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!
...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.
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.
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!"
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.
"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.
I JUST found out that the new Deftones album, Gore, drops April 8th.
Fuck yes!!!
Also found out they released the first single today. Went to look for it and it had been taken down almost everywhere I looked. But here it is and it is, as usual, awesome!
The new Drinking w/ Comics is up! King Harbor Brewing from Redondo Beach very generously sponsored this episode where we welcome Jenny Wenger, Curtis Fortier and Chris Saunders to talk about their recent performances in The Comic Bug's Development Hell performance of Joss Whedon's abandoned Wonder Woman script!
Listening to The Self-Titled Show on KXLU while driving home from work tonight I heard this song and it just sank straight through my center mass. Wow. Reminds me of the first time I heard The Vanishing Kids, back at Chicago's now defunct long-time club Neo (sad face). The entire record by Drab Majesty - who I am going to try like hell to go and see on March 5th at The Smell ( this Saturday's gig opening for Black Queen is, of course, sold out) - is just fantastic and is available on the band's bandcamp here. Digital copies are limited to 300 copies so if you dig this, grab it NOW!
In the forthcoming Drinking w/ Comics #30 one of our guests was/is Curtis Fortier, stand-up comedian, writer, actor... jack of all entertaining trades on infinite Earths. He dropped a mention of this web series he wrote and starred in and I finally got around to watching it this evening. I love it and can't wait for more.
I forgot to post this here when it went up. Ruben Gerard, creator of the wonderful Penny Strikes is the guest, Monkish, Anchor and Inland Empire beer is consumed and a good time talking about an artist's process, comics and caricatures is had by all!
I had a Bowie party this past Saturday night. Good friends, a bunch of alcohol and nothing but Bowie. It was wonderful.
The highlight of the night was my good friend Grez picking up my now long-neglected acoustic parlor guitar and leading a sing-along of Space Oddity, Ziggy Stardust, and - of course - Heroes. It was wonderful that Grez was able to time his trip to land smack dab in the middle of this (I picked him up from LAX at 8:15 and the party began pretty much as soon as we got back to my crib.)
It has now been a week since David Bowie passed and I'm still in a funk. I'm not the super-fan that has every record, knows every lyric, every everything about Bowie. His importance to me has evolved over the course of my life, from the guy on the classic rock radio station in the car whose songs I dug, to the enigma that surfaced in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (that's when I became really interested) to the man who made one of my all-time favorite records in 2003 - Reality. That led to the full-on, "Now I start buying a bunch of his music" phase and, well, here we are. Still hard to believe the Starman is gone.
My good friend John hit me with this last night but I was stuck in the editing suite finishing Dw/C #30. Watched this first thing this morning and well, I can honestly say I CANNOT WAIT!!!
It's hard to look at Bowie at times during this video. Upon the release of the Black Starvideo/short film last month I found myself slightly unsettled at how he looked as though he had aged 30 years in the three years since we'd last since him in the videos released for The Next Day. After news of his death first thing this morning I learned of the release of another video after Black Star just a few days ago on the 7th of this month. Lazarus is, as this AV Club article so succinctly posits, a farewell.
The wherewithal and sheer force of will to complete make an album as a final statement, knowing you are dying, is unbelievable. I'm reminded of author Jay Lake, how he blogged his own death realtime, narrating his battle with cancer. As horrible as this is it is also amazing, as death is most inevitably a part of life, and a part that we know little about- emotionally, mentally - because it is private, and hard, and difficult to discuss, even with ourselves. Finally David Bowie died as he lived - bold, up front and totally owning his situation, converting it to Art.
If that's not one of the best ways to go I've ever heard I don't know what is. We often look to musicians and artists as inspiration, role models for how to live. Knowing that I will one day die I hope I can do so with at least a modicum of the dignity and creative force that Bowie died with. It's truly magnificent.
This particular arrangement is, in my opinion at least, the perfected version of this song.
Sad day. The Man Who Feel to Earth has returned to where he came from. As is often the case when we lose an artist we love we binge their music, scrambling suddenly to acquire some of the albums we may have put off buying. In Bowie's case there are SO MANY I don't have them all, you probably don't either (although some of you most certainly do). If you're looking to celebrate the life of this wonderful, wonderful artist by adding to your Bowie collection I strongly recommend purchasing his 2003 album Reality and the accompanying double live disc from that tour.
Reality is BY FAR my favorite Bowie album - and that's saying something because I really like Bowie. It is the most original and unique of his work, in my opinion. The live disc is 33 career-spanning tracks, many of which have been re-worked, re-arranged and re-vitalized. Loving the Alien is a great example of that, but there's also an unbelievable arrangement on Earthling's I'm Afraid of Americans and Outside's Motel.
...at 7:30 PM, streaming Live from Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug, the best damn comic shop in So Cal! Our guests will be several of the cast of the Bug's recent live table read of Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman script. D w/C is excited to welcome Jennifer Wenger - to you that's Wonder Woman! - Curtis Fortier - aka Steve Trevor - and sound designer extraordinaire Chris Saunders (also upright bass player for the inimitable Thirsty Crows and the man who designed this beee-ooo-tiful flyer!)
If you haven't watched/heard the read you can watch it on youtube here or on iTunes. Steaming of Dw/C issue #30 will be available on the Dw/C youtube channel here, or like us on Facebook and watch for the live link to magically appear around 7:30 PM on Monday, January 18th.
...is one of the best damn horror stories I've read in some time that doesn't have the name "Laird Barron" on it somewhere. Mr. Ballingrud is the real deal and what he does in 60 something pages is worth 500 of a lot of other horror writers. What's he do you ask?
Gives me the heebie goddamn jeebies, that's what! The Visible Filth plays with that special place horror doesn't always know how to get to, the modern world; it is a story that makes small incisions in our technological awareness of ourselves, and once inside lays eggs of paranoia and revulsion. To borrow the name of Mr. Ballingrud's publisher and use it as an exclamation, This is Horror.
Also, many thanks to Justin Steele for the indirect recommendation.
