• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: May 2020

Episode 422: Michael Merriam!

30 Saturday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Anime, Episode, Film, Video Games

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 422 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Michael Merriam

This week, Michael Merriam and I discuss the 2010 cult film, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and in this conversation we address the classic structure of film; the importance of the perfect flaw for a protagonist and antagonist; Joseph Campbell (naturally); the Bible; why Reality Bites bites; video games and the psychological logic of true boss fights; the abundance of super hero actors in this film; comic book adaptations; tropes in anime; and how comedies can house tales with deeply serious content, for those who can look past the jokes.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Scott Pilgrm poster


 

NOTES on the film

The Fights

  1. Matthew Patel (Easy fight)
  2. Lucas Lee (Has to get Lucas to defeat himself skating)
  3. Todd Ingram/Envy Adams (Tricks Todd into drinking milk)
  4. Roxy Richter (Ramona uses Scott as a fight puppet)
  5. Kyle and Ken Katayanagi (Sex Bob-omb creates a more powerful music avatar)
  6. Gideon (Scott dies, is resurrected)
  7. Gideon II (Scott heals his relationships with Kim, Knives, and Ramona, and Scott and Knives enact a 2-player fight to beat Gideon)

The Turning Point Choices (film structure)

  1. Scott thanks Ramona for letting him sleep in her bed.
  2. Scott breaks up with Knives
  3. Scott agrees to help Sex Bob-Omb open for The Clash at Demonhead (a gig shared with Scott’s ex-girlfriend).
  4. Scott shows up to fight Gideon for Ramona, even though she isn’t his girlfriend anymore.
  5. Scott chooses to fight Gideon, for himself (to prove he no longer has Gideon’s flaws)

 

The Superhero Actors

  • Lucas Lee is played by Chris Evans (Johnny Storm before SP, and Captain America after SP)
  • Envy Adams is played by Brie Larson (Captain Marvel after SP)
  • Todd Ingram is played by Brandon Routh (who played Superman before SP)
  • The Vegan Police Executioner is played by Thomas Jane (who played The Punisher before SP)

The Hero’s Journey

Departure

1 The Call to Adventure—The Dream of the Girl (Ironically, not an idealized girl)

2 Refusal of the Call—Deleting Matthew Pattel’s Email (Bo-ring.)

3 Meeting the Mentor—Wallace makes him break up with Knives, and tells him to fight! Comeau (who knows everybody) also assists in giving Scott intel on Ramona

4 Crossing the First Threshold—Julie tells Scott not to hit on Ramona.

5 Belly of the Whale—facing Lucas Lee and his doubles. (Scott faces setbacks, loses Ramona.)


Initiation

1 The Road of Trials— opening for The Clash at Demonhead, fighting Todd.

2 The Meeting with the Goddess—Dealing with Envy Adams, Roxy Richter, and Ramona—outgrows Envy.

3 The Woman As Temptress—Scott acts like such a jerk that Ramona breaks up with him (Scott wants a simple woman).

4 Atonement with the Father/Abyss—Faces Gideon, who holds all the power.

5 Apotheosis—Scott dies, but gains new understanding, and is resurrected (uses extra life).

6 The Ultimate Boon—Sword of self-respect, reconciliation between Knives and Ramona, he is empowered to defeat Gideon

Return

1 Refusal of the Return

2 The Magic Flight—Scott must face off with NegaScott (The equivalent of an angry god.)

3 Rescue from Without

4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold—Knives helps him understand his new place in the world.

5 Master of Two Worlds—Scott lets Ramona go, and accepts Knives’ forgiveness and friendship

6 Freedom to Live—Scott tries again with Ramona, but living in the moment instead of trying to recreate the dream.



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.

Consider donating to City Lights Books to sustain it and/or buying a book online from Powells.

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

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 422 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

The Curator of Schlock #322: Rec 4

29 Friday May 2020

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

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #322 by Jeff Shuster

Rec 4: Apocalypse

Do not watch movies about quarantine during quarantine!

It’s time. The Florida government has given the okay for museums to open up as long as they keep to fifty percent capacity. Or is it twenty-five percent capacity? I’m not going to worry about the little details. You were taking a health risk coming into The Museum of Schlock even before COVID-19. I’m out of beans, the cabin is getting flooded, and there’s a gator giving me the evil eye. It’s time to go home.

Rec4a

Tonight’s movie is 2014’s Rec 4: Apocalypse from Jaume Balagueró. Naturally, we begin right where Rec 2 left off. We get another group of commandos going inside the apartment complex to retrieve Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) and also to set some charges because demonically possessed zombie maniacs got no reason to live. Ángela escapes with the two surviving commandos, Lucas (Críspulo Cabezas) and Guzmán (Paco Manzanedo). These are two burly Spanish men distinguishable by the fact that Lucas has a beard and Guzmán is clean shaven. Also, Guzmán was determined to rescue Ángela while Lucas just wanted to set the charges and run.

Rec4b

The three of them wake up on a ship in the middle of the ocean. It seems that the government decided to quarantine the three of them off shore while they ran some tests, checking for signs of the virus. Oh, and there’s a surviving member of the wedding from part 3, the mother of the groom who had too much to drink at the reception and woke up on the ship. She keeps asking about her family and no one has the heart to tell her that they’re all dead.  In addition to the doctors, we’ve got a ship’s captain, a chef, an engineer, and host of assorted commandos. Oh, and there’s no way off the ship and there’s no way to contact the outside world. Did I mention that the ship is heading toward a nasty storm? I’m feeling uneasy.

