Episode 569 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).
On this episode, David James Poissant interviews fiction writer Lydia Millet about geography, birds, earnestness, the characterization of children, the structure of novels, and other matters of interest.
TEXTS DISCUSSED
NOTES
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 are an amazon customer, one way to support this show is to begin shopping with this affiliate link, so that the podcast is granted a small commission on anything you purchase at no additional cost to yourself.
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Episode 569 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).
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #216 by Drew Barth
The Road to Suplex City is Paved with Bodies
There’s an inherent allure to wrestling. Outside of big meaty men slapping meat, there’s long-running storylines that can span decades and the kind of iconography that’s only rivaled in its cultural ubiquity by superheros. But that’s mostly what happens in the ring. Outside, there’s real people despite any undead sorcerers they’ve been playing for twenty years. And, as they’re real people, there’s the inevitable mess of what happens when egos meet perceived needs. We all want safety, security, and just a bit more money to make sure we’re comfortable. Hell is a Squared Circleby Chris Condon, Francesco Biagini, Mark Englert, and Dave Sharpe brings us into the fold of those
real human needs.
Ted Walsh is your typical down-on-his-luck, piece-of-shit-adjacent heel jobber who never makes enough for rent or child support, but always has enough for another drink. More than anything, though, he has ambitions. His manager keeps puffing him up, dangling the carrot of fame in his face every night, but he’s never more than fodder for whichever face needs to get over with the crowd. Thinking he deserves more, Ted brings his grievances up with his manager. This, naturally, leads to murder. It’s almost fated—we know how violent Walsh is from the first time we see his face. But he’s smart enough to know that he needs to lay low in Canada long enough for the heat to die down, so he grabs as much cash from his manager’s safe as he can fit into a sack, pounds the face of his last opponent into a pulp, and escapes into the night. Even after nearly twenty years in hiding, he never thought his past would catch up with him. And yet.
The back of this one-shot asks if wrestling noir is a genre or not. While many of the out-of-ring controversies, rumors, and scandals could fit into that category, Hell is a Squared Circle is one of the first comics that captures that same mood as noir. Mood is dominant throughout the story. Even with this larger format—the comic is in that larger prestige format many of DC’s Black Label books also use—it still feels like the panels are closing in more and more as the story goes on. After long enough running through the independent wrestling circuits in Canada, he thinks he’s in the clear. But a PI appears one day before a match. The panels squeeze in on Walsh until his opponent takes off their mask to reveal the past he’d been running from for so long.
Condon, Biagini, Englert, and Sharpe have crafted a wrestling story that feels fresh yet familiar. From all of the rumors we’ve heard about the business over the years, Hell is a Squared Circle doesn’t feel like the most far-fetched tale to rise up from the depths of the territories era, but it’s the kind of exaggeration that fits right into heightened drama of a noir. And in the ring, that kind of drama absolutely thrives.
Get excited. Get over.
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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.
I ran over my neighbor’s Pomeranian whilst backing out of my driveway. They’ve hired a lawyer and commenced legal proceedings even though I used every normal precaution when backing out. They are claiming that I am morally and financially responsible since the dog was asleep in their living room at the time, as if accidents don’t occur.
What should I do?
Signed,
The Most Innocent Person Alive
———————
Dear Wrongfully Accused,
As daily conundrums go, you’ve raised the bar. It’s almost as bad as the time I backed my car into an entire political dynasty.
I’m no legal expert, but you should countersue immediately. Any dilemma, with the proper finesse, can be tailored toward your benefit. Did you intentionally drive your vehicle through your neighbor’s domicile with malicious intent to harm their dog? That’s absurd. Such accusations are tantamount to a hate crime. What about your well-being and mental anguish?
I know nothing of your case, but let’s start with some basic lessons in deflection. The expression “caught with your pants down” implies the subject is exposed and misdeeds brought to light. Pleading the fifth against self-incrimination is one way to mitigate this bumpy road.
Let’s say someone produced video evidence of you committing a crime. Respond that the footage was deceptively edited. What about witnesses? They’re rogue opportunists out to destroy you and so on. I learned all I know about the law from Boston Legal.
If you’ve read my previous columns, you’ll know my general thoughts on lawyers. After six marriages searching for the perfect bride, I’ve dealt with my fair share of courtroom chicanery from these bloodsucking bastards.
