Hey hey hey hey, run for your life! And all the way into this here, our second episode on the mostly non-musical media!

And boy, do we bring the non-music! Pleased to be clicking at the things below, if clicking like… aligns with your purposes for being here, man!

If your ears aren’t bleeding, you probably need to turn it up! #bogmonstermusic

Dan’s Notes

Book: Nate Powell -Fall Through

https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/fall-through – buy it here! 

This graphic novel is a love letter to DIY basement show scene of the 90’s and punk as a community and form of expression (even if The Sex Pistols were basically a boy band, as speculated in one aside in the story)  in the form of a fantastical tale of summer tour by a small town band, the power a great song can have, and the seven inch as perfect encapsulation of how sometimes great bands only come together long enough for a few great ideas, all killer no filler. Author/artist Nate Powell has the bona fides of having come up in the same Arkansas DIY scene as the fictional band at the centre of the story, playing in the band Soophie Nun Squad while also doing artwork for zines like his own The Schwa Sound, HeartAttaCk and others back in the 90’s before moving on to wider acclaim in the world of comics through the 00’s and 2010’s including MARCH, a three volume series of graphic novel adaptations of the memoirs of civil rights activist turned politician John Lewis released between 2012 and 2016. It’s a fairly quick and engaging read and a major recommend for fans of punk rock and comics/graphic novels. Each character looks like they could have stepped out from a crowd shot in a 30 year old Shawn Scallen live photo and the story is heartfelt and relatable even with its turns to the fantastical at times. Definitely a recommendation from me for all fans of punk rock and comics.

 Podcasts: Horror Vanguard

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/horror-vanguard/id1445594437

Horror Vanguard at Apple Podcasts

Hosted by Jon “thelitcritguy” Greenaway, Ashley Darrow and Kyle “laborkyle” Kearn – a trio of teacher/writer/general academic smart folks who all share a love of horror and the Gothic, movies good bad and otherwise, and socialist theory, but with jokes! They have a way of breaking down the themes and imagery of horror movies old and new, whether classic or craptastic in a way that is thoughtful and heartfelt with a deep love of the genre while also having tongues planted firmly in cheek during wacky riffs on Lovecraft or Derrida or stories of their love of various fungi. The HV Crypt contains not just deconstructivist analysis but also plenty of silly jokes and rambling asides on things like the stories of HP Lovecraft or the video games of auteur director Hidetaka Miyazaki while riffing on that weeks film. Their taxes can sometimes range from the incisively grounded analysis of a film’s plot line to wild speculation of imagined subtext in even the trashiest and lowest budget genre fare. I really appreciate the care and craft they put into each episode, no matter how ridiculous the topic at hand may be, and I’ve been exposed to a ton of great movies and even some awesome and interesting books like the writings of cultural critic and philosopher Mark Fisher and the recent anthology of late 20th century genre film analysis essays We Are The Mutants through the recommendations of the hosts week to week as well. Cohost Jon Greenaway’s new book of essays Capitalism : A Horror Storywould be worth your time too but if you enjoy horror movies and/or political cultural analysis (but with jokes!) you should totally delve into the HV Crypt for a listen.

First Seven Inch Club 

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/first-seven-inch-club-aka-border-boss/id1171603348

First Seven Inch Club at Apple Podcasts

Two dudes who used to play in a band together in the 00’s that now spend their podcasting time breaking down often-forgotten slabs of vinyl of the 90’s and 00’s in a loving but often cutting and ruthlessly funny way. These dudes are lifers and definitely know their stuff when it comes to the realms of punk and hardcore, but have grown enough as people over the years to recognize and acknowledge some of the sillier and/or cringier tropes of the genre and will roast them lovingly yet mercilessly with an intimacy that only those in the know can really pull off. Every week they mine the distro dollar bins of yesteryear fr forgotten classics and sometimes best unremembered ephemera, with tongues planted firmly in cheeks while they dissect the graphic design choices of scene teens three decades ago and lament the occasional cringy lyrical choices. The pop culture historian in me loves their dedication to re-examining sometimes obscure cultural output of decades past while the cranky old guy in me can appreciate the curmudgeonly humour employed by hosts Scott and Mike over the course of their undertakings. I’ve also really been enjoying the bonus content they create for their Patreon subscribers, including a spin-off series “Equalizer Punk” that looks at punksploitation episodes of old TV shows like Quincy and CHiPS as well as things like sensationalized after school specials warning parents of the dangers of their children’s experimentations with the genre. All in all the guys create a ton of great content for those who enjoy the meeting of archival preservation and good natured jokes about niche culture. One of my favorite weekly listens for sure.

