Bear's Monthly Mayhem - April 2024!

Thanks for sticking around!

Apr 30, 2024

Spring greetings! Let me start out by thanking you again for checking out my Monthly Mayhem newsletter! I am honored if you’ve chosen to browse this email instead of doom-scrolling socials for a while!

If you’re a new subscriber, I hope you enjoy this monthly write-up of my most recent reviews, projects, services, and merch gigs, as well as a general catch-up (and a cat picture or two)! The purple links will take you directly to the articles!

LIVE MUSIC FINLAND

It seems as though the beginning of the month is often the busiest for me with shows, with three potential gigs right up front. Well, I didn’t end up going to Love Potion Club because the band I was most interest in cancelled and I was very tired, so I was able to save some energy for Saarisalo’s album release show that featured Miia Junes and Helmi Ada as warm-up acts, which was very fun, and the Lost in Grey album release show that had Where’s My Bible as the warm-up — also a great show!

Though I didn’t make it to Love Potion, I did manage to get into town for JoJo & Friends, this month featuring Julye Blom and Paul Elias, but I was also very happy to use the show as an excuse to meet up with a local photographer, Pat Zenteno, for the show as well, so all of the nice shots in the live report are from her! We met in March during an online seminar.

Then, most of the rest of the month was spent on tour with Merta as they celebrated the release of their third album, “Virta,” around southern Finland (assuming you also consider Tampere to be pretty south). Holy crap, I’ve never been so warmly accepted and included by a band before — what a joy it is to have your favorite bands be as great IRL as they are on their albums! I’ll release a Tour Blog of the whole shebang after writing a live report of the album release show at On the Rocks.

Of course, there’s no world in which I’d miss a show from Helena Haaparanta, especially if Emmy June is there as well, so my final non-Merta show of the month was of those two and another unfamiliar artist called Hilia on the 23rd at Playhouse Bar, my current favorite venue.

MUSIC REVIEWS

I had offered Šamane a review of their album, “Solstice,” which was due for release on April 12th, which they took me up on. I had also given the new album by Moon Shot, “The Power,” a try and while it’s not my favorite style of music, I do think it’s worth checking out for some fresh positivity. I was also very happy to be able to check out “Into the Realm” by King of None.

It seems that I actually forgot that In Flames’ “Soundtrack to Your Escape” celebrated its anniversary in March, so I forgot to share that one from Tuonela Magazine last month — oops! Over there, you can also find an anniversary review of Tuomas Holopainen’s “Music Inspired by The Life and Times of Scrooge” there, which is just wonderful.

Non-Music Reviews

A fun chunk of April was spent trying out the Cobalt Core video game on Switch, which my partner was astoundingly quick to label a modern classic. I also shared my thoughts on a game that I personally consider to be a modern classic: Salt and Sanctuary.

I also wrapped up my playthrough of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which was my first experience with Kirby games, and I have to say… this was going to be a pretty normal review until I reached the endgame… I won’t spoil it, but suffice to say that the game took a bit of an unexpected turn that I really did not foresee, but I have since heard is normal for Kirby games.

I then picked up the new Snufkin and the Melody of Moominvalley (aka Nuuskamuikkunen ja Muumilaakson Melodia), which was nothing short of delightful and I was pleased to be able to play it in both English and Finnish!

In my exploration of eco-products, this time around I share some thoughts on Pela Case, who make biodegradable phone cases.

Projects

I recently figured out how to adjust the mobile pageview of my website, so I spent some of the early month revamping my site, making sure it’s as nice in mobile format as it is in the browser, and I did a massive overhaul on my About page, so now you can go and learn a bunch of things about me (with more to come!). There are things like my personal origin story, my education and work history, my creative origin story, and my journalism and editing background — more to come!

I also continue to edit Kathy Criswell’s novel, which she had kickstarted on IndieGoGo. I have been loving the chance to edit this novel, because I just love the way Kathy uses prose so beautifully. Plus it’s straight-up an interesting and strangely unsettling tale as well, so I’m a natural fan.

On the creative writing front, I decided to publish another short piece of flash (non)fiction, “I Am a Monster,” which is based off three dear friends of mine who have or have had critical lacks in self-worth. It’s a pretty rough, sad piece of writing that is unfortunately true of a lot of people who don’t think they deserve happiness.

