A New Day, A New Blog

Yes, I am back to blogging, by popular demand. 😵 So let's start off with today's subjects: the Alfa Matrix label, doing a CGI version of Samantha for Sex and the City 3, my fiction work in progress, Michael Ironside vs John Saxon.

For several years, I've been receiving free promo zip files from the Belgian label Alfa Matrix.  Electronic Body Music, with Front 242 as their Chuck Berry, mostly.  I've always meant to write a review or two on the latest package, given that they think I am some sort of music media critic. So, the latest features the groups IMJUDAS (evocative name, that) and CRYTEK.  There are a couple more groups in the package, but disappointing, a female singer mewing in a post-apocalyptic Taylor Swift voice about dead romance, or something or other, can't remember the name.

IMJUDAS: Nice garbled synthesizer beginning like the start of a Roman Circus.  Smoother male vocal than the usual Alfa Matrix gargling exorcist demon voice. Kind of like anguished Duran Duran. Black industrial lyrics about "your kind of suicide" "I am blind" "this is the tragedy of your life" in the song Tulpa.  The voice changes into a kind of whispered bedeviled come on, from time to time.  Kind of a "beep beep beep beep, beep beep beep beep" synthetic beat.  I give it three molten ingots.

CRYTEK: Ah, there you go, music for grey traffic jams on Lake Shore Drive during awful Chicago cold rain mornings. Growling voice that screams in anguished moments like a gargoyle on fire.  Richard 23-derived electronic tom-tom drumming.  Hey, like that quick synthetic pan from left to right headphone speaker there.    "Nobody knows", something about my ashen eyes.  Barrage of "chugga, chugga, chugga".  Some quiet interludes with tormented whispering.   Now the growling grovels in electronic distortion, heavy, man.  Like, as if you could do piercings in your frontal lobe.  "What happened to me" "I trained myself to live" "do you want me for your own"  Songs: Anathema, Black Eyes, Anathema (KANT KINO mix) [really good AM group].  Four molten ingots.

On to the Sex and the City movie franchise.  I only know the movies: I've never seen one episode of the TV series, because I don't want to spoil my fascination with the shivering badness of the movies.
I am torn between 1-2 frequently, though I lean toward 1.  Carrie's cutesy-pie nod of assent when she is offered a fashion magazine spread displaying wedding dresses for women tying the knot at age 40; Carrie later being stood up by the monstrously conceited Big at the New York Public Library that she chose for the nuptials (probably inevitable, given that Big had earlier ridiculed her in bed by stating that she must be the only one left in New York who takes out books from the library anymore, the jerk); Miranda timing the sexual encounters with her husband Steve (an hour) then throwing a hissy fit when he has an affair to satisfy his thwarted desires, continually humiliates him, drags him to a chic marriage counselor who solves the problem, inspiring Miranda and Steve to start humping like Samantha's tiny mutt ... ah that tiny mutt.  That's what sealed the deal between me and SATC One.  The movie was being shown at some emporium or other that I was attending and when Samantha discovered and adopted the mutt who humped pillows, I instantly called my bad movie comrade and declared it the worst movie I'd ever seen.  I've since reneged a bit (nothing tops Exorcist Part II, the Heretic) but it's in my Top 10.

How I do go on about this movie, and I haven't even mentioned the climax when Samantha encounters the sybaritic Dante at her beach pad, showering nude outside, all muscular and, uh, Big ... well anyway, plans were afoot for the SATC Three: The Heretic when  that damned Kim Cattrall started making demands in refusing to again essay the role of the grotesque Samantha, claiming that she had turned 60 and wanted to move beyond the character (she actually wanted the studio to promote and fund her work producing other projects, like, maybe Mannequin 3: the Wonder Years).  Well, obviously, you can't have a Sex and the City movie without Samantha so the project folded like a cheap Arabian tent in SATC 2.

But they didn't consult me.  I have the perfect solution.  A computer generated version of Samantha.  Think of the superpowers, think of the stunts, think of the robotic soul of a new Samantha.  I mean, if Ridley Scott can blot out the presence of the hopelessly doomed Kevin Spacey in his new movie (I am appalled that I share a July 26 birthday with him, though I still have Mick Jagger and Jason Statham to fall back on) in a computer blip, then why not recreate Samantha?  Get on it, Sarah Jessica Parker, though you have announced that you have given up hope for SATC III, never say neigh.  https://sarahjessicaparkerlookslikeahorse.com/

Fiction Work in Progress: yeah, yeah, I know, I have been working on The Whipping Christ for years.  This saga of a trailer home cult in the backwoods of Indiana has preoccupied me like a 12-game Chicago Cubs win streak.  But my creative writing teacher (named Sarah, but no relation to Jessica Parker) considered it the best chance for me to get published and my literary advisor who is now stuck in the suburbs without a car made some excellent suggestions for moving the damn thing forward.  It sticks in my head constantly, like, do I make the False Reverend Shep into the Reverend Half and Half, who shaves half his head head bald while growing out the other half, like Mister Half and Half in the small town of DeMotte Indiana where I spent my disformative teenage years?  Is the furniture in the trailer home worthy of the furniture at long-gone Fetla's warehouse in Valparaiso Indiana, that had most everything a Hoosier could want, from overall bluejeans to lawn jockeys to crates of cheap beer to AK-47s and Glock pistols?  I mean, I've got the glass coffee table with the metal dolphin stand down pat, but now what?  It has to be something Kinkadesque, but what?

I need to finish this thing by the end of the year, for Baphomet's sake.  And I will post it on this blog, for sure.

Finally, I was totally embarrassed to learn today that I've been confusing the actors Michael Ironside and John Saxon for at least 2 years.  That is not John Saxon's head exploding in Scanners, that is not Saxon being gnawed at by Giant Alien Insects in Starship Trooper, that is not Saxon who gleefully does a mucho macho fallback as he fires an automatic rifle at everyone or other in the final epic scene of Extreme Prejudice ... no, no, no, it's Michael Ironside!  I apologize to all of you for this slip up over a man who should win a special Oscar just for being Michael Ironside.

Until next time, when I will attempt to analyze the character of Guido in Godfather 2, etc.