Title: The Great and Secret Show
Author(s): Clive Barker
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 1999
This book belongs to the subgenre of occult history, or should I say, occulted history, alongside such classics as Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy, the HBO series Carnivale, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods & Neverwhere, Alan Moore’s From Hell (and Promethea, and Providence, and Jerusalem, and…)
I’m sure there are others that I’m forgetting for the moment.
These are stories centred around the idea that there’s some deeper conflict/drama/struggle hidden beneath the mundane layer of reality that we inhabit. In these stories, a character gets taken (sometimes forcibly) behind the curtain and shown the true state of things. That frozen moment when everyone sees what’s on the end of every fork.
(Naked Lunch isn’t in this subgenre, though. I just like that quote.)
As a mystically-minded person who knows that frozen moment all too well, this is a favourite literary subgenre of mine. All the works namechecked above really are stone cold classics in my personal canon, and though I’m still a ways off from the end, I’m optimistic that Barker’s Great and Secret Show will find a place in there as well.
Alongside the “secret battle for the soul of the world” stuff, there’s also a slightly sci-fi angle that carries a strong resonance of another recent favourite, that being Greg Bear’s nanite/grey goo nightmare, Blood Music. I’ll talk about Blood Music on here at some point, but for the time being, suffice it to say that it pushes sci-fi right up to the line where magick takes over, and that same threshold seems to be where Barker takes things in The Great and Secret Show.
Title: Various
Author(s): Various
Publisher: Various
Year: 1968-1987
It’s such a silly little meme of an image, so cliche and tired and meaningless in a clip art kind of way. But, on the other hand, if I push my jadesness and cynicism off to the side for just a minute, I think I actually kind of like them. I was thinking recently that European clowns are...maybe not “cool”, but they’ve got something going on aesthetically, whereas North American clowns are the hobo bozo garbage for which I’ve got no time. These drama masks feel European-clown-adjacent, so that means I have to reckon with them, apparently.
Selected for the approval of the...drama mask society...?, I call this blog post, “5 horrible albums, and The Art of Noise”.
The Manhattan Transfer - Mecca For Moderns
This is easily the most horrifying of the covers, something very fleshy and Hellraiser-y going on there with the ribbons of flesh spelling out the band name. The music is also horrible, but not in a fun way. It’s all the worst theatre kid bullshit, doo-wop Grease rip-offs, Mike Love’s regressive Beach Boys style, Weekend at Bernies 2 -level reggae nonsense, quotes of the James Bond theme...I just absolutely hate this.
Mötley Crüe - Theatre of Pain
Mötley Crüe is a contender for my most hated band of all time, but boy, after that Manhattan Transfer album, this sounds great by comparison.
Actually, scratch that, this feels like goofy-voiced musical theatre Grease shit too, on Smokin’ in the boys room. God, I hate this. There’s harmonica? I hate harmonica enough in music where it “makes sense”, why on earth is Vince Neil honkin’ on bobo or whatever this is? All of this Sunset Strip Canter’s glam debauchery “metal” represents everything I hate about music, about the city I’m from, about men in particular, about mankind in general.
I’m not sure how the theatre masks relate to whatever’s going on musically, but the Crüe seemed like a random assemblage of empty symbols anyway, so I guess it’s as superficial and tacky as anything else they had going on.
Manfred Mann - Masque (Songs and Planets)
Finally, something I don’t totally hate!
Oh no, more harmonica. Yeah, never mind, this sucks too. The cover’s pretty good though. Much more tasteful than the Crüe and Manhattan Transfer ones, with an air of sadness and minimalist mystery I appreciate. Now, none of that comes across in the music on any level, but divorced from those sonic realities, I can hang with the cover art.
Steinwolke - Milionenmal
So far, this is the best music here, but it’s still pretty limp-dicked B-tier Neue Deutsche Welle cheese. But it at least sounds relatively close to something I’d like, and with as dismal a bunch as these, that pushes it right up to the top of the pile.
The cover is also fantastic, hence my including both sides of the gatefold. Horrifying airbrush van art meets the Edgar Allan Poe episode of the Beetlejuice cartoon. Chef’s kiss.
