Kacey & Willie

This one's been out there for some time, so I'm late to the game. During a back-and-forth listening session with a good friend on Wednesday, I discovered the Kacey Musgraves/Willie Nelson duet "Are You Sure."

Wow.

I know next to nothing about Ms. Musgraves, but when I saw Willie Nelson with her, I became instantly curious; while far from my bread and butter, Willie definitely fit a certain state of mind with me. I saw him live back in 2015 and he blew me away. As for this song, it's incredible. As Mr. Brown pointed out recently, she has a definite Patsy Cline/Loretta Lynn quality.

The video too, is shot in a throwback way that made me half expect to see a muppet sitting next to her when the camera began to pan to the left. It looks like 80s "live" television. Totally appropriate for the inner of the bar and feel of the song, which also harken back to a different era.

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A new episode of The Horror Vision went up this past Monday. This is our spoiler-free review/reaction piece to The Lodge (loved it - hear why), as well as a discussion that includes AHS Hotel, Netflix's Castlevania and October Faction, Joe Begos' Bliss, and 2011's Fright Night remake, as well as a handful of other titles we've viewed recently. Oh yeah, and this episode's Classic Corner is none other than Tibor Takacs' 1987 The Gate! We love this movie so much, we even sneak in some thoughts on the sequel.



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After finishing Chuck Wendig's frightening and timely Wanderers last week, a conversation with Ray from The Horror Vision prompted me to dig out a large part of Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men and begin plowing though it. I started just before the Mutant Massacre - which was about when I started reading X-Men back in the day - and plan on going up through Inferno. I might go past that, not sure yet. But I am SO looking forward to Inferno. It's been too long.

Also, the Sequart Documentary Chris Claremont's X-Men is now on Prime for free, so if you're a fan and haven't seen it, totally worth a watch.

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Playlist:

The Vines - Total Depravity
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
16 Horsepower - Low Estate
Zombi - Shape Shift
Worm is Green - Automagic
Greg Puciato - Fire for Water (single)
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Mazzy Star - So Tonite That I Might See
Grimes - Art Angels
Led Zeppelin - I
Led Zeppelin - IV
The Jesus Lizard - Lash
The Jesus Lizard - Head
The Jesus Lizard - Pure EP
Chris Connelly - Sleeping Partner
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Anthrax - Attack of the Killer B's
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease
Various - The History of Northwest Rock Vol. 2 (The Garage Years)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen
Grimes - Visions

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 Card:

Hacking off pieces in order to gain the time/vantage to reflect. I pulled a 'mental health day' yesterday, not from my day job, but from writing. The current global situation has got me down, and I've realized despite all my declarations that I will not vote for either of the two parties in hogging the US political system, I am indeed going to be casting a vote for one asshole in November simply to keep the bigger (biggest?) asshole out of office. I also realize that this won't work and we most likely have four more years of... this. Unless of course, Captain Trips wins the day and purges the planet of a large enough amount of the human population as to inspire a total societal change in this country.

I won't hold my breath. Fuck jetpacks, where's our Common Sense?

The Lodge!

The new episode of The Horror Vision is up! As I mentioned yesterday, we start out with a Spoiler-Free review of The Lodge!



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Speaking of Horror, here's a couple of upcoming horror trailers that caught my attention last week. The first, Saint Maud, looks promising, but also kind of looks like A24 fishing for another Hereditary. Either way, I'll give it a chance, because we all know trailers can make movies look more like other movies even if the film doesn't (nothing against Hereditary, I'm merely suspicious of derivative material):




Scare Package looks like it will, like a lot of anthologies, be hit or miss. Based on this trailer, I'll definitely give it a shot:



Also, look at the poster art for this one. Love it!

**

Playlist:

Hall and Oats - Greatest Hits
Odonis Odonis - No Pop
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Talking Heads - Fear of Music

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Card:

Might represent good news on the salary front. Which would be helpful in longer-termish plans I am making in my head.

