Radiohead Synthesis Essay

Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: A look at how pitchers throw those amazing pitches in baseball, Radiohead performs at Lollapalooza, President Obama writes and op-ed about feminism, and Rick and Morty recreates the most insane courtroom appearances ever.

At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention that’s our job: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about. That’s The Underground.

1. A look at pitching in baseball.
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Verlander showing you how it's done
One of the incredible things about baseball is watching how a pitcher can manipulate the ball. Watching a ball in slow motion as it seems to have a mind of its own and curve in midair always made me wonder how the hell they did it. I know it has something to do with hand placement and how they release it, but it still confuses me how throwing a round object in a certain way can have an impact on how it flow in the air.

This comprehensive look at pitching in baseball will allow you to respect any pitcher just a little bit more when you see them release the ball on TV. All I knew about pitching when I was little was the curveball and the fastball. I also learned that pitching for a length of time really hurts your arm afterwards. I guess that's why when you see older pitches taken off the mound, they have their arm and shoulder covered in ice and padding. That must make opening a bag of chips quite a challenge in the dugout.

Have a look at the pitching explanations below.
A Look at Pitching in Baseball

2. Radiohead has returned to the United States to rock. One of the biggest regrets I have in life right now (besides exes, my college degree, and so on) is that I have never seen Radiohead in concert. They're usually too far away for me to justify going to see them, and that's pretty much the only reason. I have traveled far for bands that I don't even like just because my friends loved the band. I usually just separated from the group at the concert/festival and found the people doing the drugs. Okay, too real.

Anyway, Radiohead has only a few tour dates in the US this year, but many of you probably won't be able to make it to their shows since they are few and far between. In celebration of their new album, A Moon Shaped Pool, they have hit the road playing some of their best music to date. I watched this entire concert a few times as I worked and really wished I was there with the crowd to behold this spectacle of one of the best bands to exist. Hell, my parents had Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Beatles. I have Radiohead.

Enjoy their full set at Lollapalooza just a few days
ago.

3. President Obama wrote an op-ed for Glamour magazine that urges the need for feminism.

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President Obama is coming to the end of his presidency and we'll soon be headed to the voting booth trying to choke down the stomach acid as we look at the nominees. Let's not focus on that. Let's focus on how much Obama cares about women. He wrote the article for Glamour under the title: This is what feminism looks like.

I knew the President was well-spoken and smart, but when he writes and op-ed, you really get inside of his persona to see how caring and smart he is. It's nice to get a little bit of a break from all the political insanity that happens non-stop on television and the internet, so reading this is quite the relief.

Give it a read:

There are a lot of tough aspects to being President. But there are some perks too. Meeting extraordinary people across the country. Holding an office where you get to make a difference in the life of our nation. Air Force One.

But perhaps the greatest unexpected gift of this job has been living above the store. For many years my life was consumed by long commutes­—from my home in Chicago to Springfield, Illinois, as a state senator, and then to Washington, D.C., as a United States senator. It’s often meant I had to work even harder to be the kind of husband and father I want to be.

But for the past seven and a half years, that commute has been reduced to 45 seconds—the time it takes to walk from my living room to the Oval Office. As a result, I’ve been able to spend a lot more time watching my daughters grow up into smart, funny, kind, wonderful young women.

That isn’t always easy, either—watching them prepare to leave the nest. But one thing that makes me optimistic for them is that this is an extraordinary time to be a woman. The progress we’ve made in the past 100 years, 50 years, and, yes, even the past eight years has made life significantly better for my daughters than it was for my grandmothers. And I say that not just as President but also as a feminist.

In my lifetime we’ve gone from a job market that basically confined women to a handful of often poorly paid positions to a moment when women not only make up roughly half the workforce but are leading in every sector, from sports to space, from Hollywood to the Supreme Court. I’ve witnessed how women have won the freedom to make your own choices about how you’ll live your lives—about your bodies, your educations, your careers, your finances. Gone are the days when you needed a husband to get a credit card. In fact, more women than ever, married or single, are financially independent.

So we shouldn’t downplay how far we’ve come. That would do a disservice to all those who spent their lives fighting for justice. At the same time, there’s still a lot of work we need to do to improve the prospects of women and girls here and around the world. And while I’ll keep working on good policies—from equal pay for equal work to protecting reproductive rights—there are some changes that have nothing to do with passing new laws.

In fact, the most important change may be the toughest of all—and that’s changing ourselves.

This is something I spoke about at length in June at the first-ever White House Summit on the United State of Women.
As far as we’ve come, all too often we are still boxed in by stereotypes about how men and women should behave. One of my heroines is Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who was the first African American to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. She once said, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ ” We know that these stereotypes affect how girls see themselves starting at a very young age, making them feel that if they don’t look or act a certain way, they are somehow less worthy. In fact, gender stereotypes affect all of us, regardless of our gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

You can read the rest of it at Glamour.

4. Rick and Morty take on the funniest courtroom transcript of all time. A quick back story: The State of Georgia Vs. Denver Fenton Allen is a case about a man who is accused of murder in the county jail. Allen comes to court to complain that he's not getting everything and that he only got a 4-page indictment. It starts off normal where Allen doesn't want to work with his court appointed attorney because he claims he's withholding evidence. The discussion soon spirals into insanity. Here's a bit of
proof:

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They go back and forth with insane dialogue. Allen is a murder suspect who is basically going to jail forever, but he antagonizes the judge so much that the judge says he "looks like a queer" and yells at him to masturbate infront of him after Allen threatens to. I'm serious, this is all real and hilarious. What makes it even better is that Rick and Morty took the entire transcript and reenacted it word by word. The best parts are when the voice actor and creator Justin Roiland breaks character laughing near the 5:04 mark.

Watch this entire thing in a place that is safe for work... because this entire thing is hilarious and incredibly NSFW.