RIP Peter Steele - Ten Years Gone

Ten years. Unbelievable.

Isolation Day 33: Man or AstroMan?!

Mr. Brown sent me this link a few days ago, but I've only just got around to watching it. This went up six years ago, which is probably around the last time I saw Astroman live, at the Echo in LaLaLand. It'd been years before that since I'd seen them play live. Astroman was one of the staples of artists I saw on what feels like a regular basis in the late 90s, thanks to Mr. Brown's excellent taste in curating live shows. I guess that era has been on my mind, because two nights ago I broke out some Reverend Horton Heat - who I don't listen to nearly enough these days, and who was also a staple live show back when we'd frequent Chicago's Double Door, Empty Bottle, Lounge Axe, Metro, etc. Anyway, great set from a great band. KEXP: You fight the greatest fight! Thank you for all these wonderful live sessions; you are the John Peel of the PACNW.

**

Reading:

I blew through Charles Stross' Atrocity Archives in a matter of days. Now I'm tucked into Juan F. Thompson's memoir Stories I Tell Myself, about growing up with Hunter S. Thompson as his father. Great book, but much like Will Bingley and Anthony Hope Smith's Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thomspon, or rather Alan Rinzler's forward to that book, Juan Thompson's book doesn't always paint his father in the best light.

Not that it's trash-talking. No, JFT very obviously loved and looked up to his father. And to be clear: Obviously we are all multi-faceted organisms, with ups and downs, lights and darks, successes and failures. But seeing the first-hand ugliness of someone I consider a literary inspiration is tough. This is especially true as, after my recent viewing of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas film adaptation, I am further possessed of an idea that first began setting in back about fifteen years ago - the fact that maybe Hunter S. Thompson wasn't a very good person at all. Does that matter? Was Burroughs a 'good' person? Martin Amis? DOES IT MATTER?

Well, yes. A bit.

The first time I had this sense that maybe Hunter S. Thompson was kind of a fucked up person who did things that weren't very cool was the opening chapter of the Literary Greatest Hits Songs of the Doomed. 'Let the Trails Begin' tells the story of Thompson's late night arrival at a library, and his manipulations of the poor sod working there border on the actions of a narcissistic sociopath. Even if that poor sod was a criminal and a plagiarist. Then again, in re-reading Let the Trials... this morning while penning this, it occurs to me, is any of this supposed to be taken at face value? That's the the thing with Gonzo as an aesthetic/mission statement/lifestyle choice: to what extent are we supposed to take what's written at face value? There's metaphor, prose, fact, all manner of lingual possibilities, but truly, all of this may have happened and none of it may have happened. The entire scenario is so outlandish it seems impossible. Then again, a lot of what HST is known for exists in a fringe-state of mutated factoid observation. What do we do with that? I've always taken the man's work in at the gut - kind of an amalgam of the heart and the brain - but that leaves the rational, box-checking part of me hesitant in discussing the actualities of all this.

Certainly JFT's memoir of the late night, intoxicated fights and psychological bullying sessions his mother and father put on during his childhood and early adolescence are harrowing to insert into my understanding of someone whose writing makes me infinitely happy, so there's a bit of cognitive dissonance that needs sorting out as I read this. That said, as I'm sure the man himself would appreciate, the truth is the truth, but ultimately the truth may not need interfere with the work.

Or is that also the problem with our current moment? Alternative facts? No, Thompson didn't traffic in that. Neither does his son. Both are worth reading.

Dipping back into the world of HST is long overdue and absolutely wonderful. Like Irvine Welsh, HST is one of my all-time favorite writers, one I purposely do not read much of anymore, as both author's tones influence my own writing in a way that doesn't quit gel with what I have been working on for the last seven years or so (genre). That said, what I am working on at the moment, during the COVID ordeal and this long moment of isolation is actually something I originally penned in 2007/8, back when I was still reading both Thompson and Welsh on a daily basis, so picking up JFT's book might have seemed a tangent at first, but now stands revealed as, well, perfect.

**

Playlist:

TV On the Radio - Dear Science
Code Orange - Underneath
Drab Majesty - Careless
White Lung - Paradise
Paramore - Riot
Paramore - All We Know Is Falling
Brand New - God and the Devil Are Raging Inside Me
Arthur Albes - Gold
NIN - Ghosts V: Together
Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
Disclosure - Ecstasy EP
Sofi Tukker - Treehouse

Card:

Opening up good things and finding more good things inside of them.

