Saigon West

Before May 2002 my interaction with Viets was limited. Then I got a job representing Vietnamese, and my exposure increased dramatically. Before then I knew all about the Vietnam War, as my buddy from high school was a huge fanatic about that: Tet this, Khe Sanh that, “Apocalypse Now”, etc. Now it was my turn to get inundated with Viets at a personal and professional level.

Apparently Northern Virginia has the second largest concentration of Vietnamese living in America (California is #1). Seven Corners is the center, with a mall, the Eden Center, which flies the south Vietnamese flag (yellow with three horizontal red stripes down the middle) and is full of Vietnamese restaurants, karaoke bars, jewelry stores, and travel agencies. My office was 5 minutes away, and frequently clients were given directions from the Eden Center as a landmark. I’ve eaten there a few times, and even sampled its club, the Diamond Club, a few nights, though not recently.

I tried several times, but could not manage to learn Vietnamese, beyond a few phrases. All those accents throw me off, and I think I’m past the peak of years where absorption of a new language is something my brain can handle. Portuguese is still locked in at #2.

For that matter, I’m not a big fan of the food either. Much of it, like most Asian food to my palate, reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Riker tries to sample Klingon cuisine. Uggh. Using chopsticks is a no-win situation: obviously they’ll laugh at you if you can’t seem to manage it, but even if you do get it right (as I do) they’ll laugh at you with wonder – “wow, the monkey did it!”.

I also got to know something of the Vietnamese personality. Unfortunately, the more I learned, the less I liked it. Like most Asians, Viets don’t seem to understand the Western notion of “objective reality”. The “truth” and “honesty” are alien ideas, the province of stupid, naïve, childlike Americans too foolish to lie effectively. An honest Viet is hard to find – either they’re Catholic or heavily Americanized. They’ll tell you what you want to hear and get pissed if you don’t behave the same way. [However, the guy who painted my car is 100% redneck, yet shares the same “tell him what he wants to hear so he doesn’t get completely pissed off” way of doing business. He does great work, he just takes forever to get it done. Despite that, he’s a nice guy. People are pretty complex.]
One of my secretaries dated a Vietnamese man who constantly checked up on her at the office – insanely jealous. She thought it was endearing and cute. And this same girl warned me: there’s a good reason why Vietnamese men are so jealous of their Vietnamese wives and girlfriends (“where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, was how she put it). One of my cutest clients was the victim of a husband who ruined a great thing by being too jealous; damn idiot couldn’t deal with it, but given how attractive she was, I could understand how he felt. He just took it too far.
I’m not a big fan of Asian women, who all too often look as though they never even went through puberty. I’m into women, not girls; occasionally some of them seem to actually have a figure, breasts, etc. Many of them seem to have a mean streak and ability to spend money like it’s going out of style. A former secretary’s sister had a shirt that read “You Better Make More Than I Can Spend”. Another secretary, only one-quarter Vietnamese, pointed out that the girl should have a shirt that says “Size Doesn’t Matter As Long As You Buy Me Stuff”. Add that to the lying, unfaithfulness, low attractiveness, Klingon cuisine, a majority preference for Vietnamese men, and the odds of finding a decent Vietnamese woman are pretty low, which is why I’m not even looking. Most of the offers seem to be regarding someone’s sister or cousin back in Vietnam who needs a green card. All too often, American men are only good as husbands to get a green card or provide unlimited amounts of cash to spend on their wives’ Vietnamese lovers behind their backs. Hell, Viet women cheat on their Vietnamese husbands – what chance does an American husband have expecting the woman to be faithful? [To be fair, though, a certain Eastern European country on the Black Sea does a remarkable job of producing beautiful women who are just as greedy, deceitful and unfaithful as Vietnamese women tend to be. But that’s another story.]

The Viets vary considerably on their level of assimilation. Some speak almost no English at all despite having been here since 1975. They only eat Vietnamese food, won’t watch a movie if there are no Asians in it, and have to drive a Honda, Nissan or Toyota. At the other extreme are Viets who have been here for a long time, hardly speak a word of Vietnamese, and act exactly like Americans. My office manager’s oldest son is completely Vietnamese yet doesn’t speak a word of Vietnamese. To hear him talk, and the way he acts, he is completely American. All his wives have been white Americans and all his children are Amerasians. The rest seem to fall somewhere in between: using cell phones and shopping like Americans, but rarely watching US TV or movies or listening to any music sung in English. This is one department where I can’t, and won’t, paint them all with the same brush.

I’ll finish off with a few concessions. (1) I have never been to Vietnam, or anywhere else in Asia. My impressions on Viets are due to my dealings with the ones here. (2) I have met a fair amount of Viets who are outstanding and treat me fine. They’re not all slime. It was simply discouraging to see the same behavior resurface again and again, and find myself liking them less and less the more I got to know them. Maybe I should simply go to Saigon – accompanied by someone, as I don’t speak Vietnamese and have no hope of fitting in – and wrap up this chapter in my life.

Red Is The Color

I’ve just finished watching a few of Michael Moore’s movies, and my earlier conclusions and suspicions are confirmed. He is Red, Red, Red.

