How about a little Talking Heads to start the day before we get into my picks for NCBD and the trailer? One of my favorites from Fear of Music!
NCBD:
A very quiet NCBD this week.
Two more issues left after this one, and things are due to start heating up! Hoping for some INSANE monster action, and this cover certainly suggests that's just what we'll get in issue #3 of Jeremy Haun, Jason A. Hurley and Jesus Hervas's The Approach!
I'm having a hard time ascertaining whether this is just the final issue of X-Men: Red before the X-Books get a three-month remake in the Sins of Sinister storyline (aka Age of Apocalypse), or this is the final issue of that book altogether. I'm hoping it's the former.
Watch:
EVIL DEAD RISE TRAILER!!! 'Nuff said!
Can't freaking wait! I am a BIG fan of Fede Alvarez's Evil Dead 2013 (it's not a remake!), and I expect with Raimi, Campbell and Tapert all Producing again, this will be no different!
So many DISGUSTING images! The Scalp! The cheesegrater!
Playlist:
Bedridden - Soft Soap
Catherine Wheel - Ferment
Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct
Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent (pre-release singles)
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Various - Snow Day: Upcoming Every Day (Is Halloween) playlist
Zonal - Eponymous (single)
Zonal - Wrecked (instrumental side)
Lorn - Rarities
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Emotional Breakthrough via applying learned knowledge but being careful not to be too dogmatic about the approach.
This Abby Sage is something else. I can't say I'm as crazy about "Residing in the Sky" as I am "Smoke Break," but then of late, I'm not crazy about any song the way I am about "Smoke Break." Still, Ms. Sage makes some very cool, interesting music. I don't know that I'd define it as Pop, but I don't know that I wouldn't, either. Whatever her sound, it's unique, that's for sure.
NCBD:
Because of my situation at the moment (see "Watch" below), I won't be making it into the shop today. Luckily, my shop delivers to nearby Pull Customers, so this is what I'm asking them to drop off later this afternoon:
The final issue of this mostly pointless series that I still wouldn't have missed due to its part in the countdown to Nick Spencer's final issue. I've decided in the interest of saving space and $$$, I will not be going forward with the next regular, essentially weekly AMS title. When I get the craving, I can always re-read the Spencer run (I started with issue 48, I think) or any of the 80s Spidey comics I've added to my collection from back-issue bins of late.
I read the first trade of Jeremy Haun's Beauty when it first hit shelves, however, I fell off. The trade later got damaged when I moved and is long gone. Since meeting Jeremy, I've become rather fond of the bloke - he is a true Horror fan, a gentleman and most definitely a scholar. That has bumped up re-starting Beauty on the list. I think I'll start by buying the one-shot series finale this week, just to have it in the collection, then finally read it when I can grab the series in trade and catch up.
I'm not 100% I'm going to buy this title, but I'm intrigued to say the least.
I just caught up with the last two issues of Geiger a week or two ago and I'm already hungry for more. This is shaping up to be one of my favorite books of the year.
This book is F*&king INSANE. Like a modern version of early 80s exploitation cinema, but gorier!
Watch:
Well, after a year-and-a-half of caution and close calls, I'm sick at home since Tuesday morning, waiting on the results of a COVID test. It's funny how, even if you don't let your guard down, the world can get you. One of my employees has an eleven-and-a-half-year-old sister who started school two weeks ago, was tested and found to have COVID, and thus, the virus may have made its way to me by way of the office we share. We observe all the proper protocols, and both the employee in question and myself are vaxxed, so the symptoms are mild at best, but still. While my employee is a confirmed positive - luckily with next to no symptoms - and two rapid tests in the last few days came back negative for me, we're playing it extra safe and I'm waiting on the PCR results at home. I'd just finished 9 days in a row and have been feeling like crap anyway, so I ordered a bottle of Breez Royal Mint Spray (the ease of the cannabis delivery world is one thing I will miss when I move from LaLaLand), and spent yesterday doing a full recharge. Besides beginning Stephen Graham Jones's new novel My Heart is a Chainsaw - which, a quarter of the way through I f*&king LOVE, and which totally put me in the headspace for 80s Horror - here's what I watched as recharge comfort food:
And how can you watch the original and not follow it with one of the all-time greatest movies in history? The answer, you can't.
