The Friday Article Roundup
Forsooth! Tis the best pop culture writing of the past half fortnight!
Prithee, cast thy gaze upon:
Who will join the FAR of the Round Table? Send articles throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
At The Racket, Lily Osler learns to love at least part of the Minnesota Renaissance Festival:
Whatever the cause, I was giddy enough to even find the annoying things at the MRF exciting. One fun MRF quirk is that virtually every booth is staffed by the surliest and least competent teenagers in the state of Minnesota, with food items often taking many minutes and scowls to be handed to you from a big bin that’s literally three feet away. Our trip to get coffee after the fairy houses (“Lily, do you want coffee?” “Verily! Anon, to the beanmonger!” “Jesus Christ.”) was the epitome of this dynamic: The maybe-15-year-old behind the counter responded to “Can I get a cold press?” with an audibly irritated “I don’t know, can you?” And even this, dear reader, was a delight to me at this point! This new Lily was an elf in her elf-lement. She loved the MRF.
Nick Pinkerton looks at Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois for Metrograph:
Rohmer makes no attempt to straighten out the thread of de Troyes’s tale, rather a frayed, knotty affair to a viewer accustomed to the linear, streamlined dramaturgy of the “well-made” 19th-century novel that continues to dominate screenwriting seminars to this day. His Perceval also blithely violates a holy writ of the gurus who teach said seminars—“Show, don’t tell”—by retaining many of de Troyes’s descriptive passages….This sui generis approach to literary adaptation, and the frequent comic effects that Rohmer renders of it—Perceval more than once comments aloud on the subject of his own silence; a female soloist sings, “I could describe each blow, but is it worth your time or mine?” over a battle raging on-screen—drew little praise and much befuddlement upon Perceval’s release.
Ned Raggett counters the Oasis resurgence with a survey of 90s Welsh indie rock for The Shfl:
There’s something to be said for the particular ferment of Welsh acts in a generally indie/alternative rock style that attracted attention in the 1990s for their work. Whether being notably experimental, engagingly poppy or aiming for the arena heights – or all three and more – there’s little doubt that a lot was going on at the time. If sometimes collectively described and perhaps stereotyped as a response to the overweening impact of ‘Cool Britannia’ as such by the mid-1990s – the phrase ‘Cool Cymru,’ referring to the Welsh name for the country, is sometimes used – the sense remains that most of these acts, many with shared roots or growing out of earlier incarnations of other acts, absolutely had something distinct happening.
At Reverse Shot, Kyle Turner interviews Julian Glander about his new movie, Boys Go To Jupiter:
JG: I think one thing that’s really kind of funny: basically every review kind of hooks it as an anti-capitalist movie. That had not crossed my mind at all when I was writing it. It may just be that this is a kind of a bigger cultural conversation that we all really want to have. Because for me, it’s actually a movie that sits very nicely in capitalism and kind of just explores a dozen different characters’ relationships with work. I see Billy as someone who moves through the world and is seeing multiple angles of capital in order to make the best decision that he can within this world. But, yeah, it was not my intention to make an anti-capitalist movie. It was my capitalist movie. It was my intention to make a movie that takes place in something that felt like an honest reality. And maybe that’s all you can do.
And for the BBC, Ian Youngs and Paul Glynn report on the latest AI scourge: Imposter streams of real musicians:
[Folk singer Emily] Portman doesn’t know who put the album up under her name or why. She was falsely credited as performer, writer and copyright holder. The producer listed in the credits was Freddie Howells – but she says that name doesn’t mean anything to her, and there’s no trace online of a producer or musician of that name. As for the music itself, while it was enough to convince some fans, the lack of actual human creative input made it sound “vacuous and pristine”, she says. “I’ll never be able to sing that perfectly in tune. And that’s not the point. I don’t want to. I’m human.”
Tags for this article
More articles by Dave Shutton
The Friday Article Roundup
There's still time to experience the best pop culture writing of the week.
Double Features
Family heirlooms loom large in Father Mother Sister Brother and Vulcanizadora.
Double Features
Moving in time with One Battle After Another and Caught By The Tides.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Two, “Convictions”
Classic Babylon 5, all the things I come here for – a compelling central mystery with massive political implications and a clever solution, the Londo/G’Kar double act, and Lennier being awesome. The villain’s final monologue veers between goofy and sincere, partly because he might be the worst actor the show has had yet, partly because the writing is leaning so hard on him being a willing reflection of his times, which is true but come on.
