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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: April 2018

The Curator of Schlock #221: The Foreigner

06 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #221 by Jeff Shuster

The Foreigner

The 90s Aren’t Coming Back

To say that much of my film going experience in the 90s revolved around the action titans of Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan would be understatement. I grew jaded over the slow decline of Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies, but the 90s had their charm. Brownian became 007 in 1995’s Goldeneye from director Martin Campbell.

Golden eye

That movie revitalized the spy genre in cinema and television, two of my favorites being Austin Powers and La Femme Nikita. The Nintendo game based on Goldeneye became a legend. Brosnan was and is my James Bond.

And then there’s Jackie Chan.

Hong Kong cinema was still a bit of a mystery to me back in the mid 90s, but friends kept telling me about a movie called Rumble in the Bronx and its Chinese star who did his own stunts and had the scars to prove it. Seeing movies wasn’t as easy back then. A movie like Rumble in the Bronx would only be in a theater for about a week before being pulled and DVD hadn’t quite emerged on the market yet. So you would make an effort to see this happy-go-lucky action star from Hong Kong who performed literal death-defying gymnastics right before your eyes. Supercop and Mr. Nice Guy remain two of my most memorable theater going experiences.

Mr. Nice Guy

The late 90s were pretty good. We’d left the recession for the dot-com boom and even I thought we were headed to a better tomorrow. Of course, that all came crashing down. Years later, Daniel Craig replaced Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan became less prolific. 2017’s The Foreigner from director Martin Campbell reintroduces us to these action stars of old, but if you were expecting an Expendables-esque reunion, be forewarned. This movie will punch you in the gut.

The Foreigner 1

Jackie Chan looks tired.

The Foreigner Pierce

Pierce Brosnan looks tired.

I don’t think Jackie Chan cracks a smile throughout the whole movie, something I found very disconcerting considering he always struck me as the friendliest action star ever. Pierce Brosnan cracks fake smiles throughout The Foreigner, playing Liam Hennessy, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, a former IRA member turned politician after the Good Friday Agreement. Trouble starts when a group calling themselves the Authentic IRA, blow up a clothing store in London, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. One of these victims is the daughter of Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan), a local restaurant owner.

The Foreigner 2

Quan wants revenge against the terrorists who killed his daughter. He suspects Hennessy of being involved and his suspicions prove valid, but even Hennessy hadn’t planned on civilian casualties when he reached out to former IRA members to stir things up so he could reap a political advantage in the upcoming election. The terrorists are stopped, but no one gets out of this movie unscathed.

THE FOREIGNER

There are no happy endings left for Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan. The 90s are over, and they’re never coming back.

Am I recommending The Foreigner? Absolutely. It’s a good action/thriller in an age where everything is tailored to PG-13. Brosnan and Chan give off tortured performances, but it’s well worth seeing. Chan can still do the stunts, if not as agile as he once was and it’s interesting to see Brosnan portray a character doing his best to charm his way out of the mess he’s made for himself and failing miserably at it. It’s not a feel good movie, but one can’t feel good all of the time anyway.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #7: Angles 9: Disappeared Behind the Sun

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

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Lost Chords and Serenades Divine #7 by Stephen McClurg

Angles 9: Disappeared Behind the Sun (2017)

If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and it’s about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It’s angry, yet it’s real because it knows it’s angry.

        —Charles Mingus

My first notions of music as political and social commentary grew out of seeing the once omnipresent TV commercials for Time-Life box sets. I mostly remember boomer nostalgic over the music of the ‘60s. This was all vocal music, stuff like “Give Peace a Chance” or “Fortunate Son,” with the exception of Hendrix’s jagged take on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Was it protest? Or drugs and distortion?

I’ve heard arguments about the beauty or crassness of that moment, but it’s not often that instrumental music, unless nationalistic, evokes much commentary, at least in the world in which I’ve grown up. There are stories of people walking out, hissing, or being generally disgusted over the third movement of Mahler’s first symphony when he turned a children’s song into a death march in 1889. Stravinsky caused a riot with the premiere of “The Rite of Spring” in 1913, though the intensity of the disturbances in both of these cases seems to grow and get mythologized over the decades. Ornette Coleman was bullied by other jazz artists and had his head shaved by police–for being different and playing differently.

“Blues People” by LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka) opened me up to ways of hearing politics in instrumental music. For example, he reads bebop drummers as engaging particularly African approaches to rhythm and polyrhythms as a rejection of the swing style that had been a part of many of the large, mostly white, big bands.