Rec4c

We also have a pervy IT guy named Nic (Ismael Fritschi) who’s trying to reassemble the footage taken by the news camera in the first Rec movie. He has to do it frame by frame so it may take awhile. That’s okay. The quarantine people and the crew will soon be busy with another demonically possessed zombie maniac outbreak. The doctors decided to infect a monkey with the virus and wouldn’t you know, the critter gets loose and attacks the ship’s cook who in turn infects the dinner he serves to the crew. Maybe infecting a monkey with a demonically possessed virus wasn’t such a good idea, but what do I know? I ain’t no scientist.

Rec4d

Around this time, pervy Nic reassembles the footage and the doctors get to see the demonic parasite crawling down Ángela’s throat. They determine that she’s the host and that the demonic parasite has to be surgically removed. Ángela insists that it isn’t inside her anymore and that it found a stronger host. You get a few more twists and turns, a return of the rabid monkey, and a self-destruct sequence. Boy, am I glad that’s over with. It wasn’t such a good idea to watch four movies about quarantine while the world is quarantined. It messes with your head a little.


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 #72: Ludoctratic Dissidents

27 Wednesday May 2020

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

≈ Leave a comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #72 by Drew Barth

Ludoctratic Dissidents

I would like to, if I may, talk about the absurd. There is much in comics that can be considered absurd: sun-powered aliens, living trash, a gang leader who might be a crocodile, etc. We’ve become accustomed to oddity at its highest level—our suspension of disbelief has gone from suspended to outright expelled. These things don’t hinder our enjoyment. Having a pure stream of the ludicrous shot straight into our lives like a Harpo Marxian bottle of seltzer is always appreciated. As such, we must appreciate what Kieron Gillen, Jim Rossignol, Jeff Stokely, Tamra Bonvillain, and Clayton Cowles have provided us with their work in The Ludocrats.

lc1

The story of the Aristocrats of the Ludicrous has already had its own absurd kind of history. Gillen himself has talked about developing The Ludocrat swith Rossignol at length in his newsletter and how the kernel of the story started as far back as 2003 with the eventual series announcement happening in 2015. This would lead to a solicitation for the first issue in 2018, which came and went. Many things happened in the interim, but finally, after rumors and whispers, the first physical issue of The Ludocrat swas confirmed to be released on April 1st, 2020—this turned out to also be the first week Diamond Distributors would not be shipping comics due to COVID-19. But, this past Wednesday, May the 20th, 2020, we could finally behold the this ludicrous work that we have been craving for so long.

lc2

How is the first issue of The Ludocrats? It’s a story by Kieron Gillen and Jim Rossignol with Jeff Stokely on art, Tamra Bonvillain on colors, and Clayton Cowles on letters, so it’s going to be the best kind of fucking absurd. We begin with a blood-soaked and naked Baron Otto Von Subertan on the day a wedding is taking place in his own home while his confidant, Professor Hades Zero-K, attempts to get him to dress in something other than blood. This continual frenetic propulsion through the wedding into the reception into a massive fight is the driving energy that maintains this book. These Ludocrats revolt against the very idea of normalcy, highlighted with a wedding day decapitation, to the point that stopping to breathe may be a mortal sin. Stokely and Bonvillain’s art gives every page this electric feeling that reinforces the idea of absurdity—from the half-train Steam-Judge Grattinia Gavelstein to Casanova Quinn hidden inside a sexy dinosaur—nothing here looks or feels like any comic that’s come before it.

lc3

The Ludocrats is pure absurd, ludicrous energy and it is exactly what we needed during this quarantine and as the start of comics returning to shops. The pure joy of comics screams across each page; the love that comes from creating a world and work such as this is a physical thing in your hands that can be felt. I’ve been reading Gillen’s work since Phonogram: The Singles Club and to finally have The Ludocrats in my hand feels like touching a piece of that joy that comes from creating these comics.

Get excited. Get ludicrous.


drew-barth-mbfi

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 #15: An Interview with Tina Mozelle Braziel

26 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Lost Chords & Serenades Divine, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Stephen McClurg, Tina Mozelle Braziel

Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #15 by Stephen McClurg

Tina Mozelle Braziel is an Alabama-based poet whose first book, Known by Salt, won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. The book captures specific elements of growing up poor in the South and how one navigates life by constructing a self, a family, or a home. I talked to her about these ideas, the threads of images throughout the book, and her writing process.

0

Photos courtesy of Bang Images.

Stephen McClurg (SM): One of the elements of the book I enjoyed was its use and variety of settings: trailer porches, small office rooms, the cabin you’re building one piece at a time, the river’s edge, and even whole ecosystems.

Is this sense of place something indivisible from your thinking and process or did it happen by chasing ideas? What are your thoughts about place in poetry–in how you feel it works in your poems or in others that you like? Did you have models for these approaches?

Tina Mozelle Braziel (TMB): Recently many people on social media were discussing internal monologue or the lack of it. They seemed particularly concerned if someone didn’t have a voice in their head or running conversation made of words. Or at least that was the opinion I saw.

While I have an internal monologue, I also have this internal movie screen that plays back places I’ve been before. Often it is the landscape of a commute down county roads. Sometimes it is an interior room like the lobby of the school I attended as an exchange student in Germany or my grandmother’s kitchen. At any moment I can be in two places at once, washing dishes and driving Highway 25 between Pell City and Montevallo, for example. Place is intrinsic to my imagination and interior world.

But this isn’t just me. It seems like place is integral to poetry. Place is the essential feature for many of our poetic genres such as bucolics, greater romantic lyrics, and itineraries. Place also plays an important role in other poetic genres like georgics and ballads. No doubt this is because where we are from, where we are, and where we hope to go says so much about the individual human experience.

