Animation, Art, and Other Shiny Things
(My original post is at shelftalk.spl.org)
Way in the back of the library, behind the rows of Mozart and Etta James, Jean-Luc Ponty and Steely Dan, in a place where even Frank Sinatra’s ghost won’t tread is a huge, iron-studded door. Locked inside are the dirty little secrets the Librarians don’t want you to know about. They remember the horror and gut-wrenching terror when Pat Boone returned from his brief foray into its depths.
Yes, it is (gasp!) The Heavy Metal Room. Full of Tool(s), Nine Inch Nails, and Chevelle(s). It can make one quite Disturbed. A place where the amp stacks can be turned up to 11….
Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit here. Ok, maybe I’m making it up completely, but someone needs to point out that SPL has more heavy metal than a 1957 Eldorado.
It’s a given that SPL carries classic metal artists like Motorhead and Led Zeppelin, as well as a good bunch of Seattle folks such as Jimi Hendrix, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. (We were ground zero for grunge metal, after all.) And what a myriad of metaldom! Thrash, progressive, death, nu, groove, gothic, symphonic, Viking (is Pirate metal far behind? Arrrrr!), Christian (yes, Virginia, there is such thing as Christian metal), funk, glam, neo-classical. You name the metal and SPL has it.
If you’re like me, an old school head-banger who bought all the Aerosmith albums when they were new releases, the big hair band and rock ballad years were tough ones. When Ozzie Osbourne put out that duet with Lita Ford I was inconsolable for days. Only huge doses of Rush (2112 specifically) got me through it and ZZ Top helped erase many of the scars left over, but I was still certain that it was one of the signs of the apocalypse.
Fortunately metal got through that phase and grunge helped re-focus the general genre back onto what us metal maniacs were thirsting for; heavy riffs that put an air guitar in your hands and smacks you up-side the head.
Several bands deserve, no, require, full posts of their own (Tool, NiN, Zeppelin, Judas Priest, to name just a few), so I’ll try to restrain myself while we look at some of the newer purveyors of metallic mayhem that you can find here at SPL.
It’s time for the monthly post. It certainly feels like it from the pressure building up in the head.
But there are so many things… A logjam between the cranium and the fingers.
For today – this moment; A View From the Deck
It’s been two weeks since Miz Liz, the older of our 2 youngsters, moved to the Rose City – Portland, Oregon. She actually left the nest last September, coincidently moving into the same apartment building I was living in when I met her mother.
Being a short bus ride away, or 10 minutes in the Caddy, was enough to assuage my wife’s worries easily. Her moving 4 hours down the motorway doesn’t contain much assuaginess for Aunt Bee however. We’ve got family in Portland, or rather Aunt Bee does, so there is a tad of assuagnicity going on, but clearly not enough. I mean, just to visit her young’un it’s 4 hours by train, or a bit less by Caddy. (Under my steerage, of course, as Aunt Bee does not deign to lower herself to operating a motor vehicle. With advanced degrees in both Pedestrianship and Passengerism as well as a Backseat Drivers License, she’s entitled. Besides, the Caddy is made for that drive)
Not conducive to a spur of the moment drop-by, one might say.
So, as she can’t stop by on a whim any more, Mohamed will go to the mountain – for a week. As I have to work, she’ll take the train down on Tuesday then I will drive down and pick her up over the following weekend. No problem, right?
Well… maybe a few small sticky wickets… Over the interim 4 days I fear I will starve before I can make the drive down, and if I don’t, I may be so addled by lack of food I could run off the road and over a cliff and die a horrible, fiery, (and definitely spectacular) death.
Aunt Bee was significantly less than impressed by this argument noting that I actually kept myself alive and somewhat fed before she met me lo those many years ago. And yes, I could probably remember how it is done, and no, I hadn’t destroyed that many brain cells in the interim nor do I have early-onset Alzheimer’s.
My further points were dealt with in much the same manner; Boredom? If, between books, television, and the internet, I got bored then I was one sorry human. Laundry? See the above argument about food, and don’t wash anything in hot. Cold in bed without her? There’s extra blankets in the closet and a hot water bottle under the bathroom sink. Starvation? We went over that, am I retarded?
Finally, in exasperation she pinned me to the chair with her most piercing ‘Stop While You Are Still Getting Some’ look. I took that opportunity to shut the hell up figuring that it might get me some.
Anyways, I guess the point is that it’s one thing to have a child living close by; within easy reach to rescue when their car breaks down or their computer lets out the magic smoke, it’s quite another for it to be a trip in and of itself just to visit.
I have a feeling that when Z spreads his wings I’ll be much less calm about it than Aunt Bee’s been.
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The Ruffled Crow 