The Greatest Thing Since the Last Thing That Was Great

When I was in middle school, I watched a potentially distressing amount of MTV.  This was around the time when they were playing the videos for "Soul To Squeeze" and "November Rain" constantly.  And every hour, they would run the "MTV News" bit where Kurt Loder had to tell all of the kids about the big news story of the day.  And of course, I was never watching when, say, he reported on Kurt Cobain killing himself (I heard about that on NPR during a car ride to a chess tournament in Charlotte, just to give you an idea of how cool I really was).  The only story I remember was one about some kid who got kicked out of a mall for wearing a t-shirt for the band Fishbone that had the phrase "Fuck Racism" on the back.  I have no idea why I remember that, since I'm not sure I've ever actually listened to a Fishbone song.  Anyway, it turns out that VH1 Classic has their own version of this- a two or three minute "news" segment that runs at the end of every hour.  Only, instead of telling semi-real news stories about "classic" bands, the segments are invariably commercials for new albums from heavy metal bands.  Kiss, in particular, for reasons I can't begin to discern.  So, after tonight's Venture Bros.  was over, I was flipping through the channels, and on my cable system, VH1 Classic is two channels away from the Cartoon Network.  So I caught the most awesome segment with Judas Priest talking about their latest album.  It's a concept album about  Nostradamus- a double album actually- and watching three aging guys wearing their heavy metal leather outfits and talking so seriously about Nostradamus turns out to be more Spinal Tap than some scenes from the film This Is Spinal Tap.  To give you some idea of how awesome this is, I quote from the "Story line" section of the album's Wikipedia page.  "Nostradamus [no italics is sic] centres [also sic, leading me to believe that the British contingent of Judas Priest fans won out on a wiki editing war that was truly a thing of beauty] around the life and times of the prophet.  The first disc details various prophecies he has about the future and the end of the world.  This leads to him being exiled.  Later on, after his death, the world realises [also sic] just how right he was."  The album is out now, and there's a version that includes a 48 page booklet.  The mind can only boggle at the potential brilliance of that.  I just looked at the track listing, and the last track is called "Future of Mankind" and is eight and a half minutes long.  Just when you think that you've seen all that the world has to offer, something like this returns to restore your since of... wonder, I guess?  

My sister's wedding seemed to go well.  I won't bother describing it, since there's a very real chance that only two people reading this blog weren't there in person.  And today I got the cathartic thrill of deleting about a dozen songs that my sister insisted I download onto my computer.

I think I had gotten used to being fairly busy over the last few days, because I couldn't really relax today.  So I went to see Hellboy 2, in part because I thought the first one was pretty decent, but mostly because I wanted to go the movies and that was the only thing I hadn't seen that I have any intention of ever seeing.  The movie is very interesting visually, but mostly sucks as a story.  del Toro, the director, seems to believe that audience has some sort of emotional connection to these characters, which is a very odd thing to believe.  If I hadn't already divested myself of any expectations for the Hobbit movies (yes, movieS.  Peter Jackson could do each book from Lord of the Rings in one film, but Guillermo del Toro needs two movies to tell the story of Bilbo Baggins stumbling across a piece of jewelry, walking around with a bunch of dwarves, then arguing with a dragon, then going back home), I would probably be concerned.  

I picked up the new Beck album.  I've only listened to it once, while I was driving around on Saturday.  The album seemed fine, but it didn't jump out at me as much I was hoping for, especially since Danger Mouse produced it.  Beck is one those acts that I like, but I would have a hard time explaining precisely why.  I mean, I love Odelay as much as the next guy, and maybe this idea I have that Beck is looked at as some sort of standard-bearer for music fans between the ages of, say, 25-40 is just my own misconception, but... actually, I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  You figure it out.  

I also bought the new Weezer album, even though I had agreed with myself that I wasn't going to.  Which goes to show how much I can be trusted.  I listened to the first three songs on the way to the movies.  The first track was kind of just there, the second track was a mess, and the third was the single "Pork and Beans", which seems all of the obvious "singles" from the post-Pinkerton albums- "Hash Pipe", "Keep Fishing", "Beverly Hills" and so forth.  I'll listen to the rest of the album with the hope that it can only exceed my low expectations.  I form odd sense of cultural obligation.  I've bought all of Weezer's releases this decade (including an import version of the Green album, the import of the "Island In The Sun" single and the limited release EP of the band live in Japan) out of a sense of obligation.  But I was once as big a Kevin Smith fan as I was a Weezer fan, and I haven't seen one of his movies in the theater since 2001.