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Slayer fans are being petulant assholes to the Louder Than Life organizers because Slayer opted not to stay to play Day 3 after Day 2 was canceled due to weather. They're clogging the IG feed with tantrums and sulking and demands for refunds. It's hilarious to watch so many self-proclaimed badasses devolve into shrieking toddlers because life happened. I can't tell if it's because they've never been disappointed before, or because this is one disappointment too many.
I get the frustration and anger. If Rammstein had canceled the MSG show after all the effort and money it took to get there, I would've had a nervous breakdown and been inconsolable all the way home and for days afterward, but screaming at the organizers and hurling childish insults at other bands and fans because Slayer had other commitments to its own tour and couldn't or wouldn't jeopardize them is embarrassing. You don't look like badasses, screaming your rage to the heavens; you look like pathetic children flinging poo at the big meanies because you didn't get what you wanted. Stew and sulk and bitch to your friends, but stop showing your asses in public. They weren't that attractive in your prime, and they are far less so now.
Watched Prince of Egypt today. The animation was beautiful, but the story was a hot mess that made Moses look like a crazy asshole. I know, I know, it's a sacred Biblical saga, blah, blah, blah, but the way they presented it made Moses look like a delusional jackoff. He spends his whole life as a cosseted Egyptian prince, and after one encounter with a crazy lady at a well, he accepts her ravings at face value and happily casts his lot with an enslaved people because she says he is a Hebrew? LOLnope. Nopity, nope, nope, nope. That's not how the human psyche works. Moses might, indeed, be ethnically Jewish, but he was raised and acculturated by Egyptians, and he's not going to give that up immediately just because some rando at a well says it's so. Even if he does believe her, such seismic attitudinal shifts don't happen overnight.
Frankly, to say that Moses, who has been raised as an Egyptian, suddenly feels an affinity for the Jews because he realizes he is Jewish smacks of genetic determinism, which is ten kinds of gross. If blood determines who you are, then there is no point in striving to improve or grow because in the end, everything you were meant to be is in your blood, and you will go no further than it allows. Adoptive familial bonds don't matter because you are, and forever will be, what your blood says you are, even if your genetically-determined culture had nothing to do with your upbringing and lived experience. It's all very skeevy.
And whether they intended it or not, they made Ramses highly sympathetic. Until he receives the dubious revelation from the crazy lady at the well, Moses and Ramses are best friends as well as brothers, but the second he's told he was adopted, everything changes. He pushes Ramses away and never tells him why. He just fucks off and leaves him in the dust to hang with "his people". You know, the people with whom he has no shared experience. But blood says he's Jewish, so surely he'll just naturally belong. Because that's how humans work.
And of course he does. Because both the Biblical farce and the plot need him to. Just as they need him to unquestionably need him to accept his divine mandate from a god to whom he has never been connected and in whom he has no previous belief. He just hears the voice from the burning bush and ups stakes to Egypt to order his brother to "Let his people go." Sure. Makes sense. A dude who's been a Jew for a week is going to deliver them from Egypt.
In fairness to this movie, the source material is whacked out. In the Biblical version, Moses settles down, marries, and fathers numerous children before getting his holy orders, and once he does, he leaves his wife and children behind and never sees them again. Swell, right? But Moses is the good guy because God says so, and fuck the collateral damage.
It doesn't get much better from there. Once Moses returns to Egypt, Ramses is overjoyed to see him, embraces him as his brother, and defies the priests when they remind him that Moses should be executed for his previous crimes. Ramses tells them to shove it and pardons him. You would think Moses would return the affection, maybe spend some time with a brother who clearly loves him, but nope. Moses just blows him off and starts issuing orders in the name of a god he's believed in for a bathroom break. This goes as well as you might expect.
All Ramses wanted was to be loved, but Moses spurns him again and again and then wonders why he's making no headway in convincing him to free the Israelites. Gee, Moses, I don't know, maybe if you hadn't come in rebuffing his joyful welcome and spewing orders, he might've listened. But who needs that when we can have displays of God's might? So things follow in their designated train.
The Biblical account of this showdown hardly drapes God in glory. In it, Ramses is on the verge of relenting to Moses' request several times, but God "hardens his heart against it." Why? Beats me, but it seems like God (this allegedly righteous God, mind) just wanted Pharaoh to hold out until the grand finale so that He could flex his almighty dick by slaughtering thousands while they slept for the crime of...being the firstborn. Whatever the true nature of God, the writers of the Bible make him a tool of the highest order.
