The Underground – Issue #7
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: A Japanese anime that you must watch, how to make a cocktail with what you have in your home, have a wireless hotspot anywhere, a brilliant comedian, a web series that teaches you things in a silly way, and more evidence to why country music is awful.
At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention, dammit, we will bring it to your attention. With The Underground, we mean to do exactly that: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about.
Don’t you remember the time you heard that first song from your favorite band? You made the decision to jump head first into that first album and then delve deeper into them. Now, you don’t remember a time where you haven’t listened to that band. If you play guitar, you don’t remember the time where you didn’t know how to play. We want to bring you new stuff that you didn’t know you need in your life to the point where you can’t remember not knowing about it. That’s The Underground.
1. Attack on Titan is a show that will burn a weekend away. Remember the old “fee fi fo fum” song about giants? Imagine you were living in a city that’s surrounded by giant walls that keep giants out. Not giants that taunt you that you can reason with, but giants that have terrifying faces, are naked, and all they want to do is eat you. That’s it. No other function other than to eat you.
Attack on Titan is the story of one boys (Eren) quest to avenge his Mother’s death at the hands of a Titan. How they fight the Titans are with special 3D maneuvering gear and interchangeable swords.
Pretty intense, huh? You can watch the dubbed version on Adult Swim and both dubbed and subtitled on Netflix. I highly recommend it.
To add more to the fun, a live-action movie is in production! I have no idea how they’re going to pull it off, but this Subaru commercial featuring the Titans could be a hint of what to expect.
2. Cocktail builder is a website that can turn all that liquor and mixers lying around your house into a solid cocktail. What you do is type in your ingredients and it will try to find a drink mixture that works. So instead of just pouring that last bit of whiskey into some old coke you have lying around, type in other stuff you have. You could have an interesting drink to mix up.
It can also help people in the industry. If someone asks for a certain cocktail, just type it in and you’ll get the instructions on how to make it. Also, impress your friends if you host a party. Mixing drinks is like being a chef, but for getting people drunk!
Check out Cocktail Builder here and start mixing today!
3. The HooToo TripMate Nano Wireless N Pocket Travel Router is tech that everybody needs. Imagine you’re in a line of work that has you travel all over the place and need to upload information instantly, but you have no access to WiFi internet. I used to work a job where I had to drive around and take pictures for houses so I could do Broker Price Opinions. I’d be on the road and I needed to upload the pictures immediately. I had to stop at a coffee shop or a Burger King to use their WiFi. I didn’t like that.
Let’s check the specs on this bad boy:
- Personal Cloud: sharing files with your friends in any attached USB storage
- Travel Router: instantly convert wired network into Wi-Fi (AP,Router,Bridge), create your own personal network and hotspot
- Pocket-sized(weight only 1oz): powered by usb for extreme portability
- Package contents: HooToo® Tripmate Nano(HT-TM02) , USB cable, User Manual, 1 year HooToo warranty.
Basically, create your own WiFi hotspot anywhere. My credit card is already out as we speak. Buy it here on Amazon for a surprisingly cheap amount of money with great ratings.
4. Chris Turner is a comedian that you should know about. My favorite comedians are ones that can stay in character and be completely deadpan when they tell a one-liner. Turner is that comedian.
Just one of the great jokes:
I’m really quite a normal person. I’m very good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet — I don’t know “Y.”
There’s videos of him killing it in front of crowds all over the internet, but this set was non-stop hilarious. Even when he compliments his own jokes on how brilliant they are. It takes balls to go on stage with 100% confidence. Chris Turner is that comedian.
5. A web series that teaches aliens about the human race. Now, I know it sounds silly. The lessons are taught by what seems to be a little alien explaining the many facets of the human condition. We live on a spec of dust in a vast universe, yet we fight constantly and we’re separated into hundreds of different nations. Pretty stupid when you look at it from an alien perspective.
This video is one of the lessons on Good and Evil.
The video takes on and tries to answer fundamental questions:
- Where does the concept of good and evil come from?
- What does it mean?
- Why can’t humans just agree to cooperate?
- Why is a human a murderer when he kills his neighbour, but a hero if he kills a thousand foreigners?
- Why do earthlings think that people in enemy countries are evil?
- And what has it all to do with Cthulhu and Xenu being thrown into prison?
I recommend watching all the videos that are on Zogg from Betelgeuse’s YouTube channel. If I were a Sociology teacher, I would try to show all the videos in class. An outsiders point of view of the human race is pretty neat and very informative.
6. All country music is essentially the same song. I hate country music with a passion. It’s not that the music is bad — because it is — it’s that all the music is regurgitated and the lyrics are about the same subjects. You could put a gun to my head and ask my to point out Blake Shelton in a line up with the 6 other country music stars and I’d have no clue. They’re all the same.
They sing about the same damn things in every song:
- Where to hang out on the weekends
- Trucks
- How to drink a beer
- A dog
- A beautiful gal in the moonlight/sunlight
- America
- Multiple colleges or states so that people can relate to the song (Like SEO, but in music)
- Jeans
- Boots
- Guns
- Hats
- Whiskey
- “The Boys”
And that’s it. Take 5 of those topics and make a song. It seems these artists did, and they even used the same music! Listen to this mash-up of 6 different songs from 6 different artists. They’re all the same song:
I hope this video shows you the truth behind how awful country music is. I’m talking mainstream country music. I’ve been to Nashville and heard some fantastic country music that sounds nothing like this crap. We’re talking country you want to listen to whilst drinking a random beer out of a dirty glass type of music.
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.