Pink Triangle

I’ve been watching more of “Modern Family” – the gay couple, Mitchell and Cameron, are hilarious.  Both of them fit the stereotypes so well.  I suppose it’s time to tackle this particular issue.

 Hardcore haters.  I’ve noticed that the people who bark and bray the loudest against gays almost invariably wind up being bumped out the closet quite dramatically.  Whether it’s denial or self-hatred, I don’t know, but the gay bashers all too often seem to be confused as to which team they’re actually on.  On the other hand, simply not being a “sympathizer” and hanging out with gays, frequenting gay clubs, or embracing them and their lifestyle, is not even prima facie proof of being a “homophobe”.  

 Having said that, I do have a few problems with gays.  None relate to religion, though.

A.         Roger the Alien, from “American Dad”.  Rather, I should say this is my problem with gays as portrayed on TV.  Too many of them have this annoying tendency to be excessively impressed with their own wit and sophistication.  This pretentious depiction exceeds what I’ve noticed of gays in person.  The TV people are so intent on positive portrayals of gays that they go overboard with depictions that are, in fact, annoying.  Fortunately the “Modern Family” writers have dodged that bullet.

B.         I’m not particularly worried that a legion of gay men are going to find me irresistible and hunt me down.  I don’t find all women attractive; do all gay men find me attractive simply because I’m male?  Probably not - especially since not all women find me attractive either.  What I’d be more concerned about is being considered gay simply by association.  The way to avoid that is to avoid gay bars and other places where they socialize as a majority.  But even around Dupont Circle in DC, not every place is mobbed.  

            Way back when, on “L.A. Law”, Douglas Brachtman (Alan Rachins) was invited to lunch by an old friend (law school classmates?  I don’t remember) who wanted to disclose his orientation to him.  And this guy picked a restaurant known – apparently not to Brachtman – as a gay hangout, with serious consequences for Brachtman.  And I’m thinking, Mr. Pink Friend didn’t have to go to this particular place to make his big confession, he could have picked a regular restaurant.  All very well and fine to embrace who you are, but dragging your straight friend into the equation was gratuitous and inconsiderate – a serious lapse in discretion on his part.

C.         Flamers.  Now on “Dancing With the Stars” there is are not one but TWO flamers, Judge Bruno and the contestant Carson Kressley.  Lee, on “Desperate Housewives”, is the flamer; Jack (Sean Hayes) was the flamer on “Will & Grace”.   This is annoying, to be sure, but not offensive per se.  At least not to me.  Then again, a flamer is putting you on notice as to his orientation.  You have been warned!

 Metrosexuals.  “Metrosexual” basically means “acts gay but doesn’t sleep with men” – the whole manicure/pedicure, obsessive grooming and dressing, cooking & wine, etc.  I don’t think any of them are actually gay; to the contrary, it often seems like a desperate attempt by luckless straight guys who can’t seem to attract women any other way.  Be careful: she may think you’re actually gay.   

 Choice vs. Genes.  I really don’t care about this one way or another.  I have no attraction to men, and if put in a position where access to women was practically nil I’d just…take care of myself.  I’m not bisexual or even curious – and no amount of alcohol or drugs will change that.  Nor do I buy into this idea that (A) all women are secretly bisexual or (B) all men are “bi-curious”.  While I’m sure certain women are bisexual, it’s been my experience that this proportion is extremely small.  And my take on the latter is that many truly bisexual – or in fact, gay – men don’t want to admit that the majority of the male population is neither gay nor even bisexual, so they cook up this nonsense about “bi-curious”, partly defensive and partly wishful thinking. 

            But I say “irrelevant” for this reason:  I don’t really care WHY gays do what they do.  Whether something inside them makes them prefer other men, or one day they simply CHOSE to be gay, so long as their sex is 100% consensual and they leave me alone, what they do neither interests nor concerns me. 

            “Not that there’s anything wrong with it”. Jerry Seinfeld joked that straights were worried that with the proper “sales pitch”, they could be persuaded to switch sides.  “Start with holding hands, there’s no obligation.”  Whatever you are, you are, whether you’re in or out of the closet.  Closer examination reveals “switching sides” to be nothing more than “coming out” – a public recognition of true orientation rather than an actual change in preferences.

