Powermad - Slaughterhouse

 

Over the last two weeks, I had the distinct pleasure of watching several of David Lynch's films I had previously missed on the big screen at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre. The Belcourt's retrospective on Lynch's work was comprehensive; a true celebration of the man's life and art.

I spoke about seeing Eraserhead/The Grandmother in a previous post, but this past weekend my cousin Charles and his wife Lauren came down to visit us, and Sunday afternoon, the four of us caught The Straight Story on 35mm. I'll talk about that below, but suffice it to say, for Monday night's screening of Wild At Heart, Powermad's "Slaughterhouse" rang EPIC on the Belacourt's sound system. I never got into this band back in the day, but I was definitely aware of them, mostly through ads in Thrasher magazine. 

Released in 1989, this would have come at the height of my "Skate or Die" phase; man do I miss that. The last time I rode a board was circa 2011 in San Pedro; the hills almost killed me, and I kind of backed off again after that, only to have a friend accidentally break it a year or two later.

How the hell did I get here from where this began? Oh yeah, Powermad!

The bit with Powermad doing backups for Sailor's Elvis serenade really clues you into Lynch's mindset on this film. There are times when I'd almost liken Wild At Heart to Lynch's version of a Farce. Sailor's singing and mannerisms, Marietta's, well, everything, and Crispin Glover's joyfully insane Del are all so far outside the realm of seriousness for a film that can still take itself very seriously, that they help make this one unique, even among the greater body of Lynch's work. 

The two images that stand out on the big screen are the sequences of roiling fire and Bobby Peru's teeth. Nightmare fuel, that.

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Watch:

David Lynch's The Straight Story is an underseen masterpiece. I say that as a lifelong Lynch fan who, although I own the film on DVD, had only seen it twice before, and never at the Cinema. That changed this past weekend, and I can tell you that this film is a deeply moving character piece that wet my ocular sockets consistently from start to finish.  

Seeing this film on 35 mm was an entirely new experience; Lynch films on the big screen are heightened, almost altered states; few people who have experienced Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive in the cinema would contest that. Those are films that incorporate Neo Noir and Psychological Fugue/Horror elements that lend themselves to inducing altered states. The Straight Story is something else entirely. It is a story about family, love, and redemption. It is firmly rooted in the "real" world, so its altered state is a sharply emotional one. It's a beautiful and slightly disconcerting thing to let David Lynch lead you on a journey like this, but by the end, it makes you feel wonderfully alive.

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NCBD:

Finally, after being pushed back several months, we have the finale of James Tynion and Joshua Hixon's The Deviant!

To say I've been waiting for this is an understatement. Thinking about sitting down this weekend and re-reading the entire series in one sitting. One of my favorite books in forever. 

I keep thinking this cover is an homage to an issue of Larry Hama's original GI JOE comic at Marvel, but that may not be the case. Either way, pretty cool. Maybe I'm starting to warm up to this book a bit more? We'll see.

Now that I know Epitaphs From the Abyss is ending at issue 12, I'm cherishing each one of these even more. And as I say so often with this book, LOVE this cover!

Güs! 'Nuff said!

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Playlist:

Sqürl - Third Man Records Session

Melvins - Hold It In

Hangman's Chair - Saddiction

Vinyl Williams - Lansing (single)

Flogging Molly - Swagger

The Pogues - Hell's Ditch

The Pogues - Red Roses for Me

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

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Card:

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

Grimm currently has a Kickstarter running for his ... And the Night Stares Back Vol. 2 coloring book, which features some of the art from the Hand of Doom Tarot. I backed this instantly, but there's no way I would ever apply color to Grimm's beautiful B&W art.

• V: The Hierophant

• Knight of Swords

• Five of Wands

Knowledge (or information) wrested from a perceived opponent can require Will to make work. 

This is straight-up on point with my work at the moment, where I actually feel like I have a bit of a "Moriarity" at the moment, and the knowledge they disseminate to me often feels occluded or guarded. Maybe even false.

 

I'm sure I've spoken about Portishead's third album, Third, here at some point, and I know I've posted my favorite song from my favorite album of theirs. Third has a quality not many albums have. It sounds to my ears like a mapping of my own personal mental interiority. I'm not sure I can adequately explain that without filling up a few pages; suffice it to say, this album lived in my blood from the moment I first heard it upon release in April of 2008. 

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Watch:

I drove up to the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville last night to see David Lynch's Eraserhead on the big screen for the first time. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.

Poster by the inimitable Marko Manev.

The sound design in this film is amazing, and to finally behold it on the big screen... man! I've seen many of Lynch's films at the theatre - everything from Lost Highway after (except The Straight Story) as they came out, as well as Blue Velvet and the original Twin Peaks Pilot, but never Eraserhead. This was everything I thought it would be. Also, the audience had a special treat, as The Belcourt is pairing many of their David Lynch Retrospective across the month of March with some of his short films, so I also had the distinct pleasure of seeing The Grandmother.

