Monthly Archives: February 2012

Great Minds Think Alike (And They Don’t)

Posted by on February 25, 2012 No comments

As a follower of (too) many atheist Facebook pages, I heard about the book The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer last year. This book’s purpose was to explain why some people believe in God and some don’t. As someone who decided at the age of five that there was no such thing as a god, I’ve always wondered why people believe. And furthermore, in this current negatively charged political environment, I wonder what makes conservatives so conservative, what makes liberals so liberal, and why people think Waffle House food is edible. These are the real questions in life and The Believing Brain was supposed to have the answers.

The Believing BrainI cannot tell a lie, this book is a doozy — chock full of vocabulary words, scientific theory and things that, quite frankly, I’ve never ever heard about.  Hey, I was a theatre major. I haven’t taken a real science class, like, ever. And to be honest, I did have some trouble understanding what Shermer was talking about the first few times I’d read a paragraph. But I struggled through the tough parts only to be rewarded with glimmers of understanding. A faint grasp at times, other times a firm grip – no one could ever question the author’s authority on the subject at hand. Indeed he dissects his own skepticism and libertarian leanings, making it easier for this theatre major to understand and identify with his thought process. While I would have liked the book to be more pedestrian, more practical in its delivery, I appreciate the thoroughness with which Shermer approached the myriad of complexities of the human brain. Read more »

Valient Thorr: On Earth to Help

Posted by on February 25, 2012 2 comments

 

In a world where rock music has devolved into coiffed dudes with tribal armbands crying about their girlfriends, Valient Thorr is a blast of Thin-Lizzy-Lynyrd-Skynyrd-Motorhead kick-ass telling those dudes to wake the hell up.

Valient Himself

Valient Himself (Courtesy of Volcom Entertainment)

Since their Venusian spacecraft crashed in North Carolina in the early 2000s, they’ve been bringing true rock n roll to Earthlings almost nonstop – and this online media empire just found out about them.  Alternative Control spoke with singer Valient Himself on February 23, a week before the band kicks off a tour with Corrosion of Conformity, Torche, and A Storm of Light.

“Venus was just a shitty place to live,” Himself explained.  “We were looking for really good real estate somewhere else, and heard that the dinosaurs had died out…”  Due to the crash landing and some unfortunate meddling by Walt Disney, the band members were forced to become permanent Earth residents, and soon realized that there were malevolent forces at work here. Read more »

My Lifelong Struggle with Metal Trivia

Posted by on February 20, 2012 5 comments

 

At work, we talk a lot about how important it is for students to have background knowledge of influential people and important historical events – in other words, “No, sweetie, Michelle Obama’s mother couldn’t possibly have been a slave BECAUSE THE CIVIL WAR ENDED IN 1865!”  I’m finding that background knowledge is also helpful in the realm of metal.

I’ve never been a music trivia person; I listened to the self-titled Sublime album on repeat from eighth grade ‘til college, but I couldn’t tell you half the song titles, or the even names of any band members besides Bradley.  And metal?  Forget it.  Bruce Dickinson’s a singer, right? Megadeth only has one “a” in it?  This lack of background knowledge gets me into some goofy situations editing a blog that is supposed to be about metal!

Valient Himself

Valient Himself -- Photo by Matthew Eisman

The latest situation began over a year ago, when I interviewed Andrea Black of Howl.  (BTW, she’s not in the band any more – plus one trivia point for me!)  At the time, they were on tour with Junius and Valient Thorr.

The interview went fine and I looked up those other bands on Youtube.  Valient Thorr seemed pretty cool – hard rock n roll, a hairy shirtless singer in bright red pants…

Seven or eight months after that, I saw that Jucifer was coming to the Heirloom Theater.  “Awesome!” I thought to myself.  “That band that was on tour with Howl!”  …Who I had mixed up with Junius, who by this time I thought was Valient Thorr. Read more »

STOP TELLING ME THINGS! The Art of Screaming at TVs

Posted by on February 15, 2012 No comments

Every time it’s the same. I’ll go to a friend’s house, sit down on his comfortable couch, and proceed to yell comically at the television. My screaming isn’t directed at just a particular show or commercial, and sometimes it comes without warning. To be honest, it’s really just to get a laugh or assert my position as dominant idiot in the group. I don’t have this profound hatred for television, and I guess there are even some great aspects of it. But when I think about it, I realize just how little TV I actually watch – probably less than two hours a week. I have a T.V in my bedroom, and I frequently make this conscious decision to not turn it on. There has to be a reason for it, right? Therefore, my screaming at the screen has to have a purpose, right? My veins pop from my neck for a cause, correct?