 Expediently Bisexual.   By this I mean the type of guys who will nail guys when women are not available, but are exclusively hetero when women are around.  The best examples involve (A) prison or (B) Islamic terrorists out in the field.  I’ve noted earlier about Yasser Arafat; the more knowledgeable experts, from Lawrence of Arabia all the way to the Israelis, have observed the dirty secret that the heavily homophobic Islamic world hides a substantial minority of repressed homosexuals.  As we saw during Prohibition (1919-1933), gun control, the Drug War, etc. repressing something never stamps out the behavior in question, it simply raises the cost of doing what we’d do anyway. 

 Molesters.  The big issue with molesters is not that they’re gay, it’s that they prey on children who are too young to understand what’s going on or too weak to resist.  And this is true whether the child is a little girl or a little boy.  It’s also objectionable when a person in a position of trust – e.g. a priest, father, uncle, Michael Jackson, etc. – takes advantage of that to satisfy his own darker desires at the expense of a small child. 

 Will & Grace.  This was the first show which really showcased the lifestyle.  I never watched it unless it came on the TV in front of me at gay church (the gym) while I was on the treadmill.  Even then it wasn’t particularly amusing or funny, just an excuse for these two (McCormack and Hayes) to marvel at their own wit.  I much prefer watching Mitchell and Cameron (and Lily) on “Modern Family” – a clever, sophisticated gay couple who AREN’T pretending to be the most intelligent people on the planet or better than all the straights around them.

 Freddie Mercury & Rob Halford.  We pretty much knew Queen had a bisexual singer; Mercury was fairly open about his lifestyle.  As for Judas Priest, Halford had consistently ACTED gay but denied it.  The music?  Queen did have a drama, show-tune kind of quality to their music, particularly “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Flash Gordon”, but deep down inside the music still rocked.  Songs like “Best Friend” could be considered ambivalent, as with “Eat Me Alive” and “Love Bites”, two of JP’s more raunchier songs, with “Raw Deal” being the nastiest.  But the clever part about it is that Mercury and Halford knew how far they could go without stepping over the edge – make it, at worst, ambiguous and not explicit. 

            Of course, how could we have missed The Village People?  Apparently the Navy did.

 Gay Marriage.  My take on this is the following:  allow them to have “civil unions”.  If the state had a finite amount of marriages they were willing to perform each year, and straight couples were locked out because gay couples took up the available slots, then it would be a zero-sum game whereby gay marriages were imposing some sort of cost on straight ones; then I could see some sort of problem.  But civil unions do not (A) force straight people to marry gays, (B) prevent any straight couple from getting married if they want to, or (C) somehow “ruin” it for straight couples, who now have to get divorced, live together, or pursue common law marriages in the few states which still recognize them.  The state has no legitimate interest in interfering with the happiness of consenting adults.   

            Having said that, the Constitution has no provision protecting gay marriage (nor, for that matter, should it), so at this point the 50 individual states and D.C. can make their own determination.  If DC, MA, NY, CA, etc. want to legalize gay marriage (or civil unions) and VA, NC, SC, GA, MS, AL, FL, TX, AZ, etc. wish to ban it, that’s their prerogatives.  Part of the beauty of a federal system is that if you’re not thrilled with your state, you can move to a state you prefer; moving out of the country completely due to unfavorable Federal laws is considerably more inconvenient (and unfair) than simply crossing state lines.  This will clearly encourage gays to live in certain more “tolerant” parts of the country, but if they are in the minority in the “less tolerant” areas they really have no business dictating their particular political agenda to the rest of the state.  Tolerance works both ways, and gays have to accept that not everyone loves them, nor do they have the right to unconditional acceptance by the entire country.

 AIDSCAP.  Back in 1994 I had a temporary job working for this USAID agency in Arlington.  Myself and perhaps 3 other guys were the only straight men at this whole project.  However, only about 2-3 of the gay men were actually flamers; the rest were pretty normal.  I got along fine with everyone and was not molested, groped, or mistreated. 

            I did learn something interesting, though:  according to the literature put out by this agency, which was 99% pro-gay agenda, in the US the AIDS problem is 90% a gay problem.  It’s overseas in the Third World, where it seems half the male population regularly visits prostitutes, that straight men and women start having problems with AIDS. 

 Condemnation & Gay Rights.  Having said all that, South Park is still on point: “simply because you tolerate something doesn’t mean you have to like it.”  If gays are free to do as they please with each other, straights likewise have the right say what they want about them, and private organizations like the Boy Scouts have the right to screen out for gays.  Even G. Gordon Liddy pointed it out correctly:  gays have the SAME RIGHTS, no more, no less, as straight people; they have no “gay rights” and no rights specifically because they are gay.

