No Apologies

I have at least three people pretty directly involved in my life who are dealing with cancer right now, in one way or another. One person has someone in her family who just discovered they have the disease, another will almost certainly lose her husband this fall (I just learned this today), and one little nine-year-old is living on an undetermined amount of borrowed time.

I can relate to people who don't want to take up the fight so directly, because I didn't myself until I was forced to the front line. And maybe that's what it takes for people to start to understand how important it is to fight this off. Maybe you need cancer to knock you on your ass before you fully appreciate how awful it is. But now that I'm in that category and I know what it's like, I really don't think I'm ever going to apologize for encouraging and pushing people to get involved in the fight, even if it's something as painless as a small donation once a year. I can overlook ignorance and denial, since I lived with them myself for so long. But people who are informed, and makes the choice to stay on the sidelines? Seriously: What's the problem? Life or death. You gonna fight, or you gonna watch? This thing ain't gonna cure itself.

A Point to Prove

Feelin' good today. Woo hoo! The storms that rolled through last night stayed far enough south to keep the worst of the ugly out of my neck of the woods. The morning after an experience like that always feels like a relief. I spent the day doing a lot of reading, writing, and relaxing. Pretty darn good day overall. Even as I look at the calendar and see that school officially begins for me in three more weeks, I don't see that as only having three weeks left, but still having three more weeks. Yes, people. The glass is half FULL today. I'll pause for a moment while some of you out there take a moment to collect yourselves......................


Anyway.

To temper such comfortable optimism, I went to the darkest corners of the iTunes vault for today's Album of the Day: "Ride the Lightning" by Metallica. This is the album with song titles like "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Fade to Black," "Trapped Under Ice," and "Creeping Death." Not exactly Katy Perry's neighborhood. But man, I'll tell ya - this album ROCKS. And really taking the time to listen to it closely brings to mind a point of musical debate I have loaded up for anyone who would dare to challenge it: Heavy Metal is undeniably a better quality of music than country. Notice I said quality there. I'm not stating an opinion here; there are lots of people out there that love their country music, and I have no problem with that. I even see the appeal, and a lot of the stuff in my library could be considered country rock, alt country, and, in some stretches, perhaps even crossover. But metal is a better quality. All metal? Heck no. I spent about twenty minutes watching performances from the Download Festival over in England this weekend, long enough to see Slipknot and Korn perform. I like some songs by Korn, but I have no problem with saying Slipknot sounds like an industrial accident in progress, and I'm sure they're proud of it. On the other side of the argument, I'm sure there are country acts that so deeply revel in their hillbilly redneck pride that they might brew up their own moonshine just for the principle of it. My point is that if you took the best examples of country music and compared them to the best examples of metal, country would lose out. I offer up two reasons for this opinion: Songwriting, and musical virtuosity.

Yeah, I know. Country prides itself on the songwriting thing. And yeah, at it's best it has some great songs, but I think the genre itself places limitations on the content of the songs themselves that metal doesn't need to abide by. Are there a lot of country concept albums out there? I'm not aware of them if there are. Country follows the same rules pop does: write songs folks'll like and hum and dance and drink and party along with when they hear them. Metal? No. Let's look at one of my favorite bands here to illustrate this point: Iron Maiden. I have 142 Maiden songs on the iPod, and the subjects of these songs? Executions during the Spanish Inquisition. The European decimation of Native American nations. Greek Mythology. The threat of nuclear winter. Alexander the Great. The sacrifices of World War I. More literary references than I'm probably aware of. I could go on but I'm probably boring you already.

Okay, point two: Virtuosity. Yes, I fully acknowledge that there are some ridiculously talented musicians playing country music. But again, looking at the top acts in each genre, the percentage of metal acts that are based around musical virtuosity is so much higher. How many musicians in country music are name musicians known for their playing alone, much less their songs? The game is called Guitar Hero, not Steel Guitar Hero. Angus Young? Eddie Van Halen? Steve Vai? Joe Satriani? Every member of a hundred different bands that most people don't know?

No contest.

Rain Keeps Fallin', Rain Keeps Fallin' Down

I'm feeling a little down today. It's been a stressful week compared to most of the summer, but that's to be expected when you go from doing next to nothing to having actual sustained responsibilities overnight. But that has nothing to do with feeling kind of down.

I saw on Yahoo News mid-afternoon that John Hughes had died. If you were an 80s teenager, you don't need to be told who he was. If you weren't, you still might not need to be told. But in case his name doesn't ring a bell, maybe some of these names will: "Sixteen Candles." "The Breakfast Club." "Pretty in Pink." "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." "Some Kind of Wonderful." Not to mention "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," "She's Having a Baby," "Uncle Buck," "The Great Outdoors," "Weird Science" (not his greatest moment), "Mr. Mom," and of course two perennial holiday movies, "Home Alone" and "Christmas Vacation."

I like to think I'm a halfway decent writer, but I don't think there's any way to describe the kind of thumbprint that gets left on your life and your world view unless you had the shared experience of being in high school the year "The Breakfast Club" came out in theaters. This is a man who wrote one of the movie lines I quote the most frequently. Whenever one of my students will say something about their church, I'll reply, "You own a church?!"

Thanks for the formative years and 10,001 quotable lines, Mr. Hughes. You'll be missed.