Books. What a joke. Little rectangles of information.  As usual, it’s been days since I’ve left the house and Diksmell Fartdik is once more demanding that I write something for the Mushkunt Blog. I’ve forgotten what daylight and women look like. I haven’t spoken in days and I forget how to make my throat and mouth work together to form words. I’m like that movie starring Meg Ryan where she speaks wolf talk. I am an urban feral child-adult. Here are some of my books that are going to interest others.

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10) Disney Adventures featuring Macaulay Culkin

When I was little I owned all the issues of Nintendo Power and Disney Adventures. I would keep them organized and read them over and over. I loved magazines so much.  It seemed like I was going to work for them when I was little. I made zines and then I started Trashed Magazine and by that time the magazine industry was already dead.

So what’s left? Wasting my love of topical writing on this fucking website. Playboy was once a home for chaste titties but they also sent Shel Silverstein to Spain so he could do comics about it and paid Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder a lot of money to produce the beautifully painted Little Annie Fanny comics. Who’s going to finance beautiful things now? Everything’s gotta be made cheaper and faster now.  I was supposed to be in magazines. Now what do I have? I have nothing. Rudyard Kipling believed that if Hell exists, that we are living in it.

Long story short, Macaulay happily discusses all the good times he was having with Michael Jackson at the time.

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9) Rat Catching by Crispin Hellion Glover

I interviewed Crispin Glover when What Is It? came out and he gave me copies of his books. That interview was scheduled to be in a magazine that got canceled but at least I got to meet him and he gave me these books.

I feel guilty about every interview I ever did that didn’t get used for one thing or another.

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8) Sex in the Outdoors by Robert Ros, M.D. and Buck Titon, M.S.

Boy, that rabbit’s really getting an eyeful. Did there have to be a guide for having sex in the outdoors?  Isn’t that what all living things have been doing since the dawn of time? The advice is all like “Don’t rub your dick on poison ivy.” And if you see a big bunny watching you sex then just close your eyes and hope he goes away because you are probably about to die.

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7) Understanding Human Behavior

If you ever get close to a human and huuuuuuuummaaaaaaaaannnn behavvvvvvioorrrrrrr. I’ll never understand the appeal of Bjork. I found this book in the trash.

That’s some crazy ownership tag in the front of the book. Don’t think about death too much, Wilcox.

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6) Masters of Metal by Lee Martyn

This book is ridiculous. I like that they have chubby Ozzy on the cover. He was moving in a Chris Farley direction at this point.

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I bet you didn’t know that Steve Martin was heavy metal. Now you do.

I bet you didn’t know that ZZ Top were metal either. Neither did they. Only Lee Martyn did.

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50% Off Online & In-Store ’til February 7th

That’s right mopsters we’re hitting 50% off! Almost all Мишка apparel that’s left in-store and online is now 50% off. Don’t sleep, unless you want to cry about it later because there isn’t really all that much left.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

Blessure Grave - Judged by 12, Carried by 6 (2010) [Alien8] // Grade: A

**This review that was originally published on December 1st, 2009**

2009: year of the old-school goth? Seems everyone these days is unashamedly reclaiming their goth roots and really, thank god for it; without the likes of Sacred Bones and Captured Tracks helping to usher in a new day of darker-than-dark releases, we might’ve been stuck in that cheesy post-industrial meets candy-raver purgatory forever. And though Cold Cave is arguably at the forefront of the whole thing (thanks in part to Matador giving them a go), San Diego duo Blessure Grave is far and away the most promising of the bunch.

But Blessure Grave’s latest—and by far my favorite, despite the amazing Learn To Love The Rope EP—can’t be reduced to sheer revivalism; this is an album far more intricate than that. Sure, it harkens back to Play Dead, Bauhaus and even early Front 242 in equal measure, but at the heart of Judged By 12, Carried By 6 is that undefinable thing, a mystifying X factor: it just gets you. Judged isn’t great because it takes a cue from Red Lorry Yellow Lorry; it’s great because the songs are evocative and dramatic. Because there’s something in the sweet sadness of “In The First Place” and its strained guitar, or the frantic layers of melody on “Stop Breathing”, that feels like a punch in the face. Like the first time you heard Unknown Pleasures and wondered how anything could be so miserably lovely.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Blessure Grave is primed to be the next Joy Division—such a distinction barely exists anyway—or that Judged will necessarily be the album that catapults them into the throngs. But if their momentum thus far is any indication (and really, the songs just get better and better), Blessure Grave is headed for a long run of beautifully stark releases—as well as a much-deserved place at the top of this nouveau-goth heap.

