Happy 2023!!!

I had the peculiar experience of seeing Damien Chazelle's new film Babylon in the cinema yesterday. I can say, I'm glad I saw it on the big screen. I had some serious issues though. Here's my short, spoiler-free Letterbxd review. One thing I can say I LOVED about this film, though, was Greg Hurwitz's soundtrack. Fabulous.

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Watch:

Speaking of insane budgets, we also watched Rian Johnson's new film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which is a bit overly concerned with showing off its budget and its preeminent accolades; however, ultimately, I dug this and appreciate not only the thought that went into its story but also the refusal to repeat the first.

Personally, I think not only was this one more interesting than the first - not that the first was uninteresting, but Johnson knew he had to crank it up another notch and did - but now that the elation of success has (hopefully) worn off, I'm hoping the next entry in the Knives Out canon will be a far superior film just by way of not having to devote so much time to figuring out cute little ways to name-drop so many major stars. 

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Read:

I'm beginning my reading for the year with a book I completely forgot Mr. Brown lent to me some time ago:

Not only is this a book about Talking Heads, but it's also written by Jonathan Lethem. I've read quite a few of Lethem's novels and one of his comic series (Omega the Unknown from the 00s), but it has been some time. I reread Motherless Brooklyn around the time the movie came out a few years ago, but Amnesia Moon and Gun, With Occasional Music, are both long overdue for engagement, not to mention all the books he's penned that I never got around to. 

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Playlist:

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

Lustmord - Heresy

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Bill Doggett and His Combo - All His Hits

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Justin Hurwitz - Babylon OST

Lustmord - Dark Matter

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

 My final New Year's Pull from my final and now favored deck:

Carefully considering ideas will lead to the next big thing.

2018: November 20th

From Iggy's debut record The Idiot. Reading that Hugo Wilkcen 33 1/3 on Low really opened my eyes to a lot about this album as well (Station to Station also). Wilcken really goes in depth on these two records because they give a lot of context to what Bowie was into doing with music at the time. I'd never realized that the musicians involved in both Low and Station to Station often recorded not knowing which album the tracks would wind up on. Considered in that context, it really changes the way I hear both.

Having finished Low, I started reading the copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book that my Horror Vision/DwC co-host Chris gifted me a couple of months ago. So far, pure Gaiman and arriving just at the right time, when night falls early.

Playlist from 11/19:

Opeth - Ghost Reveries
David Bowie - Low
Gavin Bryars Ensemble - Bryars: The Sinking of the Titanic
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
David Bowie - Station to Station
The Fixx - Shuttered Room
Opeth - Deliverence

No card today.

2018: November 19th

Ended up falling into a Bowie spiral Saturday when I finished Cold Cuts and immediately picked up the copy of Hugo Wilcken's book on Low, published as part of the wonderful 33 1/3 series, that Brown lent me some time ago. Can't put it down, and in turn it's given me a new perspective on Iggy Pop's The Idiot, one of the few Iggy solo albums I'm extremely familiar with. The book also sent me in all sorts of new musical directions, cueing up albums by Neu!, Can (whose discography I worked through a few years back but didn't completely integrate into my musical vocabulary), Elton John, Gavin Bryars, and Sad Barrett's solo stuff, which despite having been an enormous Pink Floyd fan in high school, I've never really gotten around to.

Also, for an idea of Bowie's state of mind while in the Station to Station/Low period, go HERE and read this short except from Angela Bowie's autobiographical book Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with Bowie. Suggestion: skip the religious espousal at the top and go straight to the quotation marks. This is fascinating stuff.

K and I began The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix yesterday. While I can't say the high school stuff is overly interesting to me, I love the set design and ALL of the Satanic imagery! The Dark Lord is just awesome and the fact that we're living in a world where this is a 14+ series makes me happier than I can explain. Just thinking of all the repressively religious types twisting with rage that a show where characters commonly exclaim, "Praise Satan" as a colloquialism of happiness or relief is currently a major part of pop culture puts a damn large smile on my face!

