A DRAGON IS NOT A SLAVE

...that is all.

Read the recap here.

I am very pleased to announce the launch of the website I've been working on with my fiancee Alison, http://www.withabang.net. We've been working on it for some time and have accrued a group of very talented writers to help us make it one of the best blogs on the web. WithaBang strives to give a unique perspective on pop culture, something more attuned towards hardcore fans than casual web surfers.

Right now, we only have four articles, but have a slew of content lined up for next week.
-Hannibal Eps 1-2 Impressions
-Hannibal- "Potage" Recap
-"Maybe Not So Lucky" -impressions on the new Daft Punk single featuring Pharrell written by Zach Shuster
-Comic Book Reviews for 4/17/2013

As I am now turning my focus to this new site, my personal blog will start to ramp down and turn into more of an online portfolio. Expect a redesign at some point. I may write some more personal posts from time to time, but anything pop culture related will be on withabang.

I hope you enjoy it.

Head over to the ZEFR-U blog to check out my latest Game of Thrones recap. Last night's episode, "Walk of Punishment" was absolutely awesome. It was a great tribute to the novels on which it is based, but also struck a very unique tone that made the episode feel almost like a standalone, one-off story were it not for all the big plot developments. It reminded me of one of my favorite Farscape episodes, "Scratch 'n Sniff," though it was obviously far less wacky.

Follow this link to read the recap and stay tuned every Monday for new recaps.

This Wednesday, at the beautiful Fox Theater in Pomona, I stood beside a thick-necked dudebro while we waited for the lights to dim and How to Destroy Angels to take the stage. He spoke of how awesome it was to listen to Nine Inch Nails at the gym and didn't seem to realize that "Dead Souls" is actually a cover of a Joy Division song. He made me feel a little ashamed to be an NIN fan and was clearly not on the same level of fandom as I was. I'm the biggest NIN fan I know- I own all the Halos, have gone to seven concerts and was even a member of the fan club before it was disbanded. That being said, there seemed to be even bigger fans at the Fox that night, fans in the truest sense. Their undivided love for Trent and everything he does was palpable, and I realized I had simply become too cynical to ever be that much of a fan of anything anymore (except maybe for my new love, Game of Thrones).

But there's no cynicism behind HTDA, and that's why I think it resonates with fans more than other super groups and solo projects. It's not a cheap cash grab or some desperate, clawing attempt to stay in the limelight. It's just Reznor wanting to give his wife and friends the same chance he was given when he first entered the music scene twenty-five years ago. It's almost touching because it's a very famous musician extending that fame to the people he loves, people who never broke out on their own or achieved the same level of fame he did. So even at its most mediocre, its hard to truly hate How to Destroy Angels.

The band is at its strongest when it focuses on heavy electronica tracks or pop songs. Their self-titled debut EP achieved this balance pretty well, though it struggled to find a distinct voice, creating a product that ultimately sounds like Nine Inch Nails Lite. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the EP because I was certain it would suck, but tracks like the Metric-esque "Fur Lined" proved me wrong.

The band's first full length album, Welcome oblivion, released last month, is overall much stronger and feels like its own animal and not just "that band with Trent Reznor's wife." It lacks the overarching narrative that makes NIN records so engaging and sags in certain patches, but overall it's a pretty sweet electronica album and certainly better than most current electronic music now that Skrillex decided to ruin it for everyone.

Still, the band is at its weakest when Mariqueen is at the forefront. It's sad, because I really want her to be good because I want the band to be a success and I support everything Reznor does. The man was bound to collaborate with his hot singer wife one way or another, but I find myself wishing he'd fallen in love with someone as talented as he is. Songs that are light on vocals, or ones where Mariqueen's voice is distorted or she's screaming, as well as tracks where husband and wife sing together, are far more effective than Mariqueen-centric ballads such as "Ice age" and "A Drowning." The more I listen to the former, the more I consider adding it to the small list of Reznor-produced music I don't like or are simply unimpressed with (along with "That's What I Get," "Every Day is Exactly the Same" and "Letting You"). "Ice age" is certainly the most boring piece of music Reznor's ever been involved with. Seeing it live sort of just accentuated everything that's wrong with it, and when I mentioned to my fiancee that I disliked one of the songs we'd heard at the Fox she knew which one without knowing the title or being given any other hints. On stage, "Ice age" was just four forty-something dudes standing around in a semi-circle playing on keyboards programmed to sound like broken pianos while Mariqueen sings some bullshit about the ocean and loneliness. Honestly, just thinking about that song makes me want to fall asleep.

