#bro is reading PULP FICTION for a man

[starcurtain]

Teyvat's "Most Down Bad" Award Goes to Alhaitham for a Second Year Running

Seeing everyone making fun of Alhaitham for his "stalkerish" tendencies in this event is funny, because I feel like a lot of people missed that "Be literally everywhere Kaveh is" has been Alhaitham's MO from the day Kaveh appeared in the game.

From only grabbing his house keys after Kaveh returned from the desert (he couldn't have had both sets of keys at the end of the Archon Quest unless he went home and got Kaveh's copy) to ditching conversations to get back to his house only after Kaveh came home, to showing up without any warning or explanation in Kaveh's hangout with some ridiculous excuse about hearing his voice through noise-cancelling headphones... Refusing to offer any help in the Temple of Silence story quest other than staying in the library with Kaveh...

Since when does Alhaitham willingly cover anyone else's duties?

But this trend of "Be everywhere Kaveh is" didn't start when they were adults. It was already in place when they were still Akademiya students--and it's a trend that didn't end even when they had their fight.

Even when they weren't speaking, Alhaitham dogged Kaveh's every step through published responses to Kaveh's research articles in academic journals. He insisted on keeping a line of communication between himself and Kaveh open, even if the only way to do that was through very public ideological clashes. Pulling Kaveh's pigtails to get his attention lolol. It's implied that, for at least the few years between their fight and Kaveh moving in, this was the only communication between them--Alhaitham's refusal to allow their connection to entirely fade away. (And the fact that this is revealed in Kaveh's character stories--through his precious journal that records the moments of his life that had the most impact on him--shows just how deeply he values the fact that Alhaitham didn't give up.)

Another relevant side note: Alhaitham never asked Kaveh to give up his half of their house. Knowing half of it belonged to Kaveh, knowing that Kaveh may one day want to reclaim his part of it, knowing that it was listed as theirs, Alhaitham moved into the house and made zero effort to change its ownership. He was completely fine with living in "his and Kaveh's house." The stories suggest it was only months later (or even longer) that Kaveh even noticed he had the house, and he transferred away ownership of his portion without Alhaitham ever asking him (or even seemingly wanting him) to do so.

Please, let that sink in. Alhaitham actively left his grandmother's (presumably comfortable) house to move into "his and Kaveh's house," with no apparent explanation for why, and after doing so, he made no attempt to change that "his and Kaveh's" label. He moved into the house with no promise that Kaveh wouldn't show up on the doorstep the very next day and move in too. It almost feels like another deliberate provocation--I've moved into our house, are you going to come stop me? LBR, if Alhaitham had had his way, Kaveh would have been living there with him from Day 1...

There's also the fact that Kaveh literally can't write on a single message board anywhere in the entire nation of Sumeru without Alhaitham hunting his messages down and responding to them (which absolutely no one else does, by the way).

"NUH-UH!" "UH-HUH." "NUH-UH!"

Alhaitham's own character stories tell us explicitly that one of Alhaitham's defining character traits is "He is never where you need him to be," yet somehow...

Shot, and chaser:

Any time Kaveh is in the slightest bit of need or danger or just wants Alhaitham near, Alhaitham is "coincidentally" exactly where Kaveh needs him to be, whenever Kaveh needs him to be there.

Alhaitham didn't just "happen" to run into Kaveh in Port Ormos, an entirely different city from where he was supposed to be working. He didn't just "happen" to read the same terrible book as Kaveh when we know he otherwise would not waste a moment of his time on poorly-written literature...

He didn't just "happen" to appear when Kaveh was upset and needed a distraction in the House of Daena during Kaveh's hangout. He didn't just "happen" to be sitting around waiting when Kaveh needed answers after the Archon Quest. He didn't just "happen" to find Kaveh's academic publications and every single message board posting and respond to them at length and in public.

Which is exactly what Kaveh's mother told Kaveh he needed.

What level of down bad is "Abusing your powers as an Akademiya employee to keep tabs on your crush's library loans"? Just asking for a friend.

The only person for whom Alhaitham just "happens" to be available is Kaveh, over and over and over again--because he is very deliberately making himself a constant presence in Kaveh's life.

(Like, out of all things, I think people really underestimate the devs deliberately paralleling the romantic relationship between Kaveh's mother and father with Kaveh and Alhaitham's relationship. If you want to point to one thing that says "These two characters are intentionally queer-coded," it doesn't get any more obvious than this.)

Alhaitham, are you not embarrassed to be this transparent??? 🫣

[blondephil]

hello (one of the) resident phannie data analyst(s) here with some parasocial stats on dnp’s movie tastes! following: distribution of dan and phil's ratings overall, movies they each rated 5 stars, their lowest-rated movies, and the similarities + differences in their tastes

(lore moment: yes i am a data analyst in my real job. yes i surprised myself with wanting to do this in my spare time. but then i remembered when we read dracula in college (yes i was an english major) and i graphed like, how many times dracula was referred to as vampire versus monster or something. so i shouldn’t be surprised.

first up, their overall rating patterns and by ~special status~ (i.e., wall-e, kill bill, avatar, lmao, plus big hero 6 for the fun of it)

dan’s rated 304 movies and phil’s rated 305. both of them have mean and median ratings of 4 with min 1 and max 5.

both rated kill bill vols. 1 and 2 a 5. wall-e got a 4.5 from dan and a 4 from phil (phake phans). both gave avatar a 3.5. and big hero 6 3.5 (dan) and 4.5 (phil)

rating distribution:

i did analyses here by genre but i need to fix the output (i’m writing all of these based on the markdown document from my phone on the subway, but i need to fix the outputs and i don’t have my computer. so those are pending but there are other genre analyses that i could do & haven’t yet!)

while i was sorting through the data i got the impression that dan overall rated movies higher than phil. so, among movies that they've both rated, here's some information

number of movies dan rated higher than phil: 65

Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Return of the Jedi, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Nightmare Before Christmas, Toy Story, Phantom Mence, Donnie Darko, Attack of the Clones, Finding Nemo, Oldboy, The Notebook, Batman Begins, Brokeback Mountain, WALL-E, (500) Days of Summer, Up, The Hangover, Drive, The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Life of Pi, Skyfall, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Whiplash, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Room, The Hateful Eight, The Force Awakens, Manchester by the Sea, Deadpool, La La Land, Moonlight, Rogue One, Call Me By Your Name, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2., Wonder Woman, Spider-Man: Homecoming, I, Tonya, Thor: Ragnorak, Phantom Thread, Roma, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Toy Story 4, Midsommar, Ad Astra, Knives Out, Soul, The Green Knight, No Time to Die, Don't Look Up, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Turning Red, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion, Beau is Afraid, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

number of movies phil rated higher than dan: 55

Star Wars (New Hope), Blair Witch Project, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Ocean's Eleven, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moonrise Kingdom, Iron Man 3, Gravity, Prisoners, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, John Wick, Gone Girl, Big Hero 6, Jurassic World, The Martian, The Revenant, Nocturnal Animals, Split, Get Out, Baby Driver, The Disaster Artist, Dunkirk, The Shape of Water, The Greatest Showman, The Last Jedi, Ready Player One, Crazy Rich Asians, A Star is Born, Rocketman, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Joker, The Rise of Skywalker, The Invisible Man, A Quiet Place Part II, Greenland, Tenet, Malignant, Eternals, The Matrix Resurrections, Scream (2022), Nope, Prey, Talk to Me, Avatar: The Way of the Water, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

number of movies they rated the same: 99!

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Se7en, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Spider-Man, Lost in Translation, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Mean Girls, Howl's Moving Castle, Children of Men, The Dark Knight, Pontypool, Inglourious Basterds, Avatar, Toy Story 3, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Black Swan, The Social Network, 21 Jump Street, The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook, The Conjuring, Snowpiercer, Her, Thor: The Dark World, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Boyhood, It Follows, Guardians of the Galaxy, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Interstellar, Ex Machina, The Witch, Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Your Name., Arrival, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, mother!, It, Blade Runner 2049, Hereditary, Black Panther, Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Avengers: Infinity War, Captain Marvel, Us, Avengers: Endgame, Parasite, It Chapter Two, Marriage Story, Uncut Gems, 1917, Black Widow, The Suicide Squad, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Dune, Last Night in Soho, The Batman (2022), Everything Everywhere All at Once, X, The Northman, Top Gun: Maverick, Bullet Train, Barbarian, Pearl, M3GAN, Dungeons and Dragongs: Honor Among Thieves, Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., No Hard Feelings, Saltburn, Priscilla, Society of the Snow, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

i didn't analyse this by genre or anything, but i could -- so if you're interested lmk!

the 5 movies with the most different ratings between dan and phil

- Iron Man 2 (dan: 2, phil 3.5)

- The Greatest Showman (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Malignant (d: 3, p: 4.5)

- Scream (2022) (d: 2.5, p: 4)

- Beau is Afraid (d: 3, p: 1.5)

Interesting that even though dan has more higher rated movies, 4/5 of these ones phil rated higher.

next, their 5-star movies

dan's five stars: 80

Alien, Empire Strikes Back, ET, Blade Runner, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Back to the Future II, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Jurassic Park, Nightmare Before Christmas, Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Toy Story, Fargo, Scream, The Fifth Element, Hercules, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Fight Club, Magnolia, The Emperor's New Groove, Donnie Darko, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Finding Nemo, Kill Bill, Oldboy, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Shaun of the Dead, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, Revenge of the Sith, Brokeback Mountain, No Country for Old Men, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Tree of Life, 21 Jump Street, The Avengers, Life of Pi, Skyfall, Under the Skin, Whiplash, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful Eight, La La Land, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, First Man, The Favourite, The Lighthouse, Parasite, Midsommar, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Oppenheimer, Poor Things

phil's five stars:

Star Wars (New Hope), Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Arrival, Dunkirk, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Gladiator, Little Miss Sunshine

overlap: 39

Alien, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Aliens, Home Alone, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction, The Lion King, Scream, The Fifth Element, Titanic, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Magnolia, Spirited Away, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Kill Bill, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Howl's Moving Castle, The Dark Knight, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 21 Jump Street, Interstellar, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival, mother!, Blade Runner 2049, Avengers: Infinity War, Parasite, Uncut Gems, 1917, Dune, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick

& their lowest rated movies...

dan: matrix resurrections (1) , thor: the dark world (1.5), the rise of skywalker (1.5)

phil: crimes of the future (1), attack of the clones (1.5), thor: the dark world (1.5), don’t look up (1.5), the matrix resurrections (1.5), doctor strange in the multiverse of madness (1.5), beau is afraid (1.5), black bear (1.5)

not even chris hemsworth could save thor the dark world, i guess (kat dennings, though…)

movies they logged on the same date:

note that this is like, non-exhaustive, because this is only based on their diaries that list the date. i think in reality they've watched most of these movies together. frequently dan logged a couple days after phil which aren’t shown here. procrastination queen

Pontypool, Eternals, The Northman, Nope, Barbarian, The Banshees of Inisherin, Glass Onion, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Beau is Afraid, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3., Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Saltburn, Poor Things, Priscilla, Saw X, Leave the World Behind

movies that one logged and not the other:

dan but not phil: 85

The Exorcist, Stand by Me, The Grave of the Fireflies, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Home Alone 2, Schindler's List, Fargo, Romeo & Juliet, Hercules, Men in Black, Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Mummy, The 13th Warrior, Fight Club, The Emperor's New Groove, Moulin Rouge, Shrek, Legally Blonde, Monsters, Inc, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Scooby-Doo, 28 Days Later, Matrix Reloaded, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, School of Rock, Matrix Revolutions, Saw, Shaun of the Dead, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Revenge of the Sith, The Devil Wears Prada, Borat, Casino Royale, No Country for Old Men, Death Proof, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, There Will Be Blood, Tropic Thunder, Slumdog Millionaire, Moon, District 9, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The King's Speech, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Tree of Life, X-Men: First Class, Prometheus, Argo, Les Miserables, Django Unchained, World War Z, Pacific Rim, Under the Skin, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle, The Babadook, The Lego Movie, x-Men: Days of Future Past, 22 Jump Street, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Theory of Everything, Green Room, Sicario, Spotlight, The Big Short, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Conjuring 2, Train to Busan, Hacksaw Ridge, Doctor Strange, Hidden Figures, Logan, You Were Never Really Here, Game Night, Isle of Dogs, First Man, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Suspiria, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Glass, Hustlers, Pig, Violent Night

phil but not dan: 86

Jaws, The Terminator, Beetlejuice, Die Hard, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Groundhog Day, The Shawshank Redemption, Leon: The Professional, The Usual Suspects, The Frighteners, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Gladiator, Catch Me if You Can, Elf, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, The Prestige, Zodiac, Spider-Man 3, Iron Man, Juno, Lake Mungo, Twilight, Zombieland, Kick-Ass, Brave, Evil Dead, The Great Gatsby, Now You See Me, Monsters University, Man of Steel, About Time, Dallas Buyers Club, Edge of Tomorrow, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, The Boy, Raw, Finding Dory, Suicide Squad, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, John Wick: Chapter 2, Lady Bird, The Ritual, Happy Death Day, Deadpool 2, Ocean's 8, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Bird Box, Booksmart, Crawl, Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Platform, Black Bear, Palm Springs, The Empty Man, The Innocents, Titane, Old, Free Guy, The Black Phone, Fresh, Watcher, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Ambulance, Aftersun, Crimes of the Future, Fall, Bones and All, The Menu, Sanctuary, Do Revenge, Smile, Hellraiser (2022), Mr. Harrigan's Phone, Plane, Missing, Infinity Pool, Past Lives, Knock at the Cabin, Scream VI

i’m interested to see how this varies by genre!

miscellaneous non-statistical things that made me parasocially emotional and/or laugh during this process:

they watched nope together on christmas eve 2022 <3

dan rated moulin rouge a 5 <3 nature boy <3

he also rated shrek a 5. of course. (valid).

