gordonzola

We saw two documentaries yesterday, both unsatisfying for different reasons.

“Bronies” –


I still don’t get it. The creator of the edition of “My Little Pony” that seems to have started this craze says something very smart. Basically that boys being ridiculed for liking something that is aimed at little girls devalues all girls and that the Brony world is super positive in fighting this societal problem. I am totally with her there. A documentary working this theme could have been awesome.

Instead we get a mostly unimaginative documentary following a bunch of Bronies – many of whom seem on the spectrum – that doesn’t really go anywhere. There’s a bit of bait and switch: adult male Bronies are talked about but not really examined.

So many questions that could be asked: “Is this just simple, unremarkablke escapism?” “Is this part of the trend that sees so many adults reading y/a instead of other novels or even genre fiction?” “What is Hasbro’s role in all this?” “Is there something about MLP that attracts people with Asbergers?” “Didn’t this whole thing start on 4Chan?”

But hey, during the credits I realized that this is a Kickstartered documentary with – as far as I can tell – no theatrical release and no professional reviews so I’ve probably spent enough time thinking about it already.

If you want more, this is a pretty good feminist blog review here.

We also watched “The Institute” which, I have to say, I knew nothing about despite the fact it was centered around Bay Area artists. Starting with absurdist flyers put up on poles around town, this secret art project was part RPG, part self-help group, part social experiment. I am not necesairly the intended audience. I am aging out of these demographics for hip art, but I saw some of these flyers around town and I thought they were dumb, not intriguing.

I am a huge fan of fake flyers and political art projects. The anarchist fake campaign that “ran” a particularly authoritarian sectarian for Sheriff? Hillarious. The fake “Legalize PCP” rally mocking pot smoke-ins (“as safe as blue-green algae”)? Funny? Official looking advertisements that weren’t? Awesome. These though, just seemed de-politicized and boring. The blunt-knife mocking of self-help gurus? A little more timely in the ‘80s than the ‘10s and I never thought about pulling the tab and calling the number.

Don’t get me wrong though. I enjoyed the movie.

There were times, especially in the first half hour/45 minutes where they really had me going. I like the crypto-vison of an alternative world, the pirate radio broadcasts, the street demonstration. At it’s best, it had a Craig Baldwin* feel, re-purposing popular culture to make clear its contradictions and hidden meanings. I was willing to buy into the artistic vision.I was willing to examine "Elsewhere", certainly a more intellectually stimulating endeavor than the My Little Pony friendship tenets. I was willing to buy into the emotions the participants were feeling. I was willing to buy into their buy in, whereas -- if described to me before I started watching -- I would have remained distanced. In these ways, the filmmakers succeeded.

It’s certainly well done and – at times – though-provoking but in the end I just kept thinking, “I can’t believe how much time and money went into this.” That, to me, is a sign that the art didn’t work, at least as documentary. Also, I was left feeling punished by my buy-in, which leads me to question the point of this piece as a work of interactive, experimental art. Perhaps it was different for actual participants (if there were actual participants) who had time and physical experiences to reflect upon. In the shorter time frame of a movie, instead of having enough time to soak in the wonderment of the alternative societal vision -- and exchange cynicism for exploration, the more heavy-handed aspects of scripted actors made me feel like the message was less "open yourself up to the possibility of a better or different world" then, "You should have been more guarded and closed yourself off more."

The first half of this movie intrigued me but the more “interviewees” that were clearly actors, the less involved I became. In the end—it’s hard to understand how much – both documented here, and in the documunentary itself – is “real” or “fake”. Which is, I guess, the point. This documentary turns documentary against itself, making you question whether, actually, this entire thing is just fiction.


Here’s the trailer:


Also, here’s a review. You know a reviewer is in trouble when they hedge their bets with an I-don’t-get-it-but-I-think-the-kids-will ending.

Also, this Rumpus review is actually a much more interesting take than what I've written, written by someone who participated and then watched the documentary.


*Tribulation 99

I saw “Maggots and Men” last week at Frameline. It was amazing. Like seriously amazing.

