Butthole Surfers Week Day 5

As though in total contrary to yesterday's post, here's Locust Abortion Technician at its grimiest. Is this my favorite track by the band? Might just be. I mean, this song is not only a total throwback to the earlier albums

---

---

---

Watch:

Writer/Director/Producer/FX/Cinematographer/Everything else Doug Roos has released a teaser for his new film Bakemono along with a crowdfunding campaign to help add more practical FX to the film. 

 

The teaser is just enough to ramp up my anticipation. Anyone else get total The Void vibes from this? Also, check out this poster!

You can click HERE to travel over to the IndieGoGo page and back this/read more. The $100 level included a making of for the Practical FX, which might come in handy down the road. Roos explains the film is already shot, so this is all for icing on the proverbial Gore Cake, which I am all about. 
 

---

---

---

Read:

I really was not prepared for the angle Robert Kirkman and Joshua Williamson are taking for the new GIJOE Energon Universe. Although we've seen a few teasers and one full issue of Duke prior to the release of last week's Cobra Commander #1, it wasn't until Williamson got into old Chrome Dome's backstory for this series that we see this is definitely more akin to the Cartoon than Larry Hama's comic. And you know what? I'm alright with that.

SPOILERS below. You've been warned.

There is a lot to dislike about the original 80s GIJOE cartoon movie and the direction the show took after. There's also a lot of really cool ideas here, once you get past the insanely SciFi take on what Larry Hama made such a realistic property in the comics. Thanks to CC #1, we now see that, just like the Energon Universe's Transformers comic, this take on GIJOE is going to run closer to the cartoon. And I'll say, full-on Cobra-La excites me. The concepts are crazy and will fit in so nicely with how intertwined we already see Transformers and GIJOE are going to be (not to mention adding Void Rivals to the taepstry!) The revelation of both Cobra-La and that they have Megatron captive and are reverse engineering their technology from him sets an ENORMOUS stage for this series, and I'm exicted to see how the entire thing plays out without all the trappings and limitations that the movie/show had.

---

---

---

Playlist:

R0BBER - La Cosa Nostra EP

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

Cherry Cheeks - Lp2

Turnstile - Glow On

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Black Pumas - Chronicles of a Diamond

Disappears - Pre Language

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Baroness - Stone

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (pre-release singles)

Mannequin Pussy - Patience

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

---

---

---

Card:

I decided to jump back in on a new month with a single card draw from Missi's Raven deck.

• III: The Empress - Let's start with a quote from A.E. Waite:

"She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man."

There's a lot here for me this morning. I have literally just returned to my own "House of Man," my Earthly Paradise. My home. It never really occurred to me while I spent the sixteen years that spanned the entirety of my thirties up through my early and mid-forties in LA that there was a way to carve out my own space in the world. By moving out of a major population center and leaving the rental lifestyle, K and I made our own paradise, and leaving it for weeks at a time is always a nice way to gain fresh perspective and appreciation. The Empress is oft associated with Love and Beauty, two attributes I couldn't associate with K more. The third Trump is also the path that bridges Chokmah (Knowlege - the Father) and Binah (Understanding - the Mother) on the Sephirothic Tree of Life. Interesting then that this is also the first time as an adult that my parents have become a regular social aspect of my life. Couple all this with the fact that today is the Eighth Anniversary of the day K and I met, and I believe The Empress has appeared to remind me to stop and take it all in. 

Eating the Flesh of Robots

One of the records Mr. Brown lent me in our recent record swap is The Flesh Eaters 2018 album I Used to Be Pretty. Holy cow, is this a burner of a record! If you dig the track above - my favorite at the moment - check out the entire record.  

---

---

---

Watch:

I've been in a bit of a rut with watching anything other than Happy! the last few days, and when I finished season one, I found I wanted something more. One of the things I found is Netflix's Love, Death + Robots.

I have watched this show before, although not in any consistent capacity. I've had Sci-Fi on the brain, though, and my decades-long avoidance of most animation that's not Cowboy Bebop seems to be falling away - never understood what that was all about, anyway - so this slotted in nicely.

Previously, only a few of these really left an impression, particularly Season Three's In Vaulted Halls Entombed, which I've watched quite a few times since it came out a year-and-a-half ago (the whys of my obsession are obvious if you've seen it). This time, however, I'm playing through entire seasons and really enjoying what I'm seeing, particularly The Very Pulse of the Machine, Life Hutch and The Drowned Giant. Oh, and Three Robots. Yes, that's a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic satire right there. 

---

---

---

Read:

I finished Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw's The Dead Take the A Train and am definitely placing it among my favorite novels of the year. So much fun, and all while being Hellraiser/Evil Dead level GOREY! This is the first book in a series, and I'm down for all of them that follow. 

Still riding high off that, I ordered Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth and started that. 

Look at that cover! 

About a quarter of the way through, and I can say Ms. Khaw may be one of my favorite modern Horror writers. She has a descriptive flair I am head over heels in love with, and her characters feel so very real. The set-up here is fantastic, with a wealthy twenty-somethings friend paying for his small group of friends to stay at a supposedly haunted ancient Japanese estate. I can already tell things will probably get Hellraiser-level bloody, and with a narrator I'm not entirely sure I'd consider reliable, all kinds of hell seems poised to break loose.

