Purple Rhinestone Eagle/Northern Swords/Forsorcerers
Fantasy Quest 7″
Poison Apple

What the fuck is going on in Portland, Oregon? I thought my recent discovery of Purple Rhinestone Eagle was rare, but it turns out the whole town is full of secret covens in hidden lairs amassing a cohesive army of high priestess power, steadying themselves to strike like a seething force of Joan of Arcs. Joining Purple Rhinestone Eagle on this particular battlefield (Poison Apple’s split seven inch, Fantasy Quest, from November 2009) are Northern Swords and Forsorcerers, and together they rock in the name of glory, freedom, honour, and death.

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Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

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…the hardest things in the world are being unique and having your life be a story. In the old days, it was much easier, but our modern fame-driven culture, with its real-time 24-7 marinade of electronic information, demands a lot from modern citizens, and poses great obstacles to narrative. Truly modern citizens are both charismatic and can only respond to other people with charisma. To survive, people need to become self-branding charisma robots. Yet, ironically, society mocks and punishes people who aspire to that state.

Given that I have a blog — this blog — I find the above passage from Douglas Coupland’s Generation A particularly poignant. Yet, the dialogue that follows really hits the mark:

“So, in a nutshell, given the current media composition of the world, you’re pretty much doomed to being uninteresting and storyless.”
“But I can blog my life! I can turn it into a story that way!”
“Blogs? Sorry, but all those blogs and vlogs or whatever’s out there — they just make being unique harder. The more truths you spill out, the more generic you become.”

In just a few lines, Coupland is able to dissect an entire generation like a skilled surgeon with a scalpel, which has become is specialty, frankly; something he started in 1991 with Generation X and that which he has now lent to me and my ilk in 2009 with Generation A.

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