Dressed in a bizarre white dress that screamed maternity (the Reznors have had two children since becoming eloped), Mariqueen also lacked any real stage presence. She's a competent singer and doesn't require autotuing or anything awful like that, but she also has no personality and her vocals are completely indistinct. It could be anyone singing those lyrics. For comparison, listen to the cover of "Immigrant Song" Reznor, Atticus Ross (also a member of HTDA) and Karen O made for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo soundtrack. Now there's a female vocalist you can recognize, one with personality and who can effortlessly transition from a punky squeal to a melancholic croon. Mariqueen is capable, but the blandness of her vocal chords makes her seem better suited to working a casino piano bar than a stage at Coachella.

If someone who had never listened to HTDA asked me which songs they should check out, there would be five I would recommend: "Fur Lined," "The wake-up," "Too Late, all gone," "How long?" and "The loop closes" with the latter being the band's crowning achievement. It's mostly instrumental, recalls NIN but isn't derivative of them and was the best song live. The ridiculous light show HTDA put on built to a peak with "The loop closes" and it was one of the few songs of the night that made me truly lose myself to the music.

This is the shitty Instagram photo I took. Cool filter, bro!

And yes, the light show was incredible, a dazzling display of band member and art director Rob Sheridan's technical prowess. So over the top were the effects Sheridan employed that in the end, it sort of detracted from the music. The visuals overshadowed the sounds accompanying them because they seemed more bombastic than HTDA's sound really called for. Then again, it was probably the best laser show I'd ever seen shy of the one Nine Inch Nails put on for their Lights in the Sky tour back in 2008. Easily the best part of the show, and truly mind-bending. If there was an Oscars for light shows, it would have won best picture hands down.

But in terms of energy and the quality of the music- well frankly, Diiv, the sludgy surf rock band from Brooklyn that opened for HTDA were far better. They had no light show, no outfits, no frills of any kind, just five guys playing music and killing it.

Overall, a great show. It's Trent Reznor- were you expecting anything less? But ultimately, it fell short of the seven NIN shows I'd attended and, well… it made me feel old. The crowd skewed older than other bands I see live. A lot of those attending seemed to be akin to the dudebro I mentioned earlier, assholes who heard "The Hand That Feeds" enough times on the radio that they decided maybe they should burn their older brother's NIN CDs onto their Alienware laptops. The super fans like myself were generally older, in their thirties or above, members of that elite group of original NIN fans. Watching a band comprised of Trent Reznor, his wife, his best friend and his protege perform in front of a theater filled with aged fanboys couldn't help but remind me of the finality of human existence. At forty-seven years old, Reznor is no longer the gangly, fishnet-wearing tour de force he was in the 90s. He's a dad now and a respected film composer, no longer relegated to the frayed fringes of the pop culture diaspora. That's fine- but it's not the same as seeing the guy at twenty three tossing himself into a crowd of sweaty Goth kids while screaming lyrics such as "Hate me/Smash me/Erase me/Kill me." Hell, it's not even the same as when I saw him for the first time at Madison Square Garden when he was only thirty-nine.

"Trent's old," I thought to myself as the lights came on and the crowd swelled while he played the opening chords of "The wake-up." "Wait," I thought, double-taking. "I'm old. I'm twenty-six. And I'm getting married."

Such is life.

Head over to the ZEFR-U Blog to check out my review of the remake of Evil Dead. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie despite its paper thin plot and weak characterizations, and was also thoroughly grossed out by its ridiculous gore. Best horror film to come out in years, and well worth the price of admission.

You can read the review here.

And if you haven't seen the film yet, you can read my less spoiler-y preview here.

