Red Flags Of Nowhere

 

One of the records that's going to just miss hitting my top ten of the year is Marilyn Manson's One Assassination Under God Chapter 1. Yeah, he's probably a reprehensible human being. I'm not sure why I'm making allowances for him when I don't for so many others, especially considering I didn't actually come around to being a Manson fan until sometime around 2000. I actually attended the first Ozzfest when MM toured for Antichrist Superstar and ignored him the entire time. And when I say I ignored him, I'm not just talking about his performance because apparently, he and Rose McGowan stood right next to me while watching Neurosis on the second stage, and I didn't even realize it until my buddy Jake told me later. I just side-eyed the goofy-looking couple, thinking, "Try a little harder, Gothy McGotherson." 

Anyway, I came around after reading two things Manson wrote in the late 90s. The first was his open letter rebuttal to the people blaming him for the Columbine massacre, published in Rolling Stone as an op-ed titled, "Columbine: Whose Fault is it?" His eloquence and vitriol made a deep impact on me because it was abundantly clear that this was a very intelligent human being. The second reading was Manson's Autobiography. 

Up until those two pieces, every interview I'd heard with the guy - none sought out, mind you - made him sound like a complete moron. Years later I would realize it all depends on who he wants to present on any given day. Anyway, I'm by no means a card-carrying fan. By this point, I haven't even heard most of his records. That said, AntiChrist and Mechanical Animals are fantastic records. In fact, while my life was disintegrating circa 2014-2015, Antichrist Superstar was one of the albums that helped me keep my head above water, to the point that the person who was ruining said life at the time actually began to get annoyed whenever she heard me listening to it. Maybe that's why I'm able to grant Manson's art the kind of separation I can't with other people. Despite the fairly ridiculous album title, every song on One Assassination is great, and this, the single... the lyrics just floor me, as his lyrics often do.

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Watch:

I finally saw Greg Araki's Nowhere and I fucking LOVED IT!

I'd previously seen Doom Generation way back when I rented the VHS from Blockbuster sometime in the late 90s and... yeah, I just didn't get it at the time. And Araki's films have been notoriously absent from streaming and disc for years, so now that Strand Releasing has remastered his "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy," I'm finally getting a chance to take these in. And if Nowhere is any indication, I'm already blown away. 

There's so much of the 90s Zeitgeist in here; not just 90s pop culture aesthetic, but the angst of the era, because the 90s was a particular brand of angst, indeed. Centered around sexuality and aliens and the burgeoning tech world that, little did we know, would consume all other aspects of our society once we embraced it. That's all here. This is a very analog movie, but with the edges of tech creeping in slowly around the edges; whether it's snow-filled TVs stacked high like altars or playing across entire walls, kids nodding off on drugs enmeshed in the scaffolding of massive neon signs, or space aliens and their abduction rays, the flickering neon anxiety of Nowhere reminds me how the world was thirty years ago and how it felt to come of age at that time, while still being artistic and strange enough to make an impact on visual and dramatic aesthetics merits. If you ever wondered what it would have looked like if David Lynch and David Cronenberg collaborated on making Repo Man, here's the answer.

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Read:

I finished Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger last week. Excellent novella, and not what I would have expected from Mark Twain based on my previous experiences with his fiction, which occurred back in Grade School.

In my previous entry about this one, I used the cover image from an older edition simply to illustrate the tone of the story. The Wizard-looking bloke on that cover is one of the story's antagonists, the Astrologer, who goes to great lengths to put paid to several decent townsfolk who become embroiled in the seemingly innocent machinations of Satan, who is the titular Mysterious Stranger and assures the narrator that he's not that Satan, but another angel with good intentions.

Yeah. Haha. Right. 

The book has some very subtle, very disturbing moments of pure Horror, most of which revolve around Witch panic and burnings, and the overall commentary Twain uses Satan to deliver about the human race is chilling in its unflattering accurateness. This is definitely not what most people think of when they think of Mark Twain's fiction.

Next, I circled back to finish James Joyce's Dubliners - a book I've had on the shelf since probably sixth grade. 

I'd left off at about the halfway point back in June and, upon returning, blew through several stories on Saturday, depositing me on the banks of the final entry, The Dead for my Sunday reading. This is arguably the most famous story in the collection and the only piece I remember having previously read in this volume.  These slice-of-life vignettes are beautiful for the elegant prose Joyce is known for, and I very much enjoyed them. Reading this one is a a bit of work-up to see if I'm finally going to undertake reading Ulysses this year, a daunting work I've been wanting to read for two decades. The author's prose in Dubliners fascinates me, so I'm thinking yes, I am going to try and take that leap this year. When I do, believe me, I'll be chronicling the experience here. But that's not happening just yet. I'm closing the year out by reading through the three issues of Hellebore I recently ordered online and thinking about fitting in one last novel, although what that is, I cannot yet say.

