Best Way to be like Michael Phelps?

Lowbrow Answer: Eat 10,000 Calories a Day
Hey, Tubby. You aren't swimming 500 miles every morning. You don't get to eat four pizzas on a nightly basis and still feel good about yourself. Stop stuffing cheeseburgers into your pie-hole and get off your couch.

The worst part about this is how long it must take to consume that much food. Phelps probably spends hours at his kitchen table. So. To Clarify. He's a big slab of meat for all of the citizens of the U.S. to enjoy and he spends more time eating than doing anything else. He sounds like beef livestock.


Middlebrow Answer: Win 8 Gold Medals
Swimming in the Olympics is so bullshit. First of all, there are a thousand different events. The 50m butterfly, the 100m butterfly, the 227.5m butterfly. No wonder Michael Phelps can win 8 gold medals. He gets like, 56 chances at it.

And have you ever noticed that nobody from Africa is in these races? Or South America? Or, really, even Asia? I suppose it makes sense. There aren't many pools in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The kids there are too busy mining blood diamonds to practice the breast stroke. Olympic swimming is a bunch of white kids from the US, Europe, and Australia preening around in Speedos while IOC Officials hand out medals. Sounds like a blast.


Highbrow Answer: Be from Maryland
Maryland rules. It has Johns Hopkins, the FDA, and the highest median income of any state in the union. Suck on that, Delaware. It also has coastline, marsh, mountains, and forest. Maryland is like that girl we wish we all could date. You know the one; she's blistering hot, she plays the violin, she's a biotech engineer, and she loves sex.

The Maryland colony was chartered 1632 by Cæcilius Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore. Ummm, Cæcilius? Awesome. God dammit, I wish my name were cooler. I think I might have children, just so I can name one, "Cæcilius King, 2nd Lord Spankitmore."

Best Western Religion?

Lowbrow Answer: Mormonism
Magic underwear that protects you from bad stuff? Really? Okay, let's do a test. Let's put 50 of you against a wall and I'll shoot you all with a Gatling gun and we'll see how many of you survive. I'm not really a betting man, but I'd be willing to wager that my Gatling gun will prevail over your mystical Fruit-of-the-Looms.

And what's with hating gay people? Gay people are amazing. Without them, we wouldn't have good haircuts, sodomy, or Elton John. I love all three of those things! I mean, come on. If you get rid of all the gays, then who are straight men like me supposed to get blowjobs from?


Middlebrow Answer: Christianity
The only reason these guys aren't down in "Lowbrow" with the Mormons is the Unitarian Universalists. Now, THAT'S a religion. You want to wear sweatpants to church? Cool. You want to play some Radiohead during your sermon? Fine. You want to skip Church to play in a soccer tournament? Go for it. Just be nice to people and respect the Lord. Or don't. Whatever.

The rest of you are crazy. You tell me Jesus loved everyone then you tell me to hate gays. You decry cannibalism and then you eat the flesh of your lord every Sunday. You tell me not to have sex before marriage and then a bunch of your priests rape little boys. You guys do more waffling than the Eggo's company.


Highbrow Answer: The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
At least this one is based on science. The church has proven an indusputable link between the decline in pirate activity to the rising global climate. Boom. Science. Fuck you, faith. I have FACTS.

You can't really beat a flying spaghetti monster as your lord. Why would I want to worship Jesus Christ? He's just a dude that got nailed to a block of wood. I could do that. I could go outside and do that right now. That's not impressive. But a fucking flying spaghetti monster?! That shit is terrifying. It looks like one of Godzilla's enemies. Now THAT is a god that I want to pray to.

Learn more about the Flying Spaghetti Monster here.

Best Form of College Singing?

Lowbrow Answer: A Capella

I know that when I got to college, my first thoughts were "How can I spend more time standing in a half-circle with a bunch of dudes in khaki pants?" and "How can I sing Dave Matthews Band songs to idiot freshman girls?" Boom. A Capella. Done.

The worst part about this shit are the names. The groups are always one of two things. Either they're a semi-clever play on words like, "The A Capellicans" or they're silly and whimsical, like "The Whiffenpoofs." Either way, they're fucking stupid. College A Capella is like Coldplay: the only people who actually like it are 40-year-old middle-aged white women.

Middlebrow Answer: University Chorus
At big schools, the university chorus is totally legit. They usually have a hundred voices, all of whom can actually sing, and get to do stuff like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The best part, though, is that they all have these ancient school songs that they sing. Shit like, "I Left My Heart at Old Cornell" and "Michigan, Michigan." Lemme tell you. When you hear a full choir sing one of those old tunes, it sounds like a barbershop quartet on steroids.

