Joe Bob Briggs @ Beyondfest 2019!

It's 3:31 AM as I begin this post. I've been up for nearly 24 hours. This is what I'm listening to - Paul Zaza's score for the 1981 My Bloody Valentine. I'm tired, but I have to tell you all something... shhh... lean in close...

I saw Joe Bob Briggs live tonight! He was amazing! Seriously, if you know who Joe Bob is, you probably know he's semi-touring the states doing his How Rednecks Saved Hollywood lecture. I expected it to be in-depth and scholarly, but holy cow. How Rednecks Saved Hollywood is nearly three hours long and, well, professorial is the word I would use. I mean, Joe Bob traces the roots of the 'Redneck' back to late the late Elizabethian era of England, then winds up through the Beverly Hillbillies, Deliverance, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Burt Reynolds. It's fascinating, educational, extremely entertaining, and well worth your time if he comes anywhere near your town.

Following JBB we hung around the Egyptian Theatre for the second Beyondfest feature of the night, the newly restored, gore-encrusted version of Stewart Raffill's Tammy and the T-Rex. Now this, this is also worth your time, but in a completely different way than Joe Bob. This is camp done in a hysterical intellectual capacity, and it really has to be experienced to be believed. You'll read about it, or hear someone talk about it, but you will NEVER understand its magic until you see it.

Playlist from 9/30:

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak Version)
Type O Negative - World Coming Down
NIN - The Downward Spiral
Nocturnal Projections - Complete Studio Recordings
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Monolord - No Comfort
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST

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Card of the day:

I still have to get back to taking care of business, and she's a reminder. I have tomorrow off, so it should be productive.

Sunday, September 29th

Two albums after this song made its way into the world on Black Gives Way to Blue it gets a video, and I'm reminded how much this band continues to steal my heart, against all possible odds. Jerry Cantrell - I love you. All you guys. Thank you for a lifetime of amazing, touching music.

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Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson's Paperbacks From Hell does an amazing job recontextualizing horror literature over the last forty or so years, and Errickson's blog Too Much Horror Fiction has been chronicling lost corners of the genre for years. We know this, and while a large part of the charm of reading PfH is seeing all those wonderful paperback covers in one place, there's also decades worth of pulp Sci-Fi/Fantasy cover art lining the shelves of history. In the interest of celebrating and cataloging some of those covers time forgot, I'm starting a new segment here on the blog: Sunday Sci-Fi Cover Art. This should be fun.



I'll kick it off with this gem, Daniel Galouye's Dark Universe, which I know nothing about, but after reading a short synopsis I definitely intend on tracking down and reading:

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Playlist 9/28:

Black Sabbath - Sabotage
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Halloween Playlist

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A call to arms - I need to organize and devise new systems of routine, as last week's illness has completely thrown my systems out of whack and it's proving difficult to get them back online. See all that red? Martial - tough love is needed.

AHS 1984 Ep 2...

... is going to serve as the episode that marked my fervor for this season. Without treading into spoiler territory, the scene with a certain female character and Richard Ramirez having a heart-to-heart, and the darkness it hints at in said character, blew me away. From this point, I'm in, and what's more, I'm rabidly awaiting the next episode!

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I dug out my first edition of Stephen King's Night Shift - which I found in a Las Vegas thrift store years ago - and re-read Gray Matter, the basis for the first episode of Shudder's new Creepshow series' inaugural story. The reading confirms it - Creepshow's version is a fantastic adaptation of a lesser-known King story, both versions being creepy as all hell.

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Playlist from 9/27:

Opeth - In Cauda Venenum
Emilie Autumn - Opheliac
Heaven and Hell - The Devil You Know

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No card today.

Opeth - Next of Kin

Opeth's new album In Cauda Venenum dropped this morning and after listening to it, I find it's the first of the 'prog' Opeth that I really like. Maybe enough time has passed that I'm not still pining for the Opeth that gave us Blackwater Park and Deliverance, or maybe I've just come around some kind of corner with the band, but I'm digging this record.

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If the first episode is any indication, Shudder and Greg Nicotero absolutely NAILED Creepshow. Talk about forty-five minutes of heaven. You can hear The Horror Vision's spoiler-free reaction/discussion at any of the links below:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

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New Desert Sessions? Fantastic news!

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Playlist from 9/26:

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III

Imperial Teen - Now We Are Timeless

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

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No card today.

The Color Out of Space West Coast Premiere

There's not even a trailer yet, so all I can give you at the moment is this beautiful poster image, which is quite indicative of the film. I attended the West Coast Premiere of Richard Stanley's adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space last night at Beyondfest. A great film! I stayed up late putting together a quick, under five minute review of the film for The Horror Vision, you can link to it below. In a nutshell, as with several other movies of late, I liked The Color Out of Space just fine for the first two acts, with only one or two small gripes, but when the third act rolled around, it cinched the entire film together for me and I ended up really liking it. Specifics at the links below:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

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New Foals! Like the first Part in this pair of albums, they sound as lush and haunting as ever.