The two best scenes in the episode are Londo and G’Kar stuck in an elevator together as they slowly suffocate, G’Kar gleeful to see his enemy die; an easy plot, but a very effective one in this context. Straczinsky has completely taken over writing duties at this point – never heard of before in television, still impressive as hell now considering he’s churning out full 26 episode seasons – and, if I want to be funny rather than charitable, he’s one of those guys who seems blissfully unaware of the concept of shutting the fuck up. But he drops that in this scene, letting Andreas Katsulas silently build his glee at knowing Londo is going to die and he gets to watch it.
Babylon 5 has as much of a liberal American sensibility as Star Trek – right down to both this and contemporary Deep Space Nine exploring working class themes like unions – and one thing liberalism gets that leftism often (but not always) does not is the sense of being part of an institution (look to Andor, which taps into the abstract idea of Revolutionary without tapping into the idea of specific organisations, e.g. the Zapatistas. This is not a flaw, but a neutral observation). In this case, G’Kar identifies with the Narn, giving him a very direct and material kind of afterlife, and he can comfortably let his life go now knowing his people will live on, which makes this scene moving as well as hilarious.
Meanwhile, the strongest story is Lennier taking severe injuries in order to save Londo’s ass during an explosion, and a few characters – including Londo himself – check on him while he’s in a coma. This story leans very hard on the idea of heroism being painful and exhausting; Lennier’s story opens up with him putting up with an annoying hanger-on before tricking him into going away and then feeling bad about it, and it ends with his poignant observation that he’s acted out his morality that all life is sacred and saved someone who doesn’t agree with that, and taken terrible injuries in the process.
I am extremely susceptible to stories about people who take suffering in the name of doing good – see also, Budd in Kill Bill living his sad little life out of penance and not fearing reprisal from the Bride – and this is a great example. I’m always astounded by the number of people under the impression that life is supposed to be comfortable 100% of the time and even moreso by people who are surprised when their dream lifestyle has work associated with it; an easy example is people who insult and berate others and then are shocked – shocked – when they get it right back. Conversely, there’s nothing more sympathetic to me than someone willing to take short-term, survivable damage for larger goals. Lennier has a rather extreme morality in that he places quite a few things over his comfort or even his own life, and that makes him the coolest character on the show.
Lord of the Flies
A stage version. This was really well-performed – my boyfriend thought it was going to be shit and starring middle aged men as the boys, but they had teenagers (male and female), and it was a pretty good descent into madness (even if it felt like a cliff note’s version of the plot, not being familiar with the source material). The actor playing Ralph had genuine movie-star charisma, with subtle vulnerability and genuine increasing terror (and he looked a lot like David Krumholtz). Also, my contribution to the online discourse about this story is that it’s really, patently obviously a satire of British colonialism and boarding schools and this was clear in both the first two minutes and last two minutes of the play (“I’d have thought a bunch of British schoolboys would have done a lot better!”), as opposed to about human nature in general.
I guess I’m kind of in the middle on the Lord of the Flies discourse (I love that book, but it’s been a number of years since I’ve read it). I think Golding–and presumably the playwright(s) here–does intend there to be a satirical touch re: classic boarding school stories, colonialism, Boys’ Own adventure tales, etc., but I also find “group of [any kind of] people away from recognizable order descend into violence” to be a fairly plausible outcome for that scenario, if not a certain one. But that’s partly because I feel like Lord of the Flies–again, at least in book form–invites me to be emotionally invested and empathize rather than (purely) criticize.
Mostly, though, I get annoyed whenever I occasionally see something circulating about how women would never have a Lord of the Flies situation because we’d all just get along and work things out, and I don’t want to be theoretically denied my share in the total human experience, even the parts with the capacity for brutality. (The too-short-lived TV show The Wilds was a really fun take on “girls stranded on an island,” though–not a huge amount of bloodshed, but not preachy about the lack of it.)
I’m not a Yellowjackets head but I appreciate that the show understands – having been raised around them – “Any situation where American teenage girls are stranded together would get violent and crazy.”
When I hear that argument about a gender-flipped Lord of the Flies, I just stare blankly and think: ‘Have you ever met a teenage girl?’
Their verbal ownage alone is terrifying.
My niece can get absolutely savage and quick-thinking in an amazing way. I don’t know why anyone ever tried to bully her, but a girl came up to her once and they had this exchange:
Bully: “You’re ugly.”
Niece: “Well, people do say we look alike.”
My sister when she was like 10, to me: “Oh, you’re so lonely.”
Right? Another girl literally choked me once during a group picture as a “joke!”
