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Archive for the ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Category

Stephen Tobolowsky–The Dangerous Animals Club (2012)

Posted in Airlines, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Community, Deadwood, Essays, Frou Frou, Glee, Groundhog Day, Heroes, History, imogen Heap, Keep My Grave Open, Memoirs, Pranks, Stephen Tobolowsky, That 70's Show, The Mindy Project, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Theater on January 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

tobo3SOUNDTRACK: iMOGEN HEAP-Speak for Yourself (2005).

heapI really liked Heap’s first album i Megaphone, but I didn’t really think to much about her after that.  Sometime last year I heard a track she was in with Frou Frou, which I liked.  So I thought I’d get this album which was highly regarded.

The problem with it is that I have listened to it a bunch of times, often several times in a row and it really just never sticks with me.  I keep relistening to see if it ever does but it’s just a kind of nebulous dancey pop.  Heap has an interesting voice–she can hit major highs, but she can also do a raspy voice that is unusual and intriguing.  But I suppose the problem is that there’s so much going on that she is effectively lost in the sound.

The standout track is “Hide and Seek” but that’s because her voice is manipulated by a vocoder, making her sound like a machine. It’s a very cool effect, especially when she hits a very high note, but it can’t really be a good sign that the most memorable track on the album is the one where you sound like a machine.

This is not to say that the album is bad–there are a number of interesting moments on it, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of great songs.  When I was looking this disc up to see other comments about it, I see that it was very highly regarded in the dance genre.  And maybe given those parameters I should revise somewhat as well.  As dance music this is more interesting than your average four on the floor stuff.  I can see how it led to the duet of Frou Frou.  And yet, compared to i Megaphone, I fear that it’s a lot less exciting.

[READ: January 12, 2013] The Dangerous Animals Club

I don’t often read autobiographies or memoirs.  I really never even look for them.  But I was waiting online at the library and this book jumped out at me.  I don’t really know why.  The title is kind of interesting and catchy.  And the author’s named seemed, if not familiar, then at least compelling in a very-long-and-Polish-or-Russian way.  So I started flipping through it.  And it sounded interesting.

But who the hell is Stephen Tobolowsky?  Well, if you have seen just about any movie or TV show, you have seen him.  He has been in a ton of things.  He was in Groundhog Day, he was in Heroes, he is in Glee, he was in The Mindy Project briefly.  Community? yup.  The New Adventures of Old Christine?  you bet.  Deadwood for a lot of the show.  That 70’s Show for one episode.  He was in the unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  He was even in a 1976 movie called Keep My Grave Open!

So who is he?   (more…)

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Andrew Chambliss–“Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In Space No One Can Hear You Slay” (Free Comic Book Day 2012)

Posted in Adventure, Alien, All Songs Considered, Andrew Chambliss, Aubrey Plaza, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Culture Shock, Fantasy, Father John Misty, Fleet Foxes, Graphic Novel, Parks and Recreation, Pugwash, Short Story, Supernatural, Surreal, Violence, Yuck!, Zombies on June 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FATHER JOHN MISTY-“Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” (2012).

This song is also on the list of NPR’s Top 50 songs of the year (so far).  It comes so far out of left field in terms of who the guy is and the way the music sounds that I can’t believe it made it to  their list.

Father John Misty is comprised of former Fleet Foxes dude J. Tillman.  I was bummed that the Foxes were not the original lineup anymore (although Tillman says he didn’t really want to be part of someone else’s vision, so that’s cool).  And if this is Tillman’s vision that  makes sense.

This is a simple guitar and drums kind of song;  There’s a ton of reverb (on the vocals, the guitars and especially the drums).  It has an incredibly retro feel.  It reminds me of someone like Pugwash, although it sounds nothing like them, really.  It feels like an older song (aside from the reverb, the guitar sounds very clean) and then the lyrics kick in: “Jesus Christ girl, what are people going to think”  And the song is all about death and cemeteries (“Someone’s gotta help me dig”).

I wasn’t sure about the song when I first listened, but then I couldn’t stop replaying it.  Yes the song is very simple–chord structures are pretty basic, but it feels so raw that it’s hard to stop listening–especially when the song starts to pick up more…instruments, and vocals, before it ends.