---

---

---

Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star

Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now

Sen Morimoto - Diagnosis

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Zombi - 2020

---

---

---

Card:

I'm finding I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to concentrate on involved Tarot readings, so I've been utilizing Missi's Raven Deck for single-card Pulls. Here's today's card:

On the lookout for obscured influences or hidden agendas, so that's (sadly) a "work-related" reading. Also, and perhaps more probable, what am I missing?

The Dead Take the A Train Straight Through the Spider Labyrinth

November is nearly over, and I realized I have not posted any Opeth yet. For that matter, I hadn't even listened to them until whatever day last week I began this post. Back around 2006/2007, Opeth became a big winter band for me, with the time change and early night that directly follows Halloween a welcome signifier that it's time to crack out Deliverance, Blackwater Park and the Candlelight years.

---

---

---

Watch:

I did a bit of online Black Friday shopping last week. Nothing huge, but there were a few titles from boutique Blu-Ray labels I haunt online that I could not pass up. 

First up, Synapse Films has a 4K restoration of one of my all-time favorite films, Mike Mendez's The Convent. I have no interest in the 4K, but the release includes a standard Blu-Ray, and I've been waiting some time for this one to get a proper clean-up and re-release:

Next, and this is a somewhat blind buy, one of Severin Films' secret titles for their Black Friday sale is Gianfranco Giagni's 1988 nightmare The Spider Labyrinth. This is one I've never seen, but I've seen a certain amount of buzz steadily build for it in the backwaters of the Horror Community, with Italian Filmofiles clamoring for a proper digital release (which the film never received before now). Check out the trailer below, and although I've become fairly anti-spoiler, I'm pretty sure there's no way to spoil the absolute madness of this one.

 

Finally, although this isn't a new title, it's one that's been on my radar for a while, and after watching Michael Venus' 2020 film Schlaf (Sleep), I forked over the dough for this gorgeous release from Arrow Video; for $20 how could I not?

If I were to elevator pitch this flick to you, I'd say it's kind of a cross between Anthony Scott Burns' Come True and the possibilities I saw inherent in Stewart Thorndike's Bad Things (which admittedly did not work for me, but had some very interesting potential insofar as location and plot). 

Here are the purchase links if anyone is interested:

Synapse Films: The Convent

Severin Films: The Spider Labyrinth

Arrow Video: Sleep

---

---

---

Read:

Richard Kadrey has released two books this year, and I've been wanting to read both, so after finishing Michael Wehunt's Greener Pastures, I slipped into The Dead Take the A Train, a collaboration with author Cassandra Khaw, whose Nothing But Blackened Teeth has been on my to-read list for the last two years or so and has now jumped to the top of that list based on the 65% of A Train I've read in the last few days.

Here's the solicitation blurb:

"Julie is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-year-old whose only retirement plan is dying early. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs, exorcize the nastiest demons, and make deals with the cruelest gods to claw her way to the top. But nothing can prepare her for the toughest job yet: when her best friend, Sarah, shows up at her door in need of help. Keeping Sarah safe becomes top priority. Julie is desperate for a quick fix to break the dead-end grind and save her friend. But her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts Sarah – and the entire world - directly in the path of annihilation. The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, The Dead Take the A Train fuses Cassandra Khaw’s cosmic horror and Richard Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly."

It's been some time since I read Richard Kadrey's Butcher Bird, but I loved that novel and have followed the man on soc.med ever since. He's a bright spot in the increasingly noxious online world, and it's great to 'catch up' with his writing over a decade since I began.*

Also, that cover has to be one of the most gorgeous I've seen in some time (artist James Jirat Patradoon's website is HERE). 

.........................................

* I've always wanted to read Sandman Slim, however, much like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books, I have grown to baulk at starting so lengthy a series, in case I love it and it consumes the next year of my life.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Frank Black and the Catholics - Snake Oil

Opeth - Deliverance

Misfits - Collection II

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

Godflesh - Purge

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

U2 - Achtung Baby

Justin Hamline - Worst Locals Ever

Steve Moore - Gone World

The Cramps - Smell of Female (Live)

Lord Huron - Long Lost

---

---

---

Card:

I've been off the clock here since last week, and I am tired. Had a new round of the COVID booster yesterday, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks, so just one card from Missi's Raven Deck today:

I'll be double-verifying all information that crosses my path today and, perhaps conversely keeping an eye out for ways to slip mainstream corridors of thought. 

Hybrid Halloween Moments!!!

 

Happy Halloween! I've got today and tomorrow off and intend to soak up the atmosphere. First, woke up with The Misfits Hybrid Moments in my head! That has to be a boon that this will be a good day.

---

---

---

31 Days of Halloween:

I had a spectacular October 30th last night. Here's what I watched:

Not for everyone, but Cary Grant and Peter Lorre are enough to make me love this classic Halloween comedy. The word "Madcap" got thrown around a lot back in this era, but this one deserves the description - it juggles so many plates that, even if some don't exactly 'land' for me, it's just a pleasure to watch.

Classic late-period Romero. I love this flick, flaws and all, and would take this any day over Schumacher's Falling Down, which, in the "man at the end of his rope" sub genre, definitely gets more love. 

If I love Romero's Bruiser, well then, I guess I have to marry Robert Englund's directorial debut, 976-Evil. I know this is not a 'good movie.' Couldn't care less. I think 976-Evil is the epitome of how great late 80s Horror could be, and it totally nails the Nightmare on Elm Street tone that none of the NoES movies except the original manage to.