Patrick Sky - Reality Is Bad Enough
The pessimistic title appeals to the Ligotti fan in me, but god, this music is bad. It’s Randy Newman / pre-psychotic Tom Waits oompah junk mixed with generic American folky waste. Bob Dylan impressions abound.
The cover’s...alright. At this point, I’m exhausted by my stupid exercise and don’t have much more to say than that. It’s fine.
The Art of Noise - Who’s Afraid
Well, this is the only good album on this list, music-wise, though the art’s a bit dull, when seen in the shadow of that amazing Steinwolke cover. But the most important thing is that The Art of Noise were “an actually good band”, and the theatre masks here remind me most of the creepy masks from Super Mario Bros. 2, which is a fun connection.
Title: Various
Author(s): Joel Biroco
Publisher: Coronzon Press
Year: 2022-2026
If Alan Moore is the go-to example of how the occult can be fully integrated into a person’s life in a holistic and dare I say even wholesome way, then the case of his pal Joel offers not necessarily a counterexample to that positivity, but definitely a complication of it, to say the least. It’s hard to put into words in such a short space here, but if Alan’s at his best when expressing the infinite joy of existence in all its majesty, then Joel’s role is to express the infinite sorrow that shares that sacred space at the heart of reality.
They’re, like, the yin and the yang, man.
Unlike Alan Moore, Joel Biroco maintains an active online presence via his personal site and the Coronzon Press site, where he posts his writing as freely downloadable eBooks. Some are novels, some are memoirs, some feel like puzzles, but they all defy easy categorization in the end.
Title: Can We Be Funny? Why Start Now? Weird Pop Culture After 9/11
Author(s): Breanna Mroczek & Jason Sheridan
Publisher: Agatha Press
Year: 2026
What’s that? A plane’s hit the World Trade Center?
Oh...
It goes without saying that 9/11 has cast an unthinkably long shadow over this still-relatively-young century, not just for America, but for the rest of the world by extension. This little pamphlet by Canadian author Breanna Mroczek and American podcaster Jason Sheridan traces that shadow wonderfully, with the mixture of humour and horror I try to maintain in my own head.
Anyone who remembers waking up that day and feeling, in some deep and hidden thoughtspace, that the train our world was on had jumped the tracks, and was now on another course altogether...well, you’ll find a lot to love here. And I suppose anyone who was still blessed with pre-natal non-existence the morning we jumped those tracks...you’ll probably find some gentle explanation for why the world you’ve inherited is so weird.
Not that it wasn’t weird before.
25 little essays covering moments in pop culture that either directly resulted from that tragic September morning, or were otherwise only made possible by the world-train’s appearance on this new set of tracks. Most of them are very funny, without being irreverent (no mean feat, to be sure), some are more mournful, but all are resonant in one way or another.
Title: Real to Reel
Author(s): Gabe Morford & Dan Wolfe
Publisher: Real Skateboards
Year: 2001
-The opening montage feels as foundational to my sonic sensibility as the opening of DJ Shadow’s equally important Endtroducing...
-I love all of the atmospheric shots of SF. That was such a magical city, at that time, for an LA boy. Some of my most cherished skateboard-related memories are of teenage trips to skate EMB and Pier 7 for a weekend.
-I’m sure part of why this video is so significant for me is down to the fact that I went to a screening of it on release day at my local skateshop. I still vividly remember the excitement in the air as everyone clustered around the TV in the back of the shop and let this video wash over them. The shop also had a raffle going that day, which I won, so I got a copy of the tape, a Real t-shirt (SF Chinatown gate graphic, gold on black), and maybe some stickers? I remember the t-shirt got mixed in with some stuff my mom was taking to the dry cleaners, and when it came back, the graphic was totally cracked and flaking off. Shirt ruined, but destiny sealed.
-This video is the coolest that Gonz ever was for me. His skating is so joyful and artsy in the best possible way, pre-Supreme. I’m not saying anything against Gonz in the slightest, just that this is the sweetest sweet spot. This is my Video Days, I guess.
