I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ANTHRAX-The Greater of Two Evils (2004).

I loved Anthrax when they first burst onto the metal scene back in 1983.  They were fast and heavy and totally great.  As they matured, they got delightfully silly, releasing a couple of novelty hits (with Public Enemy!) and really showing off their juvenile side.  (Big baggy shorts and crazy haircuts).  Then some time around 1993 I stopped listening.

Whether it was because my metal cred was running out or whether I just didn’t like what they were doing, I’d given up on the mosh kings.  Around that time, they switched singers from Joey Belladonna to Jon Bush and the difference is striking.  Belladonna had a strong, high pitched, soaring voice that rose above the trash.  While Bush has a deeper, tougher voice, and he sort of forces his way on top of the beat.

I haven’t given the Bush-era Anthrax much time, but I recently learned that they (like Kiss) re-recorded songs from their first few discs with Bush now on vocals.  Okay, so unlike the Kiss version, these songs sound totally new.  A new singer brings a totally new sonic dimension to the disc. But they have also re-recorded the music, which in most cases sounds better: recorded on better equipment, less sludgy.  But it also sounds different: different drumbeats or (as is often the case, furious double bass drumming), and the solos mixed into separate speakers and all kinds of other studio tricks.

And yet overall, I’m not that excited by the set.  I just don’t like Bush over Belladonna for these songs.  Bush’s voice is tough.  And their new songs are almost brutally heavy.  Some of these older tracks work with Bush’s voice.  However, there are a few which relied more on soaring sounds (like “Indians”) or demanded a little more subtlety (like the outstanding “N.F.L” which Bush sounds a little hamstrung by.

Anthrax is definitely a different band, but they still play loud and furious.

[READ: March 26, 2010] Heck

I found this book because someone put it in the wrong place in the library. I was looking for Easy Reader for my son, and someone had put this book at the front of that section.  I went to move it, but it looked interesting enough that I decided to read it.  Serendipity!

The premise of the book is that Heck is where you go when you die if you’re under 18.  They’re not quite sure where you’re going to wind up, so you have to go through Heck, which is basically school, until they can sort out which layer of Hell you’re going to wind up in.  Needless to say Heck is full of bad kids (and bad demons).

Our two bad kids are Milton and Marlo Fauster.  Marlo is a troublemaker from way back.  She is a petty thief and is always up to no good.  Milton is a good kid.  He never did anything bad in his life, and he always gets abuse from Marlo.  As the book opens, Milton and Marlo are sprinting down the corridor of a mall where Marlo has just stolen something. She is planning on wreaking havoc with Grizzly Mall’s centerpiece: The State’s Second-Largest Bear-Themed Marshmallow Statue (that cracked me up).

The kids run to the center of the mall where they are cornered by security.  Marlo is trying to think of an escape plan when Milton notices his classmate Damian.  Damian torments Milton every chance he can get.  And now, he is standing at the top of the marshmallow bear with matches.  Milton also notices a fuse sticking out of the bear.

One explosion later, the kids find themselves no longer attached to their bodies, as they are rapidly sliding down to Heck.  Marlo deserves to be there, she’s a bad egg.  But what about Milton?  It turns out that Marlo had slipped an item into Milton’s backpack, and therefore he technically stole something as well.  A technicality but true nonetheless.

The rest of the book shows the kids in their gender segregated classes.  The boys learn physical education from Blackbeard the pirate and ethics from Richard Nixon (the Nixon bits were hilarious, and yet I can’t imagine many kids getting the jokes).  The girls, meanwhile, learn home ec from Lizzy Borden (do kids know who that is) and singing from an angel who is on a teacher exchange program.

And these classes prove to be just like real high school: Milton is laughed at by most people for being a brainiac (except in Heck, you’re not rewarded for being smart).  And Marlo is mocked by the “cool” kids because she’s a goth and a troublemaker.

And to add to Milton’s woes, Damian himself was caught in that same blast, and he soon comes down to Heck as a glorified hall monitor, with great plans for future detentions (with Milton figuring largely in all of them).

It’s only when Milton makes a friend, Virgil, that things start to pick up. Virgil is a good egg (he’s in heck for sloth because he’s fat), and he is doing everything in his power to get out (he even has a map!).  The kids try many plans of escape, two of which involve them trudging through the sewers–these are, indeed, the sewers that lead from the Surface to the gates of Hell…lots of poop jokes here). But when the kids join forces, they each learn a secret that helps them evade Heck’s security.

And the ending is genuinely a surprise.

The book is chock full of puns and witty wordplay.  The Mall of Generica, Suburban Blight cheek-bronzer, Goodbye Doggie (instead of Hello Kitty), and lots of sentences like: “Some not quite awfully perfect and others not quite perfectly awful.”  The only problem is that the most frequently used pun is the most egregious and one that I got completely sick of reading.   The headmistress of Heck is named Bea “Elsa” Bubb.  Get it?  Right, well, the problem with a pun name like this is that calling her Principal Bubb doesn’t have any kind of scary ring to it, so we have to see Bea “Elsa” Bubb written out about 100 times in the book.  It gets rather tedious.

The other problem I had with the book is relevant to me because I read this right on the heels of School of Fear.  Virgil is fat.  And he gets made fun of for being fat through most of the book.  And yet there’s no reason for him to be fat (and in one scene he appears to be outrageously fat)…it doesn’t hinge on any kind of plot point.  So, rather it’s just an excuse to call him a beached whale.   Now of course, Virgil turns out to be a sweet, sweet kid, and we all like him, but there’s no reason for him to be mocked by Mr. Dior, the school’s fashion designer.

But whatever, skinny people are evil in the book and made just as much fun of them so it’s all well and good.

This story was a lot of fun.  It started to drag for a me a little by the end (another kid’s story where it seems like they needed to be put through just one trial too many before they could allow the resolution to happen).  But aside from that it was a fast-paced, funny, rather gross story.

There’s already a sequel out called Rapacia (which is the second level of Heck), but I’m pretty sure I won’t be reading it. Unless that one turns out to be very different, I feel like this book dealt with everything well enough that I don’t need to read more.

Given all the puns in the book I can’t help but think that Dale E. Basye is a pseudonym (although the name itself isn’t a pun–Debase comes to mind, but it’s not that clever).  And the illustrator’s name is Bob Dob, which also seems so unlikely.  I guess there are stranger names out there, but these two, along with the twisted tale inside, seem like a joke is afoot.

If you like your kids stories dark and twisted (with lots of poop) this is for you.  It’s also a good introduction to Hellish fiction, of which thee is plenty when you get a little older