Let's Spend the Night Together (Because They Will Kill You)

This coming Saturday, January 10th, marks the tenth anniversary of David Bowie's passing. I usually begin 7 Days of Bowie on the anniversary, but this year, I'd like to start it a little early. So here we go. We miss you, Starman!

It struck me again the other day just what a weird, awesome cover this one is. From his 1973 album Aladdin Sane, 

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NCBD:

2026 is starting out light. Not a complaint, that's for sure! I've been trimming back my pull list at Rick's, trying to stick with essentials. There will always be new books that catch my eye, and I'll almost always give them a try, as that's how I often find my favorite books (see the Drinking with Comics "Best of" for 2024 and 2025, where last-minute chances end up near the top of my year-end list). At the same time, I tend to overbuy, and I'm becoming increasingly neurotic when it comes to space. I have a short box and a half of stuff I want to get rid of but am not 100% sure the best way to do so, and I've spent several recent nights just sitting in my office/nerd dungeon* reflecting on how to improve use of the space for all my 'things.'

First world problems, fo sho.

Here are this week's books:

The first issue of Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia either suffered from a skosh of awkward story compression, or I'm just missing a lot of assumed historical knowledge, being that I have zero experience with two of the three characters here. Still, this harkens back to the late 80s prestige-format DC books, so I'm hanging in. 

Not sure if this is the end of the second arc or the entire series. I'm pretty sure there must still be at least one more mini-series to go. Either way, Stokoe's art continues to blow me away on every page.

I'm still fighting a zeitgeist urge to get into this Absolute Batman. It's been pretty easy to avoid the regular series because the one issue I've read was not great. That said, there are some pretty interesting things going on in this "Universe," so I've been cherry picking a few titles. 

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Watch:

I only needed to make it 38 seconds into this trailer to know I was in. You can only watch it on youtube, but here's a poster and the embed should take you directly there:

Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You looks fantastic! I am absolutely psyched for this one, which comes out three days after my 50th birthday! Woo-hoo!!

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Ghost - Impera

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World

Kildren - December (single)

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

The Jesus Lizard - I'm Tired of Being Your Mother (single)

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Helmet - Aftertaste

Spoon - Girls Can Tell

Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

Self - Niceness (single)

Self - Porno, Mint & Grime

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Denison/Kimball Trio - Plays  the Music of Walls in the City

The Besnard Lakes - ....Are the Ghost Nation

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Card:

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

• Knight of Swords

• Seven of Pentacles

• Three of Pentacles

The Creative Will often needs to stagnate in order to prosper. 

That definitely fits. Yesterday was the first writing session I had in a week; whenever I blow a weekend without a creative outlet, it feels gross, and now that's kind of morphed into a long, slog of 'blah.' Up late writing this on Monday night, I don't feel like doing much of anything: writing, watching, nothing but listening to David Bowie. That's the only agenda I had that kept me from turning in. So I'm listening to The Man Who Sold the World for the first time in a couple years and writing this and I'm not really sure what I'll do when I reach the end of this sentence.

Hulk Smash Brand X

 

A friend recently turned me on to 70s fusion group Brand X, by way of their 1977 album Morrocan Roll. This is some intense stuff; I hear influences either given or received from Goblin (Morrocan Roll and the Suspiria OST were released two months apart in the spring of 1977), Genesis (according to my friend, Phil Collins was apparently Brand X's drummer for one album), and they definitely influenced one Les Claypool. The album starts a bit slow for my taste, but once we get to this, the fourth track, things really flip out, and it's pretty awesome to behold. 

Man, there was so much interesting music happening on the fringes of Jazz and Prog at this time. Not all of it is to my liking, but it's definitely worth exploring. 

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Watch:

That time on Lettermen when Iggy Pop told the story of how he met David Bowie!

I've really been enjoying having the ability to comb through classic NBC Lettermen clips on the Lettermen YouTube channel. This is just another example of the treasure available there. Props to the historians who curate, clean up and catalogue this stuff. 

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Read:

Re-reading Imperial #1, I find I'm not quite done pontificating on "Cosmic Marvel,' because my connections to it actually go further back than I realized when I wrote Monday's entry. 

While it's true that 1992's Infinity Gauntlet was my direct entry point to anything outside street-level Marvel,* I did get a more narrow taste of Cosmic Marvel with The Incredible Hulk.

I grew up as a big fan of Peter David's run on Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk. However, prior to David's run, series writer Bill Mantlo played considerably more with Cosmic stories for Marvel's green brute, and as a kid, I had a disparate number of these and they fascinated me to no end. 

In fact, I've come to realize that, just as Imperial begins with Hulk as our entry into the larger Cosmic conspiracy, the character has long been associated with intergalactic elements of Marvel's continuity and often had a hand in piquing my interest in that direction. 

These random issues from Mantlo's run did not make it out of my early childhood but were something I sought out in back issues later in life, so strong was the memory of them for me even into my adult comic book reading. And they hold up, especially the "Crossroads" stories from the late 290s-early300s of Incredible. They hold up so well, in fact, that Peter David returned to this era a few years ago with a Symbiote Spider-Man story that set Spidey in the Crossroads era with Hulk. A good time was had by all, I can tell you!

All that aside, there is one other Cosmic Hulk era I began to latch onto (well after the fact) and never finished but have gone back to now. That is none other than Grep Pak's Planet Hulk.

