On the camino by Jason

Jason is a Norwegian comic book artist who lives in France.  I can't remember if I've read any of his books before.  I picked up On the Camino as my partners uncle and aunt have done the walk on a few occasions. Another friend from work did the walk with his brother a few years ago.

I'm not a religious person and I was under the impression that the Camino was a Catholic pilgrimage. Interestingly Jason is not religious and undertakes the Camino for self discovery and personal spiritual reasons.  He details his 800 kilometre walk and the encounters he has over the way.  He identifies himself as a solitary person and he had hoped he would would perhaps open up and talk to others more.  He has been triggered to do the walk by his 50th birthday.

He portrays himself as a talking dog.  He describes the shared dormitories, the discussions about feet and the bedbugs.  He describes the people he met and his day dreams and fantasies along the way.

Jason has a nice clear line art style and this is a good book.  It's a clear read on an interesting topic.

writing

I don't write enough.  I should write more.

Writing, at times, can be like throwing words, bouncing words, off the walls of my world.  It can help get it out. It can help work it out.

This evening I watched a DVD.  Man on fire, the 2004 Denzil Washington film (not the 1987 version that nobody has seen).  I found it amongst my fathers stuff yesterday.  My partners younger brother had recommended it to me ages ago and I've been looking for it for a while but I only just noticed it amongst my dads stuff last night.  It's exactly the sort of film my dad liked. Rough justice, guns and a bit of Spanish.  He loved that sort of stuff.

It's been about a year since my dad died.  I do miss him.  My mum misses him a lot.  Life continues but we'd rather he was about.  His illness was difficult and he was fed up with it. He didn't like being dependent and he didn't like the care he received in the hospital.  I understand why.  It was not very good a lot of the time.  Stuff was often done in a half-arsed manner.

Easter approaches but sadly we won't see any resurrections.  We will have our memories which aren't quite as good. Memories are still valuable.

addendum to Danzig post

The video to 'I'm the one' features Danzig wrestling an alligator.

No shit.

30 years of Danzig

There is a Big Black concert recording that contains the immortal phrase 'no-one in the room may look Danzig in the eye'.  One controversial punk icon making a snide dig at the other.  Both larger than life figures who attracted controversy.  Both wrote songs about horror with humour in their music.  Both often ended up in physical confrontations with detractors.

There is notorious youtube footage of Danzig being knocked out with one punch (look here if you must).  In 1993 Danzig nearly got into a fight with a member of Def Leppard. This was not the one armed drummer as many suggested.  I think a lot of people wanted to beat up Albini too.

Still, I love Danzig.  I've loved his stuff since I first heard Last Caress/Green Hell on the $5.98 e.p. by Metallica when I was at primary school.  The stupid offensive lyrics and the swearing just got me.  After that I got a tape with Bullet on it and I was in love.  Misfits stuff was hard to find but the first Misfits collection LP was well circulated in the west of Scotland in the '80s.

The Misfits were stupid fun horror punk.  Danzig sang with great passion about the emotional struggles of horror film monsters and other gory subjects.  The energy of the music with the lyrics of songs like Bullet or Attitude were just electrifying.  As a 12 year old I had no idea what the lyrics of Bullet meant.  Reading them now, at the age of 40, I'm still bemused.  If I had the chance I'd love to ask Danzig about them.

The Misfits are not the whole story.  The band Danzig, fronted by Danzig, were superb.  The first album I heard was Danzig II: Lucifuge.  I've been listening to it today.  It's still fucking great.  I'm not sure why they had to lose the original Doors homage cover.  It was a bit homoerotic.  They probably got sued.

Danzig was Danzig trying to be Jim Morrison with a dash of Elvis.  It was metal but blues.  The songs were still fucking ridiculous with Danzig worrying about being a werewolf or some shit like that but it rocked.  It rocked like little else.  It really wasn't cool but it didn't suck.

At this point I must make it clear that I had little access to MTV as a kid.  I've only seen the video for She Rides recently and as a fairly PC, hardcore punk morally puritanical teenager I might have been put off by the blatant sexism and exploitation of this video.  As an adult I just shake my head and sigh.  Danzig was trying to be sexy.  I'm not really convinced he was.

I'm really excited that I've got tickets to see Danzig when he plays Glasgow later this year.  He last played in 1991 when I was just a bit too young to see him.  I did see the Danzig-less Misfits a few times but they could never top the real deal.

When Danzig was young he wanted be a comic book artist.  Indeed, he did have his own line of horror/soft core porn comics called Verotik at one point.  They were kind of stupid, like many of his songs.  My University flat mate was an even bigger Misfits fan than me and he had a few.  Danzig also got famous comic artists like Simon Bisley to do covers for his records and draw his comics.  I used to like Bisley till I met him and he proved himself to be an objectionable twat.  I think I asked him if he knew Danzig.

I met the band Slint once.  I love Spiderland.  I got to talk to David Pajo who actually recorded a solo album of Misfits stuff and all I could ask him was 'you know Danzig, don't you?';  I was a bit drunk.  But Danzig is interesting.

