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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: March 2019

Episode 360: Poetry Jazz BBQ!

30 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Jack Kerouac, Jazz, Kerouac House, Live Show, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 360 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, Karen Price, Erik Deckers, Terry Ann Thaxton and I read Jack kerouac’s poetry to the accompaniment of Ben Deckers’s walking bass.

Poetry Jazz BBQ

Breaking down the show. Photo by Steve Erwin.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Kerouac Book of HaikusMexico City BluesKerouac Scattered PoemsA Coney Island of the Mind


Episode 360 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #12: Firsts: Invisible Kingdom

27 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Science Fiction

≈ Leave a comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #12 by Drew Barth

Firsts: Invisible Kingdom

I’ve said it multiple times at this point: first issues are difficult. There are story lines, settings, characters, and, more or less, the core of the series to introduce and get running for readers in the span of twenty-two to thirty-something pages. The task of crafting a first issue is absolutely grueling since it is the crux by which the rest of the series will hold itself. Without the readers to feel intrigued enough by the first issue to pick up the second, the series effectively dies a lonely, tragic death before ever waking up.

Too grim? Eh.

Anyway, that looming guillotine of cancellation is what makes a particularly good first issue so refreshing and inviting. For many DC and Marvel books, first issues are important to an extent. But Batman and Captain America aren’t not going to sell well. Their audiences are damn near set in stone. For creator-owned books, though, those above worries are all too tangible. And that’s why when I opened up the first page of G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward’s Invisible Kingdom#1, I knew they didn’t have to worry about those issues.

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From the first couple pages, we can see this team utilizing a storytelling technique I absolutely love both in first issues and in long-running series in general: dual narratives. There is a two-page spread that happens fairly early on in this issue that helps to provide one of the most stark contrasts between both characters and setting I’ve ever seen in comics. On one half of the spread, we have Grix—space pilot turned package courier—awash in full planetary splendor. And on the other half is Vess—a woman running away to join an order of Nones (not nuns, but close)—walking down a beige alley toward a similarly drab monastic temple. Wilson and Ward are working with paneling and color differences in such a fun way to better establish as early on as possible that these two characters are in completely different areas of their small solar system and that there is no way their lives could intersect.

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And yet. The solar system Wilson and Ward have created is vast in scope but tiny as well. Consisting of only four planets, it’s not the galaxy-spanning space opera many science fiction stories try to emulate. As a result, the story is still very much on a large scale, but it still maintains an intimate quality with its setting—like working with one city block as opposed to a whole metropolitan area. Because of this, readers are given a comprehensive vertical slice of this living, breathing system with only the smallest of introductions through both of the concurrent narratives.

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These narratives are also five minutes apart. And as we read more through this first issue, the more we see how Grix and Vess’ stories will eventually come together. From there we can see, due to those few minutes of separation, how their stories will inevitably end in some kind of heart-wrenching tragedy perpetuated by those few minutes.

Maybe. There’s typically foreshadowing in first issues for events that will happen relatively close to the end as a reward for sticking with a series for as long as it runs. As to whether or not any of that foreshadowing plays out is up to conjecture for later, but due to the sheer wealth of information and small details about the narrative from this first issue, it’s hard not to extrapolate where things are going to go.

And I’m just focusing on the narrative wonders this book is spinning from the beginning. I won’t have the space to go into Invisible Kingdom’s usage of otherness with its various alien races; religious dogma in the form of the Renunciation religion; the company Lux as the capitalist monolith that has centered wealth and power on one planet; an exploited working class whose lives are valued less than the packages they deliver. There is such a wealth of story and character contained in this first issue it’s a wonder Wilson and Ward were able to keep it at only thirty-two pages.

Invisible Kingdom is a miniseries being put out by Dark Horse’s Berger Books imprint—the same imprint putting out Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds—and is joining DC’s Young Animals and relaunched Wild Storm as the source for all things good in monthly comics right now. They are smaller in scope and scale compared to their parent companies, but their careful curating of stories and editorial oversight has aided in cementing these imprints as areas of experimentation and new expression in the monthly comics market. That freedom is what makes a series like Invisible Kingdom so interesting and fun from the first issue—and is what’s making me return to it at a later date when the series closes potentially later this year.

