Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 11/05/21

New Format Edition

New Newsletter Format!

Everyone here in the Administration Office is just thrilled with the new look of the newsletter. Thanks much to the Graphic Arts team for their timely assistance in making this look clean and readable. There has been a slight learning curve but this is nothing to worry about; we have been assured that the director can, in fact, be taught new tricks.

Personnel Changes

I’d like to thank everyone for the warm welcome they have extended to the new Director of Bunker Operations. We are thrilled to have her on board and look forward to her contributions to the N.T.A.B., particularly with regard to upcoming field assignments. The Bunker Mascot has signed off on our newest staff member, as well, and has made it very clear that she would like to put in for a transfer from Administration to Bunker Operations. We in the front office are trying to not to take it personally.

We are stunned at the outpouring of support! Thanks much!

2022 Rollout

Plans are forming around a massive re-organization of the N.T.A.B. This newsletter is the first such step. In 2022, you can expect a revamped blog, a podcast, and a patreon account for gaming materials. Many of the existing departments, such as the A/V guys, will be regrouped under the new and improved bureaucracy architecture. There’s also talk about opening up the commissary here at the N.T.A.B. for supplies and other necessary items, like t-shirts, etc.

Those of you who have expressed an interest in Bunker Life can relax! We are opening up the N.T.A.B. for anyone to join that wants exclusive access to the innermost workings of the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker.

IN OTHER NEWS...

So, I’m doing yoga now. Here’s proof.

Tree Pose, y’all! Well, more of a Mesquite Tree, but still…

This doesn’t look like much, but I assure you, I’m dying a little bit inside. Here’s how it came about.

My doctor told me that in order to prep for my upcoming transformation, I need to “engage my core” as much as possible. Yeah, that’s what he said: “Engage your core,” which is proof positive of the euphemistic nature of modern language if I ever saw it. Let’s call it what it is: crunches and sit-ups.

I’ve been trying to “engage my core” for several weeks now, with middling results and a lot of discomfort and pain. Unfortunately, as much as I might need to “engage my core,” my mind is willing but the flesh is weak. Or rather, it’s ample. As in, I got way too much skin right now. Call it a pannis, or if you rather, an “apron,” but in my case, it’s more like a gunny sack full of turnips. I can manage most upright activities, including walking, ellipticals, and so forth. But bending over, laying down, etc. is profoundly uncomfortable and makes me feel ookey.

I mentioned this to my brother-in-law recently, and told him what I was trying to do, and he said, “Have you thought about doing yoga?”

I told him that I wanted to do yoga, some day, when I was in better shape, because right now, I feel like five pounds of cantaloupes in a ten pound leather sack. He assured me that I could, in fact do yoga. “You’ve done some yoga before; you just didn’t know it.” I politely scoffed at this assertion, and he offered to show me a few things. While we chitchatted, he made a list of poses and stretches that he knew, all designed to either work my core, or help with my balance, which also happened to work my core.

My first session with him took about an hour, and left me shaking and sweating, but here’s the deal: I could do all of the exercises. All of the poses. I was actually pretty okay at some of them right away. Holy shit, y’all, I’m doing yoga!

Currently, I’m alternating yoga with ellipticals, three days a week. It doesn’t look pretty or graceful, but it works for me. I’m digging it. And I can already feel the difference, even if my gunny sack full of turnips is obscuring the results.

Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Agency of Media Review

Ghosts (Paramount Plus/CBS and HBO Max)

You might be surprised at how many American sitcoms got their start as British sitcoms. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Certainly, that conversion from UK to US is fraught with peril. I mean, there are some legitimate disasters on record (why, oh why, would ANYONE try to do an American version of Fawlty Towers? WHY?), but there are also a few noteworthy successes.

Ghosts is one such show, despite the kvetching and moaning from several online wags about the sanctity of the UK series. The premise of both shows is identical: A young couple moves into a house they inherited with the intention of making a B&B out of it. This does not sit well with the ghosts in the house, who span a length of time from the 9th century (a Viking) to the 1990s (a pantsless yuppie power broker from 1999). As fate would have it, the wife gets the ability to see and hear the ghosts (after hitting her head and getting a concussion), and so hilarity ensues.

