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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: August 2019

Episode 382: Rick Moody!

31 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Memoir, Postmodernism

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Dante, rick moody, Samuel Beckett, The Four Fingers of Death, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony

Episode 382 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Rick Moody about his new book, The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Hope and Struggle in Matrimony.

Rick Moody by Laurel Nakadate

Photo by Laurel Nakadate

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Long AccomplishmentThe Black VeilThe Four Fingers of DeathBeckett TrilogyBeckett MurphyDream of Fair to Middling Women

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Learn more about the Kerouac Project of Orlando here.

Kerouac-Color-CMYK-HiRes

If you are in Orlando on September 7th, come join the Kerouac Project in welcoming its fall 2019 resident, Chelsey Clammer, with a potluck dinner.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 382 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream.

The Curator of Schlock #288: Delirium

30 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Delirium, Giallo, Lamberto Bava, Serena Grandi

The Curator of Schlock #288 by Jeff Shuster

Delirium

That will be the title of my memoir. 

Week Five of Giallo Month here at The Museum of Schlock. What do you want me to say? I’m all gialloed out this point.

But I will persevere.

It’s usually around this point that I tell myself I will never do another Giallo Month. Of course, this is a lie. All it will take is for The House With the Laughing Windows or The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh to show up on streaming or on Blu-ray and I’ll be putty in Edwige Fenech’s hands again.

In fact, if Severin Films give them the royal treatment like All the Colors of the Dark, I’ll be a very happy man. That one came with a soundtrack CD.

Yes, I listen to Giallo soundtracks. Don’t make fun.

Tonight’s movie, Delirium, features tracks by Simon Boswell. He used to work with The Sex Pistols and Echo and the Bunnymen. Maybe you’ve heard of those bands.

Delirium1

1987’s Delirium from director Lamberto Bava is interesting to watch since I’m more used to watching Gialli from the 70s, but the Italian movie industry kept moving along until it fell on hard times in the early 90s. Anyway, the movie begins and we’re treated to a barrage of synth rock and photos of naked ladies. The movie stars Serena Grandi as Gloria, a fierce and beautiful young woman who happens to run a very popular men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazine called Pussycat. Gloria may have been a prostitute prior to marrying her late husband, the owner of the magazine. I’m assuming he was a Hugh Hefner type whose bum ticker finally tocked itself out.

Gloria would seem to have it all: a talented staff of photographers and models, a big fancy mansion, and a teenage paraplegic neighbor named Mark who makes obscene phone calls.

Delirium4

But this wouldn’t be a Giallo without a little bit of murder. One night, one of Gloria’s models, Kim, gets stabbed in the stomach with a pitchfork and falls into Gloria’s swimming pool. However, the next morning, no body is found. Turns out the killer dumped Kim’s mutilated body into a dumpster, but not before taking photos of her corpse in front of a blown up photo of Gloria.

Delirium2

In a later scene, the killer is dressed in a beekeeper’s suit. The killer seals off the doors and windows in this one model’s house, into which he releases a torrent of bees. Hundreds of bees sting the naked model as she’s drying herself off from a shower. To add insult to injury, the killer squirts honey into her hair.

Delirium3

More murders happen. The killer is obsessed with Gloria. He stalks her in an empty department store, killing her brother and his girlfriend who were giving her an after hours tour. Gloria swears she heard a woman’s voice taunting her, but the police are zeroing in on a male suspect, Tony, the photographer. He gets run over by a car before police can question him, but they consider the case closed after that.

Or is it?

Here’s an interesting tidbit. Serena Grandi is known as the Dolly Parton of Italy. This is odd in that she never sang country music.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff 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 #33: No One’s Left

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #33 by Drew Barth

No One’s Left

I’ve talked about shonen manga a few times on here—both positively and negatively—but it’s hard to overstate the influence shonen as a genre has had on western comics. Many creators have talked about their love for the genre as younger kids watching Dragonball orNaruto and inevitably being drawn further into manga as a whole. And it’s not hard to see why. With its fast-paced action taking up whole pages combined with impeccable characters, shonen series can feel almost like a precursor to the wide-screen comics of the early 2000s. Recently, though, Dark Horse have released a series that is a pure distillation of the intersection where shonen manga and western superhero comics meet: Aubrey Sitterson and Fico Ossio’s No One Left to Fight.

