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Activity: Walked 2.67 miles in the afternoon.

I plan on providing my trek playlist if I remember to upload the activity on iTs. Forgot to do it for this afternoon's walk

Supporting activities:
- Bought some shoes with better support. Tried out Nike Lunar Elite + on trek, weird to say it but this shoe totally adjusts to how your foot strikes and plants, providing support where it is needed. Hopefully this helps calm the plantar fasciitis that I have been experiencing for months now -- probably because I am too heavy right now.

- Picked up 2nd CSA box from Ma`o Organic Farms. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the produce, and vegetables I have never seen before in my life. Have some meal ideas to try out. Last week, the results were mixed for the cooking with fresh vegetables, but if you don't cook recipes, you won't find out whether you like them or not

It's taken years, but apparently the big four bands of 80s thrash metal -- Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth -- will finally share a stage at a few festival dates in Europe. Hopefully, this leads to some appearances together in the United States -- we can hope, anyway ...

Encore
Rock Steady
Stand And Deliver (cover: Adam and the Ants)
Sunday Morning

"It's a very complex record, I'm trying to do something different. Some of the arrangements are kind of like Queen. Some people are going to say, 'It doesn't sound like Axl Rose, it doesn't sound like Guns N' Roses.' But you'll like at least a few songs on there."

- Axl Rose, Rolling Stone, 2006

After so much time, money and speculation, Chinese Democracy has finally been released for mass legal consumption. My impressions from several listens is that it has elements of the GNR formula, but it appears that re-creating the glory that was GNR was not really the point of the album. Instead, Chinese Democracy is a big creative leap in many different and interesting directions, an attempted proof of concept of Axl Rose's "musical genius".

And that leap yielded mixed results -- but the picture that emerges from the album is that of a emotionally conflicted artist who still has brilliant ideas, but he could not execute them at times, leading to some really overwrought songs that were terribly in need of others to counterbalance the creative output.

A significant difficulty in assessing this album is the inevitable comparison to GNR's heritage, so let's get that out of the way. Not surprisingly, this album in no way touches their ultimate classic, Appetite for Destruction. This album has some echoes in the Use Your Illusion duo -- in that there are various styles being explored. However, at times, it captures the not-so-good aspects of UYI 1&2 as well, piano and power chords gone amok without a good songwriting structure.

I found the first five songs to be interesting and listenable. I didn't find any of them to really jump out at me as especially memorable, but they were pretty solid. However, it went horribly wrong for me in the last 2/3rds of the album. My first impression was that it reminded me of the last third of the movie, Boogie Nights -- yes, all this bad stuff happened, some self-inflicted, some not -- but it was never the same again when the "team" or cast of characters got broken up. There were points where the contributions of Izzy to songwriting, or Duff to arranging, or the bluesy solos of Slash could have made a big difference. And, then again, that's why I think this album is an Axl Rose solo album, yes there are branches from the GNR tree, but this is really an "Eff U", I'll do it myself effort in all of its convoluted glory and mad "genius".

Upon further consideration, I think this is what happened at the middle to end of the album -- imagine a scenario where you are good at many things, and try to do them all at once ... every time, every song. Or, maybe you have this formula in your mind of what would be the most creative assembly of these elements, which you believe were the formula for successful songs, GNR or otherwise (e.g., Queen, Paul McCartney, etc.). Sometimes that works, and sometimes it leads to a big pile of hot mess.

"Sorry" is the poster child of this latter two-thirds. It reminds me of an outtake of a song that Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible would sing -- all pathos, paranoia, self-importance, but unlike the songs in that effort, many of these songs were hot mess. Tongue and cheek? I think in an earlier time, confrontational songs like Get In The Ring or the uber-controversial, One in a Million went "there" and were regarded as satirical. After all this time and effort, this is the epitome of the ultimate pity party, take yourself too seriously, self martyr's anthem -- dangerously edging on crazy talk, pure and simple. Madagascar then takes Sorry and multiplies it by about 10,000, the pathos of complexes is so thick that I wonder if some day this will come to an unfortunate end.

