Now, I'm slightly odd when it comes to music. My tastes have gone through several changes over the years, some more profound than others. There was a time when I listened to absolutely nothing but classical; classical remains my favorite genre of music. Even after I'd gotten past my one-style fixation, I refused to listen to anything made after about 1994. That having passed, I'm now into what I term 'latter-day music,' as long as it's rock. If it's rap, hip-hop, pop, boyband, Britneyclone, or most so-called 'numetal,' then I ain't interested.
You see, I deem myself a survivor of the grunge ascendancy in the early and mid 1990s, when I was in middle and high school. As you can probably tell, I don't much like grunge or 'alternative' at all, except for a few individual songs. I rejected the entire grunge experience as a whole, and to do that in my schools was unusual indeed. It was pervasive, and it was, to me at least, oppressive. If you didn't hail Pearl Jam and Green Day as the Second Coming, glue your eyes to MTV's every idiot program, wear ratty flannels and baggy pants, or bemoan the evils of everything considered 'establishment,' well then, you weren't worthy of consideration. (And for the record, I don't particularly dislike Pearl Jam. I think they're alright where rock bands are concerned. But I don't think they're the best thing to hit American music since Elvis, either.) Back in those days I hated the music, hated the fashion, hated MTV, hated the fool pretentious 'anarchy' that so many of my peers spouted off so ignorantly. I may not hate it all anymore, per se (I still loathe MTV), but this by no means indicates that I like it, either. I was counterculture against the counterculture. Get it?
So when, during the summer of 2000, I began to emerge from my near-decade-long isolation with classical, what direction did I take? I don't like rap or hip-hop, and pop makes me shudder. Some country is okay in small doses, but too much is bad for you, rather like chocolate. (I'm not a fan of chocolate, either, but that's beside the point) But ahh, there was a choice, and that choice was metal. Yes, heavy metal, which I had been raised to believe was some sort of 'devil music,' and which I had loathed in the same way I loathed 'gangsta' rap. Well, I make no secret of the fact that I was a fool. About the metal, not the rap. When it comes to modern hard rock and heavy metal, I'm up for a lot of it. There is some I can't stand, but hey, it's like that with everything. You can't like everything.
If it's going to be naught but leftist political blathering, has overt and excessive swearing, is exclusively concerned with graphic sex and violence, or just possesses juvenile lyrics in general (this means you, Beastie Boys), I'm not interested. Likewise I'm not into black or death metal at all. Please, if you're going to invoke the name of Satan and sing about nothing but filth and carnage, leave me out.
That having been said, I find a great deal to like in the metal spectrum. Yes, it's loud, and dark, but so many people dismiss it outright because of this without even bothering to listen. For a long time I was one of those people, unfortunately, but you could say that I've been converted. And like any convert worth his salt, I try to spread the Truth. I consider myself to be a newfound metalhead, and I am glad for it.
My favorite band is Iron Maiden, by a wide margin. I have five of their albums, all from Number of the Beast through Seventh Son of a Seventh Son except for Somewhere in Time, as well as Brave New World. I also love Judas Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, Godsmack, Iced Earth, Rob Zombie, and Ozzy Osbourne. If you're counting hard rock, "rap-metal," or "pop metal," you can add Def Leppard, AC/DC, POD, Linkin Park, and Aerosmith to that list. I don't know where Evanescence fits into the metal spectrum, exactly, but they're one of my all-time favorite bands.
But when it comes to the so-called "numetal," I have mixed feelings. I like Staind and Disturbed, some of what Tool has done, and there are a few Korn songs I enjoy (and a few that grate on the aural nerves), but I can't stand Limp Bizkit. Whereas I'm a total fan of the real metal or hard rock bands that are relatively new (i.e. Godsmack, Seether, and Audioslave). Numetal just doesn't have the style of, say, classic Maiden or pre-Load Metallica. I blame alternative. I also utterly loathe Rage Against the Machine, which is ironic considering how much I like Audioslave. And Nickelback sucks.
I am not, however, as averse to the new genre of "rap-metal" or "rap-rock" as some fellow metalheads can be. It's not the lyrical style of rap that bothers me, per se, it's the subject matter of the lyrics themselves and the horrid excuse for "music" that goes along with it. If a song has well-written and mature lyrics coupled with professional-grade rock instrumentals, I'm all for it. Hence POD and Linkin Park, which I think do a fine job. It's the idiot stuff of gangsta rap that I find distasteful, what with its revolvement around pimpin' and drugs, gang violence, and sheer hedonism within a framework of near-constant obscenities (note that I don't like rock when it contains these elements, either), combined with incessantly repetitive bass "rhythms" and a total lack of melody.
