SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!

It’s Sunday and you know what that means: time to finally accept the fact the weekend is over. Finito. It’s DUNZO. KAPUTZ. ACCEPT IT. GO CLEAN AND BE SAD!

For the past two weeks I had friends visiting the city. I let them sleep in my basement, and because we’re so close friends, I decided to only charge them twenty-five bucks a day. But nights? Nights are eighty bucks each if you decide to sleep. And one (1) like on my Instagram Story.

So I took a little break from writing this newsletter. But breaks are meant to be broken. That is why they are called breaks. The Bum Diary weekly newsletter is back, baby.

Milk Crate Records: Sunday Speculations

Welcome back to Milk Crate Records, your one-stop-shop for tunes from all over the sonic universe. This is Max’s weekly column where he’ll ramble and suggest musicians you hopefully don’t know yet. Headphones are recommended for the proper digestion of this section.

I couldn’t decide on which three songs of an interesting subgenre to write about, so this week I’m writing about a song I love and the future of music distribution.

“I Lost My Mind on a Sunday” by Ryoma

I’ve been hooked on this song daily since I found it two weeks ago. I was shocked that it was made by two high schoolers this year somewhere in Pennsylvania. I think any album made by artists during their teen years automatically is more special out there in the sonic universe, you know? Whether it’s a once-in-a-lifetime passion project or a mega-famous artist’s prepubescent album, that bittersweet brutality of youthfulness always joyfully lingers in the background.

Even though I don’t know these kids personally, the fact they are 17 throws me off for how good of an experimental high school indie-folk album they put out. I have to accept the fact they were born in 2007 or 2008. I have to accept the fact they were in middle school when COVID happened.

Ryoma only promotes their music on mainstream platforms like TikTok or Instagram. They don’t have a Soundcloud or Bandcamp. But also, do they need to? Aside from their age, I think the other reason why this surprised me was that this album, to me, solidifies the future of young artists dealing with the world of media distribution.

There’s always been teenagers starting a band. And for about a decade, maybe between 2005 and 2015, the internet was the perfect vessel for putting your music out into the world. I feel like since 2016 or so, artists now produce music with a notion that their art’s success is at least partially controlled by an algorithm (whether publishing on Spotify or promoting it on TikTok) instead of organically growing. I think it might have accidentally started with us making anything and everything go viral between 2014-2016. Associating virality with success probably didn’t help either.

In regards to indie rock music, I would argue “Brazil” by Declan McKenna was the last alternative song made by a high schooler to soar in popularity and top charts thanks to the organic growth of the internet. Declan was 16 at the time, and that song put him on the map outta nowhere. That was 2015.

Organic growth and the music industry are like siblings that hate each other but deep down couldn’t live without the other. Fabricated songs (pop music) are a standard within the music industry. That’s been around forever, because pop sells and keeps the lights on. But now artists (besides those that can have their dad call Jimmy K in the A.M. and be on the Tonight Show by the P.M.) are scraping by while also fighting for your attention just to get signed to a label that won’t pay squat.

So what about organic growth? Finding new, good music has evolved.

At first, it was stumbling into a bar and finding an artist that captured lightning in a bottle. Then, it was stumbling in a record store and finding an artist that captured lightning in a bottle. Next, it was stumbling across an online forum chat room and finding an artist that captured lightning in a bottle. Now, it is stumbling across a suggested YouTube video, a viral TikTok, or Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist where you find an artist that captured lightning in a bottle.

Currently, finding new music feels like stumbling into a company owned bar where they know lots of artists that captured lightning in lots of bottles. I fear the next wave will be stumbling into a company owned bar where you’ll find both the artist and the lightning captured in a bottle.

But what really is next? People accept AI generated audio as music into the mainstream. Sure, what the hell. After that though? The companies will control which songs top their charts. Why else are they purposefully putting these fake artists on their own platforms? Even if it saves you money in the short-term, you’ll be wiping out your entire consumer base in the long-term.

Clanking two spoons together is more entertaining and thought provoking than listening to something a machine produced “by itself”. If you want to listen to robots that badly go sit in a laundromat for three hours.

