Money Mark - Hand in Your Head

From Money Mark's 1998 album Push the Button. One fine little tune to brighten your day. Had this man on my mind since watching that B-Boys doc on Apple, and it's been a while since I revisited this. So good.

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NCBD:

Are those... Sharkticons? Oh man! DWJ and team know exactly how to get me excited before I even hold the book in my hands.

The return of Jeff Lemire & Gabriel H. Walta's Phantom Road! This is long overdue, and I'm dying to re-read the first ten issues and pick right back up where we left off. So many burning questions with this one.

I'll admit, when this book flipped to the second arc last issue and I saw it involved that ventriloquist dummy character from Batman's classic rogues gallery, I was unconvinced. But Watters and Sherman left me completely agog by that issue's closing page, so I'm psyched to be back!

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Watch:

There's really only about 3% of stuff on Netflix I care about, and one of those is Love, Death + Robots, which is returning May 15th for Volume 4. Here's a teaser:

I've watched the first three volumes countless times, but I still somehow have the feeling I have not seen it all. This was a show I used to fall asleep to back in Redondo Beach when I first became enamored with it, so some episodes have a real 2:00 A.M. haze to them. That said, there's something particularly envigorating about viewing Science Fiction from a liminal conscious state, and I'm pretty sure that has added to my high regard for the show.

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Playlist:

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

The Jesus Lizard - Rack

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

Neverly Brothers - The Dark Side of Everything

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller

Sqürl - Third Man Records Session

Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

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Card:

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

• Two of Swords

• Four of Cups

• King of Pentacles

As I've said here before, one of the many things I love about Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot is the imagery he uses is so particular to me, so invested in meaning, I can sometimes just read these based on what I see and not the learned associations of the number/suite/arcana. In this case, I'm hearing loud and clear I should pursue a new musical idea I have. Heard, chef.

Eating the Flesh of Robots

One of the records Mr. Brown lent me in our recent record swap is The Flesh Eaters 2018 album I Used to Be Pretty. Holy cow, is this a burner of a record! If you dig the track above - my favorite at the moment - check out the entire record.  

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Watch:

I've been in a bit of a rut with watching anything other than Happy! the last few days, and when I finished season one, I found I wanted something more. One of the things I found is Netflix's Love, Death + Robots.

I have watched this show before, although not in any consistent capacity. I've had Sci-Fi on the brain, though, and my decades-long avoidance of most animation that's not Cowboy Bebop seems to be falling away - never understood what that was all about, anyway - so this slotted in nicely.

Previously, only a few of these really left an impression, particularly Season Three's In Vaulted Halls Entombed, which I've watched quite a few times since it came out a year-and-a-half ago (the whys of my obsession are obvious if you've seen it). This time, however, I'm playing through entire seasons and really enjoying what I'm seeing, particularly The Very Pulse of the Machine, Life Hutch and The Drowned Giant. Oh, and Three Robots. Yes, that's a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic satire right there. 

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Read:

I finished Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw's The Dead Take the A Train and am definitely placing it among my favorite novels of the year. So much fun, and all while being Hellraiser/Evil Dead level GOREY! This is the first book in a series, and I'm down for all of them that follow. 

Still riding high off that, I ordered Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth and started that. 

Look at that cover! 

About a quarter of the way through, and I can say Ms. Khaw may be one of my favorite modern Horror writers. She has a descriptive flair I am head over heels in love with, and her characters feel so very real. The set-up here is fantastic, with a wealthy twenty-somethings friend paying for his small group of friends to stay at a supposedly haunted ancient Japanese estate. I can already tell things will probably get Hellraiser-level bloody, and with a narrator I'm not entirely sure I'd consider reliable, all kinds of hell seems poised to break loose.

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Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star

Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now

Sen Morimoto - Diagnosis

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Zombi - 2020

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Card:

I'm finding I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to concentrate on involved Tarot readings, so I've been utilizing Missi's Raven Deck for single-card Pulls. Here's today's card:

On the lookout for obscured influences or hidden agendas, so that's (sadly) a "work-related" reading. Also, and perhaps more probable, what am I missing?

7 Days of Ozzy - Day 6: Suicide Solution Live from the Randy Roads Tribute

 

Because I had to pull something off the Live Randy Roads Tribute Album. Classic.

I remember the first time I heard this - or one of the first times it made an impression beyond, "oh, Ozzy. Cool" - some friends and I were outside at my neighbor's house. This kid was two years younger, rich AF and a total latchkey whose parents' bought him all kinds of shit to make up for the fact that they were never home. They were the first people I knew who had an inground pool, and this thing was huge, with large gazebos on either side of it and a massive wooden deck that ran all the way around the pool and then snaked around the back of the house. This would have been circa Freshman or early Sophomore year. We were smoking cigarettes and drinking Keystone in those gross-ass tall cans it came in. I was buzzed and sitting in a gazebo, staring at the flames on the tiki torches that were staged around the pool at regular intervals. My Tribute dub was playing from a boom box further down the porch but we had it loud, and I remember thinking that I felt like I was there, at the show.

Good memory.

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Watch:

This show is nuts, and I'm happy to see it coming back for a third season.

  

 

All things considered, I'd rather David Fincher return to Mindhunter, but we all know that might not happen. In the words of William DeVaughn, be thankful for what you got. 

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Playlist:

The Mysterines - Reeling

La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again

Anthrax - Attach of the Killer B's

Anthrax - Spreading The Disease

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Ozzy Osbourne - Tribute (Live)

David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

Windhand - Eternal Return

Dean Hurley - Analog Resource Vol. 1

Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST

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Card:

Lots of feminine energy, which is good. Ruthless determination can be a bad thing; sometimes passion needs to be tempered and Will focused. And sometimes you need to ask for help.

Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Deine Kusine

Last night Bohren and Der Club of Gore released a music video - really a short film - for "Deine Kusine," the fifth track off their new record Patchouli Blue, available HERE. A great album, my favorite of the band's since 2000's Sunset Mission, which I've recently noticed is criminally hard to find.

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Along with Netflix's Black Spot, which we're almost caught up with and which is becoming increasingly interesting, I've circled back around to two shows I've been meaning to watch for quite some time now. The first, which I binged several episodes of over the weekend, is Love, Death, and Robots, the David Fincher-produced anthology of short, animated films. Those who know me know that, for whatever reason, I really don't get into much animation. Aside from shows with nostalgic value and Cowboy Bebop - truly the work that transcends the genre/medium - animation usually does not connect with me. For this show, I feel like I'm getting more out of it than usual, and the premises so far have been very interesting, so I'm enjoying it. I especially liked Frank Balson's Suits, where the humdrum, simple country life of the farmer has evolved to include piloting mech suits to fight off alien invaders, and Alberto Mielgo's The Witness, which plays like Cold Hell with strippers.



The other show I've gone back to is Warren Ellis' Castlevania. This one, K and I had the missed opportunity of starting multiple times when it first landed, and each and every one of those viewing experiences resulted in our falling asleep. I had long suspected this was not the show's fault, and now that I've settled back into it and completed the first season - at a whopping four episodes - I'm hooked. The first three episodes we'd seen before, in parts multiple times, and they just didn't do it for me. Episode Four? Fantastic. I plan on binging the rest of this over the coming weekend, just in time for Season Three, which Ellis announced in his weekly newsletter recently, and which the trailer for just dropped last week:



**

New Comic Book Day is slight but marvelous:

Previously, whenever I see the new issue of either Black Stars Above listed on Comics List's New Comics This Week list, the solicitation is always at least one week before the book actually ships. I'm hoping that this time, that is not the case. Black Stars Above continues to astound me with it's complex narrative, fluid prose, and beautiful art. I could really go for all of that today.

**

Playlist:

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl
Second Still - Equals EP
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Odonis Odonis - No Pop
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Various Artists - The History of Northwest Garage Rock, Vol. 2