Get excited. Comics are happening.


drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Buzzed Books 89: The World’s Desire (Ballantine 1977 edition)

26 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Fantasy

≈ Leave a comment

Buzzed Books 89 by Mark Scroggins

H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang’s The World’s Desire (Ballantine 1977 edition)

The story behind this lurid paperback is fascinating, though not quite as fascinating as the book itself. In 1965, Ballantine Books issued a paperback edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which had been published in hardcover ten years before. The hardcover had done okay, but the paperback proved to be an outrageous bestseller. People had never read anything like it before, and were immediately clamoring for more “stuff like Tolkien.” Ballantine scrambled—in short order they published, in editions similar to LotR, early twentieth-century fantasies by E. R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, and others, and new books by folks like Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn).

The World's Desire

Eventually, Ballantine commissioned the SF/fantasy author Lin Carter to edit a full-blown series, the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, which between 1969 and 1974 issued around 65 volumes, most of them reprints of “classic” but forgotten fantasy works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shortly thereafter, entirely new large-scale fantasy series—Terry Brooks’s Shannara books and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books—began appearing. So a whole new genre—Fantasy Fiction—had sprung up, with folks like Donaldson, Brooks, Evangeline Walton, and Katherine Kurtz constituting its present, and the BAFS furnishing it with a past (or a “canon,” as the literary scholars say).

The World’s Desire, first published in 1890, was reprinted in the BAFS (with one of their trademark druggy, borderline surrealist covers) in 1972. This particular copy, with its lurid cover image of a naked Egyptian queen communing with a giant snake who has a miniature copy of her own head, was printed in 1977, when the BAFS had passed into history but the fantasy boom was going strong. The advertising pages at the end of the book make the cultural context crystal clear: a notice of the first printing of The Sword of Shannara; an order form for Walton’s and Kurtz’s books; an ad for the paperback novelization of Star Wars; an ad for no fewer than twelve volumes of Star Trek books; and two pages advertising Tolkien books and posters.

Let’s just say the book itself is every bit as nuts as its provocative cover (which, by the way, is a precise representation of a scene from the novel). When the book was published, H. Rider Haggard was already famous for King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1887), adventures in unexplored “lost worlds” of Africa, while Andrew Lang was an all-round man of letters and classical scholar, best known for his translations of Homer (though he would later become famous for his collections of international folk tales). Haggard contributes the storytelling chops, and the themes (familiar from She) of the gorgeous and dangerous femme fataleand of reincarnation and the eternal quest for perfect love; Lang contributes a close eye to bronze-age Mediterannean cultural detail and a comprehensive knowledge of the Homeric storybook.

So yes, this is a sequel to the Odyssey—the new adventures of Odysseus, now unencumbered of Ithaca and Penelope, sailing off to Egypt on a quest for Helen of Troy, who he’s decided is his true love. (The notion of Odysseus’ further adventures appears in a number of ancient Greek texts, as does the idea of Helen being in Egypt rather than Troy during the whole Trojan war business.) In Egypt he gets tangled in a love triangle with Queen Meriamun, who’s as dark and evil as Helen is blonde and beautiful, but who’s also a powerful sorceress. Helen may be an incarnation of the goddess of love—the “world’s desire”—but Meriamun’s got her sidekick snake ornament, which enables her to do all sorts of shapeshifting and astral projection. At the same time, Egypt has to deal with a series of natural disasters brought upon them by the prophets of the enslaved Apura (Hebrews)—so Haggard and Lang are able to work in the narrative of the book of Exodus—and an invasion from the north by the seagoing Greeks.

It’s a wonderful, compulsively readable mess, told in a kind of fast-moving (Haggard) mock-Homeric (Lang) idiom, with some actually good poetry along the way. (I always skip the poems in Tolkien, but these are actually worth reading.) You can get this one for free at Project Gutenberg, but there’s lots of copies of this Ballantine edition for sale out there. You’ve gotta have that woman-headed snake, don’t you?


