Breaking Benjamin

***BREAKING BENJAMIN***

It’s been about twenty days since my last blog and at this point I’m just reaching for topics like Luke Skywalker reaching for his lost lightsaber in the heat of battle. Just like that same Jedi warrior, I used the force to come up with this next topic. And by use the force, I mean exactly that: I had to force myself to come up with this topic because nothing else of immediate importance came to mind.

This coming September, Breaking Benjamin is coming to Auburn, Washington’s White River Amphitheater to put on a fucking rock and roll show. Their opening acts in order of appearance are Diamante, Dorothy, Three Days Grace, and finally Chevelle. The only opener that I listen to on a frequent basis is Three Days Grace.

Prior to this upcoming Breaking Benjamin show, I’ve seen Three Days Grace twice in concert. The first time was in 2013 at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle, where I was introduced to their opening band at the time, Otherwise. If you follow my progress with rewriting Beautiful Monster, you’ll understand how Otherwise became as important to me as they are. The other time I’ve seen Three Days Grace live is at the Pain in the Grass festival in 2015, where they were the third to last band to appear onstage behind Lamb of God and the headliner Slipknot.

Three Days Grace has been a part of my life since 2003 when I was attending school at Olympic College. I don’t remember much of the early 2000’s due to the onset of my schizophrenia, but I’ll never forget how Three Days Grace’s music made me feel. Their song “Home” perfectly described my state of mind at the time and “I Hate Everything (About You)” could have been a descriptor for my mom’s terrible ex-boyfriend Art. Seeing Three Days Grace live twice was psychological medicine for me and seeing them a third time in 2019 will be no exception.

Breaking Benjamin is the only other band in that lineup that I listen to on a regular basis, which is why I’m going to the concert in the first place. I don’t go to concerts unless I recognize the headliner. Prior to this concert, I’ve seen Breaking Benjamin on three separate occasions. The first was in 2004 when they opened for Korn. Like I said earlier, I have minimal recollection of the early 2000’s due to my ongoing battle with schizophrenia. When Breaking Benjamin opened for Disturbed as part of the Pain in the Grass festival in 2016, my senses were wide awake. Unfortunately, that show was marred by me having to sit next to a drunken lunatic who wouldn’t leave well enough alone. That’s okay, because in 2018, Breaking Benjamin came back to that same venue with Five Finger Death Punch and Bad Wolves as their openers. Much better experience!

I didn’t fully appreciate the music of Breaking Benjamin until 2006 when I first heard “So Cold”. From there, getting hooked on the music was easy. I listened to a lot of their fourth album Dear Agony in 2009 when I was taking the bus to and from my final college class. Coincidentally, I also started listening to “Life Starts Now” by Three Days Grace. We intersect once again! Who knew two sad-ass metal bands would make the perfect soundtrack for resorting to forced extroversion in a college class environment? I still don’t understand why college classes put introverts at a disadvantage like that by having public conversations in the grading rubric. It’s almost like there’s a bias going on here.

Breaking Benjamin’s upcoming show won’t be until September 22^nd of this year, which is a country mile ahead of the current date. Like I said before, I was reaching for a topic this whole time. I don’t like going for a long time without writing a blog entry because I consider those to be just as important as my poems, short stories, and chapters of Beautiful Monster. Speaking of which…

***BEAUTIFUL MONSTER***

Chapter sixteen will feature the fruits of Windham’s traumatizing labor in action. Shadow Asylum along with King Lars Stonewall and his troops will perform a raid on Shelly Atwood’s castle in an attempt to put an end to her sex trafficking business once and for all. Windham did a phenomenal job of exposing the castle’s weaknesses in his blueprints, so this should be an open and shut case, right? Sure, you can believe that if you want. You can also believe that monkeys will come flying out of my ass. After dining on Pizza Hut food tonight, monkeys are the last thing you should worry about flying out of my ass. Hehe!

***MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

HUTCH MORGAN: Eat me!

PAIGE: No thanks, I’m trying to bulk up.

