Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 08/23/24

Living in a Kiln edition

We have hit the time of year where there is no escape from the heat in Texas; an apt visual would be to take the scenes where the freeze is chasing after actors in that terrible movie, The Day After Tomorrow and imagine instead that the frost is actually volcanic gas from Satan’s own asshole, and if it touches you, every pore in your body opens up and you get a headache. There is no respite. Air conditioners laugh when you turn them on. Snarky laughs, too, like Paul Lynde on the Hollywood Squares. The Summer has otherwise been very good to us over here in North Texas. That the heat waited this long to kick in was something of a minor miracle—it actually rained here a couple of weeks ago, knocking outside temperatures down into the 80s. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

Given the level of heat being generated outside of my bunker and the fact that if I could hang an egg on my wall, it would no doubt fry in seconds, we’re going to cut this weekly missive short, so that I might conserve oxygen and limit any movement that would cause me to sweat, as my pores have a tendency to snap open like a camera shutter at the slightest provocation, coating my skin in a sheen of flop sweat. Not for the first time, I’m looking up real estate in Alaska on Zillow. I’ve never had an urge to be at any political party convention, but I have been so jealous of everyone in Chicago this week.

For this new beard project, my beacons of inspiration are Friend of the Bunker Larry Young, who’s whiskers approach legendary status, and Henry Cavill’s Van Dyke combo in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

ArmadilloCon is Nigh

In the next two weeks, I’ll be attending the premiere literary SF/F convention in Texas, ArmadilloCon, where I’ll be talking about horror movies, reading from a recent story I wrote, networking with fellow professionals, hugging friends, and feeling stressed that I can’t see everyone that I want to see. Despite leaving Austin nearly 20 years ago, I still think of ArmadilloCon as my “hometown” convention, because I know everyone and everyone knows me. It’s always nice to not have to explain oneself when discussing which Star Trek captain is the best.

I’ll be sharing a table with Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, which means if you don’t see me or Adrian Simmons in the lounging areas, it’s because we’re in the dealer’s room, holding court. I will have copies of Blood & Thunder, my novels and short stories, and even some gaming books, on hand for anyone wanting to complete their Mark Finn collection. Hope to see you there!

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

Rick and Morty: the Anime (Max)
The infamous Adult Swim breakout hit gets a do-over, reimaging the show’s aesthetic, story, and direction while, presumably, trying to still be Rick and Morty.

From the first episode, it would seem that this is a continuation of the ongoing storyline. That’s unfortunate because I’m used to a certain number of jokes per square inch in a Rick and Morty episode, along with a few visual assists. This show seems more interested in slowing down the storytelling to freeze on one person, standing, looking at something...which is great if we’re having an introspective moment in some show about robots saving a moon or something. In Rick and Morty, they use all kinds of shortcuts to get to the point.

Okay, fine, but the art style? Surely they...nope. It’s got flashes of looking like some anime, circa early 1980s (I expected Ranma ½ if not something closer to the current trend), but the rendering is even more simplistic than the show’s regular art direction, which ain’t complicated to begin with. I’d go so far as to suggest that it’s overall badly drawn, inconsistently, at that.

This shouldn’t have been that hard; other shows have done it with great success. Tell your Star Wars story, Anime style. Tell your anime story, live-action style. There was too much anime and not enough Rick and Morty, a show so distinctive that to leave that out would be to wonder why bothering with it to begin with.

Holy shit, did this did not work at all for me. I think the category of “anime” is way too broad, and requires a laser-sharp focus in order to make the premise, never mind the joke, to land. There are so many ways that they could have bent this material in such a way that they get all new jokes out of it, but instead, they chose to go right up the middle, and instead of making some obvious decisions like shifting the meta-commentary to the new “anime” look, they made no decisions and decided to change up the pacing, the storytelling, all of it. In other words, this is an anime, and about all it shares in common with Rick & Morty is the character names and backstories. Not the tack I would have taken.

If I’ve gotten this all wrong, please let me know, leave me a comment:

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Bad Monkey (Apple)
Vince Vaughn stars as Andrew Yancy, a detective currently suspended for pushing his girlfriend’s husband into the drink whilst in a golf cart. There’s a monkey, an arm that gets hauled up out of the ocean by a tourist on a fishing trip, a whiff of voodoo, and a murder to solve, but Yancy’s not supposed to be doing any official police business.

Carl Hiassen. That’s the important issue at hand, here. Who wrote the books this latest wacky detective with the gift of gab and who plays by his own rules gets its inspiration from. Was it Elmore Leonard? No, no, no. Was it Gregory MacDonald? No, no, no. We got Carl Hiassen in the house this time around, and while I’ve not read either of the Yancy novels, I have read Hiassen and this series captures his snarky asides perfectly, and Vince Vaughn is on hand to put a little extra English on the delivery. You only need to spend five minutes of the first episode to wonder why it’s taken Vaughn so long to get one of these characters for his portfolio; he was made for the understated quip.

I’m laughing out loud in all three of the 10 episodes so far. Yancy’s cell phone ring is the “Haw Haw Haw Hawah” part from ZZ Top’s La Grange, which is bonus laughs for us because Janice’s personal ring tone for me is that exact same snippet. Janice has told me to leave Vince alone and stop calling him while he’s acting in a show.

If there’s one area that Bad Monkey drops the ball outright, it’s not paying the licensing for Tom Petty’s songs. Instead, they went with cover versions of all of the Tom Petty hits, including one where they do that thing with some waif of a teenager with glottal fry that sings the lyrics slowly...in a minor key... OH GOD, when will that trend run its course? The music feels really cheap, like a detective show from the 1980s that wasn’t Miami Vice. In my defense, I will say, I may be the only person this bothers.

If you’re a fan of Justified, or any Fletch novels, or Dortmunder heists, you will surely enjoy Bad Monkey for the breezy, chatty, sarcastic romp that it is, with Vaughn, even though not quite as youthful these days, still able to carry the story along on force of will and charisma. I hope it does well enough for a second season. And, if they want to host a Kickstarter for a decent music budget to afford all of those top shelf Tom Petty songs, I’ll kick in $20.

Mark Finn is one of the most opinionated and influential experts on Robert E. Howard in the state of Texas. He’s an author out of largesse rather than as a vocation and writes stories because he can’t play the guitar. He loves gorillas, values a well-placed conversational movie quote, and treasures the picaresque in literature. Annoyed with people’s misunderstanding of popular culture, he took it upon himself to buy a movie theater so he could lord it over every film student on the Internet. He likes to say, “If three people tell you you’re drunk, go lie down.”