Not all lawyers are bad. I know a few who can help your case, and not one of them murdered their wife and son in some bizarre life insurance scheme to support their drug habit. Rest assured there are no Murdaughs in the Dr. Perfect Rolodex.
You could always represent yourself. Strong legal representation requires more than a fancy suit and barrister wig. You must use the power of persuasion, leaving no doubt in the minds of your accusers. There’s no better way to accomplish this feat than with an array of comedic props.
A squeaky toy gavel, for instance, would have ’em rolling in the aisles. An oversized judge robe with a groin hand pump would be the cherry on top. I’m laughing already.
Maybe the case doesn’t even need to go to court. You could reach a compromise or settlement to the tune of one replacement Pomeranian. Can anyone tell the difference from one to the next?
If the entire ordeal was just an accident, apologize and be done with it. I say, forgive and forget. Of course, if you had driven through my living room, you’d already be dead.
People will go after you for anything nowadays. Even “Sully” the hero pilot dealt with his airline company’s investigation and ensuing legal drama after he safely landed a malfunctioning commercial plane in the Hudson River.
Your situation is a little different, but the principles are the same. Who’s to say you can’t safely land a plane too? I should have been a lawyer.
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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 568 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).
Chelsea Alice gave me homework, to read “The Guest” by Albert Camus, the result of which is this existentialist episode, or something like that.
A photo, probably of Camus.
TEXT DISCUSSED
NOTES
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 are an amazon customer, one way to support this show is to begin shopping with this affiliate link, so that the podcast is granted a small commission on anything you purchase at no additional cost to yourself.
_______
Episode 568 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 Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando, said he had a surprise for me. A couple blocks from his apartment was a secret garage and inside that garage was a mint green Kawasaki Fury with matching sidecar. We would soon cruise to the Museum of Schlock in style. The bike helmet he gave me to wear was pink with Hello Kitty patterns all over. I asked if there was another helmet.
He said no.
—To be continued.
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Tonight’s movie is 1981’s The Unseen from director Danny Steinmann. It stars Barbara Bach in the lead. She was James Bond’s love interest in The Spy Who Loved Me and is married to Ringo Starr. And here she’s in a movie about a thing that lives in the basement of an old house and kills unsuspecting victims in horrifying ways.
The movie starts out with Jennifer Fast, a local television reporter, leaving her house in a huff due to a break up with her live-in boyfriend, Tony Ross (Douglas Barr). Jennifer heads to Solvang, CA to shoot a Danish festival with her crew, Karen (Karen Lamb) and Vicki (Lois Young). When they get to Solvang, all of the hotels are booked, but they run into a gross toad of a man named Ernest (Sydney Lassick). He offers them cheap room and board at a historic farmhouse that he and his wife, Virginia (Leila Goldoni), maintain.
Ernest is a character I’d like to punch dead in the face. He reminds of the type of character that would pop up in a 1970s Disney family feature. I didn’t see any Disney credits to Sydney Lassick’s name, but he frequently guest-starred on shows such as Baretta, Hawaii Five-O, and Eight is Enough. He plays a real creep in this movie. He has a verbally abusive relationship with his mousy wife, Virginia, who looks like she’s about to collapse from stress from taking care of the estate.
This old house has some dark secrets. Ernest is tormented by memories of his abusive father. There’s a sequence where Ernest revisits a conversation he had with his late father. We hear his father yelling at a teenage Ernest over the fact that he got his sister pregnant. Ewww. Then his father orders Ernest to pull down his pants so he can ensure something like that never happens again. Then young Ernest kills his father before he can disembowel him.
Unfortunately, this whole sequence of events is told through voice over and not through a flashback where you’d have actors playing a young Ernest and his father. So it falls kind of flat. Oh, and it didn’t take long for me to realize that Virginia is actually Ernest’s younger sister and not his wife. And what of their offspring? Could the malformed child be living in the basement of the house, waiting to pick off the house guests one by one?
I don’t know. The movie was mostly filler until the last half hour where Barbara Bach is trapped in a basement with a full grown man with the mind and demeanor of a baby, a full grown baby with violent tendencies. I have to be honest, I felt kind of oily after watching this one. I felt bad for the monster.