Roger & Me. This was his first movie. He went to Flint, Michigan (where he grew up) and busted on General Motors for umpteen minutes. GM created Flint, but also – so he claims – destroyed it by shutting down plants. As if it was GM’s duty to keep plants open just to give people jobs. I found his arguments less than persuasive.

Canadian Bacon. Fiction: the US trumps up a war with Canada when the Cold War peters out and the Russians refuse to play along. A bunch of stupid Americans try to invade Toronto, believing it to be the capital (try Ottawa) and various SCTV people get a chance to be in a movie. Dan Akroyd was quality as the trooper who advises them to repeat the nasty anti-Canadian slogans in French as well as English. Given that we haven’t invaded Canada long after the Cold War ended, I’d say this idea was pretty stupid, though it probably served to amuse a few Canucks.

The Big One. Moore goes on a tour of the US promoting his books, and stopping by various corporate headquarters along the way to hassle, harass, and embarrass various corporate PR people and media escorts. Not much happens, the highlight being his meeting in person with Phil Knight of Nike. Honestly, the odds of finding a plant full of Americans willing to put sneakers together for $5.50 an hour is pretty damn low.

The analysis here shouldn’t be how low Indonesian Nike wages are compared to US minimum wages, it should be how they compare to other wages in Indonesia. If they were paying less than the prevailing wage in Indonesia, why would anyone there work for Nike?

Then there’s this business of prison labor. How sorry are we going to be for prison inmates doing telemarketing or customer service for less than minimum wage? They’re in prison! I suppose the alternative is someone in India doing the same. Should I wonder, “hmm, this person doesn’t sound Indian. Are they in prison?” Does it really matter? Again, if Americans were willing to do this for the same price, we wouldn’t be hiring prisoners or Indians. Economics, pure and simple – and nothing wrong with it.

Bowling for Columbine. Thanks to Moore, we know who to blame for the shooting in Columbine. No, it wasn’t the two boys. No, it wasn’t Marilyn Manson. Hold your seats, people, it was K-MART! Yes, the chain was responsible. Lovable, boring, big-ass and cheap K-Mart was the merciless murderer of those poor kids in Colorado. We had no idea. Who will K-Mart murder next? Stay tuned.

Fahrenheit 9/11. More propaganda. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes propaganda as, “don’t fight fair, fight dirty. Never acknowledge the other side’s points. Don’t argue rationally. Just cram your message down their throats, repeat the lies, and shout louder than the other guy. It’s a war.” Similar deal here. Whether it’s busting on Bush for Carlysle group connections or Saudi ties (which applied to past presidents, administrations, and Democrats), blaming Bush for Oregon’s State Police budget (try blaming Portland instead), trying to get us paranoid about FBI or sheriff’s snoops on harmless peaceniks (who were never even arrested) or simply busting on US troops in Iraq, Moore strikes out on every issue. Far from being left with a damning, smoking gun no-brainer indictment on 9-11, we simply have an incessant string of vague innuendo, tenuous connections, and mysterious allegations. When’s Moore going to tackle the Kennedy Assassination? I guess he hasn’t figured out which American multinational company to pin the blame on.

Sicko. Here he takes on the US health care system. All well and fine to slam the US system – which does have its faults – but to suggest we adopt what they have in France or Cuba? Come on. There is NO WAY the US taxpayer would accept the 90% tax rate necessary for these so-called “free” health care systems (which aren’t free, of course). So we’re back where we started.

TV Nation/The Awful Truth. I caught a few episodes of these, but did not watch them consistently. The one that sticks out in my mind was when Moore painted a tractor trailer red with a yellow hammer & sickle, and drove by various truck stops trying to elicit some sort of recognition from the trucking proletariat. Nope, not much class consciousness along the highways of US.

He also wrote an article for The Nation years ago (I wish I could find it) in which he slammed US leftist intellectuals for being snobs who wouldn’t deign to have a beer, bowl a few pins, or (God forbid!!!) hunt with Joe Sixpack, the American Proletarian. These are the American workers: how are you going to win them over writing obscure books full of Marxist jargon 99.99% of these people will never read? Don’t talk about “bourgeois”, “proletariat”, “capitalist imperialist exploiters”, etc. Simply ask them if they think they’re getting a raw deal from management. Paul Wellstone had the right idea. Fortunately for us, the Wellstones are few and far between.

Books. I haven’t read any of his books. His movies are annoying enough, why go through the hassle? Hell, it took me ages to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” because I wasn’t keen on giving Moore any of my money.

Ralph Nader. Before Moore, there was Nader, causing a stink. I recently heard him speak at one of these eco/green conventions in DC, badmouthing corporate America as usual. I’ve read his book Unsafe at Any Speed. Granted, GM was being a major dick with him, and the Corvair was a shitty car – an idiotic competitor to the Mustang, and far outclassed by the Camaro and Firebird which should have been GM’s answer in the first place. But he seems to ignore Volvo and other companies which voluntarily introduced safety features without government mandates. The reality is, if people want to pay for safety they will. But the fact that Volvo doesn’t have a lock on the market suggests that consumers sometimes have other priorities than safety. Maybe they’re not Nader’s preferences, but who cares what Nader wants in a car? He doesn’t speak for anyone except himself and the tiny minority of leftists. However, I do hope he runs again and draws off Osama/Clinton voters so McCain can win (even though Ron Paul is my choice).
Both Moore and Nader are clearly lefties (to use the food analogy I brought up last week, watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside). Moore never met a corporation he liked. I suppose if you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, you could say that he simply wants to hold corporate America accountable and expose bad companies.

