So our Finns had something to hold on to while stumbling around drunk.

No one would ever be drunk again, with beer being Swedish.

would it be, as Monty Python once put it regarding the American beer, fucking close to water?

Yes. Making love in a canoe.

I'm gonna post this here since the last time I talked about my strength activities, people seemed to be quite into it.

Videos here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLAWlGbJwfG

I competed in a powerlifting meet today, my first ever. I came in second in the 242 lb. weight class (with an official bodyweight of 233.2 lbs.) with an 1150 lbs. total. 25 lbs. under what I’ve done in the gym, but it’s whatevs. Went 4/9, which is much lower than I wanted, but also whatevs. I actually got shuffled out of flight 1 after the meet director accidentally mixed up the deck cards and I got put into the start of flight 2, but I don’t feel that hindered me much, if at all.

Now for the lifts. Did a 405 squat first attempt, then a 425 second attempt (lifetime PR), missed 430. I actually tried 430 twice after the spotters forgot to throw back the monolift arms after I specified that I was gonna stand there. On bench, I missed my 295 opener and was legit concerned I was gonna bomb out. However, a good zoning out got me in the right frame of mind, and I got it on the second attempt. Declined a third attempt. With deadlift, I got my 430 opener, then missed 445 twice, and that was the end of my day.

Even though I didn’t hit the numbers I wanted, I still accomplished two of my goals: Total, and hit my openers without changing them. Plus I got a sick ass demon trophy out of it, which is going on the mantle forevermore.

Now to go back to strongman training and not needing to bench press until mid-summer.

That's fucking awesome!

That video definitely made my day. Congrats on your first meet!

Just saw the half-time show for the Super Bowl. It was good overall, but I wished The Weeknd performed more songs off the "After Hours".

Yes, I am obsessed with this album if you couldn't tell.

Anyone else feel super lonely during these covid-19 times?

I've talked with tons of people and most of them are in the brink of insanity and depression. It's a worldwide state of things.

We had a very stringent lockdown mid last year - 120 days of it (which was nowhere near as much fun as the 120 days of Sodom), but seem to have it under control now, just single cases popping up here and there. My impression, having come out the other side, is that once things get more or less back to normal, that time seems like a strange dream which you sort-of remember but the details are fuzzy. I'm a bit of a homebody anyway, and had done a lot of travelling in the previous couple of years (and was a bit burned out on it to be honest), so I didn't mind just hanging out at home with my wife and the cat.

Florida was never really locked down, so I just had to resign to avoiding big crowds and whatnot. I started seeing a few individual friends as part of a 'bubble' where it was just very limited contact and I feel like that made the friendships stronger. We also tried to do a lot of zoom shit and whatnot, movie nights and such. It just sucks that the world is so much more limited for now. Here's hoping we can move past it all.

Nice lifts! How much were those green plate 50 kilos, or something? You moved the bar pretty fast!

I have been punched a few times in the face. Alcohol may or may not have been involved in some of these.

Once hit a guy in the face (school scrap) - when his head turned back towards me like the T-1000, I realised then that I wasn't one of life's boxers.

The green plates are 100 lbs. each. The federation this meet was for, RPS, has a thing where they try to put as few plates on the bar as possible to get it to the specified weight. Therefore, they have a bunch of 100 lb. plates sitting around at the meet just for that purpose.

On the list of things I didn't think I'd see today:

Jason Newsted covering one of my favourite folk songs of the last 20 years:

The comic book store that I go to regularly received a sloppily written card. The card was from Florida and asked the store owners to add them on Facebook. It was signed "Skynet." Either some super nerd has gone to a lot of trouble to play a practical joke, or Skynet is now online. Is Skynet now online and self aware? Will it be initiating nuclear war if the comic book store does not send a friend request?

I heard Slipknot's Iowa in its entirety for the first time today. Fucking great and heavy album. I'm sure they had to be at least a bit guilty of the interest in heavier stuff in the turn of the millenia in the younger generation.

I was in heading into 12th grade when that record was released, and while I was ignoring most of the Nu Metal world, yeah, that one had some balls and I played the hell out of it for the first couple months.

Putting this here for greater visibility.

https://deadline.com/2021/02/mandaloria ... 234691898/

Gina Carano got fired by Disney and won't be a part of The Mandalorian going forward. She posted some dumb shit on her IG story about how history has edited the story of Nazi Germany, implying that the treatment of Jews in that country is no different than hating someone in modern America for their political views. Also, anti-mask stuff, because of course.

I never can understand how someone like that thinks "I'm an actress, I work for The Mouse, I'll put my wibble about Jews on twitter, definitely a good idea".

