Friday, January 26th, 2024

New Music Friday (New Model Army, You Shriek, Future Islands, TR/ST, The Smile, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Anja Huwe, Kim Gordon, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Judas Priest), Recently Watched TV and Movies, I need new hobbies. Update, and Real Life Briefly Intrudes Before Ben Cooper Sets Us Right.

Content Warning (CW): link to Bluesky post mentioning wars, food/meat

Happy New Model Army Album Release Day, to all who celebrate. It’s a New Model Army album. It’s great. You know the drill here. It’s in all of the usual places.

Also, to my mild to moderate embarrassment, I’m two days late with this (the distro date was weird with the whole thing, to the frustration of at least one other person, and that threw me off, but “Life Goes On Forever” showed up in my Release Radar), but Happy You Shriek Album Release Day Week, to all who celebrate! This one feels a little like cheating to me as a “new” release, because I’ve been so privileged to hear various versions of the album for just over 3 years now as…I guess you’d call it a beta listener, as (newsletter reader) Raziel‘s been mixing, mixing again, planning, and figuring things out, but I am very pleased that you can all finally enjoy it along with me. Go get it!

Other noteworthy albums out this week: Future Islands (this is also really good), TR/ST and The Smile.

Some upcoming stuff I’m psyched for includes the new Aaron Lee Tasjan album, Stellar Evolution, due out April 12th…here’s the first single, “Horror of it All”

…and the new Anja Huwe album. For the maybe 20% of you reading this who are familiar, yes, you heard me correctly. Anja Huwe from the great Xmal Deutschland is back from a 35 year break from making music (with Xmal guitarist Manuela Rickers joining her). They’re also re-releasing the early, pre-4AD singles.

We’ve also got a new album coming from Kim Gordon on March 8th…

…along with new stuff from The Jesus and Mary Chain on the same date.

Provided that the world doesn’t end on or before March 8th, it should really be a pretty good day.

Yeah, Judas Priest have a new one coming out on the 8th, too.

OK, that’s enough music!

Among others (I’m undoubtedly forgetting some things), here are some recent and not-so-recent television and films I’ve watched and enjoyed: Echo, Il demonioThe Super Bob Einstein MovieThe Muse, Mother (Yeah, I’m on an Albert Brooks kick), 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape from the Bronx, and Good Grief.

I saw The Marvels too, but for a film that Bob Iger tried to say didn’t have enough studio input, it’s like the new poster kid for studio meddling. Worse hack job than Whedon’s Justice League, to where it feels like 20-40 minutes of the film are missing, easy. (Note: this is not me defending The Snyder Cut, or The Whedon Cut, or most of the DCEU films; Birds of Prey was great, Blue Beetle was good, and The Suicide Squad was good even if I’m suffering from Gunn fatigue these days, the rest, not so much, even the first Wonder Woman, because the final battle was kind of embarrassing and has wiped out my desire to re-watch.) Release The DaCosta Cut!

I have other stuff to watch soon (there’s always stuff to watch): Destroy All Neighbors is probably next, and I’ve got 4K Creepshow and Suspiria sitting here waiting for me. I’ve heard good things about Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, but some of the people I’ve heard it from are bigger Matt Fraction fans than I am, and I also fear that Wyatt Russell’s the next person Hollywood’s going to really force on us (he’s in everything, all of a sudden). Still waiting to see The Iron Claw and Godzilla Minus One, too.

It’s looking like I’m going to be a little more active on my other site relatively soon, but I’ve no plans of abandoning this outlet for that one, as they serve very different purposes. If I’m doing stuff there, I’ll mention it here.

Admittedly, some of what I’m talking about today, even if it’s the stated purpose of this newsletter (I feel like at its best, it’s a thing that shows up periodically, and gives you information about stuff that I like and you might, to help make the other things a bit more bearable, but your mileage as to what I should be doing with this thing may certainly vary), makes me feel like Helena Fitzgerald feels right now, but that’s not an entirely uncommon occurrence for me.

Just to circle us back to what I want to do here, I’ll finish by saying I really, really want these.

Still lots more to catch up on (pro wrestling, comics, video games, books, toys, cat pictures from a cat who is surprisingly camera-shy because I think she hates my iPad, and, when I’ll allow it, life), but I need to go make my second meal of the day (breakfast was my embrace of Oatmeal Season for the second day in a row, next up’s gonna be some meatballs and sauce), and I’ve given you plenty to keep busy with.

I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

 

Tuesday, January 23rd

Getting the Led Out, Because, Aw Jeez, it’s 2024. Also: 200 Words, Writing For Friends Rather Than An Audience, The Lou Reed/John Cale as Batman & Robin Hoax Solved, New Year’s Eve DJ set, Deicide, Yahoo Fantasy Baseball, Blueski Codes That No One Wants Because I’ve Been Trying to Give Them Away for Three Friggin’ Months and Just One More Thing

Content Warning (CW): Eric Suher, SEO, social media, fame, poverty, the government, corporations, fascists, Nazis, Spotify, celebrity deaths, extreme gore and anti-Christian blasphemy (Deicide), fantasy sports (baseball)

39 days between posts. What’s that aboot?

As I was getting ready to start writing this, in my head, I thought “let’s get the lead out”, which made me realize that it was, in fact, Get The Led Out season for my region, so I went to check if they’re playing around here this week, and…sorta, but not really. Traditionally, for the entire time I’ve lived in this area, they’ve played the same venue in the next town over in late January and for some reason, though it could just be that it hasn’t made it to setlist dot fm, I could swear that they’d also do a summer show in the region that seems to be a mass hallucination (since Kayla and my other friends in the region have made note of the summer shows at times, and since I think the band is taper-friendly enough for the tapers of the world to have absolutely made note of those summer shows).

01/17/2015
01/30/2016
01/26/2017
01/26/2018
01/25/2019
01/24/2020-01/25/2020
01/20/2023-01/21/2023

(They also did January 22nd, 2011 and January 21st, 2012, but skipped 2013 and 2014. INTRIGUE.)

Seeing “GET THE LED OUT” on their marquee was a mile marker of the passage of time in this region, perhaps even more than anything that happens with the leaves around here. Alas, possibly because the owner of the venue in question (and a few others in that town, all of which have been entirely or near-entirely out of service since 2020, though GTLO did manage their January 2023 shows, two nights, at their usual venue) is a terrible, terrible person, and because the band have actually gotten so big that they’re starting to play venues that wouldn’t have been entirely out of place for Led Zeppelin themselves to have played (They’re playing Red Rocks in September!), they apparently did not and will not play their usual venue this time, instead opting for Symphony Hall in Springfield (which has just under twice the capacity of the other place, it should be noted) on this past Saturday night. They seem to have outgrown my first home in this region (the venue was right around the corner from me when I first got here, though I never ended up seeing anyone there), and its bullshit. Why do I feel like Donny in The Big Lebowski when he doesn’t bowl a strike? Ah well, here’s to bigger and better things for Get The Led Out (who have been together for at least 8 years longer than Led Zeppelin were at this point).

So, yeah, it’s 2024 now (yup, I’m scared, too), and don’t worry, I didn’t abandon you. I’ve just been trying to decide what to do with my various internets places, and I’m…getting there. I figure I’ll have to have one more stern what-goes-where conversation with myself, make one more attempt to round up some stragglers from the other places, and I should be good to go. Thank you for your patience, and your continued interest in my bullshit.

In the continued pursuit of figuring things out, sometime in the past few weeks, just for the hell of it, I looked up what the SEO people say is the optimal length of an email newsletter, and they all seem to say “200 words”, because the average person can read 200 words a minute, and they last about 51 seconds on an email if it’s good. They also say that a great open rate for email newsletters (like, an all-timer) is about 27%, and I occasionally do three times that, but you’re also not being marketed to by what I do here, and I would consider everyone reading this a friend.

