Lou Pearlman’s Former Boy Band Black Sabbath Enter Their 45th Year
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 13, 2015
Pearlman In His Pre-Prison Days
Long before famed music impresario Lou Pearlman created famed boy bands like The Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, he left a more lasting and indelible impact on the world of music by creating the most famed heavy metal band in history. Black Sabbath, the brainchild of the teenage Pearlman, initially came into being as what he liked to call a “heavy boy band”. Years later, they are metal legends.
Pearlman, who is currently serving 25 years in federal prison for conspiracy and money laundering, recalls the early days of the group fondly.
“I remember thinking to myself that if I had a little bit of front money and four out-of-work British musician looking guys, I could really strike it rich. All the stuff coming out at the time seemed really dark, so I figured if I created an evil version of The Beatles it might catch on. Throw in a little satanic imagery, some hip shaking grooves and wham…bam….Magic Sam…we got ourselves a number one hit record.”
One of Pearlman’s First Sabbath Pictures
Pearlman discovered the band outside of an unemployment office in Workington. He offered them 20 dollars and a warm place to sleep for the week if they’d agree to take some photos pretending to be a band called Sabbath (Pearlman later changed the name to Black Sabbath because it sounded ‘even more evil’).
There was only one problem, none of the men had ever played an instrument.
Lou, whose uncle was Ray Pearlman an IBM employee who developed a punch card computer system that wrote and played music in the late 1960s, borrowed the system and within two hours penned the entire first Black Sabbath record.
“The music sounded great, but the computer couldn’t simulate a voice that sounded right. I thought about it and realized Mick Jagger couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles on it. I just went in and asked the boys who could yell the loudest. Ozzy raised his hand. The rest is history!”
Pearlman gave Ozzy a steak and a bottle of Thunderbird wine in exchange for the vocal tracks. Pearlman edited them into the music (using the alias Rodger Bain in order to not have his fingerprints all over the band’s work) and sent it to a friend of his at a label known as Vertigo. Within a few months, the album reached number 23 on the Billboard Top 200 list.
For the band’s early years, Pearlman was pulling most of the strings. He carefully orchestrated a menacing, sinister image for the band and had them take lessons to learn their instruments in order to help heavy boy band music (later known as heavy metal) catch on. He even created a convincing back story about the members of the band being parts of earlier projects with bizarre names like Earth and The Polka Tulk Blues Band.
Boy Band Black Sabbath Today
In an odd turn of events, Pearlman, who gained a reputation for allegedly scamming bands out of their just due, was himself robbed of his rightful place in the annals of heavy metal history. The band cut ties with Pearlman, who at that time was going by the name of Incognito Johnson and running a series of tanning parlors in Arizona, in 1974. His name was removed from everything associated with the band and members of Black Sabbath have claimed to have no idea who he is.
Pearlman, who is expected to be released from prison in 2029, believes that he will one day be rightfully acknowledged for his role in creating heavy metal.
“Look, I know I’ve probably done a few bad things in my life. Ponzi schemes, releasing music that was unfit to be played in Guantanamo Bay torture chambers….hell, I even stole a blimp once! But, at the end of the day, I deserve to also be remembered as the guy who brought the world the greatest boy band of all-time, Black Sabbath.”
Kanye West Interrupts Grammys; Announces Behemoth’s “The Satanist” Should Have Been Album of Year
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 10, 2015
Kanye West’s unending stretch of boorish behavior at award shows continued on Sunday night when he rushed the stage during the presentation of the Grammy for “Aging Hipster of The Year” to Beck. After knocking Beck’s 113-pound body to the floor and kicking the trophy out of his hand, Kanye announced, “I don’t know why you are giving an award to this scrawny, barista looking guy, but I do know this, Behemoth’s ‘The Satanist’ should have been album of the year!”
Kanye is no stranger to controversy. He has gained a reputation for interrupting televised events in order to yammer on about something or other. Back in 2003, he interrupted the National Anthem during Game 5 of the World Series, grabbing the microphone from Celine Dion and announcing that “if you are a real American, you need to stop listening to this tone-deaf grandpa grabber and pick up 10 copies of USA for MOD.”
In order to keep Americans abreast of every passing thought that drifts through his celebrity mind, Kanye has disturbed everything from an episode of “The American Bible Challenge” to a community access hunting show in Helena, Montana. PBS cooking show host Martin Yan memorably stabbed Kanye in his surgically reconstructed jaw for interrupting his “Yan Can Cook” show when he ran on the set and began loudly insisting that Yan had secretly used monosodium glutamate in many of his recipes.