**The CD release of Judged by 12, carried by 6 also includes Blessure Grave’s Learning to Love the Rope EP, originally reviewed here on the Bloglin.**

When the history of film is written by Leonard Maltin’s clones, few actors of the 20th century will rival Nicolas Cage. Fuck it, I said it. But he’s also a pretty weird dude. That’s often the cost of being a genius. He was born into Hollywood royalty (his birth name is Nicolas Kim Coppola), he was a comic nerd coming up, and he once outbid Leonardo DiCaprio on a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull (top that, Twerps!). He allegedly kidnapped Kathleen Turner’s dog, then he sued her over it, which is hilarious.

Cage has stated that he used to be really selective about which roles he takes on, but now he’s trying to do more family-friendly movies that his kids can go to. I’m sure it has nothing to do with his $6.2 million dollar debt. For every memorable performance he delivers, there are six or seven shitty ones. He’s worked with some true legends: Scorsese, the Coen Brothers, John Woo, David Lynch, and most recently, Werner Herzog. In fact, Cage’s performance really does depend on the director he’s working with. If he ever collabs with Shane Black, that’s it. My life can end. And judging from the trailers, his role in the upcoming Kick Ass looks like another one for the books.

But until that day, here’s a run-down of my favorite Cage performances.

10. Red Rock West (1993)

In this neo-noir tale of mistaken identity from John Dahl (Rounders), Cage plays Mike Williams, a down-on-his-luck vet who finds himself in the right place at the wrong time. Like most noir “heroes,” Mike finds all the odds stacked against him and takes a beating along the way. It’s pretty Noir Textbook: get money, fuck a girl, don’t trust the girl, stay alive as best you can. As an old vet trying to do what’s right in a corrupt world, Cage nails it. Also, Dennis Hopper plays a masochistic Texan hitman, so this movie is worth watching on so many levels.

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9. Birdy (1984)

Yeah, that’s Cage and Matthew Modine in pigeon suits. Cage plays best friend to Modine in this soulful post-Vietnam film from Londoner Alan Parker (Midnight Express, The Wall). Modine plays Birdy, a avian-enthusiast who comes back from Nam basically thinking he’s a bird. Cage visits his friend in the asylum and does his best to snap him out of it. I couldn’t find the link, but allegedly Cage had his front teeth knocked out of whack by his dentist in order to talk differently for the role. Method as fuck.

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8. Face Off (1997)

“Suck my tongue.” I’ll never forget that Cage line from Woo’s “gun fu” epic Face Off. Cage plays terrorist Castor Troy to Travolta’s FBI agent and the result is two hours of pure fucking entertainment. Cage rarely gets to play a pure villain; he usually wears a gray hat. So Face Off stands out amongst the Cage Canon for that reason alone.

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7. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Scorsese directs – Cage never sleeps. I remember watching this one for the first time and never being able to take my eyes off Cage as he ventured further and further into insanity. I’m not sure if he went method for this one, but it seemed like he didn’t sleep for  solid week.

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6. Wild at Heart (1990)

As Sailor Ripley and his girl Pace, Cage and Laura Dern portray the only kind of couple I’ve known in my life know = fucked. David Lynch infused his adaptation with Elvis and Wizard of Oz bits, and Cage gets to play the romantic dreamer he was born to. This goes down in my top three Lynch films as well.

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Three things I like:

• Faith No More
• Buff Monster
• Brian Ewing

It seems the three have teamed up to release a super-epic screenprinted poster out into the wild. I know it’s only February, but this is probably the poster of the year for me, hands down.

One can’t help but notice the magenta and seafoam color scheme, either. Nice job, guys.