4.5 from dan and 4 from phil from the notebook

5 from danny for brokeback mountain <3 and a 4.5 from philly

cmbyn, yes, has its issues, but dan rated 4.5 and phil 4

the shape of water got a 4.5 from monsterfucker phil lester (dan gave it a 4)

surprisingly phil rated rocketman higher than dan! surprising because dan liked so many musicals

dan gave hustlers a 3.5. i don't know why i think this is funny, but i do. phil doesn't have it logged or rated, lmao.

a 4 (d) and a 3.5 (p) for barbie!

phil gave twilight a 3. lol.

phil also gave do revenge only a 3.5. tragique.

phil watched a LOT of horror alone in october 2022 (aka while dan was on tour). anyway he's just like me <3

[crossnamara]

pip. want to get into starcanwrecked. what order do i watch these things in

HIHIHIIHIHI OKAY SO. this is gonna be a long one.

there are different orders bc in starcanwrecked, there are three different companies who all do sorta different things. starkid is the main musical one, tin can bros has onee major musical i believe, along with stage play stuff and some filmed things, and shipwrecked is all filmed comedy.

starkid, i would really recommend the hatchetfield series because thats the main thing i post about. the order youd want to watch it is

the guy who didnt like musicals

black friday

*then here, if youre invested already, id say go to nightmare time. the quality of the first one is bad, but trust me, its worth it. theyre numbered, but the order is hatchetfield ape man/watcher world, forever and always/time bastard, janes a car/witch in the web, honey queen, perkys buds/abstinence camp, daddy/killer track, yellow jacket. hey melissa is from a livestream read but id really recommend it

if you need another really amazing stage show to get you hooked and you dont mind missing out on a couple references and some lord, then you can go to nerdy prudes must die and hit nightmare time after that.

after hatchetfield, there are also all their wonderful older shows! here are my favorites in no particular order. there are a few of their shows that wont be on here but theyre all on their youtube channel :) (firebringer isnt on here bc i havent seen all of it, but i know a ton of people really like it. cave people and lesbians)

twisted - retelling of aladinn from jafars perspective, making him the good guy. one of their best shows in general

starship - a little mermaid-esqe story about a little alien bug wishing he would be a starship ranger and how that dream comes true

trail to oregon - based on the video game the oregon trail, its an interactive show where the audiences choses the characters name (and who dies of dysentery). really funny show with an unexpected amount of heart (i was in a local production of this one!!)

holy musical b@man - batman musical. a bit of stupid fun mostly, but i fucking love the music in this one

not old, but vhs christmas carol is a wonderful show, killer music. literally just a christmas carol but with sick 80s music

that was our biggest section! now ontooo tin can bros!

i havent seen a whole lot of tcb but heres what i can recommend!

spies are forever - sick ass spy musical

solve it squad - sorta grown up scooby doo esque. amazing characters

how the grunch cribbed christmas - solve it squad christmas special :3 same fun characters

shipwrecked!!!

headless a sleepy hollow story - its abt the headless horseman :) really really neat. fun plot too :)

poe party - a murder mystery dinner party full of classic authors, what could go wrong?

feel free to start anywhere here, and for any other starcanwrecked fans reading this, feel free to add your own suggestions!! my suggestions for starters, like i said, will always be hatchetfield, but after that, it would be spies are forever and twisted :)

(there is also the case of the greater gatsby, a fiction podcast from shipwrecked, and pulp musicals, which is solely told through music and is mostly comprised of people in the various companies. they arent listed with the rest of them because i personally wasnt able to get into them, but i know a lot of people love them)

[burningexeter]

Here's a huge ass list of everything (as in all of the media) that I can see sharing the same universe as Tetsuro Araki & Hajime Isayama's Attack On Titan — the first two seasons of the anime and the vastly superior Royal Government arc in the manga, which are in my personal opinion the absolute peak of the series and that you can both read and see below for yourself.

I have a feeling that this will stick:

• Yasuyuki Ueda's Hellsing Ultimate

• Takahiro Omori's Baccano!, Durarara!! and Durarara!! x2

• Sunao Katabuchi's Black Lagoon

• Masayuki Kojima's Monster

• Stephen Sommers' The Mummy (1999)

• The entire Quentin Tarantino Universe (Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, Inglourious Basterds, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill 1 & 2, From Dusk Till Dawn and even Curdled)

• Julius Avery's Overlord (2018)

• Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption Duology

• Remedy Entertainment's Connected Universe

• Tetsuro Araki's Death Note

• Chris LaMartina's WNUF Halloween Special and Out There Halloween Mega Tape

• Lesley Manning's Ghostwatch (1992)

• Christopher McCulloch & Doc Hammer's The Venture Bros.

• Chris Carter's The X Files Series (First nine seasons, Fight The Future, Millennium and The Lone Gunmen)

• Joss "Yikes!" Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel

• Tom Fontana's Oz

• HBO's Spawn Trilogy

• David Simon's The Wire

• Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse's LOST

• Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad Trilogy

• Kurt Sutter's Sons Of Anarchy Duology

• Jeff Pinkner & J.H. Wyman's Fringe

• Jenji Kohan's Orange Is The New Black

• Jenny Clements' Mias and Elle (Webcomic Series)

and last but not least yet unexpected just like the rest,

• Brandon Santiago's Erma (Webcomic Series)

[spikewriter]

I saw another anti-AI post where the first words out of someone's mouth was "Plagiarism!" That is why it's so difficult to have reasonable discussions about these new tools--and how they be useful as tools--because people start screeching, "You're not a real writer!"

The article at the core of the post, however, is worth discussing because, yup, it is exactly what the antis are yelling about. The post, by the way, did not include a link to the article, just a screenshot of Publisher Weekly's Twitter promo of said article. Which is actually a rewrite of a Newsweek article about a man who was about to release his 97th ChatGPT-written "novel." I'll explain the quotes later on.

I've included a link to the original article because it's worth a read no matter what side of the argument you're on. The headline is absolutely clickbait. It's also full of self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Tim Boucher (the article is written by him, or, rather, 60% written by ChatGPT by his own admission) admits to making $2000 over the course of 7 months. Hardly the thousands of the headline. He's sold 574 books as of the article, which equals out to an average 5-6 copies per book, or an average of just under $21 per book. The books are 2,000 to 5,000 words each, so they're not really novels, but serial chapters. He is also, by the way, not selling on Amazon or any other distributor, possibly because some of the stories are too short for them to accept.

It also means he has an extremely small, niche audience who are interested in "dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building." He writes "majority of my readers being repeat buyers, many having bought more than a dozen titles. In one case, a reader has bought more than thirty titles."

I found this paragraph particularly illuminating:

"It's very difficult, for example, to have longer written pieces that maintain a coherent single storyline or character arc. So instead, I've tended to lean into short "flash" fiction slice-of-life collections, interspersed with fictional encyclopedia entries that deliver world-building and backstory, and point the reader towards other volumes where they can continue down the rabbit holes that appeal to them the most."

Right there is the issue with current LLM programs. You can get a coherent storyline and character arc with ChatGPT or Sudowrite, but it takes manipulation on the author's part. It takes being willing to put in the work to revise and massage the outlines. Dear god, don't use it to write scenes, because the quality of dialogue and description is horrendous.

This guy isn't. He's only willing to put in 6-8 hours to create and publish a book, which may include generating the cover and any brainstorming. What he is doing is the tech boy grift of inflating what the program is capable of and his own accomplishments. He's trying to shout, "I am a disruptor! I am the future!" (And taking a look at his website, he's also a conspiracy theorist about underground cities in Antartica.)

Sadly, this is exactly the type of person other tech bros who might be making decisions are going to listen to. And because he's publicity-hungry, he's making everyone else who is trying to use these tools to assist, not replace, the process look like a grifter as well.

Oh, and I can't help including this article written in response to the Newsweek one.

[ghoclish]

kim  found  no  use  in  fixing  her  face  when  caspian  would  always  find  a  way  to  leave  it  contorted  in  disgust  .  astonishing  .  it's  not  that  he  wasn't  handsome  (  anyone  with  at  least  one  good  seeing  eye  could  make  that  out  )  ,  but  the  idea  that  she  would  ever  give  caspian  frost  a  compliment  without  a  gun  to  her  head  or  a  knife  to  her  throat  ?  it  was  nauseating  .  caspain  was  the  kind  of  guy  who  didn't  need  any  help  in  the  department  of  flattery  .  all  he  had  to  do  was  wake  up  and  breathe  in  the  right  girls  direction  and  receive  bouquet  of  honey  coated  compliments  about  his  stupid  hair  or  stupid  big  blue  eyes  or  stupid  grin  or  stupid  muscles…⸺ the  list  went  on  and  on  (  not  that  she  noticed  )  .  but  those  girls  didn't  have  to  sit  and  listen  to  him  talk  day  in  and  day  out  .  maybe  then  they'd  understand  why  she  grimaced  when  he  spoke  and  rolled  her  eyes  when  he  smiled  .  “  i'm  not  going  to  hit  the  president's  son  in  the  face  .  ”  she  spoke  with  a  laugh  entrenched  in  disbelief  .  “  no  matter  how  much  he  might  deserve  it  .  and  apparently  like  it  …  ”  a  shiver  going  down  her  back  at  the  thought  .  kim  figured  he  was  only  joking  ,  another  way  to  take  a  jab  at  her  and  laugh  at  how  flustered  she'd  get  .  she  couldn't  hear  the  truth  beneath  it  .  the  never  ending  stories  in  his  memory  library  weren't  ones  she  was  pervy  to  .  not  that  she'd  ever  given  him  a  reason  to  let  her  in  .  and  with  someone  like  caspian  ,  she  wouldn't  even  know  where  to  begin  to  find  a  map  ,  let  alone  the  key  to  his  vulnerability  .  maybe  it  was  better  that  way  .  the  last  man  to  be  vulnerable  with  her  was  nothing  but  a  ghost  to  her  now  .  the  only  proof  he  ever  existed  ,  a  rusted  locket  now  tucked  beneath  her  shirt  .  too  ashamed  to  show  her  own  vulnerability  .  she  didn't  like  the  similarities  . “  is  there  anything  you  don't  like  ,  so  i  can  stick  to  that  ?  the  more  unhappy  you  are  the  easier  it  is  to  do  my  job  .  ”  she  muttered  as  she  let  him  lead  her  .  normally  ,  the  act  would  have  left  her  snatching  her  hand  back  but  she  still  felt  guilty  about  the  abrasive  reaction  from  earlier  .  it  also  gave  him  something  to  do  ,  she  supposed  .  “  you  have  a  tiktok  ?  ”  the  laughter  came  befoe  his  answer  as  she  tried  to  imagine  what  his  account  would  even  look  like  ;  what  posts  were  in  his  favorites  ,  what  drafts  never  saw  the  light  of  day  .  “  you're  probably  one  of  those  weird  film  bros  going  around  screaming  at  anyone  who  hasn't  seen  pulp  fiction  ,  no  !  you  read  quotes  from  your  favorite  feminist  literature  so  you  can  show  women  you're  down  for  the  cause…  wait  ,  wait  ,  wait  !  no�� ,  you're  one  of  those  ‘  tiktok  book  boyfriend  ’  povers  aren't  you  ?  ”  her  laughter  grew  with  each  guess  ,  her  head  flinging  back  as  the  sounded  bolstered  from  her  diaphragm  .  with  one  hand  resting  on  the  top  of  the  passenger  door  she  used  her  other  to  hold  onto  his  wrist  as  she  brought  herself  to  meet  his  gaze  ,  laughter  still  on  her  tongue  .  “  you  have  to  show  me  your  account  ,  i'm  dying  here  .  please  ?  ”

"what  do  you  mean?  what's   that  mean?  that  you  think  i'm   handsome?"   pushing  words  into  her  thoughts,  lips  almost  daring  to  twitch  back  into  an  amused  smile  before  remembering  he's  mad  about  his  hands  that  are  stinging  in  his  pockets  for  getting  smacked.  "delicate?"  is  that  what  he  managed  to  hear  under  her  breath?  "it's   clearly  more  than  that.  why  does  it  matter  that  it's  delicate,  then?"   that  just tells  him  there's  in  fact  a  rhyme  and  a  reason.  "please.  you  don't  have  to   hide  it  from  me.  i'm  not  going  to  put  my  paws  on  it  again  and  steal  your  thrift  store  antique."  icy  hues  rolling,  just  annoyed  she  won't  tell  him,  that  it's  so  secretive  for  some  reason.  secret's  drive  him  insane,  always  down  a  rabbit  hole  of  questioning  until  he  figured  them  out.   "i  liked  it  when  you  were  shoving  me  better,"  he  retorts,  even  though  he  would've  enjoyed  her  smacking  him  quite  an  abnormal  amount  if  she  hadn't  locked  him  out  of  knowing  why  her  locket's  such  a  secret  when  he  was  just   looking.  "and  that  was  a  lousy  hit.  you  should  try  here  next  time,"  pointing  to  his  jaw.  "i'd  enjoy  that  better."   a  snort  sounds  from  the  blond,  he  was  hardly  lying.  he  enjoyed  being  on  the  receiving  end  of  physical  violence  because  he  was  familiar  with  it  over  physical  kindness,  he  learned  to  cope  with  it  at  a  tender  age,  long  into  his  formative  years  then  eventually  it  shedded  into  adulthood  of  just  being  a  thrill  to  him  –  reminding  him  those  long  lasting  affects  of  being  deprived  of  attention,   hasn't  isolated  his  ability  to  feel  joy  even  if  it's  a  twisted  joy.   but  he  hardly  realized,  it  felt  normal  to  him  &  certainly...  he'd  start  glitching  if  she  was  anything  opposite  of  aggressive  or  rough.  allergic. 

symptoms  to  nice  acts:   unnerved  and  terrified,  unsure  how  to  act.  the  secret  weapon  to  getting  him  to  show  a  different  side  to  him,  one  a  lot  more  vulnerable  than  this  face  he  puts  on.  watching  kim  retrieve  his  rose  and  place  it  behind  her  ear,  at  least  she  didn't  let  it  go  to  waste.  "oh,  that's  a  great  idea."  a  game  of  footsie,  he'll  definitely  be  aggravating  her  with  that  antic since there's still a pout he's carrying in a dull tone.  he'll  be  sure  to  remember.  grabbing  her  pointed  finger,  caspian  takes  it  as  invitation  to  pull  her  along  by  it.  "mhm.  you  just  want  to  be  a  ...  what  do  they  call  it  on  tiktok  ...  a passenger  princess."  letting  her  finger  go,  leading  her  to  the  sleek  black  bmw  that  ends  up  being  a  bit  of  a  distance  from  where  they  previously  were.  opening  the  passenger  side  to  the  cognac  brown  interior  once  they've  finally  arrived  &  the  pleasant  smell  of  new  leather.  "and  the  stalkers  over  there,  they'll  come  with  of  course."  reminding  her  of   secret  service,  not  stalkers,  loading  up  in  a  shiny black  suburban  and  ready  to  follow  as  they  routinely  do  when  the  president's  family  members  leave  the  premises. 