But here is my other educated guess of the future: what we’re in right now is really the last, worst stage of this media distribution mess. It’ll stay this way until we change it. I’m guessing we’re just gonna lose the 2020s to too much digital shit being on our digital plate. But slowly over time, artists will have less and less of a chance to pursue a career in music by putting themselves out there in the digital world––even though they grew up in a time where digital was an “even” playing field. I think organic growth will stem from physically knowing where to find good music and/or possessing the knowledge of good vs bad music.

There’s still organic ways to find new fresh music online––music forums, subreddits, whatever your preference is––but they’re apart of a massive global haystack. Not only is it hard to find the needle in the haystack already, but they just keep on adding more hay too. That’s when they sneak artificial hay in there.

I think that is the other reason why this album made by two high schoolers hit me more than I expected. Its existence proves there is still young authenticity in an age of unreliability. It’s nice knowing the 17 year olds are still making music and putting it out there, even in a time where you have the most odds against you as a 17 year old artist.

I got off track. Also, this cover design is beautiful. The colors embrace the natural, earthy atmosphere of Ryoma’s tonal sound. Yet it is from two guys who have definetly killed me in Fortnite. These guys did their homework. You can hear it. Their Spotify bio mentions artists The Symposium, Her’s, and The Strokes as their biggest inspirations.

Anyways, “I Lost My Mind on a Sunday” in particular rocks. It starts out with this melodic acoustic riff. It always fades. It’s mesmerizing. The very mellow bass line, paper-thin drum beat, and occasional keyboard pair so well with the soft guitar and coming-of-age lyrics. The playful chorus feels like a reward each time they play it.

This song feels like when you’re hiking––the enjoyable part of the hike. The part of the hike where you randomly stumble upon a waterfall that melts into a pond. Sunshine pokes through the trees. Light refracts off creek water while you watch your reflection ripple. You sun-bathe on a log and before you know it you fell asleep in the woods. That’s what it feels like to me.

Their whole album Ryomaden is terrific, but my personal favorites are this track, 5 Notes Like Joy, and Eventide.

Concession Stand-ings

Aidan and I wanted to collaborate on something special revolving around our love for movies…something connected to that experience of going to the theater and watching a new story for the first time.

There is a HUGE crucial aspect apart of the movie going experience we do not talk about enough: movie theater snacks.

Nothing is more nostalgic than driving to the local movie theater, sprinting over to the concession stand, and putting yourself in life-threatening levels of financial debt for a snack you’ll finish eating before the trailers finish.

But Aidan and I aren’t just here to vent about what snacks we like and don’t like. There are stakes, methods, and other countless factors you have to consider when ranking the best snack to eat while watching a movie at the theater.

Picture this: You go to a small, independent movie theater that has some pretentious 1930s-Hollywood reference for a name like “The Apple Box" or “Metro Playhouse Center”. (These really only exist in the evil elite coastal cities)

Everyone actually calls Metro Playhouse Center the ‘MPC’ because it is shorter, and thus, more cost efficient to pronounce. The MPC sells one-size, no-refill bags of popcorn for $24.50. It comes in a dirty metallic cup stuffed with official MPC branded parchment paper. There’s probably only 30 pieces of popcorn, most of the cup is really just parchment paper with nice branding on it. They also sell a tote bag for $39.99.

The over-priced indie theater artisanal popcorn.

But then there’s the other side of the same coin.

Picture this: You go to a giant movie theater complex. It’s crammed inside a dead mall that hasn’t seen a customer since the 2008 housing crisis. It’s got the brain of a vacant Blockbuster and the body of an Amazon Prime Warehouse. The location once served as the territorial turf of nine different movie theater franchises, half of which only existed in the 1980s as money-laundering shell companies.

These theaters have five IMAX screens, arcade games that only accept Apple Pay, a partnership with Pepsi Cola’s Pepsi Wild Cherry flavor, and nothing but empty parking lots during peak movie-goer hours. The popcorn tastes like cheap crap. It costs $35 for a bucket. They do have unlimited free refills though.

The over-priced mass-produced cinema complex popcorn.