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"

3) VHS

4) All You Need is Death

5) Slashers (2001)

6) The Beyond/Phenomena

7) The Convent

8) Evil Dead 2

9) The Autopsy of Jane Doe

10) Totally Killer

11) Ritual (Joko Anwar)/The Final Terror/Grave Robbers

12) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (w/Joe Bob)

13) Never Hike Alone/Never Hike in the Snow/Never Hike Alone 2

14) Puppetman

15) Creepshow Season 4 Episode 1

16) Return of the Living Dead

17) Don't Look Now

18) When Evil Lurks

19) Barbarian

20) Demons 2/All Hallows Eve

21) May

22) Let's Scare Jessica To Death

23) The Birds/30 Coins Ssn 1 Ep 1

24) 30 Coins Ssn 1 Ep 2/The Church

25) Elvira Mistress of the Dark

26) To Kako (Evil)/To Kako: Stin epohi ton iroon

27) Tourist Trap (w/ Joe Bob)/Totally Killer

28) Amusement

29) The Rocky Horror Picture Show/There's Nothing Out There

30) Arsenic and Old Lace/George A. Romero's Bruiser/976-Evil

---

---

---

Read:

In keeping with my annual Halloween traditions, I re-read James O'Barr's The Crow yesterday and began Rick Spears and Rob G's Teenagers From Mars upon waking this morning.

The Crow never fails to affect me; still the greatest love story I've read and the purest contemplation of grief I know. O'Barr's art and words drip with the Post Punk bands that grew to sway my tastes as a metalhead in High School, my obsession with Joy Division's Substance and Still and The Cure's Pornography following fast on the heels of my introduction to this dark, beautiful angel.

I love this book so much. The characters are, at this point, old friends I love to check back in on every year. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Type O Negative - Paranoid (single)

Claudio Simonetti and Goblin - Phenomena OST

John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST

John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST

The Cure - Pornography

Night Verses - Every Sound Has A Color In The Valley of Night: Part 1

Wytch Finger - The Dance EP

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets (1998 Edition)

---

---

---

Card:

A single card from Missi's Raven Tarot for this perfect Halloween morning:

When Every Day is Halloween, October 31st just means we're about to begin another journey around the sun toward the next one. 

All I Ever Wanted Was A Totally Killer Autopsy

 

I'm back from L.A. and ready to go full October. Let's start with some Bauhaus. For my money, one of the greatest songs this band ever recorded. Not easy to say, becuase 98% of all their songs could fall into that category. I mean, there are really no less-than-stellar Bauhaus songs, and yes, I'm counting Go Away White when I say that. Something about this one, though, really resonates in a timeless manner. Maybe it's the title, maybe it's the upright bass, maybe it's the genuflective lyrics that seque into nonsense - conceivably to stress how ridiculous existential contemplation actually is. Whatever the case, this is one for the ages.

---

---

---

31 Days of Halloween:

I re-watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe on Monday night. I don't know; the first time I saw this film, it floored me, but every subsequent viewing has just rubbed me the wrong way. I love the performances, but there are little things about the script that irk me. Like the Sheriff's timelock of "I need a COD by morning because otherwise, I can't explain her presence at the crime scene to the press." What? How are the press gonna know? 

Honestly, I'm being a bit of a prick here. I think my real issue is that, between my first and second viewing of this flick, I saw the Director's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and hated it so much it spoiled this. I need to give Troll Hunter another shot because that's one I've only seen once and long before either of those others. Interestingly enough, my prejudice wasn't strong enough to spoil this year's Last Voyage of the Demeter, so maybe my issues with Jane Doe are legit. I don't know.

Next up, last night's movie was Nahnatchka Kan's new Amazon Original Totally Killer. This one was at Beyondfest, and my Horror Vision Cohost and I almost went; however, the day it played ended up being a low-key one, so we did not. Here's a trailer:

I was certain I would dislike this, however, turns out I really enjoyed Totally Killer. It's clever, but not in an overly ostentatious manner. Also, it's just a lot of damn fun! If you're afraid this was going to be another cutesy Blum House take on the post-modern Slasher, well, yeah. It kind of is. For me, however, it's one that really worked. Also, they freakin' NAILED gym class in the 80s.

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"

3) VHS

4) All You Need is Death

5) Slashers (2001)

6) The Beyond/Phenomena

7) The Convent

8) Evil Dead 2

9) The Autopsy of Jane Doe

10) Totally Killer

---

---

---

Playlist:

BADBADNOTGOOD - IV

Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer

Harsh Symmetry - Imitation

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children

Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden

Van Halen - Eponymous

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Boris/Merzbow - 2R0I2P0

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Medeski, Martin and Wood - Uninvisible

Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out

Final Light - Eponymous

---

---

---

Card:

Just one card, this time from Missi's Raven Deck, for today:

A reminder to think BIGGER! Literally, just before pulling this card, my thoughts were mired down in a very localized, small facet. This is a reminder to "I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I've started to focus out beyond the edge of the board. On a bigger game."

New Swans!!!

New music from Swans! From the forthcoming album The Beggar, out June 23rd on Young God Records. Pre-order HERE.

---

---

---

Watch:

One of the things that saved my sanity over the last few days of my recent two-week stint in LaLaLand was getting stoned at my hotel one night and discovering Bobby Fingers had released his new Diorama video. The subject of Mr. Fingers' machinations this time?

