Cleopatra's Comet

I was unfamiliar with Nova Twins until I saw Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You last Thursday and then again yesterday afternoon. This song is in that movie, and just like Sokolov's film, the track makes an impression. 

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Watch:

Rewatched Night of the Comet the other night. Here's one of the original tv spots from 1984:

 

I didn't see this film until somewhere around 2009 or 2010. In fact, I didn't remember ever even hearing of it before then. It's not my favorite of these kind of flicks from the 80s, but it's nostalgic and pretty fun, so while it's not a film I will revisit often, I did add it to the collection just to have it in the library.

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Read:

It has begun! Yesterday I read the first section in the 1990 edition of Stephen King's The Gunslinger, which I've had since '91. I LOVE this series, this book and this edition. The paintings by Michael Whelon are, like most of his paintings, phenomenal.

I don't think I've read this particular King novel since before the fifth Dark Tower book, The Wolves of Calla, came out in 2003. Twenty-three years!!! Up until this point, I made it a habit to reread every book in the series as new ones came out, and after 1997's Wizard and the Glass, there was the interminable gap during which time King convalesced after being hit by a van in 1999. I remember those days - scary times, fearing for both King's life and the idea that we might never get more Dark Tower books. After his recovery and eventual return to the series, the final three came fairly quickly, with Wolves in 2003, Song of Susannah hitting shelves in June 2004, and The Dark Tower following hot on its heels in September 2004. So this reread is a big deal for me, something I've wanted to do for years.  

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Playlist:

Windhand - Epoymous

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

MadLove - White With Foam

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

sunn O))) - Pyroclasts

Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks

Daydream Twins - Solstice For Embodiment

The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Crystal Castles - II

Jozef Can Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil

Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous

sunn O))) - Metta, Benevolence BBC6 Live: On the Invitatin of Mary Anne Hobbs

Slow Crush - Thirst

Nova Twins - Supernova

Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast

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Card:

I'm tired, so I'm setting aside Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot (which you can buy HERE) and pulling a single card from the Thoth deck.

Turning the intangible into a consumable form. I guess that's pretty much what I do as a writer, and I've had four good days of writing in a row. Also though, I've been on a mission to write down my dreams for the last two weeks, so there's another example. 

In a Pynch, They Will Kill You

I am waaay behind on posting new music. First up: Drug Church dropped a new single last week, and here's hoping a new record isn't far behind. I finally get to see these guys in May and I cannot wait!

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Watch:

Last night, K and I hit the Regal for the premiere of They Will Kill You. Here's a trailer:

How was it? This is the movie to beat this year. I will be very surprised if anything can match this (and what a great year it is that I've already said that twice since January 1st, and it's not even the end of March yet!).

This is kind of Kill Bill meets Ready or Not meets Rosemary's Baby. That's not exactly right, but it'll give you an idea what you're in for. If you're interested in elaboration, there's a widget in the upper right-hand corner of this page with the latest episode of The Horror Vision, where we give you our spoiler-free, right out of the theatre review.

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Mountain Realm - Shadowlorn

Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey

Rebirth Brass Band - Why You Worried 'bout Me? (single)

Rebirth Brass Band - Move Your Body

James Brown - Funky People Vol. 3

Faith No More - Angel Dust

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Atticus Derrickson - Black Phone 2 OST

Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Fever Ray - Eponymous

The Mystery Lights - Purgatory

Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous

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Card:

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

Note: This isn't a proper spread, but a display of Court Cards.

Let's take a look at the Court Cards for a moment, because I feel like talking about Tarot - or more accurately perhaps, I feel like thinking about it and then writing down some of those thoughts.

Knights and Queens - Male and Female energy, respectively. Knights correlate to Will, creation, and cunning. A force of Will that can overcome or be used instead of Violence. "The only reason to master violence is to abolish it." Queens correlate to pleasure, passion and emotion. Knights are Wands, Queens are cups. There's also the sexual metaphor here, as Wands being penetrative and Cups receptive.

Princes and Princesses, or Kings and Princesses if you're most non-Thoth. The Prince or King is brute force, lacking the cunning to abolish violence, hence the correlation to Swords or Intellect. This is why I'm doing this today - I always hit a blind spot with the Prince/Sword connection because of the Intellect thing. Princesses correlate to Malkuth, the Earthly realm, logistics. I handle Princesses in my day job, and that's not exactly a faulty way to say it, because when you coordinate logistics for other people, they often behave like Princesses (Divas). 

Let's Spend the Night Together (Because They Will Kill You)

This coming Saturday, January 10th, marks the tenth anniversary of David Bowie's passing. I usually begin 7 Days of Bowie on the anniversary, but this year, I'd like to start it a little early. So here we go. We miss you, Starman!

It struck me again the other day just what a weird, awesome cover this one is. From his 1973 album Aladdin Sane, 

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NCBD:

2026 is starting out light. Not a complaint, that's for sure! I've been trimming back my pull list at Rick's, trying to stick with essentials. There will always be new books that catch my eye, and I'll almost always give them a try, as that's how I often find my favorite books (see the Drinking with Comics "Best of" for 2024 and 2025, where last-minute chances end up near the top of my year-end list). At the same time, I tend to overbuy, and I'm becoming increasingly neurotic when it comes to space. I have a short box and a half of stuff I want to get rid of but am not 100% sure the best way to do so, and I've spent several recent nights just sitting in my office/nerd dungeon* reflecting on how to improve use of the space for all my 'things.'

First world problems, fo sho.

Here are this week's books:

The first issue of Batman/Green Arrow/The Question: Arcadia either suffered from a skosh of awkward story compression, or I'm just missing a lot of assumed historical knowledge, being that I have zero experience with two of the three characters here. Still, this harkens back to the late 80s prestige-format DC books, so I'm hanging in. 

Not sure if this is the end of the second arc or the entire series. I'm pretty sure there must still be at least one more mini-series to go. Either way, Stokoe's art continues to blow me away on every page.

I'm still fighting a zeitgeist urge to get into this Absolute Batman. It's been pretty easy to avoid the regular series because the one issue I've read was not great. That said, there are some pretty interesting things going on in this "Universe," so I've been cherry picking a few titles. 

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Watch:

I only needed to make it 38 seconds into this trailer to know I was in. You can only watch it on youtube, but here's a poster and the embed should take you directly there:

Kirill Sokolov's They Will Kill You looks fantastic! I am absolutely psyched for this one, which comes out three days after my 50th birthday! Woo-hoo!!

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

David Bowie - Low

David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Ghost - Impera

David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World

Kildren - December (single)

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

The Jesus Lizard - I'm Tired of Being Your Mother (single)

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Helmet - Aftertaste

Spoon - Girls Can Tell

Spoon - Kill the Moonlight

Self - Niceness (single)

Self - Porno, Mint & Grime

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Denison/Kimball Trio - Plays  the Music of Walls in the City

The Besnard Lakes - ....Are the Ghost Nation

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Card:

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

• Knight of Swords

• Seven of Pentacles

• Three of Pentacles

The Creative Will often needs to stagnate in order to prosper. 

That definitely fits. Yesterday was the first writing session I had in a week; whenever I blow a weekend without a creative outlet, it feels gross, and now that's kind of morphed into a long, slog of 'blah.' Up late writing this on Monday night, I don't feel like doing much of anything: writing, watching, nothing but listening to David Bowie. That's the only agenda I had that kept me from turning in. So I'm listening to The Man Who Sold the World for the first time in a couple years and writing this and I'm not really sure what I'll do when I reach the end of this sentence.