I do eat meat, but I usually feel 50% guilty about that. Still love this track, though.
Re-watched The Void last night. This is about my fourth viewing. I love this movie. In fact, I think it's probably the best horror movie - or at least my personal favorite - of the last twenty years.
Playlist from yesterday:
The Veils - Total Depravity
Budapest Festival Orchestra - Igor Stravinsky - The Firebird Suite
Eagulls - Ullages
Godflesh - Post Self
Grinderman - Eponymous
High on Fire - Snakes of the Divine
Bloodbath - Breeding Death
Bells into Machines - Your Crime Scene E.P.
Zombi - Spirit Animal
Sunn O))) - The Grimm Robe Demos
Underworld/Iggy Pop - Bells & Circles single
Underworld - Barbara Barbara, we face a shining future
Card of the day:
I'm choosing a straight interpretation of this one. Let's see what happens.
"I put down my tray table, and snorted a gram of cocaine, until I got up my courage to say, 'Can I have your phone number?' And she gave me the phone number, that was the good news! But the bad news was, I got too stoned and I lost the number! The stewardess would have been better than the cocaine - I made an error in judgement!"
Iggy seems to be channeling Hunter S. Thompson here. And that is fucking awesome!
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F#A# ∞
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O.
Sir Georg Solti - Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen (Das Rheingold)
Bloodbath - Breeding Death
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Burzum - Filosfem
Been leaning heavily on Cocksure lately. Such a great band. I've also been the most scatter brained I've ever been as I continue to try and drastically up my output on the T12 project. Yesterday was a total fail, today will NOT be.
I watched The Interior last night on Shudder. I absolutely LOVED this movie and will tell you nothing about it, not even post a trailer, while at the same time adamantly suggesting you check it out. Not for everyone, but those who dig it will really dig it.
Playlist from yesterday:
Burzum - Filosfem
Ben Frost - By the Throat
Cocksure - T.V.M.A.L.S.V.
Alkaline Trio - Crimson
Deftones - Gore
Card for the day:
My favorite in the Sword suit. From the Grimoire: "Indicates greater objectivity/clarity. Healthy balance of emotions and intellect. Good time to make decisions."
Interesting then that I'm drafting an ad campaign for my book and having to make decisions, was actually just questioning my decision making seconds before pulling this card.
I'm very late to Alkaline Trio. My friend Chris introduced me to their music a few weeks back and I'm surprised at how much I like it. At the time Crimson was released, I would not have been able to overcome my prejudices against anything that carried an air of slickly produced 'punk rock'. Now, I recognize this for what it is - good, fast rock with no agenda, politics or accoutrements. I'm loving this record - it's been a great sonic tool for writing.
Playlist from 5/25:
Danzig - Circle of Snakes*
Barry Adamson - Stranger on the Sofa
Chromatics - Cherry
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
Lebanon Hanover - Let Them Be Alien
David Bowie - Low
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Alkaline Trio - Crimson
Crystal Castles - Amnesty (I)
Cocksure - T.V.M.A.L.S.V.
I wrote just over 3K words yesterday, after a full day's work. Not too shabby. Today shooting for 4K.
I subscribed to Shudder recently, and have been digging the app's selection. Checking off a lot of longstanding,"I need to see that" boxes. Last night it was Adam Green's Digging Up the Marrow and Until the Light Takes Us. The night before was a new movie, Sequence Break. This is Grahamn Skipper's directorial debut; it premiered in LA last fall at BeyondFest and I had really wanted to go, but that didn't work out. Reminiscent of Beyond the Gates and eXistenZ, Sequence Break was a great watch, even if it was a little bit awkward at times (mainly just one character, the enigmatic man, was a bit off, a kind of contrived Deus Ex Machina that revealed the lines of the writing almost every time he appeared to catalyze events - there was a better way to do what he did). Still, I enjoyed Skipper's first film and look forward to his next. Definitely a fun watch with great visuals and some awesome Body-Horror elements, a la Cronenberg's mid-period stuff.
Card of the day:
The perfect Mother. Hmmm... perfectly fits what I'm writing, I'll leave it at that. Also, it ties directly into Mr. Danzig, doesn't it? Weird, since the bit below this with the asterisk is something I wrote yesterday in the morning, after listening to Circle of Snakes on the way to work.
* Other than albums 1-3 and 7, my relationship of Danzig's records runs the gamut from begrudging to tentative. I'd not listened to this one in some time, and as much as I still enjoy 1000 Devils Rain and Skull Forrest, the production on this one is so fucking bad it actually makes me angry. I'm pretty sure in the case of opening track Wotan's Procession, the subpar guitar sound is a nod to the Black Metal of Norway, which I remember from seeing Danzig live for this album, was heavily reflected by his "Blackest of the Black' Tour lineup. But the rest of the record? No excuse, can't even hear parts of the chorus vocals on several songs, including the aforementioned Skull Forrest. Yo Glenn, hire a fucking producer, eh? Also, is Forrest purposely misspelled?