no1

 From the first cover alone we can already see the explosion of color and influence all over the place. Our red-clad protagonist, Vale, with his large beaded necklace that already draws on many interpretations of Sun Wukong of Journey to the West—one of the main influences on the creation of Dragonball’s Goku—and the goggles on his forehead that hearken to Naruto’s first design in his titular manga. We also have Timor, the blue rival of Vale, and his wife Krysta to complete the spectrum of protagonists. They’re naively optimistic, bitterly hotheaded, and create a trichotomy that calls to mind, again, series like Dragonball and Narutoas well as the iconic trio of DC heroes like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. And with a tagline like “The comic you always wanted!” Sitterson and Ossio know exactly what kind of series they’ve created and want the readers to know what kind of fun they can have here.

No One Left to Fight is more than just the sum of its influences. As a series, it goes to places many of the more iconic shonen series never go: beyond the earth-saving final fight. Vale is that protagonist who saved the world. Now what else is there to do?

no2

The story starts with Vale, Timor, and Krysta going back to the site of Vale’s grandest moment because Vale doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore. He’s a wanderer. The first two issues show small glimpses of where the story is going to go, but the story has yet to concretize. This uncertainty can open up the story to a great deal of darker side paths to explore the futility of the fight and the place of the hero in the world. And yet the story doesn’t appear to choose those paths. Vale as a character maintains that continual positivity that has become a staple of many shonen protagonists—even in the most perilous of situations does that grin of “everything will be okay” maintain.

no3

As a new comic series, No One Left to Fight is refreshing in its sincerity. Sitterson and Ossio are acutely aware of their influences without ever putting down the campiness of the past. Even when looking at the colorful brightness of the world or the “The comic you always wanted!” tagline, the series never comes off as doing everything as a joke. Even with all of the work of the past behind it, No One Left to Fight is still a series pointed toward the future.

Get excited. Punch more.


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.

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #13: Palm’s Rock Island

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Lost Chords & Serenades Divine, Music

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Palm, Rock Island

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #13 by Stephen McClurg

Palm: Rock Island (2018)

A something in a summer’s noon –
A depth – an Azure – a perfume –

~Emily Dickinson

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

~Anon., “Summer Is I-cumin In”

Palm’s Rock Island conjures an aura of summer, from the sharpest July light to the dimming of vacation’s last rays. The music is vibrant, partially because of the vocalists using higher registers and partially due to bright guitar tones. Despite being described as experimental or post-rock, there is a commitment on Rock Island to vocal melody, reminiscent of Lush’s floating, silvery vocals, and sometimes even Surf’s Up-era Beach Boys.

Palm Rock Island

At odds with this melodic catchiness is Palm’s approach to rhythm. A recurring compositional element on the record is a battery of stuttering rhythms and syncopations, several so severe they sound like skips or loops. Because they are performed, they don’t register like electronic or mechanical repetition, but feel like an organic jab-and-stammer. One of the ways they achieve this sound is by using slow strums, sounding one string at a time, rather than playing full chords, an effect emphasized by a kind of hyper-chorus effect that frequently sounds like steel drum triggers to me. It’s like a steak knife in the honey. The bass sometimes shifts to upbeats, rather than the traditional downbeats in a rock band. While it’s a technique common in funk (Larry Graham is a master), Palm uses it to disrupt anticipations rather than groove.

Other rhythmic approaches include polyrhythms. I regularly hear parts in three played over rhythms in two or four. On some tracks, rather than lock in on a riff, the band will play a musical statement across multiple instruments. For example, in “Forced Hand,” a musical phrase starts on guitar, continues on drums, and ends on bass. Some first-time listeners may find these approaches jarring, but after a few listens, the songs are as hummable as any radio pop.

The lyrics, often about relationships or lost loves, are cryptic, but not wholly abstract. 

The story in “Pearly” feels just outside of comprehension, but shimmers with vague dread. The song is about a love and a vow, but it’s unclear what kind of love and what kind of vow. 

The first verse ends with “My own rules/Are always best when broken” and leads into the commitment or warning of the chorus: “I want nothing but the best for us.” The end of the song turns, and makes the direction of the danger ambiguous. Someone “enduring a vow” sounds unpleasant and recasts the “I want nothing but the best for us” line:

In a void
You put a lock on the door
But you endure
A vow

A vow to stop at nothing
I want nothing but the best for us

The lyrics are tinged with obsession, while the music ripples with bright elements like a vocal choir sample or trigger saying “Ahhh!,” chorus effeects, and handclaps. The song feels like horror in daylight as it bleeds away, slowing, then staggering to silence. 

