Monthly Archives: April 2022

Episode 521: Nita Noveno!

30 Saturday Apr 2022

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Episode 521 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).

In this week’s show, I speak with the creative nonfiction writer Nita Noveno about the Peace Corps, having a writing community, the Kerouac House, gators, gators, and more gators, and bears, and all of Florida’s wild charms, including the people.

John King & Nita Noveno on the porch at the Kerouac Project of Orlando.

NOTES

ScribophileTDO 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.

Episode 521 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 #379: Memories

29 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #379 by Jeff Shuster

Memories

Three movies in one.

I was in tears when Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government, informed me that Edwige, my kangaroo companion, would have to be transported to a kangaroo sanctuary somewhere in Gibraltar. I was allowed to ride in a truck with her to a port in Halifax. I gave her a deep hug before she was set to board a ship that would take her away from me forever. Edwige then broke from my embrace and kicked me in the face. I crashed to the ground and I could have swore Edwige was laughing at me as she hopped aboard the ship.

I’m going to wrap up Anime Month with yet another anthology movie, 1995’s Memories from directors Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, and Katsuhiro Otomo. I remember hearing of this movie during the early days of my access to the Internet. I was hungry for more animated anthology movies like Robot Carnival or Heavy Metal. Somehow I learned of this movie and waited patiently for it to come stateside, but a North American release would elude until about eight years later. Sony put out a fine DVD of this feature back in 2004 and Memories has recently received the Blu-ray treatment from Discotek Media.

The first short is Magnetic Rose from director Koji Morimoto. The movie features a group of space faring salvage men in the late 21st century. They receive an SOS call from an abandoned space station. Two of the ship’s engineers, Heintz and Miguel, go to investigate the abandoned facility which we learn belonged to a famous opera singer named Eva Friedel. The entire station station has lavish furnishings and art like something you’d find in an aristocrat’s house from the 19th century.

Holograms emit illusions of the Italian countryside and of a beautiful diva that enchants Miguel, a would-be lothario. Back on the ship, the crew informs Heintz and Miguel that Eva retreated to this station in the 2030s after her fiancé was murdered and she lost her voice and singing career. Eva left Earth for this station to drown in her memories and she now wants to draw in Heintz and Miguel. This is a creepy story and the idea that this ghost may be a combination of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology makes her no less terrifying. The score for this sequence  comes from the opera Madame Butterfly and was covered by Yoko Kano of Cowboy Bebop fame.

The second short is Stink Bomb from director Tensai Okamura, a darkly humous tale of a biological weapon turned loose on the Japanese populace. Nobua Tanaka is a lab technician battling the flu when a coworker suggests he takes a couple of pills from a new experimental cold medicine left on his boss’s desk. The pills kill his cold and turn Tanaka into a walking bringer of death that kills anything that comes near him. His body produces a cloud of stink that wipes out anything that smells it. This story was inspired by the Gloria Ramirez incident, a cancer patient that had caused severe illness in the staff at a California hospital due to her self-administering dimethyl sulfoxide which her body converted into a deadly toxin that exposed the hospital workers (if I’m to believe Wikipedia).

The third and final short is Cannon Fodder from director Katsuhiro Otomo. This film is about a day in the life of a family whose entire purpose in life is to prepare cannons to be fired at the enemy nation of their society. In fact, the whole society’s purpose is to prepare and fire the many hundreds of cannons aimed at the enemy nation. Elementary school teaches the students about the essentials of gunpowder and correct trajectory. Class is based on what level you are on the cannon firing ladder. You want to be the one firing the cannon and not some loser cannon-loader. I have to marvel at how hideous and miserable the characters in this short look.

