Skinny Puppy - Circustance

From my favorite Skinny Puppy album, 1991's Last Rights. This record blew my mind when I used a gift token from Coconuts to purchase it back circa 1992/93, not knowing what to expect, just that the weird/cool Industrial Senior in my art class named Matt once told me, cryptically, "The keyboards in Skinny Puppy will make you feel... like... you're... GOD!"

He wasn't wrong.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Unpopular opinion: I actually prefer Carrie 2: The Rage to Brian De Palma's original Carrie. Now, I'm not saying Carrie 2 is a better film, but for me, there are a few major irks with De Palma's film.

Carrie is well made, but the 70s were often an ugly decade, and all the costume design and set decoration seems (to me) to revel in that ugliness. This is an excellent story; such a raw treatise on bullying and the personal, world-bending pain that comes of it. That’s something I love and respect. That and most of the performances. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie are a fucking powerhouse, and Nancy Allen is an unforgettable bitch. Alas, a lot of the suspense just doesn’t work for me. The entire protracted sequence before the bucket spills feels absurd on a cartoon level, with Sue and the Gym Teacher looking here, looking back, looking at each other, looking away… it ends up taking away from the blood and fire of the climax. Not completely, but enough that I get annoyed. Finally, I’ve said this for three decades, but travolta is not a good actor and really brings down every scene he’s in.

Katt Shea fills Carrie 2 to the brim with a sense of embitterment and isolation that, while affecting, fails to measure up to those feelings in De Palma's. That said, I think there is something about the time between the two films (1976 and 1999) and the severely different aesthetics of the eras that helps Carrie 2 feel like a natural extension of the original. Does it need to exist? Absolutely not. The entire movie is really just one long wait for some widespread comeuppance, but when Shea's film delivers this, it is GLORIOUS! I love that pretty much no one is spared. Does the film suffer from that pre-millennial cheese that so many films from this era do? Yes, but it also references both Scream and New York Ripper in the same line of dialogue! I feel some Twin Peaks in here, some NOES 2, a lot of disparate influences that work together to make Carrie 2 way more watchable than a lot of films from this time. 

Will I revisit this again? Maybe. Will I revisit the original? Absolutely. I check back in every few years on this and Dressed to Kill to see if my problems are me. So far, that has not been the case.

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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

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

22) Carrie 2: The Rage

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NCBD:

This week's pull starts off with one I've been excited about since seeing the cover solicitation.

Holy. Shite. I've been waiting for something like this since the inception of The Energon Universe. Cobra-La in space, mixing it up with, I'm assuming, either the Quintessons or the denizens of the Great Ring? And this is probably only the beginning. It's funny how I couldn't give a toss about these 'goofy' Joe cartoon characters in pretty much any other context but what Kirkman and his team are doing. Admittedly, Pythona has the best scene in that G.I.Joe cartoon movie from the '80s, but overall I always sided with Hama's comic and eschewed the increasingly day-glo aesthetic of the cartoon. But Kirkman has recontextualized all of this, and I am excited to see what happens.

Michael Walsh's Frankenstein has not disappointed me yet. I'm sure I've said this before, but Mr. Walsh is one of my favorite artists working today. Also, does this cover allude to The Bride joining the story? 

Catching up with Leo? Nice. Loving that this book has been taking its time to release. I'm hoping that doesn't fall away once things really get going. 

John Constantine is dead and his trek across the U.S. has been as bizarre as one might expect for a (ghost? Reanimated?) Britsh Punk Rock-reared Magician. 

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Playlist:

Purple Hill Witch - Eponymous

Ritual Howls - Virtue Falters

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

The Soft Moon - Criminal

The Kills - Midnight Boom

Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

John Frusciante - Brown Bunny OST

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Card:

Today's card for study is XIX - The Sun:

The Triumph of the Spirit! This card is obviously a glorious one, filled with revelation or perhaps the idea of seeking revelation. From my grimoire: "Taking the Pill will open your eyes."

Crowley says it in his Book of Thoth: "This is one of the simplest cards; it represents ... the Lord of the New Aeon in his manifestation to the race of men as the sun."

The dancing children (?) represent humanity accepting the revelation of the new aeon, Crowley's Age of Horus. The philosophical reality of that can be argued, the important thing on the non-Crowley level of just reading the cards is this indicates the person in question will change. 

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights - Track 10 is Missing?

Speaking of Last Rights, I bought the record when I was in high school. I remember my Aunt Dottie gave me several Coconuts Record Store gift tokens that equalled quite a bit of $$ - might have been 3 $20 tokens. I bought 4 CD's - this was like '93. I came away with Slayer - Decade of Aggression, Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger (the SOMMS version), and Skinny Puppy - Last Rights. The other three albums were based on me already liking or at least having heard the groups before - the Skinny Puppy was based on A) the weird industrial Kid Matt Debore in high school who was a year older than me telling me that if I liked Pretty Hate Machine, the keyboards in Skinny Puppy would, "Make you feel like you're god" and B) the cover by I, Braineater:

The Skinny Puppy record scared me. To this day it still scares me, and that my friends, if rare. Usually something catches you offguard or unaware but you acclimate to it. That's only partially true of this record. I may have gotten to know it, gotten to love it, but I still sleep with one eye open around it. And for that I LOVE it.

One thing that always fascinated me about Last Rights was the tracks are numbered 1-9 and then 11. In the Liner notes there's a seemingly casual caption that states/asks, "Track 10 is Missing?". For years I assumed the track was somehow hidden on the album. This was the age of hidden tracks and backwards tracks; tracks hidden after hidden tracks and 12 minutes of crickets to get to the final track, so I just assumed... Remember there was both the They Might Be Giants album and the Course of Empire album that had hidden tracks before the first track on the album. You had to - if I'm remembering this correctly - pause the first track and then search backwards to get to the hidden track. Freakin' crazy!!!

Anyway, the internet is of course great for solving all these little mysteries, but it also robs us of the enigmas of those long gone pre-instant information eras. So here then, at last, is track 10. And here is the explanation, if you choose to read it. It's not that cool.

Skinny Puppy - Lust Chance

My favorite Skinny Puppy album (although I only know like three of them well).

This particular youtubes video: what the heck is up with 0:06-:010? It looks like it's going to be the album cover (brilliant! by I, Braineater) but then there's... that.