hybridplague

My favorite band is Tool. I think they are probably the most talented band around today. For one, on every stereo system i listen to them on, it sounds different; there's always some little thing that i hadn't noticed before. Two, how many bands can create good, solid epics that work, and do so consistently? Tool has been writing songs ranging from 8 to almost 15 minutes consistently since nema, and from what i hear, 10,000 is largely that (it comes out Tuesday!). The layering in the music is amazing, and Maynard's ability to fluctuate between fragile vulnurability and an agression that borders on rage almost instantly, and several times over the course of a single song is equally impressive.

Chuck Palahniuk is my favorite contemporary author. I don't how talented one could consider him, i don't read a lot of novels so i really am not a great literary critic. But i love how his stories are so absurd in certain respects (turning thousands of acres of Nebraska into a pornography landfill?) and yet the story doesn't seem to notice that it is being absurd, it carries right along as if everything happening could be expected to happen. I also love how his characters are self-destructive, but in a very dissociated way; they seem to watch as it happens, almost as if observing it happen to someone else, in a very dispassionately.

Now what do Tool and Palahniuk have in common, besides both being a little more than dark? Palahniuk is quoted as saying "I don't care what they do with my book so long as the fucking check clears." Hooker with a Penis is essentially Maynard fuck off to whiny snobs that say the band sold out, and that he had already sold out before he was famous. Now i don't think anyone can deny that Tool is a talented band, even if you don't like them, or that Palahniuk is a talented author, even if you don't like his writing, but both flat out admit that they've sold out. Is this a new era for art? Are Tool and Palahniuk realizing something that others aren't? Are they talented enough to find a way to create a style and form that is both unique and marketable and can thus not worry about selling out? Could we be entering the age of the creative sellout?

Thesis is going alright. I finished the outline last night; it was about four pages, so if i can get five essay pages per outline page i'm good. It's cloudy today. It was supposed to be sunny and i was going to go for a walk, but that may not happen now. Other than that i am just bored.

Oh, and you should go see Shotgun if you haven't. It's only a minute long, and it should amuse you at least a little.

What is it like to see
The face of your own stability
Suddenly look away
Leaving you with the dead and hopeless
-Tool, Jimmy