Hahaha I knew you would love the elevator stuff in Babylon 5, all of that business rules. I like this reflection on institutions, which will become even more relevant as the season progresses. And I think it ties to Lennier, who is the fucking man but in a way that is very institution-dependent, he is devoted to an idea and a person and that devotion is part of his Minbari culture. I think this gives him a strong base for action and even more importantly inaction — he really can’t be baited and like you say, he is willing to shoulder burdens and suffering instead of trying to pass them on — but it means when he does get nettled it really effects him. Bill Mumy does really great work in quiet intensity that occasionally has to own a dude so that rocks, but I think he is setting up something down the line.
The very good Peter Brook makes a point of this with Jack’s section being made up of the boys’ choir and choral music being played throughout.
The Thin Man – my girlfriend hasn’t seen a lot of classic Hollywood stuff, I figured this would be a fun one to watch although I have some slight reservations about it and she kinda did too. I think the later films in the series mostly balance the mystery with the Nick-and-Nora hang-out vibes a little better than this one does, even if some of them have other failings – this one is just so overstuffed that it’s hard to keep up with at times, and the Charles’ boozy antics are so much fun that it kinda sucks being dragged away from them so often to follow the labyrinthine plot. Still mostly a blast though.
Seinfeld, “The Phone Message” – turns out we’re watching the DVDs in the correct order but they follow production order rather than broadcast order I guess? This episode is the one that was written and shot super quickly to replace an episode deemed Too Dark, which is an interesting bit of trivia. I don’t think I’d have guessed it was a rush job though as it’s consistently funny and the two guest stars playing Jerry and George’s respective dates are very funny.
Joe Pera Talks With You, end of season 1 – the new year’s eve / babysitting episode is a blast, then the Rat Musical episode and finale get into heavier plot territory as Joe and Sarah’s relationship comes into the spotlight. It’s a hell of a first season and the way it kinda shifts into unconventional rom-com territory in the finale is very sweet. Excited to revisit the rest!
The X-Files, “2Shy”
There’s a character named Lauren! Then she dies horribly, and everyone talks about how she was fat. Ah, The X-Files, you giveth and you taketh away.
This is an okay episode, but I’m mildly hung up on the logistics: it seems like Virgil Incanto (this fucking name) was killing a woman a day, which surely had to be unsustainable in terms of how long you could do it without bringing down a tremendous amount of heat on yourself–is that actually how often he had to feed in order to stay healthy? The episode isn’t that interested in his condition–it focuses, understandably enough, on the evil of him seducing and murdering lonely women–but I kind of am. Will he die from not doing this, or just get really peel-y? There’s a nice symmetry if it’s just the later: he’s preying on lonely women to avoid a condition that could turn him into a recluse, exploiting their pain to avoid ever being in their situation.
Good gooeyness, and some good horror moments like the blind girl smelling her mother’s perfume in Incanto’s apartment as he lies about her never having been there, but this doesn’t quite work for me. And the guest actress playing Ellen Kaminsky, the last planned victim, is–with apologies to her–atrociously flat. She has striking looks, which makes the last shot of her with the gun and the chemical burns on her face work, but outside of that, her performance is often painful to watch.
Both this and sci-fi descendant Fringe overly rely on “women in peril/dying horribly by serial killers” as a plot point but I also know 75 percent of the CBS shows do this too.
My wife said, “This feels like a Criminal Minds opening,” at the beginning of the episode, just to prove your point.
The Hound of the Bakervilles – Watch Along with Lauren continues! I enjoyed it, though it dragged now and then, and Cushing definitely makes my list of Good Sherlock Holmeses. This is the second adaptation I’ve seen of the book – the first being the Jeremy Brett edition – and I can firmly say that while both movies were watchable and entertaining, the story itself is not my favorite. Indeed, I don’t care much for any of the Holmes novels. The character can work in longer form material, but Conan Doyle’s forte is short stories.
Slow Horses, “Cicada” – The sleeper agents are all revealed, some of their plot is revealed too, and we get a lot of stuff happening. Maybe too much as we bounce from character to character very fast, the show’s propulsiveness a weakness for once. But we do get a very chilling scene where Lamb and one of the new Horses find someone exposed to radiation (and who killed himself to avoid a slow death). When the seemingly calm Lamb is asked how he’s not scared, Lamb says in a calm and cheery voice that he’s terrified. Oh, Gary Oldman!
