I am destroyed by this news.
Thursday, January 16, 2025
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Daredevil: Born Again Trailer
I woke up with this in my head this morning and had to post. Such a gorgeous song!
From Man Man's 2008 album Rabbit Habits, now a certified classic in my book. Check out Man Man's website HERE.
Watch:
It feels like a long time since I cared about anything Marvel has done on the large or small screen. I recently tried to pick up Secret Invasion, where I left off before the strike and just found I couldn't care less. This, however, has my blood up:
I'd previously read the new Marvel Daredevil continuity would eschew any connection to the previous Netflix series, but that does not seem to be the case. Also, holy cow, is that the White Tiger we see? Also, fucking awesome to have Bernthal return as Frank Castle. March 4th I know what I'll be watching!
Playlist:
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Rollins Band - The End of Silence
Mudhoney - March to Fuzz: Best Of and Rarities
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
Drug Church - Hygiene
Aidan Baker & Dead Neanderthals - Cast Down And Hunted
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
Card:
Today's card is the Queen of Cups:
The emotional aspect of emotion, so this is a card that often needs a qualifying pull. Deals with deep, emotional realms of the personality. Associated with Binah, the Mother. Can indicate finding answers in dreams and/or imagination.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Bring Me the Disco King 2. Remix
As an addendum to Bowie Week, I discovered this Danny Lohner remix of Bring Me the Disco King last night and wanted to post it here. I'll say right away it's interesting, and I dig it, but I love the original version of the song so much that there's really no room in my life for this. Still, I view this site as equal parts personal journal and information dump and part open-source information for whoever stumbles across it, so I felt I needed to record this for posterity's sake.
The addition of John Frusciante's fragile guitar is a nice touch, and the video is cool in a very 00s kind of way.
Watch:
I rewatched Jeremy Kasten's 2007 remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Wizard of Gore. People give this movie a lot of shit because it's a 00s remake, and it's also very of its time; the 00s were just not an appealing cultural time. Also, it has the dubious distinction of having been released under the "Dimension Extreme" label, arguably a driving force in ruining 00s Horror.
This flick eschews a lot of that, though, by building its own little pastiche of a world. As a kind of mash-up of a splatter flick and a Noir, Kasten and writer Zach Chassler (working off the original script by Lewis) create a kind of fetish-hipster-Nor L.A. that's all cool reclaimed spaces and lofts. As Danny! and Tim from the long-dormant Double Murder Podcast observed when they paired this film with the original, people like this - and I think they especially meant Kip Pardue's Edmund Bigelow, a trust-funder who completely dismisses modernity for the look and accouterment of the 40s - don't actually exist. True, and it becomes a bit of an affectation for the film. That said, watching the "making of" featurette after the film for the first time last night, Kasten talks about how Costume Designer Carrie Grace (who also worked on HBO's Doom Patrol) worked to ensure every single person on camera has their own specific, individual look. This just makes me think, in that sad, tired way I used to think when I had some hope and positivity in looking at the world, "Yeah, wouldn't it be amazing if that's the world we lived in? Everyone was an individual."
Is this film misogynistic? Hmmm.... maybe? One could argue the woman - naked, scantily dressed, or being butchered - are mere objects to the film; however, Kasten was forward-thinking enough to cast members of the Suicide Girls as Montag's fodder. Suicide Girls, as I understood it at the time anyway, was a movement by which the participants created their personas and online images based on personal empowerment - the then-exploding internet's first artistic or 'tasteful nudes' movement that took the exploitation out of pornographers' hands and gave it back to the subjects themselves. So just utilizing these particular girls kind of thwarts any sweeping generalization about the filmmaker's motives or misguided M.O.
The world and artistic design in this film are part of my big draw to it. Also, it has a very Lynch-like narrative that I honestly think is fascinating. The idea that "Nothing is as it seems" may be oft-overused, but here, it is most appropriate. Also, both Crispin Glover as the titular Wizard and Brad Douriff as the cantankerous Dr. Chong. Douriff's performance, in particular, hums with a barely restrained malevolence that conjures Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, sublimated under secrets and agendas. That's the entire movie - secrets and agendas, and when it all comes out in the wash, I'm always kind of blown away.
Read:
A couple of years ago, my good friend Jesus gave me Karl Klockars' Beer Lover's Chicago:
Knowing that I A) Love Beer, B) Hail from Chicago, and C) Haven't lived there for 16+ years, Jesus's prescience took a while for me to fully understand. This has been a 'bathroom' book for a while now, but lately, I find myself deeply interested in the stories of the breweries and taprooms contained in this book - hundreds of them. Chances are, they're not all still operational seven years after publication. That's the harsh reality and also possibly the reason I've become so interested in these stories. Any beer fan can attest to the shrinking shelf space at grocery and specialty stores alike as the "pre-mixed cocktails" craze gains steam. I want all these breweries to thrive, whether or not I ever get to sample their beers or not. I love a great beer-based success story.
Mr. Klockar has a pretty informative website as well, which you can find HERE.
And, of course, you can order the book HERE.
