Halloween

On Repeat: Youth Lagoon - Seventeen

Youth Lagoon is the moniker for 17 year-old Trevor Powers of Boise, Idaho. Nearly a year ago, I compiled a list of the best Indie artists from every state. At the time, Idaho was the dominion of the fantastic Built to Spill, but after listening to Youth Lagoon non-stop for the past month, the winds of change have come. For all the flack that Pitchfork gets for being pretentious tastemakers, without their rousing endorsement, Youth Lagoon would have likely remained in Idaho obscurity. Instead, they are on a US tour and getting the recognition they deserve in the wake of one of the strongest debut albums in recent memory.

Trevor Powers sings with a gorgeous, broken falsetto, registering barely above a whisper but somehow drawing strength from this fragility. At seventeen years old, most kids have little on their radar beyond college applications and the opposite sex, yet Trevor possesses a maturity and wisdom that is enviable to anyone. The song "Seventeen" is the best example of this powerful resonance, opening with an innocuous memories of swimming and hunting snakes, yet despairing the "nothing" that surrounds him. Before you have time to roll your eyes at this sentiment, he unleashes another epiphanic memory that brings chills and a lump in the throat, "When I was seventeen, my mother said to me, "Don't stop imagining, the day that you do is the day that you die."" After that line knocks you on your ass, the rest of the song is irrelevant as you've already decided you're going to listen to it again. Say what you will about teenagers these days, but perhaps they're a bit smarter than they let on.

Raleigh

List: Halloween Candy

Halloween is fast-approaching. Most of you are focusing most of your energy on finding a funny, topical, and of course whorish costume to masquerade about in this year, but I'd like to take a moment to implore you to not skimp on Halloween candy, especially if you'd like your domicile to remain TP free. To aid in this process and keep you up on the coolest candy kids are eating this year (that sounds creepy), I've compiled this handy list of acceptable and unacceptable Halloween candy for 2011. You have been warned.

ACCEPTABLE:

Reese's Peanut Butter Shapes: Every Holiday Reese's trots out a festive-shaped peanut butter cup. Bad News: they aren't fooling anyone. Good News: they are still peanut-butter cups. Although they seem to have a smaller chocolate to peanut butter ratio than normal cups (unlike the minis, whose C/PB ratio is too high), making them more susceptible to quick melting and dryness. I have suspicions that Reese's has been fiddling with the packaging/size of the cups, but until I have more conclusive evidence, I will give them a pass.

UNACCEPTABLE:

Marshmallow Circus Peanuts: I have a feeling that the same piece of work who came up with Peeps also came up with these turds, after a bad LSD trip or some Opiate-induced hallucination. Surely there was a time and a place in history where this terrible candy elicited cheers from children (the Great Depression?), but today it is a sign of disrespect.

ACCEPTABLE:

Entire Candy Bars: Listen up. Someone on your street needs to bite the bullet and be the one to give out whole candy bars. Why don't you buy yourself some goodwill with your neighbors and take it upon yourself? Consider it an investment. Who knows, maybe they have a snowblower and will be able to pay back the favor in January.

UNACCEPTABLE:

Peanut Butter Taffy, Mary Jane, Bit-O-Honey: I grouped all of these old-timey candies together, because they are equally shitty, and deserve each other. Even if they tasted good (they don't), it wouldn't matter since at least 80% of them have undergone some sort of mitosis and oozed out of their wrapper in transit. Unacceptable. If I can see the candy, I assume it has been tampered with, and I give it to my sister.

ACCEPTABLE:

Sour Patch Kids/Skittles/Swedish Fish: Non-chocolate candies are perfectly acceptable Halloween candies. They are ideal palate cleansers between the aforementioned chocolate cavalcade and what they lack in decadence, they make up for by being delightfully sour. Also, some morons even PREFER these candies, which make them fantastic bargaining chips for MORE CHOCOLATE.

UNACCEPTABLE:

Anything with Coconut: Throw me to the wolves if you want, but Coconut is a terrible food in any circumstances and is a crime in a candy. Who likes to chew on wax-covered grass that tastes like suntan lotion? People who claim to like coconut do so because they think it makes them seem exotic. If I were trapped on a deserted island, I would eat my hand before I cracked open a coconut.

ACCEPTABLE:

Lindt Truffles: Never in my life have I seen a house give out Lindt candies on Halloween, but they certainly should. One could argue that it is a waste of money buying such fancy candy on little gremlins who will eat it to fast to appreciate it, but I disagree. If I had received a Lindt truffle on Halloween, I surely would have approached it apprehensively (since it is wrapped eerily like the peanut-butter taffy), but once I popped it in my mouth and cracked the outer shell, I am convinced it would have blown my mind in such a way that it would have changed my entire life's trajectory. Do it for the children.


UNACCEPTABLE:

Black Licorice anything: When you give a child licorice, you are giving it to their parents. No one under 40 eats this candy. Perhaps something happens to one's sense of taste when they enter middle age, I don't know. They are the diversion candy you throw to your parents when they ask "How'd you do?" so they don't start snooping around and take something good.

ACCEPTABLE:

Payday: Payday are an amazing candy. I don't even care if its a mini one, they are the perfect blend of salty and sweet. Salty peanuts, satisfying caramel. Miles better than anything with 'nougat', which must be German for 'sawdust'.  Why no one else seems to appreciate them, I will never comprehend.

 UNACCEPTABLE

Smarties/Tootsie Rolls/Dum Dum Pops/Anything else that comes in a bag with them: Grandmothers keep these candy companies in business. Some misplaced nostalgia keeps them coming back to the "FUN PACK" of assorted candies, which sounds good on paper, but in reality is a collection of misfit candies with zero redeeming qualities. These candies should only be sold to banks and only from November-September.  


DON'T BOTHER

Little goodie-bags: Anyone with the time/energy to make 100 goodie bags for strange children is one of two things: a psychopath under house arrest, or a nutritious nutcase looking for a clever way to disguise their crappy candy. When I was little, there was a nice old couple who lived up the street from us who ALWAYS made PERSONALIZED bags for every kid in the neighborhood (small town), and before my friends and I went to the good houses, my parents made me stop by. Every year I thanked them graciously, and then proceeded to groan at the apple sauce, granola bars, and foil-covered nickels they had packed for me. Not a good way to start out the night. Keep your nutrition out of my Halloween, I want candy.