“Composite” features the aforementioned strumming effect, yet bounces in ways reminiscent of late-’60s Beach Boys or yacht rock. The “composite” in the lyrics–“Let me put the pieces back in place”–could be referring to a relationship or the world at large. Lyrics like “Fake a nap to breathe in for a while” capture that kind of peculiar dread about the unpeculiar, an amorphous doubt on a sunny Saturday. 

“Composite” also describes the song’s structure. For example, the last “verse” is really a composite of various song elements. Many of the songs on Rock Island play with verse-chorus-verse structure, but bend and alter it, often by having one or two different bridges or alternate, sometimes intertwining, sections.

While “Dog Milk” and “Color Code” are two favorites, I keep coming back to “Heavy Lifting.” And though the songs may have little to do with each other, I keep pairing it in my mind with the Talking Heads’ track “The Book I Read.” Both songs take quotidian objects and events, but say so much with that simplicity. “The book I read was in your eyes” has been a line that has stayed with me since I first heard it. Similarly, “Heavy Lifting” has lines like “Go out and let the cat in/Work out a plan to retire” or “You want more/Well, so do I (conditioned?) / The last one / I’ll ask you for.” Half of the song is a gorgeous, hypnotic intertwining of mostly instrumental parts. It reminds me of the “Na na na na” part of “The Book I Read” or the last third of “Found a Job,” David Byrne’s short instrumental section written as a tribute to Steve Reich–or at least meant to emulate some of Reich’s compositional techniques. These are short, meditative musical gifts big enough to live in.

While the lyrical content is more in line with the rest of the album, “Swimmer” sounds like the Residents covering “Kokomo.” It combines lyrics like “They’ll bend your eye’s ‘til all you can see is the sunshine” with electronic horn and percussion sounds that echo Residential soundscapes. 

Sometimes instrumentals feel out of place on rock/pop records, like unfinished songs. On Rock Island, the instrumentals contribute to the whole. The instrumental track “20664” opens with Eno-esque buzzing and synth before uneven hip hop electronic drums or drum triggers–that echo the opening of the album– take over the track. “Theme from Rock Island” features jangly guitars under a theme built on melodica or keyboard violin–or possibly triggers meant to sound like that. Either way, they have a breathy quality and the melodic sense of other vocal songs on the record.

Rock Island approaches at slants and angles that make it evocative, but hard to classify. Palm satisfyingly sounds like a coherent, unique whole, and not a solo project in waiting. It will be interesting to hear where they go next.

You can listen to and order Rock Island on Palm’s Bandcamp page. 


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.

Buzzed Books #90: Enchantée

27 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Fantasy

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Gita Trelease's Enchantéé, JD Langert

Buzzed Books #90 by JD Langert

Gita Trelease’s Enchantée

Diving into the world of Gita Trelease’s Enchantée will bewitch you into wanting more, but fade over time like the magic of Camille’s dress.

Gita Trelease's Enchantéé

Set in Paris, 1789, on the brink of the French Revolution, the story follows Camille Durbonne as she tries to navigate a world of thieves, revolutionaries, and magicians. After losing her parents to smallpox, it falls upon her to care for her sickly younger sister with no resources or help. Her one blessing, as well as curse, is her magic. With it, she can transform objects for a limited time, but the cost is her very life force. Driven to desperation after her abusive brother steals the last of their money, she uses forbidden magic to sneak into the treacherous Palace of Versailles. There, she gambles to change her fate, unaware of the darker games being played.

With a premise like that, I expected to be served a tale fit for a queen. And, for a while, Enchantée delivered. Within a dozen pages, I’d already been introduced to numerous world conflicts (the impending revolution, apathy of the queen for her starving subjects, recent famine) as well as problems closer to Camille’s own heart (her sick and worldly-naive sister, poverty, dead parents, life-sucking magic, and a knife-wielding psychopath for a brother). This combined with a dynamic first meeting with the mixed-blood love interest, Lazare, via runaway air balloon and dark warnings from her fellow gambler/magician, Chandon, I anticipated a delicious feast of conflict and peril. Yet… like the cake, it seems that was a lie.

