Eek... the Portnoy PR is not getting any better...
If I were a smidge more optimistic, I'd be seriously entertaining the possibility that this might all be a game of PR chess, and that Mike's exit was a very clever strategy designed to curry Dream Theater as much favour and public respect as possible for the dawning of their
brand new age, culminating in a Christmas miracle by which... um... Mike... fuck, I don't know, the theory loses steam here. Rises from the dead? I'm not optimistic enough to finish the thought, truth be told.
Sadly, I suspect the whole thing's precisely as upsetting and profoundly sad as it looks, and that Mike Portnoy's christmas gift this year will be a trailer for A DRUMatic Turn of Events, where he sits around throwing Dream Theater branded drumsticks at his hi-hat in time to On the Backs of Angels, silently weeping.
...Or somewhere in between. Crikey, I've lost the knack for this neutrality lark, haven't I? Honestly, it's nothing to joke about. The man's trying his hardest, bless him, and I think he just wants two things at once. He's... not troubled, but the poor fellow does
not need me making snidey comments on the internet. He's ambivalent. Wants the best for everyone but, simultaneously, can't stand not being a part of the best for everyone. Twice. That's not so hard to sympathise with, is it? Not to sound too morose but I have that feeling on a daily basis! Then to chuck a
podium at the poor sod and let a thousand well-intentioned fans prod him to tell the truth until he bursts, while a thousand others tell him he's an awful person in the privacy of his own home... can
anyone say with any confidence they'd be even a smidge more graceful? I'd like to think I'd be able to compose myself - it's easy to sit behind a desk and hold up a scoreboard - but honestly, I wouldn't even be able to write a single Adrenaline Mob song. Not even Psychosane! I'd just be sat at home breaking my fingers on walls.
The PR's dreadful, but in fairness, so's replaying events from a year ago in your head and trying to work out where you messed up. If he looks like he's bitter it's probably 'cos he's bitter. Which doesn't make it innately more sufferable - we're his exes as much as the band are, (and I'm happy to deliver brain-bleach for £1.00 a pop, by the way) and we're thereby just as entitled to be sick of his theatrics as he is to be hamming it up like a third year drama student. I'm ultimately on our side - I do wish he wouldn't make it everyone else's problem, but in the end we're all just seven billion idiots muddling our way to the graveyard. For every day he says something silly, there are about sixty he holds it in. That's an okay whack for something that's consumed twenty-five years of a man's life. Who can blame something as flawed as a human for not always being able to keep work and life separate? I can barely keep my pants and my head separate.
Though I will say that briefs make brilliant commando masks.
Topic: A Retweet from JCRudess (Read 6933 times)
