"Twisting the Strangle Grip won't Give no Mercy!"

How can you not love a band with THIS as one of its album covers?



The first important thing to realize is that as I write this post I'm rocking out to Judas Priest.

The second important thing to realize is that I've had a true rock resurgence of late. And that includes Metal.

I think it started over a month ago when I re-stumbled over the song "Disposable Heroes" by Metallica. I was at the gym with my iPOD, randomly flipping through songs, looking for something to whale on my pecs to, and lo and behold "Heroes" is what the fateful iPOD shuffler delivered. Energized, I threw some iron around while Hetfield barked his lyrics and thought - this song effing rocks!

Which got me thinking. I used to love Metallica (prior to souring on them because of how lame they appeared during the Napster debacle - also their music got significantly lamer after the "Metallica" album. That said, back in high school they put on the best concert I've ever seen, period.) and an assortment of other hard and heavy bands back in my middle school and high school days, even into college somewhat. I owned the big four Metallica albums (Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, And Justice for All) and several other hard rock and metal albums of the day.

I started diving back into my older Metallica stuff, then went and found some Megadeth, and of course by that point I was too far in to consider not unleashing the inimitable Judas Priest. Priest was my favorites back in the day - back when I dreamed of being a long haired rocker. (Rob Halford's voice can easily kill a man.) And now, they've resurfaced again and have to come to dominate my iPOD the last several weeks.

All this got me to thinking that I haven't really added any new music to my life in a while. The last time I had a solid influx of music was when I was in Iraq. I ordered an iPOD and sent it to Eryn. I had him put a bunch of stuff on it - all kinds of music - and then he sent it out to me in the desert. From that experience I picked up on some new bands (chiefly Electric Six, but many more as well). Since, however, not a whole lot of new stuff has filtered across my radar. That has changed in the last few weeks.

Helping the situation was a several hundred dollar credit card surplus (automatic standing payments plus few recent purchases). I took one look at that and thought, what the hell? Next thing I know I've ordered about 25-30 CD's off of Amazon to upgrade my musical collection and try some new stuff out. I repurchased pretty much every CD in the Judas Priest discography (I had most them on cassette before), skipping the two albums which didn't have Rob Halford at the front (what's the point?).



And since, I've been bringing my iPOD everywhere, rocking out at work, in the car, in between patients in the clinic, and after work when I'm finishing notes and other administrative crap. I've been turning my office at Landstuhl into Headbanger's Ball.

To top it off, I searched for "Judas Priest Concert info" one day on a lark and it turns out they're touring Europe in the next few months and so now after a few more clicks I have tickets to go see them in Luxembourg in June. Rob Halford and I in the same vicinity? Bliss. (If you've never had Halford's four-and-a-half octave falsetto melt your face off, then my apologies but you've missed out. See the 24 second mark of the video blow to see what I mean...)



Your Life Changes in 24 seconds


So things have been straight rockin' around here for a few weeks, and with more CD's on the way, should only continue to do so.

Here's a couple of quick recommendations from my recent findings:

-Judas Priest: Painkiller (Quintessential Speed Metal Album - will revitalize your work out - and your life)

-Metallica: Master of Puppets (Possibly best Metal album of all time)

-The National: Boxer (Much more mellow and not really in the hard rock/metal category but utterly phenomenal; I bought this on iTunes on a tip from Paul Shirley at espn.com and haven't regretted it at all)

I also bought a bunch of classic rock albums which haven't arrived yet - The Who, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Van Halen, etc. It might just be time to start growing my hair out...


In other new the weather here in Germany is starting to get really good. Spring is out, shaking off the chills of winter, and sunlight remains until clear after 9 pm already. Though unfortunately stuck on call for this beautiful weekend, we had another great set of days last weekend. Last Saturday Pete and I fired up the old mountain bikes and found a great trail about a half hour away, taking advantage of Germany's beautiful scenery which is not unlike Washington's in some ways. Good to be back on the bike again.

Last Saturday night we had a little 'draft party' for the NFL draft. We watched the first round, which though shortened this year still took ridiculously long. I've never really watched the draft before, in the past I had mostly followed it. This year, however, we thought what the hell and threw it on for a few hours over beers and chips. It's funny just how addicted everyone is to the NFL these days - I mean here we are watching the draft. Not only that, but there were EIGHT motherluvin' analysts covering this event for ESPN. There was a main table, headed by the immortal Berman, with five people, and then a satellite table with three more analysts. Good God.

The best moment of the draft for me, other than the constant analysis of Mel Kiper's hair, was when Kansas City picked guard Branden Albert with the 15th overall pick in the draft. Albert is 6'5" and weighs in at 310 pounds, but when they showed him on his couch at home surrounded by his family I swear he looked like a scat back. He was the smallest one on the couch! It was hilarious. The whole couch erupted with laughter and we were thinking maybe some of his aunts and uncles could be drafted by other teams to help stuff the run. We were in stitches for about ten minutes over this. Ah, obesity - it's fun!

In terms of the (WORLD CHAMPION) G-men, I thought they did OK in the draft as far as I'm concerned. Reese did such a good job last year that he gets a free pass in my eyes anyway. We'll see what happens.

The other big doing lately is that Landstuhl Hospital just finished (and passed) it's inspection by JCAHO last week. The "Joint Commission", as it's known, is an administrative body (and more or less a money-making racket as I see it) that gives accreditation to hospitals. The lead in to such an inspection is such a frenzied spectacle that it's both annoying and hilarious. As I see it, administrative nonsense is always threatening to dominate medicine and actual patient care, and never is that more evident than when one of these "inspections" occurs. Forget the actual care of the patients, just make sure you document in triplicate everything related to what you discussed with the patients - that's the most important thing.

To put it in Star Wars terms (always a good move), the hospital is like the second Death Star and the JCAHO inspection is like the Emperor coming for a visit. We all had to double our efforts, be on our best behavior, and despite our "Business as Usual!" motto, things were anything but last week. It just makes me shake my head.

Thankfully, I had only a small part in the actual inspection, and that related to my role with our inpatient computer system. I was called to a ward one day to help answer questions about our new system. I arrived to find the inspector flanked by full bird Colonels, like an entourage. The inspector was nice enough, but the whole sight was just ridiculous. An utter circus. I'm glad it's over, and thankfully my trachea wasn't crushed.





A good Summary of the JCAHO visit