The subject of people wanting to talk to friends on whatever form social media takes, rather than having “an audience” came up elsewhere yesterday (if the person who was the catalyst of the part of this discussion that I was privy to would like to claim it here, they can if they’d like, as they’re a reader, but I’m not going to out them if not, because they were, themselves, just writing for friends), and yeah, that’s basically it.

I don’t wish to be famous anymore (and am glad as hell to be rid of that idea, because fame is terrible shit), and even if I wouldn’t mind making a little more money than this poverty-level, SSDI shit (they gave us a $32 raise this year, and at the same time, they’re reportedly starting to sunset the Affordable Connectivity Program on February 7th, so thanks, y’all), functionally speaking, I risk my benefits if I do anything like this for even a little on-the-books pay, because it starts to look too much like “work” to complete and total bastards (also often referred to as “the government”), so all of the “Substack success stories” you’ve heard about are not, will not be, and were not mine for the taking, lest my spouse and I lose our food, health care, and other benefits.

(Also, as I’ve mentioned here often, as recently as my last newsletter, Substack itself is lousy with Nazis. We’re in this space now because I found out about this a little over 3 years ago, if you recall, and it took the rest of the world that long to catch on, with only some trying to do anything about it, and plenty of them now saying “I don’t care if there are Nazis there who are directly profiting from my presence on the platform, it’s just so convenient!”, much as they do in many other walks of life, usually while giving me a hard time about using Spotify in the same breath.)

With that said, I do just enjoy talking to y’all about what’s on my mind, and would love it if I’d hear a little more from the rest of you about what’s on yours, as well (though I get it, energy is in short supply, and so many people are in full-on Facebook lock-in that it’s tough to work past that…being there creates risks of the same for me, too, so I might not be there for much longer…again…). That two-way, ongoing conversation with friends is absolutely its own reward, in my view, and if you can swing it, it happens best in spaces that aren’t completely under the boot of the other kind of complete and total bastards (the corporate kind, though they’re sorta blurring together with the government ones these days), so yeah, I’m going to try to lure some more folks here.

People on Facebook have occasionally asked me, throughout my time there, if I will make a post there public, if I’ll allow them to share it via screenshots if not (and it’s nice of them to ask, particularly as I haven’t seen anything of my own memed in a while, so they might actually be listening when I say no), and they will tag non-friends into a friends-only post despite my spending years and years asking them not to tag anyone else into my stuff, or me into anyone else’s, which I guess is flattering in a way (or it’s supposed to be, anyhow, if it weren’t such a glaring consent issue), but no, I don’t wish for exposure to the vox populi on Facebook (who have been fuck-awful for going on 15 years steady now; as soon as Obama got elected, the organized, weaponized hate mob really got the hang of dogpiling people there, taking it up about a hundred notches from the Bush fascists, even), sorry. I’m really just there talking to my friends, and tentatively, at that. I’m not angling for a TED talk, a podcast, or a successful anything. I am post-success, to put it politely (and to put it more frankly, I’ve had just about every professional dream I ever had die in flames over the course of 35 years of what passed for adult life at times), so nope, I am not interested in someone else’s idea of what “a wider audience” for me should look like, only my own, which is “a few more of my friends”.

On the subject of my being memed, though, to steer us away from this round of navel-gazing a bit, I finally found the alleged original culprit of the biggest instance of it recently, possibly the biggest one all-time, one which seems to have captured the imaginations of everyone from Neil Gaiman to Joe Hill to the entire on-air staff of WFMU. Whodunnit? It was a cat named Jim Washburn, pop culture critic/historian, and an incredibly prolific Facebook poster (so I lost almost an hour trying to find his posts about this just now). Login required to look at the actual post I linked to above for confirmation, but here’s a screenshot:

A screenshot from Facebook of writer Jim Washburn confessing to being the perpetrator of the Lou Reed and John Cale/Batman and Robin hoax, which used a picture of me with two fellas dressed as Batman and Robin from 1979.

I talked to Jim briefly, after I found out that this was apparently his doing via this Steve Hoffman forum post, and he was pretty hilariously apologetic, but it’s been one of the great adventures of my time on the Internet, so I’ve no ill will toward him for it. I’m still trying to figure out who took Jim’s post literally first (it may have been Sonic More Music, but I’m not sure, and Internet archaeology from even a decade back is really hard (the whole thing seems to have blown up in October and November of 2013 (here’s an 11/15/2013 Comic Book Resources post debunking it, including a link to my old Flickr account), but I also can’t find Jim’s original, so it could have been earlier). Still, I guess it’s time to update the bio.

Moving on…

I DJed on New Year’s Eve, as I’ve been doing for the past few years. Here is a reasonable facsimile of what I played (for whatever reason, I ended up not recording it this year, probably because I’m not spending $180 a year for Mixcloud Pro these days).

Here also, for people who can actually see playlist embeds (I’ve heard that at least one of you cannot), is the playlist, inline.

…and for those who’d just like a list because Spotify is bad, evil and dirty (if you think they’re bad, wait until you hear about their enablers, the major labels of the recorded music industry, and their parent companies):

