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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Tag Archives: John King

Episode 363: John King?

20 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Beating Windward Press, David James Poissant, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame, John King

Episode 363 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, David James Poissant turns the tables on John King and interviews him about the miraculous release of his epic novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

1flip

TEXT DISCUSSED

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Here is the original Guy Psycho short story.


Episode 363 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 227: HP Lovecraft Roundtable!

08 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Horror

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cthulhu, Dianne Turgeon Richardson, Dunwich Horror, Elise McKenna, HP Lovecraft, John King, Julian Chambliss, The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Tom Lucas, Weird Tales

Episode 227 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I and my inestimable guests have a fine conversation about Lovecraft and his bizarre tales and his rather strange life and his exceptionally unfortunate opinions

The participants included Elise McKenna, Tom Lucas,

Elise & Tom Lovecraft RoundtableJulian Chambliss,

Julian Lovecraft Roundtableand Dianne Turgeon Richardson.

Diane Lovecraft Roundtable
TEXTS DISCUSSED

the-dream-quest

This looks like a 1980s era Penguin book, right?

call-of-cthulu the-new-annotated-h-p-lovecraftweird-tales-july-1933-the-dreams-in-the-witch-house-and-the-horror-in-the-museum

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An author photo can look unintentionally scarier than the horror book cover sometimes.

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Episode 221: There Will Be Fan Fiction 2 (The Revenge)

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Comic Books, Disney, Episode, Fan Fiction, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Science Fiction

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

A.C. Warner, Aura, Batman, Brontë Bettencourt, Fatal Attraction, Flash Gordon, Frozen, J. Bradley, Jason Todd, John King, Litlando, Ming the Merciless, Shauna Basques, The Mighty Ducks, There Will Be Fan Fiction, There Will Be Words

Episode 221 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I share There Will Be Fan Fiction 2, a special edition of Jesse Bradley’s prose reading series, There Will Be Words.

There Will Be Words Jesse
fatal-attraction
Mighty Ducks
There Will Be Words Bronte
Frozen
There Will Be Words Shauna
Batman
Star Trek
There Will Be Words John
Aura Ming


This installment features the fan fiction of Shauna Basques (Jason Todd-era Batman), J. Bradley himself (The Mighty Ducks/Fatal Attraction crossover, obviously), Brontë Bettencourt (Frozen), A. C. Warner (Star Trek: The Next Generation, as read by me), and me (Flash Gordon).

NOTES

Check out the first installment of There Will Be Fan Fiction, which featured Teege Braun writing Small Wonder, Jared Silvia writing King of the Hill, Stephanie Rizzo writing about a post-apocalyptic Lewis and Clarke, Genevieve Anna Tyrrell writing Dexter, and me, that is John King, writing a Benny Hill Show/Ace Frehley crossover that includes David Foster Wallace, Yoda, My Little Pony, and a hint of Cthulu.

Also check out J. Bradley’s latest book, Jesus Christ, Boy Detective, and here us talk about it back on episode 216.

j_bradley-jesus_christ_boy_detective-front_cover

Check out Brontë Bettencourt’s blog, 21st Century Brontë.


Episode 221 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Aesthetic Drift #11: Notes on The Pink Fire Revue

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Dudag, Jared Silvia, John King, Nicole Oquendo, Synthestruct, The Pink Fire Revue, Tod Caviness

Aesthetic Drift #11 by Jared Silvia

Notes on The Pink Fire Revue

We knew, first off, that we wanted the event to be part concert, part reading, part projector art show. Whenever you start with the idea of creating a mutant, you have a relatively good chance of succeeding. Whether its destiny is to dwell in the sewer or not is another question.

Pink Fire Revue Gear

Photo by Jared Silvia.

John mentioned the idea of music/poetry coming together with an eye toward, I think, some of the modular synthesizer music I had been posting on various social streams. I had been bouncing a similar idea around in my brain, imagining it would be impossible to accomplish, or hoping that I would get better at what I do with synthesizers first, allowing my insecurity to shove the idea into the realm of “possible, but not likely,” that zone in my brain where I imagine something happening without reasonably expecting it to manifest. Sometimes it just takes the realization that you’re not riding a waveform alone to draw an idea out of hibernation.