[maxwell-grant]

any thoughts on james bond??

Not really a fan and I don’t think that’s gonna change. I don’t have much experience with the character to begin with, I watched the Daniel Craig movies which bored me to death. I watched Goldfinger, which I remembered as being fun the first time I viewed it as a kid, but I find it hard to stand as an adult because Sean Connery was an awful man and oh yeah, that’s also the movie where James Bond rapes someone (I get that it was supposed to be a slap-slap-kiss thing but that is very much not what it’s in the scene). And I read the original Casino Royale novel, which is a must-read largely for it’s importance in pop culture and has some interesting aspects to it but, again, nothing that really got me to seek out the character.

Look, I get why Bond has become this huge cultural institution and the spy of popular fiction ever since his debut, why the 60s was the era of “Bond, Beatles and Batman” and why he’s kinda become the new standard for non-superhero action protagonists. I am extremely fond of that particular style you see in media like The Incredibles and Team Fortress 2, and that style owes a lot of it to the Bond films, hell I just posted above a screencap of Venture Bros, my favorite cartoon series. I’m certainly not gonna knock on popular enjoyment of a morally dubious man of action in a slick suit who charms and shoots his way through problems, after writing my most popular posts on my unabashed worship of Vincenzo. 

The things I like the most about Bond’s character in Casino Royale and the Bond of the original novels are largely the ways in which he almost betrays the impossibly competent image he’s been set up with later. I like that he gets picked specifically just because he’s the Service’s best gambler and not because he's the best everythint, I like that he’s uncomfortable with killing and especially the targeted assassinations, I like that he has vices and struggles because of his job. His job kinda forces him to be by default an unfeeling asshole who exploits people, and I think that’s an interesting perspective to develop, even without the context of it being James Bond before “being James Bond is the coolest thing ever” was the driving thesis of the franchise.

Thing is, I never really found any reason to give a damn about anything in Bond, other than enjoyment of the stylistic trappings and absurdities which just get kinda old after a while. I don’t enjoy the titular character or the hordes of largely one-dimensional "Bond Girls”, I don’t think the villains are interesting despite their supposed reputation in pop culture, I don’t get that much enjoyment out of death traps and car chases and gun fights if I don’t have anything at all to care about in the situations. I don’t think characters inspired by Bond tend to be interesting and even Bond parodies have gotten largely old and stale (I do like Johnny English but that’s solely because Rowan Atkinson is my favorite comedian and I’ll watch him in anything, and even then I didn’t even remember there was a third film).

As a kid, the idea of being a secret agent in service of the government has never really been terribly appealing to me, and as an adult it appeals even less. I don’t entirely dislike government agent characters by default, I really like Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks and An Gi-Seok from Vincenzo and agents of fictional organizations like Hellboy’s BRPD and Carmen Sandiego’s ACME, but I can’t shake off the stink of imperialism off my perception of Bond in particular. Again, I know it’s fiction, I know I talk about morally dubious protagonists I love all the time, but it’s the fact that Bond is so closely tied to his role as a government-sponsored murderer, my disdain for real-life governments and secret services being depicted in fiction as a swell and cool thing and not at all what they actually are, and the fact that I do not find Bond at all convincing or interesting enough for me to overlook that and buy into the fantasy, all blends together to make me dislike him.  

And yeah, Ian Fleming had utterly wretched views on gender and race and that bleeds a lot into the stories. People knock on pulps for racism and sexism a lot, and it's not undeserved, but even then I’ve seldom read anything in them as appallingbas the kind of shit you get on the Bond novels, and it’s harder to separate those from the character when so much of it is framed as the thoughts and opinions and attitudes of the character to the world around him. I would still not like James Bond even if I could put aside all the racism and sexism, and I very much cannot, but the fact that they are there, atop everything else, atop the character being an actual rapist at worst and his most iconic actor being unabashedly proud of being a wife beater and somehow still remembered fondly as a pop culture badass, and you end up with the one time Alan Moore did a comically grotesque exaggeration of a character in LOEG and I thought “you know what, I acknowledge that this is overblown and stupid and immersion-breaking but fuck it, I can’t blame you for your thoughts on this particular character manifesting with such bile”.

I know there’s good stuff in James Bond novels and films, I know why the character is super iconic and popular, please don’t misconstrue anything I’m saying as me thinking James Bond fans are horrible or something, because I don’t want to get that across at all. But I personally do not like Bond, and I don’t think I have to force myself to when there’s so many other types of characters and even spies that I prefer so much more. I don’t think I’m ever really going to be a Bond fan (I do like Timothy Dalton as an actor though, and if Sam Neil ever got to play Bond like he auditioned for, I probably would have at least some affection for the character since I really like him). 

I do like Austin Powers also. A lot of the jokes have aged really poorly and apparently Mike Myers is kind of an ass on set, but I think the concept of the eternally outdated parody spy still works, the films still have pretty funny scenes, and most importantly, he spoofed the concept to death so hard that even Daniel Craig said “Mike Myers fucked us”. Austin sucked out and absorbed all the fun parts of James Bond and then made them so funny and ridiculous that the Bond franchise has never again been able to have too much fun with itself, and if I gave a shit about Bond I would probably dislike that, but I don’t so, you go Austin. 

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #85: “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” | December 7, 2003 - 11:30 PM | S08E04

Happy 20th anniversary, Adult Swim. And, boy, what a momentous episode of Ghost do we have here to celebrate. There are a number of episodes where the guest is an event unto itself and this is truly one of them. Frequent punchline William Shatner is an absolute cunt... and a proper legend. His cuntiness and legendary status are two things that seem to be at odds with one another, and the Space Ghost crew have managed to come up with an artfully idiosyncratic episode to match Shatner’s weird-guy-ness. It’s a classic for sure, and important. But (making a “smug dipshit” face) is it funny?

YES! It’s FUNNY! I will admit though, the first time I saw this episode I didn’t quite know what to make of it. This is partially because I’m very much a Star Trek agnostic. I’ve never been into Star Trek. In the last few years I’ve watched most of the pre-Next Gen motion pictures for inane list-making reasons, and I enjoyed them to varying degrees, but Star Trek is truly not for me. I’m more of a... well, I’m not a Star Wars guy either. What’s the other one? Uh... Spaceballs. That’s it. I’m more of a Spaceballs guy.

But I feel like I’ve absorbed a lot of Star Trek lore through cultural osmosis. I vaguely understand that William Shatner has had some deliberately-paced choreographed fight scene on those rocks from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. When I hear music similar to the the music that Jim Carrey hums in The Cable Guy, I’m pretty sure whatever it is I’m watching is doing a Star Trek thing. And yes, I’ve watched every single Red Letter Media “Mike and Rich talk about Star Trek for 4 hours” video. But even today, after having picked up more Star Trek knowledge on my journey to the grave, I still have this nagging feeling of “I only sort of get this”.

Still, this episode has a handful of screamingly funny lines, and the episode ends wonderfully, with Space Ghost in his death throes, suffering the ultimate indignity of dying in front of William Shatner. There’s also the part where Zorak asks why everyone in Star Trek is black, and a part where Moltar nervously reads from his fan fiction (from a book labeled TARD WARS, hahaha). Shatner, who has a reputation for being arrogant and difficult, is as good a sport as one could hope. The show makes good use of his hammier moments, and only shits on him slightly in the process. The most notable moment is when Shatner says to Zorak “didn't you and I fight to the death?” to which Zorak replies “That sounds pretty dumb, man”. I’ve actually quoted this line many times. It’s one of the best.

Also, for those of you who like to track these things: the show features callbacks to other episodes and shows; the handimen at Zorak’s apartment are clearly extras from Sealab 2020/2021, one of the Leprechauns from Aqua Teen Hunger Force shows up, and there’s a poignant callback to classic Space Ghost episode “Banjo”. 

The title motif of this season is naming the episodes after Allman Brothers songs, and I always wondered about this one. Maybe I’m reaching, and it’s probably too disrespectful to be true, but I always thought that it was somehow a veiled reference to Shatner’s wife, whom he supposedly killed or let die. It’s simply too dark to be true, but it’s the first thought that immediately jumped to my mind when I first heard the title of this episode. Am I stupid for thinking this? Am I stupid because it OBVIOUSLY is a reference to that?? I simply do not know. I would like to know.

MAIL BAG

The big anniversary is upon us. What are your 20 favorite things about adult swim for 20 years going. Don't sleep on this question!

I gotta do SOMETHING special, so I might as well do this. More thought could have gone into this, but I spent about an hour trying to come up with episodes or moments from 20 different shows and putting them in rough chronological order. I limited myself to one episode/scene/moment/joke/whatever per show so it’s not all Space Ghost jokes. So, here we go:

Sealab 2021: “I, Robot”. Adult Swim proved it could be brilliant right out of the gate with the stealth premiere of “I, Robot”, but for Sealab it’s all downhill from here. (2000)

Space Ghost Coast to Coast: Space Ghost stops in his tracks to reminisce about the time Bobcat Goldthwait said "crack a window". The entire episode “Kentucky Nightmare” is brilliant, but this moment in particular so uniquely captures my sense of humor that it’s inexplicable. The dumb look on Space Ghost’s face when he stops in his tracks. Goddamn. (2001)

Aqua Teen Hunger Force: “Mayhem of the Mooninites” I tried very hard to make this all be individual jokes or scenes or whatever, but this is another episode where the entire thing is just line after line and I can’t really pick. This, “I Robot”, and “Kentucky Nightmare” is like a perfect trio illustrating how good Adult Swim really was right out of the gate. (2001)

Home Movies: Jason casually reveals that his parents have no idea who Brendon and Melissa are and that he spends most of his free-time making movies with them. This is the episode “Storm Warning” which is overall one of the best episodes of Home Movies, but this scene is probably my favorite. Illustrates how simple and hilarious the comedy is on this show. (2002)

Tom Goes to the Mayor: the end scene in “Undercover”, where they’ve shoddily reversed Tom’s various unnecessary surgeries and called him “Taumpy Tears” to boot. Positively sublime. (2006)

Metalocalypse: Dr. Rockso’s music video. From the episode “Dethclown”. I was never in love with this show as much as the true fans were, but there were a handful of incredible episodes. This episode basically tells one joke over and over and it’s very funny. It really ends with a bang showcasing Dr. Rockso’s shitty music video that celebrates cocaine use. His singing voice is hilarious. (2006)

Assy McGee: I am the only person in the world that defends Assy McGee as being “actually pretty good” and it’s all entirely due to this one line: Assy McGee (a pair of naked buttocks with legs, whose ass functions as his head) is forced to attend a black tie event and is just milling around wearing nothing but a black bow tie. Through clenched anus he delivers the line “I can barely breathe in this penguin suit”. The whole show is worth it for that joke. I don’t even know what episode it is except that it’s from one of the first few. I might not even have the line exactly right. But, I remember laughing so hard. I may not have laughed at Assy McGee again. (2006)

Saul of the Mole Men: The opening theme song. And nothing else. (2007)

Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: Jim and Derrick. I should pick something more user-friendly maybe, since this episode almost entirely relies on being familiar with Tim & Eric’s previous episodes. But goddamn, this episode is such a funny concept (which is basically Tim & Eric doing an alternate MTV-ified version of Awesome Show) (2008)

Moral Orel: “Numb”. When Moral Orel suddenly stopped being a quirky Adult Swim comedy and suddenly started doing episodes that resembled art films. This episode is a fucking masterpiece. I remember sobbing the first time I saw it. There are a few in season 3 that are like that, but this one is my favorite. (2008)

Check it Out! with Dr. Steve Brule: Terry Bruge-Hiplo reviews “Dumpster’s Children”. Another bit of comedy that I’d describe as “inexplicable” and “sublime”, and it all hinges on an old man’s mouth. Holy fuck. I don’t think I’ve laughed harder than this at a TV show since. (2010)

Delocated: The ending of “Mole”, an extended Face/Off riff where Jon goes undercover as the scary mobster Sergei. In the final moments of the episode he marries a woman, fathers multiple children with her, and only then is pulled out of the mission. The episode is a tour-de-force of comic acting by Steve Cirbus, who is graciously allowed to shine for most of the episode. But man, that ending is fucking wonderful. (2010)

Venture Bros.: The ending of “Operation P.R.O.M.” a flurry of emotions hit me when “Like a Friend” by Pulp starts playing. The scene is so well done and weirdly touching. Brock realizes that deep down he gives a shit about the Venture family and is genuinely terrified something might happen to them. And then he gets to slaughter a bunch of Zorak monsters, which is also weirdly sweet. It’s even touching on a meta-level knowing that Jackson and Doc tried many times and failed to include licensed music in the show. I love Venture Bros, but I think we’d all be better off if this were the series finale. Sorry. I had to say it. (2010)

The Heart She Holler: The first scene with Patton being taught the way of the world posthumously by his father on a VHS tape. The first season of this show is amazing, but that scene, especially where Patton does a little Japanese bow and says “oh, hot dog!” is just hysterical. Literally every time a hot dog comes up in conversation my wife and I quote it. Please, do not scorn her, it’s not racist when SHE does it. (2011)

Eagleheart: The All That Jazz inspired finale. “Paradise Rising” is mostly a masterpiece, and how it ends is so fucking incredible. Easily the most under-rated show on Adult Swim and I’m not just saying that because... you know (mimes dick-sucking) (2014)

Rick and Morty: I watched the first two episodes of Rick and Morty, thought it was good, but for some reason didn’t become a devotee until my wife made me watch the Mr. Poopybutthole episode. It’s still my favorite episode, I think. (2015)

Brett Gelman’s Dinner in America: The “Dinner with” specials are all really good, but goddamn, this one hits. Should be shown in schools. I am going to go to every grade school in my county with an AR-15 (to get past the guards, of course) and I won’t leave until they call an assembly and they let me fumble around trying to find it on vimeo and play it for the students. (2016)

The Eric Andre Show: Eric interviews Steve Schirripa. The bit where he has an intern dip his balls in Steve’s spaghetti sauce is hilarious, naturally, but I’m here to showcase the running gag where every time Steve complains how hot the studio is, Eric just wordlessly hands him an ice cube until Steve explodes. It’s one of the most childishly hilarious things I’ve ever seen. It’s perfect. (2016)

Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace: The Pick-Up artist sketch. I’m mostly unimpressed with MDE, and all but a few Sam Hyde bits leave me cold. But this sketch is a crowning achievement. I mean, I think these guys suck politically and are more mean than funny, but their sensibilities yielded one really incredible piece of comedy. Okay, I laughed at the blackface sketch too. There. You dragged it out of me. (2016) Joe Pera Talks With You: This show is beautiful and I love every episode. But the episode “Joe Pera Reads You The Church Announcements” Wherein Joe discovers a new-to-him song and can’t stop listening to it, is one of the most joyous episodes of television I’ve ever seen. A gateway episode. I tell everyone to please watch this one first. (2018)

[aion-rsa]

Kung Fu: Inside The History of a Martial Arts Classic

https://ift.tt/2Q3B4LS

It’s been a long journey for The CW to snatch that Kung Fu pebble from the master’s (Warner Bros.) hand, but the new reboot of Kung Fu could not have come at a better time.