Orville Peck - Queen of the Rodeo

I love the way, between this and the AHS 10 Cast announcement video published last week, Peck has swung back around and recaptured my imagination of late. Not that I ever leave the record very far behind - it's a staple and feels like it will be for the rest of my life - but it feels strangely timely again.

**

Saturday night K and I, along with 3/4 of the rest of The Horror Vision crew went to the theatre and supported the big-box roll out for Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's The Lodge. Fantastic film! I've jokingly been referring to it as the, "Feel good hit of the summer," simply to help me process just how damn dark it is, but overall, I really liked this one. Afterward, we recorded an episode of the podcast, so that'll be up in a couple of days or so.




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Playlist:

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
Odonis Odonis - No Pop
The Smiths - Meat is Murder
Myrkur - M
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Patchouli Blue
The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Boy Harsher - Careful
Anthrax - Among the Living

**

Card:

A relaxing weekend, if a chilly one (I know, I know. I can hear my family and friends in the Frigid Midwest. Fuck me, California boy). Stability achieved after a stressful week on-call for Jury Duty. I got a lot of work done on Friday and Saturday, saw a great movie, and now it's time to use that clear head and march right back to work. Turning in a packet of docs to a collaborator today, hopefully we'll see some movement with that (eventually; long submission process), and it's back to my outlines for Shadow Play books Two and Three, which are more finished than not.

Candyman! Candyman! Candy...

Looks fantastic; I love that Peele's Production is going for a sequel instead of a re-boot.

**

Playlist:

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath
The Mars Volta - Frances the Mute
Mol - Jord
Zombi - Shape Shift
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
Slayer - Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Patchouli Blue
Myrkur - M
The Smiths - Meat is Murder

**

Card:

Zenith of development. I'm very close to having everything in the arc of both Shadow Play Books 2 and 3 come into full alignment.

RIP David Roback

As a teenager, I must have gotten stoned and tranced on this song hundreds of times. Thank you and godspeed to one of the artists who made it possible.

Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Deine Kusine

Last night Bohren and Der Club of Gore released a music video - really a short film - for "Deine Kusine," the fifth track off their new record Patchouli Blue, available HERE. A great album, my favorite of the band's since 2000's Sunset Mission, which I've recently noticed is criminally hard to find.

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Along with Netflix's Black Spot, which we're almost caught up with and which is becoming increasingly interesting, I've circled back around to two shows I've been meaning to watch for quite some time now. The first, which I binged several episodes of over the weekend, is Love, Death, and Robots, the David Fincher-produced anthology of short, animated films. Those who know me know that, for whatever reason, I really don't get into much animation. Aside from shows with nostalgic value and Cowboy Bebop - truly the work that transcends the genre/medium - animation usually does not connect with me. For this show, I feel like I'm getting more out of it than usual, and the premises so far have been very interesting, so I'm enjoying it. I especially liked Frank Balson's Suits, where the humdrum, simple country life of the farmer has evolved to include piloting mech suits to fight off alien invaders, and Alberto Mielgo's The Witness, which plays like Cold Hell with strippers.



The other show I've gone back to is Warren Ellis' Castlevania. This one, K and I had the missed opportunity of starting multiple times when it first landed, and each and every one of those viewing experiences resulted in our falling asleep. I had long suspected this was not the show's fault, and now that I've settled back into it and completed the first season - at a whopping four episodes - I'm hooked. The first three episodes we'd seen before, in parts multiple times, and they just didn't do it for me. Episode Four? Fantastic. I plan on binging the rest of this over the coming weekend, just in time for Season Three, which Ellis announced in his weekly newsletter recently, and which the trailer for just dropped last week:



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New Comic Book Day is slight but marvelous:

Previously, whenever I see the new issue of either Black Stars Above listed on Comics List's New Comics This Week list, the solicitation is always at least one week before the book actually ships. I'm hoping that this time, that is not the case. Black Stars Above continues to astound me with it's complex narrative, fluid prose, and beautiful art. I could really go for all of that today.