That said, getting back to the album, the mad genius certainly still has it in him to create utter brilliance, yet you can plainly see why they call him mad. The results on the latter two-thirds of the album are utterly maddening, the songs do not sink in or make sense after repeated listens -- they show a sense of perfectionist chop suey that never really amounts to anything, and the frayed emotions that drive this artist.

An interesting lyric from the song "Street of Dreams" goes: What I thought was beautiful don't live inside of you anymore. After all the years, all the criticism, and all the weirdness perhaps the bar of expectations was set too high for this album, or maybe all of the same just drove Axl, already the neurotic perfectionist, to keep trying to make an album that would be acceptable. By this I mean, not only to his standards, but to meet the expectations of all levels of potential audience -- could it really be as simple as trying to please everyone all the time? There seems to be some element of that here.

Ultimately, I feel that he should have released these songs as a solo album. That may have been the best way to accommodate Axl's need to create new music, express his reactions to all that has happened in the intervening fifteen years, and keep the heritage of GNR relatively clean and controversy free. Now, by using the name of his former band, he is abusing the goodwill that the public has for that band, its music, and history, and to what end?

So he can pretend in some deluded way that GNR was he and a bunch of sidemen? No, using the name ultimately is a cop-out, it gives him cheap entry and shelter via GNR's goodwill. I don't know why he could not release an album under his name and claim it all as his music, art, and contribution to current music -- and stand on it proudly. To release an album under the GNR name to me unnecessarily clouds the band's heritage, and raises all kinds of questions and issues. I suppose I may never understand the motive behind this.

In the end, I think there are a few songs that I enjoy enough to download, but unfortunately this album did not live up quality and the standard that is GNR, which is unfortunate because that is the name on the sleeve.

In retrospect, the better title of this album may have been, The Missed Opportunity of Axl Rose

SL Grade: D+

Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

An unexpected return to form. Even my faith as a long-term Metallica fanatic was beginning to wane with each entry into the Metallica catalog post-Black Album. I had pretty been resigned to the fact that the Metallica that plays fast, thrashy and energetic was long gone, and was only seen periodically during its live performances.

However, I am very pleased to report that I was dead wrong. After the perfection exercise that was Black, the experimentation of the Loads and the statement of St.A, all of which never really delivered on a visceral level the experience of the first four albums. Metallica delivers with Death Magnetic, a record that shows that heavy metal can still be a vital force in current music.

In that respect, Death Magnetic is quite remarkable in that it is vital and fresh sounding. Yes, it will please the gamut of Metallica fans, from the very hardcore, old school only types to the more mainstream post-1990 fans. The most remarkable aspect of the album is that it ends the experimentation with other styles of music, that made their most recent handful of albums not particularly successful or compelling -- to me, anyway.

With Death Magnetic, the core of Metallica music long left behind returns, but it is not a rehash of the first 4 or 5 albums. In this sense, I believe Metallica has created a fully modern 21st century heavy metal album. Too often nowadays, the bands in the current metal scene are stylistically limited and fit almost too well into predictable subgenres. Instead, Metallica has taken the core elements of its sound and rendered a modern version of long left for dead, thrash metal. And it serves notice once again that Metallica is still the undisputed force in heavy rock music.

One of the most outstanding aspects of the album is the welcome return of Kirk Hammett's soloing, which really shines and provided some of my moments of greatest enjoyment while listening to the album. I'm not that technically versed to discuss the interplay between players or the techniques employed. However, the band delivers an album filled with songs that show both quality riffs, amazing tempo changes, song length which shows off great progression -- basically many of the elements that people love in their earlier set of albums.