Issues of diversity and representation have been at the forefront of our cultural conversations for years now. The rise in Asian hate crimes – nearly a 150% increase in 2020 – has made #StopAsianHate a frequent trending topic on social media. For The CW to launch a show with a Chinese leading actress and a largely Asian cast right now makes a bold statement for inclusivity that lives up to the network’s longstanding slogan “Dare to Defy.”

What’s more, Kung Fu is promoting itself as an Asian family drama which could fill a newly opened gap. Two wildly successful Asian family sitcoms just went off the air – ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat ended its six-season run in 2020 and Kim’s Convenience announced that their final episode after a five-season run will be April 13, 2021 (In the wake of Kim’s Convenience, CBC is launching a spinoff series, Strays, following the character of Shannon Ross, the only white actor credited in show’s opening). This leaves the door wide open for Kung Fu to capture fans of Asian family dramas. Plus it’s The CW, a network that thrives on soap opera-esque dramas. 

CW’s reboot is a complete reimagining of Kung Fu, but what of the legacy of the original franchise? Will this new version bring honor to the Kwai Chang Caine a.k.a. Grasshopper? The original Kung Fu series was groundbreaking in its own way. The show garnered critical acclaim including three Primetime Emmys and two Golden Globe nominations. Even though David Carradine’s Kwai Chang Caine would be called out for whitewashing today, with its heavy reliance on Daoist philosophy, Kung Fu provided many Americans with their first taste of many aspects of Chinese culture, especially Shaolin martial arts. It also had the largest Asian supporting cast of any show for decades to come. 

The Shaolin Temple Days

When the original Kung Fu premiered in 1972, it was the right time too. The pilot was such a big hit that the network decided to show it again (remember this was long before the invention of VHS – back then your only chance to see a show was to watch it when it was broadcast). However, the second showing was preempted by President Richard Nixon shaking hands with Chairman Mao Zedong. China was opening its bamboo curtain to America at the same time Kung Fu was telecast. 

Kung Fu ran for only three seasons on ABC and yet it holds a special place in the hearts of its long standing fans. Kwai Chang Caine was a barefoot half-Asian mendicant monk from the Shaolin Temple who travelled the old west in search of his long-lost half-brother, Danny Caine (Tim McIntire). Caine was a wanted man because he took revenge. He killed the Emperor’s nephew who killed his beloved blind master, Master Po (Keye Luke). Beyond casting almost every Asian actor in the business back then, Kung Fu had an astonishing list of guest stars like Gary Busey, Jodie Foster, Harrison Ford, William Shatner, and many others. 

The Chinese Connection: Bruce Lee Vs. Kwai Chang Caine

For decades, it was rumored that Kung Fu was ripped off from martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Lee had written a treatment that was remarkably similar – a story of Chinese immigrant martial arts master who landed in America during the Wild West era. However, in the definitive biography Bruce Lee: A Life, biographer Matthew Polly uncovered substantial evidence that Warner Brothers already had Kung Fu in development prior to Lee’s pitch. Nevertheless, Lee’s daughter, Shannon Lee, claims that her father auditioned for the part of Caine and was rejected because, ironically, he was Chinese. She went on to develop her father’s treatment into Cinemax’s Warrior (another recent show with a predominantly Asian cast that was cancelled last year).

After the original show ended, Carradine returned to the iconic role of Caine several times. In 1986, Kung Fu: The Movie aired on ABC, reuniting Carradine with Keye Luke and introducing Caine’s estranged son Chung Wang. Even more ironic, Chung Wang was played by none other than Bruce Lee’s son, Brandon Lee. 

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By Gene Ching

Kung Fu: The Movie was a steppingstone towards a spinoff series attempt, Kung Fu: The Next Generation, with Brandon Lee playing Johnny Caine. Carradine was not involved in this series. Set in modern times instead of the Old West, Johnny Caine was the great grandson of Kwai Chang Caine, but not the Kwai Chang Caine of the original series. The TNG Kwai Chang Caine was named for his great-grandfather – Carradine’s original character – and played by David Darlow. Brandon Lee was cast as both Kwai Chang Caine’s son and his great great great great grandson. Kung Fu: The Next Generation was not picked up. It was only telecast on an unusual short-lived TV showcase called CBS Summer Playhouse, which ran failed pilots every week. Six years later, Brandon Lee died in a tragic on set accident while filming The Crow.

Twenty years after the original series, David Carradine reprised the role of Kwai Chang Caine, or rather the grandson of Kwai Chang Caine, also named Kwai Chang Caine (not the father of the TNG Kwai Chang Caine because the failure of the pilot removed it from canon). That was the first real reboot of the series – Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Set in modern times again, Caine was paired with a new son, Detective Peter Caine (Chris Potter). The series ran for four seasons, logging twenty-four more episodes than the original. 

After that, Carradine never returned to Caine. He went on to promote martial arts with his book, Spirit of Shaolin, which he wrote in 1991, and some instructional Kung Fu videos that he made in the mid-90s. Carradine was never able to completely shake being typecast by the iconic role of Caine. Over the course of over 200 roles, a few more Carradine parts echoed Grasshopper. Fans were delighted to see him play the flute as Bill in Tarantino’s Kill Bill films (the flute was Caine’s signature accoutrement). Tarantino also referenced Kung Fu in Pulp Fiction when Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) tells Vincent (John Travolta) that he plans to walk the earth like “Caine in Kung Fu.”

In 2008, Carradine played “Crane”, a martial art monk just like Caine, in Kung Fu Killer, a two-part mini-series for Spike TV. Carradine claimed that the role was based on an actual historical figure, which he alleges is how the production worked around Warner Bros.’ copyright on Caine. But Carradine was never able to provide the name of that historical figure. He believed that Crane and Caine were ‘diametrically opposed’ but aside from being more violent (in one fight, Crane knocks an opponent so hard that his spine graphically bursts out of his back) viewers are hard pressed to separate them. The series was slated to have three more installments, but those never happened.

The Barefoot Journey to The CW

Kwai Chang Caine had to walk a lot of rice paper before the character could become this new incarnation of Nicky Shen (Olivia Liang) for CW’s reimagining of the franchise. The first major talk of reboot was back in 2011 (on Halloween no less). Bill Paxton (Aliens, Predator 2) was in talks to direct a screen adaptation. John McLaughlin (Black Swan, The Patriot) was tapped to write the script. The production was from Legendary Entertainment and plans were being made to shoot in China. Paxton said they had intended to follow the original story more or less – Caine ventures across the American West of the 1870s in search of his birth father instead of his half-brother. Paxton claimed that his new production would enrich the scale and grandeur to the level that the show always deserved. This was to be feature films under Warner Brother’s Chinese cooperative venture, Legendary East. As the project developed, other writers who became associated with the reboot film included Cory Goodman (Priest) and Rich Wilkes (xXx)

In 2014, Baz Luhrmann (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) was in talks to direct Kung Fu for Legendary. If the deal had been signed, Luhrmann planned to rewrite McLaughlin’s script. Paxton died in 2017 but his name had faded from talk of the reboot prior to his passing. 

In an unexpected twist, Universal announced that it was opting Kung Fu for a feature length film in early 2020. At the helm is none other than stuntman-turned director David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool). Leitch has also been attached to a remake of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (another property with a long history of attempted remakes). However, since the initial announcements, there’s been no information on the further development on either project from Leitch. 

On the TV side of things, Fox grabbed Kung Fu in 2017 for a new series. Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash) came on board to produce with Wendy Mericle (Arrow, Desperate Housewives) penning the script. This incarnation was the first mention of changing the gender of the main protagonist. The new lead was to be Lucy Chang, a Shaolin nun. Instead of being set in the Old West, she was to be living in the 1950s. And instead of searching for her half-brother, it was her kidnapped child. 

In a successive treatment, Lucy was set in modern times. She was to inherit her father’s Chinatown Kung Fu school, only to discover that it secretly operated as a center to help those in desperate need. Lucy was partnered with a Korean War veteran named J.T. Cullen. The reboot moved to the CW in 2019 with Christina M. Kim (Blindspot, Hawaii Five-0) taking over as writer and producer and Berlanti still attached as a producer. The story is reimagined with Nicky Shen as a young Chinese American woman in contemporary times, who leaves to find herself at a monastery in China, and then returns to her family in America.

In the pilot, there’s no explicit connection given between Nicky and Kwai Chang Caine so far (save for the quick appearance of a grasshopper). Kung Fu is a complete re-imagining, so all bets are off. But as the season progresses, who knows what references and homages are possible? Reboots thrive on their Easter eggs nowadays, and even if Nicky isn’t within the Caine bloodline, Kung Fu will be well served by tucking some call-backs to the original show. 

Will Nicky have to walk rice paper and snatch pebbles from her master’s hand? Will she get those classic Shaolin Dragon and Tiger forearm brands? If she does then perhaps Kung Fu will be the right show for its time while still honoring what came before it.

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Kung Fu premieres on the CW on April 7, 2021.

The post Kung Fu: Inside The History of a Martial Arts Classic appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3sYmG5U

[crewfm]

         * 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫  :  @honeytears​

        * IT’S NOT difficult to get crew riled up , as just about anyone would be able to attest to . it’s even easier for dylan to do so , especially when armed with the intellect to question crew’s statements and opinions as she does . he can’t even remember how the conversation starts , or if they’re even arguing against each other , but what he does know is he may just burst if he doesn’t give his unsolicited opinion .   “ if tarantino can cut the auto - fellation and stop self - inserting into his films , i’d finally have a fucking reason to not shit on pulp fiction every time someone wants to hype it up . ”     he flails his hand madly in the sky as if to punctuate his frustrations with the director who , in his not - so - humble opinion , is OBSCENELY over - hyped .    “ the man has no fucking self control and it shows . his shit would read so much cleaner if someone just called him out for being gross and making everything his wet fever dreams . ”     he pretends to gag , pointing a finger towards his open mouth dramatically .    “ anyone can write a male fantasy and call it art ! it ain’t fuckin’ HARD , yo , and everybody that defends his shit gets beet red in the face when anyone mentions how obvious it is that the douchebag fuckin’ hates women . you ain’t subtle , bro , like c’mon , i’m hurting for you , please ... ”

[kathrwn]

The thing about Brad

Charisma is a funny thing. Defining charm is hard. It’s hard at a party, but at least you can blame pheromones for an animal-like attraction to the boy with the baby blues. Of course, the physical pulchritude certainly doesn’t hurt someone, but they still must have a draw. It’s harder still to detect that charm through the screen. Even harder is to understand why that charm pierces our collective unconscious and leaves us with dropped jaws and hearts in our eyes. 

On all the little cooking shows all over the internet, one man has a charisma so undeniable it might be the only thing bigger than the jugs he uses for fermentation. 

I’m talking, of course, about the heartthrob Brad Leone. Tall, with a slab of well-aged organic grass-fed beef under his kombucha belly, Brad has become the breakout star of the Bon Appetit brand. 

We like watching beautiful people succeed--that’s why Brad’s videos are so popular. He jokes, he winks for the camera, he makes fun of himself, all to spill water (pronounced: wourder) across the counter, laugh it off, and present us with a zesty fermented pineapple drink. Throughout his series, It’s Alive, he is tasked with teaching a bunch of knuckle-dragging YouTube-watchers the intricacies of fermenting food. If people are so inspired to make giardiniera or hot sauce, then that’s just a happy accident. 

Like with all food-focused programming, cooking is an afterthought. The audience is here to ogle Brad, someone bro-ey enough to play touch football on Thanksgiving, but with a culinary touch that you know he helped make the cranberry sauce. Maybe he is the idealized man, one fluent in fun and levity, but physically firm enough to protect you in the winter months. Is that the cause then? Is Brad’s popularity just another case of the massive internet thirst pandemic giving us a new hero, a Prometheus who regifted us fermentation? 

Thirst is definitely one part of the equation, and his affability is another. Perhaps, though, Brad’s popularity is thanks in part to a weird erotic fear many of us recall: the jock.

Brad, with his scritchy, growing beard, and quiet curls that poke out from under backwards baseball caps and beanies, with a healthy layer of pudge covering arms as thick as the slabs of meat he butchers, is the transformed Biff. He looks like he might have shoved you into a locker, not because he disliked you, but because he thought it would impress his friends. In college, he read Socrates for the first time, eventually pursuing Aurelian stoicism that spoke to him more. He knows a guy, still smokes a little weed on the weekends with his pals from his intra-campus soccer team (which once played in the charity kickball tournament). 

An infinite number of internet posters have made us acutely aware of a link between fear and arousal. Surely this too goes back to the time of Socrates. (If anyone has quotes in verse, please share.) Urban Dictionary has an entry for “Scaroused” dated to 2011--about as old as Aristotle. The archetypical jock, with the leverage of both strength and social life, terrorized many of us. Maybe not with physical violence, but we are acutely aware of what they could do since teen movies defined them so well. The jocks in my own high school were smart boys, kind boys, but William Zabka let fiction overpower reality. 

But back to Brad. Brad would never pummel Ralph Macchio in mom jeans to a pulp, never threaten to put him in a body bag at the All-Valley Karate Championships. He is firm but not with his fists. And not with his words either. But with his confidence of an all-valley champion, comfortable with using his hands to manipulate lacto-fermentation into food.

A loveable jock, then, it could seem like Brad wields his charisma with abandon, rather than with a manipulative edge. He’s as goofy as he is gargantuan. We’re still afraid he could crush us under his fist, but we’re salivating just thinking about it. If he shoves us into a locker, our hearts beat a little faster because he touched us for just a moment. We’re beet red and helpless, weak in the knees when we see him. 

