Top 19 -- Tenacious D: Tenacious D

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

Unlike when I relisten to yesterday's album, which reminds me of optimism, listening to this album now fills me with foreboding. Which is odd because Tenacious D is a comedy album and it's funny as hell, where Ice-T's "OG" is an album about how much everything sucked in the early 1990s. 

I got this album in the fall of 2002 on the advice of my roommate. At the time, I had moved into a place in Wakefield, MA where I had no idea who the two people I was living with were. We met on Craig's List and I got really lucky, because both guys turned out to be pretty normal and cool. The way that our place was set up was: you walk into the apartment and you enter the kitchen. To the right was my bedroom, down the hallway and to the right was a living room and to the left was a stairway that lead to my roommates' two rooms. I don't think I ever stepped foot up there. 

It was an awesome setup because we all just chilled in our rooms, unless we needed to use the kitchen--there wasn't even furniture in our living room. Each guy had a girlfriend and each duo pretty much kept to themselves. It was like having your own apartment but not having to pay full freight for rent and utilities. 

Anyway, this album reminds me of driving from my place in Wakefield to work in Marblehead. I didn't really love my job very much, but I was being paid to write and I figured that at 28-years-old, I better suck it up because this is pretty much what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life. My relationship with my girlfriend at the time seemed to be going pretty well too. 

 At the time I was starting to get into the alternative comedy scene and this, along with Adult Swim's original lineup, was my introduction to it. I had already watched "Mr. Show with Bob and David" and Tenacious D member Jack Black was on that show more than a few times. So with those bonafides, I gave it a listen and I grew to love this album so much.

It's funny as hell, the musicianship is actually really good and the idea that "Tribute" is a story about the greatest song in the world, but NOT that song is so fucking brilliant, that I can barely wrap my head around it. Black and Kyle Gass are terrific in their alter egos of JB and KG. I finally watched the Tenacious D trio of specials that were on HBO during the late 90s, early 2000s about a month ago. Again, awesome. The locations for the series was pretty much how I thought that mid-90s LA was all about.  

But how did this hilarious comedy album bring about so much foreboding? In late November of that year, our landlord came to us and told us that we all had to move out by January 1. He was sick of living beneath us, which was strange because we were barely around and when we were, we made zero noise, and wanted our apartment. He said that if we wanted, we could move to his place, but he was doubling the rent and there were only two bedrooms. He was a real dick about it too, like he read up on how to be aggressive in negotiating and just went over the top. I guess we probably could have fought him on this, because this seems highly illegal looking back on it, but we were all like "whatever" and went our separate ways. 

By Christmas, my roommates moved to different places with their respective girlfriends and I moved ... home. To my parents' house. Where I had no real bedroom. When I moved out, my Dad turned my room into his office, so I slept on a mattress on the floor. That sucked. 

Also around this time, my liaise faire attitude toward my job caught up with me and my manager really let me have it about taking a bigger interest and straightening up. It was then that I realized, writing about healthcare every month absolutely sucked and that I needed to make a change. I just wasn't sure what that was yet, so that uncertainty also sucked. 

Finally in early January, my girlfriend decided to give me my walking papers too. To be honest, I knew that things weren't great for a few months, but I ignored all of the signs. I didn't know what her deal was, but I wasn't going to ask because I was afraid of exactly what that conversation would lead to. And I wasn't ready for it -- though is anyone really prepared for that talk? The best part is that my (now ex) girlfriend and I worked at the same place and on the same team. So trying to forget her was made a little bit more difficult when I saw her eight hours a day, five days a week. That was a lot of fun. 

So now I was living at my parents' house, unsure about my future employment and newly single. And it was the dead of winter after the holidays. When I think back on the down moments of my life, this might have been the worst ebb that I've ever had to face. The good news is that these things don't last. You wallow for a while--I actually may have wallowed for more than a bit--but time marches on and things get better. 

