#jason sanford
Text
Midnight Pals: Hugo Drama
Hugo Gernsback: hey everyone its me, hugo gernsback
Gernsback: editor of Amazing Stories and namesake of the hugo awards
Gernsback: perhaps you've heard of them?
Clive Barker: oh buddy
Barker: buddy
Barker: we've heard all about them ha ha
Stephen King: they're named after you? i thought they were named after victor hugo Gernsback: ha ha a common mistake
Gernsback: but that's fine
Gernsback: i'm not mad at all that victor hugo keeps getting the credit
Gernsback: i think its funny
Gernsback: in fact i'm laughing
Gernsback: ah yes my precious hugo awards!
Gernsback: the most prestigious award in science fiction and fantasy!
Gernsback: a place for serious business
Gernsback: certainly no room for shenanigans here
Gernsback: no room for tomfoolery
Gernsback: no room for clownish buffoonery
Gernsback: The Hugo -- an award whose very name rings with integrity & honor!
Gernsback: it is no mere nebula! no paltry clarke!
Gernback: the stoker, the howard, the lambda - none can compare!
Gernsback: the L Ron hubbard writers of the future award? pah! dust before the hugo!
Gernsback: only the choicest cuts of science fiction and fantasy would ever achieve the lofty hugo award
Gernsback: an award forever untainted by shenanigans or hijinks!
Gernsback: now to take a big sip of coffee and read this file 770 report!
Gernsback: what the--?!
Gernsback: my beautiful hugos!!! tainted by the foul stench of corruption!!!
Clive Barker: yeah boy i bet victor hugo's just sick about it
Gernsback:
Barker: just sick about what they did to his award
Gernsback:
Barker: ha ha
Poe: clive leave him alone
Gernsback: my hugo!!! you were supposed to be a thing of beauty... not this monstrosity!
Dean Koontz: gosh he's so sad about his award
Koontz: do you think it would cheer him up if i gave him my nickelodean kids choice award?
Poe: i think that would be a very nice gesture dean
Chris M Barkley: [thrusting microphone] Mr gernsback! mr gernsback! a statement for the press?
Jason Sanford: [thrusting microphone] how do you respond to the allegations about your award mr gernsback?
Gernsback: confound these intrepid newshounds of the 4th estate!
Gernsback: [wiping brow] don't worry, we will be taking measures to fix this
Barkley: what are you going to do mr gernsback?
Sanford: the people demand an answer mr gernsback!
Gernsback: we'll uh
Gernsback: we'll nominate an essay called 'Dave McCarty Can Fuck Off Into the Sun'
Gernsback: what a debacle! i cannot believe my good name will now forever be associated with such shady practices!
HP Lovecraft: hey when are you gonna pay me for my story you ran?
Gernsback: new phone, who dis?
Gernsback: you know who this really hurts?
Gernsback: worse than the nominees secretly disqualified for politics?
Gernsback: worse than the entirety of Chinese science fiction secretly disqualified for being Chinese?
Gernsback: worse than the winners whose awards are now tainted?
Gernsback: the person that this hurts most of all
Gernsback: is clearly bitter karella
Gernsback: for reasons i can't articulate
Gernsback: everyone should immediately go and heap conciliatory praise on bitter karella
Gernsback: truly the most wronged person of all
Bitter Karella: [bravely holding back tears] no no it's not about me
Bitter Karella: [voice cracking] my only thought is for the hugo community who has been through... so much...
Bitter Karella: [stoically gazing into distance] they're the REAL heroes
Gernsback: look how bitter karella keeps a brave face... for our sake!
King: god bitter karella is so brave... and so modest!
Poe: truly a great goblin
Poe: possibly the greatest
Koontz: why? what did they do?
Poe: dean! show some respect!
