vida porcupina
Giving a second chance to....
... Metallica: Death Magnetic.
My favorite Metallica album is still Kill 'em All (okay, it's Garage Days Re-Revisited, but out of the full-length stuff). However, I liked the Black Album; it was good for its place and time in music and band history and the songs have stood up well in the years since. Also, yay, actual audible bass. But that was the last album I liked and the boys jumped the shark a lot with the public therapy and the Napster and the S&M stuff and whatever the hell St. Anger was. Whoever thought Dave Mustaine would turn out to be the stable one?
Death Magnetic is not really a throwback album -- lyrically and stylicistically, this is close to ... And Justice For All, but these are songs they either couldn't have written or would have come out wrong twenty (*cough, sputter*) years ago. Hetfield's learned to sing a little -- or at least roar properly from the chest -- since then and everyone's playing like they know what they're doing (instead of what they hope works) and the end result is a really big, fat sound that swaggers.
The album's not perfect and Hetfield's lyrics can be charmingly reminiscent of the poetry you wrote in fifth grade, but it's just really nice to hear the men and not the mice.
Favorites so far: "Judas Kiss" and "Cyanide"
... Supernatural. I punked out pretty early on in Season Three -- I could say they lost me with "Bad Day at Black Rock", but it was a lot of things. And I honestly didn't miss it at all. But Kripke and company didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat with Dean's deal and people on my f-list were squeeing, so...
Wow, they weren't kidding about the recap vid, were they. I think it was coffeeandink who said it was the 'Woman's Work' vid without the irony and... yeah. Going by that, all I missed was a lot of women dying and Dean going to hell.
The episode was... okay. Good in spots, bad in others:
Women killed/disfigured = 2, plus Sam's hooker who only had her dignity mangled. It's a tally that I wouldn't have even noticed had they not made it very clear in that recap vid that killing women was a theme to hum along to.
I adore Bobby and was happy to see him -- and happier that he survived the episode, although I'm starting to lose that fear a little. He's pretty much got to live or else they're going to have to develop another wise parental figure to play off the boys.
There's a ton of potential in the idea that four months have changed everything between the Winchester boys -- sledgehammered a little by Dean's scoffing that he knows everything about Sam and then missing so much. It's a chance to bring back the friction of the first year, when the boys hadn't been living out of each other's pockets for a few years and had grown up apart for a little while.
I like the concept of Sam, the good boy, working with demons hoping to do good work and Dean, the bad boy, enlisted by angels presumably to do very bad things. (If that's how it shakes out.) Does this put us on the road to Sam versus Dean later on, the general of hell's demons versus the paladin of heaven?
I don't like the idea of Dean holding out forever on there being no god/angels/heaven/divine. I am fine with him thinking he's being jerked around -- he should be suspicious. But if he's going to be an atheist, I want an explanation. This isn't about my faith; it's about logic -- the holy water only works because someone who believes in the power of God blessed it, so the idea that Dean can use it and believe in its power without believing in the source of that power... does not compute. John made holy water in the first season; if he did it believing in the power of the deity he was invoking, yeah, but if he did it believing that Magic Words + Dihydogen Monoxide = Holy Water like a chemical formula that's guaranteed to work... that's all wrong.
This show will lose me completely and forever if it turns out that there are only demons and hellmouths with nothing in opposition. I'm not prepared to be vested in a universe where there is only damnation. I can and will accept that the forces of good and redemption are either absenting themselves or held in check, thereby leaving our boys to fill the gap, but if there's only suffering and misery hidden (or not) by ignorance... that's a terribly depressing place not worth my time.
I'll give next week another shot, but I'm bailing at the first episode played for yukks.
Giving a first chance to...
The Middleman. Why did nobody tell me about this? Comics people -- you're all fired. Matt Keeslar is dorktastic and I want my own Ida.
Uh Huh Her. An updated Bangles, kind of -- the good Bangles stuff, not the super-twee Susanna Hoffs stuff that got on the radio. (myspace page)
... took that politics test that's blowing out everyone's f-list. Still not a socialist. I came out straddling the border between Capitalist and Libertarian, which I'd like to consider the territory of cynics. I also suspect I'd have ended up much more firmly ensconced in Libertarian had some of the questions been better worded.
... and in case you missed it, I wrote duckfic.
