I Left My Heart in Sunnyvale

I don't know of another piece of music that fills me with such calm. I think it's because I started really getting into Trailer Park Boys shortly after I moved to L.A. in 2006, and I associate those first five years there as being the last bastion of the world before the post-apocalyptic bullshit started. This isn't political - well, not entirely - everyone's wrong. Everything's broken. This song represents a kind of precipice to me, and although the world has since fallen off, every once in a while I hear this and it slows the fall, reminds me what it was like to have our feet planted on what we thought was solid ground*.

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* It was never solid ground and every generation feels this. The current generations, though, are the ones living it.     

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NCBD:

Short week this week.

Finally - "The Quintesson War" begins! I've declared my love for these odd techno-organic monstrosities on this page many times, and I'm happy as hell to have a six-issue arc dedicated to them in Void Rivals. Unlike fellow Energon Universe title G.I. Joe's current "Dreadnok War" storyline, VR isn't going bi-weekly for this stretch, and I'm fine with that. Just happy to be getting more Quintesson goodness!

When I downloaded this cover, I noticed right away the "7 of 8" added to the corner box. NO! I thought Zander Cannon's Sleep was going to go on longer than just eight issues! I will miss this book SO MUCH! That said, I can not wait for the revelations we're sure to be getting over the next two issues. I mean, I don't need it all explained and wrapped up, but I'm dying to get at least a glimpse at what it is that Jonathan becomes when he falls asleep. That's really all I ask. 

The penultimate issue of this Event Horizon prequel series. This one isn't quite what I expected or hoped for, but it's definitely building to something. I'm hoping that something is as INSANE as those snippets of these events play in the movie. We'll see. 

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Watch:

I had the distinct pleasure of being offered a copy of Kyle Valle and Erin Áine's ZombieCON, Vol. 1 this week. Here's a trailer that just barely scrapes the surface of goodness contained within:

This is a super indie film, but I have to say, they really made everything about it work. This feels like it should have come out ten years ago - NOT a knock - and reminds me so much of Joss Whedon - specifically that Dr. Horrible web-series Whedon did circa 2008. This comes from a place of love with the Convention circuit and the entire culture that goes with it. 

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Playlist:

Radiohead - Kid A

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Somnium Nox - Apocrypha EP

Somnium Nox - Terra Inanis EP

Black Taffy - Out Moon 

Metallica - Ride the Lightning

Metallica - Kill 'Em All

Odonis Odonis - Eponymous

Ashes and Diamonds - Are Forever

Eagulls - Eponymous

Faetooth - Labryinthine

Deadguy - Near-Death Travel Services

Deftones - private music

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Card:

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

• Three of Swords

• Five of Pentacles

• Seven of Pentacles

Blockage, worry and calamity. 

I had an Al Swearingen moment this morning. I drank a bit more beer than I probably should have last night, fully expecting to wake up in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature. Didn't happen. As a matter of fact, I woke up this morning and didn't feel an aching desire to relieve myself then, either. All day this has haunted me. I drank a ton of coffee, but never really felt like what came out was equal to what went in. That's not normally how my body works. So I see this full, and I'm a skosh concerned. 

Let's put a pin in this one and hope everything comes out okay tomorrow.

A New Night, An Old Theme Song

 

Ian Lynch's All You Need is Death Soundtrack/Score hasn't left the side of my office turntable since it arrived. This one haunts me on a regular basis. Yesterday, the first song on the second side especially hit me, possibly because it's been a few months since I last watched Paul Duane's fantastic film and the cinematic associations have weakened compared to the mental ones I've made with the music. This gets me thinking about THIS post over on Heaven Is An Incubator. Man, talk about hitting it right on the head. 

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Watch:

The older you get, the tougher it is to just be a person. I don't mean existing gets more difficult - though our bodies and our society definitely make that the case - I mean just operating inside the framework you've spent your life building out as "you." I've had a tough couple of weeks mentally as my job is absorbed and transmogrified inside a hollow corporate entity, and one of the things that brought me back from an emotional brink is Mke Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys.

I know, I didn't expect any of this, either.

A lot of the 'healing' I find in this show comes right up front with the opening credits. If a more soothing, peaceful intro than Blain Morris's for TPB exists, I haven't heard it. Twin Peaks would be close, but that also carries with it a sense of foreboding. Morris's is pure grace, and it always brings my heart rate down a couple notches.  Maybe this is because it reminds me of the time that I discovered the show, shortly after moving to L.A. in 2006, an era I now look back at forlornly as just before the post-apocalyptic era we live in today began.*

And of course, this theme song is the perfect precursor to whatever idiocy lies in wait on the other side of its final note. These characters are, in my opinion, one of the funniest comedies in existence. There's a lot that's over-the-top, but there's even more nuance that it's taken multiple viewings to catch. Julian's perpetual drink is, to me, Shakespearean in its design and continued execution, as is Ricky's inability to 'use his words' properly. 

Don't even get me started on Conky or Sebastian Bach. 

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*Of course, I recognize that, as a middle-class, white male, the world has been shit for so many other people for so long and that I'm just morning my own personal apocalypse. Doesn't make it hurt any less, though. 

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Read:

Two chapters into Prof. John Trafton's Movie-Made Los Angeles and I am fascinated. This is easily the most academic long-form piece I've read in a very long time, and while it took my brain a few sittings to adjust, once it clicked, I found myself fascinated by all the behind-the-scenes history of Southern California that those of us boring in the late Twentieth Century take for granted as just always having "been that way." In particular, John's use of the palimpsest metaphor of Southern California in general, and Los Angeles in particular, is so graceful and spot-on that it makes me wonder what other cultural histories we've erased or submerged with modernity.

Movie-Made Los Angeles is published by Wayne State Press. I picked mine up at the wonderful Sky Light Books in L.A.'s Los Feliz neighborhood, but you can order this anywhere you order books. Also, and I've said this before and will no doubt repeat ad infinitum, check out some of John's essays over on his website HERE.

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Playlist:

Valkyrie - Fear

The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me

Barry Adamson - Cut To Black

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

The Used - The Ocean of the Sky

Trailer Punk Podcast - Nervous Gender Reloaded

OLOMUHD - The Absurd Silence of a Mute World

Deafheaven - Ten Years Gone

Man or Astroman? - Deafcon 5...4...3....2...1

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

Deafheaven - Sunbather

The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

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Card:

One Card from my original Thoth Deck for today. 

Avoiding activity - is this a reference to the fact that it's nearly 100 degrees outside and I feel like doing nothing but reading all day, or is this a reference to me being too lackadaisical about the situation at work?