In what is as close to a hot take as Oi! Spaceman is ever likely to get, this week we actually covered a still-in-theaters film, rather than a sixty-five year old piece of film noir history. Shana was still out of town (but she’ll be back next week), so I was joined by friend of the show Jessica from The Web of Queer (which is a show more people should know about, so go click that link) to discuss the Paul Feig re-imagining of Ghostbusters. The film is largely just a pleasing bit of comedy and eye candy, so Jessica and I mostly just had a fun conversation about the things the film does regarding representation of women, queer characters, and queer characters who happen to be women. Also, I make a firm anti-Nazi stance and swoon over Kate McKinnon. 

Over on They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, we’re still doing sex comedies for another couple of weeks. This time we looked at one of the worst films of the genre, Summer Job (1989) and Bikini Drive-In (1995), which is one of Lee’s favorites. I also happened to do a bit of research on one of the films we covered last week, and explore some information about the song we went out on in that episode. 

And in case you missed it Friday, Jane and I had a casual conversation about Steven Moffat, Series Six, and feminism that is already one of our most-listened-to episodes. Jack described it as “the audio equivalent of relaxing into a huge comfy armchair with a steaming mug of cocoa,” which I think is a compliment. Hopefully Jane will come back and school us all on our rabid Moffat hate sometime in the near future. 

 …

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I was supposed to write an essay for you guys this week, hypothetically on de-normalizing the nuclear family, but I sort of fell into the RNC k-hole for a couple of days and found myself much less productive while staring into the gaping maw of that Nuremberg Rally/reality show blend as put on by some third-rate high school AV Club. That’s the official version I’m presenting to the public, at least. 

Anyway, Shana was out of town this week so I didn’t get the chance to record anything with her, but when Jane co-hosted a couple of weeks back on The Time Monster, she and I had a couple of hours of chatting casually after the end of the official recording. Because I have a Nixon-like paranoia about keeping all my interpersonal conversations on public record, I had a tape, and with her permission (and some edits) I’ve decided to share that with you this week. 

Please note, neither of us prepared ahead of time to discuss these topics and so we both feel this doesn’t quite get at the core of some issues, but I think Jane’s going to come back on sometime soon and set Shana and myself straight on this whole Moffat issue. Until then, enjoy the chat while I go back to not-so-silently observing the rise of open fascism in America. …

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I’m sorry, but I have nothing substantive for you this week.  I have several things half-finished, but that’s obviously not good enough. 

There was going to be a Shabcast this week, but the recording fell through.  My fault.  I’ve been crazy busy in my offline life lately.  Also, I’ve been melting.

Anyway, in order to fulfill my contractural obligation and actually provide some content for Phil and yourselves, I will fob you all off with the first chapter of a fiction project I started last year, tentatively called The Abandoned Line.  Let me know what you think… unless you hate it, in which case please be tactfully silent.  I honestly wouldn’t be doing this to you if I had anything else ready. 

(By the way, I know the use of the word ‘very’ in the first sentence is less then ideal, but don’t know how else to make the rhythm work.  Suggestions for how to get rid of it would be appreciated.)

*

When Iza Park found out that her sister Ria was real, they were both very surprised about it.

“Is that me?” asked Ria.

Iza jumped so hard she dropped the book and the photo.

“Where did you come from?” she hissed, twisting around.

“Don’t ask me,” said Ria, who was sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table, “I don’t get any say in it. You’re the one who sends me away when you don’t need me and brings me back when you want something.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Iza waited.

Come on then, she thought, do the next bit. The bit designed to make me feel guilty. The bit you say like you’re talking to yourself, but loud enough so I can hear it.

“Not that you’ve brought me back much lately,” added Ria in an audible mumble.

“I was getting a bit too old to have an imaginary friend,” said Iza.

“I’m your sister, not your friend,” said Ria, “and if I’m imaginary,” she continued, pointing at the photo on the floor, “how come I’m in there?”

Iza bent down and picked up both the photo and the book in which she’d found it. The book had arrived that morning in the post.

Iza recognised herself in the picture, looking about three or four years old. It was the first photo of herself at that age – or any age younger than five – that she had ever seen. But it was definitely her. Little Iza was looking at the camera and smiling. The girl sat next to her was doing neither. She seemed happy enough to be sat next to Iza, but less than thrilled with anything else that was going on. She looked a little older. The girls’ faces had many things in common – same eyes, same nose – but in Iza’s case those things were set into happy surroundings, whereas in Ria’s the surroundings were sad. Both faces were lit from below, golden with candlelight.

“Yes,” said Iza to Ria, who was now standing just behind her, peering at the photo over her shoulder, “it’s you.”…

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From worst to best, with things I didn’t buy marked with a *. If you want me to review something that’s not on my “next week” list, you can either send me a copy or Paypal me/send me a Comixology gift card for the cover price with a note as to what you want me to read. That’s snowspinner; a gmail account.

