I got an A in my final German class. I have been stressing about that for over two years, but I will finally get the degree I earned from the University of Arizona. I can’t count the number of hours of sleep I lost over that debacle. So much so, it doesn’t even seem like a victory. Just an annoying errand. But it’s done. I’m supposed to get my degree in the mail. I’m taking bets on if or not it will say Allen Billups.

I have been enjoying life without television for the last year. I know it makes me sound like a snob, but I can’t help it. I am approaching a full draft of The League (still working title) and I enjoy being away from it and listening to records. I still watch a few things on the computer. I think if I had cable, I would be paying $70 a month to watch Predator nine times a year.

I don’t have much to report except that I’ve been working on the book and feeling like it is on track. I have not had any successful pitches into magazines lately. Here are some recent re-ish and new acquisitions I am working on reviews for:

All good stuff. I haven’t been doing any used shopping lately. Just haven’t been out. I was hoping to be filling in at a shop on Record Store Day, but that fell through. Also had plans to go to DC Record Fair but couldn’t get off work. Oh well. Still have loads of records to go through anyway.

I don’t know how often people look at this, but people at my job have been fostering this dog for a while, so I thought I would repost this in case anyone on the east coast is looking in. Also, I got really tired of looking at that braces taking over scene from Poltergeist II that I put up. Upon repeated viewings, those screen grabs are pretty gross.

Nothing much else is happening. I’ve been writing regularly on the book. I am hoping for a showable draft before  long. I’m still waiting for a grade, but the classes are fading into the rearview for me. Besides that, I have been doing a lot of reading a lot. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture was a really good crash course in disco culture. I have been reading hoping to find a jumping off point on research for an article about Patrick Cowley, a disco producer and musician who seems to have influenced 80s dance music. I have been unwittingly covering his song “Teen Planet” for a couple of years without learning too much about him. He seems to have been working mostly during the Hi-NRG phase of dance music,  but “Teen Planet” translates as a rocker to me.

I’ve been reading enough to realize that books I like to read are not readily available at book stores, presuming you can find one. I’m starting to think we need a book store day. But I am glad to hear that Record Store Day has been a success for a few friend’s shops. Now we just need to make the other 364 days of the year record store day and we’ll have something. Not trying to be negative. Or maybe trying not to be negative even though I am thinking it a little. Either way, I’m feeling positive.

Here is a series of screen grabs that sheds light on why Poltergeist 2 was not as good as Poltergeist. The kid’s braces taking over his face was not a scary as the father pulling his face off in the first installment. I’m still have a mind to watch part 3.

I’ve been on a weird schedule lately where I go to work, come home and sleep, write, and then clean house. If I stay awake, it’s movie time. I made popcorn at 10:30 tonight. I don’t know why I am so off, but it is working for me. I have made a lot of progress on the book. Being through with the class has made me feel like a real person again. I’ve been reading a lot too.

As of now I am through with my class and awaiting a grade. Work has been great as the weather has been good and I have been getting home in time to do loads of writing. I still hope to have a draft of The League very soon.

Besides Poltergeist 2, I have seen some pretty good movies. I liked The Muppets. Often modernizing old pop culture phenomena really ruins it, but I really feel like they captured the tone of the Muppets and wrote  in a good plot line. I also liked  Melancholia. In the vein of the end of the world scenarios, I really liked a film I saw called Take Shelter. Take Shelter was an good take on the use of an unreliable narrator. I’d recommend that one highly.

I’ve been bummed about my healthcare lately. Lutheran Hospital has been so consistently bad that I am switching doctors. I hope the new group will be able to keep a schedule. Since I have quit Lutheran, I keep reading books and seeing movies where people have problems with Cancer. I start the new place in June. Hopefully they will help me manage this better. As of the last check up, I am still Cancer free, so I generally feel I have nothing to worry about.

I wanted to elaborate more, but I also want to eat this popcorn. Popcorn wins.

I won’t feel on track until we finally play a show again, but after a year of re-learning and new writing, The Basement Apartments feel solid and ready to try it out on another region of the country. We all moved to Tucson and back. What a ride. We’ll either be coming at you like a rocket, or just ride this bandcamp thing for a while.

