Aaaaaaand, Tumblr’s back. Sorry for the delay. Here we go.

It’s almost Halloween, so here are 4 Things That Terrify Me: Songs of Note, 10/26/11 

This week, We Suck Young Blood and string you up by your wrists, while we feel the Chills, dream our lives away, and attempt to get Fitter, Happier, more productive, comfortable, not drinking too much, regular exercise at the gym (3 times a week), getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries, at ease, eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats), a patient better driver, a safer car (baby smiling in back seat), sleeping well (no bad dreams), no paranoia, careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole), keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then), will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall), favors for favors, fond but not in love, charity standing orders, on Sundays ring road supermarket (no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants), car wash (also on Sundays), no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate, nothing so childish, at a better pace, slower and more calculated, no chance of escape, now self-employed, concerned (but powerless), an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism), will not cry in public, less chance of illness, tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat), a good memory, still cries at a good film, still kisses with saliva, no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick, that’s driven into frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness), calm, fitter, healthier and more productive, a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

4 Things That Terrify Me

American Horror Story: Asylum - I never saw American Horror Story before the second season premiere, and it sounds as if I couldn’t have timed it better. From what I can gather, season one of the FX horror series was an absolute mess, wherein a room of writers tried to remember as many horror movie tropes as possible, wrote them on pieces of paper, pressed Silly Putty to the writing, balled those pieces of putty up, and threw them all against the wall. Plots didn’t progress in any cohesive manner, or at all, and many of the series’ biggest questions went unanswered, because fuck the audience. Now, however, they’re attempting to create a cohesive, complete story, and while they’re still throwing as much shit against the wall as humanly possible, they’re doing so while cooking up some scares and following through on plot points. The result (so far, after only 2 episodes; this thing can still fall apart) is something more fun than most modern, terrible horror movies.

You’ve got alien abductions. You’ve got an asylum full of corrupt nuns and doctors who aim to cure homosexuality and torture dissenters (to me, the scariest plot of the bunch, one that includes Zachary Quinto which is an instant boost). You’ve got unseen, brutal creatures in the woods that must be fed routinely. You’ve got demon possessions (the second most frightening plot so far this season, also producing some excellent visuals). And you’ve got the throughline that connects the main story and its main character: the asylum itself. You see, you’re watching 2 main stories at once: what’s happening in the asylum in the 60s (all listed above), and what’s happening in the asylum today, involving a terrible actor in Adam Levine and his girlfriend, who are visiting “haunted locations” around the country for their honeymoon, and having sex in all of them, because American Horror Story. That throughline? A serial killer on the loose by the name of “Bloody Face.” Bloody Face is killing civilians in the 60s, and is the lone inhabitant of the asylum today, hunting his latest visitors. What’s happened in the ensuing years that the asylum is now empty and abandoned? Who’s Bloody Face, and how has he survived so long while still being so good at stabbing people? Will the head nun get her comeuppance for being so cruel to people living in sin, whilst being so horny herself? Will the demon who’s now possessed (SPOILER) the young nun after escaping its original inhabitant while being exorcised lay waste to the whole place in the 60s? Did all of this confuse you? Good, because that’s sort of what American Horror Story does, apparently. And it’s fun! In a scary sort of way.

The fact that you can dress up as a slutty can of Four Loko - Don’t ask me why, but Sexy Four Loko has now joined the ranks of inane, sexy Halloween costumes, which simply translates to something tight and showing a lot of leg. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with “Sexy X” costumes, not at all, but how far down near the bottom of the barrel are we scraping for the terrible ideas for their designs? What other terrible “sexy” costumes can we possibly come up with at this point, and what terrible taglines can we attach to some of them? LET’S FIND OUT:

• Sexy iPhone: “Why don’t you press MY home button?”
• Sexy typewriter: “I’ll show you MY spacebar. I know that’s nonsense, but how about you type SEX on me…”
• Sexy Starbucks coffee cup: “Wanna know what ELSE is hot, sweet, and arbitrarily uses Italian words? Fare sesso con me ragazzone. Fare tutte le cose SESSO.”
• Sexy iPad: “Why don’t you press MY home button? I was an iPhone last year.”
• Sexy homeless Big Bird after Romney hypothetically becomes president (ugh): “Wanna know what I do for bird feed nowadays?”
• Sexy Instagram photo.
• Sexy Pepsi Next bottle.
• Sexy Fandango paper bag mascot.

