The Smithsonian Renwick Art Gallery

Many non-DCers may not know, but there are many Smithsonian museums in addition to the more well-known ones like US History/Air and Space. I went to one of these for the first time today- The Renwick Art Gallery. Although small, it was pretty cool. Here are my favorite 3 pieces:










This is called "breast trophy." I think it's fairly self-explanatory.







Next, there's the Game Fish. I liked it so much, I even bought a Game Fish mug at the gift shop.


It's a fish, made of games! I know it's small, but some of its parts include gumby, yoyos, dice, dominoes, scrabble tiles, etc. And this game fish is armed! As in, it has an arm, holding a dart.












Finally, my favorite was "ghost clock"


At first I was like- WTF, is this seriously a grandfather clock with a sheet draped over it? Then I read the blurb, and it was like "at first glance this may appear to be a grandfather clock with a sheet draped on top of it..." Like it read my mind! In actually, that's not a sheet. The "sheet" and the base of the clock are all the same substance, from the same piece of mahogony. Cool!

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

The third posthumously released solo effort from Franz Ferdinand is yet another marvel of songwriting from the father of rock 'n' roll. This album is (yet again) the very definition of an anachronism. Born a fortunate little rich boy, Franz Ferdinand was heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. He was a noted lazy fuck who took little interest in the matters of governance. At the time of his death in the early 20th century, his songwriting was completely unappreciated. Indeed, record executives withheld these recordings until the time was deemed right. The people of 1908, more concerned with milking cows and avoiding bombs, were simply not prepared to handle the music recorded by the Archduke.

I just want to know exactly how a single, seemingly artless shithead like Franz Ferdinand could father the post-punk (and by extension, punk, and by further extension, rock and roll in general) sound. We'll never understand. Either way, this is Franz's third album. All three of his albums are absolutely seminal by the way. Even if you don't like the music per se, it is a necessary purchase if the reader wishes to truly appreciate the roots of rock music. In short, this album is indescribably essential for all lovers of rock music and historians alike.

Rumor has it this music was used to torture prisoners back in WWI. While it did not violate the rights of the prisoners, it was a clever loophole. So blown were the prisoners' minds that each and every prison camp was driven to mass ritual suicide. This is why the death toll is so high for WWI. While this is just a rumor, many historians now accept it as fact.


Anti-Bears: 3.2 - the music is merely decent in our modern context...but 5.0 anti- bears could be rewarded based only on the cultural, musical, punky implications found herein. I'm not going to take those things into consideration so, yeah, 3.2 anti-bears is the score.

Bears: 1.914 - Bummer alert! This album inspired Franz Ferdinand's assassination. Get this: Mark David Chapman is to John Lennon as Gavrilo Princip is to Franz Ferdinand. One bear has been subtracted as many historians believe the death of Franz Ferdinand spurred the First World War (and I think that's awesome). The man started the coolest music genre AND the coolest war. Gas masks, black and white photographs, battles on the African front, Everything getting all quiet on some western front, mustard gas, those shitty early tanks, stick grenades, funny navy hats, trenches, razor-wire, machine guns, blood, guts, decapitation, Hitler as war hero, British accents.....that's my music.

Dreaming About Girls in Cars

So, school has resumed. Besides being a general bear, it means more reading, more work, more biting my nails in class in anxiety. It also means I will be spending more time on the turnpike each week driving back and forth between Norman and Tulsa.

I'll be honest. When I am passing cars on the highway, I imagine some really good looking girl driving in the car nearby. I picture a different girl based on what car she is driving, and I am invariably wrong every time. Does anyone else do this? I will now relay my experiences based on each car model. The "anti-bears" are for potential/expectation value of who I envision behind the wheel. The "bear" points are rewarded for the harshness of reality.

Model #1: The Chevy Malibu.
Let's start with your basic car, so obviously this will be driven by your basic, regular-day hot chick, which is Kelly Kapowski. "Malibu" makes me think they must be heading to the beach, even though there aren't any in Oklahoma. Kelly Kapow-wow-wow-ski = 3.8 anti-bears.


But, as I pull alongside, who will be driving? None other than Screech himself! Always pans out that way, and always will. As I type this, a Screech quotation from an episode I can't remember comes to mind, and that is "Always a guinea pig, never a guinea." Well now I know what he meant. 3.8 bears.

Model #2: The Volkswagen Jetta.
This to me is likely to be driven by your good-looking indie rock girl. Maybe they are in a band or someone you see at a concert. They might even look really strange, like have weird-colored hair or something but for some reason they're just attractive. They're probably English majors and/or vegetarians. Basically, if you pass a Jetta, you have a chance of passing a car full of the Pipettes. I don't know anything about this band other than Garz said he liked them at one point, and that they possibly even broke up or got new members. I wouldn't have reason to know that info just by passing them on the road. 4.1 anti-bears.

So, I breeze by the Jetta, and lo and behold! It's Jerry Garcia driving it! Well, I probably got the vegetarian part right, but these Jettas are always so deceptive. You can bet the farm it'll be some hippie or slacker college guy (or Dan). I think if Garz grew a beard he could pull this look off. Would be 4.3 bears, but if they wave like that then I reduce it to 3.3 bears.

Model #3: The Honda SUV.
I don't know what started the SUV rage, but if I see one on the highway, I immediately think old high school Christina Aguilera from sophomore year. Some good-looking sorority-type girl, basically. If you're right, the payoff is usually pretty good. 4.5 anti-bears.

