Man Man Week: The Fog or China

From their 2004 debut, The Man in the Blue Turban With a Face, we have yet another example of how versatile this group is. I love the elements they draw from Tin Pan Alley and 50s Doo Wop, fusing them with something all their own.

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Watch:

Paul Duane's All You Need is Death proved to be one of the highlights of this past year's Beyondfest lineup, and now it's finally being released worldwide. I can vouch for this trailer - it does not give away the movie. 

 

Having seen the film, I can tell you to try your best to see it on the big screen. Duane's approach to Horror thrives on an almost subconscious, microcosmic level while also employing some really big, frightening images. This combination works so well on the big screen, with a professional theatre audio system, especially in regard to Ian Lynch's score, which I can only hope someone releases on vinyl.

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Read:

I've been pretty scattered lately and have not been very successful in reading. I'm chipping along at Malcolm Devlin's Then I Woke Up, which is excellent, but my attention's compass is wonky, pulled from due North by all manner of interfering metals. That said, I recently picked up the missing issues of two early 00s comic series I've been dying to dive into.

First, Mike Baron and Mike Norton's The Night Club, which I'd been missing the final issue of since I picked up the series back in 2005:

Next, from right around the same time, Keith Griffen's Tag.

I'm using the image of the Deluxe Edition Boom! eventually published, however, I was interested in the original issues, as I had two of the three. There was a subsequent series, Tag: Cursed, that I haven't read, but the first two issues of this first one always stayed with me. Ostensibly a zombie story, Tag is a pretty interesting take on what was even a bloated subgenre back in 2005, only two years after The Walking Dead comic started, the same year George Romero returned for a fourth time to his original continuity with Land of the Dead. Tag presupposes an infection you can pass by tagging another person. The pull quote on the top of issue two says it all:

Very much looking forward to reading both of these once I get my head on straight again. 

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Playlist:

All Hell - The Howl (single)

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muukalainen Puhuu

Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Glasgow Eyes

Man Man - The Man in the Blue Turban

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

One card today, because I haven't touched the deck in a while and wanted a generalized, "this is the 48 year of your life" kind of reading.

I went with the lighting I'm working in at the moment, too. It felt appropriate. Knowledge above salvation. Sounds great.

 

The closing track from 2014's On Oni Pond. This song goes to some strange places—nothing new for Man Man—and maybe it just has a slightly heftier impact at the end of the album. Either way, it's another iconic track.

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Watch:

The whole Clarksville edition of my family went out to the movies yesterday to see Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Overall, the film is not nearly as good as its predecessor Afterlife, but it was fun. 

First, what I liked: I dig the new cast, especially when we still get this much of the old cast. Frozen Empire has a nice mix of both. A few too many kids thrown in, but it works. I loved seeing Patton Oswalt - always do - and I really loved seeing Kumail Ali Nanijani have a much bigger part than I anticipated. I really like that guy. Overall, the story was pretty good, but here's where my biggest problem is: the movie is under two hours long, but I swear to you, I felt like I was watching it for four hours. The script is just wonky in places. Also, this one relies SO much on nostalgia that it becomes a touch obnoxious (the same library ghost? Really?).

Overall, I'll see more of these if they make them. I love seeing Winston as the philanthropist funding the Ghostbusters, and I love the ideas they toy with regarding expansion. This is the path I always thought the original sequel should have taken. 

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Playlist:

Man Man - Life Fantastic

Tamaryn - The Waves

Dum Dum Girls - Too True

Ritual Howls - My Friends Bury Their Souls for the Devil to Find

LCD Soundsystem - Eponymous

Yaz - Don't Go (single)

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Los Saicos - Demolición/Lonely Star (single)

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me OST

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Man Man Week Day Four: Life Fantastic

 

Life is truly fantastic, even as fucked up and dark as it can get out here in 2024. But I turn 48 today and I'm happy to still be here. It's... fantastic!

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Man Man Week - Harpoon Fever (Queequeg's Playhouse)

 

From 2008's Rabbit Habits. THIS is the song that sold me to just how odd this band is. I mean, the boneyard percussion and vaudvillian creep-outs are one thing, but juxtaposed with the bizarre digital freak-out near the end of this song, well, it's old, it's new. It's unlike anything else (accept maybe a shared DNA with Mr. Bungle's "Desert Search for Techno Allah").