There’s a video for the song (in which Aubrey Plaza (from Parks and Rec) goes batshit crazy).  And the video version is a bit longer (a lengthy coda is added on).  Well, hell, here it is:

I will definitely have to hear more from this album.

[READ: June 23, 2012] “In Space No One Can Hear You Slay”

As I mentioned yesterday, The Guild was backed with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic for Free Comic Book Day.  I loved Buffy the show.  I loved Buffy the comics.  I loved the idea that Joss was keeping the series alive in the comic books.  And then somehow I fell behind in the series.  I haven’t really read much of Season 8 (some day…some day). So there was a little bit of a context issue for me here (very minor, but still there).

True context is kind of unnecessary here (except that I don’t know what Spike and Buffy are doing together–their past relationships are so complex, who knows where they may wind up).  Anyhow, as I said context is irrelevant because this issue takes place in…outer space.  That’s right, Spike suggest that Buffy go on a space vacation to see a nebula explode (what?).  Massive cerebral cortex confusion aside, this one-off does indeed see Buffy on a spaceship.  (more…)

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TV Spring / Summer 2012: more cancellations, more free time

Posted in 2 Broke Girls, 30 Rock, America's Next Top Model, Archer, Are You There, Chelsea?, Bob's Burgers, Breaking In, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Community, Face Off, Glee, Grimm, How I Met Your Mother, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Modern Family, New Girl, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, South Park, The Office, The Simpsons, TV 2012, Up All Night, Warehouse 13, Work of Art on May 13, 2012| 3 Comments »

I was planning to wait until the season finales before writing about our spring/summer TV watching.  But then this week, NBC announced that they would be either not renewing or renewing in a very limited capacity 30 Rock, Community and Parks and Recreation.  Wow, talk about throwing a bomb on your programming.  Thursday night NBC has been a powerhouse for the last few years with 5 shows, (yes, five, with their crazy programming flip flops) that were strong.  Interestingly, The Office, the only show not chopped, has been the weakest of the bunch.  I wanted the season with Michael Scott to be good but it really wasn’t.

Since I first wrote that some more details have emerged and it seems that all three shows have been picked up for 13 episodes–with, as I gather, room to expand if the new shows that NBC tries to fill their shoes with suck.  If you want a positive spin on this, read the A.V. Club dude’s take on it (at the bottom of the post, final bullet point, although the whole post will tell you why it is such a good show if you’re not watching it.).

When I posted about TV last, Karen left a comment that we watch a lot of TV and that has stuck with me. I still don’t feel like we do…  We watch a lot of shows, but we don’t channel surf, we don’t just have the TV on.  We have appointment TV, is how I like to think of it.  And, of course, while there a lot of titles, many drop off the list (by us or the networks) and quite a few are only 13 episodes long.  But man, there has been a serious drop off in numbers after this season.

So let’s see what has been removed from the last post: (more…)

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TV Fall 2011

Posted in 2 Broke Girls, Allen Gregory, American Horror Story, Archer, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck, Community, Flight of the Conchords, Free Agents, Gilmore Girls, Glee, Grimm, Hart of Dixie, How I Met Your Mother, How To Be a Gentleman, Kal Penn, Mike and Molly, Modern Family, Mr Show, New Girl, Once Upon a Time, Pan Am, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Ringer, Suburgatory, Terra Nova, The Big Bang Theory, The Office, The Simpsons, The Walking Dead, Tosh.0, TV 2011, Up All Night, Work of Art on November 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

I was planning to write this post early in the TV Season.  I found out that the TiVo website rather helpfully includes a page of all the premiere dates of shows, which in addition to telling us when shows started, has also turned out to be a good way to keep track of the shows that were cancelled already.  Our goal is basically to get every good show cancelled so that we can watch our poor Netflix DVDs (which now that we had to change our policy we have mercifully fewer discs that we are not watching).  Um, thanks for the hike Netflix?

Anyhow, it’s now  about seven weeks into the season and we’ve already lost a number of shows–some as quickly as two weeks in…which, really?  I mean why bother.  Surprisingly, none of the FOX shows were cancelled yet.  That’s probably because FOX didn’t pick anything cool or interesting enough for me to want to watch–that’s actually not true, they have some good new shows this season, but nothing like Arrested Development.

