MetalSucks

Former Panic Channel vocalist Steve Isaacs apparently has a video blog, and it’s actually prettygood. This wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy if not for the fact that Isaacs also happens to be perhaps the last cool VJ that MTV ever had, so Axl and I have a particular soft spot for the guy. Remember when MTV used to play videos? That was pretty neat.

Here’s Steve talking about the delghts of the McDonald’s McGriddles. Gotta say I agree; they’re fucking delicious.

-VN

This is gonna be a long, Lefsetzian rant that is only peripherally related to metal. Don’t read it if that’s gonna bother you.

MTV’s The State came out on DVD yesterday – the complete series. For those of you too young to remember, The State was a sketch comedy series that launched all the guys (and girl) who went on to make Wet Hot American Summer, Stella, Reno 911, and a whole bunch of shit I’m forgetting.

(The troupe’s members have also written and/or acted in some terrible movies, I’m sure because it paid well, but if it funds their own work, then whatever.)

So last night after we shuttered the MetalSucks Mansion Grand Study of Doom & Horror (where we do all our “work”) for the evening, I went out (To fucking Best Buy – because there is now no place else in the city to purchase DVDs) and bought The State, came home, “got right” as Ron Saint Germain would say, and sat down to watch a show I haven’t seen in sixteen years.

Holy shit, that makes me feel old.

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First SMNnews.com reported that Jose Mangin revealed in a Metal Injection podcast that Headbanger’s Ball will return to MTV in 2010 with him as the host. Then the sleuths at Metal Insider contacted Jose himself to ask him about the situation. Mangin denies any official full-time launch of the show or his place in it, but he does promise that some plans are in the works for Headbanger’s Ball in 2010. Sounds to me like Mangin is at the very least in the running for the host job but perhaps spilled the beans a bit too soon.

But here’s the thing: can Headbangers Ball even be relevant anymore? In 2009, a TV show about metal hardly seems like it will, or even can, matter at all.

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The whole idea of a TV station called Music Television that doesn’t play music is completely ridiculous; nevertheless, this has been the reality of MTV pretty much since the late ‘90s. Forgive me if I’m slightly behind the times as I don’t have a TV, but apparently there’s a new channel called MTV Music (yes, folks, welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department: That’s “Music Television Music.”) that specializes in playing music videos. Is this not completely fucking ridiculous? [I realized post-publishing that this is solely a website, not a TV channel. Read on, as most of my points still stand. -Ed.]

Dear MTV: NEWSBREAK! It’s called YouTube, assholes! And it’s got just about every video ever, plus tons of live, unreleased and otherwise unofficial stuff you’d never air. The idea of a TV station being relevant to music in 2008 is about as good as the idea of traveling to California… by horse and buggy. You’re hopelessly out of date. Especially for metal. Deal with it.

Anyway… said new(ish) channel has launched an ad campaign that attempts to invoke ’80s and ‘90s nostalgia — in anyone that was alive and watched the original MTV when they still played videos — by bringing back the classic modified-MTV-logo theme retrofitted with band imagery sure to invoke just that nostalgia. This includes some of our favorite heavies, notably Metallica (above), as well as Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots, pictured after the jump.

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Eventually, someone is going to adapt Motley Crue’s The Dirt (which I’m still fairly certain is the best book ever written in any language ever) into a movie. There’s too many greenbacks at stake for the project just to sit on the shelf forever.

But I’ve read screenwriter Rich Wilkes’ adaptation of the infamous tome (written by Neil Strauss under the guise of being written by the band members themselves), and it wasn’t going to make a good movie. In fact, I can guarantee you it was going to make a horrible, horrible movie. Wilkes is the writer of such gems as The Jerky Boys movie and xXx, so that news really shouldn’t shock anyone*; in fact, I have to guess that Wilkes got the job ’cause he wrote Airheads, which is probably the last Hollywood movie about metal that is only a semi-embarrassment to the film industry**. Still, Wilkes’ script was all set to go before cameras under the guidance of Borat director/Seinfeld executive producer Larry Charles, who is really way, way, way too talented for this lousy script. At various times, Ashton Kutcher and Johnny Knoxville were rumored to be in talks to play Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx, respectively, and Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer were alleged to have filled the roles of Ozzy Osbourne and David Lee Roth.

In other words, this thing really had about as much chance of being good as Lars Ulrich does of growing to be six five four feet tall.

So lucky for us all that the project, at least as we’ve known it, seems to be in jeopardy.

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