#midnight pals#the midnight society#midnight society#stephen king#clive barker#edgar allan poe#dean koontz#hp lovecraft#hugo gernsback#bitter karella#jason sanford#chris m barkley
575 notes
·
View notes
Text
E — Living Waters (Silver Rocket)
E’s fifth full length packs a wallop, thanks to new drummer Ernie Kim, a Boston area veteran of bands including Tristan da Cunha. Not that the trio—the other two members are Thalia Zedek and Jason Sanford—has ever been especially quiet. Still no question that the intensity ratcheted up another notch this time in lurching, lumbering rhythms that shake the floors like a brontosaurus passing.
It all starts in “(Fully) Remote” with its thrusting, heavy industrial cadence that comes down hard at the beginning of every four beat measure, swings back, then hammers home again. And while superlatively heavy, E’s music has a twitchy, paranoiac empty space embedded between assaults. Sanford mutters ominously about how “the information, it comes from inside,” while Zedek picks up the end of a verse in a feral, vibrating howl. A trebly violence of guitar skreetches over the monstrous beat, like napalm fire catching.
E has never had a full-time bass player. Typically Zedek plays a conventional guitar, while Sanford goes at his home-made instruments, some of which look like cubist reimaginings of a guitar, drawn in thick lines with air where the body usually goes. For this album, however, Zedek, too, experimented with her instrument, adjusting it so that it could produce both guitar and bass-like sounds. The low-end girds the band’s customary antic, always-in-motion onslaught, giving the sound more force and resonance. And yet, it’s the drums, always the drums, that shock and roil these songs, their stick-shattering thwacks turning uneasy fever dreams like “Names Upon a List” into firefights.
A couple of these tracks lean way into this assaultive aesthetic, stripping away the poetry and melodic color to reveal the animal beneath. “Deep Swerve” bounces wavering, dopplering sounds off the hardest beat you can imagine, and “Ash” reprises the woozy foundation, adding flares of guitars and voices to its giant footed procession.
But it’s the epic title track that puts the pieces together, its ritual beat, its slow-chiming guitars, its gut-wrenching vocals all conjoining in triumph. Zedek sings, primarily, holding the long notes over a tumult of percussion and guitar sound, as if withstanding, once again, all the difficulties of the last few years. It’s nine minutes plus of persistence and resilience, playing out in a way that will make the hairs on your wrists stand up. E is full of power, now more than ever.
Jennifer Kelly
#e#living waters#silver rocket#jennifer kelly#albumreview#dusted magazine#thalia zedek#come#live skull#jason sanford#neptunes#ernie kim#tristan da cunha#no wave#punk#noise
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Books I Read In June
24. The Chosen and the Beautiful, by Nghi Vo
Really, I should have read this one last year when it was getting all the buzz – it actually really mostly lived up to it!
But then, I’m the weirdo who actually enjoyed The Great Gatsby in the first place. If you didn’t at least kind of enjoy all the references and narrative fuckery with the source text. It’s, well, it’s not quite fanfic imo (at least, no more than Ten Things I Hate About You is. Which I mean if you want to argue the point you’d probably win, but), and if you come into it blind you’re going to miss like a third of what’s going on.
The whole urban fantasy aesthetic doesn’t really add much beyond, like, aesthetics and vibes and making the incredibly obvious metaphor wholly and completely literal re: Gatsby’s selling his soul. But, like, the book has so much fun with all the magical ‘20s decadence and literally occulted speakeasies and gay bars and similar.
25. Capital Without Borders, by Brooke Harrington
On a fundamental level the basic conceit of ‘anthropologist spends years learning the customs and folkways of a privacy obsessed community who feel reviled by the wider world – the private wealth managers of the ultrawealthy’ is just, like, incredibly funny to me.
But despite being incredibly dry and very, like, academic, this was actually shockingly readable. Actually pretty interesting, too.
I mean, in a ‘filled with despair and loathing’ sort of way, but still. Interesting sort of dialectic where the officials who actually serve the various world powers’ state apparatuses absolutely loathe the whole deal with tax havens and matryoshka dolls of trusts and charitable foundations and everything else, but despite ostensibly having basically unlimited coercive force at their fingertips they’re more or less helpless to do anything about it. Always fascinating to get a look at the people who the world works on behalf of.
