

Especially love the first verse: “I sleep on my back cause it’s good for the spine and coffin rehearsal/I know a psychic who reads her own palms and her findings are personal/She keeps her fists shut tight and she sleeps on her side, well maybe she knows something I don’t know…”

-Sully

aesopic:

The Cat Lady

The Simpsons

I’m eternally indebted to Simpsons writers for sculpting me into the man I am today.

-Sully

From A.V. Club:

by Sean O’Neal June 8, 2011 

Like Martin Scorsese and many thirtysomething women, Quentin Tarantino has a thing for Leonardo DiCaprio, a torch he’s carried since attempting to scuff up the actor’s likable rogue image by giving him the Hans Landa role in Inglourious Basterds (which eventually went to Christoph Waltz). But Tarantino may soon get his wish to work with DiCaprio on Django Unchained, as the two are once again in talks about his playing a villainous role, that of Calvin Candie, the “charming but ruthless proprietor of Candyland, a despicable club in Mississippi where female slaves are exploited as sex objects and males are pitted against each other in ‘mandingo’ style death matches.” Terrible things happen in the shadow of the Gumdrop Mountains.

If he takes the part—and so far he’s just in early talks—DiCaprio would face off against the freed slave Django, who’s working his bloody way to Candie in order to rescue his wife with the help of a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, most likely played by Christoph Waltz, just to bring things full circle. And while previous reports suggested that Will Smith was in the lead to take on the role of Django, Deadline now believes that’s a “long shot,” which should certainly help the film save on its trailer budget. Other contenders reportedly include Idris Elba, Jamie Foxx, and even Chris Tucker, whose small part in Jackie Brown proved that he was capable of doing things other than shrieking at Jackie Chan. Anyway, all of this is still very tentative, and so far only Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson seem like locks, the latter as Candie’s valet who “keeps the slaves in line.” Yes, this could end up being a film where Leonardo DiCaprio bosses around Samuel L. Jackson and squares off against Chris Tucker. And somehow it will still be pretty good.

Oh snap.

See, rumors like this, I just eat up.

I’m an above-average Tarantino fan. I have nothing but love in my heart for Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction. I thought the Kill Bill films could have been edited down into one 2.5 hour movie, instead of two movies with 4 drawn-out, overstuffed hours of total content. But so far everything I’ve heard about Django Unchained—Tarantino’s next project—is downright mouthwatering.

From the shortlist of actors who are in talks to play the lead of Django, Idris Elba jumps out at me. Dude is a bonafide B.A. He’s most known for playing Stringer Bell in the gritty HBO series The Wire, which is reason enough for me to treat the guy like a minor deity. If Tarantino’s a casual fan, or has so much as even sniffed The Wire, Elba has to be the frontrunner for Django. He should also play The Bride in Kill Bill Vol. 3 if Uma Thurman isn’t available.

The best 60 hours you can possibly waste.

-Sully

Jurassic Parker Bros.

Here’s the latest SpitchTown Original. If you read the SpitchTown State of the Union Address yesterday, you know it’s the last one for the summer. Frowny emoticon.

Jurassic Parker Bros. will only make sense if you’ve seen Jurassic Park in the last 8 hours. I wrote it and even I barely understand it. Clutch acting job from Coke Money yet again. Kid’s gonna run out of room in his cabinets for all the Oscars. And props to Richard Attenborough for reprising his role of John Hammond. He flew half way around the world in a moment’s notice to shoot his phone conversation shot. Stand-up guy, that Richard. And here I thought he was dead.

-Sully

Cults - Oh My God (720p HD is available)

Good luck not instantly falling in love with this girl. I don’t even care if you yourself happen to be a girl, just good luck. Her name is Madeline Follin and she’s the lead singer of the indie-pop band Cults. Their self-titled debut drops tomorrow.

Cults is notable for the fact that they got signed to a major record label… off the success of a single track (the catchy as f*ck, “Go Outside”).Think about that for a second. You and I are apparently one song away from being signed to Columbia and getting a pile of money to make a full-length album. Just astounding.

Sure she sounds like a 3-year-old, but who doesn’t these days? You should’ve heard me in KB Toys the other day when my mom refused to buy me a Spider-Man themed battery powered rc car and I threw a temper tantrum. No less than 4 patrons mistook me for the lead singer of Cults.

Apparently, I’m neck-deep in this phase where I enjoy listening to bands with abnormal-sounding female lead singers. Take Beach House, for instance. The lead singer of Beach House sounds like a 40-year-old dude who lives in the woods even though it’s like a 27-year-old girl who probably lives in a house. And I love them.

Cults has been looping nonstop on my iPod ever since it leaked a few weeks back. So far it’s my summer’s soundtrack. Every track is single-worthy. I go friggin’ bonkers for whistleable melodies, which explains my undying love for Rihanna.

