In Praise of Bacchus

Can you feel it? October is in full dying mode. The plants K and I worked so hard to keep alive all summer long through the heat are succumbing to the dying time. So am I, sonically speaking. So yeah, here's one of my all-time favorite tracks from one of my all-time favorite bands, so perfect for Autumn. I think that, after I post this, I'll get high, open another beer and read Dawn: Lucifer's Halo. Just list those autumns so long ago.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I had the really cool experience of finally seeing George A. Romero and Stephen King's original Creepshow on the big screen last night. Regal is doing a Horror movie a day in October, and this week is the big week for me: Creepshow last night, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness tonight (never thought I'd have a chance to see this one at a theatre) and The Black Phone 2 on Thursday. Black Phone is not part of this month-long repertory stint; I'll be back at that next week. 

1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

10) Good Boy/The Viewing - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities

11) Blood Moon (aka Wolf Girl)/All Hallows' Eve (The Last Drive-In Helloween)

12) The Shining/The Simpsons Ssn 6 Treehouse of Horror V

13) Stream (2024)

14) Creepshow (1982)

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NCBD:

Tomorrow's Pull at Rick's Comic City, Clarksville. 

LOVE this cover. I'm getting Shockwaves vibes from the thing in the background. Very cool.

As usual, it'll be a minute before I get my hands on the last couple Z News, but I always love to look at the covers and wonder what bizarre copy Mr. Zdarksy and crew will throw at us on any particular topic. 

So, The War turns out to only be 3 issues? The solicitation on League of Comic Geeks starts with, "the stunning conclusion...".  I'm both bummed and relieved. Even though the second issue of this series didn't hit me as hard as the first did, this is all so relatable it's insane. Ennis and Cloonan should collaborate more often - I definitely think she captures the darker aspects of his characters. 

I'll always support the Laphams, and after only one issue of Good As Dead, my doing so is rewarded. This book feels like it's going to be a wild ride. Nobody does crime comics like the Laphams. Sure, Brubaker and Phillips are at the top of their game, but this is something else entirely. There's always an element of low-key magical realism in the Laphams' work, and it often just springs out of nowhere. 

Another Night Force issue. Cool. I'm looking forward to how the two teams play out. G.I. Joe still feels like the Energon Universe book with the most to prove, and I'm hoping something big will come into play soon. 

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Playlist:

Black Tape for a Blue Girl - Remnants of a Deeper Purity

Blindfolded and Led to the Woods - The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes me

Testament - Para Bellum

Tool - Aenima

Tear for Fears - The Hurting

The Damned - Evil Spirits

The Damned - Night of 1000 Vampires

sunn O))) - Eternity's Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential EP

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Type O Negative - October Rust

Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Skinny Puppy - Mind: the Perpetual Intercourse

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Card:

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

And Grimm's Kickstarter for The Eldritch Lace Tarot deck is now live! You can go check it out and support it HERE.

• Five of Wands

• Six of Swords

• Four of Pentacles

Conflict, Science (skill) and a base of power. Sounds like it's time to circle the wagons. 

Type O Negative - Die with Me

 

Well, after nearly a week of Autumnal weather, the temperature shifted back into the low 90s yesterday. Doesn't matter - my interior Autumn flourished for 16 years in L.A. and it's firmly intact and engaged. So here's some Type O Negative, from 1996's October Rust.

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Watch:

Longlegs hits Blu-Ray next Tuesday! 

Hail Satan!

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Playlist:

Darkness Brings the Cold - Devil Swank Vol. 1

The Mysterines - Afraid of Tomorrows

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Ershetu - Xibalba

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food

Type O Negative - October Rust

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Card:

Today's card for study is the Nine of Cups - Happiness:

Eight of Cups is emotional change, and adding one to that suggests a new stability. There's balance depicted in Lady Freida Harris' design for this card. A lot going on, but it works out. This then suggests if you keep adding, you will have to work at finding symmetry, but it just might surprise you by occurring naturally. 

