Isolation: Day 141

Mr. Brown sent me this last night, and after watching it, both K and I are immediate fans. I can't wait to dig into The Hu's catalogue, which you can peruse and purchase from HERE.
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A new trailer dropped for Season Two of The Boys.



The trailer is a bit overdone, but I'm still excited to see where this goes.

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NCBD:

Not a lot this week. I did notice this coming from Vault, and I'm curious. Back in the early/mid 90s, I wasn't a RPG'r, but I loved Vampires. I know the entire genre is cliched now, and maybe it was back then, too. I didn't know that. I discovered Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire when I was a senior in High School, and I LOVED it. This was shortly before the movie - which I'm not a huge fan of - and reading that first novel in Rice's Vampire Chronicles coinciding with my purchasing Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses (the digipak version, of course). I'd smoke out and lay around devouring the novel, while listening to Peter Steele's voice sing of Blood and Fire, and Suspended in Dusk, and Steele's voice became Louie's voice. I haven't gone back to those novels in since I read them; I'm not even sure I'd like them now. Back then though, Rice's fiction had me ravenous for more Blood Lore, and in this way I discovered White Wolf Publishing's Vampire: The Masquerade. My Chicago comic shop Amazing Fantasy carried a lot of books as well (thank you Garrett!), and I believe that is where I bought my first Masquerade novel. I wouldn't even be able to tell you which one it was, it left a bit of an impression on me. Enough that I'm curious to see a comic series reviving the line.

A few years back, when my friend Missi turned me on to Poppy Z. Brite's fiction from the 90s, it kind of scratched a long-standing itch for this kind of Goth-Pageantry fiction, and it's probably the hangover from reading her Lost Souls last year that has me tempted to pick this up.


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Playlist:

Young Widows - Settle Down City
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
Rezz - The Silence is Deafening EP
The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Metallica - Master of Puppets

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Card:

Keep going despite fatigue. The wheel turns, so says Ka.

Isolation: Day 140 - Vólan!

Vólan is a band from Moscow I'd never heard of until this morning when this live session from Audio Tree popped up on my youtube feed. Pretty awesome! You can hit their Bandcamp HERE for more music and merch!

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I'm a pretty big fan of Robert S. Wilson's Nightscape Press, and as such I backed their recent Kickstarter HERE. I'd actually meant to post about this earlier, but there's still twelve days left, and even fully funded, this is absolutely worth contributing to. Nightscape is a fantastic and fully independent publisher, and my hope is they will be around for many years to come.


Previously, I've mentioned Nightscape's brilliant Ashes and Entropy anthology - easily one of the best books I read last year. I also recently picked up Dark and Distant Voices, Nightscape's short story collection by Tim Waggoner. I'm only one story in - ALL my pleasure reading is on hold as I work on final edits of two different versions of my forthcoming novel (I'll explain that at some other point). The point is, Mr. Wilson runs a top shelf company who deserve our support.

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Playlist:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose
Aerosmith - Pump
Motörhead - 1916
Nirvana - Nevermind
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Urge Overkill - Saturation
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Big picture.

Isolation: Day 139

The beginning of this song is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've heard on piano. I fell down a bit of a Don Shirley rabbit hole yesterday, and in doing so, came across again some articles that posit 2018's Green Book was a racist film. THIS is the problem with the left; everything is a problem. Every man's a rapist. Every white person is racist. Four years of captain goatfucker in office and everyone loses their fucking minds. The way forward is not to one extreme or the other. It's COMMON SENSE. Until the day this prevails (not holding my breath), I'll use music like this to remind me how beautiful the world is by listening to music like this. Thank you, Don Shirley.

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The Final episode of HBO's I'll Be Gone in the Dark aired last night. Slightly anticlimactic, but of course that's the bane of most True Crime.

Next up, we're finishing the last half of the final season of Breaking Bad. halfway through, I realize there's a reason I've put off revisiting this show. The emotion destruction that accompanies Season 5 Part 2 is unlike anything else I've seen in serialized television. I love this show for the craft, the concise nature of the storytelling, but it really beats me up.

After that? I think we're going to do one both K and Mr. Brown have recommended to me - Halt and Catch Fire.



I've been looking forward to this for some time, so even though there's a boatload of shows to dig into, this one is next.

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Playlist:

Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Led Zeppelin - Coda
La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again
Roly Porter - Kistvaen
The Jesus Lizard - Head
Jeffery Alan Jones - Most Beautiful Island OST
François-Eudes Chanfrault - Computer Assisted Sunset
Ghost - Opus Eponymous
Ghosts of Glaciers - The Greatest Burden
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
Don Shirley - Don Shirley's Best
Don Shirley - Total Expressions

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Card:

Time to pay closer attention to the rules for a bit, especially those I place upon myself. Things may have gotten a bit loosey Goosey of late, with Quarantine-Fatigue, or possibly from the contemplation of actually making it through the tunnel and out into the light again.