Fine. But why not show us good companies too? We know they’re out there. Why not show us a company that treats its employees fairly – or even one that’s employee-owned (you NEVER hear about them from Moore and Nader). The obvious reason for this is that his ultimate motive is to make us mistrust corporations as an aggregate and capitalism as a system. For that matter, neither have I ever seen Moore do the obvious thing: purchase stock in a company and show up at its annual shareholders’ meeting to bitch and gripe.

Nor does he spend much time talking about unions. Many leftists (including many of America’s various socialist parties) dislike unions because they represent an attempt to work within the capitalist system instead of overthrowing it. It’s a sellout to The Man, they claim. To the extent workers get tangible benefits and a decent wage from a union, that shows the system works, right? Why give us a totalitarian North Korean regime – or even watered down “market socialism” like Denmark or Sweden with 90% taxes – when we can get what we want within the US capitalist system?

I see the European model as being philosophically incompatible with American culture. Americans are the adults who moved out of their parents’ house in the 17^th century and grew up. Europeans are the 30-somethings still living at home, living off mom & dad. They pay 90% taxes and keep a small, nominal allowance. Mom & Dad pay their health insurance, rent, education, etc. and provide for their needs. After that, what more do they need?

Paul Weaver. Having busted on Moore, I’ll mention Weaver’s book, The Suicidal Corporation. (I’m still reading John DeLorean’s book, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, which I’ve momentarily misplaced and will finish when I find it). Weaver started out as a neoconservative who felt that Big Business got a bum rap from Nader and the left, and went to Ford in the late 70s to help them set the record straight. Once there, however, he learned that much of the shit that Big Business catches is well-deserved, and most of it brought upon itself by its own idiotic political maneuvering. Moreover, there was NEVER a “Golden Age” in which Big Business was pro-capitalist; for the most part of its history, since the late 19^th century, business has behaved badly, has never been pro-capitalist or pro-market, and has constantly sought government favors and protection. He describes a corporate atmosphere reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) with Cuffy Meigs, Orren Boyle and Jim Taggart, and uncomfortably close to Mussolini’s Italy. The book is dated from 1988, the tail end of the Reagan era (he wasn’t phenomenally impressed by Reagan) and is 20 years out of date. But many of its points are well taken, so I won’t call Moore and Nader 100% off the mark.

So where does that leave us? Capitalism does work, although it also, quite obviously, has problems. But that doesn’t mean the solution is revolution, as Moore and Nader so quietly shout (don’t get me started on Rage Against the Machine).

Black Is The Color

It’s time for another somewhat esoteric and abstract discussion, this time about something pretty vague: the color black.

For a long time, it’s been my favorite color. I can’t explain why; I suppose it’s just a matter of taste. I’m not even a goth, nor have I ever been.


Cars. I had my Formula painted black in 1997-78 (from its original dark aqua metallic), and having seen Knight Rider, it’s clear that few cars suit the color as well as a ’92 Firebird Formula, with its sleek body and asymmetric hood. It suits the car even better than it does ’76-81 Trans Ams, especially the Special Editions (aka “Bandit models”) as I’m not a big fan of black & gold. Car manufacturers report that black is consistently a popular color, ever since the Model T, which of course was only offered in black. Unfortunately for cars, black is the color least forgiving of dents, dings, and other imperfections – and white is the most forgiving, which is why pickups and utility vans are so often white. Any car looks best in black, but it’s most alluring and flattering for performance cars.


Guitars. My Gibson Explorer and Fender Stratocaster are both black. I’d have bought my Gibson SG in black too, but that particular model, the ’62 Reissue, was only available in cherry. Since Stratocasters have been available in solid colors – after the two-tone sunburst they originally came in, in 1954 – since 1956, black has been the one color, year after year, which has always been available. Eric Clapton’s famous Strat is black, and the color is now available for his signature model. The Les Paul Custom is traditionally black, although it’s available in other colors as well, notably white and silverburst (favored by Adam Jones of Tool).


Race. I suppose as a white person, my own preferences are irrelevant, but I prefer the term “black” to describe that race, better than the alternatives. Obviously “colored” and “negro” are out of fashion, yet “African-American” seems a little too stilted. Those of us of European descent don’t refer to ourselves as “Polish-American”, “German-American”, or “Irish-American”, etc., especially since with such heterogeneity among not only whites but also multi-racial mix these days, it would be cumbersome, inconvenient, and really stupid for any of us who aren’t complete pedigrees to insist on that. Of course, black people are more brown (aside from some from deep, dark Africa), but aside from albinos, white people aren’t really “white” (more like pink), and Asians aren’t really “yellow” either. I’ve heard the expression “oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside); is there a “snowball” (white on the outside, black on the inside)? Or a “twinkie” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside)? Or “egg” (white on the outside, yellow on the inside)? We could go on with these food/race analogies for awhile. Be that as it may, I think as a racial description, black is best: it’s simple, descriptive, and devoid of value-judgments.