As for models, encountering Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s work has particularly inspired me. I became absolutely wild about “All Animals Were Once Called Dear” when I read her description of a bank housed in a trailer and of the pickup gunning its engine. Those images struck me as validation of my impulse to write the rural landscape as I knew it. I saw how the pastoral could include more than farmland, but also the rural life that I experienced: trailer parks and dammed rivers and wooded ridges.

As I wrote poems about building our house, I looked to Seamus Heaney’s work, especially “Glanmore Sonnets” and “Glanmore Revisited” as models. In fact, while I was writing those poems I did not leave home for an overnight trip without packing a Heaney collection. I was also influenced by how Claudia Emerson used images of homes and their environs to highlight personal relationships in Late Wife.

SM: You mention Heaney’s “Glanmore Sonnets.” Many of the poems felt like they may have begun as sonnets, but I may be mistaken. Several, especially towards the beginning of the book, have around fourteen lines, but don’t necessarily carry other features of the sonnet. Other than that, I mostly noticed couplets and tercets and not a lot of traditional forms, but also not anything in a free Whitmanian line. How do you approach form in your poetry?

TMB: As for form, I’m very focused on the line. I adore line breaks especially those that offer an additional meaning to the sentence. But I’ve learned that breaking every line in such a way can conceal meaning, so I try to rein myself in.

I wasn’t consciously aiming for sonnets, but I did notice early on that poems of that length are better received. Perhaps we have a sonnet-sized appetite. So that may have subconsciously influenced the length of the poems.

SM: In “Homemaking Along Lay Lake,” you write: “Made under that throng of willow flies, / made where piers hammer us to this drift of blossoms.”

The ending here captures the gruffness, maybe strength, and the difficulty of trailer park living. Words like throng, piers, and hammer provide that image. But the poem also captures a kind of tenderness and fragility of the kid playing with paper boats, albeit dipped in motor oil. This is echoed, too, in the words like willow, blossom, and later even doublewide. That last one, for all its connotations, actually sounds pleasant–I hadn’t noticed that before–maybe it’s the contrast to singlewide?

Then the pressure cooker is mentioned–well, living poor can be a pressure cooker, but also this may be the whistle for dinner, something good–home. I think “sunburnt kid” captures that dichotomy as well. The finding of home even in difficult places. Does any of that ring true to you? Could you speak about the poem and its images?

TMB: Yes! Absolutely! I’m thrilled that all of the above came through to you! The trailer park where I grew up was a magical and, to use your word, gruff place. I wanted to reveal it as having the fraught comforts of any other home.

The pressure cooker was particularly significant as an object that preserves the bounty of a particular place and time for the future. Yet, at least for me and maybe other children of the ’70s and ’80s, it is also a threatening object because they were reported to explode. When my grandmothers canned, my mother forced me to play outside so I would be out of reach of a blast of scalding water and shattered glass.

The practice of digging and spreading bulbs signified to me how even in nature some roots / homes are moved. I wanted to begin there to suggest the traditional idea of home as being stationary or a trailer being mobile may be too narrow or limiting.

The phrase “going to the house” was the impetus of the poem. Growing up I often heard many family members and neighbors who lived in trailers say it. It had struck me as odd because I was in a stage where I took everything very literally. Now I have developed an appreciation for using “the house” as a synonym for home, a word that someone could use for apartment or loft or trailer.

SM: “Known by Salt” captures peculiarities that connect us to family. My grandfather, a sometimes mechanic, full-time custodian, salted his food like you mention in your poem. I particularly remember him pulling tomatoes from his garden, sprinkling salt on them, and eating them as he inspected the plants.

I’m not sure if I have a question there. I guess I was taken with the image–of an action–and how it ties into the natural metaphors of place relating to home and family bloodlines and maybe rivers as bloodlines in the land. Does that make sense? I feel like it’s connected to some of the other images and themes in the book.

TMB: Oh, I love the idea and image of “rivers as bloodlines.” Mozelle adopted my mother, so I’m forever looking for ways that I’m connected to her. Many of those connections are actions: building houses, wearing silk, knitting, etc. My family often says, “We didn’t name you Mozelle for nothing” for doing these things.  As a poet, I like to think that in my family, names run thick as blood. But actions, particularly work, binds people to one another as well. Love for and life within a landscape does that as well. I’ve witnessed that a lot lately from members of Friends of the Locust Fork. They talk about how the river connects them to others who have different belief systems or political leanings.

SM: “Trespassing” seems to me to be about options or the lack of them, or being able to recognize opportunity when it presents itself. For one, we have to be in a place lucky enough to have options, furthermore, we have to be in a condition well enough to even know we can ask the question. Taking the book as a poetic sequence, “Trespassing” foreshadows the later poems about building the cabin. The longing for a home.

This made me think of the difficulties of being poor, and particularly being poor in America, where it’s often suggested that it’s not systemic, that somehow it’s tied to morality or ethics (later poems like “Trash” speak of this as well). One of the ways the poem spoke to me was that idea of not knowing what the options are. What possibilities do I have? Saying to children “they can be whatever they want to be”–is that helpful? So then the “Trespassing” (also the section title) could refer to that idea of growing up poor and feeling like one is trespassing, not worthy, or doesn’t belong. Do you think the poem does that kind of work?

TMB: Yes. I hope it does. I was also thinking about this in “Interview, 1966” when Mozelle looks down at her houndstooth suit and notices how one square steps into another, wondering how or if she will do that. “Trespassing” also examines how we find ways to make the world ours, to feel that we do belong, despite feeling as if we don’t.