I bought the collected Planet Hulk back around five or six years ago, started it, but somehow ended up getting pulled away before getting very far. When the series was being published weekly, I was in an anti-Marvel/indie books-only turn, so I barely paid attention to it, despite the residual hype that coated the walls of the burgeoning online comic book community at the time. I'm not sure what prompted me to pick up the collection on Kindle when I did, but now that Imperial has captured me and spins somewhat directly out of the events of Planet Hulk, it's time.

This is total throwback, 70s Sci-Fi, and I think Bill Mantlo would be a super fan of this storyline. There are definite similarities, what with Hulk finding camaraderie with alien outsiders, similar to the Puffball Collective in Crossroads. The planet Sakaar serves as a melting pot for a number of alien races due to its proximity to the wormhole above it, and that adds a nice 70s Sci-Fi aesthetic, that kind of tribalism that is then mashed up with the rule of an evil Emperor. You can really see how Greg Pak designed this to be a timeless tale, and it does wonders for Hulk. This isn't the savage Hulk, or Joe Fixit, or Banner in a green body, but it sort of splits the difference between those first two iterations I mention and gives us a savage but brooding Hulk that can think as much as he can bash. This, too, is fun for everyone involved. 

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• Even Claremont's X-Men run stayed largely Earth-bound for most of my infatuation with it. I started Uncanny X-Men with the Mutant Massacre and from that point on, I don't think there were any Intergalactic stories until Lila Cheney showed up in issue 272 to pull the team into space to save Chuck. Hell, even the Brood made the trip to Earth (232-234)!

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

The Clash - Sandinista!

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma (Disc 2)

Brand X - Morrocan Roll

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

SQÜRL - Live at Third Man Records

Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH

Explode Into Color - Eyes Hands Mouth (single)

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Ganser - Black Sand (pre-release single)

High on Fire - Live from the Relapse Contamination Festival

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Card:

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

• Ace of Swords

• King of Wands

• XV: The Devil

A breakthrough in intellect leads to a strong alternate philosophy on how to achieve a goal. 

David Bowie/NIN Hurt

 

Full disclosure. While I am a NIN fan, I've never really been a fan of The Downward Spiral. That's unbelievable to some, and honestly, it's not for the best of reasons. Thanks to a friend's older brother, I found Pretty Hate Machine six months to a year before the Broken E.P. came out, and it was just such a different sound than anything I'd heard before that I was immediately obsessed. Broken's switch to guitar-driven industrial metal confused me, but the band still felt fresh and like it was "mine."

When "Closer" hit the radio two years later and suddenly every jock and cheerleader in school became a super fan, I got salty. Because of this, it took me years to ever give The Downward Spiral a fair listen. Cunty, but what can I say? Seeing a Geo Tracker full of football players ahead of me in a Taco Bell drive-through one Saturday night in 1994, "Closer" blaring while one 'round-the-waste flannelled Quarterback jumped up and down and screaming, "Nails, man! Nail!" just put me off.

After eventually going back later in life to try and reassess, I still found I didn't care too much about TDS. When David Lynch talked lovingly about the album in the March 6th, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone (dedicated to Lost Highway), I tried again. 

Nothing (pun intended).

Eventually, I've come around to some of the record. However, both The Downward Spiral and its follow-up, The Fragile, are albums I never feel moved to listen to, and arguably the most famous song off TDS, "Hurt," has always been a particularly sore spot for me. "Hurt" sounds like a cheaper version of "Something I Can Never Have," still a masterpiece in my mind. "Hurt" has always struck me as egregiously sad, with the lyrics often evoking a one-upmanship technique. Sort of a proto-emo Madlib exercise, if you will. I'm not saying I'm right - I realize I am almost definitely wrong; that my bias stems from very much the wrong place; my high school, elitist "I liked that band first" mindset is bullshit. However, I feel how I feel. I continue to try, but nothing really moves the needle.

Until now. 

Over the weekend in Chicago, I stopped in a record store and found this in the Bowie section.

I've had a hard time establishing what exactly this performance was. The cover says, "Live Radio Broadcast," however, from the little bit I've seen online, this appears to be a soundboard recording taken from a full live set of the '95 tour, where Bowie and NIN each do a set and overlap on several songs. The thing here is it sounds to me like, on "Hurt" for example, it's Bowie's band doing the song and Trent joining them (which seems to be backed up by the video I posted above). Maybe because of this, I LOVE this version of "Hurt." I mean LOVE. The track listing is spectacular, with the older Bowie songs being reworked with the Outside era's aesthetic; in particular, this makes "Look Back in Anger" and "The Man Who Sold the World" very interesting. 

SIDE A:

Hello Spaceboy

Scary Monsters

Look Back in Anger

Wish (NIN)

AndyWarhol

SIDE B:

The Man Who Sold the World

Hurt

Terrible Lie

March of the Pigs

Closer

A word on the track order. Being a bootleg, I'm not sure if the compiler mixed in NIN's performance of "Wish" with an otherwise Bowie-centric side to further give the illusion of a completely unified performance; that was certainly my excited read upon first seeing this in the shop. Either way, I'm super psyched to have this and have already listened to it a number of times since returning home from my weekend in Chicago last night.

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Watch:

Sasha Rainbow's Grafted is now on Shudder and, oh man, I cannot recommend this one enough!