Mark Scroggins

Mark Scroggins lives in and  around New York City. He writes about poetry, art, and fashion. His latest book of poems is Pressure Dressing.

Episode 359: Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman!

23 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Memoir, Music

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman, Memoir, Sounds Like Titanic

Episode 359 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 talk to Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman about classical music, social class, memoir, and authenticity.

Jessica Hindman

Photo by Vanessa Borer.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Sounds Like Titanic.jpg

NOTES

TDO will be sharing a table with Black Fox Literary Magazine at AWP at table T14104, plus I am moderating a panel on life-balance, which I clearly know nothing about.

AWP PanelAlso, my novel has a release date of April 16, 2019.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.jpg


Episode 359 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 #266: Twilight of the Cockroaches

22 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #266 by Jeff Shuster

Twilight of the Cockroaches

Not to be confused with Grave of the Fireflies. 

The VHS cassette box for Twilight of the Cockroaches, a live action/anime hybrid movie, has a quote from Richard Harrington of The Washington Post. He says, “Could do for cockroaches what ‘The Secret of NIMH’ did for rats.” Now I know you kids have never heard of the Don Bluth animated masterpiece, The Secret of NIMH. It tanked at the box office leading Don Bluth to spend his energy making the arcade game Dragon’s Lair. You remember Dragon’s Lair, don’t ya? It was featured on that Stranger Things show that you guys love so much.

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Anyway, we’re not here to talk about The Secret of NIMH. Tonight’s feature is 1987’s Twilight of the Cockroaches from director Hiroaki Yoshida, a movie that proves that cockroaches are people too. The movie centers around a pretty, young cockroach named Naomi (voiced by Rebecca Forstadt) who’s engaged to a boring, yet stable young cockroach named Ichiro (voiced by Stephen Apostolina). They live an idyllic life with their community of roaches in the apartment of a Japanese bachelor named Saito (Kaoru Kobayashi), who gave up killing roaches when his wife and daughter left him. Saito lets the roaches roam free in his apartment, letting them eat whatever they want.

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What on Earth am I watching here? Twilight of the Cockroaches is an interesting production in that it combines live-action acting with animation not unlike Mary Poppinsor Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The technique is rather neat, featuring animated cockroaches against a backdrop of real life images such as Nike footwear and Heinz Ketchup bottles. While the movie does feature human characters in the form of Saito and his eventual girlfriend, Momoko (Setsuko Karasuma), the story focuses on the cockroaches, kind of like the latest Planet of the Apes movie. Except the cockroaches get their butt kicked in this movie.

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A young woman named Momoko lives in the apartment across the way from Saito and she hates cockroaches. She buys all kind of sprays and traps, trying her damnedest to eliminate every cockroach in the vicinity. As a result, the tribe of cockroaches living on her property is a warrior tribe. One of these warriors is a handsome cockroach named Hans. He even has a cleft chin. After an excursion, he finds his way over to Saito’s apartment and Naomi falls for him instantly. Hans recovers and returns to his tribe, but Naomi follows him. They begin a torrid affair. Oh, along the way, Naomi runs into a talking turd. The talking turd is done with clay animation. What on Earth am I watching here?

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Saito and Momoko also fall for each other. She moves into Saito’s apartment. so we know what that means. What follows is truly horrifying, a genocide of a race of creatures who just wanted to live peacefully with their human hosts. The warrior tribe of cockroaches comes to aid of the soft, yuppie tribe, but they get wiped out too. Naomi survives, pregnant with the next generation of cockroaches, immune to the poisons currently used by humans. This will force the humans to create deadlier poisons that will lead to even tougher cockroaches developing immunity to such poisons. Such is the fate of the cockroach as decreed by the god of the cockroaches. What on Earth am I watching here?


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.

Episode 358: Mark Blake, Part 2!