             We know there are two kinds of vegetarian:  the Paul McCartney style who adopt it as a choice but respect the non-vegans’ rights and choices to continue to eat meat, vs. the militant types who try to gross us out from eating meat and ruin it for everyone.  Likewise there are the discreet gays who aren’t out to rub their lifestyle in our faces and just want to be left alone, vs. the militant types who flaunt it outrageously and get off on shock for the sake of shock.  The latter types aren’t doing the movement any favors; most straight people are content to let the gays alone so long as the sex is consensual and discreet.   

            Personally, I don’t think being gay is anything to be proud of, such that a “gay pride parade” is a good thing, but somehow I also don’t think that a Gay Shame Parade, where they block off the street for a few hours to see absolutely no one parade at all, would fly or work very well in practice.  The whole thing works best when everyone just minds their own business and leaves each other alone.

Nostalgia

A few days ago I was sitting in court in Fairfax, waiting for my case to be called.  The Fairfax courthouse is fairly modern – late 1970s style – and not particular fancy or ornate, more functionally than design oriented.  My mind wandered, as it does when I’m denied the privilege of reading anything non-case related (even my Android Kindle).  It occurred to me that there could be any time in the future, be it 2111, 3111, 10011, however far advanced in time, and SOMEONE then could be wondering what life was like back in 2011, and I’d know what they could only imagine – I’m here now. 

 Occasionally I go to courts where the styling is very obvious from another time.  The US Bankruptcy Court in Alexandria dates from 1931; it’s not hard to imagine yourself back then in some of the courtrooms of that court.  Even stranger is the Baltimore City Circuit Court in downtown Baltimore, built in the late 19^th century, though as yet I have not had occasion to actually attend court in that building.  An uncontested divorce filed a few years ago had its “hearing” held in a lawyer’s office in downtown Baltimore, and a personal injury case settled without trial. 

 I suppose I should distinguish two types of nostalgia.  The first concerns a time period with which you may be personally familiar, probably either early childhood or growing up.  The other concerns time periods in which you might want to have lived – Roman times, Renaissance Europe, etc. – but with which you only have second-hand knowledge gained from books or movies. 

 1970s.  Naturally I have a strong nostalgia (of the first type) for this time period, because I grew up as a kid in Montgomery Village, Maryland at that time.   Recently I came across two issues of “Living”, the magazine the developers, Kettler Brothers, released to attract people to settle there: chock full of 70s nostalgia at its finest.  It’s too bad we can’t “go back” there.  I suppose the closest is indulging in vinyl records, 8 tracks, and scoring (someday) a 2^nd generation (1970-81) Pontiac Trans Am.  The 70s means no computers, no faxes, no cell phones, no Internet, but color TVs (no HD) and movies are in movie theater or shown with projectors and screens.  The condo I live in now, in northern Virginia, was built in 1973 and certainly looks it.

 Midnight in Paris.  This is a recent Owen Wilson film in which he time travels to 1920s Paris, meeting (among others) Picasso, Dali, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.   He strikes up a brief romance with Picasso’s mistress, Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), a flapper who takes 1920s Paris for granted and would rather experience “La Belle Epoque” (late 19^th-early 20^th century) Paris, and indeed does so.  And the Moulin Rouge patrons who they meet there, themselves take this era for granted and would rather be back in the Renaissance.  By this point Wilson’s character Gil realizes he’s just as well back in 2010.

 Somewhere in Time.  I have to say I share Adrianna’s time preference more than Gil’s.  In this film, Christopher Reeve has a fixation, an obsession, with the early 20^th century.  He manages to hypnotize himself back to 1912, to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan. 

 1879-1919. This is the time period I’m most nostalgic for – that is to say, the second type of nostalgia for a time period I never actually lived myself.  It includes Art Nouveau and World War I, gaslight, the dawn of electricity and the peak of railroads, and the very first automobiles.  Movies from this time are all silent and very poor quality black & white, e.g. “Birth of A Nation” and “Intolerance”. 

 NFL Throwbacks.  The NFL has thankfully indulged in this.  Various teams resurrect earlier uniforms from time to time.  The New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, and San Diego Chargers have made the experiment permanent.  The Patriots, Steelers, Bears, Cowboys, Redskins, Vikings, Jets/Titans, don the throwbacks uniforms periodically. 

 Williamsburg, VA.  I like the concept of Colonial Williamsburg, unfortunately I have zero interest in that particular time period (late 18^th century).  I like that the people have to stay in character, but my understanding is that when the shift is over they take off the tricorner hats and period clothing and go home to their 21^st century abodes.