I mean, that's almost the textbook example of 'How to lose your job in 2021', do these people not ever consume news or what ?

I can see where he tried to go there, but man, that was horribly worded. I'm wanting to believe she actually wanted to say something like: to get some "legitimacy" of massacring jews, Germany made population hate them for being jews in the first place, so when the government "took care" of them, no one would care about them and possibly feel some relief, just like people nowadays is relief of republicans being hated and jailed for their political views.

Still, this has 1 aspect that makes everything totally different: both Nazis and Trumpists actually went into action and committed crimes, including murder (let's not pretend both things are sort of equivalent in terms of magnitude, that's not the point), so it's not a matter of political opinion anymore, it's about murderers and racists going out there and putting their hateful ideology in action. She's absolutely wrong anyway.

In other news, I've been in a sort of Slipknot kick lately and besides the well known singles, I never cared much about them back in the day. When the debut came out I was already a "seasoned" metalhead into death and black metal so they didn't impress me in sheer heaviness as it happened to people whom had Slipknot as their gateway to metal (or the heavier side of it). I actually liked the MFKP demo as a sort of Primus-esque stuff.

Right now I'm listening All Hope is Gone. Probably just slightly behind Iowa as overall work but man, the riffs are fucking legit. The Morbid Angel influence is just massive. The "nu" metal elements are barely there. Not sure if in the subsequent albums they finally threw away the nu metal things or not, but on this particular album they were really close.

Exactly, I always think this - why not just shut the fuck up and keep collecting the paychecks? What did she think was going to happen, Disney would pat her on the back and be like 'cool views, lady.'

But nah I really just think they don't care or are delusional when they do this. They think it's just "free speech or nothing."

Time and time again it happens that people who hold these views can't keep their mouth shut. Not that it's a bad thing - it's good knowing who you're dealing with.

I can understand on principle why they would want to fire her, but shit like this only emboldens the right and feeds into the narrative of cancel culture. At the end of the day this is not beneficial to liberal causes and we need to start thinking about this from a practical standpoint. There is too much of a focus on the left at being outraged by tweets than figuring out why many people are voting republican (many of which are not actually conservative). This is feeling like 2012-2014 all over again and since the attitude of the left has not changed and has only doubled down, I think it is inevitable at this point that someone absolutely horrendous is going to be voted into office in 2024. Boy do I hope I am wrong.

I'm disappointed on several levels with the Gina Carano fiasco. In some ways, I'm disappointed she was cast in the first place, since it was well known that she was a meathead jock with meathead jock social views before she was ever hired by Disney; they really should have known (and probably did know) what they were getting into with her from the get-go, so the wound feels self-inflicted. I'm disappointed that she couldn't just keep her trap shut, because frankly I love the character and despite Carano's lack of range, I thought she was perfect for the role. As a trans woman, I was inspired by seeing a cis woman with a body not unlike my own in such a prominent role. She brought an effortless and deeply impressive physicality to Cara Dune and was allowed to present that as if it were simply natural, without having that physicality used to deny or undermine her femininity. I loved that and I think it's important that women and girls have the opportunity to see that possibility, that vision of what being a woman can mean, depicted in popular media like Star Wars.

I was also deeply disappointed by the way she was targeted for her admittedly trash views. I followed this saga fairly closely because the initial wave of #fireginacarano tweets emerged after a controversy involving alleged transphobia, and I saw the voices of actual trans people mostly marginalized in those discussions as allegedly woke cis people (and especially cis men) piled on in a highly performative and often deeply toxic way. I saw a ton of absolutely vile, violent, threatening misogyny directed at Carano by cis men who felt the need to speak on my behalf. Death threats. Rape threats. People directing transphobic language at her because of her own body type. It was gross, and very much of a piece with the sort of language and abuse I frequently find myself a target of as a woman speaking her mind in public, and it annoys the fuck out of me that the people who were spewing that garbage at her now get to feel vindicated.

And, tbh, I thought the "bop/boop/beep" pronoun joke that made her the target of online outrage was pretty funny, and frankly resonated with my own experience and distaste for the performative aspects of operating in progressive spaces.

Nothing excuses rape and death threats or misogynistic language, but a bigoted, anti-mask, antisemitic Trump fuckwit losing her job is still good news, especially since she wasn't even a good actor.

It drives me nuts right-wingers complaining about cancel culture and "being hated for their political views." Maybe you wouldn't be hated for your political views if most of your "political views" weren't rooted in hating literally everyone different from you. You want to outwardly spew hatred all the time, be prepared for consequences and getting hatred thrown right back at you. Like you always scream for consequences for minorities for slightest of infractions that you probably wouldn't give two fucking shits about if done by white people.

