Trent Wants To Bore Me Like An Animal

Saw Nine Inch Nails the other night here at the local hockey rink. Leading up to the show, I hadn't heard anything from the new CD, but I'm pretty sure I hadn't missed much epoch-defining growth.

Boy, was I... not in for a surprise at all.

As they blasted out head-bobbing-tantrum after head-bobbing-tantrum, I wondered what charm, if any, I'd ever seen in this "band". The fact that I didn't recognize the song they opened with (and still haven't gotten the urge to find out. Sorry.) just points up the fact that, more than most bands, every song sounds much the freaking same. Strangely enough, they certainly appeared animated, especially (whoever) the guitarist (was) who liked to knock things over and twirl his guitar around. It was just the music that was stiff and lifeless.

Some more quick observations about the show...

1. A super-buff Trent Reznor has apparently been working out since he was last on the road. (Visions of him working out to a DVD called Sweatin' to the Danzig need to be burned out of me quickly. Please help.)

2. Fog machines haven't been cool since Ronnie James Dio played the Civic Center. And I'm not sure they were cool then. Animated robot dragons that shot red lasers from their eyes, now those were cool.

3. Playing for 15 minutes behind a gauzy white curtain doubling as a movie screen doesn't break up a monontonous show, it adds an extra layer of yawning. Especially when the clips shown are as unsubtle as the crap the Nails were showing. Footage of some virus acting on a cell under a microscope, fading into shots of predator/prey animals in the jungle, into marching soldiers, blah, blah, blah, blech.

4. If I didn't pay to get into the show, do I still have the right to bitch about how crappy it was? I don't? Oh, well. Just forget I saw the show, then.

I already have.

This is why she doesn't take me to the movies.

I was driving around with my wife this afternoon, to avoid any sort of household chores before she hunkered down to watch tonight's Academy Awards. I accidentally remarked that I didn't believe I'd seen any film nominated for any awards tonight (as it turns out, Batman Begins and Star Wars:Revenge of the Sith were indeed nominated). We discovered that the tiny 4-screen theater in Gulf Breeze (which now is the *only* place you can see a lot of the "artier" films) was showing Transamerica, which Sandy really wanted to see.

The fact that I enjoyed the movie tremendously is secondary to the unfortunate first reaction I had to what I was seeing onscreen. And I couldn't let it go; I had to whisper it to the wife, who was futilely attempting to merely enjoy the Oscar nominated performance:

"I can't believe that Hollywood's vision of a man desperately trying to become a woman is actually Kathy Griffin."