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The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: November 2014

Shakespearing #20: Henry V

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespeare, Shakespearing, Theater

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Shakespearing #20 by David Foley

Henry V

20 Henry VMaybe Obama is Henry V. Both sowed wild oats (a little blow, a little sack). Both spent their youth working with the common folk (community organizing, highway robbery). And as a result both bring to the problem of ruling a nuanced understanding of the world’s complexity and a gut apprehension of the lives of the powerless.

This thought occurred to me early in Henry V. Henry warns the Archbishop of Canterbury to “take heed…how you awake our sleeping sword of war” since war will provoke “much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops/Are every one a woe.” No martial adventurer (no Tamburlaine), Henry knows that the cost of war is paid in the blood of real soldiers. The Archbishop offers 63 lines of almost comically convoluted justification, and we’re off!

This sense that even good men get tangled in the logic of power—find themselves, say, ordering drone strikes or mass surveillance or invasions of France—explains our (or maybe my) complicated response to both men. We want to admire them, but we need to loosen them from their setting of power to do so.

There are times when this is hard with Henry, most famously when he orders the slaughter of the French prisoners in Act IV, Scene vi, but also when he threatens the town of Harfleur with rape and murder if they don’t surrender. “What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause?” he says, sounding like a Republican threatening to shut down the government.

But this, we’re given to understand, is not the real Henry. A few scenes later he’s ordering his troops not to pillage or steal as they make their way through the French countryside. “[T]he gentler gamester is the soonest winner,” he says. Perhaps his threats to the governor of Harfleur were a kind of game, understood as such by both sides, Henry’s threats allowing the governor to yield.

Henry likes games. He plays a kind of game with the traitors in Act II, scene ii, tricking them into pronouncing sentence on themselves. And of course, he plays an elaborate game with Williams, the man who, mistaking him for a fellow soldier, challenges him to a fight. Both games take as their central joke the artificial difference between king and commoner. The traitors pronounce their sentence against a man who drunkenly “rail’d against” the king, a man Henry is inclined to forgive. These games play with the idea of power, but they wouldn’t work if the power weren’t real, if it couldn’t both reprieve the city and slaughter the prisoners.

Perhaps only an ironist could survive this contradiction between the artificial and the deadly earnest. Henry and Obama share a worldview that’s both deeply humane and deeply ironic. (You could argue that this second aspect of the president’s character, which he struggles to conceal, drives his critics crazier than his race.)

Shakespeare, too, is a humane ironist. The most extraordinary parts of Henry V are the prologues to each act. Here Shakespeare transports us by force of language. We see the horses “[p]rinting their proud hoofs in the receiving earth” and “[u]pon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing.” But he also keeps reminding us that we’re seeing a play (“Southampton…is the playhouse now, there you must sit”) and leaves us with an image of himself as the “bending author…in little room confining mighty men,” where the room seems to be both the space of the stage and the room the writer writes in. It’s a strange kind of sanity, this split vision: to know that we’re in earnest and to know it’s all invention.

_______

David FoleyDavid Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.

Episode 128: Michael Hearst!

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Music

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Tags

Carlton Melton, Danita Berg, Michael Hearst, One Ring Zero, Songs for Fearful Flyers, Songs for Ice Cream Trucks, Songs for Unusual Creatures, Whoopie Goldberg

Episode 128 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I interview the musician, Michael Hearst.

MH thereminPlus Danita Berg reads her essay, “A Note on my Skin.”

Danita BergTEXTS DISCUSSED

SFFFcoverSongs for Unusual CreaturesSFICT master

As Smart as We AreBrown Girl Dreaminghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CDSak1Pcbs

NOTES

The music accompanying Danita Berg’s essay is Carlton Melton’s “Smoke Drip,” from their album Photos of Photos.

Photos Of PhotosRead Madison Bernath’s review of Miami Bookfair International here.

Daniel Handler (who sometimes when he writes is known as Lemony Snickett) made a remarkably dense joke about self-consciousness about racial stereotypes after Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award Young People’s Literature Prize for her book, Brown Girl Dreaming. Handler was not nearly self-conscious enough to know that Woodson’s allergy to watermelon was precisely psychological in nature as a reaction to racism. Read Jacqueline Woodson about this event here at The New York Times. To read about Handler’s appropriate apology, read this story in The Washington Post.