As the months warmed up, I found a new job that I actually enjoyed in the same company. I got a new place to live with three cool guys in Somerville. And I didn't know it yet, but I was  about to meet the love of my life. To use sports as a metaphor for a moment--no one ever does this, right? I'm the first?--the end of my 2002 was like the end of the 2003 Red Sox season. Shit is as bleak as it ever was going to be, but then 2004 comes along with its brilliance and wonderfulness and it's like that shitty year was just what you needed to appreciate the greatness that is coming next. 

Unfortunately there needs to be a score for that shitty time and that score was Tenacious D. But when I hear that album, I know that it's dark; but it's going to be light again soon. And that's all that I need. 

Kill Your Leaders?

Currently I’m reading a book called “Why Rome Fell” which details the reasons why we don’t solely speak Latin any more and don’t care for Italians—other than every four years when the World Cup comes around. It’s a pretty good book, a little dry in some parts, but filled with some interesting tidbits about Roman Republic’s lesser known emperors who make Nero look like Mr. Rogers.

What I find most fascinating is that the way that most of these emperors came to power is through a brutal and always violent power grab. The would-be emperor was either a general or a senator who had the backing of the army who decided that they wanted to rule Rome*. They’d then kill the existing emperor and after a song-and-dance with the Senate (“No, no. I couldn’t accept this crown? Oh, alright. I’ll do it.” It reminded me of Tenacious D’s “City Hall”.) would accept the crown. Normally within nine months or fiveyears later, the cycle would repeat itself.

Power was transferred like this for a couple of hundred years and the people of the republic seemed okay with the way things went down. They just went on living and paying tribute to whomever was running the show.

* An interesting story that exemplifies the treachery of the age was of Emperor Valerian and his co-ruler who happened to be his son, Gallienus. Valerian was taken prisoner by Persian King Shapur after he tried invading Persia. Shapur didn’t just throw Valerian in a prison and let him rot. The story was that he used Valerian to make him get on his knees so that Shapur could mount his horse, essentially turning him into a step stool. Once Shapur died, the Persians skinned Valerian alive, painted him red and hung him in a temple as a trophy. Gallienus didn’t even try to rescue his father, he was having too much fun being the sole emperor.

At some point in history, the act of overthrowing an unpopular ruler by brazenly murdering him and then taking over his rival’s position lost a bit of favor with civilization as a whole. The answers are obvious to us why this isn’t a good idea and to be truthful, I’m not even sure why someone would want to be ruler of Rome if they know how the story is going to end.

When did this practice stop? What prompted the ruling hierarchy to figure out that this wasn’t a good solution to replacing leaders. Remember, this didn’t happen over a decade or two, the activity of murdering the emperor occurred over centuries. At some point the light must have gone off in someone’s head and it was decided that this wasn’t a good way of doing things. This moment of clarity represents an evolution in the modern human brain. Or it at least represents some foresight and the ability to understand history.

What if this practice came back into vogue? All of a sudden being the President really became a life threatening job that usually ended in a grizzly death? And not only was the assassination by someone that you trusted, but it would be one that virtually no one would mourn. Even when shitty presidents die, it’s a pretty big deal in America. But if this was Rome and a shitty emperor like Georgius Bushian II died, he’d be thrown onto a pile with the rest of the plagued and war-torn bodies. It would barely register a mention in any of the public records.

I’m obviously not advocating for a return to regularly-scheduled regicides*, but I would imagine that after a few of them went down in quick succession, we’d have the same blasé reaction to them as our Roman ancestors did. Remember, much like the United States, at one time Rome was the crowning achievement of civilization and if their economy and their ways of life were able to exist and thrive with their leaders getting snuffed out every few months, I’m sure that the American people could eventually handle it too.

* I know that this is the Latin word for an assassination of a monarch, but I’m not sure what the Latin term is for the assassination of a president. I tried looking it up on Google, but couldn’t find anything.

In any event, those years before deciding that our leader’s lives were worthless would descend into complete and utter chaos. In other words, it would suck. Thank god for the anonymous cabal that controls and runs our world.