There has been an openly progressive and protest movement within the large group improvising tradition. The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) has been known for its avant-garde creativity and has been a rich ground for African American and other artists of color. Similarly in Europe, the Globe Unity Orchestra wanted to unite players from around the world in a large free jazz ensemble. Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra made pointed protests against America’s involvement in Vietnam. Maybe Sun Ra created his own universe, through the Arkestra, in order to break free and comment on the one Herman Blount was born into.

disappeared_behind_the_sun.png

My assumption is that Angles 9 is working in this tradition of free jazz ensemble with “Disappeared Behind the Sun.” The title of the record is a translation of an Iranian phrase that is meant to describe people who are detained by governments, but not formally arrested or tried, and never come back. The music is born out of frustrations and the complicated emotions of difficult political climates. This music shrieks in protest and howls affirmations. It rocks and swings, cries and punches, laments and screams.

“Equality & Death (Mothers, Fathers, Where Are Ye?)” opens with free sax playing, an expected sound for a record like this. But the drums come in and drive the track using a variation of the Motown rhythm, a snare hit on each down beat, often played by Uriel Jones, which is unexpected and propels the track. It’s one of my favorite recordings I’ve heard this year. Andreas Werliin’s drum sound is dynamic, with a bass tone at times wonderfully cavernous–likely a large marching drum. His use of tonal colors with cymbals and slight altering of rhythms with the same beats, creates interesting alternating textures throughout each tracks.

Along with the sensibilities of a free jazz ensemble, Angles 9 mixes in the sounds of Balkan brass and occasionally New Orleans second line marching bands and funk grooves. A few of the tracks echo elements of the late 60s’ Coltrane groups, particularly the Jimmy Garrison bass ostinatos. But regardless of influences, Angles 9 is making a music that is beneficially filling and fulfilling: a music for the body and mind, heart and soul.

You can hear the recording and purchase it from Clean Feed Records.


McClurg

Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

21st Century Brontë #33: The Money Problem, Part 3

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

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21st Century Brontë #33 by Brontë Bettencourt

The Money Problem, Part 3

In 2017 I worked three separate jobs. I wondered why I chose Creative Writing as my major. I told myself, “Misery is excellent writing-fodder. Pay attention and learn.”

In a previous post I talked about leaving the security of a corporate job since it was too stressful. Three employees (myself included) shared a small office, spending hours staring at a screen. Already writing is a solitary practice; I couldn’t handle all those hours to myself with the outside world taunting me through the window.

I returned to food service, back on my feet, handling hundreds of customers and leaving the stress of the job whenever I clocked out for the day.

I had been at the Huey Magoo’s at the University of Central Florida, located in the high-traffic Student Union food court, making just enough to get by. The allure of a low-maintenance job to focus on my writing wore off. I had more time to write with a low wage, dead-end job. It was difficult to write with bills to pay and mounting grad school expenses.

I worked about a year and one week before the health department shut us down.

A lot of long-range thinking occurs when there isn’t a form of income: what the hell can a creative writer do in the workforce?

Can I be a writer if managing fast food is how I spend most of my time?

Why haven’t I written a book yet?

Are my mom and grandpa proud of me when they’re not entirely sure of what I do?

In writing, I have some control over the narrative’s outcome. If there is suffering, there can also be triumph. In real life, there is no cause and effect relationship that can be guaranteed. My life is still a work in progress that can’t be edited when it’s finished. Not by me, anyway.

In February of 2017, I was hired to work as a busser at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium at Universal Studio’s Citywalk.

Toothsome.png

In this steampunk-themed restaurant I was one of over 100 extras to the story of Professor Doctor Penelope Tibeaux-Tinker Toothsome and her robot assistant Jaques. Gears whirled on the walls, precariously stacked ice creams and shakes sat behind glass, and quirky, upbeat tunes played at all hours.

I worked for tips by cleaning and resetting tables, stacking glassware, and folding rows and rows and rows and rows of linen. I worked manic eight-hour. I developed a pain in my leg, calloused hands, and biceps strong enough to co-muscle a couch off a moving van.

Once, I slept for two hours in my car after a shift. My boyfriend Alex was alarmed when I told him. Again, part of me thought, “How could I use this in my writing?” I squeezed in my schoolwork during breaks and between shifts, and when I wasn’t congealing in horrendous I-4 traffic.