Track Name Artist Name(s) Album Name
Intro / Run Pussy Cat / Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill! Bert Shefter, Igo Kantor, Paul Sawtell Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Voodoo Mama Justin Hurwitz Babylon (Music from the Motion Picture)
Walk The Night Skatt Bros Strange Spirits (Expanded Edition)
Fox On The Run Sweet Best Of Sweet
Gotta Get Up Harry Nilsson Nilsson Schmilsson
Alone Again Or – 2015 Remaster Love Forever Changes (2015 Remaster)
Beat City (From “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) The Flowerpot Men 1984
Pure The Lightning Seeds Cloudcuckooland
Sentimental Lady Bob Welch French Kiss
Lost Due to Incompetence (Theme for a Big Green Van) Yesca Up In Smoke (Motion Picture Soundtrack) [40th Anniversary Edition]
I’m Going To Go Back There Someday – From “The Muppet Movie”/Soundtrack Version Gonzo The Muppet Movie (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Little Bit ‘O Soul [From The Amazon Original Movie “Totally Killer”] The Linda Lindas Little Bit ‘O Soul [From The Amazon Original Movie “Totally Killer”]
All Dudes – Remix Kel Mitchell Good Burger 2 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
You’re So Vain Carly Simon No Secrets
I Will Keep You Up Wand Perfume
Pale Blue Eyes The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground (45th Anniversary)
Drive, She Said Stan Ridgway The Big Heat
Inside Out The Mighty Lemon Drops World Without End
Lips Like Sugar Echo & the Bunnymen Echo & The Bunnymen
Love Crushing Fetchin’ Bones Monster
Love Your Money Daisy Chainsaw Eleventeen
Ride Ride Ride Shane and the Open Field Lifeboat Revolver (Deluxe Edition)
Between Something and Nothing The Ocean Blue The Ocean Blue
The King Is Half-Undressed Jellyfish Bellybutton
Suboceana Tom Tom Club Boom Boom Chi Boom Boom
Deeper Shade Of Soul Urban Dance Squad Mental Floss For The Globe / Hollywood Live 1990
Unbelievable – Remastered EMF Schubert Dip (Remastered)
There’s No Other Way – Extended Version; 2012 Remaster Blur Leisure (Special Edition)
The Perfect Kiss – Substance Edit New Order Substance
Something Good Utah Saints Utah Saints
I Don’t Wanna Grow Up – 2023 Remaster Tom Waits Bone Machine (2023 Remaster)
Intro Daughter Stereo Mind Game
Be On Your Way Daughter Stereo Mind Game
Destroy Me Rebecca Black Let Her Burn
Nothing Left To Lose Everything But The Girl Fuse
Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song) [feat. Mediaeval Baebes] Orbital, Mediæval Bæbes Optical Delusion
Padam Padam Kylie Minogue Tension (Deluxe)
Panopticom – Bright Side Mix Peter Gabriel i/o
Something To Believe In Kesha Gag Order
Swimming Away Marta, Tricky When It’s Going Wrong
Ghosts Again Depeche Mode Ghosts Again
Veruschka Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark Bauhaus Staircase
Carbon Dioxide Fever Ray Radical Romantics
The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte Sparks The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte
Undecided Medicine Silences
Mess of Me Jake Shears Last Man Dancing
This Hell Rina Sawayama Hold The Girl
Misery Loves Company Rebecca Black Let Her Burn
UK GRIM Sleaford Mods UK GRIM
Alice Through The Looking Glass Prince, The New Power Generation Diamonds And Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition)
IWNSLY Nala, The Dandy Warhols, Debbie Harry IWNSLY
kisses Slowdive everything is alive
Let Me Down Easy Daisy Jones & The Six AURORA
Cherry Wine Starbenders Take Back The Night
Satanist boygenius, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus the record
get him back! Olivia Rodrigo GUTS
jamcod The Jesus and Mary Chain jamcod
Countdown To Shutdown The Hives The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons
Whole Wide World The Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds
Move Under Mudhoney Move Under
Get Out of My House Miya Folick ROACH
Wings Cory Hanson Western Cum
The Knife Royal Thunder Rebuilding The Mountain
No Other You The Church The Hypnogogue
Last Rays of a Dying Sun The Rain Parade Last Rays of a Dying Sun
First Summer After New Model Army First Summer After
Full Spectrum Dominance Killing Joke Full Spectrum Dominance
Trial By Fire Judas Priest Trial By Fire
Bury The Cross…With Your Christ Deicide Bury The Cross…With Your Christ
Victory Has 1000 Fathers, Defeat Is an Orphan Primordial How It Ends
Landfill Margo Price Strays
Come on, Aphrodite (feat. Abena Koomson-Davis) Natalie Merchant, Abena Koomson-Davis Keep Your Courage
I Got No Fight Sunny War Anarchist Gospel
the drinking song Nellie McKay Hey Guys, Watch This
3 Boys Omar Apollo 3 Boys
God Bless The Child Sylvester Private Recordings, August 1970
STORY OF BLOOD John Cale, Weyes Blood MERCY
Xanthe Emma Anderson Pearlies
Give Me Strength Emma Swift Lotta Love b​/​w Give Me Strength
Meeting The Master Greta Van Fleet Starcatcher
Agua Porno for Pyros Agua
Crazy Lovers Modern English Crazy Lovers
I Wanna Be With You Jessi Colter, Margo Price I Wanna Be With You
Sweet Nothing Sunny War Anarchist Gospel
True Blue boygenius, Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus the record
all-american bitch Olivia Rodrigo GUTS
Dandelion Daughter Stereo Mind Game
The Game Starbenders Take Back The Night
Stick Up The Hives The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons
Road to Joy – Bright-Side Mix Peter Gabriel i/o
Second Bridge The Church The Hypnogogue
C.O.T.A. The Cult DEATH CULT – 8323
Driving Through Heaven Cory Hanson Western Cum
Gasms Smokey Robinson Gasms
You’ll Never Get To Me Killing Joke Killing Joke
Love Song The Damned Machine Gun Etiquette
Human Cannonball Butthole Surfers Locust Abortion Technician
Fish Heads Barnes & Barnes The Very Best of Barnes & Barnes
They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! Napoleon XIV They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Citizen Zombie The Pop Group Citizen Zombie
Everywhen Massive Attack 100th Window
Little Johnny Jewel – Parts 1 & 2 Television Marquee Moon / Adventure / Live at the Waldorf: The Complete Elektra Recordings Plus Liner Notes
Citysong Luscious Jackson Natural Ingredients
Better Be Good to Me – 2015 Remaster Tina Turner Private Dancer (30th Anniversary Issue)
After You Pulp After You
Blue Funk The Effigies Fly on a Wire
Sister Havana Urge Overkill Saturation
Let It Ride Bachman-Turner Overdrive Bachman-Turner Overdrive II
Don’t Look Down Screaming Trees Even If and Especially When
Night Time The Strangeloves I Want Candy: The Best Of The Strangeloves
(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66! George Maharis George Maharis Sings!
(I Left My Heart) In San Francisco Tony Bennett I Left My Heart In San Francisco
Fly Me To The Moon Astrud Gilberto The Shadow Of Your Smile
Hey Paula Paul & Paula Hey Paula
I Say a Little Prayer Dionne Warwick The Windows of the World
Sundown Gordon Lightfoot Sundown
Dream Weaver Gary Wright The Dream Weaver
Here I Go Again Whitesnake Saints & Sinners
Free Bird Lynyrd Skynyrd Pronounced’ Leh-‘Nerd ‘Skin-‘Nerd
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes – 2005 Remaster Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash
What I Am Edie Brickell & New Bohemians Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars
Sweetheart Died Pretty Doughboy Hollow
Oscillate Wildly – 2011 Remaster The Smiths Louder Than Bombs
Thank You for Hearing Me Sinéad O’Connor Universal Mother
Jump in the Line Harry Belafonte Jump Up Calypso
Show Down / Run Pussy Cat Bert Shefter, Igo Kantor, Paul Sawtell Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

(Thank you, by the way, for prompting me to export all of my Spotify playlists as text files.)

The road map to this fantastic voyage: the first hour is almost entirely music from films and television I watched throughout the year, give or take the three songs I played after the song from the Good Burger 2 soundtrack. The second hour is a shorter version of my 120 Minutes playlist. Hours 3-6 are some of the music released in 2023 (with one exception from late 2022 that I missed until early 2023) that I enjoyed, capped off by the most awkward song of 2023 (I don’t mean to give Smokey a hard time, but my word), and then my version of the 2023 Dead Person Montage:

Geordie Walker (Killing Joke)
Algy Ward (The Damned)
Teresa Taylor a.k.a. Teresa Nervosa (Butthole Surfers)
Robert Haimer a.k.a. Arty Barnes (Barnes & Barnes)
Jerry Samuels a.k.a. Napoleon XIV
Mark Stewart and John Waddington (The Pop Group)
Angelo Bruschini (Massive Attack and also the Blue Aeroplanes, though I’m definitely more familiar with his Massive Attack work)
Tom Verlaine (Television)
Vivian Trimble (Luscious Jackson)
Tina Turner
Steve Mackey (Pulp)
John Kezdy (The Effigies)
John Rowan a.k.a. Blackie Onassis (Urge Overkill)
Robbie and Tim Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
Van Conner (Screaming Trees)
Bob Feldman (The Strangeloves)
George Maharis
Tony Bennett
Astrud Gilberto
Ray Hildebrand a.k.a. Paul (Paul & Paula)
Burt Bacharach
Gordon Lightfoot
Gary Wright
Bernie Marsden (Whitesnake)
Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
David Crosby (Crosby, Stills and Nash)
John Bradley Houser (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Ron S. Peno (Died Pretty)
Andy Rourke (The Smiths)
Sinéad O’Connor
Harry Belafonte

…and, like I did in 2022, I wrapped around at the end. Last year’s bookend subject was Barbara Parkins, and this year’s was Tura Satana, which felt appropriate, since, while I spent many more hours with Barbara in 2022 (and, for that matter, 2021) than Tura in 2023, and while it was in many regards a Margot Robbie year, Margot’s got way more marketing behind her than Tura does or ever did, and despite that, Tura still managed to get her own officially licensed, Mego-scale action figure this year! (Only 138 left in stock!)