One of the more interesting aspects that I have discovered over the past few days of reading reactions to the album and its songs is that everyone has such a varied opinion about which song is best, worst, good, bad, etc. One of the more interesting discussions is over where the album fits in terms of ranking in the band's discography. Reading some reviews, this variance of opinions even extends to the music critics. What is ultimately good about all this buzz is that Metallica paid off on all the expectations of listeners of various interest levels, and now there is a renewed excitement and vitality -- and just overall interest in the band again.

There are some downsides to the album, notably the audio compression of the music. I don't like the way that the album "sounds", it sounds thin and loud with little dynamic range. The Guitar Hero 3 tracks actually "sound" better to me in that they have better range, clearer instrument sounds, and certain sounds emerge which are not obvious in the official release. I hope that a remaster will come to address this issue, as it is one of the few things that I will quibble about with this album. My other minor quibble is that some of the lyrics do not seem up to par with the quality of the songs.

That said, this is a welcome return to form by Metallica. I would highly recommend this album to anyone who likes heavy metal, and to those who are open minded in their tastes, who may appreciate a quality heavy rock album.

Death Magnetic: A

My Subjective Ranking of the Tracks:
That Was Just Your Life
Broken, Beat & Scarred
My Apocalypse
The Judas Kiss
The Day That Never Comes
All Nightmare Long
Cyanide
The End of the Line
The Unforgiven III
Suicide & Redemption

IMO, where it stands in the discography:
1. Ride the Lightning
2. Master of Puppets
3. Kill 'Em All
4. ... And Justice For All
5. Death Magnetic
6. The Black Album
7. Load
8. St. Anger
9. Reload

It's unbelievable

3 of the G.O.A.T. and Kanye, too

So little sense ...

Dark. Realistic. Created an unrelenting sense of dread, and a drink from the firehose type pace. Leaves you feeling gut punched; however, it is a very satisfying movie as well. The quality of this movie transcends that which would normally be associated with the superhero movie genre; it simply is a great movie.

Unfortunately, not a lot a coherent thoughts about this movie are coming to me at the present moment. This movie is incredibly dark and creepy; indeed this is the first adult superhero movie. It may be the best of breed for Batman movies, as it finally gets the darkness, the villainy, and the tension between law and chaos right.

I was impressed with this Batman, as it is clear that the creators of this movie understand that he has no superpowers. He must use his intellect and tech to keep the city safe. He walks that thin line where his actions to defeat evil, are arguably an ethical stretch even if the greater good is served. He faces a villain with no motives other than anarchy, a total sociopathic loon. He must come to terms with the mirror, that he may not be so far from being that as well. How he first proposes to solve this problem, and where that road ends up, is one of the interesting upshots of the movie.

It is rare to come across a movie that is mostly seamless. That is, everything seems right and blends into the environment. There is no performance that is greater than another, they all seem to fit together very well to raise the movie to a very high level.

That said, there is a complexity to the lay of the land that is tremendous for a superhero movie. With all the efforts of the Batman and the police, the criminal element is still able to maintain an arbitrage of profit in the background. The equilibrium that emerges sets forth a dark implication, there is no way to control it other than to seek out the sources of the problem, even if they transboundary in nature. It is endless, and even the major crusaders in the city whether vigilante or law and order are subject to being turned. Then, when you add a catalyzing factor like the Joker, the whole thing can be blown wide open. The Joker promises free reign to the criminal elements, but his true aim is an unexpected deathblow to the entire system that threatens to wipe the board clean and leave chaos behind in its wake.

The aspect of the film that really got to me was the ascent and fall of Harvey Dent. To watch the well executed rise and fall of a great man was amazing and perhaps the most gut wrenching. To digress, if only the SW prequels got it right about Vader ... The portrayal of this character is superb, beyond the foreshadowing dreadful physical scarring is a psychological nightmare which goes from predictable law and order to terrifying random evil, from a person who could love to one who no longer had the capacity. Amazing.

