I'm Too Old For This Shit

Monday we got a call from my brother: he had a pair of tickets to the Tool concert the following night--did we want them? The answer, of course, was "yes." I've been a fan of Tool since the mid-nineties, and Michele is a recent convert, having come to them through singer Maynard James Keenan's other band, A Perfect Circle. Given the opportunity we had to go.

Tool (for those of you unfamiliar) is a progressive rock/metal band led more by the bass player than by the more traditional lead guitar. The instrumental quality of the band is amazing and the band is a quirky animal. The lyrics are strange, the videos are really strange, and the band shuns publicity like everyone might hope Paris Hilton would.

The concert was amazing. The band blasted for two hours, had a great light show, and never let up. Maynard stayed true to his weirdness--in order to emphasize the music over the musicians, he sings from the back, next to the drums, and sometimes faces away from the audience. It was hypnotizing and energizing and even inspiring.

The problem was that there were other people there.

I expected a certain amount of 93X-type idiocy at this concert. After all, the band's only marketable angle is their relation to heavy music. We saw the mouth-breathers early and often, including one troglodyte in the men's room who walked in talking on his cell phone, talked while he relieved himself, and kept on talking as he neglected to wash his hands on the way out. His contribution to his conversation, at least as much of it as I could bear to hear, consisted of phrases like, "Like, fuck, dude," and, "Dude--like, fuck." I couldn't count the crooked hats and ill-considered facial piercings. Thankfully, there were no flip-flops.

The big pain was the smoke. As soon as the lights went out, the fires started burning. I think Michele and I were the only two in the building not smoking. I learned last night what pot smoke smells like. That's some horrible shit. About a third of the smoke was conventional cigarettes--the rest was chiba.

The opening band was interesting. They're called Big Business [link: http://www.myspace.com/bigbigbusiness (sorry, blogger won't let me edit my HTML)], and live their songs only sound a bit like the MySpace versions. I prefer the MySpace versions. Live, they sound like screaming mud. Oddly, they reminded me of when Sly and I went to the KISS reunion tour in 1996 and the Melvins opened. Imagine my surprise to find out that the two guys in Big Business are also members of the Melvins.

So I guess here's my assessment:
Tool is an amazing band live. If you have any inclination toward this kind of music, see them. Big Business is a little more hit-or-miss, but I liked them.

Tool's fans--for the most part--are worthless. I imagined last night that if someone dropped a bomb on the arena the state's median IQ would have risen about 50 points (and that's with my brilliant wife inside). I couldn't believe the number of mouth-breathing, pot-smoking, beer-spilling, cell-phone-addicted, loud-talking morons I saw.

I might not be able to go to any more concerts--no matter how much I admire the music. I wanted the whole audience dead. Not violently dead. Just dead-in-their-sleep dead. Peaceful, but final.

I'm too old for that shit.

Not That I Think of This Kind of Thing a Lot, But . . .

Yes, I know. I've been neglecting the blog. I could claim any number of excuses, but I won't. I've had a few minutes here and there, but not many. Enough to write, but not enough to figure out what to write.

But here's something I thought you should see. Another musical love child. See this guy?

His name's Gerard Way, and he's the lead singer for pop-punk band My Chemical Romance. But to me he looks like these are his parents:

Just in case you're not up on your pop-punk history, that's Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins on the left and Kurt "Feed Me Some of That Buckshot" Cobain of Nirvana on the right.

Okay, so there's something wrong with me. Obviously, that union could not have produced a child. Nor would we have wanted it to.

But, really--look at him. Then look at them.

His name should be Kurbly Corborgain.

Now that's funny.

Another One of Those Weeks

When it rains it pours, right? Here we are, planning a move to a new state, trying to get my mom's deck built, planning for Michele's sister's wedding, and trying to tie up all the loose ends here, visiting places we'll miss and such--and Michele's aunt dies.

It's really sad, to be honest. I didn't know Carol well--hadn't met her more than a few times--but she'd treated me well. I'll take on the obnoxiously faux-somber tones of a TV anchor: "She lost a courageous battle with cancer." In truth, she was kicking ass and taking names. I lost track of the number of times we were told she had two weeks to a month to live. She kept on going and kept her sense of humor to the end. It's times like this when I think cancer will get us all.

I feel awkward at times like this, because my attitude toward death is way too cavalier for most people. It began as a defense mechanism, starting when I was told my dad's cancer was terminal in the spring of 1988. I was just about to graduate from high school, and I wasn't even human yet. When most people start really forming an idea of what their life would be I was envisioning the end: we're all gonna die. All of us. No exceptions.

So I started making jokes about death, about cancer. I started sneering at people who got emotional over death, and especially at the clichés and euphemisms that surrounded it. That they're "in a better place." That they've "passed on" or "passed away." The worst, though was that they were "lost." "I lost my mother to cancer." "He was lost in the Battle of the Bulge." It made me crazy. "Lost" implies either unknown physical location or the unsuccessful completion of a contest. Describing death as either trivializes our end and characterizes people as possessions. I've been fanatical about this. Most of it comes from the pain of my father's death when I was eighteen, but it's been fed by other deaths: my mom's dad on Christmas Eve, 1994; my aunt Mary in April, 1995; my dad's dad in 1997; my grandmother in 2000. My aunts Jean and Judy. Since Michele and I started dating her grandmother died, and now her Uncle Jim and Aunt Carol within six months of each other. I feel like the angel of death. These people were lost? No. We aren't that careless.

But death doesn't scare me. It doesn't even strike me as a bad thing. We get our hundred years or less to do with what we want and then we're forced to move on. Out of the pool. In the words of the Dream Theater song, "Every breath brings me one less till my last." In fifty years nobody will remember my grandparents, and in a hundred years nobody will remember me. That's the way it goes for 99% of humanity.

It still doesn't make this weekend any less sad. My mother-in-law, Carol's sister, is distraught. I've seen a lot of tears from stoic people this week. I can't let my robotic detatchment allow me to hurt others who might feel some human pain. Funerals aren't for the dead, after all. They're for those left behind. The conscious ones who can still cry. And laugh, and shake our heads.

I liked Carol, as little as I knew her.

Now we'll go through the wake/funeral/grief cycle. Eventually we'll get back to planning the big move, and the deck will get finished, and maybe I'll find work in Oklahoma. That would be nice. And life will go on, and we'll remember the dead from time to time, less as time goes on, and we'll figure it all out.

Because that's life.

Welcome to Planet Dunce

Good Criminy.

How's this for a story?

Here's a picture I made (poorly) to commemorate the event:


Faith in humanity: Low.