 Renaissance Fairs.  These are the closest to medieval Europe you’re likely to find in the US, or anywhere else.  Fortunately the Bubonic Plague is absent, as is the brutalism of that period when people were simply killed outright with no police or habeas corpus.  What’s cool is that the employees are 99% “in character” and most of the crowd is too (free admission to anyone dressed appropriately). 

 Retro.  By now we have several retro-styled cars:  the new Camaro (1969 style), Challenger (1970 style), HHR (early Suburban), Prowler, PT Cruiser, etc.  My niece Zoe plays with these American Girls dolls, each of which focuses on a different time period in American history.  My question is this: why can’t we do retro for everything?  Clothes, kitchen appliances, furniture, etc. – a full “retro package” for either rooms in the house or the entire place.  Products which were originally available during that time could be repackaged accordingly, though with contemporary content.  Recently Budweiser reissued 1936 pattern beer cans, Pepsi released “Retro Pepsi” in the original styling and made with real sugar, and the same deal with Mountain Dew.  Coca-Cola has been available for years in those smaller 8 oz glass bottles (though for obvious reasons the pre-1903 formula with cocaine hasn’t been reintroduced).  I don’t know why, but there is some undeniably stronger flavor and sweetness coming out of one of those bottles than an aluminum can or a plastic 20 oz bottle. 

            I suppose it would be silly putting a 26” plasma TV into a wood console – it defeats the purpose of having a flat screen if you’re going to put it into a deep wood cabinet, but those of us who aren’t mounting it on the wall itself probably don’t care anyway.  We had the 36” depth in the room for CRT TVs, if rooms are the same size or larger we can still handle that even if we don’t need to anymore.

            The ultimate “retro experience” might be to recreate an entire town dedicated to that time period.  For a turn of the century deal, it would have to be serviced by train only (no airport or paved road).  No TV, no cell phone service, no Internet access, and more in the way of gas appliances than electricity. I don’t think this could work as a 24/7 living experience; communes were an attempt to simply replicate a rural, pre-industrial society amidst a modern industrial country, and failed miserably whenever attempted.  But as a Williamsburg tourist deal it might work.  For the sake of economics, it might better work as a theme park with multiple areas dedicated to particular time periods, as I don’t think any one time period could attract enough people to make it work by itself.  And we’ll keep the futuristic, killer Yul Brynner robots out of this: all the “staff” will be live humans. 

Vulcan's Hammer vs. Occupy Wall Street

Vulcan’s Hammer, Phillip K. Dick (Kindle) (written in 1960).  The year is 2029 (!) and Earth is ruled by a supercomputer called Vulcan 3.  An anti-computer movement, led by anarchic, monk-like Healers, rises against the computer.  The human head of this so-called Unity government, Jason Dill, seeks advice not only from Vulcan 3, but its predecessor, the obsolete and de-authorized but still fully functional Vulcan 2.  Vulcan 2 warns that Vulcan 3 will develop self-awareness and begin to act on its own behalf and initiative.  For that reason, Dill withholds information about the Healer movement from Vulcan 3, but Vulcan 3 finds out anyway.  A sympathetic sub-director, Barris, is the main protagonist of the story:  he opposes Vulcan 3, but initially cannot bring himself to switch sides to the Healers.  Ultimately, however, he determines that Vulcan 3 has access to thermonuclear weapons and will not hesitate to wipe out the entire human race if it deems it necessary to protect its own interests, so Barris decides that, as anarchic and “we don’t stand for anything except tearing down the system” as the Healers may be, they are less of a threat to humanity than Vulcan 3.  Moreover, the Unity forces upon which Barris could count on to oppose BOTH Vulcan 3 AND the Healer movement are nonexistent; so he allies himself with the Healers.  

            The plot of this story is so much like “Terminator” (even down to the year 2029) that I couldn’t imagine Cameron was oblivious to this story.  But Wikipedia says this:

 In Rome, during the release of Piranha II: The Spawning director James Cameron grew ill and had a dream about a metallic torso dragging itself from an explosion while holding kitchen knives.^[2] When Cameron returned to Pomona, California he stayed at Randall Frakes' home where he wrote a draft for The Terminator. Cameron later stated that his influences while writing the script were 1950s science fiction films, episodes of The Outer Limits as well as contemporary films including The Driver and The Road Warrior.