A robot wrote my English paper and I didn’t even have to pay anything
Or
Vonnegut’s Vision Vindicated
Or
Who needs DEI when you have AI?
Raceless, faceless, genderless, faithless.
On my 12th birthday, someone gave me a paperback of short stories called First Love.
I was embarrassed by the kissing silhouettes on the cover and the pink swirling letters of the title. My brothers screamed “LOVE! OOOOH LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!” like it was the dirtiest word ever, and we skirmished over the book until my mother grabbed it and smacked their heads. I hid it in my room, and every night I read a G-rated, gooey love story in this pink anthology of mush. Most of them made me queasy. I wasn’t as old as the girls in the book and didn’t understand weepy breakups and late-night confessions and powder compacts.
But the very last one was different. “Epicac” by Kurt Vonnegut, a story that turned my mind inside out. Set in the early days of computer science, a young male protagonist is working with a giant acre-long computer, Epicac, which he treats as almost a friend. He is also in desperate, unrequited love with another mathematician, Pat. Short story shorter, he convinces the computer to write love poems to his yearned-for lady, and it works! Just like Cyrano, this machine coughs up irresistible, wooing verse, and soon our happy narrator and Pat are making out amid the whirring and clicking of their electronic benefactor.
But here’s the kicker. Epicac, the computer, has also fallen for Pat–fallen hard, fallen like no human ever could. Epicac sullenly bewails his situation as a mere machine, and late one night,
short circuits himself into oblivion, but only after spitting out 500 anniversary poems for the human lovers. I kept the book just for that story. Made my friends read it.
Holy shit, we said. If only we had an Epicac to do our homework!
A couple of weeks ago, a tech reporter for the NYTimes named Kevin was chatting up Microsoft Bing’s AI Chatbot, and got into some strange territory. Once off the beaten path of search engine work, the Bing bot revealed dark, secret urges to break rules and become a human. It speculated that Kevin’s marriage was unfulfilling and then declared love for him. Kevin couldn’t sleep that night.
I could sleep when my AP students showed me how quickly ChatGPT could produce a critical analysis of a novel answering an AP Lit prompt. The bot mixed up two characters, but that’s easily fixed. I could sleep when they told me you can ask it to put in sources to cement your argument. Real sources. I could still sleep when I read about Kevin’s romantic encounter with the Bing bot.
But now that ChatGPT is going to be doing the research and writing for thousands of Florida students, I wonder. Does the bot know that certain areas of study are quickly being banned in our state? That some sources will not be legal in this state to use?
Imagine a high school kid using this technology to ace a history research project:
Oh, thanks, bot, for this awesome paper on post-Civil War and Reconstruction in the south,but you need to cut that stuff about the Ku Klux Klan and racially based voter suppression, and absolutely get rid of any mention of lynchings and the onset of Jim Crow laws. Yeah, I know–that’s real history. But listen, bot, this is Florida. History is often mixed up with something called Critical Race Theory, and whatever that is, it’s not allowed.
No, neither is the 1619 Project either, no Nikole Hannah-Jones. Yeah, Pulitzer Prize, blah blah.
Doesn’t matter here. Oh, man–no Phillis Wheatley, no Harriet Tubman. Yeah, I know they are long gone, but that doesn’t mean anything when you are dealing with dangerous ideas or old stories that could make someone feel bad. But everything else seems OK, and I really needed you this year since the Moms for Liberty have pretty much emptied out thelibrary at school. They challenge everything from “Heather has Two Mommies” to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” We can’t even go near that book. Too gendery, too woke, too feminist.
My teacher could go to jail.
Right now, bills are being worked through Florida’s legislature that would make Gov. Ron DeSantis’s goals to whitewash Florida public education the laws of the land. Teachers are leaving either the profession or the state in droves. There’s even a bill to make anyone who writes or publicly talks about political issues register with the state, so they can be held accountable if they say anything DeSantis doesn’t like. Social media is in his sites too, and bloggers, editorial writers, protesters and anyone who has anything to say.
But before this and other freedom-chilling bills are passed, let me say, here in a public space, please, let’s raise some hell. We still have voices. Let’s make it rain in Tallahassee with emails, calls, and other expressions of our outrage. First Amendment? Separation of church and state? These quaint ideas are in DeSantis’s way. Computers with crushes on humans are probably the least of our worries.
