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Archive for October, 2025

Michael Shea–“Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity” (published 2024) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Huh?, Michael Shea, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 26, 2025] “Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

It’s unusual that I simply do not get a story.  And I absolutely did not get this one.  Or maybe I don’t get why it was written.  It’s very short (3 pages in this tiny format) and it shows two scenes.

In the first scene, a rock hits a hill.  Something cracks open and a little molecular net–an elaborate hydrocarbon making its first appearance in nature–floated out.  She floated through the rock to the water and was swallowed by a fish.

In the second scene a backhoe hits a bluff–maybe the same hill?–and another microsomething escapes.

On a second reading I get that I think this microscopic invader is potentially going to destroy the world.  But it was so oddly written that I ‘m not really sure.  Ah, I see that this is excerpted from a larger work.  So that makes sense because this felt like the set up to something.  Although I won’t be seeking out the novel.

Interestingly, Shea wrote a story in Ghost Box II that I loved.  Every story is different.

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Lord Dunsany–“The Three Infernal Jokes” (published 1916) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Death, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Mathilda Zeller, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Devil, The Ghost Box on October 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 25, 2025] “The Three Infernal Jokes”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This is one of the few stories in this collection that isn’t relatively contemporary.  It also needs a bit of an explanation as to the author.  His name is Lord Dunsany, but his proper name is Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, which is outstanding.

This story is told second hand.  The main character of the story told his tale to the narrator who is passing it along to us.  The man said to the narrator that he had a joke that could make the listener die of laughter.  But before he  told t he joke, he wanted to explain how he got it.

He belonged to a club for men. And one evening they were boasting of their specific virtues.  One man said he detested the taste of wine and boasted of his temperance.  So the main character told the room of his virtue–he found every woman equally ugly.

When a fellow in the room said that that virtue was amazing, the man demurred.  But the new fellow was persistent–would he sell this virtue?  The man was puzzled by this but agree noncommittally.  But the fellow immediately dragged him outside and placed a direct call to Hell.

Hell would buy this virtue for three jokes.  Three jokes that will make all who hear them die of laughter.  He took the deal and looked at the jokes–they didn’t seem very funny.

After a time, the man found himself at another gathering.  People were telling jokes and so he pulled out one of the scraps of paper with a joke on it.  He told the joke and didn’t find it funny.  But the crowd slowly began to laugh.  Everyone in the room was tittering, tittering far too much for the quality of the joke.  He was convinced that they were humoring him, or possibly even mocking him.  After a few moments of this, he left, full of embarrassment.

The next morning, in the paper her read that 22 men had died at a club.  He was quickly rounded up and brought before a judge.  Things were looking bad for him.  Then someone asked him to tell the joke.  He looked at the paper–it was now blank–but he told it from memory.  No one laughed.  He was certain he was going to be hanged for murder so he told the room that he had a different joke….

This type of story isn’t really scary, but it does make you wonder what you would do if you were given this “gift.”

 

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The Vampire Circus (State Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ, October 25, 2025)

Posted in Acrobats, New Brunswick, NJ, Set in New Jersey!, State Theatre, The Vampire Circus, Vampires on October 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 25, 2025] The Vampire Circus

I love a good circus.  This circus–vampire themed–seemed like a really fun thing to do around Halloween.  It was also near my daughter’s birthday so I thought it would be a fun birthday present.  Amusingly, she made other plans that night so we went with my son and one of his friends instead.

The short version is that this show was much like any other cirque–aerial work, strong men and balancing.  But the overall story was vampriric.  It wasn’t “adult” or scary, but it did play up the tropes of vampire lore (somewhat).  For instance, before one of the acts, the woman was wheeled out in a coffin, but otherwise it was an aerial act with ribbons.

This is not to downplay any of the spectacle, just to give it proper setting.

Although according to the website

Set in Bohemia during the 19 century, Count Dracula contemplates a plan for world domination, when he decides to open a traveling circus with his gypsy bodyguards. The Vampire Circus is a perfect cover-up to travel unnoticed and begin his world reign of terror and turn all humans into an army of vampires for global dominance.

I didn’t get any of that but I did get

Cirque acrobatics, comical audience interactions, contortionists, jugglers, acrobats, and raving cheers for a “Mad Graveyard Clown.”