When I go to see art produced by people I know, and starring people I know, my expectations are low. I don’t mean that my friends aren’t talented. I mean that I’m already on their side and pre-disposed to be positive. I’ll laugh at the in-jokes. I’ll forgive hammy behavior. I’ll wince with them at hard moments, not be thinking “someone else might have done this better”.

“Maggots…” however, exceeded every expectation I had.

When I moved out of my apartment on Valencia St. 15 years ago, Cary (the Director) moved in. We had known each other through Epicenter and the punk scene. Indeed, the house I was moving out of, and that he was moving into back then in 1994, was a hub of the queer punk scene. My housemates had helped found Q-TIP (Queers Together in Punkness) and also produced shows under the name “House of Failure” (our phone number was 552-FAIL… what a happy coincidence for the “beautiful loser” generation). I’m not aware of any touring queer punk bands of that era didn’t drop by at some point, even if just to change outfits or use the bathroom before the show since we were only a half block from Epicenter.

When I saw that his movie was finally finished I knew that it was the one thing I couldn’t miss in this year’s film festival, even if it was just to see what an old friend had done over the last 5 years. “Maggots…” is the re-telling of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. The last hope of the real Russian Revolution, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base made 15 demands to the revolutionary Bolshevik government, which might have altered history and prevent the Soviet Union from becoming the tyrannical, farce of a revolution that it became. After a few minor victories, the sailors -- many of whom had fired on the Winter Palace during the 1917 revolution -- were killed, jailed, or forced to flee over ice to Finland. (Kronstadt, like the Spanish Revolution of 1936, has always been an anarchist talking point.)

“Maggots…” certainly owes a debt to Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”. While I don’t know if anyone has every been a better visual filmmaker than Eisenstein, “Maggots..” is a beautiful, beautiful film. And brilliantly scored.

Cary also made the incredibly smart decision to make the film narrated by a rebel sailor in Russian, with English subtitles.* In this way, the film could be made with its mostly transgender/gender queer cast of friends and not have the varying levels of acting ability affect the final product. ** I was overjoyed to see lots of people I knew on the big screen of the Castro, (including House of Failure housemates) but this film rose above the art-of-friends category and is seriously a film I would recommend to anyone. It’s gripping, assumption-challenging, and, in the end, tearfully sad. Of course, the place to see it is at a film festival because it’s only a 50 minute movie and it deserves to be seen on the big screen. Watch for it! Request it from your local festivals!

While the movie does not have much humor, the funniest part of the screening was when asked a question about the maggots filmed in the movie, Cary told how they had to grow them for the film a number of times. He said that his relationship to them really changed after all that. After all, they’re really only “going through their own transition”.

The film doesn’t over-polemicize. With its mostly trans cast, it draws out questions between revolutionary moments in history and a time when gender can be revolutionary transformed, but doesn’t try and make them direct parallels. It’s a beautiful look at the potential of revolutionary moments to be beautiful, perhaps even challenging folks to appreciate that beauty before stronger social forces can organize to take back control. It's also a love letter to rebels who have the courage to take up these fights.



*There is an agitprop retelling of the history of Kronstadt by a theater troupe in English as well
**An example of this is the Bratt Brothers’ early film “Follow Me Home”. It’s a masterpiece in some ways, painful to watch in others. The Rainbow Grocery joke was hilarious though.

I loved Milk. I had some issues – you should know by now that I’m like that – but everything about seeing the movie was awesome: huge lines that went down 18th to Hartford, the huge banner outside the Castro Theater, the laughing and hissing that –for once—appropriate and not claustrophbic*, and a theater full of people crying together. It was a community event and while you should go see it wherever it’s playing, if you are near SF I really recommend seeing it at the Castro.

I have memories of Harvey Milk. They are memories of a kid, so they may or may not be accurate. I remember my school closing because of the assassinations. True, the worry was more over a People’s Temple hit squad than a crazy ex-cop, but it was a big deal. I remember watching a Briggs/Milk debate on TV about the proposition to ban gay teachers from schools and knew it would affect some of my favorite teachers. I recall Milk trying to argue rationally and Briggs interrupting him to point out that he had chosen pink paper to write his notes on.