16 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Atlantic Records, Bad Company, Boogie with Stu, Burning Down One Side, Chris Farlowe, David Coverdale, Hot Dog, In Through the Out Door, Jason Bonham, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin, Live Aid, Mark Blake, No Quarter, Now and Zen, Outrider, Paul Rodgers, Peter Grant, Robert Plant, Shaken 'n Stirred, Swan Song, The Black Crows, The Firm, The Principle of Moments, Whitesnake

Episode 358 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 talk to Mark Blake, biographer of Peter Grant, about what happened to Led Zeppelin after Led Zeppelin.

Mark Blake

Photo by Ross Halfin.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Bring it On Home


Episode 358 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 #265: The Professional: Golgo 13

15 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Blog Post, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

The Professional: Golgo 13

Sex & Violence: The Motion Picture

I was on a James Bond kick around the same time I started getting into state of the art Japanese animation. Naturally, I wanted these two interests to converge in the form of an anime that resembled a Bond film. Eventually, I would discover Lupin the 3rd, a series of television shows and movies about the world’s greatest gentleman thief. I believe I wrote about them years ago on this blog, no doubt overflowing with sentimentality for Lupin and company. But when I first looked for a Bond-style anime, I discovered The Professional: Golgo 13, a deeply depressing movie about an international assassin.

Golgo1

1983’sThe Professional: Golgo 13from director Osamu Dezaki is a journey into a nihilistic hellscape. Duke Togo (voiced by Greg Snegoff) is a contract killer known as Golgo 13 who always sees the job through no matter the damage or consequences. Richard Dawson (voiced by Michael McConnohie) is the richest man in the world since he’s the president of a huge oil conglomerate. At Richard Dawson’s 62ndbirthday party, Golgo 13 shoots and kills Richard’s son, Robert Dawson, right as Richard is about to hand over the reigns of Dawson Oil to his heir.

Golgo3

Thus begins the hunt for Golgo 13. Richard Dawson has operatives from CIA, the FBI, and the United States military at his disposal, all with one mission: the tracking down and killing of Golgo 13. During the movie, we get to see how Golgo 13 operates whether he’s assassinating a Mafia Don in Sicily or shooting en ex-Nazi SS officer in a New York City high rise. Golgo 13 spends his time between missions bedding beautiful women, drinking liquor, and smoking Parliaments. Golgo 13 also has allies that supply him with information and equipment to aid his assassinations.

Golgo2

Dawson’s subordinates attempt to kill Golgo 13 time and again, only to have him escape or worse, actually retaliate and waste them. Duke Togo is an expert and sniping and close combat. Dawson’s thirst for revenge grows with each failure. He sacrifices what’s left of his family on this mad quest for vengeance, teaching his eight year-old granddaughter how to shoot a handgun so she’ll have a chance to assassinate Golgo 13 when the time is right. He also employs demented psychopaths in his mission to destroy Golgo 13.

One such psychopath is the Snake, a gangly man with serpent like eyes and teeth that resemble snake fangs. The Snake agrees to help Dawson if he’s allowed to have his way with Dawson’s daughter-in-law. Dawson reluctantly agrees, locking her in a room with the Snake, and a disturbing scene follows. The Snake manages to kills some of Golgo 13’s allies, sinking his blades into this one guy’s torso causing him to shower the room with blood.

Golgo4

Richard Dawson convinces the CIA to release a couple of death row inmates known as Gold and Silver, former assassins driven insane after being dropped in a jungle in South America with no provisions and no weapons. They survived, slaughtering 2,000 guerilla fighters, but were driven insane by the experience. The CIA doesn’t like this idea, telling Dawson this doesn’t serve the public interest like when he ordered the CIA to assassinate President Kennedy.

Eventually, this all leads to a showdown with Dawson Tower, with Golgo 13 fighting off demented assassins while avoiding gunfire from several attack helicopters. This is a movie about evil people doing terrible things to one another. By the way, I learned years later that Takeo Saito, the creator of Golgo13, actually wrote James Bond comics for Japanese audiences. This makes me wonder if Takeo Saito saw James Bond as an assassin, no better than a man like Duke Togo.