John King_2

Photograph by Shawn McKee.

Here’s what we did, for all the planning and one false start:

First, we knew it would be a literary event. That’s what our events, collectively, are. We knew it should be poetry with a technological bent, something that thought about ghosts in machines, silicon strands, electrical arcs, retro-futures, and technological mainstreams of now. We reached out to a collection of poets who would, we thought, approach this matter with an open mind, and who had performance experience, which would be necessary for a show that inherently required interactivity. This included John, of course, and also Nicole Oquendo, Tod Caviness, and Mary McGinn.

Nicole Oquendo

Photo by Shawn McKee.

Meanwhile, at the school I teach at in an audio program, there are a number of teachers who dabble (to various degrees) in modular synthesizer building. I’m at the lowest extreme of that world, taking very small steps into the modular synthesizer world after loving and playing synthesizers since I was a teenager. Jon Curtis and Derek Duda, who both build their own modules, and are resourceful, enjoy making music, but hadn’t recently performed with their systems. When I asked if they were interested, they were immediately down. We spent a few weeks gathering in a classroom and improvising together in order to see what it sounded like when all three of us went forward into the world of self-playing patches and barely controlled chaos.

Derek Duda

Derek Duda, photograph by Lesley Silvia.

This part takes some explanation. I know many folks won’t be completely aware of what modular synthesizers are. Generally, they are like other synthesizers you may have seen or heard (zap, boom boom boom), but they present their components individually, and require that you determine how they are connected in order to create sounds. This requires a base-level of knowledge, but allows for an incredible amount of flexibility and variation from a simple collection of components. Sound sources (oscillators), modifiers (filters, etc.), and math/control functions (sequencers, envelopes), plus other cool modules (samplers, in this case) come together in many various ways to generate different sounds. We started with fresh patches each time. Each of our systems was chasing a common “clock,” which means that any elements we wanted synchronized together between our systems could be locked together with a common guiding timing signal that consists of electrical pulses. In the video of the event, you’ll notice us tweaking settings, pulling patch cables, modifying the sound. That’s how it goes every time.

Ginger Leigh

Ginger Leigh, photograph by Lesley Silvia.

It also takes a little of explanation to understand the video aspect of the event. Ginger Leigh, who I have known for a really long time, is a very highly regarded visual artist who operates under the name Synthestruct. She has presented her work in the US, in Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere, and has recently curated projector art shows here in the Orlando area. I originally asked her if she would be interested in participating in this show, naively imagining that she would create series of live visuals she could trigger in much the way a VJ might.

What she did, instead, though, was to create an entire program that received sound inputs from our modular synthesizers, and from the microphone at the event, and would vibrate and modify visual protocols she had designed. In essence, she wrote a sound-reactive program just for the event, and while she tweaked parameters live, the show was utterly one-time in that the sounds came from a set of variable un-repeatable instrument settings running chaotic patterns, modifying visuals that were designed to react to these patterns.

Jared Silva

Photo by Shawn McKee.

Ultimately, this event was wonderfully synchronized. The work of the poets intersected uncannily with the sounds being generated, the improvisation huddled up perfectly well, and the visualizations functioned in ways that went so far beyond what I imagined that it was a little overwhelming to be standing in the wash of light. Not bad considering that the actual event was the first time we put all of these ideas together to become the mutant it became, not, it turned out, a sewer-dweller.

It strikes me that there are some interesting concerns inherent in an event like this. What do we see when we view ourselves as technology users? The ubiquity of media is such that we so easily slip back into our devices, a closeness of mind and screen that is unprecedented in ages before ours. We are experts at media, consuming it constantly, ravenously. And yet, our consumption is often so solitary, a monologue flowing mainly in one direction from device to person. That this event was a “multimedia presentation” of unintuitive, self-exploring instruments, programs designed for visual translation, and human voices confirming that things are amiss, things are unsettled, does not encapsulate the full experience. Because The Pink Fire Revue was a communal happening, shared not only between members of the audience, but between the performers, the audience, the instruments, the software, the voices, and the building itself, complete with feedback at every hinge, it suggested another coming age of technological witness. In retrospect, it was (without any of us realizing it, and that includes those of us who came up with the idea) an experiment in basic singularity, with all of the complex nodes it takes to form a new, multi-mind nervous system.