...Writer Harlan Ellison stated that he "loved the movie, was just blown away by it", but believed that the screenplay was based on an episode of The Outer Limits he had written, titled "Soldier". Orion gave Ellison an undisclosed amount of money and an acknowledgment credit in later prints of the film. Some accounts of the settlement state that "Demon with a Glass Hand", another Outer Limits episode written by Ellison, was also claimed to have been plagiarized by the film, but Ellison has explicitly stated that The Terminator "was a ripoff" of "Soldier" rather than "Demon with a Glass Hand".

As you can see – NO mention of Dick in this whole thing.  He had died in 1982, only shortly before the movie came out, but the story dates from 1960.  It seems his estate was asleep at the switch.   Here, by the way, is the plot to “Soldier” (also from the Wikipedia entry for this particular Outer Limits episode):

Eighteen hundred years in the future, two foot soldiers clash on a battlefield. A random energy weapon strikes both and they are hurled into a time vortex. While one soldier is trapped in the matrix of time, the other, Qarlo Clobregnny, materializes on a city street in the year 1964.

Qarlo is soon captured and interrogated by Tom Kagan, a philologist, and his origin is discovered. Qarlo has been trained for one purpose, fighting, and that is all he knows. Progress is made in "taming" him; eventually Qarlo comes to live with the Kagan family.

But the time eddy holding the enemy soldier slowly weakens. Finally he materializes fully and tracks Qarlo to the Kagan home. In a final hand-to-hand battle, Qarlo sacrifices his life to kill the enemy and save the Kagan family.

In a limited sense, the “time traveling opponents seek each other out” element of the plot is evident in “The Terminator”.  But Cameron’s overall scenario, of Skynet developing self-awareness and destroying the human population to protect itself, is almost verbatim from Dick’s story. 

The Healer movement described in this book is very similar to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.  As I’ve noted several times in the past, the anti-World Bank/IMF group is extremely vocal in its opposition to capitalism and Wall Street, but is equally silent about its actual goals and objectives, besides simply trying to shut down the system or embarrass as many people as possible.  Among others, the Anonymous movement has been described as “anarchist”.  However, it seems that Adbusters was the primary organization to instigate these protests and Anonymous has simply encouraged its own supporters to join in.

Actually, identifying the Occupy Wall Street movement with the Healers in Vulcan’s Hammer gives the OWS too much credit: the Healers opposed what was clearly a totalitarian dictatorship run by an all-powerful machine, Vulcan 3. OWS appear to be, at best, yet another vaguely articulated attack on capitalism per se by a movement which NEVER explains what type of system it favors.  Are you socialist?  Are you anarchist?  If you oppose capitalism, what do you support?

One thing that Wall Street does not do that Qaddaffi, Syria, and other regimes do:  use armed force to attack protesters.  Where are the Morgan Stanley Armored Divisions?  The Goldman Sachs F-16s spraying Merrill Lynch Napalm on the crowds?  The GM & Ford Riot Police?  Even the Pinkerton strikebusting goons are history, quite literally.  Not even US armed forces, or the National Guard, as “proxies” for their corporate puppetmasters, are present.  In DC, the Mall has always been a place for protest marches, and the DC police only arrest people for not having permits or blocking traffic.  No tear gas, no massed ranks of riot police, no Cossacks with sabers chasing unarmed protesters and their baby carriages down the steps of Odessa.

Whatever else it might be, the US government and Wall Street are not totalitarian regimes – and never have been.  North Korea, Red China, and Cuba still are.  I’ve seen some pictures showing “V For Vendetta” imagery among the protesters.  Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama – nor any other US President, even the much-maligned Richard Nixon – are or were anywhere close to Adolf Hitler, nor any US regime remotely close to the UK dictatorship depicted in “V For Vendetta”, Orwell’s 1984, or Nazi Germany.  Even Franklin Roosevelt, who co-opted the socialists’ agenda and enacted much of what could be found in the Nazi Party’s 25 Points platform of 1920, did not turn the FBI loose as an American Gestapo, and the very worse excesses of his administration, the Japanese internment camps in California, were just that: internment camps and not Auschwitz, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, or even Dachau or Theriesenstadt.  This plague of “moral relativism” and “moral equivalence” is ubiquitous among the protesters.  By making these bizarre and obviously inapplicable parallels, they completely lose any moral credibility or political coherence they might possibly have.  Lyndon LaRouche makes as much sense as they do.