I don't like hip-hop for many of the same reasons. Besides, not being a dancer, I am not into dance music at all, I think it's silly. But that's just me. And it's become so totally sexualized that I find it somewhat repulsive. And lest anyone deem me one of those prudish types who thinks sex is something horrible and dirty, I am not. Sex is a beautiful thing. But along with mature sexuality goes a healthy sense of decency and responsibility, neither of which is promoted by the hedonistic, "do it because it feels good" culture that rap and hip-hop express.
All this modern stuff aside, my first love in music is still classical. I have about 16 classical CD's, and roughly 150 cassette tapes, covering every period from early Baroque to late Romantic and into the 20th Century. I have a deep and abiding affection for the Baroque era in particular, especially J.S. Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, and Corelli.
I also like Gregorian and Byzantine chant, some Gospel, some jazz, blues, and bluegrass, calypso, whatever the heck you'd call Frank Sinatra and Perry Como ("lounge music?" I heard it described that way, once), and even a little 80s techno. And yes, I will admit, I love Mariah Carey. Have ever since I was in fifth grade. So sue me. And I'm terribly fond of Seal.
Anyway, here is a list of what we have in our apartment (or at work, in the car, etc.):
The Hayes Family Compact Disc Library:
AC/DC, various songs (mp3 disc)
Art of the French Horn, various orchestras
Bach, Brandenburg Concerti (2 volumes), various orchestras
Louis Bellson, Peaceful Thumder
Mariah Carey, Greatest Hits (2 volumes)
Chant II, Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos
Classical Top 100, (10 volumes), various orchestras
Celtic Glory, various performers
Celtic Quest, various performers
Def Leppard, Hysteria
Dokken, Alone Again and Other Hits
Evanescence, Fallen
Grieg, Peer Gynt Selections, Berlin Philharmonic, Jeffrey Tate conductor.
Godsmack, Faceless
Holst, The Planets, L'orchestre National de France, Loren Maazel director
Enrique Iglesias, Escape
Iron Maiden, Number of the Beast
Iron Maiden, Piece of Mind
Iron Maiden, Powerslave
Iron Maiden, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Iron Maiden, Brave New World
Norah Jones, Come Away With Me
Judas Priest, Screaming for Vengeance
Linkin Park, Meteora
Megadeth, various songs (mp3 disc)
Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, Boston Symphony, Seiji Ozawa conductor
POD, Satellite
Poison, Open Up and Say...AHH!
Rammstein, various songs (mp3 disc)
Vivaldi, The Four Seasons, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Martin Sieghart conductor
My cassette collection is far too numerous to list, and has been accumulating since around 1990. Within its daunting confines may be found such diverse selections as Beethoven's complete symphonies, the sountracks to Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October, and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings, and Gregorian chant. But it is mostly a classical collection, representing every era and every major composer, and not a few minor ones (Carl Maria von Weber, anyone?).
I also have a somewhat less extensive mp3 collection, down with the RIAA! comprising something like 100 songs, much of them metal (and some which I now have on CD, whether mp3 disc or "real" CD). It is extremely diverse to say the least, though.
Writing is the essential hallmark of human civilization; in comparison all the other achievments of mankind pale, are mere additions. Before the art of writing, man existed as a species bound wholly to the present, with a faulty grasp of the past and no vision for the future. He only knew of his own history what had been passed on to him by word of mouth, could only then pass this same knowledge on through the same unreliable, changable medium.
When man began to write, he gained the ability to pass on knowledge to future generations whole and unchanged, to give a record of himself that would not be grossly altered by the passage of centuries. He could then look at his past, and see what had come before, and in so looking he could learn from past mistakes and tend towards a viable path to a better future. The whole of prehistory is like a dimly lit corridor going back to the dawn of the race itself. Occasional flashes of sunlight through grimy windows gives us fleeting glimpses of our past in the shadows of prehistory, but we do not remember. What lore and history and wisdom were had by our prehistoric ancestors are lost to us forever, because all the pottery fragments and paleolithic tools in the world cannot tell us the thoughts of one single human being.
Even the most fragmentary written history, however, illuminates our past like a mighty beacon from the heavens, giving we successors thousands of years later not only a real historical record as produced by living human beings, but also a record of the changing patterns of human thought. We may dig up all manner of arrowheads and even find the skeletal remains of our prehistoric forebears, but we can even today read what the ancients thought and practiced as written in their own words. It is a difference so unutterably vast that it belies any and all attempts at comparison.
I am not ashamed to say that prehistoric civilization was in every way inferior to what has come to pass after the invention of writing. If that makes me arrogant and condescending, so be it. I am not meaning to impugn either prehistoric man as a whole, nor any society that has existed without the benefit of written language, and nor am I meaning to denigrate archaeology in any way. Our entire past is a precious thing, and worth almost any effort at further study, whatever the time period involved. However, the fact remains that the invention of writing divides the past of mankind into two very distinct and vastly different eras: the shadows of prehistory, and the lighted path of history.
