Call Me, Bobby Fingers

 

I've never been the biggest Blondie fan, but I've also largely remained to everything but the singles. They've long been one of those bands I keep meaning to dig into the back catalogue, and just never remember. Well, between the OST for Paul Schrader's 1980 masterpiece American Gigolo, which I just watched for the first time a few months back and became enraptured with, and now the Showtime series of the same name, I've been inundated with "Call Me" off and on for weeks, and I have to say, it is a fantastic song. I always liked this one, but now I'm seeing something deeper. So, motivated by that, I've begun digging. So far though, nothing matches this one.

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Watch:

Yes! Bobby Fingers has a new diorama video up!

 

Oh man, this guy is my hero. I haven''t watched this yet, but the subject matter for this, his second diarama video, is so in-line with his first, and both seem culled from the 80s pop culture detritus that I favor for fun-making. 

 

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Read:

I finally began Barry Adamson's Autobiography, Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars this past weekend. Adamson earned a perpetual place in my heart with his albums Moss Side Tory, Soul Murder, and of course, As Above So Below. This was all after his work on the Lost Highway OST in 1997 put him and his album Oedipus Schmodipus brought him to the awareness of, well, of anyone paying attention to the kinds of music that Trent Reznor included on that Soundtrack.

As Above is still my all-time favorite by him, but I've followed Mr. Adamson's career ever since. I grabbed a copy of his first short film The Therapist back in 2011, and had the total joy of seeing him perform live, solo, at L.A.'s The Hotel Cafe in... I'm not even sure when. 

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Beer:

Now that I'm officially into my first real winter in sixteen years -  I know the season doesn't officially start until December 21st, however, it's cold - my appetite for darker, thicker beers has returned full force. My palate would usually shift for a week here or there while in L.A., as nights did get down to the 40s on a regular basis, however, Tennessee is decidedly closer to what I grew up with. Already seeing the 30s and we're loving it. 

Anyway, while I still always have cans of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on hand, I've really been peppering in more Porters and Stouts on an almost daily basis. This is somewhat propelled by my neighbor Vincent, who I've befriended and who loves dark beer. He's brought me quite a few Crowlers from his (and now our) favorite Clarksville brewery Tennessee Valley Brewing, and to return the favor, while in Chicago recently, I picked up a sixer of something for him.

Three Floyds is one of those entities that 100% deserves all the hype and mania they fostered during the 00s. Every beer I've had by them has been insanely consistent in quality, and their aesthetic - kind of a Doom Metal/SciFi/ComicBook thing fits the beer perfectly. There's always an air of blue-collar debauchery that undercuts what, in my mind, are very high-brow concepts, and I love that. 

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Playlist:

Metallica - Lux Æturna (pre-release single)

Blondie - Autoamerican

Various - American Gigolo OST (1980)

Zola Jesus - Arkhon

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)

H6LLB6ND6R - Side A

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Card:

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

A slightly more ambitious pull today. The card that started this fell separate from the deck during shuffle, so I started there. An accomplishment of Will can make a Dream come true. A breakthrough with my Art will come via collaboration. Again, spot on! I've really become shocked that Grimm's Bound Tarot has essentially replaced the Thoth as my go-to deck. That seemed impossible; I'm not one to own a lot of decks. Sure, there are scores of amazing ones, but I have never owned a deck just because of how it looks - I've always struggled with reading and thus, felt it an imperative to limit the number I have to the ones that I use and bond with. That's been exactly Thoth and, later, Missi's Raven Deck of Major Arcana, which by definition, serves a different purpose altogether. Broader. But Grimm's deck has really become something I reach for multiple times a day, and I feel my readings and intuitions stoking again (I lost a lot after my Tarot debacle in 2015, which is described somewhere in these pages).

Metallica - Lux Æterna

 

Maybe I'm just in a holiday mood, but I think I actually dig this new Metallica song. This would then be the first new song by the band I've liked since the Black Album, when I was a teenager, riding high on their previous records, and didn't know any better (fan inertia - it's a thing). Believe me, I am dangerously self-aware (most of the time), and I'm so I realize that whenever I discuss this band, I have a sarcastic, cynical tone, and yet, I still talk about them. It's a defense mechanism. Part of me will never be okay with liking anything this band does because of what they have become. And conversely, I suppose, part of me will always want to like - well, no. Pretty sure that's not the case. I think Some Kind of Monster pretty much ruined any good will I had toward them.