Isolation: Day 30 - Kenny Hoopla

A friend shared this with me yesterday and I immediately fell in love. Mr. Hoopla has no proper albums as of now, however, there's a handful of singles I've turned into a playlist, and all of it's good.

**

Breaking Bad re-watch is now in full effect. We're just inside Season Two now, and although K - who'd never seen it before - had some trepidations, I'm happy to report that, like me back when it aired, the fulminated Mercury scene was the final straw in her falling in love with the show.

**

Director Marc Meyers' new film We Summon the Darkness hit VOD yesterday, and it's on my weekend agenda to watch it and hopefully get at least a few of The Horror Vision folks together on Zoom to do a review/reaction.



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Some old friends of mine are bringing back something they originally created about fourteen years ago. Every Friday night at 7:00 PM PST, The Top Floor goes live on Twitch and Youtube. If the webcam-interactive dance party was waaaay ahead of its time back in the middle 00s, it's absolutely perfect for the current moment we find ourselves in, and one hell of a good time. Drop in; you might be able to catch me and some friends making complete asses of ourselves!

**

Playlist:

Killing Joke - Night Time
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy - OST
Childish Gambino - because the internet
Kenny Hoopla - Singles Playlist
White Lung - Paradise
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
King Khan and the Shrines - What Is?!
††† - Crosses
Sofi Tukker - Treehouse
Disclosure - Ecstasy EP

Card:

Diligence in dealing with practical matters.

Isolation: Day 27 - Second Still PTP Sessions

A track from their Part Time Punks Session Cassette floated to the top of my youtube channels this morning, and in listening to it, I realized glorious LA post punk band Second Still released a full-length record last year that I somehow totally missed! Time to remedy that - Violet Phase is available on the band's Bandcamp HERE, although as I write this I see all physical versions of the album are sold out. In the meantime, here's the track that started this morning's odyssey.

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I'm pretty damn happy to still have a job, so I'm helping out in any way I can. We've been rotating shorter hours, and as such, I ended up with yesterday off. Here's the watchlist:



Letterboxd



Letterboxd



Letterboxd



Letterboxd

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Playlist:

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy - OST
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond
Killing Joke - Night Time
David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Childish Gambino - because the internet
Second Still - Violet Phase
White Lung - Paradise
Dio - Lock Up the Wolves

**

No Card.

Isolation: Day 26 - Living Nudes

Living Nudes is the bedroom brainchild of the man who runs Heavenisanincubator. Yesterday, I saw a tweet that they'd released a new track titled - appropriately enough - Growing Global Pandemic Got Me Down. It's awesome. Go HERE to check it out, and if you dig, it's set up for a "name your price" purchase. Can't beat that.

**

The vocal harmonies that make up the center piece of this new Living Nudes track haunted me all day, and seemed to echo through my mind during the night, mixing with images from the second episode of HBO's Chernobyl, our perhaps foolishly chosen before-bed watch last night.



The resonance this show has with our own current moment is terrifying. World leaders telling people everything is fine when it certainly is not, sealing potentially millions of people's fates in a terrifying refusal to own up to a situation unlike any the planet has ever seen before. In watching this and now re-reading reports on the Chernobyl crisis, we're all lucky those officials in 1986 didn't destroy life on the entire planet.

Mindful Habitation:

Speaking of mass human destruction, you have to ask: will the slow-to-start response by certain world leaders during today's crisis finish what the Soviet's began? Only time will tell, but with the Orwellian nature of our world seemingly proved by captain hairdo's surge in approval ratings, well, maybe we fucking deserve it, eh? Not really, but an objective, non-human look at things definitely makes it easy to understand why this is happening. I mean, if you refuse to hold the lessons of the past in your head and your heart, how can your future be any different? Or is it the people making the decisions just don't care, because they have advantages most of us don't?

Yeah, I'm leaning toward door number two as well. But then, I'm also trying to stay positive. The peak is coming folks. Stay in your homes...

courtesy of https://brancastudio.bigcartel.com/

One of the funniest things I've seen in years. Thanks to Jonathan Grimm for sending it my way. If you need a pick-me-up, might I suggest after hitting Living Nudes' Bandcamp, you stop by his shop and browse all the damn awesome stuff he has for sale with his inimitable art adorning?


