Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Man Man Week

 

Bringing Man Man week to a close with a live quarantine rendition of the second track off 2020's Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. So cool to see this done live in this way; reminds me a lot of the Low Cut Connie quarantine sessions. 




NCBD:

Once again, another Wednesday, another New Comic Book Day! Short stack this week, but three books I'm excited for. 


Loving this series, and after Cobra Commander #3 last week, I am really wondering where Zartan is going to show up. My money is on this book - I have a definite idea who he may be impersonating. Chances are good, though, that we may not know until considerably further down the line. Either way, I'm super psyched to read this one.


Newburn Series Finale! Can't wait to go back and re-read it in a tight burst. I've really enjoyed Zdarksy and Phillips' street-level story, and while I'm sorry to see it go, there's always something satisfying about a finite series. 


The cover promises a lot, but somehow, I'm just afraid of more gobbledegook. We'll see.


We oscillate back to the villain of the story. I'm really digging The Six Fingers and The One Hand. I wish Image had advertised this better because I know a lot of folks who would have dug these two interconnected miniseries but had no idea they existed. 




Watch:

After a failed attempt on Monday, K and I made it out to the theatre for Rose Glass's new film Love Lies Bleeding.

 

What an absolutely original film. The closest thing I can think to compare it to is No Country For Old Men, but even that falls shy. Watching this film, I kept thinking, "How does one come up with a story like this?" All the disparate elements - Love, bodybuilding, murder, gun running, cops on the take... it's just fucking glorious.




Playlist:

Zombi - Direct Inject
Underworld - Lovely Broken Thing
Underworld - I'm a Big Sister, and I'm a Girl, and I'm a Princess and this is My Horse
Various - Mix CD circa 2007
Fela Kuti - Opposite People
Fela Kuti - Sorrow, Tears and Blood
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars Motion Picture Soundtrack
Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Various - Satan's Discoteque Sweet and Salty (Mix CD circa 2008)




Monday, March 25, 2024

Man Man Week: The Fog or China


From their 2004 debut, The Man in the Blue Turban With a Face, we have yet another example of how versatile this group is. I love the elements they draw from Tin Pan Alley and 50s Doo Wop, fusing them with something all their own.




Watch:

Paul Duane's All You Need is Death proved to be one of the highlights of this past year's Beyondfest lineup, and now it's finally being released worldwide. I can vouch for this trailer - it does not give away the movie. 

 
Having seen the film, I can tell you to try your best to see it on the big screen. Duane's approach to Horror thrives on an almost subconscious, microcosmic level while also employing some really big, frightening images. This combination works so well on the big screen, with a professional theatre audio system, especially in regard to Ian Lynch's score, which I can only hope someone releases on vinyl.




Read:

I've been pretty scattered lately and have not been very successful in reading. I'm chipping along at Malcolm Devlin's Then I Woke Up, which is excellent, but my attention's compass is wonky, pulled from due North by all manner of interfering metals. That said, I recently picked up the missing issues of two early 00s comic series I've been dying to dive into.

First, Mike Baron and Mike Norton's The Night Club, which I'd been missing the final issue of since I picked up the series back in 2005:


Next, from right around the same time, Keith Griffen's Tag.


I'm using the image of the Deluxe Edition Boom! eventually published, however, I was interested in the original issues, as I had two of the three. There was a subsequent series, Tag: Cursed, that I haven't read, but the first two issues of this first one always stayed with me. Ostensibly a zombie story, Tag is a pretty interesting take on what was even a bloated subgenre back in 2005, only two years after The Walking Dead comic started, the same year George Romero returned for a fourth time to his original continuity with Land of the Dead. Tag presupposes an infection you can pass by tagging another person. The pull quote on the top of issue two says it all:


Very much looking forward to reading both of these once I get my head on straight again. 




Playlist:

All Hell - The Howl (single)
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muukalainen Puhuu
Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Glasgow Eyes
Man Man - The Man in the Blue Turban
Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

One card today, because I haven't touched the deck in a while and wanted a generalized, "this is the 48 year of your life" kind of reading.