Musically I sort of lost touch with Danzig after Black Acid Devil.  He tried to become Nine Inch Nails or Ministry and he failed.  He has made a few decent records since then but he doesn't get much exposure anymore.  He has also starred in a few slash-fiction comic books focusing about his fictional romantic partnership with Henry Rollins.  Rollins enjoys these comics.  I suspect that Danzig does not.

I love Danzig but it's a complicated relationship.

I just wish he would re-issue the Samhain box set.

Inspector Hobbes and the Blood by Wilkie Martin

Sometimes I like mild amusing books that don't require much thought. I like reading but sometimes I just want to unwind with a book.  I used to enjoy Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams and similar slightly skewed nonsense books with a dash of the impossible.  Wilkie Martin, whilst not (yet) up there with those great departed authors, is ploughing a similar furrow.

Hobbes is an interesting mix of old fashioned police officer, detective and slightly otherworldly person.  He has his tongue firmly in his cheek for most of the story and he is a figure of mystery.  The book has an unreliable and often misguided narrator who doesn't always know what is going on, standing in the corner, often quaking with fear as the animalistic Hobbes deals with crime in a unique manner.

Other strange characters inhabit the novel including Mrs Goodfellow, the house keeper, a ferocious black dog, a pair of ghouls, some Roman happenings and a troll.

There is more to be revealed about this world and I'll keep up with Wilkie Martin and the Unhuman book series.

this week

this week I have

1 - watched season 2 of Jessica Jones on Netflix
2 - watched the Death of Stalin
3 - worked many hours in a way that may benefit society
4 - had a panic one morning when I lost my house keys
5 - sent my mother flowers a few days after Mother's Day, knowing it would surprise her
6 - looked at several houses
7 - tried to teach myself immunology
8 - taught people stuff in a way that I hope will benefit them and society
9 - spent time with my favourite person
10 - read an entertaining book on my Kindle
11 - caught up with an old friend and planned a trip to a part of Scotland I've never visited
12 - planned a day trip to London for work

there are things I could have done better and things I did fairly well.  I spent some time worrying about some stuff that I couldn't change. I spent some other time working on things that may be useful.

I've been listening to the Fall a bit too much and listening to Danzig a wee bit

Repairman Jack, the Adversary and The Secret History of the World - the works of F Paul Wilson

A few weeks ago I was playing about with Twitter and I saw a post about an old horror film I'd never heard of, The Keep, which was about to be removed from Netflix.  I was intrigued and watched a bit. The soundtrack was good but the film itself was pretty terrible.  Then I read a bit about the original author, F Paul Wilson, and his work.

I was going on holiday and I'd just bought a new Kindle so I thought I would check out some of his work.  I downloaded The Tomb, the second book in the Adversary cycle and the debut of Repairman Jack and I was hooked.  In under a month I have read about 20 books in the series.

Jack is an interesting anti-hero.  He's a libertarian, almost an anarchist who refuses to pay taxes and is very fond of guns.  He develops over the course of 15 or so books and F Paul Wilson, almost literally, puts his hero through hell.  In some ways he reminds me of Rorschach or Batman but he does have at least some humanity as demonstrated by his relationship with his girlfriend Gia and her daughter Vicky.

The books mix horror, fantasy, Lee Child style thrillers and science fiction.  There is also a healthy dash of gun nut action hero.

Jack is not all of F Paul Wilson's Adversary cycle.  There is also the big bad evil, Rasalom and the once immortal source of good, Glaekon.  Reborn is a bit of a riff on The Omen and we meet Father Bill, a noble Catholic priest who has his belief challenged there.  There is also The Touch, a book about a GP (family practitioner) who gains the ability to heal with a touch.  At a price. So far, so Stephen King.

However, F Paul Wilson is a doctor and he writes doctors and medicine well.  He writes neurology well (which pleases me) and he gives his understanding of medical practice to his fictional doctor.  He understands the demands of trying to help people.  Unsurprisingly, his doctor is a libertarian who is opposed to medical guidelines and regulations and doesn't like to pay taxes.  There is a pattern here.

Outside the main narrative, other books and short stories fit in.  Black Wind is set in San Francisco, Hawaii and Japan between 1926 and 1945 and ties in with the Repairman Jack series as well as the Adversary Cycle.  It also works well as a stand a long historical/horror novel whilst looking at the relationship between Japan and America in the first half of the 20th century.

Sibs is another stand alone novel that ties in very tangentially. It's probably inessential to the main narrative but is worth a read.  The Peabody Ozymandias Travelling Circus & Oddity Emporium is better and more tied to the central narrative.  It reminds me of the old 1930's horror film Freaks.  It raises some thoughts about how society treats people who are unlucky enough to be different.

If you decide to start working through the books I would suggest using a Kindle.  I would try and read the main book in order as described HERE. I've still not actually read the Keep (too expensive on Kindle) so you can miss some out but I did enjoy not knowing how things would end until I read Nightwatch (the final book).  Several of my predictions were satisfyingly wrong.

I am now working my way through the various short stories and novellas that tie into things.  This will keep me happy for a few weeks.  Eventually I will run out of material and I will be sad.  F Paul Wilson is still writing I think and I will continue reading.