(image) Chelsea Girls are kinda like Camp Freddy, but with less dicks and more balls. Indeed the band's chief instigator, bassist Corey Parks of Nashville Pussy, was inspired to put the all-female/all-star cover band together after becoming a regular guest player alongside Camp Freddy's bad-boy... more

Chelsea Girls are kinda like Camp Freddy, but with less dicks and more balls. Indeed the band's chief instigator, bassist Corey Parks of Nashville Pussy, was inspired to put the all-female/all-star cover band together after becoming a regular guest player alongside Camp Freddy's bad-boy residents (Dave Navarro, Billy Morrison, Donovan Leitch Jr., et al.).

"It was so loose and fun, and you got to play all the songs that you grew up listening to and that made you start to want to play rock and roll to begin with," says Parks. A call from fellow like-minded Camp Freddy guest Teri Nunn (of Berlin) prompted Cory to start thinking about her dream XX band. Nunn later dropped out of the project and Cory moved on alone.

"Samantha Maloney [of Peaches and Hole] was my first choice for drummer," says Parks, who, after a false start with the Go-Go's Jane Weidlan, secured the services of Donnas' guitarist Allison Robertson. Robertson then brought in Les Deux's Rock Mondays promoter Tuesdae, who completed the core lineup. Though the least well known of the Chelsea Girls, the Juilliard scholarship recipient, who toured the world as a teen opera starlet, rocks out on vocals like a vet.

The band started rehearsing in early January, and have played just two shows to date. Though their residency at the Sunset Strip's Roxy is in its infancy, already the buzz around Chelsea Girls is as loud as their music, which is a mix of classic, head-banging rock. Heart's "Barracuda", Guns N' Roses' "Welcome To The Jungle", Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", and Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" are on their set list, though Parks hopes to expand the band's scope as things progress. Their ultimate goal is simple; "We want to be the greatest rock and roll cover band in the world," says Parks. "We will accept nothing less."

Chelsea Girls are keen to keep their concept live and direct. "It's such a dream situation because we don't have to write a record," explains Parks, who doesn't want to get distracted by the toil of recording and promoting a record. "People have actually already asked us," she says, before quickly dismissing the idea. "Why? Why would we do a record of covers? It's the most absurd thing in my life. We're playing songs that people have heard thousands and millions of times. It would never work. No matter how well we play them you would never listen to these and go 'Oh my god, I love this so much better than the original, I'm going to buy a record.'"

One might beg to differ on that point, since Chelsea Girls have a knack of giving even the most testosterone-heavy songs a steroid edge and an adrenalin high. However, for now the girls just want to have fun, and perhaps show a generation of young women, who've missed out on the likes of Joan Jett and Susie Quatro and have had the Pussycat Dolls fed to them as role models, that "you can learn how to play an instrument and kill it!"

"We just want to have the greatest, funnest rock and roll night," says Parks. "We want to be able to provide people with solid, amazing entertainment -- and we want to show little girls that guitars aren't necklaces."


Images of Chelsea Girls at the Roxy in West Hollywood, CA on February 26th, 2009. Special guests included Carmen Electra and Lemmy of Motorhead. Click HERE to view large image library.

Today I am writing the Asshole Fuckface Roundup from the jury assembly room in Burbank, California. It seems an appropriate place, considering so many Asshole Fuckfaces are awaiting their fate. Also, I’m in Burbank, a pit of hideousness and heinousness. I cannot wait to declare some poor bastard... more

Today I am writing the Asshole Fuckface Roundup from the jury assembly room in Burbank, California. It seems an appropriate place, considering so many Asshole Fuckfaces are awaiting their fate. Also, I’m in Burbank, a pit of hideousness and heinousness. I cannot wait to declare some poor bastard guilty and recommend the death penalty – no matter the crime. I am the ultimate juror. But before I send a criminal to their doom, I will present to you this week’s Asshole Fuckfaces. They are a disturbing group. I have scoured the news of the world in order to find them, so you can mock their very existence. I’m a very nice person. So, put on your favorite flight suit because this is going to be ugly.

First up, some spectacular Asshole Fuckfacery out of Colorado.

Meet Republican State Senator Scott Renfroe. He likey Jesus and no likey gays! While debating a gay rights bill on Monday, Scotty let loose with some delightful comments.

Um. Wait. Killing someone is the same as a dude blowing a dude? Really? Because in one case, someone is dead, gone from the planet, causing his family incredible pain, and in the other case, a dude is fantastically satisfied and probably needs a nap. So, I see a bit of a difference. Also, adultery is legal in a bunch of places. A bunch. Oh, and just being a “homosexual” isn’t illegal.

Really? Why did he make the anus such an awesome thing to put your cock in? I mean, seriously, the anus is like a suitcase made for lugging around cock. Shouldn’t God have put some little thorns in the rectum, or something? As it stands now, the anus seems to actually have been made for the cock, like beans and rice. Are you going to ban the combining of beans and rice next? I didn’t think so. Oh, and as far as the “procreate” thing goes…if I slam my cock into a lady and empty my man juice in there, can I then put it into a fella? I mean, it has done its “procreating” and now needs a bit of a vacation. And what better place for a holiday than in a manus?

Please say that to my wife. Please. Then cover your balls, you Neanderthal.

Next up, some corporate Asshole Fuckfacery.

Who doesn’t love McDonalds? Well, me, actually. I’d rather eat turds. And I do. But that has nothing to do with this tale of horror. Last summer, Nigel Hasket was working at a McDonald’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, when he noticed a male customer punching a female customer in the face. Now, Nigel realized very quickly that such activity does not jive with the “I’m Loving It” slogan. She was clearly not loving It. So, Nigel intervened and threw the punch-happy Perry Kennon out and blocked the door.

Well, now nobody was Loving It.

Keenon was arrested and charged with first-degree battery. Thankfully, Nigel survived. He has had three surgeries and racked up over 300K in medical bills. Naturally, McDonald’s would rather not pay any of that.

McDonald’s: Where Beating Your Woman Is Super Cool.

Next up, more corporate Asshole Fuckfacery.

Working for a bank these days seems a bit like being a Viking in the old days. Just raping and pillaging your day away, without a thought about the horrible things you are doing. Take the good folks from Northern Trust, a Chicago-based bank. Last year, they received $1.6 billion clams of prime US grade money from the government. And this week, they had a kick-ass west coast party.

Oh, there’s more. This party is just getting started.

I think that may have actually been a punishment for some employees.

Northern Trust also sponsored a golf tournament this weekend. They aren’t disclosing how much of the $6.3 million dollar purse they covered, or the operating costs. Thankfully, the bank is run by financial geniuses.

But their sacrifice paid for a kick ass weekend, so it’s a win-win.

Oh, no. See, you are mixed up. We paid for this out of a different pile of money. You are thinking of the other pile of money. This sweet vacation came from the money with a different name on it. I understand your confusion.

Does Tiffany’s make diamond encrusted guillotines?

Finally, let’s head back to Colorado for more Asshole Fuckfacery.

Colorado, what up? When did you become the Asshole Fuckface capital of the United States? First we had Scott babbling about gays and their perceived naughtiness and now we have Republican state Senator Dave Schultheis opening his dumb hole about HIV and how the ladies love fuckin.

Yesterday, a bill was rolling through the Colorado Legislature that would require HIV tests for pregnant women. Everyone seemed to think this was a good idea –– except Dave. He crawled out of his hate hole and blurted out this gem.

Fuck yeah, bro! Why should a child not come into the world with HIV because mommy was a-fuckin? Lord knows there is no other way for a woman to get sweet HIV. She certainly wouldn’t get it if her husband was banging every dude at a rest stop, without her knowledge.

Fuck you, hippy! Go back to your land of cocks, whore!

Look, maybe we are all jumping to conclusions. Maybe, Dave is just a bit confused and he doesn’t want babies born with AIDS or HIV. He took the night to think about it and has issued a more clear statement.

Oh. My. God. AIDS baby = punishment for excessive fucking. Jesus would be super into this stance.


FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

Gretchen Mol has Americana in her veins. When she first arrived on the scene in the late 1990s, observers and critics, wowed by her cottony golden locks, gigawatt smile and that arresting name, which Jack Warner himself would have been proud to create, proclaimed her to be the heir apparent to the immaculately-coifed... more

Gretchen Mol has Americana in her veins. When she first arrived on the scene in the late 1990s, observers and critics, wowed by her cottony golden locks, gigawatt smile and that arresting name, which Jack Warner himself would have been proud to create, proclaimed her to be the heir apparent to the immaculately-coifed bombshells of Hollywood's Golden Age. Like any smart ingénue, Mol soaked up the attention and used it to land meaningful roles, rising above the "it girl" fray to become a captivating performer able to hold the screen with any leading man, or on her own.

In 2005, the then 32 year-old Mol's talents were brought to bear in a role that few actresses would have been capable (artistically or physically) of pulling off - that of the patron-saint of pin-up beauties, Bettie Page. The once in a lifetime role cemented Mol's reputation as a versatile, exciting talent, and did nothing to satiate her fetish for period work; what's followed since The Notorious Bettie Page have been parts such as the faithful homesteader wife of Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma and her current gig as a lady cop in a man's world in David E. Kelley's 70s police drama, Life on Mars.

This week also sees the release of An American Affair, a dark rejoinder to the innocent sexuality of Bettie Page. Mol plays Catherine Caswell, a Washington wife and fictional mistress to JFK in the stormy fall of 1963; she's a woman of deep, uncertain bearings who begins to allow a 13 year-old neighbor boy to indulge his attraction to her as a way of taking back some of the control that powerful men have taken from her. Earlier this week, Gretchen took some time out of her busy schedule to call up SuicideGirls and talk about the film, as well as muse on her strange connection to those towering blondes from a bygone age.

Ryan Stewart: I don't think you've done any press since Bettie Page died a couple of months ago. Any thoughts?

Gretchen Mol: You know, she was so full of mystery. I found, when I was trying to uncover who she was, that she was just so full of all these juxtapositions. She was very much a 50s woman and she was religious, but she was also so comfortable naked. For a woman of that time just to not pursue the picket fence and get married and have three kids, to move to New York and do all the things that she did - it's fascinating.

I found that above and beyond her beauty, those images -- the strength and the confidence she had in front of the camera -- she was just one of a kind. It's a cliché, I suppose, but there were a lot of pin-up ladies at the time and there was just something about her photographs. Her strength in them was unprecedented. A lot of that had to do with her physicality, yeah, but I think most of it was this light that came from inside of her. I remember when I was doing one of those scenes in the woods -- the first time she poses in the nude -- and Mary Harron said to me, "You know, this is her religion." Then it clicked. It was so moving, to see those two things together -- something taboo and yet liberating and beautiful.

RS: What do you think you learned from that experience of playing her, now that you look back on it?

GM: I think what I learned from doing Bettie was investigating how any given period affects how a woman reacts, you know? The culture of that time, how much of an effect that had on Bettie, being part of a time period when there was so much repression. That's why I love doing period films, because there's that much more information available about how someone might have behaved. Their circumstances are so far away from where I am today, and I'm attracted to that. I'm attracted to finding things that are removed from me, here and now. I can almost allow a little bit more of myself in, because it's that much more of a departure.

It's all about the things that were going on at the specific time, and for the specific woman. I'm sure that being a woman in Washington, D.C. who is married to an ex CIA-operative , that's going to be a lot different than what my mom was doing at the time, in Connecticut , going to art school. That is a totally different experience. I do enjoy going back into time, because it's one more mask to put on. It's one more detail that helps you understand a character. Doing something contemporary is fun too, but I've enjoyed being able to go into all these periods. Right now, this TV show I'm doing, Life on Mars, it's 1973 and my character is a police woman and women aren't even allowed to be detectives yet. All of that is stuff we get to play with, different challenges.

RS: Do you think it's just a coincidence that with An American Affair, you've gone right back to deconstructing Americana as a subject? It's almost a response to Bettie Page.

GM: I do think that's just a coincidence, although, you know, anytime you work on something you do get more knowledge and you do become fascinated by the period. You just think about it a lot more. After Bettie Page, I did feel like this film was sort of "the next generation," I suppose, but yeah, I do think that being able to do it was a coincidence.

RS: Who is Catherine Caswell, as you see her? She represents lots of different things to different men in the film.

GM: She's someone who was embedded in that society. She had married an ex-CIA operative and all that, but at her core she is someone who just wanted to be a painter. And she was a painter, she had her own aspirations. I also think she was a smart woman and she was tuned in [to the political intrigue around her] and she knew about some things that were going on and then she fell for the President. She got some information and then she got in over her head.

RS: Did it come naturally, playing someone who is keeping lots of secrets?

GM: I don't think I'm the best at keeping secrets, but I am a Scorpio! [laughs] You know, it's funny, because I didn't think of her as someone keeping secrets, because her primary relationship in the film is with the young boy. Also, of course, she's negotiating these men and dealing with something that she knew something about, but not everything about. If anything, she wasn't even clear why this information they thought she had was so important, you know? I think that she was just trying to protect herself and protect the President.

RS: Speaking of JFK, I read a book once that delved into his various affairs -- there was even a German spy in there.

GM: I didn't know about the German spy, but I did definitely indulge in a lot of the information, the history of things that were going on at that time. I found the whole political thing, the CIA, to be fascinating, as well as the playboy aspect of our President. I guess it's all sort of known now, but it's interesting that I almost feel bad talking about it, like it's gossip or something, but it's out there!

RS: That's our history now.

GM: Absolutely! And the woman that was created for the movie, Catherine, I can't say too much about this, but there was someone who...she's not a Marilyn figure at all. There are definitely some characters who were similar.

RS: Let's talk about the boy a bit. I can certainly understand what a 13 year-old boy would see in your character, but what does she get out of encouraging him?

GM: There's some vanity there, but also, isn't it lovely just to be adored by someone? Especially at a time in her life when she's kind of alone. Also, everything else in her life is so complicated and then there's this young boy who is so pure. I think that's the thing. She's kind of been tarnished a bit by life, and then she meets this boy who just looks at her like...well, his agenda is a little muddy. [laughs] Still, I think that in comparison to everyone else that she's dealing with, that is at least a pure and honest relationship. He's also a strong, willful person like herself, and I think she finds a good companion in him.

RS: So, you didn't really see it as being about power struggles between her and these men, you see it as being about a woman who needs attention to be paid to her.

GM: I don't know if it was just attention being paid, but if you want to talk about power relationships, the boy definitely also had power over Catherine, just in terms of how much she ends up caring about him. But if you think of any relationship as a power struggle, then on any given day one person will have it and the other person won't, so I didn't look at it like that. I actually thought theirs was an honest and pure relationship in the film. She found something with him. It certainly wasn't consummated, but those moments when they're together in her painting studio are moments when he allows her to get back to someone that she might have been before she kind of got dragged through all of that mud. I don't think it really comes through in the film anymore, but there was a monologue that my character had about her child who had died, there's this whole backstory. It was almost like she was finding a son again - the child she never had.

RS: Their relationship isn't consummated, but it does sort of culminate in this big scene where she allows him to watch from the closet as she has sex.

GM: That's a tough, strange scene. I think that, and I'm not even sure if this comes through, but there's an element of "You're spying on me," meaning that she could yell at him or she could just stop the whole thing and shoo him out of the room, but in that moment , whether it's right or wrong, she decides to say "Okay, yeah. You're a young kid and you can see what this is, through me." It's a little sick, but you know, I do remember trying to figure out exactly what that moment should be. I think it was, if you will, sort of her gift to him.

RS: She's not going to have sex with him, but she'll let him have this experience.

GM: Right. I don't even know if she would have entertained that, but somehow in her mind she can justify that this is okay. It's sort of like, if you're going to look through a magazine or watch a video or whatever, you may as well just see it here and now. And also, the man she was with -- I don't think that relationship was anything she really valued. That was just disposable.

RS: Was it weird hashing all of this stuff out, on an acting level, with 15 year-old Cameron Bright? Or did you not even go there?