I went with the lighting I'm working in at the moment, too. It felt appropriate. Knowledge above salvation. Sounds great.

Man Man - Paul's Grotesque

 

The closing track from 2014's On Oni Pond. This song goes to some strange places—nothing new for Man Man—and maybe it just has a slightly heftier impact at the end of the album. Either way, it's another iconic track.




Watch:

The whole Clarksville edition of my family went out to the movies yesterday to see Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Overall, the film is not nearly as good as its predecessor Afterlife, but it was fun. 


First, what I liked: I dig the new cast, especially when we still get this much of the old cast. Frozen Empire has a nice mix of both. A few too many kids thrown in, but it works. I loved seeing Patton Oswalt - always do - and I really loved seeing Kumail Ali Nanijani have a much bigger part than I anticipated. I really like that guy. Overall, the story was pretty good, but here's where my biggest problem is: the movie is under two hours long, but I swear to you, I felt like I was watching it for four hours. The script is just wonky in places. Also, this one relies SO much on nostalgia that it becomes a touch obnoxious (the same library ghost? Really?).

Overall, I'll see more of these if they make them. I love seeing Winston as the philanthropist funding the Ghostbusters, and I love the ideas they toy with regarding expansion. This is the path I always thought the original sequel should have taken. 




Playlist:

Man Man - Life Fantastic
Tamaryn - The Waves
Dum Dum Girls - Too True
Ritual Howls - My Friends Bury Their Souls for the Devil to Find
LCD Soundsystem - Eponymous
Yaz - Don't Go (single)
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Los Saicos - DemoliciĆ³n/Lonely Star (single)
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me OST




Sunday, March 24, 2024

Man Man Week Day Four: Life Fantastic

 

Life is truly fantastic, even as fucked up and dark as it can get out here in 2024. But I turn 48 today and I'm happy to still be here. It's... fantastic!




Saturday, March 23, 2024

Man Man Week - Harpoon Fever (Queequeg's Playhouse)

 

From 2008's Rabbit Habits. THIS is the song that sold me to just how odd this band is. I mean, the boneyard percussion and vaudvillian creep-outs are one thing, but juxtaposed with the bizarre digital freak-out near the end of this song, well, it's old, it's new. It's unlike anything else (accept maybe a shared DNA with Mr. Bungle's "Desert Search for Techno Allah").
 


Watch:

I caught the trailer for In A Violent Nature about a month ago at the theatre when I went to see Stopmotion, and it completely threw me at first. I seriously thought for a minute that the long-standing F13 legal battles had silently resolved and someone made a new film for the franchise in secret. Not the case, but that's probably a good thing. 


Writer/Director Chris Nash's feature film debut looks Brutal!  Total Video Nasty DNA. Hitting theatres May 31st, I will definitely be putting my arse in a seat at my local to watch this. 




Playlist:

Zombi - Direct Inject
Zombi - 2020
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Anthrax - Among the Living
United Future Organization - 3rd Perspective




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.


• Six of Pentacles 
• XX: Judgement
• Wheel of Fortune 

Earthly plateau - things are right where I want them in some respects, but XX shows it will be a balancing act to keep them there. The Wheel confirms this, but suggests it won't be quite as difficult as I think it will be. 

Thursday, March 21, 2024

It's Man Man Week! Black Mission Goggles

Mr. Brown turned me on to Man Man back circa 2006 with the release of Six Demon Bag. This was right before I moved from Chicago to L.A. I quickly became obsessed with the way the band dabbled in Tom Waits' boneyard percussion and Mr. Bungle's no-warning non-sequiturs, all while still saying melodious and, dare I say, downright tender at times. A definite Vaudvillain undertone permeates their sound, and once all that is fused together, well, you get something like the above track, taken from the aforementioned second full-length. If I wasn't convinced with Six Demon Bag, then 2008's Rabbit Habits did it, their sound further fermenting into something wholly original and 100% endearing to folks looking for something unlike anything else. Then, three years later, Life Fantastic came out, and it quickly became the soundtrack to my life and one of my all-time favorite albums. 

