Wow. This just blew me right the F&*K away. This year's Underneath is already on the shortlist to be on my top ten albums of 2020, this perfect cover of Alice in Chains' immortal 'Down in a Hole' may just put the newly released Under the Skin live album on that list, as well.
This is one of those songs I can't hear without a slew of emotions, thoughts, and sensations from high school coming flooding back. That kind of emotion juxtaposition usually doesn't translate to covers. That is definitely not the case with this one.
Read:
Two stories from finishing Nathan Ballingrud's debut short story collection, North American Lake Monsters, I jumped into Stephen Graham Jones' Night of the Mannequins. I read the thing in a few hours and absolutely loved it. Funny, freaky, weird, hilarious, spooky, confounding. All of the above. This is a slasher novel that is not anywhere close to being what you would ever expect from a slasher story. Highest possible recommendation, especially since you can probably knock it out in a day. Perfect summer reading.
Night of the Mannequins is $3.99 on Kindle right now, and worth every goddamn penny!
Next, as I savor these last few stories in Lake Monsters, I'm probably going to start a long-overdue re-read of Clive Barker's iconic The Hellbound Heart.
Playlist:
Doves - The Universal Want
Earth - Primitive and Deadly
X - Los Angeles
Steely Dan - Aja
Mudhoney - March to Fuzz
Electric Wizard - Black Masses
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
CARD:
Getting back up on my writing legs after a fairly successful weekend that proved my new outline method will make writing these next two Shadow Play books considerably easier than the first.
I pulled out Firewater's classic 1998 album The Ponzi Scheme and, as usual, now find myself unable to put it away. I've posted other songs from this album here before but haven't paid tribute to others. In that interest, here's"So Long Superman," just another of my favorite songs on an album where every song is a favorite.
Read:
I finished John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling the Undead a few days ago. Wow. Very good. Understated, powerful, and creepy as hell. Lindqvist's prose is a touch dry, but it works well as he filters between the three main groups of characters - three families - and how they react to the return of dead loved ones. Their reactions then become superimposed across a larger arena as the whole of Sweden reacts to the return of what the media dub the "Reliving," a term very much inspired by a government trying to handle a baffling and unprecedented experience. This is an undead book where the undead are, for the most part, completely unviolent, leaving the characters to deal with the psychological, emotional, and sociological ramifications of what would happen if the recently deceased returned to us.
From there I moved back into Nathan Ballingrud's debut short story collection, North American Lake Monsters. I'd been reading a story here or there over the last two weeks, just to have something to dig into that inspires me to write, and now that I'm full bore, I'm once again in Ballingrud's beautiful prose. This man is easily one of the best writers working today, no need for the genre quantifier. I simply cannot wait for this to hit Hulu next month as the new anthology show Monsterland; I'm hoping they do all nine stories. In particular, The Crevasse is one of the best shorts I've ever read, and to see it properly translated would be majestic, in the least.
Playlist:
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Card:
"Harmonious union of male and female energies" is a nice reminder on something I've been working on as I muster up the gumption to jump back into Shadow Play, which I continue to avoid for some reason.
I have become a HUGE fan of the AMC show Halt and Catch Fire. K had watched it previously, and both her and Mr. Brown recommended it to me on more than one occasion. Two weeks ago we started the now-completed show - at four seasons, ten episodes a season, I had a sense going into it that the story had been crafted in a tight, no-BS manner, and so far that's exactly what I feel I've gotten out of the first two seasons, the second of which we completed a few nights ago.
Following a small Texas tech company in the early 80s, Halt and Catch Fire uses an imaginary company called Cardiff electronics - based on Compaq computers, if what I've read is accurate - as they clone the IBM desktop BIOS and strike out to make the world's first portable computer. "At a feather-lite fifteen pounds, you can take the Giant anywhere," the sales pitch eventually goes.
The interesting thing about the show is how, by the end of season one, we're done with Cardiff and personal computing and onto the proliferation of online games and chat. Interesting, too, is how the show keeps the core five characters growing in different directions yet still realistically intertwined; this show is no slouch - the writing is fantastic. As are the performances, set design (so much nostalgia), and the theme song! Created by Trentmøller, I had so hoped the theme was a shortened version of a longer song. Nope. Short and sweet and leaves me wanting more every damn time I hear it, this is another of those show intros that I would never dream of skipping, even in the height of a binge.
