2019: June 20th New Drab Majesty!

Still catching up on all the stuff that dropped while I was radio silent, finishing Shadow Play Book One: Kim & Jessie. If you come here often, you'll probably get sick of hearing the name of my new book, but I'm excited and relieved like you would not believe. The first book of Shadow Play - conceived as a non-traditional trilogy with ample room for spin-offs - took me seven years to complete. Sure, there was about eight months off at two separate intervals during that time, but during that time, I was kind of working on it, too. Letting something you've written sit in a proverbial 'drawer' for the better part of a year and then going back to it, doesn't necessarily mean you're not working on it. Is "Indirect Writing" a phrase? You know, letting the story stew in its own juices?

Anyway...

Drab Majesty's new record Modern Mirror is out July 12, just over three weeks from now, and I am very excited to get my copy of the vinyl in the mail. You can still pre-order this one from the wonderful Dais Records HERE.

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Yesterday was NCBD, and it proved a fantastic leveler for me. I wrote earlier in the month about a sudden existential crisis pertaining to collecting monthly comics - part of it's space, part of it's longevity, part of it's douchey first-world anxiety - anyway you call it, the accumulation of such a large collection has begun to wear on me in a way I never would have anticipated (and I've downsized majorly on several occasions in my life). But to look at my pull list yesterday and know that I was leaving several titles behind and several others were close to finishing made me feel pretty good.

Garth Ennis' A Walk Through Hell is coming to a close next month, The Empty Man ended with this week's issue 8, and Black Science closes its doors in July. With the elimination of all the mini series, or the series on this list, as well as those most likely not coming back (*ahem* Southern Bastards, I'm looking at you), well, I'm edging my way out of collecting.

That's HUGE.

I'm probably going to end TMNT in seven months at issue 100, switching to digital trades instead, and I may do the same for Seven to Eternity as well. That doesn't leave much. Of course, I'll still buy anything Warren Ellis does, but I'll probably just wait for the trades, like I've been doing with The Wildstorm (still need to read that third volume!). The goal is to have the only periodical-format books I buy be The Walking Dead, Stray Bullets, Criminal, and Gunning for Hits, the last two because they have such a wealth of extra material in their monthly format, the first two because they're grandfathered in and I love them. Even Gideon Falls may fall off, as with this week's issue the story opens up considerably wider and I feel like it might be losing me. I'm getting a Lost vibe, and as much as I enjoyed watching that series as it aired, it's something I never need or want to be reminded of again.

We'll see.

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Playlist from 6/19:

Blur - Eponymous
Blur - The Best Of
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Blur - 13
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables

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Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "A positive result dependent on the actions of the Querent." I'm taking this and yesterday's Breakthrough as directly referencing the completion of the book. Next, I have a small 'marketing' plan I intend to follow through on, so hoping the good tidings will flow directly into that.

2019: June 12th Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky - For the Sun

Very cool video. That image at 1:15 is creepy as hell. I'd forgotten about this record, so thank you Sargent House for dropping this and reminding me!

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Not a big day for NCBD today, but that's good. Fits with my existential crisis regarding stuff from earlier in the week. I am, however, really looking forward to the new issue of Gunning for Hits:

The back-matter in this book alone is worth the cost of the individual issues, as loaded into the music business both past and present as it is. Absolutely worth your time if you're a music fan.

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Playlist from 6/11:

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy
Orville Peck - Pony
St. Elsewhere - The Odd Couple
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

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Card of the day:

I will be on the look out, as something I have planned is going to fall flat on its face. Being that I woke up at 2:00 AM this morning, I'd say that's my plans to work on the final edit later this afternoon. Not a total loss, as I used that extra time between waking so early and leaving for work to fix a particularly perplexing chapter.

2019: June 11th Orville Peck - Dead of Night

It's been a few days since I posted about Spotlights' new album Love and Decay, and in that time, another album Mr. Brown recently recommended to me shot into my top tier of my year as well. Orville Peck's Pony probably won't bump Spotlights from number one, but it will definitely occupy a spot in my favorite albums of the year. Pony is rich in tone and texture; the production is cinematic and windswept, an allusion to the vastness of Peck's interior space, his voice ringing out across dusty plains. And while there are a plethora of influences that serve as way stations along the album's winding route, Peck's own unique persona leaves quite the mark on the outlaw country crooner tableau forged long ago by his predecessors.

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Over the weekend, as I was finally catching up with the comics I seem to stay perpetually behind on, I experienced a weird existential moment. Since downsizing my digs last year, space has been a continuous issue in my life. A lot of this is due to my obsessive need to make space where there is none; to arrange everything just right. Feng Shui became a marketing term for something I actually believe in, something Ben Horne perfectly encapsulates in Twin Peaks' Season Two when he tells Hank Jennings he believes there is a perfect way to organize the objects in any given space, an arrangement the benefits of which could be untold for those who dwell within that space (I'm paraphrasing; I couldn't find a clip). So my reading and subsequent filing of a few months worth of Punk's Not Dead and TMNT incited an initiative to reorganize things. This in turn spawned a project to make space in my long boxes (which I'm slowly switching out with short boxes because, you know, moving those goddamn things is a pain in the arse!), which caused me to start a pile of books to get rid of. And it was in weighing the suspect books in this context that made me look at each title and think, "I'm forty-three. Will I ever read this again in my lifetime?"

After a few minutes of this line of thinking, the concept really gained weight, creating an inescapable portal through which to view my own mortality. What's more, I began thinking about the space required to house all my comics and I wonder: why do I even do this? Will I ever re-read 100 issues of TMNT? Probably not. Of course, I want to read this stuff as it comes out because there's an excitement to that, and a community. I've always believed in and valued supporting what I love. That said, at what point does having this stuff merely turn into a slowly decaying echo in an enormous empty space?

Thoughts along these lines haunted me much of Sunday, and what's more, I've no real answer. There are books like Criminal and Gunning for Hits that offer so much awesome backwater content exclusive to their monthly installments that I feel 100% warranted buying them as ongoing periodicals. Also, these series tend to be short enough and good enough that re-reads will most likely remain regular occurrences (been meaning to re-read The Fade Out again for months now). And then there's the titles I literally can't wait to read every month: The Walking Dead, Gideon Falls, and A Walk Through Hell. Everything else I read is great, but can I do without it? Could I switch to buying digital collections as they come out? If I do that, what do I do with all my physical copies?

The sad thing is, there are no answers. At least not at the moment. Stayed tuned: I believe this brand of Existential Crisis will, for me, be ongoing.

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Watchlist:

The Craft
The Dark Backward (three times in two days; there's a bigger post coming about this one)
About a quarter of an old Video Nasty called Nightmare, which I may or may not return to

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Playlist from the last few days went something like this:

Grand Duchy - Petite Fours
Spotlights - Love & Decay
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Hall and Oats - Essentials
Sigur Rós - Takk...
Van Morrison - Essentials
James - The Best of James
James - Laid
The Foundations - Eponymous
Orville Peck - Pony
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper
The Monkees - Headquarters
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness
Henry Mancini - Charade OST

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As if in answer to my diatribe above, perhaps I do need to adjust some things...