Movie recommendation for this weekend: Dark Star. Need a good laugh after living a week in which nothing has tickled your funny bone? Dark Star follows a crew of misfits on a mission to blow up unstable planets. Along the way, they adopt an alien that looks like a giant beach ball because they wanted a mascot and a bomb with an AI mind gets very sassy then has an existential crisis. All of this is happening while the crew manages each other as well as the characters in the Office. John Carpenter made this and the spaceship aesthetic is a low budget dream. There’s a whole bunch of other references and influences in this movie that would spoil the fun by me mentioning it before you watch it.
Bandcamp song of the week: Morningface – Heaven Don’t Feel Like This
Kate Hummel is Morningface. I wish she made more music. I’m a big fan. Her music is heavily inspired by Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, Pete Kember and the bands/artists who are in that orbit.
Kate’s Outta Space album is still available on CD.
What have I been thinking about? Games characters play in spaceships. In Dark Star, the character Boiler was playing some sort of solitaire with playing cards. In the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca plays the game Dejarik against the R2-D2. Surely there has to be a list of games appearing in sci-fi movies. If there is, I cannot find it. Also, I want a Dejarik board game for myself.
Speaking of space games, the Gunstar in the movie The Last Starfighter ranked third in Giant Freakin’ Robot’s Deadliest Space Fighters.
UAPs UFOs USOs. Enough already. This is turning into quite a mess. We have people in Congress who cannot treat other humans respectfully but want disclosure (it’s only so they can get a piece of the pie, BTW). There’s Youtube and podcast bros spreading false information for clout. I’m all for humans on earth to be told what many of us already assume that we are not alone. Do you ever imagine what these morons will do once/if there is a mass sighting or visitation? It will be much worse than how we handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Record Store Day. Another RSD is coming up (next Friday!) and I will be trying to find the release Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank 1978 by Sun Ra.
The cd insert looks pretty cool. You can preorder the CD now but you will have to find the vinyl on RSD.
I plan on visiting Record Row here in Rochester. That’s the Bop Shop, Needledrop and the HiFi Lounge.
Further reading and listening, without comment but best with an adult beverage. Dream hacking. Remmyo. Life on Venus? Otherworld.
Here for the music? Tune into Fantastic Voyage Sundays at 4pm on wayofm.org.
Fantastic Voyage 