For indeed, the host, the Mad Graveyard Clown was awesome.  His audience work was fantastic.  Our favorite bit was when someone came in late while he was on stage.  He immediately found the man and had the man hold up his (the clown’s) coat.  The man stood of to the side in the audience and every time he lowered his hand a bit, the clown spotted him and made him raise his hand.  He also had a really fun sequence where he brought two kids from the audience and had them use water pistols to put out a candle.  For the climax of that bit, he moved the candle right in front of the people in the front row and gave him a huge super soaker. (more…)

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L.D.Lewis–“Flicker” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, L.D. Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 24, 2025] “Flicker”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story starts out fairly calmly.  A woman, Kam, goes to see her brother who is an optometrist.  She admits that she made this appointment just to see him since she hasn’t for a while.  She tells him about a problem she’s been having but doesn’t think he’ll be able to do anything about it.  She says that her vision fades out for like half a second.  Things just go dark like a power surge.  He says he’ll look into it and tells her to say hi to he friends Wolf and Ami whom she’s having lumch with.

Lunch with them is always disappointing because they are seasonally vegetarian.  But she’s excited to see them and runs across the park to where they are sitting.

And then the lights went out.  All of them including the sun.  It was as if the power went out in the entire universe.  There was no breeze, no natural noise.  Just the sounds of people freaking out.  Twenty-one seconds later, everything turned back on and everyone could see the airplane sail out of the sky and crash into her brother’s office, totally destroying it and everyone in it.

For three months it was all anyone could talk about (understandably).  But Kam can’t get past it.  Her brother was killed and she wants to find some kind of answer.  She moves in with Wolf and Ami and sits in front of their TV all day.

One day Wolf came running in saying they had to get out of here right now.  It’s like the Purge out there–people are firing guns and setting things on fire.

And soon enough another darkness descends on the world.  Then they hear someone break into their apartment.

There’s a lot of supernatural in this story but the basics of it–people looting and breaking into houses is one of the scarier moments in any of these stories so far.

In the second half of the story, they flee to a cabin in  the woods only to learn that nowhere is safe.

The ending confused me though as I’m not exactly sure what happened.

 

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Acid Mothers Temple: “Dark Within of Astropia Tour” (Milkboy, Philadelphia, PA, October 22, 2025)

Posted in Acid Mothers Temple, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Milkboy, Philadelphia, PA, The Macks on October 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 22, 2025] Acid Mothers Temple

This was my fourth time seeing Acid Mothers Temple.  Every show is basically the same but also very different.

This show was particularly different because I found out (after the show) that the band was being joined by Cotton Casino (for only this show and the NYC show!), the original singer of the band from 1995 (she lives in the States now).  Of course I didn’t know this and I didn’t know who the woman was when she jumped on stage with them.

Amusingly, I thought she was like a young teenager or 20something.  She looked so youthful and was wearing a hockey shirt that said SUCK IT and bounced around with so much energy.

The band lost their bassist Wolf a while back and have replaced him with Sawano Shozo, but the other four are familiar:  Kawabata Makoto guitars, speed guru, Higashi Hiroshi synths, Satoshima Nani drums and Jyonson Tsu vocals and guitar.

They opened, as they do, with a wall of noise–Kawabata furiously playing the guitar, Nani smashing up the drums and the rest adding their own noise to the mix.  And after a minute or so, they settled into the glorious Dark Star Blues.  Slow and loud and psychedelic, with Cotton adding tambourines to the rhythm.  It’s so much fun watching Kawabata go nuts on his guitar while Jyonson is chill on the other side strumming out the rhythmic chords.  Jyonson and Cottom sang complementary/competing melodies.

Things exploded and then settled down for the quiet Santa Maria which opens and sounds like a British folksong before launching into the stratosphere.

On record La Novia is an hour long, so I’m guessing they played some part of the song before entering the slow burning noise of Blue Velvet Blues.  The songs melded into Flying Teapot and OM Riff before landing on Interstellar Overdrive from Pink Floyd.  When they started the slow In A Session Not C, Cotton lit up a cigarette (which you’ll see below caused all kinds of concern)

I don’t know if AMT have ever not played Pink Lady Lemonade (actually, they didn’t play last time I saw them, huh), but it seems that they play variations on it as the years go by.  This one started with the PLL prelude and then shifted into Sparking PLL (in the past I have seen Disco PLL.  This one was unique for me though because while Kawabata was using his metal wand (whatever that is) on the strings, Cotton was singing a high melody.  I enjoyed that for some of the song, Higashi Hiroshi sat aside (even though he sits for the show) and let the rest of the band do their thing.