I’m not sure if it is helpful to tell children they can be whatever they want. My ex-boyfriend complained it misguided him to drop out of high school. He felt later he had been duped when he confronted his lack of options after that decision. My parents, on the other hand, told me if I followed all the rules and did everything right, I might have a slight chance at a job or scholarship or any other opportunity.

In “Trespassing” I wanted to explore a moment when transgressing rules was allowed. Even so, it is a justified risk for Mozelle because she felt no one would accuse women and children of anything criminal. She trespasses in order to feed her sense of possibility and to prompt that sense in the speaker. I wanted to highlight the value of the imagination here, how it deeds us for a moment ownership and dignity or control. When we say to ourselves, “If it were mine, I’d make it this way,” we own our aesthetic. In the poem, the speaker doesn’t learn this while they are trespassing. She, like so many of us, is too focused on what we enumerate, money or zipcodes.  Yet she gets it later. I wanted that from this poem, too. That we have multiple chances to find possibilities.

SM: There’s a reference in “Trailer Fish” to the Elizabeth Bishop poem “The Fish.” I thought it was a fantastic reimagining of the image, but one that still registers the hard beauty of experience from the referenced poem. I loved the description of the trailer that builds on that idea, that the trailer is “cold-blooded” and the “windows open like gills.” I assume Bishop has been an influence. If so, what have you liked about her poems? Also, who are other poets that have influenced you and whose work are you currently enjoying?

TMB: Oh yes, Bishop influences me quite a bit. I particularly love Bishop’s use of perspective and the intimacy I find within it. Reading Bishop, I feel as if I stepped inside the mind that looks close then closer. She generously re/creates a moment, extending an invitation to take a journey. Like in “The Moose,” we get a bird’s eye view of a bus traveling across the landscape, then we move inside the bus and overhear the passengers’ conversations, and then the journey dissipates in the scent of the moose and gasoline. She carries us on that journey without ever losing us. Bishop challenges me to not only look closely, but also to write as if I “looked and looked (my) infant sight away.”

As I mentioned earlier, Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Seamus Heaney have influenced me a great deal. I look to Philip Levine and Larry Levis often. Right now, I’m totally ga-ga about Alice Oswald and Camille Dungy. Oswald’s Falling Away is amazing. I love her poem about flies and how she gives us a sense of what it must be like to be that fly buzzing its way into oblivion. I’m in awe of Dungy’s skill in Smith Blue in drawing us into intimate moments and making huge events like climate change feel very personal.

SM: “Pins” contains another matrix of images and meanings. The pins, shrapnel, nails, etc. in the poem operate both as pieces of metal that invade and scar the body, but they also become stories that connect or hold together experience like rebar in concrete, but they also become trophies or heirlooms–and maybe something like the old lures dangling from Bishop’s fish that she calls “medals.”

Just as scars can be inner or outer, the poem suggests something similar about the stories we tell others or ourselves about scars or trauma. The poem is much earlier in the book, but rereading it, I also connected it to the gathering of a life and the gathering of material for the cabin. I can imagine that this poem began with one of those small pieces of metal and built up from there. What was the process like? Did it originally have those connections because those ideas were on your mind or did they come about through the arrangement of the book?

TMB: It began with the dress pin. Late in Mozelle’s life, she said she wished she had the pin that killed her mother. This reminded me of how my Dad sometimes wished he had the rung that broke and caused him to fall fifty feet. I wanted to connect those two stories, but I could not figure out how to do it. I wondered for too long what doctors do with such things.  I even imagined that there could be a depository for the objects that maim or kill our loved ones—a jail for the things that assault us.

I wasn’t conscious of how this poem would connect to gathering materials to build the cabin. I like that you saw that link. Instead, I was focused on making a stronger connection between Mozelle and Dad. Their similar desire to take hold of the objects that had done harm felt like one way. I also wanted to show that they both overcame physical hardship: Dad’s fall in this poem and Mozelle’s recovery from a detached retina and deafness from scarlet fever in “Mozelle’s Shoes.” Those stories loomed large in my imagination growing up.

The image of the soapstone was a gift from my brother that connected the two stories. When I was visiting him, he showed me some soapstone he had found and asked, “Who does this remind you of?” That gave me the object that showed Dad’s recovery and his dedication to construction work. The soapstone was a way to suggest that work mends us.

SM: The “Allure” section begins with a George Eliot quote: “For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.” Do you understand this to mean that the interior is controlled by the environment or our own physical exteriors or both? I was interested if how this feeds back into the poems about poverty, about love, about living in the world as a woman, and the cabin, but I wasn’t sure if I was just getting carried away. Again, this inside/outside here forms a web or matrix of images, rather than a linear form of arrangement.

TMB: For Eliot, “what lies outside” is society, the force it exerts on how we interact with one another and how we see each other and ourselves. I wanted to allude to that and an awareness of this force by the speaker when it comes to issues of class and the role of women, particularly as an introduction to “Allure.”

In addition to that though, I feel that the natural world provides an escape or an alternative from the force of society. In woods or even in a trailer park, the light filtering through the pine needles or the pattern of shadow on the river offers transcendence and beauty no matter who you are or how much money you have. It is a bounty open to all, at least somewhat. That richness is what I want to determine my inward being.

SM: The poem “Allure” is one of my favorites, not only for the interesting mix of allusions, from Looney Tunes to the Hebrew Bible, but also the range of emotions and experience it manages to cover in a relatively small amount of space.

