Steven Joniak – the Blog

This is a response to my friend’s Gigababy post [clickie] about how she can’t stand classic rock. …

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Music is arguably the one art that transcends language, culture and can inspire a full range of emotions more then any other creative medium. Sometimes a particular lyric or sound of music can strike a deep personal experience with the listener which then evolves into them liking similar music of that gendre or style.

I like ALL music, but at different times. But good music, regardless of gendre, will always stick in my book. I’m not a fan of any of the bands you mention above but I do love the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ by the Stones. Don’t know why exactly but I guess its so different then anything I heard at the time and it stuck – but the rest, meh. I still have nightmares of working my summers in Stelco where ALL they ever played was Q107 and Zepplin was every 2nd song, every hour, every day … I still get shivers even looking at football shaped balloons *cringe*

The problem arises that because people do have such a strong emotional connection with their favourite music, they assume everyone else must like it to without realizing that only a handful of bands ever really reached such a global acceptance such as Elvis or Abba – when was the last time you heard someone say ‘I hate Elvis/Abba?’ – think about it…

As for why people fall for these ‘rockstars’ is the same reason I would have women swoon over me if I had a hit record and made gagillions of dollars (CDN please!) – its the allure of that dream of being with a winner, a star, living the ‘good life’ where you have no cares in the world, party all the time and live life to the fullest. That is of course until you realize that Jagger is wearing knee pads in the pic – now why do you think he would need those, hmmm?

In the meantime, give me my punk rock girl bands and NIN with a twist of euro techno and a dash of Paul Potts and Pavarotti – and leave the classic rock on the side. There’s only so much I can digest at once.
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And for a more humorous perspective, see Dave Chappelle's take on this topic:

This is my Halloween (my favourite holiday!) costume that I made from scratch to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Model 101 cyborg character in Terminator 2. My rendition isn’t an exact copy (as I don’t have the money or resources for that), but the closest I could develop in a short period of time with what I had on hand. One key element of my design is my right eye allows me to see around the ‘red eye’ though I would have preferred a more movie like version that covered it, but then I would need to create face molds and sythetic prosthetics which is beyond my know-how right now.How It Was Done:I used images & info from the Special Features section of the Ultimate Terminator 2 DVD as reference for the overall look and feel of my costume and focused on the latter part of the movie where most of the exoskeleton is exposed during the fight with the T-1000.The ‘metal’ parts are a cut-up plastic mask I shaped and fitted to my face. The eye portion did light up red like the movie and is a button with a LED light that sits in a slot I drilled in for it with the wires running behind my ear, down my back into two AA batteries in my pocket. The mask was attached to my face using lots of built up layers of movie-quality liquid latex (from Malabar an awesome costume and pro makeup store in downtown Toronto) and some foam makeup sponges for added depth. Then the latex effects were blended with a variety of makeup and fake blood to achieve the effect of peeling & broken skin to reveal the metallic robotic exoskeleton.Building & shaping the mask took about 4-5 hours; final application and makeup took another 2 hours, including drying time. Overall, pretty happy with the end result! I had taped the progress throughout the build and will post it soon to show the progress of how I built it out.