So, this time I’m breaking it down by day of the week (which is silly since we TiVo everything and watch it whenever).  And this time red shows are shows we have given up on and Green ones are ones that we’re still enjoying. (more…)

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Keith Ridgway–“Goo Book” (New Yorker, April 11, 2011)

Posted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cibo Matto, Fears, Gangsters, New Yorker, Sex, Short Story, Stereolab on May 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CIBO MATTO-“Sugar Water” (1996).

We have been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In episode one of season two the (then) hip band Cibo Matto appeared, playing “live” at the Bronze.  It was the first time they had a “real” band on the show.  In season one there was an occasional live band, Sprung Monkey (they were in the first episode pretty prominently) but Cibo Matto were the first “national” band–with a hit single or two–to be on the show (and look, there’s Sean Lennon in a dress!).  The song works pretty well here for the atmospherics and moodiness.

I really liked Cibo Matto when they came out.  Sure, they were kind of a novelty, (two Japanese singers with an Italian band name who sung a bunch about food) but then the late 90s were all about novelty.  Of course, even within the realm of the alt rock 90s, a song called “Know Your Chicken” was pretty unusual (noisy and weird) .  “Sugar Water” on the other hand, is a moody piece.  It’s slow with delicate keyboards and a (very mildly) spooky verse.  But the overall feel is a kind of “space age” one for notes and tones.  It also has a kind of Stereolab-vibe (especially in the la las).   It’s a catchy song and I enjoyed hearing it again after all thee years.

Not to mention the video is suitably curious.

[READ: April 8, 2011] “Goo Book”

This is a strangely sentimental story for one that starts out with the sentence: “It was fucking hot.”  In fact, the story is strangely sentimental for a story about a gangster’s apprentice (and one which has so much cursing!).

The protagonist is a young man who is a petty thief.  Mostly he steals from tourists (I was pleased that when he took he thought was a wallet but which turned out to be a notebook, he then gave the book to a kid to make sure the tourist got it back–stealing money is one thing but returning the notebook showed a decency that I approved of).

But he also worked for Mishazzo as his driver. (And I have to admit that perhaps the one flaw of the story is that I couldn’t follow the timeline at all).  Mishazzo is a gentleman who owns a lot of businesses.  And the driver was told explicitly that he didn’t know anything.  At all.  He just drove.  And the driver was fine with that.  He asked no questions.  And the driving was fine–usually to one of Mishazzo’s coffee shops for an undetermined  length of time.  So he started carrying a bottle with him in case he had to pee (he wasn’t allowed to leave the car), and started smoking like a fiend.  But the money was good, and he honestly didn’t know what Mishazzo was up to (he assumed it wasn’t good, but he also assumed it wasn’t that bad either). (more…)

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Zadie Smith–Changing My Mind (2009)

Posted in Barack Obama, Book Reviews, Books about music, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, David Foster Wallace, Death, Dictionary, E.M. Forster, Essays, Film & TV, Franz Kafka, George Eliot, Holidays, Military, Mogwai, New Yorker, Racism, Roland Barthes, Suicide, Travel, Vladimir Nabokov, War, Zadie Smith, Zora Neale Hurston on March 27, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI-No Education = No Future (Fuck the Curfew) (1998).

This is a 3 song EP. The opener “Xmas Stripes” is one of my favorite early Mogwai songs.  The opening melody is really great, with a cool interesting bass and a nice guitar over the top.  At about 3:30 the song grows from a silent track to a menacing, growing beast until the drums start and the song and the main riff begins.  By 5 minutes it’s all out rock noise.  By 6 minutes the song is scaled back for the violin solo.  The remaining 7 (!) minutes are a denouement for the song.  Even though I love the track, I mostly love the first 8 or 9 minutes.  The ending tends to drag a bit.

But for all of their noise, Mogwai’s early releases were really quieter instrumentals, meditative songs that were really quite pretty.  “Rollerball” is a beautiful, sad three-minute track.