Jeffrey Shuster 3Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

 

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #11: Two Times

13 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

≈ 1 Comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #11 by Drew Barth

Two Times

First issues are notoriously difficult to get just right. Those first moments of a comic’s life need to set up characters, setting, story, and a whole hook to keep readers interested for the next month’s issue. Writing these first issues is laborious because there are so many things a creator wants to get out into the world as quickly as possible to show readers what the series is going to be about but they just don’t have the time and space.

Luckily, second issues exist. But second issues are just as difficult as firsts, for different reasons. Creators have introduced small pieces of what will comprise the larger story, but the job of the second issue is to start the heavy lifting process for a series. Characters and story aren’t being introduced anymore—these aspects are being given more purpose to the larger narrative the creators are attempting to make. A good second issue is going to show a reader what direction the story is going and what the larger ideas are for the series.

The best way to really look at the strengths of second issues is to look at two masters of the craft who have written dozens of second issues between them: Kelly Sue DeConnick and Warren Ellis. DeConnick’s name may sound familiar as she and a host of artists are responsible for the rebooting and subsequent explosion in popularity of the character Carol Danvers—Captain Marvel. This rebooting has subsequently led to the Captain Marvel film released last week. But what was it about their series in particular that resonated so much with readers? Let’s look at the opening page from Captain Marvel #2:

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From this first page we’re being introduced to a different kind of Carol Danvers. We had seen a bit of this new characterization from the first issue—introducing her new costume and powers as well as setting up her identity conflict—but already in the second issue we’re getting her out of costume and on the ground. And it’s in this second issue that we’re getting more into the heart of what makes DeConnick’s run on Captain Marvel so iconic and special to readers: its focus on the connection between women. For the longest time, Danvers was defined by her association with the previous Captain Marvel—the alien Mar-Vell. And while DeConnick still utilizes that aspect of Danvers’ past, she works on forging a new future for Captain Marvel.

What helps to make this second issue so important to the rest of DeConnick’s run is the setting up of a nebulous timeline. After flying the plane pictured above, Danvers is transported to the past, an island in the middle of World War II specifically. The initial set-up for time travel is utilized as a way for Danvers to relive portions of the past, specifically in connection to Mar-Vell and Helen Cobb, the owner of the above plane. But why relive the past? Because of Danvers’ questions of identity and who she is now as a hero. DeConnick lays down the groundwork for what her initial character arc for Captain Marvel will be and that’s what makes this second issue so strong.

Now we move to NextWave, one of the only series I can think of with a dedicated theme song. Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen bring us a series that is a pure distillation of superhero fiction: punches, explosions, conspiracy, and a team made of various Marvel misfits. It’s also one of the funniest series of comics to be released by a major publisher. NextWave is one of those series that was iconic from its first issue, but only cemented that status further with the second. Kieron Gillen says “We all live in the shadow of NextWave” and it’s hard not to agree with him.

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And how can you not love a series that starts its second issue with Fin Fang Foom in little purple shorts? How can you also not love a series with two-issue arcs that keep its pace and story quick and fresh? The first issue of NextWave sets everything up for the reader: the Beyond Corporation creates the Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort (H.A.T.E.) and recruits a group of C-tier Marvel heroes to fight evil around the world. But the Beyond Corporation is actually just a terrorist organization in disguise that uses its corporate facade as a means of finding and testing biological weapons of mass destruction. One of those weapons is Fin Fang Foom. No spoilers here: everything mentioned above is in the first issue.

The second issue is where we get to the heart of what Ellis and Immonen’s plans for NextWave: punches and explosions. Issue two is a perfect distillation of what Ellis refers to as “widescreen comics” in both its pace and its sense of action. The major element of issue two, the fight with Fin Fang Foom, is massive, loud, gregarious, and over at the end of the issue. And that pace is perfect for widescreen comics. NextWave wasn’t a major event book even though it was happening at the same time as Marvel’s massive cross-over event, Civil War. And as a result of that, NextWave could do whatever it wanted with its own space in the Marvel universe. We’re given a hint of that in the first issue, but the second cements the series completely as this weird off-shoot that takes superhero fiction in its silliest direction. That’s why the second issue of NextWave is so iconic and indicative of the series as a whole: this issue cuts out everything but the action while remaining tongue-in-cheek about that action. It is a series that knows it’s ridiculous and embraces that ridiculousness at every moment.