**
Read:
I swam a bit after finishing Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country; there are so many damn books I want to read right now, that I became paralyzed by the prospect of actually choosing one. I ended up going with a short-story collection/novel combo.
First up, Nathan Ballingrud's debut short story collection, North American Lake Monsters.
I've been wanting to read this since I first read The Visible Filth in 2015, but I'm often a 'saver' - that is to say, I purposefully hold out on reading books by favorite authors so I have something to look forward to. With Babak Anvari's adaptation of the stories as a new HULU original Horror Anthology show set to premiere in October, I figured I should probably get on this one, which was published in 2013 by Small Beer Press.
One story in, the majestic You Go Where It Takes You, I'm even further convinced that Ballingrud is one of the greatest living Horror authors the world has, and I find myself even more excited by the prospect of watching Anvari's interpretation of more of his world (2019's Wounds - which I wouldn't shut up about last year - was Anvari's first work with Ballingrud's material, adapting The Visible Filth, still one of my top five favorite books ever).
Next up, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Handling The Undead.
This is a loaner from my Horror Vision co-host Anthony. Lindqvist is best known for his 2004 debut Vampire novel Let the Right One In - which I have not read - and I am going into Handling.. totally blind to his style or anything about the plot, other than, working backward from the title, this will most likely be Lindqvist's unique take on the Zombie genre, an area I don't normally care all that much for, but which lately I seem to keep finding really interesting derivations of. Hopefully this continues that course.
**
Playlist:
The Cure - Standing on the Beach
David Bowie - Lodger
Rezz - Mass Manipulation
Deftones - Ohms (pre-release single)
Santogold - Eponymous
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Skywave - Killerrockandroll
A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Thou - Heathen
Deftones - Gore
Midnight Danger - Chapter 2: Endless Nightmare
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
**
Card:
Back to my original, full-size Thoth deck for today's pull:
Keeping me on course. Reading You Go Where it Takes You this morning, I feel the urge to work on one of several short stories I have sitting around. Maybe late tonight; for today's writing session - which I've already budgeted out to be fairly lengthy - it's back to what I have to complete next, Shadow Play Book Two: The Absence of Light, which means I have to finish the outline for Book Three, the title of which I am not yet ready to reveal, but which fills me with unholy glee!
Deep, murky dreams last night, the kind that follow you right up to the door that leads back across the wall of sleep. I woke up before my 6:00 AM alarm feeling the need to begin the day with Sunn O)))'s new album Life Metal, which I'd yet to spin since its release (was holding out for the vinyl). So far, these tracks actually scare me a little bit, which is awesome. There's something to the sound this time, something Steve Albini no doubt helped add to the thick, rolling fog metal of this behemoth. Sunn O))) actually sound more massive, if that is possible. Life Metal would make a perfect soundtrack to a re-read I'm planning for John Langan's The Fisherman, a book I had some issues with as far as execution, but which still stands as probably the scariest novel I've ever read, and has stayed with me on an almost daily basis for two years now.
Speaking of great Weird/Horror fiction, I was unbelievably happy to see Nathan Ballingrud announce on Twitter yesterday that his first collection of short stories, North American Lake Monsters, was just picked up by Hulu as an anthology series. Mr. Ballingrud's continued success is well-earned, and it's nice to see that happen.
**
The Watchlist from 5/24 was the final episode of Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In on Shudder. Joe Bob played Blood Harvest and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, and while Hello Mary Lou is definitely better than the first Prom Night (its affiliation with the franchise apparently decided after the fact), I didn't much care for either film. However, that is totally not the point here. I watched these movies for Joe Bob's interruptions, and as always, he delivered. The Last Drive-In prom at the end of the episode was especially sweet and funny; can't wait for season 2, and I definitely find myself hoping there's a holiday marathon in the interim.
**
Playlist from 5/24:
Muggs - Dust
Pelican - Cold Hope (Pre-release single)
Pelican - Midnight and Mescaline (Pre-release single)
Faith No More - Angel Dust
The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave
Melvins - Houdini
The Veils - Total Depravity
Card of the day:
Probably my favorite card in the Sword suite, this tells me I need to be very methodical today. I work, need very desperately to write again (still sick, still exhausted), and have plans to tape a new episode of The Horror Vision tonight. That's a lot to fit in feeling like I do. I'll need to be resourceful and above all focused.