Here is Jacqueline Woodson’s acceptance speech for this award:

Here is a link to the Indiegogo campaign for We Need Diverse Books.

Repeal Day 2014

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Episode 128 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 #67: Scrooge

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #67 by Jeffrey Shuster

Scrooge

Albert Finney is the only Ebenezer Scrooge you’ll ever need!

Scrooge5 I think it’s the movies we watch as children that have the greatest influence on us. While I must have watched Star Wars about a hundred times between my 4th and 5th birthday, it wasn’t the only movie that made regular rounds in my parents’ video cassette recorder. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Fiddler on the Roof, and Oliver all introduced me to the idea that characters breaking out into song and dance was perfectly normal. In fact, my young self never understood why people didn’t do this in real life.

Scrooge6But of all those musicals, the one stood out the most was Scrooge, the 1970 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol directed by Ronald Neame and starring Albert Finney. This was the movie that taught my younger self that Christmas wasn’t just about Santa Claus, Rudolf, and presents under the tree. The Christmas presented in Scrooge is terrifying. We have ghosts, eternal damnation, and quite possibly the most ugly and unpleasant Ebenezer to ever to grace the silver screen.

It’s no surprise that the first number to spring from his lips is “I Hate People.” Check out these lyrics:

 When I see the indolent classes

Sitting on their indolent asses

Gulping ale from indolent glasses

I hate people! I detest them! I deplore them!

Yikes! At the same time, being a four-year-old with a meager allowance made me appreciate old Scrooge’s stinginess. I was never a big fan of that sharing business they kept promoting in kindergarten. Keep your hands off my snacks and my toys was always my motto.

Scrooge1Anyway, Jacob Marley shows up and he’s played by Alec Guinness. Hey, it’s the man who played Obi Wan, I thought to myself. I wonder if that was the first time recognized an actor from another movie. I think the idea that an actor could play another role blew my mind back then, but I was rather slow on those things. I remember it took me a couple more years to realize that Star Wars movies weren’t filmed in outer space. I always figured the studio had a deal with NASA or something.

Scrooge2Anyway, Jacob Marley tells Scrooge he’s going to hell for being so stingy, and up they go flying about the London sky like Superman. In the night sky are ghosts that look like rotting cadavers, the inhabitants of hell. I can tell you they ended up fueling some childhood nightmares for me. I remember thinking why is old Scrooge going to hell. It’s not he murdered anyone or anything. Of course, my adult self might reply that, like Wal Mart and banks, Scrooge was killing people around him a little bit at a time. He loans out money to poor Londoners who would never be able to keep up with the interest, bugging them for money on Christmas Eve, yelling at every Christmas caroler and refusing charity at every turn. He doesn’t even splurge on himself, hoarding his wealth while living in a dilapidated house. Scrooge’s trade is misery.

Scrooge4They used to air Scrooge on network television every week around Christmas time. They used go to commercial break with a still from the movie and this unearthly chime of bells. He ever chose the commercial breaks for this movie must have had a sense of humor. Nothing like seeing the Ghost of Christmas Future who resembles the Grim Reaper as Scrooge falls through his own grave straight to hell. And then you get a commercial for Crazy Eddy. His prices were insane!

Top Five Things I Learned from Scrooge

  1. A gang of street urchins is no match for an old man with a cane.
  2. Ghosts of Christmas Past are awfully judgmental.
  3. Ghosts of Christmas Present are even more judgmental.
  4. Don’t try to find out what’s beneath the hood.
  5. “Thank You Very Much” never gets stale.

_______

Photo by Leslie Salas

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, and episode 124) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

The Lists #9: Ten Reasons You Need to Stop Doing That

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Lists

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The Lists #9 by Scott Hoffman

Ten Reasons You Need to Stop Doing That

  1. For the children.
  2. It’s unnatural.
  3. It’s the principle of the thing.
  4. I don’t care if the other kids are doing it.
  5. Because people can see you.
  6. I can see you.
  7. What will the neighbors think?
  8. Because what the neighbors think matters.
  9. You’ll go blind. Seriously. It may take a while, but you’ll go blind.
  10. You need to cut THAT CRAP OUT.