The movie starts with the clip of Diane Feinstein announcing the murders of Moscone and Milk. That clip – and I’ve seen it 100 times – never fails to give me chills. I think it’s a reporter – obviously distraught – yelling “Jesus Christ!” and everyone else gasping. It is a profoundly unprofessional, non-political, and human moment for everyone involved.

Any movie that begins and ends with the hero being murdered is a tearjerker. smallstages and I brought a whole box of tissues. But it is not especially manipulative. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, a story more people should know. I remember, during the few years I lived outside the Bay Area in the late ‘80s, hearing “God is a Bullet” by Concrete Blonde for the first time and being amazed that someone knew of Harvey Milk outside of the Bay Area.

The movie’s biggest problem is one that everyone should assume going in: it’s a Hollywood Great Man story. It’s as if the whole concept of Gay Liberation came out of Harvey Milk’s head so he moved to SF to make it happen. One can believe that Milk was a hero and a martyr and still have room to believe that others paved the way for him. We just can’t expect to see that in a Hollywood film.

One ironic thing to note is the politics that are portrayed in the film. With the passage of Prop 8 so fresh in everyone’s minds, the scene where Milk stands up to the closeted rich gays to push a coming out strategy -- rather than a vague “civil rights” one – to defeat Briggs is rather ominous. A lesson not learned?

Also, I wish the film had ended with the White Night Riots instead of the candlelight vigil. When Dan White got off with manslaughter* the city erupted. There had been reports of the SFPD applauding Dan White when he was brought in for the murders and this – combined with years of police brutality in the gay community and communities of people of color – made the centerpiece of the riots the burning of multiple cop cars near City Hall.*** Check out this video on the bottom of this entry by jk_fabiani for riot pron. It’s only 1 minute long.

Of course that tells a less clear story since the rich gay “Advocate” folks, who Milk “defeats” in the movie, ended up immediately raising the funds to replace the cop cars and apologize.

But seriously. go see the movie and then rent “The Times of Harvey Milk” or vice versa. It’s well worth your time.





*At Frameline one year I saw a film about the gay communist South African who, being white, acted as a cover for Nelson Mandela before he was arrested. Mandela posed as his driver so he could travel the country. During the detailing of the advent of 1950s apartheid laws people started hissing. I really felt safe in assuming that everyone at the theater was against apartheid, especially since it took place in another country. The hissing was just too.. I don’t know… self-important to me a decade after the end of apartheid.

**Mostly because the prosecution overshot. The death penalty was and is wildly unpopular in San Francisco. In order to push for it, even in the case of assassination of the Mayor and Supervisor, the prosecution had to pick very right wing San Franciscans who said they would consider it at all,. The prosecution assumed that – being conservatives -- they would be appalled at the murder of elected officials. Unfortunately right wing San Francisco sympathized with White and he got the shortest term possible, only serving 5 years in jail. “Twinkie Defense” my ass.

***The image of which graced the first Dead Kennedys album “Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables”

Oh man, I can't wait for this. It's going to be horrible and fun at the same time. I can feel both the urge to cringe and the urge to fuck shit up! Hopefully we can see a double feature with the new animated Chicago 8 movie. Either way we must be a forceful presence on opening night.

Yes, it's a movie about the Seattle WTO 1999!



sabotabby and sadie_sabot beat me to linking this but I will happily join the viral marketing campaign. Commentary on their journals is worth reading. But I'll say here what I said there:

Thank god the got the part right about all of us following the leader with the bad facial hair. I was afraid they'd leave that part out.

1. It was so busy right before Thanksgiving, such a blur of customers... At one point, dairryiere and I were discussing something at the cheese sink and someone walked by who gave us the shy nod of punk acknowledgement. We returned it and went back to our discussion. About five minutes later Dairryiere was all, "Hey, that was Aaron (Cometbus)!" I said, "Oh shit, you're right!" We've both known him for years and didn't know he was in town. We were just too dazed from customer service for the information to go to the thinking parts of our brains in time to actually say hello properly.

