In Boozo Veritas #33: St. Patrick’s Day

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, In Boozo Veritas, Irish Literature

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In Boozo Veritas #33 by Teege Braune

St. Patrick’s Day

If you are the kind of person who celebrates holidays by listening to podcasts, you’ve no doubt already enjoyed The Drunken Odyssey’s drinking roundtable discussion recorded especially for St. Patrick’s Day.

Somewhere among the odd off topic asides and the sounds of clinking glasses I share an obscure poem written by Irish poet, scholar, and mystic W.B. Yeats entitled simply “The Irish Car Bomb.” Don’t ask me where I dug up this relic of misguided poetic innovation. I’m sure Yeats himself would have preferred it lost to posterity. It is admittedly not the poet’s best work: for one thing its rhythm and meter lack the near perfect precision for which Yeats’ is rightfully credited. Furthermore, the poem’s references are a hodgepodge of Irish culture and mythology with nothing of any discernible importance uniting them together in this particular poem. Careful readers of Yeats’ work will find it odd that he mentions Orlando, which at the time of his death in 1939 was still only a fledgling metropolis. Stranger still is that the poem is about a drink often deemed culturally insensitive to the Irish and their history of violent conflict between imperialist England and the IRA, but most perplexing is the fact that Irish car bombs were invented in the United States forty years after Yeats died. His prophetic foreknowledge of their future popularity can only be attributed to his involvement with the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn and communion with Secret Chiefs.

Despite its spurious origins and cultural carelessness, the Irish car bomb is a favorite among binge drinkers on St. Patrick’s Day. We can at least acknowledge that its ingredients are Irish, though ninety percent of the Guinness consumed in the United States any day of the year is actually brewed in the company’s facility in Canada and not in its historic Dublin brewery. One could argue that the car bomb is actually a perfect symbol for St. Patrick’s Day in the United States: “Irish” ingredients created in the new world thrown together and chugged at one’s own peril with zero consideration for how they actually relate to the people one is supposedly celebrating. This is the way we appropriate any culture in this country, right? Taking bits and pieces from various stories and epochs, combining them without much thought or justification, blurring the lines between honoring another ethnicity and simply bastardizing it.

And yet I’ve enjoyed my fair share of car bombs, consumed them with a clear conscience, and probably will again.

This is the nature of a melting pot: one generation shares with its neighbors and progenies the pieces of the old country that it has brought with it across the ocean. These same neighbors and progenies remember the details but forget the old country, a place, after all, they have never seen, or if they have, visited only as a guest and a stranger. Like a cross generational game of telephone, they pass the half-remembered traditions up their family trees until they are as watered down as their own bloodlines. This isn’t a lament. This is simply the nature of America; the alternative, namely nationalism, is much darker indeed.

Neither is this an argument for unbridled cultural appropriation, the inevitability of which does not justify the creation of insulting portrayals of other ethnicities, nor the trivialization of their struggles. Unfortunately, racism is still a huge problem in this country and much of the world. Despite my occasional consumption of the beverage, the Irish car bomb is undoubtedly on the insensitive side of the cultural appropriation fence. There’s a great Irish proverb that goes, “It is often a person’s mouth that broke his nose.” The ignorant tourist who orders an Irish car bomb in any random pub in Dublin deserves the fat lip that he may receive instead. Why, then, drink it in the United States? Guinness, Bailey’s, and Jameson are surprisingly delicious when all gulped down all together, but is this justification enough? What if we simply changed the name? Were I taxed with renaming the car bomb, I might call it something like Fergus’ Folly or Finnegan’s Quake, but we all know that neither of these are likely to stick.

One finds references to St. Patrick’s Day lacking in Yeats’ work. In fact, the ideologies of the poet and the patron saint of Ireland, separated from each other by a gulf of centuries, stand in stark opposition to each other. While the latter made the rediscovery of Irish mythology and folklore his life’s work, the former spent his first years in Ireland, a land that was not his home, in slavery, and then after gaining his freedom only to voluntarily sacrifice it for a monastic life, created his legacy by converting pagans to Christianity, thus Romanizing Ireland and initiating the end of the age of myth. The primary miracle associated with St. Patrick is the legend that he drove all the snakes from Ireland. While it’s true that there are no snakes on the island, paleontological evidence suggests that they were never there to begin with. The snakes St. Patrick drove from the island symbolize the pagan gods whom Christianity associates with demons. Rediscovering these gods, breathing new life into them and reestablishing their significance was Yeats’ own mission, and thus its easy to imagine why St. Patrick was a not figure for whom he had much reverence.

Despite their differences, there are aspects of St. Patrick’s Day for both Yeats and the old monk to enjoy. The shamrock, for example, while appropriated by Christianity to represent the trinity, was also a sacred symbol of springtime and regeneration to the pagan Celts who came before. On the other hand, the adoration of leprechauns, about whom Yeats collected a host of folktales, would no doubt please the poet, while their ubiquitousness might have the saint rolling in his grave, and if that didn’t do it, the fact that his holiday serves as an out in out bacchanal for many would most likely not please him in the slightest. Of course, it is unlikely that your average American reveler is thinking much about how the plastic shamrock hanging on a beaded necklace around their neck is a bridge between Christianity and paganism while they are getting smashed chugging car bombs in some “Irish” pub most likely owned by Americans.