George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series is an extremely complex and complicated collection of novels, so much so that by book four they cease to feature any central narrative or arc and kinda just tell you what's going on in Westeros in real time.

It's kind of astounding that a television adaptation was greenlit in the first place, but all things considered showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are doing an impeccable job with their version. Part of the problem with these first two episodes of season three is that they felt like two halves of one two-hour season premiere, so I think TV fans were just a little bummed last week that they didn't get to see Jaime, Brienne, Arya, Bran or Theon. "Dark Wings, Dark Words" was definitely better than "Valar Dohaeris," and now that all the principal characters have been reintroduced, the story can move ahead in earnest. Next week is gonna be awesome.

In the meantime, check out my recap over at the ZEFR-U Blog.

In case you didn't know, I now write for the blog of my employer, ZEFR. Yesterday I recapped the extremely disappointing season finale of The Walking Dead, and am reposting it here.

Ever since Darabont left the show, the quality of The Walking Dead has been in steady decline. The first half of season 3 seemed promising and the midseason finale was great. When the show returned, it was a slog through eight episodes that for the most part, were nothing but pointless filler.

Characters switch personalities and roles on a whim to match the story. Characters act stupid so that their arcs can be stretched out. Drama is manufactured out of thin air and practically none of the people who occupy this world are likable or relatable. It's sad, because this once seemed like one of the most promising new series on television, and the comic book series on which it is based is fantastic. We'll probably never know what exactly transpired behind the scenes to cause such a masterpiece to turn into such a heap of dung in the course of just two seasons, but all I know is that I'm not deadset on tuning in to the season 4 premiere.

You can read the full recap here.

Head over to the ZEFR-U blog to read my take on last night's season three premiere of Game of Thrones. There's so many characters now that the show feels a little all over the place, but it's still amazing and solid. Not jumping the shark, and a lot of surprises for people like me who've read the books.

Follow this link to read it.

A few days ago I wrote of Evangelical Ben, a former coworker who I have been arguing with on Facebook for some time. At the behest of my fiancee, and using my own good judgement, I decided to block him- not to avoid any harassment from his end, but rather to stop myself from reading the crazy shit he posts on his wall and get into further arguments.

Our Facebook debates and the somewhat trollish manner in which I sometimes engaged him, drove Alison insane and I've started to see her side. Now she's a little less confrontational than I am, but nonetheless I think she's probably right that treating Ben like the asshole that he is really doesn't do anything but make me look like an even bigger asshole. It's one of the most important philosophical questions in recent history: if you troll an asshole, does that make you an asshole? What came first, the troll or the asshole? If you troll someone on a message board and no one's there to read it, did you even troll at all?

I'm not really a fan of trolling. It's juvenile and stupid and not usually very funny. It also goes along with the whole notion that you don't have to hide your racism, sexism, homophobia, bigotry or general douchebaggery on the internet because you know, it's the internet and people don't get to look you in the eye while you're shitting all over them. In a way, psychoanalyzing Ben on my personal blog is tantamount to talking shit about him behind his back, which is why I decided to omit his last name (also because I wouldn't put it past the guy to sue me for libel or something). I kept making the argument to Alison that he deserves it and he does... but is it really worth my time to tarnish my own image in my quest to muddy his?

Now there's no denying the man is an asshole, bigot and crazy person. And when I come into contact with such people my natural reaction is to revert to sarcasm and insult because civil discussion is pretty pointless. In my eyes I'm the one who comes out looking good because I'm letting a piece of human garbage get his comeuppance. But what I never really thought about until Alison pointed it out is that my Facebook friends might look at it and go, "wow, Alex is kinda being a dick," but more importantly that I'm just reaffirming Ben's preconceived notions of the liberal stereotype I'm sure he thinks I am.

