Despite recent claims otherwise, "Mexican Caravan" from 1985's Psychic.... Powerless.... Another Man's Sac is probably my favorite Butthole Surfers track, simply because of the guitar. It's always kind of made me imagine Jimmy Hendrix playing while on ten hits of blotter acid. But then, that's kind of what the Surfers do.

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One day last week while I was still sequestered at the hotel in West L.A., I watched Josh Forbes's new movie Destroy All Neighbors and had an absolute BLAST with it! Here's the trailer, which I can now endorse does not give anything away other than a taste of the Hallucinatory 90s Practical FX goodness you can expect from this one!

Produced by Alex Winter, with FX by Gabriel Bartalos (Skinned Deep!), Destroy All Neighbors reminds me more than a little of 1993's Freaked, which Winter co-directed with Tom Stern. This fits in nicely with Butthole Surfer week, as Stern Produced/Directed last year's The Butthole Surfer Movie, and the Surfers were involved with Freaked, starting with lending their frontman to the film's cast to play Cheese Wart. There's a certain tone Freaked employs - a kind of madcap 90s Practical FX and sets grandeur - that is at work in Destroy All Neighbors as well. The opening credits reminded me so much of the 90s, with its swirling, wormhole-like background, that I knew I was in for goodness. 

Neighbors obviously did not have the same budget; no studio is going to give anyone 11 Million to make a movie like this in 2024, but the movie does so much awesome stuff with what they have, that you won't notice unless you're checking while you watch. And you won't be doing that, because you'll be laughing out loud. This is a story we've definitely seen variations of before, but not like this, and not with a Prog Rock obsessive as the lead character (Jonah Ray is awesome!)  

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Re-Release:

Just a quick heads up to any Blut Aus Nord fans out there, Debemur Morti just re-pressed Memoria Vetusta II: A Dialogue with the Stars on vinyl, and it's available both on the label's site HERE (where I ordered it this morning), and from the band's Bandcamp HERE. 

I've been laying off ordering vinyl, but this was a no-brainer. By far my favorite album from a group that has quite a few albums I adore, I have been waiting to grab this one on vinyl for probably over ten years now. 

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Playlist:

Ready for the World - Oh Sheila (single)

Sheila E. - Glamorous Life (single)

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

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Butthole Surfers Week Day 5

As though in total contrary to yesterday's post, here's Locust Abortion Technician at its grimiest. Is this my favorite track by the band? Might just be. I mean, this song is not only a total throwback to the earlier albums

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Writer/Director/Producer/FX/Cinematographer/Everything else Doug Roos has released a teaser for his new film Bakemono along with a crowdfunding campaign to help add more practical FX to the film. 

 

The teaser is just enough to ramp up my anticipation. Anyone else get total The Void vibes from this? Also, check out this poster!

You can click HERE to travel over to the IndieGoGo page and back this/read more. The $100 level included a making of for the Practical FX, which might come in handy down the road. Roos explains the film is already shot, so this is all for icing on the proverbial Gore Cake, which I am all about. 
 

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Read:

I really was not prepared for the angle Robert Kirkman and Joshua Williamson are taking for the new GIJOE Energon Universe. Although we've seen a few teasers and one full issue of Duke prior to the release of last week's Cobra Commander #1, it wasn't until Williamson got into old Chrome Dome's backstory for this series that we see this is definitely more akin to the Cartoon than Larry Hama's comic. And you know what? I'm alright with that.

SPOILERS below. You've been warned.

There is a lot to dislike about the original 80s GIJOE cartoon movie and the direction the show took after. There's also a lot of really cool ideas here, once you get past the insanely SciFi take on what Larry Hama made such a realistic property in the comics. Thanks to CC #1, we now see that, just like the Energon Universe's Transformers comic, this take on GIJOE is going to run closer to the cartoon. And I'll say, full-on Cobra-La excites me. The concepts are crazy and will fit in so nicely with how intertwined we already see Transformers and GIJOE are going to be (not to mention adding Void Rivals to the taepstry!) The revelation of both Cobra-La and that they have Megatron captive and are reverse engineering their technology from him sets an ENORMOUS stage for this series, and I'm exicted to see how the entire thing plays out without all the trappings and limitations that the movie/show had.

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Playlist:

R0BBER - La Cosa Nostra EP

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

Cherry Cheeks - Lp2

Turnstile - Glow On

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Black Pumas - Chronicles of a Diamond

Disappears - Pre Language

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Baroness - Stone

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (pre-release singles)

Mannequin Pussy - Patience

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

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Card:

I decided to jump back in on a new month with a single card draw from Missi's Raven deck.

• III: The Empress - Let's start with a quote from A.E. Waite:

"She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man."

There's a lot here for me this morning. I have literally just returned to my own "House of Man," my Earthly Paradise. My home. It never really occurred to me while I spent the sixteen years that spanned the entirety of my thirties up through my early and mid-forties in LA that there was a way to carve out my own space in the world. By moving out of a major population center and leaving the rental lifestyle, K and I made our own paradise, and leaving it for weeks at a time is always a nice way to gain fresh perspective and appreciation. The Empress is oft associated with Love and Beauty, two attributes I couldn't associate with K more. The third Trump is also the path that bridges Chokmah (Knowlege - the Father) and Binah (Understanding - the Mother) on the Sephirothic Tree of Life. Interesting then that this is also the first time as an adult that my parents have become a regular social aspect of my life. Couple all this with the fact that today is the Eighth Anniversary of the day K and I met, and I believe The Empress has appeared to remind me to stop and take it all in. 