Of course, for every badass school song you're singing, you're singing four contemporary pieces of shit. And you're often forced to combine with other school choirs to do big numbers. Fuck that. I don't want to dillute my gene pool by mixing some lowbrow school. If I go to Cornell and you go to Ohio State, that means I don't have to talk to you because you're too stupid to understand the words I'm using.


Highbrow: Chamber Ensemble
Chamber ensembles allow you to sing stuff by guys likeThomas Tallis. Tallis composed music in the 16th century for Queen Elizabeth. His most epic piece is called "Spem in Alium" and was composed for the Queen's coronation. No big deal, but it has 40 different parts. Forty. Different. Parts. Musicians today are lightweight. Imagine John Mayer trying to come up with forty different vocal harmonies. His head would probably explode, finally revealing to the world that he's just a robot controlled by a tiny gerbil.

The music sung in chamber ensembles is also generally so old that it's a capella, which is great because I hate instrumentalists. Look, I know that playing the piano is hard, but you're just pushing buttons in a sequence. We could program a computer to do the same thing. Get off your high horse, pianists of the world, I'm through living under your tyranny.

Best Version of Hitler?

Lowbrow Answer: General
You were trying to take over the world, right? Kill everybody who didn't agree with you? How'd that go for you? Oh, you failed? But I thought you were the master race. I thought you were all powerful and unbeatable. Here's a little lesson for next time. Don't fuck with a bunch of people who are bigger than you are. That's like a gazelle walking into a lions' den and picking a fight. Dumbass.

And then, at the end of it all, you hid in a bunker like a little bitch and finally killed yourself? Nice one. Real heroic. I'll see you in hell, you prick. And when I do, I'm going to shit in your pillow.


Middlebrow Answer: Politician
Okay, so you rallied a nation that had been devastated by World War I. And you unified the socialist party to take power. And your speeches were crazy. You sound like some sort of motivational speaker on methamphetamine.

But, come on. Killing everyone who isn't Aryan? Are you insane? That's not really a strong platform to base your campaign on. I didn't study political science or anything, but maybe you should focus more on "I'll lower taxes" or "I'll get you better wages," and less on "I'm a crazy idiot who wants to kill six million people." Know what I mean?

Highbrow Answer: None
I'm sure some of you were expecting me to talk about Hitler as an artist for this one, but I can't. His art blows. His landscapes look like "paint by number" and his portraits are shitty. Which means there really isn't a highbrow version of Hitler. Although, are we really surprised by that? This is the dude that tried to exterminate an entire race of people. He's basically an annoying schoolyard bully, only with Panzer tanks.

I'm sure that there are a ton of arguments that could be made about Hitler being a genius and about his high level of intellectualism. But he lost. He lost the war. So fuck him. You know those people who lose a soccer game and then tell you that it was because they were a little tired and that they could totally beat you if they played you again? I hate those people. Win, or shut the hell up.

Best Site for the 2016 Olympics?

Like the Olympics? Learn about the events here.
Lowbrow Answer: Chicago, USA
I love how upset Americans get when they don't get picked first. Hey, Chicago. Newsflash. You kinda blow. What have you given the world besides the Sears Tower, Polish-Americans, and the Cubs. Who blow. I know our super-cool black president is from your city, but get over yourselves. I can name a million other cities in the world with way more super-cool black dudes than you.

My favorite part about this last Olympic bid was the scene in Chicago when they found out they didn't get it. It was like somebody had taken their favorite toy away from them. What did you expect? You can't just throw Oprah and Obama at the IOC and expect them to win. They're all from culturally elite countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg. Each one of them speaks like nine languages. Don't expect them to cave when you hold up pictures of Michael Jordan and demand the games.


Middlebrow Answer: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Brazil is awesome. You have to hand it to a country that's famous for both soccer and removing hair from female pubic regions all over the world. Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. The population of Brazil looks like a box of crayons; they've got redheads and black dudes, and everything in between. How nice. The Olympics will be one big ad for "We are the World."

It does seem a bit odd, though, to put the Olympics in the unofficial crime capital of the world. I can just picture the marathon course: avoid getting stabbed in the first ten miles as you traverse the dense city center, watch out for errant needles as you pass through the favelas, turn right at the whorehouses, dodge gunfire in the gang district, and be sure to take a nice hit of Colombian white as you cross the finish line.


Highbrow Answer: Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
All the original Olympic events were based on battle, so why not put the games right in the middle of a war zone? It would give the Javelin throwers something fun to aim at. Just think about how much more fun those long track races would be if the runners were being chased by Hutu rebels with sawed-off shotguns in a 1989 Ford Pickup. I bet you'd get a lot more people tuning into the 10k.

