THE UNDERGROUND — ISSUE #61
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: All the film trailers played during Super Bowl 50, a terrifying new short-film that will make you afraid of the woods, behind the scenes of the great South Park, the top 10 hangover cures you’ll need after days of drinking at Super Bowl parties, and The Simpsons parody of Making A Murderer.
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 that’s our job: 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. That’s The Underground.
1. All the Super Bowl 50 movie ads that played during the game. To be perfectly honest… Super Bowl 50 was boring from the beginning to end. I mean, it showcased Cam Newton being a whiny turd, both teams getting dominated by defense, Peyton Manning doing his best Forrest Gump impressions, and oh, then there was the halftime show being a joke. Yikes. The positive was that there were some good previews of movies that’re coming out this summer. There was destruction scene from Independence Day 2 that looks completely insane.
Here is the rundown:
2. The Woods is a horror short-film that takes inspiration from The Revenant. If you’ve seen The Revenant, you no doubt know that the entire film was shot with natural lighting in the middle of the woods. This short-film is just like that, but terrifying.
Premise: The Woods is a dialogue-free horror short that follows a lone woman in a desolate snowscape on a quest to take care of an ailing relative. Shot in -30 degree weather using only natural light and no digital trickery, The Woods is a horror-meets-arthouse narrative about the lengths we will go to take care of family.
If you have ever been on a camping trip, you’ll know the feeling you get when you watch this movie whilst walking through the woods in the middle of the night. I’m not talking about camping at one of those places where there’s an electric thing where you can hook up a bunch of appliances, I’m talking “WHAT WAS THE NOISE?!” camping. This short sum it up pretty well.
The Woods from Remington Smith on Vimeo.
3. Behind the scenes with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. There’s no doubt that these two are a genius duo that can gives us hilarious satire in 6 days. They can cover recent events that have overloaded the news-cycle and crap all over it. They can also go back to classic story telling that is equally hilarious. They don’t give a crap about being politically correct, and they even made their entire recent season about skewing people who are for/against political correctness.
However, one episode about the World of Warcraft — and episode that I think was perfection — almost killed South Park.
“Every Tuesday, Matt and [Anne Garefino] know they have to talk me off a cliff. Every show, I’m like, this is a horrible show, I don’t want anyone to see it. There’s one episode we did, it was the first show of the season, and I’m like, I’ve lost it. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I was like, please, begging Anne, do not let this go on the air, because I don’t want the South Park legacy to be ruined, and this show is going to ruin it, because it’s so bad and I’m just going to feel terrible… I just went home and was depressed and couldn’t sleep, and I got in the next day and they’re like, dude, people really like that show. And it was the show about World of Warcraft.”
This blows my mind since that episode was so damn funny that I usually turn it on when I want something to watch to take a break from things. However, I can understand how Parker could feel this way. You create something after you’ve built yourself up so high that you don’t want to disappoint. The episode was really innovative, so it’s understandable that Parker thought he made a mistake. If you watch 6 Days To Air, you can really see Parker questioning everything.
Give the behind the scenes a shot. I could watch an entire behind the scenes of the writer’s room of South Park. I could watch a video camera set up in the recording booth to see them laugh and try to do takes over and over. May South Park live forever!
4. Super Bowl is over, so how about some hangover cures? Now, know the only real cure for a hangover is to hydrate the next day, but also to hydrate before you go to bed the night you decide to drink a few drinks. Or you could even switch between a beer/drink and a glass of water to hydrate. It’s a good strategy. Having a hangover is essentially being dehydrated in the desert. When you see films of people lumbering along gasping for water, they have a horrifying headache because they need to be hydrated. When you wake up in the morning and have to urinate, then notice that the color is dark yellow… that means you need to get some fluids in you.
The Super Bowl is known for parties that include lots of alcohol, annoying people talking during the game, and dreading the fact that they have to go to work the next morning. I mean, seriously, can’t they just have the game on a Saturday? Nothing else is on! It will give people a day of recovery before heading back to work on Monday, which has to be one of the least productive days of the year, right?
However, there are some hangover cures that people will swear by. My hangover cure is to have a gigantic bottle of water and sports drink near my bed (doesn’t work this way if I’m in another person’s bed!), and I set the alarm on my phone for around 3-4 in the morning. As soon as it wakes me up, I notice that I am thirsty and lazy. Boom, a foot away is water and electrolytes that hydrate me even more before waking up in the morning.
Other people have other cures that claim to work. Whether it be drinking in the morning (hair of the dog), greasy food, drinking some strange concoction of fruits and protein mixed in a blender, it doesn’t matter. If you think it works, then you can do it… well, not so much drinking in the morning if you have to go to work. Let’s not get fired over this.
Check out this handy video that gives the top 10 easy to cure a hangover.
5. A Simpsons parody of Making A Murderer is something we never knew we needed. There have been so many Simpsons episodes that you can basically cut up bits and pieces from the 20+ years of it being on the air and make anything you want. This parody takes on the Making A Murderer phenomenon — one that we covered like champions on Social Underground — and makes you laugh. Not laugh at the messed up situation in the documentary series, but laugh because The Simpsons are so great that this type of spoof is possible.
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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.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com