And that’s it for Memories. If you ever had an interest in anime, this might be a good place to start.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #172: What Streets Say

27 Wednesday Apr 2022

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

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #172 by Drew Barth

What Streets Say

I don’t know if there is anyone as influential to comics as a medium as Will Eisner. His Contract with God trilogy would become one of the shining examples of what graphic novels could do and how a self-contained story could work in mainstream Western comics. The initial story, A Contract with God, is still considered a touchstone of the medium, but what of the other two parts? A Life Force is a towering work that continues many of the themes of A Contract with God, but it is Dropsie Avenue—published nearly twenty years after Contract—that really shows Eisner at his best.

Dropsie Avenue centers on the fictional neighborhood in New York, the titular Dropsie Avenue, and how it has changed throughout the century of its existence. While much of the Contract with God stories are shorter stories about a specific building or people’s lives, Dropsie is more of a history of the neighborhood those stories take place in. Told chronologically, we start with the first Dutch farmers that settled in the South Bronx in single family homes and continue into the British, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Puerto Rican immigrants that would call the neighborhood home until their tenement buildings eventually crumbled. A microcosm of city life from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, Eisner shows the ways in which homes and the people in them shift with the times, culminating in the construction of a suburban neighborhood in the 1990s that would start the whole process over again.

Eisner’s skill as a graphic artists is why they name the medium’s biggest award after him. Dropsie Avenue reminds us of his skills. From a glance of the included pages, we know this is an Eisner comic. From the blending of panels to the lettering, there is a continual distinction in his lines that is unmistakable. But it is these panels—the blending of story into the next—that helps give his stories an energy and a continuity that has always remained unique to his type of storytelling. As this is a history of a single neighborhood, his blending of panels helps to contribute to the more liquid nature of how a neighborhood develops. It isn’t all at once as much as it is the push and pull of its people.

Dropsie Avenue, and much of the Contract with God Trilogy, is a testament to Will Eisner’s skill  and consistency as an illustrator. Told over nearly twenty years, his style remained as impactful and distinct from the first Contract with God story to the final pages of Dropsie. And Dropsie Avenue itself shows Eisner’s continual fascination with the neighborhoods he grew up in and shows just how comics as a medium can intertwine with history, even if it’s fictitious.

Get excited. Get neighborly.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Perfect Life #38: The Beasts of Love

25 Monday Apr 2022

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The Perfect Life #38 by Dr. Perfect

The Beasts of Love

Dear Dr. Perfect,

My husband and I have an ongoing argument: dogs in or out of the bedroom while we have sex. I say let them stay. They whine the whole time they’re locked out and I can’t focus on pleasure. However, if my husband locks eyes with one of them, he instantly loses his boner. You see the dilemma.

What can we do?

Signed,
Doglover69

————————–

Dear DL69,

Have you ever considered cats? They pay scant attention to what’s going on in the bedroom or any other room, for that matter.

I hesitate to mention my feline Archibald, as the pain of his loss still weighs heavily. But since we’re talking about dogs here, I’ll try to relate.

You’ve got a ruff situation. Nsexual othing should get in the way of your needs and having them satisfied. A good spouse understands that. A considerate spouse wouldn’t let a couple of gawking, drooling beasts distract him performing his duties. If your spouse can fantasize about other women during the act of lovemaking (which I’m assuming he does), he can ignore family canines.

When your husband’s not fantasizing, his entire attention should be on you. It’s easy to be self-conscious in the presence of animals, but animals will do just about anything in broad view, and they’re supposed to be the lesser species. I rest my case.

Dogs are indifferent to our behavior when it doesn’t involve food or pampering. Most of the time, they couldn’t care less if we walked off a bridge. But miss feeding time, and you’ll never hear the end of it. I’m no expert, but I did once live with a woman who owned several Pomeranians. I barely got out of that situation alive.

Don’t get me wrong. I love all animals, especially the hyper-dependent, slovenly kind that claw at your pant leg and sniff your crotch. They’re quite endearing. One way to turn any rambunctious Rover into a placid pooch would be to get them spayed or neutered. Bob Barker knows best. Just look at that last name.