Frasier, “Dr. Nora” – Frasier approves the hiring of a second radio shrink, only to find she is judgemental right wing shrew. Clearly a poke at Dr. Laura, who said she upset not with how she was lampooned but showing Dr. Nora’s even more shrewish mother. Paramount had this pulled, though thankfully that unnecessary censorship doesn’t extend to streaming. Still, even though Christine Baranski (as Dr. Nora) snf Piper Laurie (as her mom) earned their Emmy nominations, this is a hard watch. Dr. Nora only gets driven out of Seattle because of her mother. Otherwise, her retrograde advice catches on and Frasier cannot win, and it’s painful.
Yay, Hound of the Baskervilles! I’m especially pleased that you liked Cushing. And I need to do a full read of the Holmes short stories at some point–I’ve read Hound and A Study in Scarlet out of the novels, and then I’ve read a sampling of the short stories but not all of them, and I like the idea of being a completionist here.
Tut he cushing version of HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLE’s was my introduction to Sherlock Holmes. The Hammer visual elements really stand out here.
I loved The Valley of Fear when I read it. But I haven’t revisited it since, and that was many many years ago.
Watched The Adam Friedland Show episode where he doesn’t exactly rip into Richie Torres but continually talks to a generic politician/genocide denier like a human being, whether about wrestling or Palestine, and there’s a certain point at which Torres’ eyes go absolutely dead and he goes into AIPAC speak. It’s genuinely disconcerting to watch. (Hilariously Torres implies, or maybe jokes, that he’s on the show because Friedland was in The New Yorker.) Not to mention you get Torres trying to mansplain antisemitism to a Jewish man who’s been to Israel! Wild shit, though I’m not sure what Friedland was expecting – he asks “Are you mad at me?” and while I have this people pleaser side, I’d personally relish pissing off this absolute scumbucket of a human being.
Babylon 5 — hey, the show remembers it has a pretty boss ongoing plot! And an extremely boss recurring side character! This is the shit, lots of intrigue and uneasy alliances, and the B-plot involves a long-brewing confrontation between Delen and G’Kar that both play very well. The opening scene is less fun, one of the core tenets of good sci-fi is not that it predicts the future but it sees the present and past clearly and extrapolates, here 1995 Strascynski knew that the future would repeat old bad stuff and here we are in the future, living it.
Honey Don’t! — there is a line to walk between judging this on its own faults, of which there are not a few, and judging this on the fault of “not being a Coen brothers movie,” which it can’t help, and I think a lot of folks have fallen on the latter side of the line. There is sloppiness here but also some very funny bits and some solid violence and a really strong Margaret Qualley performance at the center of this, she plays her private eye with less Marlovian whininess and more Archerian protection/recognition and feels very much like a person who could anchor a bunch of other stories, if she doesn’t make some bad decisions first. But the real literary touchstone is unexpected — Charles Willeford. More to come, I think.
Highest 2 Lowest — ahahahaha the anti-Boston stuff is hilarious, Spike Lee’s great strength and great weakness is he knows a movie can do whatever he wants it to do so a fat Yankees fan directly yelling at the camera about the Red Sox is of course on the table. As others have noted, the first half cannot compete with Kurosawa’s god-level blocking in his film but there is also some bizarrely bad editing, shooting conversations like they are Liam Neeson jumping a fence. What the fuck, man. But also as others have noted, the train sequence absolutely rules, just a ton of energy and Dennis Fucking Duffy getting to do the greatest cinematic emotion of exasperation, hell yeah. The big difference between the two movies is how Kurosawa devotes his second half not to high or low but the middle of police (and to a degree media) in procedural mode, and how this is in service of the high — Lee gives Washington the lead throughout and his up-from-the-streets music mogul both has a certain understanding of the low that Mifune does not, but is never brought that low himself. Before the confrontation of the original’s ending, Lee stages his own version where his players are separated by the glass of a recording studio and is fucking electric, it points to a different out than the movie finds and while it is fair to let characters make bad decisions this seems to reify a certain boomery mentality that the extremely corny epilogue doubles down on. But even there, Lee can’t resist jumping his camera inside a piano because he thinks it’s cool, and he’s right. You take the highs and the lows.
Good to hear some positivity on Honey Don’t – I feel like the discourse on Drive-Away Dolls was much the same, “how dare an acclaimed filmmaker make a sloppy b-movie comedy on purpose!?” – I had a really good time with that one and I’m hoping to repeat that experience here.
DAD was very loosey-goosey, this goes to darker places FYI. Nothing out of the ordinary for a Coen fan but it’s not the same tone.