If you're reading this Aaron, sorry for the brush-off.

2. Martin from Giant Robot liked the Lance Memorial zine.

3. My drinking tolerance is very low these days. I guess I haven't been drinking enough. Cheese broker-paid drinks and a little dinner last night at Thirsty Bear = tipsy Gordon.

4. Number of suggestive "Wookey Hole" references made at the cheese broker holiday party: 6.

5. Picture of my Wookey Hole:


6. I am so excited about some of the cheese coming in on Tuesday that I'm a little giddy. Let's hope it shows this time.

7. "The Devil Knows Your Dead" is a grim movie.

8. Looking forward to The Shondes on Tuesday at Annie's Social Club. Who's with me?

9. Also looking forward to fun holiday parties, out-of town guests, and the return of displaced Bay Areans

10. Also looking forward to February vacation plans. Yurts!

One of the things I did while sick this week was watch, "When the Levees Broke", the Spike Lee documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. It was well done and compelling, though a little depressing for the edgy emotional state I get into while sick. I watched it in dribs and drabs, sometimes because it made me cry and sometimes because I found I couldn't concentrate because of my sick brain.

The only part I watched where I was like, "Hmmm, this seems a little picky." Was the scene where a teenager gives a tour of his FEMA trailer, complaining about how cheaply made it is. I didn't dwell on it but Lee had just documented how few people had gotten the trailers at all so it seemed a little, I hesitate to write this, ungrateful. It was a minor moment, but to me it seemed like a false note, a moment of less righteous anger in a film where "righteous anger" was the baseline .

And you know what? I was totally wrong.

Not 15 minutes after watching that I read a Nation article that just came out. Written about a year after the movie was filmed, it detailed that those trailers are making people sick because the materials aren't rated for people to actually live in them. Truly much of New Orleans is toxic still, and it would be hard to separate the toxicity of formaldehyde from the toxicity of sewage, mold, etc without massive study. But, man… It just keeps coming.

In other movie news I finally saw "Pan's Labyrinth" last night. I never get tired of seeing Fascists killed, especially Spanish ones. My favorite scene was right near the end so I probably shouldn't mention it until the movie is out of the theaters, but as someone who grew up watching war movies the "Fuck your honor" moment was incredibly satisfying and against genre. As it should be.

I also somehow got that James Bond movie from Netflix... "The World is not Enough" starring Remington Steele. It was so bad that I actually returned it unfinished. I realized about half way to the mailbox that I actually forgot to watch the last 15 minutes and I totally didn't care. I swear I don't know how that got on my queue. I think the name confused me. Maybe I was thinking it was "The World Can't Wait" and it was about sectarian front groups, I dunno.

I went and saw "American Hardcore" last night and while it wasn’t the movie I hoped it would be, it was a lot of fun. For a while at least. Some of the scenes are amazing, some bands are awesome, but none of it made me wanna go back in time.

Vic Bondi turned out to be the most eloquent voice of why punk was important to me. The opening scenes of the movie set the stage perfectly: Reagan getting sworn in, neo-‘50s aggressive preppyism coming into vogue, greed-is-good-for-everyone (Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.) attitude as the law of the land. The earlier waves of punk, 1977 and 1979, weren’t angry enough for us Reagan youth, thus hardcore punk was born. Being punk in the early ‘80s was setting oneself up as a target of violence and taking (at least temporarily) a vow of poverty. The movie delineated the DIY network that grew up through the ‘80s and showed how bands and scenes survived and why they did it.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter. This movie is a great document of certain things but didn’t take it’s opportunity to ask the really interesting questions. I am predisposed to like this movie. While I was never more than tangentially involved in the punk scene at that time, I did start going to punk shows regularly in 1983.* For the reasons listed above, punk helped politicize me and, honestly, changed my life. But man, even I got tired of watching white guys talk about how important their scene was by the time the movie was over.