Kanye’s most famous outburst came during The 2005 Concert To Alleviate The Guilt of CNN Viewers. His performance helped to generate money for hurricane survivors, but many critics were critical of his “metalicization” of a somber and important event. After his performance he was asked about the cancelation of a Mayhem concert in New Orleans days after Hurricane Katrina, Kanye famously quipped “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black metal.”
I’m Not Saying They Are Golddiggers, But They Don’t Remind Me Much of Heidegger
At a press conference after the event, Kanye heaped further praise on the Polish death metal juggernaut Behemoth. “Honestly, except for the whole idea of putting screen doors on submarines, I never really thought of the Polish as very innovative. Then, I heard ‘The Satanist’ and was like ‘Whoa!”
“They are like the Beatles of Death Metal. The death metal Andy Warhols. The number one most impactful death metal artists of their time. They liberate minds from the lyrical Apartheid of minimalist bloodlust. They are the atom to Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic. They are like a cross between Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, Paul Newman and Martin Heidegger.”
Mother of Unvaccinated 2-Year-Old: “Why Does My Daughter Look Like Phil Anselmo?”
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 6, 2015
2-Year-Old Spumoni Doltberg
Looks like the whole “Americans choosing not vaccinate their children crisis thing that everyone seems to be worked up about” has gone to a new level!
When a woman in Menlo Park, California showed up at a local emergency room with a nearly 6 foot tall, bearded 2-year-old with an “Unscarred” tattoo across her flabby stomach, doctors believed something might be wrong. It was then that Helen Doltberg revealed to the staff that she had not had her child vaccinated for any disease in the hopes of being more like some of the B-list, crackpot celebrities she stares blankly at on the television in her free time.
“Look, it’s a competitive world out there. How can I possibly expect to keep up with the demands of work and parenting while still trying to get my family its own reality show? The answer is…no vaccines.”
“Sure, Spumoni (Helen’s daughter) may end up with some virus that science eradicated decades ago, but it seemed just as likely that she would morph into some attention grabbing, cloven-hooved beast that television producers couldn’t ignore. We took a risk. But, we never expected anything like this.”
This would be the first reported case of Anselmo contracted in the United States since 2005. Back in 1938, Dr. Jonas Liposuct famously created a vaccine for the virus from mold that had accumulated on a 4-year-old Twinkie. Until the vaccine was created, over 20,000 Americans were infected with Anselmo on a yearly basis.
Former American President Chester Arthur During a Brief Bout With Anselmo in The Year 536 BCE
The long history of Anslemo-related deaths in the United States goes back to the 1700s when Sir Jeffrey Amherst distributed blankets infected with the disease to members of the Fugawi tribe in Massachusetts killing off nearly 90 percent of them within 3 weeks. Amherst later had a town and a college named after him in honor of his great spirit of generosity and creativity.
The first recorded case of Anselmo struck a group of Taters who contracted the virus by eating chimpanzees during their voyage through one of the Italian rainforests in the 1340s. The Taters went on to attack the Italian city of Caffa in 1346, but were so overwhelmed by the virus that they gave up their siege. Still, determined to inflict the maximum amount of suffering on the residents of Caffa in order to avenge the theft of The Sacred Spud from the Tater city of Fribourg back in 1273, they became the first army to attempt the use of biological warfare. The last remaining Tater soldiers vaulted Anselmo infected bodies over the city walls infecting the entire population of the city with the deadly virus as well as causing the city’s burgeoning thrash metal scene to adopt a more “groove-oriented” sound.
The Obama Administration was initially blamed for allowing an American to contract the disease, but claimed to have been too busy infecting dwarves with measles and rubella in their attempt to turn Disneyland into a FEMA concentration camp. Because Obama and his cabal of Kenyan communists were unavailable to be held accountable for this problem, the media has shifted its focus to blaming athletes who do not act as role models, Congressional gridlock, Craigslist, radical Islamic groups throughout the Middle East, people who receive welfare, the police, members of the rap group 2 Live Crew, Chinese toy manufacturers, puppy mill owners, and Casey Anthony.
How To Avoid Talking About American Sniper
Posted by Keith Spillett in Here's Why I Dislike You So Much on January 23, 2015
In my ongoing refusal to take any “enlightened” debate about American culture seriously, I’ve been working on ways to extricate myself from discussing American Sniper with anyone.