The list can go on and on. This is the easiest exercise ever.

Taco Bell giving away free Doritos Locos Taco next Tuesday - Talk about an absolute shitshow. In last night’s World Series game, Angel Pagan (who the Mets traded away for total garbage, NOT THAT I’M BITTER ABOUT IT) successfully stole a base, which triggered an unusual, awesome Taco Bell promotion: whenever someone steals a base in the World Series, Taco Bell gives away one free Doritos Locos Taco to all comers during a certain time window of their choosing. That time window will be next Tuesday between 2PM - 6PM. Now granted, I’ve previously written about the Doritos Locos Taco, and how it tastes exactly the way you imagined it would (read: pretty good!), but this is FOOL’S GOLD. Taco Bells around the country will house mayhem for those 4 hours, and lines will go around the block. You don’t want a taco this badly. They’ll be making so many of these in such a short amount of time that the quality will suffer, and you won’t be able to enjoy the pleasures (and associated regrets) of the Doritos Locos Taco this way. I actually fear for our nation that day, and our region, as the SNOWRRICANEPOCALYPSE is headed right for us that day, and will immediately sweep away and kill all of our hungry who risked it for a free taco. Speaking of which…

The coverage of Hurricane Sandy - No, no, not the actual hurricane, but the coverage. A fairly nasty-looking hurricane is moving its way up the Atlantic coast, and will begin to hit the NYC area Sunday, with the possible worst of it slamming us on Monday going into Tuesday. We’ve all been through this a couple of times already. There was a pretty significant blizzard a couple of winters ago. Last year, we had Hurricane Irene and the associated panic, only to have a day of heavy rain and nothing else. Now, the SNOWRRICANEPOCALYPSE IS NIGH, and all ye shall perish should ye not preparest thyself for the wrath of Hurricane Sandy. Since this hurricane might bring snow with it, everybody’s assuming the worst, which includes the 4 horsemen, the rising of the dead, the ruination of our soil, rendering it useless so that we might never grow crops on it again, and, perhaps, worst of all, a temporary Internet outage. It’s being compared to the infamous 1991 “Perfect Storm,” which killed 13 people and caused $200 million in damages. A weather expert at Weather Underground is estimating that this thing can cause $14 trillion $1 billion in damages. It’ll rob our iPhones. It’ll spit in our coffees. It’ll block the doors of our subway trains making it difficult to squeeze in during rush hour. This hurricane’s an asshole, and it doesn’t care WHOSE day it fucks all up. BEWARE.

Since I originally wrote this, the National Weather Service has even taken to calling this FRANKENSTORM. See? We’re all dead.

The music

In honor of Halloween, I decided to select songs based on their generally darker, ambient sound, a list you might like to listen to while driving on Wednesday night. Beth of Portishead declares that “there’s nowhere to hide from me, all mine, you have to be. So don’t resist.” The Drums’ Jonny aches as he tells you “I just stood there in the cold, I know I won’t see you again.” She Wants by Metronomy has generally unsettling synth during its verses, and Dr. Dog warns (threatens) that “fate has a funny way of coming around,” after old buried memories “creep through your window to smother your dreams.” Radiohead’s We Suck Young Blood pairs creepy music with statements that cult members might make. The whole thing stays slow and slight, until at 3 minutes in the piano (and drum) strikes get harder, and Thom yells absolutely nothing in particular. The list closes with another Radiohead track, Fitter Happier, a creepy collection of slogans and pieces of advice spoken by a computer that Thom himself actually called the “most upsetting thing I’ve ever written.” Enjoy the music.

Next week: Not sure I’ll have to time to write a proper post, methinks I’ll be posting old, shorter playlists alone instead, in an effort to complete my efforts to catalog old Grooveshark playlists in Spotify.