Punk, even hardcore, was never all white though it was always mostly white and, with the exception of the Bad Brains, dominated by white folks. Punk, even hardcore, was never all male though it was always mostly male and dominated by men. As a white man who was a white teenager in the early ‘80s, I would argue that there can be a place for that. I can’t totally denounce the very scene that politicized me in the first place even though I had no idea of the bigger societal issues at play at the time. But we needed a place too. As Bondi put it, there was no organized left (that we could find) in the ‘80s, but there was hardcore. White teenagers had a lot to be angry at in the early ‘80s and creating self-sustaining worlds and acting as walking fuck-yous to Reaganism was certainly a valid and creative alternative. Especially when the scene is being created by teen-agers.

But (mostly)white (mostly) male anger has historically been problematic . And while punk gave me a lot, it was downright ugly at times. To the movie’s credit, some of the ugly is shown. Hardcore punks talking about "new wave faggots", some still-stupid people laughing at their violence against others who didn’t have it coming, the massive drug use, the band "Nig Heist", etc, but the most telling thing is the visual: two hours of white boys yelling and hitting.

There’s a reason that a neo-Nazi movement (never mentioned!) took hold in some punk scenes and why hardcore was seen as a recruitment base for white supremacists. They were never more than a dedicated and dangerous minority in the punk scene, and indeed many punks learned anti-racism by fighting with racist skins, but that’s still one of the obvious dangers of creating a (mostly) white subculture.

The rap on hardcore from the disaffected has always been this: hardcore was the reinscription of white male power on punk rock. While punk was always mostly white, Hardcore suburbanized it (and suburbs were a lot whiter back then) brought in a jock mentality through slam dancing and thrashing, pushed out the homos, the women, many of the people of color, and the artists. It also rigidly defined the music (with the exception of Flipper) creating "generic" punk from what was a musical movement that defied rigid form. These are things that spawned the queer punk and Riot Grrrl scenes in the late ‘80s early ‘90s.

I would also argue that hardcore politicized punk in a way it hadn’t before. It became explicitly anti-Reagan and got a more unified voice about the shift of political power going on in the country at the time. Hardcore created infrastructure that allowed people to survive. Kids could escape to any city in the country , find the punks, and find a way to survive unless self-destruction was their real goal. The DIY scene that was created spawned thousands of projects and is what made punk something we would even discuss today. That scene also spawned political impulses that rippled out to help fuel political movements such as the one that shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

As much as we would like to make perfect organizing decisions and do only good, those of us who care about such things need to realize that politicization can be an ugly process. Despite all the negatives, and all the ways I could have chosen to not become political, punk showed me the possibility of another world, one that was anti-authoritarian, creative, self-sufficient, exciting, and full of people trying to, corny as it sounds, fight injustice. There was lots of stuff I ignored at the time, and there was lots of stuff I needed to unlearn, but punk provided a way of looking at things that spoke to me and my background. If people are to be politicized you have to get ‘em where they are. Where "they" are, where we are, in 1984 or in 2006, is pretty fucking ugly. To me, the importance of punk politically was to provide an avenue where people could start making political connections. If they took those lessons outside the punk scene and did more important organizing, as many did, so much the better. There weren’t many option we could see in those days. I don’t know how it feels as a teen today.

What I was disappointed by about the movie was that those questions weren’t on the agenda. This was about white teenagers in bands and the Bad Brains. There were some amazing folks interviewed but they weren’t asked the questions I wanted to hear.

At one point they explain/rationalize the absence of women in the movie and the scene by saying that women were always in the audience but were documenting the scene through photos and zines. Fine. But then why is the focus of this movie only on bands? I could be wrong but I think there were two women in bands interviewed and just three women from the Boston scene (Including, I think, that woman who played Brandon’s girlfriend In Beverly Hills 90210) out of around 100 people. That’s just fucking embarrassing.

