Shoplifters of the World!

 

I've been on a bit of a Smiths kick lately, and it was cool to see David Fincher's new film The Killer pretty much use their greatest hits as the soundtrack for the titular character (to say nothing of the brilliant Rezner/Ross score).  Now, let's talk about that movie...

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Watch:

I had somehow missed that a new David Fincher movie was on the horizon until just a week or two ago. I knew nothing about The Killer going in except it was Fincher directing from a graphic novel I am unfamiliar with and that Michael Fassbender would star. 

Everything about this flick worked for me, from how Fassbender's character dressed like Raoul Duke to the pop culture references on his IDs.  The lighting was to die for, and Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography was soft and fluid, even during the brutal scenes (Messerschmidt also shot Mank for Fincher and, more memorable to me, The Empty Man back in 2020). The Killer was a total homerun for me - possibly my favorite non-horror flick of the year. 

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Read:

After hitting Amazing Fantasy in Frankfort, IL for my secondary pull there (mainly consisting of stuff I had trouble finding here in Clarksville for whatever reason), I was able to catch up on Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows' The Ribbon Queen.

This book is super gnarly as far as the kills, and that's part of what makes The Ribbon Queen feel right in line with all the books Avatar pu that company published in the mid-to-late 00s. This one's a Horror story on the surface, with underlining themes that touch on a host of modern issues, particularly those surrounding Police. As usual, Garth knows how to cut the shit and exploit the fallacies of both sides of the argument. 

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Playlist:

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

BABADNOTGOOD - IV

Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy

Jamiroquai - Canned Heat (single)

The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs

Danko Jones - We Sweat Blood

David Bowie - Outside

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting

NIN - With Teeth

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

Hexis - Aeternum

Code Orange - The Above

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Card:

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

• Six of Swords - Greater objectivity required

• Three of Cups - Family. Together

• Six of Cups - Emotional Balance

I love seeing these spreads that are so exactly the hammer on the head of a pin currently sticking out of my life. Moving my parents almost feels bleak right now; there's a level of having to accept that they won't be out on time (this Friday) and will need to pay the extension to stay. They are inbound to us now, coming down for another round of house hunting. The spread tells me to shove all my defeatist bullshit into the corner, remain objective and balanced, and that will eventually create stability.

RIP Andy Rourke & Ray Stevenson

 

Almost let it slip by me that former bassist for The Smiths passed away last Friday. I love the entirety of The Smiths' catalog, and all of Andy's basslines, but this is one of my favorites.

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Watch:

Ray Stevenson passed away yesterday. Wow. I know he's come to the forefront of cultural discussion in the last two years with the success of RRR - a movie I have no interest in ever sitting through after my friend Shailesh 'streamlined' it for me months before it took the world by storm - but here's the trailer to possibly my favorite version of the Punisher to hit the screen (Bernthal is awesome, so it's a bit of a draw):

 

Punisher: Warzone is just a crazy fucking movie - from the opening with Stevenson using a broken pencil to fix his broken nose to the exploding gymnastic villains, this one took a moment upon first viewing to grasp its tone, but once I got there, I never looked back. 

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Playlist:

Brand New - Daisy

Ghost - Phantomime EP

The Ocean - Holocene

VOLA - Witness

The Ravenonettes - In and Out of Control

Peter Gabriel - So

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Card:

Fortunes change as the cosmic Wheel turns unrelenting, What will this bring me today? No idea, but I'll embrace it. 
 

 

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There Is A Light in the Bottomless Pit That Never Goes Out

In a Smiths mood this morning. Sometimes Morrissey's biting observations and poetic turns of phrase just hit the spot intellectually, to say nothing of Marr, Rourke and Joyce's music, which transports me to a very specific place in my head, more feeling than thought. That's why this group worked so well for the time it did - Morrissey anchors you while the music compels the soul to soar. 

Of course, to enjoy any of this, I've had to maintain my ignorance of what an unbelievable twat Morrissey has become over the years. 

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Watch:

Browsing the Just Added on Shudder, I followed a hunch - a hunch that all Irish Horror Films are fantastic - and clicked on Billy O'Brien's 2005 Isolation. 