Here’s your challenge, latter-day Marxists and anarchists:  take what we’ve learned from (1) the Paris Commune, (2) Soviet Russia, (3) Red China, (4) North Korea, (5) “Market Socialist” Europe (Sweden, Denmark, etc.), and (6) the capitalist First World, and give us a coherent, sensible blueprint for a fair and free modern day society: its government (if any) and its economic system.  Tell us how that would work not merely in Belgium, Sweden, or Canada, but also in larger countries like the US and Russia with diverse, multi-ethnic populations and huge, complex modern economies.  When you’ve got that all figured out, THEN you can tear down the current system once you’ve figured out what the hell you’re going to replace it with.

And as for freedom of expression, listen up:  you have a right to say what you want.  You have a right to wave placards.  You have a right to get up on a stage and bark and bray.  And you can invite as many of your comrades as you can get to join you at the same time.  But here’s where your rights end:

1.         No right to block traffic – e.g. roads and bridges - simply to inconvenience others you feel are complacent or indifferent to your political agenda;

2.         No right to obstruct pedestrian traffic to museums and other tourist attractions, again as some misguided attempt to disrupt others’ lives because you feel they don’t care enough about your movement;

3.         No right to blow things up, even if you target unoccupied office buildings at 2 a.m. with a warning call, simply to attract attention to your cause (“propaganda by deed”) and stir the general public out of its bourgeois complacency.  This applies whether your goal was to stop the war in Vietnam (The Weather Underground), the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, or Wall Street. 

Black Sabbath Revisited

A few weeks ago my brother uttered the blasphemy of blasphemies, heresy of heresies: that the albums Heaven And Hell and The Mob Rules were superior not only to Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die, but ANY album Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals.  Much as I acknowledge the high quality of those two Ronnie James Dio albums, and recognize the relatively (!) low quality of the last two albums with Ozzy Osbourne, I cannot agree with this bold assertion.  But it does make an album-by-album analysis appropriate at this…juncture.

 Black Sabbath.  The debut album was released on Friday, February 13, 1970 in the UK, June 30, 1970 in the US.  The “popular” songs are “Black Sabbath”, “The Wizard”, and “N.I.B.”  European versions of the album featured “Evil Woman” instead of “Wicked World”, though I prefer the latter song.  The lengthy “Warning” was a track I learned to play along to by ear in college, on a recently purchased Gibson SG, without following any tablature; this is the “underrated gem” on the album, but “Behind the Wall of Sleep” also applies.  I bought this one on vinyl along with Paranoid, copied both to a 90 minute tape, and listened to them on the train ride up to The Hague for Model United Nations in high school (January 1985).  The Deluxe Edition features an alternate take of “The Warning”.

Paranoid.  Released September 18, 1970 in the UK, January 7, 1971 in the US. The second album is often considered the best, though I feel that SBS (below) deserves that distinction.  The “popular” songs are “War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, “Iron Man” and “Fairies Wear Boots”; the hidden gems are the balance: “Planet Caravan”, “Electric Funeral”, “Hand of Doom”, and “Rat Salad”.  A typical Sabbath set would open with “War Pigs”, close with “Paranoid” as the encore, and feature “Iron Man” somewhere in between, so clearly this album is crucial to a Sabbath collection.  The Deluxe Edition features a DVD-Video version of the complete album in 5.1 Surround (quad).

Master of Reality.  Released July 21, 1971.  I got this on cassette from the PX at Henderson Hall, the Marine Corps base next to Arlington Cemetery in northern Virginia, in summer 1984.  The other choice was Sabotage.  Since this album had two tracks from Speak of the Devil, “Sweet Leaf” and “Children of the Grave”, whereas Sabotage only had one, “Symptom of the Universe”, this one made the cut.  The album name provided the source for Chris Goss’ band name – Goss is known as a stoner rock idol, and closely associated with Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age.  The popular songs on this album are as noted above; the hidden gems are really the balance:  “After Forever” (a pro-religion song the fundies seem to ignore or just be completely unaware of), “Lord of this World”, “Solitude” – another haunting slow song – and “Into The Void”, covered by Soundgarden with completely different lyrics.  “Solitude” alone makes this a “Ok, now I want to kill myself” album.  Shouldn’t every Sabbath album qualify as such?

Vol. 4.  Released September 25, 1972.  I seem to recall buying this on vinyl along with Master of Reality, though for the latter it was simply rounding out the collection as I already had it on tape, whereas with this album I hadn’t heard it at all.  The popular song is “Snowblind”, and the hidden gems are “Wheels of Confusion” (only played live at the Hollywood Bowl – ten days before the album was released!), “Changes” (later done by Ozzy’s solo band), “Laguna Sunrise” (yet another slow instrumental, which seems to evoke images of a lazy Florida hotel in the early 60s), and “St. Vitus Dance”. 

