RIP Ronnie Spector

 

Seriously one of the most iconic voices of all time. So iconic, she makes me love an Eddie Money song.

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Watch:

The sting of the anniversary of David Bowie's death and now Ronnie Spector's passing was traversed by some really good news (thankfully, that's too many bummers to deal with in one week) - Ti West is returning with a new movie!!!

 

I am SO happy about this. West has directed a number of TV episodes (his two on Amazon's Them were incredible), but hasn't done a film since 2016's In A Valley of Violence (which is on Netflix and SO worth your time). West is easily one of the best directors working today, in my opinion, and I'm hoping having A24 distribute this new flick will A) put it in theatres for longer than a weekend, and B) herald his return to filmmaking.

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NCBD:

Not New Comic Book Day, exactly, but here's what I've picked up over the last few weeks via eBay and back issue bins:

I'd read the first issue of Hunger back when it first came out, then never continued. I've always wanted to go back and read the entire thing, though, because I'm something of a Galactus fan, even though I haven't really read many stories with him. Maybe that's the Unicron fanboy in me, I don't know. There's a lot about the Fantastic Four's history and rogues gallery that I retain something of an armchair interest in, but never really do anything about. I'm glad I bought this, even if just for the image of Galactus tearing through a hole in the fabric of the 616 Universe and entering the Ultimate Universe

Next up, I started reading The Low Low Woods when it first dropped back in early 2020, but never acquired all the issues. I finally solved that. Here's the bad ass cover I just scored for the fifth issue:

I'd put a poster of that on my wall. It's gorgeous. The book itself has an amazing premise - girls go missing in a small rural town where coal fires have burned for decades, then return missing time. The execution leaves a little bit to be desired, but overall I dig it. And for whatever reason, I wanted the issues of this one instead of the collected edition.

And I finally replaced the original Dark Horse Aliens Vs Predator that went missing at some point over the last few years. No idea where these went, and even though my Horror Vision cohost gifted me a beautiful hardback collection of this one, I had to put my hands back on the original floppies I bought as they came out monthly (or maybe bi-monthly) back in 1990.

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Playlist:

John Coltrane - Blue Train

The Outfield - Play Deep

Alio Die and Lorenzo Montaná - The Threshold of Beauty

Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Un Hiver En Plein Été

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - In Summer EP

Crumb - Ice Melt

Zombi - Liquid Crystal

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

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Card:

Definite stagnation in creative areas at the moment, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel...

Yellowjackets

 

My friend and Horror Vision cohost Tori recently sent this track my way, and of course, once you hit play and hear the bassline that starts and runs through the song, you'll get why I immediately went back and looked up several records by Great Falls. This particular track can be found on the Split Single the band put out with Thou. Makes sense, right? Tough as nails, this. Love when those guitars come in just past the one-minute mark.

Here's a link to the Great Falls Bandcamp, where you can find more of their music. Also, here's a link to the label that put that split out, Hell Comes Home Records. Some great stuff on there, including the album Trust Fall by Xnoybis, which I stumbled upon while writing this and really quite liked. 

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Cast:

The new episode of The Horror Vision went up (a day late - thanks Wordpress, you fuck), and it's a full-on, ALL SPOILERS discussion about the first nine episodes of Yellowjackets, just in time to prepare us all for this week's season finale. 

I haven't had this much fun with a show since Twin Peaks. No shit. 

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NCBD:

Another NCBD! It's fairly light again, and my addiction has grown, so I might do what I've done the last two weeks and order some stuff online to accompany these. I'll post my recent eBay acquisitions on another day, for now, here's what I'll be bringing home from the shop tomorrow:

This one's been a fun ride so far. I'm really starting to love anything that has Reed Richards as a villain, 'cuz, you know, that's pretty much where he's been headed all along if you really think about it.

I haven't read the Joe Hill novella this series is adapting, but it's in Strange Weather, a collection of five novellas. I've read the first three over the last few months, and really dug them, so I'll pick this up and hold off until I get around to reading the story first. 

Jeff Lemire's Mazebook comes to a close and it looks as though we're getting our minotaur. This book has been super cool - you can see how personal it is to the author, which makes it feel weighty, but shot-through with a mystery that has really been something to watch unfold through Lemire's art. 

I am straight-up LOVING this newest series by Michael Rosenberg and Tyler Boss. What's the Furthest Place From Here? has become one of my most anticipated books each month. 

