After not really following anything Anthony Gonzalez has done with M83 since Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (not true - I adore the soundtrack to Knife + Heart), I happened to see the band's 10th album just dropped and upon hitting play I was literally blown away by album opener "Blister Sunrise."
M83 OWNED my heart for much of 2009-2012, and then just kind of disappeared for me. I saw them live at the Fonda Theatre in 2011 and I think I wept for about half the show, from the moment they opened with "Intro" and brought Zola Jesus out on stage all the way through a set that included pretty much everything I wanted to hear. That was the pinnacle for me.
I'm typing this Thursday night at 11:51 PM CST, listening to the new album I Wrote You A Letter for the first time, humming with excitement at possibly having a new record by this band to adore.
Watch:
I did something I had to kind of come around to in my head this past week. I bought a bootleg copy of The Last Drive-In season one on Etsy.
Let's talk about this for a moment.
I am steadfastly against pirating any media. I mean, I grew up making cassette dubs and burned discs, but that's different (or so I tell myself). I'm talking about pirating. I never have, I never will.
Except.
In the case of The Last Drive-In, after AMC forced Shudder to cancel it (that's still my read on the situation), all my fandom and good will for Shudder disappeared. I believe I mentioned here previously how I cancelled the annual Shudder sub I've had since 2018 and, as timing would have it, grabbed a limited deal for one year of AMC+ at $30. Now, the optics of that make no sense - AMC is the parent company, so it makes sense to ascribe the blame for the cancellation to them. Why then, would I take punitive measures against Shudder and then turn around and give AMC money?
Well, because I want access to The Last Drive-In, of course.
Here's the thing, though. Most of the original movies Joe Bob has hosted on that show have long since disappeared. They just don't renew the rights. Even worse, I've noticed when they do add movies back to the service, they often do not replace the Joe Bob episode. This has happened a number of times, most recently (that I noticed) was with The Prowler.
All of this antagonizing me to no end. Further goading my decision to buy a bootleg copy of the show is the fact that I'd be willing to wager AMC ultimately owns The Last Drive-In and profits off of it. I'd hope Joe Bob and Darcy make money from residual viewings, but if the movies are not kept on the service, that wouldn't be possible.
Ultimately, I just want to cancel AMC+ and be done with it altogether. I've been slowly moving away from the endless decision-making of streaming - it's literally killing my love of movies - and this will be a HUGE step toward that end.
So the other night I received my purchase and sat down to watch TLDI Season 1 Episode 1 Movie 1: C.H.U.D.
The movie is just as bad as I remembered it being, and there really is no reason to watch it without Joe Bob. But will I watch it again with him?
You betcha!
Read:
I finished the seventh and final book in my reread of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. The final book, appropriately titled The Dark Tower, was a helluva a ride, and like I anticipated, I remembered almost none of it from my first and only reading back when it was first published in 2002.
What I did love about this book is everything from page one to about page 794. From Jake and Callahan fighting for their lives in the Dixie Pig, to the underground chase to the Chassit door. All of the Maine stuff, which I thought worked so much better in this book than in Song of Susannah (not that I had any problems with book six), to the battle at Blue Heaven, Ted Brautigan, seeing Stanley again - all of it! The deaths hurt, and so did the parting, but in the end, the epilogue was, as the author suggests at the start of the coda that follows it, the place to stop.
Interestingly enough, this took me way longer than I anticipated, and about the time Roland and Suze turn down Stuttering Bill's offer of a vehicle to complete the final leg of their journey, I realized I was doing the same thing the characters were doing - putting off going faster simply because I did not want this to end. Even after all the heartache, even in the throes of loss, I just wasn't quite ready. As a result, I pecked at the final one hundred pages, drawing them out over more than a week. And now that I have finished? Well, I just cracked the revised edition of Book 1: The Gunslinger for the first time, and after that, it's time for The Talisman again!
Playlist:
Ramones - Road to Ruin
Ramones - End of the Century
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Shapes of Midnight
Godflesh - Purge
The Cramps - Gravest Gravy
Godflesh - Decay
The Misfits - Walk Among Us
The Ocean - Solaris
Anthrax - Attack of the Killer Bs
Type O Negative - October Rust
Godflesh - Decline and Fall
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Swords
• Ten of Cups
• 09: The Hermit
Simple: I'm writing while I did this Pull, and this tells me in no uncertain terms to cut down on the exposition and throw in some kind of action.
Reminders like this can be crucial. It's really easy to get lost in explaining the story - especially when the 'world' is as big as what I'm attempting with the continuation of my Shadow Play series.