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.  Released November 1973.  I bought this on vinyl along with Sabotage.  Others may disagree with me, but I think this is their peak.  Oddly, only the title track seems to survive as a hit, although Metallica were shrewd enough to cover “Sabbra Cadabra”.  “Fluff” is one of their best instrumentals.  “National Acrobat”, “Spiral Architect”, and “Killing Yourself to Live” are all excellent, and even the two weakest tracks, “Who Are You” (with Rick Wakeman on keyboards) and “Looking For Today” are still very good.  Not a bad track on the whole album – and certainly at least as good, if not much better (IMHO), as/than H&H and Mob Rules.  And the album artwork, both front and back cover, is one of the best in rock.  Unlike LZ IV, this is one of these albums where the artwork matches the quality of the album.

Sabotage.  Released July 28, 1975.  Inevitably, it was impossible to top SBS, but Sabotage suffers in comparison but not absolute terms – as well as having not merely a less impressive cover, but one which seems fairly thrown together (even with all their money, Sabbath still dressed like bums).  “Symptom Of The Universe” is the best known, but here it has a very nice acoustic 2^nd half which only resurfaced live with the Tony Martin era Cross Purposes tour set.  “Megalomania” is live on Past Lives; so far as I know, neither “Thrill of it All” – one of their best songs, ever, and easily the equal of anything on a Dio album by ANY band – or “The Writ” were ever played live.  “Hole in the Sky” was covered by Pantera.  The weakest track is “Am I Going Insane (Radio)”, but with so many strong tracks on the album, it can’t sink the album as a whole.

 Technical Ecstasy.  Released September 25, 1976. I bought this on vinyl along with Never Say Die.  Hipgnosis, best known for Pink Floyd covers (e.g. Dark Side of the Moon), struck out on this album; two robots passing each other on escalators, one apparently male, the other female.  It may be for this reason alone that this album gets such a bad rap; on Joe Siegler’s Black Sabbath website, there is a link to an article by Dan Marsicano on why this album is underrated; I agree that it is.  “Dirty Women” was brought back into the set for Ozzy’s return to Sabbath (1997-2001).  But the good songs are damn good: “You Won’t Change Me”, “All Moving Parts Stand Still”, and even “It’s Alright”, Bill Ward’s sole singing job on a Sabbath album, covered by Guns N’Roses.  For me, “Gypsy”, “Back Street Kids” and “Rock’n’Roll Doctor” (trying to be Blue Oyster Cult, as Marsicano described it) are indeed subpar, though no worse than simply mediocre.  “She’s Gone” is another sad and depressing song which was Sabbath’s particular forte. 

 Never Say Die.  Released September 28, 1978 (US), October 1, 1978 (UK).  I agree that this album deserves its bad reputation.  About the only songs I like on here are “Air Dance” (very similar to Frank Zappa – no wonder he was accompanying the band on their final tour with Ozzy, on which Van Halen was the opening act) and “Junior’s Eyes”.  I really can’t stand “Johnny Blade”, and the rest of the album is mediocre. 

 Live At Last.  Released summer of 1980.  An honorable mention for this live album, released well after Ozzy left the band but recorded on the Vol 4 tour (March 1973) – and includes “Killing Yourself To Live” (from the as-yet unreleased Sabbath, Bloody, Sabbath) with alternate lyrics.  The extended version of “Wicked World” is awesome: an unusually jazzy improv by Tony Iommi, snippets of “Supernaut”, and a heavy version of “Changes”.  Now this is included on Past Lives.  

 Vinyl.  We bought all the Sabbath albums on vinyl, up to and including Seventh Star.  Eternal Idol was the first album which came out when we were no longer buying records.  I bought We Sold Our Souls For Rock’N’Roll on vinyl in Paris, but never bothered to buy the CD version of it.  Of course, our vinyl versions, which were NEMS reissues from the 80s and not first generation Warner Brothers releases, did not have gatefold sleeves (except for Vol. 4, and that one was missing Ozzy and Bill), much less the posters.