New album, that second part of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost drops October 18th, pre-order HERE.

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Recent Playlist:

Sausage - Riddles Are Abound Tonight

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Air - Talkie Walkie

Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth

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Card of the day:

Fire of Fire. Charge forward, pick your battles, and focus Will and Intellect. I'm taking this as confirmation I should finish something I've been hesitant to, a story that has languished in a state of perpetual 'almost finished' for some time. One last charge, then it hits the idea limbo for the foreseeable future.

RIP Sid Haig

Moments after I posted yesterday's page here I learned that Sid Haig passed away. This seemed inescapable after all the reading I'd done late last week about why he had such a small role in Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell, and sure enough, one week to the day after the film's release, we lost Captain Spaulding. I can think of no great tribute than the scene I've posted above; other than the intro to Way of the Gun, this is possibly my favorite to any movie ever.

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This record is absolutely fantastic!

After stumbling across it's premature release late last week and posting about it here, I ended up truncating my first listen; last week was my on-call shift at work, and during those weeks I always refrain from smoking, which I knew I wanted to do for my first go-through on this one. So yesterday, after turning the phone over to the next person in the rotation, I returned home after work and hit the ol' dugout, then put on my headphones and lay on the bed listening - and I mean full-attention, not doing anything else listening - to the album all the way through.

It's epic. My favorite Blut Aus Nord record since Memoria Vetusta II, probably because this feels like a direct sequel to that record, even more than Memoria Vetusta III does. Epic, cosmic, and majestic,  Hallucinogen takes me straight to the stars, and I love it.

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NCBD: This will be the first week in number of weeks that anything I read comes out, so I'm pretty excited:

After mis-reporting it last month, here it is, just in time to coincide with my re-read of the series: Black Science ends with issue forty-three!

Two Remender books in the same week - always a great thing!

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Playlist from 9/23:

Air - Talkie Walkie
Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth
Rob Zombie - Hellbilly Deluxe 2
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

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Card of the day:

Despite not having a formal writing session yesterday, I did a pretty good deal of research and I had a massive breakthrough on a major aspect of the overall Shadow Play story. It would seem the suggestion for today is to do a little housekeeping and translate some of those notes into actual story Bible material.

New Trailer for Shudder's Creepshow!

This Thursday! Can't wait.

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The Writing Process:

Lots of intense bursts of inspiration for Shadow Play Book Two: The Absence of Light. I have a general outline, sort of, but there's so much ground to cover and a lot of jumping around in the timeline, which currently runs from about 1576 to 2019, with one chapter most likely occurring in early pre-history. This is easily the most ambitious story architecture I've ever attempted, but it feels strong and alive in a way that is increasingly energizing. Which is great, because lately, I've had a lot of ups and downs with all the short stories I've been working on over the last year, and the first book of Ciazarn is largely written, but I can't quit nail the tone, so I'm easing away for the time being on that one. Frustrations are amplified by the fact that most of these issues would probably work themselves out if I could just get back on a consistent writing schedule. Hoping that happens this week.

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Super excited to announce I'll be doing a bit of a collaboration with my good friend Mr. Brown. I've never really been an X-Files fan; I don't have anything against it, but I also have never really gotten into it beyond a dalliance with the 'mythology' episodes way back in the day, which dried up as it became apparent the story wasn't really mapped out to conclude in any satisfying way. Or maybe I'm wrong - I liked some of what I saw, but could never commit to a regular watch-schedule with it, despite being sexually obsessed by Gillian Anderson in my late teens/early twenties.

But I digress...

Brown asked me recently if I'd be into the idea of him curating a playlist of stand alone X-Files episodes, the idea being I would watch them and write a little something about them as I go. I love this idea, as I trust Brown's taste implicitly, and have always wanted someone to show me just what the hell everyone loved about this show in the 90s. This is the perfect time for such a project as well; 31 Days of Horror begins next week, and I figure on days with little watch time, I could pepper in some X-Files. I have the list and can't wait to start!

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Recent Playlist:

Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth
Carpenter Brut - Trilogy
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Drab Majesty - Careless
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
Boy Harsher - Careful
Rob Zombie - Hellbilly Deluxe
Monolord - No Comfort
Joseph Loduca - Evil Dead 2 OST
John Carpenter - Prince of Darkness OST

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Card of the day:

Turning. Changing. Cycles. You can see on the diagram below that Atu X: Fortune manifests as the path between Mercy and Victory. Not sure how to read that in my own current context, but while digging around online for the image below, I came across something I'd never really noticed about Fortune - The Wheel or The Wheel of Fortune in other decks. It moves counter clockwise. Macro-definitions aside, I'm looking at this today as a nod to move forward in reverse-engineering something that has been giving me a bit of trouble.