GM: To be honest, I sort of felt like that was the director's job. To me, that would have been like me trying to direct him, you know? That would be me trying to tell him how to play something. I felt like my job was just to know what I'm doing and just to do the best that I can and then he could make the choices for his character. It's up to the director to make sure we're all on the same page, I suppose. That's what I always think, but it doesn't always work out that way. Also, he wasn't in the room when I did that [the sex scene that he covertly watches.] I was literally looking at a piece of tape. It wouldn't really have been appropriate for him to be there. It was almost like working with a green screen, where you have to imagine someone or imagine that something is happening. A lot of that can come from a great director talking you through it.

RS: You've worked with lots of interesting talent lately -- do you feel good about where your career is right now?

GM: I feel comfortable. I'm working, I have a good job on this TV show and it's allowing me to live in New York City with my family and be with my son a lot, and still feel like I'm working. I'm always struggling to find that balance and you give over to saying that some days you'll f eel it and some days you won't. But this job I'm on now will be over in three weeks and I don't know if we'll do another year, so I have to be okay with being "out there" again. But that's exciting, too. You never know what's going to come along, and I've had lots of practice developing my zen state.

RS: I'm surprised no one is hitting you up to do a movie about the last days of Marilyn Monroe. Now that would be a movie.

GM: [laughs] Oh, I don't know, there's so much Marilyn stuff out there -- do we really need more? You know, when I first moved to New York, you get these obsessions with people and I was into Marilyn Monroe for a time. I think it was just because she was blonde and I was blonde and my hair was cut similarly at the time, so there was that thing of, you know, everyone seems to find someone that they resemble a little bit, maybe the better version of themselves or whatever, so there was that. Also, just her struggle as an actress. Anything I ever read about her was about how she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress and I think at that time, when you're 19 years old and just starting out, of course you take yourself seriously, but it's such a struggle to get other people to take you seriously. So, I was interested in her for that, but you know, sometimes I think, Oh, Marilyn, let's just leave her alone! What is anyone gonna do at this point? It would have to be something really great.


An American Affair opens in select cities today.

(image) I divide my time between two towns that I call home, Boston, MA and Charleston, SC. Both towns are near military bases and both, back in the big-haired, leg-warmer-wearing 1980s, sweated in the nuclear crosshairs of the Cold War -- so much so, that Charleston got nuked in a really good and really... more

I divide my time between two towns that I call home, Boston, MA and Charleston, SC. Both towns are near military bases and both, back in the big-haired, leg-warmer-wearing 1980s, sweated in the nuclear crosshairs of the Cold War -- so much so, that Charleston got nuked in a really good and really controversial 1983 made-for-TV flick called Special Bulletin.

In Boston, I sometimes go to this thing called "Heroes" -- a retro 1980s dance night. And in Charleston, I hang out at this karaoke-like scene called "Metal Monday", where you get to belt out '80s crunch rock classics with a live band.

Thing is, to me, a guy who was 20-years old in that most Orwellian of years, 1984, the dance floor of "Heroes" is only akin to the real '80s in the way that the Renaissance Faire is akin to rural France in 1358, during the Jacquerie uprising. Kinda fun -- but without the Armageddon-y goodness of famine, class warfare and plague. You could say there's a lil' somethin' missing. And much as I love "Metal Monday", I can't help but brainwork how "karaoke" is Japanese for "empty orchestra", and how without a particular bouquet-whiff of immanent doom, "Metal Monday" is discount-chocolate-Easter-Bunny hollow.

We're living in a cultural landscape thicketed with old-growth 1980s, as stubbornly rooted in our minds as the Proustian olfactory memories of the scents of belched up wine coolers, Duran Duran-esque hair mousse, and He-Man and She-Ra Shrinky Dinks contracting in the oven. Beyond things like "Heroes" and "Metal Monday", and the fact that a Flock of Fucking Seagulls now get played on "Classic Rock" stations, there's a litany of other examples I can list: washed-up '80s icon Mickey Rourke's defibrillation back to the living as a washed-up '80s icon in The Wrestler; millions of fanboys dampening their shorts with pre-ejaculate for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen; new iterations of '80s slasherdom in the form of "re-imaginings" of VHS-era standbys My Bloody Valentine and Friday the 13th (yeah, Friday the 13th was made in '79, but as a franchise, it's pure '80s); G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra rating a Super Bowl spot for its August release; the looming advent of the alternate reality, atomic panic, superhero '80s epic Watchmen...and, God help the crushed scrotum of our creativity, Beverly Hills Cop IV is in the works.

And the return of one of the most iconic '80s artifacts is about the rain down like fallout. This summer brings Terminator: Salvation, a humongous movie that, due to the twisty knots of time travel, will be a prequel, a sequel, and a reboot of the franchise, and the first flick in a new trilogy starring everyone's fave f-bomb-dropping Welsh wigout master, Christian Bale.

The return of the Terminator gives me comfort in this omigod-fucking-drive-a-stake-through-its-heart-already 1980s resurrection. The Terminator, was a true icon, before it was ripped off by everything from V: The Series to Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah to Wallace and Gromit In A Close Shave to the porn flick The Sperminator. And of course there were those disturbingly fascist animated man/machine hybrids that used to show up during the bumper segments of televised NFL games.

The metal endo-skeletoned man/machine was the embodiment of a specific vintage of berserk, apocalyptic terror that defined the years of the Reagan/Bush Junta. The 1980s, which saw the final frenzy of the Cold War, was a time of doom in which even a benign kiddie movie like The Monster Squad (which gifted us with the knowledge that, indeed, "Wolfman's got nards!") featured the special effects-y end of the world. Doomsday loomed, and the coke-driven, junk-bond-funded bacchanal of doomsday was the cultural engine behind what is now reduced to the '80s kitsch of "Heroes" and "Metal Monday".

James Cameron's 1984 film, The Terminator, is now 25 years old. In turn, it was constructed atop the legacy of films from a quarter century before: 1959's Hiroshima Mon Amour, On the Beach, and the Geiger-clicking radioactive brontosaurus of The Giant Behemoth.

The Terminator is now recognized as a historical artifact. The Library of Congress recently placed it in the National Film Registry, for its being not just "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant, but also a work of "enduring significance to American culture."

Amen to that.

The Terminator is a work of cultural, historic, and aesthetic significance. But more than that, it's an important artifact of a once ubiquitous psychological reality, especially for geezers like me who thought that our beloved, doddering, Teflon-coated Unca Ronnie was gonna get us vaporized.

The inevitability of Apocalypse was a psychological ache that knotted our thoughts into rosaries of angst. In 1983, a girl I knew in my home town of Buffalo, NY lived near a neighborhood that was leveled by a propane explosion. She screamed and panicked when the blast knocked her out of bed because she was sure bombs were dropping. I talked to a bartender who was painting houses one summer near a naval base in Connecticut. The base blared an air raid test without notifying the surrounding community, whereupon this guy, thinking the nukes were flying, looked at the guy on the ladder next to his. They both shrugged and kept on painting, not knowing what else to do, sure that the shadows of their own vaporized forms would soon be on the wall they painted. My high school girlfriend asked me to kill her if the bombs dropped and we were left alive -- melodramatic, I know, but it was...y'know...high school.

No matter what melodramatic form my girlfriend's panic took, this terror was a sane response to a world gone bugshit. Unca Ronnie, early in his Presidency, John Hancock'ed a little goodie called the National Security Decision Document, which shifted the paradigm of nuclear war to something that the US could and should win, rather than it's more pedestrian and sane conception as a "non-survivable event." (*1) Reagan and his boys were talking such crazy cowflop that, if anybody else had said it in public, they'd be shot full of Thorazine and strapped to a gurney with rubber blankets. And these were the guys with their fingers on the button!

How can any sane person deal with a president making the famous joke that Unca Ronnie let fly on August 11, 1984, in front of an open mic, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes," a Dorothy Parker-ish bon mot that put the Soviets on alert?