Last year while I was in Target with my own bonny lass, Jenny no less, on an errand unrelated to the holiday, a middle-aged woman ran up to me and began talking enthusiastically about how excited she was to meet a real leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps I was wearing green. Perhaps not, though I can safely say I sported a big, red beard. Nevertheless, I allowed her daughter, whose mortification was obvious, to take a picture of her mother and myself together while Jenn stood off to the side unable to control her laughter. What can I say? I am a person who aims to please. No sense, it seemed, in mentioning the fact that I am really only about twenty-five percent Irish, my lineage being mostly German. When people see my red beard, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, they often want me to be Irish, and I am usually quick to indulge them. If I meet a party-goer with more than one drink in them, I just claim to be 100% Irish. “Came to America when I was a wee lad,” I’ll tell any random drunk person. It reinforces some idea to them, not a religious principle or anything so sacred. Rather I become another component to the flimsy veneer of Irishness with which they have adorned themselves. Rubbing elbows with a real Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day becomes one more glorious detail in a night of blurry memories. If I, of all people, approve of them, then they must be doing St. Patrick’s Day right.

Personally, I love St. Patrick’s Day. I enjoy an excuse to dust off my collections of Yeats and Seamus Heaney, to play the music of Shane MacGowan and Ronnie Drew, and yes, get drunk on beer and whiskey. Perhaps my red beard is indicative of Irishness as my spiritual ancestry even if it only makes up a quarter of my blood. I’ll ignore the fact that the recessive ginger gene is a minority among the population of the emerald isle as it is everywhere else in the world. Perhaps my red beard is only an excuse to claim a cultural identity that is more romantic than my German lineage. In truth, I am really as American as everyone else pretending to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Sitting in the Drunken Monkey, writing about Irish car bombs while listening to French pop music and drinking Ethiopian coffee, I feel grateful to live in a time and a place where I can enjoy various bits and pieces of cultures all over the world, but I also know that their is privilege there too, that enjoying a song, a beer, or kind of coffee will never allow me to understand what its like to be anything other than an American. St. Patrick’s Day will never mean the same in America as it does in Ireland. Nor, for that matter, will it mean the same today as it did for the down-trodden Irish immigrants of a hundred years ago. We will never distill the experience of an entire people into a single day or idea. That being said, rather than deride those who wish to adorn themselves in green hats and beads and consume green beer, I would simply encourage you to have fun in whichever way you please, but while you do so remember that respect is always an important virtue in the United States, Ireland, and across the world.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

Episode 90: St. Patrick’s Day Roundtable!

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, Episode, James Bond, Zombies

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Finnegan's Wake, In Defense of Green Beer, James Joyce, James King, Jared Silvia, Matthew Peters, St. Patrick's Day, Tattoos, Teege Braune, Tilly, William Butler Yeats

Episode 90 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, my friends Teege Braune of In Boozo Veritas fame, Matt Peters, Jared Silvia, and my brother James King join me for a wooly discussion of St. Patrick’s Day. Much was consumed.

Jared and James watch Teege do his miraculous pouring technique.

The foot of good cheer.

How can it be possible Teege is only a quarter Irish?

Creamy toasty goodness.

Eventually, the peer pressure was too great for sweet Matthew.

My red face was sunburn. The angle of my head, weariness.

Episode 90 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Like a Geek God #19: Beside the Point of Origin

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Like a Geek God

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Like a Geek God, Mark Pursell, origin stories, X-Men

Like a Geek God #19 by Mark Pursell

Beside the Point of Origin

Origin stories need to die a slow, painful, fiery death.

But first, a history lesson.

The modern era of superhero cinema began in 2000 with a long-awaited celluloid re-imagining of the X-Men franchise. This should have been a portent of great things to come: Bryan Singer’s foray into comic book action brimmed with mood, tension, and a fair approximation of the franchise’s psychological complexity (Halle Berry’s tone-deaf turn as Storm notwithstanding).

It took years and millions to finally get an X-Men movie project off the ground. No, really. Imagine that for a hot second. Imagine an executive/financial landscape in good ol’ Hollywood that viewed a superhero movie not as the nominally-expensive cash grab it currently represents but instead as a black hole investment, unlikely to reap much from its sowing. That was the landscape all through the ‘80s and ‘90s, a time when not only X-Men but Spider-Man and multiple other Marvel and DC properties languished in the most fiery of development hells. The story might have been different if Tim Burton’s unparalleled 1989 Batman had launched a film franchise that was both critically and commercially viable, but Burton’s own 1992 follow-up, Batman Returns, was largely misunderstood by viewers, and the subsequent movies (1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman and Robin, both barely more than odious) did little to instill hope among Hollywood suits that comic-book adaptations would result in desired profit margins.

