THE COOL KIDS

No one can say what this world is coming to, but for a big part of the population, it probably can't be good with these discoveries. Look, this is old news but I never posted anything about it so I'm doing it now.

VEGAN

Yep. Mike Tyson went vegan and lost 130 pounds to get back into fighting shape. of course, he's probably not going to be fighting anyone because he's washed up and batshit crazy. But still, him being vegan is pretty awesome.

STRAIGHT EDGE

Metallica hasn't put out a good record since The Black Album (even as much as I love Garage Days, I know that isn't really a Metallica album) and the whole band has been a shell of their former selves since somewhere around the turn of the century. Sure, Hetfield was battling addiction, but when the band started squabbling in front of a family therapist for the sake of a documentary, there's just no coming back from that.

But now, Hetfield is "reborn Straight Edge." And any way you look at it, this is kind of cool. Mainly because it pisses off metal fans everywhere. As someone on another blog said, it's not like the guy was a few beers away from Master Of Puppets II, anyway.

This interview was in the Metallica Fan Club zine, So What?

SO WHAT: (Caught by a tattoo)… that's a new one, right? Sorry-

James: Straight edge? Yeah.

SO WHAT: You're not getting away with the last comment, incidentally. We'll have to go back to that. But anyways, the straight edge X.

James: Right. Well, straight edge, this was certainly a design of my own. You know, the old straight edge tattoo, it's just like a big X on your hand. No drinking, and I don't drink. It's like when you go into the clubs, they put and X on your hand…

SO WHAT: Right. It's because you haven't shown your ID.

James: And I don't need drink or drugs. That's straight edge life. Obviously I'm not straight edge – a true, hardcore straight edge has never had any of it in her or her whole life. But I'm a reborn straight edge.

SO WHAT: I always associated Minor Threat and Ian MacKaye and those guys with straight edge punk. That's what they were all about.

James: Absolutely. There's some hardcore people that are straight edge from birth. So this was my take on the straight edge X, you know? Straight razors. A straight edge, is what that was all about.

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I don't care what anyone else says. Both of these are awesome.