I Don't Even Own a Television

Grisly, gory, gruesome, and far, far too long, it's Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil, a five-hundred-page career unto itself, even if it's little more than a footnote to the career of JK Rowling, who we mention for ... some reason. (The reason is that Galbraith is a Rowling pseudonym.)

It's the episode that airs Clsn's eighth-greatest shame, as this is a book with more than one reference to Blue Őyster Cult in literally every single chapter, which he had to be physically restrained from explaining, at some length, in lieu of having anything else to say about this tremendously turgid tome. (Fun roundup of one way to read the connection between the two can be found here if you're so inclined. And tune in next episode to hear us talk, and talk at length, about why Patti Smith gets credited by name when Michael Moorcock and John Shirley (and others!) do not.) (NOTE: we will not be talking about this.)

A real monkey's paw: we wanted to read a thriller with some connetions to music, and, for our sins, we got a sub-Patterson doorstop where every character's regional dialect is carefully presented on the page (and, lamentably, in the audiobook, particularly lamentably when it comes to the Thai runner of a massage parlor) and every single negative stereotype about poverty and mental illness is given a couple of chapters (of BŐC references). Enjoy! because we sure didn't.

 

Recommendations:

• The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
• Desperately Seeking Susan movie

Music Thoughts:

• "Rollin'" by Rush
• "Career of Evil" by Blue Őyster Cult
• "Stanky Legg" by GS Boyz

A story, nay, a tale so big we had to have help to handle it, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu: Story of the Movie is a novelization slash transcript of the recent film, which Kotaku's Gita Jackson (@xoxogossipgita on Twitter) was kind enough to join us to discuss!

Roughly ninety minutes of giggling then ensued.

The book's very first page includes the phrases "secret science lab", "dark minds at work" and "Legendary Pokémon", so you know what you're in for right from the beginning: Pokéaction, and plenty of it. The episode is ... basically the same thing, what's-on-offer-wise.  Whether you're the kind of person who's long felt they "have to" "catch all of them" or are more on ol' Chris Collision's level of Pokéknowlege (Pokéfamiliarity?), this is one downloadable that will make you the very best, like no one ever was!

 

 

Recommendations:

• Dirk Gently TV Show (2010, BBC)
• The Outer Worlds video game (Gita Jackson's review of The Outer Worlds is here)
• On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger

Music Pairings:

• "Basket of Masks" by DTCV
• "Dose of Thunder" by The Replacements
• "Big Balls" by AC/DC

Cue the music and lift your voices in song with us, because it's the mo-st won-der-ful time ... of the year: it's time to get back on the Guy N. Smith train with an absolute banger entitled Killer Crabs.

You know how last time we took on a Smith-crab joint, we thought "Wow, this one has EVERYTHING"? Well, it turns out that that one had a lot less than this one, because this one has everything. Everything is what this one has, at least if by the word "everything" you understand "just a whole LOT of sex and a briefcase-full-of-cash ménage à trois subplot that just screams "late '70s made-for-TV movie" and, of course, extremely invulnerable giant crabs eviscerating humans all over the beach.

Is there any defense against this scuttling menace? Have the crabs developed military tactics? Will any of our major characters have enough sex to say "You know what, that's about enough sex I've had right there"? Friends, allies against the crabs, secret lovers, there's only one viable path to an answer, and that path runs straight through the pages of ... Killer Crabs. Up Guy N. Smith, up the Irons, up IDEOTVPod and up the giant crabs!

 

Recommendations:

• A Human Algorithm by Flynn Coleman
• Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

Music:

• "Shellburn" by The Spinanes
• "Sideways" by Dinosaur Jr.
• "Dead Meat on the Beach" by Sonny and the Sunsets

Ever want to hear what we get up to in our extra-special episodes over on Patreon dot com slash IDEOTVPod? Often, it's rad stuff like this, where we go deep into and thickly through a magazine aimed* at ... well, it's complicated, but the magazine is called Skillset and it's about being a hecka T U F F dude one hundred percent of the time. Which, full disclosure, includes an interest in collecting vintage video games, and has way less information about knives than you might expect. :(

If you want to learn about how to fix a blown-out tire, this episode will teach you how NOT to handle the situation. If you want to know more about things you can buy that will make everybody say "WOW WHAT A MAN", then this episode is absolutely for you. So please enjoy this special break from format while you find some ways to expand your ... skillset.

*You'll get that one on the way home.

IMPORTANT: Here's a giant pdf with a bunch of hi-res scans of various pages from this magazine so you can follow along. It's a MULTI-MEDIA EXPERIENCE.

http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/media/Best%20of%20Skillset.pdf

 

 

Music Pairings:

• "Guns (Now)" by Negativland
• I Can Make You a Man, from Rocky Horror Picture Show

When you're scouring the shelves for some hot new Jack, sometimes you reach, er, farther, and thus might you happen upon L.T. Ryan's Noble Beginnings: A Jack Noble Thriller (Jack Noble #1). Anyway, that's pretty much what happened to us!

This semi-taut sorta-thrill quasi-ride introduces us to Jack Noble, a man who one-punch breaks jaws at least two separate times and gets caught up in a conspiracy to ... it's not clear. We think the conspiracy is to perpetuate and expand the war in Iraq after 9/11, and a lot of the conspirators seem Ripped From the Headlines (we see you, homage to Paul Wolfowitz!), but, again: it's not super clear. It's probably fine.

