A Ten Year Argument Between Critter & I Gets New Wind

Critter and I have been the best of friends for about fifteen years now. His family is my family, mine is his. Most people think it's a weird pairing... but the biggest thing we have in common is work ethic and professional expectations. Our shared extremely morbid and often beyond inappropriate senses of humor probably bind us together even more, but it was the work thing that started the friendship.

One of the weirder quirks to our friendship is our differences. I'm younger enough to be his child, yet the age thing never really became an obstacle. Naturally, being so far apart in age, our tastes greatly differ on topics like music, motorcycles, cars, etc... We honestly have different visions of the "ideal" everything, case and point, movies.

As I'm begrudgingly part of the millennial generation, I enjoy things like the Harry Potter movies whereas he like the Hellraiser series. He's a Simpson's guy, I'm Futurama. He's Harley, I'm Honda. He's 80's Metallica, I'm 90's Metallica... that sort of generational gapping.

It was about a decade ago that I showed up to work after a weekend at the movies talking about this funny, nerdy, goofy movie called Pitch Perfect. I saw it in theaters on a date and I thought it was hilarious. College students' journey of self-discovery and communal bonding over the wild shenanigans of competitive acapella, what's not funny about that?

For five years, when it came up in conversation, Critter would ask me "What's so funny about it? It's super dark..." We were talking tomato/tomato, data/data, potato/potato... Turns out, he was thinking of Pitch Black, where Vin Diesel is some sort of super-anti-hero something or other.

Critter did finally get around to seeing Pitch Perfect and he has not stopped giving me grief about it sense.

Is it a chick flick? Sure, I'll give him that... but it's hilarious. Projectile vomiting and locker-room humor, it's passable.

Even as we argued and I managed to justify everything he took issue within such a flick geared toward the other gender, he finally drew a line in the sand over the music... or lack thereof.

Acapella is a genre of "music" where every sound you hear is generated from a vocal arrangement. It's the air-guitar of actually making music, and it's the one thing I had no answer for. Art is subjective, so if a person says "This isn't art" they're just as correct as the person that says it is.

Enter Van Canto...

Finally, a retort to the suggestion that acapella music can't be metal, er-go, acapella is lame.

Van Canto is a (mostly) acapella metal group signed to the same label that publishes for most of the bands you can hear on Z94's Altered State - AKA - the longest-running true metal show in America.

I had no idea this was really a thing, and to be honest, it's an interesting take on one of his classic favorites.

Of course, not to be outdone, upon hitting play, Critter just gave a snort of confident contentment. He didn't say it sucked, but he didn't say it was good either... It's just different, meaning there is an acceptable spectrum of acapella in this world, proving Pitch Perfect is and will continue being a great movie, chick flick or not.