7 Days of Ozzy - Day 2: Desire

 

One of my favorite songs on an album that is 75% favorite songs. The guitar on this album - and this song in particular - is, in my opinion, the heights calibre hard rock guitar can reach. It sounds so rich and fuzzy, yet retains fantastic definition. 

And, of course, great vocal lines, too. 

---

---

---

Watch:

Bill Hader's Barry returned a few weeks ago and I only just found out. Over the weekend, K and I caught up and were pretty surprised by the tone of this third season:

One of this show's strengths is the way it balances its inherent darkness with some of the funniest shit I've ever seen. Part of that's the cast - Hader's fantastic, Anthony Carrigan (NoHo Hank) is brilliant pretty much every time he's on the screen, and Stephen Root is always gold. This season, the humor has, thus far, been seriously downplayed and we've been presented with a super dark take on the characters - especially Barry. Again, that comingling of tones has always been the strength of the show. Barry does not shy away from the reality of the concept: a hitman's a pretty dark protagonist. 

But it works.

Really not sure where this show is ultimately headed, which is always a good thing.

---

---

---

Read:

I spent a large part of the weekend relaxing and catching up on my comics. Here's what I read:

So nice to finally sit and read this one all the way through, start to finish, in one tight sitting. The Last Ronin totally delivers that old school 80s Frank Miller dystopian aesthetic, while retaining and drawing from the original, B&W Mirage series. Gorgeous art - the design of everything we see in this dystopian world is gorgeous, and visually seems the natural evolution of the original book's Manhattan. 

I'd dropped off reading James Tynion IV's The Nice House On The Lake monthly, simply because I lost a lot after its hiatus. sitting down and reading 1-8 in a sitting really took some time, and that just goes to show what a meaty story Tynion's telling here. Very cool story that's essentially a zombie-less update on Romero's Dawn of the Dead (in a way it is! Think about it!)

---

---

---

Playlist:

(Lone) Wolf & Cub - May You See Only Sky

Bexley - Lost in the Moment EP

Cypress Hill - III: Temples of Boom

Jerry Cantrell - Brighten

Calexico - The Black Light

Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST

Mike Doughty - Live at Ken's House

Calexico - Even My Sure Things Fall Through

---

---

---

Card:

A Conservative approach to an infuriating problem will serve me better than, say, a hammer beating. Loud and Clear. 

Hellraisin'

No More Tears turns 30? Shit man, I'm old. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy the hell out of his new, super cool video for one of the best songs on a pretty solid Ozzy album (his best, IMO). The version on the album was co-written by Lemmy - as were several other tracks - but did not feature him on co-vocals, although if memory serves this version with both Ozzy and Lemmy singing surfaced somewhere years later. Either way, I've always really liked this song, and the video is super cool. Reminds me A LOT of Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill series from earlier this year (that I'm still super hung up on).

---

---

---

NCBD:

Another great week at the Comic Shop -  NCBD has really come to be something I look forward to with rabid anticipation again and being that I psychoanalyze myself constantly, I'm pretty sure this is a nostalgia blanket, something that I needed to reinstate in midst of 2020's uncertainty. Why else would I revert back to following Spider-Man so rabidly for 6 months, pick up a new Defenders series with a bunch of characters I know nothing about or are not particularly keen on, or fall back into an X-book? Being a Marvel Comics fan is what got me through the uncertainty of adolescence, and as such, I've apparently flipped that switch again in order to navigate middle age. Whatever the case, I start looking at what's hitting the stands as early as possible, assemble my list, and then wait with bated breath for Wednesday to come around.

Speaking of which, this week we begin with the return of a new friend I hardly had a chance to get to know before it up and disappeared back in the spring:

Definitely not something I normally go in for, I ended up really digging the first two issues of James Stokoe's Orphan of the Five Beasts, and I'd begun to fear it was never coming back. Speaking of returning titles...

I love The Silver Coin so much, and am extremely pleased it proved popular enough to continue on after what was originally supposed to only be five issues.

The Me You Love in the Dark - ghost fucking, huh? Based on the cover art, there might be trouble in paradise for our heroine.

---

---

---

Watch:

I've recently been getting into the films of Alex de la Iglesias. My end-of-night movie on Halloween ended up being his 2014 Heist-turned-cannibal-Witches flick Witching and Bitching. Here's the trailer:

This movie is completely fucking insane. I mean, the last twenty minutes is... well, spectacle filmmaking at its finest.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Opeth - Deliverance

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Allegaeon - Into Embers (pre-release single)

---

---

---

Card:

Keeping my mouth shut.