Remember That Time When...

Nice shorts, douche

....is a new rotating column Grez started on Joup back in January. I picked up the thread this morning amidst reports of G-n-R's Las Vegas show by remembering the time in 1992 when Axl Rose cheated me out of 15 free concert tickets to see his band. Read about it here.

Drinking w/ Comics Special Guest: David F. Walker

Luke Cage all the rage? Can't wait for Danny Rand? Well, watch Mike and I talk to the man writing 'em in Marvel's Power Man and Iron Fist. And check out Mr. Walker's website for a whole boatload of goodies!

New Perturbator May 6th!!!

While I've been secluded trying to finish the novel that does not want to be finished I've almost missed out on a bunch of great music. Luckily while writing this afternoon I threw on an old favorite and was inspired to check up on what Perturbator has been up to.

Good thing I did because the new record, The Uncanny Valley, drops in just about two weeks!

I cannot wait to get this, as it feels like I've been listening to Dangerous Days for years at this point (probably because, like Heavenisanincubator, I haven't been able to stop listening to it in voracious aural jags since Dangerous Days was released!). The Uncanny Valley is a sequel to DD, taking place 40 years down the road and set in Neo Tokyo. What a fantastic description for such visual music.

Check out She Moves Like a Knife and then high tail it over to the aforementioned best got-damned music blog in the megaverse for the official, 8-bit animated music video to yet another new track from The Uncanny Valley, this one titled Sentient. And go pre-order the album from Blood Music, the hardest working indie record label in the business!

Chelsea Wolfe - Hypnos

Jonathan Barkan dropped this in an article he recently wrote abut Ms. Wolfe over on Bloody Disgusting. He is not wrong about Chelsea Wolfe - she and her music are magnificent and deserve to be heard by fans of dark, mesmerizing music.

Drinking w/ Comics Issue #31

Special guests Kat Rocha and Josh Finney of 01Publishing! Featuring Saint Archer Brewery's unbelievable Tusk & Grain ale!

Release From the Shackles of the Greater Corporation

Heard this last week on KXLU's Demolisten program. Great stuff. Reminded me a bit of old school Flying Luttenbachers.

Matthew Rosenberg's New Comic

Writer of We Can Never Go Home Matthew Rosenberg's new book 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank looks fantastic!

And Then There Were None...

Two nights ago my cat Tom died. I've been wanting to post something here as a tribute but it is really hard to accomplish this without breaking down into complete woe. No other word for it but old school, quasi-biblical woe.

Tom was my guy. He was my best friend and he had my back in ways that absolutely amazed me and solidified the idea that he had a very human emotional intelligence, and that he felt about me exactly how I felt about him. No offense to Lily, who also died recently, or Baby who is happy living in Ohio now, but Tom was my favorite.

Tom died in my arms, on my living room floor. I had my cheek against his abdomen and actually felt his life leave his body. It was haunting and terrible and magnificent, to know that my best friend died in my arms, knowing that I loved him.

My girlfriend Kirsten is new to our life, but just as I have fallen so completely for her so too did Tom; he made it known from the moment they met that not only did he approve of her but that he loved her. And she loved him. She was there with Tom and I when he passed, and the connection I saw between them - especially at the end - was beautiful beyond most of what I have seen in this life.

I will miss Tom for the rest of my life. The following were the three things I played shortly after his passing to try and honor him. The first because it is the saddest song I know, the second because Tom is short for Thompson, as in Hunter S., and the third because, well, it should be obvious.

Whispers From The Abyss Volume #2

I've really only just begun reading the first volume of Whispers From the Abyss from 01 Publishing but I'll stay straight off it's fantastic. Two of the stories in it - Nation of Disease: The Rise and Fall of a Canadian Legend by Jonathan Sharp and Death Wore Greasepaint by Josh Finney are probably among my top five Lovecraft-inspired stories ever. And now 01 has the second volume out digitally and are kickstarting the print edition. If you're a Lovecraft fan, a fan of dark or Weird fiction, or just a fan of great writing this is a well-worthy cause. AND might I add that 01 has procured none other than Laird Barron for an entry into this second volume.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children

A Tim Burton movie without Johnny Depp or HBC? Based on a book I LOVED? I'm in.

(pleasebegoodpleasebegoodpleasebegood)

Homicidal Homemaker's Black Lodge Pie!

Mr. Brown sent this to me on Twin Peaks day and I'm late getting around to watching the entire thing (yeah, at a whopping 6 minutes and some change this would'a kept me up all night, right?). I am SO going to make this. And I absolutely love the idea of a horror-themed cooking show, so I just did what I'm going to suggest you do - if you dig this subscribe to the Homicidal Homemaker's youtube channel!

The Callas - Could You?

There is A LOT to love about the new album from The Callas, a band whose previous record Am I Vertical? made my best of list in 2013. Returning to produce is Bad Seeds/Grinderman member Jim Sclavunos on a record that totally threw me for a loop at first listen. Not that there's not some sonic threads that pull Half Kiss Half Pain and Am I Vertical? together, but this is definitely not a case of a band sticking with a producer and adhering to a 'sound' that they created together. Half Kiss Half Pain still has those gloriously jagged garage rock leanings, but they're tempered with a nuance and sophistication that gives the record an incredible sense of dynamism.

I get the impression from juxtaposing these two most recent records (I am completely unfamiliar with the four previous LPs the band has - going to remedy that real soon) that The Callas are very much about moving forward, in the way that a band like, say Liars is also. Which is going to be a very good thing for those of us that follow their career.

So if you dig this, you know, buy Half Kiss Half Pain and follow their career.