I see, I guess DAD was more “Honey… Do”
Lee has the potential to add some vitality to the middle section of the story, getting noticeable work from character actors that the original, with one exception, subordinates to the procedural elements. The material also fits into Lee’s wheelhouse as a panaramic depiction of class and race, and having Washington’s role as someone familiar with social stratification (and marketing those discrepencies and facing the consequences of that) sounds intriguing. Too bad it succumbs to superfluous visual flair. Based on BLACKKkLANSMAN I hoped he was getting a bit more restrained.
I think the visual flair is anything but superfluous! It clashes with the somewhat conservative (in dynamic more than philosophy, although that is there a bit) storytelling, that can be productive but is mostly not, although not in a ruinous way.
Seeking Justice – This Death Wish riff has a ludicrous plot amid workmanlike direction. After Nick Cage’s wife (January Jones) is sexually assaulted he inadvertently hires Guy Pierce’s vigilante mob organization to get revenge. But now he is stuck and harassed into being an unwilling participant in the org. So, a group meant to protect citizens is harassing Cage to stay involved. That’s right, Cage is the victim while the real victim has her trauma completely washed over and seems ok playing pool after getting out of the hospital. The direction seems very cookie cutter. It’s only at the end in a real abandoned mall destroyed after Katrina that any sort of metaphor arises for the dire straits of those involved in the conspiracy infecting the city. But there is a footchase on a freeway that I thought was pretty cool too. Cage seems a little checked out. Maybe he was coming off back-to-back-back-to-back films at the time.
How do you inadvertently hire an org for revenge??
Well, I was at my moms which means watching a trashy thriller on TUBI. It also means lots of chores, so I was seeing the beginning out of the corner of my eye. What I gathered was Pierce meets Cage in the hospital hinting he’ll take care of things. Cage is too distracted with Jones to know what that means until later on.
The best version of this is still Strangers on a Train where Robert Walker is so coded and off-putting that it’s plausible Granger would laugh it off at the time.
At least you’re not inadvertently training a dolphin to murder the president.
I remember this one being very… competent. I want genuinely good Cage or batshit Cage, not this! NOT THIS!!!
What did we read?>
”The Most Dangerous Game”, Richard Connell
I’m with Lauren on this one – this is a killer premise and I absolutely get why this has had a million movies based on it, and if it has flaws it’s in the inherent pulp qualities – too simple characterisation, too purple prose, not quite complex enough in the plot. I enjoyed how obviously this was a response to both the Russian Revolution (unexpectedly) and the First World War; Connell is horrified by the indifference to human life whilst getting the puzzle-solving aspect of the thing.
Ah, the best opening to any comment.
Still very supportive of you doing a Most Dangerous Game take.
Just this morning finished Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer, a post (very very post) apocalyptic novel about an apprentice Torturer (think hangman) who travels around the city. Wolfe is a famously difficult read, and I had a strange relationship with this book. It took me over a week to get through its 300 pages. There would be a chapter that was incredibly interesting and dramatically compelling, and then it would be followed by a couple chapters of the protagonist wandering around and having interactions that made no sense or impression on me at all. Which the Wolfe fans say is all part of the build up. (This is the first book in a four-book series which is itself the first part of a 12-book cycle .) I’m interested to continue, but I still can’t say if I *liked* it as such.
Tender Is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica
A quick read if you’re good with 1) thorough descriptions of humans being slaughtered and processed as livestock and 2) misery. This is a solid literary horror novel, and Bazterrica has a good eye for choosing which grueling, gruesome details to highlight and an understanding of how the grueling can be worse than the gruesome: yes, a barbecued child is horrifying, but there’s almost a more entrenched, inescapable awfulness to how swiftly this world has accepted that as a lovely treat, and the novel leads naturally on to thinking about how quickly and thoroughly societies can normalize atrocities, especially if they can establish rules that superficially control them. But on the other hand, this is such a one-note look at the human experience, which can be a problem with book-length horror that concentrates on tone rather than situation. Like, of course teenagers are massacring puppies for fun. Of course everything is shit. Of course the political thrust of the novel’s allegory and satire means that exploring certain inevitabilities, like organized resistance to the new normalized cannibalism, is off the table.
But that’s my limitation of taste more than the book’s limitation of style, probably–I just don’t tend to like when stories are obviously designed around a point rather than a natural exploration of situation or character. Bazterrica is clearly a talent, I’m glad she’s broken out on a global scale, and I’m probably going to read more of her work. And this has an excellent ending.
I know what you mean and have avoided this kind of horror novel lately in part for mental health reasons. This isn’t helping and I’m not getting more out of it, author!
