Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 12/31/21

End of Year Edition

This update finds me back at the Central Texas Field Office as plans continue apace to close down and consolidate operations with the N.T.A.B. We are anxious about the impending logistical challenges, but I am confident the transition will be smooth and uneventful.

Old Business

 Christmas Item! In my haste to assemble the Boxing Day guide last week I did not provide an adequate rundown of the various gifts, tributes, bribes, and expressions of fealty this holiday season hath wrought. There was a lot of love in the air, folks. I ended up with several interesting books (listed in part last week), not one but TWO different Neca King Kong action figures, two pieces of framed artwork, two spiffy blank journals, a Spider-Man cocoa mug, and a small stack of gift certificates that were used to buy new drill bits, a sexy hot glue gun, and yet another book of Gil Brewer short stories (because, evidently, I’ve run out of things to read, which is complete bollocks).

The Director of Bunker Ops, in a blatant and transparent attempt to curry favor, got these prints framed for me. They are the cover art to the first two volumes of Boxing Stories by Robert E. Howard. I was a co-editor on the series. The covers were painted by the very talented Thomas Gianni, who I was lucky enough to meet before he passed away. I treasure that memory, and these exceptional paintings. On an unrelated note, the Director of Bunker Operations’ work contract has been renewed for another year.

A couple of people asked after the Black Oak Workshop Advent Calendar, so here’s the final spread of dice and nifties that came out of it: four complete sets and some special one-off dice, my favorites being a three-way-tie between the monkey d20, the rum jug d6, and the skull and bones d6. Don’t make me pick a favorite.

Health and Wellness Item! Just before the Christmas break, I went and did something that astonishes me even now; I willingly went to get not one, but two shots. Long time bunker residents will recall my complicated and panic-strewn relationship with needles. However, it seems those fears and concerns can be overridden by A) a bladder infection so severe that it feels like the kind of scourge Edgar Allen Poe would write about and B) an abundance of caution for not wanting to give anyone in my family the most recent variant of our current global pandemic plague.

I’m a brave boy! I didn’t get scared or nuthin’!

The former happened in the fleshy part of the buttocks, and the latter took place in the arm, as is customary for these kinds of things. Aside from some soreness in my arm, I experienced no side effects. More importantly, none of my usual panic-attack symptoms kicked in, either. I think I can now safely check those kinds of shots off of my personal grievance list. Blood draws continue to be another matter entirely, but vaccines? Vital life-saving meds? As long as you’re not taking anything out, you are evidently welcome to put stuff in. Preferably in the buttocks.

New Business

This missive would have absolutely zero value if it didn’t point out I.P.A.C.s as they occur. I.P.A.C., for those of you who don’t have your welcome package handy, stands for “Impending Points of Apocalyptic Concern.  In this particular instance, it’s this:

I assure you, it’s no laughing matter. Some jackwagon has become stupidly rich creating a meal replacement drink he blithely and guilelessly called Soylent (because the protein comes from SOYbeans and LENTils...riiiiiight). This is such egregious bullshit, and I want to urge you in the strongest possible terms to NOT purchase any of this product, not even ironically, as you may well be wont to do. There are serious and legitimate reasons why, as this article helpfully points out.

But there is another reason, as well. The guy who “thought” this up? He’s rich, and it’s 100% unearned. I love to reward cleverness, and I’ve done so, with money, for most of my adult life. This isn’t that. A quick, not-even-nuanced Google search will turn up a myriad of plant-protein-based meal replacement shakes that do exactly what Soylent purports to do, only better, and without the chronic farting.

What this guy did is a novelty act. He did the product development equivalent of forwarding a meme he didn’t write. Naming a meal replacement drink after a classic and pervasive SF-based plot point (?) is lazy and unoriginal at best, and mercenary and cynical at worst. Especially since he's doubled down on insisting the name was a coincidence or a happy accident. Sorry, Jack. When The Simpsons mentions it in multiple episodes, it’s in the Zeitgeist. You can’t claim ignorance on something so culturally widespread, and even if you did! Even if you did—google would correct you in a nano-second. Typing in “Soylent” triggers the auto-complete “Soylent Green (film) 1973.” Now, unfortunately, the crappy meal replacement shake has risen to the top of the Google search, along with a number of cautionary articles, but back when he was first trying to name this? Yeah, I ain’t buying this “happy accident” shit.

