2018: July 24th - Deadly Class Trailer!!!

Holy cow. One of my favorite comics turned into a show that looks this good? Count me in! And kudos for using my favorite Killing Joke song - perfect match.


Playlist from Monday, 7/23:

James - Wah Wah
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Sqürl - EP #1 - EP
Marilyn Manson - AntiChrist Superstar
Andre Previn & The London Symphony Orchestra - Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
Underworld - Barbara Barbara, We Face A Shining Future
NIN - Ghosts I-IV


No card today.

2018: July 23rd

Joup's Amy Riley reached out to me with a link to her nephew's band, and pretty much from the moment I hit 'PLAY' I was hooked. Waste Man is fast and frenetic, reminds me of Blue Meanies, Mr. Bungle, Dyslexic Apaches and one of my own former bands, Universal Product. Good stuff. Their band camp can be found HERE, click on over and support a great indie band.


Playlist from Sunday, 7/22:

Beak> - L.A. Playback
Johnny Marr - Call the Comet
True Widow - AVVOLGERE
Boy Harsher - Country Girl E.P.
Boy Harsher - Yr Body is Nothing
Deafheaven - Sunbather
John Carpenter - Lost Themes

Card for the day:

New journey, new story.

Drinking w/ Comics #42

With special guest all the way from the Philippines, Karen Kunawicz! We talk Robert Kirkman, Scott Gimple and Chris Fucking Burnham's new book Die! Die! Die! and opinions are divided - I LOVED the first issue of this unannounced series, Chris and Karen... not so much. Other topics of discussion include but are not limited to Imaginary Fiends, which has some fantastic creature designs (see below), Her Infernal Descent and Holly Interlandi and Sally Cantirino's Last Song.

2018: July 21st

I just realized Tennis System has a new E.P. out the other day, and not long after Keller messaged me to ask if I was down to see them at a Part Time Punks show at the Echoplex next Sunday.

My response? Fuck. Yes.

Per my previous blog, we watched Triangle on Friday night. Fantastic film. I was a little worried that the thumbnail image on Shudder - which was the widespread poster image for the film - had ruined the twist of the film for me (I was so concerned about this that I doctored the thumbnail I posted here the other day, so as not to ruin it for anyone else), but the good news is that particular twist is inevitable right from the start and not at all the point of the film. So definitely worth a watch.

Oh! And speaking of Shudder, one more reason to love these folks - they surprised me with a free 30 days! How great is that? So, let's check the boxes on why Shudder is awesome (and, btw, not an affiliate):

1) They Sponsor Beyond Fest every year.
2) Great selection that grows every week
3) Hosting the Joe Bob Briggs Last Drive-in and leaving it up in perpetuity
4) Their live-streaming Shudder.TV channels are awesome and remind me of how I discovered horror back in the day (John Carpenter on WGN channel 9's nightly movie).

Playlist from Friday, 7/20

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Daughters - Satan in Wait (Pre-release single)
Beak> - L.A. Playback
Lake Trout - Another One Lost
Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Emma Ruth Rundle - Fever Dreams (Pre-release single)
True Widow - AVVOLGERE
Uniform - The Walk (Pre-release single)
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Johnny Marr - Call the Comet

I spent about twelve hours yesterday editing, uploading and post the new episode of DwC. Possibly the fastest turn-around I've done on my own, but it cost me my Saturday. I mean, I didn't do anything else, as reflected by my playlist, which was what we listened to while we made and ate dinner.

Playlist from Saturday, 7/22:

Footloose - OST
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

I watched Slither last night for the first time since my initial viewing, many years ago. Great little horror flick. Between that and Super - which I loved - I'm pretty sure James Gunn will have no trouble re-acclimating to making movies again. I'm sorry for the loss of such a huge contract and opportunity at the hands of adolescent-like immaturity, and I'm even more sorry for those MCU fans that will be subjected to GoG without Gunn at the helm, but I'm excited Mr. Gunn will once again be making movies that I will actually see.



Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "All troubles and disruptions have been necessary to grow. That growth is a Victory, as not everyone makes it out of the strife and chaos of the fives."