The Wonder Boy: Luka Doncic and the Curse of Greatness by Tim McMahon – The ESPN Texas NBA beat writer wrote a bio of Luka that went to press before the big trade, so the standard version of the book cuts off before everything changed. But it still does exactly what it sets out to: presents a fairly balanced overview of Doncic, the Mavericks, and the expectations that came with being the next big thing. Doncic comes across as a generally decent guy who loves what he does and whose failings are hardly a roadblock to success. To my surprise, Kyrie Irving – a player whose time in Brooklyn did not endear him to me – came across as mature and thoughtful. If there is a bad guy here, it’s Mark Cuban. And fans looking for clues about why the Mavs traded Luka will have to look to stuff written by MacMahon later.
Finished Dan Jones about the Plantagenents and reserved his book on the War of the Roses. And started a long book about the commanders of the Army of the Potomac.
Tried out Danse Macabre but it feels like your good-hearted boomer uncle giving you some truly strange/bad movie takes. Started Jack Ketchum’s She Wakes instead, which is like a much more horrific, less romantic Spring (or is Spring a more romantic version?) Good stuff, Ketchum’s take on Algernon Blackwood (tourists in cosmic horror peril!) or “The Great God Pan.”
Poetry: jjjJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies, the third book I’ve read in Milkweed’s neurodiverse poet collections, and while I admire the poetics at play here, turning stutters into part of the writing technique, this goes into “woo woo” hippie shit for me, thanking and blessing plants. Other people will like this but I mostly did not. Meanwhile Alex Dimitrov’s Ecstasy is pretty great, a modern Frank O’Hara in his queer musings and partying through the end of the world.
I think She Wakes might be my only remaining novel-length Ketchum blindspot! I’d forgotten about it, so I thought I was only missing some short story collections. I think I’d heard mixed reviews given that it’s unusual for him to tackle something supernatural (though “The Box” is killer), but this is going to make me pick it up.
I do love Danse Macabre, but it’s partly a hangout read for me: I’ve been a King fan for so long that I just love his voice and am happy to spend time with him that way, even when his opinions are obviously wrong. (Which they sure as hell are in that book when it comes to his The Twilight Zone appraisal. I cannot believe one of the episodes he cites as a favorite while dismissing obvious classics.)
King’s voice is so enjoyable here, just going off about shit he clearly loves. I think there is a fair amount of overlap in this regard with On Writing, although that is much more focused and is a deserved classic at this point.
I cite insights from On Writing all the time. And actually, while my timeline on this may be fuzzy, I think it could be the first King book I ever read: a teacher recommended it to me in seventh grade. My copies of both that and Danse Macabre are pretty lovingly beaten-up at this point.
On Writing is the King book non-King fans like, in the sense that it’s a damn good writing primer.
Aww, give Danse Macabre another go at some point. It is really a product of its time, which is when King was doing a lot of cocaine and lecturing about horror at the University of Maine in the late 70s, and I think going in with that understanding is important regarding some of his takes. I do think he has some strong points about horror archetypes and his big strength as a reader/writer, his omnivorous consumption of material, means he covers a lot of interesting ground (for a Boomer, which is fine seeing as that’s what he is). He has a whole chapter on radio horror! And his analysis of several horror novels towards the end is good stuff, he knows a bunch of these people and writes them for more info. Some great crazy Harlan Ellison quotes here!
That radio horror section is so great. (I didn’t grow up during the medium’s heyday, but my parents had a bunch of classic Suspense and Inner Sanctum episodes on tape, and we would listen to them on long car trips: there’s noting like being a kid, listening to “Sorry, Wrong Number” or “The Hitch-Hiker” or “Three Skeleton Key” while riding through the dark.)
I don’t know if this is the same version I heard years ago, but “They’re Made Of Meat” is a perfect short story for radio adaptation: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/studio/segments/168264-theyre-made-out-of-meat
Oh, that story’s a delight. I’ve only read it in prose form, but now I have to listen to this. (Love Bisson–he’s done one of the coolest alternate history takes on the Civil War, Fire on the Mountain, where it’s not “what if the South won” but “what if John Brown succeeded at Harper’s Ferry and touched off a wide-scale uprising.” I feel like this is a “paging Conor” read.)
Oh shit that sounds cool.
I remember it being a blast. It’s a slim novel, but it deals with a couple different time periods (projecting the alternate history into a more utopian present/near-future) and has a couple different styles, and it’s just such a good idea.