The Basement Apartments

Drawing for the Cramhole animated piece has resumed over the past few weeks as well. I can’t say when that will be done, but it’s happening.

The big news is that the fucking German class that I have been struggling with since “graduation” is finally concluding. Next Friday I take my final exam. 40 lessons and four exams later, I will go from a useless Creative Writing major to a useless University of Arizona graduate. Did I mention I don’t live in Tucson anymore? Yea, the whole thing confuses me too. The cancer thing mixes in, but basically it still boils my blood too much to get into it. If you are following the saga, it draws to a close. I feel like a new human. Happier than I have been for a long time, although it troubles me to write about it being over for fear of jinxing it. I am getting As on the assignments, so I have no reason to think that they are dogging me. I want to type curse words now, so let’s move on.

After my final on Friday, I am going to open my draft of The League (working title) and concentrate on that for the rest of the year. The thought of working on the book with a clear head is exciting. One way or the other, plans for this book to come out are solid for the end of the year. Look for updates and excerpts. Boogaloo.

I found another cat scare in Roger Corman’s Humanoids from the Deep (1980). The movie was pretty entertaining, borrowing heavily from H.P Lovecraft stories and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Vic Morrow is the only notable cast member. He plays a bigoted  businessman who wants a cannery opened in the town. Why was Morrow always saddled with racially questionable characters? There is something about him that is believable as the small town, angry white man. The cannery thing is really a side plot; it has little to do with the town being overrun by fish heads. The fish creatures adhere to the slasher trope that young people who get naked are doomed. However, unlike the cannery subplot, the nudity does (or tries to) have something to do with the plot. I’ll leave that as a surprise.

Corman should have adhered to Lovecraft’s concept of the fear of the unknown. These creatures had huge brains and long arms, however they didn’t act like it.

A tasteful shot from the point of view of a humanoid. You would think these people would have noticed a giant fish person standing this close, but I don’t think that is the point of this shot.

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I’m really excited that I got to contribute a review of a recent Gories performance for The Brooklyn Rail. They are always way awesome. Their first three albums are essential listening in my book.

The Gories in The Brooklyn Rail

I revisited some movies during the past weeks while I have been feeling a little run down from being sick, yet not sick enough not to go to work. Maybe this can help you over a rough patch. Here is a week’s worth of double features for better or worse:

Missing in Action (1984)/The Octagon (1980)
Chuck Norris has become a hipster punch line the past few years, but these two slabs are why he deserves to be a household name. These movies are full of slow motion hand grenade action and Ninjas. Nobody knew much about Ninjas when The Octagon was made, but everybody knew that they kick ass. That’s all you need to know to enjoy it.

State and Main (2000)/Bowfinger (1999)
Two meta-narratives before that sort of thing was all the rage. State and Main has several good one-liners. Bowfinger shows Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin can be funny when they try. I don’t like the dad thing Steve Martin moved into, but he plays a good sleezeball.

Ghost Story (1981)/An American Werewolf in London (1981)
These two movies are the first to scare me badly as a child. Looking at them now, they might not seem terrifying, but Nazi werewolves with machine guns wrecked me at a young age. Nazi werewolves with machine guns are enough of a reason to see An American Werewolf in London.

Demons (1985)/Ganja and Hess (1973)
I know you are thinking of all the better foreign horror you would rather be watching, but Ganja and Hess and Demons are really good when the cough syrup is kicking in. There are better Argento/Bava family films, but what does Demons have to offer? Only a guy chopping of heads with a sword from a motorcycle. Only a random helicopter crashing through a roof furthering the plot. It was a good double.

Ghosts of Mars (2001)/Let Me In (2010)
There are better John Carpenter movies, but even though none of the acting in this movie is very good, I like the rapport all the characters share. The flashback scenes via cheap looking models of Mars are worth the whole movie. Although it is really a flashback inside of the entire flashback that is the movie since the whole thing is a testimony. Is she testifying that someone is flashing back and explaining something to her? Doesn’t matter. Let Me In was a respectable remake of Let the Right One In. The original was better, but I like a remake that brings something to the table besides dumbing down.

