it feels as though my world has contracted down to a very small, very perfect circle. i didn't think this would happen to me. perhaps ... perhaps it is just the weather.

what is inside the circle?: i am looking at the Just For You thing on i-tunes right now. usually this unworldly circuitry deity omnipresent mind thing does a good job--proof that we humans are expendable. it suggests i try The Adverts. the adverts are some good-ass punk rock. it wants me to get The Mob Rules, by sabbath. good choice, guy.

it also says i'd like Cliffs of Dover. is this meant to get my attention? i'm here in the office before everyone else, staring out the window, wondering why it's telling me this. Cliffs of Dover? really? does it know something i don't? what else does it know? am i gonna be hit by a car tomorrow? does it know i'm adopted? cliffs of dover, what the fuck. does it recommend that to everyone? is it a litmus test? what are you trying to tell me, great server farm in the sky? is this the moment i should cast off the world and retreat to the hills, trying to carve the perfect radio headset to make the cargo planes bring me chocolate and penicillin from the gods?

see what i mean. too small, this circle. i need something to change.

everything in the world changes by a matter of degrees based on what's in your head. some days, i lament my poor hearing. i will surely be deaf, i sadly decide. and today, i can hear my watch ticking on my arm, tic tic. it drives me up a wall. i sit, close my eyes, and enjoy the horrible, neurotic feeling it gives me to hear it. why can't it stop.

i like sardines. when i was growing up, there was a rule, instituted by my mother. it ran as such: you are not allowed to eat sardines while i am in the house, and if you eat them while i'm gone, you must take out the garbage immediately afterward.

yesterday i was on the 3 train, heading down to 42nd street, and a guy on the train was eating sardines. oh my god, normally i hate it when people are eating, but sardines are something everyone hates. they make everything smell like fish. and the train smelled like fish. intensely!

i didn't mind. what a weird feeling--i like sardines, so it just made me think, boy, i'd love to have some sardines. but i knew everyone else hated it. normally people can't even stand it when i'm eating sardines for lunch.

sardine eating guy stood very straight, with a crewcut, and his hat weirdly too high on the back of his head. when the doors opened, he sliced through the people like a machine. a weird one, sardine guy.

in the 80s, in the south, when i was a kid and a teenager, there was a daily obsession with satan. what was satanic, what was not. the generally accepted premise, which i never remember any doubts about, held that a certain percentage of popular culture was controlled by people who worshipped the devil. these people were in places of power, enabling them to affect the most mundane aspects of your life. and, rather than do anything more overt, they generally aspired to hide the mark of the beast on everything you might like to buy.

did you know that, for example, if you wear away the soles on british knights sneakers, underneath it says 666? it does. actually it doesn't, but if you can't find it, you must have done something wrong and messed it up. it's there. (i know someone who's brother did it, and you could see it, 666.)

my dad once told me--when i was older and we were talking about something else entirely--that he grew up with louie louie being the dirtiest song ever written. thankfully, i have my own absurdity: i grew up with the eagles being the most satanic band in existence. i mean, hotel california really affected the dudes who made the rounds of the baptist church circuit, doing the Satan In Popular Music seminars. steely knives, all that. i had never heard of the eagles, and i was terrified of them. i was into much safer bands like anthrax. then, i finally heard the eagles, at camp once, and they sounded like the easy listening i associate with the late seventies AOR station in nashville, over the tinny speakers in my mom's car.

W.A.S.P. stands for we are satan's pupils. or people. or maybe it's we are sexual perverts, as a girl tried to tell me in seventh grade. i would have none of it--satan is way better than sex. (major mistake on my part--oops it's not actually.) motley crue had pentagrams and shit on their records. how on earth did the eagles ever top this? how bad ass. for anyone who thinks the eagles are lame, i have one fact for the defense: they out-sataned WASP, ok?


dio backwards

an often-cited one i recall, if you take any of ronnie james dio's records and hold them in the mirror, it says DEVIL. god, i remember doing this with the big gorgeous album art you used to get with real vinyl records, and then debating it--was it true, did we see it?? it was so clever. you really couldn't tell. the ambiguity kept you wondering.