In 1982, while culturally America was creaming itself over the adorableness of the Christ-like ET, Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberg was talking to Harvard students about the Apocalypse that might bring Christ back to earth. According to the New York Times (*2):

In the fall of 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig said it'd be just a spiffy idea, if things got hot in Europe, to fire a nuclear warning shot at the Soviets if they used conventional forces, as if Ivan would just pack up his toys and shuffle back to Trotskygrad in the face of America's throbbing, uncircumcised atomic dick. But you know, even nuclear warning shots aren't that dire a commitment, as, according to Unca Ronnie, once you launched those nukes, you can recall them, just the way a falconer recalls his noble bird back to his gauntlet. In May of 1982, old "Dutch" said:

These terrors that bubbled in our collective Id attained a kind of Ground Zero in the few days before the release of The Terminator on October 26, 1984, when Reagan was running against Walter Mondale. Reagan was talking craziness about the 'end of the world' that so freaked out a bunch of Catholic, Jewish and Evangelical leaders, that on October 24, they were compelled to sign a document condemning Reagan's use of "nuclear Armageddon" rhetoric as being a "perversion of Holy Scripture and a danger to the security of our Republic." (*3) For their pains, they were heckled at their press conference by a phalanx of smegma brains from the Moral Majority, lead by the Heritage Foundation's Paul Weyrich.

A few days before that, in San Francisco, Mondale called out Unca Ronnie on the insanity of his "you can the recall the nukes" comment, saying (*4):

And just two days before The Terminator hit screens with its premise of uncontrollable mechanized warfare destroying humanity, a bunch of liberal malcontents chanted, "You can't call them back! You can't call them back!" (*5) at a Reagan campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio.

Beyond the psychological and political context in which it was released, The Terminator is an important document in that it makes visible what the Reaganite ideology wanted to keep invisible (and there is a fucked up terror to being forced into invisibility). Maybe just the way European exiles, as outsiders to American culture, could come to the U.S. and create a uniquely American genre about uniquely American outsiders in the form of film noir, it took a Canadian guy like James Cameron to fill The Terminator with the urban diaspora who lived in exile in their own country under Reagan.

The movie gives a glimpse into the urban shitscape that was city living in the 1980s, when, as a punk kid walking home to my shitty apartment, I'd have to pick the glass from broken crack vials the from treads of my Army Surplus combat boots.

Early in the flick, our hero Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn), naked after dropping through time from a future dystopia to Unca Ronnie's trash-choked dystopia, steals clothes from one of the homeless that Reagan had cattle prodded into the streets, and for whom Reagan would abdicate any moral responsibility by saying they were homeless by choice.

The movie's cheapness is a virtue, as the location filming, on streets too dirty to be sets, preserves and documents the grime of the era nicely, as does the gloom of the discount store where Reese steals shoes and a coat before going back out into the night where guys who were themselves thrown out like trash push shopping carts to scavenge trash.

Reagan hated cities, populating them in his rhetoric with "welfare queens" as far back as 1976 while speaking in small towns. But even while he slammed cities, as far back as 1974, he presented a neo-platonic ideal of the city as a fucked up kind of political reality, the "Shining City on a Hill." This Puritan jerk-off fantasy seemed to exist as a thing Reagan created specifically so that his suburbanite voting bloc could hate real cities for not living up to that fantasy.

The Terminator, even as a science fiction movie, is a portrait, albeit a stylized one, of the neglected human detritus who could never be part of that City on a Hill. The first person seen in the movie is an African American garbage man working the night shift. Our heroine, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), is a waitress...the very kind of working young person whose nickel-and-dime tips Reagan would tax two years later while Santa Claus-ing tax cuts for the rich in an effort to facilitate trickle down oppression. The secondary characters, from Dick Miller as the gun store owner who gets blown away to the janitor who gets the first computer-generated "Fuck you, asshole!" in the history of cinema, to Paul Winfield as a cop, are too real as city people...they don't belong in Reagan's fairy tale city. They belong in the metropolises Reagan strangled.

The Terminator himself (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, now the administrator of the eighth largest economy in the world), before he went all candy-ass-"Now-I-know-why-you-cry" in the second flick, brought a small-scale version of Reagan's atomic Book of Revelations/fever vision into the kind of real city that would get blown to shit in the event of a real nuclear war. The iconography of atomic war is the destruction of cities -- from Godzilla to The Day After to the Oscar-winning The War Game to the later Terminator sequels. Fighting the Terminator was akin to fighting for our cities; it was invisible people fighting for the invisible people Reagan forsook.

So, with the prospect of not just a new Terminator sequel coming down the pike, but a new mini-franchise, the question arises, will the 2009 model Terminator bring us a new kind of terror suitable for today, in a world still defined by eight years of Neocon non-reality-based worldview, and thus be a document of our time? Or will it just be a karaoke of the social, political, and psychological forces that a young Canuck named Cameron scab-picked apart a quarter of a century ago? A simulacrum of something dynamic and alive, the way the Terminator himself was a simulacrum of something that lived?

Then again, maybe like "Heroes" and "Metal Monday", it could just be fun.


Notes

*1. Further reading: Robert Scheer's book With Enough Shovels: Reagan Bush & Nuclear War, (1983).
*2. Briefing by Phil Gailey & Warren Weaver Jr., The New York Times (Late Edition / East Coast), August 23rd, 1982. Page A-14.
*3. Armageddon View Prompts a Debate by John Herbers, The New York Times, October 24th, 1984. Page A-1.
*4. Mondale Questions Reagan's Ability To Understand Nuclear Arms by Gerald M. Boyd & Jane Perlez, The New York Times, October 16th, 1984. Page A-24.
*5. Reagan At Ohio Rally, Attacks Mondale Anew by Francis X. Clines, The New York Times, October 25th, 1984. Page B-19.
*6. There is no six.

© Michael Marano 2009.

Horror writer, pop culture commentator and Public Radio film critic Michael Marano previously wrote "Ten Lessons Spider-Man Can Teach Our First Nerd President", and has a new fiction collection in the works about the crazy shit he lived through in the 1980s entitled Stories from the Plague Years.

You'd be hard-pressed to find even a handful of rappers who can mention Kobe Bryant and Rene Descartes in the same verse, but that's all in a day's work for MC Lars. Probably best known for his anti-consumerist anthem, "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock," Lars is back with a collection... more

You'd be hard-pressed to find even a handful of rappers who can mention Kobe Bryant and Rene Descartes in the same verse, but that's all in a day's work for MC Lars. Probably best known for his anti-consumerist anthem, "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock," Lars is back with a collection of new songs that are just as opinionated and just as catchy. On This Gigantic Robot Kills, he criticizes trends like greenwashing, anarchist posers, and stereotypical Brooklyn hipsters.

He's backed up by a veritable army of guest artists, including his childhood idol, Weird Al Yankovic. Lars has been a part of the nerdcore rap scene for years, and some of nerdcore's best MCs show up to contribute verses: you'll hear MC Frontalot, Jesse Dangerously and YTCracker, among others. Hip-hop is only part of what MC Lars' post-punk laptop rap is about, though. He's also enlisted some friends from Simple Plan, The Aquabats, Nerf Herder, The Donnas, and Cobra Starship to add rock to the mix.

Lyrically, This Gigantic Robot Kills is a crash course in Lars' unique blend of pop culture and academia. The Stanford grad name-checks everything from Naomi Klein's No Logo to Shakespeare to Halo. Despite touching on some serious issues, he manages to come off as more fun than preachy. This album has been almost three years in the making, and it shows.

Jay Hathaway: What made you decide to become a rapper, instead of just being in a rock band?

MC Lars: That's a good question. When I went to college, freshman year, I broke away from my band, 'cause they were all still at home or in LA for school. So, I wanted to keep making music, but I didn't have my band. Stanford has this station, KZSU, and this DJ, Kevvy Kev, has a show called The Drum that's been on the air since the '80s. There's a giant wall of vinyl at the station that goes back to the '70s. So I spent all my free weekends -- cause I had trouble fitting in with all the jock and fraternity kids -- I spent a lot of time reorganizing the vinyl. Making sure the records were in the right sleeves, and listening to them. It wasn't that hard, because I had this knowledge of music, to set up shows where I started writing hi-hop songs and, even without my band, just performing with my laptop.

