Pop Goes the Weasel

Or in the case of me, my jaw.

I have TMJ. Or at least some dentist way back when diagnosed me with TMJ when I complained about my jaw "getting stuck" while I was chewing. I've gone through a soft guard which fit over my bottom teeth and made me clench my jaws like crazy. Clenching is bad when you have TMJ. Then I had a hard bite guard made that looked like a retainer on steroids. Of course it wasn't covered by insurance (cost $150, which is cheap cheap cheap by today's standards) and it moved my teeth. I only wore it for a week because I could feel it mashing my teeth together in the front of my mouth. For those of you who don't know, I have a relatively small mouth filled with monstrous teeth. In my childhood, I resembled the recently discovered incisivosaurus gauthieri. Perhaps I still do, to an extent. Flossing requires a shoehorn and a pair of pliers (just kidding, but it's not easy, my teeth are tight.) This hard bite guard jammed my front teeth together so tightly I could fly a plane between my molars. My head felt like it was in a vise. Luckily, I am very suspicious of medical practitioners (they are humans, just like me, and get hooked on trends or misinformation) so I stopped wearing it. My teeth returned to normal.

I currently have a less invasive hard night guard which I do not wear because of the copious drooling it causes. While I enjoy making fun of retarded people, purposely drooling down my shirt and smacking my chest with the back of my hand whilst hollering "I R SMRT!" I really don't like drool. I do not enjoy sleeping in a puddle of my own rank saliva. I also clench like mad when wearing it and have to peel my bottom teeth away from it in the morning. And the damn TMJ doesn't seemed to be helped by it at all.

Now, as of late, the TMJ seems worse again. I'll be eating, or god forbid, kissing Jeff, and my jaw will pop like a gunshot. Not great for romance, I'll tell you. "Jesus Christ, are you okay?" has been uttered more times in our bedroom than I care to count. Sometimes, I have to hold on to my jaw and put it back into place manually. If I am doing something which requires me to lean over, with my head facing downward, my jaw bone will start to slide off the condyles. My muscles feel stretched and unable to keep it in place. All you dirty minds out there stop thinking what you're thinking. It's not an advantage.

Are you all squirming? Does the idea of your jaw sliding out of place as you try to tear into a tough piece of pizza crust have you hugging yourselves and squealing? Good. You'll like the next story.

One benefit to my loose jaw is that it is *loose.* Thus, when I was punched in the face by a 500 lb moshing asshole whilst watching Watain this summer in Tampa, my jaw popped out, richocheted back and snapped into place. I gave it a wiggle to make sure it was back in joint then returned to worshipping the stench that is the Watain brotherhood. Anybody else would have been going to the ER to have their jaw manually reduced. Score one for TMJ.

I'm currently debating if I should do something about this problem. I have NO pain. It's somewhat a case of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." However, all the snapping and popping and manual repositioning is annoying if not downright embarrassing. Pardon me while I turn away from you all to put my jaw back in place, since I just laughed it out of joint. I'm waiting to get popped in the face on accident during a Drifter show and have it get stuck. That'll make for some great photos. My pants will probably be torn in the crotch, too. And my nose will be running copiously (since it always does at shows) and I'll be drooling. Photographic perfection. Where's Ross Halfin from Circus Magazine?

One thing I am learning: the medical profession doesn't know what to do with TMJ. There's lots of theories and treatments but no evidence any therapies actually work.

So guess what? Health insurance doesn't like to cover it. Why am I not surprised?

Next week I have a free consultation with an orthodontist. I'm intrigued to hear what he'll say will help me. In writing this blog I've almost convinced myself not to do anything, but the bitter cynic in me wants to hear what expensive and possibly crackpot fix will be suggested. I'll update you all.

As an addendum: tomorrow I'm getting two moles removed since they're showing suspicious changes. They're on my back. I guess it would be stupid to get in the front row at the Goatwhore show this Friday at Red 7, so the moshers pummel my wounds? The pit will probably be bad. Fuck it, metal is pain. Maybe I'll leave bleeding. That would be cool.

Congrats Are In Order

This blog posting is for no other reason than to give major kudos to my good buddy Norma who is looking beautiful and amazing after banishing 37 lbs! That's like a whole little kid gone!

Go Norma! Go Norma! We are so going to humiliate ourselves at Iron Maiden this spring by going crazeeee. 'Arry and Bruce won't know what to think!

"Eh, look at those two barmy birds down there in the front row!"

If I'd been born a man...