Office Space (1999)/Strange Brew (1983)
Like revisiting old friends. One thing that struck me watching Strange Brew so much later in life is how cool Max von Sydow is to appear in this movie. I mean he is too cool to begin with. He did Shakespeare. He worked with Bergman. For him to recognize value in The McKenzie Brothers is mind blowing. He can’t have needed money. Max could probably walk into any bank and say: “Hello, I’m Max von Sydow and I need some cash” and they would have to give it to him, wouldn’t they? Let’s put it this way, Max was waaaaay cool BEFORE Strange Brew. It put him into another stratosphere. You wouldn’t see Klaus Kinski in Strange Brew.

Gosford Park (2001)/Apocalypse Now (1979)
Wanna napalm a Sunday afternoon? Test your endurance with a classic and a sleeper. Robert Altman turned his knack for utilizing huge casts into a clever whodunit. I like Altman anyway, but you don’t hear about this one as much. I watched Apocalypse Now Redux because I could not remember ever watching it with the cut footage reinserted. Honestly, I think it was a better movie without that stuff. Those scenes on the plantation were just too off the road. Plus in Redux, Martin Sheen gets laid twice on a river mission in Vietnam. Coppola really Lucased Apocalypse Now in my opinion.

I watched the 1979 adaptation of Dracula because I thought Frank Langella was an interesting choice as the count. This version was kind of fun, mostly
due to this strange take on sex with a vampire.

There were a few psudo-psychedelic moments like this in the movie.

Check out the bat flying over the knee.

Sir Donald Pleasence and Sir Laurence Olivier knighted up this movie. I wouldn’t recommend it over Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre of the same year, but it has a shade of the same vibe if you’re looking for some 70s movies with a gothic feel.

Blind Willie Johnson
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
(Mississippi)

There is a legend that Blind Willie Johnson was arrested for singing “If I Had My Way, I’d Tear This Building Down” in front of a New Orleans courthouse. While there are several versions of the contention, it is generally agreed that the Johnson’s detainment was based on a misunderstanding. Whether or not the police believed Johnson was inciting a riot or making a threat, the incident is a testament to the power his singing. He made it real in front of the courthouse decades ago, and he made it real to artists such as Bob Dylan, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Billy Childish, The Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin who are among the multitudes who have covered songs Johnson was known for. Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground is a collection of nearly all of Johnson’s recorded output (omissions being alternate takes). The album contains twenty-six songs from five recording sessions: a body of work from a man whose actual birthday and birthplace can only be confirmed by vague declarations on his death certificate. Details life and death are in question and linger as a longstanding rock mystery. It is the stuff music legends are made of.

Mississippi Records is becoming a premier label for reissues. Combining folksy packaging with contemporary design, the artwork looks timeless without the typical trappings of “collection” style layouts. It is an appropriately tasteful frame for this compilation of Johnson’s interpretation of spirituals. His gravel-tinged vocals and heavy-handed style of slide guitar picking create an infectiously haunting sound. “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” a slow burn that shows the seams of Gospel melody conceits evolving into popular music. The tune is representative of a style of dark proselytizing that reminds us that the bible can be sourced for chilling imagery.

A woman named Angeline, who is generally thought to be one of his wives, accentuates Johnson’s evocative style with a series of chilling backing vocals on many of the tracks. Angeline’s matter-of-fact vocals were laid down in several of Johnson’s recording sessions. Bringing up the rear with melodically hollow tones, the back up vocals emphasize the ghostly temperament Johnson creates in songs like “I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge.”

“Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)” is a melancholy caterwaul that was chosen by Carl Sagan to be included on the record that was stored aboard the Voyager 1 satellite on its journey through the solar system. The song floats through space representing the human race along with tracks by Bach and Chuck Berry. That certainly makes the album worthy of any serious music collection.

The end of the year.

It’s been nine months since I moved to New York City and I am feeling more awake now that I have in a long time. I got the education I needed in Arizona to move forward, but school really put me to sleep. I liked many things about AZ, but I am glad to be back on the east coast. I am working as a dog walker in Brooklyn and managing to finish a book I have been working on forever called The League (working title). I took so long to write this book that there has since been a TV show named that. I don’t have any alternate title ideas right now, but this is the year I do something about getting it out. I have a draft finished and feel like I am one re-write away from showing it.