If you grew up in the South/Midwest like me, there’s a good chance your average "going to the movies" experience was just driving 30 minutes across town to the closest AMC or Regal complex.

If you grew up in an evil coastal city full of snobby elite film-hubs, you probably grew up going to the theater with Martin Scorsese himself. You probably even call him “Marty”, because of course you do. Jackass.

Regardless, there’s plenty of unspoken rules to eating at the movie theater.

You can’t just loudly slurp down your brain-freeze-inducing ICEE slushie. You don’t want to be chewing too loudly either. You don’t want to be the person really struggling to open the sour patch kids ‘easy-tear’ tab. You can’t have a whole full course meal either, that’ll distract you from the flick.

What movie theater snacks are the worst to buy? What are the best? Which ones do you avoid making eye contact with? Why do concession stands still exist in the first place? Let’s dig in.

INTRODUCTION

AIDAN: So, before we begin, would you like to tell everyone why you were late yesterday when we tried to record?

MAX: Um — goddamn it. Fuck. Well, dude, it's actually gone. Fun fact.

AIDAN: What's gone? Tell the audience.

MAX: So… I thought I had pink eye yesterday–

AIDAN: And how do you think you got it? It better not be how I thought…

MAX: I was actually planning on writing about this for this week… I mistakenly slept with my eye contacts in, and my right eye got really disinfected. I woke up Monday and, like, I looked like Fetty Wap. Yeah. And then, yesterday, I was fine, but I went to work and I was like, nah — it was kind of weird. And I was like, “should I go to urgent care?” And then… 

AIDAN: Nice.

MAX: Well, dude, so there's another long story in there, but–

AIDAN: Okay. We'll save that.

MAX: I'm okay, but my pink eye is gone. So grateful I'm free.

AIDAN: So, our topic for this lovely recording is ranking and just a general discussion about different movie snacks. And I want to preface, before we get into it, that movie snack rankings say more about a person than, like, your political alignment. It's one thing to be like, “oh, I'm a Democrat,” or, “oh, I'm a Republican,” or “I'm a Scientologist” — because those are our three parties in the U.S., right? But on the other hand, your ranking in this list, like, not only determines who you are as a human being, but even like how much respect and basic dignity you deserve as a human being.

MAX: I was going to say, it shows your ethics and morals.

AIDAN: It's more telling than a trolley problem.

MAX: Yeah, exactly.

AIDAN: We didn't really come up with a structure, so we're just going to look at a fucking tier list. We're just going to see how this goes.

MAX: In terms of ranking this, are we, like, hungry at the movie theater? Like, did we have dinner before this or whatever?

AIDAN: This is like the hypothetical, like: you're getting movie snacks. We ate lunch five hours ago, so we're not, like, starving, but we're hungry enough to where, yeah, we could have a little sweet treat.

MAX: Okay. Like, drink, and like snack––right?

AIDAN: Well, we're going to get into that, because drinks are a part of this list. And I didn't make this. I'm just taking what some jackass made on Tiermaker.com.

MAX: (looking at the list) “Gooey Bites”? Fucking Cinnabon?

AIDAN: Yeah. You're jumping forward a little bit…

MAX: Sorry, sorry. Sorry.

AIDAN: I guess we should just debate to figure out where our mutual placement is for each of these on the list. Because we have to find common ground. 

POPCORN

AIDAN: Well, so starting with popcorn… maybe it's just me, but I think, honestly, like movie theater-wise, it’s — I don't want to say S tier, but well, like, a top-tier snack in the sense that there's a ton of it. It's really fun to snack on. It's very like, “oh, I'm at the movies while I'm eating it.”

MAX: Yeah, it is a classic…

AIDAN: And it's not that loud when you're chewing.

MAX: I don't know, like it depends. Do you butter it? Do you salt it, you know? I think you have to have it salted and buttered–

AIDAN: Here's the thing that the mainstream media won't let you talk about: popcorn isn't the same at every theater. Sometimes, you'll go to a Regal or an AMC, and the popcorn will be straight-up ass. But then you'll go to, like, a local theater — some random place — and it's the best movie theater popcorn you've ever had. So I think that the quality varies, but in general, I feel like it's such a mainstay. It's such a staple that even if I'm not always in the mood for it, it's so many people's ideal movie theater snack. It's like, popcorn paired with something else.