It was as if Riot Grrrl and queer punk never happened. While those early ‘90s scenes were out of "American Hardcore ’s" time frame, they would have provided scores of interesting topics to ask the old-timers about. Those scenes changed the way that any punk or ex-punk with any brains at all thinks about their involvement in the scene. For example, all the scenes showed crowds of primarily white punk boys thrashing. Riot Grrrl asked the important question, "Who was holding their coats?". That question was a pretty memorable one for the punk world. It still resonates. Two weeks ago I asked dairryiere to hold my coat for a second (so I could put something at work away, not so I could go slam) and we had to joke about it to diffuse the situation.

MaximumRocknRoll was not even mentioned which is just unbelievable. MRR, through it’s collective organization, compilation albums, radio shows, and , reader-written scene reports in an explicitly political zine, was one of the most important networking tools of the hardcore scene. There was reason to hate that, but to ignore it is bizarre.

The lack of politics was my biggest disappointment in the movie. Anti-nuke protests, anti-Pope protests, Rock Against Reagan, the re-emergence of anarchist political groups: all of these things were influenced by political punks in the hardcore scene. For many, being political was being punk. I don’t know if they just considered Peace Punks non-hardcore, and certainly much of their influence came from the UK, not Huntington Beach, but we were all at the same shows. And don’t try to tell me that Gang Green rocked harder than Crucifix. It was no coincidence that I ran into someone I know from ‘80s North American Anarchist Gatherings as I walked out of the theater.

In the end, the movie cared about bands not scenes, even as it brought up the concept that hardcore’s greatest asset and contribution was the community of punks it created. Certainly the regional scenes couldn’t have existed without the bands. But the whole interesting thing is the vice versa. After two hours of amazing footage and some interesting interviews, that’s what was disappointing. It was a pulled punch. It shouldn’t have been another "great men" story.


*Flipper/Butthole Surfers/Frightwig at the On Broadway. Awesome.

For the last few months, customers have occasionally asked if that was me they saw in the Cheese Nun movie. I had no idea really. Sister Noella and I have exchanged a few words, mostly involving her asking what I wanted from the bar at the SF Cheese Conference Festival of Cheese, but none memorable enough to be captured on film for a PBS documentary. I do truly appreciate her work as a cheese bio chemist and resource to traditional cheesemakers.

No one asked me what I thought though, so I knew if I was there it would be in a non-speaking, background role. I rented the movie last night and sure enough, there I am. About five minutes before the end, during the filming of the Festival of Cheese in Louisville Kentucky, they focus on some woman eating cheese. She backs up and there I am taking notes on the cheese I’m eating. I’m in my blue bowling shirt that Gary Fembot bought for me at a thrift store because "Gordon" is stitched on the front. Full frame baby!

It was a bittersweet couple of minutes because, of course, I know lots of the people in those scenes. The reason it was bittersweet is because, just before my cameo, the cheesemakers they show looking at their cheese through Sister Noella’s microscope a very sweet couple who went out of business last year. They made a great cheese that won best in its category the first year they entered it. They were wide-eyed and sweet when I first met them, avoiding all the pretentiousness that the cheese conference can bring out.

Unfortunately, the combination of a recall and a national retail chain contract put them out of business. The recall was for listeria. A test on a cheese came back positive and they had to recall and destroy everything in their aging rooms despite the fact that even though they did many, many more tests they never found another cheese that tested positive or the "source" of the contamination. A bad test? Compromised at the lab? An incredibly localized problem? No one knows. Certainly there were no reported ill effects.

As for the contract, I don’t know the specifics. But those contracts have brought many cheesemakers to the brink of bankruptcy. Basically, what can happen is this: a place like Costco or TJ’s makes an offer on someone’s cheese at a certain price. Many cheesemakers have a problem with quantity of scale so the increased production is a godsend even if they are selling some of that product cheaper. The problem comes in when dairies expand their facilities to meet that increased demand. A year later, with the dairies now carrying a much bigger load of debt on their larger production facilities, the chain comes back with an offer that is less per pound and it’s take it or leave it. Especially in these years of rapidly increased utility and transportation costs, neither option is sustainable for long if they’ve overextended themselves..