However, against all odds, X-Men did eventually achieve liftoff, and did so with enough panache and box office returns that it not only set the stage for sequels of its own, but also a reinvigorated cinematic landscape where suddenly, superhero projects gathering dust in the slush pile turned into diamonds-in-the-rough, potential moneymakers desperately in need of a greenlight and a quick turnaround. In rapid succession, we got X-Men 2, Spider-Man, Hulk, Daredevil, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Blade franchise, all within a period of roughly three years. By the mid-Aughties, however, this sputtering pilot light of life among superhero cinema looked in danger of going out just as quickly as it had been lit. For every Hellboy, there was a Catwoman; for every Unbreakable, a Daredevil. Then, Christopher Nolan singlehandedly reoriented the genre with his dark, archetypal take on Batman’s origination, Batman Begins.

And with it, cast the immediate future of the superhero movie into a paradoxical pit of both financial viability and critical darkness.

Batman Begins isn’t responsible for superhero cinema’s fixation on the origin story. Every noteworthy hero film that came before it in the early Aughties was also an origin story of sorts, even X-Men. And standing alone, there was nothing particularly egregious about Nolan’s decision to tackle Bruce Wayne’s complicated past. It’s only when you consider the decade of superhero movies that has passed in the interim that you see how unforgivingly Begins’s success molded the movies that came after it. The contemporary cultural juggernaut known by the innocuous-sounding title of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is thoroughly and utterly marred by this. 2008’s Iron Man also chose a “hero begins” route, recasting Tony Stark as a modern, motormouthed, military-industrial apologist. Iron Man is notable as the opening salvo in Hollywood’s MCU onslaught, beginning a decade-long project to release individual hero movies for all of the classic Avengers teammates and then, finally, a climactic film where they would all work together in a team (perhaps you’ve seen it? It was written and directed by a little-known auteur named Joss Whedon). It’s also notable because it’s one of the few movies in the MCU that is actually good, but that’s an argument for another time. Iron Man’s runaway success—again, very merited, given its high quality—gave birth to Thor, Incredible Hulk, and Captain America: origin stories, one and all. Soon even non-franchise superhero tales, like Chronicle, went the “origin story” route. The origin story became such a fixture in the forefront of pop culture preoccupation that it bled into our TV shows (Bates Motel, Hannibal, Sherlock). Somewhere along the way, the idea of the origin story became entangled with the idea of the franchise reboot; less than a decade apart, we have two very different Spider-Man movies, both origin stories.

So what’s the problem? This panoply of origin stories has been financially viable for Marvel Studios, and critics have been suspiciously kind to the entries in the MCU, even the ones that are insignificant fluff at best (here’s looking at you, Thor).

Why should we be concerned? What’s got my little geek heart all aflame?

I think, somewhere along the line—because X-Men, Batman Begins, and Iron Man told origin stories that succeeded both critically and commercially—that the origin story came to be thought of as something that has an intrinsic cinematic value to moviegoers, that the archetype itself is some sort of lodestone that, if only picked up, yields magic. The truth, as should be obvious to anyone who bothers to look beyond the immediate surface of things, is that those movies, particularly X-Men and Iron Man, are extremely well-constructed. They succeed as movies first, origin stories second. The script and the direction don’t rely on the basic components of an origin story to do their work for them. The writers and actors and directors have fleshed out the characters, spent time creating opportunities for viewer investment at all possible moments, and made sure that their story works not just as a lackadaisical illumination of how X character got from Point A to Badass, but as a narrative experience in and of itself. Take, for example, the first Mad Max movie, which wasn’t even necessarily conceived as the beginning of a franchise but whose tale of a vengeance-seeking policeman was executed with such muscular vision and cinematic poise that it unintentionally birthed a franchise.

With each passing year and each new superhero origin story, however, it’s become clear that subsequent writers and directors can ape the general look and feel of an origin story but not the substance of its best examples. There’s also the matter of not really having to do much work when writing an origin story (theoretically) because they all follow a distinct pattern: hero has problem, hero gets power, hero has to figure power out. You can knock out an origin story screenplay without moving much beyond first-thought, and, as Hollywood has discovered, people will go in droves to see the resulting movie. From a financial standpoint, origin stories have become a no-brainer investment: minimum effort resulting in maxiumum profit. What this has created is an atmosphere of origin-obsessed superhero movies that have long ago abandoned complex, fresh storytelling in favor of the rote. This problem reached its apotheosis with 2013’s Man of Steel. We’ve actually seen a LOT of Superman in the last few decades (Lois and Clark, Smallville, Superman Returns), so it’s not exactly like we needed a brand-new reboot, but reboot it they did, and with as little narrative acumen as a direct-to-video knock-off.