This event would not have been possible without John King, who conceptualized it with me, Ryan Rivas, who is an amazing event producer, and who always makes Functionally Literate stuff possible, Shawn McKee, who shot the video of the event alongside John King, and edited the video as well, Pat Greene, who was generous in providing the space at The Gallery at Avalon Island, and Lesley Silvia, who always helps in a million tangible and intangible ways as things kick off on an idea like this.

_______

Jared SylviaJared Silvia (Episodes 57, 62, 69, 90, 122, 129, 131, 152,  167,  171,  173,  206, and 213) is the host of the Functionally Literate reading series and radio show. His fiction has appeared in decomP, Monkeybicycle, Annalemma Magazine, Digital Americana magazine, and in collections from Burrow Press. He was the recipient of a Luso American scholarship from the DISQUIET International Literary Conference in 2013. You can find out more at jaredsilvia.com.

 

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Episode 143: Boris Fishman Event

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Replacement Life, Bookmark It, Boris Fishman, John King, Patrick Greene, The Gallery at Avalon Island

Episode 143 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I share a recording of a live event featuring Boris Fishman reading from his novel, A Replacement Life,

Photo by Rob Liguori

Photo by Rob Liguori

and your humble host reading poetry.

Texts Discussed

A Replacement Life

Read the New Yorker profile of Merle Haggard here.

Oyster PerpetualWhat Narcissism Means to MeThe Trouble with Poetry

The Fixer_______

Episode 143 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 135: A Craft Discussion About James Wood’s How Fiction Works, with Vanessa Blakeslee!

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amy Penne, David Foster Wallace, How Fiction Works, James Wood, John King, Vanessa Blakeslee

Episode 135 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk about James Wood’s How Fiction Works with Vanessa Blakeslee,

Vanessa BlakesleePlus Amy Penne writes about how David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster and Other Essays changed her life.

Photo on 11-12-14 at 6.34 PMTEXTS DISCUSSED

How Fiction WorksConsider the Lobster

The Prime

NOTES

On Tuesday, January 20th, 7 P.M., Leslie Salas will lead a workshop on imagery at the Orlando Public Library, Herndon Branch.

On Saturday, January 24th, 11 A.M., J. Bradley will host a love poem workshop at the Orlando Public Library.

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Episode 135 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In Boozo Veritas #71: MEMO from the In Boozo Veritas Offices

22 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Eyes Wide Shit, In Boozo Veritas, John King, Stanley Kubrick, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #71 by Teege Braune

MEMO from the In Boozo Veritas Offices

To: John King, Host of The Drunken Odyssey 

From: Teege Braune, Author of In Boozo Veritas

Subject: The Greatest Film Every Made or An Average Tuesday for John King?

Date: December 22, 2014

You’ve called me out! It’s true that I have been hallucinating more and more regularly. Why, early this very week I had the strangest dream that you and I were being serenaded by an adorably sad, seven foot tall clown with a golden voice. What a strange but delightful vision. My pharmacologist warned me not to eat those mushrooms growing around the back of my house, but damn it, they just taste so good on pizza.

That being said, I feel certain that at least some of the details of my last letter took place in reality. For example: your neighbor Mrs. Thorndike had asked me not to use her real name so that the world would not be privy to her libertine activities, and while it’s true that her parties are not exactly orgies, but more akin to friendly afternoon games of bridge, most of us in attendance wear masks and a few of us (no names) do get naked. I used Nuala Windsor as a convenient alias, but alas, I chose too obvious a ruse. Nevertheless, it is you who has exposed a kind, if eccentric, elderly woman. Let that be on your own conscience.

EWS PosterThe fact is, that as I read the details of your attack on Eyes Wide Shut, I kept thinking, John’s right! But where you groan and shake your head in agonized disbelief, I find myself filled with delight. Rainbow motif symbolizing adultery and sexual excess? Yes, I’ll take it! Proliferation of characters passing through thresholds and dreamy, drawn-out dialogue? Please, give me more! A highly stylized and antiseptic orgy that, despite the outrageous amount of nudity, is completely lacking in anything that could be considered erotic? I can’t get enough of the stuff!