The last song “Small Children in the Background” continues in this quieter vein.  At nearly 7 minutes, it allows for a noisy middle section.  This noisy section is indeed mostly noise.  And yet the pretty melody of the rest of the track is just as loud throughout the mix, making for a very cool and very brief explosion mid-song.

Not all EPs are essential, but this one is pretty fantastic.  And I have Lar to thank for getting it for me.

[READ: March 10, 2011] Changing My Mind

It’s funny to me when that when I get into an author, I seem to wind up not reading the books that people most talk about until much later.  Take Zadie Smith.  Her debut, White Teeth, is something of a touchstone for many readers.  I missed it when it came out, but I loved On Beauty and figured I’d go back and read it.  That was almost a year ago.  And in that time I have read lots of little things by her and now this collection of essays.

Regardless, this collection of essays is a wonderful look in to the nonfiction world of a writer whom I admire.  And it was quite a treat.  Zadie is an intellectual, and that comes across in all of these paces.  Whether it’s the subjects she’s writing about, the footnotes she uses or just the acknowledgment that she likes art films and not blockbusters, we know where she’s speaking from.  And, of course, I’m right there with her.  The funny thing about this book then is how few of the subjects I know.

The book is broken down into five sections: Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling and Remembering.  The Reading section is basically book reviews.  The Being section is about her experiences.  The Seeing section is about films.  The Feeling section is about her father and the Remembering section is about David Foster Wallace. (more…)

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The Guild

Posted in Adventure, Anarchy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Contests, Death, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, Fantasy, Felicia Day, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Greed, Humiliation, LGBTQ, The Guild on June 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’m very late to this show, I know.  But then I have an excuse: I don’t like watching TV/movies/etc on my computer.  So, even when I watched the awesome Dr Horrible, and the commentary  told me all about Felicia Day’s online show, I didn’t investigate.

It took our friend Megan telling us that we could Instant Watch it on TiVo before we decided to check it out.   And the only reason I’m glad it took so long to watch is because we were able to watch all three seasons back to back (to back). (more…)

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Seth Grahame-Smith–Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2010) [prepub]

Posted in 19th Century, Adventure, Blue Öyster Cult, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Death, Demons, Edgar Allan Poe, Entertainment Weekly, History, Meta, Michael Moorcock, Seth Grahame-Smith, Violence, Yuck! on March 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLUE ÖYSTER CULT-Fire of Unknown Origin (1981).

This was the first BOC album that I bought.  The video for “Burnin’ for You” was all over MTV (although I don’t remember it at all, now).  And I was an instant convert to BOC.  I listened to this disc constantly.

It took going to college and meeting my roommate before I got any other BOC discs (he was a diehard fan).  And while I like most of their releases, this one still ranks as number one for me.  BOC had been getting poppier and lighter over the years, there’s no question.  But this album perfected this mix, making for a supremely catchy recording that still exhibited all of their metal trademarks: wild guitar solos, bizarro futuristic lyrics (although there’s no weirdo titles on this one) and heavy heavy chords.

The opener, “Fire of Unknown Origin” is a wonderful rocking song.  It sets the tone for the disc: keyboards, yes, but of the atmospheric/spooky variety, not the poppy/hit single variety.  “Burnin’ for You” seems like an obvious single, and so it was. It also screams early 80s to me, which I guess isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But the album’s wonderful weirdness kicks in with “Veteran of the psychic Wars” written by Michael Moorcock. It was featured in the movie Heavy Metal, and is weird and creepy, propelled by thunderous drums and a great guitar riff: a sci-fi masterpiece.  “Sole Survivor” is in the same vein, Eric Blooms ragged voice and the awesome bass line really sell the song.

The middle track is “Heavy Metal (Black and Silver)”  It is heavy heavy heavy and it rocks like all get out with a screaming feedback solo.  It’s an awesome song that seems more than a little out of place on this rather light sounding disc (although even on their later discs, they have included an occasional heavy track).

“Vengeance (The Pact)” is a keyboard-fueled track.  But the greatness is that it’s Lanier’s spooky keyboards.  It also features an awesome middle section with heavy heavy guitars and dark lyrics.  “After Dark” is another wonderfully creepy keyboard song.  The underlying riff is sinister and cool, and the lyrics (and harmonies) meld the “band vocals” on some of their more “hit single” songs, with the oddness that keeps BOC interesting.