This weekend we got a visit from Atlanta based DJ and turntable destroyer extraordinaire DJ Klever. Klever was in town for a night only as he shut down Webster Hall on Friday along with our good homie Nick Catchdubs. And although he had a pretty tight schedule he knew that we had the heat so Klever made it a point to stop into 350 B’way.

We chopped it for a bit, all while Klever fell in love with piece after piece and stuffed his dope cowhide duffel bag to the brim before shipping of to his next stop, Seattle. But if Klever’s name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve either been living under a rock or missed Keep Watch Vol. XIII. Also be sure to check out the 28th installment of Serious Saturday to see a vid Klever cutting it up at the 2001 DMC Championships.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

I can’t believe it’s been a decade! R.I.P. my dude Big Pun.

Clipd Beaks - To Realize (2010) [Love Pump] // Grade: B

Oakland’s Clipd Beaks are a great band. Let’s just say that up front; they were a great band in 2007 with the slush-noise Hoarse Lords, and they’re an even greater band now that they’ve settled cozy-like into a cave of drone and pseudo-psych. Love HEALTH but need a little more nuance? Wish Bear In Heaven were less polished, structured? To Realize is your jam.

And I’d love the album—I mean, straight-up hysterical love—if it were 2 EPs. Divide it after the wailing climax of “Home” and let the separate halves speak for themselves: its initial ominous jitter cracked away from the eventual wide-open space. Not to imply that the album ever goes downhill. It’s just that once you hit that explosive midpoint, stuffed totally with so much buzz and drone, each song starts to feel like the final cheese course at some fancy restaurant; delicious for sure, you’re just so effing full.

But you can’t really nibble away at either half of To Realize. Though its first part is arguably more propulsive, maybe even the better half if you need to make a distinction (there’s no denying a track like “Visions” and its pterodactyl-squeal guitars), it’s the closing songs that really demand an empty stomach. How perfect that among them is a track called “Desert Highway Music”—the whole thing really does feel like 75 mph through isolated sand. Vocals echoing like a ghost, molded to the scenery. Hollow snake-rattles in the distance. Early tracks “Strangler” and “Broke Life” may hit you instantly with the deadly thump of bass and whatever else, but the second half comes in like a dust storm—the musical equivalent of peyote.

Which, to be fair, describes the whole album; every rattle and hum creates a thick, textured atmosphere that feels like a hallucination…or, at least, a few completely sleepless nights. And though the rhythmic noise is impactful no matter what, the buzz hits even harder in 2 chunks. Go the full hour at once and you might lose the effect to some bummer comedown—and who wants that, right?

We’ve been all about the collision between Juggalo and Hipster culture for a long while now. We reported on Derek Erdman’s excursion into the Dark Carnival way back in August of last year. I really think we’re witnessing a strong and unprecedented shift into Juggalo pandemonium and I predict that 2010’s Gathering of the Juggalos will see the largest influx of curious non-Juggalos into the Dark Carnival than they’re probably ready for.

I think that a lot of this has to do with the fact that those of us who grew up with seedlings of the movement in the mid-late 90s are just now starting to realize just how large and powerful it has grown since we stopped paying attention. Case in point? MTV has starting taking an interest in the growing fascination with Juggalos. When’s the last time they cared about being down with the Clown? The late 90s??

The MTV blog just posted a short read with Derek Erdman asking him to compare his experiences in attending both The Gathering of the Juggalos and Pitchfork’s yearly music festival in Chicago (AKA The Gathering of the Hipsters). Maybe Pitchfork will even stop taking themselves so seriously and give everyone what they want at this years festival, ICP as the headliners! Or maybe MTV will do a Jersey Shore type show with 8 Juggalos in a House (fingers crossed). Who knows? Hipsters are thirsty for some Faygo!! I just hope it doesn’t lead to a whole Juggalo vs. Maggot type feud… Juggalos and Hipsters must unite. One love woop woop!

Thanks to The Tripwire for the heads up on the MTV post.

Our favorite Eastern European Horrorcore masked butcher returns Romper Stomper style on the homeless population of the Czech Republic. Reznik brandishing the Mop as he delivers the final solution! I’m never, ever, ever stepping foot in the Czech Republic.

Fuck man, I want a Renzik/Necro Reznik/Necro/ICP dream collab!!!