What To Do About Trump

  Hello. So this channel has so far been almost exclusively about nerd shit, movies and music because that’s the shit I like. And I wish we had built a world where I could just focus on that and have a good time, all the time. But that is not the world we live in. So, in the interest of clarity, I’m gonna lay it all out on front street. I’m an anarchistic. If you don’t know what that means (don’t worry there will be at least one video on it in the future all about it), to put it simply, I’m about as far left as you can get. I’m everything Fox News has warned your racist uncle about. So naturally, I’m not thrilled about another Trump term. Out of all the bad options, he’s the worst. But no president is ever gonna stop this channel from being a place that is explicitly antifacist, antiracist, pro queer, space for people who aren’t shitty. That’s the line in the sand, so if you can’t get behind that, fuck off. For those left (and I do mean left), let’s talk about what we are gonna do. 

  First off, I wanna talk to the liberals who might be here. And when I say liberal, I mean the centerist who are not revolutionary and would just like to see some reforms to the current system so we could “get back to the way things used to be”. I know you’re gong through it right now and I don’t want to dogpile. But your time is over. The system you are trying to save is the problem. The good times you want to go back to don’t exist and probably never really did, at least not for everyone. We have tried your way for at least as long as I’ve been alive and now we are here. An election every few years, reforms, and participation in a corrupt system will not save us. At most, electoral politics can gum up the works and slightly slow the march of fascism. The time for begging and asking nicely for a better world is over. We need to start building that world now, by any means.

  Where to start? Well if you knew me outside of this channel I think you’d be able to guess what I’m about to say. I’m a big union guy. You spend a disgusting amount of your life at work and I’m willing to bet, it’s far from a democratic arrangement. A union is the way to even out the power imbalance between you, your fellow workers and your bosses. I’m co-chair of agitprop for my branch of the Industrail Workers of The World. The IWW is a revolutionary union that is less focused on organizing a single trade and more in the business of training you to help organize everyone into one big union. So, I may be biased (and a bad Agitprop co-chair) but, I’d recommend joining up and becoming a Wobbly, but really any union is better than no union. It really is one of the front lines in the fight against capitalism and can have a huge impact if done well. So find one that works for you and start talking to your coworkers behind your bosses back.

  But a workplace union isn’t the only kind of union there is. If you’re one of the many, many, renters out there, you can also start a tenants union. It’s generally the same idea but instead of withholding your labor as leverage, you withhold your rent. Landlords are a parasite on society and we must do everything we can to starve them. Just like your boss makes money by exploiting your labor, your landlord makes money by exploiting your need to have shelter. If you need it to live (food, shelter, water, etc.), it shouldn’t cost money. These organizations, because they use one of the two languages a capitalist system understands, profit (the other being violence), makes it the other front line in the fight for a better world. 

  Both of these tactics have the same goal but also the same drawback. The end goal of course is to have such a build up of strikes that it leads to a general strike that starves the parasites of society enough to kill them off, so to speak. We have a saying in the organizing spaces. We are building a new world from the shell (or ashes) of the old. So all these disruptions and demands are not rooted in a general upheaval for the sake of chaos. Things need to drastically change, yes, but we aren’t trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I only say this because I know for some, the idea of revolution or any change is scary. But all this organizing and marching and strikes are to demand that, the people who should benefit from and be in charge of the world we create are the people who do the work to create the world, us. 

  But something that is scarier than change, at least for a lot of folks I know, is the main drawback for all these tactics of organizing. That is that, you’re gonna have to talk to people. Not just online in your bubble but to your coworkers, your neighbors, strangers. We have to build genuine relationships with people. It’s the only way to figure out who has your back and who you can organize with. You can preach theory at people till the end of time but it is infinitely easier to build solidarity if you like each other. And on the flip side, much easier to dismiss and ignore folks that are strangers to you. You aren’t gonna like everyone or agree with everything others think. Some people are too far gone and I’m no hippie here to tell you that you just need to love them enough for them to change. But you won’t be able to make it through the coming years alone. So find your crowd. I don’t like it either. I’m a vampire loner type too. Why do you think I’m talking to you over the internet? But it’s gotta be done. This new world can only come about and last as a mass movement and mass movements need the masses.

  One thing I can already tell you about those conversations is you’re gonna find that most everyone is struggling. Being alive is too expensive and everyone is one missed check away from their life completely falling apart. This is where the next thing, and probably the most empowering thing, you can do comes in, mutual aid. The idea of a strike or any disruption to the delicate balance of their life is impossible when it could get you fired, evicted or worse. The powers that be have sent the last 50 years dismantling the social safety net so no one has the energy or inclination to do anything but survive. So we have to build our own support systems outside of the official systems and, to put it simply, take care of each other. Free food, rent parties, childcare, skill trades, tool sharing, transportation. All these things we can do for each other and make it easier for people to take risk. Capitalism has turned all these things and more into commodities that exist solely to turn profit. We need to do it because, to put it simply, it’s good to take care of people. I think you’ll find too that, after some initial awkwardness, you’ll find something all of us have been lacking in this modern age, community. So after talking to folks around you and figuring out what everyone needs, join or start a mutual aid network and start helping. All these years you’ve been giving your power away in the voting booth to people who do not give a single shit about you. Stop waiting for permission to build a better world and get out there. The less we rely on the power structures we have today, the less power they have. Like Tinkerbell, if we all stop applauding, they’ll die out.