 

There is a level-up in this video that absolutely blew me away, and that's all I'll say. Well, besides confirming that Bobby Fingers is now my favorite anything on the internet. Watching these literally helped quell the total disgust for humanity that arose in me while stationed in LaLaLand this time.

 

---

---

---

Plastic:

I have to confess that I've become one of the many disillusioned Hasbro Pulse fans. The company's entire manner of doing business is just disgusting. Due to this, and because I've cut my nerd-spending in half, there have been quite a few recent releases from their GI JOE Classified and Transformers lines that I want but have ultimately passed on. That said, here are a few I did allow myself to splurge on:

Copperhead is one of my all-time favorite characters, and this redesign is spot-on perfect in my opinion.

I don't know anything about Range Vipers, and this is obviously a rather "Sci-Fi" figure - an approach I do not normally appreciate in the series, but as a straight-up horrific-looking action figure, this thing is rad AF. Look at that brain!!!

This last one I actually have not yet ordered but am on the fence. One of the issues I (and a lot of other collectors) have with Pulse is their insane price markup. I've had Scrap Iron in my cart on their site for a few weeks now and, although this guy was one of my favorites of the original series' earliest figure designs AND a figure I never had as a child, this figure's pull is strong. I loved the character in Larry Hama's comics - that scene where he blows up the station wagon with the Soft Master, Billy and Mr. Coffee-in-my-Brandy has always stayed with me. That said, when you're at checkout and see a final cost of $57 for one figure, well, that's just INSANE, regardless of whether or not it comes with a 'vehicle' like old Iron's anti-tank drone. Magic eightball says I'll probably end up ordering this, but it irks me nonetheless. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

The Veils - Total Depravity

King Woman - Celestial Blues

King Woman - King Woman on Audiotree Live EP

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Godflesh - Pure Live

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Silent - Modern Hate

Savages - Silence Yourself

Neverly Boys - Dark Side of Everything

---

---

---

Card:

From Missi's Raven Tarot:

I turn 47 today, and in light of this event, I wanted to pull a card from Missi's Raven Tarot as a sort of "Card for the year." Makes sense I would see The High Priestess, as I feel like she has been lurking in quite a few of my dailies of late. 

From the Grimoire:

"Can denote change and/or fluctuation. Matter or situation shaped by gracious or pure influences. The Priestess taps into the power of Life and the Universe."

All of which is to say - or at least in my interpretation - I will have a year where I continue to shape my future. Sounds boring, but as anyone who has changed their life for the better multiple times and is generally unafraid to do so at the drop of a hat, it's not easy. Nor is continually affecting my own creative force, honing these lumbering documents of a novel that is hard A.F. to write, but ultimately rewarding A.F. when it begins to come together.

Here's to the voyage to 48!!!

New Deafheaven!!!

This hit yesterday, but I've been writing and scheduling these posts at least a day ahead to try and regain some sense of consistency. Wednesday was already a pretty good morning when Mr. Brown text me that Deafheaven dropped a new track and announced an album. As you can imagine, I FLEW to pre-order Infinite Granite HERE, then spent a good amount of time listening to "Great Mass of Color "over and over. So good. I guess all the black metal blow-hards can shut the fuck up, since the band has obviously now embraced integrating so many other elements. That's what the best of any genre does - refuses to be limited by the tropes of their chosen peers.

Infinite Granite lands August 20 on Sargent House.

---

---

---

Watch:

Well, Marvel's Loki started last night, and after watching it, all I can say is... loved it. Not really sure where this is going, except I'm thinking we might be meeting a certain purple time traveler by the end of this series. Which would be pretty f*&kin' cool. 

One of the things that put me in the mood for this series was listening to the Marvel's Pull List podcast that dropped yesterday. I've become quite a fan of both this and the This Week in Marvel 'cast, and on this week's Pull List they interviewed Al Ewing, a writer whose name I've been seeing on the solicitations for a lot of Marvel books of the last few years, but who I haven't really read outside of an aborted attempt at Immortal Hulk (not the book's fault; I plan to get to this eventually, especially now that it's ending). Anyway, the interview kind of primed me for Loki because apparently, Al wrote a series called Loki: Agent of Asgard that I very vaguely remember seeing on the shelves back circa 2014, and he spoke at length about what an attachment he has to the character, and how he kind of ushered in a more 'fixed' take on the character. Really interesting stuff, so I just may read this series, too.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Deafheaven - Great Mass of Color (pre-release single)

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Entropy - Liminal

Principles of Geometry - Lazare (Tommy, you are SO right on this one) 

Blanck Mass - Animated Violence Mild

NIN - Ghosts I-IV

John Carpenter - Lost Themes III: Alive After Death

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

---

---

---

Card:

After drawing The Devil two days in a row, my good friend Missi - who made the Raven Deck - suggested that perhaps I needed to "turn the volume down on the real world a bit."

 Well Missi, I would say Your creation agrees with you. Here's me turning down the volume on the real world for a bit. 

War Pimp Renaissance

I finally picked The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen back up earlier this week, and this time, I find I can't put it down. More about that below. For right now, reading the Biafra interview in the book and hearing Al talk about the origin of the band Lard, I felt motivated to dig out 1997's Pure Chewing Satisfaction. This is one of those records I had on cassette back in the day, and because I still have the actual cassette, I always put off listening to it on Apple Music under the guise that I should dig out that tape. Well, that never happens, so I haven't heard Pure Chewing in a loooong time. Guess what? I gave up on the tape and started playing it the other day, only to find out I miss the hell out of this record!