Archetypal stories and figures move in glacier-like cycles through the attention span of pop culture. Slasher flicks gave way to torture porn gave way to found footage, to use horror as an example. Vampires gave way to zombies gave way to whatever monster will capture the zeitgeist of the popular imagination next. The obsession with the origin story is weirdly appropriate for the Information Age and the social media generation, where everyone is the star of their own Facebook reality show and builds their own “super” origin story out of their life narrative. We powerless mortals no longer identify with the hapless humans who help the superheroes: we see ourselves as the superheroes, misunderstood and put upon but ascending to a great destiny, while pop music assures us that we were “Born This Way”, that we’re a “Firework”, that we’re never less than “Fucking Perfect.” It’s the delusional opposite of Generation X disaffection, which at least had the virtue of cynicism. Who can say whether the Men with Suits have articulated this connection, but they perceive enough about the way social psychology works to know that the contemporary moviegoing audience spits out $$$ when certain buttons are pressed, and they press them with gusto. The good news is that the origin story is quickly turning into a fallow field, in need of crop rotation. There are only so many heroes to make movies about, only so many ways to depict a brave-but-reluctant soul’s rise to power. Now that everyone from Tony Stark to Peter Parker has had the murky origins of their heroism fracked and stripped of every possible vein of crude, superhero movies will eventually be forced to turn to other types of stories, new chapters, new problems. To be honest, this will probably be the death of the superhero boom; Millennials will care little for Captain America’s middle-aged struggle with morality because it doesn’t say anything to them about the movie of their lives, and the dollars will stop flowing in a Mississippi-like torrent to the glass eyries of Los Angeles. That’s good; it’s necessary. We need to let the superhero lie dormant for a while. It’s only out of a period of dormancy that a given archetype returns to cinema with vim and vigor. Think Batman 1989. Think X-Men 2000. I’m personally looking forward to ten years without capes and noble martyrdom. Maybe by 2020, I’ll be ready for some more.

___________

Mark Pursell (Episode 75) is a lifelong geek and lover of words. His publishing credits include Nimrod International Journal, The New Orleans Review, and The Florida Review, where he also served as poetry editor. His work can most recently be seen in the first volume of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology from Burrow Press. He currently teaches storytelling and narrative design for video games at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida.

Episode 89: David James Poissant!

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, David James Poissant, Episode

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Bill Knott, David James Poissant, High Fidelity, Max Bakke, Nick Hornby, The Heaven of Animals, UCF

Episode 89 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to fiction writer David James Poissant,

Plus Max Bakke writes about Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Read David James Poissant’s “I Want to be Friends with Republicans” here.

NOTES

OST’s William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar can be seen from March 19 – April 20, 2014. Go here for more details.

Anne Hering, Esau Pritchett, Paul Bernardo, from Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s forthcoming production of Julius Caesar.

Episode 89 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #31: Movie Poster Mahem!

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #31 by Jeffrey Shuster

Movie Poster Mahem!

They don’t draw them like used to.

It’s late. I’m tired. I don’t feel like writing a movie review. So those of you who were expecting a Leprechaun review in time for St. Patty’s Day, you can forget it! I’m in a grumpy mood and when in a grumpy mood, I start to hate on the times we’re living in and start waxing nostalgic for the good old days when things were just plain better. Today’s topic: movie posters!

Okay. We’re going to take a look at last week’s movie posters and I’m going to explain to you why they’re flawed and show you how older posters from similar movies did a much better job at enticing the movie goer.

Modern Poster 1: Nebraska

What’s this movie about? Can you tell? I sure can’t. It looks like an outline of Bruce Dern’s face, but most of it’s obscured. What’s the point of having Bruce Dern on your poster if you can’t see his face?

Old Poster that’s better than new one: Silent Running

How cool is this poster for Silent Running? Not only do you get to see all of Bruce Dern’s face, but it has cool robots to boot! Robots make any poster better.

Modern Poster 2: Captain Phillips

Woah! What happened here? I guess that’s Tom Hanks in the poster with the scary Somali guy behind him. The floating machine gun in front of him is there to emphasize the danger of the situation he’s in. Still, it just isn’t threatening enough.

Old Poster that’s better than new one: The Beyond

Okay. Look at the above poster. Now imagine that’s Tom Hanks getting that blade in front of his throat, all squinting and screaming like that woman. Now that’s a movie I want to see.

Modern Poster 3: Her

That doesn’t look like a Her to me. That looks like a Joaquin Phoenix with a disturbing mustache. This simply will not do.

Old Poster that’s better than new one: She

Okay. So you have a choice between watching Ursula Andress, “The World’s Most Beatiful Woman” or you can watch Joaquin Phoenix’s disturbing mustache. The choice is yours.

Modern Poster: Gravity

Yeah. A lone astronaut floating out in the middle of space. Nothing’s happening! When a movie takes place in space, the poster should show a little more than just plain old space.

Old Poster that’s better than new one: Moonraker

Do I need to say anything? We have Roger Moore in a space suit with a laser gun, that metal mouthed henchman they call Jaws flying right at him, floating Bond girls, and a super villain raising his fist in the air as space shuttles blow up behind him. What more could you possibly want?

___________

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47) is an MFA candidate and instructor at the University of Central Florida.

Loading the Canon #20: Juliet DiIenno

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Loading the Canon

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Helena-Anne Hittel, Juliet DiIenno, Loading the Canon

Loading the Canon #20 by Helena-Anne Hittel

Interview With an Artist: Juliet DiIenno

It’s not every day that your work, as a student artist, gets picked up by an institution, let alone a museum overseas. The planets aligned for Juliet DiIenno of UCF, though, and one of her pieces is now in the permanent collection of the Gaudnek Museum in Munich, Germany. DiIenno, a Clearwater, Florida native, studies Visual Art at the University of Central Florida with her identical triplet sister, who is a photographer. “We work off each other to reach new levels in our artwork,” she says. I recently asked her a few questions about her study of art.

Helena-Anne Hittel: How did your piece get picked up by the Gaudnek?