But by far the creepiest, most sinister and flat out weird song is “Joan Crawford.”  When I first heard this song back in 1982, I had no idea who Joan Crawford was.  Finding out later that she was a real person has messed with my head for my entire life.  I have never seen a film with her in it and am just convinced that she’s a scary, scary woman (the whispered “Christina…mother’s home” really did me in).  Interestingly, I don’t find the song spooky (although I do get chills if I’m paying attention), but I still find her spooky.  It opens with a pseudo-classical piano riff and then bursts out with menacing metal chords.  The chorus “Joan Crawford has risen from the grave!” complete with squeaky violins proceeds until and the break with sound effects that imply Crawford’s life, I assume: car crashes, race tracks, telephones, babies crying and the whispered “No.”   And it’s all catchy as hell.

“Don’t Turn You Back” ends the disc as something of a mellowing out after Joan Crawford.  It features a great solo and rather soothing choruses (despite the warning that you shouldn’t turn your back).  And it features the ever confusing line: “You use that special option in your car”  (what could that BE?).

Why on earth hasn’t this disc gotten a deluxe reissue from Columbia>?

[READ: March 3, 2010] Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

I received this book as a prepub Advanced Readers Copy and hoped to have it finished before the book actually came out, but I was shy of it by a couple of days (rats).

So Grahame-Smith wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  His was pretty much the first in what has become an ever increasing series of literary mash-ups: using “classic” texts as a basis and inserting a seemingly random (usually horror) element.  The genre is already close to jumping the shark, although realistically, you never know when a combination is going to work wonders.

I wasn’t really that interested in the follow up to P&P&Z: Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters.  When I first heard of it I was intrigued, but watching the promotional video for the book actually turned me off of it.  I’m intrigued that a new title: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is written by a different author, but I have to assume that it will be all original as there’s no prequel to P&P itself.  And I have to admit I like the title of the upcoming Jane Slayre (for Jane Eyre).

But the things about P&P&Z were that it kept the original text (mostly) intact, and there were a number of things in the original that actually led to inserting zombies into the text.

Plus, Grahame-Smith matched the tone of the original perfectly.  The forthcoming mashups will have a lot to prove but I think some cream will definitely rise to the top.

So, Grahame-Smith’s new book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is sort of a mashup.  Unlike P&P&Z, there is no source text to blend.  Rather, Seth Grahame-Smith, who is a character in the introduction of the book is given the “secret” diary of Abraham Lincoln, under provision that he write up the real story of our 16th president.  The secret diary reveals not only that our country was plagued by vampires but that Lincoln himself was personally impacted by them. (more…)

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Terry Moore & Craig Rousseau–Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane 1-5 (2008)

Posted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Craig Rousseau, Graphic Novel, Kevin Smith, Spider-Man, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore, The Flaming Lips, YA Books on April 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

spidermanSOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-The Fearless Freaks 1986-2006 (2006).

freakThis is an assemblage of ten recordings from twenty years of The Flaming Lips.  It’s something of a soundtrack to the movie of the same name, but it’s more of a collection of rare and unavailable tracks.  Most of the tracks are live, and, since I’m not a big collector of unreleased works, they were all new to me.

Except of course that track 2 is “Free Radicals” which is from the then-soon-to-be-released At War with the Mystics.  The opening track, “Wayne’s Intro…Smoking a J with the Fearless Freaks” is a pretty instrumental with an introduction to the album by Wayne himself.  I’ve since found the instrumental online and it’s a really good listen (with the intro, it’s not something you’d want to listen to all that often, frankly).

The next track is “Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear.”  According to Wayne’s intro it’s a very rare track and it fits quite nicely into the time period of its recording (2005).  It’s a bit more acoustic sounding than most of their work at this time, but it’s still really good.

