Extract from Episode 45 of the Funfiltered podcast. In a world of meaningless, annoying and otherwise poorly-written lyrics, two dopes take aim at a really rather mid-level offender and end up somewhere really rather low-level profound. Perhaps this was the artists’ intention all along... It wasn't.

Extract from Episode 68 of the Funfiltered podcast. A gruff man's man and a little girl wandering a post-apocalyptic landscape have a chinwag about the first season of HBO's The Last of Us.

Alright? Sam here. It's been a while. It's always been a while. Perhaps it will always be a while. While while while. While E. Coyotes, that's us. And that's either an eminently disposable rap lyric or an utterance pregnant with the possibility of laboured metaphor. If you understand anything about the man who now writes to/for/really, AT you, you'll know the latter was never in peril of neglect. While E. Coyotes, that's us. And I suppose that makes you lot Road Runner, or maybe Ode Shunner, given your comprehensive rejection. What's the ode, you mumble all scowlily? Well, what is the flow of conversation if not music, if not poetry? In the barren, Southwestern landscape of meaning that is 2023, you are nevertheless content to flit from place to place, meep-meeping on your TikToks and your Chatsnaps and your Whatchamathumbits. Do we claim to be the acme of quality? No. But nor are we the ACME (Looney Tunes' facility for irony, mwah). We just wanna share our product with you and if you just stopped for a bleedin' second, it wouldn't kill you. And this is where the analogy finally crumbles. The foundations were never sturdy, I concede. But I started typing, "While E. Coyote" zoomed behind my eyes like the bullet train of nonsense that is my stream of consciousness, and I'd have been remiss to deny my nature. So yeah, with that s-- Oh, God... The product only ever ends up hurting us. It kills us. Slowly. Writing. You just keep doing it and doing it and no matter what fantasy you contrive or worthless tangent you rabbit-hole, you always end up looking your Shadow in the eye whereupon it whispers with omniscient menace, 'You suck.' Or is that just me? That question too is an invariable consequence. sigh ^^Another inevitability. On this episode, Jordan and I review The Fabelmans, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Tár, Happy Valley and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. Gonna have a drink now. Bye.

'S'appening, travellers? Sam here. While true that we haven't spoken since November, I'll yet refrain from conveying a "Happy New Year." Not necessarily (though not necessarily NOT) out of dispassion, but because it's February now and shops are getting the Halloween stock in, thereby promoting such platitudes from banal to vulgar.

So I'll just ask, y'a'right?

...I know this isn't actually a conversation. It's rhetoric without substance or import, the equivalent of 'Where did I put my keys?' or whistling on a heath or doodling on a damp bit of cardboard in a gully alone.

Even beyond the parameters of this medium - "IRL", as 'twere and lamentably 'tis - the likelihood, reader, is that we're overdue a catch-up, i.e. have no interest in having a catch-up or too apprehensive to make the first move or too "busy", i.e. have no interest in having a catch-up. When DID we stop talking? WHY did we stop talking? Were we EVER friends?!

Y'A'RIGHT?!!

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I return to writing from some rest. My better angels compelled self-care when they spied their badder analogues towing me t'ward a vortex of mournful violence. My writing angels, such as they are and resemble as they do judgmental gargoyles- oh God, are they...- demand that I leave the previous paragraphs in place as some demonstration of transparency. Though I do harbour the suspicion that those seraphim of scribble are secretly motivated to cultivate the APPEARANCE of honesty to create the APPEARANCE of personality and an even deeper suspicion that the angels are me.

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On this episode of Funfiltered, Jordan and I tackle some newish releases to the ground and affix our "KICK ME!"-style signs to their backs in the form of half-considered reviews, namely She Said, Pinocchio, The Menu and Glass Onion. We also list our Top 10 amalgamated cinematic and televisual things of 2022, which will no doubt in time fall victim to the caprices of a life devoted to "appreciation", wherein taste is eternally urged to evolve... But it's a bit of a whatever in the meanwhile!

If the tone of this bulletin persuades you to listen, don't. When we record, I am trussed and medicated. This is not always how I am.

Bye!