If that premise sounds great to you, then this is your show. It’s very “what you see is what you get,” and there’s not a lot of deep meaning behind it the set-up; it’s mostly just the ghosts from different eras banging into one another as they try to get the references flung about by the more contemporary spirits, and now, the living. I watched both versions, and I know it’s just my cultural leaning, but I liked the American version better. The ghosts and their humor were a little more pointed and satirical, and a lot more relateable, all of which made the show much more watchable. I was way more familiar with the historical references, too. You can watch both of them and decide for yourself; the British version is on HBO Max.

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Karl Edward Wagner: The Last Wolf (Vimeo)

I don’t know if anyone here has messed with Vimeo, but I feel like they are trying very hard to re-invent the wheel. You have to navigate through two levels of frippery to get to the point where you can watch a documentary on your computer (instead of the TV, where all of your other apps live at the moment). And can someone, preferably from the company, explain to me why they offer a subscription service to Vimeo? Who on Earth ever in their life looked at Vimeo’s offerings and said, out loud, “Oh, hell yes, I wanna watch all of that! I’d better space this out…” When I saw that the documentary I wanted to watch was on premium access Vimeo, I saw only buttons for joining their monthly service (pricier than joining Apple TV). So I did that, using the free trial, because, well, you understand.

Only, I couldn’t see the documentary I wanted to watch. I had to GOOGLE the answer to my problem (their help page was useless) and found out that their premium content still costs money: in this case, $3.99, an Amazon Prime rental. But it’s okay, because I would have paid that much on Amazon to watch it. I just shook my head at how needlessly complicated it all was to access something on a media app designed to distribute content.

Side Bar: through trial and error, I discovered that even if you download Vimeo to your smart TV, you can’t BUY anything through it. For that, you gotta go to the website on your laptop. Grrrrrr… But at least, once you rent it on your laptop, it appears in your queue on the Smart TV app, right? RIGHT?!

Well, no. It does not. The load screen spins, apparently infinitely, despite restarting everything and leaving it alone for fifteen minutes in the mistaken belief that it’s “buffering” or something.

The good news is that after two hours of back and forth, I finally got to watch the documentary. I had to do it on my laptop, like a caveman. You must REALLY want to watch something on Vimeo if you’re going to pay Amazon Prime prices for it, and view it through a 2012 portal.

If you’re a filmmaker and you’re putting your project out on Vimeo, I beg you to reconsider.

I told you that to tell you this: I liked this documentary a lot, despite some bush-league technical difficulties with the audio mixes and the interviews. Karl Edward Wagner was a sword and sorcery author who was very influential for my generation’s nerds and geeks, particularly if you were into sword and sorcery, like me. His Kane books were published and reprinted for years with iconic Frank Frazetta covers (that later found their way onto Molly Hatchet albums, among other places). He also was a canny editor, working with DAW for years on their Year’s Best Horror anthologies. The documentary does a great job of explaining to the audience why Wagner was considered a big deal and why people continue to think of him fondly and reverently. I was particularly pleased to see people making a case for Wagner’s work being steeped in a Southern gothic/folklore tradition, as this is something I’ve talked about often in relation to Robert E. Howard. For years, I said if REH was the first word in Sword and Sorcery fiction, KEW was the last word. The reason why Wagner was so successful at writing in a Howardesque way and others were not is that they both came from similar places, but did their own things with the source materials.

This is the first biographical project about Wagner, and if you’re a fan of his writing, it’s highly recommended. Even if you have to dance with Vimeo.

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Stargirl: Summer School (CW)

It’s been a while since I took a swing at the Berlanti-verse, and that’s because it’s mostly low-hanging fruit; you know exactly what it is by now, and no one is coming to the shows cold. You also know what to expect in terms of drama, pathos, and tragedy. Those shows have a common thread.

But Stargirl hit the ground with a bit more buoyancy. It planted its flag firmly in high school, but managed a lot of fan service, too, especially if you like the Justice Society of America. Season 2 (AKA: Summer School) picks right up on that mission statement, and manages to deftly handle one of my favorite DC villains, Eclipso, and make him not only formidable, but also a little scary, and surprisingly so. This second season was better than the first, and it manages a more even-handed tone than most of their other DCEU shows. If you haven’t watched any of the DCEU lately because they all got a little too dark, give this show a try. For featuring a villain who represents the worst in people, and a super villain who lives in darkness named the Shade, Stargirl is the brightest show in the Berlanti-verse at the moment.