  Most of this so far has been targeted at people shocked by the election result and searching for a different way forward. But now I want to talk to all the folks like me out there who have been radicals a long time. Look, I know it’s hard but this is not the time for a told you so’s or for any “I’m more left wing than you” dick measuring contest. No one wants to join a revolution full of self righteous pricks. I think all the late night host have proved we are not gonna lecture and ridicule our way out of this. No Reddit thread comment or sick subtweet is gonna destroy the fascist threat. We also have to accept not everyone is gonna read Marx and Lenin or Goldman and Kropotkin for that matter. It’s our job to know the theory so well that we can break it down in simple and effective strategies and messaging for folks who don’t want to read 170 year old dry ass tomes. FD Signifier has a great new video that I’ll link below that explains this better than I probably can but we must be making our own cool art, podcast and communities. We need to lead the masses to revolution but we gotta have fun doing it. Joy is in itself an act of resistance. So let’s wait until after we’ve stomped out the fascist to start telling the liberals that we could have had our better world 20 years earlier if they listened to us. For now, we got work to do.

  So in case you needed to know where me and this channel stand, this is it. I hold only a few simple maxims close to try and find my way through this increasingly hostile world. One, no one has the inherent right to rule over another. No kings, no presidents, no bosses. You are your own authority, so act like it. Two, all power should be limited and temporary. Power itself is illegitimate until proven legitimate. For example, say you wanted to fix the potholes in the street but only your neighbor Rick knows how. Everyone would come together and say, ok Rick, you’re in charge of fixing these potholes. Tell us what to do. Rick would be in charge but only to tell you how to fix the potholes and once they were fixed, Rick has no more authority. Instead of how we do this today which is beg the city to fix the potholes, no one does it, you run an expensive campaign to elect Rick to some position that can tell someone else to fix the potholes but he’s also in charge of a million other things for several years. The former seems like a better system to me. Third of my closely held beliefs, not my circus, not my monkeys. What I mean by that is, unless you’re funding me, fucking me or friends with me, what you get up to isn’t really my business. So if you’re gay or trans or religious or whatever, as long as it’s happening between consenting adults, not my business. 

  Lastly and really, most importantly for our discussion today is, if we are gonna have society and a human civilization, its purpose should not be profit. Civilizations purpose should be twofold. To alleviate human suffering and to maximize leisure. We are currently burning the planet and everything on it in the name of making a few already rich pricks even richer. This just doesn’t make sense. It has just never made sense to me that we use so much energy and ingenuity just to make money. With just a simple change, from profit to human wellbeing, we could solve so many problems. A green energy transition will be too expensive? Who cares! Automation and AI are gonna take my job? Good! One less thing I have to do. We don’t want to hurt the healthcare industry’s bottom line? That’s an insane thing to say in a world where we take care of people because they are people and not a profit margin. Since I was a kid, the fact that some have too much and some have nothing has never made sense. Why are we doing this society thing if it’s not to make it easier for everyone to have a good life? We have enough to feed, cloth and shelter everyone if we just stopped trying to make a buck while doing it. For me, that’s what it all boils down to. After all, the economy is a human invention. Why shouldn’t work for all humanity?

  Look, I‘m not gonna lie to you and say it’s all gonna be ok. It’s not. Things are gonna get much worse before they get better, if they get better at all. I’m an eternal pessimist. What keeps that pessimism from becoming nihilism is a healthy mix of spite and a love of humanity. Everything I talk about on this channel, art, music, games, food, has all come about because humans broke free of their existence to create something beautiful or silly or dumb. I would love for the world to become a place where everyone could take part in that creation. But if instead we continue down the path towards our demise, I’m at least gonna go down swinging.  In the description I’ll leave links to some stuff to help you get started. Until next time, death to the algorithm and death to fascism. See you in the streets. 

The Problem of Power

   This must be the age of villains as we just had not one but two great TV shows focused on some truly evil folks. While very different in tone and look, both deal with the nature of power and what you have to give up to get it. It just be the season of the witch because we are talking about Agatha All Along and it must be winter because, The Penguin? I don’t this cold open got away from me. Just roll the intro.

  Before we get into what these shows have to say in tandem, let’s look at them individually first, starting with Agatha. I admit I was skeptical of this show at first. It’s an odd case of being a spin off of a spin off and those rarely work out. I was afraid it would be WandaVision (which I liked by the way) season two without the main characters. That assumption wasn’t entirely off base. In the first episode we are reminded of the framing device that I liked so much in WandaVision, trapping Agatha in a police procedural. But the show quickly takes a turn into it’s own territory onto a path of being completely it’s own thing. Although, I still don’t think I could recommend this to someone who hasn’t seen WandaVision first. Much like the rest of the MCU, this interconnectedness is both its biggest flaw and greatest strength. It’s the price you pay for continuity story telling I guess. 

  That one small gripe aside, if you could even call it that, I loved this show. To start with the obvious, the cast was stacked and everyone, including folks I was unfamiliar with beforehand, brought their A game. It seems to me it’d be easy enough to just get that Marvel check and phone it in if you’re a big name like Aubrey Plaza, Kathrine Hahn, Patti LaPone, etc. But no one, as far as I could tell, did. They all seemed like they into it and having a ball. 

  As for the show itself, it was so well thought out and precisely written. The twist and reveals were so well sprinkled throughout the show and wrapped everything up so satisfactorily, I was honestly shocked by how expertly all is revealed. From Audrey Plaza being Death to the witches road being a construct of Wiccans mind, it was beautifully executed. This is something I harped on in the last episode of Pitch Please on this channel (which you should go watch) but this is why you need to know your ending when you start. You can tell these creatives knew where they were gonna end up and worked backwards from there to sprinkle in just the right amount of foreshadowing and connections to tease their way to a satisfying prestige, if you will. The divination episode I found to be especially great as it wove its way though the rest of the previous episodes bringing context to something that at first glance seemed only to be a bit about the weird fortune telling witch. You know I liked that an episode because I normally hate tarot and all that other mystic shit. 