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Playlist:

PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

David Bowie - Let's Dance

David Bowie - Station to Station

Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1

Great Falls/Thou - Split (single)

Xnoybis - Trust Fall 

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Card:

A change in seasons or cycles. This is a HUGE point for me at the moment, as I have to migrate my entire podcasting setup from one service to another. It's nerve-wracking, but not nearly as much as every interaction I've had for every episode I've done through Wordpress for the last year. I should have changed this paradigm - this world - a long time ago. 

David Bowie

6 fucking years. Wow.

I'll never forget it. I had just staged an intervention with my eventually-to-be ex-wife. Her parents flew out from the Midwest and the three of them were staying with me, in what used to be our home (and thankfully was now just mine). Her stuff was stacked all over my living room, and I'd graciously given up my bed so everyone else could have a good night's sleep after their long ordeal and drive out of the high desert. In other words, my life appeared to be in a shambles, but in reality, the shambles was well and truly behind me. She was probably at her lowest point, but I was on an upswing. I'd had a fabulous weekend. I had prospects for a social life. I had friends. I sat on the chaise lounge watching Chef starring John Favreau with my outgoing father-in-law (nice guy), trading texts and emails with prospective new love interests, friends, laughing and drinking beer well into the night, even though I had to be up at 4:30 AM for work.

Cut to when my first alarm went off. I was sleeping on the couch, my phone was beside me on the floor. I snatched it up as soon as I heard that tell-tale wake-up chime and silenced it. This would have been before I switched to an iPhone, so I was in Android country. Not sure how that factors, other than it's a detail I remember, so it fills the scene in. A moment later the phone buzzed again - too soon to have out-distanced my snooze - and when I picked it up, I saw a text from my friend Tori. It said, simply:

Dude. David Bowie died. 

I felt at that moment that all the progress I'd made, everything, was for naught. David Bowie taught me how to age - how to grow older with grace. How to navigate life's unending menagerie of madness with tact. I'd just exhibited this lesson in the two-and-a-half years it took my marriage to end, to get to the point where I was, about to send my ex and her family off into the negative zone outside my own peripheral existence. And now, my teacher was dead.

Fuck.

Six years later, we return to the same stage - it's Sunday night while I'm typing this, the long-delayed love of my life curled up on the sofa by my side, Black Star playing on the stereo. I lost three cats, gained one, started a bunch of podcasts, ended one big one, gained friends, lost some, turned my back on others. Life continues to throw its curve balls at my head, and I duck and pop back up and smile.

Just like David Bowie taught me.

 

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Watch:

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Playlist:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Tennis System - Technicolor Blind

Tennis System - Lovesick

Tennis System  - Bitter (Single)

PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Depeche Mode - A Question of Lust EP

Boy Harsher - Careful

Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk

Beach House - Once Twice Melody (Disc 1)

Felicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Un Hiver En Plein Été

Fleet Foxes - A Very Lonely Solstice

Chet Baker - Baker's Holiday

The Yellow House - Refurbished

David Bowie - Black Star

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Card:

Transformation. 

Happy 75th Birthday to the Alien!

We miss you, sir. More than you could ever know.

 

Sunshine the Werewolf

 

Man, I miss this band.

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NCBD:

I'm not normally a huge fan of Chris Bachalo's art, but this cover is creepy AF. I've been a little disappointed in this Darkhold series, mainly because it wasn't a series at all, but an Alpha Book - which I dug - followed by a series of one-shot character books, i.e. The Darkhold: Spider-Man, The Darkhold: Iron Man, etcetera, none of which I was ever going to read. That means tomorrow I'm returning to the tale for the Omega issue, not really expecting much. I really thought there would be more Doom in this one. I guess I'll have to try another book dropping this week to get the Doom fix I was hoping for when I picked up the Alpha issue two months ago. That book?

I'm not following the Wastelanders books, but again, I've been in the mood for some Dr. Doom, so hopefully this will satisfy the craving. 

OH MY GOD I CAN'T WAIT TO READ THIS FINAL ISSUE OF INFERNO!!! 

Here I was thinking that there were going to be five issues of this series, and instead, Hickman brings his run on X-Men to a close this week with Inferno #4. I was late to this and I'm bummed it's ending, so I can only imagine how people who have been reading the entire time feel. I guess the big question is, will I stay on after. Well, the newest X-Men book - I feature issue 6 farther down on this list - is a keeper for the time being, but what about anything else? I mean, I'm not currently reading any of the other titles, and several are ending, but there's been solicitations for at least two books slated to launch over the next few weeks. X-Men: Red is one I'll definitely give a chance to, simply because it's being billed as a sequel to the recently ended S.W.O.R.D. book, which I read and loved. But I'm on the fence with Immortal X-Men, which although is said to focus on all the agendas in the mutant ruling body known as The Quiet Council, features Kieron Gillen as writer. I loved what I read of Gillen's The Wicked and the Divine, but ultimately it didn't hold me. Also, his recent take on The Eternals was definitely NOT for me, and his plans for the X-Men kinda sound similar.