Now he's already confirmed my assumptions of who he is, and while I suppose he could just be trolling as well, I doubt it. You can feel the passion behind his dogmatism; there's no underlying sarcasm. The truth is I'm not really the stereotype he probably thinks I am because then I would just be the flip side of who he is. The actual flip side of Evangelical Ben is another former Sleepy Giant employee I will lovingly call Sean Degouiavich (I blocked Sean on FB months ago). They're pretty much the exact same person, but their ideologies have been reversed. Ben believes in an Obamacare death panel conspiracy, Sean thinks 9/11 was an inside job. Ben is a vessel for the gospel of Fox News and I have to assume Sean just says whatever Rachel Maddow tells him to. I don't like any form of news media outside of the New York Times, and for headlines I like to stick to neutral news agencies like Reuters and AP. I'm a registered Democrat but don't really support the party and didn't vote for Obama.

But in Ben's eyes, I'm Sean Degouiavich. And because social media gives us a very skewed perception of who a person is- their identities come off as a patchwork of random thoughts, links and likes- the Facebook identity of an individual can be quite removed from who they are in real life. What began to worry me is that Ben might not be the only person who sees me in this false, negative light. I also have family on FB and have to keep reminding myself that I will soon be Alison's husband and what I say will reflect on her as well. And of course hanging over all that is the specter of THE CAREER, the fear that the shit I say will ruin my chances at getting a job or hurt my dreams of writing professionally. Companies don't like you to have opinions or convictions about anything, so voicing them online is always a risk. It's a difficult balance I have to attain because I need to establish myself as a unique, personal voice and vie for position with the billions of other personal voices on the interwebs, but I also have to avoid writing something that may come back to bite me in the ass down the line. As Alison is wont to remind me, once you put something on the internet, it's there forever.

But it's soooooo hard for me, because I'm such an opinionated and passionate person. It's hard for me not to spit obscenity-laced retorts at Evangelical Ben because he brings it out of me and I let my emotions get the better of me sometimes. What can I say? I'm an emotional guy.

During the time we spent debating, I would tell myself I was trying to have a rational, civil discussion with someone of differing ideals, but in truth I was lying to myself and was essentially trolling. I was trolling Ben because I pretended like I was interested in Christianity and his ideas but the whole time it was more of an obsession spurred on by morbid curiosity. I couldn't believe the things he'd say, and they made me so angry I couldn't help but jump back in, even though arguing with him was tantamount to arguing with a toddler as that's basically the level of intellect he's achieved. It was pointless, Alison kept telling me it was pointless, but I couldn't stop; it had become more than an obsession, it had become an addiction. A part of me wanted to get through to Ben but my rational brain knew he would never see reason and so all I was doing was grinding my own gears. I didn't really want him to understand that he was wrong, I wanted him to understand that he's an asshole. And at the end of the day, that's kind of a dick thing to do and I'm always paranoid of being a dick. I hate dicks.

Some friends have encouraged me to keep this bullshit going because they find it entertaining and probably share the same sick fascination in Ben that I do. But it's time to put an end to the cycle of frustration and to move forward. It doesn't matter what Ben thinks because we all know he's wrong, and we all know that marriage equality will come to fruition and that people such as him will go down in history as the bigoted assholes that they are. What does matter is that I continue to pursue a more professional line of thinking; it's the only way I'll ever get to be a real writer.

Opinions are great and voicing them is even better. Most of the best websites are ones where people complain and bitch and critique and analyze and basically say whatever's on their mind. It's why I can't peel my eyes off Jezebel even though I find the writing style a little annoying. But those are real bloggers, people who get paid to write. When I'm getting paid, I'll say whatever the hell I want and use phrases like "piss the shit" as much as I damn well please. But right now I need to focus on an image, and write what I'm expected to. My voice can come through, but it must be muted. That's why, in the next few weeks, this site will transform into more of an online portfolio than an actual blog.

Alison and I will soon be launching withabang.net, a pop culture blog I will be writing for along with several other talented friends. It will be the classiest, most professional blog you've ever seen. Details will come soon- in the meantime, I'll continue to repost my articles from Games Abyss, ZEFR and Cultermob here.

For now, I will leave you with this:

Back when I was a slave for worked for Sleepy Giant Entertainment, there was this guy named Ben. He left for another QA job at the now-bankrupt and nonexistent THQ shortly after I started working at SGE back in the fall of 2011. I knew very little about him, and what I did know came from a friend and coworker who had attended USC with him. He was a conservative and believed Fox News to be god's gift to broadcast journalism (hah!), and that was pretty much all I knew.

