Enscalpument of the Demagoguery! Phase One

I just watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the first time not on Channel 17 and there is nudity in that movie! Nudity and swearing. Awesome! Yet except for the mention of VH, there is no metal in the film. Now I know that the Halen isn't exactly Carcass or anything, but their sheer love of rocking and being fucking awesome all the time coupled with Eddie's shredding and Alex's awful skin-tapping (not even a pound, a frigggggin' tap this guy does, with the obv xcptn o "Hot for Teacher"). However, the film has a semi-secret metal trump card: Romanus.

Romanus's Mike Damone is not explicitly metal. In fact, he's a new wave dude, so he likes punk's wussier, orthopedic-shoes-wearing cousin. His room is decked out with Devo and Elvis Costelo posters, he rocks the skinny tie and thinks that Deborah Harry is a dish (not that she's uggs or anything, but let's just say she's no Lizzy Caplan. Riiiiight??). And though he does drive a Gremlin (a close cousin of the AMC Pacer MIRTH MOBILE), Romanus is still not really very heavy.

Until he sits down!

Because he has a cowskin chair!

It looks like a cow's hide, except it's brownish, so maybe it's one of those cows that produces chocolate milk. In this chair Romanus ascends to a heaviness of nearly-Dio-ian proportions. It's such a freaking heavy chair. It will splatter your brain across most available surfaces. It was no doubt wrought upon the blackest anvil in the deepest smithy of Vulcan, possibly with a pentagram-shaped hammer. I usually feel confident about my ability to analytically discern an object's metalosity, but in this instance the sheer epic-ness of the seat, nay, the throne!, overrides standard neurological procedures. Also, the movie was realy good, though the sexual content and glut of embarassing (though firmly resolved/forgotten) situations therein make me glad that I didn't watch it with a laday. "Hey, dinner was really fun; let's go and watch a movie where young women fellate carrots! I'll squirm uncomfortably and clear my throat if you will!" Banging.

Refuse!, Plus the Band Below Looks Like the Worst Thing Evs

Babababa-boom. No respect to May. I recently read that Marcus Garvey died from a stroke triggered when he read a negative obit of himself in a Chicago paper. Given his place in Rastafarianism and in a Burning Spear record, he seemed like a pretty heavy dude, but getting smoked by your own death is pretty weak; metal welcomes all things demise-centric, even/ESPECIALLY when they relate to one's own bucket-kicking. Like that dude who took himself out onstage at a Death show, except not annoying.

This possibly apocryphal story also says a lot about meta stuff, namely that it will merc on you like the government on Brother Shabazz. Self-referentiality is crafty darts, yet we often opt to instead stick with Laffy Taffy. Simply put (?), the sloppy ease with which postmodernism can be applied in this modern age (a ridiculously wack step in social evolution that for arbitrary reasons I blame upon "Bull" Fulbright dying right before he could have cleared the A-Team in "The A-Team") makes anything meta-related a dangerous proposition. Like picking up someone who you think MIGHT be a hooker but who could just as easily be Greg Luzinski.

Yet the chance is sometimes worth taking. I refer, of course, to how The Matrix is alla sudden getting on my nerves in a heavily macro way. When the "CSI" was on at the lanes the other night, the fuzz was getting the grill in a press conference by some ratty-ass blogger dude. The televisions were muted but I could tell that the fool was floating some inquisitive business and smart-assedly being a butt to the cops. Karankaredes or whoev doesn't need that shit, kids! So he was being a butt and is way too satisfied with himself I'm trying to bowl, wondering the whole time why he isn't getting beat up. He's talking about computers out loud and one of the Alpha House goons isn't there to administer his deserved swirlie? Gwuh.

And it's the fault of that Matrix picture. It made computers/being computer-savvy much more socially acceptable than anyone could have previously imagined. All them dorks running around hard-driving and booting or what have you and nary a nosebleed in the bunch! I think that some of them might not have even been virgins. And jesum crow, it ain't fair. Neo et al. subverted the time-honored nerd/not-nerd paradigm by establishing the computer-literate as heroic and sympathetic from the outset rather than as hopeless misfits who, through a rigorous battery of hilarious pranks, de-bra-ing and hearty, self-affirming partying, subsume the (initially) more socially acceptable jocks. What's the point if the nerds are set up as capable, even deserving victors from jump? Their status as social outcasts needs to be overcome and function as a display of collective subcultural worth to the hegemonic observer. In The Matrix, the outcast role is embraced and gaily brandished so that the nerd stands as an aggressor, eager to impose his/her (who are we kidding, his) dorkgenda on the so-called "unenlightened" masses. Marrone!

And next thing you know it's cool to know what a gigabyte is and action movies are all about typing shit instead of blowing shit up. It's as if Tango & Cash, which sucks super hard already, had Clint Howard's hacker dude as the lead character instead of the asshole stockbroker Stallone and the xenophobic Kurt. That's a dismal example because T & C would be 70 millions times better with C to the H in the lead, but that's beside the pizzointzz. Computers are wicked renarded and never cool.

But I'm using a computer to broadcast this and if anyone reads it they are likewise using a computer to receive the message. I would almost feel like a shitty "anti-capitalist" band like Anti Flag (more like Anti GOOD!) or Rage Against the Machine (more like Boring Blah Blah Blah I Got No Heat Jah) or Captain & Tenille (more like DRAGON & His Partner) who, like, are totally hypocritical and, um, profit from the all-too-comfortable machinations of capitalism totally totally IF NOT FOR THE FACT that I could at this point echo Duke's words in Repo Man because through it all, I blame society. And The Matrix. But also society.