  This show is also gay as hell and I love it for that. Not to poke the toxic fanbase or anything but, as a straight white cis dude, I’m so bored of seeing shows about people just like me. Representation matters and not just because it’s good for folks to see themselves onscreen and not just because it’s good for little folks who look like me to see folks different from them on screen and realize they aren’t so different, therein building empathy for others, but also because, rather selfishly, I’m tired of only seeing my perspective on stories. I know what it’s like to be me. I wanna see new angles on the world, both real and fictional. I don’t recall there being a straight white dude in the whole show and honestly, it’s refreshing.

  I think my only nitpick with the show is again not really with the show but with the MCU as a whole and that’s that I like these characters but who knows when we will see them again. It seems reasonable to assume that Marvel is racing towards a Young Avengers, which has probably only accelerated since the Jonathan Majors debacle, but who knows how many years away that is. The MCU just has too many loose ends and cool characters floating around, waiting to be brought back. Because of the break neck pace of the last few years, Marvel has signaled they are gonna slow down and put out less stuff, which just means long times between seeing these characters. I’m very much in favor of Marvels slowing down though. We only had two Marvel related things this year (What If Season 3 is coming soon as well) and both of them are great. Focusing on quality of quantity wins the day again but it seems for 2025 Marvel is ignoring that signal and barreling through with five shows and three movies. I’m excited for them but I do worry. If they have another rough streak as they had recently, t might be the death of the MCU. So cross your stretchy fingers Fantastic Four pans out true believers. 

  Moving from the happy go lucky world of Marvel over to Gotham, let’s talk about this amazing first season of The Penguin. I loved The Batman for nailing the gritty realist take on a character that so many other superhero films fall short of and had high expectations for anything based on it that this show consistently met and exceeded. Much like Agatha, every actors and every department absolutely crushed it. This show truly is a high bar for genre television. Every episode flew by, with no filler, that it really could have been an eight hour movie and. Would have been fully invested. But I’m also one of those sick freaks that likes 8+ hour movies. 

  The star of the show is obviously Colin Ferral as Oz Cobb, which I personally think is a dumb name and not really a change that was needed but whatever, who, under heavy makeup, gives a stunning performance. The whole of the show is set up to portray Penquin as a sympathetic villain only to subvert that in the end by showing his true colors as someone who is truly evil. In fact, that perception of him as an everyman underdog is just another tool he uses to obtain the power he is so desperate for. His speech to the other gang leaders sounds so much like a spiel I’d give to get people to unionize it’s frightening. The way the character uses the truth to weasel his way to power should be studied by organizers so they can keep watch for those that use all the right language but are not actually interested in revolution but just their own personal power. If we can’t recognize people like that, we might just find ourselves and any movements we are apart of in Vics shoes. Unceremoniously smothered once these so called leaders have what they want. 

  Speaking of Vic, what a performance of such a tragic story. Here’s a kid that just wanted a life a little better than he had and Gotham just kicked him down at every turn. Then, just when he thinks he’s found his ticket to everything he wants and he’s traded any morals he had to hitch himself to that horse, he’s dumped like trash, dead in the park. He acts as such a great audience surrogate because he is not interested in power for power sake. He just wants the forgotten people of the city to get theirs and for that, he has to die because the people can never get the power they deserve. If they did, there’d be none left for the Penguins of the world. And I’m sure I’ve said something similar about other shows but, when the girl you’re into and is obviously into you, says to come with her to Cali, you get your ass to Cali. Will Hunting didn’t end up face down in the dirt, did he Vic?

  I think the only real qualm I have with the show is something that has been floating around the internet, the absence of Batman. It didn’t really cross my mind for most of the show, which shows you how engaging it is, until the bomb went off in the underground drug lab. Then I thought, Batman might have noticed that. But then again, as we saw in the preceding film, he’s new at this. Maybe he’s just too busy chasing down small time bliss peddlers to find his way to the big fish in time. After all, he doesn’t yet know the city as well as the gangs if, like in the comics, he left to train for his formative years. So it wasn’t so far fetched that he was no where to be found. It was really strange not to have some interaction with Gordon though. At least a press conference or something. But this is a very small gripe and I better cut myself off here because I could praise this show for hours. 

  I used a word a lot so far in this review and that is because both of these shows ultimately revolve around it, power. Both shows are about villains obsessed with obtaining power at all cost. And no matter how much power they have, it’s not enough as long as someone has more. In Agatha, we she how power affects women. All the witches realize men have to power in society and look for ways to get some back. But as they do, they are punished and cast out from society to maintain patriarchal order. The only one of their coven that starts with power, subconsciously punishes them for obtaining their power, and ends the journey with any power is a man. A gay man, but a man none the less. Some women hope to obtain power to help uplift and protect other women but there are those like Agatha who, although they recognize the power imbalance, still only seek power to hold others like her down. She hopes to become part of the system and not to abolish it. 

  In the end, Agatha doesn’t get what she wants and finds a slight hope of redemption. Oz on the other hand gets what he wants and loses everything worthwhile. He is so blinded by his psychotic pursuit of power that any humanity he has must be killed or locked away. Sofia, on the other hand, is born into that power and thinks she’s above it, that i’s unimportant, until it’s turned on her. Then she realizes just how devastating it can be and even just by association can stain your soul and tarnish your humanity. Even then, she is addicted and tries to use what’s left of her power to escape and get some revenge as she climbs out of the cesspool and back on top. But that stink never comes out. The problem isn’t these people, but instead the systems of power (both in these fictional worlds and our real world) that are inherently based on exploitation. Can power be used for good? Yes, obviously. But only when wielded properly and horizontally. Otherwise it is a corrupting force that harms those exploited by it and those wielding it. 