The trick is to say something so outrageous that the person who has sucked you into the discussion will dismiss you as being completely insane or will simply have nowhere to go with the conversation. They will then awkwardly switch topics and begin frantically discussing the weather or the inflation level of the average NFL football.
Often, if done correctly, the person will simply move on to hassle someone else, repeating the same canned, hackneyed monologue about how people today hate good old fashion American heroism or how George W. Bush is about as smart as a bag of kidney stones.
You will have done the only thing that a sane person can do to survive the onslaught of the only product this nation is capable of producing anymore…useless, illogical opinions. Then, you can devote to focusing your mental energy on truly important questions, like who will play drums on the next Megadeth record.
Feel free to use these:
“People say that American Sniper guy was an evil guy and a killer and whatnot, but personally, I think his clown paintings are beautiful.”
“You think being a marine sniper is stressful! You should try coaching high school basketball.”
“Speaking of American Sniper, have you ever seen Gigli?”
“You know, if guns were illegal in Iraq, none of this would have ever happened.”
“You could tell when you were watching Bradley Cooper in that A-Team movie a few years back that he was an actor cut out to make important films.”
“They should make a movie about a hipster sniper. He could carry a ferret with him at all times and hum MGMT songs while he shoots people.”
“American Sniper is probably Leni Reifenstahl’s greatest film!”
“Did you catch the Jessie Ventura cameo?”
“Do you think Clint Eastwood is ever going to do another film with that orangutan?”
“Wouldn’t it have been awesome if Clint Eastwood made the whole film exactly the same way, but instead of having Bradley Cooper play the sniper, he used the orangutan?”
“My only problem is the movie lacked diversity. Sure he killed 160 people, but they were pretty much all the same race.”
“The movie poignantly displays man’s quest to preserve his humanity in the face of having to make life or death decisions in the service of his nation. It speaks to the deepest and most powerful emotions a person can possibly experience. Have you played the Xbox version yet?”
“You want to talk about a talented sniper! I hear the sequel to American Sniper is going to be about a marine who hit a moving, guarded target with 2 shots from almost 3 football fields away in a building three stories up. The future of the Free World was in his hands and his performance was flawless. His aim was so good that, to this day, most people fail to believe he was capable of doing it alone.
His name was Lee Harvey Oswald.”
(thanks to R. Lee Ermey, Gustav Hasford and Stanley Kubrick on that last one)
Umlaut Shortage Causes Cancellation of Motley Crue Tour Dates
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 21, 2015
As the America’s supply of umlauts drops to record lows, some bands are going as far as canceling shows instead of paying the exorbitant cost of purchasing them to put on signs and merchandise. Up until this point, only underground bands like Laaz Rockit have been impacted and had to cancel concerts, but even big name acts like Motley Crue are now being affected.
Motley Crue plans to cancel five dates on their annual final tour instead of spending thousands of dollars per umlaut, the going rate in many parts of the United States. The “It’s Never Too Late To Cash In On The Public’s Fixation With Nostalgia Tour” will no longer be coming to Phoenix, Sacramento and some other places that probably weren’t worth visiting anyway. In Europe, where umlauts grow freely on trees and can be purchased at the same cost as most other punctuation marks, none of the tour dates will be cancelled.
In order to conserve umlauts, some critics have suggested the band could do the shows as Motley Crew. However, according to drummer Tommy Lee, The Crue believe in keeping the integrity of the band’s initial mission sacred. That mission, to bring hard rocking ballads and ironic, faux-European pronunciations to the masses, should not be compromised under any circumstances.
“You can’t spell Motley Crue without the umlauts. I mean, you wouldn’t spell Jesus without a J. It would just just be “Esus” then. And who would take a guy named “Esus” seriously. No umlauts, no Crue…bottom line!”
Motley Crue’s resistance to compromise on its umlaut usage has struck many Americans as being selfish, particularly in a time of crisis. Many impoverished German Americans have been forced to sign their names without umlauts for several months now because of “umlaut gouging” in cities like Madison, Wisconsin and Fargo, North Dakota.
Umlaut-Starved Crue Members Eating Guitars To Maintain Their Strength
The public health toll of a potential American umlaut famine could be devastating. German infants, who need umlaut milk to avoid vitamin deficiencies and Pointed Head Syndrome, will be hit the hardest. Some mothers have gone so far as to try to supplement the diets of their babies with less nutrient rich asterisks and ampersands. Several parents have even taken to giving their children 1.99 cent a gallon unleaded gasoline in their breakfast cereals.