One or the other they probably could have survived, but both things in the same year put them under.

In the movie, however, they are just so excited to be checking out the microscopic activity in their product. It’s, pardon the not-actually-a-pun, infectious. It’s no wonder the film maker used that image in the film because watching Sister Noella show them their own cheese in a brand new way was exciting. It really brought home both the value of someone like Sister Noella and the hunger there is among small-scale cheesemakers for the knowledge to make their cheese better and better.

It was fun to see that cheese couple still so idealistic and excited, before the business bit them in the butt.

As noted in yesterday’s post, I watched the Metallica in therapy documentary "Some Kind of Monster". I had heard lots of bad things about it so I had put it off. I shouldn’t have. It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie. In fact, I laughed most of the way through.

I gotta say, I’m buying the hype on this one. In the end I was convinced that they released the movie, despite often not showing our men in a very good light, because they really felt therapy helped them and wanted to send that message out to others. I’m sure there was some recoup the investment cost discussion. But these guys seem to own half of Northern California and they paid a therapist around half a million dollars a year for two years so I imagine they could have buried it if they wanted to.

Most of the reason the movie is fun is because it’s incongruous. Watch the metal band use "I" statements! Look at the macho dudes talk about their feelings! Follow every moment of the creative process and realize the band isn’t handed the lyrics and melodies directly from Satan!

Basically the story is that our boys are on the verge of breaking up. They’re trying to record a new album but they are territorial about their individual contributions and all harboring grudges and slights that go back 15 years or so. Part of the way they try to combat this is by hiring a therapist used to dealing with big ego millionaires who have to work together. They are paying him $40,000 a month! The beginning is fairly painful and you might find yourself wondering why you should care. But then one goes off to rehab, leaving the others rudderless. He comes back looking cute for the first time ever and the band fights and creates, finally releasing another album that makes them all millions.

As a co-op person it was great fun to watch their band meetings and see how they would have been improved with decent facilitation , ground rules, and an agenda. In fact, under the guise of therapy-speak, that is a big part of what happens to get the band cooperating again.

Maybe I’m falling for an intricate ploy to humanize the band after they pissed off their fans, and all good people, with the Napster lawsuit. But I found myself liking them more than I thought I would, especially Kirk. Kirk is my favorite. There is some Spinal Tap to the whole thing except that the decisions they make as a band are cunning and smart. Dumping that horrible song about temptation, choosing a name for the album, hiring the bass player from the Suicidals instead of one of the generic metal dudes, buying Basquiat paintings low and selling high. That’s why unlike Spinal Tap, in the end the joke is not on them.

My favorite moment was when they bring Dave Mustaine to group therapy to let him vent about the way they fired him nearly 20 years before. Oh man, that guy is still living the pain from that. Because I’m mean, I was howling when he talked about metalheads taunting him on the street by yelling "Metallica" at him. He made it sound like they were waiting outside the door at that moment to mock him. He preemptively and defensively brought up the record sales from his band Megadeath* but the best moment was when he talked about the hurt he felt in getting kicked out and says, "What happened to my little Danish friend (Lars). He’s not there anymore."

Watching the therapist "rock out" during the recording sessions and start to use "we" when talking about the band is also a highlight. Metallica has never been one of my favorite bands. I haven’t listened to them since "Master of Puppets" really, but I did wanna go find my tape of that or "Kill ‘Em All" after the movie. I always resented the fact that they encouraged way too many people who shouldn’t have been playing one bass drum to try and play two, but I can’t deny that some of their songs are pretty great.



*I actually saw Megadeath and Overkill at a small club (the Stone in San Francisco) because I won tickets. It was the only metal show I eve went to and I hated it. Megadeath did cover a DOA song which weirded us out and made us flee.

Ok, it's kind of awesome out there right now. The fake BART stop has been installed in Duboce Park and the streets are filling with pre-1981 cars.