I can’t say with assurance that anyone actually cooks what they see Brad makes. Fermentation, pickling, and other not-quite-cooking cooking techniques are scary for beginners, many people beyond that too. I mean, I watch Martha Stewart, but I’ve never sought out Snoop Dogg for a blunt-and--baking-brownies evening. But the ilk of the traditional television cook was never the domain of thirsty twenty-somethings, craving for death and sex as much as the food to sustain life. 

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Forty-Seven: Bizarrodale”

Jughead eats: QUICK SHOT OF BRUNCH

the print on Josie’s bomber jacket? confounding

“If there’s no wedding reception, it means the Gargoyle King has won.”

Ms. McCoy in bright blue? confounding

have Moose’s eyebrows gotten thicker? he...he fine

Cheryl’s sheaths: like a true gay icon, Cheryl wears both a satiny demi-cup bustier and a flannel in bed with Toni, who’s rocking a sort of cottony Aerie bralette

Hermione’s earrings look like divining rods, which makes sense

“dangerously unhinged,” in this day and age? UNHINGED?

Cheryl is “legacy” in Riverdale’s version of Smith College

Cheryl’s pins: in her droopy 1920’s lady-reporter tie, Cheryl has a pin that is probably a bee but is POSSIBLY a giant frightening moth like in the Silence of the Lambs poster

Moose’s hair is longer or something and he’s like? I don’t know but I’m a gay boy all of a sudden, like let me at All That

I like how he pauses but goes in for more kisses after Kevin tells him he wants to ask him something

he’s like…..so tall….and he has this a little mole on his cheek….

(RIP Midge)

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: you look me in my pale astigmatic eyes and tell me the little snitch canary “told you they were in here sir” smug Malfoy stool pigeon ISN’T a pillow queen and I’ll give you this money RIGHT NOW. THAT thin-lipped smirk? with THAT cleft chin? he’s a gay, your honor

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: oh fuck!!!! Sweet Pea has a VERY vulnerable, soft-masculinity speech about his heartspace and emotional boundaries and he’s so fluffy-haired and trying to be gentle with himself……….SWEET PEA……..

Best costume bit: don’t miss the two-second shot of a Prostitute in a turquoise pencil skirt and red velvet blazer and pearls AND GLASSES leading a man by the tie down the Maple Club hallway

“Damn good coffee”: also this jazz music and Cheryl’s short pantsuit

WHERE CAN I GET CHERYL’S MINI BACKPACK

The Blossom spawn: I know Penelope Blossom is not out here suggesting there are no lesbians in what I assume is a women’s college. I remember when I got into My Women’s College one of the nuns at my church was like, Ha ha! Don’t let the drug-dealing lesbians get you! and I was like, How do you already know the plot of Riverdale season 3? but then I was also like, Ma’am why did you join this monastery?

Fifth period is AP English: “THIS IS THE PRICE OF SALT.”

Lawyer McCoy is right, Ex-Sheriff Keller IS a snack and this bitch’s blood sugar is low

I love Sierra and Whatsit playing Lawyers in bed because it happens to be my thing too and I want to be there with them

Certified pedigree: his name’s Tom right? he’s SO HANDSOME. everyone is so handsome right now!!!!!!! (I’m ovulating)

this is the same fancy hotel room Jughead and Betty stayed in when he sort of proposed to her? this is just the upscale version of the sex bunker

Kevin eats when he’s stressed, as you will recall from the drive-in S1 episode

“an epaulette to cry on”

Cheryl’s hair: and Cheryl’s sleeves!!!!!!!

Sixth period is Intro to Film: “looking like a community theater production of The Talented Mr. Ripley” is the SECOND time handsome bicurious Tom Ripley has been name-dropped (also the drive-in S1 episode)

“I can’t go back to Fox Forest” is like the most tragic thing. HE CAN’T GO CRUISING AGAIN

“Oh, sullen, tenderhearted Kevin.”

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: “RAPTUROUS”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like that Cheryl continues to use words like “whilst” and “amongst”

is Moose wearing a denim Henley? MOOSE?

the closed captioning renders it “O shutterbug of my dreams.” “O,” LIKE CHERYL IS SHAKESPEARE

I absolutely buy that Cheryl would ask if this was their first fight mid-fight

only Toni among us could wear that many necklaces at once

I did get a little confused when Toni confronts Cheryl in the bathroom, like at first it was about how you shouldn’t out people but then it was about her not being in the Serpents? let’s focus, ladies

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie’s commitment to keeping her eyeshadow coordinated with her jackets over her commitment to boys is aspirational

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: I LOVE ARCHIE’S SIDE-EYE, LIKE………“SWEET PEA?”

Reggie on kneecapping: “Does that really happen?”

Reggie’s voice cracks me up. he’s just a big gorgeous squeezable side hustle dummy bro, so down for the ride, remember when he slugged Jughead? neither does he

REGGIE HONESTLY HONEST-TO-GOD IS JUST LIKE….RONNIE YO YOU NEED SOME MONEY?

“You can be my Baby Driver” uuuuuugggghghhhhhkkhhhhhhhhh REggggeieiee

“JUST PLEASE DON’T SCRATCH MY CAR” has more sexual energy than I think Archie has ever manufactured with anyone EXCEPT BETTY when they kissed that one time you know?????

why do you think Reggie is such a good doofus boyfriend while Archie was such a bad doofus boyfriend? is it because Archie tried to think for himself? or has Reggie just not been given the chance to fuck something up yet

I like Penelope bringing up Sierra and Tom getting married not to shade them but to just be like, They should be happy if they want. I was like, Damn, Penelope! You’re right!

“He is a vicious and petty god.”

lol oh yeah Hiram got shot

Gay?!: as has been discussed, Veronica is reading some classic lesbian pulp fiction for no other reason than I suppose she fucking likes it, and that is BDE

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica would wear those shoes to baby drive

SOMEONE TAKE ME ON A “MAD SAPPHIC CAPER”

Archie > Dawson: Archie is a hot-or-cold boyfriend but he is an EXCELLENT beard!!!! GOOD, ARCHIE

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Reggie takes the same positive attitude towards getting shot and surviving that I hope I would have, which is “at least I can say I got shot”

Moose is like, out and THEREFORE dtf, as if they couldn’t have secretly been having sex this whole time

Toni conceded to Highsmith’s business formal dress code insofar as she wears a black vest over a plaid tie and that’s it

“WHOEVER YOU ARE, PLEASE BE CHILL.”

Veronica’s blue plaid coat SHOCKS me

Veronica was rich: Gladys admires Veronica and Reggie’s gumption showing up with only half the money

is it a coat or is it a miniskirt with a matching jacket?????

God bless jingle-jangle Moose: Moose is so excited that he just absolutely tells Cheryl he’s finally going to have sex. I know the show needs him to say it so Cheryl can tell him to BYOS, but it’s still cute of him, himself. is Moose kind of precious?

remember when Moose got gunned down in that car? Christ

HE BROUGHT A LITTLE RED CANDLE!!!!!

I love when people take off their whole belt, as if you can’t just undo it and still take your jeans off

dope deer skull! plus: everyone’s fucking

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: I’ve lost track a little bit of whether or not Alice KNOWS Betty and Jughead are literally/colloquially sleeping together in Betty’s bedroom, or are they taking advantage of her being gone?

The female gaze: Reggie’s chest is the new Archie’s chest

“NIGHT HAG”

“KEEP YOUR BOW CLOSE.”

Moose is MASSIVE like, do you see those arms?

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: HIS BEAUTIFUL FLIPPY HAIR ON THE PILLOW

Dilton Doiley Ethel Muggs The Gargoyle Children: the RROTC guy is Chris Cooper in American Beauty???

Gay.: Sierra was halfway right about “the jealousy thing”

even FP, conducting his interview in his flannel, is like, bruh

These students are legally children: his “Man, the Sisters did a number on you” feels like Riverdale’s version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Catholics really fucked you up”

Jughead doubts it: Jughead makes a good point. is there one costumes everyone keeps using or is it that easy to DIY your own Gargoyle King?

“UR-KING,” JUGHEAD, PLEASE

oh I can see Jughead about to be disillusioned by his family coming a mile away

Archie’s soft soft sweater? confounding

at least Moose isn’t moving to Toledo, am I right

CHERYL’S SLEEVES?????????

What damn high school in America: Cheryl’s girl gang is 100% Teddy girls and I love them

THE WHITE STRIPE ON REGGIE’S SWEATER and the little black birds on Veronica’s shirt!

Gladys & JB are already a more powerful duo than FP & Jughead could ever hope to be

ARCHIE ASKS HER IF HE COULD KISS HER. THAT’S VERY SEXY OF YOU, ARCHIE. GOOD, ARCHIE

wait Moose is moving to Glendale? SABRINA-GLENDALE? MOOSE WAIT A SECOND?

NEXT WEEK: Gladys tells Veronica to pray, OH BOY

[zed-air]

CKUA - The Midway: 2018

______

The Midway was a special program which typically aired from 9:00am-12:00pm (or sometimes 10:00am-2:00) on CKUA from 2016-2019 during statutory holidays.

Click “keep reading” below for my 2018 Midway playlists.

Explore my playlist history for other dates and programs.

- - - - -

AIRTIME // TITLE // PERFORMING ARTIST // ALBUM

2018-02-19

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

09:00 // Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class

09:06 // Cowboy Song // Thin Lizzy // Uncut Nov 2001

09:11 // Glory Hallelujah // The Give ‘Em Hell Boys // Barn Burner

09:19 // Navajo Rug // Ian Tyson // All the Good ‘Uns

09:21 // S Lazy H // Corb Lund // Things That Can’t Be Undone

09:29 // Winter // Celeigh Cardinal // Everything and Nothing At All

09:35 // Viva La Vida // Coldplay // Viva La Vida…

09:39 // Shop Around // Smoky Robinson & the Miracles // Motown Forever

09:43 // You Really Got a Hold on Me // The Beatles // With the Beatles

09:48 // Another Day // Paul McCartney // Wingspan

09:54 // I Was Born Under a Wandering Star // Lee Marvin // Paint Your Wagon

10:02 // Be There // Kimberley MacGregor // I Am My Own

10:06 // Mary Jane’s Last Dance // Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers // Greatest Hits

10:11 // Back in Black // AC/DC // Back in Black

10:18 // Rose of the Valley // Duane Eddy // Road Trip

10:21 // Like Water // Graftician // Wander/Weave ++

10:26 // No Wrong // Bahamas // No Wrong 45 ++

10:32 // Devil in Disguise // Elvis Presley // Hits

10:35 // Christine’s Tune // The Flying Burrito Bros // 20th C. Masters

10:38 // I’m No Elvis Presley // Lindi Ortega // Little Red Boots

10:42 // Pretty Thing // Michael Rault // Crash! Boom! Bang!

10:44 // Not Fade Away // The Rolling Stones // Grrr!

10:46 // Maggie’s Farm (live at Newport) // Bob Dylan // No Direction Home

10:52 // You Keep Me Hanging On // Vanilla Fudge // Classic Rock 1968

10:56 // Why Do You Love Me? // Jom Comyn // I Need Love

11:01 // Leaving the Table // Leonard Cohen // You Want It Darker

11:07 // Rabbit in Your Headlights // UNKLE & Thom Yorke // Psyence Fiction ^^

11:12 // My Soul’s in Louisiana // Otis Taylor //  ________ ^^

11:16 // Give Me a Sign // Edward Sharp & the Magnetic Zeroes // Give Me a Sign 45

11:20 // Distant Sky // Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds // Skeleton Tree

11:27 // He’ll Have To Go // Jim Reeves // Essential Jim Reeves ^^

11:30 // Once in a Lifetime // Talking Heads // Remain in Light

11:34 // Murder in the City (live) // The Avett Bros //  _________ ^^

11:39 // Love is the Drug // Roxy Music // The Collection ^^

11:43 // I’ll Take You There // The Staples Singers // Greatest Hits

11:48 // Fun Fun Fun // The Beach Boys // Good Vibrations

11:50 // Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio? // The Ramones // Greatest Hits

11:55 // Memories // Leonard Cohen // Death of a Ladies’ Man

- - - - -

2018-03-30

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

09:00 // Friday on My Mind // The Easybeats // Greatest Hits

09:05 // Walk of Life // Dire Straits // Greatest Hits

09:09 // Walk on the Wild Side // Lou Reed // Transformer

09:14 // Love Minus Zero // The Walker Bros // Take It Easy With the WB

09:17 // All Along the Watchtower // Jimi Hendrix // Electric Ladyland

09:21 // When the Ship Comes In // The Hollies // Hollies Sing Dylan

09:24 // Here’s That Rainy Day // Bob Dylan // Triplicate

09:31 // Laugh Laugh // The Beau Brummels // Greatest Hits

09:36 // No Surprises // Radiohead // OK Computer

09:39 // You Don’t Scare Me // Whitney Rose // Rule 62

09:44 // Come To Me // Sue Foley // The Ice Queen

09:48 // I Ain’t Cool // The Sheepdogs // Changing Colours ^^

09:52 // Bad Bad News // Leon Bridges // Good Thing

09:56 // Ain’t That Good News // Sam Cooke // Ain’t That Good News

10:03 // The Priests of Golden Bull // Buffy Sainte-Marie // Medicine Songs

10:09 // Whiskey // Joey Landreth // Whiskey EP

10:12 // Bad Bad Man // The Give ‘Em Hell Boys // Barn Burner

10:16 // After Midnight // Eric Clapton // Complete Clapton

10:19 // Give Me One Reason // Tracy Chapman // _____

10:24 // Still Crazy After All These Years // Paul Simon // The Essential

10:28 // The Addams Family Theme // Vic Mizzy // Greatest Hits of TV

10:31 // Winter // Celeigh Cardinal // Everything and Nothing At All

10:37 // Go // Kimberley MacGregor // I Am My Own

10:42 // Everybody’s Coming To My House // David Byrne // American Utopia

10:47 // I Wanna Prove To You // The Lemon Twigs // Do Hollywood

10:51 // This Winter Revisited // F&M // ______ ^^

10:54 // North To Alaska // Johnny Horton // The Essential

10:58 // I Can See For Miles // The Who // The Who Sell Out ^^

11:02 // Shining in the Distance // The Stray Birds // Magic Fire

11:08 // When You Ain’t Home // Lindi Orgega // Faded Gloryville

11:12 // I Don’t Know Why I Love You But I Do // Clarence “Frogman” Henry // Collected Works

11:14 // Heroes (live) // King Crimson // DGM Live

11:20 // Goldfinger // Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan // Small Town

11:26 // Secret Love // Nels Cline // Lovers

11:30 // Zoot Allures // Frank Zappa // Zoot Allures

11:34 // 13 Engines // What If We Don’t Get What We Want? // _____ ^^

11:38 // Nedayeh Bahar // Habibi // Cardamom Garden

11:41 // Disarray // Preoccupations // New Material

11:45 // Say it Louder // Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats // Tearing at the Seams

11:49 // Don’t Stop Me Now // Queen // Greatest Hits

11:52 // Heart of Oak // Richard Hawley // Hollow Meadows

11:56 // Goodbye Stranger // Supertramp // Retrospectacle

- - - - -

2018-05-21

Today’s theme: because Victoria Day falls between Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, the theme of this program is going to be parents & music. I want to hear from you. Get in touch with names of formative songs your parents introduced to you, and/or songs you introduced to your parents that turned their cranks.

