RGGS: Lollyphile! -or- How I Learned To Feel The Burn

I'm beginning to feel that Lollyphile has let me down. The evenings of sweet and sugary joy I was breathlessly waiting for have turned out to be little more than empty-if-not-novel candy booty calls.

I'm feeling cheap and used. The saloon lights are glowing dimly above me as I soak my sorrows into a strong drink.

'Damn you, Lollyphile...' I whimper, 'Damn you to hell.'

Suddenly the doors are kicked open by a a pair of snake skin cowboy boots, followed by long legs clad in black jeans with Japanese Dragons stitched up the sides. 'Bad to the Bone' begins thumping from the old jukebox as this mysterious strangers straddles the dusty floor boards. He pulls a zippo lighter from his jacket: it's made of metal that burns as brightly as the flame. He produces a smoke from thin air and cocks his head sideways as he sucks in the fire as it's reflected in a pair of obsidian shades.

'It's the hot one...' I hear someone whisper to my left.

The cool customer slides up to me, blowing smoke over his shoulder.

'I hear you've had your heart broken a few times.'

He smells like fire and spice.

'Who are you?' I barely choke out.

'Who am I?' He replies with a grin, 'I'm Wasabi-Ginger.'

The Look: This is the first truly good looking lolly I've had so far. It's a dark burnt orange with flecks of red just under the surface. As you suck on the treat you'll find that these little flecks slowly worm their way to the top, like tiny flecks of crimson glass. It looks like a little dark ball of fire. Which is goddamn exactly how a lollypop made of ginger and wasabi should look.

I like this lollipop.

The Flavour: This is also the first lollipop that has actually tasted entirely like what it purports to be made from. About. Fucking. Time. The base candy tastes like the sweetest ginger syrup you've ever had, with a delicate warmth that slowly gives way to the potent mustard edge of the wasabi. Further into the treat the heat intensifies as those little shards of red begin to emerge. They are, I believe, tiny pieces of crystalized chili peppers. They have a tendency to scratch your tongue while sucking on the lolly, which I found to make the spice more intense as my tongue became raw. Genuinely enjoyed it the whole way through, which is a first.

Should you buy it?: Are you serious? I give you my total blessing. I really loved this lollipop, and am definitely considering getting more of them.

I suppose, to give it some balance, I should point out some potential downsides to this sweet. Buyers beware of these caveats:

1. The whole thing SMACKS of ginger, and will do nothing to convert those who don't like the spice to the cause.

2. The whole 'raw tongue' aspect, I could that see turning folks off. I suppose not everyone wants their tongue to be going through an S&M session to get the sugar. But they just don't know what they're missing.

3. The heat, while never overwhelming, is strong enough to be the key sensation to this treat. This is sweet, sticky, and HOT.

GOD DAMN this is a SEXY lollipop.

So yes. Oh godddd yesssss...

To be continued in: Lollyphile! -or- How The Dude Abides

-Dashiell 'The Sexy Bon-Bon' Asher

Image Courtesy of Lollyphile.com

RGGS: Pornogrind -or- How To Fuck Like The Frog

I'll keep this brief.

There is a musical movement known as pornogrind.

Awesome.

One of the bands involved in the movement are called Cock and Ball Torture; a charming group of young men from Germany who craft pop gems with titles like Titty Torture Bondage Boys, The Taste of Animal Sperm and of course, Anal Sex Terror.

Fuck. Yes.

Sadly the whole thing turns out to be as sexy as a venereal wart.

Dammit.

The music is essentially bland death metal with vocals that literally sound like a frog drowning. As far as I can tell, outside of the titles, there is nothing even vaguely pornographic.

Maybe we can pretend the frog was choking on a penis.

-Dashiell 'Amplexus' Asher

PS. Before you go googling Pornogrind, be careful of the images. Even with safe search. Seriously. Semen on cornflakes is the softest image you'll find. And the least violent. Now go do it anyway. You Sick Fuck.

Image courtesy of some dudes myspace, for reasons listed above.

FMS: A Horse Is Not A Home -or- How To Be Bored While Having Your Ear Molested

The opening line of 'A Horse Is Not A Home' does a better job of describing how I feel about this song than I ever could: 'Oh God! I think I'm dying!'