They always say “don’t explain the joke”, but they also told me to worry about things I did in grade school being on my permanent record, so fuck ’em.

My timing on the last song I played from 2023 would’ve been right on, by the way (it landed at about 12:03, as things stood), but on December 25th,
Deicide released a video for their single “Bury The Cross…With Your Christ”, so that was a late entry to the playlist. I CW’ed this up above, but I’m going to do it again: it’s a doozy. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever had a YouTube video preview come up here as age-restricted. It’s really, really gory, incredibly, cartoonishly blasphemous toward Christianity (like literally everything else they do, but they really stuck the landing this time), and it’s probably the best example of “music video as distilled mission statement” I can think of since Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video, though the end results are wildly and profoundly different. Glen Benton’s been doing music with the band that became Deicide for 35 years now, and in this one clip lasting three minutes and thirty seconds, he, the band, and the film crew they worked with manage to elevator pitch literally everything they’ve ever aimed for. It is truly remarkable, and really, really fucked up. Enjoy!

Moving on, Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball opened this past weekend, about a week earlier than usual, with barely a whimper (being owned by strip-mining private equity will do that), and my keeper league is open again. We have at least one spot available, though if we do add more, the pickings in the draft will probably be pretty slim. If anyone would like to join us, please let me know, and I’ll go over the particulars, including rules settings, in a place that isn’t going to bore the shit out of people who don’t care a lick about fantasy baseball.

Speaking of stuff that people don’t care about, I still have Blueski invite codes, because no one who hasn’t immediately run to their doom and joined up (there are about three million of us) is bothering, apparently. These are the same 6 codes that I had last time I posted, plus an additional one, and they should all still work. If one doesn’t, then just try another one. We’re actually having a pretty OK time there after close to a year (I think I’ve been there for 6 months of it now), though some of the “just asking questions” crowd has trickled in (they generally get “go fuck yourself”-ed out of the building when they do, though).

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OK, that’s over 3,300 words, not counting these.

UP YOURS, SEO TYPES!

It’s also about time for me to call it a day on this here post. There’s plenty that I haven’t gotten to just yet (recent music, movies and television, just to name a few things, and there’s absolutely some noteworthy stuff to talk about), but I gotta save something for later, don’t I?

OK, just one more thing.

a picture of our cat, Entrapta, a grey, orange, beige and white dilute tortie cat, stretched out in a sunbeam in our living room window, near a table lamp
I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

Friday, December 15th, 2023

MOAR BLUESKI CODES, New Year’s Eve, Movies I’ve Seen Recently, The Wise Guy Cookbook, and My Favorite Albums of 2023

Content Warning (CW): death, celebrating the death of humanity’s enemies (Henry Kissinger), awful guys who abused their kids (Henry Hill, The Wise Guy Cookbook), Substack’s Nazi problem (My Favorite Albums of 2023)

Started writing this 8 days ago, so it might have some time whiplash here and there.

Getcher Blueski codes that no one wants because y’all are super burned out on social media! (And, believe me, I get it, but thus far, my experience there has been largely positive, knock wood. The one negative I have to report is that, if you’re coming there now, you won’t get to celebrate the vanquishing of our mutual foe Henry Kissinger in real time, which was a day that social media in general had been waiting for since its inception.)

I’ve really racked these babies up, now that every attempt I made to get on their waiting list seems to have panned out (2 of these are from that, and someone else has my other wait list-generated code). I’m trying to just give them out to people I know, rather than posting them in more public places, because even if people I know don’t end up using the accounts, at least I have a better idea of who I’m inviting than if I put them in front of randos. When you get there, please say hi.

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I had some moments of self-doubt about the New Year’s Eve DJ set, but now I’ve got a 7 1/2 hour long playlist planned (when in doubt, listen to a lot of music), so there you go. Have to figure out my start time, in light of all that. Gonna be on Twitch this year, it seems. Still figuring out start time, but it’ll probably be sometime after 5 PM Eastern Time. There’ll be opportunities to listen for those who are pre-gaming, and those who more wisely stay the fuck home.

Some movies I’ve watched recently: I watched May December a few days back, and the vibe I got from it was “Todd Haynes doing late Hitchcock”. I enjoyed it, and it kept me guessing the whole time. I also finally saw the Albert Brooks documentary, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, and that’s absolutely worth your time as well. Enjoyed the Studio 54 documentary from a few years back, too, though it felt too short (though there’s basically never gonna be enough information about that club). Mostly enjoyed Moving On with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Malcolm McDowell, because…I mean come on…but I will say that there was a much greater than usual level of comedy/tragedy whiplash to the whole thing. If you’re not worried about spoilers, and appreciate content warnings about difficult subjects, I’ll point you here for them.

I also finally saw Love, Actually, or more properly put, I fell on the sword of cultural literacy by watching Love, Actually. There are moments in it that a cast that huge and that talented can’t fuck up, but on the whole, what an absolute shitshow. This one, along with Field of Dreams, which I’ve still not seen (though through cultural osmosis, especially when Craig gets started, I’m pretty familiar), people have a lot of big feelings about, though, so try not to start a war in the comments.

Books: I’ve been starting to make some basic recipes out of The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes from My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run by Henry Hill and Priscilla Davis. While I am glad I waited until Henry passed to get this book (he was a pretty awful person who did some pretty awful things, and I hope his poor kids are getting the money from the book now), I am guilty of having seen Goodfellas about a billion times, with my favorite character in the film being the food, so if he’s going to continue to tell us how to make it from beyond the grave, it’s the one truly great thing he’s ever done for anyone in his life.

Oh, the food? Fundamentally sound (Kayla thinks he should’ve used a little more salt) and sneaky-fast good. His cooking style is simple enough to feel kinda brutal in ways, and when I first tasted the results, I was like “Wait, this needs something” (the sauce; in the book, he describes it as a baseline that he’s never made exactly the same way twice, but I did it as by-the-book as possible for the first go) and “This doesn’t look right, it tastes a little blah, and there’s probably a better way to prepare it” (the roasted peppers), but I found myself very happy to go back for more in both cases, and I’m making more sauce over the weekend.

As for the writing, he and his co-author (I’m not sure if she was purely transcribing, or if she collaborated on recipes) made a cookbook read in my head like Ray Liotta was explaining how to cook something to you, so it’s a huge success on that level.

Yeah, screw it.

Here are my favorite albums of 2023, about 10 days earlier than usual. My mind’s made up, and if I get D’Angelo’ed, I get D’Angelo’ed. (I hope it’s by an album as good as that one, though.) These are in no real order, beyond that the Daughter album is my favorite and the first one I reached for when I wanted to hear music for most of this year.

Daughter-Stereo Mind Game
The Church-The Hypnogogue
boygenius-the record
Cory Hanson-Western Cum
Slowdive-everything is alive
Olivia Rodrigo-GUTS
Emma Anderson-Pearlies
Peter Gabriel-i/o
Cowboy Junkies-Such Ferocious Beauty
Godflesh-PURGE
Lloyd Cole-On Pain
Buggin-Concrete Cowboys
Cindy Wilson-Realms
Wreckless Eric-Leisureland
Royal Thunder-Rebuilding the Mountain
Orbital-Optical Delusion
Rebecca Black-Let Her Burn
Kesha-Gag Order
Sunny War-Anarchist Gospel
Miya Folick-ROACH
Natalie Merchant-Keep Your Courage
Margo Price-Strays
Primordial-How It Ends
The Hives-The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons
Starbenders-Take Back the Night

To actually hear what I have to say about this, please sign up for the Paid edition of this newsletter, which costs one million dollars, but at least I’m not giving money to terrible right-wing assholes like Substack is. Nah, I’m just fuckin’ with you. I’m not charging for subscriptions. But I’m also not typing 25 reviews into one newsletter. What do you think this is, 2020? (For some of us, it still is, alas.)