This isn’t exactly a project, but it occurred to me that I have yet to mention that I do have a brand ambassador code for www.harempants.com that I could share here. If you use “geekbear” at the checkout, you get a discount and do something nice for me, so if you’ve ever enjoyed how comfortable and colorful my pants look all the time, consider picking some up for yourself and get a discount!

This is what my pants drawers look like and no, that’s not all of them

Islands of Nightsea

Since I parted ways with my artist in March, I spent a lot of early April just reaching out to artists and getting a feel for the scene. We met up with one local artist early in the month and a lot of ideas were thrown my way, some of which I was more open to than others. Ultimately, one of these suggestions was that I should do the art myself. I am a decent artist, certainly, but I am worlds away from what I would consider professional, so this suggestion naturally made me extremely uncomfortable, yet I found myself envisioning scenes in a simple enough style that I wondered if I could pull it off. I’m certainly feeling a great degree of imposter syndrome, but ultimately, they are my stories, so perhaps, at least in the beginning, it should be my art? I’m yet to make up my mind, I’m just trying to do some doodles and see how I feel about them after I stare at them for a long time. I was going to include some preliminary sketch attempts I made but for whatever reason, I can’t find what I’ve done with my sketchbook.

It’s also worth mentioning that Islands of Nightsea also has an origin story on my website now, if you’re inclined to learn a bit more about what the series was before now, and where it’s going from here on out (though the future remains obviously uncertain).

Off the Record

Interviews seem to get canceled and shuffled around quite a lot, which meant that my get-to-know Vies Vignette interview got moved away from April 2nd. I should be able to fix up the interview with Today Was Yesterday and get it online after this annoying delay, but I’ll need to do a few more interviews in the meantime to make it worth my while, because it looks like I’ll have to pay to get the separate tracks, so I can fix the audio balance. So, no new interviews this month, but a few upcoming in the future.

Gathering of Geeks

I met James Edward Raggi IV briefly back in 2023 when my merch master dragged me out to a show with her that he was also attending. Having also been a metal magazine editor and also being the creator of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess TTRPG system, he made for a very interesting guest and he told an extremely interesting story on the subject of controversy and cancellation. This has by far been my most popular podcast episode so far!

Enslain Metal Merch

As mentioned, I was slingin’ merch for three weekends in April with Merta, which is always fun. Those guys treat me better than most people and always make sure that I’m fed and watered and all that good stuff. I had a blast!

General Bearsness

In later March, I revisited my voodoo osteopath to work on relocating my right shoulder and pelvis to where they belong. It felt good for a couple of days, until what I think is some part of my trapezius muscle started to ripple when I breathed in and created a rather violent spasm in my spine. This was not painful the first day but it was on the second and at some point I was unable to walk because of some pinched nerve/sciatica sort of issue in my right leg. I know this is all part of what it takes to heal my back into place, but good friggin’ grief is it unpleasant to go through in the meantime. Remember kids, if you have to headbang, use circular motions and consider warming up before hand a bit.

I was able to get a time to get corrected again before my May appointment, as my shoulder remained very painful afterwards, but while he was able to put my pelvis back where it belongs, my spine and shoulder remained adamant that they will be tormenting me for the rest of the month, minimum. Ultimately, I did try to go help out at the garden again, but I got sent home after an hour. I seem, very unfortunately, to be extremely limited in my physical capacity these days.

So the chronic pain levels were very high in April, though I remained hopeful that my session on May 2nd would move something.

Honestly, I don’t think much else happened this month, besides a wonderful social visit from dear new friend and today is Vappu, so I’m having a few people over, hopefully it will be nice.

That’s about it for this month! Thanks for following along and keeping up with me and my general mayhem!

Here’s a quote that I wish people would take seriously:

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

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Coming Next Month…

First up will be Helsinki Psych Fest at Playhouse Bar the first weekend of May, which I’m really excited about… I think I got Pihka Is My Name a slot where another band had cancelled, so naturally I will be there.

My aforementioned friend Kathy is coming back to Europe already to see Delain with Altamullan Road, and seems to have made up my mind for me as to whether I was coming too.

Otherwise, I’m going to make a conscious effort to take it easy in May and focus on doing what I can for this crippled and jacked-up body of mine. Hopefully yard work is not as strenuous as garden work, but I’ll be finding out today.

Thanks again for reading along this month! You get bonus points if you read this far!

And below is my Best of 2024 playlist! Welcome to follow along!

Bear's Book of Balance