 Remasters.  The first set was from Castle; they have lyrics and liner notes.  I can’t say I’ve noticed a HUGE difference between these and the original CD releases.  I haven’t heard the Rhino remasters; nor can I say I can trust Joel Siegler’s testimony that the Rhino versions are much better than the Castle series (which I have), as he has essentially become Sabbath’s webmaster and cannot risk alienating them by describing the newer ones in anything less than glowing terms.   For that matter, I really dislike the Amazon.com “user reviews” which try to tell me why these albums are so important – I know they are, I bought them ages ago, on vinyl, no less! – but fail to address the issue of whether the 3^rd generation remaster is any better than the previous two.  I do have a few of the Deluxe Editions, which claim the standard album is also digitally remastered.  At least with Judas Priest someone with no connection with the band took the trouble to listen to the various remastered versions of Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny to give us an opinion as to which one he thought sounded best.  I’ve yet to see anything comparable for Black Sabbath.

 Bootlegs.  I have, on tape, several bootlegs: the Paris 1970 show (“War Pigs” as “Walpurgis Night”, with alternate lyrics), a Sabotage tour show with “Sabbra Cadabra”, the Reading 1984 Born Again show (includes “Smoke on the Water” in the encore), a Seventh Star tour bootleg with Ray Gillen on vocals (Hammersmith Odeon) (on CD), and the Rob Halford/Ozzy Osbourne show from 1992.

 For that matter, I might as well review the Dio albums.

 Heaven & Hell.  Just like Back In Black – by my other favorite band, AC/DC – Sabbath hit the ground running with their first album with Ronnie James Dio.  The title track, “Neon Knights”, “Children of the Sea”, and “Lonely is the Word” are all excellent.  “Die Young” and “Walk Away” are good, though I could do without “Lady Evil”.  And the artwork is killer.   But again, I still put Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath ahead of this album.

 The Mob Rules.  UGH.  I can’t stand the artwork, and unlike the prior album I also can’t stand the title track.  “Country Girl”, “Voodoo”, “The Sign of The Southern Cross”, are all quality, as are the lesser tracks.  Perhaps I’m biased by the terrible artwork.

 Live Evil.  The double live album with Dio, recorded in Seattle on the Mob Rules tour.  The mix of H&H, Mob Rules, and classic Ozzy tuneage is good, as is the sound quality.  Of course, the highlight is Dio’s pedantic instructions to an obviously English-speaking audience of Americans on the “Heaven & Hell” sing-along portion, i.e. “here’s the example.”  For all his skill as a singer, his crowd-control skills lagged well behind…Ian Anderson…Eric Bloom…Jim Morrison…Rob Halford…Bruce Dickinson…even Ozzy Osbourne and Ian Gillan, though I still put him a bit further ahead from Tony Martin.

Dehumanizer.  My friend Ken salivated over the imminent release of the album, and the tour for this album in 1992 was my first opportunity to see Black Sabbath in concert; the Seventh Star tour was cancelled before it reached Paris in 1986. 

            I really didn’t like this album.  Sorry, but I do NOT worship Ronnie James Dio – either in Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath or solo.  To me, every single track on this album is mediocre.  Tony and Dio clearly developed a “system” for writing songs which put them on auto-pilot.  If you like the formula, fine, but if you don’t it’s just another album of writing by the numbers.

 The Devil You Know.  The same deal with this album.  The “X of the Y” is the pattern for ¾ of the album.  Aside from “Fear”, “Bible Black”, and “Nevermore”, all the rest of the songs feature that type of song title and chorus.  This might as well be “Dehumanizer II” – great if you loved that album, otherwise so-so.

 Ozzy vs. Dio.  I had always assumed that Ozzy wrote the lyrics back when he was in the band.  Only much later did I read that Geezer was the principal lyricist for the band until Dio showed up and took over completely.  For some reason I never really liked Dio’s lyrics compared to Geezer’s, but until now I hadn’t been able to focus my thoughts on the issue sharply enough to articulate why.  If there is some subtle, barely articulable difference, it’s that Dio strikes me as pretentious, whereas Geezer and Ozzy are not.  Pretentious works for the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd – the usual crop of “progressive” bands – but does not work so well for a blues-based hard rock band like Black Sabbath.  In the latter context we wind up with the spectacle of the black trenchcoated, “food court druids” waxing poetic about the occult.  I know we want to steer light years away from the Beavis & Butt-head, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” crowd of idiots who unfortunately make up a sizable portion of the heavy metal audience, but this goes too far.  Plenty of us are neither pretentious nor idiots. 

 One last piece of anti-Dio heresy: I do like Born Again, even if Ian Gillan can’t stand it and no other Sabbath fan seems to be willing to admit it.