There are links to a way to hear every album on this list above (and most of them auto-completed in my browser because I’ve told you about most of these albums. If you don’t recognize something, though, or hadn’t gotten to listen to it yet? Take an adventure. If you don’t like 30 seconds of a song, try another.

Fewer albums than last year, both because there were fewer albums that I loved, and because the albums I really fell in love with, I spent a lot more time with.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think, both of my choices, and of some albums that didn’t make my list.

As always, I’ve got a bunch more to talk about, but I’m also tired of typing right now, so this will do it for this morning. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

Wednesday, November 29th, 2023

Habitrails, What Happens Later, Peter Gabriel’s i/o, Moar Blueski Codes, RIP Mike of Mike’s Amazing World, Carol Miller (and making the call, sending the email, and writing the letter), and A Little Hüsker Dü, As a Treat

Content Warning (CW): death (Mike’s Amazing World of Comics)

Y’all, why didn’t you tell me that Habitrails are completely bananas now? They’re like if a first-generation iMac did it with Pixar!

With that, I say good morning and welcome you to whatever the hell this thing is these days.

I just got done watching Meg Ryan’s What Happens Later, which I’d been looking forward to since I saw the trailer. I don’t know how I feel about all of it yet. A lot about the story and dialogue didn’t stand up well to scrutiny even as I was watching it (between the continuity issues that develop in adapted works starring two actors playing roles a dozen years younger than they are, some of the cliches of stage plays, the fact that it told a pretty heteronormative story, when it didn’t have to within the context of the work, and the fact that both characters could’ve been written with greater nuance in general), but it was a film that I wanted and still want to like, and at the very least, it felt relatively harmless and well-meaning (which may sound like me damning the film with faint praise, but you’d be surprised how often I’m looking for a film that has those qualities, but isn’t quite full-on Hallmark kinda stuff, and just can’t find anything; there’s more room in this world for harmless and well-meaning than perhaps most people realize). The leads (Meg and David Duchovny) both made me want to care about them, even with the shortcomings of the material firmly in mind, and it’s filmed and lit beautifully. I sort of expect the actual critics and aspiring critics of the world to do a pretty good hatchet job on it once it’s more widely seen, but I don’t know that it’ll be a fair one, and I do think that it will find its audience, even if that audience doesn’t end up being me in repeat viewings (again, it’s probably too soon for me to tell on that).

Every song of Peter Gabriel’s i/o is out now, and the album gets its proper release on Friday. If you want to hear the tracks before then in the order they’re intended to be released in, which, mercifully, remains the chronological one, I made playlists of the Bright-Side and Dark-Side mixes (the physical release will include both, and there’s an expanded release with Dolby Atmos “In-Side” mixes that’s also being released) to hold you over until the album properly hits streaming services.

Getcher blueski codes!

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As with the last one I put up, first-come, first-served. I should have another soon enough, though.

I am very sad about the passing of someone I never talked to. Over the past year and a half, thanks to reader Nancy enlightening me to its existence very late in the game (it’s existed for a quarter century, apparently entirely the work of one person, who I and most folks only know as Mike or dcindexer, who put 40 hour weeks into it as a hobby project for over two decades), I’ve spent untold hours researching things at Mike’s Amazing World of Comics that were…more than comics. Their Newsstand section has helped me contextualize a great deal of my childhood by giving me an understanding of what books were happening in the background (and often, the foreground) as I was living it, and also how I was led to read those books, in terms of personal preference, market visibility and corporate decisions. In some ways, a person who was really just documenting his comic collection at the start of his endeavor has helped me figure out certain things better than most of my therapists have, and alas, I’ll never get to thank him for it.

His death hits pretty close to home for me for other reasons, too, particularly that Mike was apparently only a year older than I am. Most of the cultural touchstones he describes as his in his shorter origin story and the two parts of his longer “Origin of a DC Fanboy” are very much the same as my own, though he ended up having the resources and focus to do far more extraordinary things in the service of building his comic book collection than I have. We got used to people living longer for a while, so 50 just feels too damn young now.

For now (and hopefully, far into the future, as the site currently claims we will), we still have the documentation of his life’s work with us, and I don’t know if he and I would’ve necessarily gotten along just because we liked some of the same things, but it still feels like a huge loss of knowledge, experience and, yes, love that comic fandom and the wider world has fairly quietly experienced this week, and on a personal level, again, I don’t like it when folks leave before I have a chance to thank them, or to talk to them about what we do have in common. In this case, to some degree, it couldn’t be helped, because Mike apparently went no-contact with most of the Internet years before his passing and years before I found his site, but it’s things like this that motivate me to tell y’all to at least try to make the phone call, send the email and write the letter, because someday, it won’t be an option anymore, and to also walk the walk on it myself, however daunting that can be, admittedly, by reaching out to people like Carol Miller.

I wrote to her late last week, both with interview questions that I’d thought up without a venue for the interview in mind, and also, more importantly to thank her for her impact on my life, which I did at polite but thorough length. If you’re wondering, no, I haven’t heard back from Carol, and I’ve no idea if I ever will (and it’s totally OK if she never gets around to it, as she’s a busy person who deals with a great deal on a day-to-day basis), but I felt like I had to try, as she’s another long-time part of my world from a distance who’s loomed large of late. Between the shows of hers I’ve caught some of recently (she’s still great), my long-term memories of her being her self-described “Professional Lifelong Friend” to anyone within broadcasting distance, and my read of her book Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio over this past summer (which covered her life and history well, but not as much of her likes and dislikes, or what she loves about doing the job now, and her plans for it in the future), I still had things I wished to know about her, so I just asked. If she decides to answer (and I did give her the option of doing so on background, so it might not be anything I can ever really share, but I also told her about my not-so-commercially-viable outlets like this one and I need new hobbies. and offered those up as venues), that’ll be an incredible gift. If not, then she still knows that there’s one more person out there who appreciates and respects her work, and really listens when she’s doing a weather report and does something like making a sharp turn into the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination and our Pavlovian response to anniversaries of events like that in the middle of it before finishing the forecast, without ever really losing her flow or running long.

Seriously, whenever possible, famous or not, big or small, even if it’s just a deal where one of your friends is really good at something like parallel parking or remembering songs no one remembers or playing darts or somesuch, or always seems to show up when you need them to even if they don’t know you need them to, or whatever it may be, tell the people in your world that you like and respect that about them, while you still have the opportunity to do it.

“If you don’t stop to smell the roses now, they might end up on you.”
-Bob Mould

That happy thought (and pretty solid performance that I’d never seen before) should just about do it for this morning. Perhaps next time, I’ll offer up the cat’s and my review of the Good Burger franchise, as we watched both films together over the past week, but I don’t think I have it in me today. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

Monday, November 6th, 2023

A Person Listening to Joe Walsh at 6:30 in the Morning Without Being in Trouble, a Cat, and a Blueski Code Walk Into a Bar, plus October Movies, Music and Comics, How You’re Doing, and How I’m Doing

Content Warning (CW): capitalist language (“What’s been happening with y’all?”), COVID mentions (“What’s been happening with y’all?”, new cat) drug and alcohol use (Joe Walsh), Geoff Johns (comics), things not going so great/mood (how I’m doing)

Mornin’. When’d I do this last? Juuuuuuuuust under a month ago, that’s right. What’s been happening with y’all? Tell me at the length of your choosing in the comments, but, as a personal request, please try not to lean too hard into the “we left the house recreationally” stuff. I see your pictures on social media and I know. What else has been doing? Creating anything? Stuff OK at work and/or school? Family/friends doin’ OK? To use hellscape language for a moment, “Consume any good content lately?”.