If castration isn’t the answer, set up a series of diversions that will draw your calamitous canines away from the four minutes of pleasure you so desperately need. Place within another room an array of tempting treats and close the door. Driven by scent, your dogs won’t be able to resist. They’ll whine and claw at the door of said room, but that will be just far enough out of earshot for your husband to maintain an erection.

If not, talk to both your husband and the beasts. Decide which one you could possibly live without. This isn’t the usual domestic dilemma of finances or who has possession of the remote during TV time. This is about sex.

Either your husband takes you on that Paris vacation you’ve wanted or he’s in the doghouse for good.

A wise man once said, hair of the dog that bit you. And on that note, I need another brandy. These cozy new slippers I purchased make walking around the house a real treat. I could recommend some great brands in the interim.

Dr. Perfect has slung advice across the globe for the last two decades due to his dedication to the uplift of the human condition.

Episode 520: A Discussion of Anne Sexton with Rachael Tillman!

24 Sunday Apr 2022

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Episode 520 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).

In this week’s show, I speak with Rachael Tillman about the poetry and practice of Anne Sexton.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

ScribophileTDO 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.

Check out these video archives of great poetry events from Miami Book Fair.

Episode 520 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 #378: Mary and the Witch’s Flower

22 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #378 by Jeff Shuster

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Kind of like a Ghibli movie.

The nightmare was over. Operatives from the Canadian government had infiltrated a marsupial slaughterhouse in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Edwige, my kangaroo companion, and myself were saved. All of the surviving animals were to be transported to animal sanctuaries. And then Larry, the Don Knotts looking special operative, gave me some bad news that hit me straight in the gut. I had to say goodbye to Edwige.

A few weeks back I reviewed Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, an attempt by a Japanese animation company to produce a movie in the style of classic Disney animation. The critics lambasted it and I felt the need to defend the movie because, at the very least, it was pretty to look at. But looks aren’t everything and, in retrospect, Little Nemo proved to be a hollow experience as the protagonist was a bit of a floater. This brings us 2017’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is the first feature film of Studio Ponoc, a company formed by Yoshiaki Nishimura, the former lead producer of Studio Ghibli, a production company said to rival the Walt Disney Studios in terms of quality animated features for children and adults, Why did he leave Ghibli? Well, the studio shutdown following Hayao Miyazaki’s retirement, Miyazaki being one of the great living legends of animation. Unfortunately, this must have left many of the animators out of a job so they went with Nishimura to form a new studio and keep the style of Studio Ghibli alive.

On the surface, Mary and the Witch’s Flower has the look and feel of a top notch Studio Ghibli production. The movie is based on the children’s novel The Little Broomstick by English author Mary Stewart. Studio Ghibli had also produced movies based on English children’s novels such as The Borrowers by Mary Norton and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Studio Ghibli English dubs are also known for featuring top talent and Mary and the Witch’s Flower features Ruby Barnhill, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent.

With all of these elements coming together, we should have a movie set to rival any that Studio Ghibli had to offer, allowing Studio Ponco to carry on the legacy. Unfortunately, the experience left me feeling flat. Yes, the animation itself is up to the level of a Studio Ghibli production, but our heroine isn’t up to the Ghibli standard. Sheila O’Malley of RogerEbert.com is spot on when she says, “There’s no real inner conflict in the character, informing her choices (consciously or unconsciously).”

I remember in Kiki’s Delivery Service how Kiki loses faith in herself or how Chihiro breaks down after surviving her first night in the bath house of the spirits in Spirited Away. I’ve heard that Hayou Miyazaki has come out of retirement to make one final movie, How Do You Live? After that, it may be the end of an era for this style of animated movie, much how classic Disney animation has faded away; so too may Ghibli.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #171: Looking Space

20 Wednesday Apr 2022

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #171 by Drew Barth

Looking Space

Although I have talked about him and his work in the past, I can always talk at length about the wonderfully creeping horror of Junji Ito. Much of his most iconic work is typically found in his short stories, namely pieces like “The Enigma of Amigara Fault” or his longer-running Tomie stories, but when he is given the space to work on a single idea all at once, something particularly eerie bubbles up. Much like his acclaimed Uzumaki, one of his newer graphic novels, Sensor, stretches beyond his normal horror and into something more cosmically disturbing.