  Anyway, I should probably wrap this thing up. What did you think of these shows? Excited for more? Comments, questions, concerns, critiques, death threats, they all go down below in the comments. Subscribe and all that jazz and, as always, death to the algorithm.

Pitch Please Episode 2: DSTLRY Comics

  Hello again and welcome back to Pitch Please. It’s a show all about guiding you through something new. I’m your host Jason and this episode we are talking comics! But we aren’t talking the big two. No we are talking about a newer publisher on the scene, creator owned DSTLRY Comics! Oh fancy…

  Before I drill down into DSTLRY, let me show my bona fides a bit and talk about my love of comics. As you can probably guess just from looking at me, I grew up on superhero comics. (Shocker) As a kid, my neighbors uncle used to sell comics for a dollar each, every year at their annual garage sale. It was mostly 90’s trash (complete with wild body proportions and infinite pockets) with gimmick 3D lenticular covers, but I was like 10 so those gimmicks worked on me and I was hooked. As I got older, I fell off of superhero comics (for reasons I’ll get into), replacing them with superhero movies and more adult (ie pretentious) graphic novels. I stopped reading DC and Marvel books and started reading stuff from Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, and the like. 

  As I got older, I also started to learn the stories of the people who made some of my favorite books and noticed a theme of them getting absolutely boned by the corporations they were writing for. I’m thinking of people like Alan Moore with Watchmen, Bill Finger with Batman, or Shushter and Segal with Superman. It seemed that, just like the rest of the working class, the creatives I loved were being exploited by creating some of the most recognizable and profitable characters in fiction and never seeing the fruits of their labor. You shouldn’t be able to invent Superman and die penniless. 

  It’s all possible through a trick as old as the creative industry. In case you don’t know, when you make anything for a big comic publisher, most of the time you’re under contract with them. So whatever you create is theirs. You’re just the hired gun. (It’s the same idea behind all the gig apps like Uber and Doordash. It’s a nice little trick to get out of giving people the benefits of being a full employee) The trade off is that, theoretically the corporation has the resources so that, whatever you create, will be seen by more people (and you’ll get a bigger upfront check). Theoretically. Even if you aren’t creating characters whole cloth, any story you write or picture you draw, is theirs to do what they see fit with. So say, years down the line, there’s a multibillion dollar movie that is inspired heavily by something you created, while it may be cool, you won’t see a dime.

  This changed in the 90’s when Image comics came along. Image offered artist the chance to publish their work and keep the rights to whatever they created. Image wasn’t without its controversies (chronically late books, tensions amount partners leading to lawsuits, the 90’s comic bubble crash, etc. It’s almost like they had a bunch of artist in charge of a company. Weird.) but this strategy seemed to work out for them in the long run. They are now the third largest publisher out there and have put out some of the all time most influential comics in history (Spawn, The Walking Dead, Invincible, god damn Saga. It’s a star studded list). It’s almost like if you give creative folks room to be creative, you have a higher chance of getting quality work. Crazy.

  The brings us to DSTLRY, which seems to be looking to replicate that Image success, albeit in a simpler, smaller, and more modern way. DSTLRY was started by the guys behind Comixology, the digital comics reader (another thing that Amazon has gobbled up and essentially destroyed). Now, I’ll be straight with you. I don’t trust these suits as far as I can throw them. Unlike with Image, they are not artist, they are business men (which means they are not in it because they like comics. They’re in it because they like money.) and business men are not to be trusted. (That might be our first evergreen rule on this channel. Let’s put it on the board.) For example, while the company stresses that their digital collectible comics aren’t NFTs, they certainly smell like NFTs. So before I go heeping praise on the books they’ve been pumping out, let me be clear that just because they’re a corporation that has realized that giving the creatives that give your brand value a steak in the company, thereby aligning your wellbeing to their wellbeing, does not mean they aren’t still a corporation at the end of the day. 

  Disclaimers aside, DSTLRY is making one business decision that I do agree with in that they are copying that Image model. Artist and writers not only get to keep the rights to their creations but the founding creators even earn equity in the company. So if their books sell and the company does well, they do well. Rising tides and all that. What that means is, say some all consuming media conglomerate comes around and wants to make a movie based on, let’s say Gone by the artist known only as Jock, then instead of the company who just happened to print the book and happens to have a relationship with Diamond Distributors, raking in the dough, Jock makes that money and, crazy thought, could even work on the movie based on the book he made. (If only there was some way for all workers to get the value they create and own the means in which they produce value in common. Hmmmm)

   But for any of this scheme to work you have to have some damn good founding creators and attract some big talent with big ideas. In a business dominated by to behemoths, it’s a steep uphill climb to even be noticed, so you need some heavy hitters (and, in the case of a few folks, whose name alone can move a few units). Well between the founding creators and the folks currently slated to have books put out on DSTLRY, it seems the these business types went deep into their Rolodex to call in some award winning titians from around the industry and world to write a book of two and have ended up with an absolutely stacked list of creatives. (Kids, a Rolodex is this mechanical device we had before cellphones…never mind) We have the likes of (and apologies if pronounce any names wrong here) the aforementioned Jock, Becky Cloonan, Marc Bernardin of podcast fame, Jamie McKelvie, Scott Snyder, Chip Zdarsky, and on and on. This a group of people that have put out some of the best comics this century and here they are, under one label, given what seems like free rein. (At the very least there seems to be no restrictions on content, style or genre)

  So far, hiring the best comic book writers and artist has paid off. Every book DSTLRY has put out as of writing has been good or, often times, better than good. There’s any genre you can dream of here (except, notably, superheroes.) from western to sci-fi to romance to heist. Each with enough of a twist to get deep hooks in you. Plus, the art in some of these books is stunning. It helps that all their books come in this oversized, magazine dimensions that really suck you into the artwork. I love a big ol’ physical piece of media (He said in front of his 1500 records. Admittedly, this doesn’t make them harder to store but I think it’s worth it). When you make something this size, it feels like a statement. Like a celebration of the medium. Maybe it’s the American in me but, bigger is usually better (I can hear you snickering) and these are some hefty comics. 