Over here, I found myself wanting to listen to “Rocky Mountain High” and “All Night Long” (and, OK, “In The City” and “Life of Illusion”, too) by Joe Walsh at 6:30 in the morning today, and surprisingly, I wasn’t coked to the gills and full of whisky when it happened. I was just laying in bed with the cat. I wonder how Joe, clean and sober for a long time now, feels about people associating his music with gettin’ all tore up, even that which he made while all tore up himself, and wrote about that specific experience. It probably shows up in interviews somewhere or other, but I haven’t personally seen him talk about the direct association between his music and being all messed up (his sobriety and how he got there, absolutely, just not “What do I do with this now?” where the music’s concerned).

As I noted, there is once again a cat in the house.

Say hello to Entrapta:

a grey, beige, orange and white cat sits on a ledge near a window, looking up

She’s 2 years old, and as you may be able to surmise from the angelic photo of her above, she enjoys being everywhere she’s not supposed to be. She showed up just under 2 weeks ago, after a brief stay at another adopter’s house where she didn’t get along with the other cat they adopted at the same time, so we got another chance at her, after we couldn’t pick her up because we were due for vaccines and hadn’t gotten them yet (the shelter had just switched over to open access after being in COVID protocol for 3 1/2 years). We are still very much in the getting-to-know-each-other phase, but it’s been good to have a kitty here again, especially as I’ve been awake overnights and overnights are the quietest they’ve ever been in my life these days.

Want to be on Blueski…er…Bluesky?

Here:

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First-come, first-served, of course.

It’s not that bad over there yet. It’ll get there, but so far, it hasn’t.

2023 Completed October Movie List:

October 1st: The Old Dark House (1932) and Season of the Witch (1973)
October 7th: Crocodile II: Death Roll (2001)
October 8th: Frankenhooker (1990), Frogs (1972), Children of the Corn (1984) and Fade to Black (1980)
October 12th: Totally Killer (2023) and Snakes on a Plane (2006)
October 13th: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
October 14th: Saturday the 14th (1981) and Blood Quantum (2019)
October 15th: Alligator 2 (1990)
October 18th: Scream (1996)
October 19th: Pumpkinhead (1988) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
October 26th: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
October 27th: The Blair Witch Project (1999)
October 28th: Student Bodies (1981)
October 29th: Ginger Snaps (2000), Halloween (1978), and Halloween 4 (1988)
October 31st: The Mummy (1932), The Mask (1961), Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988) and I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)

A lighter month than last year, but still 27 films. My favorite new-to-me films were The Old Dark House, Totally Killer, Blood Quantum, Invasion of the Saucer Men and Ginger Snaps. The best re-watches were probably Frogs, Friday the 13th Part 2 (I had which one was the bad one backwards from 2 and 3), Saturday the 14th, Student Bodies and The Mask.

I’ve listened to a few new albums of late, the new Emma Anderson probably being my favorite, and haven’t listened to a few others (still no-go on the Stones, OMD and Jessi Colter albums, haven’t felt up to them).

I skipped the World Series. I don’t need that negativity in my life.

Comics, I’ve been enjoying Fantastic Four and Birds of Prey of late. I did like the first issue of Wesley Dodds: The Sandman, as well (I really loved Robert Venditti‘s Hawkman while it was running, so I gave it a try), but it’s the first issue of a 6 issue mini-series connected to ongoing plot lines that Geoff Johns is working on, so your interest in getting on-board may vary. I’m mostly caught up on my (currently being published) books, save for Silver Surfer and Moon Knight, though have copies of Parasocial and Wonder Woman: Historia here that I need to read.

Oh, and I’ve really been loving Dan Schkrade’s new Flash Gordon comic strip. It’s classic and fresh at the same time.

This is a not-bad rundown of what I’ve been doing, but admittedly, I don’t cover how I’m feeling all that much. The short answer is “really not that great, but I’m continuing to work on it”. I don’t know if I have it in me to write the long version, or if this is even really the venue for it. My writing in general? Sure, absolutely. This newsletter in particular was created to keep me busy, keep you busy, and help us all keep our minds off of “really not that great”, though, so while the outside world does leak in here on the regular, there’s a difference between a leak or three and Niagara Falls. As I said, though, I continue to work on it.

With that, I think we’re a wrap for this morning. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

 

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

Brain-Wandering Through Beefsteak Charlie’s, Other Steak Restaurant Chains and Bentley TVs, with a Little Bit of Music on the Back End

Content Warning (CW): marketing, meat, divorce, poverty

(My content warning today describes the actual stages of grief, I think.)

Just a quick one while I’m thinking about it and talking about it with some folks in other parts.

My brain this weekend has taken me from Red Lobster commercials (I’m still desperately looking for the “CRAB LEGS II!!!!” commercial where they made their crab legs promotion look like a 1950s black-and-white monster movie) to the Beefsteak Charlie’s “SHRIMP!” and “RIBS!” (thanks to Rolando Pujol) commercials…

…to the late Tom Lacy, who played Charlie (guy had a hell of a “That Guy” career), to thinking about the defunct local PA Mr. Angus Steak Haus chain (not to be confused with Steakhouse Mr. Angus in Schleswig, Germany)…

3 drinking glasses from local Reading and Lancaster, PA restaurant chain Mr. Angus Steak Haus.

(These glasses are dope as hell. Image ganked from a Worthpoint listing, which Worthpoint gank images themselves, so fuck ’em.)

…and the time I ate there (I don’t remember what I had, but I remember the meal was REALLY good…) when my parents, on the last road trip I took with them together before they divorced, looked at a time share near Reading with no intention of buying in, and got a free 5″ black and white portable Bentley brand television that survived several apocalypses over the years.

Back before I had a properly sized color TV, I played a bunch of Atari on this thing in the mid-’90s when I first started collecting cartridges again. As best as I can understand it, Bentley’s business model was a lot like the disposable razor one, where they sold a bunch of cheap TVs, lots of which were given out at giveaways, but then they made their money back when you ordered accessories like the AC adapter, the car adapter and such from them. I think I sold that TV, like a fool, in the 2000s when I had no income and sold a lot of things I shouldn’t have (SUP PANZER DRAGOON SAGA).

The box for a Bentley 5" deluxe portable black and white TV, with a picture of the TV (showing a very 1986 white woman on the screen) sitting on shiny black surface with a blue sunrise-ish background, the Bentley logo at the horizon, and a bunch of text describing the TV set.

(Gaze upon the majesty. Image ganked from an eBay listing, and no, I won’t tell you which one because I might be an asshole and buy this.)

They’re all over eBay at pretty reasonable prices, most still visibly working and in good shape or not used at all, most from the same basic geographical area (PA and NJ), but I haven’t found one with the external antenna adapter yet, which, even more than the AC adapter, would make it worth having again. It wouldn’t be the same as my dad’s old “beat to shit from living in his truck for a couple years, but still working perfectly because these little shits were built like tanks” model, but nothing’s ever truly the same, is it? It would be something else to get one of those babies hooked up to a digital antenna and watch The Price Is Right on it. 65″ 4K set in the living room, and I’m entertaining these fuckin’ shenanigans.

I also spent a minute thinking about the first trip I took with just my mom after my dad filed for divorce, and how we ate at The Steak Loft in Mystic, CT, with no idea of its connection to Steve Rubell and Studio 54. (It was 1987, and while I still played a pretty good game of connect-the-dots back then on how things were connected, it was connected to a world I wasn’t really a part of or even fully aware of yet, and had mostly missed, sadly.) That was also a meal that I can’t remember the specifics of, other than that it was very good.