The story I've been working on, "Please Believe Me" is so far outside of what I've done before, as far as character and overall tone, that my writing sessions have been strife and chaos. It can't be underreported, the feeling of sitting down during my daily ritual space for writing and coming away two or three hours later with nothing useable, or merely sketches of the tone and ideas that I want. Please Believe Me is meant to be a contemplation of Dread, which is far and away a different tone and emotion than horror, and finding the parameters of that tone inside of how I would normally write, how I would move a character or set a scene to progress, it's just not easy.

But it's rewarding, I'll tell you that.

Is today the day I finish it? Maybe.

2018: July 20th

I was completely unfamiliar with Daughters before finding this in my youtube feed (which I have gone to GREAT lengths to heavily curate, as a lot of what youtube recommends is complete and total shite). I dig this; there is an obvious Jesus Lizard comparison right off the bat, but also, Thrall, and the tension makes me think of a great, sick, dying beast. Possibly a beached whale.

How's that for your bagel and cream cheese Friday, eh?

Planning on writing and watching this tonight, as it was just added to Shudder:

Playlist from yesterday:

Lake Trout - Another One Lost

Cold Cave - Confetti

King Woman - Doubt E.P.

King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Oathbreaker - Rheia

Write Dark Things Playlist

Drab Majesty - Careless

Card of the day:

2018: July 19th

I completely forgot how much I love this record! Lake Trout is 100% worth your time, especially this record, Another One Lost.

No Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying today. Taking a break before the last two editions emerge.

Playlist from 7/18:

Lake Trout - Another One Lost
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
King Woman - Doubt E.P.
Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Blut Aus Nord - 777 Cosmosophy
Boy Harsher - Country Girl E.P.

Card for the day:

I'm no astrologer, in fact I haven't really ever even read about astrology. However, because I've had such a rocky week, and because a lot of people I know are also having trouble sleeping, staying in good mental balance, and just feeling fucking normal, a friend of mine mentioned planets in retrograde being a common cause of disruption. Interesting then, that I pull the 5 of Swords - a card I'm not all that familiar with except as the classic "5" disruption of the Truce initiated in the "4" cards and a child of Geburah.  From corax.com:

"The deep crisis the Swords are going through in here also  result in the influence of Venus, the planet of emotion, harmony and sensitivity."

So the airy logic of the Sword is undermined by sensitivity and emotion. In myself, where logic is a goal but often undermined by a more off-the-cuff emotional leaning, that's like bulls butting heads.

2018: July 18th

Kind of an obsession right now. I had never heard of Emma Ruth Rundle until a friend sent me a writing playlist that had this song on it. After a few iterations, this one stuck out. It has a particularly '2 A.M.' sound to me, a tone I've talked about on here at various points in the past. Might be what I need to finish my novel 2:00 AM Corridors, or at least complete the outline. Regardless of how Ms. Rundle's music fuels my creativity, you can find her full albums - including Marked for Death - on Apple Music, and I was excited to see she has a new record in pre-order mode HERE.

Playlist for yesterday:

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
Write Dark Things Playlist


Card of the day:

Oppression? In this heat? Yup. That is the word. My sleep is bad, my stomach is bad, my head is heavy. Oppression is the exact word.

2018: July 17th

Junior Jr. just released the video for Guns A Blazin'! With the final issue of my DwC co-host Mike Wellman and his debonair artist extraordinaire counter part Rafael Navarro's cross-time comic epic close at hand, I can't think of a better song to start my dreary Tuesday morning with.

Playlist from Yesterday:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Card of the day:

Significance of the primary subject of this card - Knight on Horse, flying into the fray. Going toward your goal with no distraction. Funny then, that this morning I feel so distracted. Leave it to the cards to call me out on it.

2018: July 16th

I know I just posted the full album stream that Deafheaven's record label Anti- put up last Friday, however, I'm still ingesting the album and while it is chock full of wonderful surprises, this song hit me the hardest. Gorgeous. And look, there's Chelsea Wolfe, who I appear to be inadvertently stalking here on my blog.

Playlist from yesterday:

John Carpenter's Lost Themes II

Yep. That's it. One album. We spent the day cleaning and organizing our garage, which has enough storage to essentially be a storage unit, so there wasn't a lot of time for music. Ended the night by viewing my new Scream Factory Blu Ray of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, my favorite Carpenter film (not his best film, but my favorite). I had a hard time deciding on the collector's edition or the steelbook, as the latter comes with an awesome lithograph. I went with this one because it is my all-time favorite cover art for a dvd/br, artist Justin Osbourne:

If anyone knows where I can get a poster of this, please let me know. I've looked online but found nothing and apparently this edition was originally released with one.