So, that was the comfort food portion of my sabbatical. Next up, a film I had not seen, but my friend/colleague Heaven is an Incubator logged on his Letterbxd a few months back and looked interesting, 1989's The Dead Pit:
Turns out I LOVE this flick! It's not good by any stretch of the imagination, but its heavy-handed Nightmare on Elm Street influence immediately endeared it to me, as well as the fact that the weird, dream-like tone and often half-completed set design makes it the perfect pairing for a double feature with another schlock flick I adore, 976-EVIL, which I may watch today.
Next, one I had not seen in ages, and thus did not readily remember very well. Stan Winston's 1988 directorial debut, Pumpkinhead:
There is not a shot in this film that I don't adore. The lighting and set design are heavenly... well, hellenly? You know what I mean. The Blackwood Cemetery sequence and Pumpkinhead's grave especially stay with me, as does the fact that, when Ed Harley first digs up Pumpkinhead and Haggis sets about resurrecting it, the young version looks almost exactly like Sam from Trick r' Treat without his mask on!
Pretty cool, huh? So, when Sam grows up, will he be a demon of vengeance?
Playlist:
St. Vincent - Daddy's Home
Jerry Cantrell - Atone (single)
Ultra Bann - Big Trouble in Little Haiti
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
Abby Sage - Smoke Break
The Bangels - All Over the Place
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
Card:
I'm assuming this is a nod that I will 'fail' my COVID test, ie be negative. This means I'm just suffering from a cold - something that didn't use to garner nearly this much anxiety.
Looking at the image for this card makes me want to go a bit deeper, though. I'm seeing it for the Abyss it represents visually. I may choose to use this as a starting point for something I may attempt to write today (can't spend every day recharging).
Full article on Bloody Disgusting, Legion looks like it will be one hell of a ride. I love the visual allusions to Evil Dead, I love the links to Shamanism and Sorcery, and, well, I guess I love everything about this trailer.
**
Playlist:
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough, Vol. 1
Belong - October Language
Psychetect - Extremism
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
**
Channeling the Will to forge new goals. As usual, on the nose with my creative endeavors. The novel is finished, I'm palate cleansing with a short story, and then it's back to Shadow Play.
Speaking of writing, here's a situation I find myself in need of help with.
I'm running a poll on the Horror Amino at the moment, but I'll post my quandary here as well. Any readers who are able to post a reply with their opinion on this matter, it would be much appreciated. That said, I generally do not comment on other sites due to an aversion to elongating my online fingerprint, so I will absolutely understand if no one does.
Here's the deal:
The current title for the new novel is The Secret Life of Murder. I'm having doubts about that name, primarily based on friends' who read this back when it was finished in 2008 and didn't take to the title.
Some background:
This is not the second book in the Shadow Play trilogy, which is completely outlined. And when I say outlined, we're talking detailed to the point that the word count of the outline may very well rival or best the eventual word count on the actual novel. That said, I am refraining from actually writing Book Two until Book Three's outline is complete. Three was about 50% outlined as of February, however, two things made me push both of these back so that Book Two will now release in 2021 and Book Three 2022. Those two things were A) Realizing I would not be able to finish outlining Book Three and write Book Two this year, and B) the onset of COVID-19, Shelter-in-Place, and borderline mass hysteria seemed too in-line with The Secret Life of Murder, which follows a small group of characters trapped in Seattle, Washington as a "Murder Virus" the press has nicknamed MV-3 works its way through the population. MV-3 turns everyone infected into rampaging murder drones, and the resulting wave of chaos appears unstoppable. The virus is introduced into the population by way of a book written by a shadowy ex-hippy guru names Abremlin Harvest.
