StrangeLove
the biggest dick in the year of the dick, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
This year has been a total dick. The Chinese call 2020 “The Year Of The Rat,” and while a dirty sewer rat is certainly an apt representative of this year [1], I feel it’s a little unfair to the rat to blame our diminished quality of life on them. The only thing rats ever did wrong was evolve into humans. That was just stupid. Why would you evolve into a creature that is going to perform cruel and inhumane experiments on you, its own ancestor? (We evolved from rats, right?) Anyway, rats are gross, sure, but is a rat really going to buttfuck you right in the mouth for an entire year like 2020 has done? I don’t think so. I think we can all agree that this year needs a much stronger mascot and that’s why I’m calling 2020 “The Year Of The Dick.”
trapped under ice
Sean Cliver
Let me guess, you expected something like, "Winter is coming." I mean, sure, even I have to admit it's hard not to idly go there after having the phrase fracked into our collective pop culture subconscious over the past decade, but once winter finally came and a Starbucks cup was left on the table I was more or less over it (and apparently the writers and crew were, too). So, next up on the mental mnemonics list of cold-shit-that-immediately-crystallizes-to-mind would be Metallica's "Trapped Under Ice." After all, nothing screams metal more than a headbangin' nod to cryogenics!
perusing peru with tony hawk: part 2, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
It’s PERU PAR2, woooo!—oh, that’s fun to say. Anyway, we’re in Part 2 and Tony’s coveted dinner reservation at Central isn’t for a couple nights, so Chef Virgilio handed us off to his old friend, Lucho, who I mentioned in Part 1. In this episode, Lucho takes us to his favorite place to get frisky with Peru’s national dish.
black metal thanksgiving, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
I didn’t realize that our whole Black Metal Thanksgiving nonsense was training for the blackest Thanksgiving of all time: Thanksgiving 2020. Holy shit, can this holiday be any darker? What are you thankful for? … uhhhh… Zoom? Fuck me, I don’t know. But this is the one year that black metal and Thanksgiving sort of seem to make sense together.
perusing peru with tony hawk: part 1, by dave carnie
Sean Cliver
A few years ago I visited Peru with Tony Hawk. Tony had learned via a CNN profile that Peruvian chef, Virgilio Martinez, had grown up as a skater in Lima in the '90s. Since then, Virgilio traded in his skateboard for a cutting board and he is now an internationally renowned chef and an ambassador of Peruvian cuisine—mostly due to the success of his Lima restaurant, Central, rated the fifth best restaurant in the world on "The World's 50 Best Restaurant List" (Central is currently sixth). So Tony DM’d him.