Mickey Avalon

Crack-addiction, male prostitution, Judaism, and “My Dick“; that’s what you get when listening to Mickey Avalon’s self-titled debut album. It would be easy to write off the white rapper from Michigan as just another honkey glamorizing substance abuse and STD’s to build legitimacy, but it is highly recommended to Wikipedia him before making judgments. Most of the content Avalon centers his album around he’s actually lived through.  In the chorus of “Friends & Lovers” Avalon concludes “All my friends and all my lovers are Dead.” In his mid-twenties, his sister overdosed. and his father died in a car crash on the way to AA. “Dipped in Vaseline” is reminiscent of Avalon’s days working as a prostitute. Avalon chooses his words cleverly to bring light to such heavy topics and is able to pack his whole life into a twelve track disc.

 MANIC

Have you ever wanted to see what Zooey Deschanel looked like before she was the beautiful front woman of She & Him and the star of 500 Days of Summer? Then go watch Manic, an incredibly low budget indie film that also stars her 500 Days co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film is centered around the juvenile ward of a hospital that is home to young adults with varying personality disorders and looks as though it was filmed on someone’s personal video recorder. Gordon-Levitt plays main character Lyle, a young man with severe anger outbursts. Levitt does a damn good job of capturing how out of control his characters rage becomes, but the film does little to elaborate on why this kid is so pissed off while explaining why more minor characters were placed under such treatment. If such drama is up your alley, the film is incredibly addictive and is most likely to leave a deep impression.

 SIX FEET UNDER

 

HBO series Six Feet Under captured the lives of a family run funeral home and the dysfunctions of the Fischer family as they lived directly above their business. They literally shared a home with the dead. In the first season, the youngest child Claire stole the foot of a dead man and stuck it in her boyfriend’s locker for revenge, middle son Nathan struggled with his homosexuality and being the only child dedicated to the family business throughout the whole series, and eldest David tried to accept the fact that he had become his father even though he tried his best not to. The characters are as well developed as the storyline as both evolved together throughout the  six seasons of the show. Death was a major concept that was never a taboo and the series ended with death by showing each characters demise in their future years.