-Nate Jones is the smoothest motherfucker not named Gino Iannucci who ever rode a skateboard.
-Matt Field’s hill bomb at the beginning of his part, with Karl Watson, that golden California hill, the music, into the Sizzla song... it all rules so hard. Field’s got amazing sketch style, like a less...autistic?...Gonz. Wonderful.
-Ipaths were cool shoes. I got a photo of a 50-50 around the curve at 3rd and Army in the back of Thrasher, pretty shortly after this came out, where I’m wearing Ipaths and baggy olive chinos, in total Field/Jones fashion mode.
-Fuck, Huf’s part is going to make me cry. The Heart song is such a perfectly unexpected fit, and he just had such amazing style, I could watch him do ollies for days. So smooth and precise, but still heavy and fearless. RIP, Huf.
-The world seen through a fisheye lens on a VX is how my life will look on the heavenly videotape. That’s my world.
-I love how brief the parts are.
-”Ain’t no love in Oakland, bitch.” I’ve never been a vert guy, but i love Max Schaaf’s part in this. A lot of that is down to the song, but it’s so sweet that Onio’s in there. The $$$ board, the adorable dog, Gonz skitching on the hog to ollie over Max, this is all just a perfect bit of vert spice in a street skating masterpiece.
-I have no words for Busenitz’s part beyond just, “I love skateboarding”.
-The Modest Mouse song in Cairo Foster’s part is an all-timer. MM and Built To Spill were important bands for me at this time, helping me define my own musical taste as distinct from what my dad or the radio could show me. In fact, Built To Spill was my first real concert, all ‘cause I’d heard so many of their songs in skate videos.
-Gonz’s part belongs on the Voyager golden record. This is humanity at its finest. I cannot believe how much joy and pure creativity is packed in there. This makes me feel like being alive is ok. I love this part as much as anything else in life. I can hear the influence of the Tommy Guererro song in my own music. The through-the-rail hippy jump was the craziest thing I’d ever seen at the time, and even if I’ve seen more challenging stuff since, nothing comes close to it for my personal sense of amazement. God, his mobbed kickflips are so beautiful. The powerslide-body varial-front shove...it’s absolute unadulterated beauty.
“I do the tricks, not you!”
Title: Flaunt the Imperfection
Author(s): China Crisis
Publisher: Virgin
Year: 1985
And thus do the immortal words of Reno 911’s Deputy Clementine Johnson open this missive on China Crisis’s sophisti-pop landmark, Flaunt the Imperfection. Why? Because Steely Dan’s Walter Becker was a fan of the group’s previous album, sought them out to work together, and ended up as the producer here. But also because Reno 911 is a contender for greatest comedy show of the 21st century and I like bringing it up.
China Crisis were an interesting band, sharing their slick-but-sincere little niche with contemporaries The Blue Nile, The Painted Word and my absolute favourites, Prefab Sprout. Too smooth, too tuneful, too virtuosic to fit in with the post-punk crew, too preppy and unfashionable to fully mix with the new romantic scene, doomed to be cast off at the earliest rumblings of the late 80s/early 90s rebirth of ugly music made by and for ugly men. But also not arch enough, ironic enough or closely-tied enough to the jazz world to achieve the status of the aforementioned Steely Dan. And, it might be said, simply too British to be yacht rock.
It’s nowhere near a hill I’d want to die on, but there’s a case to be made for China Crisis as a British Talking Heads, but with Walter Becker instead of Brian Eno as visionary producer, and a Bryan Ferry -indebted smoothness in place of RISD cred and CBGB nerviness. I could also note that singer Gary Daly sounds a bit like a lounge act version of Robert Smith, and from there I could imagine my way into a Tokyo skybar scenario, the cover group from Lost In Translation, but it’s these guys doing an adult contemporary rendition of Seventeen Seconds in its entirety.
That’s a bar I’d like to spend some time at.