Kyoko Byakuya walks along the base of Mount Sengoku where, sixty years prior, a village had been wiped out by Sengoku erupting. But the village still stands, covered in these golden volcanic hairs—hairs that the people in the village claims lets them see to the furthest reaches of the universe. Out there, in the darkness of space, something is watching them as they peer and causes the volcano to erupt a second time. Wataru Tsuchiyado is a reporter that sees a picture of a black cloud hanging above the spot where the village had stood previously. Kyoko Byakuya wanders the same woods she had been in previously, this time with a full head of that golden volcanic hair. Wataru knows who she is, but Kyoko does not remember anything about herself. The small cult that has sprung up beneath the black cloud is looking to Kyoko to peer further into the depths of the universe and, maybe, to the being that was lurking there.

This is one of Ito’s first forays into a more cosmic, unknowable horror. Stories like Uzumaki touched on that unknowable horror, but its basis was something within the earth itself. This time we’re looking more toward the stars and what they hold. There is something ancient hiding at the core of this story, a figure that the villagers at the base of Mount Sengoku briefly glimpse, and its golden threads tie the story together. Coming from Ito, there isn’t much in terms of the body horror much of his famous work is known for. Instead, we have a story that creeps along with that ancient entity in the background. It’s a horror that build and builds these small moments into a realization of the kind of cosmic terror that is peering down at these people trying to scratch at the surface of its machinations.

Junji Ito’s work is a horror that can seed itself deep in a reader’s bones and remain in the marrow for decades—like me and the first time I got to the final page of “Amigara Fault.” But it is these stories like Sensor that really ingrain themselves into your psyche. Like any good piece of cosmic horror, it doesn’t reveal too much about the terrors beyond the stars, but Ito gives your mind a moment to conceive of it yourself. And you don’t want to do that.

Get excited. Get golden.

Drew Barth at Miami Book Fair in 2019.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Perfect Life #37: Modern Medicine and Postmodern Problems

18 Monday Apr 2022

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The Perfect Life #37 by Dr. Perfect

Modern Medicine and Postmodern Problems

Dear Dr. Perfect,

I shut my hand in the dishwasher at work. It really hurts. Might be broken, definitely burned. I can’t file worker’s comp because of a warrant out for my arrest. How do I find affordable medical treatment?

Sincerely,
Not Tom Actro, that is definitely not my name.

————————–

Hey Tom,

I believe you wrote me before after getting your foot caught in one of those big, blue mailboxes.  Then there was the time you got your head stuck in the engine of an ’86 Camaro. That could have been another Tom Actro, but I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

Dishwashers, like many unassuming appliances, can be dangerous. The other day, my toaster oven burnt my bagel to a crisp. This inexcusable act was made even more appalling by the fact that I had it on the normal settings. I chucked it into a river that very morning. There are consequences for screwing up my breakfast.

One time, I nearly tripped over the cord to my “bubble bliss” foot massager. Water spilt everywhere. And don’t get me started on tanning booths. Maintaining a glow doesn’t come easily. You’re better off steering clear of dishwashers.

In fact, I advise you to avoid most things in general.

There was this movie about these kids who survived a terrible incident due to one of them having a premonition of their collective deaths. Fate, however, caught up with them in a series of gruesome, accident-prone killings. I believe it was called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You don’t want to end up like one of those kids.

I recommend immediate self-isolation for three weeks, watching reruns of Good Times, and eating sliced pears for nourishment. You’ll be off the smack in no time.

There’s no shame in having a warrant. My perfect endeavors rarely involve run-ins with the law, but I can attest to the occasional slip-up, embezzlement and/or back-alley knife fight to find oneself under the full, suffocating weight of our legal system.

