Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

The title track from Mannequin Pussy's new album, I Got Heaven, which you can order HERE. This came out two weeks ago, the same day as the new Ministry, which is kind of hogging all my attention, hence why I haven't thought to post something here yet. This is probably my favorite track on the record, which is saying something because the entire thing is fantastic and a safe bet to end up in my best of 2024 list.

 

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NCBD:

Man, some weeks NCBD can't come fast enough. This was one of those weeks! 

The cover says it all: Let's SNIKT us some Dr. Stasis! While Rise of the Powers of X has been pretty much a major slog so far, its sister book Fall of the House of X has been pretty great. Hoping that continues. 

Jeff Lemire's Fish Flies comes to an end! I won't be able to read this one until early April, as I'll most likely have to have my Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Shin throw it in my box up in Chicago, but that's okay. Looking forward to rereading this entire weird little series. 

Hot off the heels of The Six Fingers, we pivot back to the detective's perspective with The One Hand issue #2. These two series really have me excited. 

One issue left after this, then the TMNT gets turned on its ear - luckily without restarting the continuity! It's anybody's guess where this is heading, but I'm psyched for the finale.

Has it already been a month since Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers #5? Man! I love this cover, and can't wait to see Devastator in action. This series is really packing a punch.

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Fuck yeah - Joe Bob and Darcy are BACK this Friday!

So happy to have The Last Drive-In back for another year! Granted, this year, Shudder is making it one movie instead of two and every other week, but that's because they're really trying to keep the subscribers who click on for JBB and then leave after as long as possible. That's fine - I'd advise anyone reading this who subs in and out simply for Joe Bob and Darcy to rethink their approach. There's tons of great stuff on Shudder and they're always adding more, a lot of which is exclusive content they help produce. In order to help folks navigate the best of the best on Shudder, my podcast, The Horror Vision, recently started an off-shoot called The Horror Vision Presents: ON SHUDDER. Kind of a streaming kind, the first episode went up this past Monday and highlights Josh Forbes' Destroy All Neighbors.

We're recording a new episode soon, as this may end up being a weekly addition to our regular episodes. There's just so much great stuff on Shudder.

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Nobuhiko Morino - Versus OST

Sleep - Dopesmoker

Ministry - Hopiumforthemasses

Ministry - The Last Sucker

Mudvayne - Lost and Found

Steve Moore - Bliss OST

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

John Carpenter - Lost Themes

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Perturbator - Nocturne City EP

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

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Card:

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

• Ten of Pentacles 

• Ace of Cups

• King of Cups

Culmination of hard work pays off with an emotional breakthrough that lends insight into 

H6LLB6ND6R - Armageddon

 

This past Friday on The Last Drive-In, Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mailgirl hosted Hellbender, the sixth movie by the prolific and endlessly fascinating indie filmmaking Adams/Poser family. 

During the interview segments of the broadcast, the family revealed that not only is H6llb6nd6r an actual band they play in, but Ship to Shore media are releasing their debut record on vinyl. I immediately pre-ordered the vinyl, despite an estimated ship date of Q4 2022 and the fact that, hopefully, by that time I will no longer live at my current address or even in California. Because of this, I used my parents' address in Illinois. However, there is the very real possibility they may also end up near us in Tennessee, so I'm hoping that, when all this finally happens, I will have enough time to go into the order and change the shipping address. 

 You can pre-order H6llb6nd6r's Side A from Ship to Shore Media HERE. The entire record is currently streaming on all platforms, and it's fantastic.

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A new episode of Southside 90s dropped concurrently with the newest installment of my Newsletter, which appropriately enough features a "Giant-sized" 90s playlist that chronicles all of the bands and albums I associate with those long-ago days spent playing in bands and smoking pot, getting crazy and watching friends build flamethrowers out of fire extinguishers. Sound insane? Yeah, it kinda was. 

The stories are only going to get weirder from here out, so if you're listening, buckle up.

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My good friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray kicked off his summer outdoor movie series Cineray this past Saturday with one of the coolest double features I've seen in a while. First up, my first-ever viewing of Tango and Cash:

 

Next, and I had no idea this movie existed, was John Stamos and Vanity in an all-out 80s action movie called Never Too Young To Die. Feat your eyes on this glory:

 

Yeah, it's ridiculous, and maybe it was the tall cans of Stone's Hazy IPA I was sucking down, but it really hit the spot.

 

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Playlist:

H6LLB6ND6R - Side A

Various - Lost Highway OST

David Bowie - A Reality Tour

Duende and David J - Oracle of the Horizontal

Deftones - Gore

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

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Card:

I was SUPER excited to receive my copy of The Bound Tarot, which my friend and occasional co-conspirator Jonathan Grimm recently released. I'm extremely proud of Grimm - I watched him work on this deck over the last year and his skill never ceases to amaze me.

You can buy a set of these amazing cards on Grimm's site HERE. 

Page of Cups indicates a predilection for following your Creativity, which, as of yesterday, is where I'm at again after weeks of spinning my wheels.

Rebel Rebel

 

I've been listening to the live double album David Bowie released from the Reality tour. Not only is Reality my favorite Bowie album, I think A Reality Tour is my favorite Bowie live album, as well. Such a great, career-spanning selection of songs, and some especially insightful new versions of old favorites and deep cuts, the best of which might just be this re-working of "Rebel Rebel", the studio version of which was included on a later edition of Reality as a bonus track.

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I can't wait for Friday. Seeing Joe Bob and Darcy kick off a new season will be like old friends having a party after time away, and my Last Drive-In text threads - Tommy, Ray and Missy - are always a welcome respite. 