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Playlist:

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Shellac - To All Trains

Exhalants - Atonement

Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Faith No More - Album of the Year

Pitch Black Manor - Halloween Scene 

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 1

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Urge Overkill - Saturation

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Fen - Epoch

Steve More - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST

Willie Nelson - Pretty Paper

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2018: June 20th

I've been listening to the Lost Highway OST a lot again lately - it's never far from my ears - and I realized I don't think I've ever posted this track here blog before. Apple of Sodom, as well as Manson's cover of I Put A Spell On You, were the tracks that made me a fan of his. Previous to that, I actually disliked him quite a bit. The problem was, in the mid-90s when he first got huge, depending on what interview you caught with Manson, he might come off like a complete tool. Those were the interviews I saw initially, including one at Woodstock '94, which was right around the time Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison. During an interview with Empty-V, Riki Rachtman asked Manson if he felt sadness at Dahmer's passing and Manson went on some asinine diatribe about how a he felt a little piece of him had indeed died with the imprisoned serial killer. Now of course, I realize that Manson was probably fucking with the moronic VJ, while at the same time playing up the stupid image much of his fanbase at the time ascribed to him (the guy singing about worshipping no one but yourself liked to fuck with those who worshipped him). Whatever the motivation, as an early encounter with his persona, I rejected it. It wasn't until the Lost Highway OST that Manson's music music begin to seduce me, and dovetailing with that, a friend lent me his Autobiography, which fully revealed just how smart this guy was. Finally, a rebuttal Manson penned in Rolling Stone magazine post-Columbine, after being blamed as a catalyst for the event, was so well written and thought provoking, I plunged headfirst into his music. I really can only lay the 'genius' tag on two MM records - Antichrist Superstar and Mechanical Animals, but the man is an icon and a really good motivator for self empowerment if you listen to the lyrics. A couple of years ago I recall finding a lot of strength in Superstar while my life was imploding around me and the person I had trusted the most repeatedly stabbed me in the back. I remember her commenting on me listening to Superstar a lot at the time, as if she felt threatened by it. She was right to feel threatened - it helped me stay afloat in one of the most tumultuous times of my life.

Playlist from 6/19:

Danzig 1
Belong - Common Era
Nothing - Zero Day (single)
Nothing - Downward Years to Come
Christopher Young - Hellraiser OST
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport
Various Artists - Lost Highway OST

And Marilyn Manson's Phantasmagoria is FILMING???

Via the mighty Bloody Disgusting, you can read their article here. I had actually never seen this trailer before. If the film bears any resemblance to it this will be Phantastic!!!

Marilyn Manson - The Reflecting God

It's funny, when this album came out I was most definitely not a fan of Marilyn Manson. For much of his early to mid career, as he ascended into goth-metal-godhood I thought he was a moron. This was particularly based on an interview I saw him and multi-instrumentalist Twiggy Ramirez do circa mid-90's where they pretty much acted like morons and said some things that felt rather disingenuous. That's the funny thing about Manson, and something I definitely didn't get until much later - depending on what face he wanted to put forward at any given moment he was apt so play different angles on his character. Later the two songs on the soundtrack to David Lynch's Lost Highway soundtrack planted the seeds of my interest in his music. Piggyback on this his autobiography The Long, Hard Road Out of Hell - which I read in a day, and then finally his BRILLIANT post-Columbine rebuttal to the accusations of real morons that his music was to blame for that tragedy and I began to realize that this guy was a very, very smart person. And an artist of the highest order. As the years have gone by I've become more and more of a fan, Antichrist Superstar achieving a status in my personal hierarchy of music that puts it up there with the greatest concept albums ever made. This - very much like Pink Floyd's The Wall - almost feels transcendent of the idea that it is a concept album in a world where that term gets bandied about a little too loosely (smashing turnips' meloncholo and the infinite drabness a concept album? No.). Antichrist Superstar of course also has the distinct function of being a rather sophisticated act of Magick, and the power the cycle of songs achieves by the time it reaches the peak song The Reflecting God is something that can be physically harnessed and used to fuel all manner of creative, philosophical and empowering undertakings.