For a big guy, the evil-looking Clown from the band Slipknot can move pretty fast. In a flash he leaps out of his seat, lunges at me with a stiletto blade and plunges it into my chest. "Nothing else means anything to me," he snarls, his face inches away from mine, his eyes burrowing to the back of my skull, his knife slowly being withdrawn from my flesh.

"It's like Gandalf facing the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dum," I note, but the "Lord of the Rings" reference goes over the Clown's head. I guess fairy tales don't impress real-life monsters.

It was the Clown's way of emphasizing a point he'd just made -- when he dies he doesn't want it to be painless and quiet, but totally in his face. It kind of totally sums up what Slipknot is all about . . .