Book Review: “Miss Subways”

It’s easy to write off David Duchovny one of a number of celebrities who fancies him or herself as a novelist. However, the guy is no stranger to the world of fiction. His college education is steeped in English Literature and poetry, he received a terminal M.A. in the same field while working on a Ph.D. — but ditched completing the degree while working on his doctoral dissertation. Does that make him more qualified than his acting contemporaries to write long-form fiction? Not really. Indeed, it’s possible that having a deep knowledge of English Lit may somewhat hamper his ability to tell a good story. While that’s not entirely the case with his third novel, Miss Subways, Duchovny does take extended detours in his story with long expositions and pontifications on philosophical and religious questions — which does muddy the waters of a good yarn.

The story veers into the realm of science fiction with its lead character, Emer Gunnels, facing a choice:  save the one she loves from a horrible death by sacrificing her relationship and never seeing her soul mate again, or watch him die.  It’s kind of a Hobson’s Choice (i.e., taking what is available or nothing at all) as both will leave Emer alone and pining for love. Where does this strange choice come from? Well — and this is where the novel takes a strange turn — Emer is confronted in her apartment by a Celtic fairy (not a leprechaun) named Sid who shows her on his phone video of Emer’s boyfriend, Con, and the grisly fate that awaits him. The video shows what could be if Emer lets him die, and also shows what could be if she makes the choice to leave him and never cross paths again. She chooses a loveless existence where she and her boyfriend — known as Con, but whose real name is Cuchulain Constance — live apart in an alternate reality. The bulk of the novel is exploring the nature of love (as it transcends space-time), mythological creatures who live in our world, and a heaping helping of pop culture references that are very funny at times.  

Duchovny is a competent writer who really shines when his sardonic, pop-culture laced quips take front and center. I’m not sure if people outside late Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers will find the references Duchovny weaves into the dialog funny, but they certainly made me chuckle at times. Alas, those moments were few and far between in the novel, and that’s a shame because Miss Subways had the potential to be a crazy and funny wild ride of a story. Instead, Duchovny’s detours into high-minded quotes and long disquisitions into the meaning of love and religion sacrificed a potentially compelling plot that made the novel more than a bit plodding.  

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross: Episode Seventy-Nine

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:  Episode Seventy Nine

With no shortage of time or events unfolding, Jon and Rob hit the ground running and very hard – so much so, you could consider this instalment of Radio City… as a mini-marathon.  From the embarrassment and ego-blown MTV Video Awards to the Manafort verdict to The Eagles now having the biggest selling album in history to Rob spending a few hours with Cyndi Dawson from The Cynz and, of course, “In Our Heads”,  this show has everything you could want and even more.

There is a lot to listen in to; a lot to digest.  Some of it you’ll like, be entertained by and be amused – some of it you may bristle at, become annoyed or just plain angered.  We’re neither right, nor wrong – we just deliver as objectively as possible and let you decide for yourselves.  As it should be.

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:  Episode Seventy Nine


The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.

 

The Popdose Mixtape: Labor Day 2018 Edition

Welcome again to our annual cavalcade of music and songs from the ass-end of the class divide, the anthems and laments of the world’s working men and women, those who toil in obscurity while the boss-man hogs the glory.

In years past, I’ve typically used this space to treat you to an essay on the state of the US economy and the plutocratic banditry so rampant therein. This year, though, that seems kind of redundant. If you pay any attention at all to the news, you can’t help but be aware of the tensions and inconsistencies in this nation, where the stock market soars and the president brags of sustained economic growth even as his billionaire friends reap the benefits before they can trickle down to the common man, even as his trade policies destroy middle-class industrial jobs by the thousands.

The mask is well and truly off, now, and the failings of the capitalist economy are increasingly apparent even to those who have traditionally been its staunchest defenders. There’s something changing in this country, for good or for ill, and we will not understand the scope of that change until it is behind us.

So let’s all take a moment before we plunge into the full-on madness of election season to breathe, to reflect on the sacrifices and the victories of the organizers who came before us, and to wave goodbye to summer as it slowly begins to recede.


Select individual tracks provided for reference only; as always, we encourage you to download the full mix (1:20:55) for best enjoyment, and support the artists by purchasing their music.

Collect ’em all!

Download the full mix for 2017 (1:17:20) — see details here

Download the full mix for 2016 (1:14:42) — see details here

Download the full mix for 2015 (1:26:24) see details here

Download the full mix for 2014 (1:15:39) — see details here

Download the full mix for 2013 (1:08:31) — see details here

Download the full mix for 2012 (1:12:37) — see details here

Download the full mix for 2011 (1:20:57) — see details here


(prelude – beach ambience)

Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere In Summertime (extended remix) original track on New Gold Dream (1982)

The Mooney SuzukiIt’s Showtime Pt. II from Electric Sweat (2002)

The Pretenders – Back On the Chain Gang from Learning to Crawl (1984)

David Bowie – Day-In Day-Out from Never Let Me Down (1987)

The Afghan Whigs – The Lottery from Do To the Beast (2014)

Phoebe Hunt and the Gatherers – Lint Head Gal from Shanti’s Shadow (2017)

Bill Wilson – Pay Day Give Away from Ever Changing Minstrel (1973)

Leisure Process – Cashflow (1982 single)

Bachman–Turner Overdrive – Takin’ Care of Business from Bachman–Turner Overdrive II (1973)

The Smiths – Frankly, Mr. Shankly from The Queen Is Dead (1986)

King Missile – Cheescake Truck from Mystical Shit (1990)

Bon Jovi – Work For the Working Man from The Circle (2009)

Jeff Beck – Guitar Shop from Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop (1989)

Lucinda Williams – Fruits of My Labor from World Without Tears (2008)

Steely Dan – Glamour Profession from Gaucho (1980)

The Editors – Fingers In the Factories from The Back Room (2005)

The Easybeats – Friday On My Mind (1966 single)

Wall of Voodoo – Lost Weekend from Call of the West (1982)

(interlude – summer night by the water)

coda: R.E.M – Nightswimming from Automatic for the People (1992)


Dedicated to the memories of Walter Becker, George Young, and Joe Hill

Dizzy Heights #46: Never, Ever, Always, and Forever

The idea comes from an old joke that an ex-girlfriend made long ago: “We should never use the words ‘never,’ ‘ever,’ ‘always,’ or ‘forever’ when describing us.” She was not wrong, but from the ashes of that (spectacularly) failed relationship comes this show, and over half of my defunct Mope Like Me column, so at least something good came from it.