And I admit I sort of have an aesthetic fascination with the sort of elite professional who ends up being a de facto social worker and relationship councilor for the much MORE elite family they work for.
26. Plague Birds, by Jason Sanford
I…thought this was a Hugo nominee? But apparently not? So, okay, zero idea how I ended up reading it.
Possibly my new top contender for ‘non-visual media which are still, spiritually, anime”. You know, post-post-apocalyptic setting of scattered villages watched over by benign village Ais and clans of dangerous hunters in the wilderness and wandering superpowered paladins who wear red leather and have bright red hair who are bonded to a super-powerful AI in their blood, and also the only character who isn’t at least kind of a furry is the apparently 16-year-old girl whose actually a myriad old alien spy.
Anyway! Decent romp, but honestly kind of fell apart in the third act, imo. Spent too long luxuriating in the (honestly very fun) worldbuilding, so all the actual plot and revelations had to be crammed together without having nay space to breath or feel natural.
Also the protagonist turns out to be, like, the most special child to ever exist Chosen-One-but-sci-fi, which I just generally despise.
Kinda a bit less than the sum of its parts, imo.
27. Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan Mcguire
Hugo novella nominee number 3!
This was fun! Not really much more than fun, but still – pleasantly tropey read, in a self-consciously fairytale-like sort of way.
I’m informed that it’s part of some wider setting/universe, but honestly you really couldn’t tell reading it.
Kind of amused at the apparent coincidence that this came out at (IIRC) basically the same time as a children’s tv show called Centaurworld, which I know absolutely nothing about except a friend stole the surprisingly terrifying villain to use in D&D.
Anyway, like, 3/5? The last thing I read by the author was Middlegame, and this is just honestly a pretty big let down by comparison. Doesn’t help that the general vibe kept me mentally comparing it with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, either (not a flattering comparison for it).
28. A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark
Hugo novel nominee number 4!
As a fan of pulpy weird alternate 20th centuries, this really was catnip to me. Buddy cop antics in a Djinn-haunted steampunk Cairo at the turn of the 20th century! A heroine who insists on wearing perfectly tailored English suits at all times despite living in early 20th century Cairo! A climax involving a giant robot and an evil wizard trying to restore the British Empire!
The vibes were sublime.
Beyond the amazing aesthetics there isn’t much to write home about, honestly – the setting is largely set dressing over a fairly conventional plot. Fun set dressing! The bit where the Brits and Americans are basically losing at imperialism because they went hard on the whole witch hunting things while everyone else went digging for local spirits to try allying with doesn’t necessarily make much sense, but is very funny to me.
29. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir
And Hugo Novel Nominee Number 5!
So I think I mentioned but – I did not know this was by the The Martian guy until I started reading it, but oh my fuck can you tell.
The tone is very..specific. I found it pretty grating, honestly, but not nearly enough to outweigh all the things the book has going for it.
So, it’s hard sci fi. Like, ‘extended asides to explain the scientific processes and technological breakthroughs as they happen for the education of the reader, most of the acknowledgements section is thanking different scientists for their help making it accurate’ hard sci fi. Honestly it’s to the books credit that the writing is just kind of twee and self satisfied, and not soul-witheringly dry.
The decision to have the protagonist wake up with amnesia and then slowly fill out the backstory as he makes do on the spaceship orbiting Tau Ceti he woke up from a medically induced coma in next to two dead crew mates was frankly an incredibly good decision, because the earth chapters are a) clearly just an excuse/justification to get him to Tau Ceti and b) just incredibly boring.
But, like, I really cannot overemphasize how much I just adore first contact scenarios where both parties are awkwardly trying to understand each other and work out some sort of mutually intelligible way to get information across and solve some desperate problem together. The aliens were so lovingly amazingly weird, too – both the astrophage and whatever Rocky’s species are called.
I literally read it travelling halfway across the continent, so can confirm that it’s a great airport read.
If Hollywood isn’t a bunch of cowards they’ll spend $100 million to make this one a movie too.
30. The Past Is Red, by Catherynne Valente
Hugo novella nominee number 4! Getting close!