I think that’ll do it for this weekend. I’m still recovering from getting fingerblasted by the latest vaccine, and there’s not much music out aside from the new Omar Apollo EP (terrific) and the new Prong album (on the good end of things for them and for reader Brenda, they do cover Rush’s “Working Man” servicably, though Tommy will probably squander my goodwill toward his record because he’s an old guy from the NYC metro area who hangs out with Glenn Danzig and he probably lands somewhere around Glenn and Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth on the political spectrum), though, now that I think about it, there is a new recording of an old Jessi Colter song that Margo Price did with her for Jessi’s upcoming new album that caught my ear, too because Margo’s backing vocals give it hella ABBA vibes…

I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

Friday, September 29th, 2023

New Music Friday, Peter Gabriel, The Fast Saga, The Cheech & Chong Saga, Other Movies, Some Other Stuff

Content Warning (CW): mention of “outdated cultural references” (Cheech & Chong movies)

It’s still taking me some time and effort to get back into really writing, unless it’s on my fantasy baseball league’s chat to talk about potential rule changes and the history behind the existing rules, apparently. So, some of this is going to be kinda bullet pointed, I think. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll learn how to words again someday.

New albums out today-ish: Blonde Redhead, Graveyard, LP, Melenas, Primordial, Wilco. Graveyard’s decent, Primordial’s pretty great, haven’t done the rest yet.

Albums from the last couple weeks: Kylie Minogue, Starbenders, Teenage Fanclub and motherfuckin’ Sylvester (this last one was out when I wrote last, but I missed the release date somehow).

We’re up to 10 Peter Gabriel songs this year (though the Bright-Side mix of the new one isn’t out yet), with 2 more full moons to go. Here’s what he’s got for us so far, if you were having trouble figuring out how to one-stop shop (Pete’s official one just has all of the tracks in reverse chronological order).

Finished the Fast saga. My rankings of the non-spinoff films (Hobbs & Shaw is truly its own thing, y’all), which I reserve the right to change:

1. Fast Five (2011)

2. F9 (2021)

3. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

4. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

5. Fast and Furious (2009)

6. Fast & Furious 6 (2013)

7. The Fast and the Furious (2001)

8. The Fate of the Furious (2017)

9. Furious 7 (2015)

10. Fast X (2023)

Feel free to debate the rankings with me in the comments, but in general, I think Justin Lin is usually better than no Justin Lin.

Currently also working on the Cheech & Chong movies (just finished Still Smokin’, and it’s taking me a minute to psyche myself up for anything past that, because the “outdated cultural references” were rough, especially in the last two I’ve watched, in ways that I’d forgotten about), so eventually I may have a power rankings list for those, too. It’s almost gotta be the first 3 movies 1-2-3, but there are some people who’d put 3 ahead of 2. Watching them was a great reminder that Evelyn Guerrero was an MVP of the series.

Other movies of the moment: SlaxxBlue Beetle and Bottoms. I also watched most of Nightmare Castle on Night Flight Plus, The Best Fucking Streaming Service in the World yesterday, and loved what I saw (Barbara Steele is predictably awesome).

No new video games in a while, though I did start up No Man’s Sky and play through the beginning for about the billionth time recently. I like where my current base is there, because it’s practically on top of a space port.

Reading through a bunch of comics still (loved Clobberin’ Time, love Ryan North’s Fantastic Four). The last 3 Silver Surfer mini-series and Sgt. Rock vs. the Army of the Dead are next, then I have to decide if I want to read all of the current Moon Knight volume (and the associated mini-series) now or in one sitting when they finish the story in December, before starting over with another volume in January. Sorta leaning toward the latter. I am sticking with Teen Titans for now (though it feels like they had this idea of making them THE TEAM at the end of this last big event, someone higher up doesn’t like that, and they’re basically stalling for time until they hire a new Justice League writer), but only the main title once the one associated mini-series I’m still on the hook for is finished in November.

As for how I’m doing? Well…I just read through my last post, and everything I wrote then is kind of in a holding pattern from all of that, plus three weeks. I should probably do something about this.

And with that, I think we’re a wrap for this morning. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

 

Friday, September 8th (For Reals This Time)

Today

Content Warning (CW): inappropriate media consumption for children (Apocalypse Now), COVID-19 mention (health care stuff), other health stuff (bad lungs), death/estates (my mom’s estate), ableism and poor-hating (“finance”), mortality and its effect on leisure time

Apologies for that false start yesterday (that somehow also time-traveled, as the title said that it was from today), but it’s been a rough couple of months.

Aside from recommended media consumption, which I’ll pretty quickly run through right now (borrowing heavily from an email I sent to reader Ethan a day or two ago), I’m just going to skip from late spring of 2023 to today.

Music: the whole year so far is here, but between June 9th (when the Godflesh album came out) and September 8th? Olivia Rodrigo, Kristin Hersh, Slowdive, Medicine (it’s not on the year-end list yet because I still need to listen to the last third, but it’ll likely make it there), Wreckless Eric, The Hives, Greta Van Fleet, Cory Hanson, and Lloyd Cole. Just listened to the new Chemical Brothers, and it’s pretty good if you’re into that sort of thing, though it really leans on the “single vocal sample repeated over…and over…and over again” side on the last few tracks. Probably my favorites of these are the Olivia Rodrigo (already through it twice, once very loudly in the car, and it came out last night), Slowdive, Hives and Cory Hanson records.

Movies: on the new stuff front, enjoyed Barbie, Joy Ride (referring to the Stephanie Hsu one, not the Bobcat Goldthwait/Dana Gould one, though they’re both terrific), and the new Spider-Verse was good, but I wish they’d treat the animators better. Was less into Meg 2, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (if you’re curious, and we’re talking privately and not in a position to spoil the movie for other people, ask me what my real takeaway was from this movie) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (so much has changed in the world at large and in the lives of both the director and the actors that it was really hard to not be affected by the subtext…we just know too much about everything and everyone involved now…).

Movies, older stuff/re-watches edition: I’m through Hobbs & Shaw on my Fast Saga watch (2 more to go), have been watching “Art Carney as an older gentleman” films of late (watched Harry & Tonto at the worst time imaginable, but watched and enjoyed The Late Show and Going In Style recently, too), finally watched both Schumacher Batman movies (I think the Kilmer/Carrey one is bad, but the Clooney/Ahnold one is GLORIOUS), saw To Live and Die in L.A. finally after Friedkin passed (decent New Hollywood post-New Hollywood film), Between the Lines was another solid Joan Micklin Silver entry (not doing them in order, but I’m trying to watch all of Joan’s stuff), and I snuck in re-watches of 1941 (Wendie Jo Sperber should’ve been the next Lucille Ball, and I don’t think that’s hyperbole), Magic (Ann-Margret may have been better in it than Anthony Hopkins or the dummy), Fandango (Costner sucked upon re-watch, everyone else was great) and Up In Smoke and Cheech & Chong’s Next Movie (gonna try to do all of ’em; Next Movie was better than I remembered, Up In Smoke was a little worse with the “outdated cultural references” than I remembered). Nothing I know about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 2023 was capable of ruining my love for the film when I watched it again in 4K. Nothing I knew about Apocalypse Now really prepared me for watching the movie when I got my 4K copy, thinking “I first saw this shit when I was 7 or 8, and not just a scene or two by accident, the whole thing” the entire time. (The 4K edition does look gorgeous, though.) Gearing up for horror movies in October, and trying to find a time-based, rather than reel-based, list of cues for The Tingler.

Television: a lot of The Price Is Right (James O’Halloran is amazing), This Old House and pro wrestling (AEW, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, where I watched almost all of the G1 Climax again, and Wrestling Open) lately. Really liked High Desert, which of course Apple TV+ picked as their first really quick cancellation, so when I finished watching it, I really quickly canceled Apple TV+.