The Hunt #1

I’m trying all new Image #1s, just because it seems like where things I’m going to be interested in comics-wise are going on. This… is not a recommendation for that plan. A muddled book of the sort that one usually associates with Vertigo after the period where they were meaningfully creator-owned and were thus no longer the first choice of actually good creators. Generic horror tropes, muddy storytelling, and, for good measure, utterly irritating “let’s try to capture an Irish accent” dialogue. A complete mess of a book. The art is pretty, but this is pretty classic “artist decides that he should write his own material when that’s not where his strengths are” comics. Which makes it oddly appropriate for an Image book, if not quite in the right decade.

Spider-Woman #9*

The stuff about Wendigos is smart and funny, and Hopeless’s “Spider-Woman as mom” characterization is as delightful as it was in Spider-Women. Pity Civil War II comes crashing through the door halfway through to be stupid all over the place. I’d probably enjoy an extended run of this where Hopeless was doing his own stories, and may well check it out again if such a thing ever exists, but man, Civil War II is a fucking disaster.

Kim and Kim #1*

Much to love about the aesthetic here; queer punk space bounty hunters yes. But it doesn’t quite click together – it’s very “standard tropes made more diverse,” which is good and valuable, but my interest in standard tropes is a bit low. It fails at one of those crucial first issue tasks of making me care about the characters and concepts. Very pretty, though, and if you want a by-the-numbers queer punk space bounty hunters comic, this is absolutely the one for you.

The Ultimates #9

Some good bits here and there, but even Ewing is having trouble rescuing one of the biggest problems with Civil War II, at least based on its tie-ins, which is that Captain Marvel’s role in it seems to be to just act like a completely unreasonable jerk at all times. Her side is self-evidently the wrong one, and everyone writing the books recognizes that. Her big interaction with Adam in this issue is just awful, hinging on her being horrible to him with no justification whatsoever. Add to that a super rough stitch job between two artists of very different styles and skill levels and you have a weak filler issue. Alas.

Chew #56

Only four more issues of this! Woo! Obviously from it’s ranking it’s not that bad, but man, I am 100% just slogging through to the end of this out of some horrible sunk costs fallacy and not actually caring.…

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If this were Doctor Who, we’d call it the pizza-faced Oberyn.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, 2Tywin Lannister

Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

The Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish

Kraken of Moat Cailin: Theon Greyjoy

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

The Direwolves, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane

Flowers of the Wall: Gilly

Flayed Men of Moat Cailin: Ramsay Snow

Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

With the Bear of Meereen, Jorah Mormont

Winterfell is abandoned and in ruins, Braavos is empty.

The episode is in eight parts. The first runs six minutes and is in two sections; it is set in and around the Wall. The first section is four minutes long; the opening image is of a thatched hut. The second section is two minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Gilly to Samwell talking about how she’s probably dead.

The second part runs five minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow drinking morosely to an underwater shot of Grey Worm, and indirectly by family, with Daenerys showing up shortly.

The third runs five minutes and is set in Moat Cailin. The transition is by hard cut, from Grey Worm to an establishing shot of the Bolton camp.

The fourth runs eight minutes and is set in the Eyrie. The transition is by hard cut, from Theon to a slow pan up Littlefinger’s coat.

The fifth runs six minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Littlefinger and company in the Eyrie to the masters being (rather belatedly) removed from their crosses.

The sixth runs three minutes and is set at Moat Cailin. The transition is by image, from a wide shot of Meereen to one of the Bolton forces.

The seventh runs five minutes and is in three sections; it is set in the Eyrie. The first section is one minute long; the transition is by hard cut, from a wide shot of the Boltons riding to Sansa in her chambers. The second section is two minutes long; the transition is by family, from Sansa to Arya Stark. The third section is one minute long; the transition is by dialogue, from Arya laughing at Lyssa Arryn’s death to Robyn and Littlefinger talking about her.

The last part runs eleven minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Sansa to Tyrion. The final image is of Tyrion having landed on a snake and been sentenced to death.

Analysis

As with “The Prince of Winterfell” two years prior, the decision to make the ninth episode a single location battle benefits the eighth episode, into which a number of climaxes are shifted. But with the increased number of plots in progress compared to two years ago, this means that two-and-a-half plots resolve outright in this episode, their handling comprising the majority of the episode.…

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This week in the world of Oi! Spaceman Shana and I actually did a Classic Doctor Who story without a guest. Since she’s been itching to get some more Liz Shaw love in her life, I showed her Doctor Who and the Silurians, to which she had a somewhat mixed reaction, due mostly to the Third-Doctor-era pacing of the thing. In addition to the pacing problems, we chatted about the general interpretation of this story as fundamentally a political narrative about genocide, in which the militaristic humans are acting imperialistically towards an indigenous population, and found that interpretation a bit wanting. I may work some of that into an essay down the line, but then again virtually all of our podcast episodes are becoming sort of scratch pads for essays we might write. So it goes. 