Valente’s pretty easily one of my favorite writers currently working, and this did absolutely nothing to change my mind about that. I mean, a bit heavy handed – the setting is quite literally the city-sized island of trash floating above the waves after the seas have risen and drowned the entire world – but still, it’s the sort of ever so slightly surreal magical realism I’m really very fond of.
The prose was just relentlessly sharp and occasionally mean spirited and really consistently great, imo. For whatever reason ‘hope that’s just greed, going by it’s maiden name’ has gotten thoroughly stuck in my head.
Tetley as a protagonist is just generally amazing and wonderfully tragic and interestingly broken, really.
Anyway, haven’t read Elder Race of A Spindle Splintered yet but really solidly my favorite of the hugo novellas I’ve read so far.
#book review#monthly tally#The Past is Red#catherynne m. valente#project hail mary#andy weir#a master of djinn#p. djèlí clark#across the green grass fields#seanan mcguire#Plague Birds#Jason Sanford#Capital Without Borders#Brooke Harrington#the chosen and the beautiful#nghi vo#analysis/review
71 notes
·
View notes
Text
an italian vampire who uses mount everest as a hunting ground is not the story i was expecting but am nonetheless enjoying
1 note
·
View note
Text
Covers de Red hood The Hill #3
134 notes
·
View notes
Text
Red Hood: The Hill (DC, February 2024) preview artwork by Sanford Greene
86 notes
·
View notes
Text
Slasher Madness..?
It supposed to be ready for Halloween, but how you see, it didn't happen until now. This was my friend Sei’s idea and dang, i had to draw them.
Hank - Jason Voorhees.
Sanford - Candyman.
Deimos - Ghostface.
Doc - The Collector.
#madness combat#madness combat fanart#jason voorhees#friday 13th#candyman#ghostface#scream movie#the collector movie#deimos madness combat#sanford madness combat#hank madness combat#hank j. wimbleton#2bdamned#doc madness combat#madcom
417 notes
·
View notes
Text
Red Hood Moves to The Hill
Jason Todd is moving to a new neighborhood in a new 6-issue series from writer Shawn Martinbrough and artist Sanford Greene.
"In Gotham City’s early days, The Hill was one of Gotham City’s most dangerous neighborhoods, one that required the residents to band together to keep themselves safe when the police – and sometimes even Batman – wouldn’t.
Now, as the Hill finds itself gentrifying, old habits die hard as the vigilante known only as Strike works with her team to keep the town safe—but she’s not alone. Jason Todd, one of the Hill’s newest residents, is more than happy to don the visage of Red Hood to help Strike keep his new home safe. But a new villain is emerging from the shadows. Will Red Hood, Strike and the Hill’s small militia of vigilantes be able to keep their home safe?" (DC Comics)
Red Hood: The Hill #1 (of 6), featuring a main cover by Sanford Greene and a variant cover by Tirso Cons, goes on sale on Feburary 13, 2024.
To see why Jason Todd is moving house, check out Red Hood: The Hill #0 from writer Shawn Martinbrough and artists Tony Akins and Moritat. The comic will collect Red Hood #51 and Red Hood #52 in which the Joker War causes a new vigilante group to form in order to protect their neighborhood and Red Hood is caught in the crossfire.
Red Hood - The Hill #0, featuring a new cover by Sanford Greene, goes on sale on February 6, 2024.
(Images via DC Comics - Cover of Red Hood: The Hill #1 and Red Hood: The Hill #0)
#red hood the hill#red hood#jason todd#shawn martinbrough#sanford greene#tony akins#moritat#dc comics#TGCLiz
40 notes
·
View notes
Text
Oh hey it is that one Red Hood writer I actually like, going to be writing Red Hood again.
Sanford Greene on art too, fuck yes.
Will keep an eye on this one, see if I can find a spot for it.