I'm already thinking of this as 'this year's The Substance.' Although it's not quite as cinematically bombastic as Coralie Fargeat's film, Grafted is a super fun, super gorey Body Horror Film with a weirdo score by Lachlan Anderson and an outstanding visual aesthetic that visually works the film's metaphors into color palette, setting and design.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

JD McPherson - Nite Owls

Miranda Sex Garden - Velvetine single

L.A. Witch - Eponymous

Crime Weekly - Rey Rivera (part 1)

Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 1)

Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets - Indoor Safari

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

The Cactus Blossoms - Every Time I Think About You

David Bowie - Outside

NIN - Not The Actual Events

The Jesus Lizard - Westside (single)

Bandsplain - Talking Heads (part 2)

Anthrax - I'm the Man EP

Testament - Demonic Refusal (single)

Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)

David Bowie & NIN - Back in Anger 

Deafheaven - Magnolia (single)

Deafheaven - Black Brick (single)

Deafheaven - Roads to Judah

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)

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Station to Station

Continuing our David Bowie week-long celebration of his life and work, K and I watched Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth last night. I had not seen this in some time, and both of us sat captivated for the entire 2 hours and 19 minutes run time. Anthony B. Richmond's camera combines with Roeg's deliberate pacing to juxtapose Bowie's inherent renowned alien beauty with the beauty of the Earth. Such a great mission statement to approach source material about an alien on Earth. The supporting cast is extravagant - Candy Clark, Rip Torn and Buck Henry* all turn in fantastic performances, but it's Bowie's grace and reserved performance that really makes this film what it is. You literally could not have cast anyone else and had this work the way it does.

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 * Being that Buck Henry was also in Friday night's viewing of The Linguini Incident, I guess you could spin my weekend celebration as a Buck Henry double-feature as well.

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David Bowie/Brian Eno - Neuköln Remastered

 

Being that David Bowie was not only born but also took his exit from our Planet on this week, I'm doing another edition of David Bowie Week! For today's post, I pulled the remastered version of "Neuköln," originally published on 1977's collaboration with Brian Eno, Heroes. I LOVE the arranging on this one, especially Bowie's Sax. Some interesting tonal ideas.

Heroes is a great album, but it could almost be pragmatically divided into two different playlists, one for the 'songs' and the other for the instrumental suites like "Neuköln." Such a haunting atmosphere to these passages, while the songs draw on a lot of the musical ideas/subsequent tropes being formed in the late 70s. Likewise, the Eastern influence of the instrumentals and overall world themes (

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Watch:

A few days ago I fired up Shudder.TV to see what was playing and caught Writer/Director Liam Gavin's 2017 film A Dark Song. Here's a trailer:

I caught this once before, maybe three or four years ago. I really dug it at the time, and it totally holds up upon second viewing. Mr. Gavin clearly knows his way around the Occult, or at least he researched the hell out of this film. Also, I may be off base, but feel like I detect some Warren Ellis influence here. Maybe I'm just running an unconscious parallel to Ellis and Mike Wolfer's Gravel series from the 00's - also kind of a Mercenary Magician, although in Gravel's case, Combat Magician would be a better description.

Wow. I just realized how much I miss Gravel.

How has it already been almost twenty years since this and Doktor Sleepless? 

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Playlist:

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

David Bowie - Heroes

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Wayfarer - American Gothic

The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn?

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

The Afghan Whigs - Do The Beast

Damone - Out of the Attic

Yawning Balch - Volume I

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Card:

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

• VI - The Lovers - Influence or inspiration

• Ace of Wands - Essence inception

• III - The Empress - Fruitfulness

The big pinion in the interpretation for today is choosing to read The Empress as Fruitfulness, an association I often forget or disregard altogether. It fits in with all the other ideas attached to this card, though, and it shows here that I need a little something new to get back on track writing. Being away from home for so long, it would be damn easy to fall out of the habit of writing. Not gonna happen, however, I think I need to lean into a new idea briefly in order to get my momentum back up. I haven't written since Friday. I brought a nice microphone with me so I could record myself reading the current version of Black Gloves and Broken Hearts, a part of the process that can be cumbersome, but that is also one of the most beneficial elements of my edit strategy. So while I'll be doing that at night, I think I'll take some time this afternoon to start up a new Nosleep story I've had percolating in the back of my brain. My first, fairly successful three-part serial on Nosleep, I Got a Deal On My New House Because Someone Committed Suicide in the Garage really inspired me, as I feel like it's some of the best short-form writing I've done to date, and I've been wanting to kind of re-create that. Sure, the Nosleep Community is fantastic, and provides instant validation to writers if they take to your story, which might sound lame at first, but that validation can be used as fuel for stepping up projects.

Happy Birthday David Bowie!!!

Earth misses You, Starman.

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Watch:

Thanks to some friends, I finally saw David Ayer's 2012 End of Watch.

This one had been on my list for a long time. I remember not really caring about it when it hit theatres, but over the intervening years, several people have told me End of Watch is fantastic. They are correct. I'm still thinking about this flick two days later. Great performances from Peña and Gyllenhaal, and a very realistic portrayal of L.A. 

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Play:

I finally beat Torture Star's Night At the Gates of Hell! I'd been stuck on the final series of stages, an awesome jungle last stand totally inspired by Lucio Fulci's Zombie, but haven't had a heck of a lot of time to play. Fixed that on my flight into L.A. on Friday. I actually beat the game as the plane was landing - that was pretty weird. 