The Way We Die Now, by Charles Willeford — a reread of the final Hoke Moseley book after some time and I forgot how weird this book is. Half the book is setup for what appears to be the main plot, which is then resolved almost immediately (and extremely violently), it is almost comical. Something else that appears to be simmering to a boil just simmers until the stove is turned off. Hoke is not a bad cop in the sense of sucking at the job, he is pretty casually racist and indifferent to a lot of suffering, except when he’s not. Willeford’s style is straightforward grotesque, the world is full of shit and not much is going to change in that regard, but he’s not a nihilist. At one point Hoke picks up a copy of Scaramouche and is hooked by the first line: “He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad” and Willeford’s chuckles may be rough but his sense of madness is pretty well-honed.
Finishing Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands book about the end of the Raj gave me an itch for more British India content, so I’m halfway through the Flashman book set during the Mutiny/Rebellion (depending who is telling the story? Of 1857: Flashman and the Great Game.
This is my first and favourite Flashman, with our terrible ‘hero’ in peak form as he plays up to the noble Empire expectations of his peers in whatever manner he must to save his skin during this epic crisis. George MacDonald Fraser is famous for being good on the historical details, and Flashman is a perfect character to chronicle the horrific insanity of events during 1857. Characters die left and right around him with no time to do more than note their demise, yet Flashy always maintains his terror-driven perspective: tragic (often even sincerely so), but I’m still alive and angling to remain so.
I’ve been meaning to read the Flashman books for so long now. Maybe this’ll be the year ….
Great Game would be up there as my recommendation for where you start. I think it’s one of the best.
The Fisherman by John Langan – Just finished the cook’s tale in the middle. Some good cosmic dread, Lovecraftian menace and backwoods folk horror. Langan knows how to build a thick atmosphere. Melville is another influence especially in the modern parts. Langan goes into the fishing process in detail almost as much as Melville did with whaling. I connected with the flashback much more than the horror trauma/grief in the first section. Intrigued to see where the two men go after the cook’s story.
Hey Friends, What’s Up?
Aaaaargh work is infuriating. I suspect I lack the courage to actually do it but I’m giving some serious thought to handing in my notice to force me into actually finding something better – I have a frankly ridiculous three month notice period so it’s not like I’d be out on the street immediately.
Failed to meet my new nephew last weekend as I thought I was getting ill and didn’t want to risk inflicting germs on a newborn, it doesn’t really seem to have amounted to anything though so might have another go this weekend. First I have a gig tonight with an NYC antifolk guy which theoretically should be fun although I suspect nobody is going to come to it.
Wow, three months? That’s nuts. Good window to have if you do decide to take advantage of it. If not, I hope things at work get better. And that you get to meet your new nephew soon!
Sorry about your job, but I have a solution!
1. Quit this very second
2. Get a plane ticket to Boston right now, so you can arrive just in time for
3. This series at the local arthouse theater: https://brattlefilm.org/film-series/cat-fancy/
Holy shit! That is quite a series!
I always say to myself – and try to believe it – that you play all-out whether a lot of people showed up, or no one. And maybe that one person, or the few people, who are there, might help you get a show and/or a record out. That once happened to some friends of mine that were in a band.
We held what could be called an emergency meeting of the executive committee yesterday to discuss the Everything in public media. The bad news is that staffing cuts are still pending. The less bad news is that we are looking to not let a crisis go to waste as we accelerate our move away from broadcast. I really wonder if, in five years, public media just abandons the airwaves (which would free us of Project 2025 efforts to take our licenses) and becomes something new on the internet. Meanwhile, it became painfully clear that while the state of New Jersey scaled back its contributions to public media in the new budget and claimed cuts were necessary, there was a lot of pork given out. And this is in a state run by our supposed friends. Public media cannot count on the government at any level anymore.
Meanwhile, finally recovered from vacation. I tried to talk with someone from the hotel about the screwups, but still don’t feel like I have a good explanation for things. And of course no one offered to refund any money, since the rate for the room is the save either way. Probably doesn’t help that they know I am not likely to stay there again any time soon.
“I really wonder if, in five years, public media just abandons the airwaves (which would free us of Project 2025 efforts to take our licenses) and becomes something new on the internet. ”
I don’t know anything about the landscape but I do know the airwaves are public and the internet is not. I can see that not being the case in the future but also, you can’t own the airwaves! They’re there, in the air! I dunno, something like the Telecommunications Act has nearly killed radio but laws can be changed and evaded, as opposed to the internet having some real choke points, and I’ve thought for a while the radio is something worth fighting for on a much larger scale than people have been.