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
#cardiff devils#ice hockey#welsh#cymru#joey martin#josh batch#eihl#puck#fighting#cardiff bay#ice arena wales#ben bowns#riley brandt#cole sanford#joshua waller#trevor cox#goaltender#hockey#sam duggan#ben davies#cymraeg#wales#🏴#professional#sport#sports photography#mark Richardson#jason stone#andrew lord#pete russel
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Impact
“Charming” isn’t a word normally associated with film noir, yet it fits Arthur Lubin’s IMPACT (1949, TCM, Tubi, Plex, Prime, YouTube). From the intricate plot in which everything falls neatly into place to the location photography in San Francisco and Larkspur, CA, to, most importantly, the not quite love scenes between Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines, it’s an ongoing delight. Wealthy industrialist Donlevy is driving to Denver for a plant opening when his wife (Helen Walker) contrives to have her lover go along for the ride and kill him. The lover is neither very good with a tire iron nor with a steering wheel and ends up dead in a fiery car crash while Donlevy, stunned to discover what the Mrs. had been doing, wanders the countryside until he winds up at war widow Raines’ filling station. Romance is as inevitable as Hollywood usually makes it. Meanwhile, police detective Charles Coburn, in one of his least fussy performances, tries to make sense out of the plot.
With lots of scenes shot on location (including the same San Francisco hotel where Kim Novak’s character stayed in VERTIGO), IMPACT is a lot sunnier than most film noirs, but the plot is so twisted and Walker such a great femme fatale it doesn’t matter. The script, by Dorothy Davenport (that’s Mrs. Wallace Reid to you) is a masterpiece of efficiency, with key facts and events planted effortlessly and events communicated through telegrams, newspaper headlines and even a radio broadcast by gossip columnist Sheilah Grahame. Raines was never distinctive enough to be a star, but she’s a darned good actress and lots better than you’d expect from a film noir good woman. Donlevy, whose leading man days were largely over by 1949, has beautiful moments as he realizes what’s going on in his life. Anna May Wong deserved a lot better than her brief role as Walker’s maid, but she delivers a solid performance in her next-to-last film. Her friend (and merkin?) Philip Ahn is on-hand in old-age makeup as her uncle. You may also spot Robert Warwick as a police captain, Clarence Kolb as chairman of Donlevy’s board, silent great Mae Marsh as Raines’ mother, Jason Robards, Sr. as a judge, Erskine Sanford as a doctor and horror film standby Morris Ankrum as Donlevy’s assistant.
#film noir#arthur lubin#dorothy davenport#brian donlevy#ella raines#helen walker#anna may wong#charles coburn#robert warwick#clarnce kolb#mae marsh#jason robards#erskine sanford#morris ankrum
0 notes
Text
Halfway through Plague Birds now and I'm really going to have to raise the bar on calling non-anime things 'basically an anime' going forward, after this post-post-apocalyptic sufficiently-advanced-technology setting where the only character who isn't at least kind of a furry is the teenage girl whose actually a millennia-old alien AI.
(the main character is a wolf-girl who dresses in red leather and fights with dual knives, and also is bonded to a sarcastic and vengeance-obsessed AI that lives in her blood which she lets out to help in a fight by slitting her wrist).
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hugo Award Follow Up:
I think it's fair to say that the astonishing thing is how enthusiastically the American, Canadian (and British?) people involved in the Hugos took to censorship. I'm proud of the whistleblower, and am still puzzled by the removal of Sandman Episode 6. But this appears to have been what was going on:
12K notes
·
View notes
Text
Jason Voorhees Costume
In a previous blog, I presented a guy wearing a Jason Voorhees mask.
On this particular blog post, I present a guy wearing the whole costume. He wore this costume during Bloodbath, a theme night hosted by Manikins Lounge.
For those that don’t know, Manikins is located in Downtown Sanford, Florida.
Because today is Friday the 13th, this blog post is featuring the main character from the movie…
View On WordPress
0 notes
Text
Red Hood: The Hill #0 (DC, February 2024) cover by Sanford Greene
50 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
brigadeutopiacornerstonetranquil
Brigade Cornerstone Utopia
smalltowncas
it's about the grace kisses
thegonse
dont feed me bread
vickriarts
Vicki!
kokoronopikuseru
心のピクセル