I shut the door pretty hard on Twin Peaks last year when it ended. Nothing against it, but when I stop to consider how much time and energy it consumed from me, it makes perfect sense that I would have needed to distance myself (I remember saying I was going to rewatch it like a month later - ha!). I've really only began to even think about it again recently. One insight these new considerations have revealed is the idea that I'm slightly unsure and maybe even a little bit nervous as to how the new series may have affected my relationship with the original - when I deep dive, I'm not really finding that first run occupying the same place in my head. Maybe this is just an integration period - the new series fractured the old and how I relate to it, now I have to rebuild? Probably thinking about this too much (probably = definitely). I spent the last two days getting increasingly jazzed on the music from the new series again, and that's very much making me want to rewatch it. I've got a three-day weekend ahead of me, however I also have a backlog of flicks to watch and roughly 53K words to write in the next 35 days, so I'm thinking that probably won't happen. I will, however, continue to enjoy the music, like the link above. I know it's not the actual Lynch remix that appears on the Score for season three, but honestly I like this one better. It's a part of the Twin Peaks playlist I made early on during Season 3, adding to as I went along and peppering in some BlueBob and a few tracks from the Twin Peaks musical archive that was released through David Lynch.com a few years back.
Playlist from yesterday:
Dosh - Pure Trash
Twin Peaks Playlist
Twin Peaks Season 3 OST
Chromatics - Night Drive
Burzum - Filosfem
Blut Aus Nord - 777 Trilogy
Card of the day:
Emotionally charged but creative juices flowing? Luckily, I'm actually well-rested and think I can handle this today. I want to try and write at least 15K words over the next three days, so we'll see.
Chris from DwC and I will be attempting to do our The Genesis of Preacher show again this year. Last year we got hit with a 'Cease and Desist' thing for using footage from the show, and that kind of took the wind out of our sails for a bit. Also, I was doing the Twin Peaks: Evolution of the Arm, and DwC, and working and writing a book, so that show just died. Not this year. Now I'm just hoping the show actually incorporates SOMETHING from the fucking comics this year; as much as I have enjoyed what they've done, I got a bit fatigued last season. If this trailer is any indication, I should get my wish.
The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying just went up. Read it HERE.
Playlist from 5/23:
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles II
Alice Glass - Alice Glass EP
Chromatics - Black Walls EP
Twin Peaks Playlist
Lebanon Hanover - Let Them Be Alien
Alkaline Trio - Crimson
Card of the day:
Going to interpret this visually today and say I need to have another ~3K word day writing, as what I'm reaching for is well within reach (that about 45K words in ~38 days).
Props once again to Heavenisanincubator for reminding of a band that had fallen off my radar.
Playlist from Monday, 5/21:
Helmet - Betty
Lebanon Hanover - Let Them Be Alien
Melvins - Pinkus Abortion Technician
Chromatics - Looking For Love
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Drab Majesty - Careless
Card of the day:
Funny. A couple days ago my friend Missi asked me what my least favorite card in the deck is (hers is the Emperor, and he's never been one of my favorite either, but I don't think I harbor the ill-will for him she does. Mine is more of an ambivalence, which also perfectly encapsulates my view on authority). I'd never really thought about it in those terms before, my least favorite card, and yet I knew immediatley what my answer was:
The Queen of Wands.
And yet, I see her in a good amount in my pulls. This seems to suggest I should engage with ideas that are contrary or combative to my nature - which is itself an idea that has been winnowed away from the collective consciousness of our society, the practice of confronting and working with ideas that don't exactly match up to your own, in order to grow and, help us, change our minds.
New issue went up today after a lot of hard editing work. It's worth it, even though I totally blanked on adding a theme song for the new, apparently monthly segment titled, "What Stupid Thing Did Chris Buy This Time?"
Also, check out who gives us a bumper at the start of the episode! None other than Garth Fucking Ennis!
Next time.
And just because I dig Mr. Lucarelli and his work so much, here's the previous episode we had him on, back when his awesome new book from Alterna Comics, Tinsel Town, had just begun formulating for him:
I still haven't checked out anything beyond their 2011 debut, but Torches has never failed me. Every song is fantastic. I put this on the headphones yesterday when I rang out to grab some groceries, and it completely lightened my mood (spent the entire day finishing the edit on the previous DwC, only to have the Media Encoder fail to render it properly. That's about two hours down the drain and the knowledge that I have to fuck around with it more today).
Playlist from yesterday:
Helmet - Betty
Foster the People - Torches
Urge Overkill - Saturation
The Veils - Time Stays, We Go
Card of the day:
From the Grimoire: "Roll up your sleeves. Take care of what you have been procrastinating. Clear out what has stood in your way." Message received.Writing will be painful but exhilarating today.
Another new song surfaces. I started listening and then decided to wait until the album drops, wanted to post it here though for anyone else interested.