of course it says DEVIL. whoever drew that thing is a genius, and probably had a great laugh.

but just remember this, mr. dio: peaceful easy feeling deviled you ten times better. the loving public of the 80s bible belt wanted it even more ambiguous than that.

god, i hope i never see the eagles. they'll probably cut me up and eat me.

early this morning i couldn't get back to sleep. i left for work at 4:50, not tired, trying to pick out people under the subway tracks at 30th avenue--by the dunkin donuts, by the newsstand, who's been up all night, and who's going to work? one thing appeals: both types of people seem nice and calm.

i like taking the early train with the construction guys. almost none of them has i-pod headphones in his ears, but they all have steel-toed boots. the train's quiet, as it is for almost all commuting hours, but less crowded.

at 117th and broadway, the coffee guy, with the light on in his cart, suddenly stood up when i got to his window. "boss, you're in really early today." i couldn't sleep. the two construction guys behind me pointed to a 20-storey crane near 120th.

"i left it over the building yesterday." "looks like it's north now." "two regular large coffees."

my building was empty and bright. i rode the elevator to my floor, happy to be alone.

when the door opened, two women, talking loudly, were standing directly in the opening. "oh my god!" "oh! you scared me." they hadn't been expecting a person on the elevator. it shook me up, and i walked to my lab door, listening to them getting in and the doors closing.

go ahead, go ahead, no one's around, say something bad about them. say it, even if it's unfair, no one's around, no one's around, no one will hear you say it, it'll feel good, go ahead, say it, say it, say it.

"bitches."

bob: how are things, josh?

josh: i dunno. a lot to do, i always feel like i'm behind. no matter what happens, i'm behind. hurry, hurry, so much to get done, why do i always have to feel behind?

bob: josh! stop feeling you're behind. don't do that. especially not in public! it's not polite to feel you're behind. (walks out.)

get it?

not last night but the night before, i woke up to howling wind outside. it was about 4 in the morning, and a storm was going through. the radio had prognosticated this storm, but i hadn't really registered it.

here in the room where the computer is, i sat with just the light from the google homepage and watched out the window, where everything was dark and glowing and yellow. the tree right outside was flailing around, and wind was shooting across the fire escape, just across the glass from me.

i wondered how fast the wind had to blow before it was a small tornado. i also wondered where the birds go.

all of a sudden i noticed mia was behind me. "scary," she said. and then she turned around and went back to bed.

i don’t remember where i learned about the magazine heavy metal from. it was possibly from my friend scott, but more likely it just turned up, because i liked rummaging through the sorts of old book and record stores where they sold it. heavy metal was (and is, because it’s still around) a creation of the seventies, when the world was more fantastic than it is now, bright colors were more in vogue, plastic was still a new and exciting idea, and the baby boomers were young adults. examining magazine ads from the seventies, it is my conclusion that everyone smoked and drank milwaukee-brewed beer back then. no one wore seat belts! a different age! all of culture revolved around young adults, and something weird like a fantasy magazine filled with nude women could be born.


heavy metal, issue 1

heavy metal stories—with protagonists who are generally either sword-wielding wanderers or spaceship pilots—play to a very specific male adolescent feeling. the women are almost always beautiful and completely objectified, buxom, unattainable, and dressed provocatively in S&M clothes. and on the flip side of this coin, these women are always strong, sure of themselves, intelligent, and heroic. as an example, i cite an archetypal story of a dweeby hero wandering through a jungle world, with a gorgeous female companion he’s just met. they cross a resplendent field of grass, as she says, “gosh, i feel so in touch with the world today. do you mind if i walk with my clothes off?” then, a page later, a savage barbarian attacks them, and this naked girl grabs the guy’s sword and skillfully, artfully slays the enemy. ri-diculous, but it’s this kind of thing that’s in the heads of all the dorky young guys you ever knew: women are beautiful, women are competent, and they will save you.