I'd seen this before, but not in years and not on a big screen. The Grandmother may be even more unnerving than Eraserhead; I'm not the first one to say it, but many of these early-period Lynch films have an unmistakable "Industrial Nightmare" feeling to them. I had indulged in a deep drag from my vape pen before the screening, only to realize by the time The Grandmother began that it hit me SUPER hard. So I went into both films completely ripped and had a full-on hallucinatory experience, which was a bit difficult to manage at the time, but eventually worked out to be an extremely memorable experience.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Satanized (single)

TVOTR - Young Liars E.P.

TVOTR - Final Fantasy (single; 2004 Recording)

TVOTR - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

The Bronx - IV

Ghost - Infestissumam

D'Nell - 1st Magic

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

Isaac Hayes - Three Tough Guys OST

Isaac Hayes - Truck Turner OST

Led Zeppelin - Presence

Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions

Slayer - Show No Mercy

Drug Church - Prude

Fugazi - 13 Songs

PJ Harevey - Rid of Me

The Police - Outlandos d'Amour

Portishead - Third

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Happy Twin Peaks Day!

I tend to go through an emotional resurgence with Twin Peaks in December and January, so I often miss Twin Peaks Day. This year, as the first year without David Lynch, I feel a particularly strong need to celebrate the holiday. So here's Angelo Badalamenti's "High School Swing" from the Twin Peaks: Season Two OST. This is really just a 'More Music from the Series' kind of thing, not solely music from Season Two. Still need to grab this one on vinyl, as it's the only outlier.

Also, Fright-Rags has this little doozy on special today: 

Order here. I grabbed this AND this shirt, which kinda blows me away. You can check out their Twin Peaks items HERE.

Finally, I'm heading out to Eastside Bowl tonight (first time) for their Twin Peaks Day event. No idea what this will entail, but I'll report back and maybe share some pictures (maybe; I'm terrible about taking pictures).

And special thanks to the Twin Peaks Twin Peaks YouTube channel for posting this crystal clear scene we all love so much!!!

All right, in the words of the Little Man From Another Place, '!KCOR S'TEL"

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Saying Goodbye to The Soft Moon (One Year Late)

A week or so ago, I saw a post on social media that alarmed me - Luis Vasquez, the singular voice of The Soft Moon, died a year ago! I had no idea...

When I realized I hadn't posted anything from this band since the day after seeing them live in 2018, I guess it makes sense that they were far enough off my radar that I missed the news of Vasquez's passing in January of 2024 and for, you know, the entire remainder of the year. I was in L.A. for the entirety of January 2024, but pulling last year's Moleskin off the shelf, I see that I spent January 18th at Santa Monica Brewworks with my good friend Chris. Looking at my post from that day, I didn't find a serendipitous dalliance with The Soft Moon's music, and scrolling through their discography, I realized I'd kind of tuned them out after 2018's Criminal. 2022's Exister only shows up three times in my daily playlists on this page. 

It also makes sense that I never saw the short film "Stupid Child," a kind of tense noise interstitial for one of the tracks from Exister. This is possibly the most harrowing thing Vasquez had a hand in - the video to "Needs" is pretty fucked up, but I'd say this tops that easily. 

Glad I got to see The Soft Moon live. Great band that had so much more in them. Fuckin' Fentanyl. 

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Watch:

K and I are currently rewatching Yellowjackets seasons one and two as prep for the new season starting on Valentine's Day. Rewatching, I realize there is so much of season two I somehow completely forgot. 

K typically conks out earlier than I do, so after she falls asleep, I've been continuing my first rewatch of Twin Peaks: The Return since 2018. 

I'd never watched The Return directly after the original series before, and honestly, I don't know that I'd do it this way again. There's such a marked difference between the two; every time I watch the original, I fall in love with it all over again, so to switch gears and jump headlong into the follow-up that is not really concerned with being a follow-up at all felt a bit jarring at first. In fact, after the first two episodes, I was starting to think I didn't like The Return. That feeling didn't last that long, though. By the time I got to episode three or four, my brain had caught up, and I had reemerged. 

There's so much about The Return that I love, but first, I have to remind myself that this is 100% a creative vehicle for David Lynch - really his last large-scale vehicle - and he used it to shoot what many TP fans felt was idiosyncratic content that had nothing to do with the answers and resolutions they'd been hoping for since the second season finale aired on June 10, 1991. Lynch famously did things 100% on his own terms (except with Dune, and look how that turned out), and continuing what he'd started and begrudgingly lost control of nearly thirty years ago was definitely not on his "to do" list. I've definitely spent some time wondering what might have been had the show continued, and as usual, those contemplations only yield one result: Better to leave 'em wanting more than to overstay your welcome. Still...

So it took a bit to recalibrate myself coming into this rewatch of The Return, but now I'm 100% in. Friday night, I watched episodes seven and eight, and I was once again struck by (of course) episode eight's absolute grandeur. I woke up the next day wanting to read some critical writing on the series. Happily, I found some excellent articles. 