 

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Watch:

I caught the trailer for In A Violent Nature about a month ago at the theatre when I went to see Stopmotion, and it completely threw me at first. I seriously thought for a minute that the long-standing F13 legal battles had silently resolved and someone made a new film for the franchise in secret. Not the case, but that's probably a good thing. 

Writer/Director Chris Nash's feature film debut looks Brutal!  Total Video Nasty DNA. Hitting theatres May 31st, I will definitely be putting my arse in a seat at my local to watch this. 

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Playlist:

Zombi - Direct Inject

Zombi - 2020

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Anthrax - Among the Living

United Future Organization - 3rd Perspective

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

• Six of Pentacles 

• XX: Judgement

• Wheel of Fortune 

Earthly plateau - things are right where I want them in some respects, but XX shows it will be a balancing act to keep them there. The Wheel confirms this, but suggests it won't be quite as difficult as I think it will be. 

It's Man Man Week! Black Mission Goggles

Mr. Brown turned me on to Man Man back circa 2006 with the release of Six Demon Bag. This was right before I moved from Chicago to L.A. I quickly became obsessed with the way the band dabbled in Tom Waits' boneyard percussion and Mr. Bungle's no-warning non-sequiturs, all while still saying melodious and, dare I say, downright tender at times. A definite Vaudvillain undertone permeates their sound, and once all that is fused together, well, you get something like the above track, taken from the aforementioned second full-length. If I wasn't convinced with Six Demon Bag, then 2008's Rabbit Habits did it, their sound further fermenting into something wholly original and 100% endearing to folks looking for something unlike anything else. Then, three years later, Life Fantastic came out, and it quickly became the soundtrack to my life and one of my all-time favorite albums. 

Oddly, despite loving On Oni Pond, something had gone out of the band for me. Looking back on it now, this is entirely on me. I did that thing I sometimes do where I let the fact that Man Man had caught on as an Iconic Hipster "It Band" affect how I felt about them. I just kind of stopped paying attention and, amazingly enough, listening to even the albums I already cherished. Over the intervening years, I've kept up a bit - like the littlest bit one can - but my life completely changed and I forgot how much Man Man's music meant to me. Then, two days ago, after the announcement of the new album in June, I threw on Life Fantastic, and it all came flooding back to me. I just couldn't turn it off. 

It makes me sad that I lost the piece of myself that identified so strongly with this band, but that piece has definitely come crashing back, as you'll no doubt notice from my playlists. So let's do a Man Man week and revel in some of the absolutely beautiful, insane, amazing music we've received from Honus Honus and crew to date while looking forward to what we have coming in just a few months' time.

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Watch:

I left my Tim Burton fan club card behind a loooong time ago, but there's no way I'm not getting excited about this.

I don't think  Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands ever meant to me what it did to a lot of folks, but I dig them. Especially the former. The original Beetlejuice is just a crazy fucking movie, and I'm hoping Burton can put aside being Tim Burton long enough to make this what it should be. As in, CRAZY!!!

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Playlist:

Man Man - Life Fantastic

Man Man - Six Demon Bag

Man Man - Rabbit Habits

The Babies - Our House On the Hill

Brigitte Calls Me Baby - This House is Made of Corners EP

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather (single)

Metallica - Lux Æterna (single)

Metallica - Hardwired... to Self-Destruct

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

Zombi - Direct Inject (pre-release singles)

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New Music From Man Man and Alien Romulus Gets a Teaser!!!

 

New music from Man Man! From the forthcoming album Carrots on Strings, out June 7th on Subpop. Pre-order HERE.

Man, after Ryan Ketner showed up in Josh Forbes' Destroy All Neighbors two months ago, I've been lamenting not having more than one Man Man record in nearly ten years - 2020's Dream Hunting in the Valley In-Between was the first record since 2013's On Oni Pond, which just feels like a lifetime ago. Anyway, here we are - a new record and an insane new song that sounds, at times, like something from Six Demon Bag. I'd love to see whatever the band looks like live again - last time was for 2011's Life Fantastic and they were awesome! Shit, I'll even put aside my crippling dislike of "John Travolta" for them.

 

I think...

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Watch:

Yes!!!!

The Blood! The Screams! The ambiguity - this is everything I want in both a teaser and a new Alien movie directed by Fede Fucking Alvarez! 