No card today, but let's do the Prince of Darkness trailer to round things out:

2018: July 15th

To celebrate the Steelbook/Angela Figure exclusive Scream Factory announced last week. I won't be ponying up for it, at least not with the figure (no room for it), but it's pretty damn awesome.

Haven't been on here in a few days. Pulled a trip to Fingerprints in Long Beach on Friday during the day after K and I declared it a mental health day. Traded in a bunch of old CDs that didn't make the cut and used the credit to buy a couple gems on vinyl we'd been wanting.

Did a DwC Friday night and had the delightful Karen Kunawicz from the Manilla Times as our guest. Already editing it, so hopefully I'll have it up mid-week. As always, live feed is on our FB Page in perpetuity.

Spent most of Saturday, from about midnight to 8 PM watching the amazing Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder's The Last Drive In. A 24 hour horror movie marathon, this was basically a 27 hour horror movie party and I loved every second of it I caught (had to sleep for a few hours Friday night/Saturday morning). I'd never encountered Joe Bob Briggs before, and now that I've had a taste I can only hope this isn't, as he says, the last one of these he'll be doing. The entire event is up on Shudder as a season with each movie an episode. Each film has a considerably longer-than-usual runtime, as Mr. Briggs cuts in every so often to offer facts about each film, aside, stories, insights. This is the real draw, and I can only hope I can see him do this again, whether by having more, or through finding ways to watch the old Up All Night events.

Films played:

Tourist Trap
Sleepaway Camp
David Cronenberg's Rabid
The Prowler
Sorority Babes in the Slime Ball Bowl-O-Rama
Daughters of Darkness
Blood Feast
Basket Case
Herbert West: Re-Animator
Demons
The Legend of Boggy Creek
Hellraiser
Pieces

Great stuff, eh?

Playlist from the last few days has been sporadic at best with all the movies, so I'll refrain from posting it for now and pick back up tomorrow.

Card of the day:

Duality and completion.

2018: Happy Friday 13th! New Deafheaven Streaming via Anti-

Well, it's 12:27 AM. I've officially called out from work tomorrow. Mental Health day. AND the new Deafheaven just dropped! and their awesome label Anti- is streaming Ordinary Corrupt Human Love in it's entirety. I'm a little pissed that the vinyl copy I pre-orderd the day the album was announced has not shipped yet (or King's Road Merch/Anti- hasn't updated the order status on their website), but I've got it digitally and now I've got all night and all day to listen to it!



There's a Drinking w/ Comics live streaming on our Facebook page tonight at 9:00 PM Pacific Time. Check it out - we've got Karen Kunawicz as a guest. She's the entertainment columnist for the Manilla times and a good friend of Mike's so I'm psyched to talk geek shop with her.

And a BIG Also, Joe Bob Briggs is hosting a 24 hour horror marathon on Shudder starting at 6:00 PM Pacific (that's 9:00 PM Eastern Standard) and other than listening to Deafheaven and doing my show, I'll be watching that.

Comics I will (Try) to talk about tomorrow:

Earlier this evening I watched a flick on Shudder I'd not heard of before. Described as a modern Giallo, Cold Hell defied ALL of my expectations and proved to be a fabulous film. A Giallo that is not content to just hail the flags of the genre, Cold Hell is a story of violence, but more over it is a story of the human heart. That might sound a bit heavy handed, but it's not. Absolutely, positively recommended:



Followed that up with this classic:



Card of the day:

Balance. Kind of feel like that's what I'm doing now, by not going to work tomorrow. Sometimes you have to do that; call it a mental health day.

2018: July 12th

I've been on a bit of an Electric Mud kick and this was always one of my favorite songs and one of the ways I got into the record, as Cypress Hill sampled this on their first album, which I used to be quite the fan of.

Playlist from 7/11:
Greenhaus - The Unmistakable Sound of Sloth
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
Andre Previn & The London Symphony Orchestra - Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op. 11
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Sinister Whispers: The Wax Trax! Years
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir


New Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE. Two more to go and it is officially retired.