First, this article HERE on the Wrong Answers blog, where Abigail Nussbaum makes some excellent points about what I have long felt is both the saddest and most remarkably compelling aspects of the series, namely how well it mirrors the disappointments of life. The lyrics to Eddie Vedder's contribution to The Return's soundtrack sums this up beautifully:

Next, Crypto-Kubrology's article on Medium reminded me of a theory I'd read about once before, shortly after the series aired. Namely, that episodes 17 and 18 may very well have been intended to be watched at the same time. 

As a huge fan of The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka, this idea makes me giddy with anticipation, and while Zaireeka has become all but impossible for me to orchestrate listening to properly, 17 & 18 will simply require I muster the wherewithal to carry the tv in my office downstairs and set it up next to* the one in the living room. I have at least three Blu-Ray players, so no problem there.

White The Return may be unlike the original Twin Peaks in most ways, one thing the two series share is the ability to reward repeated viewings with ever more mystery. 

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*Although Cryto-Kubrology's screenshots make me wonder if the screens would be better served stacked as opposed to side-to-side, but I'll take what I can get. 

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Playlist:

The Veils - Asphodels

Frank Black - Teenager of the Year

Frank Black - Cult of Ray

Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

Sleep - Dopesmoker

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

Various - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series

Crime Weekly Podcast - Rey Rivera (part 2)

Laura Cannell - A Compendium of Beasts Vol. 1 EP

Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hot!

Amber Mark - 3:33am

Apple Music Playlist: February 2, 2025

The Soft Moon - Criminal

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Card:

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

• VI The Lovers

• Six of Pentacles

• King of Pentacles

Surface reads are always something I avoid, almost to the fact that sometimes I feel like I tend to resist instances where the cards attempt to convey something simply. I'll not make that mistake today. The Lovers is an obvious nod to K and I celebrating out 9th anniversary this past Saturday. Six of Pentacles is a reminder of the stability I have now, a goal I set and accomplished with no small degree of Will. And King of Pentacles is both a nod to giving more attention to everyday Earthly matters (Malkuth), and that I need to listen to more Sabbath; kinda slacking off lately.

ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ - Moutains Falling

From David Lynch and John Neff's 2001 BLUEBOB album, technically titled ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ, but I don't know a good way of typing that stylization outside of the clunky cut-and-paste from other websites, and then, see, you get comic sans or whatever that is. 

One of my favorite albums ever, and "Mountains Falling" is probably my favorite track. There's something so eerie and beautiful about the guitar, about the entire song. Very compelling and wonderfully utilized in Mulholland Drive. 

Tomorrow will bring us full circle on David Lynch's passing, and although technically the week-long celebration would end today, I'm extending it to Thursday for symmetry. That said, I wanted to start to get back into regular posting.

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NCBD:

This week's pull list from Rick's Comic City:

And then there's last week's books, which I completely forgot to post. How is that possible? More on that in a second.

Okay, so yeah, how did I forget to post last week's books? Well, besides being so busy at work that I didn't even make it into the shop until Thursday night, and that was only to give myself some normalcy after spending the day with the news of David Lynch's passing? There's something else at work here, though.

I recently realized I no longer have a tent pole book. I like everything I'm reading, but there's nothing that I absolutely cannot wait to read. This is always a rough patch because the older I get and the more media changes, the more I become concerned that one of these patches might stick. That seems unlikely, but even if an indie book really grabs me at some point in the near future, chances are it will either be a limited series or will be released in seasons, with gaps in between. I miss having something that really drives me. There was Preacher,  Stray Bullets, and The Walking Dead. Most recently, it was the Krakoa-era X-Men, and after that, I thought for sure the Energon Universe would carry the torch, but that's just not happening. With the exception of DWJ's Transformers, my favorite books last year were all indie titles that were published sporadically or as mini-series. Of everything I read, SIKTC comes closest, but goddamn, these hiatus intervals! Hahaha. I know JTIV is busy working on a lot of books people love - myself included - but that just means there's only sporadic consistency with all of his stories.

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Watch:

I really just found myself wanting to hear David talk today. About anything. How cool, then, that I found this:

 

From the Simple Tom YouTube Channel, which I recommend you check out. The full video for this is in the description.

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Playlist:

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between

Circle Jerks - Group Sex

The Halloween Scene - Pitch Black Manor

The Cure - Songs Of A Lost World

The Cure - The Head On the Door

David Bowie - Station to Station

David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Sax Version; Single)

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Tonight

Raven Chacon - Los Subliminados (single)

Drug Church - Prude

David Lynch & John Neff - BLUEBOB

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

David Bowie - Reality

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Limited Event Series OST

Various Artists - Twin Peaks The Return: Music From the Limited Event Series

David Bowie - Stage

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3

James Brown - Hell

Hemlocke Spings - going... going... Gone!

