The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. - Thursday, February 17, 1994 - 3 Veteran talks of Battle of the Bowls Nothing fosters dissonance like an unwashed cereal bowl. The crusty bran adheres to the white ceramic, and in the name of Palmolive, all hot- and-bothered-hell breaks loose. The Gulf War was nasty, but it was never any match for the battles in my house: The War of the Dirty Dishes. II fingerprinted..." I trail off. They look at me eagerly. I con- tinue. "Then, whenever there's a dirty dish in the sink we can take it to the police and find out who the real cul- prit is!" Housemates One through Six break out in applause. I ring the Ann Arbor Police Department. "Criminol- ogy lab please," I request demurely. "Criminology," answers an of- ficer. I explain my predicament. He sounds sympathetic, but cannot help me. "We're busy giving parking tick- ets. Try the FBI," he advises. But I have done enough work on the issue; it's only fair that the others do their share. I write a note on our message board. "Someone call the FBI about getting fingerprinted." "I took out the garbage this week," writes Housemate One in response. "I called about snow removal last month," writes Housemate Three. "I picked up the remote control when it fell off the TV stand three days ago," scribbles Housemate Five. Obviously, we have all expended our share of chore energy for the semes- ter. The FBI will have to wait. So the war rages on, and I hurry home to the front every day after class. Of course, if I can't make it, CNN has very good coverage. Opera- tion Dessert Spoon, they are calling us. Catchy, no? "Today an Allied soldier took all the dishes from the sink and put them in a grocery bag in the middle of the family room," reports Peter Arnett. "The Axis and other Allied soldiers have been slow to react." I go home to check this out. Sure enough, there sits the bag, filled up with crusty macaroni bowls and stained tea mugs. Housemate Four is staring into it intently. "I would have put them on people's beds," she says with a nasty grin. Shell shock, no doubt. I walk into the kitchen where Housemate Six perches over the sink. She starts to pick up a dirty cup to flash in my face. Battle fatigue upon me, I grab for the white dish towel to wave in surrender. But stained with grape juice and embedded with cornflake crumbs, the towel is no longer white and she misunderstands. "It's about time someone washed that rag," she says. I come home to find Housemate One deep in the trenches, metal spoon in one hand, plastic plate in the other. "Hello," I remark amicably. "Grrr," she growls at me. I make a quick break for the stairs. "Housemate Four and I saw you using this," she yells after me, "You can run but you can't hide." None of us are sure at what point war became inevitable. Maybe with the sinking of the Lusitania, perhaps upon the assassination of the Arch- duke Ferdinand. Of course, it could have begun with the spaghetti sauce pan that sat on the stove for three days, eight hours and 47 minutes. Taking sides becomes part of the plan. Housemates One, Two and Three against Four, Five and Six. Two, Four and One against Three, Six and Five. The gangs are always different, though the battle remains the same. No time of day is sacred, and there is no sanc- tity of a no man's land. "These dishes are yours," the Al- lies scream. "No, they're yours!" respond the Axis. Plates and bowls fly, exploding against each other in midair. Custard's Last Stand ends with eight casualties - two plates, four bowls, one mug and one shot glass. In effort to quell the tension, we hold a peace conference. "Why don't we each have a day of the week when we're responsible for doing all the dishes?" suggests Housemate Two. Everyone glares at her. "We could start using paper and plastic," says Housemate Five. "But who will take out the extra garbage?" says Housemate Six, al- ways quick on her toes. I have an idea. "What if we all get U Paul D'Amour, Maynard James Keenan, Adam Jones and Danny Carey became Tool while in college. Tool tours with hardware in gear By TED WATTS Tool is storming the world. Since last spring they have toured the U.S. oi Lollapalooza, toured Europe with Fishbone and Rage Against the Ma- chine and seen their first full-length album, "Undertow," achieve gold sta- tus (with the help of heavy MTV airplay). Recently, they embarked on the first leg of their current 20-show U.S.