Books: Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio by Carol Miller was very solid. For those of us who live or lived in or near New York, and have had Carol on the radio with us for most of our lives, you know how there’s a part of her delivery and presentation that makes you think “she sounds really tough”? It’s because she is really, really tough. (Thanks to reader Melissa for the book!) I’m also working my way through Tony Visconti’s autobiography, Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy, and it’s taking a while because there’s meticulous attention to detail in it, but it’s interesting and worthwhile so far.

Comics: Orson Welles: Warrior of the World is the best premise I’ve seen for a funny book in quite a while, but after reading the first issue yesterday, it remains to be seen if they’ll nail the execution (the creators are definite Welles nerds, but this is high concept stuff), or if they’ll sell enough copies to keep publishing it (I hope they do). Other comics I’m actually reading, rather than just making big piles of: Robotech: Rick Hunter (being written as a sequel/postscript to the Macross Saga; I picked it up on a whim, as I haven’t bought a Robotech/Macross book in almost 40 years, and I enjoyed it), and Birds of Prey (Kelly Thompson just started a new volume of it, and it’s true to both BoP and Kelly Thompson’s other stuff; this is out this week, so if you buy single issues of stuff, go get it while you can). I want to like the new version of Titans, but DC is shooting itself in the foot by being 2 huge crossover events and 2 extra mini-series deep on a book that’s less than a year old, the same way Marvel’s doing it with Moon Knight because they plan things far enough in advance that I think they developed all the extra Moon Knight stuff when they thought the TV show would be a success. NOPE!

Video games: really haven’t been playing much lately, but I feel like a lot of Atari is gonna happen this winter. More on that later.

There’s probably a bunch that I’m forgetting, because of course I am.

As for now…what am I doing now?

Setting myself up for inevitable disappointment at blueski. (All the profiles are still paywalled, I think, but if you’ve got an account, you’ll be able to see it. If you don’t have one, let me know if you want an invite, and I’ll see if I can scrounge one up. Alex Winter had a ton at some point, I can see if he’s still holding.) I’m also still at Dreamwidth, though literally no one has followed me there.

Feeling like too much of a bystander on home improvement projects (Kayla, on the other hand, has leveled up to Drywall, and they were under our sink when I just walked into the kitchen), but preparing for more of them, even if it’s mostly from a “coordinate shit between multiple people via email” kinda direction.

Working out what I’m going to do about the health care industry (and society at large too, but let’s keep it focused) basically giving me the bird because I won’t expose myself to the plague in the name of capitalism quite enough for them. (Pro Tip: if you have the opportunity to receive health care from a corporation that has a former director of the CDC from our very recent past on their board? Don’t. Just fucking don’t.)

Breathing a little easier (figuratively; my lungs still suck), because the majority of what I needed to do in the service of my mom’s estate seems to be taken care of for now.

Hoping a bunch of cats ring our doorbell, wearing hats and coats and carrying little suitcases. (Adopting the conventional way hasn’t been something we’ve been able to make happen yet, though we haven’t formally reached out about any cats, either, as we’re still taking care of some things before we can, ourselves included.)

Fighting with terrible financial advisors, while simultaneously feeling fortunate that I have a reason for them, and being mad that my reason for them is completely piss-ant in the grand scheme of things, and wouldn’t be necessary at all if our society didn’t hate both disabled people and poor people.

Feeling a desire to streamline and simplify a life that’s still complicated as hell. This includes me looking at my interests, and wondering if I get enough joy out of them to justify the use of time, effort and other resources. In some ways, this feels like the antithesis of fun, but even where fun’s concerned, I have a lot of fun I want to get around to, and assuming that I don’t live to be 500 years old*, I’m gonna have to prioritize at least a little, especially if Real Life fucking intrudes on it all the time. Where this is gonna go? No idea. Probably nowhere.

That’s all for today. Plenty to read and poke at, I think, in stark contrast to that shit I pulled last night. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

* As I just confirmed by doing the math, my parents averaged 72 years and 331 days of life, so I’m probably not swinging that “500 years” shit unless science takes a huge leap forward, and I can afford whatever it costs. Additionally, going by that math, provided that none of my current health issues end up fast-tracking my exit from this plane of existence, I’ve got approximately 8,626 days left (April 21st, 2047, if my math’s correct, which will be Iggy Pop’s 100th birthday, should he also live that long), or about 15.75 years of waking time (I own Playstation 3 games that are older than that), assuming (as much as I shouldn’t, given the non-24) 16 hour days. After that, every day I get is GRAVY, probably because I won’t be able to chew solid food anymore, given how I’ve lived. So there’s your happy thought for the day.

Friday, September 8th, 2023

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Nah.

New posts on the way, though.

That’s all for today. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

 

Friday, June 9th, 2023

Godflesh, Janelle Monáe, Dreamwidth and My Own Somewhat Off-Center Social Media Strategy

Content Warning (CW): discussion of childbirth and masturbation (Janelle Monáe), Elon Musk/Twitter mention (Dreamwidth)

YUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

As a Godflesh album, it’s innerestin’, because it starts out in a pretty high energy place, but drives the mood into a ditch about a song or two earlier than they usually do. They also decided to use audio clipping noise as a musical instrument this time in a very conscious, deliberate way. I enjoyed the record on my first pass through, though, and I’m glad to have more new Godflesh.

As a counterpoint to the Godflesh album, this is the new Janelle Monáe album. Many children shall be conceived with this album on as background music, and many vibrator batteries shall die at its hands.

So, I’m doing something completely counterintuitive: after realizing that I’ve had a Dreamwidth account for just over 14 years, and while I’ve never really used it much, I’ve also never heard of some big stink about ownership/management, and I’ve never had any hassles from the userbase, I think I’m going to start trying to move my social media presence, at least in part, over there. At present, there are…8 people I know who I’ve confirmed have accounts there, only 5 of whom have used those accounts in the past 52 weeks. So, this should be interesting.

If it looks familiar to you in any way, specifically if it reminds you of LiveJournal, there is a reason for that: it’s built on a fork of the original LiveJournal code, and owned and run by some ex-LiveJournal personnel, dating back to the Brad Fitzpatrick days if I’m not mistaken. Reader Erika’s been singing its praises for the longest, as have a handful of other folks, but I became more aware of them still being a vital, going concern (if a much quieter one than most other things like it) late last year, when there was a rush into production of a bunch of social media sites, to try to cash in on the exodus from Twitter when That Other Asshole bought it, and Denise, one of the founders, did a long thread on Twitter about how the people behind these sites all kinda had their heads up their asses. To date, she’s been right about all of ’em. (I deleted my cohost account this week, for instance, because they made an absolute mess of the community guidelines when they published a rewrite of them, after supposed months of work on the whole thing, then immediately backpedaled on the thing in it that pissed people off the most when they’d drawn a clear line in the sand in their original version, in a way that told me that they are “not serious people”, as a famous monster said recently. If you made a cohost account and you’re not really using it, you can probably go ahead and delete it, too.)

Now, the trick with anything like this (it’s true of any of the places where I’m at least semi-active online) is trying to figure out what gets written or posted where (I have at least one other semi-abandoned website, I still have the Facebook account for now, I’ve got this place, Dreamwidth, an account on a Mastodon instance where I still try to check in from time to time, etc.), but I’m working on that. Part of why I wanna phase out Facebook is because it’s too goddamned easy to share things that I should be sharing here over there, and it’s a far less trustworthy place to be sharing anything.

So, we’ll see what happens with all of that.

Well, this draft has been sitting here untouched for about 6 hours, so it’s probably done. I should be back soon, with MOAR. Because, until there isn’t, there is always MOAR. Until then, stay safe, be well, and don’t take shit from anyone.

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