And then, like each of the three previous shows I’ve seen, they ended the set with Cometary Orbital Drive.  Cotton picked up a tambourine and it looked to me like Higashi was having a little fun mimicking her when he shook his tambourine (but he’s totally deadpan, so who knows).

And then, like the end of every show, Kawabata went insane for the final 3 minutes or so.  His fingers flew, he raised the guitar over his head, he bent notes (all the while the rest of the band is keeping up going faster and faster), he took off his guitar and held it head down while still making noises.  Then he brought the guitar to the edge of the stage and let everyone within reach (including me) tap the strings as he waved it around.  Satisfied, he took the guitar back and looked around…spotting something or another and then he lifted the guitar over his head and suspended it from something near the ceiling.  And there it hung feedbacking as the band finished up.

It was without question the best AMT show I’ve been to.  I even hung around and took a (sadly, very blurry) selfie with Kawbata.

Next time they come to town I might have to hang out in front of Jyonson.  I feel like I don’t get to really appreciate what he does.  But Kawabata is such a magnet it’s hard not to want to watch everything he does.

Kawabata writes a daily(ish) blog about all of his show and here’s the recap for ours

From Kawabata’s blog:

For just two shows, tonight in Philadelphia and the day after tomorrow in Baltimore, AMT’s original founder , Cotton Casino , will be joining us for a special 90-minute set. The crowd was thrilled when Cotton first appeared, her incredible vocals and trance-like performance stirring up the band and the audience. Meanwhile, the enigmatic rhythms she occasionally played on the tambourine completely captivated both NANI and I, and this only served to further enhance the hyper-psychedelic sound, transforming us into a super-fast version of the eerie star Goras, racing through the galaxy with a furious cosmic rampage, and finally bringing the set to a grand finale.

Incidentally, in the middle of her set, Cotton lit a cigarette, much like she did in her old performances, causing a plume of purple smoke, and after the show she was given a stern warning by the venue. Smoking in public indoor spaces is now considered a barbaric act, and with the Fire Service Act now also coming into play, even the charismatic Cotton would not be tolerated in this day and age, so please do your best.

2025 Milkboy 2023 Johnny Brenda’s 2019 The Saint 2018 Underground Arts
Dark Star Blues ‰ [3] Jam (while soundcheck was finishing up) La Nòvia £ Dark Star Blues ‰
Santa Maria Õ Blue Velvet Blues ⊗ [2] Sycamore Trees (Jimmy Scott cover) Blue Velvet Blues ⊗
La Nòvia £ [2] Dark Star Blues ‰ [2] From Planet Orb With Love > ≅ Disco Pink Lady Lemonade > ⇑
Blue Velvet Blues ⊗ [3] Interstellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd cover) Good-Bye Mrs. Uranus § La Le Lo > ♥
In A session Not C > Flying Teapot (Gong cover) Hello Good Child > ‰ In C ©
Flying Teapot (Gong cover) > From Planet Orb With Love § > [2] Disco Pink Lady Lemonade > ⇑ [2] Untitled > 
OM Riff From The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. ‰ > Good-Bye Mrs. Uranus § [2] In E > ∞ Nanique Another Dimension >  ⊄
Interstellar Overdrive (Pink Floyd cover) Cometary Orbital Drive ⇔ [3] Pink Lady Lemonade coda∀ [2] Pink Lady Lemonade coda ∀ > 
Pink Lady Lemonade prelude > Cometary Orbital Drive ⇔ [2] Cometary Orbital Drive ⇔
Sparkling Pink Lady Lemonade ◊
Cometary Orbital Drive ⇔ [4]

It’s unclear to me what records these songs first appeared on (as they have 1,000 records out), although Setlist does a pretty good job, I think.