Rina Mushonga - Narcisc0 (single)

Jocelyn Montgomery & David Lynch - Lux Vixens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

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

• Knight of Cups

• XIV: Temperance (ART in Thoth)

• Ace of Pentacles

Couldn't be clearer. Emotional despondency at the loss of an Artistic influence should inspire a breakthrough in Process (the alignment of time and resources, both the Earthly realm of Pentacles). I'm planning on ending my period of obsessive mourning tomorrow with a full-on bounce back into Creative Fire

David Lynch - Wishin' Well

 Another of my favorite tracks from David Lynch's The Big Dream. I love the motion of this song, it's somehow spooky and playful.

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David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Night (City Back Street)

From the 2015 album Polish Night Music, written and performed by David Lynch and Marek Zebrowski. You can practically see the manhole covers belching voluminous, silent vapor.

Listening to this the other night with a head full of smoke, I felt like the very air before me might open to reveal a portal to the pitch-black winter streets of Łódź.

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David Lynch

It's hard to accurately encapsulate in language what David Lynch means to me. I discovered his work through Twin Peaks in 1990 when the pilot aired on ABC channel 7 Chicago as a Sunday night movie. I was instantly hooked. The show would prove to be unlike anything I'd ever seen. When I think about what seeing that pilot and the subsequent episodes did to me at the age of 14/15, I am not exaggerating when I say David Lynch exploded my world. Narratively, musically, aesthetically, and spiritually. 

At 14, I was a suburban Chicago 80s stoner kid. I'd just become enamored with Anthrax through their album The Persistence of Time, and this was a catalyst for me to let the tide of 80s Thrash carry me out onto its tumultuous sea, for better or worse. I loved the imagery that came along with Metal - all the dark, weird and cosmic stuff. I thought Metal, comic books and Horror films like John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness were the only way into that dark tone that inspired all my teenage art - copious amounts of drawings, song lyrics, etc. The same tone that still inspires my art to this day. David Lynch showed me another way. 

The idea that the elements he employed could cut so deeply into horrific metaphysics blew me away. Jazz. Small Town America. Lonley traffic lights, shadows, Douglas Firs... the woods proved the ultimate draw - I lived surrounded by the 70K acres of forest preserves covering the Cook County area. Twin Peaks proved such a palpable experience because I could literally walk down the street from my house and get lost in the woods. The Black Lodge felt close. So did mystery and excitement. 

From there, I went back and found Blue Velvet - a film I watched for the first time on LSD. This was video store days, so it took me a while to track down Eraserhead. I had to go to a video store 22 minutes away when I finally got my driver's license and could explore more than the Fuckbuster down the street. After that, I watched everything as it came out, mostly in the theatre, the way Mr. Lynch intended. Lost Highway was a revelation I saw multiple times during its initial theatrical run. Mulholland Drive baffled me upon first viewing, then shored itself up as my favorite of his feature films over the three subsequent visits to the theatre that same week. Inland Empire proved a vertical free-fall unlike any other cinematic experience (one I've never been able to recreate at home with the DVD). 

The images and soundscapes David Lynch created have accumulated over the last thirty-five years, becoming integral aspects of my personality, driven in deep and strengthened by the patina of time and recycling. I watch David Lynch's work often. I listen to his music more. There's a place in my brain I access through Lynch's work, a shadowy corridor that lets out at my unconscious, my adolescence, my understanding of what it means to be a good human, an artist, and a fan. 

Thank you, David Lynch.

Human Impact - Lost All Trust

 

The final song on Human Impact's new album Gone Dark, which dropped this past Friday, October 4th. Fantastic record and the final two tracks really seal the deal. I knew this was former Unsane guitarist/vocalist Chris Spencer's band. However, I did not realize that the other members hail from equally awesome groups, with Cop Shoot Cop's Jim Coleman on Electronics, Daughters' drummer Jon Syverson and Eric Cooper from Made Out of Babies. Syverson and Cooper replaced Drummer Phil Puleo and bassist Chris Pravdica, both of whom previously played with Swans.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Holy cow. What. A. Fucking. BANGER!

I don't know what to say other than what I always say: I went in 100% blind, you should too!!!

1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

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Read:

I pulled out some of my old issues of Craig Miller and John Thorne's Wrapped in Plastic to prep for a new episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror, where we're going to deep-dive David Lynch's Lost Highway. 

If you don't know, Wrapped in Plastic was a bi-monthly magazine published by Win-Mill Productions, which also published Spectrum magazine. WIP was published for 13 years, from 1992 - 2005. I came into it around issue 17 in 1995. This was pre-internet for me, and I no longer even remember how I became aware of the publication, although smart money is on Amazing Fantasy Books & Comics - still my Chicagoland shop of choice - as I remember them having it on their shelves, and '95 would have been about the time I began frequenting A-F every week. Issues 28 and 29 hit hot on the heels of Lost Highway's theatrical release, and I probably read these issues half a dozen times each. My idea in pulling them out was to supplement this next viewing with some outside analysis, and I have to say, it added a lot.