Or at least, another sleight of hand from Camille herself. Not to say that the story was bad at any point, but lackluster as it fumbled with its own potential. What harmed Enchantée the most was the tradeoff of concrete goals and action for leisurely thought and the contemplation of past events. After solving Camille’s initial desire of getting enough money for rent, the story feels lost as for what to do next. While there would be references to a revolution brewing, Sèguin being a dark magician, and the looming threat of her brother, Camille seems rather unaffected. Sure, she was aware and concerned, but did very little to either deal or learn more about said issues. While I cannot fault Trelease for not putting Camille at the forefront of the French Revolution (no matter how that idea is set up with her father being a former revolutionary), there is still the expectation that if a problem is introduced in the story, the main character will play a role in trying to solve it. This is possible to do even without drastically changing history.

However, Camille doesn’t seem to play much of a role in anything. As charming as gambling aristocrats out of their money and playing hide-n-seek in the gardens is for hundreds of pages, it doesn’t scream an active or suspenseful storyline. Camille reveals her heroic intentions with, “I don’t know, but something is happening, Sophie. Perhaps something great, but perhaps something terrible. If we stay in Paris, and I start a press, I can do my part in telling the truth about it” (423). However, she remains on the edge of decision long enough for it to resolve before she does anything. While danger does eventually strike, it comes from a rather uninspired source and resolves too quickly with Camille benefiting from the conflict. Me personally, I stand by Vladimir Nabokov’s theory that “the writer’s job is to get the main character up a tree and throw rocks at them” rather than the way Trelease tosses vague threats at Camille.

The writing style both helped and harmed this impression. While wonderful in terms of recreating a vivid Paris during this time period, character thought and dialogue fell short on many occasions. Particularly with the main antagonist. “You and I–together we will rise. Victorious. We will be the court’s second monarchs, the King and Queen of Magic” (383). Given that this is the apparent reveal of the villain’s plans and motivations, it felt underwhelming and lacking in depth. Given Camille’s own indecisive sentiments, the antagonist’s lack of the solid plan further decreased the impact of the story.

However, there were times the writing hit all the right notes. “What if she told him her fingernails used to be like his? Would he believe her, in her silk dress and clean hands? It seemed like another life” (321). Given the gritty depth of hopelessness Camille felt earlier in the story, the reader is able to immediately sympathize with the street urchin while also feeling the strange dissonance of Camille’s new status. Yet, even here, I would want Camille to do something to honor that person she used to be instead of just lamenting how much she’s changed.

For all it that could be improved, I would still recommend Enchantée to anyone with a love for France, history, and empathetic characters. Many novels that deal with revolution often frame it with one side being irrevocably good and the other undeniable evil. Trelease strikes a unique balance as she guides Camille to care for the aristocrats she befriends as their glass houses shatter around them while keeping her own revolutionary beliefs. While I wish Camille hadn’t permanently sat on the fence as to what to do, her open-mindedness and compassion in spite of her bitter life was as refreshing as it was enlightening.


JD Langert Author Photo

JD Langert is pursuing her MFA in Genre Fiction at Western Colorado University. With interests in both screenwriting and novels, she’s been published in John Hopkins Imagine Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, and other publications. Feel free to visit her website here.

Episode 381: Deirdre Coyle!

24 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Fantasy, Magic Realism

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Deirdre Coyle, This Mortal Coyle

Episode 381 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or right-click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with the fiction writer and essayist Deirdre Coyle about why fantasy can be more real than realism, the video game experience that happens inside our minds, and the joys of cutting extraneous words from manuscripts.

Deirdre Coyle Farewell Reading

Deirdre Coyle’s farewell reading at the Kerouac Project, August 17, 2019.

Deirdre Coyle Wizard

A witch versus the wizard of Wor. Photo by John King.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Read Deirdre’s wonderful video game blog, This Mortal Coyle, at Unwinnable, or her short stories “Stakes” and “How to Vomit Living Creatures.”

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Learn more about the Kerouac Project of Orlando here.

Kerouac-Color-CMYK-HiRes

If you are in Orlando on September 7th, come join the Kerouac Project in welcoming its fall 2019 resident, Chelsey Clammer, with a potluck dinner.

Check out my alcoholic, literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

RIP, AC for TDO’s Secret HQ.

RIP AC.JPG


Episode 381 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or right-click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #287: Death Laid an Egg

23 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Death Laid an Egg, Ewa Aulin, Giallo, Gina Lollobrigida

The Curator of Schlock #287 by Jeff Shuster

Death Laid an Egg

So did the director.