There's a hilarious rumor going around the Austin music scene that I was born a man and had a sex change. I guess it's to be expected, given the fact that Ignitor did have a transsexual as a member for a while (Annah, not me, not Bev). Don't believe me? Just check out Annah's myspace or her website - she's completely open about it and has even written a book about her journey through life.

I find it hard to believe that anybody could look at me and think I was once male. I'm small, I don't have a brow ridge, I have little bitty hands. Perhaps my aggressive nature and guy-like way of being is contributing to the issue. Plus, there's nothing like a dirty, juicy, freaky rumor for people to chew on. Try pulling that greenie away from them and they growl and snap. Nothing worse than finding our your bit of juicy dirt is actually mud in your eye.

This did get me to thinking, if I **had** been born a man, what would have been different in my life.

• My dad might have actually liked me (or maybe not, who knows)
• I would have been given trucks and cars to play with instead of dolls (I hated dolls)
• The local bully wouldn't have been able to call me "peaches and fuzz Barbie."
• Teachers might have taken me more seriously
• I would have had better grip strength in my hands and would have had an easier time learning to play guitar
• I would have stage dived and gone in the pit (What's stopping you now? Having discovered in my increasing age that I am increasingly breakable. When people land on me, I go 'splat'.)
• My love of metal wouldn't have seemed as unusual
• I might have ended up in a band sooner
• My long hair would have seemed really rebellious and cooler than it is
• I'd probably be getting paid more today
• I could actually DO death or black metal vocals (to everyone who's ready to say, but Angela Gossow can so can you - no, shut up. I've tried. All I get are swollen vocal chords. And I still sound like a girl. I want to sound like a guy!)
• I wouldn't have early onset bone loss
• No periods/cramps/grossness
• I wouldn't have endometriosis
• No pregnancy (that gets fixed March 25 for good, yay)
• I wouldn't have any of the other miserable girl problems I've had to endure because I was born with ovaries
• I might actually be able to build muscles
• My chest would only be slightly flatter than it is now
• Cool metal shirts would fit me
• I'd be taller and would be able to see at shows
• I wouldn't have to prove myself that I'm not just the "arm accessory" of the metal guy. I would just be accepted as metal.

Now, don't get me wrong: I quite enjoy being female. I've never doubted that two X chromosomes were the right thing for me. I like it when people open doors for me. I like wearing make up and looking pretty. But being female, especially from a physical standpoint, can be a challenge. Sometimes, I do get pissed off when I can't do what I want because I'm not six-foot-one and looking like David Vincent from "Altars of Madness"-era Morbid Angel. So given all of the advantages listed above, if I had been born a man, I think I would have stayed one.

Slayer's "Angel of Death"

Best. Song. Ever.

I will listen to it again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Until I am dead.

Angel of Death! Monarch to the Kingdom of the dead!

Less Versus More

Listening to Celtic Frost's "Monotheist" on the way home from work got me to thinking about the concept of "Less versus More."

"Monotheist" is the perfect Less. The composition on this album is absolutely breathtaking. It is a landmark in minimalist structure that achieves grandiosity in sound and emotion with the minimum amount of tracks. There is no fat. Not an ounce. Every single sound: every drum, every vocal, every feedback wail, is absolutely necessary and utterly without excess. The songs are huge universes of sound; they breathe and swell and writhe and entice my soul to do the same. I've never heard such perfect guitar feedback. Whereas other players would clutter up a song with note heavy riffs and ear-tiring noodling, Warrior bangs away on one chord through the majority of "Ground" and creates a song of such flat, sneering anger that I risk running pedestrians off the road when I listen to it. Truly a prime example of Less being More in music.

A perfect counterpoint to More being Less in music would be the Dragonforce album, "Inhuman Rampage." Dragonforce is more when more should be outlawed. Everyone is hugely talented, and everyone is playing at full capacity almost 100% of the time. Drums, keys, guitars - everyone's going as fast as possible creating a breathless wall of musical notes that are harmonious but utterly suffocating. I don't like Dragonforce. Part of me wants to because they're so amazingly talented but I just can't get past the fact that they aren't writing songs, they're writing musical bludgeons.

I admire the artist who makes a mountain out of Less. The older I get, the more I like abstract art. A few years ago, it was with something akin to horror that I realized I actually liked and wanted a Mark Rothko color field painting, or one similar. When I was a teenager, I thought Rothko was the biggest schyster on the planet. "I could paint THAT," I remember saying with disgust, looking at "Orange and Yellow." Now I realize I probably couldn't. I could paint a couple rectangles on a canvas, but my painting wouldn't have the depth, the little delicious brush strokes at the edges of the colors, the patina that Rothko's would. I would not be able to make as much out of Less as he could.