_______

Scott HoffmanScott Hoffman (Episode 66, essay) is an independent scholar and native Austinite living and working in his hometown. He earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue University in 2005 and is currently revising his manuscript Haloed by the Nation: Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America. In 2008, he was nominated for a Lone Star Emmy for researching and writing The World, the War and Texas, a public television documentary about Texans during the Second World War. His publications include “How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria? St. Maria Goretti in the Post-Counter-Cultural World” in The CRITIC and “Holy Martin: The Overlooked Canonization of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “‘Last Night I Prayed to Matthew:’ Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America,” both in Religion and American Culture. This year he completed compiling an LBGT Resource Guide for the Austin History Center. In his spare time Scott likes to sing like nobody’s listenin’ and dance like nobody’s watchin’, which means he tends to wail and flail his arms a lot…

Heroes Never Rust #69: How to Understand That a Man Can Fly

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Heroes Never Rust

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Heroes Never Rust #69 by Sean Ironman

How to Understand That a Man Can Fly

Lana Lang was Clark Kent’s high school sweetheart, and, like most high school sweethearts, she thought that they would get married and spend the rest of their lives together in their hometown. She narrates the last issue of Superman: For All Seasons, a smart choice, given how close she was with Clark before he left for Metropolis. As a child, Lana was a dreamer. The issue opens with her teenage dreams. “I was going to marry him. To be Mrs. Lana Lang Kent. We’d have children. Lost of little rugrats running around, since I was an only child and so was Clark.” That was before Clark lifted her into the air and they flew. She thought he’d propose to her, but instead showed her why he had to leave. That night, up in the air, Clark thought he was connecting with her, showing her his deepest secret. For Lana, that flight shattered her future.

SupermanWinter

After, she left town. She lost herself in the world, and now she has returned home to Smallville. The same as Clark. After last issue’s loss to Lex Luthor, Clark Kent seeks comfort at home. The two hang out like old times. Pete Ross digs into both of them. “You go out into the big, wide world—the both of you—and you come back here…You can’t even see how wrong that is.” Clark and Lana haven’t come home for any real reason other than they are sad and came running home. Nothing bad happened to Lana, at least she doesn’t share anything with the reader. Lex Luthor lectured to Clark, but he still has his powers. One woman died, but he saved the rest of the city. How many tragedies occur while Superman hides out in Smallville? How much is Lana missing out on because she came running home?

SupermanSnowOne night, Police Chief Parker comes to the Kent home warning them that the heavy rain has caused the reservoir to overflow. He tells the Kents that people are gathering at the church for safety. Clark sulks after Chief Parker leaves. “I began to think that I could do anything,” he tells Pa Kent. He lays in bed like he did in issue one, when he was back in high school wondering what to do with his life. Pa Kent has bit of advise for his son. “It’s not nearly as hard learning you have limitations as it is learning how to work with them.” Clark was a big fish in a little pond. Then, he went off to Metropolis and discovered life was more complicated than he thought. He imagined going off to the big city and saving people, stopping bad things from happening. When he got there, he found that he didn’t have control over everything. His dreams broke just like Lana’s did that night in the field. She thought she had her whole future laid out, and then Clark brought her into the air.

manforallseasonsAfter his talk with Pa Kent, Clark puts on his Superman uniform and takes flight to help save the town from flooding. Lana finally gets in a kiss, though. She tells him, “You may be able to do things nobody else can do, but that doesn’t make it any less hard to be who you want to be.” Superman, of course, stops the flooding, and saves the day. That’s never in question. As he does so, Lana tells readers that when she was away from Smallville and people would question why Superman would use his powers to help others and not for his own benefit. “No one would give it a second thought how Chief Parker came out on such a horrible night to warn us…any more than when a fireman rushes into a burning house, not so much to rescue someone—but to find out if there is anyone who needs rescuing.” Clark is no different than anybody. Sure, he has the ability to help on a larger scale, but he has the same values as anyone who helps. The yellow sun gives him the ability to fly, makes him physically invulnerable, but the Kents and Lana and Pete Ross and Chief Parker and everyone else in Smallville made him Superman. Clark’s hometown will always be a part of him. He doesn’t have to stay there, though. In the end, he flies back to Metropolis. He doesn’t stop Lex Luthor or some large monster wrecking havoc in the streets. He helps a boy trying to save his cat and introduces himself as Superman before flying back in the skies looking for others in need.