MAX: Yeah, like “candy, popcorn, and soda” or something…

AIDAN: I think rating it anything lower than an A would be ridiculous, but I can't give it an S because it varies. So I'm going to give it an A.

MAX: I think that's what I’d say, great. It's just, like, the GOAT — like, it's like the anchor of all the movie theater snacks, you know? Exactly. None of these would be here without popcorn.

CHARLESTON CHEW

AIDAN: We've yet to put something in the D tier, but I think we have one here. Okay, this is called a Charleston Chew. This is like Great Depression candy. You don't see these unless you're at a really old movie theater. Like, when you look at the box, you’re like “that actually looks kind of good,” but, like, you don't have this unless you're at your fucking grandma's house and she's, like, decaying in front of your eyes, and she's like, “Oh, dear, take something from the little candy jar.” And then you look, and it's a Charleston Chew wrapper that hasn't been touched since the fucking ‘40s. Max, have you ever had a Charleston Chew?

MAX: I've had them, and I do not understand how they're, like, still around. They're not bad, but they're not… Like, I have to put them in D. I'm sorry, like... I just... Yeah, it's like, it's like nougat and– I think I've had them in their prime. They're so chewy. Like, worse than Milk Duds.

AIDAN: This is my opinion: if eating the candy is in and of itself a chore, where you have to stop and think about eating it to make sure it doesn't get on your teeth, you fail. “Oh, it's fine–” It's not. You fucking fail. You can't be aware of the candy experience.

MAX: Especially during the movie theaters! Because when you're watching a film — a flick — you know, you want to be immersed. You want to be stuck in that world. You don't want to be fucking thinking about, “Oh my God, this fucking Charleston Chew is making me Charleston chew all goddamn day, you know?”

AIDAN: Yeah. You eat a Charleston chew if you're going to go home and chew your wife out for not doing the dishes and being a '50s housewife. You know what I'm saying?

MAX: Yeah, exactly. Like, this candy is past its era. I feel like Charleston Chews probably hit when you were in the mines, you know?

SWEETARTS

AIDAN: I have to say, I've had SweeTART originals. I don't know if I've ever had them as, uh–

MAX: These are the chalky disc ones, right? But not like chalky in a bad way. Just chalky as in texture, not taste.

AIDAN: Yeah, they're good. They're good. I would put them in B. I don't know about you, if you've ever had them. I really like SweeTARTs, especially the original classics. They honestly are like crack. They're really fun to eat.

MAX: And I think there's ones that they've done like… Have you ever had the ball versions of them?

AIDAN: I don't know, but I think I might have. Anyways, they're pretty fire. But I guess if they're doing like this basic box of them…

MAX: I do remember specifically with SweeTARTs, compared to any of these other candies on this list I see right now — they are loud as fuck. Like, because they're all loose in that box.

AIDAN: Oh, yeah.

MAX: So you're trying to sneak into a theater with that candy you bought from Walgreens or wherever, you know? You're getting your ticket. You gotta, like, kind of hide it in your hoodie or your purse. And you just hear, like, just–

AIDAN: One time I snuck a full Wingstop meal into a theater in New York, and they didn't even give a fuck.

MAX: You snuck in full Wingstop? That's pretty crazy.

AIDAN: Yeah. I hit it in my snow coat, and I think they just thought I was fat.

MAX: Well, I mean…you brought Wingstop to a movie theater, so…

AIDAN: Yeah, I technically– (laughs) You're not wrong with that. That's so–stop talking about my body. It's really rude.

WOAH! STEADY! TAKE IT EASY THERE, AVID READER! To continue down this path you have to travel to our website. This piece is too juicy for an email.

I took the road less traveled…

That’s all for this week on Bum Sums! If you enjoyed reading and think a friend would too, forward them this email. If you want your own weekly column, or any other fun ideas, contact us. We want to make this the best community building newsletter out there. Stay tuned for more stories next week.