Very excited that Bedridden's debut album, Moths Strapped To Each Other's Backs, released today! You can head over to their Bandcamp and snatch up the digital copy for $8 or the cassette for $12! Great band, can't wait to hear more from them!
Watch:
Although I have very few complaints about the theatrical releasing in Clarksville, I was bummed that all my Chicago friends got a pretty wide rollout of French Canadian directing trio RKSS's (Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell, and François Simard) new film Wake Up. All reports are, this is a great one.
I know nothing about Wake Up. This was completely off my radar until my friend Chris mentioned it to me, and from there, a few others picked up the chant. "See it in the theatre." Unfortunately, neither my failsafe Regal in Nashville nor the Belcourt has it, so I'll be holding out for VOD.
Read:
Long-time HWA friend David Lucarelli has turned his brilliant 2018 spook show Doctor Zomba into a comic book, Doctor Zomba's Ghostly Tales!
David joined us on Drinking with Comics HERE to talk about the original stage production of Doctor Zomba's back circa 2019. K and I caught the show at that year's Fringe Fest in Hollywood and LOVED it, so I'm psyched to see David turning this into a Horror Anthology comic. Head over to the Kickstarter HERE and take a gander!
Playlist:
Radiohead - OK Computer
Lounge Lizards - No Pain For Cakes
Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
Drug Church - Prude
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A#∞
The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
The Afghan Whigs - Black Love
Slow Crush - Aurora
Suburban Living - Always Eyes
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Seven of Cups
• Ten of Swords
• Page (Princess) of Pentacles
Imagination culminates into prosperity when focused through long-term effort. All good signs when you're getting ready to launch a new book. Not there yet, but close.
The second single from the upcoming album I Want Blood, out next Friday, October 18th. Pre-order HERE.
31 Days of Halloween:
Last night, K and I watched Anouk Whissell, RKSS, François Simard, and Yoann-Karl Whissell's Summer of 84 for the umpteenth time. This has emerged as one of my favorite films over the last couple years. It hits EVERY TIME. At first, I dismissed this as capitalizing on Stranger Things' popularity; however, it quickly became apparent that this was not the case. In the same way that Twin Peaks adopts the veneer of the TV night-time soap opera to subvert the genre, Summer of 84 does the same to the "kids on bikes" aesthetic popularized by Stranger Things.*
Summer of 84's ending is, in my opinion, one of the greatest in recent memory.
1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer
2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)
3) Loop Track
4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS
5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway
7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats
8) V/H/S Beyond
9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
10) Terrifier 3
11) Summer of '84
* Yes, technically Kids on Bikes was invented and popularized in the 80s. By NO means am I suggesting ST invented it. I'm 48 - I grew up during the 80s. However, it didn't become an acknowledged "genre" - for better or worse - until later, and not a checklist-ready template until after ST.
Playlist:
Various - My Halloween Spotify Playlist
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
Count Gorgann - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead
Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST
Card:
Taking a break from the single card studies for a pull from Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
What's it say that the first card I lay down has my new friend here on it?
From the forthcoming album The Night the Zombies Came Out, dropping October 26th. Pre-order HERE.
Post-reunion Pixies has been a mixed bag for me. I LOVE Indie Cindy, but everything since has felt anticlimactic. Sure, I'll lean into Head Carrier and its brethren, but they don't put me in quite the same place. Plus, I've always been a bigger fan of the music Frank Black (or Black Francis) made after the Pixies' first breakup, so to see him essentially jettison those musical endeavors for the last ten years has been disappointing, to say the least. I'm hoping his upcoming Teenager of the Year anniversary tour early next year means maybe he will start dividing his time between Pixies and other bands (Catholics!). We'll see. In the meantime, I still love the Pixies, so I'm looking forward to hearing the new record come Halloween time.
Watch:
The filmmaking collective of François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell - largely referred to as RKSS - is responsible for one of my favorite films of the last ten years: Summer of '84. Of course, they've also done Turbo Kid, which is fantastic in its own right. Not many films in recent memory have affected me like Summer of '84, though, so after that one, I'll follow RKSS to hell and back. And funny enough, it looks like that's where their next film will be taking us.
Streaming everywhere on August 13th, We Are Zombies is based on Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis' comic series called The Zombies That Ate the World. I'm not familiar with that series, but like I said, I'd follow these filmmakers anywhere they want to take me, so based on the trailer, buckle up.
Read:
Over this past weekend, I sat down and re-read Ram V and Dan Watters' The One Hand and The Six Fingers as one complete story.
This one is definitely going to be near the top of my year-end list. I read these all monthly, and re-read most of the series before the final two installments dropped, and I can say that when I finished the final issue last week, I was a little hesitant. I wasn't quite sure these guys had pulled off what they'd set up.
Boy was I wrong.
The key to 'getting' these books is reading them as one story because each issue of each book contains serious overlap, where we see the same events from both the Detective and the Killer's perspective. Not necessarily the most novel idea, except when you place the story in the context of a Blade Runner-esque Cyberpunk city like Neo Novena.
Calling this Cyberpunk is a bit of a misnomer, but I can't really think of anything else that quite gets the tone across. With visual and tonal references to everything from the aforementioned Ridley Scott classic to Métal Hurlant, the atmosphere is thick enough to cloud the reader's perceptions. Something about the inevitability of these futuristic worlds makes them so real to me, and the creators use a mystery involving androids to pontificate on the human condition in a manner I've never quite seen before. I don't know. All I can say is there's a collected edition coming out in December, and I'm definitely going to recommend it to everyone who I think might dig this.
Hopefully, this did well enough that both creators will return to Neo Novena at some point in the near future. Preferably before our world comes to resemble theirs any more than it already does.
Playlist:
T. Rex - The Slider
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Jerry Cantrell - Brighten
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Queens of the Stone Age - In Times New Roman
Helmet - Monochrome
16 Horsepower - Hoarse
Liars - Sisterworld
Mr. Bungle - California
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, starting today for the next 30, Grimm's Kickstarter for the Hand of Doom Tarot Art Book is up. Check it out HERE.
• Two of Wands
• XVI: The Tower
• Seven of Swords
Collaboration of Will leads to a change in pre-existing paradigms - not an easy thing, but a good thing for those with the intellect to recognize the advantages of a system overhaul.
This has to be work-related. Not sure if that's good or bad.