Jurgen Cathe, head of Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsgesetz for the Ethical Treatment of Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, plans to have his group protest several of the remaining American concerts because of the band’s “unwillingness to change their name and confront the most diacritical problem in America today.”
(Due to budget restrictions, Tyranny of Tradition was unable to afford umlauts for this article. If you need to use umlauts in order to understand the text, please print the article out and place appropriate dots above the correct letters)
The Best Metal Albums of 2015 So Far
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on January 1, 2015
The Internet Features Many Pictures Of People In Strange Contexts Often Different From What We Were Expecting
This year is shaping up to be one of the finest in the long, storied history of heavy metal. 2015 is less than 17 hours old and their have already been tens of thousands of great metal albums released to the public.
In fact, since midnight Slayer has already released a remarkable 7 albums, Megadeth has put out 9 LPs (which means around 4 good songs) and Devin Townsend has put out 137 records. In the last hour alone, 91,783 metal albums have been released.
If you took all the albums put out in the last 17 hours and stacked them on top of each other they would go all the way to Pluto…and back!
In order to absorb the amount of albums that have come out, I underwent surgery this morning to have 437 ears attached to my body. In order to accommodate all the new ears, I was stretched to 12 foot 8. Currently, I have 917 stereo systems playing 917 different records simultaneously.
While I’ve only had a chance to listen to the 786,012 albums one time through, I feel confident that I can discern which of these (now 793,124) albums are the 10 best. My only concern is that in taking the time to write this list I will be missing out on nearly 2,354 new albums. I will need to wake up an hour or two early in order to catch up lest I let things snowball on me and, by September, have somewhere in the neighborhood of a 978 million album deficit.
Abbath! Got’cha Again!
Here goes…
10. A Dog Barking At 3:17 AM Waking Me From A Dream In Which Myself And Sophia Loren Are Eating Seal Meat
by Austere Lymph Node
9. The Tape Some Rapper Gave Me At The North Dekalb Mall That I Threw In The Garbage The Minute I Was Out of His Range of Sight
by Yung Elderly
8. The Odd, Porpoise-like Grunting Noise The Guy Next To Me At The Gym Made When Auburn Scored A Touchdown
by Nefarious Old Person
7. A Chevy Tahoe In The Lane Next To Me Needs A New Muffler
by Senseless Barbecue
6. My Feet Grow Cold. I Get Up Out of My Chair In Order to Get A Pair of Socks. The Chair Squeaks.
by Murderous Narcolepsy
5. Flossing For The Second Time In An Hour
by Hypotenuse Death Angle
4. The Kids Are Listening To Some Moronic British Kid Yelling About Minecraft on Youtube
by Iron Steel
3. Mumbling Under My Breath At The Wendy’s Manager Because They Opened Five Minutes Late
by As I Lay Down For A Nap
2. I Wonder Aloud As To Whether Obscure Character Actor Fritz Weaver Is Still Alive. My Wife Ignores This Statement And Continues Reading.
by Iconoclastic Necromyopic Marzipan Blood Colon
1. Otters
by Benign Malignancy
Top 10 Metal Albums From 2104 List or Whatever
Posted by Keith Spillett in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on December 31, 2014
I’ll Be Honest With You, This Article Is Pretty Lousy. However, I Thought I Might Distract You From That Painful Fact With A Danzig Meme.
2014 certainly was a year. It went by quickly and more of us were born than died. So, I guess things are looking up.
There were at least 10 incredible metal albums that came out this year. Unfortunately, I haven’t listened to any of them.
However, I am strong believer in the principles of jurnalizmcore (whatever they may be) and feel it is my solemn obligation to inflict upon you my opinion on what the best albums to come out in the past year were.
10. Licking Nutella Out Of a Goat’s Armpit
by A Plethora of Ants Eating The Lining of My Stomach
The second effort from this 93-piece grindcore orchestra from Wheeling, West Virginia turned heads by becoming the first CD in the history of heavy metal to explode when placed in any sort of listening device. So far, over 917 people have been maimed or killed by the record.