The image of how the young stripper steps into the thong “the way she’d cross a low wall” struck me. It’s very precise, but it also reminded me of the “good fences make good neighbors” line from Frost. If she is stepping over a low wall, what kind of neighbors are these? The poem gives us a few answers and they mostly aren’t positive: the Fudd character, who is turned on, but ashamed, the decapitations of the Salome section, the husband’s rude friend.

TMB: I hadn’t consciously meant to allude to “Mending Wall” though it was a poem that I had been studying at the time.

SM: The poem also suggests an empowerment for the dancer, who becomes more confident as the poem shifts from a third person to a first person perspective–more embodied, but somehow disembodied from the experience? The aforementioned decapitations are several: the money that stacks up, the turning off of thought and emotions, the silhouettes and shadows of paper dolls watching, themselves seemingly not empowered or being rational in any way.

TMB: Thanks for noticing that. I find that to be a central irony of stripping. The dancer is elevated. She is on stage. She is given money. Yet she is denigrated and looked down upon. I wanted to give her the agency and power that isn’t granted by social norms.

SM: The “Formica” section leads toward this turning off of emotions. The Fudd character, previously the blushing hunter, becomes the husband and then the sculptor of the Galatea metaphor. At first, I felt there was an interesting tension in that Bugs has more agency in the low art version rather than in the high art version. The dancer, Bugs, who’s always in control, becomes the statue–though that seems still like prey, but not active. And even though one is high art and one is low–the lower one maintains an action even if they are acting, whereas the high art version does not get agency. The dancer regains control in the last section.  The poem captures both the potential empowerment, and the joy of it, and the shame and how people still look down upon it.

TMB: Wow, I hadn’t thought too much about the difference in agency between the high and low art versions.  While Bugs has more agency, he need only to remove his “femininity” in order to change the power dynamics. He’ll be hunted but in a different way. In every cartoon, he gives up on the guise of femininity to “save” him because it won’t. For the speaker in the third section, she doesn’t want to be shaped by the male gaze. Like Bugs in the cartoons, she rather give up femininity and return to what she was before, to a more natural state of stone.

SM: A previous poem, echoed with “Allure” to me. “Interview, 1966” felt like it could be a Coen Brothers scene, but I was surprised about how many elements these two poems shared.

TMB: Coen Brothers!?! That’s a huge compliment. Thank you.

SM: “Claims” has a rusted sign decayed into reading “NO  SING.” I took this as a commentary on the man’s hubris of claims or simply something like the littering shown in the poem, but also how those claims can’t be permanent. I also found that the claim was made on a rusted sign that was falling back into the earth, but also made in language that itself was about having no song. The true poem, or maybe nature’s answer is a song in the form of the fawn found in the moment. The poem moves like the frequent nature walks mentioned in these poems, which I also connect to the web or matrix of images that the book develops. Does any of that register with your experience of writing the poems?

TMB: Absolutely. After listening to this and some of the house building poems, a neighbor told me that I wrote in a way that made the cabin seem temporary, as if we and it were just visiting the land where it sits. Perhaps that is the trailer park kid in me holding on to the sense that home is a bulb to be dug up and spread. I’m suspect of human claims. The surveyor’s claim to the lines he sited feel stronger to me because of the work he put in. I understand the claim made by the campfire ring of a trespasser. When nothing is yours, it all is. Or as Larry Levis says, “Anything is enough if you know how poor you are.” All of this is to say I wanted to explore how transitory or even ridiculous our claims are on land. How much can we really claim other than the footprint beneath or feet or where we lie down?

SM: Maybe I’m being too precious, but the building of the cabin and the writing of a poem seem linked in that both are a means of constructing a way in the world. Building a poem a line or word at a time is echoed in the cabin poems.  Like birds building a nest–itself a theme in the book–finding oneself (or selves–there are the multiple identities and names that the persona takes on) and finding someone else, finding love, and building a place to be in the world. Building a poem and then a book of poems strikes me as a potentially similar project.

TMB: I definitely feel that building a home and building a poem echo one another. I grew up hearing my grandmother claim that my father and his father and brothers (all of them were bridge builders) were filling her narrow living room with bridges whenever they talked shop. So I’ve been imagining words building things all my life. I wanted Known by Salt to address how home is made, emotionally as well as physically.

Building the house itself taught me so much about the creative process. Building the house and putting a collection of poems together are enormous projects that felt overwhelming to me. I couldn’t grasp the full scope of what I would need to do to finish them. Since we moved in before we had our walls up and needed to dry the house in quickly before winter, I didn’t have the luxury of overthinking or procrastinating about building. That gave me practice in moving forward into uncertainty when it came to writing.

I had no idea what book I was writing when I wrote most of the poems in Known by Salt. I had written a series of poems about Mozelle, others about growing up in the trailer park, “Allure,” and I kept writing poems about building the house. I worried that I had the “seed” poems for three or four different collections. At some point I realized I needed to write poems that filled in between those themes, much like I needed to frame windows between studs to create walls. “Trash,” “A Clear View,” “Rivering,” and “Looking Glass” are some of the poems that filled that need.

Much like how my husband and I moved the bed and scaffolding around as we lived in the house as we built it, I shifted poems around trying to figure out where they’d best fit with one another. I reread collections I admired, paying attention to how they were structured. After looking closely at Natasha Trethewey’s Domestic Work, I decided a mostly chronological order peppered with a few flashbacks to Mozelle’s life worked best.