Sunday Bandcamp: Dead Swords

Holy shit, where has this been my whole life? I stumbled across New Jersey's Dead Swords while tripping off this awesome record that Heaven is an Incubator posted a few days ago. Talk about an algorithm!

This album goes deep, so strap on some ear goggles and disappear to another dimension.

Isolation: Day 138 The Royal Screw

I cannot get enough of this album! It is perfect, and this song is probably my favorite (I'm rotating through the track list day-by-day). The drum sound on this record is a total throw-back to old school Rhythm and Blues, while having the advantages of modern technology. The alto sax that peppers through the verses evokes Boots Randolph, while the chorus horns hit hard and serve as a good-natured reminder that former Dap-King Thomas Brenneck produced this collection of perfection. Finally, the vocals are perfect - striking a bit of an evocation of classic Van Morrison while still being completely Adam Weiner, snark and energy going full throttle.

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Last night K and I watched the indie film Cosmos. Loved it! In fact, I kept thinking "I never knew astronomy could be so riveting! This reminded me of Darren Aronofsky's π, not in style or tone at all, but simply because the filmmakers made something most people see very little in and make it thrilling (in π it's math).



Cosmos was directed by brothers Elliot and Zander Weaver and stars a total of four freakin' people, and it's one of the best examples of 'more with less' I've seen in a while. True, the score is definitely heavy, and really helps to dramatize situations that might have had slightly less impact, but overall, this one get a four-and-a-half star from me.

The Weavers' production company is Elliander Pictures, website is HERE.

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Playlist:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangan's Noose
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
JK Flesh - Posthuman
Dead Swords - Enders
Low Cut Connie - What Has Happened to Me (pre-release single)
JK Flesh - Depersonalization
Baroness - Gold and Grey
Led Zeppelin - How the West Was Won

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Card:

Turning once again to the Raven Deck, I get a nod to follow my instincts. I think this card is a vexing counterpoint to the 4 of Wands' continuous advice.

Isolation: Day 137

Mr. Brown had to remind me several times to look up Low Cut Connie, and when I finally did, I understood and became extremely thankful for his persistence. So far, 2015's Hi Honey is all I know, but MAN is it a fantastic album. This is a tie for my favorite track - so far - with Royal Screw, which I might just post here tomorrow.

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As of yesterday, my short story Pentagram Girls is available to read for free on Wattpad, just follow the widget below:



If you dig the story, you can follow the widgets to the left to order the book - I have a 'quarantine special' of $.99 for the Kindle copy running now, so that's a pretty great deal, if I do say so myself. Also, that fantastic cover art is from my good friend and often co-conspirator Jonathan Grimm. If you dig his art, check out his site HERE.

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Playlist:

Primus - Frizzle Fry
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
Orville Peck - Pony
Baroness - Gold and Grey
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
Joy Division - Closer
Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Dead Swords - Enders

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Card:

I keep getting this card because I shake my head like I understand and heed the advice contained therein, then turn around and do the exact opposite.

Isolation: Day 136

It was a real disappointment to learn that Shane Carruth - whose films Primer and Upstream Color are among the best films made in the last twenty years - is not a very cool person. I won't go into everything, but aside from numerous accounts of his assholery to everyday people, it appears that he may have made public certain aspects of his estranged relationship with director Amy Seimetz in a weird attempt to sabotage the release of her new film, She Dies Tomorrow. I'm not sure this is exactly what's going on, but regardless, I wanted to see this film before all this happened, now I'll be making it my Friday night watch next week when it drops on the 8th, just to help bump the film's numbers. Looks awesome, and seeing Jane Adams and Tunde Adebimpe from TVOTR is just too good to be true.

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K and I caught up to the current episode of HBO's I'll Be Gone in the Dark last night. This show is a powerhouse of emotion and terror, and although I usually don't have the stomach or nerve for true crime - I prefer my horror to have at least a dash of supernatural so it doesn't color the world around me any darker than I already perceive it - this is one I would recommend to everyone. I've loved most of what Michelle McNamara's husband Patton Oswalt has done since someone turned me onto Feelin' Kinda Patton in the mid-00s. To see this side of his life, and the lengths Michelle McNamara went to hunting a decades-old killer, it's inspiring.



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Playlist:

Primus - Frizzle Fry
Count Raven - Storm Warning
Angel Witch - '82 Revisited
Testament - Titans of Creation
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey

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Card:

Another pull from my beautiful new Raven Deck:

So I'll be paying more attention to my intuition.