Õ Holy Black Mountain Side (2024)
£ La Nòvia (2023)
⊄ Never Ending Psychedelic Deathmatch (2022)
◊ Domino Dimension Drumatique Vol.1 (2022)
⇑ Levitation Sessions (2021)
∀ Diend of Fiend or Unstoppable Moonsault (2020)
≅ Electric Dream Ecstasy (2018)
§ Sacred and Inviolable Phase Shift (2018)
∞ In 0 to ∞ (2010)
⇔ Cometary Orbital Drive (2008) or Paralyzed Genius Brain (2023)
‰ IAO Chant From the Melting Paraiso Underground Freak Out (2005)
‰ Does the Cosmic Shepherd Dream of Electric Tapirs? (2004)
♥ Mantra of Love (2004)
© In C (2001)
⊗ Pataphisical Freak Out MU!! (1999)

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Ruby Cowling–“Eliminate Toxins and Increase Blood Flow” (published 2019) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Massage, Patton Oswalt, Ruby Cowling, The Ghost Box on October 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 23, 2025] “Eliminate Toxins and Increase Blood Flow”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story is set in a Thai massage parlor.  The main character is not Thai, but she has worked there long enough that the rest of the Thai employees consider her one of them.

She likes the job–Thai massage uses more than your hands–you walk on the customer and there are bars around the room for them to hold on to as they dig their heels in (all if the customer wants of course).  But every Tuesday, Mr Smeed comes in. He’s a white slug, the kind of guy who asked if they massaged “to completion.”

She hates this man and today, after a lengthy massage she has had enough.

The story is very short and the ending comes very fast.  It’s the kind of ending you have to read twice to make sure you understood what happened.  I also really enjoyed the reactions to what happened.

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Billie Eilish (Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia PA, October 23, 2025)

Posted in Billie Eilish, Philadelphia, PA, XFinity Mobile Arena, Young Miko on October 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 23, 2025] Billie Eilish

Our history with Billie Eilish shows is interesting.  I bought tickets in 2019 to see her in NJ.  Then COVID came along and the show was postponed and then cancelled.  I bought tickets again in 2021 and we finally got to see her in 2022.  When she announced a show at Wells Fargo Center in 2024 I wasn’t sure if my daughter cared that much and so I didn’t get tickets.  The show sold out and everyone raved about it and she was bummed we didn’t go.  And then, ever so nicely, Billie announced that the tour was continuing and she was going to play in Philly AGAIN at the same venue.  So this time I was able to surprise her.  The tickets weren’t as close as they were in Newark, but her stage design was a huge rectangle on the floor and she came pretty close to us throughout the show.

And this show was basically the same as the 2024 show.  The only real difference was the middle acoustic songs that she and her backing singers played.  And the fact that the venue was then the Wells Fargo Center and is now the XFinity Mobile Arena.

As happened half the time at this venue, the traffic was terrible.  We left early and assumed we had plenty of time.  But even when we pulled in the lot, all of the ADA was taken!  Good grief.  However, it was cool that we parked right near the Billie 18 wheeler which had her logo on it (photo op!)  Nevertheless, we were going to miss some if not all of Young Miko, the opening act.  I didn’t know anything about her.  She seems to be a chill rapper who sings in English and Spanish.

Since we has already missed half of her set, we decided to just get on the merch line (which moved really quickly!). Having acquired our merch, I did the typical dad thing of figuring out that if half of the people there bought a shirt she made $500K on merch alone.  But good for her and even better for her because she happily donates to good causes and calls out rich men who don’t.

We had pretty great seats, unexpectedly.  I mean, I knew where the seats were that I bought, but I didn’t expect them to be so good.    So her stage was a square (rectangle?) on the floor of the arena.  There was a vertical lighting rig in the middle of the square on which they projected videos and also had a crane of some sort that lifted her up and down throughout the show.

The show started with some videos on the middle screens–mostly static.  And then suddenly Billie was floating above the screens.  On either side of this big screen in a lower area were her band members–2 on either side facing each other.  We were closest to the bass and drums.

When Billie lowered to the stage, she proceeded to run (pretty fast) all around the stage.  She sang and waved to all sides of the square. She stood at corners and sang. She lay down in some places.  She made sure that everyone had a good view of her.