Week 4 of Giallo Month is here. Are you entertained? Did you know that over 400 gialli were made over there in Italy? Do you think I’m getting through all of them in this lifetime? I don’t think so. And you’d better believe that I’m going to try to watch as many of these through streaming services. But the trouble with services like Amazon Prime is that they giveth and taketh away. I planned to review Torso this month, but it’s no longer available. I planned on reviewing Eye in the Labyrinth this month, but every time I click on it to play, no dice. But never fear, I’ve found a replacement.

egg1

Tonight’s movie is 1968’s Death Laid an Eggfrom director Giulio Questi. If you ever wanted to spend ninety minutes in an automated chicken farm, then this is the movie for you!

Oh, man. I’ve got about three hundred and fifty more words to go.

How did I get here?

I am not finding myself in my beautiful house with my beautiful wife. Instead, I find myself watching a late 60s Italian poultry fetish movie at two in the morning. I can get through this. I can do it.

Death Laid an Egg starts out with a man named Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant) meeting up with a woman in a hotel room. The woman is a prostitute and Marco mustn’t like prostitutes since he starts slicing her up with a straight razor. Later, Marco goes into an office building to figure out the best way to advertise chickens. You see, Marco co-manages a chicken farm with his sexy wife, Anna (Gina Lollobrigida). The chicken farm was recently automated which resulted in the plant workers being let go from their jobs.

egg2

Anna and Marco live an idyllic life on the chicken farm. They have a palatial estate, a fancy swimming pool, and separate beds to sleep in so they don’t hog each other’s covers at night. Anna also let her down-on-her luck cousin, Gabri (Ewa Aulin), stay with them. Gabri happens to be a young, pretty blonde woman and attracts the attention of Marco. The two begin having an affair. Marco wants to run away with her, start his life over with her, but Gabri refuses.

egg4

Meanwhile, Anna is obsessed with breeding the perfect chicken. She has bioengineers working to achieve this. Eventually, chickens are hatched that have no heads or wings, but are full of meat with few bones. Marco considers them an abomination. Anna thinks they are the chicken of tomorrow and can’t wait to showcase them before the Poultry Commission, but Marco destroys them before she gets the chance. This puts Marco in hot water with the Poultry Commission. You could say his goose is cooked.

egg3

What am I watching here? I want to see horrific murders being committed by a psychopath with black gloves, trench coat, and fedora. I don’t want a diatribe on the dehumanizing effects of automation.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the hankering for some chicken salad.


Jeffrey Shuster 4

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.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #32: Fantasy House Party

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

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

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #32 by Drew Barth

Fantasy House Party

With the recent publication of DIE #6, I was reminded of another series that I had written about previously: Coda. With its examination of fantasy tropes and classic D&D character classes as starting points for exploring what fantasy is and what it can be, Coda, and its creative team of Si Spurrier and Matías Bergara, became established as one of the best fantasy comic series in quite some time. The final issue of Codacoincided the release of the first volume of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’s DIE—another series that examines fantasy, RPG classes.

cd1

Coda is like a traditional D&D game run amok with much of its magic being limited to a scarce resource, character quests proving futile, and whole warring factions undermined by the machinations of manipulative god. This would be a campaign in which every saving roll failed.

DIE uses the role playing game idea more literally, and then twists it. The characters are role-players who must inhabited the fantasy world they have ruined—almost calling back to the ruined world of Coda—and have to deal with the consequences of their teenage actions from when they were originally trapped in the game. There is also the World War I imagery throughout the series—one of Tolkien’s influences when writing about Middle-earth—even going so far as to have a hobbit-esque soldier dying in a trench as a commanding officer in gray smokes a pipe above his corpse. DIE deconstructs fantasy RPGs and their cultural DNA.

cd3.jpg

The two central figures of DIE and Coda—Ash and Hum, respectively—belong to highly verbal roles. Ash as The Dictator can speak emotions into existence, and Hum the Bard composes stories and ballads that make magic. Ash and Hum deal almost exclusively in deception through most of their series, relying on their words as a means of defense and eschewing responsibility for their impact. Interestingly, Gillen and Spurrier chose these untrustworthy characters as narrators for both series. How much of either story is actually happening, and how much is the manipulative discourse of our narrators? For Coda, we ultimately know that the majority of Hum’s narration is utter lies, no matter how much Hum wishes they were true. As for Ash of DIE, such dishonesty would clash with the themes of DIE at the moment. Then again, we’ll have to wait to see how the rest of the story goes.

cd2-2

DIE and Coda are both series that are masterful in kicking away our genre expectations. All of those subversions come with having a fine-tuned, fundamental understanding of what makes fantasy and role-playing compelling. Through this knowledge, some truly spectacular comics are able to emerge.