Video Game: Baldur’s Gate 3

Okay so this is probably the most acclaimed video game of 2023, but seeing as it just celebrated one year since release and I have devoted something like a few hundred hours through various playthroughs of this sprawling video game based on Dungeons And Dragons’ “Forgotten Realms” campaign setting I figured it was worth including on my multimedia list. This game is huge and deep with a wealth of story hidden in all corners of its sprawling maps told out over the course of three acts, where the player (either as their own created character or one of several pre-made origin characters) gets abducted by an interdimensional alien invasion and has a psychic parasite stuck in their head, leading to a series of fantastical adventures culminating in a journey to to the titular city while tangling with ancient curses, murder cults, literal deals with the devil, and all manner of romantic misadventures with your fellow adventurers as well as a few shape-shifting hippies, smooth talking demons and amorous tentacle-faced monsters along the way. Since the game came out for consoles in late August 2023 I have started like nine or ten play throughs and have finished at least a couple of those while exploring all of the deep branching narrative options of Lariah Studios’ game. Literally tens of thousands of lines of dialogue were recorded to cover all manner of ways that the player wants to handle the situation, whether they decide to swing their swords through the situation, smooth talking their way out of danger or turning the other party into a farm animal and the game is really a wide open sandbox allowing for all manner of play styles while still faithfully sticking to D&D’s 5th Edition rules to handle the affair. I’ve probably put in nearly five hundred hours on the game since it first dropped last year and still find new weird little details and fun interactions every time I roll up a new “Tav” (the default name for player-created characters) for another adventure in the titular city. It’s also won pretty much every major “game of the year” award out there and the creators are still updating it with new content like additional end game story scenes and extra dialogue options. If you like video games and/or tabletop RPGs and haven’t experienced Baldur’s Gate 3 yet you need to totally check it out.  

Movies: I Saw The TV Glow

Sidenote: Conner OMalley/COREYS

In regards to what I’ve been digging in the world of the big screen these days I figured I would mention a recent film I saw and thought was very good as well as a wild short film by one of the actors from my feature pick. Jane Schoenbrun is one of the more interesting filmmakers out there on the A24-distributed end of the cinematic world these days and her first feature “Let’s All Go To The World’s Fair” was cool and creepy and one of the rare films that uses online spaces and media as the means of storytelling in a way that really works to tell its tale of a streamer who goes through *changes* while haunted by a cursed Bloody Mary-esque online challenge  so I was really looking forward to seeing her new feature. “I Saw The TV Glow” jumps between timelines as Justice Smith’s Owen is forced to re-examine the past via the surprise present day reappearance of a long-missing old friend and a shared teenage obsession with a Buffy The Vampire Slayer-inspired fantasy series called “The Pink Opaque”. It is a slow moving but visually striking exploration of identity, memory, the perils of nostalgia, and gender dysphoria. It mixes dreamlike fantasy with the real life horror of the day to day, including a veritable jump scare of sheer insensitive douchiness by The Chris Gethard Show alumnus and alternative comedy madman Conner O’Malley as Owen’s boss at the local movie theatre. This also led me to checking out O’Malley’s own cinematic exploration of identity mixing dreamlike fantasy with nightmare vibes in his short film “COREYS” (available for viewing on his YouTube channel). A stereotypical suburban dad named Corey suddenly finds his social media algorithms overtaken by videos of a man who looks exactly like him living a cartoonishly debauched life in a series of Las Vegas hotel rooms, claiming to be “the real Corey” and that he exists outside of time, leading to a confrontation and results straight out of David Cronenberg. Both of these cinematic experiences are weirdly complimentary and both worth checking out for sure.

A live performance from “The internet”

Canada. gov ca – live at The Marquee Club in Halifax (a show I went to recently)

Maritime-born Montreal-based nostalgia merchant and travelling raconteur, mostly known for slinging Canadians-centric memes on Instagram  and has recently taken to the performing the occasional live show, including a recent appearance here in Halifax that I was able to catch at the Marquee. After playing some classics by The Rankin Family over the sound system for an extended period of time to get everyone hyped up, “The admin” regaled the audience with jokes and stories of his interactions with Anne Murray, Cape Breton chanteuse Rita Macneill’s rabble-rousing political organizing past and subsequent CSIS investigation, and a rundown of the history of fishermen’s credit unions in Nova Scotia. Part standup show, part history lecture, and part late night hangout bullshitting over beers with an old pal, the @Canada.Gov.ca live show experience was one I very much enjoyed. Apparently each live show is different with all new material tailored to the city where he is performing. I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from a live show by a meme-based instagram account, but the guy’s live show was totally entertaining and worth checking out if he ever graces the stage in your town. 

