James & Me: A Confessional

Warning: This is the one serious part of the site. If you want to go straight to the humor and pics, that's cool, just click on the links at left.

Wading through this website, you might get the impression that I don't like James Hetfield very much. But nothing could be further from the truth. I love James and Metallica, or rather, I love what they once were. This website is a labor of love.

I got into Metallica in high school, and I quickly grew to adore them. And eventually, I had to admit to myself that I thought James was totally sexy. I didn't admit it to anyone else, though. It was the guiltiest of guilty secrets.

I wasn't the most hardcore of fans. I liked the Black Album. I didn't even think that Load was the total end of the world. But then...well, even a tolerant person can only stand so much. So Metallica and I called it quits. Sort of.

My relationship with James (and Metallica) is rather like a love affair that ended in a really, really ugly breakup. You know, my feelings were disregarded, I felt betrayed, and my "ex" had turned into someone I couldn't even recognize anymore. Like any scorned woman, I got pissed. "To hell with you!" I said. "Who needs you? I'm never buying one of your lousy records again, asshole!" And yet...

I could never quite let go. Although I haven't bought a Metallica cd or concert ticket in a very long time, over the years I've found myself at their website on a regular basis, seeing what they're up to, or checking for recent pics of James on the AP image wires. I keep picking at that wound. Why? What am I looking for?

Hope, I guess. A sign that maybe things could be ok again. Stupid, I know. And extremely unlikely. But hey, love is stupid.

What's all this got to do with hair? Well, since the stupider James got, the stupider his hair got, in my delusional little mind I like to think that if only he could get back to his 'real' look, maybe his real self would follow. And the music would stop sucking. And we could patch things up.

And since I was checking up on James anyway, I thought, "What the hell, why not share what I find with the world?" Or maybe my mind just snapped after one two many Metallica-related dissapointments.

Either way, the end result of all this festering pain is this goofy website. Because if we couldn't laugh at James, we'd have to cry.

-cg 2004