It isn’t necessarily easy for me to say exactly what I love about EWS, but no matter how many times I watch it, whenever I hear Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, Waltz No. 2, my analytic and aesthetic mind begins whirring with the possibility of making new connections, of reentering this strange universe that is both exotic and present. I never ever grow tired of viewing this bizarre and mysterious cinematic objet d’art. Watching the film after reading your critique, I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to convince another person that this film is a masterpiece, especially someone as intellectually gifted and adept at analysis as yourself, is simply a foolish endeavor. Which is not say EWS is a guilty pleasure. Far from it. You simply appreciate the oddball genius of Stanley Kubrick or you do not.

One place in which I must disagree with you, however, is your assertion that EWS is a projection of a “repressive Puritanical libido.” Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill Hartford’s never-realized sexual misadventure is more complicated than an attempted escape from inhibition. After all, he and his wife Alice seem to share an active sex life.

eyes kissWhat sends Dr. Hartford down the rabbit hole is not Alice’s confession about the naval officer, but rather the realization that his wife is a sexually autonomous person and not merely an ornament reflective of his social status and object of male sexual desire. His emasculation is not so much a result of learning that his wife once wanted another man, but that women are tempted by sex at all.

eyes_wide_shut3Instead of handling this emotional trauma the way one might in the real world, either by seeking marital counseling or engaging in some kind of midlife crisis, Bill enters a psychological labyrinth inside a dreamscape version of New York City that begins with an oddly inverted version of his own situation. A deceased patient’s daughter, who looks remarkably like his own wife Alice, spontaneously and without warning professes her love to Bill despite her engagement to a man who looks remarkably like Bill himself, the bright opulent rooms juxtaposed with the same dull blue light seeping in from the windows.

Bill attempts to redeem his masculinity throughout a series of increasingly odder scenarios that culminate in a masked orgy, a place where women are reduced to literally faceless objects of pleasure, but just as his near temptation by the models at Ziegler’s party was interrupted before he was able to go where the rainbow ends, every encounter fails to culminate in sexual union or restore the shattered order to his world. He returns from this journey to discover another man’s face beside his wife in his bed. Of course, it is own face, his mask from the orgy, his own illusion occupying the place of his real self.

eyeswideshut maskAll boundaries have been subverted, the lines between dream and wakefulness, fantasy and reality, and representation and that which is being represented.

But it’s like I said: you either dig that sort of thing or you don’t. I doubt I’ve convinced you that you enjoy a movie you’ve previously called “a pretentious waste of time.” I can offer one last detail, however, that I think you might appreciate. This theme of representation even seeped into the actual production of EWS. You mentioned you recognized the location of Rainbow Rentals as a cross street between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park when, in fact, Kubrick’s phobia of flying meant that none of the movie is filmed on location.

EWS4Instead a reconstruction of New York City was built in a sound studio in London. Kubrick’s eye for detail was as unquestionably sharp late in life as it had ever been before.

While my defense may have fallen on deaf ears, I will say, if nothing else, I take pride in the fact that I was able to force you to endure a second viewing of EWS and that the wonderful music of Jocelyn Pook was redeemed in your eyes.

Only now as I reach my conclusion does it occur to me that maybe I have missed your point altogether, and perhaps your frustrations with EWS are much more basic: simply put that a film climaxing in a bizarre orgy will never impress you, a man for whom masked orgies have simply become a routine detail of any humdrum Tuesday evening. Enjoy your orgies, my friend. I hope to see you soon.

_______

Teege BrauneTeege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90, episode 102, episode 122, episode 129) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #70: MEMO from The Secret HQ of The Drunken Odyssey

15 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Arthur Schnitlzer, Eyes Wide Shut, György Ligeti, Jocelyn Pook, John King, Stanley Kubrick, Teege Braune, Tom Cruise

In Boozo Veritas #70 by John King

MEMO from The Secret HQ of The Drunken Odyssey

To: Teege Braune, Author of In Boozo Veritas

From: John King, Host of The Drunken Odyssey

Subject: The Unspeakable Awfulness of Eyes Wide Shut (Redux)

Date: December 15, 2014


Teege, I am more worried about you than ever.