As can probably be gathered from the above dissertation, I hold literature as the worthiest and most glorious form of art man has ever produced. All his other arts, even unto the beautiful cave-paintings that are many hundreds of centuries old, are physical things that in time will all pass away and be lost. So it is with architecture, handicrafts, sculpture. Literature, however, is different.
Books do not last, they are as physical as any other material human creation. Even words carved into the most durable of stone will eventually crumble. Paper and parchment are fragile things easily destroyed and difficult to maintain for extreme lengths of time. But the ideas contained within literature, the thoughts and feelings, the words of man, endure, because they can be endlessly reproduced in a way unmatched by any other art form.
What have we of Caesar the Dictator? The siege works at Alesia are long gone to dust. The Basilica Julia is an ancient ruin, and his rebuilt Curia Hostilia still exists only by virtue of having been made into a Christian church. But we still have Caesar's writings, though all originals of them are of course lost. The words remain when the hands that first wrote them have perished, when all the physical works of those hands are gone or changed utterly.
So what do I myself like to read? Just about anything, really. I have an abiding love for the recently popular "technothriller" genre, most luminously expounded by Tom Clancy. I am also heavily into what I consider to be the real "classics," ancient literature, of whom Tacitus has always been my first and favorite. I like some sci-fi, particularly if related to Star Trek or Star Wars. Non-fiction, though, accounts for most of my reading time apart from the mainstay (see next paragraph). Anything concerning history (especially if ancient history), architecture, astronomy and the space program, geography, computers, or religion will pretty much hold my attention for long periods of time. And though I've not read a lot of historical fiction, I count Colleen McCollough's Masters of Rome series as among my all-time favorites.
It is fantasy literature, however, that I consider to be my very favorite genre of all. I first read Lloyd Alexander's The Prydain Chronicles in fifth grade, but it wasn't until high school that I really began to get into it, and begin acquiring my own little fantasy library. Now some ten years later it accounts for most of my time spent reading.
Unlike an apparently large fraction of fantasy readers, I did not begin with The Lord of the Rings. In fact, I didn't get around to reading Tolkein's masterpiece until 2000, and nor The Hobbit until 2002. To be perfectly honest, I checked out The Fellowship of the Ring way back in eighth grade, and found it boring, so that I never got past the first fifty pages or so. This may horrify some. But the way I see it, a lot of people who began with LotR started out with fantasy very early on, whereas I didn't really get into the genre until I was already a mature reader. And at the time I had first checked out FotR, I was almost exclusively reading non-fiction, day in and day out; any kind of fiction except the Jack Ryan series bored me to absolute tears.
The first fantasy author I delved into was Terry Brooks, followed closely by Stephen R. Donaldson and Robert Jordan, and I also reread Lloyd Alexander (whose works I had basically forgotten in the five years since I first read them). I'm actually glad I didn't read LotR until I had already whetted my apetite with a lot of fantasy; it made me appreciate it more, I think.
And I still haven't read as much fantasy as a lot of people I know; I might never catch up in sheer volume. For five years, the five years during which I passed from adolescent to mature reader, my literary world was populated solely with history, geography, almanacs and encyclopedias, and "technothrillers" by the likes of Tom Clancy, Harold Coyle, and Larry Bond.
So, having said all that. what don't I like to read? Trashy romance novels. Biased religious and left-leaning political literature. Anything smacking of Anti-Catholicism or Anti-Semitism or racism. Apocalyptic literature of any kind not actually contained in the Holy Scriptures. Most mystery-type literature apart from the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. "Brave New World" style or other post-apocalyptic science fiction.
I'm not a fan of American literature in general, and I can count on one hand the number of "classic" American authors I genuinely enjoy (Namely, Poe, Melville, Eliot, and Henry James). I've read much else from the Puritans up to Steinbeck and I can't say I liked much of it at all. Especially where 20th Century writers are concerned. I haven't liked anything I've read by Hemingway, Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, or Steinbeck. For one thing, my final year somewhat excepted, the American Lit presented in my English classes was always and forever boring, tedious, downright depressing. I could just never connect with it. In poetry especially I find little to like in American authors, Edgar Allen Poe, T.S. Eliot, and Oliver Wendel Holmes being the singular and eminent exceptions.
Okay, let's get one thing straight: I am no sexist or misogynist in the least degree, and I am very weary of the modern brouhaha over use of the word "man." Modern English, for better or worse, is very limited in choice of definite and indefinite articles and has no gender cases whatsoever. While this does make the language far simpler in grammatical form than, say, German or French, it also leads many of our more excitable elements to revile some words in the English vocabulary as being sexist or otherwise oppressive, in need of updating. Thus the idiotic "inclusive language" arguments that have assailed such things as newer translations of the Holy Bible.
