Interview w/ Gun Up Paintball Creator Cassidy James

Art by Marco Roblin, image courtesy of the Gun Up Paintball kickstarter page

Is what's on tap at Thee Comic Column over on Joup this week. Hear what he has to say about his book, the Kickstarter and the process of creating the book!

Big Trouble in Little China - the Comic!!!

image courtesy of introtogeek.wordpress.com

Wow. You know, John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China is one of my all-time favorite movies. It has everything I love: that beneath-the-city, sewers-and-secrets mystery, magic, martial arts, and of course Jack Burton! The fact that Bloody Disgusting just blew my mind with this article is worthy of opening a beer and throwing up a toast. Who'll join me?

"Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather."

Larime Taylor Emergency Relocation Fund

This man is an inspiration and I'm lucky enough to now be able to say he is my friend. Please, if you can, help here. Thank you.

Brooklyn Vegan has a BEAUTIFUL Photo Spread on David Lynch @ BAM

see it here. As a bit of a soundtrack for your reading, here's The Pink Room, from TP: FWWM.

Kickstart the Gun Up Paintball Comic

I know nothing about Paintball - except I always thought it looked like fun - but I know comics. After meeting Cassidy James several evenings ago and talking to him briefly about this book he is currently running a kickstarter for I'm convinced this book will be great.

If you can pledge go here and help an independent creator do what he does best!

Mastodon - High Road

I wasn't very keen on this band at first. Then my friend Tori gave me Leviathan about two years ago and it sat in my itunes, which of course is bloated with more tracks than I could ever work around to (though I'm certainly having fun trying!). I gave Leviathan a few perfunctory listens but as with a lot of metal, it didn't penetrate at first. I was hearing the 'metal' but not the subtleties. Then a couple months ago I really fell into the habit of listening to a lot of metal at work - it helps quicken my tempo in the early, early morning, works almost as good as coffee. Now Leviathan is a couple-times-a-week fav and I'm in the market for the rest of their catalogue, so this new track from upcoming record Once More 'Round the Sun (6/24) comes at a perfect time in my life.

Fivre - Trailer

Fièvre (2014) Trailer - For more of the funniest videos, click here

All I can say after watching this trailer is 'You had me at Ether'. At a glance this looks like a cross between Ken Russell's Gothic, Dante Tomaselli's work and Beyond the Black Rainbow. Go read some actual details about this fantastic-looking new film on Bloody Disgusting. Director Romain Basset is one to watch for future awesomeness.

David Lynch - The Big Dream (Official Video)

I am not much of a Moby fan - nothing against him, the music I know of his is good but has just never done enough for me to make me a fan - but here he remixes, directs and apparently shoots a video for a David Lynch song that, as you'd expect from a Lynch fan, I LOVE.

Deftones - Entombed

I come back to this album so much that it has done that thing where, despite the fact that I love almost all of their other albums beginning with White Pony (not the re-issue with the 'rap' version of Pink Maggot) I just always go to Koi No Yokan. It's like a warm blanket of awesomeness and creative inspiration, and every time I listen to it - still!- it blows me away.

REC 4: Apocalypse Trailer

I am such a fan of the original [Rec] 1 and 2, not such a huge fan of 3 because it deviated from the urgency established in the continuity of those first two. If you've not seen these, or you've only seen the American remake titled Quarantine, you owe it to yourself. Soooo much better.

Of course, no US release date yet. Oh, and I couldn't find one with subtitles that would properly embed so here's a link to the aintitcool article that has that.

Nick Cage in a Bear Suit. Boots Randolph. 'Nuff Said

I'm a big fan of Boots Randolph's Yakety Sax. Hell, once you get past the goofiness that's been permanently tattooed onto Randolph's music you begin to see how it is a fairly uplifting take on life. If everything can be reduced to the kind of basic hilarity that Benny Hill trafficked in, the daily absurdities of life set to a soundtrack that really took the piss out of it and all its self importance, Randolph is the one who can do it with his squirrely horn and mocking compositions.

Branching out from here, to take what is the goofiest, squirreliest movie I've seen since The Room and string together all the 'good' parts to maximize the ridiculous effect it quickly becomes obvious the soundtrack to such an undertaking could really only consist of one song in particular. You guessed it, Yakety Sax.

If you've not seen this film do not go out of your way to do so until you have some friends in tow and at the very least a twelver of something good and strong. Dig in, catch a buzz and behold the quixotic madness that is Neil Labute's baffling attempt to remake Robin Hardy's The Wickeman for conventional, modern horror audiences.

Joss Whedon's In Your Eyes

Written and executive produced by Joss Whedon, directed by Brin Hill. I don't know anything about this film. It's existence was announced to me via an email I received from Vimeo alerting me to the fact that it is available to watch for $5 powered by their site.

Gonna have to find the time to do that, but figured I'd help spread the word.

Larry Hama, Marc Silvestri and Dan Green's Wolverine

image courtesy of marvel.wikia.com

is the topic in this week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup. To me, there are several issues of this creative team's run that really forms the backbone of a great character that, unfortunately, has subsequently been done to death. I still dig the ol' Canucklehead, but there are very few writers who still write the character well - probably mostly because of editorial intervention, which I think tends to play way to big a part in monthly, serialized comics by the big two and often has things beside the story or characters' best interests in mind.

Just sayin'.