Title: Pattern Recognition
Author(s): William Gibson
Publisher: Putnam
Year: 2003
This is my favourite William Gibson novel by a wide margin, and I love everything he’s written (ok, maybe not his unmade Alien 3 script, or First Person Shooter, the lesser of his two X-Files episodes, but all the novels, at least). Although he’s best known as the progenitor of dystopian cyberpunk noir (and is consequently one of the unwitting and remorseful fathers of our current dystopian cyberpunk reality), for my money, it’s the trilogy of novels he wrote during the early years of this strange century where he really shines. Without casting any shade at all on Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix or any other beloved piece of cyberpunk media, I do feel that “gritty dystopia” can be quite easy - just take the most cynical view of the present, throw some dirt on it and call it “a prescient look into our possible future”. I think that’s a Neal Stephenson paraphrase, but I’m not going to look it up. This is a blog, not a term paper.
Anyway, Pattern Recognition is set in our normal world, in the year in which it was written. The shadow of 9/11 hangs over the narrative, and though it is ultimately a story of corporate espionage and encounters with the hidden hands that control the world, it’s extremely grounded. This is the book where I really came to love Gibson’s specific style of prose, where I realized that it’s the way he writes that’s so engaging, the poetry of it, not so much the wild sci-fi concepts or mirrorshades cool. The way he describes our actual world makes it feel alien, and makes me sense the deep alienation we all encounter every day as we try to live in this strange and hostile society.
The book is also largely about fashion, and branding, and has influenced how I dress and shop in a way that stultifying ideologues like Naomi Klein could only dream of. No Logo? No thank you! I’ve got Cayce Pollard and her debilitating allergy to the Michelin man, her divinatory hypersensitivity to the pollution of advertising, her otaku devotion to reading the meaning in a bolt of fabric, the history in a weave of Japanese denim.
Cayce’s inner monologue also put forth the concept of “soul jetlag”, the idea that flying halfway around the world separates your body from your soul, and that it takes some time for the two to reunite. As someone who spent much of his childhood and adolescence flying halfway around the world, this rings as true as anything could ever ring.
Gibson would round out the Cayce Pollard trilogy with Spook Country in 2007 and Zero History in 2010, both of which are fantastic and highly recommended, but nothing hits me like Pattern Recognition. The copy I have, shown in the photo to the left, is autographed, made out to someone named Bill, and I’ve hoped that one day, when I finally work up the nerve to approach Gibson outside the coffee shop or pilates studio, I’ll happen to have that book with me, and can ask him to simply cross out “Bill”, and write “Wyatt” instead.
Title: The Mummy Theme Park
Author(s): Alvaro Passeri
Publisher: Production Film 82
Year: 2000
In this purported film, a descendent of Cleopatra seeking to reestablish the ancient Egyptian monarchy petitions the gods Ra and Osiris to cause an earthquake that opens up a huge ravine in the desert, exposing the lost tomb of a lost pharoah. Is that plot setup needlessly convoluted? I said don’t worry about it.
The tomb is opened by a horny sheik (accompanied by his catty and treacherous harem), and wouldn’t you know it, he’s unleashed the mummy’s curse. But that’s not all - while the curse is percolating off-screen, the sheik decides to turn the tomb complex into an amusement park and, sensibly, hires a random American nudie photographer to...come snap some pics? Seriously, don’t worry about it.
This is ultimate schlock from the onset of the 2000s dark ages. Wooden acting, gratuitous toplessness and production value that would make a high school drama teacher blush (whatever that means), The Mummy Theme Park was entertaining for about 70 minutes, and then I turned it off. I’ve recently learned that it’s ok to turn movies off before they’ve officially ended. I feel like an Amish boy on Rumspringa.
Title: Doot-Doot
Author(s): Freur
Publisher: CBS
Year: 1983
Maaaaaybe...
Did I then discover that it’s actually really good?
Yuuuuup™
Before making his directorial debut with Hellraiser, predating even the screen adaptation of Rawhead Rex, Clive Barker wrote a film called Underworld, (also sometimes known as Transmutations). That film is...fine, I guess...but the reason I bring this up is that Underworld / Transmutations was scored by a quirky Welsh new wave band called Freur, of whom I’d never previously heard. I checked out their debut album, the goofily-named Doot-Doot, and fell in love with it instantly. If asked to describe the music, I’d be tempted to say that it feels like if XTC made an early Aphex Twin record. AFXTC.