Playlist from Saturday, 11/17:

Ghost - Meliora
Merciful Fate - Don't Break the Oath
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resources Vol. 1
Opeth - Ghost Reveries
Burial - Kindred EP
Thought Gang - Eponymous
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - Low

Playlist from Sunday, 11/18:

David Bowie - Low
Elton John - Honky Chateau
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Neu! - Neu! 2
Ghost - Meliora
Metallica - ... And Justice For All
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Claudio Simonetti & Goblin - Phenomena OST
Vangelis - Heaven & Hell
Friendly Fires - Paris (Airplane Remix)
Opeth - Deliverance

Card of the day:

I believe this draw to be completely non-writing related and primarily based around one aspect of my social life at the moment. I'm not going to discuss that here, however I can also say that despite the hanging on of this drab illness, I managed to push myself out and to my writing place yesterday in preparation for returning to work today, and I had a killer writing session for about two and a half hours where I cinched up the transition into the third act. I'm relying heavily on the Aeon Timeline program at the moment, and it would be A LOT more cumbersome to integrate something so heavily plotted as this without the help of this program. Here's a screen cap:

2018: November 5th

It's been quite some time since I went on an honest-to-goodness Tom Waits kick. Probably the last time was about four years ago when Mr. Brown lent me the 33 1/3 book David Smay penned on Swordfish Trombones. Anyway, I feel a full-on Waits jag coming on, so here's first salvo.

Over the weekend K and I watched the newest Jane Mansfield documentary, Mansfield 66/67. Fantastic! Along with the legendary actress, the film also serves as an exploratory dispatch into Anton Lavey and the Church of Satan, so it's fascinating. I've always bristled at Satanism, which of course has nothing to do with the devil and everything to do with worshipping yourself, which I feel leads to rampant Narcissism. That said, I've also always had a soft spot for Lavey as a public figure. The hilarity that the man instills to those that 'get it' is epic. This is especially apparent in the documentary, as the film spends a lot of time talking about and interviewing people from Mansfield's life about the supposed 'curse' Lavey is said to have put on Jane and her husband at the time (both of whom died in that nasty, Chihuahua-killing cash), all the while showing him dressed in his devil suit, little more than stylized PJs. Lavey was laughing at everyone that took the 'evil' aspect of his publicity push seriously, because he's telling you up front it's a joke by dressing like that.

Not a lot of folks got it though.

Playlist from yesterday:

The Veils - Total Depravity

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Roni Size - New Forms (disc #1)

Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank, Vol. 1

Card of the day:

Threes are solid numbers, and it takes a foundation to acquire abundance. This is the path I've set myself on; there are SO many distractions vying for our money, my job for the next year is to minimize what I allow myself to purchase because I'm starting to think about the need for a foundation in the physical plane, ie a domicile. 

The Flaming Lips and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes - Do You Realize???

I've been on a HUGE Lips kick after reading Mark Richardson's wonderful 33 1/3 entry on Zaireeka. Great version of a song that I believe may be one of the greatest songs ever written - but that also always makes me cry so - as happiness does - so I'm careful with the exposure.

I know I'm tangenting here, but I've never done Zaireeka. I was at the BoomBox Experiment live in 1998, but have never done the home listening experience.

That's about to change.

I've got a xmas bonus coming soon and one of the few things I intend to purchase for myself with a part of that is Zaireeka on cd so I can finally get around to throwing some Zaireeka parties.

Geez, how many times in one post can I say 'Zaireeka'?

image courtesy of blog.kexp.org

Butthole Surfers @ Doornroosje 1985

I never saw them live but out of everything I've found thus far on youtube this clip comes closest to what I always thought one of their shows would have looked like back in the day. Completely fucking insane. How couldn't it be, the original name of the band was The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole. Why the change guys? Really?

Anyway, while googling the aforementioned original band name I found this excellent page HERE that is an oral history of the Surfers. Wow - such a good read. Should be converted into one of those Brilliant little 3 31/3 books.

Also, in researching my missing copy of Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac I found the cover artist's website. Pretty wicked: http://www.macioce.org/