Blood Dawn

I had completely forgotten the Chelsea Wolfe/Converge collab album Bloodmoon: I dropped a few weeks back. Thankfully, Heaven is an Incubator just released his Top Twenty-Five records of 2021 and this was on it, reminding me to strap on the ear goggles and disappear into a place both wonderful and strange.

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Watch:

After five episodes, I can absolutely assure you that Showtime's new series Yellowjackets is on the shortlist for my favorite shows of the year. It's not going to beat out Brand New Cherry Flavor, but I almost feel like I should remove that one from the running - it's unbeatable.

 

Yellowjackets seems to be on track to come pretty close, though. This show has me chomping at the bit for each successive episode, which drop weekly on Sundays.

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Playlist:

Van Halen - 1984

White Lung - Paradise

White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

Deftones - Ohms 

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Blut Aus Nord - Codex Obscura Nomina

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

Møl - Diorama

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Card:

The Airy aspect of Earth - note the bull and its rider, often interpreted as an 'energetic young man.' I have to wonder if there's a message there, or if the cards are mocking me this morning. I'm still struggling with a total lack of energy and the subsequent feelings that, at nearly 46, I'm just getting tired and old. Part of me reads that and immediately says, "Fuck you," to the part of myself that thinks that, and part of me wonders. 

Recently, I've traced the start of this constant feeling of exhaustion to two things: 1) the loss of most of my staff at work, which means all my managerial duties take a backseat to near-constant physical work. None of this is super demanding work, but it's continuous over the course of several sustained hours. Add this to my penchant for only sleeping a little over five hours a night (most nights, with after-work naps increasing in frequency), and there's a definite factor. However, 2) I also can't ignore that the start of this exhaustion appears to match up with my relatively newfound love of fasting. I do 13-16 hour fasts almost every day, and while this almost completely alleviates the stomach issues I've had for most of my life, I also can't help but wonder if it's a contributing factor. 

The good news is we're on a hiring kick at work, so hopefully, this will soon put me back in a place where I don't burn all my energy for the day by noon. I'm not the kind of manager who likes sitting at a desk for my entire day, but eight or nine hours of near-continuous physical strain sure as hell isn't doing me any good.

We'll see. 

2018: January 27th 9:51 AM

Started the day in silence as I drove to work on a relatively clean 405. As I've become increasingly intent on becoming a better writer I find starting the morning with my thoughts is a very good thing. Lots of ideas come to me in the morning, always have, and it's a good thing to let them flow. I work a lot of 'big picture' problems out this way, and I keep my handy dandy Olympus VN-722 PC Digital Voice Recorder in my car so I can always click it on and capture everything completely; one thing I've learned as I've aged is no matter how great an idea is, it will often slip away and disappear completely if I don't nab it on the spot.

Starting my musical day with Converge, as I'm still buzzing off the show on Thursday:



Didn't have a lot of time to make progress with Han King's The Vegetarian this week, but I'm eeking along; the perspective shift at about page 50 was interesting and adds a whole new angle to whatever the hell is happening. I'm enjoying this very much.

Reading-wise I did make some progress in catching up with all the comics I'm behind on, chief among them Kevin Eastman's ongoing relaunch of TMNT. I can't say enough good things about this series, it's still the best re-launch I've ever seen. I grew up in the mid-to-late 80s as a fan of the original Eastman and Laird B&W series, before the Turtles became marketed at children, a tactic I've never begrudged, as the creators have always been good about keeping at least one title on the shelves to appeal to us old school fans: there was the Erik Larsen B&W series in the 90s that continued the original series, then the Peter Laird series in the early 00s, and now this Eastman-driven one that started circa 2012 and has brilliantly brought in elements of every iteration of the Turtles and found a way to do all of it without alienating any aspect of the fanbase. The long form storytelling makes me smile to no end, and when I finished the double-sized final chapter of "The Trial of Krang" the other night I was once again in awe of how excellent this series is.

Yesterday's playlist was once again a bit diluted, as I started work later than normal to accommodate for the late night after the concert. I wasn't totally keeping track of what I was listening to, but I'll try to pull from memory:

Converge - The Dusk in Us

Fiona Apple - Tidal

Drab Majesty - Careless

Swans - Glowing Man (Disc 1)

David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise

This last album was also the subject of my Joup Friday Album yesterday, filling in for Sonny who takes up the reigns next week.