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

09:00 // Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class

09:06 // Victoria // The Kinks // Arthur

09:09 // These Days Is Coming Soon // The Lemon Twigs // Do Hollywood

09:12 // Today // Jefferson Airplane // Surrealistic Pillow

09:17 // Somebody That I Used To Know // Gotye // Making Mirrors

09:21 // Masseduction // St. Vincent // Masseduction

09:25 // Physical // Juliana Hatfield // Sings Songs of Olivia Newton John

09:30 // We’ve Come This Far // Sloan // Commonwealth

09:34 // Just Like Romeo & Juliet // Sha-Na-Na // __________

09:37 // Romeo & Juliet // Dire Straits // Priviate Investigations

09:45 // Four Out of Five // Arctic Monkeys // Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

09:51 // Treat Her Right // Mr. T. // Greatest Hits

09:55 // Axel F. // Angela Dubeau & La Pieta // __________

10:01 // Nunca Es Suficiente; Natalia Lafourcade; Hasta la Raiz

10:06 // Layla (Strange Brew) // Le Onde Blu // Italy 1960s Beat

10:10 // Nessuno Mi Puo Guidicare // Gene Pitney // Definitive Collection

10:13 // Save the Last Dance for Me // The Shanes // Anthology

10:16 // California Sun // Ola & the Janglers // Swedish Rock & Roll Hits

10:19 // She Taught Me to Yodel // The Scarlets // Collection

10:22 // Boys Night Out // Johnny Reimar // Greatest Hits

10:24 // A Swinging Safari // Bert Kaempfert // Classics

10:29 // My Bonnie // Tony Sheridan & the Beat Bros // Tony Sheridan & the Silver Beatles

10:34 // Why Do You Have To Break My Heart Again? // The School // Reading Too Much Into Things

10:38 // Neon Lights // Kraftwerk // The Man-Machine

10:42 // Das Model // The Cardigans // B-Sides

10:47 // Wipeout // The Eliminators // Planetary Pebbles - Behind the Iron Curtain, vol 1

10:50 // Crazy Guitars // Boomerangs // Planetary Pebbles - Behind the Iron Curtain, vol 1

10:52 // Can Can // Can // Singles

10:57 // Lakes of Mars // Doug Hoyer // Walks With the Tender & Growing Night

11:01 // Hello in There // John Prine // Souveniers ^^

11:09 // Carry Me // The Stampeders // Best of ^^

11:12 // Ghost Riders in the Sky // Gene Autry // Essential ^^

11:16 // I’ve Been Everywhere // Hank Snow // Essential ^^

11:20 // Happy Brasilia // James Last // __________ ^^

11:24 // Crazy Train // Ozzy Osbourne // Anthology ^^

11:27 // Oxygene II // Jean-Michel Jarre // Oxygene ^^

11:30 // Froggy Went a-Courtin’ // Red Allen // Essential ^^

11:35 // Welcome to Earth (Pollywog) // Sturgill Simpson // A Sailor’s Guide to Earth ^^

11:40 // Late Night Radio // Gary Brown // __________ ^^

11:45 // A Sweet Beginning Like This // Fats Waller // Anthology ^^

11:49 // You Make Me Feel Like Dancing // Leo Sayer // You Make Me Feel Like Dancing

11:52 // Twist & Shout // The Isley Bros // Essential

11:55 // End of the Line // Traveling Wilburys // Vol 1

- - - - -

2018-07-02

Due to some scheduling kerfuffles at the station, the July 2, 2018 instalment of The Midway will last longer and start a whole lot earlier! Coming to your receivers from 6AM-10AM MST, tune in for our post-Canada Day extravaganza.

The theme of this episode is a simple one: what is the best Canadian artist/song you’ve discovered in 2018? It can be a new release, or any Canadian that you weren’t previously aware of - regardless of era.

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

06:00 // Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class

06:06 // Changing Times // Iwan Rheon // Changing Times single

06:10 // Hippy Hippy Shake // Chan Romero // USA Roots of the UK Invasion

06:12 // The Devil in His Heart // The Donays // USA Roots of the UK Invasion

06:15 // Twist & Shout // The Isley Bros // Essential

06:19 // Robotic // Hannah Georgas // Hannah Georgas

06:23 // Crash Years // The New Pornographers // Together

06:31 // Psychopath // St. Vincent // STV

06:36 // Summer Sounds // Robert Goulet // Summer Sounds

06:38 // Under the Boardwalk // The Drifters // Greatest Hits

06:40 // Summer Holiday // Cliff Richard & the Shadows // Summer Holiday

06:45 // Suck It and See // The Arctic Monkeys // Suck It and See

06:48 // Street Life // Roxy Music // Collection

06:51 // Everybody’s Coming To My House // David Byrne

06:56 // Houses of the Holy // Led Zeppelin // Houses of the Holy

07:03 // Troubled Mind // Dan Mangan // Troubled Mind single

07:08 // Wendy // The Beach Boys // Good Vibrations

07:11 // Gorilla Song // Sha-Na-Na // Greatest Hits

07:13 // Bananaphone // Raffi // Bananaphone

07:16 // Carry On // Coeur de Pirate // Roses

07:19 // Breaking Down // Florence & the Machine // Ceremonials

07:23 // Stepping Out // Joe Jackson // Night and Day

07:32 // Everything // Celeigh Cardinal // Everything and Nothing At All

07:35 // Tommaso // nehiyawak // Tommaso single

07:39 // My Back Pages // Marshall Crenshaw // Bleecker Street

07:44 // Only a Pawn in the Game // Bob Dylan // The Times They Are A-Changin’

07:48 // The Godfather Waltz // Nino Rota // The Godfather Soundtrack

07:53 // Wish You Were Here // Pink Floyd // Wish You Were Here

08:01 // Radio // Client // City

08:05 // Radio, Radio // Elvis Costello // This Year’s Model

08:08 // Shape Shifter // Lera Lynn // Resistor

08:12 // In the Aeroplane Over the Sea // Neutral Milk Hotel // In the Aeroplane Under the Sea

08:17 // Maybe Tonight // Nicole Atkins // Neptune City

08:21 // Girl Don’t Come // Sandie Shaw // Hits of the 1960s

08:24 // I Only Want To Be With You // Dusty Springfield // Hits of the 1960s

08:26 // Moonshiner’s Daughter // Rhiannon Giddens // Factory Girl

08:31 // Decomposing Composers // Monty Python // Monty Python Sings

08:35 // Girl From Ipanema // Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto // Super Samba

08:39 // Xanadu // Juliana Hatfield // J.H. Sings Olivia Newton John

08:43 // I Wanna Prove To You // The Lemon Twigs // Do Hollywood

08:48 // Depth of My Soul // Thievery Corporation // Saudade

08:51 // No More Disguises // Thievery Corporation // Saudade

08:56 // You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You // Dinah Washington // Blue Box 2

09:01 // O Canada // Osyron // O Canada (music video)

09:04 // Who Do You Love? // Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks // Rock & Roll Originals ++

09:07 // One Foot // Doug Hoyer // To Be a River ^^

09:10 // Glory // Layten Kramer // Glory ++

09:15 // Always For You // J.J. Shiplett // Something To Believe In ^^

09:19 // You Don’t Scare Me // Whitney Rose // Rule 62 ^^

09:25 // Norwegian Wood // Greenwich, Breau, Bickert // Toronto Sessions ^^

09:31 // Changes // Gordon Lightfoot // Original Lightfoot

09:33 // Been Waiting // The Flashing Lights // Sweet Release ^^

09:40 // The Silent // The Bolt Actions // TBA EP

09:42 // Don’t Wanna Hear It // Lindi Ortega // Cigarettes & Truckstops ^^

09:45 // Bye Bye Blackbird // Ringo Starr // Sentimental Journey

09:48 // Blackbird // The Beatles // The Beatles

09:51 // End of the Line // The Traveling Wilburys // Volume 1

09:54 // I’ll Be Seeing You // Francoise Hardy & Iggy Pop // Triple Best

- - - - -

TITLE // PERFORMING ARTIST // ALBUM // AIRTIME

2018-08-06 - 09:00-12:00

The theme of this episode: what recent folk-festival performance/performer has astonished you? It can be during the current festival season. It can be an artist you’ve loved for years, or someone you’ve only just discovered.

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class // Mon 09:01

Maggie’s Farm (live Newport ‘65) // Bob Dylan // The Bootleg Series Vol. 7 // Mon 09:06

Polka Dot Undies // Bowser & Blue // Polka Dot Undies (Single) // Mon 09:12AM

Let The Good Times Roll // JD McPherson // Let The Good Times Roll // Mon 09:17AM

Country House // Blur // ______ // Mon 09:20

Rockaway Beach // Ramones // Loud, Fast Ramones // Mon 09:25AM

Do You Need My Love // Weyes Blood // Front Row Seat To Earth // Mon 09:30AM

Surrender // kd lang // Tomorrow Never Dies Soundtrack // Mon 09:36AM

Underneath the Mango Tree // Diana Coupland & Monty Norman // Dr. No Soundtrack // Mon 09:40AM

Nobody Does It Better // Carly Simon // Clouds In My Coffee: 1965-1995 // Mon 09:43AM

You And Whose Army? // Radiohead // Amnesiac // Mon 09:48AM

Four Out Of Five // Arctic Monkeys // Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino // Mon 09:54AM

She’s Electric // Oasis // (What’s The Story) Morning Glory // Mon 10:02AM

Lille (live at EFMF 2013) // Lisa Hannigan // Live at the CKUA Tent // Mon 10:09AM

Driver’s Seat // Sniff ‘n’ the Tears // Driver’s Seat single // Mon 10:12AM

Breakfast at the Ace // The Rapiers // The Rapiers // Mon 10:16AM

Ford Fairlane // Confusionaires // Make a Little Mess With the Confusionaires // Mon 10:22AM

Big Sunglasses // Dylan Farrell // Blues Before // Mon 10:24AM

Would You Be My Dog? // Celeigh Cardinal // Everything And Nothing At All // Mon 10:30AM

Bizarre Love Triangle // Give 'Em Hell Boys // Barn Burner // Mon 10:34AM

City Lights // King Of Foxes // Golden Armour // Mon 10:38AM

Rock Pool // Cate Le Bon // Rock Pool EP // Mon 10:42AM

Twisting By The Pool // Dire Straits // Twisting By The Pool // Mon 10:47AM

Enola Gay // OMD // Organization // Mon 10:51AM

Bad Luck // Neko Case // Bad Luck (Single) // Mon 10:59AM

Total Eclipse // Klaus Nomi // Klaus Nomi // Mon 11:06AM

From a Logical Point of View // Robert Mitchum // Calypso is Like So // Mon 11:07AM

Phenomenal Woman // Ruthie Foster // The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster // Mon 11:12AM ^^

Gotta Serve Somebody // Mavis Staples // Tangled Up In Blues: Songs Of Bob Dylan // Mon 11:16AM ^^

Mr. Monday // Kobo Town // Jumbie In The Jukebox // Mon 11:22AM ^^

The Letter // Joe Cocker // Sounds Of The Seventies: 1970 // Mon 11:26AM ^^

Steppin’ Out // Joe Jackson // Night and Day // Mon 11:32AM ^^

Preachin’ To The Choir // Rodney Crowell // Fate’s Right Hand // Mon 11:37AM ^^

You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover // William Prince // You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover // Mon 11:43AM ^^

And I Love Her // Passenger // The Boy Who Cried Wolf // Mon 11:46AM ^^

And I Love Her // The Beatles // A Hard Day’s Night // Mon 11:51AM

End Of The Line // The Traveling Wilburys // Traveling Wilburys Collection // Mon 11:53AM

I’ll Be Seeing You // Francoise Hardy & Iggy Pop // Triple Best // Mon 11:56AM

- - - - -

2018-09-03 - 09:00-12:00

The theme of this episode: what is one of your essential live albums? It can be new, old, filled with cheating overdubs, lo-fi, hi-fi, whatever!