The super cool thing about this game was, upon beating it, two more games opened up in the main menu. The first I moved on to is Evil in the House of Dr. Fleshenstein. Thanks to Mild Goth Daddy you can see some of this one here:

Really digging this game to, even if once again, I'm a bit stumped. I love the environments of Puppet Combo/Torture Star games so much, though, that I don't mind just being immersed in the game, even if I am repeating the same levels over a multitude of times. 

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Playlist:

Drive Like Yehu - Yank Crime

Twin Tribes - Ceremony

Your Black Star - Sound From the Ground

Chris Brokaw - Puritan

Baroness - Stone

Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist

Burial - Untrue

Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children

Fear - Live For the Record

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Card:

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

No time to actually interpret this today. I have a feeling it will be like that for a while, but I'm going to try and go back later and look at this. 

Wishful Beginnings

 

Sunday night, I found myself in bed at 10:30 after getting another round of COVID booster earlier in the day. 

I felt awful.

Of course, this means I woke up somewhere around 4:45 AM on Monday. Yay. Not a lot good about waking up that early, especially when feeling like absolute crap. That said, this has happened enough over the last few years that I know not to waste the time. I make coffee, fire up the laptop and plug my headphones into my ears, eager for an aural world to impress itself upon the morning-thin physical one. In this particular case, I followed David Bowie into that special liminal zone he had such a way with in his later years. One track I've always shortchanged on 1997's Outside is "Wishful Beginnings," which despite knowing quite well, often gets overshadowed by the fact that it leads directly into "We Prick You," one of my favorite tracks on the album. Something about "Beginnings" really resonated with me in those grey early hours yesterday, though, and it stayed with me all day, a rather pleasant haunting.

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Watch:

Despite not having seen any of the Legendary Godzilla or Kong movies, I caught up on Legendary Studios/Apple TV's Monarch: Legacy of Monsters over the last few days, and I have to say, I dig it. Of course, a lot of what I dig is the utilization of Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt, both cast to play the same character at different points in his life. There's one scene transition where the older Russell's face seamlessly dissolves into his son's, and it's pretty damn breathtaking. 

Seeing this, I've become curious enough to probably finally give the Legendary Studios' Godzilla and Kong movies a chance. I'd previously avoided these after being warned off 2014's opening film in the franchise by friends. I'd also made a subsequent attempt at viewing Godzilla: King of Monsters that failed. With the former, the hopes I held that Legendary would treat the iconic monster in a more "Cloverfield" manner were banished when friends saw it and basically reported back, "It's just another Godzilla movie." With the latter, I'm pretty sure I watched about half the film and there were considerably more humans than monsters, which seemed impossible based on the title and trailers (there's another reason to dislike trailers).

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Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star

David Bowie - Outside

André 3000 - New Blue Sun

I really don't know what to make of this new André 3000 album. It's an easy candidate for "up its own arse," but at the same time, I think there's something there. Maybe it's because I was sick A.F. yesterday (still am) and needed something soothing, but I put in headphones and drifted into a bizarre inner space courtesy of four tracks with names like:

1) I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a 'Rap' Album but This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time 

2) The Slang Word Pussy Rolls Off the Tongue with Far Better Ease Than the Proper Word Vagina. Do You Agree? 

3) That Night in Hawaii When I Turned into a Panther and Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control ... Shit Was Wild

4) BuyPoloDisorder's Daughter Wears a 3000® Button Down Embroidered

I guess there's the relief that there won't be another "Hey ya" floating around out in the world like a viral STD for the ear, but I also have to wonder if this is a complete piss take. Actually, it's a lot like another project Mr. 3000 was involved with around the turn of the century, Guy Ritchie's Revolver, which I'm still not sure how I feel about, as it's either the dumbest movie I've ever seen or the smartest. 

Talk about walking a thin line.

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Slashing/Back to 1984

 

Driving back from Indiana yesterday was a pretty serene experience. After an amazing weekend with my best friends in the world, I hit Route 31 and dug into a deserted drive back to Tennessee, accompanied for the first few hours by a handful of great Rock n' Roll albums. First up - Bowie's Diamond Dogs. I wasn't high, but I swear, I heard things in this listen that I hadn't ever before and really came out the other side with a new appreciation. Of particular mention, 1984, the arranging and production of which inspired a considerably great appreciation than on previous listens. There's a mindset to this album that it takes a very strong concentration to crack; I'm not saying I didn't dig DD before, but I guess I'd never listened to this one in such a concentrated, uninterrupted session before.  Aside from Rebel Rebel - which would have originally been the opening track on side two, and thus strategically placed to be the first song heard after the album is stopped and physically flipped over and re-started, there is a sonic and conceptual vein that runs through this record that almost makes it flow like one long song. 

I'm re-posting this track from youtube user Mister Sussux's channel, which, if you're a Bowie fan, you might want to check out and subscribe to, as it has some really cool Bowie clips.

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Watch:

I missed the trailer on this back a few months ago, but after catching it this morning on accident, I have to say, Slash/Back goes to the top of my Shudder watch list:

One part Stranger Things/Reservation Dogs, one Part The Thing or Slither - I purposely stopped watching the trailer the moment it looked like they might reveal the monster - this looks fantastic. This is the first feature from Slash/Back Director/Co-writer Nyla Innuksuk, who I know nothing about but have a feeling will be getting a spot on my radar after this one. 