Butthole Surfers Week Day 4

From 1987's Locust Abortion Technician. This album has always struck me as kind of the halfway point between the total madness of the earliest Surfers' albums and what would come later. Not to say there's anything 'sane' about LAT; on the contrary, I just feel like the production was ticked up a notch on this one. Case in point: "Human Cannonball," where the kick drum actually shakes your walls (when you listen as loud as I do), the bass guitar could almost be from a Buzzcocks or Magazine record, and Gibby's voice isn't just clear, he's got a whole host of new FX to fuck with.

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NCBD:

Thankfully, this week, I only have 2 books in my Pull, one of which is Amazing Fantasy in Chicago. I say luckily, because I'll be picking up four weeks of comics from Rick's after work today. My wallet is already weeping. Here are today's titles:

I dug Duke issue one, despite the fact that I don't really care at all about Conrad S. Hauser. This is our window into the GIJOE aspect of Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe, though, and I'm excited to get this going. (I really can't wait to read last week's Cobra Commander #1- saw what I think is a spoiler image and it's NUTS!)

The Penultimate issue of Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows' The Ribbon Queen. I probably won't be picking up my books from AF until March (unless I ask Mike to ship them, a service they do offer). Can't wait to read this one start to finish.

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This looks goddamn terrifying:

 

I watched this trailer once and, within moments, knew I would now be praying this one hits my local Regal on February 23rd. There's not a lot of films that can actually scare an adult in 2024 - the real world is already scary enough - but this? This looks like it will do the trick. Something about dolls. Maybe it's a residual trauma from seeing the Poltergeist clown as a kid, or maybe it's the Uncanny Valley thing. Certainly all the Thomas Ligotti didn't help.

This is a debut feature from Writer/Director Robert Morgan (he shares the writing credit for Stopmotion with Robin King). Morgan previously directed "D is for Deloused," one of the films in ABCs of Death 2. You can read an old interview with him about that short HERE. 

I'm really looking forward to this one. 

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Playlist:

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

The Bronx - (II)

R0BBER - La Cosa Nostra EP

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

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Butthole Surfers Week Day 3:

 

I had to pause Butthole Surfers Week for traveling back home to Tennessee, but now that I'm here, let's get right back to the madness. Did you know the original name these guys had was The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole? You probably did, however, it makes me happy just to type that here.

 

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I had the chance to re-watch two movies last week that share a love of color and intention. 

This was a bit of a distracted viewing; I stumbled across Mandy playing on Shudder.TV and let it roll while I edited last week's episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Murderboard - A True Detective Night Country Discussion, pausing from my duties to soak up key moments. At this point, Panos Cosmatos' sophomore feature is so much a part of me that I've become holographically entwined with it. That is to say, I can watch a little and it contains the entire film.

Ryan Gosling's only Writer/Director feature to date, every time I watch Lost River, my love of the film and its characters deepens. Missi and I did an Elements of Horror on this one, listen to it HERE.

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Playlist:

Ready for the World - Oh Sheila (12" single)

Robbie Dupree - Steal Away (single)

Nabihah Iqbal - Dreamer

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

The Bronx - (II)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Pentacles

• Queen of Cups

• Eight of Pentacles

Mark Says Alright

Guess what? In honor of the recent announcement that Matador Records is re-releasing Butthole Surfers' catalog on remastered vinyl, it's Butthole Surfer's Week!!!

Taken from their 1986 album Rembrandt Pussyhorse, "Mark Says Alright" is the first song I remember hearing from Butthole Surfers' back catalog. A few years earlier while still in High School, 1993's Independent Worm Saloon briefly put the Surfer's on Empty-V's radar with the single/video release of "Who Was in My Room Last Night," which was cool despite in no way preparing me for the absolute madness of their early albums. I remember hearing this track on a cassette Mr. Brown brought around to our practice spot above my Parents' garage, a strange little gem that factored into many mind-altered evenings after we finished working on the set list and early demo for Wink Lombardi and the Constellations.

You can order the newly remastered Rembrandt Pussyhorse, along with 1985's Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac and the live PCPPEP 12" directly from Matador HERE. There's even a bundle, which I won't be needing as I already have both Rembrandt and Psychic on vinyl. Can't wait for the re-release of Locust Abortion Technician, though! 

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Watch:

We finally have a trailer for Harmony Korine's new film AGGRO DR1FT, the one that is shot entirely in infrared.

I know I complain about trailers and try not to watch them. However, there's really no way the trailer for a Harmony Korine movie can tell you what it's about because with some of his films, you watch them and you still don't know what they're about. This one will be polarizing, but aside from Trash Humpers, I don't think I've ever not liked anything by him I've seen, so I'm in. 

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Playlist:

NIN - Year Zero

Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark

Pixies - Trompe le Monde

Fugazi - Red Medicine

The Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse

Matt Cameron - Gory Scorch Cretins

The Knife - Silent Shout

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (pre-release singles)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XVII: The Star

• Five of Pentacles

• Five of Wands

An explosive burst of creative energy will be a struggle to commit to.