Interesting juxtaposition, if you look at this card, one of the major visual components beside the Princess herself, is the churning, stormy sky, this can indicate anger, restlessness and negative trauma. I don't directly feel any of that, however I spent a few hours earlier today engrossed in reading Lords of Chaos; while doing so I listened to the audio from a thunderstorm on loop. The book and the storm burrowed their way into my brain; I fell asleep and woke up from a nightmare somewhat shaken. The dream involved a doctor who had an evil man locked up in some kind of photo-prison cell in her home. At some point she realized he had picked the lock and was free. The dream ended with the evil one on the hood of the doctor's car, with her driving into a fence on a kind of pier that ran to the ends of her property, the fence collapsed and the aggressor was thrown into whatever large body of water lay below, but there was the definite panicked intimation that he was not dead and she should hurry out of there.
I've a lot to say about Lords of Chaos, and more specifically Varg from Burzum. He talks in interviews of using Burzum's music to influence others, especially younger fans, to get them to take up his cause, which is a militaristic brand of nationalist medieval satanism. This is insanely removed from what we think of as satanism in the modern day - the goals this entire motley cast of characters continually extol are spreading 'fear and evil,' and they really mean it. It's deceptive; on one hand you can see skinny, somewhat awkward young people carving out an identity for themselves - one that they perceive will make others fear them. This is a counter balance to being 'misfits' and many of us do it, especially those who come up in metal. But here you can see extreme examples of the possible divergent paths, where most of the inner circle of the original Black Metal scene backdown from actually committing the follow-through on the atrocities they preach, and others go through it all the way, refusing to back down, transgressing into murder, arson and mayhem (pun intended). The book is an interesting journey into a pathos we children of the Heavy Metal 80s often dismiss, the idea that people can be influenced to do evil via music.
Chester Whelks absolutely kills it with a brief call-to-arms for reassessing one of the greatest albums by a hip hop artist in the last twenty years (in my opinion). READ IT HERE.
K surprised me a bit by asking to go see Deadpool 2 for her birthday yesterday. We saw the original on video about eight months ago and both liked it, K more than I. I may still be suffering fatigue from blockbusters and thus, eschewing all of them, I'd never begrudge my girl anything. Plus, there's something about the strange, Meta-soup that Reynolds has spearheaded here; my interest and enjoyment of Deadpool 2 - which I liked infinitely more than Deadpool 1 - lies in its comedy. Ask most of my friends and they will half-jokingly tell you, "Shawn hates comedies." This isn't completely untrue; the comedies I love - The Burbs, Airplane, Real Men, Ghostbusters, The Convent, The Big Lebowski (not a comedy but still shows up on this list! How's that?), are so well-made they make me hate most modern comedies. While I quite liked both Neighbors movies, Pineapple Express (maybe more for the shock of Gary Kohl as a villain than anything else, but still) and the Twenty-One Jumpstreets revivals, I find no reason for laughing at most of what comes out in the genre. Deadpool 2 was f*&kin' hysterical, and largely because it is so aware of itself. The tragic backstory that catalyzes most of the events in the movie are even delivered so hard-nosed I couldn't help but crack a smile. And sorry, Josh Brolin was born to play Cable. Just saying.
Yesterday's playlist:
Apex Twin - I Care Because You Do
Lantlos - .neon
Geto Boys - Eponymous
Merciful Fate - Don't Break the Oath
Eagulls - Ullages
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Card of the day:
Emotion tempered with Intellect. Rain falls on the calm waters - emotions rousing the mind, stirring decisions beyond those made by sheer intellect. The reins in the Prince's hand, wresting control from the tumultuous forces threatening the calm - this should not necessarily be looked at as 'bad' - the creative process is a marriage of Emotion and Intellect; a tumultuous explosion that we must shape and control in order to actually record or define.
In my head upon waking; pretty sure I've posted this before, but it's good enough to post again:
The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying went up yesterday. You can read it HERE.
Back when Riverdale first came out I loved their posters - the tone of the piece, kind of a Neon Noir look, really caught me, and the fact that I read/heard someone somewhere refer to it as "Dawson's Peaks" intrigued me; I couldn't care less about the Dawson part, but the Peaks part, well, that should be obvious. When season one hit Netflix I gave it a shot, liked it okay, but it just didn't make the cut; I have to be pretty severe in what I choose to watch these days, as my time for tv is minimal to say the least. Now though, I see this and I know I have to go back and catch up, because my mind is blown that season two of an updated Archie story (I should really stop thinking of it in those terms) has a Giallo element. I mean, who saw that coming?
Playlist from 5/17:
Eagulls - Ullages
The Geto Boys - Geto Boys
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Kitty Lester - Love Letters
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
Lantlos - .neon
Two cards today:
It annoys me that I couldn't find the actual card, instead of this weird, dark-bordered version. Either way, I'm looking at this as I'm going to encounter my dark side today - or perhaps someone else's - and I will need to bring balance to the situation. This sounds about right, know the day I had yesterday and what's on deck at the office today.
