Funny, I Don't FEEL Like I've Been Renewed

Because it’s taken so long to get my emissions inspection done, I’m within a week of having my registration expire, so I went online to pay to renew it and to print out a temporary registration (the results of the inspection are transmitted to the DMV electronically, so I don’t actually have to send that in, even though I had to get it done in order to renew).
While I was at it I went ahead and renewed my driver’s license, as that’s expiring in April.
That’s one thing I miss about Arizona: after 25, your license doesn’t expire until you’re 65.
After work on Saturday night I stopped at a grocery store to pick up milk. While I was at it, I bought some vanilla extract so that I could make oatmeal raisin cookies, but somehow I never got around to it.
I’m still not sure why I didn’t have any vanilla extract in the first place.
I suppose I could make them today, as it seems unlikely that I’m going to do much else.
Given that they’re among the only interesting things here, I feel like I should be posting a new picture, but I just haven’t felt up to working on anything new.
So for those of you who look forward to the new pictures, my apologies.

Spreading The Disease Department:
One Friday evening in the fall of 1989 I was sitting at home reading (Jon was sitting at home on a Friday night? What are the odds?) when my friend Joel called me up to tell me about this amazing album he’d just bought.
By Joel standards (think Lurch of The Addams Family TV show), he was positively gushing.
In those days, Joel, Kevin, and I were always on the lookout for anything new and exciting in the world of metal.
This meant reading magazines like Circus and Hit Parader in order to find out about new bands, or old bands that had influenced bands that we liked, and of course watching Headbanger’s Ball, and periodically one of us would bite the bullet and go out and buy some album based on this research (other times we would just take a chance and buy something based on the album cover).
In this manner we had gotten into bands like Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I., and The Misfits.
In any case, there was a band we’d heard of and read about, but hadn’t really checked out yet, and so it was Joel who took the leap and bought an album.
The band? Queensrÿche. The album? Operation: Mindcrime.
Joel went on to explain that in addition to sounding amazing, the actual content was amazing. It was a concept album that told a story through song and snippets of dialogue. The band, it seemed to me, based on his description, had created some synthesis of operatic and cinematic elements and applied them to the production of a heavy metal album.
He went on to explain the story: a young drug addict is recruited into an underground conspiracy bent on overthrowing the government. This organization, named Operation: Mindcrime, keeps him happy and in line by providing him with free, hiqh-quality drugs, and through the ministrations of a prostitute turned nun turned agent for the revolution whom he comes to fall in love with.
Then one day he gets the call.
His mission is to engage in a bloody campaign of murder of local religious and political leaders, a mission that takes its toll on him, and it only gets worse when he gets his final assignment: murder the woman he loves.
He goes out to fulfill his assignment, they make love, and he decides that they will both break free of the revolution. He leaves to confront the leader, stumbles off into the night struggling through withdrawals, and returns to the only person who means anything to him only to discover that there are no happy endings.
That’s it in a nutshell, though it is actually much more complex than that.
In any case, I was intrigued, and when I finally got the chance to hear it, I was hooked.
For the next 6 months Mindcrime dominated my life.
I listened to it at least once a day every day, and a good portion of the time Joel and I spent together at school was devoted to examining every aspect of the album, making new discoveries all the time.
Sometime towards the end of 89 they released Video: Mindcrime, a home video featuring select tracks from the album and promising to provide some answers and raise new questions.
Eventually I acquired all of Queensrÿche’s other works (they’d had three previous albums), and became a full-on fan of what was known in many circles as “the thinking man’s metal group.”
But as much as I enjoyed The Warning and Rage for Order, it was their third album (I don’t count the self-titled EP, which isn’t very good), that stood out as the essential work.
In the summer of 1991 we learned that Queensrÿche would be doing some shows in Madison, Wisconsin, which was as close as they were getting to us.
The circle of friends I hung out with made plans to go to one of the shows, but it never panned out.
Some time later they released a box set featuring a concert video and CD entitled Livecrime, which featured performances from two of the shows in Madison(!).
So not only did I miss the chance to see them perform it live – with, it was reported, an interesting stage show that adds much to the understanding of the story – I missed an opportunity to be part of the home video and CD.
By 1995 Queensrÿche was on tour in support of their album Promised Land (their last good album, in my opinion; Queensrÿche has the problem of having peaked too soon), and their tour was bringing them a little bit closer to home. Green Bay, to be precise.
This show we did manage to get to (Type O Negative opened; shittily enough, while in mid-song, Queensrÿche’s road crew basically said, “Time’s up,” and began hauling Type O’s stuff of the stage while they were still performing. In response, lead singer Peter Steele said, “They said 45 minutes, and they meant it.” Apparently that happened a lot on that tour. It really was a shitty thing to do, but hey, it was Queensrÿche’s show. I might have been bothered by it more if Queensrÿche had then gone on to put on a lousy show. They didn’t, as you’ll see.)
Queensrÿche came on stage and launched into songs off the new album, which was cool. In addition to sounding good, they had a lot of good visuals, making use of big screens and various theatric elements to supplement the performances. During set changes they played these little short films made by lead singer Geoff Tate.
At some point in the show, after playing a mix of new and old songs, there was a pause, and Geoff said, “It’s a long way to the Promised Land. I hope you don’t mind if we take a little detour through…Operation: Mindcrime.”
And that was when I experienced one of the top ten greatest things that’s ever happened in my life (Of course, to put things in context I should mention that the time that I got two Twix bars for the price of one from a vending machine is like Number 4).
They. Did. The. Whole. Thing.
Plus they did some more non-Mindcrime stuff afterwards (about a two and a half hour show total).
My love for Mindcrime has never really waned over the years (even if my love for the band that created it has), but I don’t listen to it nearly as often as I did.
Still, I did listen to it last week and in doing so decided, “You know, Scott really needs to hear this,” so I burned him a copy.
He doesn’t quite share the enthusiasm for it that a 17 year old Jon felt, but he did get hooked.
In looking up some information on it, he discovered that in 2006 they released a “deluxe edition” that included the original CD, a concert CD from a performance in London in 1990, and a DVD of Video: Mindcrime.
That’s what I bought at Best Buy yesterday.
I was saddened to learn that a while back they actually released a sequel. That’s just sad. Something like Mindcrime can’t really be recreated in any fashion, and is perfect and complete in and of itself. A sequel just cheapens it.
Besides, with Chris DeGarmo gone, it, like the band itself, just wouldn’t sound right.
Still, I HIGHLY recommend the original. Not everyone will like it, I know, but this is a case in which if you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you. It’s not a matter of different strokes for different folks, or any namby pamby crap like that. There’s just straight up something wrong with you.
Now, I’m not saying that what’s wrong with you is grounds for rounding you and others like you up and putting you in camps to await the final solution, or that there’s a sleeper army of assassins out there just waiting to get the call to take out the non-believers, but I am saying that Mindcrime is really, really good and worth checking out.
So just think about it.

Yet another three day work week that will feel like twelve days looms ahead of me. Hopefully it will go a little bit faster than that.
It’s been rather an odd week for me, but I’m sure things will fall back into the normal rut next week.
In any case, if I don’t manage to post anything in the meantime, have a good weekend.