First, my villa complex uses garbage cans. There is no dumpster. This leads me to believe that you are either hallucinating again or else you are bothering even more strangers with your relentless obsession.

Of course, one might reasonably conclude that the reality of one night, or a handful of nights, let alone a whole lifetime, is not the truth, just as no dream is ever only a dream. Still, I am worried about your fantasmagorias about attending orgies with elderly women, especially if they (the orgies) are as boring as the one depicted in Eyes Wide Shut.

Second, you know as well as I, alas, do, that the preposterously-named Nuala Windsor is a character in that cinematic abomination. Either your movie-watching companion was having you on, or maybe you knew but played along, eager to blur the lines of reality and boredom the ways EWS does.

My neighbor is Mrs. Thorndike, and she’ll be crushed to know that you’ve been watching VHS movies with another elderly woman down the street or wherever. She asked me to tell you to call her. You’ve made things awkward between me and my neighbors, Thomas.

Third, I checked the DVD out of the library and watched it for the first time in fourteen years, and, ouch, EWS seemed even more unbearable this time.

Eyes Wide Shut should have been called Tom Cruise Walks In and Out of (Mostly Opulent) Rooms.

EWS5This two-and-a-half hour movie would have had a running time of about seventeen minutes if Kubrick had used jump-cuts instead of lavishing steady cam footage onto every entrance and exit. I wonder if Kubrick saw Scorcese’s two major steady cam shots of entrances in Goodfellas and thought, “I will use that in every scene, despite there being no coherent story-enhancing purpose of such cinematography.”

EWS6And here is where you might pull the thesaurus down and tell me that such footage represents the liminal, and that such representation is essential to the themes of EWS, in particular the in-between state between reality and dream, and the in-between state between reality and perception.

EWS2But there is no liminal state between boredom and boredom, Teege. The liminal is a lazy metaphor, the expression of a lack of anything real to communicate.

EWS3

The aging and ailing Kubrick must also have been reading too much Harold Pinter and decided to out-Pinter Pinter, because the amount of pauses is excruciating. If he used jump cuts and lost the pauses, the running time of EWS comes down to about seven minutes.

And when the dialogue finally comes, often it is delivered with Quaalude-grade stupefaction.

When the plot drudges towards Tom Cruise finally about to crash the black mass orgy, we ooze into the totally-essential tuxedo and costume rental scene, where we get to meet Mr. Milich of Rainbow Tuxedo Rentals, and learn about his tragic bald spot.

EWS1The name of the rental place–considering the barely cryptic innuendo of Nuala Windsor earlier in the film, whose sexual predilection almost makes her either a succubus or a reality television star–is so symbolic as to be nauseating, especially since I used to walk by this actual location on my way to classes at NYU. This is on one of the cross streets between Sixth Avenue and Washington Square Park in the West Village.

EWS4When Milich enters his office rather late at night, he catches two men with an underaged girl, all of them in states of undress.  He attacks the men and screams at the girl, who’s either his daughter or ward, who runs to Tom Cruise for protection. She then immediately casts lusting looks at her new protector like some Lolita, without the nuance or ambiguity Nabokov gave his nymphette.

EWS7The point seems to be to call into question what one sees, and to wonder if the world is so ubiquitously corrupt, or if one’s imagination–if one’s own repressive Puritanical libido–is being projected dangerously out onto the world.

In the fucking West Village in the latter half of the twentieth century, one of the least sexually inhibited locales in America. What next, a closeted gay man living in San Francisco who wants to come out, but is afraid the people in his city won’t accept his sexual orientation?

If the movie’s setting was Indianapolis or Chicago, the profoundly nuerotic sexual anxiety might make more sense.

Probably Arthur Schnitlzer’s Dream Story (Traumnovelle), the source material for EWS, makes more sense: Vienna in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Milich, as a proud business owner, should have been the main character, as I liked him, his daughter, and the two Asian men with her were more interesting than everyone else in the movie.