A Horse Is Not A Home is a track off of Miike Snow's self titled debut album released back in May of this year. Miike Snow, as iTunes point out, is not in fact one bland artist but three bland artists: singer/song writer Andew Wyatt and production duo Bloodshy & Avant, less pretentiously known as Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (okay, just as pretentiously known as).

The band are an electro pop group that have been compared by The Guardian's Paul Lester to A-Ha, and I'm not entirely sure if that's supposed to be a good thing or not. Sort of like being told you have the charisma of William Shatner.

The track is average dance fair with a basic thud-thud-thud club beat; the drums suddenly falling over every so often, presumably out of boredom. Ghostly pianos echo across the majority of this void of a song eventually giving way to ugly rave synths until Bloodyshy & Avant seem to agree that this was just making things worse and very quickly bring the piano back. Frankly, I expect a hell of a lot better from the Swedish production duo who have churned out hits for a smorgasbord of other artists including Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears.

But while the music is simply dismissively uninteresting the lyrics are God awful. They sound like one of the worst attempts by a Euro-Pop band to craft earnestly-overly-emotional-English-is-my-second-language lyrics ever. It's almost impossible to know where to begin. One of my personal favourites is: 'Uninvited to the play / where language doesn't hurt / with nothing on my shirt.'

...What?

The song's whole lyrical feel, particularly the choruses titular line 'A Horse Is Not A Home,' feels like they played a game of song writing madlibs:

Christian Karlsson: "A noun is not a home?"

Andrew Wyatt: "How about horse?"

Pontus Winberg: "Haha, yeeeah! Sounds like a hit!"

Christian Karlsson: "Fuck yeah, that's hi-lar-ious! Hey, somebody pass me our respect for the music buying public, I want to rape it some more."

It's the only way to explain away lines like 'With a golden hand by your fortress side / but without magic.' Initially I assumed the group song writer, Andrew Wyatt, must have also been a Swedish native like his production duty counterparts, explaining away the bizarrely Eurovision-esque lyrics. But he's an American.

So yes Miike Snow, I think we are dying. A slow, boring, pointless, vapid, disgusting, insultingly bad death.

-Dashiell 'My Fortress Side Has This Much Magic' Asher

Image courtesy of Downtown Records / RCRD LBL

RGGS: Lollyphile! -or- How I Sucked A Hobo Treat

So today's neat sweet treat to get your tongue to move its feet is Lollyphile's! Bourbon Lollipop.

Now, bourbon has a reputation. It's a Tough'n'Rough-All-American-What-Did-You-Just-Say-About-My-Mother-Mother-Fucker kinda booze. It's the kind of drink that burly backwoods gentlemen guzzle in boxcars while Home On The Range wheezes from a broken harmonica.

So then why the hell does the bourbon lollipop taste like sugar, cream, and angel farts?

The Look: The lolly is a nice soothing off white (which is not how it looks in the promo shot), suggestive more of pina coladas than bourbon. Honestly not much more to say, it's fairly non-descript compared to the gorgeous green of the Absinthe or the fucked up Franken-pop of the Maple-Bacon.

The Flavour: Well not like fucking bourbon for starters. It basically just tastes of sweet, caramelized sugar. Frankly it felt no different than the pops you can get at the dentists. Unlike the absinthe lolly I didn't detect any trace of the alcohol, which might have given the sugary flavour a slightly unique edge. Putting it bluntly, had I not been told this was bourbon flavoured, I never would have guessed. And even having been told, I still want to call Lollyphile! liars.

Should you buy it?: I've had some trouble writing this review. It's been almost impossible to find anything interesting to say about this sweet. And that pretty much sums up the whole experience. Tasty? Yeah I guess so, but in a kind of inoffensive and harmless way. There is genuinely little to recommend about this lollipop, particularly considering it's supposed to be made out of badass bourbon, which is how Lollyphile! are trying to sell it (see the photo). But really? This is less guzzling a bottle of hobo booze and more like licking Charlie Brown's head.

Comin' Soon: Lollyphile! -or- How I Learned To Feel The Burn

-Dashiell 'And I Like Vanilla' Asher

Image Courtesy of www.lollyphile.com