9.You And I Both Have Horrible Sores And Boils All Over Our Faces But We Are Still Human Beings And Deserve To Be Treated With Respect and Dignity
by Kankles On The Legs of Satan’s Younger Brother Ralph
This pop-power metal noise polka Eucharistcore mummy alphabet chicken Montreal haphazardly blackened deathrot band debuted with a record that many have compared to the noise made by a hippopatamus being slaughtered during a ritual sacrifice in Youngstown, Ohio by a roomful of Shriners.
1. Milk of Magnesia of Human Kindness
by Impetigo Sore Ridden Kidney and The Pips
I once witnessed a homicide in Troy, New York. It sounded like this album, only people were smart enough to run away.
Abbath Meme. Boom! I Bet You Already Forgot What The Article Was About
S?. Illegally Downloaded Version of Ride The Lightning
by Metallica
Sounds exactly like the legal version that people paid for except I had to type the names of the songs in (which was a serious inconvenience)
Twelve. Angel of Rotting Succubus Infected With The Worms of Evil
by Some Band That Sounds Like Slayer
I read somewhere that Joss Whedon had a painful adolescence. Too bad it didn’t continue.
Some number that rhymes with Twelve. I Went To Have Tests Done At A Local Hospital and They Diagnosed Me With A Horrible Disease That Only About Two Hundred People On Earth Have. I Ran Home And Named My Band After It.
by Rheumatoid Hemorrhagic Mump-Measals
A playful mixture Incantation, The Early Writings of The Marquis de Sade and Bob Marley. Sort of like listening to the last Burzum album after sustaining a traumatic head injury.
7. Fetal Gunshot Syndrome
by Fatal Head Wound
Best rap metal album to come out since the last rap metal album came out.
8. After Smoking For Thirty Years One Of My Lungs Looks Like A Plate of General Tso’s Chicken
by After Smoking For Thirty Years One Of My Lungs Looks Like A Plate of General Tso’s Chicken
I’m getting sick of trying to describe these albums. Most of them sound the same. I’m just going to type the first words that come to mind.
”Rattlesnake”….”Pomegranate”…”Optimum”….”Opiate”….
4. Jeff Hanneman Jokes Aren’t Funny
by Some Guy Who Just Told Me A Rick Allen Joke
I’m sure that just pissed someone off
W. Malaria: One of The Most Deadly Diseases On The Planet Yet Not One Metal Band Is Named After It
by Echo, The Bunnymen and Narcissus
Sounds like a cross between Nell Carter during her doom metal phase, early Pestilence, Erasure and mayonnaise.
2. Tim Lambesis
by My Dying Bride
Many believe this album might be a hit…
*rimshot*
“I’ll be here all week. Thanks. Try the veal”
Atlanta Falcons Fire Former Suffocation Drummer Mike Smith
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on December 29, 2014
Smith Moments After The Team’s 34-3 Loss To Carolina
The organization that many refer to as “The Cleveland Browns of The South” fired death metal drummer Mike Smith during a confusing morning press conference today at Flowery Branch. Team owner Arthur Blank cited Smith, whose speed and precision made him a legend during his days as skinsman for Long Island Slam-o-death kings Suffocation, as a major reason for the team’s horrendous performance over the past two seasons.
“Mike’s work, particularly on the double bass pedal, will be remembered by this organization, but things just weren’t clicking and we decided we needed to go in another direction,” said Blank to a room full of bewildered Atlanta media members.
Owner Arthur Blank Fielding A Question About The Album “Blood Oath” Earlier Today
Reports had surfaced earlier this week that Blank was growing increasingly frustrated with Smith’s decision making. The owner was particularly unhappy with what he referred to as “Smith’s poor time signature management”.
Much of Blank’s dissatisfaction stemmed from a Suffocation concert he had attended back in 1993 where Smith accidentally called a timeout during the last few measures of the song “Effigy of The Forgotten”. A source close to the team admitted that Blank blamed the drummer’s mistake for a close loss to Cleveland earlier in the season.
Falcons Receiver Julio Jones Not Fumbling During Yesterday’s Game
Smith, who was at his home in Coram, Long Island during the game, was surprised that a football team who had never hired him had chosen to blame him for their failures and terminate his non-existent contract.
“I got a call a few weeks ago from some raving lunatic who claimed to own the Falcons. He started telling me that if the Falcons didn’t make the playoffs I was going to lose my job. I told him I had never even been to a Falcon game. He said something like ‘maybe that’s why the team is underperforming’.”
“Last night, he called me back yelling about how much he hated the album ‘Breeding The Spawn’ and how the whole season was my fault. Then, he told me I was fired and hung up. It was all very strange.”