  While the physical size of the books may be supersized, one thing I really like about DSTLRY is each story is only three or four issues long, with the exception of Life which is listed as being six issues. But still in the single digits. The big two could learn a thing or two from this approach. Actually, I think this is gonna take us to a new segment, Side Rant. Come join me in my old man corner.

 

  One of the things that caused me to fall off of superhero comics was the tendency for them to spin out into multiple books with long arcs over hundreds of issues. For example, I started reading the Ta Nehisi Coates run on Black Panther month to month. It was a really interesting take on the character by a great writer who was from outside comics. But then that single book spun off into three books and, if I recall correctly, was broken up by one of those crossover events that superhero comics love so much. I stopped reading because I simply didn’t have the funds to collect that many books every month. It was just too much. And not just for me but for you, the publisher, too judging by the amount of times you have to reset the continuity. It became unwieldy and the story just fizzled out. And for my money, the ending is the most important bit!

  So here’s my pitch. Less is more. Instead of ongoing series with no real end, limit the story to a maximum twelve issues. The artist pitches a story for the character THAT MUST INCLUDE AN ENDING, and that goes for movie producers too. People only remember the ending so it’s best to start there. Then you stagger your books so there’s always something coming out but in a way that there’s always a number one each month and readers know there will be a satisfying end to the story and a fresh jumping on point regularly. So it’d be like: Superman: Luthors Revenge: 1 of 7, or whatever, and once it was done, new creative team, new story, new number one. Everything as an interconnected collection of miniseries.

  Granted, it has been a while since I bought single issues so maybe the big two are already doing this and I just don’t know it. I read Absolute Batman #1 recently and it appears that all these Absolute stories will be miniseries. In which case, I’m really showing my ass here. All I know is, if there’s a book with a lot of hype out, I usually wait for the collected softcover or the big hardcover if it’s really special. Maybe that’s just me and I’m yelling at clouds again. Anyway, rant over. Back to what we were talking about.

  Ok, where were we? Oh yea, DSTLRYs short and sweet runs. I love this approach as it’s concise and means you always have something new on the horizon. But I will admit, it’s a double edge sword. It is a very hard thing to world build in three issues, especially if you’re doing something a little more out there. Gone, the book by Jock I mentioned before, is a prime example. This book takes place in what seems like a deep, interesting universe with a lot of characters and factions I’d love to see more of. But with only three issues, you really have to focus on the one story you’re telling. That’s not to say Jock couldn’t come back and expand in further series but maybe he’d rather move on to other things. In the end, it’s always better (in fiction, movies and playing music) to leave the audience wanting more rather than have them grow tired of you.

  And let me tell ya, boy do I want more of these books. No matter what book you start with, you’re gonna get quality. I’m gonna go over some of my favorites but I’d honestly start with the first book the put out, The Devils Cut. This compilation book serves as a great taste of everything they’re doing over there at DSTLRY. It’s like a bunch of trailers for these comics. You can read through this and figure out which stories you want to get or keep an eye out for. DSTLRY has only been around for about a year, so there’s not so much backlog that you’re going to be way behind on. The only just started putting out collected hardcovers (That I very much like as well). So not everything in The Devils Cut has been expanded into a full book yet, but plenty has. 

  A lot of what I’ve read are just number ones so I’ll start with the aforementioned new hardcovers. The first, Somna by Becky Cloonan & Tula Lotay, is the story of a woman at the height of the witch trials having an affair on her witchfinder husband with the devil…in her dreams. (I can’t do it because I’ll get a copyright strike but, if you could put the band Witchfinder General on in the background here while I talk about this book, that’d be ideal) If that synopsis doesn’t do it for you, I don’t know what will. I love how this book uses its setting and the supernatural to explore how society was (and let’s face it, still is) openly hostile to women who dare to reach for power of any kind. And how other women, instead of coming together in solidarity, use that hostility to turn on other women. The addition of the actual Devil only serves to bring out those gulfs between the powerful and powerless. Plus the art is fabulous, switching from a more traditional comic art to this soft watercolor look when the character is in the dream world. I won’t spoil the ending but, while I liked it, I did wish it’d go a slightly different way. (As always, I was rooting for everyone to burn)

  The second collected hardcover is a book I’ve mentioned a few times already, Gone by Jock. I first became aware of Jock when he did a book with Scott Snyder called Wytches that creeped me the hell out (in a good way of course). His art in that book was so experimental and different that it was hard not to become engrossed in the book. In Gone, Jock is doing everything, so the art is a little more traditional but still with great design and incredibly inventive page layouts and panel work. This world feels grimey and lived in but with the scale of the future in its giant slums and looming ships (making use of the large format book). The story is that of a kid who, while tying to steal supplies from a luxury interplanetary ship, gets trapped aboard, stranded for possibly many years back on Earth (The ship travels at light speed so it’s your classic case of one year for her is like six back home. Or is it the other way around? You know, that old gem.). The fact that they cover so much story in just three issues is kind of mind boggling. There are many twists and turns and factions and politics that sort of get glaced off of in pursuit of telling the main characters story well. But as I mentioned before, I’d love to spend more time in this world.

