This is a true story.

In the year 2000, my parents took me and my cousin on holiday to Magaluf. I was five. By that time, I was already a voracious reader, as far as voracity can apply to the habits of a nipper. Thus, in the breaks between swimming, mocktails and ice cream, I turned my attention to penning my first work of fiction. A haunted house yarn, it amounted to an austere roll call of horror archetypes - the vampire, the ghost, the mummy... it isn't humility alone when I say that the piece lacked accomplishment. Nevertheless, when I ponder the birth of the bug, this is the provenance at which the train of recall halts. The tracks may persist rearward, my Bic may have earlier met paper, but such things have been lost to the fog of infant amnesia. And so, be it history or mere story, accounting for the blur betwixt the two and the value of myth, I consider this my creo-genesis.

But this emergence wasn't the only salient feature of the vacay. I also remember a pirate-themed stage-show, during which my adolescent cousin drunk himself into paralysis. I remember my continued insistence that we patronise the local Burger King in the hopes of completing a kids-meal toy collection. I remember the friendly server swapping out the trinkets already in my possession for fresh plastic trophies.

I remember the elderly man pawing at a payphone so that he may scavenge coins. I remember, trailing behind my family as I was, stopping to study this strange spectacle. I remember the man's fixed gaze as his arm extended outward, grabbed my shirt and began to violently drag me into an alley. I remember my father running back to us, tackling the stranger to the ground and restraining him until the police arrived. I remember being told much later that the stranger, now known to me as Camilo Muñoz, had subsequently been jailed for his role in a string of attempted child abductions.

That wasn't a true story.

Well, some of it was.

But enough about BABY REINDEER. Almost enough. Just enough more to say that Jordan and I talk about it. That, along with the first season of FALLOUT, the KNUCKLES miniseries, LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL and a whole bunch more.

Tuck in!

There are advantages to being late to a party.

People are likelier to take notice of you, if you're into that sort of thing. It is easier to avoid falling into a maelstrom of sloshed groupthink and social inducement, sidestepping behaviours you may bemoan or words you may bewail. If anthropology or sociology or psychology tickle your pickle, the scene of the good time is laid out squarely for your observation. As an arson investigator might survey a charred dwelling, so might you examine the somatic rubble of mortal desolation.

Who likes parties anyway?

DUNE: PART TWO may have disappeared from your feeds as the algorithm continues to adapt into the void (and us along with it). The eponymous GLADIATORS of the Saturday night smash hit may have migrated into other media spheres as a result of their popularity. I.S.S. may have slipped so comprehensively through the cracks of culture that you never even knew what it was, let alone that it had been released in cinemas. ROAD HOUSE may have already found sufficient success to be commissioned for a sequel. And YOU'LL NEVER FIND ME may not have even registered as a blip on your radar at all...

However...

To translate and address the whole "party" metaphor point by point (and in reverse order to suit my purposes)... with the benefit of time, Jordan and I are afforded a perspective on the critical community and its myriad responses... we have the privilege of distance to discern the shape of a piece's place in the cultural landscape... were we susceptible in the first place, we can more readily rebuff the seductions of consensus... but no, nobody listens still. That's where the thing falls apart really, and I'll leave whether that "thing" is simply the analogy or a larger sense of personal purpose to you.

But yes, there are advantages to being late.

Rather not be though tbh.

Imbibe!

Around two hours ago (at the time of typing), I sat down to rollick in the glorious Providence of Inspiration, invoking Its sacred hover with a can of zero-caffeine Coke Zero, a bit of a headache and the apparent disinclination to do anything about that.

And that was two hours ago. Still I now sit, the water droplets from the Coke can having formed a gentle ring on the coaster. The headache has passed, though it's tricky to isolate whether that's from the curative properties of time and the body or a practiced desensitisation to pain, both physical and meta- (honestly, if I start to FEEL anything nearing REAL, some OBSIDIAN MECHANISM* kicks in to sabotage the engine and confine me to the desert remand of vague somethings).

It seems that I have lost time. Possible though it is that I called the wrong devotional number and instead reached the God of Going Nowhere (frankly a commonality given ∅'s place in speed-dial), it's likelier something to do with my generation, mental health and the effect of the Internet, etc.

So to fill the space hereforth, we're just gonna do some free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness associations.

This is our 75th episode... 75th equals platinum... the chemical symbol for platinum is Pt... "PT" can refer to the Palestinian Territories aaand we'll stop there.

This is our 75th episode... 1975 saw the Fall of Saigon... Tim Robbins played a Vietnam vet in Jacob's Ladder... the Biblical Jacob was later given the name "Israel" aaand we'll stop there.

All roads, huh? Little parable there.

On this... "landmark" feels conceited... map-spot episode, Jordan and I, in a subjective fashion, delineate the merits and demerits of AMERICAN FICTION, DAMSEL, DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, IMAGINARY, THE IRON CLAW, MADAME WEB and THE ZONE OF INTEREST, at least.

*Otherwise referred to by me as "The Callous Callus", but it feels tacky to start plugging my autobiography this early unless it's in a footnote.

The looming axis of China, Russia and Iran threatens to destabilise the global order, such as it is. Populations across the world are continually immiserated under tyrannical regimes. The impending race for leadership of the free world orbits a pair of hoary ignorami whose antiquity and indeed place in history may best be described as "antediluvian". The abiding "we don't know" around artificial intelligence accommodates the calamitous continuum of widespread unemployment to total nuclear holocaust. Social media pollutes the mind, body and soul of what approaches an entire species. The cost of living condemns a generation+ to treadmillity. And nuance, conversation, art, tolerance and intellectual maturity are generally plunging into obsolescence.

