Sunday, June 4, 2023

X's For Eyes... And That's All

I have always carried a torch for a handful of songs from the Phil Collins/80s Genesis catalogue. I know, I know... I don't care. These songs are in my DNA from early life exposure. Also, weirdly enough, a lot of comic book memories are attached to some of them, this one in particular. Not necessarily specific issues, but eras.

The year Tonight, Tonight, Tonight came out - 1986 - was the year I first started reading comics on a regular basis with Larry Hama's G.I.Joe issue #49. The same year, this song appeared in a Michelob television commercial. Something about that commercial primed me to be both a Ministry fan and a Bret Easton Ellis fan, though it's difficult to explain the latter half of that statement. (Ministry's Everyday is Halloween would score a - get this - Old Style Dry commercial, just two years later. My memory so clearly stated it was a Bud Dry commercial that I would have put money on it. Also, who remembered that Old Style had a "Dry" beer? Not me, and probably not Dennis Farina, either. I mean, if he was still alive...)

Play:

The New Puppet Combo game Stay Out of the House drops June 16th! I've already pre-ordered my copy for Switch. Why? Check out this gnarly trailer:

Oh man, I need to double-down on No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I played the hell out of for the first week and a half and then haven't really had time for since.

Read:

Blew through Laird Barron's third Isaiah Coleridge novel, Worse Angels and, exactly as instinct suggested, it went from a 4-star to a 5-star rating simply because I did not reread Black Mountain (Bk 2) first. Love this series, and it's put me in mind of tracing some of the recurring characters, so the instant I finished it, I picked up Barron's 2015 novella X's for Eyes.

I've only read this particular Barron book once before when it first came out, and it's not a Coleridge novel, however, Tom Mandibole makes an appearance, and since he is a major force in Worse Angels, I really wanted to work backward on his character. The first memory I have of him is "More Dark," the closing story in Barron's 2013 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All collection, where - in my mind at least - it's heavily implied he is a riff on author Thomas Ligotti. I read Barron's work as it's released, and in the past, I haven't kept notes, so I'm hazy on where and how often Mandibole has appeared. Hence the 'working backward.' At any rate, Mandibole shows up in the first two pages of X's For Eyes, as does Sword Industries, the Labrador family and who knows what else. So I'm in the right place until The Wind Began to Howl (Coleridge Bk 3.5) arrives.

Playlist:

Lustmord - Berlin

Low - Double Negative

Ganser - Odd Talk

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

Godflesh - Post Self

Danzig - Danzig III: How the Gods Kill

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Phil Collins/Genesis - Collins. Phil Collins. Playlist

Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Yeruselem - The Sublime

Pigface - Pigface Live 2019 vinyl

Card:

Heading to Chicago today, so here's a card from Missi's Raven Deck to see me on my way and plot the course of the trip:

Things change; long-standing certainties switch polarity. Life is change, so embrace change. Kill. Your. Darlings.

Shawn C. Baker

Pages