Chin up, friend. Any number of seedy walk-in clinics are available to assist for a relatively nominal fee. You just need to know the right places to look. My own deductibles are through the roof, which has me considering Haitian Vodou priests as an alternative source of medical care. They’ll also conjure you up an impressive love potion guaranteed to end up in tragic irony. Fun times.

It’s time we reclaim our standing amongst the machines. One day, they’re slamming our hands into their doors. Next thing we know, it’s an all-out cyborg apocalypse. Get that hand checked out or get used to doing one armed push-ups. I do about five reps each morning, preparing for the coming robot wars. Humankind will need you then, Tom.

Dr. Perfect has slung advice across the globe for the last two decades due to his dedication to the uplift of the human condition.

Episode 519: Marisa Siegel!

16 Saturday Apr 2022

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Episode 519 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).

In this week’s show, I speak with the poet Marisa Siegel about the value of combining poetry with graphic art, language poetry, discovering poetry early in life, and the Mills College MFA Program in Oakland.

TEXT DISCUSSED

NOTES

ScribophileTDO 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.

Check out these video archives of great poetry events from Miami Book Fair.

Episode 519 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 #377: Short Peace

15 Friday Apr 2022

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The Curator of Schlock #377 by Jeff Shuster

Short Peace

Don’t ask about the title.

I had collapsed in shock after witnessing a security guard get mauled to death by Tasmanian devils while trapped in a cage with a female kangaroo named Edwige. The devils ignored us, choosing to go after the other factory workers in the distance. Maybe it was a kinship toward Edwige and the other marsupials in this slaughterhouse for black market meats. Hours later, a team of soldiers led by Larry, a secret agent of the Canadian government bearing a striking resemblance to Don Knots, freed Edwige and myself from our cage. — To be continued.

This week’s anime extravaganza is 2013’s Short Peace, another animated anthology of short films from directors Koji Morimoto, Shuhei Morita, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hiroaki Ando, and Hajime Katoki. One of these shorts, Possessions, was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The movie begins with a little girl following a rabbit into a chamber filled with wondrous delights that serves as a hub for the different worlds that await the audience.

The first short is the aforementioned Possessions. It begins in old Japan. A traveler  caught in a forest during a raging storm. He enters a shrine to escape the rain, apologizes to whichever spirits reside on the sacred ground. Before he knows it, he’s in a room surrounded by fancy umbrellas, all complaining about their state of decay. The traveler marvels at their craftsmanship and proceeds to repair them with materials made available to him. He repairs garments as well, but then requests that the spirits let him out, but the spirits of the abandoned items turn violent. Will he survive the night?

The next short is titled Combustible, and as you can tell from the title, it’s about fire. The short begins with an illustrated scroll rolling out. The images spring to life and we get a tale of a bride wanting a man other than her betrothed. She’s in love with a member of the town’s fire brigade. In her despair, she accidentally starts a fire, infighting her home and the entire neighborhood.

The third short is Gambo, a tale of a bear and an ogre. The short begins with a defeated samurai asking the big, white bear Gambo if he’s a messenger from God or something to that effect. In a nearby village, a giant red ogre with a twisted face and sharp horns attacks the villagers and makes off with one of the young maidens to impregnate her with his devil spawn. Later, Gambo meets the daughter of the emperor who conveys her despair and gets him to destroy the ogre’s lair. A brutal fight between bear and ogre ensues. The samurai from the beginning of the film rushed to Gambo’s aid.

The final short is titled A Farewell to Weapons and is about a group of scavengers looking for valuables in an abandoned city after a future World War. An artificially intelligent super tank wakes up and gives chase. Realizing how deadly this weapon is, the men vow to destroy it. And that about sums up Short Peace. I liked how some of the shorts were cel animated while others incorporated CG into the traditional look of cel animation. For fans of animated anthologies, this one is not to be missed.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.