Playlist:
David Bowie - John I'm Only Dancing (Single; Sax Version)
David Bowie - Five Years 1969 - 1973
David Bowie - Young Americans
Windhand - Eponymous
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Testament - Practice What You Preach
NIN - Ghosts I-IV
Adrian Baker & The Dead Neanderthals - Cast Down and Hunted
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XIX: The Sun
• Eight of Swords
• Eight of Cups
Just a bargain-basement read right now, as I'm taxed and the bandwidth isn't really there:
Emotional and insightful avenues lead to a transformation of sorts. Something good is going to happen.
Monday, January 13, 2025
Bring Me the Disco King, Mr. Atkins
Bringing this year's Bowie Week to a close with possibly my favorite song by him, the closing track from 2005's Reality. I have a short story I wrote around the time this album came out that pertains to the mood and abstractions in this song, a time-traveling hitman stuck killing time in the 70s waiting for his target, the titular Disco King. I haven't even looked at it in probably twenty years; maybe one day soon.
I've probably posted this track here before. However, there is a very specific reason I'm posting it again now. Tune in tomorrow.
Watch:
Holy smokes - haven't been online all that much this weekend, so I just caught wind of this now, thanks to Bloody Disgusting:
Order from Shout Factory HERE.
Read the full BD article HERE.
Playlist:
Ruin of Romantics - Velvet Dawn
Steve Moore - VFW OST
David Bowie - Station to Station
Sunday, January 12, 2025
Station to Station
Continuing our David Bowie week-long celebration of his life and work, K and I watched Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth last night. I had not seen this in some time, and both of us sat captivated for the entire 2 hours and 19 minutes run time. Anthony B. Richmond's camera combines with Roeg's deliberate pacing to juxtapose Bowie's inherent renowned alien beauty with the beauty of the Earth. Such a great mission statement to approach source material about an alien on Earth. The supporting cast is extravagant - Candy Clark, Rip Torn and Buck Henry* all turn in fantastic performances, but it's Bowie's grace and reserved performance that really makes this film what it is. You literally could not have cast anyone else and had this work the way it does.
* Being that Buck Henry was also in Friday night's viewing of The Linguini Incident, I guess you could spin my weekend celebration as a Buck Henry double-feature as well.
Friday, January 10, 2025
I Can't Give Everything Away
One of the most touching tracks on an album filled with touching tracks.
Watch Bowie:
Being that yesterday was Friday night and the ninth anniversary of David Bowie's death, I wanted to do more than just listen to his music. I decided to watch a movie with Bowie. I'd recently noticed the Criterion Channel added a Bowie playlist that had The Man Who Fell To Earth on it, and it's been quite some time since I watched that one. En route, however, my finger stalled on the remote as the cursor passed over a different film - one I don't remember ever hearing about before:
Super fun film Directed by Richard Shepard. Reminds me a bit of After Hours, a bit of Quick Change, and a bit of The Dark Backward and The Birdcage (which came after). Spoiler-free Letterbxd review HERE, but the long and the short of it, with Bowie as the male lead, if you're a fan and missed this like I did, see it!!!
Watch:
Oh my god. This movie!!!
Read nothing! If this hadn't gotten a small theatrical run late last year and I could count it toward next year's best of, I have faith that twelve months from now, this would still be in my top ten. Holy F*CK! Kudos to Nick Frost on writing and starring in this, and Steffen Haars for Directing. Everyone involved does a smashing job!
Playlist:
David Bowie - Low
Windhand - Eternal Return
David Bowie - Black Star
David Bowie - Station to Station
David Bowie - Santa Monica '72
Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST
Horna - Nyx Hymnejä Yölle
Ruin of Romantics - Velvet Dawn
RIP David Bowie - 9 Years Gone
January 10th - nine years ago today David Bowie soared from Earth. Hopefully, he's bringing joy through music to some distant cosmic race (and we'll eventually be able to get copies on vinyl!).
Watch:
Lowell Dean, the Writer/Director of Wolfcop, has a new Horror movie based around an underground Wrestling match meant to raise the Dark Lord? In, 100%.
Even though I don't count myself a wrestling fan, this looks pretty fun.
Read:
I've been suffering a spot of insomnia and using it to blow through Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola's Joe Golem and the Drowning City.
"In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance. Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run. Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him."
This is the first of several collaborations between Mignola and Golden that I'm reading, and I have my good friend Chris Saunders to thank for gifting me a beautiful hardcover copy last year during my trip to L.A.
Playlist:
Mick Jagger - Strange Game (Theme from Slow Horses single)
David Bowie - Black Star
Laylow -.Raw
L.A. Witch - Eponymous
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Arcade Fire - Everything Now
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Mr. Bungle - Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
David Bowie - Outside
David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia OST
Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)
Al B. Sure! - Nite and Day (single)
Diana Ross - Missing You (single)
Karate - Unsolved
Card:
Today's card is the Five of Wands - Strife:
From the grimoire: "Often signals the querent is unhappy with a situation such as work or home, but can also indicate inner conflict. Introduces the suite of Wands/For of Will undercurrent of moral or ethical issues (what will ultimately happen to other in the pursuit of our Will?).
Chaos that can prove growth."
Fives are Geburah - Severity; Mars. Fives are demanding cards.
So what are they demanding?
There's a balance found in Four that is interrupted by Five. This is demanding growth! Growth is Chaos, and in pursuing growth, we often offset others' balance as well as our own. So this is a 'tread with caution, but definitely tread!!!" card.
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