often mis-filed in the “music” section, a know-it-all teenager could feel superior when going to pick it out. god, it’s about science fiction, not music, fucking morons. one issue the editorial page dropped the atomic bomb that the magazine would change its name to HM, due to the constant confusion with music magazines. josh, age thirteen, wrote an impassioned letter imploring them to reconsider. lonely teenagers the world over apparently did the same, as the next issue apologized and the idea never floated by again.

heavy metal is what guys read when they start getting too old for comic books. in the small town where i grew up, i always assumed no one else would ever care about such a thing. and i have to admit, i was a little embarrassed of it. while the stories and art are stunning, it’s hard to get around all the naked women. (but dad, it was art!)

in 1987, i was on the school bus, sitting next to gary. we were assigned to sit by each other for that year and didn’t have much in common—he was okay, though, and i would like to think he thought the same. one day i had heavy metal with me, and he asked to see it. i said sure, and i still remember him sitting back, knees up on the seat in front, spitting occasionally from the dip in his mouth, reading it wide open on his lap. i glanced over and saw he was looking at a sex scene. there’s like fifty pages in it and only one has sex on it and he’s looking at that one, god, i thought. someone from the seat behind said, “gary, what’re you looking at?” “i don’t know. i don’t know what i’m looking at,” he said, still looking.


captain sternn

one of the great searches of my young teenage years was for the heavy metal movie, which had come out in 1981. of all the video cassettes i could have bought, that was the one i wanted: i had never seen it, although the magazine would occasionally allude to it. you couldn’t buy it, it was completely unavailable, as it would remain for over a decade after that. i wrote to the magazine and asked them how to buy it. this was a good lesson: attempting communication with such a faraway godlike entity resulted in complete silence. in the internet age, how will kids ever experience such utter hopelessness, i ask? finally i groused about it to the right person, and a cool older cousin of mine taped it off cinemax and sent it to me from ohio. (he reminds me of one of the alien pilots in the video clip below.)

the heavy metal movie is so unequivocally weird, it is perfect. this movie was not written by committee. it was written by mad geniuses who surely attempted suicide soon after. no focus groups were consulted here. what could this movie sell? this movie sells nothing but itself. it’s one of the ones that’s on your side. the teenage boy watching (who else could it be?) learns about war and sex, it makes him laugh, and the story is genuinely redemptive. and the heroine is a beautiful woman in leather (who else could it be?).


so beautiful, so dangerous

not only is it a collection of stories from the magazine, but it also has a splendid soundtrack, effectively transcending the movie itself, filled with iconic 1981-era rock music. it opens with sammy hagar (before a band called van halen had come into the picture) and has devo, blue oyster cult, nazareth, and cheap trick; it was the very first appearance of none other than the #1 power ballad of all time; and it has the thoroughly lovely and haunting blue lamp by stevie nicks.

(stevie nicks - blue lamp)

for me, heavy metal the magazine begat a tireless search for the movie, and then as the movie and magazine both faded from my horizons, because i was getting older and recognized that reading a nudie fantasy magazine was a little weird (right?, right?), i started listening to this soundtrack over and over. before i could drive, my older friends would pick me up from school, and i would have a cassette, likely the heavy metal soundtrack, ready to play for the drive. rock music, this was a cool thing. maybe this i could stick with.

the other night i was in the red-neon virgin megastore in union square, on my birthday, and felt like getting myself a present. god, when did i last hear the heavy metal soundtrack?—now likely a bleached-out cassette, with the tape stretched thin from countless playing, buried in my parent’s basement. i went looking, and it was $13. heavy metal, you always seemed like you understood. thank you very much.

due to frequent elevator use by undergrads changing classes, i generally come and go from the lab via a long hallway and a bridge between two buildings. this other building is rather sleepy, having no classrooms in it, and the elevators are easier to get.

i was just leaning against the elevator wall, slowly going from 4 to 9, and saw a handbill taped up for an upcoming visiting scientist seminar by Li Li. i want Li Li to be my new favorite scientist.

i collect these guys from seminars i see. first, i thought george georgiou was the best. but i hadn't yet seen evan evans. you gotta admit: that's good. but Li Li is now my true love. evan, i want your valentines no longer.