Commitment to creation and character drives these stories forward. When we have creators like Gillen and Hans and Spurrier and Bergara, the medium of comics gets better. When creators recast old forms for something new, we get stories that show us how far fantasy and comics can be pushed when given that right amount of thought and insight. Comics need to be pushed forward. DIE and Coda push hard.

Get excited. Play the game.


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 380: Binnie Kirshenbaum!

17 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

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Episode 380 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or right-click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with the novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum about finding one’s voice, finding the right point-of-view, avoiding boredom, and the occasional hell of marketing literature.

Binnie Kirshenbaum

Photo by Tina Boyadjieva.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Rabbits for FoodThe Scenic Route

A Disturbance on One Place.pngOn Mermaid Avenue

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Art Spiegelman chose not to censor his essay on Marvel Comics, in which he likens the president to the Red Skull. Instead, he gave the essay to The Guardian.

Check out my alcoholic, literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 380 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or right-click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #286: Weekend Murders

16 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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Tags

Giallo, Grantchester, Masterpiece Mystery, Michele Lupo, The Weekend Murders

The Curator of Schlock #286 by Jeff Shuster

Weekend Murders

What are you doing this weekend?

Anyone catch the latest season of Grantchester, the gem of Masterpiece Mystery on PBS? This season was a tsunami of mystery and heartache. Reverend Sidney Chambers fell in love with a woman of color visiting from the American South during the Civil Rights movement.  He moved to America to be with her. Leonard was struggling with his role of curate while trying to keep his homosexuality a secret. DI Geordie had to contend with his wife working as a sales associate at a fancy new department store in town. Oh, and Geordie’s wife ends up getting sexually harassed by a coworker resembling Orson Welles. And let’s not forget about new vicar of Grantchester, Will Davenport, a dashing young man with his own dark secrets. But I’m wasting my time, aren’t I? None of you want to hear me talk about fine British television. Such is my lot in life.

Weekend2

This week’s Giallo is 1970’s The Weekend Murders from director Michele Lupo. Like Grantchester, The Weekend Murders takes its cues from the British cozy, the quaint mysteries that take place in the country as opposed to the big city. Sure, a murder or two may take place, but at least the surroundings are pleasant. The movie begins with an English bobby named Sgt. Aloisius Thorpe (Gastone Moschin) cycling through the English village of Somerleyton. He’s a rather goofy looking chap, complete with a bobby mustache and big teeth. He looks like the kind of bobby they make lamps out of.

bobby

Anyway, Sgt. Thorpe rides through town on his bicycle. He rides up next to a milk truck, pops one of the bottles open, drinks his fill, and pays the driver. I’ve never seen that in a movie. He then travels to a golf course where some well-to-do members of the gentry are enjoying a game until one of them finds a hand sticking up out of the sand trap. Someone’s been murdered! The movie then sets us back a couple of days where we’re introduced to these well-to-do members of the gentry, showing up at a rich estate to find out about their inheritance. The old geezer bequeaths his prized flowers to Sgt. Thorpe, who openly weeps to the disgust of various playboys, snobs, and a prodigal daughter or two. Everyone else gets nothing with the exception of the old geezer’s niece, Barbara (Anna Moffo), who inherits the estate.

Of course, if Barbara were to die, the estate with be divided evenly among the remaining family members. Naturally, bodies start showing up. I think the first is the family butler, ruling him out as a murder suspect. I think someone points that out in the movie, so it’s not that funny.

Scotland Yard sends over their finest detective, Inspector Grey (Lance Percival), to solve the case. The rest of the movie shows off the sublime incompetence of Detective Grey counterbalanced with surprising ingenuity of Sgt. Thorpe. Together they’ll get to the bottom of the murders. This is an odd one, an Giallo movie rife with English stereotypes, but I enjoyed it … though not as much as Grantchester.

The Weekend Murders is streaming on Amazon Prime.



Jeffrey Shuster 3

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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