Juliet DiIenno: Walter Gaudnek asked me to make a piece. He was doing a series about the beauty of chapels, called The Chapel of Art. Along with the simple brush outline, it was made with a technique I (not so cleverly) call body painting, where I put the paint on my body and then press my torso against the canvas.

HA: What medium do you most like to work in?

JD: Paint. In my recent years, I have begun to work in acrylic paint. I originally began to work with oils, but UCF does not have the proper ventilation. I have also began to experiment with using palette knives and even painting with my body, and so far I have enjoyed the result. That being said, I still love to try new forms of art, and this week I shall finish my first sculpture made with wood. Once I have learned how to manipulate a new kind of material, I really love combining different kinds of techniques and materials to make new kinds of artwork.

HA: When did you decide that you wanted to study art?

JD: At first, I thought that I wanted to study music. After years of practice, I realized that music was not the proper form of expression for me, because I was playing music that others had written, and therefore was expressing what THEY felt. I had tried to write my own music, but that took so long. I wanted something that I would immediately see and express myself in. That’s when I began to start making physical works of art.

HA: What inspires you to work?

JD: I am inspired by things that I see around me every day, which can explain why I have never stayed in a particular kind of stile for a long period of time. I am inspired by other artists, the water, the sky, my sister, conversation, history, my studies, etc. I have drawn a bit from everything.

HA: Do you have a favorite piece that you’ve created?

JD: As funny as it may sound, my favorite work is usually my most recent piece. So, right now, it happens to be the sculpture that I have been working on.

HA: What kind of message do you want to communicate through your artwork?

JD: I want the viewer to see my work and understand what I feel as I create my work, whether it is to question social structure and culture, or to reach peace within themselves. Each work that I have made so far is relatable to practically any viewer, and I want each of them to get something from my work.

More of Juliet DiIenno’s work can be found on her Instagram page, as well as the newest issue of UCF’s literary magazine, The Cypress Dome.

___________

Helena-Anne Hittel (Episode 35, essay) earned a B.A. in Art History at the University of Central Florida.

Heroes Never Rust #32: Dark Knight

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Batman, Heroes Never Rust, Red Son, sean ironman, Superman

Heroes Never Rust #32 by Sean Ironman

Dark Knight: How much can one person change the world?

This question runs throughout Superman: Red Son #2, which takes place years after the first issue. The second issue opens in media res with Superman stopping Luthor and Braniac. the two villains have shrunk the city of Stalingrad and handed it over to Superman to try to revert the city and its citizens to normal size—a task in which Superman never succeeds. The world has known about Superman for years. Luthor and the CIA ready for attach number 307. The Soviet Union is under President Superman’s control.

Superman doesn’t kill; even landing in the Soviet Union hasn’t changed that. But in order to get control of its citizens, Superman has created a version of Braniac as a form of lobotomy. The Soviet Union under President Superman’s control has become the world’s greatest superpower, but its citizens live in fear of the demi-god. America is in ruins by focusing its energies on destroying Superman, but the American people are free.

The star of this issue is Russian Batman. Technically, introduced last issue with a flashback of Superman’s Head of Security, Pytor Roslov, who killed Batman’s parents and left the child to live. Here, though, Batman isn’t Bruce Wayne. His parents were dissidents, not Thomas and Martha Wayne from Gotham City. This Batman’s real name is unknown. It’s interesting that Superman and Wonder Woman are the same characters, but Batman’s identity can change. Who knows what happened to Bruce Wayne in this world. Unlike Superman and Wonder Woman, Batman is human. In Superman: Red Son, he represents humanity, not those like Luthor, but the everyday person on the streets. Roslov killed his parents. Superman enslaves the working man. Batman fights back.

Batman has become a terrorist, which isn’t too far off from his normal DC counterpart. The difference is that now he fights against the government. In an effort to defeat Superman, Batman teams up with Roslov. This is a huge development. The Batman we know would never side with a criminal like Roslov, the criminal who gunned down his parents. But Batman being Batman, he’s too smart to let an opportunity pass by.

On Superman’s birthday celebration, Batman captures Wonder Woman and with Luthor’s help has created an area under heat lamps that recreate the effects of a red sun. Superman’s powers are derived from the yellow sun, so under a red one he’s powerless. For a moment, Batman actually defeats Superman, something many fans have always seen as the outcome if Superman was powerless. It isn’t until Wonder Woman breaks free and rescues Superman that Batman is defeated. Instead of letting himself get lobotomized like other dissidents, Batman sets off a bomb he had attached to his ribs.

Batman dies.

Of course, his last words to Superman are, “Oh, and by the way. It was Pyotr who betrayed you. While Superman doesn’t kill Pytor Roslov, he does lobotomize him. The issue ends with Luthor finding the Green Lantern ring and a plan to use it against Superman, who has now created his Fortress of Solitude, only here it comes off less peaceful and more as a tyrant. But one of the most interesting developments goes back to Batman. Another man has taken up the mask. A man in a bar gives a suitcase with the bat suit to another man, possibly one we saw earlier, but it’s not made clear. Batman has become an idea, maybe always has been in this world.