While we're on the subject of Africa, I'd like say something:

Fuck you, Westernized World.

You showed up in Africa in the early twentieth century, stripped the continent of all its resources, killed EVERYBODY, and created endless civil strife by giving guns to some tribes but not others. Nice work. I'm really hoping that someday the African nations band together and attack the U.S. Maybe we will learn some humility when Rwandan soldiers are dragging the body of our president through the streets of New York behind a war elephant.

Best Form of Poetry?

Lowbrow Answer: Haiku
Have you ever noticed that only one in every forty haiku's even makes sense? It's just seventeen syllables worth of bullshit. You could literally pick out words from the dictionary at random and make Haiku's for a living. Here, I'll show you. Below are three Haiku's. One is a real, published piece, and the other two are just me trying to sound epic. See if you can guess which is which:

1. Coming from the woods
A bull has a lilac sprig
Dangling from a horn

2. A bitter morning:
Sparrows sitting together
Without any necks.

3. A mountain village
Under the piled-up snow
The sound of water.

---Answer Below this line---

Numbers 1 and 2 sound pretty bullshit, eh? Well, guess what. They're all real. Each one of those was a money-earning, fame-creating piece of poetry. Fuck you, Haiku. You're like a pretentious toddler who tries to convince me that the poop in his bedsheets is actually a priceless peace of post-modern art.


Middlebrow Answer: Sonnet
At least there's some real work involved here. You can't just stick seventeen random words in a row and be published. And you're embarking on a form made famous by this random English guy you may know of called Will Shakes-something. I forget his full name but I guess he's pretty good. I heard he wrote plays too, or something.

The problem with sonnets are that all the most famous ones are about love. Ugh. Kill me. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" No, you shan't. Your lover is a slut who's been sleeping around behind your back. Compare her to a community bicycle or an AIDS monkey.


Highbrow Answer: Blank Verse
Most of this shit is so oblique that you can't even tell that it's poetry. And that's the key. If it confuses the proles, it must be highbrow. Just like theoretical physics or Dickensian literature or simple algebra.

Blank verse is beautiful because it eliminates all the rules of other forms of poetry that poets are so intent on keeping in place. You actually have to write some good stuff, rather than relying on rhyming or form to save your ass. I hate poets. Just because you take long pauses in between what you're saying doesn't mean you're a genius. Just tell me how you feel about summer rain. Don't use 56 sets of rhyming quatrain to do it. I have more important places to be, like, anywhere but here listening to you. Jackass.

Best Way to Get a Dog?

Lowbrow Answer: Buy It
It's a dog. It drools on your couch, chews on your shoes, and poops on your lawn. You're really going to pay $1200 for it? Are you insane? You could buy something useful with that money, like a flatscreen TV or 1200 bags of Skittles. How about this. Send me a check for $500 and I'll poop on your lawn whenever you want me to. You'll save money and I'll finally be able to afford that vintage Punky Brewster lunchbox.

Most people who buy a dog want to put it in dog shows. What a blast these shindigs are. It's a beauty pageant without the swimsuit competition or the "World Peace" questionnaire. Oh yeah, and they're DOGS. Maybe comparing them to each other mattered back in the 1600s when they actually helped us survive everyday life, but come on. If you're going to dog shows at this point, you probably live alone and you probably own a sweater with your dog's face bedazzled on it.


Middlebrow Answer: Rescue It
If you're going to have a dog, at least get one with personality. Who would want a perfect-looking poodle when you can have a mangy rottweiler with one eye and dog-fighting scars? Rescuing a dog also allows you to sleep at night knowing that you did something nice, rather than sleeping at night wondering why you didn't get 1200 bags of Skittles instead of buying a dog.

Of course, you're getting sloppy seconds with this one, and we all hate that. Your dog probably belonged to some redneck named Cletus with 14 kids and pickup truck who never fed it and made it watch NASCAR races with him on the weekend. Low. Brow.


Highbrow Answer: Capture a Hyena
Fuck dogs. If I'm going to have a four-legged animal in my house, it's going to a be a Hyena. It can protect me from burglars, it can scavenge for food around my neighborhood, and it can take down the mailman like he was a sickly gazelle. Who doesn't want all those things? Name me one person who doesn't want those things.

Hyenas are also big enough that you could put little kids on their backs. Imagine it. Other kids are getting dropped off at kindergarten in a Ford Fiesta and your son rolls up on the back of a Hyena. I'll guarantee you this: he'd never get beat up. If he did, you could just train the Hyena to rip the bully's face off and eat it in front of the other kids as a warning.