The rest of the disc is live tracks from various shows throughout their career.  And the thing that is somewhat amazing is how noisy/sloppy/untechnical the band sounds compared to their post Zaireeka explorations of sonic landscapes. “With You…” dates back to 1986, when the Lips were a noisy bunch of punks.  “Whole Lotta Love/You Can’t Stop the Spring” comes from 1988 and is a ramshackle mess–well the Led Zep cover is a mess– intentionally so. In fact all of the songs from this era have a feeling of what Wayne desribeds as “Our playing is on the verge of overtaking itself.”  It’s sloppy, noisy, fast and pretty wonderful.

The disc also contains a cover of “Space Age Love Song” by A Flock of Seagulls.  It’s from that same time period and is hard to determine if it’s reverent or not.

“When You Smile” clocks in at 12 minutes, although really the song itself is about 5, with a 7 minute noise-fest afterward.  Meanwhile, “Sleeping on the Roof” comes from the Parking Lot Experiment in which about 50 people all play a tape from simultaneously.  This version is considerably longer than the version from The Soft Bulletin and it is far more profane.  The last several minutes consist of several people telling each other to Fuck Off.  It’s not really worth repeated listenings but it’s interesting for curiosity seekers.

The last track, from 2003, is “The Observer” also from Bulletin.  It’s quite a change from the rest of the disc, as the playing is crisp and the recording is quite clean.

The disc is meant for diehard fans of the band.  Casual listeners probably won’t enjoy this as much, and should just seek out the original albums.

[READ: April 8, 2009] Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane

Even though I’m a fan of comics, I’ve never really enjoyed the superhero vein of them.  But every once in a while a writer I like will jump into the fray and I will follow.

Kevin Smith did Green Arrow, a superhero I’d not even heard of, but I read his run of that one.  And now Terry Moore has done a limited run of the series Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.  I didn’t know anything about this series when I first heard he would be writing it.  I have since learned that there were 20 issues published in 2004-2005.  And this 5 issue mini-series may or may not have anything to do with the previous series (I’ll probably never investigate that).

But after that big super-hero welcome, this series has very little to do with suprheroes.  It’s more of a love story, or at least a frustrated love story. (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Face” (New Yorker, September 8, 2008)

Posted in Alice Munro, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Canadian Content, King's X, New Yorker, Short Story on September 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Gretchen Goes to Nebraska (1989).

I loved Out of the Silent Planet and never thought there’d be anything better.  But then just a year later, King’s X put out Gretchen Goes to Nebraska.  It ranks up there with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in terms of weird titles the belie how wonderful the contents really are.  I still have no idea what the title actually means, but that’s okay.  I put on the disc, and relish the music.

The opening is as otherworldly as the cover.  It starts with a sitar chord that plays long and slowly fades…into a great high pitched bass line.  And, then comes the dissonance once again.  The dissonance isn’t quite as harsh this time around, but it plays off the other instruments even more.  And just as the dissonance ends, you get the harmonies.  All of the elements of King’s X are back, and even better!

The next song, “Over My Head” is just an amazing bit of music.  It incorporates everything: gospel sing- alongs, great guitar riffs, he even mentions his grandma!  Fabulous.  “Summerland” may even top “Goldilox” in terms of fantastic ballads.  The harmonies on it are simply through the roof.

I’m going through the song list and there’s not a bad song to be found.  There’s still overtones of Christian rock in evidence, but the message becomes even more about spirituality than simple Christianity as on “Mission”: “What’s the mission of the preacher man, some are true, some do lie.”  There’s also the great “Pleaides” a song not sung by Doug Pinnick, which allows Ty to let his voice shine through.  The disc ends with “The Burning Down” a song that encapsulates the mellower side of King’s X, including an extended instrumental denouement which plays more with fun instrumentation (and shouts of Ow Sigh Planet).

Brilliant.

[READ: September 7, 2008] “Face”

I’ve talked about Alice Munro a few times lately, so I’ll skip any introduction and get to the heart of the matter.  This story concerns a young man born with an enormous birthmark on his face: the entire side of his face is covered with the  purplish mark.  His father is utterly repulsed by him, and as far as the narrator can recall, only looked him in the eye once when he was born, and that was it.  His mother tried to protect him by home schooling him until he was old enough to go to college.  By the time he went to school, he felt he was old enough to withstand any of the abuses that would be hurled at him.  Although, frankly, the disdain of his father was worse than anything the kids could dole out. (more…)

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