Miscellaney

Matt’s Notes

As mentioned during the recordings, I’ve been all over the place this summer!

My multimedia herein has been about SURVIVAL this summer, quite frankly! I’ve been living in hotels for around six weeks at this point… I’ve changed cities and jobs for the second time in 15 months…

I saw my kids for the first time almost a year!

We hit the theatres a lot! And that leads us handily into…

Summer Blockbusters and Art House Schtick

Despicable Me 4

I saw this with my kids in Kamloops! We went and saw a bunch of other films on this list.

I’ve really developed a fixation with the minions since seeing this film.

We went to a bunch of movies, like… a bunch… and my older kid kept asking to go to Despicable Me. Frig right off with that nonsense, said Dad of the Year (DotY)… until one day I relented, and friends, I am some glad we did!

Like, at one point the younger boy had to ask me to keep it down… cause my guffaws were apparently A LOT relative to my fellow filmgoers…

I’ve used this movie as a starting point for some of my English Criticism lectures this past week! I ran a supercut of minions doing minion things of the big display screens in front of the classroom while the students were writing assignments!

Even now, as I watch this GIF below as I type this… part of me is rolling in the aisles of the theatre hysterically…

BOO-FUCKIN-NANA FOR THE WIN, AMIRIGHT??

A Quiet Place: Day One / Deadpool and Wolverine

I really dug the first Quiet Place film! And so did my kids. Krasinski & Blunt are among our generation’s most disgustingly talented actors, and so the family drama landed. And… CREATURE FEATURE!

And so, having not bothered with Part Two because who cares, my boys and I hit the Cineplex in mid-July and totally got our tickets and popcorn value out of the trip! Lupita Amondi Nyong’o is a brilliant, commanding presence in a role which could have been cheesy and/or underwhelming as fuck!

Speaking of disgustingly talented! It must be weird to be Ryan Reynolds. I mean, he’s a weird guy… but he’s just now this uh… let’s see… movie star, movie executive, writer, soccer team owner, handsome, talented dude from Vancouver (or is that Ottawa), and married to the brilliant, talented Blake Lively… Hugh Jackman is a consummate showman… The Prestige is one of Nolan’s best films, and Hugh is like, talented as a thespian… beyond physically contorting himself to the kajillionth degree for the Wolverine role…

Every bit of me cringes! I could have easily avoided this film. WGAF. But my younger kid wanted to go. And so we went. And it was fine! I enjoyed it tons at the time. The fourth-wall schtick lands for me! And 80’s and early 90’s comics, including all the various X-titles meant alot to me at the time… more than I can properly express… so… the fandom behind Reynold’s ridiculous spectacle was evident as fuck! Well-done everyone, I suppose! And especially to my kids for making me go!

The Hills Have Eyes / The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly

I have to admit that Kamloops, BC punches above its weight when it comes to independent cinema!

That significant qualifier is, as many (some?) reading this might know… that city put me down a rocky path… that I’m still contending with in major ways both personal and professional!

This is all to say that the Kamloops Film Society is actually really really to be commended for their ongoing, passionate commitment to offering high-quality films… on the regular…at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Kamloops… which can otherwise be a sad spectacle offering clear evidence of failed public policy when it comes to basic city planning… and, more notably and concerningly… no strategy whatsoever to address the significant numbers of homeless and underhoused downtown… well above and beyond those anywhere else I’ve lived… and I’ve lived all over Canada and around the world..

ANYWAY

My kids are of an age now where basically the only public activities we can enjoy together are movies, sports events, restaurants, and stores… which is actually a lot! They’re turning into adults at an alarmingly fast rate, so I’m pleased as hell we were able share these absolute classics of 20th Century film. Had I stuck around a few more days, we could have caught Tremors (1990) featuring a way young Kevin Bacon who has aged really gosh-danged well, come to think of it!

Eddie Murphy: Raw

I was looking for a way to watch Delirious! Apparently that absolutely genius concert film is currently unavailable for streaming in Canada! Boo-urns to that, I say!

As it turns out, Raw is available (or was) on Amazon Prime? Or was it YouTube for renting?

ANYWAY

This was actually the last film I watched with my boys this summer.

Eddie Murphy in the BLUE leather suit, mind you… my kids learned way more about Bill Cosby than I ever expected to share! And… because the Internet is a wretched, awful place… they understood the Michael Jackson jokes without needing an explanation from me!

Honestly, if Eddie were to bust out some leather and do a standup FOR TIMES SUCH AS THESE!, I’d be totally there for it. Has he done more standup films besides Raw and Delirious? I’m one Google search away from learning this totally non-essential info.

The man is a legend for Raw and Delirious alone. I strongly recommend watching this with the teenagers in your life, cause that is really the intended audience!