SM: I enjoy the kind of crossover you do with love and ecopoetry. Like I mentioned earlier, they’re really bound with other topics throughout the book. “All Our Things Are Resurrections” represents even in the title–that love is an act of resurrection, that care is also about resurrecting others. “Simple Machine” does this beautifully–making a life together as a simple machine–or something built out of simple machines–hammers and hearts beat together throughout many of these last poems. I could carry that into natural cycles or the rhythms of the poetic line. The ecopoetic qualities aren’t directly about nature besides the one line that mentions saplings, mostly it is about recovery and repurposing. The idea of simple machines reminded me of Williams and his notion of “no ideas but in things.”

In a way, maybe I’m asking about the connection of writing to living in the world, to finding love, making and sharing spaces, that writing poetry itself is a simple machine–or can be–a simple machine of love and resurrection?

TMB: Your question is worded so beautifully, I feel like the best way to answer it is to simply say yes.

So–yes.

It also reminds of a prompt that Geri Doran, my thesis director at the University of Oregon, gave my poetry workshop. She asked us to take a day without the distractions of social media or email or TV or even the radio. Instead, we were to pay close attention to what bubbles up and shape that into a poem. That encouragement to see how living in the world gives rise to poetry is something I’ve tried to keep my sights on ever since.

At first, building our glass cabin was a means to a writing life.  The best way we knew to afford time to write was to rid ourselves of a rent or mortgage payment. That sense quickly shifted as we became invested in the creativity in building our home and life. We then realized that what we were doing had evolved into a creative life. In other words, all of our labors became meaningful, if not art. Now living in and building our glass cabin, writing, and loving each other has become the ecosystem we inhabit. All of it is intertwined and interdependent. We don’t see divisions between them. And what is ecosystem other than continual resurrections?

You can find out more about Tina Mozelle Braziel’s work at her website and you can follow her on Twitter.


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.

 

Episode 421: Didier Ghez!

23 Saturday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Art, Disney, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 421 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Didier_Ghez

This week I talk with Disney historian Didier Ghez about the joys of research and forging one’s own path as a historian.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

TDADP5

TDATP5 page

Designs by Ken Anderson.

TDATP5 p194b Shaw

Design by Mel Shaw.

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.

If you want me to talk about creativity, check out my appearance on Jeff Wilfong’s podcast, Dub Ya Mind.

Consider donating to City Lights Books to sustain it and/or buying a book online from Powells.

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

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Episode 421 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

The Curator of Schlock #321: Rec 3

22 Friday May 2020

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Paco Plaza, Rec 3 Genesis

The Curator of Schlock #321 by Jeff Shuster

Rec 3: Genesis

This one’s just plain goofy.

As you know, I went all in on the canned pork n’ beans much to my regret. I guess I panicked a little while grabbing up a wheelbarrow full from the local Big Lots. But I am a lucky man tonight. It seems in my haste to grab up all the pork n’ beans that I accidently swept up a couple of cans of beans n’ franks. You read right. Frankfurter bits and beans! Also known as beanie weenies! A new taste sensation! I’ll be eating good tonight!

Rec3a (1)

Hey, I’ve got another Rec movie for you. This one is 2012’s Rec 3: Genesis from director Paco Plaza and is the third movie in the Rec series. Rec 2 left us with the big reveal that Ángela Vidal is now possessed by the head demon after the original possessed girl upchucked what looked to be a giant maggot down her throat. Ángela was able to leave the apartment complex by impersonating the priest’s voice. I’m sure those idiots in HAZMAT suits welcomed her as she left the building unscathed. I was anxious to see what schemes Ángela had up her sleeve in the next installment, but alas, Rec 3: Genesis is a side story about a wedding from hell.

Rec3b

The movie starts out with a wedding DVD showing the nuptials of a lovely young couple, Koldo (Diego Martin) and Clara (Leticia Dolera). We get about twenty minutes of the beautiful and the wealthy being so in love with each other, something that I don’t really care to see while I’m living in a shack in the middle of a swamp eating beanie weenies.

I hate my life.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. The young, beautiful couple that we’re all rooting for!

Rec3c

We get introduced to various members of their families. We have a grandfather whose hearing aid doesn’t work right and the groom’s future mother-in-law who’s described as a “milf” by the rotund wedding photographer. We get to see a children’s entertainer who calls himself John Sponge so as not to get sued by the owners of Spongebob Squarepants. There’s a guy running around keeping notes of all songs played at the wedding reception so that the artists get paid the proper royalties. Is that a thing?

Oh, and there’s Uncle Pepe, a veterinarian who got bit by a rabid dog earlier that day. I seem to recall a rabid dog being mentioned in the first Rec movie. And it’s highly probable that the demonically possessed virus infected this dog. You know, I remember playing that Doom game from the mid 90s.  In addition to gunning down all sorts of demonic monsters from hell, you also had to shoot zombie soldiers before they shot you. I bet these were soldiers infected with the demonically possessed virus like in these Rec movies. They weren’t just plain old zombies.

Rec3d (1)

Anyway, Uncle Pepe goes feral and bites Aunt Lucille or whatever her name is and before long the entire wedding reception is a madhouse with each guest getting demonically zombified. The bride and the groom get separated and spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to find each other. The groom dons the armor of Saint George at some point. The bride gets her hand on a chainsaw and starts massacring any of the former family members who stand in her way.

Fun stuff.

I wonder how this series will wrap itself up.