Growing up dirt poor, I got very stuck on the concept of More. I spent my childhood with Less while all those around me drowned in More. I wanted to be like them; More meant I would be popular, I would be "normal." I specialized in producing school projects of prodigious length and volume. Everyone groaned when it was my time to present my work. Whereas the other kids would have a four page report or a single poster, I'd have a 13 page single-spaced tome, 20-30 drawings and a 3 x 4 foot poster. I have never written a truly "short" short story in my life. At 18, I started a very concerted agenda of filling my life with More. I bought toys, books, CDs, ephemerata - anything that stuck my fancy. My husband was quite able to keep up with me, also being a pack rat, but for far less pathological reasons than mine. By the time we got divorced, we had filled our 2500 square foot house with thousands of toys, @4000 CDs, hundreds of VHS tapes, thousands of LPs, hundreds of old character glasses, glass bottles, hubcaps, beer signs, stuffed animals, books...

The toy collection alone had taken a 17 foot U-Haul packed to the gills to get it to our house when we finally consolidated it from Ron's relatives' houses.

Something snapped in me when I saw that U-Haul sitting in the driveway, full of shit. Needless, stupid, space wasting shit. I was fairly checked out from the marriage at that time anyhow, and that U-Haul suddenly began to symbolize everything that was wrong with my life. A truck full of broken and moldering old toys - meaningless, a vacuum of time and expense for what? Looking at it on the shelf? Watching it gather dust? Worrying about whether the moisture in the basement would damage the boxes and devalue the collection?

More, at that point in my life, was definitely not desirable.

When I ran to Texas, I left with one 4 x 8 trailer and my Pathfinder. I left Ron keep all the rest. I just wanted my office chair, my computer and Yamaha keyboard, my CDs and my clothes. I did eventually get my book collection mailed to me, but after that, it was over. No more shit. ENOUGH. Less is more.

I've tried, in the last 7 years, to keep the less is more principle going. In my physical life, I do a fairly good job. My house is small. I can't keep much stuff because there's nowhere to put it. I have my skull collection, my fossils, and my books. People give me shit for Christmas and it instantly goes to Goodwill or to work to be given away. I'm starting to give books away. I don't need three copies of "The Dark Tower" by Stephen King. I just Goodwilled the last of my "dressy" clothes in a willful nose-thumbing at the white collar world. I'll be a project manager and you'll deal with my snakeprint satin jeans and my Hello Kitty t-shirts. I'm even starting to think I have too many CDs. I don't listen to 90% of them. I made a promise to never get rid of anything black metal, especially if the band is wearing corpsepaint, but jesus I have all this other non-BM shit that I don't care about any more. Strip and turn, flay away the excess flesh.

One thing I've noticed is I still struggle with the concept of Less being More in my creative endeavors. This blog is a perfect example. I'm fucking raving on and on, churning out words like some pregnant termite queen pissing out babies. I will say, after re-reading my first attempt at "The Apocalypse Gods" that I've gotten better. I'm improving with age. I found myself reading passages and screaming to the room, "Jesus fucking christ, would you GET TO THE POINT?" I had smothered myself in words, covered myself in the mud of them to protect myself from the miseries of my dying marriage and go-nowhere job. Now, sitting down nightly, I find the urge to describe every damn thing down to the last scale, needle or drop of blood, no longer exists. I write, "She stared into the creaking darkness" and not, "She stared with trembling green eyes into the velvet, silent tomb that was the dark, the dark stretching out before her like an endless night."

Thomas Harris' "The Red Dragon" is directly responsible for my reduction of words. Go read it. It's a nearly perfect book. He describes people and places using a gestalt of details that provide a lush picture with the absolute minimum of words. Beautiful. Elegant. Glorious.

And so, listening to the Less of "Monotheist" once more, I will begin my nightly sojourn into my 2000 word minimum, into the world of Glaysa and Thorn and the dusty carcass that is South City and the CORAT dominion. My words will be sparing, like Tom Warrior's riffs, but they will be lush with unspoken feedback. My writing will be Less, and because of that, More.

Neighbor of the Beast

I got home from work today and decided to get my 30 minutes of low impact exercise by mowing the fallen leaves into my lawn. As I was pulling up the hose from where I'd left it strewn across the grass in October, my neighbor from two doors down came over and asked if Drifter had any gigs coming up. He's a Maiden fan who saw us play at that miserable Hanover's gig this past summer.