You get this great sense of attrition in this movie. Similar to the Bane storyline in the comics, one is left to wonder how long can Batman hold it together, both physically and emotionally. It's not really a question of whether he disappoints in the end. It seems to be one of, when will he finally fall off, since the task in front of him is endless. The movie leaves him in a place where all that is left to him is to be the Batman, there is no exit, there is no stopping. That said, I don't know where this movie can go from here in terms of a sequel. All that may be left may seem minor in comparison.

Excellent movie, highly recommended. Definitely one of the best movies we saw this year.

What does it look like when a comic comes to life? This movie is a pretty close approximation of my childhood recollection of what I appreciated about reading Hulk comics -- really liked the action, the chases, the explosions and destruction and I wasn't particularly sophisticated enough to appreciate some of the psychological complexity/human drama that Bruce Banner was going through.

I'm not the ultimate Hulk expert by any means, but I had sufficient context about the Hulk from reading the comics and watching the TV series to understand the basic concepts of the story, and from the geek standpoint, see and appreciate the nods and cameos. This movie gave nods all around, but really was a summer popcorn action movie at its core -- which anyone could appreciate as a cold viewer. With my level of context, I felt that some of the nods and layering of TV, comics, and movie were cool to see. I felt a level of foreshadowing with the appearances of certain characters in that it created anticipation for what some of these characters are or could possibly become, if this movie became a series. I guess the upshot of this movie and Iron Man is that there is a definite build towards something pretty big and cool (coupled with apprehension that it could all be a big mess, well pessimism aside, I have my fingers crossed).

Here are the issues of the movie, as I saw them. First, I don't think there was a great deal of depth to the exploration of the whole character paradox that is the Hulk -- in other words, the mild mannered scientist who avoids entanglements with others because of his dangerousness vs. what are the implications and consequences of a superhuman/super soldier. These were touched on very briefly, almost in shorthand. The agenda of the movie was more in line with let me show you, rather than let me tell you -- so come along for the rollercoaster ride, we hope you dig the action and effects. And, well yes, I enjoyed the ride well enough -- but almost like a frosted mini-wheats commercial, the adult in me wanted a bit more.

If you owned a Ferrari, you would want to push it past 2nd gear, although 2nd gear might have all the satisfaction that you crave. For me, I felt that the high powered talent that was in this movie was underutilized -- Ed Norton and William Hurt are two big-time talents, and they could have sleptwalked, air mailed, etc. their performances for this movie. I reflect on the agenda of the movie, and believe that the basic plot framework and dialog was too limited for the talent available. But then, if they loaded it up, then we have Ang Lee's movie again, don't we? Double edged sword, you could lose the audience much like some hated the 2003 Hulk movie for its complex relationships, dialog, and structure.

So instead we have a movie where it is abundantly clear in hammers and dead horse flesh that Banner doesn't want to become the Hulk, the army is chasing him down to experiment on him for a super soldier application, and Betsy Ross and Banner never really can quite get together even though they may be romantically interested in each other (a tragedy several levels below Romeo & Juliet in exposition in the movie). If you clear yourself of the redundant themes, the action carries you nicely throughout the movie, much like riding the log ride at the amusement park -- mostly nice and at the end you get wet. You know the pattern, you've been here before. Do you care about being wet for the rest of the day at the park. If you do, you might be irritated at where it all ends -- wanting more from something that is really limited. If you don't, then maybe you go nice ride, or go, hey I've been here before, let me feel some nostalgia and have some fun.

And it all leads to the final boss fight where most superhero movies end up, where this time an experienced soldier also subjects himself to alteration -- but retains conscious control of his transformed state, in contrast to the Hulk. So, is it better to be conscious in superhuman form and evil, or not be conscious of your actions in superhuman form? No answer provided, but very cool special effects on how a Hulk fight would go down in Times Square, comics come to life -- very enjoyable on that level.

At the end of the day, that is what remains -- movie as experience, almost like an amusement park ride. Suspend your disbelief for 2 hours and enjoy the ride. As a theme for the summer movies so far, it falls in the don't analyze too much or it will fall apart. Enjoyed it while it lasted, but I'm not sure there is repeat viewability for me.