If your idea of fun is a taciturn Jack Reacher drinking coffee and punching evil all silent but deadly, this series may tickle your fancy, even if the chatty/sassy Jack Noble gasses on now and again. Squad up and get ready to drive up and down I-95, because it's time for ... beginnings ... noble beginnings.

 

Recommendations:

• "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" by Chavisa Woods
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine l'Engle

Music Recs:

• "Jawbreaker" by Judas Priest
• "Noble Stabbings!!!" by Dillinger 4

No Regrets by Ace Frehley? More like "No, Regrets"!! For the first time in a LONG time we hop back on the rock bio train, and find that it treats us ... well, this isn't really the first one we'd recommend you read, let's just say that. Basically a guy throwing in his perspective on stuff he expects you to be incredibly familiar with and interested in, long after the shouting has ended and the confetti has all been swept up (and away), this book is an essentially narrative-free pile of anecdotes about fast cars and ... mostly it's just about fast cars, honestly.

So, you know: VROOM! Pop the clutch and tell the world you wanted the best and you GOT ... well, this episode!

Side note: both of us spend a LOT of time shrieking about "cold gin" and "owl ka haul" and at some point Clsn mutters "We'll explain this later", but we never did: what that's about is this legendary collection of Paul Stanley stage banter, commonly known as "People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest".

Side note two: no-one alive knows more about Kiss than Jon Wurster, and everything I (Clsn) personally know about Gene Simmons comes from this call he made to the Best Show some years back. Highly recommended.

Recommendations:

• Telling Lies game by Sam Barlow
• "The Adults in the Room" by Megan Greenwell

Music Thoughts:

• "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" by Frank Zappa
• "Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives" by Aesop Rock

Bouncing off the walls with at least one too many cups of coffee, it's the IDEOTV squad (-ron) chasing after Ricochet Joe! This is a prime blast of classic Dean Koontz, which means it's literally impossible to dislike or have a bad time with.

We hope you'll enjoy our dogged efforts hereby unleashed! So fix your collar and keep your eye open for evil grandmothers, chambers of commerce, and Corvettes.

 

Recommendations:

• "Solidarity and the Labor of Writing" by Toni Morrison
• "The Work You Do, the Person You Are" by Toni Morrison
• A Goddamn Impossible Way of Life by The Paranoid Style
• They Live
• Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein

Music Recs:

• "Little Joe" by Soundgarden
• "Don't Turn Your Back" by Blue Őyster Cult
• "Ordinary Average Guy" by Joe Walsh

Coming at you faster than a stretchy missile off of a young boy's outstretched finger(s), it's Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe's The Rubber Band! What is it? Why, it's a classic mystery of the old school, with armchair detection aplenty, two-fisted shoe-leather gumshoeing (?), gals, dames, dudes, orchids, bankers, and crime cases no cop could ever crack!

There's also no shortage of sizeist and sexist horseshit, straight out of the 30s and glued onto the page, so it's not all fun and games. But where else are you going to get a narrator who drinks maybe six glasses of milk and eats a dish of lamb kidneys and green peppers? Probably nowhere. Or anyway, possibly nowhere else.

No magnifying glasses needed for this caper, but we warn you: this plot MAY require a flow chart (or two). You need not fear, though, because we promise that we'll be able to hold it all together—with the help of The Rubber Band, anyway!

 

Recommendations:

• "Proust's Madeleine, But for People Who Grew Up With a Single Dad" by the great Mara Wilson
• Alita: Battle Angel
• American Truck Simulator (game)

Music Recs:

• "Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band)" by Bootsy Collins
• "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" by Boys Don't Cry
• "Friggin in the Riggin" by Sex Pistols

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! And so does Doc Savage. This is just one of the things that makes the two of them rivals, tentative opponents, uneasy collaborators, and, the reader continuously hopes, cautious lovers in Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow!

(Alas, this may be an "all-new WILD" adventure, but it's not quite wild enough for that last development, so calm down.) This is a super-enjoyable team-up in the old style, as our two favorite pulp heroes team up to take off a very thoroughly self-branded villain who's been blackmailing criminals (uhh, Season 3 Jessica Jones?) but makes a mistake and makes it a big one when he runs afoul of New York honestly, basically just Manhattan and occasionally upstate or parts of New Jersey's most two-fisted and twin-.45'd (Doc & Shadow, respectively) bad-punishers.

Anyway, this one was a lot of fun, so set your hearts and minds on a course for adventure and settle down with ... Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow!

Side note: these lil' toys are incredible.

   

Recommendations:

• Stranger Things Season 3
• America by Garrett Bradley

Music Recs:

• "Dark Shadows" by EMA
• "No Face" by Savages
• "Together Again (live)" by Linda Thompson & Richard Thompson

Picked out and up at a literal airport bookstore, it's the greatest fight we've ever had: J.A. Jance's Duel to the Death: An Ali Reynolds Mystery. Will this supposed thriller bring the techno-chills, delivering A.I.-derived Bitcoin by Bluetooth? Or will we spend most of our time at the DMV?

(Sorry for the short notes this time around: time pressure!)

 

 

Recommendations:

• "World Without Men: The Wisdom and Weirdness of Feminist Utopian Novels" by Lyta Gold
• "Love Poem to Oakland" by Leila Mottley

Music Recs:

• "Pure Energy" by Information Society
• "http://mmouse.albndy.coolio.myass.dot.com" by Donuts N' Glory
• "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford