Earmageddon: Lou Reed, "Metal Machine Music"

In David Cronenberg's 2005 movie A History of Violence, Viggo Mortensen stars as Tom Stall, a small-town diner owner whose decisive intervention in a robbery makes him a local hero. At first, Stall's reluctance to embrace his newfound notoriety seems like it's nothing more than a reflection of regular old good-guy bashfulness, but we soon learn he has other reasons for wanting to remain anonymous — chief among them his secret past as Joey Cusack, a former hit man for the mob. Despite his life-altering efforts to leave that past behind, Tom/Joey is forced to confront old enemies and contend with long-buried debts. It's an unpleasant movie, but a fascinating one, not least because of the decidedly unglamorous and eagerly confrontational way it treats death onscreen.

Cronenberg has said he views A History of Violence as a meditation on the human body's relationship with violence, but I think that's probably just how he sees all of his movies, and probably many movies made by other filmmakers; like a lot of geniuses, he seems like a bit of a weird bird. For me, Violence's real message is a lot easier to parse: It's about the ways in which acts of violence leave a ripple effect that can't be directed or contained. Regardless of intention, regardless of moral justification, there are reactions to those actions that the actor will eventually be forced to confront.

I bring all this up because in 2007, my dear friend Jason Hare forced me to listen to Paris Hilton's debut album, and I responded to this act of violence with overwhelming force — specifically, by mailing him a (freshly reissued) copy of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and forcing him to sit through the entire infamous hour. (You can read his Metal Machine experience here and watch part of it in this video, which has racked up an impressive 25,000 views.)

Although Jason took his punishment like a champ, he also argued that my response to his playful musical jab was excessively punitive; at the time, I publicly dismissed this as the whining of a man who has been taught to regret messing with the wrong person, but in my heart of hearts, I always sort of knew I'd gone overboard. I wasn't sorry, mind you, but I knew he sort of had a point.

And now, nearly 20 years later, this sneering, leather-clad chicken has come home to roost.

It comes — as do so many awful, awful things — courtesy of discarded fondue fountain Dave Lifton, who chose Metal Machine Music as his retaliation for being forced to listen to a double album of Corey Feldman music earlier this year. At the time, he warned me that I would get what I deserved, and for once in his lumpen life, he was correct — not because Lou Reed's demented opus is a sensible response to a double dose of Feldman, but because every act of violence leaves a ripple effect. When I mailed that copy of Metal Machine Music to Jason, I sealed my own fate; try as I might to avoid it by balancing the karmic scales, I was always going to have to confront my past.