Incidentally, WIP went digital a few years ago, and you can now buy a digital bundle on their website HERE.

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Playlist:

Moon Wizard - Sirens 

Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous

The Mystery Lights - Purgatory

Human Impact - Gone Dark

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Ministry - Hopium for the Masses

System Of A Down - Eponymous

The Mysterines - Afraid of Tomorrows

Various - Lost Highway OST

Wilco - A Ghost is Born

Iggy Pop & James Williamson - Kill City

Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste

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Card:

My card today for exploration today is 7 of Cups - Debauch:

I think I've found a better way to do these research entries. I've been treating them like a Pull, in other words random. Here now, though, I think grouping them from here out might be better. I didn't pull this card from the deck today, I specifically chose it to follow the 7 of Swords.

From Crowly's Book of Thoth: "The Seven of Cups... its mode is poison, its goal madness. It represents the delusion of Delirium Tremems and drug addiction." False pleasure.

John Carpenter - My Name is Death

 

John Carpenter and Sacred Bones announced Lost Themes IV a few days ago. You can pre-order the record HERE. I'm not going to lie - I don't love this first single (or its video); the song feels like a long 5:44. That said, I've also not had the greatest morning - I woke up with one of my cats puking next to my face, so I might just be in an ornery temperament (JC can no doubt relate given that sour look plastered across his puss in the video). I'm suspending judgment - and all further listens - until I can hear the entire album. Something tells me "My Name is Death" will work better as a lead-in to the rest of the ten tracks. 

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Watch:

I watched Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys for the first time in what I'm realizing is close to twenty years last night. This flick was very important to me when it came out, and afterward. 

No one uses a camera the way Gilliam and long-time Cinematographer Roger Pratt do; a lot of the angles here just reinforce Gilliam's Orwellian, bureaucratic worldview even more than the way he tells his story. This really put me in mind to finally order that Criterion Brazil 3 Disc DVD set they put out in the 90s. The update to Blu-Ray is tempting. However, I can't quite discern from what I'm seeing online if the other versions of the film in the 3 Disc were ported over to the Blu-Ray. 

Gilliam's worldview, especially his sense of humor, very much shaped me as a young adult. I'd go so far as to say that, without early exposure to the works of Terry Gilliam and David Lynch, I would not be the person I am today. It's been quite some time since I revisited Gilliam, so perhaps it's time.

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Playlist:

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

Baroness - Stone

bunsenburner - Rituals

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (pre-release singles)

Ministry - Animositisomina

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Brigitte Calls Me Baby - This House is Made of Corners EP

Ministry - Hopiumforthemasses

Genghis Tron - Board Up the House

Jim Williams  - Possessor OST

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over

Frankie and Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Dead Boys - We Have Come For Your Children

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Floating into the Night Reissued!

 

I'm sure I've posted this here at some point in the past, but it felt like the right thing to do this morning. From The Ravenonettes PERFECT 2011 album Raven in the Grave, this has long been one of my favorite songs by the band. That guitar just breaks my heart in the best way possible!!!

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Sacred Bones just announced a new edition of Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, her collaboration album with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. If you know the record, you know it's HUGE for Twin Peaks fans, as several of the tracks here went on to populate the soundtrack to the original two seasons of Twin Peaks. To promote the re-release, Sacred Bones produced this charming little video:

 

You can order a copy HERE; I was able to snag the Pink and Black Galaxy Vinyl, although I am uncertain if I qualified for the poster. Either way, I'm happy as hell to finally have this on wax without having to pay for an original pressing on eBay.

 

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NCBD Addendum:

On a lark, I picked up the first issue of Bliss on Tap Publishing's new series Killing Hope. I was not disappointed.

Written by Josh Barbee and Maloney, with art by Alex Cormack, who I was familiar with from 2020's Aquatic Horror mini-series Sea of Sorrow, Killing Hope starts out as a thriller then veers into what I'm guessing is going to be full-on Horror territory. It's a woman on the run from seemingly unstoppable forces, and I can't wait to read more!

Bliss on Tap is new to me, but a quick gander at their website shows they've got quite a few titles under their belt, with seemingly something for everybody.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy

Principles of Geometry - Lazare

Roxy Music - Eponymous

Colors of the Dark Podcast - Episode 61: The Boogeyman

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

The Sword - Warp Riders

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

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Card:

• Ace of Disks 

• Two of Swords: Peace

• Prince of Swords - The airy aspect of Air, or conflict with intellect

Resolving issues with spending money leads to further resolution of internal conflict. I think this is a tit-for-tat response to my current state of continual distraction. The internet is both a powerful tool and a siren that calls me away from my work on a regular basis. Fighting this over the last couple days has led to a huge breakthrough in my work. I was stuck on a final act, but I believe I now have it well underway and it's better than I first imagined!