Superman says in the end, “My desire for order and perfection was matched only by their dreams of violence and chaos. I offered them utopia, but they fought for the right to live in hell.” But that’s what Superman doesn’t understand, hasn’t learned in the Soviet Union, would have learned in Smallville, Kansas, had his ship landed there. Freedom is more important than perfection. We want control of our own lives. Wars and rebellions throughout our history have been fought for freedom. We don’t want some outsider coming in and showing us how to live. What good is living in Superman’s utopia if you spend the day afraid of him, afraid of doing what you want?

___________

Sean Ironman is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida, where he also serves as Managing Editor of The Florida Review and as President of the Graduate Writers’ Association. His art has appeared online at River Teeth. His writing can be read in Breakers: An Anthology of Comics and Redivider.

In Boozo Veritas #32: No Rest For the Weird

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #32 by Teege Braune

No Rest For the Weird

Here it is a sunny, beautiful Monday afternoon in Orlando. What in the hell am I still doing working on In Boozo Veritas!? This should have been finished twenty-four hours ago! Like Dr. Duke alone in Vegas, panic is creeping “up my spine like the first rising vibes of an acid frenzy.” My own horrible realities are dawning on me: hungover, no cash having spent the weekend drinking instead of bartending, no entry for my blog; I don’t know who won the race, but I can safely say it wasn’t me. Is this the week I throw in the towel, put my head in my hands, and face the world with empty pockets turned out. “I’m sorry folks. We appreciate your continued support through highs and lows, but as it turns out, we spent so much time researching, we didn’t have time to write the report. We just couldn’t cut it this week,” I’ll meekly apologize before falling upon my own sword. Is this the week there was no In Boozo Veritas?!

No, with a spontaneous surge of new-found energy, my entire being rails against defeat. My caffeine fueled mind awakens to new ideas and possibilities. Did we not spend the entire weekend drinking? Buck up, young man. Tell the people about your adventures. They need to know about the drinking! Sit down, type the words they long to hear. With the music of The Misfits blaring around me, I begin, clacking away at the keys until the subtle movements of my fingers become automatic as if mechanized, my entire being bent to a single purpose, my one and only master: In Boozo Veritas.

Saturday night Jenn and I made our way to the Cheyenne Saloon for the Orlando Weekly sponsored Great Orlando Mixer.

Tickets cost thirty dollars; everything from that point on (and by everything I mean each multitudinous drop of booze) was free, cab fare and tip money being the only added expenses. The uber swanky, pseudo-historical Cheyenne Saloon had been done up as lavishly as if the party was hosted by Jay Gatsby himself, and more than once did I maybe hear someone say in my ear, “Pretty good show, eh, old sport?” feeling a jocular hand clasp my shoulder, only to look behind me and discover no one was there at all. Jenn and I were dressed to the nines in authentic-as-possible 1920s-style attire,

while elsewhere party-goers made mockery of the decade by wearing zoot suits and feathered head pieces, as histrionic and anachronistic as Luhrmann’s own interpretation of the flapper era.

Did I mention the booze was free? Or at least prepaid, which was close enough for Jenn and me. Apart from the mixology contest on the first floor, each guest was given five drink tickets, which entitled them to very stiff classic cocktails being made on the second floor. Furthermore, if you were able to spot her hidden in a back corner Kaitlin of Daughters & Co. was mixing some of the best old-fashioneds and mint juleps I’ve ever had. As I grew up in Louisville, that’s saying a lot. Grabbing drinks at every bar we passed, Jenn and I made our way through the crowds who were clamoring to become as intoxicated as possible before the booze ran dry. That nasty, little glitch in our nation’s history, not-so-fondly known as prohibition, was completely forgotten. Meanwhile, the festivities were presided over by the gorgeous Miss Carol Lee, dancers entertained with their delightfully executed rendition of the Charleston, and Will of the titular pub played Hemingway for the evening. Apparently, he was going for Walt Disney, but he’ll always be Hemingway to me. Rene of Hanson’s was deservedly crowned Orlando’s greatest mixologist and shortly after things dissolved into utter chaos. Any remaining booze was clutched at and downed with wild abandon. The dance floor was packed with revelers trading party hats and sucking the helium from balloons, and then just as we were all about to forget what decade we were in, which one we were recreating, past and future colliding dangerously, the clock struck midnight and without so much as a night cap, security ushered us unceremoniously out the front doors and onto the street.

I awoke at five in the morning, my throat dry, head reeling from all the alcohol and sugar, my stomach a sour, twisted mess, belching noxious fumes that tasted of basil, mint, and cucumber. Chugging gallons of water, I resisted the urge to lose my (liquid) dinner. I resolved to spend the rest of my Sunday hiding under the covers before I remembered I had committed to another drinking round table of John King’s The Drunken Odyssey that very afternoon where I knew I would be obligated to drink whiskey, beer, and Bailey’s Irish Cream. “Dear God,” I thought. “How can I possibly chug an Irish car bomb on a day like this?” This proved easy enough by the time I got there a few hours later. Together we recorded what I think will be a highly entertaining episode of the podcast. With St. Patrick’s Day providing a sort of lose structure, we discussed a myriad of subjects including tattoos, feminism, and of course Disney cartoons. Furthermore, I shared an obscure poem by W.B. Yeats in honor of the drink known as the Irish car bomb, but you’ll have to tune in next Monday to hear it.

