New Music From Bohren and Der Club of Gore

It's been five years since we had new music from Bohren and Der Club of Gore. Five long years. And while I'm still largely hung up on Sunset Mission, I can't wait for this one. My life needs to feel more like a David Lynch movie, and, well, I can't think of any better way to accomplish that. Other than introducing myself to my neighbor whose husband is missing an ear, but I'm pretty sure this is the better route.

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It's been a minute since I logged any X-Files episodes, but over the last few days I've been sick and had some time to slip back into that world. First, I have to say, although I was never a huge fan of this show during its original airing - I briefly became interested in the 'Mythology' episodes and made a few half-assed attempts to keep up with those - I am very much enjoying diving into The X-Files now. A large part of that isn't just the quality of the show, which, while still very much "TV," feels very nostalgic for me. This is indirectly the case with Twin Peaks as well; any TV from this early 90s era that I can connect with - which is rare - brings with it a sense memory of that time in my life. The feel of the house I grew up in, the elastic quality of nighttime spent in our living room, the large picture windows pulling the night inside, the many large trees that surrounded our small home always on guard just outside. The suburb I grew up in is essentially a township carved out of a forest preserve, and my memories of growing up there definitely play into watching this show the same way it does the original Peaks; the screen tends to blend with the environment, or in my current, mostly treeless home in LaLa Land, it blends with the memory of those trees and how they were a daily part of my life.

But I digress. It's time once again for...

Season Two, Episode Twenty, "Humbug" - Freakshow! While these days, the whole freak show setting feels overdone to me - I've continued to avoid the titular AHS season due to that feeling - this is another episode with Twin Peaks alumni, and a definite ploy to the at-the-time interest in all things "alternative." Not a bad thing; it works here, and even though Jim Rose and crew feel a little shoe-horned in (remember they opened Lollapalooza for a while in this era), the always marvelous Vincent Schiavelli evens everything out. This guy is such a great character actor, and his distinct visage and more than worthy chops are something I grew up with seeing in a lot of disparate places, from Night Court to Buckaroo Bonzai, so that he owns a little piece of my heart, for all time.

Season Three, Episode Four, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" - A great little episode co-starring Peter Boyle as a reluctant, socially confused psychic; an old man who has lived with a bizarre gift he doesn't want, and what happens when that brings him into a murder investigation. In his notes on this episode, Brown pitched it as, "Creepy," and he was not wrong. I really dug this one.

Season Three, Episode Twenty, "Jose Chung's From Outerspace" - An episode I had seen at least once before, and one that made a mark on me back in the day due to its strangely comedic tone. Really out there at times, to the point it seems to threaten the integrity of the mythology the show is building. But then it doesn't, and everything ends up working perfectly within the confines of what the show has already set up.

Also, Charles Nelson Reilly. 'Nuff said.

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Playlist:

Zombi - Shape Shift
Lovecraft and Sabrina Spellman - Straight to Hell
INXS - Kick

Card:

Of particular interest to me here, today, is the image of the Crab, which here symbolizes the aggressive and/or healing attributes of Water, or Emotion. This plays directly into something I wrote into the outline for Book Three yesterday, and I think I'll read this as suggesting an attempt to work in a bit of symbolism in an otherwise literal scene.