A busser once dropped an entire tub of dirty dishes, and like ants, servers and bussers alike picked up the broken glass and towel-dried the floor, unprompted. It felt like a musical number. There was something magical with the unpredictability of every shift. The restaurant thrived with life and so many people. Once I clocked out, I left the stress of work behind me.

I planned my day around the hectic drive to Universal, leaving extra early to write in coffee shops, or I’d re-enter the Citywalk after a shift to write instead of fighting my way through rush hour.
I would’ve stayed longer if not for the hour-plus long commute with tolls, and the financial unpredictably of a wage of tips.

But my old boss from Huey Magoos called me. He was brought on as a general manager for another location. They were searching for an assistant manager.

I hung up my steampunk goggles and rubber gloves for a steady paycheck and closer commute. Surely this would be the end of my job hunt. I’ve corralled hordes of Anime club goers and actors for theater productions. Managing employees must work the same way, right?

For months I kept assuring myself that this was the smartest course of action, even after one shift, where a fanatical, religious, homeless guy meandered into the store for a sermon, and a guest who was stalking one of my cashiers bought the guy a meal.

And after the day when one woman cut the line and blew mysterious white powder all over the counter.

Even if the work atmosphere feels toxic, I can always repurpose those feelings for my characters.

I wonder if leaving Universal was the right choice. I wonder if leaving the realm of unemployment law was the right choice. A steady nine-to-five with a potential for growth and benefits seems luxurious compared to food service. I once wrote, “I want to believe that my time creating is more valuable than a paycheck derived from data entry,” and here I am, leaving Huey Magoo’s.

Insane, leaving jobs and expecting different results. People work dull jobs to fund their passions. Yet I had to walk out of a lecture in my summer residency because despite being in another state at the time of a secret shopper report, management blamed me for a low score. The thought of returning to my current job broke me.

Hamline.png

In that residency a few days later, I attended an open discussion, where several alumni answered questions regarding their experiences in publishing. This was my chance to ask about agents, or query letters, or editors, or any other steps in the publishing process. But when I got a chance to speak, I asked about their writing processes. “I know that everyone has a different process,” I prefaced, “But it’s nice to hear what works for others. So often I read that ‘oh if you don’t write every day, you’re not a writer,’ and then I don’t write, and I beat myself up and I eventually spiral into a pit of despair…”

A few audience members laughed. But the alumni were quick to respond. They expressed their hatred of the “write a day” tenet, because a writer who is still discovering his or her habits will automatically discredit his or herself. One stated that she simply did not dedicate every day to writing. Another mentioned setting stupidly easy goals, like committing ten minutes to writing. Setting impossible goals creates a resistance to write, while easy goals not only creates little pressure, but usually lead to exceeding the time set aside in the first place.

“Be kind to yourself,” the alumni stressed.

I feel like this advice is great not only for the writing process, but a general lifehack. When I was a teenager I was told that life would settle down once I entered my 20s. Now that I’m here, an online post mentioned that my life won’t settle until I’m in my 30s. At this rate, I’ll be settled a decade after I am dead.

Since that summer residency, my current job has leveled out. The pay is decent and the stress is better (those employees quit or were fired). And the strange happenings still make for excellent material (we had one woman ask us to substitute each tender for an extra toast in her meal, because she stated she’s a vegetarian. We’re a chicken tender restaurant).

But I’ve searched for another job because I need to be kinder to myself. I need to find a creative solution to my employment, one that will allow me the mental clarity to accomplish more. I need to be less harried, in order to be able to answer some of these questions.

And I believe I will with my new job, not as a shift lead, but as a Sensei. I have been hired by Sus-Hi Eatstation, a create your own sushi restaurant that started in 2011. The employees and guests are called Ninjas. When guests top their rolls with cheese and bacon, they literally have the option to set their food ablaze via blowtorch (to which the employees yell FIRE!).

The owner stated that it’ll be over a month before I’m fully comfortable in my role, which includes front of house, back of house, and management operations. I’ve adorned my uniform with Fullmetal Alchemist pins, which are permitted. And we are encouraged to make mistakes, because once the mistake is made, we can learn the procedure the right way.

I haven’t had much time at Sus-hi, but so far, I think I’ve taken a step in the right direction. A change in setting is a change of story, after all.


Brontë Bettencourt at Hemingway House

Brontë Bettencourt (Episode 34, Episode 221) graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelors in English Creative Writing. She’s currently pursuing an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University. When she’s not writing or working she’s a full time D&D enthusiast and YouTube connoisseur.

