This is a 'Thank the Universe for my friends" post, because both of the two things I'm posting here, I NEVER would have found and/or given the time of day to without my friends.
First up, Jacob, who sent me Slope's new album on Apple Music yesterday and totally picked up the later part of my day. This album rules! It starts almost like NIN's Broken, with a slowly building noise, then leaps into something that initially sounded a lot like nu-metal to me. I was just about to click off when the first change in the song hit, and I was roped back in - and from there, I could no stop. This record is fantastic - reminds me SO MUCH of Infectious Grooves' debut album, which I desperately wish I still had, 'cuz it's streaming on nothing. In the interim, Slope will help (or push me to buy the CD on ebay for $20 - I had the cassette).
Watch:
MODOK - First: Patton Oswalt can do no wrong.
MODOK has long been a joke between myself and my good friend Joe.Baxter, the other half of on-again-off-again musical project Christian Fisting. In fact, if you could go to the Christian Fisting website (which is down) , you would see that MODOK even figured into our fake 'origin story' that we wrote for ourselves back in, oh, 2011 or so. Anyway, apparently Joe and I weren't the only people who found MODOK comical, and I glad of that after seeing this INSANE Marvel/HULU collaboration. Part Robot Chicken, part... I don't even know, I'm laughing my ass off as I watch this. And that's not very easy to do.
Playlist:
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color
Blur - Parklife
Windhand - Eternal Return
Slope - Street Heat
K's 70s Playlist
Card:
Clearly, I'm on repeat, going around and around, because I keep getting The Devil card from this deck. Until today. Unless this is just another way the deck is telling me what I'm apparently not hearing.
It was a real disappointment to learn that Shane Carruth - whose films Primer and Upstream Color are among the best films made in the last twenty years - is not a very cool person. I won't go into everything, but aside from numerous accounts of his assholery to everyday people, it appears that he may have made public certain aspects of his estranged relationship with director Amy Seimetz in a weird attempt to sabotage the release of her new film, She Dies Tomorrow. I'm not sure this is exactly what's going on, but regardless, I wanted to see this film before all this happened, now I'll be making it my Friday night watch next week when it drops on the 8th, just to help bump the film's numbers. Looks awesome, and seeing Jane Adams and Tunde Adebimpe from TVOTR is just too good to be true.
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K and I caught up to the current episode of HBO's I'll Be Gone in the Dark last night. This show is a powerhouse of emotion and terror, and although I usually don't have the stomach or nerve for true crime - I prefer my horror to have at least a dash of supernatural so it doesn't color the world around me any darker than I already perceive it - this is one I would recommend to everyone. I've loved most of what Michelle McNamara's husband Patton Oswalt has done since someone turned me onto Feelin' Kinda Patton in the mid-00s. To see this side of his life, and the lengths Michelle McNamara went to hunting a decades-old killer, it's inspiring.
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Playlist:
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Count Raven - Storm Warning
Angel Witch - '82 Revisited
Testament - Titans of Creation
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Some time back in late 2018, my good friend Jesus gifted me a Blu Ray copy of the film Summer of 84. At the time when I first watched it, the film seemed a little too derivative of Stranger Things. Kids on Bikes felt like it was becoming the new Steampunk, i.e. ubiquitous to the point of losing me. Still, I ended up digging the movie that first time.
Yesterday, I came home from work and, as has become my custom, cuddled up with my cat on the couch to take a nap. I generally put Shudder TV on, find something mildly interesting, and nod in and out while I watch. This has been a great way for me to see a lot of films I can't commit to in the course of my regular, evening viewing. Anyway, 84 came on and I fell into it. I felt pretty much the same for most of the movie, and then the last ten minutes or so happened and I finally 'got' what the filmmakers were trying to do. Much like Twin Peaks purposely took on the language of the night time soap opera in order to completely subvert it, Summer of 84 puts on a Stranger Things costume just to turn it on its head at the end. Chilling is the only word I have for it, especially after seeing on Reddit where in a post-screening interview, the directors - François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell - stated they would never make a sequel because - and this is me quoting someone paraphrasing - "The terror was from the ending as it was, and to make a sequel would take away some of the effect."
That's fucking hardcore.
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The new issue of Fangoria arrived this past Thursday. Look at that cover! The cover story is based on a comic strip Patton Oswalt sent in to Fango in 1984, and the print the entire thing. It's fantastic.
With information about Fangoria's parent company Cinestate coming out on how they ignored one of their producers who sexually harassed women on set coming on top of former Fango head of acquisitions being accused of harassment, it seems that everyone is jumping ship from the magazine.
Not me.
I don't really understand cancel culture in general, but this is insane. The moment the Cinestate story broke, Fangoria Editor in Chief Phil Noble, Jr. posted that Fangoria was looking for new owners, and the head of acquisitions in film had been on board for probably a year since coming over from the same position at Dread Central's film division. He stepped down from Fango immediately, and from what I've seen, there's no suggestion that anyone at Fangoria even knew about his actions. So why then did Shockwaves, Mick Garris, and a host of others dump their association with the beloved Horror mag? Why did one of my favorite new authors not only pull his upcoming book from Fangoria's publishing imprint, but also post a letter to his social media saying that although he has never sexually abused or harassed anyone, he realizes this may have hurt people and he apologizes (I think that's what it says. It's really confusing)?
This apologizing for for nothing is a panicked overreaction in the age of the SJW and cancel culture, and I think it sucks. People are pulling their association with the magazine as a preemptive strike, which is seems more than a little like being guilty until proven innocent. Until someone shows me Fangoria itself actively ignored or fostered this stuff, I'm sticking in as a fan.
The re-launch has been such an amazing vessel for critical and thought-provoking Horror discussion. Much more than the later days of the original magazine's iteration. I never consistently read any of the horror mags when I was younger, but I'd pick them up on occasion and, through the 00s when I worked at Borders, read them on break. By that time, Fangoria paled in comparison to Rue Morgue, in my opinion. No longer the case. Rue Morgue and Horror Hound are still great, but the new volume of Fangoria is fantastic from an academic perspective, and I think everyone who is afraid of the SWJs swooping down on them are going to regret their actions, especially if it tanks the magazine. If you didn't do anything wrong, you didn't do anything wrong. Period. I reject absolutely the idea that everyone on Earth with a penis is a rapist by default, and although I absolutely believe predators of any kind need to be stopped, outed, and punished, guilt by association is not a good thing. One of my closest friends in high school turned out to be a murderer and rapist, and at the time that came out, a lot of people cast suspicions and, on a few occasions, borderline accusations at those of us who hung around him. Although he was my friend, I didn't know what he was capable of, and I certainly did not condone or take part in it. That's the example I use as my guide.
**
Playlist:
Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar
The Chameleons UK - Strange Times
The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge
Le Matos - Summer of '84 OST
Zombi - Shape Shift
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Short story almost finished, time for something new.
Courtesy of aintitcoolnews. I don't know thing one about Parks and Rec and I'm posting this from work so I haven't even been able to watch it with sound, but I can already tell it's hysterical.