  Lastly, they just released the collected Blasfamous by Mika Andolfo. This is the story of a new religion secretly run by demons, using immoral pop stars to turn faith and worship into drugs. It’s a wild concept but also not so far fetched if you’ve ever been around religion in your life (especially here in the states). Just imagine one of those megachurches plus JoJo Siwa. The art is lovely and borders on cartoonish with big spreads depicting angels and demons in battle. The story was fun but once again I was a little lukewarm on the ending. (It falls into the cliche I think a lot of big heady stuff like this falls into. High fantasy, sci-fi, cosmic stuff, it all gets to a point where it’s so out there that only a mcguffin of twisted internal logic, a special sword, a spell, the right code, can reset the story stakes arms race that had been going on beforehand. In comics, it’s usually in stories with cosmic multiversal enemies like The Anti-Monitor or Eternity) Other than that, I liked it a lot. It was the weakest of these three so far but I still had a great time. 

  That does it for their collected editions, so I’m gonna quickly run through my favs of the #1’s they’ve put out. Now, for these, I’ve only read the first issue. So if the ending sucks, I’m sorry, I’m waiting for the hardcover. 

   Let’s start with my favorite, White Boat by Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla. I don’t have many fears (some would say I have almost a complete lack of self preservation) but one big fear I have is water. The last six times I’ve been in a body of water, I’ve almost drowned. So we have an understanding now and I stay on dry land. (I’m even nervous in the shower at this point) So, I cannot think of a worse place to be when a Lovecraftian nightmare kicks in than on a cruise ship in open ocean. I’ve liked almost everything I’ve read by Scott Snyder (I wasn’t big on Dark Knight: Metal or The Batman Who Laughs) and he has scared me before with a comic I previously mentioned he did with Jock called Wytches. But this one feels like it’s targeted at me. Plus the Hellboy-esque, tattoo worthy art really adds to the atmosphere with it’s thick line work and jagged edges. (If you’re thinking of getting almost cliche tentacle tatttoos, get it in this style instead to mix it up) I’m really excited to see where this one goes. (And if anyone has an unsigned copy of the seven inch they put out with this book they can spare, slide into my DMs.)

  Next up, Life by Brian Azzarrello, Stephane Philips, and art by Danijel Zezelj (again, so sorry if I mispronounced any of those names. I’m hopelessly white). Now, this looks like any other DSTLRY release except, what’s this? *flips book around* What the hell? Which side is the front? Up is down? Topsy turvy. This is actually a cool way to tell the same story from to different angles. One side from the perspective of a band of criminals looking for a score on what they think is an abandoned planet and the other side from the perspective of the mutant prisoners on that planet, with the two stories meeting in the middle. I have the first two issues of this because I think this (for lack of a better word) gimmick is so interesting. That’s why I love small publishers. They have the freedom to experiment with the format in a way the big two would never. Gimmick aside, it’s a cool villain on villian story that I’m actually gonna collect all six issues of. That’s like 12 stories! (Talk about bang for your buck)

  Lastly, let’s talk about Spectregraph by James Tyrion IV and art by Christian Ward. Like White Boat, this is another horror book, this time set around a billionaires mansion (at least it’s on land this time) and the cult dedicated to whatever he’s building in there (insert Tom Waits reference here). These billionaires are always up to no good. They are not to be trusted. In fact, let’s update the board. (*adds billionaires to earlier rule*) The art is surreal yet crisp and like White Boat, really sells how unnatural all the goings on are. This real estate agent (and all around terrible mom) is in deep shit for sure. (Although, the housing market is so bad, I’m sure I know a few people who would take the house, murderous cult and all, if they could get it for cheap) I hope this gets collected soon so I can really spend some time in this unsettling mansion. 

  Those three are just my favorites but honestly, every book that’s come out so far has been good to great. I can’t wait to see what comes next. They’ve recently announced (or released depending on when I put this up) a few holiday one shots and have teased some upcoming books that all look intriguing, even if I’m not familiar with any of the names attached. But that’s actually what I would like to see from DSTLRY. Don’t get me wrong. I can think of a few names I’d love to see do books for them. I’m thinking Sean Murphy, Crom, Alexis Zeritt, Ben Passmore, Kelley Sudiconik, Andrew MacLean, etc. But the DSTLRY M.O. is great for new talent. You don’t have to worry about a new team tanking sales on a popular character or shoehorning their take into a bigger continuity and 3-5 issues is relatively not too big a commitment to take a chance. DSTLRY is what the world needs more of. Less big, risk adverse companies, churning out sequels and remakes and more smaller companies taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy (to paraphrase Miss Frizzle). It’s been a banger year of books and I can’t wait for more (even if I’m very skeptical of the digital collectible side of things).

  Well I think that about does it for this episode of Pitch Please. What are your thoughts? Have you read any of these books? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Let me know in the comments along with any other comics talk you want. Do all that normal YouTube stuff with the liking and subscribing and shit and I’ll see you in the next one where we will talk about film photography. But until then, death to the algorithm.