But, big surprise. Why would I set my hopes so high? These are always inevitably driven by Tom Anderson everytime, which is probably why I am passing them in the first place because they are going so slow. Look for the handicapped tag in the rearview mirror. Maybe I'll see Beavis and Butthead in a stolen Honda SUV sometime. At least Beavis is a blonde.

Model #4: The BMW.
!!!!! Hot chick alert !!!!! is what these things scream, no matter what the color. I'm aiming high with Mary Elizabeth Winstead here. All I know about her is she was in Live Free or Die Hard and was the only reason I sat through Tarantino's Grindhouse movie because she was in it. 5.0 anti-bears.

Wrecked! As you pull up alongside, it's just a multi-millionaire thirty-year old man who's going to a modelling shoot in his kick-around car for the weekend. It's A-Rod! 5.0 bears.

Model #5: The Ferrari.
No doubt, every time I pass one of these, I bet all my chips on seeing Christie Brinkley from Vacation, with her hair in the wind, waking me up just before I fall asleep of boredom. 4.7 anti-bears. Who else could possibly be driving such an automobile? I have to speed up and find out...

I just got pimped!

Joe Flacco

=Anton Newcombe with a haircut!

My Favorite Part of the Holidays

These days celebrity voice-overs are all over commercials. From Gene Hackman and Jeff Bridges lending their trustworthy tones to Lowe’s and Duracell ads to Queen Latifah’s sassy Pizza Hut spots, you can’t turn on the TV without hearing a familiar voice. While some of these celebrity voice-overs can never save a bad commercial, others simply make the ad. With that being said, I present to you my favorite part of the holidays: Steve Buscemi and Norm MacDonald as gingerbread men.



Anti-Bears: 4.2. This ad is pure marketing genius! I still laugh every time I see it.

Bears: 2.3. What happened the these guys’ careers? The most common comment on Youtube is, “HEY isnt that the voice of Death from Family GUy!? LOL.” O-M-G. fo realz.

Surely this disproves the impending apocalypse

For years I've occasionally taken a minute out of my extremely mundane trips to Target for shampoo and shaving cream to take a trip back into childhood, or to at least consider how much more fun I'd be having if the purpose of my trip were to buy toys and not toiletries. After the very first of these trips I even became a bit jaded on these fantasies, because, let's face it, toys these days suck. All of the airplanes are made of cheap plastic, the action figures are too gimmicky, and there are many media reference points I just don't get.

When I was a kid, the only toys I really really actually cared about were Legos. There's no need to explain why they were so great because it's become something of a common ground for my generation. My brother, Danny, Danny's brother, and I would spend entire days and sometimes weeks doing nothing but constructing and deconstructing modern towns, pirate towns, and space towns, and sometimes combining for hybrid modern pirate space towns with airplanes battling the Caribbean Clipper and some crazy Blacktron soldiers using laser beams to restore order. I don't actually think we deviated from the themes that much, but hey, anything's possible.

If you go into the Lego aisle at Target today, there's still some town stuff but for the most part all the sets have stupid movie tie-ins. I don't give a shit about Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Harry Potter; just give me the classics. Unfortunately, it was beginning to look like the classics were done for. In the spirit of Christmas and holiday cheer and all that I fought off something like forty two shoppers and their nine million kids just to get into the aisle and I almost broke down and cried because of how terrible the sets were. Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

As I fought my way back out of the crowd to price-scan one of these abominations ($39.99 for a Spongebob house thing) I saw something on and endcap that made me weep for almost the exact opposite reason. I present to you, the Charz2k readership (and more importantly, directly to the contributors herein), the triumphant return of Lego Pirates:


Anti-bears: 5. 5 fucking anti-bears.

Bears: 2.6. Lego, what took you so fucking long?

SNL's Andy Samberg (kind of) endorses the Charz2k rating system

Copied from Pitchfork:

Samberg: It's funny, I was having this discussion the other day about how, on Pitchfork and Stereogum and likeminded places, the best and the worst of the year are always pretty much the same bands, which is so indicative of sort of the tone of it all.

Schaffer: It was "Most Overrated slash Best."

Samberg: Oh right, on Stereogum, all the overrated bands were also the top bands of the year.

Pitchfork: People confuse the overrated bands for the most underrated as well.

Schaffer: They were literally saying, "This was the best!" and giving it its overrated quality and then going, "Unh, it's so overrated" like on the very next page.

Pitchfork: But then the next day, since everyone said it was overrated, it's now underrated.

[Laughter.]

Schaffer: As if someone is keeping it on a scale, the "rated" scale, ready to knock shit down when it gets too big and ready to build it up when it gets too small.




Ed.- I'm not exactly sure our rating system combats this phenomenon. It definitely clarifies things though. See we are totally objective -or at least we rate art without considering anything else but the art itself- in rating things (The Anti-Bear scale) but we still leave room to paradoxically subjectively rate it in an unrelated,objective scale(Anti-Bear Scale). Nah, see I think Stereogum and Pitchfork and shit kind of have to be self-referential...they're the source of overratedness. honestly they need to stop shitting on things they helped build up. I mean we don't have to be all meta and whatnot. We rate the content and then we rate the bullshit surrounding the content, the content's effect on the community, etc. We can call something good and then hate on the people who like it and then just leave it alone. We can quantify the unquantifiable. On one hand it seems like we're perpetuating Andy's complaint. But on the other hand, we're doing it more objectively. Does any of this make sense? My mind is fried; this is an infinite regress. I'm so confused.

And Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island's new SNL Digital Short "Jizz In My Pants" is funny enough to earn it 3.2 Anti-Bears.

But my girlfriend has a crush on Andy Samberg and, let me tell you, that's kind of a bear! 2.4 Bears to be exact.