And so it's never been more acutely vital that you care about what Jordan and I think about the 2023 Doctor Who specials. Otherwise, "they" win. We used to agree on who "they" were, whoever they were. That is no longer the case. So just pick your side and whatever antagonises it... that's the "they". And they will win in the face of stark, unclicking indifference.

And fear not, the content of the 'cast isn't as dour. It's pretty overcast as I'm writing this and were the Sun to peek out from behind a cloud for a couple of minutes, I'm sure I'd sing the praises of something I like in this world if I could summon the energy to ponder the matter for a good while.

On this episode, Jordan and I discuss the fifth season of Fargo, The Holdovers, Poor Things and Doctor Who, and debut a new segment that isn't really too dissimilar from what we usually do. Enjoy!

Week last, I was listening to another (another?!) podcast that shall go unnamed because time and attention are zero-sum games. I'm not gonna direct any stragglers elsewhere. I'm Mr. Monopoly, mothershuckers*, and while I mayn't have a moustache, a top hat or any real estate holdings beyond personal space, I'm in the GETTING business... Admittedly, if this boutique whinery that Jordan and I operate required any capital investment, we'd be redder than Chairman Mao. So it's good that the only things we pour into this enterprise are toil and bile.

Upon this anonymous podcast, one of the hosts remarked that she had an aversion to compiling top-ten lists and the like, describing the endeavour as particularly "male". My curiosity tickled if not piqued, I dived into the scant research in this area. The first result coughed up by the search engine was an article reporting on a study that had concluded the following: generally, women make lists with greater enthusiasm than men, while men are more focused on ticking off the items thereon.

So maybe not so uniquely "male" after all, huh?

Of course, this study was about to-do lists and not "rankings"... So all a bit of a wash, really. I dunno. Something inside rebelled at the inferred venom of a thing being described as "male" even as I intuitively agreed with the assessment. It DOES feel like more of a "male" thing. This day and age, huh? equine lip-smacking

So with our maleness explicit to you, cemented, indeed petrified, 'tis also the mating season. Consequently, Jordan and I are in hibernation (mostly apart, I might add, lest you get all hetero-directed homophobic about it), watching stuff and talking about it and that and unveiling this here, our TOP 10 of 2023, a list subject to infinite revision by the sands of time and the winds of aesthetic change. So all a bit of a wash, really.

So why make lists? Well... because.

*Writing this on Mother's Day, I am psychologically obliged to bypass any interrogation of this neology and why it sprang to mind. The horror of the peel-oriented imagery it conjures is surpassed only by that the word was coined on a whim to replace.

According to most, it's a new year. According to us, too. And, to a near 100% certainty, to you. So why qualify at all? Who knows why people do the things they do⸮ Live with mystery. Loll in the penumbra of conundra. Sniff the azaleas without scrutinising the chemistry of olfaction or whatever.

2024 promises global unrest, the continuing degradation of any and all sense-making apparatus and some more episodes of this podcast, released with no consistent schedule because why should we be the only people keeping promises in a civilisation rapidly spiralling into the abyss? That's not rhetorical. WHY?

Ugh, I guess it is. I'm sorry, I've got the Vicks on my chest, the Olbas Oil hovering under my nostrils, the nicotine leaving my brain and I can't at the moment fathom why anyone bothers doing anything. The shame of the thing, it's not that the above paragraph is off the mark, it's just that I'd usually be mobile enough to want to lie about the whole business.

But you don't need this, do you? For once, I hope you don't read. Just keep making those resolutions, scrolling and scrolling. Seriously. If you damn well can, stay happy. Bonne année and all that. It'll be fine, I'm sure.

On this episode, Jordan and I review Leave the World Behind, The Killer, The Fall of the House of Usher, Killers of the Flower Moon and Five Nights at Freddy's.

Goooooodbyyyyyyyye.

Good mofterning, goofballs and goofaries!

Welllll now, it really has been rather a while, hasn’t it? Has this been the longest “break”? Who knows?! If anyone IS keeping track, their identity is a mystery, cloaked as they are in the caligine of withheld praise, churning a bitter barrel of vitriol in the shared breast of his or her (let’s face it, his) content providers that will one day burst forth in savage expression as surely as the whole enterprise is a fanciful premise.

I suspended a couple of quotation marks over “break” up there because I would be remiss if I suggested the hiatus had the character of leisure or pleasure. No, no, indeed, the last few months have been replete with bodily discord, self-recrimination, extra-recrimination, feeble fisticuffs and a wedding in Belgium. And while the lattermost item was an indelibly joyful experience that will forever define a certain time in our lives and the memories of which we will have until the grave… graves, that is, whatever this thing Jordan and I have, its terminus must surely be physical expiration… one should not neglect the first four items because it is from within them that we might derive compassion. And only the fourth thing is a lie.

It weren’t feeble. We’re MEN.

Nah, didn’t happen.

We’re back, anyway. For now, at least, and not at most. We will do our best, whatever meagre form that takes, to advance the pace hereafter. But no other promise will be here made. You’ll get us when you get us and be ungrateful or oblivious for the paltry privilege.

So what do we review on this episode? Don’t remember. No idea. Not a solitary clue. Waiting on Jordan to send me a screenshot of the video graphic.

On this episode, it turns out, we review The Flash, Asteroid City, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer and Barbie.

Yes yes, we’re late to the party, but aren’t you happy we showed up at all?

Well, that’s rude.

I’m out!