Live WEEN from last week's shows

Screen shot courtesy of Tara Cushing's youtube channel

Mr. Brown sent me a sampling of what some of the fine folks who attended these reunion shows have put up on youtube. This user, Tara Cushing, has an wonderfully extensive documentation of all three nights so check out her youtube page here. They make me smile. Again, I simply cannot describe how happy I am to see one of my all-time favorite bands back together again - I'm literally tearing up just writing this.

BOOGNISH!

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival 2016 San Pedro

SUPER happy to be able to promote this. I've gone two other times and both were fantastic - really looking forward to this year! If you're unfamiliar with the H.P. Lovecraft Film Fest and are a Lovecraft fan you can read my review of the first one I attended here to get an idea of the level that this fest takes it to. And as good as that initial experience was, my subsequent one was about ten times better, so that's really saying something. This fest improves exponentially with every passing year. And honestly, it's just a great round-up of Weird and Horror culture, as well as being a great time to boot, whether you're an HPL fan or not.

Among the vendors this year I happen to know that Josh Finney and Kat Rocha will be representing the wonderful 01 Publishing. Josh and Kat were our guests on the live stream of Drinking w/ Comics #31 last night and they were awesome! 01's line-up is kind of a dream come true for Lovecraft/Weird/Cyberpunk fans and if that sounds great or even the littlest bit titillating, I suggest you make an intro to their world with Josh and Patrick McEvoy's Casefile: Arkham "Nightmare on the Canvas", which made it into my top comics of 2015 and is an exhaustively researched mash-up of Lovecraft mythos and Noir.  Another great entry to the 01 world would be the Lovecraft-inspired prose anthologies Whispers From the Abyss, volume 2 of which is available in digital right now here or can be pre-ordered in print here. I only just got my hands on Vol. 1 and it looks fantastic and features stories by Josh, Kat, Silvia Moreno-Garcia as well as many others. And Vol. 2 features a story by one of my favorite writers ever, the inimitable Mr. Laird Barron.

Ghost interviewed at the grammys

The woman interviewing them clearly has no prior knowledge of them. I'm sure that was the case with most of the people at/watching the grammy's. That makes this all the better.

Thanks to my friend John the Viking - if he hadn't shared this clip with me I would have never seen it.

Papa kind of reminds me a bit of a less hostile Mike Patton circa Angel Dust era as he subtly makes fun of the interviewer's questions. Favorite quote: "You want to win to win prizes for what you do."

Awesome!

Daredevil Season 2 Trailer revels in The Punisher

YES! I'll admit, I have a fondness for Punisher: War Zone. But this... this is PERFECT. He should have always been intro'd as a supporting character, and the dynamic this will add to Matt Murdock, as he attempts to discern where the line is and if he can cross it... man I cannot wait! And I'll be damned if he doesn't look exactly like an amalgam of all my favorite iterations of Frank Castle in the picture above!

Ween's 1st Reunion Show was Last Night...

from: http://www.heyreverb.com/blog/2016/02/13/ween-returns-our-1stbank-center-review-and-photos/113602/

...and although I wasn't there and won't be at the next two nights, Jambase has the entire thing mapped out, photographed and even some video! Check it out!

Here's one of my favorites that I was happy to see that they played last night.

David Bowie's Reality is this week's Joup Friday Album

You can read my thoughts and subsequently listen to Reality here. This is actually, I think, considerably more than just me talking about my favorite Bowie record. This  piece is the product of four long weeks of contemplating what the icon meant to me and why I have previously always gravitated more toward his later works.

Pictures of Lily

Yesterday I woke up and found that my cat Lily had died during the night. I found her at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms. She was laying in front of the outside door like she and my other cat Tom like to do when it's hot - like it is this week - in order to catch a breeze from the gap between door and frame.

I loved Lily. She was the first cat to ever really accept me and she made me a cat person, 100%. Her acceptance of me seemed to make other cats okay with me, whereas before they kinda knew I'd grown up a dog person and held it against me (at least the two or three cats that had been in my life before that seemed to).

Also, she had incredible toe fur.

Later, in Lily's honor I jammed Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones. That influenced my pick for this week's Joup Friday Album, so instead of reiterating it here I thought I'd play the song that Pete Townsend wrote for Lily, many years before she was born, anticipating her legacy of drool, off-key yeowling and, well, an awful lot of intolerance. As she got older Lily's ability to interact diminished and she just kind of seemed as though she dislike EVERYONE most of the time. Except those quiet moments where she would come to me and want to be petted rigorously for a few moments before growing tired of my company and running off in a huff. I loved Lily's hate - it was adorable and I think helped keep her alive and well these last few years of her pretty incredible 16 year run.

Godspeed Lily; wherever you go from here I leave you with Hunter S. Thompson's words that seem to fit you so well, "Take no guff from these swine!"

Anticipation: The Witch

I'd thought I had already posted this, but apparently not. A friend shared the trailer with me several weeks ago on social media and I was immediately taken with it. The shrill, dissonant suspense the trailer cultivates makes me think that, regardless of the fact that The Witch is now getting some major hype - mostly because news outlets have latched onto the fact that the Satanic Temple are touting this as a big deal - it will still outreach my expectations.

What hype? Well, here's what Satanic Temple's has to say:

"The Witch is not only a powerful cinematic experience, but also an impressive presentation of Satanic insight that will inform contemporary discussion of religious experience. Yet, The Witch is more than a film; it is a transformative Satanic experience that, in its call to arms, becomes an act of spiritual sabotage and liberation from the oppressive traditions of our forefathers."

Wow. One can only hope. I'm not a, ahem, Satanist, though as far as religions go I'd choose that over most others - believe in and worship yourself? Better than a flying spaghetti monster - but I definitely think our world would benefit from anything that undermines the current global war between two extreme and downright dangerous religions (in their most frenzied forms that is): Christianity and Islam.