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist ~~ today’s featured album: Richard Hawley’s Live at the Devi’s Arse

Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class // Mon 09:01AM

Maggie’s Farm (live at Newport Folk 1965) // Bob Dylan // No Direction Home // Mon 09:07AM

Goldfinger // Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan // Small Town // Mon 09:14AM

Four Out Of Five // Arctic Monkeys // Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino // Mon 09:19AM

Oliver Cromwell // Monty Python // Sings // Mon 09:28AM

Reelin’ In The Years // Steely Dan // Can’t Buy A Thrill // Mon 09:30AM

Help Me Rhonda // The Beach Boys // Good Vibrations: 30 Years Of The // Mon 09:36AM

Hideaway // John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers // Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton // Mon 09:39AM

Going Down // Freddie King // Ultimate Collection // Mon 09:43AM

Steppin’ Out // Memphis Slim // Rockin’ the Blues // Mon 09:46AM

Shake Your Money Maker // Paul Butterfield Blues Band // Paul Butterfield Blues Band // Mon 09:51AM

Darlin’ // Richard Hawley // Live at the Devil’s Arse // Mon 09:54AM ~~

The Devil in Disguise // Richard Hawley // Live at the Devil’s Arse // Mon 09:57AM ~~

Ain’t That a Shame // Cheap Trick // Live at Budokan // Mon 10:06AM

Hot Rod Lincoln // Commander Cody // 70s Classics // Mon 10:15AM

Rambler // The Madmen // Swedish Rock & Roll Hits // Mon 10:16AM

Pistoleros // The Shanes // The Shanes Anthology // Mon 10:17AM

Satumaa // Reijo Taipale // Satumaa 45 // Mon 10:22AM

Satumaa // Frank Zappa & the Mothers // You Can’t Do That on Stage Anymore 2 // Mon 10:25AM

Impossible Germany (live, 2012) // Wilco // Ashes of the American Flag // Mon 10:31AM

I Wonder If Care As Much // Richard Hawley with Lynn & Jean // Live at the Devil’s Arse // Mon 10:40AM  ~~

Lille (live at CKUA Tent, EFMF 2013) // Lisa Hannigan // Live at EFMF 2013 // Mon 10:45AM

Distant Sky // Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds // Distant Sky Live in Copenhagen // Mon 11:51AM

Smoke on the Water // Deep Purple // Made in Japan // Mon 11:00AM

Comfortably Numb // Roger Waters & Van Morrison // The Wall Live // Mon 11:10AM ^^

That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine // Simon & Garfunkel // Live 1969 // Mon 11:14AM ^^

Folsom Prison Blues // Merle Haggard // Live // Mon 11:19AM ^^

New Favourite // Alison Krauss & Union Station // Live // Mon 11:25AM ^^

Murder By Numbers // Sting & Friends // Broadway the Hard Way // Mon 11:29AM ^^

Do You Feel Like I Do? // Peter Frampton // Frampton Comes Alive // Mon 11:31 ^^

Lakes of Mars // Doug Hoyer // REC-YEG Concert Sessions 2012 // Mon 11:39AM

1952 Vincent Black Lightnight // Reckless Kelly // R.K. Was Here // Mon 11:47AM ^^

Just Like the Rain // Richard Hawley // Live at the Devil’s Arse // Mon 11:48AM ~~

That’ll Be the Day // Cliff Richard & the Shadows // The Rock & Roll Years // Mon 11:52AM

Don’t Ever Change // The Beatles // Live at the BBC // Mon 11:54AM

I’ll Be Seeing You // Francoise Hardy & Iggy Pop // Triple Best // Mon 11:58AM

- - - - -

2018-10-08 - 09:00-12:00

The theme of this episode: a smorgasbord of tunes - food, mood, and gratitude. We’ll also feature some leftovers - songs which listeners recommended for earlier editions of The Midway, but which were not broadcast when received due to time constraints or other impediments. Sharing a feast for the ears.

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class // Mon 09:01AM

Hi Hello // Johnny Marr // Hi Hello // Mon 09:07AM

The Right Stuff // Noel Gallagher // Chasing Yesterday // Mon 09:12AM

Snow Bank // Doug Hoyer // Walks With the Tender & Growing Night // Mon 09:19AM

Strawberry Fields Forever // The Beatles // Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club // Mon 09:27AM

Strawberry Cake // Johnny Cash // Strawberry Cake // Mon 09:35AM

You Don’t Scare Me // Whitney Rose // Rule 62 // Mon 09:38AM

The White Witch // Ivoux // Frozen // Mon 09:43AM

Winter // Celeigh Cardinal // Everything And Nothing At All // Mon 09:48AM

Dunes // Alabama Shakes // Sound And Color // Mon 09:55AM

Satin Devil // Dirty Dirty Devils // Dirty Dirty Devils // Mon 10:04AM

Help Me // Joni Mitchell // Hits // Mon 10:08AM

My Favorite Things // John Coltrane // _____ // Mon 10:11AM

Big Rock Candy Mountain // Harry McClintock // O Brother, Where Art Thou? // Mon 10:14AM

Morning Has Broken // Yusuf / Cat Stevens // The Very Best Of Cat Stevens // Mon 10:17AM ^^

Blame It On the Bossa Nova // Eydie Gorme // Greatest Hits // Mon 10:21AM

Telstar // The Tornados // The Tornados // Mon 10:23AM

Telstar (Original Demo) // Joe Meek // Joe Meek Anthology // Mon 10:28AM

Take a Bow // Muse // Black Holes & Revelations // Mon 10:31AM

Money // The Backbeat Band // Backbeat Soundtrack // Mon 10:40AM

Rockaway Beach // Ramones // Loud, Fast Ramones // Mon 10:42AM

Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer // Nat King Cole // Greatest Hits // Mon 10:45AM

Crocodile Rock // Elton John // Greatest Hits // Mon 10:47AM

Money // Pink Floyd // The Dark Side Of The Moon // Mon 10:53AM

Statesboro Blues (Live) // The Allman Bros Band // At Fillmore East // Mon 11:01AM ^^

The Tourist Song // Brad Bucknell & the oHNo Band // self-titled // Mon 11:06AM

Wiggle Wiggle // Bob Dylan // Under a Red Sky // Mon 11:11AM

Bad Guy // Jesse & The Dandelions // True Blue // Mon 11:14AM ^^

Danceland (Come With Me) // The Garrys // Surf Manitou // Mon 11:17AM

Loneliness // Rebekah Higgs // Sha La La // Mon 11:21AM

Trigger // The New Haunts // The New Haunts // Mon 11:25AM ^^

I Wanna Thank You // Sloan // Navy Blues // Mon 11:29AM ^^

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut // Almond Joy // Vintage Commercials // Mon 11:35AM

Fireworks // First Aid Kit // Ruins // Mon 11:37AM

The Way It Is // Nicole Atkins // Neptune City // Mon 11:44AM

Ice Dance // Danny Elfman // Edward Scissorhands Soundtrack // Mon 11:47AM

Apple Tree // The Hearts // ______ // Mon 11:49AM

Blistered // That Pedal Show Band // Blistered // Mon 11:56AM

I’ll Be Seeing You // Francoise Hardy & Iggy Pop // Triple Best // Mon 11:58AM

- - - - -

2018-11-12 - 09:00-12:00

^^ listener recommendation ++ selected from CKUA’s “house blend” playlist

Monday Morning // Pulp // Different Class // Mon 09:00AM

Lollipop (Ode To Jim) // Alvvays // Antisocialites // Mon 09:05AM

Danceland (Come With Me) // The Garrys // Surf Manitou // Mon 09:09AM

Christmas All Over Again // Tom Petty // A Very Special Christmas 2 // Mon 09:13AM

I Will // The Beatles // The Beatles (Stereo Remaster) // Mon 09:20AM

Is He Really Coming Home? // The School // Loveless Unbeliever // Mon 09:22AM

The Spell of City Lights // J.D. McPherson // ______ // 09:25AM

The Future Age // The Hearts // Equal Love // Mon 09:30AM

Arnold Layne // The Pink Floyd // Arnold Layne 45 // Mon 09:34AM

Anne of 1000 Days // John Moore // Knickerbocker Glory // Mon 09:42AM

Journey // Sarah Nixey // Night Walks // Mon 09:44AM

Start As You Mean To Go On // Black Box Recorder // The Facts of Life // Mon 09:47AM

Xanadu // Juliana Hatfield // Sings the Songs of Olivia Newton John // Mon 09:53AM

Africa // Weezer // Africa // Mon 10:00AM

Hold the Line // Osyron // Hold the Line // Mon 10:05AM

Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio // Ramones // Greatest Hits // Mon 10:09AM

Breaking Down // Florence & The Machine // Ceremonials // Mon 10:13AM

Time Of The Season // The Zombies // Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1 // Mon 10:19AM

True Love Ways // Peter & Gordon // Greatest Hits // Mon 10:23AM

Wonderful Land // The Shadows // Shadows Are Go! // Mon 10:25AM

Midnight // The Shadows // Shadows Are Go! // Mon 10:27AM

While My Guitar Gently Weeps // The Beatles // White Album // Mon 10:31AM

(Nice Dream) // Radiohead // The Bends // Mon 10:37AM

A Boat Lies Waiting // David Gilmour // Rattle That Lock // Mon 10:41AM

Get Ready // The Temptations // The Motown Box // Mon 10:48AM

Did You Feed My Cow? // Sharon, Lois, and Bram // Smorgasboard // Mon 10:50AM

Damn Tattoo // John Wort Hannam // Brambles And Thorns // Mon 10:54AM

Little White Lines // Sweet Vintage Rides // Road Trip // Mon 10:58AM

Time Is Tight // Booker T. & The MG’s // Beg Scream & Shout!: The Big Ol’ // Mon 11:02AM

Take Me Home, Country Roads // John Denver // Behind The Music: The John Denver // Mon 11:07AM

Imagine // Neil Young // ______ // 11:10AM

This Magic Moment // Lou Reed // Lost Highway Soundtrack // Mon 11:13AM

You Belong To Me // Jo Stafford // Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1 // Mon 11:18AM

Lodestar // Sarah Harmer // You Were Here // Mon 11:21AM

Crosstown Traffic // Jimi Hendrix // Electric Ladyland // Mon 11:28AM

Quickstep Medley: I’m a Believer, Simon Smith & his Dancing Bear, The Happening, Georgie Girl // Joe Loss & His Orchestra // Top Pop Dance Time

Tous les garcons et les filles // Francoise Hardy // Tous les garcons et les filles // Mon 11:38AM

My Autumn’s Done Come // Hooverphonic // Sit Down and Listen // Mon 11:41AM

Darlin’ (live 2008) // Richard Hawley // Live at the Devil’s Arse // Mon 11:47AM

Memories // Leonard Cohen // Death of a Ladies’ Man // Mon 11:50AM

I’ll Be Seeing You // Francoise Hardy & Iggy Pop // Triple Best // Mon 11:57AM

[calamusgerent-blog]

SWEET BRO AND HELLA JEFF: THE TURD MOPVIE, REVIEWED.

THIS IS GOING TO BE SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT THAN MY OTHER REVIEWS, BECAUSE WHILE I HAVE ALWAYS FOCUSED ON THE AUTHOR’S STYLE, I WILL ALSO MAKE REFERENCE TO THE CONTENT OF THE PLOT. IF YOU GIVE A SHIT, THERE ARE PROBABLY GOING TO BE SPOILERS. I HAVEN’T SEEN THE FIRST TWO MOVIES, IF THEY EXIST, AND THE TITLE ISN’T JUST A FUCKING JOKE.

SBAHJ: TTM IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TOO MANY PEOPLE ENCOURAGE A TALENTLESS PISSLORD. SOMETHING LIKE THIS DOESN’T JUST OCCUR NATURALLY WITHOUT THE KNOWING CONSENT OF DOZENS OF PEOPLE. MOVIES ARE A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT AND AGREEING TO SHOOT THIS SHOULD BE A FUCKING WAR CRIME. HOLLYWEIRD, I GUESS.

THE IDEA THAT THIS COULD BE THE THIRD IN A SERIES GIVES MY ULCER AN ULCER. LET’S GO.

WE OPEN ON A FULL-SCREEN OF A BRICK WALL, WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS FOR, QUOTE, “SEVERAL MINUTES.” “THE END” POPS UP, AND GIVES EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE A SHOT OF HOPE DIRECTLY TO THE HEART, LIKE THE RESUSCITATION SCENE IN PULP FICTION. BUT IT’S NOT THE END. IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE.

SWEET BRO

You know what we need, Jeffryey?

HELLA JEFF

I don’t like when you call me that.

SWEET BRO

I SAID.

You know what we NEED

ASSMUNCH?

THIS, ON PAGE ONE, IS THE FIRST SIGN OF CONFLICT BETWEEN OUR PROTAGONISTS. I’M BEING MOTHER THERESA LEVELS OF GENEROUS BY USING ANY OF THOSE TERMS, USUALLY RESERVED FOR WORKS OF FICTION INSTEAD OF THIS SANDPAPERY BOWEL MOVEMENT. ANYWAY, IT’S NEVER REFERENCED AGAIN. IT’S A CHEKOV’S GUN THAT SITS ON THE TABLE, FOREVER, INERT AND UNKNOWING. WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE TO BE THE SAME: AN EYELESS, EARLESS, INANIMATE OBJECT, WHO COULDN’T POSSIBLY READ THIS YEAST INFECTION ON PAPER.

WE MOVE SEAMLESSLY FROM LOCATION TO LOCATION, BUT ONLY BECAUSE VOMIT DOESN’T HAVE SEAMS. FROM THE NACHO STORE OF ACT ONE, WE APPEAR IN WHAT I THINK IS A SUPERMARKET? IT ISN’T SPECIFIED. A PLACE WHERE BELL PEPPERS ARE.

MORE CONFLICT.

HELLA JEFF

Looks evil.

GREY MAN #1

The bell pepper? Bell peppers can’t be evil.

HELLA JEFF

Sounds like something,

an evil one would say.

HELLA JEFF IS MANY THINGS, INCLUDING AN IDIOT, BUT NOT RIGHT NOW, FOR SOME UNEXPLAINED REASON.

SWEET BRO AND HELLA JEFF PRESENT A UNITED FRONT AGAINST GREY MEN ONE AND TWO, THEIR EARLIER SQUABBLES FORGOTTEN. THE GREY MEN IMMEDIATELY FOLD, IN A SCENE WHICH I CAN ONLY IMAGINE MIRRORS WHAT THE PITCH MEETING FOR THIS FUCKING MOVIE WAS LIKE. THE “STAR POWER” OF THESE TWO CANKER SORES IS ENOUGH TO BULLDOZE ANY OPPOSITION. THIS IS GETTING AD HOMINEM, BUT FUCK IT, I’M WORKING HARDER ON THIS REVIEW THAN TUMBLR USER COMICSNAS WORKED ON THE SCREENPLAY.

INT. A PARK AT NIGHT. IT’S RAINING. GEROMY clips through the floor.

ONE: THAT’S NOT INTERIOR, THAT’S EXTERIOR. HOW CAN IT BE AN INTERIOR PARK, COMPLETE WITH RAIN? SURPRISE, IT CAN’T. TWO: WHO THE FUCK IS GEROMY? IN TWO HUNDRED FULL PAGES, HE IS NEVER MENTIONED, NOT ONCE. THREE: WHY THE SUDDEN VIDEOGAME REFERENCE? FOUR: SERIOUSLY WHO IS HE??? IS HE IMPORTANT? DO I NEED TO SEE THE TWO PREQUELS FOR CONTEXT? WHY WOULD YOU SEND ME A PROJECT THAT DOESN’T STAND ON ITS OWN???? DO YOU WANT ME TO LOSE MY MIND?