 

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Mascara - Half Light Aftermath

Hailing from France, Mascara is a band I know very little about. I picked this up after hearing the guys at Cinematic Void talk about the latest single, which this song is on. I really dig this and recommend checking out their Bandcamp HERE.

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Watch:

Let's talk about David Lynch's Inland Empire.

 

I have to laugh at the idea that a trailer was cut for this film. I mean, this tells you nothing except Laura Dern is in the movie. I plan on writing a bit more extensively at some point, possibly on my Letterbxd, but for now, suffice it to say that while I love this film as an example of how David Lynch's mind works, I find it nearly inscrutable and a bit of a chore to watch in its entirety. I always think back to seeing this in Hollywood when it premiered. What I experienced that night was what I have always described as an absolute free fall - the film swallowed me whole, and I did not become lucid until the moment when Beck's "Black Tamborine" kicked in. Resurfacing, I had absolutely no idea how long I had been sitting in that theatre; it could have as easily been four hours as forty-five minutes. That's one of the best theatrical experiences of my life, the experience of being so taken over by a film. Translating that to at-home viewing, however, has been unbelievably difficult. I must have attempted to watch the Inland Empire DVD a half dozen times since it was released in '07 0r '08, and every time I failed. Until yesterday, when I watched it with headphones on. 

Yes. Headphones.

You would not believe the sound design in this, and while I still felt the burden of sitting through the entire three hours, I made it and am glad I did.  While I can't see myself ever frequenting this film like I do most of Lynch's other works, I'm glad I own it and look forward to whenever the next time I watch it - as long as the tv I watch it on has blue tooth.

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Support:

Jonathan Grimm has his new Kickstarter up, and I'm blown away by the artwork he's produced for this.

 

I've known Grimm for a long time, and he has come a long way with his art. In the last year, however, his talent has grown exponentially, as has his business plan. Having all the risk removed from these campaigns before even launching them should instill a confidence in his fans and supporters that is equal to the awe his work inspires. Solid Dude, Incredible Artist. Honored to call him a friend.

 

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Playlist:

Thou - Rhea Sylvia

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone

Anthrax - Persistence of Time 

Mascara - Hla-11Tf (single)

Deafheaven - Sunbather

Mascara - Cameo Blue Estate EP

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Card:

Back to the Thoth deck for today's single card pull:

The Airy aspect of Water, so Will applied to Emotion. Sounds like this is still pointing to that same Emotional Breakthrough I keep missing on my recent daily spreads - and I believe I just figured it out. In jogging back through the other posts, I realized I've been reading these in a completely distracted state. On Friday, 1/20/23 my Pull had an Ace of Cups at its center, however, the two days this week I mistakenly read as a reiteration of that were actually Ace of Wands, thus Intellectual Breakthrough. Or an achievement of Will. This, I believe is a reference to a slight incoming lifestyle adjustment in terms of finally being removed from my salaried Associate Manager position I stepped down from in August when I moved and shifted to a work-from-home position. Not a huge change, but you'll be seeing a lot fewer picks for NCBD for starters. Hence, Will Power Adjustment.

Slow 30s Room

My first re-watch of the original Twin Peaks since 2016 is digging up all kinds of deep memory and psychological stuff that has 1990/1991 fresh in my head again. I will never be able to overstate my gratitude that I found this show when I did, as a 15/16-year-old stoner; it changed me for all time, for all the better. This morning, while I sat on my porch drinking coffee and reading from Lynch's Room to Dream, I played several of the soundtracks on my turntable - I still have all the CDs, and I put up the $77 back in 2011 for the digital music archive Lynch released through his website - ALL the music from the series. Everything. Then Mondo put out Twin Peaks Season One, FWWM, and the two soundtracks from the 2017 series on vinyl a few years ago, and I grabbed them all. 

So I get around to The Return's score and hit "Slow 30s Room," and immediately remember that, at some time in the not-so-distant past, I found this hour-long loop of the track on youtube. 

Presto - here you go.

Also, Happy Birthday David Lynch!!!

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Watch:

Since moving, I have fallen a bit behind on all the podcasts I listen to; my primary podcast time was in LaLaLand traffic, and being that I work from home now and pretty much listen to music all day, there's no equivalent time. So I have to make that time. To accomplish this, I've begun making a concentrated effort to set aside time, usually on Friday afternoons, specifically for podcats. In this way, I've knocked out a few of the Bret Easton Ellis show but not much else.

One podcast I am currently behind on is the brilliant Cinematic Void. Cinematic Void is a monthly cult film screening series in Los Angeles at L.A.'s American Cinematique Theatres, as well as a pretty damn great Podcast with online Cinemadness Screenings that showcase some of the best in Horror and Exploitation Cinema. For some time now, The Void has been hosting January Giallo screenings in L.A., and now it appears they have locations in both Massachuttes and Chicago, as well.        

