Some of the Spanish, Bandcamp and ‘new podcast launched’ birthday items are now starting to be indexed by the search-engines.

* The newspaper El Pais published a long introduction to Lovecraft and a fine header photo…

The article recommends a 2021 translation to readers…

* Ominous Conclusions chose the day to release The Outsider… “A three-part instrumental E.P. for electric guitar and symphonic orchestra, inspired from H.P. Lovecraft’s tale ‘The Outsider’.” FrontView magazine said of it… “progressive metal, but so much more. Packed with technical proficiency and profound storytelling”.

* La biblioteca de R’lyeh chose the day to start a new bi-weekly ‘Lovecraftian culture and thereabouts’ podcast in Spanish.

Another round-up of items for H.P. Lovecraft’s 131st birthday. Most likely there are more to be found, when the search-engines catch up, and there may be a ‘part three’.

“Astrophobos 1917” has been released by the band Dreams in the Witch House…

In celebration of Lovecraft’s birthday on August 20th, 1890, the “Dreams in the Witch House” team presents this dynamic take on Lovecraft’s poem written in 1917.

Seemingly announced on the birthday, or else only just now picked up by the search-engines, The Shadow Over Innsmouth Vinyl LP Box Set from quality vinyl purveyors Psilowave Records, set to ship for Halloween. Possibly already sold out, judging by the ‘last one available’ flag I see.

A modestly-discounted clearance sale at the HPLHS store, until 23rd August 2021.

Several long birthday streaming podcasts on YouTube. Alongside the usual daily tidal-wave of readings, which is nothing unusual.

A nice H.P. Lovecraft, the Man of Madness ‘speedtoon’ for the birthday, in which AniMio Studios shows how exactly how to draw and fill-paint a toon Lovecraft. He’s got to work on squaring off the jaw, but it’s otherwise a rather pleasing little art tutorial.

And finally, leftists also chose the day to desecrate Lovecraft’s gravestone with some crude scrawling. Best ignored, I’d suggest.

At the HPLHS Store and new to me, a line of Lovecraftian Netsuke…

Also said to be set for the store (seemingly coming soon, perhaps for the Birthday on the 20th?) a toothsome faux carved whale-tooth from Innsmouth…

Lovecraft on carving…

“That [new] theory of rock carvings 150,000 years old is certainly fascinating in the extreme – even though it presupposes the evolution of man to have begun at a period somewhat earlier than is normally assumed.”

“The prevalence and depth of the mediaeval horror-spirit in Europe, intensified by the dark despair which waves of pestilence brought, may be fairly gauged by the grotesque carvings slyly introduced into much of the finest later Gothic ecclesiastical work of the time”.

“I am truly of an opinion, that [eighteenth century] carvings are just as genuine poesy as anything ever writ in lines and rhymes.”

H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival returns to his home city of Providence, R.I., in physical form, at the…

Columbus Theatre on H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday weekend, 20th-22nd August 2021

My rectification, up-scaling and colorising of a vintage picture of the venue.

The interior today.

As a fan of Titan Quest I’ve always wanted to play its spiritual great-grandpa Diablo II at a similar level of visual fidelity and polish. Now I’ll finally get the chance. Diablo II Resurrected apparently lands, at least in a ‘final beta’, on 17th August 2021. This being a “full HD remaster of Diablo II”, a single-player PC game which first appeared in 2000. And of course it’s mentioned here because it’s not just another dingy old dungeon-slogger. In what is held up as one of the greatest of games, your isometric adventurer traverses a veritable list of Lovecraft’s loves… a hoary medieval castle; Ancient Egyptian desert tombs; a Baghdad-like Arabian Nights city, sinister tropical jungles; ancient crumbling mountain-top temples… and all apparently “almost completely unchanged from the original Diablo II” other than to HD them. It’s not otherwise said to be Lovecraftian, though later Diablo games did apparently start to introduce Lovecraftian elements. But I would imagine that there may, in time, be Lovecraftian conversion-mods for Diablo II Resurrected.

A new episode of the Voluminous podcast, A Symphony of Galpin. In which the letters are accompanied by…

Reber Clark [and] his amazing orchestration of Galpin’s “Lament for HPL”