"Friday, March 7, Room 710!"

"Great, great, we'll be there," he says. "I'm working on building up a following for you guys!"

"Well that's real cool!"

Grinning, he goes on. "Yeah, I tell people that the singer from the Iron Maiden cover band lives next to me, that I have Neighbor of the Beast."

At that moment, I knew I must blog. Neighbor of the Beast. Do you all have any idea how much that tickled my aging metal heart?

Neighbor of the Beast. Fuck yeah. I'm Neighbor of the Beast.

And he's right, you know? I don't think he realizes how very right he is.

They Said It Was A Phase...

When I was 19 years old, I was home from college on break and at the dentist's office, getting my teeth cleaned. I was wearing a shitty bootleg Metallica "Damaged Justice" shirt my boyfriend had gotten me for Christmas. The dentist paused in his inspection of my ivories, noted my shirt, and said, "You still like that stuff, that heavy metal?"

"Sure do!" I replied.

"It's just a phase; you'll grow out of it," was his response as he finished looking for cavities. At the time, my impulse was to bite his fingers and tell him he was wrong, but even then, I knew he would just chalk it up to teenage headstrong nature and blow me off. Well, Dr. Matlach, I'd like to say I have proven you wrong. It's been 16 years since that visit, and I'm more metal than ever (and yes, I've gone to the dentist since then!). Back then I didn't even have a band. Now I have a band, a metal husband, and more metal friends than I could ever have wished for. Shit.

Back in the 80s, before gangsta rap, before gold teef and baby daddies, love of heavy metal was the phase most parents hoped we'd all avoid. Growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo, NY, a land surrounded by skeletons of old steel mills and perforated, rusting grain silos, a kid had two choices when it came to music: the brainless pap of 80s pop or rebellious, "thanks for bringing me up in this shithole" heavy metal. Obviously, I was the latter. For me, loving metal was never really a choice. From about three years of age, I gravitated toward the minor strains of darker music like a plant will turn towards the sun. I have "Devil's Tritone" audiotropism. Something in those minor tones vibrated in me; warmed my soul and cooled it at the same time. I felt slick, like oil, and deadly, like the wolf. Powered by those sounds, I could slip through the night, free to run with the moon. Not that I did any slipping into the night at age five (and not at 10, nor 15, nor 25, LOL), but I did a heck of a lot of imagining and that was only the beginning.

It was all over when I saw Alice Cooper on the Muppets at age seven or so. That was the seminal moment. I wanted Alice to serenade me like he was serenading the freaky bird muppet! He was scary and enthralling and sexy with his long-ish hair and black eye paint and cape. About that time, I also discovered KISS, with whom I immediately fell obsessively in love. Unlike Alice, who I thought was hot (and now who I think belongs in the ground having a long overdue dirt nap, fucking traitor to the cause he is), I WANTED to be KISS. I ran around the house sticking out my tongue really far until it hurt. I cut up umbrellas and pinned them to my sleeves and shirt sides to make little wings like Gene had. I painted my face like Peter Criss. I fantasized conquering the world with my buddies in KISS, along with a seven foot tall lion-headed dragon man I called Chimera. Chimera had a long golden mane, wore studded wrist bands, a leather vest and pants, and rode a chopper motorcycle. I never could quite figure out how he could sit on the chopper and get his big dragon's tail out of the way, but somehow he managed. He was inhuman but he was cool, cooler than KISS! And he was metal before I even really knew what metal was.

Here's a pic of me, being Peter Criss as best I could. Note the green too-small Garanimals. Christ, I was a dork, but I love this picture. When I was KISS, nothing could hurt me or frighten me. I wish my mother had taken more pictures.



As I've written before, my young life was somewhat of a horror. I didn't really realize it at the time - I don't know if anyone in those situations ever does. What I can say is I was always looking for something new to release the pressure, take me away from the stress and the tension, to show me there were better things out there in the world. I still remember the night I first heard Maiden's "Die With Your Boots On." My dad was listening to the Dr. Demento show on the radio and I was hanging out in the living room with him. I was nine. When those dual guitars came on, my entire hide goosed up. My body went tense. What is this? This is so cool! Bruce's voice came in, aggressive and demanding: "No point asking when it is!" No, Bruce, there is no point, I'll listen to whatever you have to say! Tell me what to do!

