Now that that's taken care of, let's get into some comics!
NCBD has become a much bigger deal to me since Mike Wellman (AKA Mike Wahlman) and I resurrected Drinking with Comics. Here's what I'll be picking up today and (hopefully reading) before tomorrow at 7:00 PM PST when we live-stream the new episode and talk about all this stuff on our FB page! If you miss the stream, the edited episode will be up early Friday. That's the schedule we've set and are attempting to stick to for the foreseeable future. Now on to this week's books in...
PULL LIST:
I'm really feeling Spiderman lately, even though I'm not super into the way Peter Parker appears to be a teenager in his monthlies and an adult in the regular Marvel titles (as evidenced in The King in Black, which I broke down and bought all five issues of last week and overall enjoyed). Spider's Shadow is a kind of limited "What If" that asks What if Peter had become Venom. As for Non-stop Spiderman, this will probably be my last issue of it, however, the current Falcon and Winter Soldier show has my blood up for some Baron Zemo, and he made his appearance in the final pages of Nonstop #1, so I'm back for more Zemo!
Five days ago: in the car, a cover of Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill comes on KROQ and mildly annoys me. I erroneously dismiss it as another 'Of Monsters and Men' type band covering a song I adore.
One day ago: I hear the same Kate Bush cover on the radio that is always on at work. Normally tuned exclusively to KXLU, lately, the dial has been set to KROQ. I relive the experience in the car from a few days before, walk out and Shazam the track, realizing as I stand there with my phone in my hand that I actually like the cover.
Fifteen minutes ago: I wake up early, set up to stretch and see that I ear-marked the artist in question, Meg Myers', 2014 Make A Shadow EP on Apple Music. I download the tracks, lay out a yoga mat and hit play. While attempting to stretch out incredibly sore hamstring muscles, the first track starts and I melt.
This is amazing. Full salvo - this hits me hard.
Five minutes ago: I start this post, a newly minted Meg Myers fan.
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It's time again for...
For the first time in years yesterday, I listened to Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too by the New Radicals. This was a huge album for me in the early 2000s, but perhaps because of that fact, it feels as though it belongs to that era. In this on-going obsession with recontextualizing the 00s, I listened to the album in one straight shot at work and experienced it in a deeply emotional way. Which was very, um, cathartic, I guess. Weird to experience a strong emotional response to music in an office with other people around, but it's kind of a different office aesthetic than most people have, so it worked.
I followed the one album Greg Alexander recorded as New Radicals with a song that often surprises people when it pops up on my iPod in a public forum. I know nothing about Michelle Branch and I'm not the biggest Carlos Santana fan, especially the album I'm about to reference here. However, this song, written by Alexander, sounds like it belongs on that one New Radicals album. I love it. When Ms. Branch hits those "tell my whhhyyyy" parts, it does to my soul exactly what Alexander's voice does on album opener Mother We Just Can't Get Enough, and it feels very, very good.
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Finished the second season of Veronica Mars, and we're now a quarter of the way through the third. I've seen all these before, but my memory sucks, so while I remember how the main season arcs sweep, I don't completely remember how they get to where they're going. That was certainly the case with the climax of Season Two, where I remembered who had blown up the bus, but not why. I also didn't remember just how damn dark that Season Two finale gets, or how dark Season Three's main story is. Is this why the show ultimately disintegrated in the ratings that propelled it through its initial lifespan and subsequent following?
Chomping at the bit to revisit the movie - which I remember nothing about - and to get to the new Season on Hulu.
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The new episode of The Horror Visionis up. Movie of the episode is James Gunn's wonderful 2006 gross-out Slither, but the conversation goes all over the place, from Jennifer Kent's Babadook follow-up The Nightengale, to AHS 1984's conclusion (no spoilers), to Clive Barker's Nightbreed. Oh, and our Classic Corner is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Doing the movies-on-silent-in-the-background-while-I-write thing again, and it seems to be working well for inspiration. Recent features:
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Playlist:
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Soundgarden - Down On the Upside
St. Germaine - Tourist
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Federale - No Justice
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturian Poetry
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond
Telephone Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself
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Card:
Which I associate with a very good friend who I spoke to immediately after pulling the card - coincidentally, not by design - who experienced a 6.4 Earthquake in Tirana. Stay safe, brother.
I am kind of becoming excited for the Sandman Universe comic line, despite absolutely hating the most recent Neil Gaimen Sandman series Overture. I have to give it another try, if for no other reason than JH Williams III's absolutely mind bending art.
The penultimate edition of my Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE. Like last week, I didn't think I'd have one for today, as I've been so busy at work and have been nearing the completion of my short "Please Believe Me", however in the midst of my strange, heat-inspired sleep deprivation, I lay down for a nap yesterday after work and found myself once again unable to drift off. After about thirty rather frustrating minutes of this, I picked up the book I'm currently reading, Norman Mailer's The Deer Park, and read for a while. Prose like this always inspires me, and it wasn't long before I was up and seated at the desk in my writing nook. I put in my headphones, cued up Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's brilliant OST for The Social Network, and disappeared into my story for two hours. And this was the first session where I really nailed it. I mean, I'd been fretting over this story, because after several weeks of immersive work on it, I just wasn't nailing the tone I wanted. I didn't feel it coming together the way I'd felt all of the stories in A Collection of Desires come together, and as writing is a blind walk in a dark room - complete with a lot of bumping into things that smart - I was unsure if this one would ever get 'there.'
It's there.
I'm not all the way through it yet, but I'm halfway through a mostly polished piece, and hope to have it wrapped within the next few days.
Playlist from yesterday:
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Rollins Band - The End of Silence
Jimmy Scott - Greatest Hits
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - The Social Network OST
Card of the day:
Ready for some financial breakthroughs, that's for sure.
Aside from the obvious fact that Gaimen named Morpheus's realm after the title of the album, doesn't this record - especially this song - sound exactly like Sandman reads?