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 #71: A Short Piece on ShortBox

20 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

≈ Leave a comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #71 by Drew Barth

A Short Piece on ShortBox

Founded by Zainab Akhtar, ShortBox is continually the name that comes up for me when I think about where comics can go both as a place self-expression as well as a physical medium. I’ve written about their most recent box of comics as well as their efforts in helping to maintain an active comic community during COVID-19 by offering a wide variety of some of their best work for a pay-what-you-will rate. As such, I bought and read through a variety of work that I hadn’t read before, and, of course, it’s delightful. From short comics collections like A Long Distance by Jean Wei and What Are You Thinking About? by Anatola Howard to longer works like Nicole Miles’ Barbara, it’s hard to express the depth of quality work these creators have produced, and yet I’ll still try.

sb1

Barbara by Nicole Miles is a short rumination on friends and food. What works so well throughout this story is its constant narrative movement—Jayda looks at the emptiness of her room and fills it, she hears her coworkers talking negatively about veganism and researches it, she looks in her fridge and empties it of anything from an animal. And most of this is after meeting her newest friend, Barbara the cactus. The genuine feeling resonates through every page along with the confusion and reluctance that comes with change. Through a cactus like Barbara, Jayda can become who she wants to be and we’re only witness to the most difficult beginning stages.

sb2

A collection of five short comics, Jean Wei’s A Long Distance is a marvel of vignetted storytelling. One of the strongest aspects of that storytelling comes from Wei’s constant work with panelling and dialogue balloons throughout. In the story pictured above, “Bats”, there are only three panels with the rest of the story taking over the next eight pages with either full pictures like above or with only the characters heads talking while bats hover around them. Later, in “Offering”, a young boy, Evan, takes an offering to his deceased grandma. But this act becomes overwhelming for him as soon he’s on the floor, nearly smothered by the dialogue balloons above him. All of these elements culminate in these perfectly captured moments that represent an in-between, an almost liminal space that comes with the disconnection that a child of an immigrant family can feel.

sb3

Anatola Howard’s What Are You Thinking About? is just that, pure thought. These are short strips, vignettes, and illustrations that feel like a perfect summation of someone’s daily thoughts. There are characters that reappear, there are flashbacks to childhood, there are moments of comedy and sadness, there are times when you’re not sure what your thoughts are even doing but you still follow along because they’re your thoughts in the moment. And these moments are constant—continually flashing by on the page, and yet there’s a comfort in that. Even through all of the randomness of our thoughts, we still feel a connection to the work as a whole because we can still see so much of ourselves there.

There are still many more comics ShortBox is putting out and I’ve only touched on a small few, but I’ve always said that now is the time to start looking for new comics to read. Small presses like ShortBox need support right now, the creators being published by them need your support. This is a comic community, so let’s make sure we can make it through this together.

Get excited. Get together.


drew-barth-mbfi

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.

Aesthetic Drift #25: Corona State of Mind

18 Monday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift, Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Gustavo Guerra

Aesthetic Drift #25 by Gustavo Guerra

Corona State of Mind:

Reflections on the Pandemic from The Florida Department of Corrections

March 25, 2020.

The virus is spreading. Thousands of confirmed cases. Cemeteries are being overwhelmed. Italy. Spain. China. Iran. New York. Miami. All on lockdown. Just like us.
Anxieties about the outside world—especially my elderly parents—visit me at least once a day. The rest of my time is divided in adapting to the changes in my own life (washing my hands for twenty seconds 10-15 times a day, greeting people with elbow-bumps, holding my breath as I walk by prison staff) and agonizing about what is going to happen if someone gets infected on this compound.

There are no testing sites here. Institutional staff are not checked for a fever or questioned about flu-like symptoms when reporting to work. I’ve asked them. Yet, despite expert recommendations and municipal orders, they gather in groups of twos, fives, even tens to gossip and socialize to my dismay. Staff cannot realize we will not know they have infected residents until it is too late. In this setting, the virus will spread like—well, a virus.

Our medical facilities are not prepared to handle the magnitude of what I see on television very day. You might think that they will have to send us to an outside hospital, but consider the logistics. Every prisoner that goes to outside medical must be escorted by two correctional officers at all times. The institution’s available staff will be quickly depleted after seven or eight residents need medical attention. Then what will they do?
When men get sick here, it will be too late.

But, I worry about how this will affect me. Is that a little bit selfish? While society is concerned with having a job to return to when this is over, I am thinking about when volunteers will be allowed to return to the institution so I can continue my classes. People outside want to return to beaches and restaurants and movies theaters; I just want to lift the suspension of our gavel club (an affiliate of Toastmasters International). The suspension is one we self imposed because we felt the administration was not being proactive enough.

Three days ago two county correctional officers tested positive for Covid-19. The same day, our administration shut down all programs: chapel, education and library. They began to feed us quad by quad, forcing us to sit two to a table. Why? These men live in the same quad. They use the same phones, the same drinking fountain, the same showers.

I think segregating us by quad for all movement is an excellent idea. However, the effort is defeated when security gives residents the choice to either return to the dorm or go to the recreation yard until the compound has been fed. They enforce social distancing on men living together and then invite them to go to the recreation yard with the rest of the compound. They either don’t take it seriously, don’t care, or don’t get it. And this frightens me. These are the people in charge of my safety.

The irony is that there are activities I would continue to participate in given the chance, even considering the risks. I decry the Department of Corrections’ reactive nature while bemoaning the activities I have lost. It has only been three days and I miss my friends, my brothers. I cannot call them on the phone or write them an email like the public can. I miss the myriad activities we participated in together. God only knows when I will be able to see them and have an intelligent conversation about writing again.

The truth is that the activities I filled my schedule with had been carefully balanced to include personal growth, community involvement, and recreation: classes, clubs, executive committee meetings, newsletter creation, speaking engagements, writers’ groups, workshops, even planning and practicing for a licensed TEDx event that has now been canceled.