Second issues are easily one of the hardest things about writing comics due to what they have to accomplish for a reader: maintain interest, reveal just a bit more about the story, and give the reader some satisfaction for staying beyond the first issue. Whether it’s setting up the groundwork for more of the story, giving us important character moments, or just showing us the pace the series is going to take, the above mentioned second issues helped to cement their series as great pieces of comic fiction.

Get excited. It’s time for seconds.


drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 357: Mark Blake!

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Biography, Episode, Music

≈ 2 Comments

Episode 357 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 talk to music writer Mark Blake about his new biography of Peter Grant, the man who empowered Led Zeppelin to become the most popular rock band of all time.

Mark Blake

Photo by Ross Halfin.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Bring it On Home

NOTES

I will be at AWP. Leave a comment if you are attending and would like a TDO meet and greet.

AWP Panel


Episode 357 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 #264: Lily C.A.T.

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

The Curator of Schlock #264 by Jeff Shuster

Lily C.A.T.

Not for kids. 

Streamline Pictures was instrumental in bringing state of the art Japanese animation to the United States back in the early 90s. It wasn’t marketed as anime like it is now. There was no existing audience for Japanese animation like there is today. A man named Carl Macek brought features stateside for distribution under his Streamline Pictures label. These features were often dubbed in English and released on videocassette. On cassette cases you’d often find a “NOT FOR KIDS” sticker fixed to the box featuring a caricature of a confused, freckle-faced young boy. These stickers always disturbed me, my mind conjuring images of young children being irrevocably scarred by witnessing animated sex and violence. NOT FOR KIDS stickers also elicited my feelings of guilt over not watching something more wholesome, but I couldn’t turn away from the exotic nature of these curiosities from Japan.

Lily1

Which brings us to tonight’s feature, 1987’s Lily C.A.T. from director Hisayuki Toriumi. How does this film earn the “NOT FOR KIDS” label? Well, it’s basically an Alien knockoff with a little bit of John Carpenter’s The Thing thrown in. And we can forgive the movie for this since Alien basically ripped off It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The movie begins with members of the Sincam corporation getting ready for cryostasis aboard the starship, the Saides. Sincam employs people from all over the world. The crews mission is scope out some planet that’s twenty light years away, meaning the crew will be away from Earth for about forty years.

Lily2

That’s a long time. Heck. If you do two missions, that will be eighty years. Think about all that could change. You’ll come back to Earth, ask for a cool, refreshing Coca-Cola Classic only to discover that New Coke has made a triumphant comeback. Talk about a waking nightmare.

Lily4

Crewmembers have different reasons for wanting to leave the Earth for forty years. One blonde-haired jock type wants to use the money he earns from the trip to do some serious damage when he gets back while he’s still young enough to do some serious damage. Nancy Strauch (voiced by Julie Maddalena), the daughter of the President of the Sincam corporation, is taking the journey so she can get revenge on the best friend that stole her boyfriend. She’ll show up back on Earth all young and pretty when her friend is old and wrinkly. I don’t think Nancy thought this out. Captain Mike Hamilton (voiced by Mike Reynolds) keeps going on these trips because he’s too out of step with the times whenever he comes back to Earth.

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There are also a couple of “time jumpers” mixed in with the regular crew. Time jumpers are fugitives that board starships hoping to hide out from the law for forty years. What else? There’s an alien bacterium absorbing members of the crew into a monstrous mass so that’s creepy. There’s also an evil robot sent by the corporation that’s disguised as a cat. So the crew of the Saides has a lot to worry about. Will they survive? I’m sure at least one of them will. That’s how these Alien movies tend to go.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

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

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Recent Posts

  • Episode 462: Denise Duhamel!
  • The Curator of Schlock #345: Pulp
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #112: I’m Talking About Isolation
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19: Silica Gel’s May Day
  • The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #26

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