Oddly, despite loving On Oni Pond, something had gone out of the band for me. Looking back on it now, this is entirely on me. I did that thing I sometimes do where I let the fact that Man Man had caught on as an Iconic Hipster "It Band" affect how I felt about them. I just kind of stopped paying attention and, amazingly enough, listening to even the albums I already cherished. Over the intervening years, I've kept up a bit - like the littlest bit one can - but my life completely changed and I forgot how much Man Man's music meant to me. Then, two days ago, after the announcement of the new album in June, I threw on Life Fantastic, and it all came flooding back to me. I just couldn't turn it off. 

It makes me sad that I lost the piece of myself that identified so strongly with this band, but that piece has definitely come crashing back, as you'll no doubt notice from my playlists. So let's do a Man Man week and revel in some of the absolutely beautiful, insane, amazing music we've received from Honus Honus and crew to date while looking forward to what we have coming in just a few months' time.




Watch:

I left my Tim Burton fan club card behind a loooong time ago, but there's no way I'm not getting excited about this.


I don't think  Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands ever meant to me what it did to a lot of folks, but I dig them. Especially the former. The original Beetlejuice is just a crazy fucking movie, and I'm hoping Burton can put aside being Tim Burton long enough to make this what it should be. As in, CRAZY!!!




Playlist:

Man Man - Life Fantastic
Man Man - Six Demon Bag
Man Man - Rabbit Habits
The Babies - Our House On the Hill
Brigitte Calls Me Baby - This House is Made of Corners EP
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather (single)
Metallica - Lux Ɔterna (single)
Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct
Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here
Zombi - Direct Inject (pre-release singles)




New Music From Man Man and Alien Romulus Gets a Teaser!!!

 
New music from Man Man! From the forthcoming album Carrots on Strings, out June 7th on Subpop. Pre-order HERE.

Man, after Ryan Ketner showed up in Josh Forbes' Destroy All Neighbors two months ago, I've been lamenting not having more than one Man Man record in nearly ten years - 2020's Dream Hunting in the Valley In-Between was the first record since 2013's On Oni Pond, which just feels like a lifetime ago. Anyway, here we are - a new record and an insane new song that sounds, at times, like something from Six Demon Bag. I'd love to see whatever the band looks like live again - last time was for 2011's Life Fantastic and they were awesome! Shit, I'll even put aside my crippling dislike of "John Travolta" for them.

 

I think...




Watch:

Yes!!!!


The Blood! The Screams! The ambiguity - this is everything I want in both a teaser and a new Alien movie directed by Fede Fucking Alvarez! 

I have the highest of hopes that Fede has been allowed to bring to Alien what he brought to Evil Dead - an unflinching, brutal approach. Alien doesn't, by nature, allow the creator to shy away from a certain level of brutality, but come on, let's make this as horrific as possible! Let's merge the nightmarish approach of Alien Resurrections - which does indeed suffer from a lot of craft issues but overall has some of the most terrifying ideas and images of all the films - and the non-stop attack of Aliens. If anyone can do it, Mr. Alvarez can. 




Playlist:

Yawning Balch - Volume One
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Bite
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Are You Normal?
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - brainbloodvolume
Chris Brokaw - Puritan
Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the End of the War
Man Man - Life Fantastic




Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.


• Page of Swords - Stop. Breathe. Assess. Applies to both my life at this very moment and my character's.

• Queen of Wands - Unceasing female energy. Know when you're fighting just for the love of fighting. Definitely Lisa's (my character)

• VII: The Chariot - Emerging Victorious from a trying time. Again, this applies to both me and Lisa. 

K has a low Vitamin D deficiency, and that means I have been tasked by her doctor with giving her inter-muscular Vitamin D injections once a week for the next four weeks, starting today. Have I mentioned how absolutely terrified of needles I am? 

In terms of Lisa, she will emerge victorious, but only at the cost of a major compromise. Once again, I read this as an acknowledgment that I'm on the right track.