I don't think I've been to Chicago's Music Box since I saw Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-Tep premiere there back in 2002. I am heading into town next week, but unfortunately, I probably won't make a screening. I wanted to put the word out there, though, for all my Chicago folks. I can vouch for The Void's programming, so next year I will be all over this!

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Read:

David Lynch and Kristine McKenna's Room to Dream is currently having an indelible effect on my mornings. This book puts me in such a good mood; it's remarkable. The book has led me back to my recent inclinations to begin meditating again, and this time, I think I'm going to attempt Transcendental Meditation, something I've always been intrigued with but felt self-conscious about.

When I began serious meditation back in my former life, circa 2014, I used an hour-long tone I constructed using fundamental principles of the Binaural Approach - something I'd learned about and messed around with long before it became a hokey product called binaural beats that populated the 'new age' section of music shops. Using a tone generator, I built a multi-layered mediation track in Pro-Tools and would take periods out of every day in totally random places to use it. For one regular spot I favored, I'd walk up to Olympic Blvd, just North of Bundy in L.A. There's a CBTL there, so I'd grab an Americano, then walk down Olympic to a bench-like ledge in front of an office building there, and with my headphones in, I would sit and meditate for 9 minutes. This is directly across from a bloodbath and beyond store and a block or so down from a Trader Joe's, so it's a high-traffic area. I always got an extra charge out of creating a little bit of novelty in the middle of this area where all these L.A. People tended to be so L.A.

Anyway, because I'd meditate anywhere back then, I avoided trying TM because making audible noise just seemed as though I'd be really calling attention to myself, which in turn would make me self-conscious, which would make it impossible for me to actually achieve any kind of meditative state. I no longer have any of those problems, and after things went a bit batty in 2015 (a story for another day), I have been reticent to use that old Pro Tools track. Thus, my impending return to Meditation will require something new. Reading Room to Dream, I think TM might be just the thing. First, though, I want to re-read Lynch's book on the subject, Catching The Big Fish.

 

Hearing the first-hand accounts of the people in Lynch's life talk about the change that TM produced in him when he first began practicing, I think this could be a very good tool to rid myself of some of the residual anger and frustration that I've fallen prey to lately, living with and helping to take care of an elderly person who just epitomizes a lot of the ignorance and blind consumer mindset I have such a hard time with in the human race. 

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Playlist:

The Police - Synchronicity

David Bowie - Outside

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Iggy Pop - The Idiot

Iggy Pop - Every Loser

Iggy Pop - Lust for Life

Final Light - Eponymous

Godflesh - Pure Live

Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion

NIN - Hesitation Marks

David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia

U2 - War

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

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Card:

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

I love an easy Pull! An emotional breakthrough that will provide a solid foundation for moving forward with a sustainable degree of patience and cohesion.

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.

New Music from The Veils!!!

 

YES! I have been waiting for this for about five years now. Not sure how long it usually takes between records - it was The Veils' performance on David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017 that introduced them to me (despite Mr. Brown attempting to previous to that), so this will be my first new Veils' record since becoming a fan. 

Wow. Right when I start my Twin Peaks re-watch, too. The Stars, they are aligning!

The new double album, "... And Out of the Void Came Love" drops March 3rd; you can pre-order it now HERE.

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Playlist:

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Season Two and More

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

Continuing my three pulls for the new year, here's my card from Crowley and Harris' Thoth:

Typically, I read Aces in this deck as Breakthroughs and the fact that we're looking at a breakthrough in Disks reflects the fact that I received a completely unexpected 'extra' paycheck this year and was able to all but pay off the credit card that I used to help us move. This is a HUGE breakthrough, because now, as long as I'm diligent for a bit, I can finish these and then help K whittle down the big box hardware store card she got when we first moved. I can only imagine this Breakthrough should echo good things into the new year.

Bedridden - Soft Soap

 

My good friend Amy posted a track by her nephew's new band on her socials the other day, and I was floored when I followed the link and hit play. Can't wait to hear more by Bedridden soon; this band rules! Buy the track and hit follow over on their Bandcamp HERE.

 

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Watch:

Starting my first full rewatch of Twin Peaks since before 2017's The Return (which I've rewatched twice since it aired). This time, however, I am starting with Fire Walk With Me. 

Watched it today; never fails to blow me away.

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Playlist:

David Lynch and John Neff - BLUEBOB

Stan Getz - Focus

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner

Lustmord - Hobart

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

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Card:

For the first of my three New Year's Pulls, I used Missi's Raven Tarot for a single card to indicate where the new year will take me.

A paradigm shift! Good news. This leads me to believe I am on firm footing with the projects I am currently balancing. Let's revisit this for each of the next two days with my subsequent pulls.

7 Days of Badalamenti: Day 6 - She Would Die For Love

 

"She Would Die For Love," from Julee Cruise's 1993 album The Voice of Love, produced by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. The instrumental version earned considerably more momentum as the opening credit sequence soundtrack the year before in Lynch's much-maligned prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The the latter is the version I am more familiar, and taken, with, but both have their merits.

