Even Paper Girls Need to Rock N Roll

 

I'll never forget the first time I heard Metal Church. My second concert ever was at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, Il. 1991, Operation: Rock n' Roll. Metal Church (The Human Factor Tour), Dangerous Toys (Hellacious Acres), Motorhead (1916 Tour), Judas Priest (Painkiller Tour), and Alice Cooper (Trash). As we exited the amphitheater, we were handed cassette compilations that featured a song from all the bands that played, plus Cycle Sluts From Hell, Alice in Chains, and I don't remember who else.

Unfortunately, I don't think I still have this tape, despite having a box filled with tapes that I've lugged with me across the country twice now. Regardless, the Metal Church song on this was "Date With Poverty," and thus, my constant revolutions of this tape burrowed it deep into my brain. 

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Watch:

We finished the regular season of Netflix's The Sandman, then were super happy to see the bonus episode drop with two stories culled from the third TPB collection Dream Country. Both Dream of a Thousand Cats and Calliope were every bit as faithful adaptations of the source material as the overall show was. I really hope they renew this one.

Incidentally, a new episode of The Horror Vision went out today. We do a spoiler-free reaction to The Sandman, and talk about a whole bunch of other things as well, from my first viewing of Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem, to seminal 80s flick Popcorn, to the unique and disturbing films of Andrey Iskanov. Check it out in that little widget just above and to the right, and if you dig, follow us on your favorite Podcast Platform. 

Next up, the first episode of Paper Girls. I am a HUGE fan of the comic, but this first episode felt like the show was cramming A LOT into one episode. Still, I'm in for the haul, so hoping it smooths out a bit. 

This is another one I really hope hits its stride; Brian K Vaughn fans already had one heartbreak in the last twelve months with Y The Last Man being tossed out after only one season, so hopefully, Paper Girls will hit its mark and find an audience:

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Read:

I finished T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies yesterday. Wow. What a book. It's always fantastic to find a literary Horror novel, and this is definitely that. The Ceremonies breathes for a large part of its 600-page length, and the story is all the better for it. This is the kind of prose I love most, where the author isn't concerned with hitting beats or creating a page-turning momentum. The story unfolds slowly, primarily with character development, and when things climax in the final 50 or so pages of the book, it feels well-earned.

Loved this. Can't wait to grab Dark Gods, also recently republished by PS Publishing. Also, a note in reference back to my original post about this edition of The Ceremonies when I first received it: despite my fears, the spine on this one actually held up beautifully. Way to go, PS! You guys rock, thank you for bringing Klein's work back into print, I was getting dangerously close to paying upwards of $50 on eBay for a beat-up old MM paperback copy of Dark Gods before you swept in and saved the day.

Unfortunately, I realize now I missed out on a gorgeous Hardcover with Slipcase edition, but that's okay. 

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Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Small Cat, Big Yard Playlist

Various - Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards Playlist

Underworld - 1992-2002

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Metal Church - The Human Factor

Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks

Various - Return of the Living Dead Soundtrack

King Woman - Doubt EP

Sharon Jones and the Dap Tones - Give the People What They Want

The Devil's Blood - The Thousand Fold Epicentre

Anthrax - Worship Music

Forhist - Eponymous

David Lynch and Mark Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Revelation can Strengthen Will, however, Emotional persistence can hamper Will. I'm not entirely sure what this is speaking to at the moment, but I'll do some reading later today and see if I can't get a better read on this. 

The Cowboy and the Hot Air Balloon

 

BIG thanks to Mr. Brown for cluing me in on the fact that there's a new John Doe record out on the always delightful Fat Possum Records. You can order Fables in a Foreign Land HERE. 

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Watch:

Warning: This trailer may give some plot points away.

  

Michael Shannon in the die-hard tropey creepy neighbor role? SOLD.

 

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I gave up on the book I've been slogging through for the last few months, Helltown by Jeremy Bates. It's well written, it just did not connect with me. I've moved on to a novel I've been wanting to read for years, and which only recently came back into print via Drugstore Indian Press. 

So far, at only about 200 pages into its 608-page runtime, this is every bit as majestic as I'd expected. Klein needs more credit - he's a master of his craft and appears to be setting up a magnum opus that I'd wager influenced Clive Barker's Great and Secret Show, another of my favorite novels. I'd commented on this edition back when I bought it last year, specifically on my fears for its binding, which for this many pages, seems weak. That said, so far so good. 

Also, it's interesting to note that the first and for a long time only story by Klein I had read, Events At Poroth Farm, seems to have been a short born of the author excising and reworking a section of The Ceremonies, probably due to frustration with the novel in its original form, misgivings he has shared publically on more than one occasion.

Also, it should be noted that in checking out DIP's website, I realized they have also reprinted Klein's most heralded volume, the looooooong OOP Dark Gods, which I plan on ordering ASAP. 

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Playlist:

Yerusalem - The Sublime

The Bronx - II

Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Deftones - White Pony

Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Bexley - Lost in the Moment EP

Bexley - Eponymous

John Doe - Fables in a Foreign Land

Cypress Hill - III: Temples of Boom

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Def Leppard - Diamond Star Halos

Def Leppard - High 'N' Dry

Bauhaus - In the Flat Field

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Revocations - Teratogenesis

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

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Card:

I always equate this particular card with emotional strength and support, so I'm reading this as it pertains to giving someone else the support they will soon need. 

The Twilight Singers - Live with Me/Where Did You Sleep Last Night

 

A wonder live rendition of the opening track from the Twilight Singers' 2006 EP A Stitch in Time, which as a bonus, flawlessly morphs into a cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night." 

I got chills at the end when Dulli yells, "Mark Lanegan ladies and gentlemen!"