Music/Songs. “Fade to Black” by Metallica, “Back in Black” (song and album) by AC/DC, “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones, not to mention Metallica’s self-titled fifth album, are just a few examples. Ritchie Blackmore tended to dress in black, but for some reason rarely favored black guitars. Black Sabbath also comes to mind. Then there's Spinal Tap....


Clothing. The black uniform of the Allgemeine SS (General SS) of Nazi Germany comes to mind, but these days, an all-black uniform is most likely the province of hair dressers. “Dieter” from Sprockets is long over…. I have a black suit, a black dress shirt, a black tie, and dozens of black t-shirts collected over the years of going to metal concerts, though I can’t say I wear black much more often than any other color.

Doonesbury

It’s Blog 100! Woohoo! But nothing special this time, just more of the same. In this case, a “tribute” to Doonesbury, the famous liberal comic strip.

I still read it as often as possible, including the Sunday version. I’m by no means a fan of the politics: politically, I’m closest to B.D., who is far and away my favorite character. I got But This War Had Such Promise expressly because it’s the one in which B.D. goes to Vietnam. After years of wearing a football helmet (first Walden, then the Rams), then the Kevlar helmet (after Desert Storm), later a CHP trooper motorcycle helmet, back to a Kevlar helmet for the Iraqi War, now he’s bareheaded for once. He’s also mellowed out somewhat over the years, though he’s still conservative and married to Boopsie. I like that despite his politics, Trudeau has always made B.D. a human and sympathetic character.

Mike Doonesbury, the main character, is somewhat liberal, but not really political. Back in the 80s he was a Reagan Democrat; tolerant of liberal policies and watered down socialism so long as it actually seemed to work, but willing to jump the fence for a compelling Republican. He started off in a relationship with Joanie Caucus, but eventually married her daughter J.J., an aspiring artist, until she dumped him for some complete loser their daughter calls “Uncle Stupidhead” (Zeke). Now he lives in Seattle, working as an ad exec or something like that, with the daughter and his new wife, some cute Asian chick.

Joanie married Rick Redfern, an almost exact copy of Robert Redford’s portrayal of Bob Woodward, even to the point of working for the Washington Post. She became a congressional aide to Lacy Davenport. Their son is a Gen-X slacker who interned for…the CIA.

Mark Slackmeyer was the hardcore communist, at odds with B.D. He started out normal until Trudeau decided he needed a gay character, so BOOM! He came out of a closet he never seemed to be in in the first place. His father was a hugely corrupt ENRON/establishment guy, so naturally there was considerable mutual hostility.

Zonker Harris. The lovable hippie, either working on his weed or his tan. His nephew is friends with Joanie’s son.

Reverend Scott Sloan. The “hip young priest” who can “talk to the young”. He’s always involved in some protest or other. ZZZZ. At his funniest in the “Doonesbury Special” mentioned below.

Uncle Duke. The eccentric, doped up lowlife always involved in some shady scheme and zonked out of his mind on some drug – including some fictitious drugs. At one point he was running a med school in the Caribbean, at another he was actually a Haitian zombie. He’s modeled after Hunter S. Thompson. He’s usually accompanied by his “mistress” Honey, a fairly ordinary looking but smart Chinese woman who’d gladly have his children if he even realized who she was – or that she was female.

Various politicians, portrayed in novel ways. Bush Sr. appeared as a talking “dot” (as if there was really no one there – a nonentity). Quayle was simply a feather suspended in air. Newt Gingrich was a talking bomb (“bowling ball candle” as Seinfeld would put it). Bush II is a Roman centurion helmet, nowadays somewhat battered. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the “Gropenfuhrer”, is a disembodied hand in a groping gesture. Bill Clinton was a floating waffle (his groping got a free pass, it seems).

Doonesbury Special. This was an animated special from 1977 which we came across years ago and still watch from time to time. I have practically all the dialogue memorized, including the football scenes. It’s still not on DVD, and it was never translated into a full animated series. Too bad. It features two songs by Doonesbury-exclusive artist Jimmy Thudpucker, which I actually liked enough to tape.

Walden. The fictitious college they went to, loosely based on Yale, the alma mater of Trudeau…and George W. Bush, though Walden is portrayed as a second or third tier school and not an elite Ivy League school. B.D. played quarterback for the football team. Zonker’s nephew goes there – Mike’s daughter wound up at M.I.T.
I’ve already mentioned the politics. It’s a bit underhanded: if you agree with them, then take them at face value; but if you disagree, the response is “hey, it’s just a cartoon.” Even so, he’s not as nasty and radical as Michael Moore. I find the stories and characters far more compelling and interesting than the politics anyway.
The controversy which has occasionally erupted over the years is a bit silly, giving Trudeau far more credit than he deserves. He should be viewed no better or differently than any other cartoons following characters over time, mainly “For Better Or For Worse”, though Doonesbury is considerably wider and more interesting than that cartoon.