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Playlist:

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Land of Sleeper

Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Cinematic Void Podcast - Episode 62

Trombone Shorty - Lifted

Television - Marquee Moon

Frank Black and the Catholics - Live at Melkweg March 24, 2001

David Bowie Diamond Dogs

The Police - Outlandos D'Amour

Dr. John - Locked Down

Beck - Odelay

David Bowie - PinUps

Various - Rocktober Blood Soundtrack

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Card:

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

Emotional recharge after letting go of the urge to try and control Earthly things we cannot. I'm not entirely sure what this is saying, but I have a feeling it ties into recent work/life stuff. 

Seven Days of Bowie: Day 7 - Cracked Actor (Live 1974)

 

I thought I'd end with something older since, this time, I focused so singularly on the later period of Bowie's work for most of the entries. That was, of course, intentional: I personally have always been drawn to the latter years more than the early ones, and it was through my appreciation of some of those later albums that I worked backward. Not to say I didn't dig Ziggy Stardust or Diamond Dogs when I was initially exposed, but I didn't get them as complete albums until later. The singles always wowed me, but I often didn't understand how they 'fit' into the context of the larger album they arrived on. 

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Watch:

The trailer for Season Three of The Mandalorian dropped last night:

Mando season three doesn't look like much based on the trailer, but it goes without saying that, as someone who grew up with but has disowned Star Wars but created a complicated caveat for my love of this show (and the Boba Fett show), I'm all-in until proven otherwise, which I doubt will ever happen.

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Playlist:

They Might Be Giants - Miscellaneous T

K's 70s Playlist

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Card:

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

Taping into the power of something bigger than myself will lead to a solid foundation from which to proceed. I can't help but read this as alluding to my current writing projects, but... oh, wait. I think I just got it. Now let me put this out of my mind so as not to taint the result. I'll confirm here later on if this means what I think it means.

Seven Days of Bowie: Day 6 - Sue

I had not even heard of this track's extended version or the accompanying 'film' before Saturday night. I love that I'm still discovering things about Bowie now, seven years after his death.

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Watch:

Continuing my own personal seven days of Bowie, I watched Francis Whately's documentary David Bowie: The Last Five Years on HBO this past Saturday night. Really great film; I've never made any bones about saying that Bowie's last few albums are among my favorites of his (2003's Reality is my favorite, to be exact), so this one was sure to strike a chord with me.

 

The film begins by setting the stage with the Reality Tour, where Bowie first fell ill, and then moves backward and forward through his career to give the proper context to Reality, 2013's The Next Day and finally, his final album, Black Star.

 

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Read:

I finally started David Lynch's autobiography Room to Dream this past weekend. About 85 pages in, it's every bit the balm I knew it would be. 

Actually a hybridization of bio/autobio, the book is a collaboration with writer Kristine McKenna. McKenna interviews an enormous cross-section of people from Lynch's life - she's talking to childhood friends in the first few chapters! So one chapter is her speaking to these folks, the next is Lynch reading and reacting, filling out what others have said about him. The technique is genius, in my opinion, and makes for marvelously joyous reading. But then, it's David Lynch - no artist I know of makes me happier.

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Playlist:

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

M83 - Oceans Niagara (single)

Ministry - Animositisomina

G Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It's That Easy

Frank Black - Live at the Utah Hotel Saloon

David Bowie - A Reality Tour

David Bowie - Nothing Has Changed

Lustmord - Hobart

Metallica - Kim 'Em All

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Card:

Just a quick one from my trusty Thoth deck:

Off-the-cuff reading - "Applying Will to Wonder in order to learn and grow."

This gels. I'm poised at a position where I've done some deep reflection on my own ins and outs, motivations and hangups, and I find that I have a short attention span - I want to start and finish projects within a very brief time, or they give me anxiety, and I avoid them. The only place this is not true is in writing, although my mileage varies there, as well. Hence, I need to address this, and the one big elephant in my room that I am 100% aware of but avoid like the fucking plague is returning to Meditation. I really think applying my Will to restarting that practice will reap huge benefits, I just have to do it.

Seven Days of Bowie: Day 5 - Strangers When We Meet Live 1995

 

I love this song, and I love this version of this song. 

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Psyched:

Yellowjackets Season Two releases on my Birthday? Wow, thank You, Universe. 

I won't be watching anything else leading up to this. I'm overjoyed to see Elijah Wood join the cast, especially spending time opposite Ricci's Misty. 

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Watch:

Well, I tried.

K and I went to our local theatre to see Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink last night. We made it about twenty minutes in and bailed; if I'd been by myself, I probably would have stayed just to see if what I interpreted as the gimmick of the film - constant static shots of the ceiling, childhood detritus on the floor, the upper right corner of an antiquated television, the upper right molding on a door, ever evolved. I'm pretty damn open-minded, and I tend to like and accept art on its own terms, but as I watched Skinamarink, I couldn't help dismissing the film as 'art school nonsense.' I'm not saying I'm correct; when we left, we didn't ask for our money back - I wouldn't take money out of the pocket of an indie creator, and I'm all for doing something different with Horror. I just don't think this concept can sustain a runtime of 100 minutes.

I also feel like, had I done some of the research on the film and on Ball in particular, I might have 'gotten' it more. I still wouldn't budge on the runtime being excessive, and the proof is, after reading this interview with Ball and then poking around on his youtube channel Bitesized Nightmares, I found the short film that served as a sort of Proof of Concept for Skinamarink. It works A LOT better as a thirty-minute short.

