I actually laughed out loud at Fargo Rock City last night (previously I’d just been chuckling guiltily on the inside). It was when Klosterman suggested that Whitesnake’s video for “Here I Go Again” was about “watching a woman trying to fuck a car.” Then about two pages later I laughed again. I think Klosterman’s obsessive metal knowledge is a little hard to drill into.

It might be laugh-out-loud funnier to someone who wasn’t as steeped in metal lore as I was. I read all the magazines he’s talking about. I know the name of White Lion’s guitar player. So to me, reading the book is largely like having an amusing conversation with a guy I knew from high school.

Unlike Klosterman, I was never really a metalhead. I was just into music and as Chuck points out metal was pop back then. That was what I absorbed because it was the most easily accessible. Chuck brings up the classic argument about keyboards “being gay” (in the words of Charlie Benante). I’m not completely sure I ever had that argument with someone, but I remember vividly a scene in which I decried the use of drum machines.

Todd K and I ponged fiercely the other night. I think we’ve gotten back in stride. My wins over the last couple of months have been largely due to series of errors from the K man. Finally, we got to a point where we were both having to concentrate to play the game. It wore us the hell out.

(Oh, and I still won the majority of games.)

After pong, we watched most of an episode of 24. Wow, does that program ever suck big, sweaty donkey balls. I know, I’m such a low-brow doofus who just wants his detective shows to make sense that you shouldn’t even pay attention to my thoughts on this. Why for example are all the people who work in Jack Bowers’ FBI office such backstabbing mothereffers? Why do they work in Dr No’s volcano? What is wrong with that deranged, mousy woman?

It’s not like it’s the new wave of TV not to make sense. The Law & Order and the CSI franchises base their shows on reality, evidence, reason. The plots for each take liberties but the genre makes sense: Detectives following clues to solve cases. The truth is 24 isn’t a cop show. No, 24 is a soap opera. The characters speak with the same misplaced gravitas. The scenes jump from one to the next with no regard for conflict resolution. Sure, they may think it’s edgy because every so often they off a 16-year-old girl. But it’s total bullshit.