Artists making their Dizzy Heights debuts this week: The Assembly, The Association, Shirley Bassey, The Buzzcocks, Aretha Franklin, Deborah Harry & Iggy Pop, Raphael Saadiq, The Stranglers, Walter Meego, and my cat Harvey! He hops up at the 1:05:55 mark.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

TV Review: “Sharp Objects”

Sharp Objects Preview

 

In 1999, when The Sixth Sense came out, I was the only one in my group at the movies that evening who figured out the surprise ending from the moment Haley Joel Osment’s character uttered the famous line, “I see dead people.”  I bring this up because when I watched the premiere episode of Sharp Objects on HBO, I made a quip about a minor scene that could be viewed as transitional as holding the key to the show’s mystery. I was joking at the time, but that quip turned out to be true in the end — and that disappointed me.  Well, the entire series of Sharp Objects was a disappointment. Riding on the success of the book and film adaptation of Gone Girl, author Gillian Flynn’s debut novel was adapted into an eight-part series for HBO. However, instead of a taut thriller about a mediocre journalist — who’s borderline alcoholic with severe psychological baggage — on assignment investigating the murder of a young girl (and another who is missing) in her childhood home, we get eight glacially paced episodes where the narrative barely budges week after week.  Indeed, when the big reveal came at the end of the series, it felt more like a relief rather than a “Holy Sh*t!” moment.

Sharp Objects was created by Marti Noxon (writer and executive producer of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV series) and directed by Jean-Marc Vallee — whose success with HBO’s Big Little Lies made him a good choice to handle this twisted drama. However, even with a powerhouse production team and a powerhouse cast — led by Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson — the series was mired with bloat that used the atmospherics of sound, stark colors, dreamy flashbacks, and sweat to mask the fact that most of Sharp Objects is filler.  However, buried in all that bloat is a story that could have been compelling as a two-episode limited series.

The story is moved forward by the small town murder in Wind Gap, Missouri, where the corpse of a young girl is found with all of her teeth missing. What kind of sick f*ck does something like that? A town drifter looking for a quick thrill? A local serial killer? Camille tries to extract information from the town locals, the police, and even an out of town detective working the case, but she runs up against roadblocks in her quest to find out what happened. While doing her gumshoe work (and getting drunk), the missing girl is found dead in an ally. She too has had all of her teeth extracted, and so it’s clear that these murders are connected since the bodies have been killed and mutilated in the same way.   

However, if this was the story of the murders of a couple of teenage girls and an alcoholic journalist reporting the story, it would be a rather boilerplate narrative.  Laced into the tapestry of Sharp Objects are Camille’s troubled relationship with her family (mostly her mother, Adora) and her recovery as a cutter who etches words into her body with razor blades, pins, and other, well, sharp objects. Throughout the series, Camille is haunted by the flashbacks of her sister who died when she was a teenager, suffers psychological trauma because her mother doesn’t love her, and is troubled by her half-sister’s (Amma) nymph-child behavior.  In short, the characters present themselves as complicated white people with money whose secrets are made all the more mysterious because of their southern roots. But in reality, they are just psychotic. Now, this is all fine material to create an interesting story since no author worth her or his salt wants boring characters to dominate their work. And while Flynn has been accused of misogyny in her novels, she hasn’t been accused of creating borning lead characters. However, that’s exactly what has happened in this adaptation of her novel. Characters who shouldn’t be boring or uninteresting, are hampered by a long-winded arc that takes way too much time to get to the point.  Along the way, viewers have to suffer through episode after episode of depressing scenes that do very little to move the plot forward. As I wrote at the outset, when the big reveal comes at the end — and I mean literally at the end and during the credit roll — it was both laughable and somewhat disturbing. It felt very B-movie in the way it was wrapped in a rush. Certainly, that was by design so viewers could chew over the previous seven hours and 58 minutes of story and piece together the clues that led to the conclusion — much like The Sixth Sense. However, it would have been a much more satisfying experience if we didn’t have so many interminable hours to parse.  

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross: Episode Seventy-Eight

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:  Episode Seventy Eight

The response to Episode 77 was overwhelming, as you very kind listeners took our message to heart – we were starting to feel fatigued with all the constant negative energy and remembered – we’re here to entertain as well as inform you.  So with that in mind and the need to keep things upbeat, installment 78 is the first completely “unscripted” show we’ve done in a while.

For those who don’t know, Jon and Rob usually hash over a list of topics to discuss for the upcoming episodes and cherry-pick from there.  This week is the first time (in a long time!) that the show is completely improvised.  And, like #77, it’s still in a positive-momentum, forward thinking frame.

So tune in and enjoy – you will, again, be very pleased by what you hear!

Radio City With Jon Grayson & Rob Ross:  Episode Seventy Eight


The podcast will be on the site as well as for subscription via iTunes and other podcast aggregators. Subscribe and let people know about Radio City, as well as Popdose’s other great podcasts David Medsker’s Dizzy Heights and In:Sound with Michael Parr and Zack Stiegler.