JH: You're really into the social movement of hip-hop. Did you set out to do more social commentary on this album?

MCL: Yeah, The Graduate's more pop-culture and fun, more simple laptop beats. The reason this record took longer than The Graduate is because it had so many live guests. Also, I wanted to see how I could dive into being serious without being annoying. Like that song, "No Logo," with my Canadian friend Jesse Dangerously, is making fun of people who try to be serious activists but miss the whole point. The green song I did with Simple Plan ["It's Not Easy (Being Green)"] is about how you can do conscious hip-hop in a well-meaning way, but also make fun of the shortcomings of ecological trends, or people wearing Che Guevara shirts just because it's trendy.

JH: Are your songs meant to be funny?

MCL: Humor is a very good tool for making people pay attention, but you can't just do a fart joke or talk about your penis. I think humor is important, but I never want to be a novelty. That's a hard tightrope to walk.

JH: While you're skewering a lot of lame or phony trends, what about the positive side? What would you encourage people to support or be into?

MCL: Well, that song with the Mr. Big and Nerf Herder guys, that's kind of admonishing to kids that you can get really good at Guitar Hero, but it's not going to mean anything in five years. Kids can get into Guitar Hero because it's a great way to listen to music and practice your timing, but it's a bad waste of time if you're doing it more than a real instrument. You know what would be awesome? If there were a bigger, more beautiful world beyond the laptop. Maybe that's the theme of this album.

JH: If you had a number one hit all of a sudden, what would it take to keep your outlook and your philosophy from being corrupted?

MCL: It's very easy for people who have something to say, people who want people to look outside the mainstream, to be co-opted by the mainstream. I think for me the trick is staying plugged in with subgenres like nerdcore, because nerdcore is very limited, but it's painfully DIY. I like to record in studios with good engineers who know how to help me get the right sound, but some people might think that's selling out. So for me, it's just keeping in touch with scenes that are supportive of me, but also help me stay real.

JH: Do you think nerdcore is going to last? What sort of future do you see for it right now?

MCL: I think hip-hop's going to last. I think hip-hop has to last, because it's the only real, original music that kids are passionate about. Nerdcore is often an excuse for kids on the Internet to put out lo-fi, Nintendo-sample records where they talk about Dungeons & Dragons, as an example, to legitimize that complete alienation from hip-hop culture. But it's also showing that hip-hop has become completely universal, international, and it's a language that we all identify with. Nerdcore could easily burn out, because it's essentially a novelty, but MCs who come out of the genre, who want to dedicate themselves to hip-hop, learn about it, teach it, and try to create future success, those people will stick around and be part of the hip-hop canon. It won't reach the mainstream popularity of crunk or hyphy, but it will have a place in the hip-hop encyclopedia. I hope! You were at the show, right?

JH: Yeah.

MCL: What did you think of the show?

JH: I mean, it was a lot like a regular hip-hop show, except that everyone in the crowd was a nerd.

MCL: Yeah, you've got people who wouldn't go see KRS-One, but after seeing our show, they might want to go find out who KRS-One or Eric B. & Rakim are. That is really positive. Then some people might start thinking about social inequality...Class disparity in American is really ugly, true thing, and we cover up that painful truth with the mask of race being the issue. But really it's a class issue, and kids need to get educated. Nerdcore has the potential to be in the bubble of complacency and fantasy, but the hip-hop language it ties into is so much more than that. That's why I think it's positive.

JH: And the rap they're going to hear on the radio has really gotten away from any kind of relevant social commentary...

MCL: I think that Frontalot's "I Heart Fags" is so much more hip-hop than anything 50 Cent would drop [laughs] in terms of keeping it real and being inclusive, and being intelligent. Old-school hip-hop was about knowledge and truth, and mainstream hip-hop is this disgusting display of consumerism. Nerdcore is a little more true to the old school than anything you'll hear on the radio.

JH: Could you ever imagine a nerdcore rapper getting incredibly rich and rapping about wealth? Like the Bill Gates of nerdcore?

MCL: YTCracker is kind of that guy. [laughs] He raps about how much money he made from hacking. But he doesn't rap about what he buys, he raps about how he hacked to get it. I think that's kind of cool.

JH: If This Gigantic Robot Kills were a meal, what meal would it be?

MCL: It would be macaroni, tofu and organic salad. And coffee, 'cause it speeds up your mind a little bit.

JH: What's the biggest thing that's changed for you in the past three years?

MCL: I've learned that even if you think your business team is pretty solid, the music industry is so fickle that if you really want to survive in any genre, you have to be on point with what you're trying to do creatively. [Think about] how you can be self-sustaining, and not rely on other people to help you create your art. If you're willing to be on the road in a band for five months of the year, it's really possible to be independent and DIY and not need a major label and a huge management company to live your dreams and have people hear what you have to say. It's been two or three years of being on the road, being on my grind in the studio and trying to tap into whatever's happening. I've really proved to myself and my fans and my friends that it's possible to be self-sustaining in an uncertain economy and a messed-up music industry. I've gotten to the point where I could do this ten more years if I wanted.

JH: What's the eventual goal with your own label?

MCL: Horris Records is my label, and the goal there is to keep signing other electronic, punk, hip-hop acts who are pushing boundaries and creating really good art. I signed a two-label partnership with Jaret from Bowling for Soup, started a label called Crappy Records, and they're helping me distribute that record. So for the next two records, we're going to use that great distribution to get the album into stores, and as the medium of the CD dies, have the next two albums be some of the last physical records they put out. Then we'll switch to Horris as a digital entertainment company and really push the boundary of electronic, punk, indie hip-hop with multimedia. I eventually want to get into producing and help younger artists get their foot in the door, and teach them what I've learned on my own: how to keep creative and happy in a world that tells you you need to conform and be quiet, and be happy with mediocrity if you want to survive.

JH: How much longer do you think CDs will be around?

MCL: I have a two-album deal, so hopefully it will last until I drop the second record! None of my friends buy CDs. I think by the end of 2009 places like Best Buy are going to stop selling CDs and start selling media cards with MP3s and the art from the albums. I think the majors are getting into that, too. I saw Bjork was putting stuff out on those, and it's got the potential for a lot of cool stuff. And then labels are selling vinyl with a code to get the MP3s. So I think a year, two years at most.

JH: Is that something you want to do?

MCL: I'm doing a 7" for this album, for the street team and the fan club. YTCracker and I are working on more records, and we're going to start doing vinyl and getting that to the college DJs. Nothing compares to the first time you play a record. Nothing sounds better.

JH: Who are some of the people you hope to work with in the future?

MCL: I met Jello Biafra at a Leftover Crack show in Santa Cruz. Ian MacKaye and I have been emailing each other. He let me use the Fugazi riff for the "No Logo" song for free, so he's down with it. He respects the movement, the nerdcore rap and indie hip-hop movement, and we've talked about how this is the next step in DIY that Fugazi and these other bands laid the groundwork for. I'd love to write with that guy. I'd love to do a verse with KRS-One –– somehow, someday –– that would be a very beautiful thing.

JH: Have you had trouble getting anyone to let you sample their music?

MCL: When I dealt with Iggy Pop for "Download This Song," he approved it, but I had to give his label seven grand to use the master recording. That was painful. I had to pay Supergrass three grand to use the "Moving" sample for the "Moby Dick" song. So what I learned for this record is that if you don't want ten grand of your budget to go toward clearing samples, there's this thing called an interpolation, where you can have your friends play the music, and sample your friends playing it. Then you just have to pay publishing. It's cheaper, and you have more control over the tempo. It's a way to sample without going broke.

JH: You talk about postmodernism a lot. What role does it play on this record?

MCL: Well, hip-hop is a distinctly postmodern art form, because it's a reflection of a cut and paste culture. It's the first genre that's based on postmodern tools of recording and digitally manipulating records. The postmodern identity stems from a response to the modern movement, where T.S. Eliot would reference stuff from classical antiquity and reference all this "high art." Postmodernism is the realization and the coming to terms with the fact that you can't make that distinction between high art and low art. My record does that when it has a song about Hamlet and a song about Guitar Hero, and they both have the same cultural legitimacy.

