5/19/26
Down front and center for David Lee Roth near Philly tonight, and I am so fucking excited!
I’ve seen a lot of grousing online about his voice, and about the fact that he’s focusing only on Van halen songs, rather than his solo stuff, but those people fundamentally misunderstand what this tour is about. The man is 72 years old. His favorite thing in the world is to entertain people. He’s not doing this for the money. He doesn’t need money. Hell, he doesn’t even have a merch table at these shows. He’s doing this because it’s fun for him. At 72, I hope I still have that same spirit. And as for the set list being all Van Halen songs — it’s Dave grieving Eddie. They knew each other for how many decades? And not all of those decades were easy on that friendship. But by focusing on Van Halen songs and giving monologues in between songs about the Van Halen days, it’s a way for him to honor and grieve his friend and give us fans a chance to celebrate together, as well. I respect the hell out of that.
Fuck the haters. I’m going to have a great time
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James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, has declared that he has “no problem” with AI-written books being sold in the retailer’s stores. I’ll have some thoughts about this later in the week on KEENEVERSATIONS, in an episode I think will probably be called ‘James Daunt Can Eat A Bag Of Dicks’.
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Women In Horror Year: Day 38
A Light Most Hateful by Hailey Piper
Three years after running away from home, Olivia is stuck with a dead-end job in nowhere town Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania. At least she has her best friend, Sunflower.
Olivia figures she’ll die in Chapel Hill, if not from boredom, then the summer night storm which crashes into town with a mind-bending monster in tow.
If Olivia’s going to escape Chapel Hill and someday reconcile with her parents, she’ll need to dodge residents enslaved by the storm’s otherworldly powers and find Sunflower.
But as the night strains friendships and reality itself, Olivia suspects the storm, and its monster, may have its eyes on Sunflower and everything she loves.
Including Olivia.
Despite our widely divergent tastes in movies, Mary and I have an exactly similar list for our Top Five Favorite Horror Movies of all time. One of those films is Session 9, and the reason we both love that movie is because of the way it runs the entire gamut of the horror genre, blending psychological, slasher, surrealism, splatter, supernatural, and more — often within the same scene. It is a horror movie that deies easy classification.
I loved A Light Most Hateful for that same reason. For my money, this is Hailey Piper’s (so far) best — a note perfect make-you-flinch novel that visits every aspect this genre has to offer. It’s a cosmic horror novel that will appeal to fans of Laird Barron or John Langan, but it’s also a coming of age novel that will appeal to fans of Stranger Things or my own Ghoul, but it’s also splatterpunk and surreal and quiet and loud and there’s some beautiful body horror. The mainstream appeal for this one is so strong, and I’m genuinely stunned that we don’t hear more about it outside the genre. (Don’t get me wrong. Reviews were through the fucking roof and it seems to have done VERY well among devoted horror readers. But I feel the publisher should push and market it beyond the genre).
A Light Most Hateful will appeal to a wide swath of horror fiction fans — from devotees of Clive Barker to rabid Richard Laymon readers to fans of everyone from Poppy Z. Brite to Stephen King. It’s that good. Available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook from Titan Books.