The real problem is not that the English word "man" is inherently patriarchal or sexist, it's that the language possesses only that one single word to mean several things. Which is rather ironic, considering that the modern English vocabulary is singularly vast. "Man" means the race of mankind as a whole, the male gender collectively, and an individual adult male. The reason our Biblical translations, for example, have been forced to use that one word to mean different things is that the older languages the Bible was written in and translated to are not so limited in this respect as is modern English.
We'll take Latin as an example, since I am of course a Catholic and consider the Latin Vulgate to be the penultimate translation of Holy Scripture. There are two words in Latin analogous to our single "man." The first, homo, is used both to denote the race as a whole (as in the scientific species classification homo sapiens), and also as an individual member of the race, most commonly male (as in the Roman term homo novus, "New Man," a man who succeeded in war or politics despite having no famous ancestors). The second is vir, which was specifically male and was intimately tied with concretely masculine terms (as in vir militaris, "military man," a Roman man who based his entire career and power on military exploits), hence the root of our words "virile" and "virility."
When in the Latin Vulgate Man as a race is mentioned, the word homo and its derivatives are used, whereas when referring to individual men (such as Noah) vir and its derivatives are often used. The possible supposition that homo as well as vir was intended to be specifically male (and thus, by extension, patriarchal and oppressive) is faulty, since in Latin almost every single noun has both masculine and feminine forms, sometimes entirely without actual relation to either gender. The family name, for instance, or gens, was used by a singular male family member ending "-us", as in "Claudius," and by a female family member ending "-a," as in "Claudia." When speaking of two or more members of the same gens, the plural ending would be "-i," hence "Claudii." But the gens as a whole was always referred to in feminine form, hence we speak of "the gens Claudia" and not "the gens Claudius."
I really don't watch much television at all, even though I was an absolute television junkie in 8th and 9th grades. Back then, when we had cable and HBO as part of our unusual living arrangements, I would routinely come home from school and proceed to space out with the boob tube until 2am or so. On the weekends, this could sometimes extend past dawn. But today, with there being very few quality programs on the air and an unutterable profusion of horrible, useless "reality TV," I stick to a few shows and the occasional news program.
For one thing, I am very much a Trekkie, and every week from 1994 until 2001 I could look forward to new or old episodes of The Next Generation every weeknight, to which later was added new and old episodes of Voyager, while Deep Space Nine was on Sunday nights after the news, and the same station running TNG also ran the occasional episode of "The Original Series" on early weekend mornings. It was televised bliss. But since 2002 the amount of Trek on local TV has dwindled, until now there is only Enterprise on Wednesday night. All the other Trek series are no longer aired, and they constituted a major portion of my former viewership. And while I do like Enterprise, it alone just can't compare with the amount of Trek seen weekly in former years.
Since we haven't had cable television since 1999, I'm also bound to the broadcast networks. And while we're in a good-sized media market and we do have local affiliates of ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, UPN, and WB, there just is not a goodly amount of quality, worthwile programming at present. In fact, apart from Stagate: SG1, Star Trek: Enterprise, local news, The Simpsons, Saturday morning cartoons, the occasional John Stossel report on 20/20, and PBS' Secrets of the Dead, I don't watch anything at all on a regular basis. The one new show of the 2003 season I truly got in to, ABC's Threat Matrix, has vanished from the airwaves, and I can only assume it's been cancelled. Suffice it to say I'm not the most avid of viewers, anymore.
As for movies, it muct be noted that I did not go to a movie theater at all from 1993 until 2002, when I saw Ocean's Eleven, and we did not have a VCR until late in 2002, either. So I was totally at the mercy of broadcast television when it came to watching products of the Silver Screen. And though that venerable old VCR has now gone to the big electronics shop in the sky, I'm much more into movies now than I have ever been. To be short, I love a good guy-oriented action flick, such as all of the Rambo movies, as well as pretty much any sci fi or fantasy, the occasional drama, and even a few comedies now and then (especially if written by Mel Brooks). I am also a longtime fan of Disney animation, though I must admit that many of the more recent offerings have been sorely lacking (Pocahantas, anyone?). And mobster movies are great, except for Kansas City, which was terrible.
My favorite movies are, in order, Apollo 13, The Hunt for Red October, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Return of the Jedi, and the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy.
What don't I like on the big and small screen? I loathe romance films, they leave me with an oily sensation on the skin. Or maybe that's just my ointment. Anything with too much graphic sex or that is unrepentantly, excessively gory, all horror movies, anything by Oliver Stone except for Any Given Sunday, anything at all by Martin Scorsese or Roman Polanski or Michael Moore, and anything smacking in the tiniest detail of anti-Catholicism. I also despise all reality TV, left-dominated news programming, soap operas, makeover shows, infomercials, fashion shows, media awards shows, most current children's programming, and MTV.