Buzzed Books #60: Gregory Orr’s A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Poetry

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Buzzed Books #60 by Amy Watkins

Gregory Orr’s A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry

Why do we write poetry?

As an experienced poet, I’m supposed to have an eloquent, compelling answer to this question. I’m supposed to acknowledge that the reasons for writing poetry are various and all valid. I’m supposed to quote Neruda. However, if I asked any of the earnest, inexperienced poetry writers in my English 101 class why they write poetry, I’m fairly certain they would all give some version of the same answer: We write poetry to express ourselves. As an experienced poet, I know I’m supposed to find that answer shamefully unsophisticated, but I don’t.

BOOKS-ORR

In his new craft book, A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry (W.W. Norton, 2018), the great lyric poet Gregory Orr posits that poetry is ideally suited to meet the human need for self-expression because of the way it balances order and disorder. This, he says, is why so many people, even non-writers, feel compelled to write poems in moments of crisis. The disorder of emotional extremes–grief, love, rage, desire—welcomes the order of craft, and vice versa.

This is true to my own experience. I began writing poems in middle school, first for a language arts assignment then for the fun of making the world rhyme. I kept writing poems as a way to process disorderly emotion. At that time, my family life was chaotic; grief, addiction, and poverty imposed disorder on my life, to say nothing of the prosaic disorder of adolescence. Like many children experiencing trauma, I craved the control poetry offered. In a poem, I could choose what to tell and how to tell it. I could contain and shape troubling memories. I could let in only as much disorder as I could manage, using the rules I had established.

More available than therapy and ideally suited to my personality, poetry became a way to compartmentalize and impose order on my emotions. While my reasons for writing poetry have become more sophisticated over the years, I still respond to Orr’s paraphrase of Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry: the source of poetry is “emotion remembered from a place of safety.” For me, the poems themselves–my own and those I read–continue to be meaningful, if temporary, places of safety.

As Orr explicates and complicates the sources, tools, and craft of lyric poetry for his readers, he never loses sight of poetry’s basic initiating impulse: We write poetry to express something, often something we can’t express any other way. We make poetry to remake the world or imagine a new world in words. If this sounds a bit fluffy and vague, never fear. Orr is a great teacher, and he balances the emotion and mystery inherent in discussions of poetry with concrete explanation, analysis, and wisdom, delivered in the warm, intelligent voice of a kind, slightly dorky uncle. His approach to teaching language, rhythm, and other elements of craft leaves room for poets to work in a variety of styles.

The book is clearly aimed at a less experienced audience. If you’ve studied poetry for a long time, many of the ideas and exercises are not brand new, but I think it does us good to remember how and why we began to write, and to revisit some of the lessons that shaped our understanding of our craft. In that way, I read this book side-by-side with my younger selves. I underlined passages I doubt I would have understood at 15, passages that would have blown my mind at 25, and passages I desperately want to share with my students now. I wrote in the margins, “If only you’d learned this sooner,” and, “When you grasped this, everything changed!” I worked through the poems and exercises with gratitude for my teachers and hope for my students.

If you teach writing, this is an ideal textbook. I can imagine both introductory and advanced undergrad poetry classes using this text. In the introduction, Orr admits that his Primer does not include a wide variety of poems, and I appreciate that he acknowledges this limitation. If I were using this as a textbook, I would want a really good anthology to go with it. On the other hand, by foregoing a bunch of expensive rights, Orr and his editor have kept the book very affordable: $15.95 is cheaper than any craft book I used in undergrad more than 15 years ago.

If you’re a young poet, Orr’s Primer will offer you meaningful insights into the craft of poetry, without belittling your reasons for attempting it in the first place. If you’re more experienced, it will offer you a chance to reflect and maybe even rediscover the energy of your younger poetic self.


Amy Watkins

Amy Watkins (Episodes 124, 161, 164, 192, and 209) grew up in the Central Florida scrub, surrounded by armadillos and palmetto brush and a big, loud, oddly religious family, a situation that’s produced generations of Southern writers. She married her high school sweetheart, had a baby girl and earned her MFA in poetry from Spalding University. She is the author of Milk & Water (Yellow Flag Press, 2014) and the art editor for Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine.

Episode 308: Get Shreked!

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Film

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Episode 308 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, the format is quite different.

Get Shreked

Episode 308 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

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