I’ll end with a few gems from the special:
“Ella Fitzgerald is NOT a building contractor!”
“Percussion! The Innkeeper is playing percussion!”
“All I’m saying is, have we in any way prevented future Vietnams?” (Mark). “Future Vietnams, what was wrong with the old one? We did what we had to over there!” (B.D.)
and “Delay…of…game…. TOUCHBACK!”

Hello Neon, Bye Bye Formula

…well, at least for the next 2 months or so.

Part I. The Crash. On December 4, 2007, on a cold (but not snowy) evening, I left work and drove down the road to go home. Turning a curve, the car spun out, and crashed backwards through the woods (I was acquitted of “failure to maintain control” due to my own pro se representation). The driver’s side window was completely destroyed, the driver’s side door banged up enough to prevent it opening (see pic above), and various other body panels also suffered their fair share of damage. The passenger side tie rod end was busted, meaning the car is neither steerable nor drivable, though it fires right up on all 8 poorly injected cylinders.
The insurance company, sending out a special adjuster who divides a car’s fair market value by half and issues a check for that, and yanking rental car coverage before it had even issued that pathetically inadequate check, was happy to rip me off and reward me for 15 years of loyalty. So I had to go down to Woodbridge, to a large used car auction dealership, and snatch the first cheapo econobox that wasn’t a total piece of shit.

Part II. The 1995 Plymouth Neon. Actually, the car is pretty nice. Smurf blue, fairly clean grey interior, automatic transmission, with working air conditioning and 4 wheel antilock brakes. It had no stereo, so I had to get a nice one from Crutchfield, a Pioneer CD player with one of those incredibly cool but equally distracting blue screen displays. I installed it myself, aside from some help from Myer-Emco because the factory harness refused to supply a constant 12 volt power supply. I also got floor mats with the embroidered “Plymouth” logo, as the car didn’t even have any mats. But the car passed inspection with just a new fog light and cleaning up the headlights, and passed emissions with flying colors.

Part III. Formula vs. Neon. Hmm. 5.7L OHV V8 vs. 2.0L SOHC I4. 300 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque vs. 134 HP and about 120 lb-ft of torque. Black on black vs. blue on grey. RWD vs. FWD. WS6 performance suspension on 245/50ZR16 tires, vs. go-cart suspension on 185/65R14 tires. Although the Neon is lighter, it doesn’t handle nearly as well as the Formula, and it has a cheap, small, fragile tin can feel to it which doesn’t inspire any sense of safety or security – despite the anti-lock brakes, which work as though the brakes are failing, not working properly thanks to higher technology than the older brakes on the Formula. In all these categories the Formula is definitely superior.

But in two categories, which you can probably guess, the Neon triumphs: INSURANCE went down by almost 50%, from $140/month to $80 a month (for a code 10 Neon vs. a code 20 Firebird Formula) and FUEL ECONOMY jumped dramatically, from 13 mpg in the Formula to 24 mpg in the Neon. Instead of filling up every 3 days with 93 octane gas, it’s every week with 87 octane. The econobox does have its advantages.

I did do some research, and discovered that performance parts are available for this Neon. Header (as in ONE), cat-back exhaust, SOHC camshafts from Crane and Zex, and a few other parts. But it’s not nearly as much as for the Formula and even with all those parts thrown in together, the HP would still be only something like 180, well short of the 240 HP the Formula had in stock condition, never mind the modified condition it’s in now. Perform the same modifications on a V8 and you’d be seeing twice the overall output, in a car that’s only 50% heavier. There’s a reason hot rodders have preferred V8 muscle cars for so long. These stupid rice racers and import/compact tuner crowds act as though they invented a hobby which didn’t exist in any real sense before 1998 or so (for their crappy excuse for performance cars) – whereas Edelbrock was modifying the Camaro as soon as it came out in 1967 and Hot Rod has been published since 1948. Bootleggers had been souping up their Model Ts and Deuces (first mass-produced V8, Ford in 1932…first small-block Chevy V8, 1955) long before Toyota, Honda and Nissan were out of their automotive diapers. Hoorah for “Fast & Furious 2” for showing us some REAL cars: the Yenko Camaro (’69 w/a 427) and a ’70 Hemi Challenger.

Fortunately, the Formula isn’t dead, it’s merely resting in a lot down in Stafford. Someday, it might rise from the ashes like its namesake. We’ll have to see. But at least in the meantime I have the Smurf-blue Neon to drive.

Stoner Rock 101

I suppose it started with Hawkwind…Pink Floyd….Blue Cheer…maybe even Captain Beyond. Up until the early 90s, heavy metal was alive and well, as we could see in “Heavy Metal Parking Lot”. Then Nirvana came around and ruined it all with grunge (see my grunge blog). Now we have “nu-metal”, Good Charlotte, A Simple Plan, Disturbed, etc. all the dazzlingly brilliant and original (ha!) bands on the Ozzfest. Hold on, where’s the real metal? And I don’t mean Manowar….


I’m talking about bands that know, understand, and live for riffs, guitars, guitar solos, old-school, old-style banging around like …Black Sabbath, who are probably the most important influence to many of these bands. But despite the name, you don’t have to smoke dope, or get stoned, to listen to this or enjoy it, although obviously many of these bands are probably chemically inspired in different ways, to various degrees. For some reason many of the bands come from California. Oddly, there’s little jamming and not much psychedelic (except for Gas Giant) – just straightforward heavy guitars and good fun.