After we were laid off my friend David De La Rocha started texting me about the crazy shit Ben was saying on Facebook. Turned out the guy was also an evangelical, and had some pretty strong opinions. I'd gotten a glimpse of these opinions via another SGE employee's FB wall; he was also religious, but you know, not crazy.

I was very vocal about my disdain for the American political process during the November 2012 elections. I voted for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein, but couldn't help but feel relieved when Obama was reelected. I made a post on FB saying I wished I was friends with Ben so that I could see the whiny complaints he was no doubt spouting now that Crusty Old White Guy Candidate #5,801 had been defeated. David jokingly responded that Ben and I should be Facebook friends, and a few hours later a friend request popped up in my inbox.

I debated whether to accept it for several days then decided, fuck it, why not? It's only Facebook. What followed was several months of intense debate and heated argument and two instances where I defriended Ben. We are no longer FB friends, but I do regularly check his wall because I can't help myself and we recently communicated via messages to discuss a Huffington Post article, and subsequently gay marriage.

We argued about Darwinian evolution, Islamophobia and other things, but what really struck a chord was gay marriage. I am very liberal but gay marriage has always been the issue I am most passionate about. Ironically, I haven't had too many gay friends (though I do have sam gay in-laws) but it's hard not to come into contact with gay people on a regular basis when you live in New York and L.A. It's still something I feel very strongly about because I believe in equal rights, but I think part of the reason I obsess over it so much is because I find the opposition so damn frustrating. If you're not a religious lunatic and think rationally, it's hard to find any reason to oppose marriage equality, and thus the national "discussion" and "argument" we keep having seems like such bullshit to me as there's no argument to be had. This is a simple issue that isn't open to debate. I'm all about the grey area, but this is as black and white as they come.

Arguing with Ben opened my eyes a bit but also reaffirmed pretty much all my preconceived notions of what evangelicals are like that years of watching The Daily Show helped to generate. The eye opening bit was the fact that these people actually exist and that they live pretty close to me. In New York, I almost never encountered anyone religious, and when I did they were usually crazies with placards handing out fliers in Union Square (the angry black Muslims that hang there come to mind). Los Angeles is much more politically and socially diverse than I imagined, and there are some pretty hardcore Bible-thumping conservatives around here.

As you would expect, Ben turned out to be a shining paragon for the evangelical. Resolute in his beliefs, vehemently opposed to anything that attacks them, but bizarrely logical in his reasoning. The cognitive dissonance on display in our discussions was astounding; to watch someone create a rational argument for something irrational is a truly mind-bending experience. His argument style was juvenile, along the lines of The Matrix's Morpheus or any character from LOST, answering every question with another question. The faithful are wont to do that as a means to avoid difficult questions the Bible simply doesn't have the answers for. For example, if you asked him why he thinks gay marriage should be illegal, rather than answering it he'll hit you back with "well, what would you think if bestiality or pedophilia was legal?"

Evangelicals believe that without god there is no morality, that morality cannot exist in a vacuum. If you don't believe in god your beliefs are just opinions; in this case it's my opinion that homosexuality is okay while pedophilia and bestiality are not. Without an old book to affirm them, my beliefs can be instantly questioned and parallels can be drawn between them and things that are immoral on a very basic level. But if the old book says homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality and a ton of other crazy shit are wrong or right, then they've been affirmed.

Smart evangelicals like Ben will pretend like they're not bigoted and that they're accepting of other belief systems but it's all bullshit, and that brings me back to gay marriage. The media acts like the marriage equality debate is just that- a debate, but they only say that because they're politically correct and a significant portion of their viewer base may be just like Ben and take offense if they tell the truth, which is that marriage equality is morally right and anything else is intolerance. It's time we stop pussy-footing and pretending like the other side of this manufactured argument has even a shred of credence.

