All the good ideas are taken

You might be asking yourself what I do on Saturday nights. This is, after all, the town where anything can happen. After Sex & The City starting showing in syndication, my mother made the hilarious comment, "I imagine that's kind of what your life is like." My life involves a lot more enduring rock bands at Piano's, not as much time spent at brunch. Generally speaking, I spend my weekends recovering from whatever late nights I've had during the week, and often nachos are involved. Do you know what goes well with nachos? Headbanger's Ball.

I'm not particularly Metal!, by most standards. In fact, I find the majority of what's commonly considered heavy metal pretty ridiculous. My tastes - while more generous than, say, the writers at Pitchfork - tend to run along the lines of Bands From The UK and Music Made By People Who Could Conceivably Have Had Sex At Least Once, preferably both. With a few exceptions, there just isn't a place in my life soundtrack for RWWAAAAARRR and machine-gun drumming. As Leslie once pointed out, "I'm just not that angry."It's really true. Withering disdain is highly effective and much less taxing than outright hate.

Part of the reason that I make a point to watch Headbanger's Ball is because it's one of the few times MTV2 even shows videos anymore. (Not that Real World vs. Road Rules isn't a spectacularly good use of airtime - I fully support any endeavor that allows those people to avoid getting regular jobs in lieu of mud wrestling and talking shit about each other.) But beyond that, it seems like these are videos were never really meant to see the light of day in a forum larger than the people on band's mailing list. So more often than not they're pretty interesting, whether because of painfully low production value or totally bizarre overall concept. I especially liked the one with the Japanese schoolchildren who were eating and then throwing up lots of cereal. So while I'm not going to run out and buy the new Bury Your Dead album (definitely not for lack of advertising on their part, though), I'm glad there's an outlet for videos other than those that suggest a guy pulled up with a semi and asked, "Did anyone order a rock video?"

When I made the snap decision to go to film school, it was mainly because I'm bad at math and that seemed the easier way to assure a Calculus-free couple of years. Hey, I was 17, what did I know? On the other hand, I always had a secret desire to be a music video director. It became even more secret when I discovered that directing videos was one rung below making kiddie porn on the Ladder of Cred at NYU. This was, of course, back before we were all encouraged to sell our souls at the altar of pop culture - in the most ironic fashion, of course. Selling out is the new artistic integrity! It's probably all for the best since it became evident rather quickly that I was a terrible director. Of anything. There's a lot more math involved in the process than one would think.

In the last couple of years, as we began the steady decline into unabashed mediocrity - I've given up hope of basic standards for entertainment ever being raised higher than "not horrible" - I wonder if there would ever be a place for the kind of videos I wanted to make. Sometimes there are Bands From The UK That Have Likely Had Sex who step up, but generally speaking, we like the guy with the semi to handle things. Someone find an empty warehouse and some stools! Back light that son of a bitch, and we're good! So thank you, Headbanger's Ball. Thank you for showing me that a bass player in a monkey suit could make me believe in dreams again.