Big Black's Songs About Fucking stands with early Ministry as one of the stalwarts of the Chicago Indie Sound of the 80s. While it's easy to draw comparisons to Industrial music because of the drum machine, Albini's vocals help it remain not so committed to any one genre. It's some important DNA, though, and a perfect record from start to finish.
Watch:
It had easily been 25 years since my first and only viewing of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. The film popped up on Prime recently,* and Saturday night, I fired it up and remained rivetted throughout the entire run time.
When I first watched this back in my 20s, I know I dug it, but this was one I never really sought out to add to the collection, and now I just can't understand why. Despite immediate tendencies to embellish and decry this as my new favorite Carpenter film, Assault on Precinct 13 definitely jumps up into that upper echelon on his work, along with Halloween, The Thing and Prince of Darkness.
This one is raw! There's a scene that dropped my jaw (you know the one). Not that JC can't be brutal, but holy smoke muffins! And through the entire siege portion of the film, there is definitely that 'the calm before the storm' eeriness that percolates through Halloween, as well. The scene where the station receives the "Cholo" is just creepy A.F.
Reading this again, I have to say that The Deviant strikes me as possibly one of the creepiest psychological nightmare mind-fuck series ever published in comics. Five out of Nine issues notched and if this is going where I think it's going (but not necessarily how it's going to get there), Michael and Randall's stories are becoming more and more entwined, not just with each other, but with the Horrors of loneliness and social isolation that seem to have created a world of sad, deadly men.
*I feel like amazon has been listening to me through the apps on my phone and actually sought to rectify my major gripe, namely that along with commercials in all their original programming now, most movies have migrated over to freevee. FUCK freevee.
Read:
Took some time this weekend to re-read James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson's The Deviant before diving into the newest issue that came out this past Wednesday.
Michael is telling us everything point blank; we're just not listening. It feels like this is exactly what it would be like to know a killer. I can say this because I knew one in my teens, and while looking back on his behavior with adult eyes after the fact, it becomes clear the signs were there all along; he wasn't steeped in killing the way a serial killer like the killer in The Deviant is.
You don't need to have had that experience, though. Tynion and Hixon's tale unfolds in such a character-driven way that we're drawn into their world and their lives. You can imagine being in Michael's boyfriend's shoes, the signs that are literally all over the place, but how do you put that together? How do you learn to distrust and fear people you love enough to properly interpret these silently telegraphed confessions?
We'll see.
Playlist:
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu
Big Black - Songs About Fucking
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Steven Sanchez - Angel Face
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST
Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Moon Wizard - Sirens
Alice in Chains - Sap
Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies
Gold Class - Drum
Etta James -
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Give the People What They Want
Chuck Berry - Berry on Top
Various - Romantic Night in Playlist
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot Deck, which you can buy HERE.
I had a hankering for Grimm's Bound Tarot, so I broke that out for today's Pull.
• Page (Princess) of Pentacles
• Two of Pentacles
• Seven of Pentacles
Interesting. The first day back with this deck in months, and my entire Pull is Pentacles? Money has been on my mind - for both good and hesitant reasons. It's good right now, but I feel as though there is a shoe hanging above a drop of about 1000 feet. The Page/Princess indicates security, the Two partnership and the Seven Completion. That bodes pretty well, but I'm still feeling things out as I go along.