We'll see. The trap I'm trying to avoid here is what I have long referred to as "fan inertia," where you dig a book so much, you keep reading it even after the writer who made you love it leaves. 

Often, not a good idea at all. 

Another badass cover. This second arc of Two Moons has really been throwing curveballs, can't wait to see where the story goes next.

I really have no idea what to expect from this book anymore, so I'm happy to just go with the flow. 

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Cast:

The latest issue of A Most Horrible Library went up on all podcast platforms yesterday. In it, Chris Saunders and I discuss, among other things, Jeff Lemire and Doug Mahnke's Swamp Thing: Green Hell, which I absolutely LOVED. 

Good to see a return to all-out Horror for a Swamp Thing tale.

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Playlist:

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Disassociation

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

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Card:

Two days in a row. Hmm...

Happy 60th Birthday, Peter Steele

 

To celebarate, the official Type O Negative youtube channel dropped this earlier today. Super cool Man do I miss Peter Steele.

Crossing Licorice

 

I've never really been able to keep track of this Chino Moreno side project, but I guess that's because it kind of gets lost amidst Deftones, Palms, Team Sleep and probably at least one other project I'm blanking on. Good thing I'm subscribed to their youtube feed - this popped up and I LOVE it. Not sure if there's a forthcoming album, but hopefully there will be something substantial because I think another reason I drop the ball on these guys is the only other 'full length' is a comp of singles - I think. 

 

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Watch:

I watched a bunch of flicks over the holiday, but the two I'd like to briefly discuss now are the new Paul Thomas Anderson film Licorice Pizza and Park Chan-Wook's seminal revenge classic Old Boy.

 

Licorice Pizza is another beautiful film by PTA, and being as it serves as Cooper Hoffman's first film, the introduction of someone I think we'll be seeing a lot more of in the coming years. There's a lot of talk that this film is racist because of a certain pair of scenes featuring an obnoxious restauranteur who speaks to his Japanese wives in a culturally insensitive manner. Calling this film racist because of that is like calling Schindler's List a pro-Nazi film - complete snowflake lunacy. Both scenes are funny, that's the point, but there's no one slighted here, so sorry. They are ridiculous, funny, and ultimately not going to hurt anyone's feelings that aren't looking to have their feelings hurt. Saying this is offensive would be like me saying I find State of Grace's portrayal of the Irish stereotypical and offensive. The point is, the character is based on an actual person, and the character is a dildo. Did I laugh? Yes. Do I feel bad? No. We're going to need tougher hides to get through the coming years, folks. I think we all know racism when we see it - this isn't that.

Aside from that, all the hype around Bradley Cooper's portrayal of Jon Peters is well-deserved. This is also comical, and perhaps some will see it as a slight against the hyper-masculine? There's an under-represented group amidst the SJWs, so if you're looking to cause a ruckus, have at.

Also, SO great to see Tom Waits again, in any capacity. His recent years of radio silence in all mediums had me concerned, but he's just as spry as he always has been in terms of performance, and with Sean Penn in his scene, the two are a sheer pleasure to watch.

Next, it'd been well over a decade since the last time I watched Old Boy. Long enough, in fact, for its effect to have waned in my memory. Well, this re-watch brought the film back up to the prestige it held with me upon my first viewing; this is an EPIC! The camera work is fantastic and the fight choreography is stunning. I'm pretty much betting the 'hammer' fight scene was the inspiration behind the now legendary "Hallway" fight scene in the first episode of Netflix's Daredevil show, and probably a hundred other fight scenes I'm unaware of or simply unable to conjure at the moment.

 

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Playlist:

Miami Horror - Illumination

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane - Eponymous

Great Falls - The Fever Shed

Old Time Relijun - Musicking

Nun Gun - Mondo Decay

Algiers - Eponymous

Algiers - The Underside of Power

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

The Police - Synchronicity

The Afghan Whigs - 1965

Fleet Foxes - A Very Lonely Solstice

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Blut Aus Nord - 777 Cosmosophy

Blut Aus Nord - 777 Sect(s)

Burzum - Filosofem

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Card:

I have finally struck a balance between two disparate projects, and I believe this is a nod to my continued success in this regard.