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| THE BLACK LIST: GRANDPA CALLED US NAMES. ACT NOW! | |||||||||
| By The Black Table | |||||||||
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This week, names our grandfather used to call us:
We have 10 reviews this week, and that's great, but we here at the Public Broadcasting Network need more, we tell you, MORE! So use that little form to the right to give give GIVE, and please, call the 1-800 number. If you donate 50 dollars, we'll give you this crappy "autographed" picture of Big Bird. By the way, this week, there's some dude down there who's really pissed off about prunes, for some reason. -- BT
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The Black Table needs your help! Every week, we need reviews of the latest media-related crud, new products from Capitalists and odd idea, concept or trend. All you need to have is a sharp opinion that you can distill down to one paragraph of 150 words and give a letter grade. To submit, please fill out the form below. Entries may edited for length, style and clarity. Hit us with your best shot. Fire away.
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MY SUDDEN AND COMPLETE INABILITY TO WATCH THE NEW FRIENDS SPINOFF "JOEY" WITHOUT CRYING: Last Sunday night's episode of The Sopranos is giving me night sweats. We have all known that Drea de Matteo's Adriana has been doomed for weeks now, but her plight seemed so star-crossed you almost found yourself day-dreaming that she could somehow squeak her way out of it. Nope. Has there ever been a more wrenching portrayal of the horror of suddenly realizing that you have about 10 seconds to live? She clings to the steering wheel; she crawls, screaming, through the leaves as Silvio snarls; and then, off-screen (mercifully) ... she's gone. Just looking at photos from the episode the next day made me shiver. And now de Matteo's going to be on the Matt LeBlanc sitcom, like Sunday never happened? No thanks; I'm going to try to watch something that will allow me to go to sleep afterwards. D -- Will Leitch CICADA HYPE: Another 17 years have passed, and it is time for more cicada-driven hysteria. In another sign of our modern, yellow-media-driven hysterical age, this minor bit of the magic of nature that your average American will experience at least four times in his or her life has become a crazy, mad, once-in-a-lifetime event. What's more, it is a sign of how blissfully urbanized we all are; does anyone remember that the anachronistic word for "cicada" is "locust?" People are celebrating a plague of locusts! This kind of thing used to be a literal Biblical curse from |
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God! Yet everyone is out there mad with joy over a swarm of insects that will eat most every living plant in sight! F -- Rich Thomas LINDSAY LOHAN'S VANITY FAIR PICTORIAL: It was kind of tough to read through this month's Vanity Fair with studly Brad Pitt on the cover and not feel a little homo -- yeah, I checked out how ripped he got. Yeah, I knew I'd feel inferior. You look great, Brad. Nicely done. Now grow some man boobs and stomach flab. You're 40 dude! I questioned my own sexuality for a brief second, trying to check out how he got so ripped up, wondering if I could do the same before summer started. And as soon as I started to swoon a little too much over Mr. Pitt, I turned to page 180 and Lindsay Lohan rescued my machismo. Yes, I know my gushing is a little late, but good sweet mother of Cialis-- where did this girl come from? Or this woman, rather. I'm not one to fawn over teenage girls -- for the record, I have not been counting the days until the Olsens are legal -- but after seeing this lusty little Lohan all tanned up with her blown out hair in what appears to be a post-make-out blush, well, my body exerted a noise that was a combination belch, grunt, gasp. That's right: FLUBAHAWAGGH! I'm not gonna run out and buy a van and start hanging around high schools, but, thankfully, I'm also not gonna buy a subscription to Cargo and shave my pubic area any closer. I may take a long lunch break and go see Mean Girls by myself, however. That's normal, right? A -- A.J. Daulerio JILLING OFF IN PUBLIC: When Toys in Babeland asked if I wanted to participate in their 6th annual Masturbate-a-Thon, jilling off with a roomful of other hot ladies, to be filmed for HBO's Real Sex and raise money for charity, how could I say no? But the reality of the experience was even better than I imagined. First of all, I have a roommate so my loud Hitachi Magic Wand (which lives up to its moniker as the "Cadillac of vibrators") can't be used at any random horny moment of the day, so this was a chance to get off for several hours in a row. Second, I was surrounded by lots of very cute girls all screaming and moaning and writhing around. Third, I got to give birthday spankings to my sexy friend who was wearing a black and red cheerleader skirt and black shiny platform heels with flames on them (I got so into it we went far beyond her actual numerical age). Fourth, we got to take home all kinds of fun toys like finger vibes, a g-spotter, buttplugs, light-up vibrators, a Hitachi, even pillows and cots. That being said, it took me a while to warm up to the cameras and strangers; I'm used to the privacy of my bedroom. And I'm not sure exactly how good I'll look with my face contorted at the moment of orgasm, which I know was captured on film from the camera looming over me when I opened my eyes. I guess we'll all find out when the show airs. A - -- Rachel Kramer Bussel IMPROVISED PACKING MATERIAL: E-commerce is a fickle mistress. You never quite know if you'll get your wares, or when, or in what condition. But every once in a while this wacky online exchange of money for goods and services goes off without a hitch. Eight days after placing the order for