Anvil

Some people are evil. We know this with our minds, but every once in a while we get to see what we know, and we feel like we've stepped into a Bosch painting, where everyone has reached out for the closest arm or leg and started chewing on it. I got one of those shocks yesterday as I was watching the documentary "Anvil - The Story of Anvil".

If you haven't seen it I'll summarize it quickly, because what I want to talk about is not the main story but a single event within it. The film is about a heavy metal band called Anvil, which apparently started up in the 80-s along with Metallica, The Scorpions, Guns'n'Roses and some others of that group, were one of the best metal bands at that time, but for some reasons (which you can theorize about as you watch the movie) failed to make it big and disappeared into Canadian obscurity. However, instead of breaking up and falling back into writing or playing for other bands, Anvil stayed together and kept working. They've been together for over 25 years and put out about ten more albums, they have a few dozens of devoted fans in Canada where they live, and a few thousands more around the world. The film talks about what their lives look like now, why they failed, and how they're still trying to pull off a last minute comeback.

The part that had me cursing the TV at the top of my lungs happens about half way through, as Lips (the singer and band leader and a very cute guy) gets a chance to work with their old and still very successful producer, and needs to get together enough money for the guys to fly to London and record an album. It would seem that the advantage of being a metal band in your 50-s would be that your fans have become grown-ups with jobs and assets that might be able to help you in your time of need. And indeed we see Lips meeting with one of the die-hard fans that follow the band religiously to every dingy club they play in, who turns out to be the vice president of a telemarketing company. Every normal human being watching expects this guy to loan or even give Lips the money, but no - his idea of helping his idol is to put him to work as a telemarketer. This 50 year old man, who by the way already has one day job, sat in front of the cameras in a room full of teenagers and tried to sell some crappy sunglasses to people over the phone. Can you imagine, even if he turned out to be good at it, how long it would take him to earn enough money for a flight and several weeks stay in London?

This, to me, is an example of true, real, garden variety evil. Because evil is not talking with a scary Darth Vader voice or an evil cackle and plotting a laser beam that would blow up the moon because your mommy didn't love you enough. Evil is when you have power over someone to help them, not help them, or harm and humiliate them, and you choose the worst one of the three. Evil is something that simple, seemingly harmless people do on a tiny scale every single day.

I can't walk into that guy's office today and punch him in the face, all I can do is post his name and photo. Unfortunately he's using a "cool" pseudonym: