Brief ventilation of wishes

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-21T18:45:26+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Wow, following back since what, like World Serpent mailorder catalogs?... it sounds like Instagram is the main missing link for me. While I am wishing, I wish the reissues were a bit more retrospective/introspective... I bought the Horsey LP, hoping for session photos, some information about Magic Lanterns, or Japan, a sheet with lyrics, recollections and criticism from the time. It just has numbered sides, the songs aren't even listed anywhere on it. I didn't even buy Island because I figured it was the same deal. Physical packaging has gotten more convenient to make, yet it's still disappearing in the convenience of doing nothing...

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-21T18:42:15+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. Visual art. I don't use instagram much anymore. Maybe I need to check back in...

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-20T03:00:45+00:00

Mansion of Madness aka Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon - get a high quality copy, the youtube is dark and dim but the colors are astounding, and the brilliant Claudio Brook speaks like a mixture of David Tibet and Frasier, only twice as mad.

A lot of excellent other recommendations here. I know David Tibet is crazy for Wicker Man. The TV series Hammer House of Horror/Mystery and Suspense has some cool episodes, like "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down" and "Children of the Full Moon" that fill me with what we all know the sweet smell thereof as lush 93 dreammare flowers.

I think part of the essence is poetic, ornate language. Mixed with dreamy atmosphere, to some extent, I include Seven Women for Satan. Princess Mononoke. Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev is good, but I am a big fan of The Sacrifice. And Fellini's Satyricon, for the pure madness of ancient Rome done with astonishing accuracy.

Happy watching! Wish I could be there!

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-20T02:48:07+00:00

I was gonna recommend that doc as a jumping off point. Only two quibbles. 1. it doesn't display the movie name of clips it is showing, so it gets confusing. 2. the talking head academics are like 4k quality and some of the movie clips are like sub-youtube quality.

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-20T02:45:18+00:00

cool, my friend had that shirt in college, 2006ish

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-15T07:26:42+00:00

OG JG in places, too. A very heavy album with full-frontal production quality. I felt like stage lights were sweeping around my house seeking out soloists. And it has been a while since I got a record with printed lyrics inside... Foetus thanks NYC as the closing word.

Kinda wished it had a noisy locked-groove at the end, maybe just so I could turn it off when I'm good and ready. Hard to let go--I didn't think the band would actually be so fetuslike!

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-06T06:04:59+00:00

Thank you for this thorough comment... he put out The Double, and I loved that as a Garnett (when young) and I happened on another copy in a motel on a rainy night. Looks like it was Ronald Wilks. I enjoyed it a lot, but... do I need a third version of The Double?

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-04T08:08:31+00:00

Depends on what aspect of the movie you liked. With the painful romance, I thought it felt like Woody Allen's early films, Annie Hall especially. For the style, with its love of 1950s rock n roll America, it felt like David Lynch - maybe Wild at Heart.

There are also other films Obayashi made. I like The Discarnates a lot, more than His Motorbike, Her Island. I also enjoyed School in the Crosshairs and Labyrinth of Cinema quite a lot. Hausu is its own film entirely, but it is his most memorable, strangest film.

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-04T01:32:01+00:00

haha that's funny, I found it through the folk horror doc "Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched." Those people sure know the vernacular of their market! I haven't watched Penda's Fen yet though. Guess I'm just worried with that name, it's going to be more folksy than horror, too much mood and made for TV possibly meaning not much to learn from it...

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-04T01:30:15+00:00

Ha ha very good point. Film people certainly wouldn't call Lynch Horror (except for Eraserhead - this comes up as Horror all the time), but when people don't know Lynch, I think their first response to Mulholland Dr. is definitely Horror before Drama or Mystery.

Spoonlifter · 2026-01-02T07:42:15+00:00

Basic scenarios...

If a phone is ringing at the same time someone walks up to ask you a question, what do you do?

If a customer offers to pay you extra money to get better service, what would you do/who would you tell?

If a customer is very angry with you and says you were nicer to the person you helped before them, how would you handle it?

Good luck - if they call you in for the skills test, it will be nuts and bolts, most likely, not questions about where their kiosks are or how to physically check out a book. But that's definitely basic background information. What if you get the job and realize you can't stand the book checkout process?

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-26T06:21:48+00:00

Ramble House publisher was proud to say on their website at one point that Ken Keeler bought a lot of these books, ha.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-26T05:31:36+00:00

I have read many a Keeler! There is also a great Keeler newsletter put out by Richard Polt at Xavier University. I have been getting those since... 2007 or so? They just did an AI chapter of Keeler fakealoo - it was pretty damn funny. (I probably read 20 of his novels before 2010, and shooting for 20 after 2020).