It turns out, Jocelyn Pook’s music is wonderful; it reminds me of her music for the film of The Merchant of Venice. The annoying music from EWS (sampled and repeated for maximum annoyance as a tone poem of boredom) is György Ligeti’s “Musica Ricercata II: Mesto, Rigido e Cerimonale,” which I think translates to “Can some shadow demon please help me tune this piano?”

This movie has scarred me with its awfulness, dear friend. Please explain how you see it as anything other than a pretentious waste of time, the silly effort of a former cinema master pretending that he still has something to say.

_______

1flip

John King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.

In Boozo Veritas #68: MEMO from The Secret HQ of The Drunken Odyssey

01 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, In Boozo Veritas

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Eyes Wide Shut, Jocelyn Pook, John King, New York City, Nicole Kidman, Orgies, Stanley Kubrick, Teege Braune, Tom Cruise

In Boozo Veritas #68 by John King

MEMO from The Secret HQ of The Drunken Odyssey

To: Teege Braune, Author of In Boozo Veritas

From: John King, Host of The Drunken Odyssey

Subject: The Unspeakable Awfulness of Eyes Wide Shut

Date: December 1, 2014


Teege, this obsession is unworthy of you, dear friend.

A year ago, on the platform of the Grand Floridian monorail station, with Christmas tunes oozing from the eaves, and huge wreathes prematurely dangling, you extolled Stanley Kubrick’s final cinematic hurrah, that turgid psychosexual melodrama that is part architecture porn, part Noh play (maybe it’s just the acting), and part predictable postmodern conspiracy narrative.

Tom Cruise’s tortured innocence as the private physician of the one percent was unbearable.

Eyes Wide Shut 3The notion that there is a privileged subculture in modern New York City so sexually repressed that only a black mass-style orgy (or is it an orgy-style black mass?) could liberate their Puritanical souls is ludicrous. Like the show Friends, Eyes Wide Shut imagines a New York City unpopulated by those actual New Yorkers who live there.

Eyes Wide Shut 4Nicole Kidman was even more unbearable than Tom Cruise.

Eyes Wide Shut 2Am I supposed to be enjoying it on a merely impressionistic level, as a sort of affectless tone poem that isn’t really about the human experience, but something sublimely inhuman, like the last sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Are hallucinogens necessary for appreciating Eyes Wide Shut?

Is the movie just something for the eyes to focus on while listening to Jocelyn Pook’s maddening music?

Eyes Wide ShutAs a friend, I ask you these things, because your harassment on this issue has gotten out of control. The way you boom your mitts on my door after midnight, with that ratty VHS copy clutched in your hand is startling my poor neighbors. You’re like the Ancient Mariner with this wretched tape as your albatross that you are somehow proud of.

Apparently, the old woman two doors down from me invited you in, and you showed the movie to her and offered your own expert commentary on the film while she watched it. At least you found someone who had a VHS machine. You drank all her lemonade after you finished the Guinness you had brought. She thought you were very nice. Does Jenn know you are doing this?

Really, buddy. I’m getting worried.

_______

1flipJohn King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.

Episode 122: There Will Be Words Fourth Annual Flash Fiction Spooktacular!

18 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Flash Fiction, Horror

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Brett Pribble, Jared Silvia, Jesse Bradley, John King, Karen Best, Matt Peters, Rebecca Swain Vadnie, Teege Braune, There Will Be Words, Whitney Hamrick

Episode 122 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I share a recording of a Halloween show in Jesse Bradley’s prose reading series, There Will Be Words, in which I was a reader.

The There Will Be Words Fourth Annual

Flash Fiction Spooktacular featured

KAREN BEST
KEITH GOUVEIA
MATT PETERS
REBECCA SWAIN VADNIE
JOHN KING
WHITNEY HAMRICK
BRETT PRIBBLE
TEEGE BRAUNE
JARED SILVIA

Karen Best

Karen Best (Photo by Leslie Silvia).

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Episode 122 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

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Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #112: I’m Talking About Isolation
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19: Silica Gel’s May Day
  • The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #26
  • The Perfect Life #7: Commit to a Dream
  • Episode 461: Isaac Fitzgerald/Brigette Barrager/Leigh Hobbs!

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