It's been quite some time since I doubled down on any Twilight Singers. This EP and the corresponding album Powder Burns also released in 2006, along with Lanegan's 2004 Bubblegum were intricate daily rituals for much of my life during the mid-to-late 00s. They're also slightly synonymous with drugs - no surprise there. To me, these records so perfectly capture the fabric of my mental life at that time, it brings back a huge rush of thoughts, feelings and ideas that are otherwise haphazardly placed in a closet at the back of my psyche. It's good to take that stuff out and brush it off every once in a while.

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Read:

I'd been trying to read the works of T.E.D. Klein for the better part of a decade, but until very recently, everything was out of print. I eventually found the story "The Events at Poroth Farm" in a Kindle-only "Megapack" of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story has fuck all to do with Lovecraft, but hell, forty stories for $0.99, I'll take it.

This is the kind of thing that flits in and out of my radar, so months go by where I get busy obsessing over other things, then something puts the enigmatic Klein back in my thoughts and I look around on Kindle and eBay again. The holy grail of his work would appear to be the 1985 novel Dark Gods, which goes for upwards of $40 for a Mass Market Paperback on eBay. It's only a matter of time until someone puts Klein's stuff back in print...

And now that is exactly what is happening. Two recent purchases I've made:

This first volume is a novel. A reprint of Klein's 1984 novel The Ceremonies, also long out of print. I snatched up a paperback copy of this the second I saw it hit Amazon, however, I will say, the binding looks like it will split and fall apart before I'm finished reading this one. Maybe I'm wrong, but when you have a 400+ pages book and its binding is barely an eight of an inch thick, well, that's usually a pretty crappy edition. 

And here's one from Pickman's Press I just saw this morning on Kindle. I grabbed the digital right away for this collection of short stories, poems and an interview. "Poroth Farm" is included here, which is nice, as are what looks like an essay on Arthur Machen's "The House of Souls", a story I recently short-listed when I picked up a Complete Works volume of Machen's work. So far, I'm three stories in, and can already tell you, "Well-Connected" is already worth the $5.99 I paid for this one. Fantastic story.

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Playlist:

Mark Lanegan Band - Bubblegum

Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral

Post Stardom Depression - Prime Time Looks A Lot Like Amateur Night

QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze

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Card:

Looking for answers, but something remains obscured.

Blood Machines Official Trailer

SO happy I helped kickstart this one! There are two slots for this year's Beyondfest still to be announced - I'm hoping one of them is Blood Machines. My hope for the other slot is either Babak Anvari's Nathan Ballingrud adaptation Wounds or the Soska Sisters' Rabid.

Speaking of Beyondfest 2019, I was able to get tickets to almost everything I wanted:

Joe Bob Brigs - How Rednecks Saved Hollywood
Tammy and the T-Rex
Joe Begos Double Feature: Bliss and VFW, with Begos and crew in person
Tom Atkins Triple Feature with Mr. Atkins attending: Halloween III Season of the Witch, Night of the Creeps and John Carpenter's The Fog

The only flick I missed out on is Richard Stanley's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space with Stanley in person, but I'm cool with what I was able to score. There's also tickets available for a bunch of other films I'm toying with, but I'll probably decide some of those last minute since most are during the week.

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NCBD - so weird. Third NCBD in a row with no books, and I'm not particularly bothered. In fact, probably to sub the weekly comic experience, I chomped down hard on my re-read of Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera's Black Science, which I erroneously reported ended last month, but actually ends next week with issue forty-three. As of last night, I am eight issues into the re-read, and having an absolute blast with it. Such great world building, both story wise and with Scalera's incomparable art.

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I've been doing a lot of digital reading. So much so, that it's becoming a bit of a problem. Kindle books are so cheap it's insane. Case in point, this was $0.99:

Forty freakin' stories by a variety of different authors. Some of those, like the Lovecraft and the Howard I already have, but there's a ton of stuff I do not. In fact, what led me to this one was researching T.E.D. Klein, whose OOP paperback Dark Gods keeps coming up in conversation as essential reading to further Lovecraft's mythos, but which runs for about $50+ on eBay. Klein's story The Events at Poroth Farm is included in this one, and it also comes recommended as a great place to start with his work. Instead of that one though, I started with a Clark Ashton Smith, whose SciFi/Fantasy work I adore, but whose entries in the mythos I've never read before. I'm about a quarter of the way through The Return of the Sorcerer, and it is, as I suspected, fantastic. Smith's handling of Lovecraft's work actually reminds me a lot Howard's, whose Lovecraft-related work I actually probably like better than Lovecraft's. Sacrilege, I know, but the man can write. And so can Smith.

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Well, I went and saw Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell two nights ago. I didn't like it. My short review is up on Letterbxd HERE. I'll add that I am happy RZ made the movie he wanted to, it just wasn't to my tastes or what I wanted from a sequel to two movies I adore. Despite of my negative take, I'll still go see the next one when it comes out (there will be a next one).

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Playlist of late:

Danzig - Danzig 1
Sepultura - Chaos A.D.
Mark Korven - The Witch OST
Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
Flipper - Generic Flipper
Various - Under Frustration, Vol. 2
Brass Hearse - Eponymous EP
Rob Zombie - Apple Essentials
Brass Hearse - In Death (I'll Love You More) single

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Card of the day:

To me, this card always indicates a solid foundation, or re-gathering thereof. And that's what I've been doing of late - a lot of rest. I've felt out of sorts, stressed out, and my wrist in probably badly sprained. I may continue to rest today, even if I am neglecting my writing. We'll see. The reading - of comics, The Queen's Conjuror, and now some Cthulhu Mythos, is also an attempt at re-cementing my foundation, and that combined with the added rest is helping put me back together a bit after traveling and a grueling return to work last week.