Seven Years Ago Today Peter Steele Left Us

Amazing image/lyric pairing by nervennahrung

As I sit at my computer typing this morning I'm listening to Swans's The Glowing Man, disc one. It's very zen and flows perfectly from my half hour of mediation and ongoing efforts to put proverbial pen-to-paper. But in the background there's a growing sense of unease, as if I've remembered something but not fully realized it yet. Then it hits me: April. April 14th.

Interestingly enough, upon waking this morning I spent an hour or so finally reading the first trade of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked and The Divine, which centers around the death and rebirth of gods as rock stars.

Peter Steele, I miss your music. I love what you gave us and will want more until I follow you out to the next big Halloween Party. To commemorate your passing here's an absolutely shattering live version of one of the songs I always go back to. Love You to Death illustrates how Steele - and by extension Type O as a whole - could pen beautiful, emotionally resonant epics and place them beside their pitch black satire without ever breaking the overall tone they perfected over the course of almost, but not quite, twenty years.

Rest in Peace. Now time to break out the Type O.

Things I Didn't Say: Wolf Moon

The previous entry is fairly simplified – I desperately long to find a way to eek this Autumn tone out of my soul and onto paper where others can possibly feel it as much as I do. For lack of a word and I suppose feeling melodramatic enough to accentuate said mood I'll say that I commune with this time of year possibly stronger than any other. When I was younger and there were actual seasons in the Midwest other than six months of winter/six months of summer with a few sporadic portals of the transitories thrown in here and there, never fully making a 'Season' per se, I remember what a switch music was in this time. I'd go from my summer, hang-out tunes like John Spencer Blues Xplosion, Beastie Boys and Cibo Matto to NIN, The Cure and Type O Negative like that (*snap*). Over the last several years I spent in Chicago I saw that change as the seasons waned, and here in LALA land, well, it's a fairly even keel all the time. I'm not really complaining – I didn't ever want to have to live through a winter again unless A) we live in the UK (ultimate life goal in the category of positioning for both of us) or, B) have a Thompson-esque compound in Colorado. But while I don't miss the winter I miss the rain, and I miss the Autumns of my younger days.

I remember shortly after my friend Jake died. This was like 1997 and he'd been pretty much the only person that connected to this aspect of my brain. We were both HUGE Type O fans and would often spend entire nights just laying around baked out of our minds listening to their albums (only up to October Rust at that point – Jake, you don't know what you missed in subsequent years man). They were the sonic embodiment of Autumn (still are) and something about the combination of the buzz, the music and that sharp, chill Autumn air that grants such clarity morphed. This is about the time I realized I had what is commonly referred to in the psychological community as 'Synesthesia' and man – pinning my senses together with those disparate elements really took me to another place. A place I can still achieve sometimes if the air is right and the music appropriate.

I went there after Jake died. I drove my old wood-paneled dodge mini-van West into the last, dying strains of sunlight one evening, parked at a random forest preserve and listened to this song. I don't know how long I sat there in the diminishing light, or how many times I listened the song, but finally something snapped and I suddenly found myself walking into the woods, disappearing into the slow, thick fog rolling out from beneath the trees, a inspirational carpet that beckoned me along a path into the thicket, amidst strange, night-time animal noises and the reverberations of Peter Steele's haunting vocals and then all at once, I began to run.
I ran for an undecipherable amount of time and distance; I ran because I couldn't stand still, walk or sit any more. My best friend was dead, my world was shattered after a not-so long ago mending (but that's a story for a different time, like when my first novel eventually gets picked up and published) and my eyes were alive with tears. But there I was, running like a madman, like a wild animal beneath the rising moon, shaking with the raw intoxication that that Autumn air can bestow upon those who can surrender to it. Running with nowhere to go but back to my car (eventually), back to my home, back to my life which, though I didn't believe it then, got better.

Thank You Peter, Kenny, Johnny Josh (and Sal in the early days). Thank you for the a soundtrack to a night I will never forget and that will always grant me strength and passion in a world seemingly derived to extinguish them.