... Metallica: Death Magnetic.
My favorite Metallica album is still Kill 'em All (okay, it's Garage Days Re-Revisited, but out of the full-length stuff). However, I liked the Black Album; it was good for its place and time in music and band history and the songs have stood up well in the years since. Also, yay, actual audible bass. But that was the last album I liked and the boys jumped the shark a lot with the public therapy and the Napster and the S&M stuff and whatever the hell St. Anger was. Whoever thought Dave Mustaine would turn out to be the stable one?
Death Magnetic is not really a throwback album -- lyrically and stylicistically, this is close to ... And Justice For All, but these are songs they either couldn't have written or would have come out wrong twenty (*cough, sputter*) years ago. Hetfield's learned to sing a little -- or at least roar properly from the chest -- since then and everyone's playing like they know what they're doing (instead of what they hope works) and the end result is a really big, fat sound that swaggers.
The album's not perfect and Hetfield's lyrics can be charmingly reminiscent of the poetry you wrote in fifth grade, but it's just really nice to hear the men and not the mice.
Favorites so far: "Judas Kiss" and "Cyanide"
... Supernatural. I punked out pretty early on in Season Three -- I could say they lost me with "Bad Day at Black Rock", but it was a lot of things. And I honestly didn't miss it at all. But Kripke and company didn't pull a rabbit out of the hat with Dean's deal and people on my f-list were squeeing, so...
Wow, they weren't kidding about the recap vid, were they. I think it was coffeeandink who said it was the 'Woman's Work' vid without the irony and... yeah. Going by that, all I missed was a lot of women dying and Dean going to hell.
The episode was... okay. Good in spots, bad in others:
Women killed/disfigured = 2, plus Sam's hooker who only had her dignity mangled. It's a tally that I wouldn't have even noticed had they not made it very clear in that recap vid that killing women was a theme to hum along to.
I adore Bobby and was happy to see him -- and happier that he survived the episode, although I'm starting to lose that fear a little. He's pretty much got to live or else they're going to have to develop another wise parental figure to play off the boys.
There's a ton of potential in the idea that four months have changed everything between the Winchester boys -- sledgehammered a little by Dean's scoffing that he knows everything about Sam and then missing so much. It's a chance to bring back the friction of the first year, when the boys hadn't been living out of each other's pockets for a few years and had grown up apart for a little while.
I like the concept of Sam, the good boy, working with demons hoping to do good work and Dean, the bad boy, enlisted by angels presumably to do very bad things. (If that's how it shakes out.) Does this put us on the road to Sam versus Dean later on, the general of hell's demons versus the paladin of heaven?
I don't like the idea of Dean holding out forever on there being no god/angels/heaven/divine. I am fine with him thinking he's being jerked around -- he should be suspicious. But if he's going to be an atheist, I want an explanation. This isn't about my faith; it's about logic -- the holy water only works because someone who believes in the power of God blessed it, so the idea that Dean can use it and believe in its power without believing in the source of that power... does not compute. John made holy water in the first season; if he did it believing in the power of the deity he was invoking, yeah, but if he did it believing that Magic Words + Dihydogen Monoxide = Holy Water like a chemical formula that's guaranteed to work... that's all wrong.
This show will lose me completely and forever if it turns out that there are only demons and hellmouths with nothing in opposition. I'm not prepared to be vested in a universe where there is only damnation. I can and will accept that the forces of good and redemption are either absenting themselves or held in check, thereby leaving our boys to fill the gap, but if there's only suffering and misery hidden (or not) by ignorance... that's a terribly depressing place not worth my time.
I'll give next week another shot, but I'm bailing at the first episode played for yukks.
Giving a first chance to...
The Middleman. Why did nobody tell me about this? Comics people -- you're all fired. Matt Keeslar is dorktastic and I want my own Ida.
Uh Huh Her. An updated Bangles, kind of -- the good Bangles stuff, not the super-twee Susanna Hoffs stuff that got on the radio. (myspace page)
... took that politics test that's blowing out everyone's f-list. Still not a socialist. I came out straddling the border between Capitalist and Libertarian, which I'd like to consider the territory of cynics. I also suspect I'd have ended up much more firmly ensconced in Libertarian had some of the questions been better worded.
... and in case you missed it, I wrote duckfic.