What The Heck Does Noel Mean?
Issue #122: Look Up!
How’s it going readers!
Don’t get nervous. I’m not permanently moving this back to Fridays. I’m just posting this on Friday because I will be out of town on Monday. In fact, I will be out of town all next week. I’m going out of town (actually out of state) for the holidays.
So what’s been going on this week with me? Well, earlier in the week I started working on the garage clean up again. I got all of my comic books (single issues, collected editions, graphic novels, etc…) moved into my office. At least I think I got all of them. At least all of the ones that I was able to find. I went through quite a few boxes and got a bunch of stuff gathered up to donate. So I did get some progress done but there is still a lot more to do. Also, the cats (mostly Andor) came out to the garage to “help” me with the clean up. I noticed a strange smell coming from the garage when I got out there and started cleaning. Andor found a nest. A mouse nest that is. Apparently we had mice out there and they had a bunch of babies. The cats (again, mostly Andor) took care of them.
Another big thing that happened this week was we got a teaser trailer for the Superman movie that is coming out next year. I am so freaking excited for this movie I can’t even put it into words. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, here it is:
So……are you curious as to what noel means? If you didn’t already know this, the word comes from the Latin word nasci which means to be born. So, it should come as no surprise that the world noel has biblical meaning and is a word that signifies the Xmas season. Well how about that. Learn something new every day don’t you? Or maybe not.
No new releases to speak of this week.
On the subject of music however, I have noticed that in the past few months (maybe longer I can’t be 100% sure) that my music tastes have gravitated more toward an indie rock flavor rather than "traditional" punk rock. For instance, I’ve been listening to lot more music by bands like Sonic Youth, Superchunk, and Pixies, among many others. In fact, I did some searching on the interwebs for some best indie rock releases of 2024 and found some stuff that I had not heard of previously that, if I had heard them, and had a chance to dive into them more, they might have made one of my top music lists. Here are a few that come to mind:
Ugly - Twice Around the Sun
English Teacher - This Could Be Texas
Wunderhouse - Midas
Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven
King Hannah - Big Swimmer
Here are my top 10 listened to artists for the week (according to Last.fm):
Short pull list this week but that is to be expected because of the recent downsizing.
Absolute Batman #3 by Scott Snyder
Challengers of the Unknown #1 by Chris Cantwell
As far as other comic book reading I have mostly been reading a bunch of single issues of random stuff. I am currently re-reading Whatever Happened To the Man of Tomorrow by Alan Moore. As of this writing, I’m about halfway through it.
Other than that, I read The Coldest City by Antony Johnson. I read that for this month’s comic book discussion at Speeding Bullet.
No theater trips this week. Last night (Thursday) I watched Atomic Blonde which is the movie adaptation of The Coldest City. This is one of those rare cases where I think the movie is better than the book.
Tuesday on Rebel Rock Radio we discussed the third episode of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.
Yesterday (Thursday) I recorded (along with Megan from the Vigilante Vibes podcast) a Superman trailer reaction video.
MP and Ben released a new episode of Let’s Play Ten last week.
This week’s track is a holiday one for you. This one comes from one of the bands that I recently discovered through searching for indie rock releases. This isn’t off the album that I mentioned above but it is from the band King Hannah. Enjoy!
That is it for this week. I’m not sure when I’ll do another one of these because I will be out of town for a while. But anyway, have a great holiday and be safe but always remember to be more kind!