**

Playlist:

Wire - Pink Flag
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold The World
Foster the People - Torches
Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1
Pearl Jam - Gigaton
Childish Gambino - 3.15.20
Childish Gambino - because the internet
Living Nudes - Growing Global Pandemic Got Me Down
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Steve Lynch - Let Us Prey

**

Card:

From the Grimoire: "A new project or a sudden change in material fortune/status." Playing this one close to the chest so as not to tempt the Universe to smack me upside the back of the head.

Isolation: Day 23 - RIP Bill Withers

Bill Withers passed away a few days ago. I love this man's music; it echoes up from my childhood, one of my earliest exposures to Soul music. This song in particular has a lot of meaning for me, not only because I love it and it always makes me feel better, but because I put it on one of the early mix tapes I made for K when we first began dating. And yes, I used actual cassette tapes.


**

Finished Ozark Season Three. Good lord, it is going to be hard to wait for Season Four, especially not knowing when or if it might arrive after our current Global Crisis. In the meantime, I with Devs approaching the final episode (only two left), I think I may push to finally show K Breaking Bad, with the ulterior motive of finally being able to catch up on Better Call Saul afterward.



**

Chris Saunders and I recently relauched a Quarantine-approved version of Drinking with Comics. Not a replacement for the regular, live video-show, this spin-off, aptly named Drinking w/ Comics: The Conversation, is meant to be a podcast-only discussion of, well, comics. This first episode finds Chris and I discussing comic shop innovations during Quarantine, as well as what we've been reading, which includes but is not limited to Joe Hill's Hill House books, Mirka Andolfo's Mercy, and Jonathan Hickman's Decorum. Check it out!



**

Playlist:

Wire - Pink Flag
Prists - Nothing Feels Natural
Drudkh - Autumn Aurora
Apple Music Playlists - Blackgaze Pioneers
Helmet - Aftertaste
Slayer - Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel
BENNI - The Return
Steve Lynch - Let Us Prey OST
Anthrax - Among the Living
Wolves in the Throneroom - Two Hunters
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease
Carpathian Forest - Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods
Foster the People - Torches
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1 (Vinyl arrived!)

 **

Card:

The Six of Swords leads perfectly into today's Mindful Habitation: As the Orwellian nature of our world - a state derived primarily through the Internet's ease of access to both true and falsified information and humanity's increasingly rabid need for convenience over actual rational, logic-based thought - continues to provide baffling reports of what's happening, remember. Everything except Science is, at this point, extrapolatory at best and anecdotal or misleading at worst. We are still firmly in the forest, and thus, have no way of counting how many trees we will pass before we exit. Science, while not entirely accurate - nothing beyond the subatomic level is - is our best bet at survival.

And yes, I made the word extrapolatory up just now, but feel cheated that it doesn't already exist, at least officially.

Isolation Day 20: Priests!

During a pretty lucrative writing session yesterday I leaned on White Lung for momentum, and in doing so, inadvertently discovered Priests. Great band! The lyrics to 'Appropriate' - the lead song on 2017's Nothing Feels Natural are so insightful they hurt!

**

I sat down and watched Stuart Gordon's Stuck, a film that had been on my list for years, and which until recently I had completely forgotten was Gordon's. Really dark, sometimes funny, overall great. Read my small Letterbxd review HERE.



I'd never noticed it before, and maybe it's not true of Gordon's more phantasmagorical works, but this one really reminded me of Larry Cohen's work. I might try to squeeze in one of his films today, you know, since we have all this bloody time on our hands.

**

Beyondfest's Twitter account has been a bastion in this trying time. Earlier today they tweeted out the link to American Cinematheque Chief Projectionist Ben Tucker essentially giving a tour of the Egyptian's Projection Booth. I've been meaning to join the American Cinematheque for years, and I think now is when I will finally pull the trigger on that.



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Playlist:

Wire - Pink Flag
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Soundgarden - Bad Motorfinger
Seefeel - Fracture/Tied (Single)
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb
Slayer -  Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel
White Lung - Eponymous
White Lung - Sorry
Priests - Nothing Feels Natural
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST

**

Card:

Again. From the Grimoire, "...skill and/or wisdom..." because I'm finally making real headway on what I'm working on.