Lee and I also recorded a new They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, continuing on our sex comedy series (which will run another three weeks or so before we move on into spaghetti Westerns for a bit). This week we did 1984’s Hardbodies and 1986’s Perfect Timing, the first of which is well-known but the second is an almost completely lost gem.* Eighties’ sex comedies are an almost irredemably sexist genre, but there’s quite a bit of feminist justification you can pull out of these two once you account for the terribleness of the source material, especially Perfect Timing, which is sort of a combination sitcom/French farce/independent film progenitor that works as a lowbrow character study while still containing a handful of Skinemax-style nude scenes. Pex Lives’ own James Murphy has said in public that he liked this episode, so go give it a listen if you trust what that guy has to say.

*(Future programming note: in the next TMBDOS episode released I provide some background on Perfect Timing that I didn’t have access to in this episode, so if you enjoy this week’s make sure to check out the next as well.)…

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Well, history continues to happen and to be shit. So does editing and writing, though that’s less shit – the next Last War in Albion chapter is actually almost done with the main text. And I just got the last bit of copyediting back from Jane, so I can finish typesetting Volume 1.

Anyway, I mostly want to use today’s Waffling to plug Noah Berlatsky’s latest, an essay collection entitled Fecund Horror: Slashers, Rape/Revenge, Women in Prison, Zombies, and Other Exploitation Dreck. Noah’s a friend of the blog (we podcasted about Wonder Woman a bit ago) and one of the best critics out there, and I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the book, which takes the tired “trashy exploitation films have something interesting to say” angle and finds fresh new life in it, suggesting that the genre works by “looking wrong” at the world, and that this is a generative and, well, fecund angle to take. It’s a delightfully odd collection, hitting obvious things like I Spit On Your Grave and also totally weird things – the title essay culminates in an enthusiastic paen to the subversive potential of a piece of erotica about wasps that lay mind-controlling eggs in people’s brains. It’s on Amazon here, and worth a look if weird trashy cinema is your thing.

As for discussion, getting back to the appallingly rapid pace of history in 2016, in amidst all the news stories that are (deservedly) getting coverage like Brexit, Black Lives Matter, Trump, the Nice attacks, the coup attempt in Turkey, and whatever fucking awful thing has no doubt happened in the couple hours between my queuing this and it posting, what news are you wishing were getting more attention? What’s interesting and underdiscussed in the world?…

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Hello, I’m Ian Chinashop, and I own and run the Ian Chinashop China Shop Co.™ And I’m here to tell you how I made it in business, and how you can make it too. 

The secret of success is hard work and determination.  Without these things I could never have turned the million pounds my dad gave me on my 21^st birthday into a global business empire.  Some hang around waiting for handouts.  That doesn’t work.  You just end up embittered, entitled and useless.  Some people expect life to serve them what they want on a silver platter.  I can’t stand people like that.  I had to work hard to succeed, and there’s no reason why you can’t do that too.  Some people say I had advantages, but who doesn’t?  Even if you grow up in the poorest housing estate in the country, you can turn your desire to escape into an advantage.  If life hands you lemons, make lemonade – as my friend Ian Lemonademanufacturer OBE of the Ian Lemonademanufacturer Lemonade Manufacturing Company™ always says.  He should know.  When he inherited his company from his father – Sir Simon Lemonademanufacturer – it just made lemonade.  I mean, how 20^th Century is that?  Simon diversified into limeade and cherryade and cola, lemonade ice lollies, a lemonade chocolate bar, lemonade flavoured condoms… the company’s mascots – the Lemonade Family – got their own TV series and now sell millions of pounds of merchandise every year.  He puts a lot of his profits into a nice lemony hedge fund.  You see what I’m saying?  Take a disadvantage (i.e. ‘my father’s company just sells lemonade’) and turn it into an advantage.  Okay, so he had lots of help… like when he was able to pay for meetings with government ministers to lobby for relaxation of rules on what he was allowed to put into the lemonade… and able to get away without paying corporation taxes for more than a decade because he could pay accountants to put it all off-shore for him… and able to pay his staff less, and give them fewer holidays, and less compensation for work-related injuries and poisonings, and stop them joining unions, and pay less for more part-time workers on precarious contracts, all thanks to liberalisation of labour laws… but hey, that’s just winners helping other winners.  You can’t complain if the winners do that, it’s part of how winners get to be winners.  If you want to be part of the winners club, where the winners help the other winners, then use your individual enterprise and initiative to turn things around for yourself.

There are certain facts of life that everyone has to come to terms with.  You never get anywhere without a hard-headed appreciation of how the world works.  This is especially true in business.  If you’re going to succeed in a business, you need to make yourself master of the facts of that business. 

I’m going to explain to you how the china shop business works. …

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