But I saw this new track from the forthcoming 72 Seasons album dropped and, unlike anything they've released in years that I've been aware of, I couldn't help but click on it. Maybe it's because I root for Robert Trujillo, and regardless of what I think of the band, want him to succeed. Talk about a rags-to-riches story with a happy ending (when I moved to San Pedro and joined the YMCA there, I saw the enormous check he donated, as it used to be framed on the wall). 

The first thing here that grabbed me - the production is AWESOME. Listen to those drums. Wow. Sure, the main musical ideas are all kind of recycled from previous iterations (did you hear the little bit of Whiplash, in the guitar solo especially). But overall, music alone - heightened as it is by the production - I dig. I'll never be a fan of how Hetfield sings now - probably because of those embarrassing songs that were plastered all over the sonic landscape of the late 90s. Give me fuel? Ugh. Or, that Bee-otch song? Jesus - that did more to sink his vocals than anything. And that, combined with my self-conscious defensive approach will no doubt keep me from ultimately engaging with this on any real level, but overall, this feels like a 'win' for these guys. 

It might also be said, in a more positive vein, that I've been impressed by a couple things about these guys. First, they play so much, they're tight AF. This isn't a band that physically rests on their laurels, and I'll give 'em that. Sets I've seen listed over the last few years include older albums from their "good" period (Kill to Justice) in their entirety. And what was the thing with them playing in Antarctica? Can you imagine hearing The Call of Ktulu in Antarctica? I mean, not that anyone was there for that show, but still. Pretty cool idea. 

So, I'll probably check this album out when it drops, and I'm sure I'll report back here. Until then, if you're so inclined, you can check out the pre-order page for 72 Seasons HERE. 

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Watch:

With some trepidation, K and I binged the remainder of Showtime's American Gigolo series last night. After only three episodes, I'd become irritated with certain elements of the show and was pretty close to jumping off. However, in the end, I'll say that, while there is some pretty dumb writing that ends up being major plot mechanics (there is NO way Julian saw that hand tattoo from that far away), overall I enjoyed this.

 

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say I'd recommend it. Well, maybe. Jon Bernthal is absolutely fantastic, and I have to say that, while initially, I could not stand Rosie O'Donnell's character Detective Sunday, she ended up really winning me over. 

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Read:

I finally have jumped into James Tynion IV and Werther Dell'Edera's Something is Killing the Children and I'll tell ya, the book is worth the hype:

I'd read and reread the first five issues twice earlier in the year, when my buddy Gerald at the Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach gave me a "going away" present and knocked half off a pack of the David Mack covers of those first five issues. Something about it, though, didn't really register. In the interim, I learned about the body bag covers that the prequel series, House of Slaughter, have gotten, and began picking those up at Rick's Comic City purely on a whim. This, plus my Horror Vision cohost Butcher's regular admonishments that I needed to, "get on this, man" finally won out, and I followed his advice (knowing I would not regret it). I ordered trades 2 and 3 on Amazon the other day and read them in a day.

This series is fantastic. I won't go into spoilers plot-wise, however, I'll just say that the fact that the first three trades all take place over the course of basically a day or two, with most of that hinging on one insane night in Archer's Peak, well, it did a lot to bring me into the story. Now, I have to pick up the fourth and fifth trades, because I've already begun buying it monthly as of issue 26.

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Playlist:

The Men that Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing - Now That's What I Call Steampunnk, Vol. 1

Bret Easton Ellis Podcast The Shards (about the first eight hours)

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Card:

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

The emotional aspects of Will and the Willful aspects of emotion - a tad jumbled until you add in the idea that this confusion is probably what has been hampering a decision intimidated by the Ace of Pentacles. Not sure I've dialed this in exactly, but that's probably also part of the confusion, the fact that I have more than one decision that's overdue based on conjoined elements of what I want for the real world and what I want emotionally.