Dying Onstage

Not so long ago, I was lucky enough to get this record a week early when I took the three hour road trip with my friend down to Cleveland to see one of three “secret” shows Bright Eyes was playing with Neva Dinova. Unfortunately, after a solid opening set by Neva Dinova, Bright Eyes came out and, well, Conor was fucked up. He had blown out his voice to the point of barely being able to talk, much less sing, he couldn’t remember lyrics, had real guitar tech problems and eventually after a set cut short, sat on an amp and talked about wanting to to kill himself. It was a truly depressing night and I guess I just wanna talk it out. So let’s get into this new album and what it’s like to watch someone you admire fall apart live on stage. Let’s start with the record, Five Dice, All Threes. Musically, this record is full of upbeat and midtempo songs that occasionally breakout into bombastic guitars and big pounding drums. One of the lead singles, Bells and Whistles, sounds like it could be a Target ad. Aside from that though, the bouncy tunes mostly work for me. One of my favorites, Rainbow Overpass, feels like a mature version of The City Has Sex with its fuzzed punk sound that pushes the song forward with enough energy to pogo to if you felt like it. Really, that’s something you could say for most of the record. It’s a more mature and experienced version of a band that has been around for awhile now. Gone are the days of basement tapes and lofi jams or of sprawling poetic stomp alongs. Instead we have the tight production similar to that of their pervious record Down in the Weeds, that is from musicians that are focused and have plenty of experience to draw from. The biggest change might be that Conor has abandoned the over compressed, tightly double tracked sound on his voice, that I personally never a fan of, to return to a more naturalistic sound. A very welcome change if you ask me. To contrast with the joyous tunes (there are two or three slow, piano heavy songs, but even they have extra instrumentation and production experimentation that keeps them from being straight forward sad piano songs), lyrically this record is cynical, nihilistic and most of all vicious. Conor seems to feel like all the warnings he sang about on previous records have come to fruition and the people who are supposed to guide us, save us and give us hope have betrayed us. One such target is religion especially with songs like Hate, where Conor rails against all the conmen who have taken advantage of the downtrodden and led us to this special hell we have built for ourselves called the 21st century. He also seems to be grappling with getting older. This may be me projecting (I am writing and recording this a day before my 36th birthday so age is on my mind) but it feels like he’s going through something a lot of people loosely acted into the millennial generation are feeling. Amongst most my friends, there’s always been a sense that we wouldn’t make it this far. We all seemed to privately come to the conclusion that we would kick the bucket or the world would end by the time we were thirty and for too many of us, that was true. But for those of us that are still around, we didn’t really plan this far ahead and, frankly, judging by the state of things, it would have been pointless to try. It’s a fucked up and idiotic world out there and most of the time it doesn’t feel like there’s anything worth saving. We are tired and angry. Two of the main ingredients for hopelessness. And this record drips with that hopelessness and a failure to find a way to cope. Which brings us to the not so secret warm up show at Beechland Ballroom. After getting an email with a link to tickets, my close friend and I got ourselves an airbnb (we’re old and can no longer drive three hours, see a show and drive back in one go) and headed down to Cleveland. As I said, Neva Dinova opened, playing some stuff off of their new record Canary, and it was a solid set. The songs were great to sway in place to and they caught and kept the audiences attention, which is no easy task when people are there for one specific act. Everything was added up to have the potential for a special night. The Beechland holds maybe 400 people, so it’d be the smallest venue I’d ever seen Bright Eyes in (Fun fact. The only other time I’ve been to the Beechland Ballroom was to see IDLES and not long after, they wrote a song about it. Or at least titled a song Beechland Ballroom). It was also a warm up show so maybe they’d play some songs they hadn’t played in awhile or have some fun stage banter while they figured stuff out. It’s not often you get to see such a big artist in such an intimate setting, so the crowd was tingling. Unfortunately, after a couple of songs, a bucket of cold water was thrown on that excitement. From the beginning, you could hear something was up with Conors voice. It wasn’t its normal cathartic broken sound but something much more painful sounding. Apparently, he blew it out in the six days of practice leading up to the shows and the band has since canceled several dates on orders from a doctor (They actually just cancelled their shows for the rest of the year and honestly, the more I thought about it, it’d be terrifying to be a singer songwriter and be in danger of losing your voice. So here’s to a speedy recovery). Very unfortunate but ultimately the right call and if that’s all that was wrong it still would have been a good show (I can relate to this though as in the past, the less people in the audience, the harder I went in my bands and I was guilty of leaving it all on the field during practice). Unfortunately, in what seemed like an effort to self medicate, Conor ended up pretty drunk. As the show progressed, he stumbled through some of their biggest songs, forgetting lyrics, skipping whole sections of the set and by the end, letting the touring members of the band sing for him while he sat, head in hands, on his amp. There were at least ten minutes that he stopped the show and spent on a distortion pedal that didn’t seem to be working. He stumbled around, rambling and apologizing and in one too real moment talked about killing himself. After which he had to be reprimanded by Mike Mogis for brining it up on stage. The crowd morphed into a friend watching someone they care about lose a fight with addiction. We were watching someone who at some point in our lives gave us the strength to carry on, die on stage before our eyes. I don’t think anyone left there feeling hopeful for the future. This would be bad enough if this was a one off occasion but unfortunately, it seems to be happening more and more and not just with Bright Eyes. The last time I saw Bright Eyes was at the Masonic Temple a few years back and at that show Conor was also almost too drunk to stand. At that show he also had dark rambled banter about being in the hospital and wanting to die. He even hurt his wrist falling off he stage at one point. It was a mess. I believe that tour ended in flames, if I recall. Online, comments suggest this is a typical Bright Eyes show. He’s always been this way, they say. That’s not the defense you think it is. In fact that makes it much worse. This pattern of addiction is not sustainable in the long term and you can’t help but wonder why it’s continuing. I’ve seen Conor play with some of his other bands and he seemed simply happier and more engaged (I’ve actually seen Conor play eight times. Four with Bright Eyes, twice with Desaparcidos, and twice with the Mystic Valley Band. He was definitely the most relaxed with the latter). If this band is leading you to your worst instincts and addictions and your addictions keep you from doing essentially what is your job, maybe you just gotta stop. But what can we do as fans? I don’t know Conor Oberst. Aside from a handshake and a few pleasantries, I don’t know him from Adam. As fans are we doomed to watch as someone important to us slowly marches to their grave? Is it the most that we can hope for that someone close to him can help and not just watch? I don’t know the answer I just know something has to change. Too many artist are melting down and cracking to the pressure. Bright Eyes and Conor are just the one I’m most familiar with but evenly we’ve seen a spat of folks lose it onstage. We are killing our idols in the most literal way. But I’m sure that Oasis reunion will be smooth sailing. I know no one from the band will ever see this (I mean, I’m averaging what? 30 views a video?), but if I could talk to Conor, I’d say this. What are you doing man? It seems like this thing, this band, is killing you. So stop. Get some help. Just as an outside observer/long time fan, if the choice is between churning out a few more albums and tours where two out of three shows are passable until you burn out (to borrow a phrase from another doomed poet type I’m a fan of) and quitting but living longer, I’d take the latter every time. The world is better with you in it. And you’re right. Those who are in power, and especially the ones you’ve championed in the past, have betrayed our whole generation. They took our hope for change and used it to profit from the status quo. But you can’t let that send you down the spiral of nihilism because that only benefits the bastards. Use that betrayal to motivate you to help build a better world without the people you’re railing against on this and other records. You’ve written some amazing songs about the problems in this world and the pain it causes. You should stick around to write the anthems of the better world we are gonna build together and tell the stories of how we got there. You don’t want to make music anymore? Fine. Sculpt, paint, garden, write a novel, fly a kite, anything. Just stick around cause the world needs someone watching and holding them to the flame. It needs you. We are all rooting for you. Feel better. Anyway, that about covers it. What do you think? What is the responsibility of fans if their favorite artist is obviously unwell? Did you listen to this record? What’d you think? Let’s talk about it in the comments and as always, death to the algorithm.