Being that this one was already finished but has sat for over a decade, the work I set out to do was fairly straight forward: I knew there would be a lot of grammatical/syntax issues I needed to edit, because, simply put, I am a much better writer now than I was thirteen years ago. I also knew the timeline of events that make up the plot would need to be sharpened, and I wanted to work the emotions, situations, and socio-political elements occurring in our own world into the story, making it more parallel to what we've experienced so far in 2020. This was not difficult to do, although I did end up changing an entire layer of the final act to better reflect the character arc of the Earth, which figures in as a sort of character when you take into account that, much like I believe with COVID-19, the planet is employing the virus as a medicinal reaction to the overpopulation currently choking the life from it. Taking all this into account, I still feel as though The Secret Life of Murder is the best title, however, after living with this one for so long, I'm unsure if I feel that way because it is a good title, or if it just feels that way to me because it has stood as the uncontested 'placeholder' for it in my head for thirteen years.
The question then is, without having read this novel, is The Secret Life of Murder a title that you would scroll past on amazon or - if you're lucky enough to have one - the shelf of an actual book store. Is its not-so-subtle play on all those non-fiction books from the 00s (The Secret Life of Bees, The Secret Life of Lobsters, etc) cause for an eye roll? Or is it intriguing enough to make you want to at the very least read the synopsis?
Praise be to the might Bloody Disgusting for plastering this one on their front page, right where it belongs! Not sure what to even say. Talk about inspiring. Courtlan Gourdan did this in 72 hours for $200? It might be time to finally think seriously about making the Short Film I've had planned for a few years now.
**
On Friday, October 18th, I had the members of The Horror Vision Podcast over to record an episode that started out with a planned viewing/reaction to Babak Anvari's Wounds. However, things slipped from my grasp - the battery meter on our Recording Device read a solid three out of four lines for not one but two pairs of batteries, only to die unexpectedly. The delay pushed back the viewing until we missed our spot to have everyone present participate, and realistically we were down my Left Hand Man Anthony, so the night just ran into random horror film conversations. Which was definitely cool in its own right, hence why I took the time to stitch together a mostly coherent episode and put it online. In listening back to it, there's one rough edit where two different conversations unexpectedly bleed into one another, and you can absolutely hear my up-at-four-AM ass lose steam somewhere near the middle of the episode, but overall, pretty solid discussion. Check it out, and we should have another new one up sometime real soon.
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena
10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds
10/17: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18: Creepshow Episode 4
10/19: Ed Wood/AHS 1984 Ep. 5
10/20: Sinister/Sinister 2
10/21: Uncanny Annie
10/22: Scream
10/23: Simpsons 666: Treehouse of Horror
10/24: Jennifer's Body
10/25: Belzebuth/The Lighthouse/Halloween
10/26: Murder Party
**
Playlist for 10/26:
Tones on Tail - Everything
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Zombi - Shape Shift
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Ghost - Infestissumam
The Doobie Brothers - What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits
**
Card of the day:
Interesting. I've been warring with myself for the last twelve hours or so, over an awkward social situation that blasted my night in splinters last night. Well, a series of them really, culminating with an almost telekinetic manifestation of the anxiety I've been carrying with me for a few days. Lots of stress right now, at work and in life. This Pull is a nice indication I should let it go.
How about a little Ted Leo and the Pharmacists to kick off the mid-week holiday?
Get you feeling good? Me too. There is so much Thin Lizzy in that song it's awesome!
The Comic Bug recently bought at massive collection and that means there are about a dozen long boxes (at least) of comics out for $1.00 right now, set up in the middle of their shop. A couple weeks I did some light digging and, as I always am when digging through back issue long boxes like this, I was in the mood for grabbing a few 80s/early 90s copies of Newsprint Marvels. I went with a few issues of The Avengers, specifically #352, 353, and 354. Why? Well, I never really read Avengers growing up, however I did pick up a few issues around this time back in the day and I've always been subsequently intrigued by the way the team - much like Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, often cycled out the 'Big Names' and operated with a cast of C, D, and maybe even E level characters. And you know, that didn't make the stories bad, it actually made them more interesting than just having status quo re-achieved after every arc or crossover.