So what passes for real metal these days is best known as “stoner rock” and will not be found opening for Ozzy or Black Sabbath. Maybe just as well, because it means we can see these bands at local clubs for $20 a ticket and maybe even meet the band members after the show. Who are these bands? Here are a few of the most important (i.e. these are not only the ones I’m most familiar with, but who are also the most popular and tour the most – with the exception of sHEavy, mentioned below - and the list is by no means exhaustive):


Kyuss. They are considered the first stoner rock band, if you leave out Hawkwind and Black Sabbath (precursor bands). I actually saw them in concert years ago and can’t remember a thing. D’oh!


Queens of the Stone Age. Derivative of Kyuss thanks to Josh Homme. Despite the name, none of the band members are female. This is one of these more original bands with its own sound that’s hard to describe, but it’s definitely heavy and definitely different. My favorite album is Rated R. I’ve been able to see them a few times, including with Dave Grohl of Nirvana on drums (Songs for the Deaf tour).


Fu Manchu. If Black Sabbath were surfers and into vans, cars, etc. you’d have Fu Manchu. Scott Hill is a bit smarter, and has a better voice, than Ozzy. IMHO, their best album is King of the Road. This is the band of these that I’ve probably seen the most.


Nebula. A three-piece that used to be ¾ of Fu Manchu, with Scott Hill being the 4^th who remained the core of Fu Manchu. Nebula sound almost the same, though with a more spacey riffing and losing the vans & surfing themes.


Monster Magnet. From New Jersey, and led by Dave Wyndorf, the closest thing to a rock personality that stoner rock has. They have several albums and are heavily influenced by Hawkwind – they even covered “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff.”


Atomic Bitchwax. This started out as a side project of Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell, but now has a life of its own with replacement guitarist Finn Ryan, who looks like a blond version of Jason Lee. More riff-oriented than Monster Magnet; my favorite song is (surprise, surprise) “Black Trans Am.” They even cover Deep Purple’s “Maybe I’m A Leo.” I got to meet the band in Baltimore and talk to Chris Koznik, the bassist/singer.


Electric Wizard. From England, EW tune the guitars down to C and really, really drone on. Their album Dopethrone should be a dead giveaway (wizard w/bong) as to their inclinations. Imagine Black Sabbath slowed down half speed…and you have Electric Wizard.


Acid King. Now…substitute a female singer in EW and you have….Acid King. Pretty much the same deal. They do an excellent cover of BTO’s “Not Fragile.”


sHeavy. Of all these bands, sHeavy have by far the closest sound to Black Sabbath, thanks to the singer, Steve Hennessy, who does a dead on Ozzy impression. For some reason, this Canadian band doesn’t tour. I finally saw the DVD that comes with their latest album, The Machine That Won The War, and could see why: half the band (aside from Hennessy, who looks like he belongs in a band) look like they have day jobs, wife & kids, etc. and can’t go off on a money-losing tour of Canada or the US. Too bad, as they are damn good.


Fireball Ministry. These guys sound like 70’s Black Sabbath with 90’s-era Ozzy singing.


Pentagram. The DC area’s Black Sabbath. Remarkably, they’ve been around since the 70s yet only put out an album until the 80s. The only consistent member is singer Bobby Liebling, though their drummer, Joey Hasselvander, recently played drums for Blue Cheer, and I found out that Liebling was at the Blue Cheer show I saw at Krug’s Place in Frederick, Maryland (see the shot of me and Dickie Peterson on my Yahoo 360 album).


The Suplecs. A trio from New Orleans. Fortunately they’ve survived Katrina, but I haven’t seen them tour around this area yet. “Cities of the Dead” is my favorite song, and they do a knockout cover of the Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy.”


Gas Giant. These guys are from Denmark, not to be confused with an Arizona band called the Gas Giants. They have two albums, Mana and Pleasant Journey in Heavy Tunes, both of which are fantastic. They actually have some pretty psychedelic stuff going on, more so than even Hawkwind these days.


Orange Goblin. This was one of the first of these bands I heard, and I got to see them play in Baltimore. Pretty damn good. They are one of the more Sabbath-oriented groups, though the earlier material from the first three albums, Frequencies from Planet Ten, Time Travelling Blues, and The Big Black, are the trippiest.


Lowrider. Teleport Orange Goblin from England to Sweden and you have…Lowrider.


Valkyrie &The Sword. For some reason I put these two together and can’t pull them apart in my mind. They both sound the same. I suppose it’s because The Sword evoke a lot of Norse mythology, which matches up with the name of Valkyrie. They should definitely tour together.


Wolfmother. This new band from Australia gets lumped in with these other bands. They’ve been compared to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, but I hear more Grand Funk Railroad – but I seem to be the only one making that connection.


Even within this narrowly limited genre of rock music, there is much variety, but in addition to cool riffs, they share a remarkable talent for cool album covers, as you can see.