-Fighting With My Family-

Learn to Lose

You’re still talking, still just yapping

Verbal masturbation, endless fapping

You can’t go undefeated forever

Your chances of winning are never

Learn to lose your arguments, buddy

Mudslinging became too damn muddy

You’re proven wrong time and again

Yet the conversation never really ends

You’ve got an army of straw men soldiers

Your childish tactics get older and older

Being loud is not the key to victory

But the key to friendships ending bitterly

Know when to shut your filthy pie hole

Lose gracefully, don’t cry your eyes cold

One of these days, they’ll drop the hammer

You’ll rot in the slammer, never again yammer

You’re fighting a battle you cannot win

As you wait for your sentence to begin

Defying the odds is not your strong suit

Especially in a cage with a hairy brute

What will it take to get through to you?

A body full of bruises so black and blue?

Is it a lifetime membership in the ICU?

Or a permanent home underneath the tomb?

I guess some people don’t want to change

Never improve their lives, stay deranged

I guess you can’t rehabilitate those types

A bullet to the skull, an end to your life

If you truly believe in reincarnation

Come back with an attitude of elation

Be grateful for your second chance

Or in hellfire is where you’ll dance

Learn to lose before you can’t turn back

Know your place in the hunting pack

Obligations

Running away from your obligations

Won’t put an end to the conversation

The topic’s been brewing for a while

Never mind approaching it with style

You must attack the problem head-on

Even if it starts to feel morally wrong

You don’t have to have the answers

You’re a team player, not a freelancer

Help each other come to a conclusion

Don’t spend so much time in seclusion

Don’t confuse the act of cooling down

With running away and skipping town

You can do this, it’s a phone call away

Don’t put this off for yet another day

Three words, eight letters, say it loud

Before the hatred comes back around

Don’t let a small misunderstanding

Become your downfall, a stiff landing

Pick up the phone before it’s too late

Before the silence has sealed your fate

Staying In Bed

To hell with being dutiful

Staying in bed is beautiful

A purring kitty on my chest

He agrees that it’s time to rest

Piano music calms me down

Hypnotized by the gentle sound

Cold breeze blowing outside

Under the blankets is where I hide

Back to work on another day

Couldn’t motivate myself anyway

Stare at the ceiling, think about life

Share my bed with an imaginary wife

Watch movies playing in my head

They don’t make a lick of sense

Heater blasting on a winter night

Makes resisting sleep an uphill fight

But I can’t stay here forever and ever

Despite the drop in barometric pressure

Another day waits on the other side

That way you can’t say I never tried

Still walking around like the undead

Not a whole lot going on in my head

A few more hours until it gets dark

Until rainwater floods the public park

Until the moon shines down upon us all

Until face down on the bed is where I fall

Disconnect my telephone line

Tomorrow everything will be just fine

Like it is almost every damn day

No sense in asking me if I’m okay

Boring

VERSE 1

“Get a real job!” is what they say

Blind conformity equals good pay

PRE-CHORUS 1

Trade school is boring

I can’t keep from snoring

Come on!

Fuck off!

CHORUS 1

You see, it’s their fault

We don’t have no dreams no more

Colors fading, not worth parading

Society has become a chore

VERSE 2

“Go work in tech!” is what they scream

Crushing your dreams, it makes them cream

PRE-CHORUS 2

Tech jobs are boring

I can’t keep from snoring

Come on!

Fuck off!

CHORUS 2

You see, it’s their fault

We can’t do what we love the most

Paintings destroyed, artists left unemployed

While the boss men laugh and boast

BRIDGE

Crushed all our pride

We can’t get inside

Nowhere left to hide

We sleep outside

Come on!

Fuck off!

VOICE-OVER

Trade school: the one part of the educational journey where it’s okay to fall asleep in class! Sign up today and get fucked for your first three months free!