Maybe you already bought some. Maybe a few of you are drinking it already. Fair enough. You do you. But for the rest of you...I beg you, don’t do it. It will become a minor fad and your cultural obligation is to rise above it. Granted, it’s not like eating Tide Pods. But it really kinda sorta is, too, isn’t it?

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

Don’t Look Up (Netflix)

This has become the “must watch” project of late 2021, and if you’ve been following along at home, you’ll notice the review spread is wide and varied. It can be quite difficult to know if you should sink any time into watching this movie. Let me try to straighten a few things out for you.

1. Adam McKay

McCay is a writer and a director. He’s best known for the movies Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and East Bound and Down. He’s also known for The Big Short and Vice. That little list should tell you at a glance if you like his movies. He also is one of the creators of the Funny or Die website https://funnyordie.io/. If you looked through the above movies and sneered with disgust, chances are, you won’t like Don’t Look Up.

2. All-Star Cast

Do you like to see talented celebrities banging into one another to stay in frame? Have you always wondered what a scene with Jonah Hill and Meryl Streep would look like? Here you go. This movie is chock-full of Academy Award winners and nominees, the most obvious ones being Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio and Meryl Streep. There are others, too, that may trigger a fight or flight response, such as Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman, Tyler Perry, and Mark Rylance, making all kinds of hay as basically the same exact character he played in Ready Player One, albeit a more sinister “Mirror, Mirror” version. Some of these luminaries only show up in a couple of scenes, and others steal the show. That’s the nature of this kind of project, but even small glimpses of Michael Chiklis are better than pondering, “I hope he’s not drying out in a clinic somewhere.”

3. Social Satire

Let’s talk about this for a minute. Satire is defined as “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.; a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule; and a literary genre comprising such compositions. Britannica’s article on Satire is also very helpful and gives a lot of examples of satirists and their works.

Humor is hard to write, and one of the hardest kinds of humor to pull off is satire. It’s not so much a target to bullseye as it is a strike zone to aim for. You’re out of it until you’re not; you’re in it until you stray to the outside. It’s not precise, but the means of getting there is. It’s also collaborative, in that the audience has a tacit agreement that they will do some of the heavy lifting by extending trust in the premise to the author. Many works of satire don’t telegraph their intentions and rely on the goodwill of the audience to “get it” at some point.

I told you that to tell you this: Americans hate satire. At least most modern Americans do. It requires an understanding of humor, and at the very least, a willingness to entertain nuance, that many people (who, coincidentally, seem to congregate on Twitter) are not willing to do. The mental gymnastics necessary to appreciate satire are beyond what many people are willing to attempt. More and more these days, folks just want something funny thrown at them, overhand, chest-high, so that it’s easy to catch and hard to drop. They don’t want to run a complicated pass play where they have to get to a certain spot on the field, and then look up and back over their shoulder as they run and make a diving leap to catch the joke and take it into the end zone for six points. That’s way too much work for a lot of people who grew up pushing buttons on controllers to run those same pass plays. They like what they like, and they want to do that, over and over again. Thinking? Listen, Pal, I turned on The YouTube so I wouldn’t have to think!

This movie is a social satire. It’s a big old gooey mess of a satire. I love satire, even (and sometimes especially) if I don’t find it very funny. And this movie is really not funny, not in a gut-busting laugh kind of way. It’s wickedly sharp, though, and it makes some precise and deft points, very sarcastically, which merits a wry, knowing chuckle. For some people, it’ll be like watching a two-hour Facebook post where they are sitting there trying to puzzle out if the person writing it is “trying to be funny” by being sarcastic or if they need to hit reply and write a scathing rejoinder about how “eating babies” is not funny, Mr. Swift, and how dare you...?

In short, Know Thyself. If you don’t like sarcasm, delivered straight-faced with rapier-like precision, you will likely hate Don’t Look Up. Some of the reviewers of this movie have been quick to point out how not-funny it is, but what they mean to say is, they didn’t like it because they didn’t get it. I personally think it’s McCay’s best movie yet. If you like satire—pointed commentary on current events, even when that commentary splashes across stuff you care about—then I think you’ll love this movie as I did. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to call it the 21st century’s Dr. Strangelove, but I am saddened by the realization that we now have a contender for that dubious honor. We have learned nothing, and the scattered reactions to Don’t Look Up really drives that point home.