Speaking of summer soundtracks, my 2010 summer’s soundtrack (Kanye West and Big Boi) would absolutely destroy this summer’s soundtrack (Beach House and Cults) in a physical brawl should they ever meet. I’m scared for my 2011 summer’s soundtrack’s life to be real honest with you.

-Sully

Too bad summer has to exist because it causes a huge fissure in the tripod of high command seeing as Joshua, Peter and I live in three really disparate parts of the country. Now that we’re separated by thousands of miles, I constantly worry about one or more of us dying somehow, in keeping the fate of SpitchTown ever in the forefront of my mind. I check up on my other two co-writers every hour on the hour to make sure their blood sugar levels are still normal.

Two weeks ago, the three of us went to the Landmark in LA to see the premiere of The Tree of Life. All I did was fuss about the possibility of getting into a car accident and how we should split up into three separate vehicles. Literally, that’s all I talked about, to and from the theater. Terrance Malick’s gorgeous cinematography was the very least of my concerns.


Yeah, we get it. You know how to use a camera.

It’s kind of like how the Vice President can’t be on Air Force One at the same time as the President because if it goes down, who the heck is the president, you know? If all three of us were incapacitated I shudder to think what would happen to SpitchTown. Robyn would probably take it over and prattle on about vicious volleyball serves all day or something. We can’t have any of that.

But physical division of power is needed, I guess. I mean, somebody’s gotta keep the East Coast in check, in Peter’s case, while Joshua keeps an eye on the Rocky Mountains and I let tumbleweeds know who’s boss.

This is how I get from Point A to Point B. Don’t judge me, bicycles are too friggin’ expensive. $99 Target? Are you kidding me?

What sucks most about being separated is that we won’t be producing any SpitchTown Originals until we get back to school in August. So until then, the three of us are just gonna try really hard to make this tumblr as good as it can possibly be. Personally, I’ll do my best to post at least once a day, be it a music post, movie review, prejudice anecdote or newly classified animal update (have you guys caught the scoop about the varanus bitatawa????). So hopefully, SpitchTown will entertain all 6 of you reading this for the summer. Three months is a long time.

Good news though, is that we have one more SpitchTown Original coming out tomorrow. We filmed it a week before school ended. It’s called “Jurassic Parker Bros.” and it’s mostly a social critique on the Paralkot Rebellion of 1825 when tribes revolted against British rule’s shortsighted and economically irresponsible caste system. Hope you guys enjoy it because it’ll be the last ST produced video we release for a while.

By the way, please please please “like” SpitchTown on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SpitchTown/157753950957747, even if you don’t actually like us personally. We need all the “likes” we can muster because instead of oxygen, Joshua Peter and I are sustained by affirmation to keep this blog up to date. Also, we want our own Facebook url (you need 25 likes apparently. As of now we have like 2. HELP!)

Bye.

-Sully

Guess it’s F’d-Up Music Video Week ‘11 here at SpitchTown. Kanye West dropped the official version of his “Monster,” video today, so soon after Tyler the Creator’s, “She.” (posted below)

As you can see from the video, “Monster,” sports some adult-centric points of discussion you might want to bring to your parents immediately, (i.e. misogyny, necrophilia, Rick Ross, sadomasochism).That Kanye fellow sure has some weird fetishes. Alas, so is the price of super-stardom. One minute you’re on top of the world cause your wallet has infinite coin. Next thing you know, your sensation receptors are so overloaded that the only thing that’ll get you off is a ménage à trois with Minaj and a cadaver.

I still love My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, though. I gladly throw it in my top 5 albums of last year along with Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, Beach House’s Teen Dream, Tokyo Police Club’s Champ and Sleigh Bells’ Treats in some order. But dang, it’s friggin’ dark. Here’s to hoping Yeezy’s next album is a little more College Dropout-y and a little less satanic-y.

And if you haven’t seen Kanye’s 30 minute mini-film Runaway which coincides with MBDTF, do yourself a favor and watch it. It’s more for them “I Like Art,”-type girls.

-Sully

Good Life (feat. B.o.B.) - OneRepublic

So this sick remix of “Good Life” by OneRepublic hit the internet about a week ago and I gotta say, I am absolutely loving it. The original of this song was good enough, but when you get B.o.B. in the mix it’s, to quote my co-writer Sully, “freaking almond honey to my ears.” This song really typifies what summer is all about. No it’s not about living the good life, what part of the song didn’t you understand? It’s about understanding the delicate balance between nature and industrialization, and not letting ourselves get swept away in the post keynesian economic thought processes that run so rampant in our culture today. Am I reading too much into this? Good, now SpitchTown sounds like every other indie music blog on the internet. Just enjoy the fricken music, here’s the download.

http://www.mediafire.com/?uwphsm4q5080dql

-Joshua