The movie skips over all of this, of course, so Ramses just looks like a stubborn prick who gets his comeuppance in the end. Nor does it admit that after Moses obeyed all of God's commands for forty years, God (Mr. Lovingkindness, recall), forbids him from setting foot in the promised land after a single, small mistake. Guess that would end the movie on a bit of a downer, not to mention make people wonder why they'd want to serve a petty god like that in the first place.
I get the frustration and anger. If Rammstein had canceled the MSG show after all the effort and money it took to get there, I would've had a nervous breakdown and been inconsolable all the way home and for days afterward, but screaming at the organizers and hurling childish insults at other bands and fans because Slayer had other commitments to its own tour and couldn't or wouldn't jeopardize them is embarrassing. You don't look like badasses, screaming your rage to the heavens; you look like pathetic children flinging poo at the big meanies because you didn't get what you wanted. Stew and sulk and bitch to your friends, but stop showing your asses in public. They weren't that attractive in your prime, and they are far less so now.
Watched Prince of Egypt today. The animation was beautiful, but the story was a hot mess that made Moses look like a crazy asshole. I know, I know, it's a sacred Biblical saga, blah, blah, blah, but the way they presented it made Moses look like a delusional jackoff. He spends his whole life as a cosseted Egyptian prince, and after one encounter with a crazy lady at a well, he accepts her ravings at face value and happily casts his lot with an enslaved people because she says he is a Hebrew? LOLnope. Nopity, nope, nope, nope. That's not how the human psyche works. Moses might, indeed, be ethnically Jewish, but he was raised and acculturated by Egyptians, and he's not going to give that up immediately just because some rando at a well says it's so. Even if he does believe her, such seismic attitudinal shifts don't happen overnight.
Frankly, to say that Moses, who has been raised as an Egyptian, suddenly feels an affinity for the Jews because he realizes he is Jewish smacks of genetic determinism, which is ten kinds of gross. If blood determines who you are, then there is no point in striving to improve or grow because in the end, everything you were meant to be is in your blood, and you will go no further than it allows. Adoptive familial bonds don't matter because you are, and forever will be, what your blood says you are, even if your genetically-determined culture had nothing to do with your upbringing and lived experience. It's all very skeevy.
And whether they intended it or not, they made Ramses highly sympathetic. Until he receives the dubious revelation from the crazy lady at the well, Moses and Ramses are best friends as well as brothers, but the second he's told he was adopted, everything changes. He pushes Ramses away and never tells him why. He just fucks off and leaves him in the dust to hang with "his people". You know, the people with whom he has no shared experience. But blood says he's Jewish, so surely he'll just naturally belong. Because that's how humans work.
And of course he does. Because both the Biblical farce and the plot need him to. Just as they need him to unquestionably need him to accept his divine mandate from a god to whom he has never been connected and in whom he has no previous belief. He just hears the voice from the burning bush and ups stakes to Egypt to order his brother to "Let his people go." Sure. Makes sense. A dude who's been a Jew for a week is going to deliver them from Egypt.
In fairness to this movie, the source material is whacked out. In the Biblical version, Moses settles down, marries, and fathers numerous children before getting his holy orders, and once he does, he leaves his wife and children behind and never sees them again. Swell, right? But Moses is the good guy because God says so, and fuck the collateral damage.
It doesn't get much better from there. Once Moses returns to Egypt, Ramses is overjoyed to see him, embraces him as his brother, and defies the priests when they remind him that Moses should be executed for his previous crimes. Ramses tells them to shove it and pardons him. You would think Moses would return the affection, maybe spend some time with a brother who clearly loves him, but nope. Moses just blows him off and starts issuing orders in the name of a god he's believed in for a bathroom break. This goes as well as you might expect.
All Ramses wanted was to be loved, but Moses spurns him again and again and then wonders why he's making no headway in convincing him to free the Israelites. Gee, Moses, I don't know, maybe if you hadn't come in rebuffing his joyful welcome and spewing orders, he might've listened. But who needs that when we can have displays of God's might? So things follow in their designated train.
The Biblical account of this showdown hardly drapes God in glory. In it, Ramses is on the verge of relenting to Moses' request several times, but God "hardens his heart against it." Why? Beats me, but it seems like God (this allegedly righteous God, mind) just wanted Pharaoh to hold out until the grand finale so that He could flex his almighty dick by slaughtering thousands while they slept for the crime of...being the firstborn. Whatever the true nature of God, the writers of the Bible make him a tool of the highest order.
The movie skips over all of this, of course, so Ramses just looks like a stubborn prick who gets his comeuppance in the end. Nor does it admit that after Moses obeyed all of God's commands for forty years, God (Mr. Lovingkindness, recall), forbids him from setting foot in the promised land after a single, small mistake. Guess that would end the movie on a bit of a downer, not to mention make people wonder why they'd want to serve a petty god like that in the first place.
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