While I was recording the podcast, Jenn had been fighting her own hangover in order to lend a hand at Bookmark It, the new independent, locally-themed bookstore located at East End Market. Afterwards, we had dinner with Bookmark It’s owner Kim and her boyfriend Pat at Gargi’s. As we watched the sunset on Lake Ivanhoe over pasta and sangrias it became increasingly obvious that no writing would get done that evening, and by the time I got home even the season finale of True Detective wasn’t enough to keep me awake. I arose early the next morning and collapsed on the couch. Before I could attempt to find my laptop or even think about composing my blog, a cat had jumped on my lap. Too cozy to disturb my furry friend, I drifted back to sleep and did not awake again until after noon. In no way rested for this upcoming week of work, I nevertheless fought fatigue and exhaustion to bring you yet another edition of the cultural phenomenon known as In Boozo Veritas.

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Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

Like a Geek God #18: Geeking Out on True Detective

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Like a Geek God

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Like a Geek God, Mark Pursell, Nic Pizzolato, True Detective

Like a Geek God #18 by Mark Pursell

Geeking Out on True Detective

WARNING: contains mild spoilers through the end of Episode 7.

Here’s a facet of my geekdom that I haven’t really addressed yet on this blog: crime fiction.

Crime stories don’t usually come to mind when someone says the word “geek”, but there’s an entire subculture of crime fiction enthusiasts for whom the term “geek” is extremely apropos. It’s a more “grown up” sort of geekery, I suppose, in the sense that events are usually rooted in contemporary or historical reality, devoid of robots and/or magic. That doesn’t speak, however, to the level of investment that crime geeks sink into their favorite authors, movies, and television shows.

Of course, the crime tale is quite “done” at this point in the history of modern storytelling. Artists across the media spectrum have tackled the basic idea for well over a century, yielding results both transcendant and trite. However, over the last decade, the New Golden Age of Television—a charge of high-quality programming led by HBO, Showtime, AMC, and FX—has created a safe harbor for talented writers to craft their crime tales with precision, as well as a canvas large enough to contain complexity. What is Breaking Bad if not a hyperrealist tragedy about the criminal underworld? Even shows that are more ostensibly procedural—The Fall, or Top of the Lake—elevate themselves through the quality of their writing and their characters, even though the standard “person dies, police investigate” plot engine is old hat. Cinema has fared similarly: in 2013 alone, you had movies like Prisoners, Spring Breakers, and Mud, all three of which showed that the crime story is not just alive, but thriving under the auspices of creative visionaries who have the freedom to tell stories the best way they know how.

Which makes the artistic achievement of HBO’s True Detective even more impressive. Detective hasn’t arisen in a genre vacuum, after all. But creator and sole writer Nic Pizzolato’s Shakespearean, years-spanning epic about two detectives’ hunt for an occultist ring of murderers in the deep Lousiana bayous puts one foot on the shoulder of other excellently-conceived murder mysteries and vaults over them with the ease of a gymnast.

The reasons why are multifold. The show’s limited run of eight episodes has given Pizzolato and director Cary Joji Fukunaga the space to do two very important things: let the story breathe, and end it satisfyingly before it overstays its welcome. True Detective is an anthology series, conceived to follow the pattern of American Horror Story; each new season will feature a differing cast and storyline. (The current story, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as the gridlocked detectives, will end next Sunday). This turns each season into what amounts to a miniseries or very long movie, ensuring that each new storyline will have to describe a finite arc. The big problem with serialized detective stories is that they have the potential to go on for too long, running out of gas long before the writers and the money behind the show are ready or able to let it end. The anthology format is a genius one for a crime show, and hopefully future installments of True Detective will derive as much power and focus from the format as this season has.

Because across its existing seven episodes, this flagship season of the show has not only set a bar for effective storytelling, but engaging, deeply visceral storytelling that aims to get at the uncomfortable psychological truths lurking under the veneer of civilization. Rustin Cohle (McConaughey) and Martin Hart (Harrelson) can best be described as beleagured, not only by the horrific events and forces they find themselves thrown into conflict with but also by the larger problems of love, family, mortality, and “what it means to be a man/woman” that trouble us all. When their initial investigation of a ritualized murder pits them against a secret, diabolical cult, their search draws the darkness in their own lives to the surface, as if the horror they are attempting to illuminate calls, siren-like, to the unresolved and the unconscious in each of the men’s dysfunctional lives. (Cohle is a hyper-intelligent savant more than a little touched by obsession, compulsion, and the scars of undercover narcotics work; Hart paints himself into a familiar corner, drinking too hard and cheating on his wife, but the fury with which he erupts when he finds himself trapped by the consequences of his actions allow us to glimpse a person much more damaged than an adulterous cliché). The tag line of the show is “touch darkness and darkness touches you back”, and strangely enough, this serves as the most direct summation of the first season’s thematic gist.