I don’t really know her new album all that well, but she is such a great performer that I didn’t care.  I enjoyed her delivery, her energy and the whole entertainment package of her show.  Like last time the girls screaming around me were far louder than the music.  In fact, listening back to the videos I took, the audience is always louder than Billie (but are in fine rhythm).

Perhaps the most interesting part of the show was when she asked everyone to be quiet so she could loop her vocals for When the Party’s Over.  She explained that she needed silence or the looping wouldn’t work.  People were okay and then people yelled at them to shut up and the Billie started and of course someone shouted I love you and Billie just shook her head and carried on (that voice did not get looped that I could hear).

During Bad Guy (easily my favorite of her songs), she grabbed one of the many cameras ringing the stage and ran around with it showing all of the band members.  And of course the crowd shouted every word.  Duh! (more…)

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The Macks (Milkboy, Philadelphia, PA, October 22, 2025) [ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE]

Posted in Acid Mothers Temple, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Milkboy, Philadelphia, PA, The Macks on October 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: October 22, 2025] The Macks

I hadn’t heard of The Macks before and I wasn’t really sure what to expect from them.  I mean they were opening for Acid Mothers Temple so I knew they’d be kind of weird, but I wasn’t expecting them to be weird in the way that they are or for them to rock so hard.

After the set, I asked the singer if their set was a bunch of really short songs or a few long songs and he looked at me like I was crazy.  But there were so many stops and starts it was hard for me to tell.  Either way, though, I didn’t care because the songs were so cool.  Ben Windheim on guitar played great riffs and made wild sounds (he spent so much time on the high notes–chords, feedback, noise–it was great.  The drummer Josef Windheim (Ben’s brother) played really fast and added lots of little details that filled out the sound.  Aidan Harrison on bass played really cool lines and fills and was also up on the high notes a lot.

But it was hard to take your eyes of of singer Sam Fulwiler.  He was really intense, almost daring us to watch (or to turn away).  He had a kind of barking delivery that worked perfectly with the staccato verses.

But there were also some really catchy parts.  Like the chorus of Modern Grape: “I don’t need anymore, godamnit.”  But the verses were staccato pumps with staccato lyrics.  And then the middle slowed down with wild spacey synth sounds from Jacob Michael Perris.  That’s what made it so hard to know if these were all the same song or lots of little songs. (more…)

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Mathilda Zeller–“Kushtuka” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Alaska, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Mathilda Zeller, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 22, 2025| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 22, 2025] “Kushtuka”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story is set in Alaska.  The main character is not yet twenty but is old enough to want to get married to her boyfriend (actually, he wants to get married and she doesn’t care).  But her mama would like her to get married to a rich white man from Kansas named Ferryman.  This man is terrible, acting like he owns the place and taking what he wants.  He has some “treasures” in his house that she is certain belonged to her grandfather.

Her mama tells her that she (the daughter) is going to work for Ferryman’s party that night.  She bristles but it’s a done deal and she will make some money out of it. (more…)

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Bob Leman–“Window” (published 1980) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Bob Leman, Hingston & Olsen, Patton Oswalt, The Ghost Box, Time Travel on October 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 21, 2025] “Window”

It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….

After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.

As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.

This story is set in the middle of nowhere.  A government facility that has been shut down since World War II was recently reoccupied for research purposes.  The man in charge was experimenting with supernatural concerns.

And then one day his prefab house was gone and in its place was an invisible box–perfectly straight lines in all directions.  And inside of that box was an old house–like a Victorian postcard.  There was a family in the house and the government men could see in, but it was clear the family could not see out.

It had been a few days since this happened and the man in charge–who just came on the scene–is furious that no one said anything sooner.  But the men on the ground had been busy doing experiments and they knew (correctly) that if they went to Washington with this, they would be removed from site.  The men had discovered two important things.  Anything inserted into the clear wall would disappear.  So a stick pushed half way into the box would come back with that half missing.  And two, every fifteen hours or so, the window let its barrier down and things could go through it.  They had been practicing with ice cubes.  Most cubes simply disappeared, but every once in a while, a few would get through and plop on the lawn.

The next time that the opening happens, one of the men spontaneously jumps through and the family clearly sees him.

That’s when the trouble starts.

The story was a little slow at first but it really ramped up at the end.

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