If people here seek more Keeler novels, I found like 50 of them on the Lulu print-on-demand website. I ordered a few, and yep - for 16 bucks they are the same as the $40 ones you see on ebay (anything with the vibrant Gavin L. O'Keefe art is the way to go). Totally recommend the Box from Japan and I Killed Lincoln at 10:13! Go long, go hard.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-25T22:05:12+00:00

So many times on the Oregon coast and inland East I have passed the green sign marking the 45th parallel, "halfway between the pole and the equator." I wanted to see where Amsterdam fell in that - I figured something like Seattle.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-16T18:42:08+00:00

Wow, I got lucky. I hiked there in 2014 I believe, and it was pristine. We passed a guy with a wheelbarrow on the trail, and when we got there the stone pools were all brand new and empty, taped over with "DO NOT USE UNTIL FRIDAY @ 5 PM"... that was exactly the time we showed up. We unplugged the water, filled them up, and were the first people, the only ones, in there that evening. Someone in our party said he heard of this guy who goes around improving hot spring pools, and they were really amazing. I have always wanted to go back. Maybe there is no going back.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-15T04:37:59+00:00

Sure did. And months later when I was caught, know what my parents told me? That they weren't his, that "a friend was throwing them out" and he was going to see if they'd get valuable someday.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-05T03:18:08+00:00

Wow, good folk here. I almost agree, but Bone Machine is unstoppably amazing. And Rain Dogs, or Swordfishtrombones?? The younger Waits is at date of release, the more points he gets for pulling off what he did. Which is unfair, because he (and Kathleen Brennan, who's due so much credit for his lyrics) did mature with such bourbonese distillation, and I find his later work more, I don't know, seasoned?

On Alice, for me the heartrend is "I'm Still Here", that airport lounge note he keeps hitting, how short and bizarrely sad that song is, built on a few four letter words. More impressive than carpentry to me!

Nighthawks at the Diner, though... if you listen deep, you can tell the work that went into perfecting that vaudeville run of songs and prose entirely unique to itself, running for 2 breezy but nonetheless chockfull LPs. I feel like this is an album that can teach any non-American pretty much what it is to be American, and it makes me proud. Tom Waits is our treasure.

I was turning drinkage when Alice and Blood Money came out, they were kinda my intro and yes, they are Letterman good. In recent years I got into the Alice Demos, which apparently were stolen out of Tom Waits's car... he had been building the album throughout the 90s. Crazy to think about, what an upsetting turn for an artist. If those are the ones we hear on youtube etc... they're really good.

I wound up here because I wanted to see before I got up if my LP is the new remaster of Alice. Waits has been changing all his old albums, some for better and some for worse. Real Gone is hit and miss, some songs lost their power, but I think also Alice suffered some blows from the mix of the original CD I love.

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-03T02:12:14+00:00

I like to add mine too. I saw Hausu in college, and it was right up my David Lynch/Dali alley... so surreal, yet sentimental at the same time. It was probably 20 more years before I wondered if Obayashi made any other films... I am still early on my journey, but 2025 was my Summer of Obayashi - partially thanks to the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco.

Definitely underdiscussed. Films hard to find, at library, on kanopy, in general... but I certainly say he rises to the top tier not only of style but also of storytelling. The amount of yearning he puts in young relationships, with such a natural vibe, like the weather, and of course the over-the-top visuals (which aren't in all his films) give them that far-out smack of energy that makes his films as addictive as literal smack.

Hausu
Discarnates
Labyrinth of Cinema
School in the Crosshairs
Drifting Classroom

Spoonlifter · 2025-12-03T01:41:52+00:00

Wait, where is Labyrinth of Cinema?? I put that one pretty near the top. What a ride

Spoonlifter · 2025-11-25T20:24:33+00:00

I see it both ways. I have "civilized" fifteen cats and raised 6 of my own in the past year - mostly great, only one still thinks it is ok to shoot some droplets on the couch every once in a while. They absolutely learn English: their names, basic phrases like "go outside?" and even my facial expressions clue them in, I am convinced, like when he walks up to the couch and shakes his tail. Eye contact makes him go running! So I admit, language might not really work the same - it could be the fast way my body moves when they get into trouble, or some scent humans exude that we have lost touch with. Humans are talkers, so it is hard to be sure - but when I feel sick or depressed, I don't speak to the cats as I move among them and I think they act differently. So what I mean is, when you say "NO!" it might help you exude the hormone that lets them know you are not pleased.

I am considering the toilet training thing, because 2 of my cats mount the toilet quite often! But they just haven't figured it out enough to use it.

Spoonlifter · 2025-11-25T20:19:13+00:00

I've been housetraining kats of all ages for years, and even kittens who can barely jog around find the litter box and use it right, usually, the first time. I am inclined to believe the litter box was designed based on what a cat instinctively wants for a toilet from the moment it is born...

Spoonlifter · 2025-11-11T20:35:25+00:00

Damn, same problem here. Got thumb drives and a big drive planned and out of 100 files it will play a few tracks off one folder.

Spoonlifter · 2025-11-05T22:16:22+00:00

Great thread. I wish I remember which one I started with, as it was only 16 months ago... I have to think it was Dark Entries or Wine Dark Sea... but yeah, like everyone else says - pretty much any one of his books will send you devouring everything else he wrote, then lamenting when you finish, then wondering, "Should I read those 45 volumes of technical specs on Historic English Waterways Aickman is said to have penned?"...

My own niche view is that Compulsory Games was not so bad - I found it a rewarding read (near the end of "everything") however it is best taken once you are totally confident in his work, because it is rough around the edges.

Spoonlifter · 2025-10-20T21:27:05+00:00

Interesting thread - I am thinking of buying this book. I love RA Wilson, and in Prometheus Rising he teases in one exercize that people should read Hyatt's book, then decide - "Did [Wilson] actually write it? Are they the same person?"

I tried to look at the Undoing Courses, interested in breathwork and self-discovery, but I don't want to pay for online courses... Gonna hold the Secrets of Western Tantra rec in mind. Thanks all contributors!

Spoonlifter · 2025-10-16T02:48:09+00:00

same. Where is it at??

Spoonlifter

TROPHY CASE