I have to admit the announcement that Nine Inch Nails is "boycotting" Arizona kinda slid by me yesterday.
After all, like most right thinking people I sorta assumed Trent Reznor was off doing the soundtrack for some children's television program I've never heard of, or civilly married to Marilyn Manson in Florida or living quietly in Ted Bundy's house with a bunch of seven-toed cats.
Then my friend Noah reminded me that Trent just made a huge deal of the band's "Farewell Tour" and "Last Ever Show." Like six months ago. Jay-Z doesn't un-retire that fast, ladies and gentlemen.
"This is it," Spin quotes Trent Reznor as saying at his LA show last September. "I haven't had a chance to catch my breath and think about things ... I'm kinda sad. But I'm not gonna break down in tears just yet."
So, yeah, I'm not sure what the band's "boycott" means. Is it a reverse psychology thing? Is Trent boycotting his on-hiatus status by planning a show here? Is it more than one show? Are we now going to be forced to watch Trent Reznor sing that Johnny Cash song (just kidding -- but, seriously, Cash pwned Reznor there) several nights a week at a local casino? Is Trent Reznor moving here?
The mind reels.
Now, of course Reznor's "retirement" has been a cheap ploy from the beginning. After all, just a tiny bit of googling turned up more than one show he claimed was the band's last in the U.S. of A.
"It just dawned on me that this is our last show ever in the United States," Reznor said several months before that LA show. "Don't be sad. I'll keep going. But I think I'm going to lose my ... mind if I keep doing this, and I have to stop."
"Cool, Trent. We're managing to hold it together out here," you imagine some bored kid in skinny jeans and Chucks saying. "Now sing that song the strippers like, the one about animals fucking."
Anyway, this is officially pathetic. I half expect Zach de la Rocha to now trot out announcements that Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd will not be re-uniting in Arizona, and that the ghosts of Elvis and Brad Nowell have both strongly condemned the law.
Meanwhile, some people from Arizona are doing some positive things to oppose this law which, again, has been called "eerily similar" to a law California voters (not a state legislature) passed not so long ago.