my replacement watchband, I returned home to find a small, nondescript package on the stoop. I tore it open, burdened only by the prospect of having to dig through two solid inches of those awful Styrofoam peanuts to reach my treasure. Imagine my surprise when I found my band not nestled in traditional packing foam, but instead immersed in individually wrapped pieces of delicious strawberry and grape bubblegum! Those fantastic hipsters at Nixon had provided not only adequate padding for the parcel's bicoastal tour of North America, but also a tasty treat. In the end, the only thing troubling about this purchase was the lingering question of how Bazooka Joe lost that eye. A -- Z. CREST DUAL ACTION WHITENING TOOTHPASTE: Toothpaste in my apartment is a communal affair; whoever remembers to buy new toothpaste just takes care of it. Our selections usually involve some sort of whitening agent. If we were feeling unusually unclean, perhaps something with mouthwash or bubbly bleach action, or whatever crap is in there. My roommate recently brought home a tube of Crest Dual Action Whitening Toothpaste. The tube has a flat, wide cap and is meant to be stored upright. It may look convenient and neat, but the whole thing is a ripoff. With most tubes of toothpaste, you can roll them up and twist them to get the last bit of toothpaste out of there. Not with the Dual Action Whitening. Crest's engineers and designers created a tube rife with waste, a tube that requires significant hand strength to eke out enough paste to effectively brush. The tube design forces you to buy more toothpaste way before you would have to do it with a traditional tube. And who has good manual dexterity and coordination first thing in the morning? So forget it, Crest. Brushing my teeth isn't supposed to be a frustrating or irritating task. I get enough of that trying to get to my job on time. I don't want to fight with your poorly-designed bottle. I'll still buy your other products, but I'm sticking with the older models. C- -- Aileen Gallagher CON EDISON'S SUBWAY ADS: In the halcyon days of my youth, I spent the better part of one summer not playing stickball on the corner or catching tadpoles down by the creek, but instead stuffing my face with Fun Dip and watching episode after sweet episode of General Hospital. Mom wanted me to play outside, but I just had to know whether Luke and Laura would succeed in stopping the evil Mikkos Cassidine from freezing the world. Thanks to Con Edison's current crop of subway ads, I now know that Cassidine was a rank amateur -- who cares about controlling the weather when you can control my emailing, hair coloring and pizza eating? Somewhere deep down I always knew that I don't so much as pluck a hair from my eyebrows without Con Edison supplying the light in my makeup mirror, but being reminded that I am a helpless puppet in the face of Con Ed's total world domination on my way to an already stressful day at work? Come on. F -- badteaparty PRUNES: This score is getting settled right now. Prunes, those tantalizing nuggets of temptation, almighty Godfathers of the pathetic raisin, have become the notorious emblem of the elderly and constipation, relegated to the status of the stinky Grandpa. Why? Here's why. The capitalist superstructure has constructed a link between old age and constipation among consumers, and prunes have been anointed the capitalist prescription to those problems. "Be Young! Have Fun! Keep Shitting!" they say. Our generation has swallowed that drivel, associating our dear friend prune with old age. Open a bag of prunes on the street, and you'll stick out like a parakeet with dog balls. (Editor's note: We have no idea what that means.) So what's a liberal arts student with a big ego and an existential crisis supposed to do about it? FUCK THE MAN. Lord willing, I'm going to keep eating prunes as fast as the sun can shrivel them luscious little sumbitches. B+ -- Earl SUPER-DUPER DISGUSTING FAKE TANS: Hey, whaddup pasty white chicks? Why you lookin' so ... BRONZE? It's scary, the number of you freaklets I've seen flip-flopping down NYC sidewalks this week, skin dyed a ridiculous shade of "tan." Um, girls, it's not even summer yet. Take off the flip-flops, and for God's sake, throw away that nasty self-tanner (especially if it cost more than $5, or it's named something like "Whipped Soleil" or "Gilded Glow"). The skin tone you have now from those putrid potions is somewhere between rotting pumpkin and poop with a faint gold shimmer -- not flattering, and not found in nature (at least not on Gramercy Park girls with blonde hair). It looks weird. Bad. Heinous. It's just ... wrong. In the future, if you're gonna fake bake, wait until Memorial Day, and for the sake of your skin (and the rest of humanity's aesthetic pleasure), memorize this mantra: Try Before You Buy! D+ -- Laura Barcella THE GIRL WHO HATES WEED HOOKING UP WITH YOUR STONER BUDDY: There's this girl you get along with very well, what with all the jokes, conversation and a couple of casual hook ups. So you invite her to the party at your place, and she "catches" you smoking weed in your roommate's room. She had no idea, and she's appalled! What's wrong with you, she wants to know. Everything is derailed. It's pretty obvious that you're not a stoner, but are you really going to try and defend yourself on this one? Next week, she starts waving a quick hello rather than stopping to say hi for five seconds, and that's that. Two weeks later, who's walking out of your roommate's room on Sunday morning? Her! What? Who's room was I smoking in? Did she not notice the armada of "tobacco smoking accessories" strewn about the room? Did she not smell that he'd been smoking in that very room the very night you hooked up? Dammit! Way to go, roommate, at least, I guess. D -- Steve Lerner
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