 

My bet is we finally get Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which hit Shudder for the first time since I've been subscribed (2018) and leaves the service on the first of next month.

 

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Playlist:

Calexico - El Mirador

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

David Lynch - The Big Dream

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Testament - The New Order

Download - The Eyes of Stanley Pain

Puppy Gristle - Eponymous (Thanks, Klint!)

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The mass of all my possessions occasionally weighs on me. Yesterday was one of those days.

New Zombi!!!

New Zombi! I'm still blasting last year's aptly titled 2020 and here there is, more on the way! Pre-order from Relapse Records HERE.

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Our entire household received our first doses of the Pfizer Vaccine on Thursday afternoon and it subsequently knocked me on my ass. I had flu-like body ache, fatigue and borderline nausea until yesterday. Which was fine, because I called out from work on Friday and other than having to work five hours on Saturday - which sucked - and interviewing comics artist and entrepreneur Jay Fotos for A Most Horrible Library afterward (episode out now), I basically watched a bunch of stuff, read a lot, and got some writing done. Oh yeah, and sleep. I slept A LOT.

Watch-wise, first up was Andrzej Zulawski's Possession, which I'd been wanting to see for a long time but is fairly hard to come by. Luckily, Anthony from The Horror Vision has several European Region copies and I now have a Region-Free player, so the stars aligned and my mind was literally blown. 

  

I'm seriously planning a second viewing of this one SOON, because I really need to unpack it. 

Friday night, Joe Bob Briggs returned with the first episode of The Last Drive-In. I'm a huge fan of JBB, however, after about thirty minutes of Lloyd Kaufman's Mother's Day, I jumped ship. I respect the hell out of the Kaufman's and Troma, but thus far, I've never had a single one of their movies work for me. This one was no different, so instead, K and I rented Travis Stevens' new film Jakob's Wife.

Starring Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden, there was pretty much no way this one would miss for me, and it didn't fail. Solid Five Stars on Lettrbxd.

I'm finally going back and re-watching all the Marvel MCU flicks that I missed due to total Superhero burn-out. If you're keeping track, I loved Ms. Marvel, and now loved Spider-Man: Homecoming! 

Wow. I knew these flicks would all be good, however, damn! This one was awesome. K and I both LOVED Homecoming and now can't wait to watch Far From Home.

Finally, Saturday night we watched Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon's Freaky. Everyone told me this one was great, and they were all 100% correct. Loved it! 

   

As my good friend Missi said, "Vince Vaughn was born to play a seventeen-year-old girl!" Amen!
 

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Small Black - Cheap Dreams

Zombi - 2020

Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility

K's 70s Playlist

Kensonlovers - Keep Rolling

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth

Selim Lemouchi and His Enemies - Earth Air Spirit Water Fire

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man OST

Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss

Pilotpriest - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

John Carpenter - Lost Themes III

Judas Priest - Hell Bent for Leather

Mrs. Piss - Self Surgery

CCR - Bayou Country

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier

Numenorean - Adore

Alice in Chains - Facelift

Judas Priest - Painkiller

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Revocation - Teratogenesis

Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Zombi - Shape Shift

Zombi - Escape Velocity

Voyag3r - Doom Fortress

Voyag3r - War Mask

Various - Valerie and Friends

 

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 Definitely feels like a Victory that A) I received that first dose of the vax, and B) I'm back into a pretty great vibe with Shadow Play Book Two!!!

2019: May 20th - Joe Bob Briggs on the Demons "Series"

As we entire the final week of Joe Bob Briggs' inaugural season of The Last Drive-In on Shudder, I thought I'd post one of my favorite clips from the man.

I didn't have cable growing up, so I never got to experience JBB in his previous iterations. I seriously don't think I'd ever even heard of him before Shudder brought him on last summer for that first, 25 hour marathon - the origin of this clip. I've fallen in love fast, though. After last week's episode (The Stuff and Street Trash), I actually threw on his Thanksgiving Dinners of Death to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre with his asides (I missed the beginning of it during the original, Holiday airing). That's something I never thought I'd do - watch a film I respect as much as TCM more for interruptions than the film itself. But JBB is a fount of information, and despite the weakening of a viewings immersions with his interruptions, I've seen TCM many times, but never with the Joe Bob's annotations, which I'd imagine will add quite a bit of context to subsequent viewings, much the same as Brad Shellady's 1988 documentary Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait, which I love as much as the original film.

I'll miss Joe Bob in the off season; there's been something amazing about watching this live every week I'm able, and I'm sure I'll be revisiting these episodes throughout the interim between this and what I hope will be another season somewhere not too far down the line.

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I was able to catch up on a lot of reading this weekend, and one of the comics I blew through several issues of was Gunning for Hits. This book - published by Image Comics - is fantastic, especially if you're a music lover. Writer Jeff Rougvie brings all the insight from a career producing some of the biggest and most influential bands in history - David Bowie and Elvis Costello to name a few - into the story of Martin Mills, former Government Black Ops Agent turned A&R man, signing bands in 1987 New York. What we have is a brilliantly entertaining and educational book that really shows how the industry used to work, woven in with dramatic situations that range from the on-the-road hi jinx of a newly signed band in the pre-Grunge era (think Noel Monk's 12 Days on the Road) combined with a whirlwind tutorial of the back-room goings on of the men who made the hits. And the back matter alone is worth the price of admission, where Rougvie further hashes out for the laymen just how that giant dinosaur system used to work.

Also, as you can see, there are a lot of allusions in the book for music nerds to get excited over.

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Playlist from 5/19:

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal
Melvins - Stoner Witch
Hall and Oats - Essentials

Card of the day:

Careful consideration; be aware of anxious motivation, and those who might be anxiously motivated.