SWEET BRO

Imbecile*. You know nothing.

(*pronounced imbessool)

IF YOU WANT ME TO MCFREAKING LOSE IT, YOU ARE DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO SUCCEEDING.

THE RISING ACTION OF THE SCRIPT IS HIDDEN UNDER LAYERS OF POND SCUM AND MASTURBATORY, SELF-REFERENTIAL “””””HUMOR,””””” BUT APPARENTLY IT’S TO DO WITH THE ENVIRONMENT. THERE’S A THING WITH A GIRAFFE AND A MOTORCYCLE THAT’S TOO LONG FOR ME TO QUOTE DIRECTLY. THERE’S A SPECIFIC NOTE TO USE RED SPOONS AND CAKELIKE SYMBOLISM IN THE BACKGROUND OF THIS SCENE. THERE’S A LOT OF HORSESHIT SET DRESSING IN THE MARGINS OF THIS THING, BUT THIS STANDS OUT TO ME FOR TWO REASONS. ONE, PAID ADVERTISING FOR CORPORATIONS IS USUALLY WAY LESS SUBTLE THAN THAT. TWO, IT’S KIND OF IMPLIED THAT THE CEO OF THIS COMPANY IS AN ALIEN? THERE’S THIS WEIRD SCIENCE FICTIONY VIBE TO THE CLIMAX, AND IT’S ONE OF THE ONLY THINGS THAT IS FORESHADOWED AND ACTUALLY COMES TO FRUITION. EVERYTHING IN THIS MOVIE LIVES AND DIES WITHOUT PURPOSE, BUT THIS MESSAGE IS SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERED. NO CLUE WHAT IT MEANS, THOUGH.

WHILE THE WRITING IS AN INSCRUTABLE MESS THAT LIVES AND DIES WITHOUT PURPOSE, THE METATEXUAL LAYERS OF THIS STORY ARE JUST FUCKING DEPRESSING. THIS IS THE THIRD OF THESE MOVIES, IMPLYING THAT THERE IS A DEMAND FOR THE AUDIOVISUAL EQUIVALENT OF CATCHING YOUR PUBES IN YOUR ZIPPER. THE COMMITMENT TO PARATAXIS IS SO UNWAVERING THAT, IF THERE IS ONLY A POLYSYLLABIC WORD FOR WHAT HE WANTS, HE WILL FUCKING INVENT A SHORTER ONE TO SUIT HIS NEEDS. “LAUNDROMAT” BECOME “LAUNDO.” “TAQUERIA” BECAUSE “NANCH.” IT SERVES AS A STARK VISION OF AN IDIOCRACY-LIKE FUTURE, WHERE WORDS BAD AND NO THINK GREAT.

I FOUND THIS STORY MORALLY, EMOTIONALLY, GRAMMATICALLY, AND PERSONALLY OFFENSIVE. BECAUSE IT EXISTS, GOD CANNOT. WHEN WE DIE, THERE IS ONLY BLACKNESS. A FIXED SHOT OF BLACKNESS FOR SEVERAL MINUTES, UNTIL “THE END” POPS UP.

BAD.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #478

Top Ten 1990s Films I’ve Still Never Got Round to Watching

I came of age in the nineties. I was born in 1981, and by the time 1990 rolled round I was already eight years old; you consume a lot in those eight years, as my lifelong devotion to Transformers (which started in 1984, when I was all of two) will attest. But really it was the nineties that shaped me, I think, more than anything. There’s a weird kind of Ground Zero in 1993 which I feel defines so much about different aspects of my psyche, from The X-Files to Jurassic Park; I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s also when Batman was dealing with a broken back and Superman was dealing with being dead. If we stretch it a little either side of ‘93, you get Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, two hugely seminal films from a director whose rise kinda defined the decade in film. And 1993 is the year I started reading Empire magazine, a publication which really cultivated my love of film, turning it from being “I like watching movies” to being a true hobby, probably the biggest and most abiding one of my life. And it’s through the pages of Empire that I was introduced to dozens of films that piqued my interest in lots of ways; quirky American indies, prestige historical dramas, wacky-looking arthouse fair, and loads more besides. Truth be told, as a regular visitor to Ye Olde Video Shoppe, my head was often turned by the exotica on display. Sometimes it was the cover art, delightfully lurid in the eighties; sometimes it was the title; sometimes it was just me wondering what on Earth this film could be about.

So through scenic trips round the HMV video isle and flicking through Empire and listening to the sage wisdom of Sir Barry of Norman, I was exposed to loads of films that just looked interesting; films I wanted to see. Sometimes I was too young, of course, but these films – unseen – expanded my interest in the artform because I knew that they were there. I knew that I’d be able to see them eventually. I dreamed as a young teen of being older and independent, of taking myself to see earnest and adult films; the latest Tarantino or Scorsese, a Naked or a Wild at Heart. I wanted to be a smart-arse cinephile university student, probably with a goatee and a ponytail, the kind of character that I was too young to realise was already a comedy cliché by the mid-nineties.

I got older, and I saw a lot of movies, but I read about a lot more, and quite frankly even back then there just weren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week. I had friends, schoolwork, Red Alert, Red Dwarf, and loads of writing to do. And, even back then, I have to say I’d have chosen Judge Dredd over Before Sunrise, or Godzilla over Pi.

So these films go on your backburner. I read the articles in Empire, I watched the trailers (remember when Empire would stick a VHS full of movie trailers to the front cover? Good times), I scanned the posters in foyers, the boxes in Blockbuster, and the nascent and ever-growing racks of DVDs as the decade wound on. My time became scanter, the blockbusters bigger and more encompassing (Star Wars fever lasted at least three years), and still those quirky-looking indies, those intelligent-looking dramas, those intense-looking B-pictures all went unseen.

No worries; I’ll see them eventually.

And then a funny thing happens. You turn around and you realise that twenty-odd years have passed. That film starring young up-and-comer who was in Schindler’s List? The one with the unknown, good-looking actor who it turns out has a new paranormal sci-fi series starting on BBC2? That was a long time ago, entire series, entire movie franchises have come and gone. And I’ve still not seen these films.

So here we are then; a list of films I’ve not seen, but have wanted to, in some cases for nigh-on three decades. It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, and it makes me wonder what recent films I’ll end up skipping on till I’m sixty or seventy. And, also, I’m going to take this list as a challenge; I’m going to try, within the next year, to watch all of these films.

Or at least I’ll try to do it before 2051.

There’s actually an added level of relevance this week. My Nanna turned 90 on Saturday. 90! So I was kinda primed to do something to do with the number 90, and as it happened this was a half-written list that I’d not got round to finishing yet. I was actually going to do a revisit of my 90th Top Ten, but as that was actually “Favourite Movies of the 1990s”, this feels like a fitting tribute, both to my grandmother (90!) and to my 90th list.

Oh, one last thing: this week I’ve just decided to do them in chronological order, rather than a “proper” ranking, because I couldn’t really decide which I wanted to see more. I’ve lived with these things for thirty years!

Malcom X (1992): there was no way I knew who Malcolm X was when this came out, but I remember seeing the posters and being curious. As I grew older, the stereotypical narrative of “militant Malcom versus peaceful Dr. King” emerged, and I was even more curious about this film. And then I began to see more films by Spike Lee, or starring Denzel Washington, and I realised just how huge a deal this must have been in the nineties. So here we are, 29 years later, and I still really want to see it.

My Cousin Vinny (1992): I knew Joe Pesci back in 1992 because of Home Alone, and also – if I’m honest – because of Goodfellas, which I’d have watched on video around the same time (shocking, I know). But all the same, I probably wasn’t that interested in a relatively-straight-looking courtroom drama starring the Karate Kid. However, I do remember people talking about it; I think my older cousins may even have rented it. And as I got a bit older, and wondered why people made jokes about Marisa Tomei winning an Oscar, I became really curious. So, by the time I was in my mid-teens, it became an early-90s film I really wanted to see. And I still haven’t. Ahem.

In the Line of Fire (1993): not everything here is going to be some earnest drama or forgotten indie movie; there’s a very good chance I would have seen Fire back in the day. I mean, my dad loves Eastwood, so it could have been something my parents rented. In ’93, I wouldn’t really have known about the political aspect of the film (I remember watching The Bodyguard and being really confused when one character talked about Reagan being shot, something I was utterly clueless about), but all the same, an Eastwood action-thriller is actually something I probably would have enjoyed. As time’s gone on, that feeling has increased.

Kalifornia (1993): weird to think that nowadays, the biggest draw for me with this film is seeing a pre-X-Files David Duchovny. Back then, I kinda had a thing for Juliette Lewis, and Brad Pitt was the epitome of cool. It probably hit me just as I was getting into Tarantino (not that I’d have seen any of his films in ’93 or ’94), and – in my head – it felt like one of those cool adult films that explored themes of violence in America. I’m not sure it reviewed all that well at the time, but all the same, I’ve always wanted to see it.

Quiz Show (1994): I think that, by 1994, I’d fixed Ralph Fiennes in my head as this young up-and-coming English actor who was going to conquer Hollywood. I’m sure by then I’d seen Schindler’s List; too young to go to the pictures, obviously, but it was an immediate rental. And ’94 was when I was really taking movies seriously for the first time; devouring Empire magazine, religiously tuning into The Film Programme. I’d probably never seen a Robert Redford film, but I knew who he was because he was so famous he permeated popular culture; so I knew it was a big deal whenever he directed. I knew nothing (still know hardly anything!) about the scandal the film depicts. But I was phenomenally intrigued. It’s on Disney+ now, I think. I’ve still not got round to it.

Reality Bites (1994): I don’t really know anything about this. It’s, like, Gen-X youngsters getting all angsty, right? And it’s Winona Ryder. If I “kinda” had a thing for Juliette Lewis, I definitely had a thing for Winona Ryder. But I remember seeing the poster in my local Video Emporium. And learning, years later, that it was an early (debut?) Ben Stiller film makes it all the more interesting. I think watching it now would be like opening a time capsule to the early nineties, and it’d be phenomenally interesting; but I know as the decade drew on, I felt this slight disconnect, like I should have watched these young-centric films that critics said “defined” the decade (see also Before Sunrise and Dazed and Confused). Still haven’t!

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995): if I was just getting “into” Tarantino in ’93, by ’95 I was fully in the tank. And this is when the first wave of “inspired by Tarantino” films crested; see also the phenomenal (but, for me, phenomenally tainted) The Usual Suspects. Denver was one of the first ones I remember being talked about. Truth is, I don’t remember much about it; but it had one of those impossible-to-forget titles which, post-Reservoir Dogs, were very popular in nineties indie crime flicks (see also Killing Zoe, Albino Alligator, and Man Bites Dog). It had a very mid-nineties cast of interesting actors that I liked (Andy Garcia, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Lloyd); I think this was the film where someone told me that a character is shot up the arsehole to slowly bleed to death. That was probably why I wanted to see it, but also the whole post-Pulp American indie vibe played a huge part; these sorts of films just seemed so cool to me.

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995): mid-nineties I was very much into Patrick Swayze (Ghost! Point Break!) and Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man! Passenger 57!). Despite having seen Super Mario Bros, I’m afraid I did not at all recognise John Leguizamo, for which I can only apologise; by the time Spawn came round, he was a huge draw for me, if that helps (I imagine it don’t). anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent. Seeing these three big macho dudes play drag queens was a big deal for me; even back then, I felt that it was good for them to do something that seemed progressive, or ran counter to outdated notions of masculinity. Was it really that progressive? I’m not sure; obviously I’ve not seen the film, but it seemed that way to me as a kid. It probably helped normalise the idea of non-heteronormative performance, in the same way The Birdcage or Philadelphia did. I’m not saying these are ideal interpretations of diverse sexuality, but when all you know is utter straightness, they were a window into a wider world. Also it’s got a hell of a title.

The People Versus Larry Flynt (1996): we’re now getting very deep into reading-Empire-religiously territory, and also David-is-old-enough-to-see-a-15 territory (the first 18 I saw was Face/Off the following year). We’re also – and I want to put this delicately – in an era where the discussion or depiction of pornography in a film was, shall we say, intriguing. Sue me; I was 14. The thought of taking a porn publisher and making him a good guy in a freedom of speech battle meant that, not only might it feature a bit of filth, but I could also root for him against the forces of censorship. I loved Woody Harrelson, too; and the insanely controversial (and banned!) poster is hilarious, if a bit much nowadays. Anyway, I wanted to see what I hoped was an intelligent and funny biopic that might also be a little bit rude; it made me feel grown-up and sophisticated. I wonder if I’d still feel the same if I watched in 2021.

Gods and Monsters (1999): jumping to the end of the decade and whilst I know full well why I’d be so excited to see Brendan Fraser in a more serious role, I’m not sure why I’d have know Ian McKellen; maybe The Keep? Or just reading about Richard III (I’d not seen it at that point)? Certainly I was very excited for his casting both in X-Men and Lord of the Rings, so I must have known who he was. Anyway, this film sounded great; a biopic of the director of Frankenstein, and also what appeared to be a rather tragic romance. I loved stories about old Hollywood, and – paging Wong Foo – stories about LGBTQ+ characters, even then. And I wanted to see what one of my favourite Hollywood action stars was up to, as well as support a British actor who I knew was in consideration for an Oscar. Knowing more about the situation, the movies, and the actors, I’d really love to see it now.

Well, there we are: ten films I can’t believe I’ve still not got round to seeing. I’m a bit rubbish, really. And these of course are just the tip of the iceberg (don’t worry, I did see Titanic). Throw a stick at an episode of The Film Programme in the nineties, and you’ll hit a film I was really interested in but still haven’t seen.

Mind you, I’m not dead yet. There’s still time… and I know Quiz Show is on Disney+…

[arcadeigannon]

As a film major, what movies set off a red flag of "wow, I should stay away from this person" if it's their favorite? For me it's usually A Clockwork Orange.

snzjknfdjkngsg that’s SO incredibly fair….tbh like…..woody allen or polanski films obviously, pulp fiction isn’t like..terrifying but just tells me they’re a huge Film Bro and if ur around white male film majors ever u know what im talking about (it’s also just kind of a lazy fucking answer not that that can’t be someone’s favorite movie but u know), uhhhhh i never saw mother! but i read about it and dont trust any man who says he enjoyed it…..man idk?? i’m trying to think of what else but i’m blankin. you’re right though if a dude says a clockwork orange is his favorite movie u run the other way and call the police