JH: Right, and you were talking about how you studied Shakespeare ...

MCL: I'm the only rapper I know of that has an English degree from Stanford. Not that it really matters, but it helps a little bit when I play with the distinction between high art and low art, because of my education -- my overpriced education -- I can delve into the regular low culture, or whatever you'd call it, and then I have all these references that are unique. It's cool to have that kind of access, to play with that line in that way. That's what makes the album a fun, postmodern listening experience.

JH: So, Stanford. Do you have regrets about doing that? Looking back now, what would you have done?

MCL: All through high school and college, I was obsessed with getting good grades because there was this goal of going to grad school, getting my Ph.D and becoming a professor. My whole life, my goal has been to become an academic expert in a field, and teach, inspire people and connect thoughts. If music hadn't happened so early, when I was twenty, if I hadn't gotten signed, I would have stayed the course and spent even more time studying, gone on to grad school and gotten a Ph.D in American Literature or American Studies. Now my goal has become to keep doing records and eventually go back to school and get my PhD in media studies, and then teach hip-hop culture and postmodern culture at a university, drawing on my experience as someone who's practiced in the field. A lot of academics do their fieldwork after they're finishing their PhD. I'm kind of doing my fieldwork now. [laughs]

JH: What happens as your audience grows up with you? What will you be rapping about when you're 30?

MCL: The trick is to keep rapping about your emotional growth, and world events. I think as rappers get older, they have to let go of the slang and the quirky lexical tics of a certain generation. If people keep saying "hyphy," it'll be like people still seriously quoting MC Hammer right now. I have to accept the fact that I'm getting older. I like the Beastie Boys, but the 5 Boroughs record was just more of them doing the same thing. I wanted to hear about what it feels like to have grey hair and kids growing up. If the Beastie Boys rap about being 40 as they are 40, I think that will be more interesting, creatively. I think rappers need to address that, that's how you stay relevant and real.

JH: What will music even sound like in 10 years? What new genres will pop up?

MCL: The last art form of the 20th century is hip-hop. It's the definition of postmodern. There's this attitude of 'everything's been done, so let's just cut and paste what's been said.' What do you do next? I think there has to be another world war, and then people will be banging pipes rhythmically in a certain way and recording it with a certain microphone. That'll be a new genre.

JH: Do you think hip-hop will eventually be absorbed into a mainstream, modern grand narrative?

MCL: I don't think there are going to be any more of these grand sweeping movements. It's like The Long Tail, Chris Anderson, that guy who works for Wired. He writes about the splintering of movements, and how there's all these micromovements, and I think that's the future. We'll see what micromovements become more relevant than others, and that's where it's all going to go. I think the age of these sweeping, grandiose paradigm shifts is over, and hip-hop was the last example of that. So when Nas says hip-hop is dead, he doesn't mean hip-hop is dead. He means that the way the world can be tweaked by a single scratch on a record is gone, because we're in such a postcolonial, postmodern, electronic age. For artists, it means ultimate freedom, and not having to obsess over every choice. I'm excited, I think it's a good time to be creating art.

JH: What's your attitude toward fame?

MCL: I would want that exposure to happen only so far as it would provide economic fuel for me to fund other projects and help other artists. Fame is really boring to me. It just means that people will bother you, and give you simple, uninspired advice about life and art. I'm not really trying to find that. I'm just trying to create something for people who are in tune with the world I'm in tune with, and if it becomes popular, then I can fund other people's similar dreams. My dad is a poet and a photographer, and he likes to use this metaphor where artists are trying to hold the light. Art has this entropy, where things decay and become depressing and sad, but art holds the light. If things spread beyond your control, then you're no longer holding the light. It's about keeping that balance, and owning what you create, instead of giving up your babies for adoption.

JH: What was your favorite album of 2008?

MCL: Tech N9ne is always really exciting and he put out a record called Killer. That's my favorite record from 2008. And Paul Barman's been doing more stuff this year, that he's released on his website, which is pretty awesome.

America is clearly overburdened with morons. They are a loud, uneducated group of people who live by one slogan: Taxes Are Bad. No matter the situation, taxes are bad, because government is bad. They’ve now gone as far as to start two glorious wars and combined them with some juicy tax cuts, because,... more

America is clearly overburdened with morons. They are a loud, uneducated group of people who live by one slogan: Taxes Are Bad. No matter the situation, taxes are bad, because government is bad. They’ve now gone as far as to start two glorious wars and combined them with some juicy tax cuts, because, if you are going to spend over a trillion dollars, by all means don’t pay for it. They’ve ruined our country with fiscal irresponsibility and they’d like to fix that – with tax cuts. They created a mythological character named Reagan and now they would very much like to follow him to the bottom of the sea. The only problem is, they are going to take the rest of us with them.

The tax-cut-only-Republicans are no different than crazy religious parents who don’t take their kids to the hospital because they believe in prayer. Much like those kids, our country is dying. Taxes are how we pay for this crazy thing called society. With an endless stream of tax cuts, we end up with what we have now: Schools in shocking disrepair, fewer teachers, bridges, roads and highways falling apart, horrible traffic congestion, sicker people, more crime, oh, and enormous debt, which handicaps the government’s ability to deal with recessions and depressions.

But, the government can’t do anything right, so we have to cut taxes. All one has to do is look at the amazing success of Wall Street over the past year to see how brilliant of a statement this is. Or the shocking disaster of privatizing the Iraq War, where private companies turn so many things into colossal piles of shit, at a far higher cost than if the government had done the work. Yes, private companies are the way to success and government is the way to failure. Lewis Black said it best.



Yeah. It’s people. Turns out mistakes can and will be made, whether it is government or private companies. Who would have thought? I’m actually super pleased with our socialized fire departments. Back in the day, they were private companies, but now they are paid for by the government. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Our crazy, hippy highway system was fucking sweet when the government made it. After years of starving it to death, it has lost a bit of its luster, but still, not bad. Taxes promote general welfare, which is, you know, kind of a good thing.

What are you five? Yes, everybody fucks up sometimes. The fact that you can't see the good the government has done is absolutely pathetic. If your kid makes a mistake, why don’t you take him out in the backyard and kill him with a shovel? I mean, he made a mistake, after all. By all means, don’t attempt to fix the situation. Don’t show him a different way. The idea that the government always screws up is such juvenile and pathetic thinking it is astounding, as is the idea it is not repairable. Completely fucking astounding. You have the analytic ability of a hamster.

More than anything, it’s the rigidity of the position. Saying tax cuts is always the way to go is nothing short of cult like. Always saying government needs to be smaller is childish. Government needs to be more efficient, which has nothing to do with size. Everything needs to be more efficient. We should always be looking for ways to streamline. Unfortunately, we usually don’t notice something is wrong until there is a problem – you know, because we are human beings. We certainly didn’t notice our awesome, kick ass, private mortgage industry was giving home loans to hobos until it was too late. (And if you blame the housing meltdown solely on Freddie and Fanny, you are unread and, really, very stupid).

The Reagan trickle down tax cut policy is now believed to be a sound economic policy by too many people. It is a sham, a fool’s game, a myth and extremely irresponsible. The wasteland that is California is the future of America. And yet, the idea of tax cuts being a healing elixir is believed by so many that Democrats now tout their tax cut prowess. That’s why we’re doomed. People have bought into the idea of “small government," but when asked about individual programs provided by the government, they love them. It’s a broad and stupid argument that has won and will lead to our doom. There is no one-way to do things, there are many. Once you come to believe there is only one way, like the Republican hoard, you are pretty much doomed. I find it baffling that so many hold such ignorant beliefs with such religious veracity. I look around and I just don’t know what’s happening, only that it spells ruin.

Oh, and Reagan raised taxes three times, you clown fuckers.


FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday and Friday for more from FearTheReaper

I'm literally just off the plane from London having just spent the last week there celebrating the release of the movie Anvil: The Story Of Anvil. My friend Sacha wrote and directed it and it's blowing up in the UK. It comes out here April 10th. You have to see it. It's an amazing story... more

I'm literally just off the plane from London having just spent the last week there celebrating the release of the movie Anvil: The Story Of Anvil. My friend Sacha wrote and directed it and it's blowing up in the UK. It comes out here April 10th. You have to see it. It's an amazing story about two guys that made a pact at 14 to rock forever and they refuse to give up that dream in the face of the most brutal situations a band can deal with. It's truly an amazing film and it will move you. For more info go to AnvilMovie.com.

On the food front I didn't get to do too much exploring as I was on a crazy schedule but I did get to go to Nobu with Pearl on Valentine's Day and it was as usual, flawless. They were serving these martini's that were excellent and I got the recipe that I will share with you at the end of the article. Invite a lady/man over and pull these out of your ass and they'll definitely do the trick.

We spent two days in Glasgow with our friends Andy and Fiona who just had a baby. Fiona owns a gourmet delicatessen/restaurant called Heart Buchanan and they make the best BLT on the planet. It's doing them a disservice to only talk about the BLT as they have a whole shop full of incredible food, but that BLT is from another planet!! Andy is also a great cook and he makes the French onion soup from Les Halles in NYC better than they do. We had a great dinner of that aforementioned onion soup and roast chicken at their house and spent the night plowing through Italian and Spanish wine. I don't get to eat in like that very often and when I do it makes me realize how much I miss that experience, food, wine, friends and fucking hilarity 'til sunrise. Can't beat it.


Above: The best BLT on the planet.

We got back to London and had a day to walk around the food halls at Harrods. If you've never done that, you must. They have everything you can ever imagine that can be eaten and it's all the best quality. I always buy the Salami di Tartufo (truffle salami) and I also bought a Spanish Chorizo. They vacuum pack those suckers and then you pray that customs doesn't snatch them from you. What a bummer that would be to think of some customs agent eating a big fat truffle salami sandwich, or worse, throwing it out!! I got'em in and I'm eating them as I type.

Of course I drank pints of bitter to excess. Before we went to London we were in NY for a week. Anthrax played an event for Red Bull called Snow Scrapers. They built a ten-story ramp for Shaun White and others to hurl themselves off and then we closed the event. It was cool to play with NYC as our backdrop and to get a minute out of the studio. We had Chuck D come up and do "Bring The Noise" with us. Chuck is the man.

In NY I met up with my buddy Joe Bastianich (he's Mario Batali's partner in all the restaurants) at his restaurant Del Posto for a drink and that drink turned out to be a 1949 Chateau LaTour. Jo had some wine collector buddies in the house eating and they offered it to us. When the sommelier brought the glasses over Joe asked him if it was "on" and the reply was, "It's on." I've never had anything even close to a 60 year old world class Bordeaux like this before and I savored it. I'm basically ruined on red wine now. How do I drink anything else after that? Stupid old Bordeaux! Why hast thou ruined me???? It was by far the best thing I've ever drank.

After getting my mind blown by the LaTour I had dinner next door at Joe's new spot The John Dory. It's a casual fish restaurant with A-list fish. If you go make sure you get the grilled octopus with celery, fennel and bottarga and the seared squid stuffed with chorizo. We had a group of five and we almost ordered everything on the menu and everything was great!

We hit the Spotted Pig while we were in NY as well and I'd have to say it's become my favorite place to go out. The combination of the food, killer hand-pulled beers and atmosphere make it the perfect place for me. It's the perfect pub. Get the dnudi and the 'devils on horseback' and six pints of Old Speckled Hen. Do it.

Cheers,
Scott
www.anthrax.com
www.myspace.com/scottian
www.ultimatebet.com/scott-ian/?ubAffilID=73329
www.nonelouder.com
twitter.com/Scott_Ian

Scott Ian is SuicideGirls' monthly Food Coma columnist. Click HERE for more of his musing on sustenance and libations. He plays guitar for revolutionary metal band Anthrax and also for Pearl.

Greetings fellow metal-heads! Welcome to the second edition of my monthly metal column Metal Asylum. I appreciate all of the great feedback from the first article and I hope to continue feeding your metal addiction every month. I'm sure by now most of you heard that two heavy metal magazines, Metal... more

Greetings fellow metal-heads! Welcome to the second edition of my monthly metal column Metal Asylum. I appreciate all of the great feedback from the first article and I hope to continue feeding your metal addiction every month.

I'm sure by now most of you heard that two heavy metal magazines, Metal Maniacs and its sister publication Metal Edge have folded, with just one more issue of each title scheduled to come out. The magazines have been on stands for 24 years and 19 years respectively, and were two of the more popular magazines for the atomically well-endowed genre.

I remember when I first started getting into underground metal, running to the nearest store and buying the newest edition of Metal Maniacs to fulfill my appetite for news of new bands. The horrible state of the economy dealt the final blow to these excellent magazines, which were already suffering from ever-increasing online competition.

Admittedly I have downloaded music as well as gotten my metal news online (one of my favorite sites being Blabbermouth.net). But there is still something I love about the feel of paper in my hands. I buy a lot of the metal-zines, and still consume much of by music by way of CD. I like to see the cover art and read the lyrics while the album is playing (this is especially crucial to the enjoyment of most music I listen to since you can't understand what most of the singers I love are singing about otherwise -- really!). I fear that one day soon all music will just be downloaded from the internet, and that will be a very sad day for hardcore fans like myself that like to physically have an album for their collection.

I have seen too many mom-and-pop music stores, and emporiums dedicated to underground metal, shut their doors. After almost a decade in business, my friend Mark, who owns Metal Haven in Chicago, doesn‘t know how long he can hold on. I cannot adequately express how much that saddens me, so let's just say it fucking pisses me off! I have spent countless hours in stores looking for new bands -- and quality metal conversation. It may be easier to stay at home and hit download, but we fans need to go out and support our local music scenes by actually buying albums (or T-shirts?) from the music stores that support the bands we love.

Onto brighter things. I recently attended the Cradle of Filth, Satyricon and Septic Flesh show on February 11 at the Henry Ford Theater in Hollywood, CA. First of all, I have to admit that I was primarily going to the show to see Cradle of Filth and Satyricon as I've never seen either band live.

When I walked up to the theater I saw that Septic Flesh were playing. What an awesome surprise! I started getting into them last year and absolutely love them. I bolted through the doors to make sure that I didn't miss them. Thankfully, they didn't start the show until almost an hour later.

Greece's Septic Flesh went on first and sadly only got to play a 30 minute set. Indeed their actual set might have been shorter because unfortunately they had some technical problems when they first hit the stage. It didn't matter though, they were FUCKING AMAZING. I love Septic Flesh because like Hollenthon, I can't seem to pin down what they play. They seem to take inspiration from almost everyone and everything. I guess if I had to try to fit them in somewhere, it would be symphonic black metal??? Their sound isn't easy to reproduce live -- they have a lot of symphonic and female vocal elements -- but all things considered they did a great job transitioning their music from the studio to stage.

The next band was Norway's Satyricon. I just got their latest album The Age of Nero last week, and I have been listening to it non-stop. It's similar in sound to their last full length, Now, Diabolical. Live, they put on a very powerful show. They played a lot of songs from the new album, "Wolfpack", "Commando", "Black Crow on a Tombstone" and "Die by my Hand". During the latter song, they had the crowd sing the chorus along with them -- call me cheesy, but I always love it when bands do that. Predictably, the crowd also went nuts when they played their hit song "K.I.N.G." but I was very surprised and very much excited when they ended their performance with an old classic, "Mother North" from '96. I should also mention how awesome it was to see the infamous Frost play. He's an incredible drummer and an icon within the black metal scene. The pitchfork mic stand that Satyr (lead vocals) used, is also worth a mention, and is surely a "must have" for all other metal singers.

Here is the official video of Satyricon's "Black Crow on A Tombstone" for your delectation and delight:



Next and last was the infamous Cradle of Filth from England. I have to be honest here and say that I've never been a really huge fan. The last album I bought was Cruelty of the Beast when I was 16. But Cradle of Filth have a huge following and a very loyal fan base, so can do quite nicely without me added to their number. That said, their live theatrics are legendary so I was prepared to be entertained.