In spite of the fact that Smith has nothing to do with the team, he admitted that he had watched the 31-point shellacking at the hands of the Panthers and was disappointed that the team had “performed poorly in all four phases of the game…offense, defense, special teams and cookie monster vocals.”
General Manager Thomas Dimitroff has already begun a search for Smith’s successor. This morning, the organization contacted Deicide about the availability of drummer Steve Asheim. One report claimed the Falcons are seriously considering pursuing free agent drummer Gene Hoglan to fill the make-believe vacancy. The team, however, has denied they have any interest in hiring former 49ers coach and Morbid Angel drummer Jim Harbaugh because he is “too extreme”.
Proposed Lyrics To Metallica’s “Unforgiven Four”
Posted by Keith Spillett in The Poetry of Death on December 29, 2014
“Yes, we sell out. Every seat in the house. Every time we play. Anywhere we play.”
-Jason Newsted on VH-1’s Behind The Music: Metallica
Unforgiven Four
(Song begins sounding almost exactly like Unforgiven 3 in the hopes of capitalizing on earlier Metallica work and ensuring that the landscaping on Mr. Hetfield’s home in Malibu will be paid for well into the next century)
How could we know
Writing four-minute ballads-ah,
Would change our lives for-ever-ah?
Hired Bob Rock to change our course,
Sold trillions of records-ah,
Caused old metalheads
Senseless pain,
In our quest for Bentleys.
Been confused,
Always confused,
By the rage they’re feeling.
We…ARE…A…COM-MOD-ITY,
That’s…..what…you…want us….to be,
(What you want us to be)
(Chorus)
How come if we suuuuu-ck,
We make more money this way?
Stopped playing no-name clubs,
You should see our 401-Ks!
How can we go wrong?
This is the American Way,
How can we sell out?
This is how the game play—-dah.
People like to whine,
About how things have changed,
Distracts them from their lives,
To us it just seems strange.
We do what people waaaaa-nnn-tttt,
We have become unsure,
If we’ve always been a business,
What should we be Un-forgiven Forrrrrrrrr?
(Mediocre instrumental part that ham-handedly transitions from cannibalizing The Unforgiven 3 to regurgitating the first part of Unforgiven 2)
Lay beside me,
Try not to make me grin,
Commodity fetishism-mmmah,
Is surely not a sin.
We are rock icons,
We certainly do not care,
About your lives, about your ideas,
Just please don’t file share.
Lay Beside Me,
And I’ll tell you how things are done,
You act the part,
Hock an image,
None of this is true.
We are a consumer item
Just like Elmer’s Glue,
Well…they’ve been selling rock as revolution,
Since 1962,
If you can understand McDonald’s,
Then you understand what we do.
Yeah, you can understand what we do-ah!
(Chorus)
What we’ve done,
What we’ve sold,
You know the rules,
No one’s been rolled,
You hate the system,
But you participate too—ah.
Yeah…What we’ve felt,
What we’ve known,
Hegemonic mediocrity,
Etched in stone.
Behind our masks,
We are amused by youuuu-ah.
Before you call,
Lars a whore,
Then peddle your skills,
To buy seats on the floor,
Remind us again why you’re so pure,
And we’re The Un-forgiven Four.
(Mildly interesting but forgettable solo section that somehow meanders into a new chorus meant to put an end to this monstrosity of a song)
You think we’re old,
But we’ll survive,
In ten years you’ll get nostaligiccc-ah
Want to see us live,
Pay 400 dollars,
To hear us play The Unforgiven Five-ah.
Yeah…The Unforgiven…………..Five……
King For A Day: My Adventures Roaming Around The City of Atlanta Dressed As King Diamond
Posted by Keith Spillett in Existential Rambings on December 17, 2014
I’ll admit it; I’m probably not the most normal person on the planet. Some would say there is no such thing as “not normal”. They have never encountered a 39-year-old man pretending to be King Diamond at a Quik Trip gas station trying to buy a chocolate chip muffin and a Pepsi.
For a very long time, I have wondered what it would be like to walk around a major American city in King Diamond paint for an entire day. I’m not sure what started the wheels turning on this one for me. I never particularly liked mimes or really anyone who wears large amounts of face paint.
I’m a moderate fan of The King. I’ve gone through phases where I listened to a lot of his music, but I’m certainly not like the guy who was standing next to me at the 1993 Halloween concert holding a wooden cross upside down and chanting in tongues for 20 minutes before The Man got up on stage.