-Canadian tour with the group Failure - a tour culminating on Feb- ruary 26th in Detroit, the day before they leave to tour Europe again. Whew. With a schedule like that, it's hardly surprising that Tool ex- presses bundles of unpleasant emo- tions in their work. Anger, hate, dis- gust and depression are all readily apparent in their lyrics, as well as in their deep, resonating metal-like mu- sic. With this in mind, vocalist Maynard James Keenan's influences might seem the tiniest bit odd. They are as follows: "Steve Martin. 'Kids in the Hall.' I like the Kids because they're pretty well thought-out." While the thought-out aspect of "Kids" may be an integral part of Tool, the physical comedy most cer- ainly is not. They get no-giddier than ihe darkest of humor in most of their songs, unless you find physical agony comical. Their new single "Prison Sex", for example, is not the kind of song that would seem to come from a guy who used to wear a fake arrow through his head. While Keenan understatedly describes it as "a sur- real kind of song," the fact that forc- ible sodomy is at the root of the lyrics has a tendency to belie comedic par- Vlels. Its video, filmed by guitarist Adam Jones in the same stop motion anima- tion style as their acclaimed first video Sober," will undoubtedly lend itself more to comparisons to the dark work of the Brothers Quay than to the Smurfs. This mindset is reinforced wvhen Keenan quotes a Grand Rapids garage band named Lipsmear: "Kill the Smurfs, kill the Smurfs, they're ugly and they're sinners. Oswald, Oswald, he's our man; eat those damn blue things for dinner." This isn't kid stuff. However, Keenan has relatively little to say about himself or his band, choosing instead to exude reticence and surliness which wonderfully fit the atmosphere that envelops Tool. When asked how he liked playing live, he answered "Fun, for the most part" - a frustratingly simple answer from the frontman of a band which amazed audiences during last year's lollapalooza. Having now played them to deal with some of the wick- edly horrible themes they explore. Maybe it just shows their desire to keep people from getting easy an- swers. They are, after all, devotees of the ideology set forth in the book "A Joyful Guide to Lachrymology" (lachrymology being the study ofcry- ing), which basically amounts to redi- recting pain to useful ends. They give the pain, the listener uses that pain for (hopefully) positive ends. Of course, they may just be bastards as a result of their success. Tool is quick to bite the institu- tional hands that feed them that suc- cess. Keenan is proud of the fact that the band's contract gives them more or less full freedom to do whatever they want. More pointedly he feels free to loathe the thing that is quite possibly the most responsible for Tool's success: Beavis and Butt-head. The loathsome pair took up Tool's standard by deeming the video for "Sober" worthy of praise. Keenan is not impressed. "Now they've given up saying what sucks and now they're trying to tell you which ones are cool," he complained. "And now they're selling records. They should just stick to playing the ones that suck. It's much more fun when they bag on videos instead of telling us which ones are cool." You have to respect someone so true to himself that he kills his supporters in expressing his beliefs. At any rate, Tool is skilled at their delightful infliction of painful emo- tion and beautiful music. It is safe to say that they can be enjoyable. But be careful. They may just disassemble you. TOOL will play at the State Theater in Detroit on February 26; Failure will open the show. Call 961-5450 for details. Carolyn Quint Was named r4e Jihigan Pai1y Display Account Executive of the Week. Congratulations ATTENTION Due to Spring Break, there, the following Publication Date Monday, Feb. 28 Tuesday, March 1 Wednesday, March 2 will be early deadlines for publications: Deadlfne Thursday, Feb. 17 Thursday, Feb. 17 Thursday, Feb. 17 Douglas Coupland . f $15.30 at Border Saturday, February 26, 2:00 p.m. Next semester, broaden your horizons with Beaver College. You can intern in London, ponder Peace Studies in Austria, cycle to class in Oxford or study Spanish in Mexico. You can even stop by a cafe in Vienna or explore a Greek isle. We also have a wide variety of university programs in the U.K. and Ireland. For over 30 years, Beaver College has been sending students abroad for the experience of their lives. Now it's time for yours.