Gary-Stu

I spent a hundred years in the navy

The sexy siren is carrying my baby

I spent five decades in the marines

They all call me a fighting machine

I spent half a century in the army

No way could the enemy harm me

I spent ten years in the air force

I still don’t make sense, of course

I’m a Gary-Stu who’s lost at sea

Always carry machineguns with me

A battleaxe bigger than my body

Always imitated, but never copied

Except by those trying to make a buck

Make a fortune from negative luck

Put me in a videogame or paperback

I’m a macho man, genetically jacked

Everybody wants to buy my image

Everybody wants to laugh at critics

Everybody wants to look for tropes

Everybody’s given too much rope

Whatever happened to character depth?

Got slaughtered in a battle to the death

Everybody’s got their own little flaws

They don’t include too much brawn

They don’t include a nasty attitude

They don’t include a lazy aptitude

Three dimensional isn’t hard to achieve

All you have to do is make them believe

If a captain is going to be lost at sea

If a warrior is going to bleed, bleed, bleed

If a damsel in distress screams one last time

Put some reason in your fucked up rhyme

"Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven" by Brandon Easton

BOOK TITLE: Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven

AUTHOR: Brandon Easton

YEAR: 2015

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Wrestling Biography

GRADE: Pass

Andre the Giant’s road to wrestling stardom was one filled with pain, unhappiness, excessive drinking, and tough choices. Starting out as a farm boy in France, he fell in love with professional wrestling in his teen years when he’d see these small shows performed in front of live crowds. Needing an escape from feeling like a freak, he used his massive size to his advantage and started his long hard road to becoming one of the biggest legends in the wrestling industry. He traveled all over the world wrestling matches that stunned spectators until he made it to the multi-billion dollar World Wrestling Federation. His larger-than-life star power would become immortalized with his matches against Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, and many other future Hall of Famers. He died in 1993 due to complications with his gigantism, but he will never be forgotten.

Graphic novels and comic books alike get bad reputations for being ordinary picture books for kids (that was a dig at you, Bill Maher). This graphic novel in particular is much more than that. It’s a well-written biography with dialogue and narration any reader can get behind. I especially liked the part where the old lady at the fairgrounds told Andre that he’s “closer to heaven” because God doesn’t have to reach down that far to touch him. That simple act of kindness helped Andre feel like more than just a sideshow freak. He was a human being with real emotions and real struggles, just like any other regardless of size. The dialogue and narration help convey that message perfectly. In other words, he’s a three-dimensional character within the confines of a greater story.

Just like all three-dimensional characters, Andre had flaws underneath all of his stardom. He was so young and egotistical that he thought he was invincible, so he turned to drinking and telling inappropriate jokes to keep up this appearance. Partying was a huge part of the wrestling industry and some people succumb to their vices easier than others. In Andre’s case, his alcoholism led him to complicate his gigantism, where his bones were already aching and he needed so many surgeries that he lost count. Despite his flaws, it’s impossible to hate Andre the Giant as a character. He is, after all, human. He still feels guilty during his times of sin, especially as it relates to his estranged daughter Robin, who penned an emotional letter to him while he was away. This is a reminder that nobody is invincible no matter how big and strong they are. That’s true storytelling at its best.

In addition to his struggles with his physical health, his emotional health took a toll on him as well. Despite being a mega star every country he wrestles in, he couldn’t find his permanent happiness. He took the little things for granted until it was almost too late to appreciate them once again. Being able to catch up with his friends back home in France was a huge emotional boost for him. Forging new friendships with his business manager and his bosses helped keep him in check. Being able to shoot movies and work with friendly actors helped him escape from wrestling when he needed to the most. In the end, being happy is all that matters in this world. If you hate life with a passion, you can’t be like Andre the Giant and be “closer to heaven”. It’s not a religious thing. It’s common sense that we all push aside at some point down the road. The key is to remember who we are and why we do what we do.

As short as this graphic novel is and as easy as it is to poke fun at the wrestling genre (again, I’m looking at you, Bill Maher), Andre the Giant: Closer to Heaven is a brilliantly-written piece of art that should be appreciated by wrestling and non-wrestling fans alike. It’s not just a biography of a pop culture icon. It’s a story. A real, living, breathing, three-dimensional story about a human being overcoming gargantuan obstacles. A passing grade is what this graphic novel deserves.