The Last Temptation of Reid has always been the go-to masterpiece in the Lard catalog as far as I was concerned; however, now I find Pure Chewing Satisfaction is every bit as awesome, starting with this, the opening song, which I could listen to over and over again ad nauseam.

 

---

---

---

Watch:

Watching the first two episodes of Marvel's Wandavision last night was quite the experience. I now very much understand what Elizabeth Olsen meant in the interviews she did during the run-up to this show when she repeatedly said, "I just can't believe they let us actually do this show." 

This is the evolution of Marvel's style. 

I'm speechless. Wandavision isn't the best thing I've ever seen or even my favorite of the Marvel stuff, but being that it breaks their fight-on-catwalk-stop-him-before-he-ends-the-world-and/or-destroys-the-entire-city mold and shows that they will begin to take chances, I'm excited. And as fans, that's all we can ask for. That's how the comics gave us things like Matt Faction's Hawkeye series, or Rick Remender's Uncanny Avengers, or any of the mold-breaking stuff Marvel occasionally does to draw in new readers who don't necessarily jive with fight-fight-fight and crossover-crossover-crossover paradigm they seem to still be stuck in.

I'm totally fine having (mostly) given up reading Marvel Comics if I can get stories like this from their MCU.

---

---

---

Read:

Last year when Mr. Brown sent me his copy of Al Jourgensen's autobiography, I read about a fourth of it and had to walk away. This happens a lot with musician autobiographies. Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty's book really started to affect how I felt about one of my favorite bands of all time, so I stopped reading that, too. I thought that would be the case here, but when I picked Gospels up again recently to give it one more chance, I found I couldn't put the fucking thing down.

Al still comes off like a complete douche, which I guess really shouldn't be a surprise. However, the book is also laugh-out-loud hysterical at times. Really, once I got past the utter nonsense of him bragging about how many chicks he nailed as a teenager and moved into the origins of Ministry, well, the douchery didn't stop, but it became mixed with a lot of great information about a band I've loved for most of my life (thanks also to Brown, who lent me his copy of The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste when we were Juniors in High School).

Anyway, if you can get past those initial chapters, and deal with him being one of those "Been there, done that, did that first, fuck those guys I used to work with" tirades, and the endless drug stories that make him really look like an ass - the River Phoenix one is especially awful - then this is a pretty good read. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

The Veils - Total Depravity

The Replacements - Tim

Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone

Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon

---

---

---

Card:

This morning I thought I'd pull from the Raven Deck. Every time I bring these cards out, I marvel at the work and detail my good friend Missi put into them. The cards literally hum with the energy she put into them, and so they make reading an incredibly unique experience.

Change. From Peter J. Carroll's Liber Null: "The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves."

I have 100% agreed with this statement since I first began reading Carroll in the early 00s. And I find it funny that I pull this card now, as I try to understand how I've suddenly become able to reintegrate The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream back into my life.

Tangent? No. Hear me out.

I loved this record upon its release the summer before my Senior Year in high school began, but I have been mostly unable to feel passionately about it since about two or three years later. Everything about this album and that band that I loved was, in my opinion, flipped on its head beginning with the release of the follow-up, and The Smashing Pumpkins became kind of an antithesis to me. However, for every reason I feel justified in distancing myself from their music and personas, I realize too, I was distancing myself from who I was when this album meant so much to me. Which is fine. That's the mountain of dead selves at work right there, and that's important. And there's a vulnerability to reconnecting with something that was so integral and intertwined with who you were when you were a teenager, and I began to make it a point to execute and deny most previous versions of myself somewhere about the time I graduated college and became a bartender (ha! what a sentence). 

Anyway, I guess the poignant part of all this is that while Siamese Dream was executed and thrown on the pile with that old version of Shawn, along with records by bands like Pantera, Sublime and the like, it's a new one for me that I can dig this one out of that mountain of corpses, dust it off, and reconnect with it in such a strong way.

Will it last? It feels like it will, however, I should probably avoid hearing anything billy corgan says in the media if I want that to last.

Isolation: Day 141

Mr. Brown sent me this last night, and after watching it, both K and I are immediate fans. I can't wait to dig into The Hu's catalogue, which you can peruse and purchase from HERE.
**

A new trailer dropped for Season Two of The Boys.



The trailer is a bit overdone, but I'm still excited to see where this goes.

**

NCBD:

Not a lot this week. I did notice this coming from Vault, and I'm curious. Back in the early/mid 90s, I wasn't a RPG'r, but I loved Vampires. I know the entire genre is cliched now, and maybe it was back then, too. I didn't know that. I discovered Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire when I was a senior in High School, and I LOVED it. This was shortly before the movie - which I'm not a huge fan of - and reading that first novel in Rice's Vampire Chronicles coinciding with my purchasing Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses (the digipak version, of course). I'd smoke out and lay around devouring the novel, while listening to Peter Steele's voice sing of Blood and Fire, and Suspended in Dusk, and Steele's voice became Louie's voice. I haven't gone back to those novels in since I read them; I'm not even sure I'd like them now. Back then though, Rice's fiction had me ravenous for more Blood Lore, and in this way I discovered White Wolf Publishing's Vampire: The Masquerade. My Chicago comic shop Amazing Fantasy carried a lot of books as well (thank you Garrett!), and I believe that is where I bought my first Masquerade novel. I wouldn't even be able to tell you which one it was, it left a bit of an impression on me. Enough that I'm curious to see a comic series reviving the line.