(I didn’t say it sounds like that - it feels like that.)
Interestingly enough, the members of Freur would, after scoring the above-mentioned Clive Barker film, rename themselves Underworld and go on to become the seminal 90s dance group we all know and love.
We all know them and we all love them.
As a teenage Trainspotting obsessive, Underworld’s Born Slippy (Nuxx) has season tickets to my heart, and their album Beaucoup Fish was a significant touchstone in my own quest to make electronic music, so it’s both sweet and interesting to hear Karl Hyde’s distinctive vocal and lyrical stylings in this romantic post-punk context. I limit myself to one image per post here, but do yourself a favour and check out some pictures of the band. They were adorable.
Title: Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
Author(s): Lam Nai-choi
Publisher: Golden Harvest
Year: 1991
The Story of Ricky is a 1991 Hong Kong adaptation of the 1989 manga of the same name. It follows the titular hero as he gets himself sent to prison in order to avenge the death of his girlfriend. The film is set in the then-near-future of 2001, when prisons have become private businesses run by a corrupt and sadistic elite. Watching this from the vantage point of 2026, that angle seems to fit our boring dystopia pretty well, but what’s lacking from the actual late-capitalist hell we’ve been sentenced to is the absurd kung fu violence and oddly comforting style of handmade gore we find in Riki-Oh’s private prison. I’m afraid I can’t do justice here to the wonderful practical effects work that brings these bizarre imaginings to life on screen, but I can say confidently that this film is the centre of the venn diagram comprising Fist of the North Star, the Mortal Kombat video game series and the music of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Title: Coldheart Canyon
Author(s): Clive Barker
Publisher: Harper
Year: 2001
I love Clive Barker. The Hellraiser poster in the horror section of my local video store growing up was a spooky item of seminal importance. Of all the enchanting, alarming and titilating box covers to be found in that fertile VHS swamp, it’s that of Barker’s 1989 classic that sticks with me the most doggedly. Finally seeing the film itself, followed in short order by viewings of Candyman, Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions, would set me solidly on the path of becoming the horror obsessive I am today.
Later on, as a young man looking to fill in the gaps in his knowledge of horror literature, I’d read his short story In the Hills, the Cities, while in the waiting room at jury duty, and though I wouldn’t be selected to serve on any juries that day, I would be inspired to do my civic duty and devour all the Books of Blood on a summer trip to Ojai, California, contentedly hiding from the July sunshine in my darkened hotel room.
Coldheart Canyon is a more recent (but still 25 year old) outing from our favourite prince-alberted lord of plump vermillion darkness. It’s classic Barker, telling a story of hedonistic depravity and debauched blasphemy in an accurséd Hollywood Hills mansion. Fans of Barker’s work will find much to love here, and Los Angeles natives residing in exile in northern lands will feel their heartstrings tugged by Barker’s lovingly dismal renderings of that fallen city. RHCP’s Under the Bridge, but the bridge is a dungeon, and the city is an upholsterer’s nail being driven into your cock, forever.
Title: Immortality
Author(s): Sam Barlow
Publisher: Half Mermaid
Year: 2022
But no, really, it’s a video game, though maybe not by everyone’s definition. As far as gameplay is concerned, you’re basically just scrubbing through video clips on a Final Cut-esque timeline. You can fast-forward and rewind the clips, you can slow them down and speed them up, and most crucially, you can click on any object within a clip, whereupon you are immediately and seamlessly linked to another appearance of that object (or something very similar to it) in another clip. This is the mechanism by which Immortality tells its story, though there’re some other interesting mechanisms to explore as well - I’ll leave those to you to find on your own, as this game really is all about the thrill of discovery.
The narrative conceit of Immortality is that you have uncovered the raw footage from three lost films starring also-lost actress Marissa Marcel. The films are:
- Ambrosio, a lusty 1960s take on Matthew Lewis’s gothic ur-text The Monk.
- Minsky, a Warhol-cum-Cassavetes detective thriller set in 1970s New York.