To this day, when that song starts, whether it's me listening to it on iTunes or Drifter playing it onstage, I'm transported back to that innocent nine-year old girl who sat in the dark with her nutjob dad and realized there was this huge musical greatness out there waiting to salve her soul with its pounding drums and wailing guitars.

This pic captures the middle teens well - summer going into 10th grade, me and my pal Dorothy before going to see Motley Crue on the Girls Girls Girls tour. It's impossible for me to believe this pic is 20 years old! Dorothy, I miss ya. I hope your life is happy.



Not every kid who develops a lifelong love for metal was abused or came from a crappy family, though. Take my husband and his bandmates, for example. They all came from relatively stable, loving families which did not have dads who decided to go shoot the neighbor one night. They were loved and they knew it. But they had their seminal moments, just like I did. For my husband, it was the Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia. It was all over when Satan hit the screen. Jeff saw that and was off to the races. Nothing his mother could do would divert the course set in motion by that brilliant piece of animation.

I wouldn't trade this life for anything. Metal has given me so much joy and freedom, so much exhilaration. Yes, sometimes it excluded me from the norm; got me unwanted attention. My friends and I got kicked out of several malls simply because of our appearances - this pic captures is perfectly: backwards ballcaps, leather jackets and fingerless leather gloves at the time, al-la Hetfield in skater mode.



The Canadian border police booted us back across the Peace Bridge one time and scared the shit out of us. But still, being metal elevated me. It thrilled me. I belonged to something with power. I loved it. I loved the fact that in senior year of high school, I never ONCE repeated a concert shirt - between my boyfriend and myself, we did a different shirt every day by trading the contents of our closets. I loved the fact that I got hit in the head by a guitar at the River Rock Café in Buffalo because I was banging forward at the same time as the guitarist on stage. WHAM! I checked for blood - none - took a breath and kept thrashing. I loved the fact that I saw the first Cannibal Corpse show EVER (and just about every one after that until they hit it big) and had to be hidden up in the front at the River Rock because they banned girls from the pit. My guy friends would surround me so the lone bouncer wouldn't see me.

I purposely wore my Exodus "Bonded By Blood" T shirt on the day when yearbook club pics were being taken just to piss my mother off. She hated that shirt. Said it promoted cruelty to children. And so, there I was. Front and fuckin' center: here's to you, Mom, Love, Erika.



This pic got taken a few days later. I did not disappoint - was wearing Slayer Root of All Evil.



A yearbook candid: I was doing my calculus homework here. In pen. How's that for balls?



I love this pic - it's also from the yearbook. Made no sense and I look like a tool, but I got Slayer's "Hell Awaits" in the yearbook. I consider that success!



This was for a regional scholarship I won. Note the Metallica shirt and utterly black eyeliner-ed eyes. That took effort, people. I love this picture. I look like such a fuck up.



This was another fave of my mother's: the "class picture". We did a normal one (left) and a crazy one (right). I made sure I was front and center.






















And lastly, my supreme metal moment of high school: Hamburg's Top 10 Students, me in slot #3, wearing my Slayer "Show No Mercy" T shirt. This was printed in the local newspaper. My mother was horrified. I was thrilled. I was unrepentantly METAL.





I feel sad for anyone who once loved something almost more than breath itself and has since walked away from it "because it was for kids." Nurturing that inner child, that glowing ingot of creativity and fearlessness, is to me, the secret of youth. Allow that fire to die and you're nothing but a cold ash. People with whom I work always seem shocked to discover my metal predilections, despite the fact that I come to work in Dark Throne shirts and have photos of my long-haired, tattooed husband on my desk. Christ, if you all only knew the full truth of it. I'm writing project plans to Funeral Mist and Marduk, for dog's sake.

I'm sorry if I've rambled on - I'm getting over the flu and my head is full of wool. I just think it's very important to stress that for some, metal is NOT a phase. It's not even a choice in some cases. We are drawn to the building blocks of metal long before we ever hear it. Metal is not something which can be given up, put away, shelved, forgotten. It's an essential part of the warp and woof of the tapestry of our souls. To pull out those threads - we unravel, we unwind (to quote my former band, Autumn Tears). Plus, I think it's important for us to reaffirm why we are what we are every once and a while - so we remember why this music, this leather and spikes and oft corpsepainted world keeps us emblazoned, keeps us flipping off "normal society": We can't not be metal - for us Hessians, metal is our ideology, our religion, our lifestyle. We'll be metal until we cease to draw breath, and even after, I bet. I'd have it no other way. Hail metal!