H.P. Lovecraft

This one was way overdue. I’d actually referred to Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft in previous entries but never gave him star billing until now. He’s a horror writer whose active years were 1915 to 1936, but who didn’t become famous until the 60s, thirty years after his death. I started reading his stories in high school, and re-read them periodically to this day. I’m not a fan of horror, whether books (haven’t read a single Steven King story) or movies (don’t waste my time with that crap) but I make an exception for Lovecraft.

Life. Born in 1890, died in 1937, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England, specifically Providence, Rhode Island, where he’s buried – with a brief spell spent in New York City when he was married to Sonia Greene. Hardly surprisingly, most of his stories take place there too – with one story, “The Horror at Red Hook”, based in NYC. He wrote short stories for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, plus a fair amount of amateur journalism, the latter recently compiled into a book called Miscellaneous Writings, which collects his nonfiction. He missed out on WWI (“The Great War”). He travelled to the South and was both a major Anglophile – making it a point to give all his words English spellings when appropriate – and a Confederate sympathizer despite being a Yankee’s Yankee.

Stories. These were published separately during his lifetime and mostly ignored except by other writers in his circle of friends, which included Robert E. Howard of “Conan” fame. His friend August Derleth compiled them into book format in the 60s, and at this point finally – long after his death – people began to pay attention to him at last. They vary from short stories and poems all the way to longer epics like “At The Mountains of Madness” and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”

By now there are two volumes of “Annotated H.P. Lovecraft”, which include extremely helpful and illuminating annotations to the stories, explaining obscure references or archaic terms, in many cases clarifying points which may have been common knowledge to a reader of Weird Tales in the 20s and 30s but would be completely alien to a modern reader. Unfortunately the two books come nowhere close to covering all of Lovecraft’s stories.

   Lovecraft’s angle is that there are vast, cosmic secrets which man is too small, puny, and insignificant to understand or even grasp. Man is alone in a hostile universe. Strange entities from outer space, including Cthulhu, the Deep Ones, the Old Ones, the Great Race, all colonized Earth before even the dinosaurs roamed the planet, building vast cities in what are now remote, desolate areas. These deities and races consistently pop up in his stories, referred by him as “Yog Sothery” but today are well known as “the Cthulhu Mythos”.

His top stories are:

At the Mountains of Madness. Actually published in Astounding Stories instead of Weird Tales, which rejected it. Antarctic explorers find an ancient alien civilization dating before the dinosaurs, buried deep within the mountains. The aliens are the Old Ones, barrel-shaped with star-shaped heads and membranous wings. Their slaves are the shoggoths, semi-sentient gelatinous beings. The hero, stunned enough to find all this, finds even more horrors: the civilization isn’t quite dead….

The Call of Cthulhu. Considered his masterpiece. An artist has mysterious dreams, and finds that others around the world have been having similar nightmares at the same time. A police detective finds a bizarre cult in the swamps of Louisiana – which matches other cults in equally remote locations across the world, all disturbingly similar. Finally, a ship finds Rl’yeh, a city of non-Euclidian geometry sunken deep in the Pacific, which rises above the waves “when the stars are right.” The HP Lovecraft Appreciation Society produced a B&W silent movie version of this story which is probably the best movie adaptation of any Lovecraft story produced by anyone at any time.

The Shadow Out of Time. A university professor falls into a bizarre trance for 5 years, then wakes up with a strange, but imperfect, form of amnesia. Soon thereafter he starts having strange nightmares of a prehistoric city in Australia full of cone-shaped aliens – and he is one of them. Eventually he goes to Australia and finds the city…and finds that he knows his way around despite never having been there before. As if the city itself wasn’t horrifying enough, he finds something even worse.

The Colour Out of Space. A strange meteor lands in backwoods New England. Soon the farm near it is corrupted, everything turning to grey dust. The family goes mad and eventually perish in a horrible fashion. The excellent horror of this is that the malevolent entity is not some doofus in a hockey mask or a Fedora with wisecracks and razor nails, but an impersonal, mindless substance from outer space which defies the scientists’ best efforts to identify it or analyze it.

The Whisperer in Darkness. A Vermont man is abducted by strange fungi-like aliens from Yuggoth (Pluto) and horribly corrupted.  The HPLHS people followed up "The Call of Cthulhu" with an adaptation of this one as a "talkie", which they couldn't resist: the buzzing sound made by the Mi-Go as they attempt human speech.  The film adaptation is super creepy and very well done.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth. A Massachusetts town has a horrible secret: it has been cross-breeding with bizarre monsters from beneath the waves. The protagonist discovers the secret and barely escapes, for the time being. After doing some research into his own genealogy, he finds his own relationship to Innsmouth is closer than he imagined – too close.

The Dunwich Horror. A corrupt family breeds a half-monster son, Wilbur Whatley, whose quest for The Necronomicon at Miskatonic University ends in his death. But the monster he had been hiding at home, an invisible monstrosity, no longer fed prodigious amounts of raw meat, breaks out and terrorizes the local town. Finally a doctor, who has himself educated himself with The Necronomicon, leads a small group of brave townspeople to defeat the monster – with magic.

He also liked fantasy, indulged in the extended epic “Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath”. It’s good, but not nearly as good as Howard, Tolkien or Moorcock. He has one (1!) science fiction story, “In The Walls of Eryx.” He co-wrote a story with Harry Houdini, “Imprisoned with Pharaohs”, which I read on my trip to Egypt in high school.