Your point is valid, and probably a reason no one in public media is ready to stop broadcasting. (Easy to imagine service providers throttling truth-based media.) But aside from “broadcast is dying” – and I have no idea if in five years or ten or twenty the last antennas will be taken down and the commercial networks will move entirely behind streaming paywalls – there is the fear that the Project 2025-led FCC will just take our licenses. The airwaves are free. But PBS and NPR and all the various stations probably can’t easily become pirate stations. Though the idea is, if perhaps impractical, very romantic. Time to change the P from public to pirate?
Having just watched Pump Up The Volume, I am now all in on pirate radio.
My parents have been having some serious health problems lately, so my dad’s going to be staying somewhere for physical rehabilitation for a few months (post-hip surgery), which unfortunately leaves my mom (who has Parkinson’s and is increasingly confused) on her own. We’ve found some home care for her, but I just found out that apparently the aide isn’t going to be coming as often as I thought, so I’m trying to get in touch with my dad to arrange something to fill in the gaps. Bad, upsetting stuff. (My wife has, unsurprisingly, been really great throughout this, and I don’t know what I’d do without her kindness and research skills.)
On a less grim, if still annoying note: my computer has been broken for about a week and will now be in repairs for about a week. If the upcoming Streaming Shuffle is especially short, please excuse me.
When I do get it back, though, I really want to get better about writing original fiction more regularly. That’s the big goal going forward. I think it’ll be a huge help for my mood and feeling of purpose.
Hell yeah, supportive wives! Best wishes for the family stuff and for future creativity.
My phone died and spent a good part of the evening transferring data, made all the more complicated since the power on the old phone was practically dormant. I’m afraid that my laptop is not too far behind.
It’s the worst, isn’t it? Similarly, I suspect my phone is failing: apparently it’s at only 77% of its previous battery capacity.
The main plus is that it failed about 6 weeks before going to Europe. I was going to upgrade it anyway but this got me to prioritize the change. i just hate unexpected impositions on my time.
Also. my sympathies on the parental front. Caretaking has been a major focus on our marriage, beginning with my dad while my wife and I were dating. Having a supportive (and useful) spouse helps.
I’d be happy to look at any of your original fiction. I’m an editor, and have taught creative writing.
Thank you, I’ll take you up on that when I have something new to look at!
I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday and I took Thursday and today off, along with Labor Day, I have 6 days off in a row. Not a bad long weekend. Today is my 15th anniversary and to celebrate, my wife, daughter and I are going to see a release of Jaws at the local drive-in.
But all of that is just filler for the real exciting news, Temu has an exceptionally detailed model kit in stock: https://share.temu.com/7fQ94nWOW1C
There are two things people I admire do that annoy me. Tom Lehrer making fun of folkies, and Mike Nelson making fun of Ren faires. Not they don’t have a point, but it’s just surprisingly mean.
Nelson is often shockingly mean if you think about it, which you don’t because he’s just so funny,
To give Nelson credit, he was pretty much always the head writer for MST3K. But I think the show got even funnier when Mary Jo Pehl started writing for the show (watch, for instance, the Tormented episode).
I will strongly recommend the Ren Faire article, it is not at all in the vein of Nelson’s casual meanness and is much more about the author recognizing her issues and trying to deal with them while also being clear and funny about weird and questionable stuff (like a Ren Faire toilet). More David Foster Wallace at the state fair than Nelson, and in the comments some participants at this particular faire chime in with appreciative notes.
Honestly, the times I have been to a ren faire, it never really occured to me I needed to dress accordingly (though I did buy what everyone else would call a Robin Hood hat and what I call a Green Arrow hat). Maybe I like the ones I have gone to because I didn’t engage as anything more than a spectator. That said, no force on earth can get me to attend a Society for Creative Anachronism event.
I saw something once about a Ren Faire fan who likes to go dressed accordingly, but with a Star Trek Federation pin hidden under a flap of clothing, so they can pull people who are not properly dressed aside and fake outrage at why the hell they’re violating the Prime Directive, and I get an enormous kick out of that idea. I’ve never been to a Ren Faire, but I might go just to get that to happen.
Haha, there’s a Mr. Show sketch coming up with a gag about Trekkies crashing Renaissance fairs (not like you describe, but the kinds who show up and cosplay as Enterprise crew who time traveled somewhere or landed on a Renaissance planet or something).
You picked the Ren Faire article just to have a reason to use an image from Home Movies, didn’t you?
I found the article first! But when thinking about images to use (that were not from the article, I don’t want to gank her work) Home Movies immediately came to mind.