_______

Photo by John King

Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Buzzed Books #15: Miami Bookfair International 2014

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Buzzed Books #15 by Madison Bernath

2014 Miami Book Fair International Review

As I walked into the 2014 Miami Book Fair International, the scent of sweet corn, melted cheese, and grease blew slick in the air. Food trucks and carts littered the landscape. Children rushed about throwing bocce balls with no sense of the game, only a sense of play and blood. Passerby jumped over tables, skirting out of the way, and then flocked to stands of comic books, international books, classic books, independent books, and tiny books. Ladies in tight jeans and spike heels leaned over tables discussing the latest cookbook, the author only minutes away from a demonstration. I spotted many an old couple gripping each other’s arms, not the least bit phased by the chaos, but notably pleased. In my first forty-five minutes wandering this Miami sea of books and people, I saw Jason Segel (pushing his middle-grade thriller, Nightmares!), Ann Hood (killing an interview), and John Waters (promoting not a movie, but his new book about hitchhiking at age 68, Carsick). This, my friend, is a festival for the millions.

Press PassThat night, at a ritzy party for the authors (which I crashed thanks to my press pass and The Drunken Odyssey’s own John King), a friend of mine wondered aloud if this could be a happy alternative to AWP, that shit show of writers I look forward to every year. And perhaps it could be. There were book stalls, interesting readings, panels on craft and criticism, and heavy amounts of alcohol. But there were also art exhibits, live cooking shows, and an area strictly reserved for comics—not to mention Children’s Alley, complete with characters on stilts and a tiny tent theater.

Sure, John Waters was on-stage talking bad taste and making obscene gestures with his hands, an event that I believe AWP conference goers wish could be replicated this year in Minneapolis, but, to be honest, the Miami Book Fair International crowd didn’t seem to get it. There were some buckled over in laughter, but many who walked out, heads bowed and cheeks flaming (one of whom I may or may not have tripped and to whose rescue the fire department was deployed).

Miami Book Fair International isn’t only for those who adore Carolyn Forché and Joyce Carol Oates (both of whom made an appearance). This event panders to lovers of the literary scene, but also to those that love soul food and the visual arts. This, as I said before, is a festival for the millions, hence the $8 street fair admission compared to AWP’s $285 registration fee for nonmembers. Miami Book Fair International has mass appeal. It is not a writers’ conference, but rather, an event that celebrates them—and so many others.

_______

Madison BernathMadison Bernath (Episode 46 and 75) is a writer of both creative nonfiction and fiction. She graduated with an MFA from the University of Central Florida with a thesis of travel essays. She is currently a reader for Pithead Chapel and an adjunct professor at Valencia College and Seminole State College. In her free time she sucks the life out of cats and berates herself for failing to write/read something.

Shakespearing #19.2: Another Interlude

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespearing

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Shakespearing #19.2 by David Foley

Another Interlude: Tamburlaine

Since it was Marlowe who first got me started on my Shakespeare project, I thought I’d pause and take in the wonderfully bloody and inventive production of Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2, at Theatre for a New Audience. I’d never read the plays before, but managed to do so last week, and that helped me follow the plot, though plot is not quite the word for what happens. It’s hard to have a plot when there’s only one cause and one effect. Tamburlaine conquers and the world submits. Over and over. Tamburlaine is his own cause; indeed as the play goes on he sets up himself up as rival to the First Cause, God himself.

