iven Joe's own experiences of late in English departments of higher education institutions. We found a lot to like and a lot to completely shit on. (PS - there's a little something special if you keep listening past the end.....).

box, and in between includes sun-dried radishes, a shadow man in a basement, a high-speed chase through an apartment complex, and two murdered dogs. It's funny and tragic and surprising and stirring. We watched it on a DVD that came in the mail. O, those year 2000 days.

we wanted to post a mini-episode to talk about a few cultural products we've been really into lately. Let us know about the things you've been enjoying (or, alternatively, hating). We'll be back next week!

We did something we haven't done in about fifteen years and watched an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Old follows a family on vacation at a posh tropical resort where things take a nightmarish turn after they're taken to a secluded beach reserved for "special" guests and discover that they're aging extremely rapidly. Spoiler alert: Joe is an M. Night Shyamalan apologist!!

"A Filmed Adaption of the Chivalric Romance by Anonymous," emblazoned across the screen in old-timey font, is how we're introduced to David Lowery's The Green Knight. The film is based on the Medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and we follow the legendary knight of King Arthur's round table as he takes part in a pretty fucked up "Christmas game." What follows is a fever dream involving bandits, an undead saint, giants, a talking fox, a magical belt, and a dangerous trudge toward his own beheading. We were into it.

The new Space Jam made us mad.

We decided to take a break from movies to talk about the heaviest of heavy subjects -- evil. Using Claudia Card's 2002 treatise, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil as our jumping off point, we did our best to think through the present-day utility of this very loaded word. It's complicated.

eality fucking BITES. It did in 1994, and it does in 2021 (maybe? That's debatable). We took a stroll down memory lane to watch the definitive Gen X movie and discussed the waning appeal of Troy Dyer, the enduring charm of Winona Ryder. and the cynicism of the post-9/11 moviescape.

We drove an hour out of Buffalo to spend the weekend in Rochester. We walked, we ate, we gawked, we frolicked. We watched Minari, a tender portrait of a Korean family trying their damnedest to start a farm in Arkansas without completely falling apart. An unbelievably cute little boy and a very funny grandma steal the show. Warning: we workshopped the ending (!).