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Cast:

This morning The Horror Vision launches a new spin-off podcast, The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror. This is a project that brings in my good friend Missi, as well as the other THV folks when they're able. My 2022 Wrapped from our hosting platform Anchor shows The Horror Vision created more content this past year than 77% of our contemporaries, and that felt good. This new show is something I'd been wanting to do for a while: a place where we could talk non-genre flicks that contain Horror Elements. And oh, what a list we have so far! The first episode is on Jim Jarmusch's beautiful, beautiful film Only Lovers Left Alive, but from here we have some films I cannot wait to talk about. Here's a small tease:

Ryan Gosling's Lost River

Nicholas Verso's Boys in Trees

Adam Rifkin's The Dark Backward

David Lynch's Lost Highway

And a whole lot more beyond those. That's just scratching the surface! The first episode is now on all streaming platforms - you can even hit play up on the little Spotify widget in the upper right-hand corner of this page. 

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Watch:

Saturday night I caught Lorcan Finnegan's new film, Nocebo:

Another solid film from Finnegan, who popped onto my radar with his Without Name. 

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Read:

I finishe Irvine Welsh's The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs last night in one Heruclean jaunt of reading that lasted most of the evening and well into the small hours of the night. Just like the first time I read it, back in 2006 upon its release, I could not put those last two hundred pages down. Having only gotten back into reading Welsh after a self-imposed hiatus (his voice tends to affect my own writing, and I wanted to steer clear of that for most of the projects I've been on for the last decade), I'm temped to say this is Welsh's best behind Glue, which will most likely always remain my favorite. Secrets is fantastic though, and creates such unrelenting pathos for all the characters through rotating first-person accounts from nearly the entire cast, that when you reach the last act, well, it's fraught with tension. He sets up several really great "gotta-sees," and balances them in such an expert way that you often lose sight of one for whichever is currently "on screen," only to have Welsh juggle them in front of you again and immediately re-ignite your curiosity for what's been in the background for several chapters. 

Really great book. Now, I'm feeling that void of having just finished a great book and really wanting to jump into one of Welsh's newer books that I haven't read. Not sure that will happen before the end of the year, so I will most likely pick Will Carver's Psycopaths Anonymous back up. 

I began it directly after I finished Hinton Hollow Death Trip and quickly realized my genre interests had shifted a bit. From what I did read, there's a definite Fight Club influence here, although not in an egregious way. I loved HHDT, so I'm very much looking forward to more Carver!

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Playlist:

Zombi - Shape Shift

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Beach House - Depression Cherry

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

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Card:

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

More on the money front, which has been an open loop for a while. I need to square this CC bill soon, before the no-interest period runs out, but hidden costs continue to keep the balance level. This is nothing dire, but it would definitely be nice to be at 0 by year's end. 

Julee Cruise and David Lynch, 1989

 

Garmonbozia

Discovering Black Mare last week has sent me into a spiral with Sera Timms music. Following my own advice and clicking on that Bandcamp link for 2020's Death Magick Mother, I sat completely transfixed by the record yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. This record has an extremely ethereal quality. I can hear Pornography-era Cure, Cocteau Twins, and contemporaries, L.A.-based Chasm, but the space created within the walls of this aural shrine are all Timms's own. Turning this one on feels like stepping into an hour-long fog bank. Through the obfuscation, you see outlines of landmarks you think you recognize, except they're all wrong, and give you an immediate impulse to be at the ready.

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Watch:

A few weeks back, my cousin, Charles told me about the Youtube channel Twin Perfect's video, "Twin Peaks Actually Explained (No, Really)." I'd seen this floating around in my feed and ignored it. Despite the fact that I often create or take part in videos similar to this - well, NO video is similar to this one - I rarely watch them, and I certainly go out of my way to avoid any video that claims to explain any movies or shows I dig, most especially Peaks. However, Charles told me enough to get me interested, and if you'll recall, there was one other Twin Peaks Explanation video I took to heart a year or so ago - Wow Lynch Wow's "Was Mr. C Victorious?" This new video, then, wasn't exactly unprecedented. What was unprecedented was the fact that, after watching about the first twenty minutes of this 4 hour+ video, I truly believed in my heart of hearts that holy F'ing shite - this guy COMPLETELY EXPLAINS TWIN PEAKS. It's not what you think it's going to be, it's far better. I cannot recommend this one enough unless you do not want to have the show explained.

Seriously, without spoiling anything, when you get to the part about what the light shining on Laura Palmer's face at the end of FWWM means, you'll know if you're on board or not.

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Playlist:

Black Mare - Death Magick Mother

Metallica - Seek and Destroy (single)

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Faith No More - The Real Thing

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Windhand - Eternal Return

Conan - Monnos

Guns N' Roses - ABSURD (wow, this is awful)

Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual

The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs - Original Series Soundtrack

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Card:

Okay, so what am I battling here? I feel like most everything is in line.