Eddie Murphy and 80’s standup forever, generally!

One Small Stack of Books

Meditations (Marcus Aurelius)

This is my favorite book of all time… hands down! I’m never not reading this, since discovering it around early 2023. It’s philosophy as a way of life… by one of the most powerful humans ever, in the history of humans!

The fact that Marcus was so intensely focused on being a better person… to the point that when I’m walking past the weed store… or considering whether to stay out… or thinking of where I want to end up in five years… or nearly any personal situation… of the kind of advice I’d want to give my kids in just about any situation…

Look, I want to lead a rich, joyful life during my few microseconds on planet earth. But if the shit’s not mindful of others, thoughtful, purposeful, and kind… then what kind of life is that, exactly?

I think everybody should read this. I’m not religious, but if I were, it would be around this… the cult of Marcus!

Stoic philosophers and self-restraint and mindful, purposeful living for the win!

Make it Stop (Jim Ruland)

Jim is such a great guy.

I mean it! If I wanted a blueprint of how an ideal writing career would play out… always busy, always with a deadline, lots of travel to awesome locations… based in gorgeous Northern California… and in touch with some of the absolute best, coolest, most impactful musicians and associated creatives and outlaws… listen, he’s a gentleman!

Jim has written three of the best works of punk scholarship out there… his history of SST Records was my first of his, and you should definitely check that out!

Make it Stop is rewarding from a story standpoint, and a writing standpoint… like, you dig the way Jim puts together words… the prose is just stellar… and such stellarship is the mark of a professional… paying attention to the story at the sentence and word and beat and image level…

As Jim mentioned in our interview earlier this summer, his purpose is to entertain! I would seriously recommend checking that convo! I am stoked for anything Jim is working on… including journalism and his awesome Substack newsletter! I am looking at ways of potentially getting Make it Stop on my English course syllabus somehow! Stay tuned for the particulars!

Days and Days: A Story about Sunderland’s Leatherface and the Ties That Bind

I just caught wind of this on FB last week!

I fucking love Leatherface so much, let’s be clear about that! I can’t think of a band, from a songwriting standpoint, that has meant more to me over the years… with the possible exception of the Replacements / Paul Westerberg… except the Mats are commercial juggernauts, pathetic though that is, compared to the rocket from Sunderland…

When I was twenty-five, I dreamed about writing this book! About somehow working myself into a position with writing where such a thing would be possible… hopping on a plane and somehow being able to talk to Frankie, Dickie (RIP), and all the myriad players, promoters, writers, roadies, carnies, punters, and schemers in their orbit.

As a 46 year-old English teacher and as somebody who still listens to Leatherface, Jesse, Pope, and every Stubbs-associated recording or act I can track down… this is radness of the highest fucking order!

I’m also really glad this is coming out on Toronto-based ECW press… given the Boat’s long association with Canada, including the absolutely brilliant Medictation record with Montreal heroes the Sainte Catherines!

I’m just so glad that this exists! And that it’s coming out this fall!

Around Three Hundred Compact Discs (CD’s)

This is me being somewhat of a sneaky fucker, getting music into the ostensibly non-music episode!

And so, sneaky fucker-like, here are a few (bunch) that I’m really, really glad to have in physical media… as opposed to the whole iTunes thing… which is like, a different bag entirely, man!

Where once there were slabs of vinyl… and YET MAY BE AGAIN… until such time, and in due persistence… the compact disc, the first digital format will serve until the humble (meagre!)(meek!) resources of yer local English ‘structor may begin what will be, perchance, the final or at least most egregious foray into vinyl ownership! Possibly after the children are properly launched… with jobs and so forth!

ANYWAY

And so on! What fun!

I have a fetish about things I can touch… I mean, uh…

ANYWHO

The City of Fort McMurray, Alberta

When I came here it was out of necessity. As in, I needed a job, my dudes!

You can check the various episodes of this podcast and the other from the May, June and July times! To say nothing of uh… most of 2022 and 2023…

This city has saved my pathetic, middle-aged ass!

Dynamic, international, culturally and academically vibrant… HIGHLY AFFORDABLE AND LIVEABLE… I’m not saying I’m surprised… I’m saying… my experience here is confounding all the Fort Mac stereotypes I’ve encountered over the decades… the people I chat with here all say that there was the “before” and “after” boom times… and it’s been the “after” times for awhile… which for my purposes is just fine!

Finally, I’m really digging being an English teacher again for the first time in nearly ten years! Oh Captain, my captain and so forth!

Seriously, a great many thanks to all you gnarly peeps! Keep doing exactly what you are!

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Filed under: Uncategorized - @ September 8, 2024 12:01 am