The curtains opened to reveal a huge crucifix laid on its side, with a skeleton hanging from it. Four or five torches also adorned the onstage. Their production value was matched by that of their performance. Frontman Dani Filth has great energy and stage presence. Though I can't get into the high vocal screeching he does, I do like his low gutteral stuff. The keyboardist and female back up vocalist had amazing chops and great stage presence as well. Even if, like me, you're not super into CoF, I would recommend checking out their live show. Hit RoadrunnerRecords.com for tour dates near you.

In the meantime here's a taste of "Honey and Sulphur" from Cradle of Filth's lastest, Godspeed on the Devils Thunder.



Before I go, I want to share some new albums I have been getting into as of late. My current play list if you will. If you haven't already heard these albums, I suggest you do immediately:

Belphegor - Bondage Goat Zombie
Enslaved - Vertebrae
Satyricon - The Age of Nero
Opeth - Watershed
Crimfall - As The Path Unfolds..
Borknagar - For The Elements 1996-2006
Suidakra - Crógacht
Amorphis - Silent Waters

That's it for this month. I would like to hear your current play lists and bands you think I should check out!

Also, make sure to check out my interview this month on SG with Peter Wichers of Soilwork. We talk about his three-year departure from Soilwork, his return to their fold, and what he's been up to in the meantime.

Until next time,
Horns & Hails

Hollee

(image) Check back each month for the next exclusive installment of the poetry, pencil and ink series TG on SG from Tank Girl and her pen pals Alan Martin and Rufus Dayglo. Rufus will join 2000 AD editor Matt Smith, and a host of the comic’s heroic writers and artists, to celebrate the release... more

Check back each month for the next exclusive installment of the poetry, pencil and ink series TG on SG from Tank Girl and her pen pals Alan Martin and Rufus Dayglo.

Rufus will join 2000 AD editor Matt Smith, and a host of the comic’s heroic writers and artists, to celebrate the release of Thrill-Power Overload (a 260 page illustrated account of 2000 AD's 30-year history) at the Forbidden Planet Megastore's 2000th Signing event in London on Saturday, March 21st from 1-2:30 pm. Tank Girl's 2HB-powered scribbler will be doing free sketches of Tankie, Judge Dredd etc, signing comics, and then drinking far too much in the nearby pubs. If you're in a Soho watering hole on the appointed day in the vicinity of a gangly punk rock, ginger-topped geezer with mad ink that looks like he's in need of more alcohol (Rufus' default expression), his preferred tipple is Guinness, white wine and chocolate martinis –– just don't mix 'em together (his stomach will take care of that!).


Member Info: TankGirl_TGonSG / Large Image Library.

(image) The case against David Beckham doesn't begin or end with the fact that that he now weighs less than his wife despite her handrail build thanks to the 85 silicone-laden pounds inserted inside her during chest-centric plastic surgery. His better half's tragic descent from lovely natural... more

The case against David Beckham doesn't begin or end with the fact that that he now weighs less than his wife despite her handrail build thanks to the 85 silicone-laden pounds inserted inside her during chest-centric plastic surgery. His better half's tragic descent from lovely natural woman to cosmetic enhancement addict/cautionary tale, may be cause for objection, but is utterly irrelevant in Sweaty Pursuits' sporting court. The issue for those that like to watch (sport that is) is that the soccerer may again invade America's shores to toil as a wholly overrated star who thrusts a sport we as a nation loathe in our collective faces.

We'd much prefer to exchange Beckham for more palatable British exports, such as a third series of Spaced or a few container loads of Cadbury Flake bars, but it doesn't seem likely that Becks will play ball on this one. If his second coming actually happens, we'll officially be even for inflicting Friends and Pepsi-Cola on the United Kingdom. To further complicate shit, there's another party involved in the Beckham stakes: Italy. The country, who's only contemporary cultural contribution is making some of the most over-priced handbags and stilettos on the planet, wants to keep him. And, for some reason I can't quite fathom, some Americans are trying to stop them.

Vote for Italy. The announcement that Victoria's spouse could be returning to Major League Soccer is a seriously upsetting prospect for those in the States who prefer their sports to be sporty and not chess-y. The return of Golden Balls to LA's Galaxy means SportsCenter will subsequently devote an unacceptable percentage of time on the tie-heavy sport. Enduring Beckhamwatch yet again while waiting for NBA scores and news on the condition of pitchers' rotator cuffs is a deplorable prospect for real fans of real sports.

It's bad enough that Beckham is soccer's Trojan horse, allowing the "sport" to mince into the mainstream, carried by his admittedly cute legs, but the problem is also his play. Quite simply, someone that handsome should score more often. He's amassed a grand total of, wait for it, drum roll here, five goals in his 30 games with the Galaxy, a total as underwhelming as the team's name is insipidly silly. His 12 assists don't quite justify his five-year, $437 billion contract, either, and even he'd admit he's not worth his economic bailout-sized checks if you got two or three cosmopolitans in him.

Even by soccer's woefully meager standards, he doesn't frequently propel balls to nets. And that's always been a problem with him: Posh's bit of designer rough is a fine passer, and he's quite proficient at free kicks, and that's about it. He's like a receptionist who makes good coffee but doesn't know how to answer the phone.

The didn't-appear-in-Bend It Like Beckham Beckham found fortune and fame by obeying the Hasselhoff Principle, which states that riding on others' successes is success itself, sort of. For example, his first team, Manchester United, was consistently victorious during his tenure there -- the striking word in this sentence being "team." While he was often a contributor, the fact remains that the Red Devils are a self-perpetuating juggernaut, much like how you, me, or anybody's two-legged momma could have played for the New York Yankees and still have won a selection of World Series rings back in the 90s.

Beckham has made a fortune in tips as a decent waiter working at a restaurant in a terrific location, and yet that's only a misdemeanor compared to his felonies against the "man" part of mankind. Namely, he was the initial and quintessential metrosexual. Thankfully for males who display an innate repulsion for "product," the trend has gone the way of the Atkins Diet. But we still get occasional dirty looks when we drink beer out of cans, don't shave on a particular day, or wear a non-ironic rock band T-shirt. Thanks, Handsome!

That legacy is part of his infuriating magnetism, but I'm veering offside here and should get back on point. Mr. Spice may be the most famous person in the world, never mind athlete, and yet he hasn't even been the best player on many of his teams. Who knows why his roster mates haven't also appeared on the cover of Details when they're not incessantly shilling for Disney? In their collective defense, not everyone can be born with boy band good looks.

His puddle shallowness is why he won't be the person who reverses 230-plus years of American evolution that's rendered the foot-heavy sort of football reflexively unappealing to the nation. Those already allergic to soccer are never going to be convinced to change by the Great Brit Hope.

Good 'ol American sport fans, who prefer collision-conducive athletics, find a game where humans are forbidden from using hands, despite being equipped with the useful appendages, rather primitive. And they're not likely to be converted by an Armani underpants model who moonlights as a kicker when they discover that there's no full-body tackling or checking, and almost the same amount of scoring.

The good news is that Spice Boy may not be back anyway. He's been bitching about how he wants to stay with his loaner squad, A.C. Milan, and despite the expiration of a Galaxy-imposed deadline to negotiate a deal for him, the Milanese are still trying to bribe his California team for his questionable services.

Those accessory-loving Italians would be doing the U.S. a favor: American fans want their sports to remain fiercely combative affairs where maintenance crews have to squeegee blood off the playing surface during television breaks. Ultimately however it won't matter whether Becks returns to LA -- if fucking Pelé couldn't make Americans permanently embrace soccer, a man who has his name on a fragrance certainly won't, either.


Anthony Bialy is SG's no-jocks-required Sweaty Pursuits sports columnist. He follows sports religiously even though he’s quite bad at them. He ran cross country and played rugby in college, and was horrid at both. He schedules his life around his favorite NHL team’s games, and sadly lists his alma mater winning the NCAA basketball championship as his happiest moment. He likes other things besides sports, too, and requests a minute to think of them.

Photo by Nicole Powers, who was having far to much fun with her zoom lens at the Home Depot Center.