Lying about Widows

image courtesy of dc.wikia

So this is what I was staring at when I momentarily titled the previous post "New Young Liars Track Streams" by accident. The fifth issue of Drinking with Comics - which we shot three weeks ago but have not been able to align our schedules to edit yet - will feature our Sierra Nevada-ingesting interview with Young Liars/Stray Bullets creator David Lapham that took place when he signed recently at the best comic shop in Southern California, Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug.

Now granted, I don't even think we mention Young Liars in what we recorded, as the return of Stray Bullets was practically all I could think about for most of March. However, Young Liars is a fantastic story in its own right and this particular art is one of my all time favorite comic book covers and it was one of the three books I brought to the event to have Mr. Lapham graciously sign.

As an interesting side bar, you'll see the image is a play on David Bowie's classic Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars record and the moment after Mr. Lapham signed my books that exact song began to jam from the Comic Bug's stereo!

New Young Widows Track Streams

Via the mighty Brooklyn Vegan's Heavy Low Down - a very special Heavy Lowdown, as this is Metal editor/contributor Doug Moore's final dispatch as he moves on to focus his energies on other creative endeavors (read all about it and see their great Doug w/ Cats tribute here). I've enjoyed these Heavy Lowdowns - as I do most everything on the site - so though I hadn't really put a name to them until now I wish Doug the best and will miss his writings on one of my favorite music sites.

Young Widows really mine some interestingly original territory with their sound. This reminds me a bit of Brand New, but not overtly. There's often a sick kind of stilted, foggy slink to their sound, and I dig it.

Black Sabbeth?

I'm re-posting this from my favorite music blog, the brilliant Heaven is an Incubator. I had no knowledge previous to this of the band Gonga, but Beth Gibbons + Black Sabbath is just too good to be true.

I was a fan of Ms. Gibbon's band Portishead from back around the time of Dummy, but it wasn't until the release of Portishead's record Third in... ah, 2007 that one of their records became necessary to me. The pagan-like soundscapes of some of the darker corners of Third fell into that category of music that the first time I hear it some part of me feels as though it were made specifically for me. So it's really no surprise that I feel the way I do about this cover because Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath - along with much of their Ozzy-era catalogue - also hits me that way.

Dillinger Escape Plan - Happiness is a Smile

And then there was Dillinger Escape Plan last night at the Echoplex. I'll be honest - I was a bit afraid. I've seen these guys five times now since I, like so many others, discovered them in '99 when they came out and tore shit up as the opener for Mr. Bungle on the very first leg of their California tour. I've written about this before - DEP scared me then and they've scared me numerous times since (I think I outline it fairly exhaustively here), and it'd been literally ten years since I saw the band in a venue as small as the Echoplex. That was at Chicago's now deceased Fireside Bowl and actually, yeah, that was even smaller than the Echoplex.

But I digress.

My friend Michael went with me and we stood fairly close to the front. And you know, it was still bedlam, especially with the good-natured audience full of surfers and stage-divers, but it was the least-threatening Dillinger show I've seen and had an all-around great vibe full of camaraderie.

Happiness is a Smile is a new song they played last night, released a few months ago on a limited edition vinyl 7" that I didn't even realize was being sold at their merch table last night.

Drat!

Godflesh @ Henry Fonda Theatre 4/22/14

When word first surfaced circa 2010 that Godflesh was reuniting to play a European festival show I became excited. If it'd been in my budget/schedule to fly to that show I would have, but with all the other tantalizing European line-ups (esp. All Tomorrow's Parties and Minehead which - at least in years past - seem to consistently book many too-good-to-be-true corners of my record collection past/present and future) it's just not in my cards at the moment.

Tarot or credit.

But with Godflesh, Justin K. Broadrick is so prolific that I just knew there would be more shows and maybe a record to boot.

Or, given time, many more records.

So when I had the chance to buy tickets to see Godflesh on their first North American tour in a looong time I did not balk. Originally I had it planned where I was going to see them in Chicago at my beloved Metro and then again in LA several days later. Then there were problems with the bands' visas and the tour was postponed. I ended up not seeing them in Chicago, but the LA show this past Tuesday at the always fantastic Henry Fonda Theatre was something of a dream come true. When they came out and opened with the pummeling Like Rats I knew this was going to go down as one of my most cherished concert experiences.

Special thanks to MBMdrums666 who took some fantastic video of the show and put it up online and also to the awesome 80's metal chick who tore shit up with her dancing and kept our little corner of the Fonda free of others.

Deftones Release a Track From Eros

Another one I'm a few days late on. This was written up heavy circa early last week but then got yanked down due to copyright issues. By posting this I certainly do not wish to step on one of my favorite band's toes - I'm just glad this stuff is finally going to see the light of day. And with the Deftones also reportedly working on a follow-up album to their absolutely breath-taking Koi No Yokan, this could be a very good year for fans of the band, of which I am most definitely one.

Eros is the final album featuring original Deftones bassist Chi, who was in an automobile accident in 2008 and passed away after a long struggle in 2013. You can read more about the love and support that made Chi's struggles easier at One Love for Chi.

Queens of the Stone Age - Smooth Sailing Video

I am waaay late on this. My friend and fellow QOTSA fanatic Josh FB'd me to ask my opinion on this like a week ago and I've consistently forgotten about it. Until now.

Hard to pick a favorite track on a record as mammoth as ... Like Clockwork but this is in the top tier. It's so Revolting Cocks it's not funny, and Mr. Homme's trademark snake-snark is at full hilt.

Oh, and in answer to your question Josh, I haven't smiled this much while watching a music video for the first time since Grinderman's Heathen Child back in 2010.