Speaking of Joup, I launched my new, weekly column this past Thursday: Drinking, Fighting, F*&king and Crying - check it out, this week's is Drinking, next week's is Fighting and so on. You get the picture.

2018: January 26th 9:19 AM (by way of 11:37 PM)

Converge at The Regent - awesome band, awesome show. Here's a break-down of my night in Downtown LA - still the filthiest city I've ever seen in my life:

-Drive to Hollywood after work and meet up at Keller's place

-One last Americano before the show to help buoy my up-since-four-AM-arse

-Drive to DTLA, stare aghast at the post-apocalyptic landscape - as Keller mused, "It's an abandoned city"

-Walk three blocks to The Regent. The Regent is owned by Spaceland, who now own/book the Regent and the two places on either side of it, Prufrock Pizza and The Love Song Bar. We had some pizzas and a pitcher of Stone IPA at Prufrock, then further avoided waiting in the massive entry line by walking over to the Love Song Bar, where they had Abita Amber on tap (Not my favorite Amber but I needed a break from the IPA mouth) and were spinning The Kinks on vinyl over the sound system. Halfway through the first pint local LA band Spain began a set of some of the most wonderfully jazz-tinted indie rock I've heard in years. We stayed for three songs and then...

-Go into The Regent just in time to see Sumac's set (we missed Cult Leader). Sumac is Aaron Turner's (formerly of Isis) new band. They are outstanding. Converge went on at 11:00 and KILLED it. No video up from last night's show yet, so here's them doing my favorite song on The Dusk in Us live a few months ago:



All in all a fantastic night that we rounded down with a few beers at a wannabe dive back in Hollywood.

Aside from the live experience, yesterday's playlist looked something like this:

Jimmy Hendrix and the Experience - Axis Bold As Love
Thin Lizzy - Fighting
Converge - Caring and Killing
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Roxy Music - Eponymous
Swans - The Glowing Man (disc 2)

Here's a trailer for a movie I really want to see. Thank the Universe for Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix:

2018: January 22nd

6:30 AM - I've already been awake for 2 hours. Going to be a long day, between work at the biorepository, the commute home (which hopefully won't be that bad but, well, I won't hold my breath) and my scheduled daily words for this evening, I'll be running on caffeine and sheer force O' Will for the next... 13 or 14 hours. And then I'll do it all again tomorrow, probably with less sleep under my belt. That's okay, Wednesday is nap day (I swear to the Sleep Bank theory, something I'll either link to or define myself sometime soon) and Thursday night is Converge at the Regent. Going to be insane. I've been looking for a band to fill the hole left by Dillinger Escape Plan's retirement, hopefully this will do the trick. I will NOT be hitting the action in the Pit however, as my torn hamstring at December 14th's Jesus Lizard show (The Fonda) has convinced me that, just like K warns me when I step up to the plate to do stupid things, I'm 41 and well past the age I can surf over a throbbing crowd on other people's fingertips and kindness.

Well, at least until I properly heal...

K and I watched The Killing of a Sacred Deer last night. Jesus H. Christ, where to begin? I'll save it for another time. I loved it though, and it will definitely make my "Shawn's Favorite Films: 2017 list, which I'm delaying publishing on Joup until the day of the oscars, just to allow myself time to see everything. Hey, if the awards that almost always get it wrong can have until February to see everything, so can I.

Began the day with some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - From Her to Eternity.


Finishing up Reinhard Kleist's brilliant Graphic Novel Nick Cave: Mercy on Me

Also jogging through a re-read of Patrick Kindlon and Maria Llovet's There's Nothing There - issue 5, the final issue, came out recently and it'd been a few months since I'd read the previous ones, so I thought I'd go back to the beginning and read through until the end. Reno is a strange character; because of her vapid, media whore lifestyle I should hate her. I don't. I want to see her come out of this journey with something new to her, a better outlook. That said, I'll be just as interested in the final issue of the story if she doesn't evolve but receives some kind of comeuppance instead.

Converge - Murk & Marrow

Converge is new to me, though I've heard of them in an increasing capacity for the last few years. Now I understand why. After listening to the new album, I can say The Dusk in Us is definitely going on my top 10 albums of 2017. Also, a friend scored sold-out tickets for us to see them at LA's The Regent, the venue where I caught Dillinger Escape Plan's farewell LA show last year. Maybe these guys will act as a suitable replacement for seeing DEP live.

Maybe. Either way, great album.