This is the goal of creators uploading content like Ball does to his channel, and I don't blame Ball for rolling with the opportunity. Watching a succession of these Bitesized Nightmare films, I'm definitely going to attempt to watch Skinamarink again when it hits Shudder. I'm also interested in seeing what he does from here on. 

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Playlist:

G. Love & Special Sauce - Yeah, It's That Easy

David Bowie - Outside

David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This Giant

Marnie Stern - This Is It and I Am It and You Are it and So Is...

Idles - Joy as an Act of Resistance

Jucifer - I Name You Destroyer

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Seven Days of Bowie: Day 4 - Tin Machine Live!

 

From the relatively recently released Tin Machine: Live at La Cigale, Paris, 25th June 1989. I never felt like Tin Machine's studio album captured their sound. Not that I ever saw them live, but I distinctly remember their 1991 appearance on SNL, where they performed Bowie's "Baby Universal" and what a little research now shows me was Roxy Music's "If There Is Something" (neither of which I was familiar with at the time, and there's no youtube clip of that second performance online). 

It was that performance, to a 15-year-old stoner who had only the most fledgling radio understanding of David Bowie, that imprinted something on me that would be called upon later in life when I became a full-fledged fan. In fact, Tin Machine was all over Chicago's Loop 97.9 FM rock radio at the time (not sure what song), and I have a  tiny memory of the disconnect between the kind of lackluster energy the track had compared to what I'd seen on SNL. 

Years later, I picked up the group's 1989 eponymous record, and again, felt like something was missing. It's a serviceable record but just does not present the band the way I remembered them from that performance. Then, in 2019, this live album surfaced, and it's perfect. 

Perfect. 

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Watch:

Here's a trailer for the new film from Christopher Smith:

Reminds me - I still need to watch The Banishing, and Black Death has been on my unrequited radar forever; I love Triangle.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Bowie - Black Tie White Noise

David Bowie - The Next Day

Sunn O))) - Pyroclasts

Godflesh - PURE Live

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Card:

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

My recent forays into emotional stability (via re-engagement with yogic discipline) will bolster a partnership and push me further away from the dogmatic thinking that can set in when a routine develops. 

Routines are good and bad. I have definitely established one since moving across the country; however, recently I've become aware that the routine is too entrenched and would benefit greatly from a pattern interrupt. Based on this, earlier in the week I began practicing yoga again. This is something I've flit in and out of over the last twenty years. I use it until I don't need it anymore, move on and eventually come back. However long I stick this time, in just four days, the practice has worked wonders for my body and mind. I can feel things clearing up and my everyday life, absolutely a partnership with K, has become a lot lighter. 

One of the things I initially told K concerned me about our plan to buy a house out in the country (relatively we're not on green acres or anything) was not letting it inadvertently become a prison. We left a lot of friends in L.A. The good news is my Chicago people are only 6.5 hours away, but that still leaves the day-to-day spent primarily in the house, where we both also work from home. So you see how quickly our retreat could become an agoraphobic processing center. 

Maybe this is paranoid, but I'm always on the look out for what I call "Life Traps." People maneuver themselves into situations that look good when juxtaposed with their current circumstance, the good in which they've probably grown blind to due to repetition and routine, and they take steps without considering the long run. In our veritable frenzy to get out of LaLaLand, I became hyper aware of the possibility we might be jumping into just such a trap. The good news is, just being aware of this stuff usually helps to mitigate it. 

But diligence is required. 

Thus, I'm looking at shaking up the small routines in favor of creating a bigger picture. To quote Special Agent Dale Cooper:

"I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I've started to focus out beyond the edge of the board. On a bigger game." 

Today's Pull definitely makes me feel as though I am moving in the right direction.

Seven Days of Bowie: Day 3 - Sex and The Church

 

From the criminally under-referenced The Buddha of Suburbia album Bowie released as, in his words, "a quasi soundtrack" to Roger Michell's series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel, neither of which I am familiar with. I LOVE the Saxophone on this album, especially this track. Little considered fact: Bowie plays all the Sax on this record. Granted, there are some Bell Biv Devoe-style beats on this one (South Horizon, I'm looking at you!) but they work! Overall, it's a marvelous record.

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Watch:

Many thanks to Heavenisanincubator for reminding me Nicolas Winding Refn's Copenhagen Cowboy recently dropped. 

 

 I blew through the entire six episodes this past Tuesday. If Refn's previous foray into sequential streaming Too Old To Die Young left you a bit cold, fear not, I found Copenhagen Cowboy a considerably easier ride (that said, applying the adjective "easy" to Refn's work is a bit misleading. You still have to work for it here, too, only this time, the contents don't make your skin crawl so much).

My Letterbxd entry on this one lives HERE.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Death - ... For All the World To See

Jucifer - I Name You Destroyer

David Bowie - Scary Monsters

David Bowie - Station to Station

Tin Machine - Live at La Cigale, Paris, 25th June 1989

Bigg Doggett and His Combo - All His Hits

Lorn - Rarities

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Card:

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

Completion of Will requires a partnership or collaboration that will ultimately balance my somewhat topsy-turvy confidence. Could be good news, I have a couple of possible collaborations in the near future.

RIP David Bowie - Seven Years Away From Tibet

 

The Alien has been gone from this world for seven years. Damn. I still remember that day. Thus begins my annual Seven Days of David Bowie, and I thought I'd start with "Seven Years in Tibet," from Bowie's 1997 album Earthling.

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Watch:

The first trailer for Ari Aster's third film Beau is Afraid dropped:

Wow. I'm not even sure what to make of this one other than A) I won't be watching any more trailers, and B) I'll be there opening day.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Skid Row - Eponymous

Talking Heads - Big Country (single)

The Flamingos - I Only Have Eyes For You (single)

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Kaiser Cheifs - I Predict A Riot

Sylvaine - Nova

Sylvaine - Atoms Aligned, Coming Undone

The High Confessions - Turning Lead Into Gold with the High Confessions

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Metallica - ... And Justice For All

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Card:

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

Transformations of both Emotional and Proprietary merit can be achieved by applying the appropriate degree of Will to the correct avenue. I'm not entirely certain how to actually apply this, yet, because on one level this drawing seems to hold the same vagueries most do, while something here is picking at me that perhaps if I sit and contemplate this one, a more specific epiphany may arrive. 

Antonio Sánchez feating Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

New music from world-renowned drummer Antonio Sanchez. This is the first single off his upcoming Shift (Bad Hombre, Vol. 2) album, and it features Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. You can order the new album  HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

10/1 - Trick 'r Treat

10/2 - Barbarian

10/3 - Hellraiser ('84)

10/4 - Phenomena

10/5 - Hellraiser (2022)

10/6 - The Dark Backward

10/7 - Sick/The Beyond

10/8 - Werewolf By Night

10/9 - Something in the Dirt

10/10 - Let the Right One In Episode 1/Lux Aeterna

10/11 - My Best Friend's Exorcism/Grimcutty

10/12 - Smile

10/13 - Monstrous/VHS (Amateur Night segment)

10/14 - Halloween Kills

10/15 - Halloween Ends/Ed Wood/Plan 9 From Outer Space

10/16 - Spider Baby/101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments/Night's End/Behemoth

10/17 - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

10/18 - Random Acts of Violence/Two Witches/Let the Right One In Episode 2

10/19 - 976-EVIL

10/20 - Alison's Birthday/Tone Deaf

10/21 - Elviria's Haunted Hills/Popcorn

10/22 - Resolution

10/23 - The Endless

10/24 - VHS 99

10/25 - Tigers Are Not Afraid

10/26 - Bliss

No matter how many times I watch Joe Begos' Bliss, it just gets better and more inspiring. 

There are ideas in this film that I think rank among the greatest contributions to the modern Vampire myth, and the execution only helps seal that. My big regret from this year's Beyondfest was that I already had tickets to see Zeal and Ardor at the Echoplex when Begos' new film Christmas, Bloody Christmas screened. That's the first of his films I haven't seen on the big screen at Beyondfest since a bunch of friends and I saw Mind's Eye, which sealed my love of his aesthetic.

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Watch:

I finally got to see Moonage Daydream on the big screen. This was one I almost missed, but with my good friend Grez in town, we headed into Nashville to the wonderful Belcourt Theatre and saw a late showing. 

So how is it? Fantastic. Not a documentary with a narrative so much as it is a constantly evolving series of clips - interviews, performances, personal journal stuff - a slightly linear trajectory through David Bowie's life as an artist, or perhaps rather, a series of artists, dappled with some intimate peaks behind the thin, white curtain at the man behind those personas. Built for the big screen.

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Playlist:

King Woman - I Wanna Be Adored (single)

The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored (single)

Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years

Type O Negative - Dead Again

Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws

David Bowie - The Next Day

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Card:

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

Pretty straightforward. 

Only five days left to get in on Grimm's Kickstarter for The Art of the Bound Tarot hardcover art book. I'm throwing down today, you should too if you dig the art on these glorious cards. Back the project HERE.

Moonage Daydream

 

I mean it like it is. Like it sounds.

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Watch:

This. Looks. Incredible. 

I don't think I was even aware this Bowie doc was on the horizon. 

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Dollar Bin:

One of my prized possessions is a beat-up old copy of Marvel Age Annual #2. This pretty much monetarily worthless periodical celebrates the first 25 years of Marvel Comics, and as such, it looks back on many key moments from Marvel Comics, as well as offering little one and two-page spreads that tease upcoming storylines in Captain America and Uncanny X-Men, among other titles. Because I love this book so much as a document of an era in my life, I recently jumped on another Marvel Age when I found it in a Dollar Bin.

Okay, I didn't exactly find this one in a Dollar Bin,  as while I did purchase Marvel Age #44 for $1.00, it was not from a physical shop's bin, but from an eBay seller. Still, cost-wise it counts, and it's timely (see last week's Dollar Bin).

Inside there is pre-release news on the then-upcoming, original eight New Universe titles, as well as articles hyping the Mutant Massacre, G.I.Joe vs. Transformers, and a Spider-Man vs. Wolverine 64-page one-shot special. Pretty cool to go back and read this stuff. Also, the layout and design of all the 1986 Marvel Comics, with their key-character border around the cover image, has always been something I love very much, probably as they lined the shelves at the time I really fell in love with reading comics.

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Playlist:

Alustrium - A Monument to Silence

Yard Act - The Overload

Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror

Tones on Tail - Everything

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

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Card:

The personification of a lot of issues I've had on my mind after a week-end of consciousness-raising viewing.

