GOOD NEWS AND BAD
Hi. My computer broke. Killer bought me the new Anthony Bourdain cookbook. My brother burned me an excellent cd of Indian music. We’re hiring a handyman to fix the leaning pillar out front that is barely holding up our tiny, sweet, enclosed porch. Also, he’s dismantling a doorframe so we can move our dryer from the dining room to the basement. Vampires at work continue to suck my blood. I bought an elaborate handcarved Thai teak birdcage during an unexpected fit of decorating. I’m reading
The Projectionist by Michael Helm and the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Allusions, as well as the afore-mentioned Bourdain book. There’s something weird growing on my elbows. I am in Montreal right now. Right now! I am only just recently, really, getting over a period of deep devotion to the Metallica record
St. Anger. It began when I saw that film weeks ago, and believe me, gentle reader, nobody was more surprised by my passion for it (the record) than I; the deep-seated cultural indoctrination of the nineteen eighties and nineties cause me to identify myself as more
alternative than
metal, both long-defunct categories of aesthetic socialization which, in this case, suggest that loud, fast, precision rock ’n’ roll is okay if made by, say, the Bad Brains or Black Flag, but not okay if made by Megadeath or Metallica. I know that all of these distinctions melted away long ago, and that by even bringing up the sagging ancient cultural architecture of my mind I am pathetically dating myself, but I am thrilled and ashamed and stunned, even now, that I am crazy, just
crazy, for beautiful Metallica.
Metal up your ass!