Something that has been a bit arresting for me is not knowing how to talk about cancer. September marks one year since I had surgery and chemotherapy. People occasionally ask and people hear about it and say they didn’t know. It is a weird subject for me. On one hand, I want to move away from it. Just put it behind me. But I also feel as if I am hiding from it and not dealing with it. I thought about writing in September to say that it is a year later and I am cancer free, but then there were complications and I was thinking that I might have it again. I am glad to say that nothing has changed since last year. I took me a while to find an oncologist, but I am with one here in NY, so I will be getting regular scans now. I have had some other problems complicating my health, but everything seem to be coming together and I am feeling well. Dog walking has helped with exercise and my attitude immensely. I have realized that three of my favorite things have to do with pets:

1) I enjoy watching dogs carry things, especially things that are too big for them to carry.
2) I like a dog or cat on a sofa. People who don’t allow pets on the couch have their priorities mixed up.
3)  Dog snoring.

I am still regularly writing for Razorcake. I am also still writing for The Tucson Weekly and The Brooklyn Rail. I am bummed that there has been another year without a Cramhole, but I didn’t start that thing thinking there would be any regularity there, so we hold out hope for another one sometime. I am still looking for zines and things to contribute to. We are also doing The Basement Apartments and it is sounding good. Don’t call it a comeback, ’cause we didn’t do that much in the first place.

SO… I am happy. Things are good. Just to break the somber tone and Bill-centricity going on here, I am going to put up a few of my favorite things for the year. Don’t think of it as a Top _ list, it’s just stuff I liked:

Guitar Wolf is always a good thing, but this year I got pulled on stage with them randomly. I was reviewing the show for the Brooklyn Rail. Guitar Wolf. The album is awesome, but what would you expect.

I’ve been praising The Shirks since the beginning, but this single is awesome-er that the last ones.

The Overnight Lows: good single from a good band.

The re-issue of Bright and Dark by The Resonars is essential.

Mississippi Records is a label to keep an eye on for good stuff. This Blind Willie Johnson album is nearly all of his recorded output. I love the way they package their albums. I have been submitting a full review of this record. If no one picks it up, i’ll post it here.

Everything on Sing Sing has been full-on. I picked up this Rip Off (Ireland) compilation and started checking for other Sing Sing releases. This Panic 13 one has been getting a lot of spins.

This just needed to happen.

I wouldn’t say that I wasn’t a fan of the Everly Brothers before, but I got into them more this year. It was mostly at the urging of my friend Travis. It’s great when someone leads you into something. I bought several collections this year…

With that sentiment in mind, I am going to encourage you all to get into Exodus this year. Face it: Metallica thoroughly sucks. There is no coming back for them. Like Exodus. Yell it out at Neil Hamburger shows.

Great stuff.

Buttshakers 5+6. All the Buttshakers are essential. Not in the “Bill sort of likes everything” sort of way, but in the “play all six of these and you wake up masturbating and the house is clean” sort of way.

I don’t know what year this came out, but I just got it and it’s awesome.

I reviewed a Monotonix show for the Tucson Weekly last year. Monotonix. The way this band was presented to me, I was not sure I would like it. Too much “young people having young fun” for me. When I hear a band is super wild, I generally assume it is because they are hiding the fact that they suck. But you gotta keep an open mind.  These guys’ records are solid. The show was great too. Young people accidentally like good things once in a while.

 
Here are some record stores that I have been frequenting. Support your local record stores.

I’ve seen David Cross, Paul Giamatti, and Maggie Gyllenhaal on the street while walking dogs in Brooklyn. This is a pretty cool line up of celebrities in my book. Better that seeing The Bachelor or something like that.

We saw Miranda July speak at a screening of her new film. We don’t go to the movies as often as we used to.

Amy got me tickets for Jeff Ross at Carolines for Christmas. I got into Greg Giraldo, Jeff Ross and Patrice O’Neal around the same time. Amy and I said hello to him after the show. He was super nice.

Well, this is going long. I haven’t felt like posting too much, so I guess I am running on a bit. I would say my resolution would be to keep in better touch, but I am never going to do that. This year, my resolution should be not to make promises about things I know I will never do.