I could not find a serviceable trailer, and also,  I think the less you know about this one going in, the better you are. Believe me, however, when I tell you that my hunch continues to prove correct because Isolation is fantastic. A taut little creature feature with notes of The Thing and Alien, only set on an Irish farm.

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Read:

Completely off the cuff, I began re-reading Alan Campbell's brilliant Deepgate Codex trilogy over the weekend. About a third of the way through the first book, Scar Night (2006), these have a special place in my heart, and I am ashamed to say I never finished the trilogy by reading that final book. 

Back when I first moved to LaLaLand in 2006, I was working at a Borders bookstore as an inventory supervisor. Myspace was the thing at the time, and through its messaging, author Alan Campbell - then relatively unknown, as Scar Night was his first novel coming off the success of having helped write the Grand Theft Auto game - messaged me. Seeing that I was a pretty vocal champion of China Mieville's work at the time (still am), Campbell reached out to tell me about his book, which is set in the city of Deepgate - a city that hangs from chains suspended above a bottomless pit.

No way I wasn't going to read that!

I bought the book when it came out in Hardcover, and continued to buy Campbell's books as they were released in that manner. By the time book three came out, though, I was probably in the middle of something with a completely different tone, and it wasn't the time to reread the first two and go into number three. 

And the years lapsed...

Back around 2019, I picked up and plowed through the first two books of Campbell's subsequent series, The Gravedigger Chronicles. These were immediately among my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels ever - we're still waiting on that third book though, and from time to time the thought that we may never see it (the Author, who is not active on social media, has stated that the third book in the series is finished, however, the publishing deal he had went south and the book remains, well, suspended by metaphorical chains above the abyss that was once the publishing industry). That particular sadness darkened my door this past week, and thus, I grabbed the Deepgate Codex with the intention of loving it so much again that the power of that love might somehow aetherically find Mr. Campbell and transmute into a resolution for that final book. 

And yes, Scar Night is just as good as I remember. Maybe better. And no, aetherically is not a word. Well, not until now.

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Playlist:

Lustmord - The Others

Fvunerals - Let The Earth Be Silent

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Wasteland

Karl Casey - XX

Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP

Final Light - Eponymous

Ager Sonus - Book of the Black Earth

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Special Interest - Endure

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Anthrax - Attack of the Killers B's

Aerosmith - Pump

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark

Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Thou - Rhea Sylvia

David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise

Silent - Modern Hate

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

Metallica - Hardwired... 

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Card:

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

A reminder that balance is what supports harmony, and balance is not achieved by the narratives about others we sometimes tell ourselves repeatedly. I've 100% done just this, and it's not without a breakthrough of Will that I will be able to smooth things over. 

Isolation: Day 131

I've had The Smiths on the brain of late, particularly The Queen is Dead, and even more particularly this song. I love Morrissey's lyrics, but even more, I love his delivery of the lyrics. "Dreaded sunny day, so let's go where we're happy, and I meet you at the cemetery gates" is a hysterically subtle indictment of 80s Goth culture - a considerable part of the band's fan base - that is beautifully countered by genuinely thought provoking and despondent lines like, "All these people, all those lives, where are they now? With loves and hates and passions just like mine, they were born and then they loved and then they died."

It's just so damn good.

The Smith are a band that, when I'm into them, I feel my love for each song and album deepen with each listen.

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Last night, K and I finished Dark Season Three.

Holy. Shit.

In the interest of understanding the insanely well-written intricacies of this series, we'll be starting season three over again tonight. This time, however, we're going to follow every episode we watch at night by listening to the Digesting Dark podcast episode pertaining to the episode. These guys really know the show, and both K and I are really looking forward to having some third person insight into this one, because no one else we know is watching this, and it BEGS to be discussed.



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Last week, the Maniac Cop trilogy dropped on Shudder. I've been wanting to see the original for years but haven't had much luck. As far as I knew until Arrow's recent release, the Larry Cohen created, William Lustig-directed Action/Horror classic had not been in print for quite some time. How was it? Exactly what I expected, and wonderful for just that reason. It's not everyday you have Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins in the same flick.