I have the highest of hopes that Fede has been allowed to bring to Alien what he brought to Evil Dead - an unflinching, brutal approach. Alien doesn't, by nature, allow the creator to shy away from a certain level of brutality, but come on, let's make this as horrific as possible! Let's merge the nightmarish approach of Alien Resurrections - which does indeed suffer from a lot of craft issues but overall has some of the most terrifying ideas and images of all the films - and the non-stop attack of Aliens. If anyone can do it, Mr. Alvarez can. 

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Playlist:

Yawning Balch - Volume One

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Bite

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Are You Normal?

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - brainbloodvolume

Chris Brokaw - Puritan

Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over

Man Man - Life Fantastic

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

• Page of Swords - Stop. Breathe. Assess. Applies to both my life at this very moment and my character's.

• Queen of Wands - Unceasing female energy. Know when you're fighting just for the love of fighting. Definitely Lisa's (my character)

• VII: The Chariot - Emerging Victorious from a trying time. Again, this applies to both me and Lisa. 

K has a low Vitamin D deficiency, and that means I have been tasked by her doctor with giving her inter-muscular Vitamin D injections once a week for the next four weeks, starting today. Have I mentioned how absolutely terrified of needles I am? 

In terms of Lisa, she will emerge victorious, but only at the cost of a major compromise. Once again, I read this as an acknowledgment that I'm on the right track.

Moon Wizard - Luminare

I'm not even certain how I stumbled across Moon Wizard, but hot damn am I glad I did. I LOVE this band! New album Sirens came out a few weeks ago and you can click on that Bandcamp Widget above or this link HERE and support these guys!

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NCBD:

Pretty big haul today. Let's get into it:

Two issues of Army of Darkness Forever remain after this one, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the three disparate timelines - Ash in the future, Evil Ash in the 90s, and Sheila in the Medieval Army of Darkness timeline - all coalesce. 

This Cobra Commander series is the best damn thing since sliced bread. My Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Shin stole a peak at this one while putting it on the shelves at his shop, and without revealing anything, his "Damn," pronouncement has me giddy A.F. for tomorrow.

Love the cover. I was happy to learn that Larry Hama's seminal G.I.JOE: ARAH is making such a triumphant resurgence, and I'm happy to do my part. Even with an almost 200 issue gap in my reading, I'm digging returning to the book that turned me into a hardcore comic fan. 

Johnny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. With old buds John Constantine and Alec Holland's Swamp Thing back together again, what madness awaits? We shall see...

I feel like the second issue of this just came out. The other side of the Fall of X coin, I'm digging Al Ewing's approach to this a lot. As I mentioned in a recent episode of Drinking with Comics, this shares some DNA with his 2021 Defenders series, of which I was a pretty big fan. 

Hate to see this chapter in Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Bone Orchard Mythos go, but with the world-building going on in the previous two issues, I'm psyched that however Tenement ends, it will pave the way for future great things.

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty skeptical about this one. That said, I've come this far not to finish this whole Fall of X thing out, and the four-issue X-Men: Forever appears to be the caboose on Kieron Gillen's train, so let's do this, for better or worse.

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Watch:

Fede Alvarez, I'd follow you into hell, because tomorrow...

Is today...

Can't F**kin' wait! 

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Playlist:

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Moon Wizard - Sirens

The Obsessed - Gilded Sorrow

Goat Snake - Black Age Blues

Yawning Balch - Volume One

Fvnerals - Let the Earth be Silent

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Also, Grimm recently launched a Kickstarter for his new deck, The FaeBound Tarot, which you can marvel at and acquire HERE.

• IX: The Hermit

• Queen of Pentacles

• Five of Cups

There's the Hermit in first position again. That's two days in a row, so let's look a little deeper into it. From the grimoire: "Dark & lonely period of gestation. Fetal; a re-grouping. This is EXACTLY where I'm at after two days of working on the last act of the novel. It's uncanny. The Queen of Pentacles - or the Emotional aspect of Earthly concerns is my protagonist Lisa exactly. The Five of Cups is the Emotional Conflict she is soon to be crushed under in determining how best to survive the events of the novel's final conflict. I don't necessarily see guidance for my way forward in these cards, but they definitely feel like a nod to the fact that I'm on the right path. To quote Deputy Hawk: 

"You're on the path. You don't need to know where it leads. Just follow."