That's the hard line. Accept that there are gay people and that they deserve the same rights you do or you're a bigot. There's no middle ground. Ben would flip that on me and say that I am intolerant of his beliefs and therefore am also a bigot. While I think his beliefs are batshit crazy and a completely idiotic system on which to base your daily life, I tolerate them the same way he should tolerate the fact that some dudes like to take it up the butt. Oh, I'm sorry, did that gross you out? Tough shit, you have to deal with it the same way I have to deal with the fact that there are morons who think the Earth is 6000 years old and that an old Jew is going to come back to life and take a select few up to a seemingly boring cloud-laden afterlife. If I were a bigot I would be pushing to have churches closed down and religious texts burned but I'm not because I believe in free speech above all.

Ben recently posted an article that he used as the basis to criticize people just like me. He says that the fact that people such as myself are throwing the word "bigot" around and getting emotional is detracting from what should be a civil discussion about a serious issue (he's a lover of civil discussions). But the reason I'm fucking emotional is that as I've already said many times already, THERE IS NO DISCUSSION. Sure there are certain specifics I think are tricky, such as whether religious institutions opposed to gay marriage should be forced to marry same sex couples. Again, this seems like a pretty simple question if you look at it from a removed, secular point of view. If you're like me and you don't believe we're part of some mythical "Christian nation," then church and state should be completely separated. If marriage licenses are something that are issued by the state and not the church, then yes, if pastors and rabbis want to continue to have the ability to marry people, tough shit, they have to marry gay people. If married couples as a whole aren't recognized by the state and given benefits and the whole concept is really just ceremony, then fine, the church can marry whoever they damn well please because it's a freedom of speech issue.

But you see, you can't make the counter argument that something is infringing on your religious freedom when your religious freedom infringes on another person's rights. It's the most commonly used counter-argument the faithful will use, and the most idiotic. It's a goddamn paradox but I suppose if your brain is hardwired by cognitive dissonance, then you'd never notice. "YOU CAN'T MARRY BECAUSE IF YOU MARRY IT WILL OFFEND MY RELIGION." That. Makes. No. Sense. That makes no sense. NO. SENSE.

Other arguments that piss the shit out of me: "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!"

Dude, fuck your children. What is this argument? That children raised by anyone other than one man and one woman are going to automatically grow up to be serial killers? Who the fuck cares who raises kids as long as they raise them well? Are you trying to imply that every normal, well-balanced kid who's ever existed was raised by one man and one woman? Because that's retarded. Family is amorphous, malleable, undefinable. No one's fucking "undefining" or "redefining" anything because there's nothing to define. Family is whatever you make it. Hell, Jack Nicholson was raised by his grandmother who told him she was his mother and his actual mother was his sister. And he turned out great (kinda)!! Oh, and you know, there's also all those studies that say that kids raised by same sex couples are, you know, totally fine. On a sidenote, if Ben were here he would then pull up a study that says the exact opposite... a study performed by a biased church organization.

The government has no right to tell people how to live their lives, within reason. There are instinctually immoral things we all understand to be wrong like murder and stealing. The government should exist to protect us but not to protect us from ourselves (though I'll admit it gets a bit more complex when you talk about things like gun control). This applies as much to marriage equality as it does illegal drugs and prostitution. All of these things should be legal because they are eternal; as much as they may offend your quaint Christian sensibilities, people will always snort cocaine, fuck hookers and fall in love with members of the same sex no matter how hard you try to stop them. When certain groups stop trying to force their very specific moral systems on all of us, we'll all get along better. CONSENSUS, people. Consensus.

The discussion ben and I had concerning gay marriage was one of our more civil, rational discussions, but that's sort of what made it the most frustrating of them all. Behind the veil of ideology, I could tell Ben was a normal person like me and he struggled to form a cogent argument for why gay marriage should be illegal. Over and over I pressed him on it, and over and over he answered my question with another question. Finally, desperately, I managed to get him to fess up. "But gay marriage doesn't inherently infringe on anyone's rights, yes?" I asked. Then it came:

"Yes, it does not infringe on other's rights." My heart swelled. A tear almost came to my eye. I'd done it. I'd actually achieved the impossible, I had gotten through to him. I had cut through all the bullshit and discovered that our core, Ben and I weren't so dissimilar. "One evangelical at a time," I said to myself. "One evangelical at a time."