You might suppose that, since I've been away on vacation for a whole month, I must've dedicated some amount of that time to absorbing various cultural pursuits, in order to restock my depleted stores of cultural-critical commentary. Well, you're wrong. I did very little in my time away from article writing. In the month of July, I saw zero movies in the theater, went to zero music concerts, and even read fewer books than I normally do. Other than dedicating some quality time with Nick to producing our latest run of super-awesome ashcans, I really have little to show for myself. I did eat as many grilled portabella mushroom caps this month as about anybody might, I imagine. So I have that going for me, which is nice.
All of which is to say that I'm scrambling a bit to get my shit back together in time for this article that's already happening, and already more like a LiveJournal post than a substantial article with the high level of incisive acuity that I usual bring to the cultural table. The closest I got to any full-blown media consumption in July was reading a giant stack of comics that Nick loaned to me, and one particular afternoon sticks out in my mind, as I listened to some classic metal on headphones and read "Essential" issues of the Fantastic Four. Metal + Comics = the adolescence that I'm only getting around to having now. But I don't particularly fancy the idea of writing all about all the comics that I've just read that all of you have probably already read (though I thought Neveda was pretty awesome, and of course the Bill & Ted comics are a must-read for all humans everywhere).
In my metal listening (I was basically just listening to Slayer and Death), I also opted, briefly for a foray into the more brutal black metal kind of scene of music to listen to some scarier music. The motivation goes something like this:
a) sometimes metal is pretty awesome music (depending on which sub-genres of metal you're talking about--I being a fan, primarily, of the doom/sludge kind of stuff (e.g. The Melvins, Sleep, etc.)).
b) sometimes its good to try other (sub-)genres of music, and I had access to the internet on my vacation that I don't have in my real life, so was able to do more internetting re: metal than I generally would
c) especially because of my interest in classical music (and Sufjan Stevens), I have been exposed to a generally high volume of music written with Christian inspiration and content. I'm basically agnostic about it, caring more about the music and how it sounds than its motivation or what it means, figuring that, hell, people can believe whatever they want if it turns out a good product. Therefore, I should be similarly comfortable in listening to music that is written with motivation from the other end of the religious perspective, namely, with the whole black metal thing, satanism, or at least paganism, or whatever. Of course, I draw the line at anything explicitly bigoted, 'cause that's no fun (of course, its hard to hear what they're saying, so who knows, really...), but if the dudes believe in their religion and happen to worship that bad guy, that should be fine, if the music rips.
Of course, playing music for the dark gods tends to involve way more brutal riff-age, which encodes hours on top of lonely hours learning how to play such riffs, which tends to keep me from being a real metal-head, since I've been brain-washed by my own classical training in music to have a slightly hedged interest in virtuosity in general; that is, just 'cause the dudes can play fast, doesn't mean it's good at all--this, of course, lines up with my preference for the sludge, since the riffs there aren't so much about speed as slow-burning awesomeness.
But, long story short, reading comics and listening to metal makes you a nerd. No two ways about it. So I switched to hip-hop, but mostly Handsome Boy Modeling School, Black Elvis, and Ultramagnetic MCs, which keeps well profiled as an unabashed nerd. What can I do? Without the usual levels of content in this article, I can't mask the nerdiness which lurks under the surface of just about everything that I do. Oh well.
(P.S. The next book club entry, schedule for this week, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road had been postponed until next week; get reading, folks!)
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