McConaughey and Harrelson tackle these dour, hard men with a voracity. Once largely relegated to typecasting by their early famous roles and their distinct personalities, both actors have undertaken something of a career renaissance in the last few years. Serious, nuanced character work (Killer Joe and The Paperboy for McConaughey, Rampart and The Messenger for Harrelson) is apparently not beyond either of them. Far from it, in fact: both actors have increased their visibility and their reputation due to these performances, and one can’t help but see their tour de force work in True Detective as a further evolution. Or perhaps it’s the sheer delight of watching Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson scheme and think and fight together. When a friend told me that they were the two stars, I said, “Oh, I’ll watch that, I don’t even care what it’s about.” Case in point. Both men have always been charismatic on-screen, able to plumb the depths of both comedy and drama with ease, but something about their True Detective chemistry—complex and ever-shifting in the manner of all intense partnerships, comprised of respect, resentment, and shared trauma—heightens their individual and combined magnetism. Even in the early parts of the show, the detectives both look hungry, starved around the eyes, as tragically unable to extricate themselves from events as they are unable to shore themselves up under the “burdens” of love, fidelity, and human connection.

Pizzolatto has done that rare and enviable thing; he wrote all of True Detective himself, without employing a traditional writing staff. It may seem like a risky gambit for people who are invested in a traditional writing model for television, but the surety of Pizzolatto’s vision—his tight grasp on the puzzle pieces of his story and its fairly unique mythology (inspired by Robert Chambers’s seminal book The King in Yellow)—is strong evidence in favor of talented writers taking this approach more often. Maybe it’s only due to the limited number of episodes, but True Detective has a momentum and a laser-targeted focus that make it more compulsively watchable than even binge-bait like House of Cards or Orange is the New Black. One of the most compelling aspects of the writing is how Pizzolatto depicts the detectives’ case-working process. It’s refreshing to see Pizzolatto heavily emphasize two crucial aspects of actual detective work: pounding the pavement, and paperwork. The two halves of True Detective—in which Cohle and Hart investigate an initial murder in 1995 and pick back up on unresolved aspects of the case in 2012—make much out of both things. The two men spend long lonely stretches of road together, seeking out leads, often coming up empty-handed or with a piece of the puzzle they don’t know what to do with yet. They spend time and energy (on-screen!) discussing the acquisition of tax records, title transfers, and old case files; there’s a compelling scene where Hart, attempting to dig up old information, is led by a clerk to a room full of haphazard file boxes. No database, no digitization, nothing to do but roll up one’s sleeves and start sorting through the mess. Pizzolatto doesn’t linger on this part of detective work long enough to bore us, but he holds it up for us with enough obvious intent that his point becomes clear. This isn’t a flashy Hollywood thriller where profiling and a nod towards actual investigative work results in a shocking revelation and a prerequisite, climactic chase scene. It’s one of the few detective stories that don’t make the detective or his process into something romantic. Between the unglamorous stylization of detective work and the destructive personal consequences Cohle and Hart both face as a result of their involvement with the case, Pizzolatto’s point-of-view seems to be more in line with the Southern gothic noir feeling of the overall show: that detectives are cursed half-men, consigned by destiny to fight evil in the shadows and fated, by dint of that battle, to lose everything, even themselves. It’s a bleak point-of-view, but it reverberates more viscerally with an audience than a glossy, cardboard-cutout detective who breezes through a case with barely a scratch or a setback.

Above all, though, True Detective strikes a particularly American nerve. Much like the Swedish novel/film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Detective takes on an institutionalized problem within the culture and society of its setting and addresses that problem head-on through the conceit of a detective story. This is a storyteller’s trick; we all tend to wrap up a vague point or observation we wish to make inside something exciting and consumable, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Dragon Tattoo directly addressed the misogynist abuses within the Swedish government and upper echelon; True Detective does the same, but because its focus is America (and not just any America, but the Deep South), one can’t avoid the entanglement of organized religion with sex and power. It’s a bit surprising there hasn’t been a wave of attack pieces about the show, since it depicts evangelistic Louisiana politicians as secret rapists and ritual murderers. It’s a broad shot that somehow also manages to strike a bullseye. For several years now, Americans have faced the consequences of moneyed religious interests attempting to subjugate or obliterate the rights and freedoms of various subcultures and minorities, particularly women. The headscratching battle over reproductive health and the religious right’s froth-laden obsession with outlawing abortion is a thinly-veiled attempt by powerful men to exercise control over female sexuality, often by prioritizing the health of the unborn child over the health and safety of the pregnant woman. One can’t help but imagine Pizzolatto taking in the political climate about this issue in this country over the last five years—Republican politicians scheming, trying to pass clandestine and medieval legislation, publicly insulting women who speak up against them—and seeing in his story an opportunity to reflect or comment on this systemic, endemic problem. True Detective is ultimately the story of two damaged men battling the exploitative male hierarchy for the fate of every disenfranchised woman and child in the bayous. What could be more feminist, more truly American, than that?

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Episode 88: John Henry Fleming!

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

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Bookmark It, Burrow Press, Christopher Booth, James Sanders, John Henry Fleming, Songs for the Deaf, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Episode 88 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to fiction writer John Henry Fleming,

Plus James Sanders writes about reading The Autobiography of Malcom X.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

The VIDA count for 2013 is now available.

Orlando now has a new independent bookshop: Bookmark It, at the East End Market in Winter Park (3201 Corrine Drive).

Find Burrow Press’s releases here, & check out the discounted subscription rate.

If you live in Orlando, do come to Vanessa’s book release party.

Episode 88 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.