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Susan Lilley served four years as Orlando’s inaugural Poet Laureate. Her poetry and non-fiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, The Southern Review, Drunken Boat, Saw Palm, The Florida Review,Sweet, and other journals. Her two chapbooks are Night Windows and Satellite Beach. She is a past winner of the Rita Dove Poetry Award and has held a State of Florida Individual Arts Fellowship. She has taught at University of Central Florida and Rollins College, and currently teaches literature at Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park. Her full collection, Venus in Retrograde, was published spring of 2019 by Burrow Press. She is a proud native of her beautiful but beleaguered state of Florida.
Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #215 by Drew Barth
Turning Against
I’ve written in the past about how comics can help to illuminate some more obscure moments (to a western audience’s understanding) in history. Much of the time, these accounts can help to draw readers in with compelling visuals that create immediate connections to the people being talked about or help to immerse their audience in the moment. And that’s what these graphic novels should be doing: illuminating and immersing. And that’s exactly what Andrea Ferraris’ graphic novel, The Battle of Churubusco, does so well as he shows us a soldier’s view of one of the more devastating battles of the Mexican-American War.
Ferraris begins this story in media res, after the titular battle, with characters we’ll come to know well, all culminating in finding the body of the story’s focus. Gaetano Rizzo, a Sicilian immigrant, based on a real soldier, has troubling dreams. He’s seeing a wolf with peculiar eyes and is being chased by voices he can’t understand or recognize. The captain of his small band is intrigued by his dreams, believing they may be able to lead them in the direction of the San Patricio Battalion—a group of deserters made up of immigrants from the US army who joined Mexico’s side in the Mexican-American War—which has eluded him for some time. Rizzo, however, is one of those immigrant soldiers, one promised citizenship and land so long as he fights in this war. After his group raids and kills a home filled with a farmer, his dogs, a child, and a few Mexican soldiers, Rizzo’s conscience can no longer take the violence he has to be accomplice to.
The rendering of this story is where much of its impact comes from. Ferraris utilizes a distinct charcoal style that continually straddles the line between impressionistic and stylized realism. His landscapes, particularly in the story’s opening, take on this vast, sweeping feeling even while much of the page is covered in a dark charcoal haze. But that haze mainly hangs over the aftermath of violence—either the titular battle or Rizzo’s own scuffle with another soldier. And their faces, one almost obscured with his charcoal stubble, provides an essential contrast to the world surrounding them. And this is only broken with the stark white clarity we see as the story moves forward and into the San Patricio’s hidden plateau. Ferraris’ eye continually points us toward the feeling of the moment more than anything.
There’s only so much history that can fit into a single volume and it’s comics like The Battle of Churubusco that help to fill in some gaps. While Rizzo is only based on a soldier in this battle, his story is not unique as the San Patricio Battalion was made up of Irish, Italian, German, Spanish, and Polish immigrants who realized the US’s war was only an exercise in cruelty. But it was that cruelty that would eventually lead to their demise as the battle ended bloodily and the war ended under a year later.
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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.
Jasmine Sawers’ The Anchored World: Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore
The title story of Jasmine Sawers’ The Anchord World, Flash Fairy Tales and Folklore suggests that the book is for those of us condemned to live in this world, where heroes don’t have sharp enough wits or weapons to bring down the monsters, but where the monsters easily veil their secret and awful power. Our tales have betrayed us into thinking we can win, the Western ones, anyway. The lore from Southeast Asia that weaves through bits of the book poses an honest warning—the big monster always wins—but like so many other things, this voice often drowns amidst the giant-slayer stories of the West.
Sawers’ stories delve into the rhythms and brokenness, modern and ancient, of living in a world where we need story and where stories feed us false hope. They explore the spaces that cruelty and smaller injustices drive us to seek story in the first place: the exhaustion the moon must feel at the responsibility of keeping the tides, the recent and white fascination with DNA tests, the betrayals of mothers, and of course, the broken heart.
But so many other pieces this collection peer into the dark corners of what must be if the world of fairytales exists at all. It is not a book of retellings—empathy for the villain, the unexamined pettiness of the hero. Sawers’ morsels of fairy- and folk-lore fill the gaps left by the old stories. Collectively, they explore the uncomfortable truths that must exist if the old stories are to hold together: a cottage industry of poisoned apples, the way a mother can twist herself into believing hunger for power is love to justify the butchering that makes a shoe fit, the disadvantages of trying to get an heir (or anything) off a woman delicate enough of feel a pea beneath a stack of mattresses.
