Spotlight on Stephen King's Fairy Tale

 

Really digging this new EP from Spotlights. Order from Ipecac Records HERE.

 

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NCBD:

As of Monday, I'm finally back from my two weeks in LaLaLand. Trapped up in West L.A./Santa Monica at the Sonder hotel at Found, I didn't get a chance to hit up my beloved Comic Bug until my final day in town, but I saw some old friends and got to pick up a few books that weren't on my list. Also, will be returning to Rick's Comic City today to grab my Pull-List books from the last two weeks, so here's everything I will have acquired starting back on NCBD 3/08/23:

This Week's Pull 3/22/23:

Last week's Pull, 3/15/23:

This, the penultimate issue of Hulk, is one I actually missed out on; I never added to my Pull, and The Bug was sold out, so I'll have to find it online somewhere.

The only one I've read at the point of reading this, I started out feeling pretty non-plussed, but ending up really liking where this second issue of Immoral X-Men went. I don't love Sins of Sinister, however, I'm reading through it simply to see the pretty big-swing ideas the X-writing stable are taking with it.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this cover!

Two Weeks Ago, 3/08/23:

Based on the Master of Reality and now Back in Black homage covers, I am SO hoping they do one for Mercyful Fate, Don't Break the Oath on a future issue of this series!

I'm glad this regular X-Men book isn't adhering or pausing for Sins of Sinister. With issue 19's start of a Brood-based story, I thought I was going to roll my eyes, however, the entire set-up was fantastic (the Nowhere thread is amazing!). I'm really looking forward to this one!

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Read:

While in LaLaLand, I had a couple of occasions to catch up and hang out with my good friend Chris Saunders, formerly of The Thirsty Crows, and my co-host on the hiatus-ending-soon podcast A Most Horrible Library. Chris gifted me a beautiful Hardcover copy of Stephen King's newest novel Fairy Tale, and at ~120 pages into its ~600 pages, I'm hooked!

I haven't read a new King novel since 2010's Doctor Sleep (thanks to Mr. Brown!) and reading Fairy Tale makes me remember how much I adore the man's prose. I'm realizing now that one of the everlasting endearments of King's mind and how it translates to the page is he writes about a world that, while modern and incorporating modern elements (the internet, online shopping, current cultural establishments), King's world still feels very much like the world I grew up in, the one-two weeks in LaLaLand convinced me did not exist at all anymore. That's a very welcome refresher at the moment, as it gives me hope humanity isn't as far gone as it often feels when in a high-population center or tooling around online.

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Playlist:

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth

Screaming Females - Desire Pathways

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

SQÜRL - Silver Haze

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Burial - Untrue

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right To Children

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

Spotlights - Seance EP

Spotlights - Love & Decay

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Card:

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

Emotional security leads to an Emotional breakthrough that ultimately could turn into a profitable partnership. 

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.

2019: April 17th - New Earth Track!

From the forthcoming album Full Upon Her Burning Lips, out May 24th on the frankly at-this-point unbelievable Sargent House. Pre-order physical HERE and digital HERE.

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First day back in LALALand was a doozy. All the cliches: traffic, meetings, yuppies, hipsters, douche bags. I suppose this all seems exacerbated by the fact that I want to live in North Bend! All in due time. Talk about life goals.

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NCBD today, and I'm so behind I don't even want to know what comes out today. I haven't been able to get into the shop in at least a month - yeah, I blog about what's coming out but my schedule has prevented me from stopping in so all that great stuff is just accruing into a massive bomb that is going to explode in my wallet, creating a black hole that will empty it.

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Playlist from 4/16:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me
Skating Polly - Queen for a Day (Audiotree Live)
Algiers - Underside of Power
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors

Card of the day:

This is telling me to continue to focus, as I did yesterday, on honing one of two stories to send into an open submission I've been waiting to see for a while. Information flowing quickly, which definitely means not to stall or overthink it, even if I am overhauling one of the two stories completely. Then I can dip back into Ciazarn.