It’s hard to see or read Marlowe without a renewed bewilderment at the folks who think Marlowe wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare’s voice is multiple and various, where Marlowe’s is single and obsessive. But even that doesn’t get at the difference between the two. Marlowe is almost the anti-Shakespeare. Shakespeare reconciles. Even his bloodiest plays try to set the world back in balance. In Tamburlaine, Marlowe shows no such concern. He’s fascinated by will, and if people are guilty of anything in the play, it’s insufficient will, or rather will without the might or perhaps mana to back it up. As the evening winds towards its end, we think we may finally have found the one person willing to change the story, to oppose honor and dignity against Tamburlaine’s will. The defeated governor of Babylon defies him: “Do all thy worst. Nor death, nor Tamburlaine,/Torture, or pain, can daunt my dreadless mind.” But in his very next line, he begs and bargains for his life. Tamburlaine, true to form, accepts the bribe and kills him anyway. In this play, weakness is the only sin. Or to be more accurate, since none of the characters is actually weak, to be weaker is the only sin.

This gives enormous strength to the poetry. It plays much better than it reads. On the page, it lacks the surprise and mobility of Shakespeare, but spoken, particularly here in John Douglas Thompson’s magnificent performance, the lines sing.

19.2 TamburlaineYou can imagine how they intoxicated their Elizabethan audience. If the language starts to weary after a while, it’s because it hits the same note over and over, although with admirable versatility. Marlowe’s song is the song of will and reach. Even in Tamburlaine’s mourning for his wife Zenocrate (in which, intriguingly, Marlowe uses a ghazal-like refrain: “To entertain divine Zenocrate”), the language vaults towards the skies, not in spiritual longing but in a kind of ambition of grief.

But will is not the same as drama, and it’s certainly not the same as psychology, which seems to interest Marlowe not at all. People try to impose their wills on situations, and this requires some changing as situations change, but the emotional texture of the characters is largely diagrammatic: pride + imprisonment = helpless rage. This is particularly notable in the character of Zenocrate, who must be both in love with Tamburlaine and devastated at Tamburlaine’s destruction of her city and his murder of her friends. As a portrait of fate, it’s mysterious and terrible. As psychology, it’s nearly unplayable. Shakespeare would unfold a psychological bind for us. He’d make it not just believable, but harrowingly so. Marlowe is more interested in the fact itself. Like everyone else, Zenocrate must bow to power. The fact that she loves Tamburlaine in spite of his ruthlessness—his literal, constitutional lack of ruth—is the tribute love pays to power.

The production gets this tone exactly right. It bathes the stage in blood, blood being the sign of ruthlessness. Marlowe, too, continually reminds us of the cost in blood. The corpses pile up. There’s never any question of a humane side to his hero. And yet he remains a hero, a figure of fascination, even admiration. At times, Marlowe seems to fascinate himself, to ask himself how horrific he can make the man’s deeds and still set him up as a hero. Virgins begging for their lives are raped and slaughtered. Thousands of men, women, and children are put to the sword or, at Babylon, drowned in a lake. Like Zenocrate, Marlowe seems to ask himself how much horror he can face and still love. The fascinating villain, of course, is a staple of literature. In his final decadence, he becomes Hannibal Lecter. But here we’re still in the realm of Camus’s rebel: a man vying with God himself, defying God’s mercy as he embodies his mercilessness.

The back cover of my Penguin edition of Marlowe mentions a debate as to whether Marlowe was an “atheist rebel” or a “Christian traditionalist.” On the evidence of Tamburlaine, you’d have to plunk for the former. In a scene in which the Christian King of Hungary and the Muslim King of Natolia trade notes, Marlowe slyly draws an equivalence between the Virgin Birth and Mahomet’s coffin rising to Mecca’s roof when he died. Both, he seems to imply, are equally improbable legends. And this is before Tamburlaine burns the “superstitious books” in one of his last acts. It may be that to be religious you need to be able to imagine a place for pity in the world. Shakespeare’s world view is essentially compassionate. Marlowe’s is pitiless, and director Michael Boyd’s production reveals that such a vision has its own ravishing power.

_______

David FoleyDavid Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.

Episode 127: Mixtape #2 (A Distance Coat)

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Jazz, Mixtape, Music

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Episode 127 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I offer TDO’s second mixtape. This one is vintage, from my M.A. years (circa 1996?). Enjoy!