Card of the day:

Let's take a literal interpretation, shall we? That'd be nice.

2018: July 11th

Because I'm still charged from that video I posted yesterday for The Culling, and I'm crushing on her pretty hard at the moment.

Playlist from yesterday:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
The Veils - Total Depravity
Various Artists - Twin Peaks Ssn 3 OST
Jeff Grace - House of the Devil OST
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini

AND my good friend Chris from Drinking with Comics gave me a sneak peak at some of the tracks on the forthcoming new Thirsty Crows record his band has been recording for Batcave Records. It is awesome!

Card of the day:

Willing a spark of intuition or creativity into a form. Again, the writing analogy. Also, notice in spite of yesterday's deviance, I've gone Fool, Magus Priestess in succession; I have to look into what exactly that can represent, as I've not seen that before.

Also, I'm always drawn to this card for the grid, which represents order to me. And the camel, a representation for the Hebrew letter Gimel, which is the third letter of the sacred alphabet and corresponds to the third Sephiroth, Binah, the Great Mother. Lots of water in this card, and it shows in the feminine (ie the suite of Cups; Emotions) attributes of the card. Thus, the Priestess. And interesting that one of my setbacks in working on Please Believe Me is probably because the main character is both female and elderly, and I'm attempting to find an authentic voice there. I've re-written Heddie Larsen now multiple times to try and find and air of authenticity.

2018: July 10th

What do you know? A video for my favorite track on Chelsea Wolfe's unbelievable record Hiss Spun dropped yesterday. Creepy AF. I love that they continually show you even less than just enough to intrigue you, provoking rabid contemplation and nightmare like mental recoil and reflex.

Playlist from yesterday:

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night
The Paper Chase - God Bless Your Black Heart
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
Windhand/Satan's Satyrs - Split E.P.

Card of the day:

Tipareth - shelter from the storm. A healthy balance between emotion and intellect. I can use this, first and foremost in my current writing project, "Please Believe Me," where I'm really trying to nail a genuine reaction to something terrible.

2018: July 9th

I had a notice in Google to 'rediscover this day' for June 24, 2016 - two years since I saw Eagulls at the Teragram Ballroom in DTLA. That means it's just over two years since Ullages came out, so hopefully these lads have a new record in the wings. I'd like that very much. In the meantime, HERE is the Google Link to my very mediocre photos of the show (I share these merely for posterity's sake, and have never claimed to be any kind of photographer).

I finished Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton over the weekend. Very good novel; first thing I'd categorize as "East Coast Lit" that I've read in a while. No genre trappings at all; nothing wrong with genre, in fact, I guess you could say that 'lit' is kind of a genre to me. The idea comes from working in a book store for five years - I read voraciously and definitely began to see a difference in what was in the Fiction/Lit section and what was in the various genre sections. And of course this isn't a blanket policy. But, you know, William S. Burroughs' Science Fiction is different from John Scalzy's. Neither is better than the other, they just come from different angles. Or, all that's shite. This is the inner workings of my own head, don't think I'm subjugating anyone else with these parameters.

Anyway, it really put me back in a lit frame of mind - I've put off reading almost anything I'd categorize that way for years, from the time I began to write heavily plotted material I considered more genre than anything. Irvine Welsh has released four or five novels in that time and although he's one of my favorite writers, I've avoided them completely. However, after Monsters fired me up again on the lit 'flavor', I broke out Norman Mailer's The Deer Park. This a novel I've had on the shelf for some time. From the first sentence I was in love; The Deer Park is kind of The Great Gatsby in the Southern California desert, a tale of the vices of 1950's Hollywood that has Fitzgerald written all over it. I love it. And I know Gatsby isn't Fitz's Hollywood novel, but there are HUGE similarities, especially, it seems, with contemplations of morality.

The playlist from 7/08/18 was a short one:

Anthrax - Sound of White Noise
Johnny Jewel - Digital Rain
Chromatics - Night Drive


Card of the day:

From the grimoire: "Can represent desire for rebirth or a new beginning." Interesting that I've started the new short I'm working on, "Please Believe Me," three times already, slightly tweaking the way I bring the reader into the world. And it's been a journey so far, a lot of subtle changes in the way I present the characters.