- Two of Everything, a late 90s doppelgänger murder mystery - think Mulholland Drive as interpreted by Christina Aguilera.
This isn’t a game that requires any particular skill, or even any familiarity with other games of any genre or era. It’s an essentially entirely unique experience, with the only similar game I’ve ever encountered being creator Sam Barlow’s earlier release, Her Story. While I would consider myself to be “someone who likes video games”, in practice I like very little of what gets released by AAA studios, and many indie titles bore me as well. I have a categorical hatred of first-person perspectives, I don’t like war, and jump-scare horror (better called “startling”) leaves me completely cold. Immortality is exactly the kind of thing I love to discover, where games are concerned, and comes with my highest recommendation.
Title: Purple Rain
Author(s): Albert Magnoli
Publisher: Warner Brothers
Year: 1984
That said, I do appreciate that we get compelling insight into his background, how and why he’s come to be the way he is, and we do see some growth by the film’s end. There is compassion here, which is always a good thing.
Regarding the music, I found it consistently frustrating how the songs would start out amazing, then get worse as the guitar solos and self-indulgence appeared, and then would be good again for the reprise at the end. I’m not trying to have a hot take here, and I feel no joy in saying any of this. I love the idiosyncracy, I love the gall, it’s a wonderful spectacle, but it doesn’t really click with me.
I also find it odd how, despite sexuality being such a huge part of Prince’s whole image, he comes across as a completely sexless being to me. He’s an alien doing an impression of hypersexuality, but I almost get the impression he had no actual sexual impulses.
In conclusion, Morris Day is awesome, The Time are better than The Revolution, and now I’m going to watch Under the Cherry Moon and probably Grafitti Bridge as well, for the sake of completeness.
Title: Quench
Author(s): Zack Parker
Publisher: n/a
Year: 2007
There are many different types of schlock, and I’m sure we’ll get into each of those over the course of this blog, but Quench is an instance of what I’ll temporarily call the “pretentious/artful” type. Dutch angles a-go-go, self-conscious attempts at eroticism, framed portraits of Marilyn Manson, a Hitchcockian score and sex cult scenes straight out of a 13 year old boy’s fevered extrapolations of that review of Eyes Wide Shut he once read in a copy of the New Yorker his dad left in the bathroom.
What do irredeemable edgelord touchstone Kids, popular Broadway musical Rent, convicted sex offender R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet and this little film have in common? Well, I could spoil it for you, or you could get a copy of Zack Parker’s Quench and find out yourself. There’s only one way to be...positive...
Title: Nostalgia Nest
Author(s): The Salamander King
Publisher: Hollow Press
Year: 2026
I enjoy the concept of someone doing the worldbuilding for a video game that doesn’t exist, and in fact, I’ve got a whole book about exactly that concept, by Super Eyepatch Wolf, The Bizarre World of Fake Video Games. Maybe I’ll post about that in the future, or maybe this post is all I have to say about lore books. Who knows.
Nostalgia Nest is a largely pictorial affair - while there is some text on most pages, the bulk of the content is evocative imagery conjuring up the false memory of a 90s home computer RPG, floppy discs and all. There’s a gauzy, dot-matrix filter over everything, an effect made tangible by the lush frosted-transparent dust jacket in which the book comes wrapped. The imagery within evokes some lost version of Silent Hill that existed for the ZX Spectrum. The book’s preface indicates that the “game” was distributed under the title Nostalgia Simulator, but that upon booting up the first disc, the title shown on screen would invariably be “Nostalgia Nest”. A nest does feel appropriate as a vessel for nostalgia, and nostalgia itself is right there in every atom of this “fake video game lore book” thing.
This book was released by Hollow Press, who seem to be the primary proponents of the “fake game lore book” concept. They published Eyepatch Wolf’s above-mentioned book, along with the wonderful Vermis series, which is what got me started on this kick. I found the first volume of Vermis on the shelf at my local comic shop, Lucky’s in Mt. Pleasant, Vancouver. It looked compelling, so I grabbed it and now my library has a small section dedicated to lore books, mostly for fake games but there are a couple in there that have actual game counterparts.