Rebel Rebel

 

I've been listening to the live double album David Bowie released from the Reality tour. Not only is Reality my favorite Bowie album, I think A Reality Tour is my favorite Bowie live album, as well. Such a great, career-spanning selection of songs, and some especially insightful new versions of old favorites and deep cuts, the best of which might just be this re-working of "Rebel Rebel", the studio version of which was included on a later edition of Reality as a bonus track.

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Watch:

I can't wait for Friday. Seeing Joe Bob and Darcy kick off a new season will be like old friends having a party after time away, and my Last Drive-In text threads - Tommy, Ray and Missy - are always a welcome respite. 

 

My bet is we finally get Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which hit Shudder for the first time since I've been subscribed (2018) and leaves the service on the first of next month.

 

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Playlist:

Calexico - El Mirador

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Testament - The New Order

Download - The Eyes of Stanley Pain

Puppy Gristle - Eponymous (Thanks, Klint!)

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Card:

The mass of all my possessions occasionally weighs on me. Yesterday was one of those days.

Opeth - The Width of a Circle

I'll admit - I was pretty disappointed to see this pop up in my youtube feed, click on it and find that it's NOT a cover of the David Bowie classic by the same name. That said, I don't take to very much of the music Opeth makes these days, but I dig this. 

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Dollar Bin:

Welcome back to the Dollar Bin, one of my favorite corners of any local comic shop to spend some time digging through. This week's find: 1985's Moonshadow!

Talk about a book that's been on my radar for decades - maybe as long as I've been seriously reading comics - yet one I haven't actually picked up until now. Originally published through Marvel's Epic comics - kind of their Vertigo a full eight years before Vertigo existed - Moonshadow's J.M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth's coming of age, modern fantasy. I remember leafing through this one when it was still on the stands, probably near the end of its 12-issue run, so circa 1986. I would have been ten. This and Stray Toasters were books that initially confused the hell out of me as a die-hard disciple of Larry Hama's G.I.Joe, however, those books also planted the seeds for me to eventually see the potential that lay in the comic format beyond superhero books. I recently scored issues 1-4 in the dollar bins at the Comic Bug, and am looking forward to reading them.

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Watch:

I remember seeing the thumbnail for the first Wyrmwood movie on Netflix for years but never being motivated to watch it. I've had plenty of people whose opinions I trust recommend I do just that, but for whatever reason, I just haven't. Now there's a sequel on the way, and I'm still not certain how I feel about these flicks:

It's not that this looks bad, it just looks kind of repetitive. If anyone out there has seen these and vouch for them - because apparently like five of my good friends aren't enough - let me know. 

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Playlist:

Sugar - File Under: Easy Listening

Quicksand - Distant Populations

The Mysterines - Reeling

Ministry - Filth Pig

Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release)

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror 

Lower Dens - Escape From Evil

Opeth - Deliverence

Code Orange - Underneath

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Card:

Again with the damn Hierophant. What the hell am I missing? What am I so blindly adhering to that it's impairing me in some way?

Putting Out Fire

 

I've really been digging on David Bowie's 1983 album Let's Dance of late. This is one I never really deep-dived on due to the oversaturation of the hits - all of which I love - throughout most of my life. This one always felt a skosh... pedestrian to me previously. What a f*&kin' stupid thing to think. As if any David Bowie could be pedestrian. While there are definitely albums and eras of his career that appeal to me more than other ones, any Bowie is good Bowie, and my recent obsession with this album proves that. Here's my favorite non-single, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", of which I definitely am one. A cat person, that is.

 

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Watch:

While the teaser for Jordan Peele's eagerly awaited Nope had a total of three images from the film in it and is mostly teased out by clips from his previous two films - which, although I can't wait for the movie, renders it meaningless for me to post here - the teaser for Dario Argento's new Giallo Dark Glasses is all I need to see to know I can't wait for this flick:

Looks like classic Argento to me, a flavor I haven't quite had enough of lately. No definitive release date yet, but "soon" is enough to get my heartbeat above 110.

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NCBD:

Another super light NCBD. Here's what's coming home with me this week:

Very curious about this new Fist of Khonshu that's shown up in the pages of Moon Knight, especially after seeing this cover. 

So, I gave up on the X Lives of Wolverine, and am moving forward with the Deaths because, so far, this one reads like a direct sequel to Jonathan Hickman's recent X-Swan Song Inferno. Deaths also, quite surprisingly, has thus far had very little to do with the titular, over-used mutant. Now, I'm not convinced this is a worthy sequel to Hickman's time on X-Men, but I'm willing to give it an issue or two more before I decide.

Is the tentative jive I throw down when talking about some of these books taxing? It might be. I'm just so suspicious of Mutant books, even after being so blown away by so many recent ones. The problem, of course, is that, to quote the Action Figure Insider, Daniel Pickett from one of his appearances on Drinking with Comics, "Comics has always been a strip-mining industry," and nowhere is that more true than with Wolverine and the X-Men. What you like one second will turn around and drastically disappoint you a minute later, so a savvy reader has to keep his guard up always while reading big-two series.

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Playlist:

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

AC/DC - Highway to Hell

Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Carnage

Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now

Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Godflesh - Post Self

David Bowie - Let's Dance

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Card:

I raise a glass to he who inspires the grandest of stories, the oldest of tales, the inspiration for independent thought. Never forget - the snake was the enemy of the Old Testament's god because the snake offered enlightenment.