A few years back, when my friend Missi turned me on to Poppy Z. Brite's fiction from the 90s, it kind of scratched a long-standing itch for this kind of Goth-Pageantry fiction, and it's probably the hangover from reading her Lost Souls last year that has me tempted to pick this up.


**

Playlist:

Young Widows - Settle Down City
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
Rezz - The Silence is Deafening EP
The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Metallica - Master of Puppets

**

Card:

Keep going despite fatigue. The wheel turns, so says Ka.

2019: May 24th - New Pelican Track!

On June 7th, Southern Lord is releasing the newest album from Chicago Post-Metal group Pelican, and from the two tracks we've heard so far, Nighttime Stories looks like it is a serious contender for my top ten this year. I love the texture of this track; thick, sludgy, but not without melody and a certain swing in its step. You can pre-order the album HERE.

**

Two more episodes of Ozark season one down last night, so that means two to go, then I can finally begin Season Two. This show really holds up on second viewing, and I'm pretty sure its dark, foreboding tone, exceptionally well-written characters, and left-of-center plot twists will continue to impress me; Ozark is the kind of show that already feels destined for greatness.

**
Final episode of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder tonight, but, in case you haven't heard, it will be back. In my excitement, I looked up some old clips:



**

Playlist from 5/23:

The Cure - Disintegration
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Faith No More - King for a Day
Faith No More - Angel Dust

Card of the day:

I've never been a fan of this card. Frankly, it has always visually been intertwined with a former lover, and I'm one who usually shuts the door on the past pretty hard, so I'm never really enthused to receive anything in the way of reminders. But last year at some point, this card came up a couple times in close proximity, and in discussing it with my good friend Missi, she put something to me I'd never stopped to consider; basically, why? Why did the Queen of Wands have to be what I had come to think of it as? And this morning, free from any pull of the past, I uncover this card and think, "That's not what this is at all."

So then, the question remains, what is the Queen of Thoth to me?

Let's start basic. From the Grimoire: "Emotional Intelligence." Well, that in and of itself is sometimes as difficult to find as the Dodo; the waters of emotion run rapid when they run best, and sluiced through the right tributary, we may find it very difficult to apply any guidance to the rush toward conclusion. So then, when I pull this, especially today, where my day-to-day gig at the biorepository feels a bit out of control (mother business expanding exponentially constantly), I feel as though the eyes of this fiery lady are telling me to watch my mouth, which runs often, loud, and considerably unchecked at work.

Also, there's the related idea of the 'Consciousness in Spirit,' which I see pop up online when scouting around for other facets of this card. Consciousness in Spirit equates to Intensity of Purpose, which I have absolutely lacked for going on a week now, as work as been difficult and some passing bug has kept me feeling sick and run down for most of the week, even now when I'm through the worst of it. I read this as a need to get my ass back in gear; for the past two weeks, I've had a fantastic regiment of after-work writing and yoga going almost every day, then Sunday I woke up sick and ever since, I've haven't done either. The little bit of yoga I forced myself to do last night ended up making me feel amazing, and that's as good as any other reason to re-focus and re-acquire that Intensity of Purpose.

2019: April 7th - Droneflower

Well, I did not expect to be posting this track today. I didn't expect to even think of one of my favorite Guns and Roses songs any time soon. And 'favorite G&R song' is a somewhat exclusive label, as the band long ago irritated me to the point that I have little ability left to engage with their music in any meaningful way. It's all nostalgia, with only brief glimpses of the feelings their music - especially the epics on the two Illusions records - used to inspire in me back when I was in high school and G&R was a force to be reckoned with. It's not that the material is lacking, because songs like Estranged, Coma, and yes, even November Rain still feel epic and genuine to me. But for a band I once thought would be the 'next Rolling Stones,' G&R couldn't keep it together and ended up traveling through this timeline as a not much more than a bad joke. Nadler's upcoming collaborative album with Stephen Brodsky, out April 26th on Sacred Bones, however, is not a joke:



I can't place where I know Marrisa Nadler's name from; it doesn't matter. Between her, Chelsea Wolfe, Emma Ruth Rundle, and Myrkur, there is an amazing cabal of female artists exploring the dark and beautiful intersection of folk and black metal. It's not about sound, it's about tone and aesthetic. And Brodsky's discography is loaded with impressive projects, so I think I'll pre-order this one, which can be done HERE.

**

The Horror Vision had a group outing last Thursday and caught the first pre-screening of Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer's new iteration of the classic Stephen King novel Pet Sematary. I'm sorry to say I hated it. With a passion. And I think I have some pretty good reasons for that hate. Did my Castmates agree with me? Check out our reaction on any of the following platforms below to find out, but only if you've seen the flick; we go heavy spoilers on this one:

The Horror Vision on Apple
The Horror Vision on Spotify
The Horror Vision on Google Play
The Horror Vision Official Website

**

I leave for Spokane in a few hours, and in preparing for this trip, my main goal over the last few days has been to finish the First Reader copy of the Shadow Play Book One, so I could pass it off to Missi and NOT THINK ABOUT IT for a few weeks. I'm happy to say I accomplished my goal, even though by the end of the work - last minute touch-ups to the prose and a ton of formatting tweaks that resulted from taking the finished document out of Scrivener and into Vellum, I was spent. I raced through three hours last night and came out the other side feeling as though I'd been immersed in hard physical labor. Now? On to Ciazarn!