Mixtape 2

The Curator of Schlock #66: C.H.U.D.

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #66 by Jeffrey Shuster

C.H.U.D.

The C stands for cannibalistic!

 Hey, it’s your Curator of Schlock once again wishing you a Happy Turkey Day! Another year has passed since my last Thanksgiving review, and cannibalism still has yet to enter the mainstream. Flesh eaters are still marginalized by our judgmental American society. You bunch of prudes can enjoy your turkey, but that’s not going to keep me from championing cannibal rights! If you don’t want to do it for the cannibals, do it for the planet. We’d solve overpopulation and food shortages in one fell swoop!

CHUD posterIn the meantime, I need to expose a bit of anti-cannibalistic propaganda in the form of 1984’s C.H.U.D. from director Douglas Cheek. C.H.U.D. is an acronym for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. The movie starts off promising enough. We get the hint that there are things living in the sewers that are attacking people on the streets of Manhattan. A woman walking her dog is dragged down screaming into a manhole. Then it seems to devolve into a domestic drama about John Heard and his girlfriend. Listen, when I watch a movie named Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, I want to see Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers! I don’t want to see a story about famous photographer and his fashion model girlfriend, and whether or not she’s going to going to have the baby.

MSDCHUD EC001The reporter’s name is George Cooper (John Heard) and he spends his time taking pictures of undergrounders, the homeless people who live underneath the city. One of these homeless undergrounders got a huge chunk bitten out of his leg by something lurking in the sewers. Okay. Now this movie is showing some promise. There’s a hippie street preacher named A.J. Shepherd (Daniel Stern) who feeds the homeless at his soup kitchen.

chud stillFewer and fewer homeless are showing up for free vittles. A police captain named Bosch (Christopher Curry) teams up with Shepherd to investigate the homeless disappearances. The cop’s own wife has been missing ever since she decided to walk their dog a few nights earlier. Dun dun dun!

Their investigations lead them to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The commission reveals that there are mutated humans that like to eat non-mutant humans and that they’re living underneath New York City. It might have something to do with all of the toxic nuclear chemicals that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided store down there. Anyway, the Chuds terrorize the streets of Manhattan.

Chud Still 2They eat a bunch of people including John Goodman.

Chud stills 4The Chuds don’t look too much like people. They’ve got slimy skin, sharp teeth, and glowing yellow eyes. That doesn’t make them any less human in my opinion. Maybe they just wanted to be like any other New Yorker, see a Rockettes show. Sure, they might take a bite of a leg or two, but digestion is the sincerest form of flattery. C.H.U.D. would be followed by C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud. Robert Vaughn starred in that one. He was The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Acronyms are a pain to type!

Five Things I Learned from C.H.U.D.

  1.  John Heard is one of those actors who’s just kind of there, you know.
  2. Hippies make the best street preachers.
  3. Chuds eat everything but the head.
  4. Don’t stop for a cheeseburger while you’re on duty.
  5. If you try to unstop the bathroom drain only to get sprayed in the face with blood, consider leaving the city!

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 4

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, and episode 124) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

The Lists #8: An Index for Bi the Book: How to Become Bisexual In Less than a Month

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Lists

≈ 1 Comment

The Lists #8 by Chelsey Clammer

An Index for Bi the Book: How to Become Bisexual In Less than a Month

Index for Bi the Book

 

_______

Chelsey Clammer

Chelsey Clammer (Episode 49) has been published in The Rumpus, Essay Daily, and The Nervous Breakdown among many others. She is the Managing Editor and Nonfiction Editor for The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, as well as a columnist and workshop instructor for the journal. Clammer is also the Nonfiction Editor for Pithead Chapel and Associate Essays Editor for The Nervous Breakdown. Her first collection of essays, There Is Nothing Else to See Here, is forthcoming from The Lit Pub, Winter 2014. Her second collection of essays, BodyHome, is forthcoming from Hopewell Publishing in Spring 2015. You can read more of her writing here.

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Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #106: Crafting a Witch’s Story
  • The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #23
  • The Perfect Life #1
  • Episode 455: Elif Shafak!
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #105: Peeking Into the Future

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