"No, I won't trust Resolve with my carpet stains!"

Maybe… Or maybe I’m just a ranting maniac. I better explain myself a bit, so nobody poisons my beer for the benefit of TV watching humanity. To give you a better feel of what it’s like watching TV with me, I’ll set up these prominent two points with a phrase in all capital letters that comes directly from my more common, jarring outbursts.

  • STOP TELLING ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE!!!!

This is obviously directed at commercials – a huge part of why I’d rather look at a black screen. Read more »

Dancing with a Giant Book: Review of Martin’s A Dance with Dragons

Posted by on February 4, 2012 No comments

 

North of the Wall, a skinchanger enters a wolf’s body and gorges himself on human flesh.  Thousands of miles to the south, a fourteen-year-old queen tends to three ferocious dragons in the hopes that they will win back her ancestral empire.  In between, a beaten populace has more immediate concerns than wargs and winged beasts: avoiding armies of warring nobility and finding something to eat.

This is the state of Westeros in A Dance with Dragons (2011), the fifth novel in George R.R. Martin’s acclaimed fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.  Martin is often compared to Tolkien and Robert Jordan, but he’s much darker.  Tolkien of course is pretty “PG” and Jordan might throw in some true love here and there, but Martin is heavy on sex, torture, and more sex.  (Imagine The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, except with real dragons and about fifty more characters…)

Weighing in at three and a half pounds – yes, I put the book on my bathroom scale – Dragons is a beast, and it’s impossible to discuss it without mentioning the other books in the series.  The first, A Game of Thrones, introduces the Starks, the Baratheons, and the Lannisters; these interconnected noble families are “friendly” at the beginning of the book, but mortal enemies by the end.  Readers also meet Daenerys Targaryen, a young girl whose father was king before being ousted in a civil war that took place before the book began – and who some say is the true heir to Westeros’s Iron Throne. Read more »

Brides + Basement = Bad Horror Movies

Posted by on February 3, 2012 No comments

 

BAD horror movies bring me a lot of joy.  I’m talking about the kind that is so awful it’s insulting.  Bad scripts, bad acting, bad special effects, just plain bad.  I particularly like movies from the 70s because they weren’t torture porn like today’s horror movies — and more importantly, the boobs were real.  Cutler’s Records in New Haven, Connecticut has the most hideous horror movie collection known to man at the right price.  While digging through the bins, I found two movies that are cinematic gold:  Don’t Look in the Basement (1973) and He Knows You’re Alone (1980).  Movies with cautionary titles teach us important lessons, so I strongly recommend you watch these two right away.

In Don’t Look in the Basement, we’re introduced to a ridiculous cast of characters who are patients in Stephens Sanitarium.  A lobotomized black guy named Sam and his toy boat, a woman possessively  rocking a baby doll, an old crone, a nymphomaniac, a hyper ginger with a fro whose sole purpose is to annoy, and a paranoid army dude in full combat gear are just a few of the outcasts.  Being part of a new experimental treatment, they are encouraged to act out their delusions.  In the first scene, Dr. Stephens instructs an axe murderer to violently chop wood as part of his treatment.  “Use the axe, listen to me, use the axe!” he commands.  When Dr. Stephens turns his back, this homicidal maniac surprisingly uses the axe to hack him to death. Read more »

The Pocono Mountains – A World Away in Just over Two Hours

Posted by on February 2, 2012 1 comment

 

The author with some Poconos wildlife.With this being the month of love, I thought I’d share a relationship secret with you. Relationships are a lot of fucking work. As with most brilliantly constructed sentences, you can take a statement more than one way. One, relationships are a lot of work: real work, hard work and sometimes downright ugly work. Two, it’s the fucking work that makes all the other work worthwhile. And doing that work in a new place? Well, that just plain rocks. Read more »