BEAR-BLASTING!!!! AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!

I AM BLASTING BEARS!!!!!

The Nintendo Wii now has a beer pong game. That’s the greatest thing I’ve heard in awhile. College boys everywhere must be crapping their pants. JV Games is trying to clean up the game by changing the title to “Pong Toss” so they can market it to younger kids. This is pretty funny: it was produced by JV’s Frat Party games line. How douchey! It is rated “T” and is the first drinking game of its kind. Reviews all say it sucks badly but oh well. I already hate people who take beer pong too seriously and now mix that with hardcore video gamers and all hell will break loose.

Apart from boasting a shithead college for shithead students and the world famous Sierra Nevada Brewery, Chico, California, has a thriving (if not nationally recognized) music scene. Many of the players in this scene contribute to a summer School of Rock-style band camp named The Collective Sound. Last year they decided to start putting together a documentary of the goings-on of the staff and the campers, aged 12-18. Watching it will give you that warm on the insides feeling. Please enjoy Episode 4.

If you’re a college student, right about now you’re probably in the throws of some epic study seshes for your upcoming finals. So is Moshe Cavalin, a second year student at East Los Angeles College, working hard to maintain his A+ average. He also happens to be 10 fucking years old:

“I’m studying statistics,” says the alternately precocious and shy Cavalin, his textbook lying open on the living room desk of his parents’ apartment in this quiet suburb east of Los Angeles.

Within a year, if he keeps up his grades and completes the rest of his requirements, he hopes to transfer from his two-year program at East Los Angeles College to a prestigious four-year school and study astrophysics.

Kinda makes you want to give up and just get a job sweeping floors somewhere, huh? Actually it makes me want to have a bunch of kids in the hopes that one of them turns out like Moshe and eventually figures out the meaning of life. Mine will probably just be a bunch of fucking jerks though.

This is a bit atypical of the bands that we generally choose for Synthesis Band of the Day. No horn-rimmed glasses, waifish broads with ugly indie-rock haircuts, ‘roid-bicep hardcore meatheads, striped sweater wussies or epic Dungeons & Dragons progressive metalheads. No, Phredley brings the funk-rock.

In my fledgling college days, back when tie-dye wasn’t as vomitous and my roommate’s constant Phish-Grateful Dead-Phish musical rotation didn’t drive me completely bonkers, I would have broken my left leg to check out a band like Phredley. Now bad photoshop effects kinda irk me, patchouli oil makes me want to hurl and hippie funk in general just pisses me off. But not Phredley. They’s alright.

Based around a brother-sister duo (Phred Brown on Vocals, Guitar & Horns; Alesha Brown on Keys & Vocals) and a rhythm section (Paul Loos, Drums & Vocals; Samuel Tobias Winn, Bass & Vocals) Phredley lays down funk that is far closer to the heart of nearby Detroit than that of longhair revivalists in Colorado or Vermont. And when they stray toward the pop side of the spectrum, it comes across more as radio-friendly than looking for a parking lot miracle. More importantly (for me at least), their lyrics hold water. With the aforementioned hippie-funk enthusiasts, it’s most often the lyrics that drive me to enraged hysterics; Phredley uses some clever (or nearly clever) turns of phrase. No, Phred’s not Leonard Cohen by any means, but in a sometimes poppy, sometimes rocky funk quartet, it works. Their track “The Truth About Capricorns” also has some pretty, Beatelesque, tonally complex passages. If you’re a big fan of Ben Harper/Jack Johnson/Maroon 5, or your ’70s R&B records don’t have much dust on them, do yourself a favor and look into Phredley.

If you were a rambunctious little boy as I once was, you probably have fond memories of firing foam projectiles at your best friends with a sleek Nerf Bow and Arrow or Blast-A-Ball. Everyone needs a little combat in their lives, and I’ll confess, I still own some Nerf weaponry (granted, it’s a far cry from the arsenal I use to have at the age of eight, and the guns just don’t fire the way they use to). Still, there’s nothing quite like the smell of foam in the morning.

The kids at Bowling Green State University however aren’t so lucky. In 2006 two students were arrested and others cited for “disorderly conduct” while taking part in a week long, glorified game of Nerf tag called Humans v. Zombies. Students carrying Nerf guns on campus found themselves being targeted.

“The police began issuing citations after receiving several phone calls from people concerned that weapons were being carried on campus…” and the University Chief of Police was quoted as saying that they “do not allow weapons or facsimiles of weapons on campus.” BG News

Are you kidding me? Since when is an oblong, bright orange and purple foam shooter similar to any type of death dealing mechanism? This is just ridiculous.

Two years later Bowling Green students are trying their luck again with another round of Humans v. Zombies but their fortune appears to be much of the same.

“The University might hamper the second round of BG Undead’s game play after the announcement was made last week to place an immediate ban on the use of Nerf guns on campus.” BG News

Nevertheless, students will still be participating, using rolled up socks instead of Nerf guns. They better be careful though. The way these college cops behave, a rolled up sock could be considered a facsimile of a grenade.