Ciazarn: also known as carny, is a private language employed by those who live and work in Carnival culture, meant to keep anyone outside that culture from knowing what is being said.

This is the new collaboration with Jonathan Grimm, who I'm also doing The Legend of Parish Fenn with. Fenn is a comic. Ciazarn is a short story - or perhaps eventually a series of short stories - with illustrations by Grimm. At some point I'll post an elevator pitch and sample art and I think you'll agree with me that Ciazarn is going to be awesome.

**

Playlist 4/05:

Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me
Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death
Canadian Rifle - Deep Ends
King Khan and the Shrines - What Is?!
Windhand - Live Elsewhere
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Playlist 4/06:

Uncle Acid  & The Deadbeats - Wasteland
Lustmord - Songs of Gods and Demons
Faith No More - Angel Dust

Card of the day:

Breakthrough. Exactly. One immediately behind me, hopefully one directly in front of me.

2019: April 3rd - Full Episode from Jordan Peele's New Twilight Zone

CBS timed this one right, eh? I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but I figured I'd post it here for posterity's sake. Very intrigued; I'm imaging the Peele hosted/produced new spin on the classic anthology series will sit quite nicely in the cultural zeitgeist alongside his own films, Black Mirror, Electric Sheep, etc. 

**

The new episode of The Horror Vision podcast went up yesterday. We talk about a bunch of flicks we've seen since the previous episode, and then the recently released Book of Monsters, the trailer for which follows the links for the show below:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

**

NCBD: I don't even know where to start. Despite keeping track of the releases in these pages, I haven't actually been to the shop in a couple of weeks, so I'm pushing wallet-death at this point, not to mention a very real chance I'll forget one of the peripheral titles not on my pull. If there were any. I don't remember, so I'm going to have to go through the last few week's NCBD posts here so I can stay abreast. Here's today's titles:

LOVE this book!

So good to have Paper Girls back in monthly form!

The description for this issue on Comics List ends with, "...dark times ahead." Oh man.

**

Playlist from 4/01:

Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me

Steve Moore - The Mind's Eye OST

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Playlist from 4/02:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes

King Khan & The Shrines - The Supreme Genius of...

The Juan Maclean (Matthew Dear the Red Thread Remix)

Otis Redding - Live on the Sunset Strip

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland

Card of the day:

Same card as the last pull I did, a few days ago. This is no doubt because my previous interpretation was on the nose, and I have 100% ignored it. Yesterday after work was a much-needed nap and then I finished the edit on the new episode of The Horror Vision. Day before I got a little editing done (did some yesterday morning for that matter too, hence no post here, but I'm lagging. I need to get this to my First Reader before I leave for Washington on Sunday. Hopefully work will be a bit calmer today and I'll have the energy to come home and really knock out the final tweaking on the last five chapters. Because that's all that's standing in the way!

2019: April 1st - Talking Heads - Crosseyed and Painless

Because most days, Talking Heads' first Brian Eno collaboration Remain in Light continues to be the album in my head the moment I wake up. NOT a complaint.

**

A long weekend of work set me back about a day on turning the book over to Missi - yeah, I'm remembering yesterday's Card of the Day, but there's still a few tweaks to be made. I spent about a good hour yesterday morning at 5:00 AM reworking the dialogue in a scene and it has resonated in my head since, so it's worth it.

**

I was so tired last night when I skipped dinner and passed out, that I think I may have been speaking in tongues. Creepy, that kind of tired. Makes me feel like I'm not really here.

**

Playlist from 3/31:

King Khan and the Shrines - The Supreme Genius Of...
Joe Mason - Music for Unrealized Cartoons
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
The Police - Outlandos D'Amour
Sleaford Mods - English Tapas
Television - Marquee Moon
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Windhand/Satan Satrys - Split EP
John Carpenter - Lost Themes

No card today.

2018: December 7th - RIP Pete Shelley

Rest in Peace, Peter Shelley.

The first time I heard The Buzzcocks it was their single What Do I Get, circa 1998, and I was floored. After coming up in the early 90s and absolutely HATING the pop punk movement (do I hate green day more than I hate crappy 70s bands like Ace, Styxx, and Kansas? Yes. Yes I do), I was shocked to find there was pop punk that didn't turn everything I loved about the original 'punks' - a social movement more than a sound, per se - into a marketing ploy. Then, to find that as that as they evolved, the Buzzcocks melded more with the Post-Punk movement, I've often felt this band were way more important in the annals of rock history than they are generally given credit for. Even I haven't listened to the Buzzcocks as much as I feel I should, my familiarity starting and stopping with songs on an old mixtape back in the day, and an career-spanning anthology Mr. Brown gave me years ago.

I began working on my Top Ten Favorite Albums of 2018 list the other day. Did Beak>'s L.A. Playback make the cut? Honestly, I'm not even sure yet. It's always a favorite year-end activity of mine, to comb back through all the music that came out over the past year and boil down my ten favorites, but it's never easy. There's A LOT of good music out there. I also always look forward to reading other people's lists, chief among them the ones published by Heaven Is An Incubator and Joup's Daniel Fiorio. I'll definitely be posting links to those here when they drop.

In the meantime, here's some Live Beak> I found on youtube. Love KEXP! So many awesome bands - reminds me of the old Peel Sessions, or in a more contemporary, LA way, Part Time Punks.