His writing is extremely pedantic and he uses lots of arcane, obscure, and archaic verbiage. Women are almost nonexistent, except the villain in “The Thing on the Doorstep”, and the hero never has a love interest (no, not even a male love interest – according to Sonia Greene, Lovecraft was not gay) unlike the Robert E. Howard stories based on the same mythos; Howard takes the pedantic language down a notch and his heroes – notably Conan – are more muscular men of action than Lovecraft’s intellectual dreamers. The compendium of Howard-written Cthulhu Mythos stories is called Nameless Cults. Many stories begin with the narrator about to commit suicide because he can’t live with the horrible knowledge he now possesses, and the story consists of telling us what he learned (so we, in turn, can also kill ourselves. Thanks, asshole.) Others, such as “The Lurking Fear” and “The Rats in the Walls”, concern bloodlines irretrievably corrupted with debauchery and insanity. Insanity is also a common theme: someone’s mind breaks from having seen too much, and they end up locked away in an asylum, babbling disjointed fragments of Cthulhu Mythos jargon in various obscure, ancient, and dead languages no one would have occasion to learn.

Since by now I’ve read all the stories, some more than twice, my tolerance for his ponderous verbosity is less than when I was 15 and reading the stories for the first time. Even Tolkien is easier to digest in large quantities than Lovecraft. And I find that, unlike many other books, such as Atlas Shrugged, where I found something much different as a 30-something reader than I did as a 15 year old, with Lovecraft I still find the same thing over and over again. Even so, for a newcomer the charm and horror should be fresh and new.

The Necronomicon. Throughout the stories a fictional book, The Necronomicon, periodically plays a role, most importantly in “The Dunwich Horror”. Supposedly written by a mad Arab in the Middle Ages, it contains horrific knowledge and means to summon various unbelievably vile monsters and deities. Of course, the book doesn’t exist, it was merely created by Lovecraft as a plot device, though that hasn’t stopped plenty of people from believing, quite seriously, that it does exist. In fact, twenty years ago I found a “real copy” years ago at B. Dalton, of all places, which turned out to be a complete paperback Charmin – full of “Sumerian mythos” spells in Enochian and having zero to do with Lovecraft. Apparently someone thought they could throw this BS together, call it “The Necronomicon” and make some easy cash. Avoid at all costs, as it’s not even particularly interesting on its own merits. It’s not even worth picking up for $1 at a used book store, thrift shop, or garage sale.
More recently Donald Tyson took a stab at it, and scored 100%. Not only does he evoke the Mad Arab – giving him a complete motive behind his depraved lifestyle – he takes us on a tour of Egypt, Damascus, Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, the Nameless City of Irem, Stonehenge, the Plateau of Leng, the Tower of Babel, and even the Garden of Eden. All your favorite Lovecraft villains are here: Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Yig, Shub-Niggurath, and Dagon. He dovetails the Cthulhu Mythos into the Bible and everything we think of as pre-Christian Middle Eastern history, weaving it in with a subtlety and cleverness that even Lovecraft couldn’t manage. I like that he effected the style of how Arabs write, and didn’t fall into the trap of trying to evoke Lovecraft’s style of writing. It’s probably the best Lovecraft-related fiction not written by Lovecraft himself.

Movies. Some of his stories have been made into movies, with varying degrees of faithfulness and success. The most notable are “Herbert West: Reanimator” and “The Dunwich Horror” (featuring Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whately). John Carpenter’s “The Thing” takes place in Antarctica and has a definite Lovecraft influence. Even “Ghostbusters” had a Lovecraft element, this whole business of the post-WWI architect and the apartment building; and there is an episode of the animated Ghostbusters series in which they actually take on Cthulhu himself. Probably the best was the “Call of Cthulhu” silent movie mentioned above. Part of the problem with the Lovecraft movies is that he became popular in the 60s, and the idiots cluelessly expropriating the story names to make films had NO IDEA what his books were about and simply took a stock “ooh, scary spooky monster!” type film and slapped the Lovecraft name on it, obviously hoping to cash in on it. The recent Stuart Gordon films (“Reanimator” and “From Beyond”) are a case in point: 99% gross-out, disgusting crap, when Lovecraft was all about situations and horrible truths, a huge, horrible cosmic picture, not someone’s intestines falling out on the floor. I’m not a fan of horror movies, for that reason, aside from “The Sixth Sense”, which was put together like a Swiss watch and not simply an endless barrage of decapitations and disembowlments.

Music. The obvious one here is the band H.P. Lovecraft, a 60s psychedelic band similar to Iron Butterfly. They have two albums, but only one song, “At the Mountains of Madness”, based on Lovecraft: the rest is typical 60s pop music. Metallica have two songs, “The Call of Ktulu” and “The Thing That Should Not Be”, based on Lovecraft. But I discovered that you can literally write a whole book just on Lovecraft-inspired music, because someone did: The Strange Sound of Cthulhu, by Gary Hill.

Of course, the best site to check out is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society at http://www.cthulhulives.org/toc.html. Check it out.