A permanent piece of my medium-sized Canadian heart

Could Tokyo Police Club be any more awful? Why the answer is an astounding YES, they can. I sometimes feel bad for them, because they’re so boring and homely, and they try to make good music, but they just fall so short.

I recently heard their latest musical catastrophe, a song called tessellate, which if you’re wondering means: “To form into a mosaic pattern, as by using small squares of stone or glass.” I’m certain the pale, scrawny 13 year old lead singer was all:“I heard this word today guys, and it’s like super awesome cool rad, and I think we should like totally make it a song!”
The other 13 year old, pale, scrawny, guitar player adds, “but like dood, we totally can’t make a whole song with just one word!?!”
Finally, the humble Jewish boy* in the band, (see above, he’s got like 7 sandwiches in hand), suggests, “but guys remember when we had that song where we chanted our own band name the whole time?? Why don’t we just do that again, but just say TESSELLATE in a mock British accent over and over.” Then, in unison, they applauded the brilliance of the Jewish band member! Hooray! Bar Mitzvah! Shalom! Hanukah! (* I’m Jewish so I’m allowed to make sly remarks on the topic.......well I’m not actually Jewish per se, but if I’d had the choice to be born either Jewish, or not Jewish, I’d chose the former.)

The song goes on to talk about how “broken hearts will tessellate…tonight.” God, what brilliant lyricist; they’re so poetic and endearing. Their 13 or so years spent on this earth have given them such beautiful insight into the world of severed hearts and unrequited love. When I hear that lyric I’m forced to envision axed cow hearts cauterized together to form a lovely mosaic pattern. Remember in high school when they forced you to dissect a cow’s heart? And it was fucking creepy as shit, and people spent the majority of the class running around and screeching at the top of their lungs every time someone touched the fucking thing? And it smelt like formaldehyde? And when you finally got the courage to cut the thing open, you had to saw for like 10 minutes? Meanwhile, your lab partner continued to yelp with ever motion of the knife? And then you finally got so fed up you cut off the aorta and chucked it at your feeble, annoying partner? Good times. Though, I was in “advanced placement” biology, so it’s probably just something us “90 percent average” kids did. Man we had it good.

I’ve forgotten what I began talking about. So now I’m going to stop…and leave for Disney World! Feel free to be jealous, because you know deep down in your tessellated heart that Disney brings on the magic like no other.

Collars Erect! "Why the popped must be stopped"

The Collar Popper.

They're the quintessence of what it means to be a douche bag...actually, I’m lead to believe that they coined the term. I hate them. I hate how they walk around in their too tight, pastel, American Eagle polo's with the collars popped. They're usually found in packs with other collar poppers who are equally as arrogant and dim-witted.










Often, the collar popping clans will get together on Friday nights in a pre-bar ritual I like to call “getting yourself psyched to knock up some whores!” They begin by all standing in front of the bathroom mirror in their effeminately coloured polo’s, lubricating their hair into faux hawks. Once they’re done that, they pause, pucker their lips, turn to their cohorts and yell, "COLLARS UP!"

Once at the bar, they're usually found hitting on females and saying things like:
"Hey baby...wanna GRIND?!" or
"you see how my collar's popped? yea, well my penis is popped for you hunny! ZING!....wanna GRIND!?"

Sadly though, the girls will generally accept their offer to overtly gyrate their hips on the dance floor, and often will end up sleeping with these tools. The reasons why they do this are two fold:
1)They are drunk to the point of being deaf, blind and mute...we'll call it a Helen Keller drunk (and I’m going to hell!)
2) They make equally appalling clothing choices. Ie...they wear valour sweatpants with sexual innuendoes on the ass...


















They can also be found wearing clothes 3 sizes to small, causing the oh-so-dreadful muffin top...
















I think there are various levels of collar poppers. There are the infrequent poppers who’ll do it just when going to the bar, or various other social outings that require a slight ego-boost. Then there are those that do it daily. These are the ones that’ll sometimes wear 2 coloured polo’s together and upturn BOTH collars. They’ll generally combine a baby blue, and a light green, or a pink and a light yellow, but their absolute favourite combination is the baby blue with the light pink…

















I'm really quite perplexed as to how their collars manage to stay so erect. They must use starch, because it seems to me that any regular cotton polo would just fall over, especially whilst grinding, drinking and engaging in countless gestures of male camaraderie.

So, this all leads me to wonder why people are so intent on popping their collars when the trend clearly died in early 2006…and it wasn’t even cool to begin with. I’ve come to three conclusions:
1)The popped collar provides an exclusive membership to a secret underground society to which us “regular” folk aren’t privy. They hold meetings in caves and discuss the benefits of the popped collar. Then they drink candy apples and reassure their heterosexuality.
2)Upturning the collar protects them from the elements. It’s like a built in scarf. Wind, rain, cold, sun…the lower two inches of their neck will always be protected.
3)And finally, it can be used to cover those regrettable “love bites” from the muffin topped Helen Keller they picked up at the bar the night before.

The trend may never die. But to each their own I guess. In the meantime, if I see you with a popped collar, I will turn it down for you, even if you throw your finger in my face. And before you turn that collar back up again, ask yourself if it’s worth it to have the general populace look at you like you’ve just mugged a pony.















IDIOTS!