Playlist from my travel day yesterday was primarily six sustained hours of Burial's Untrue, with a few other things thrown into the mix. That's how I travel: I put on an album, almost always electronic in nature, and drill it on repeat. This helps me reach a strange, liminal state, a kind of hypnogogic trance, and that helps me ride the day out in a strange but beautifully peaceful fugue, where none of the inconveniences or discomforts of traveling bother me, and I end up with a creative re-charge. Previous albums I've done this with are Boards of Canada's Geogaddi, Music Has the Right to Children, and Tomorrow's Harvest, and Moderat's II and III.

12/06:

Burial - Untrue
Burial - Kindred EP
Bohren & der Club of Gore - Gore Motel

Card of the day is super special today, because my good friend Missi surprised me with a present last night - a Mini Thoth deck. No disrespect to that Hansen Roberts deck I've been using as a back-up over the last year, but I have absolutely NO connection with it. Actually, while I can admire the beauty of many decks out there (chief among them that mind blowing Vertigo Comics deck), Lady Frieda Harris/Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck is the only Tarot deck I have a working connection with, so it's the only one I use. Maybe someday that will change, but I kind of doubt it.

I broke the deck in reading for Missi last night, and as usual, her understanding and interpretation of Tarot always inspires me, so the cards are charged and ready to go, and to celebrate I'm doing a spread today instead of just one card:

Full disclosure: I never factor in reversals. That said, while making this giff, I wanted to portray the cards exactly as they were drawn, so I kept that intact. Also, the fact that all three cards are reversed either totally negates the idea that a reversal in this case would matter, or testifies to it. Either way, I read them as the card, not their positioning.

This is interesting because it slightly mirrors the drawing I did for Missi last night, with two Cups divided by a Sword card. My overall reading is simple - I'm having trouble with the setting for the final scene in the book, because it's not enough of a 'set piece.' to change it, I must be cruel or kill one of my darlings - something about the scene that I've been adamant not to change. This will lead to a breakthrough.

Pet Sematary Trailer!

Whoah. Thanks to my good friend Missi, I finally read Stephan King's Pet Sematary about five or six years ago. It immediately became my favorite non-Dark Tower King novel. It is chilling. End of story. And the scenes that brush up against the Wendigo - if that's what it is - SO spooky. So well done! The flick looks great - the directors previously did Starry Eyes, so that's a great sign in my book. Another upscale King Adaption on the heels of last year's IT. While I'll admit to a certain soft-spot for the original Pet Sematary, this looks to be a vast improvement.

2018: August 13th

Happy birthday to one of my best friends in the world! I hope You have an amazing day, Missi!

Been a few days. Leaving one project behind and starting the final stretch on another. Had to put Please Believe Me away for a few days in order to gain perspective on it, as I'm not sure it's 100% finished, even though I 'finished' it last Thursday. Something is telling me there's a coda, of sorts, that has to go in. We'll see.

Attended my second HWA meeting yesterday. What an absolute inspiration these folks are! So great to talk about the craft in such a wonderful environment.

Playlist from yesterday was short because I've been listening to that SC3T Giallo ST almost none stop; I've felt it building to inspiration on a project and this morning it was revealed to me what exactly that will be, and I am psyched!

Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Card of the day:

Needed to see this today, and the fact that it comes up in my pulls so often is definitely a reassuring sign.

2018: June 21st

There is a melancholic air to this song that absolutely floors me. I love it SO much. Corniglia is a band that I happened across on LA's music treasure, KXLU, one morning on the drive to work, and in the two or three weeks since I just cannot stop listening to them. The album, self-titled, is easily in my top of the year. One of the things I like so much about this is, in some strange way, it reminds me of the vibe I had in my head in the early 2000s - a kind of delicious airiness that translated to a gray hopelessness as I graduated College: the future loomed before me, I buried a friend, and I felt more alone than ever. The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE and while it would seem to glorify a somewhat frightening moment in my life, it actually very much illustrates the loneliness I felt at that time. 2001-2002 was dark, and although I had an awesome band (The Yellow House) and awesome friends (particularly at that time Brown, Tim, Sonny, Grez, Dennis and Dave), I was somewhat adrift on a mindset so bleak that it spurred me into frequent drug use and several bouts of totally vapid sex, both very much unlike me. And some how, I hear elements of that hear.

I'm digressing, or maybe I'm not.

My point is that music is the same as all art in that, to modify a famous saying, the beholder gets out of it what they put in. That is to say, there is often baggage you bring with you when hearing a new band, new song, new album, and that baggage - snippets of color or image associations, emotions, whatever form it takes - shapes how you hear that music and, ultimately, what it will mean to you. What's even more interesting is your interpretation could be light years away from what was happening in the artist's head at the time - it doesn't matter. Having also made music and talked to people who got something out of it that I had never anticipated or intended, I can tell you that just the idea that something you made could have such a multi-textural effect on another soul is rewarding beyond description. So, while Corniglia may not have intended the melancholy associations I ascribe to their sound, I'm sure they won't mind if there music drives me to stay awake long past when I should have my head down, trying to capture in words something they have made me feel with their song.

Playlist from Odin's Day, 6/20/18:

Danzig 6: Satan's Child
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
David Bowie - Reality
Nothing - Downward Years to Come
Various Artists - Reservoir Dogs OST
Corniglia - Eponymous

Card O' the day:

The Lovers again, and how it currently applies to my life is still escaping me. I need to make time to look further into this. Perhaps I will ask Missi.