The transformation process was a bit strange. It took about 45 minutes to get the makeup right. I sat there listening to “Don’t Break The Oath” staring off into space as I was painted. I once wore rouge for a 5th grade presentation of Annie in which I had a brief role as one of FDR’s advisors (Harold Ickes), but beyond that, I had never gone through the process of having makeup applied to my face.
It’s uncomfortable. I immediately felt empathy for clowns, particularly this one woman “Miss Teacup” who I once met while she waited for the tow truck to come pick up her broken down Toyota Tercel. She was standing there in 95 degree heat wearing about a half of a pound of makeup frantically trying to contact the family of the child whose birthday party she was supposed to be at. If I knew then what I know today, I would never have stolen her purse.
There were really only a few noteworthy encounters. One person started singing “Rock and Roll All Night” when they saw me. I was unamused. Being mistaken for Gene Simmons under any circumstances is offensive to me, but the metal purist in me wanted to throttle the person. Another person asked me if I had any Faygo. You can imagine the horror I felt. My co-workers were relatively amused, but it was laughed at and quickly forgotten as the business of life ground on.
There are these Pro-Life protestors that I regularly see on the drive home with signs that read things like “It’s A Baby, Not A Choice” and “I Survived The American Holocaust” camped in front of the local Planned Parenthood. I had an elaborate scheme planned in which I leaped out of my car and began screeching the lyrics to “Abigail”. Unfortunately, they were not there and my rather uneventful day as The King slogged on.
I kept casting glances out of my car window at people who I intended to frighten. No one seemed particularly impressed or even remotely affected. A minivan cut me off in traffic. I drove up right next to the car and gave the driver an angry look. He cast a brief eye in my direction then went back to text messaging someone about whatever urgent thought had just occurred to him.
I assumed that my stop to get gasoline would be the highlight of the day. Someone would have to find this at least a bit out of the ordinary. Again, disappointment. I stood behind my car pumping gas. People walked by. Some looked, some didn’t. No response.
I went inside to the cash register. The person whose named tag announced him to be “Tim” looked took my 20-dollar bill and gave me change. Nothing. Was this an ordinary occurrence at gas stations throughout the American South? Was this odd attempt to garner attention not particularly interesting or funny? Was I misreading the body language of the people around me? Were people simply so locked into the everyday drudgery of their lives that a 6 foot 2 man in heavy metal makeup could not even awaken them from their daily slumber? I wasn’t sure.
I slumped back into my car and drove home. My wife and children found the whole thing pretty funny, but considering I regularly run around the house with a pair of pants on my head or singing Soviet Era march anthems, it didn’t really strike anyone as being out of the ordinary. We took some pictures and went back to our usual routines.
Life seems to march on unmoved by the bizarre actions of myself or anyone else. When something truly out of the ordinary occurs they might ponder it. For a moment. Sometimes.
Life has an energy of it’s own. It flows in 7 billion directions all at once. Everyone in their own lanes. Everyone going somewhere. Doing something. Thinking. Breathing. Talking. Texting. Chewing. It all just goes on and on. Day after day. Night after night. There is no universal theory to explain it. It’s just one event after another. An endless parade of sights and sounds.
What is the importance of one man wearing King Diamond makeup in this sea of human impulse and action? Very little. Throughout the entire day, I felt this odd pressure to be noticed. As if it was critical that someone see me, see what I had done. To laugh. To be altered from their course.
At first, I was kind of bothered that no one really seemed to notice. After all, what was the point beyond seeing the shocked expression on a few faces? As time went on, I just wanted to get the makeup off. I was tired of showing off. Tired of playing a part. Exhausted by trying to be noticed.
At the end of the day, I felt a genuine sense of relief to take the makeup off. I’ve always felt it important to stand out as an individual. I’m narcissistic enough to have spent four years writing random thoughts and ideas on this website and hoping desperately that people will want to tune into my world enough to read it. I enjoy the thrill of being noticed. Until yesterday, I had never realized how tiring searching for it can be.
The best part of the day for me was when I sat alone in the deadening quiet of my bedroom right before I fell asleep. No one was watching me. No one cared what I was doing or how I was doing it. Silence. For a fleeting moment, I felt the genuine peace of not being an individual, but simply being.
I sunk into life and disappeared. It was beautiful.
The Tyranny of Tradition 