Finding purpose while serving a natural life sentence has been difficult. These activities gave me purpose. Being involved kept me positive and helped me maintain my sanity and subsequent sobriety. And the thought of a drawn-out quarantine frankly makes my blood pressure rise and brings tears to my eyes, even as I type this essay.

This whole pandemic scares me. I fear for my family. I fear for my friends. And I fear for my state of mind when this is finally over.

In the meantime, I continue to hold my breath when I am forced to walk by a gaggle of officers. I wash my hands and sing the ABCs until I finish (it’s a 20 second song). I read books and trade them off in the quad for another one. I watch and listen to the news and I worry. And at the end of the day, I write. Because writing allows me to regurgitate my anxieties on a blank page, thus helping me manage my fears. At least until the next newscast, which will feed this ever-present corona state of mind.


Gustavo Guerra is serving a natural life sentence in the Florida Department of Corrections. He has recently discovered a passion for writing as a result of participating in the volunteer-led Exchange for Change program. He can be found writing, complaining, or engulfed in a Dungeons and Dragons game.

 

Episode 420: Tom Papa!

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comedy, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Tom Papa, You're Doing Great ... And Other Reasons to Stay Alive, Your Dad Stole My Rake

Episode 420 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Tom Papa_credit Sam Jones

Photograph by Sam Jones.

This week I talk with comedian, actor, sourdough aficionado, and essay writer, Tom Papa!

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Cover.You're Doing GreatYour Dad Stole My RakeEl Superbeasto

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.

If you want me to talk about creativity, check out my appearance on Jeff Wilfong’s podcast, Dub Ya Mind.

Consider donating to City Lights Books to sustain it and/or buying a book online from Powells.

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

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 420 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

The Curator of Schlock #320: Rec 2

15 Friday May 2020

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

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #320 by Jeff Shuster

Rec 2

The sequel to Rec in case you were wondering. 

I have a confession to make. I don’t always understand what I’m watching when it comes to movies. Take Howard the Duck. I thought it was a movie about an anthropomorphic duck trying to survive in a mid 1980s Cleveland. Then the movie becomes about laser spectroscopes and Dark Overlords of the Universe. What I’m trying to say is that simple movies can get complicated to the point where I don’t know what’s going on.

Rec2a

We need to talk about 2009’s Rec 2 from directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. It picks up where Rec left off. A group of three commandos led by a Dr. Owen (Jonathan Mellor) make their way through the crowd of onlookers outside of the quarantined apartment building. This is another found footage movie as each commando has a video camera in his helmet to help him record the situation inside the apartment complex. Once inside, only Dr. Owen can give the voice command to permit them or anyone else from exiting the building.

Rec2c (2)

They make their way up to the penthouse with all of the religious iconography and newspaper cutouts about the possessed little girl. Dr. Owen keeps demanding that everything gets recorded. Infected apartment residents attack and infect one of the commandos, but Dr. Owens is able to subdue and trap the infected commando with a Rosary and some prayers.

Huh?

And then Dr. Owens removes his helmet to reveal a priest’s collar. He’s not Dr. Owen from the Ministry of Health; he’s Father Owen from the Vatican!

Okay. So I’m going to try to explain what I think is going on. The Vatican decided to use medical science as a way to cure the demonically possessed. I think Father Owens rambles that the Vatican discovered that possessed people have a virus while possessed and if they could come up with an antidote for this virus, priests could just inject someone who gets demonically possessed instead of going through the whole exorcism ordeal.

Unfortunately, the virus mutated during their experimentation.

The virus can pass from person to person. The demon residing inside the original possessed person possesses each person the virus comes into contact with. So I guess the virus is possessed, which allows a single demon to possess several people at the same time?

Rec2b (1)

Father Owens needs the original blood sample from the possessed girl so that an antidote can be created. He directs the remaining commandos to hunt for the virus. By the skin of his teeth, one of the commandos retrieves the last vial of the possessed girl’s blood before one of the demonically possessed, zombie maniacs is able to tear him a new one. At this moment, Father Owens makes the stupidest mistake I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. He insists that the blood sample needs to be tested for authenticity before he will allow them to leave the building.

Rec2d

Ummmm. Father Owens, you can test the sample outside of the building in a controlled facility far away from this demonically possessed, zombie maniac infested apartment complex. You got what you came for. Now get out of there. But no, he has to test the sample. He pours some of the blood onto a plate, holds a crucifix over it while saying some prayers, and the blood shimmers before catching fire. The remaining blood in the vial also catches fire and the commando holding it drops it on the floor. The blood sample is useless now, but Father Owens says they can retrieve a new sample from the original possessed girl who is hiding somewhere in the building.

What else?

We get some annoying teenagers sneaking into the apartment complex after destroying a perfectly good blow-up doll. Ángela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) shows up again apparently having survived the first movie. They discover that the original possessed girl can only be seen through a camera’s night vision, as the demon is able to make her invisible to the naked eye. Nothing is going to go according to plan…well…actually…I suppose things go according to demon’s plan. To think, I was going to have June be Satan Month.

I guess Satan Month came early.

You’re welcome.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

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.

← Older posts
Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Feminism
  • Film
  • Film Commentary
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Criticism
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • science
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Westerns
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Episode 524: Yeoh Jo-Ann!
  • The Curator of Schlock #382: Dark Crimes
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #175
  • Episode 523: Aaron Angello!
  • The Curator of Schlock #381: The Driver

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Join 3,107 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...