**

Playlist:

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl
Second Still - Equals EP
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Odonis Odonis - No Pop
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Various Artists - The History of Northwest Garage Rock, Vol. 2

Mark Lanegan - Skeleton Key

From Straight Songs of Sorrow, the new Mark Lanegan out May 8th via Heavenly Recordings. Pre-order HERE. Apparently, this record is "closely aligned" with Lanegan's forthcoming memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, out April 28th. Pre-order that HERE or HERE.

I can't wait to read that book!

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Over the weekend, in the interest of starting something new and mostly unknown, K and I started Netflix's Black Spot, which comes to the US via France.


BLACK SPOT trailer season 1 vfsta from MEDIAWAN RIGHTS on Vimeo.

Although highly derivative of Twin Peaks, Dark, and True Detective Ssn 1, I'm enjoying Black Spot quite a bit; it borrows heavily from all three aforementioned shows, but is definitely its own thing. I'd definitely recommend it for fans of those shows and thrillers in general. I've seen references now to both this and Dark as belonging to a genre being called "Into the Woods," and although genre splitting and tagging can become tiresome, I kinda dig that. Suffice it to say, Black Spot is creepy, extremely well lit and well shot, and the voice they've given to the forest is mysterious and exciting.

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This happened last night and I am still unable to completely wrap my head around it:

Apparently, in honor of Relapse's 30th Anniversary, they chose people who pre-ordered records in the past few months and randomly awarded them these nifty golden tickets. What's it good for?

Whoah. I don't know that I've won anything since 1991, when I called Chicago's seminal Rock statin The Loop and won 10 free lawn tickets to see Guns n' Roses on their Use Your Illusions tour. Of course, I never got to cash those in, because two nights before that Chicago show, Axl jumped off the stage in Cincinnati, OH and clocked a dude with a camera, subsequently landing in jail.

One reason why I've always disliked Axl.

Anyway, looks like I have a lot of vinyl coming my way this year. Very cool. Thank you Relapse Records and Happy 30th Anniversary - here's to 130 more (at least)!

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Playlist:

The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Mol - Jord
Various Artists - The Void (OSM)
Frederic Kooshmanian - Black Spot (OSM)
Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death
Burzum - Filosofem
Grimes - Miss Anthropocene
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Various Artists - Garage Rock (Compilation used in Black Spot)
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

**

Card:

I've done a few pulls over the last few days that haven't been logged here, almost all of which have been Swords. The Nine of Swords - Cruelty has followed me a bit. Swords is the Suit I know the least in the Tarot, and this card in particular is, at a glance, always tempting to fear based on face value. However, from the Grimoire:

"The airy nature of Intellect, it is difficult for Swords to rest. Rabid analyzation and thinking in general can produce a loop that one becomes trapped in, the ultimate revelation that Nothing really leads Anywhere and in the end, there is Nothing."

Now, juxtapose this with a clarification card I drew and an interpretation begins to take shape.

Reality is breaking a bit, as Chuck Wendig's Wanderers escalates into a pandemic that cuts a massive swathe through the human population. Oh, and the disease's origin? Bats.

Can you see how that would start to saturate my reality? Also, it was the day after I started reading this book that the first really scary images from China began to appear back in January, and since, well, the arc of the book has been so parallel to the arc of real life (except, thus far, we're on a MUCH smaller scale) that I've had a lot of time to reflect on everything. Interestingly enough, long periods of time reflecting on everything, on all of our existence, leads to the ultimate understanding that Nothing is at the heart of it. Humanity holds itself up by the bootstraps, and although there are more good than bad humans - I think - if things go ugly, it doesn't really matter for the overall organism of the Planet Earth. In fact, it might be better for Her if we were to largely die off. I hope not, because there's a lot of humans I really like - including myself. But then, it's one thing to have an objective view of an extinction event, it's quite another to be able to conduct yourself that way.