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Playlist:

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
Tamaryn - The Waves
The Soft Moon - Deeper
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done
Me and That Man - New Man New Songs Same Shit Vol. 1
The Stooges - Funhouse
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band


Card:

Big influences spur a new project. Yes. Very big. Not a new project, but a new direction for the current book as I've decided to take a completely different tack than I was originally planning.

2018: March 7th 10:55 AM

Playlist from yesterday:

Godflesh - In All Languages (disc 2)
Monolord - Rust
The Mutants - Your Desert My Mind
The Rolling Stones - Beggar's Banquet
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed

Card of the day:

"A Positive Result dependent on the actions taken by the Querent." Fitting. We got the place!

Morrissey Biopic Trailer

Thanks be to Mr. Brown for forwarding this on because I had never heard of it before. Looks good and with the same producer as Control I'm in.

The Smiths - The Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The lyrics to this song scare me. The ending is the closest thing I've ever heard to an artist transcribing the underlying fear of modern humanity into a short, concise and ridiculously catchy refrain.

Chills every time I hear this.

Johnny Marr & Andy Rourke Perform How Soon is Now?

Whoah.

You can get the full details about this show on Brooklyn Vegan here.

If you listen to the excited roar of the crowd at about 0:47 secs, just as Marr introduces Rourke, you can hear the fact dawning on them they are about to witness something amazing. I admit - I'm not usually one for reunions and I only got into the Smiths about five years ago, but once I 'discovered' them they became one of my favorite bands of all time. Just hearing this while I type is giving me chills. And of course this track is a classic - even before being a Smiths fan this one meant something to me.

I'd still wager no matter what we'll never see these guys joined by a certain Mr. Morrissey, so this is probably as close as we're ever going to get.

But then, I've been wrong many times in my life. I'd like to be wrong about that.

Thanks to Brooklyn Vegan for posting this and making my day pretty much within moments of my waking up.

Bauhaus - Stigmata Martyr

This is still one of the most badass songs I've ever heard. In my quest to re-read/read Neil Gaiman's Sandman from the beginning through to the end Bauhaus just jumps off the music shelf. Along with Joy Division and The Cure, Tones on Tail and The Smiths (esp. Meat is Murder for Vol. 4 Seasons of Mist) Bauhaus is a perfect soundtrack for Neil Gaiman's lush dreamscape set on the outmost fringes of the old DCU.  I'm currently reading Vol. 5, A Game of You, one of the volumes I'd not read before (I started reading the book during it's initial run with The Kindly Ones, which I believe was either the second or third-to-last volume. Of course I went back and snagged Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country as they were published in trades and then left what was essentially the middle of the saga untouched on my "To buy and Read" list. However, I very much wait for the particular moods for music/film and comics/books to overtake me before I lock into them, i.e. I can't just pick up Sandman and start reading it anymore than I can just through on Bauhaus any old time. I have to be in that particular headspace. I've begun re-reading Sandman many times over the years, as those first three volumes are among my most read comics. However I can't always sustain the mood to go all the way through, not with all the bloody distractions of everyday life. I've also often hit the $$$ wall, starting it and making my way through the beginning volumes only to find I didn't quite have it in my budget to buy the three or four volumes I was missing. Recent bursday presents from my wife have solved that particular problem).

Whenever a comic or book strikes such a strong harmonic frequency with a particular band or album I always wonder if the author themselves - or in this case any of the awesome artists involved - listening to that same music at the time of creating. And if that is indeed the case, the fact that you can pick that up suggests to me that the author/artist's hands are literally transducing the energy in its audio wave form into energy in a visible form, like a microphone is a transducer that takes audio waves and changes them into the physical rearrangement of magnetic iron particles (on analog tape) or 1's and 0's in the digital domain?

Something to think about.

Johnny Marr of the Smiths talks about 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now'

I love The Smiths.

The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

BIG pull back to The Smiths lately. Rounding out my (hopefully) last night of feverish delusion (oh who am I kidding? The fevers been gone since yesterday and I'll always be delusional) with a huge Smiths bender complimented perfectly by beginning to re-read Neil Gaiman's Sandman in anticipation of next fall's new Sandman series.

(and in the still for this video, doesn't Morrissey look kinda like David Patrick Kelly, best known as Jerry Horne in Twin Peaks? LOVE IT)