Oh yeah, no doubt. I just feel a certain empathy for her because I she was the target of some really vile abuse, and that kinda thing ain't exactly calculated to make you NOT double down on your bullshit. On the pronoun issue, my suspicion is that a cis man would never have been repeatedly pushed to include pronouns in his bio, as Carano was. He certainly wouldn't be harassed about it.

And I really, really hate pronoun go-rounds. You have no idea how many meetings I've had to take where like, 10 conventionally attractive white MSWs from the Good Families™ courageously parade their she/her's, then all turn to me with that, "And what do we have to remember to call you, tranny?" look, before getting down to the real business of asking how they can better help marginalized people vote for Democrats.

So did a bunch of you just get an email from some user called Piotr? Lol I got one and did see a bunch of usernames I recall in the CC.

Is that the Beldaroh guy who’s been pestering a lot of us for 100% reviews? Yeah, he’s back.
I mean, sure every musician hopes listeners will like their album, and reasonable people would suggest it to people who listen to their sort of music... but come on, man. Don’t ask (sort of demand) for a perfect score; and especially, offer a better bribe than a copy of your album

Every punch makes you wiser than the last.

On another note, woke up this morning to the news that Sabbaoth of Goatpenis died which was completely unexpected

I wonder what The Lord the Rings with Nic Cage deepfaked as Gandalf or Aragorn would be like.

I met Betty McCollum today. She's the US Congresswoman for the district I live in. She came into the grocery store where I work and checked out at my lane. I wasn't 100% sure at the time, but I cross-referenced the person I met with some photos from Betty's Facebook. My dad used to work at a bagel shop not too far away and says she used to go in there too.

I don't idolize her or anything, but I respect her views and think she's made decisions that are in the best interest of the people she represents. I just find it kinda funny that I just casually ran into someone so powerful, and she was rather unassuming. She didn't seem like a bigwig at all. There I was though, ringing up groceries for someone who just helped to impeach the most dangerous president in modern American history. Pretty neat.

Looks like it's that time of year again where metal chuds will swear up and down that they don't care about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame but will still complain about the metal band getting snubbed by the "not real rock" artists that just happen to be people of color. Iron Maiden may be my favorite band but Fela Kuti getting the nod this year is legitimately cool in my eyes.

As a mediocre white man, I am so fucking tired of other mediocre white men.

Has anyone thought to catalogue the history of the archives itself? I'd be interested in reading some interviews or stories from admins/users about all their experiences with the site, what it's like to keep Metal Archives up and running, how they became involved etc.


Same here, bud. I don't care about the rock and roll hall of fame and haven't looked into any of the nominations since someone told me 'Priest were nominated. I appreciate the love they give to black blues artists but it's not for me. If MC5 get in soon, maybe that'll change but I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.

They just need to change the name of it. There are some phenomenal artists that have been nominated this year, but inducting Jay-Z into the rock n roll hall of fame is like inducting Michael Phelps into the NFL hall of fame.

I get that at the end of the day it doesn't matter and I personally don't care much for who they induct, but it is hard to take an organization seriously when your name literally makes no sense.

The ceremony, were they awarded Nirvana, was actually funny. Only surviving permanent member, Krist Novoselic, spoke for the band, which had Pat Smear, as lead guitarist, and Joan Jett, doing rhythm guitar and vocals. In introducing Joan Jett, Novoselic subtly threw in some criticism of the hall of fame, for being sexist, and ignoring women, asking why she wasn’t in there already. She then proceeded to not actually play her guitar during part of the song. But, it’s actually an obscure Nirvana reference!

When the band appeared on the BBC show “top of the pops,” Cobain did the same thing! They were doing their sound check, to perform smells like teen spirit, which was, at the time, #1, and were informed that only vocals were live on the show, and the instrumental song would be playing on the PA system. The band hated it, and took the opportunity to desecrate the poser show. In the video, you can see, Krist Novoselic is swinging his bass in circles around his body, because it’s not plugged in. Kurt Cobain hardly plays his guitar, and cups the mic with both hands, singing an octave lower, changing “load up on guns, and bring your friends,” to “load up on drugs, and kill your friends.”

Obviously, any rock and roll institute, that doesn’t recognize Judas Priest and Venom, isn’t educated very well, and has poor, Christian homophobe, wuss rock taste. At least they recognize Little Richard, he was true and cult.

I'm not sure. Iron Maiden is huge and they have plenty of hits and influence, so I'm sure they'll get in the R&RHOF. I'm more interested to see how the Foo Fighters will do, since they were one of my favorite rock bands to listen to before I got into metal, and seeing Dave Grohl's band be next to Kurt Cobain's band in the HOF would be really cool.