Also of note in these three particular issues, penned by Len Kaminski and drawn by M.C. Wyman, is the heavy influence of the original Evil Dead movies. You see it a bit in the covers to 353 and 354, but there's a lot of little stuff lovingly cribbed from the ED2 and Army of Darkness. This fits, as these were published right about the time AoD was released.
Great covers, right? I am especially fond of 353.
Playlist from 7/02:
John Frusciante - Niandra LaDes and Usually Just a T-Shirt
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Jane's Addiction - Kettle Whistle
Nirvana - Incesticide
Cocksure - Corporate_Sting
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
The Casket Lottery - Smoke and Mirrors E.P.
Fever Ray - Plunge
White Hex - Gold Nights
Jeff Grace - House of the Devil OST
Card of the day:
Pressure has eased. Yes - perfect. Yesterday was the first day after I handed over the 76k+ second draft of T12 to Keller. Immediate relief, although I didn't come until I walked to my writing spot, fired up the laptop and closed the T12 Scrivener doc, then opened up my short story one and started something new. So yes, the pressure has eased.
Watched Evil Dead (2013) for about the fifth time last night, as K had never seen it. SO fucking good. Please Mr. Alvarez, make that sequel!!!
Playlist from 6/18:
Chasms - On the Legs of Love Purified
Wrong - Fee Great
Cocksure - TVMALSV
Beach House - 7
Nothing - Zero Day (single)
Them are Us Too -
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Card today:
The Emotional Aspect of Air. Wielding the Will with emotional maturity. Knowing when to back off and when to be assertive.
Simply put, I Love Fede Alvarez's 2013 continuation of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead SO MUCH that I would follow him to hell and back (Love Panic Attack!too). So when I heard about his new film Don't Breathe - although I'm bummed it's not another chapter in Mia's corner of the Evil Deadverse - I was stoked for another movie from him, especially one with such an awesome concept.
I can NOT wait for this. After, what? Thirty freakin' years we're getting another chapter in Ash's life. That said, I'm a fan of BOTH Evil Dead timelines and I still really want another Fede Alvarez-directed movie with Mia.
I can't wait for this. That said, I also still want Fede Alvarez to do a part 2 in his end of the Evil Dead-verse. I want more Mia, and holding out that she and Ash will eventually team up.
I cannot wait to own this. Thanks to the almighty Bloody Disgusting for posting this. I don't care what anybody has to say about this, I LOVED it. And, as my friend Ray pointed out, the fact that THE car is sitting at the cabin, already there when our new characters arrive, well, that means it's cannon. Now granted THE car gets transported into the past at the end of Evil Dead 2 doesn't really argue convincingly to me, granted that Raimi re-writes the specifics of each movie as he goes.
Hot-off the heels of my Friday night viewing of Evil Dead - which I LOVED and most definitely is NOT a remake - I'm still reeling with all things Evil and Dead. Thus, I thought I'd post this little gem that the always awesome and informative (and fun!) Aintitcoolnews posted recently.
You know, I just put two and two together for the first time. I remember when this short went viral about three years ago - I loved it and the story that followed about how Raimi supposedly flew the creator up to LA from his native Uruguay and put him to work for Ghost House made me even more happy. It reinforced what a great person and outside-the-box filmmaker Raimi is. Flash forward a couple years and Ataque de Pánico! has been off my radar long enough for it never to have dawned on me that this was the same guy directing the Evil Dead remake.
Now I'm even more excited and honestly, I didn't think that was possible.
Bought my tickets last night for Evil Dead on Friday. I CAN'T WAIT!!! I'm posting this from work - if you watch this you're seeing it before me as my hands are freezing from liquid nitrogen vapor and I've no speakers on this computer. There may be spoilers as far as the franchise. thanks to the always awesome bloodydisgusting for posting this.