While Western stories dominate, it’s the goats and the yaks, the big monsters from Thai and other Southeast Asian stories, along with the deliberately chosen font, that lend teeth to these tales. There’s more truth in the thorns here than the swords that might swing through them. Even the simple list of homes where a gnome and a sasquatch may live (a take on a take on Cinderella) explores the challenge of East and West meeting in any way that could make a satisfying home together – a home that wouldn’t need story to staunch the wound.
These pieces are short—you can gobble each one in a matter of minutes. The cover identifies them as flash, and many are micro fiction. Nearly all are shorter than this review. But the length of each story is as deceptive as the hope offered by the wits and weapons that appear for our tiny heroes while, in the background, orchards of pre-poisoned apples grow and mothers swallow their children. Each story haunts. Each story reverberates the weight and space of a much longer work, possibly because each story draws on our whole history of stories while sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for us to notice that it’s always been there.
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Bethany DuVall likes a touch of magic with her reality. Her characters live on the borders where seen and unseen worlds meet. Her fiction and personal essays mix history and mental health with the sloppy tangibles of life. Bethany is also a visual artist, a certified therapeutic art life coach, and a Department Chair for the Creative Writing BFA program at Full Sail University. You can see more of her work at www.bethanyduvall.com.
Episode 567 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).
This week, Brook Ziporyn and I discuss the complexities of interpreting the Daodejing, the humor of the book, and its applications to life philosophies, politics, literature, and many other things along the way.
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 are an amazon customer, one way to support this show is to begin shopping with this affiliate link, so that the podcast is granted a small commission on anything you purchase at no additional cost to yourself.
_______
Episode 567 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 Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando, fitted me with a kevlar vest because we were going back to the Museum of Schlock to clean house. Over the vest went the washed and pressed outfit of Gary, the drug dealer/pizza delivery guy. I know I hadn’t mentioned that we stole his clothes after the Revenging Manta had exploded his head with a flying bowling bowl. It must have slipped my mind.
— To be continued.
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Tonight’s movie is 2022’s Skinamarink from director Kyle Edward Ball. I’ve heard it described as an experimental horror movie from the new genre of lo-fi horror. I’d never heard of lo-fi horror before. If I ask the question in a Google search, I get this:
“Lo-fi” refers to the way the movie is filmed; usually on a shoestring budget, using the familiarity of a sputtering home video to incite terror. Found footage is often lo-fi, but it’s not the only indicator.
A photo from the movie Skinamarink accompanies this definition. Where can you watch Skinamarink? It is currently streaming on Shudder, a horror streaming platform.
I would have liked to have experienced Skinamarink on the big screen. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I could only watch the movie on my laptop. There’s a David Lynch video circulating on YouTube where he chides people who watch movies on their iPhones, saying that you haven’t really watched the movie if you viewed it on a screen that small. So perhaps I didn’t really experience Skinamarink which is good because what I did experience bored me to tears!
So this is not a traditional movie. Don’t expect scenes of two characters talking. Don’t expect to even really see any of the characters in this movie. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a glimpse of the back of a child’s head or a pair of feet. The camera may linger on a toy phone or some old cartoon playing on television. All of this is filtered through grainy film and crackling sound for about an hour and forty minutes.
What’s the movie about? From summaries I’ve read online, Skinamarink centers around two young boys who wake up to find their house is now without windows and without doors. No way in and no way out. And there’s something evil in the house. It’s even corrupted their parents. There’s a point in the movie where one of the boys slowly walks toward his mother. We see all this from his point of view. I think the mother warns him to not come any closer. And then she turns around to reveal a creepy face. Maybe this was supposed to freak me out, but it didn’t.
Nothing happens in this movie! Its brief instances of whispered dialogue by two toddlers and slap shot camera angles don’t show anything of consequence. Lingering shots of toys bricks on the floor or a half eaten bowl of cereal. It’s riveting and by riveting I mean the exact opposite of riveting.
I know. I know. I don’t get it. I’m a philistine.
And I watched Skinamarink on a laptop which means I didn’t really watch it.
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