DC Talk (My Adventures with Superman & Crisis On Infinite Earths Pt. 3 Review)

   Man, remember when Superman liked being Superman? Crazy. There’s a lot going on with DC movies and shows recently even if it seems like a quiet year. I just finished season two and I loved it. I also finished Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 3 from the Tomorrowverse and, controversially, I liked it. But it did have me thinking about the future DC and the James Gunn of it all. So let’s get into it.

  Let me start by gushing about My Adventures with Superman. (Actually before I start, hi it’s me. Future Editing Jason. Just wanted to say I’m gonna be popping in throughout the video to add stuff I either forgot to say or, since these videos take me awhile to edit due to a poor work life balance, stuff I think is relevant that has happened since filming. It’s like a bad version of Pop Up Video. Fuck I’m old.) If you haven’t even it, MAWS is a anime inspired take on Superman currently on Max. Season one shows the sweet origin of Clark Kent becoming Superman and falling for fellow rookie reporter Louis Lane. If you’re familiar with Superman at all, it’s nothing completely new. And yet, the hopeful vibes and bright visuals were just what I needed in dark times. That plus some small twists to the lore were enough to really make me fall in love with this show over the course of the first season and season two only leaned into those things more. 

  Writing a review for something like this is always hard because there’s not much else to say except that it’s really good. (The same goes for Batman The Caped Crusader, which I have watched since filming this. Maybe I should make a whole video on it but the gist of my review would be that it’s great. The shows creators really display just how well they understand the Batman characters by bending and changing them just enough while still keeping the core of the character intact. I should just make that video, fuck) It sometimes gets a little too corny and sacrhine for me but that’s less a dig at the show and more because I’m a bitter old man. This kind of Superman story is exactly the kind I want to see. One where he saves the day not just with his fist, although the fight scenes are fantastic, but by just being a good dude. He solves problems heart first. His tragedy in this show is while he wants to be human, he knows he’s not and is scared not just of what he might have come from but not being accepted by those he loves, which is as human as it gets. 

  In this second season specifically, while I didn’t love the characterization of Brianiac, I did love the idea of him being a rogue AI built to wage war and when his creators started to not desire to wage war anymore, he destroyed them. It’s a good thing we aren’t arming AI powered robots. That’d be dumb. (Deep sigh) Tha choice also leads to having a brainwashed Supergirl be a villain, a twist I thought worked really well. Can’t wait to see more of her in the future, if there are more coming, which we will get into in a second. 

  Overall it just feel nice to have a light hearted time watching Superman be a light to humanity, chill with his friends, and navigate normal human stuff just with superhuman shenanigans thrown in to muck up the works. On the other end of that spectrum, I finished the third and final part of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the big finale of the animated continuity known as the Tomorrowverse. Let me tell you, folks on the internet absolutely hate the Tomorrowverse and I don’t get it. Is it perfect or as good as the animated universe that came before it? No. But that is a bit of an unfair comparison. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start by talking about this three parter first.

  Of the three parts of Crisis, this part comes a close second to the first, if that makes sense. Its flaws are flaws that I have with the whole of the Tomorrowverse so I’ll instead talk about the ending which I liked a lot. I don’t normally go for the big cosmic stuff in comics or comic movies. At a certain point it gets just too far out there to make sense to me usually losses the plot a bit. One second everyone is teaming up to save the multiverse and the next thing you know, Superman is blowing into a cosmic bugle or some shit. It’s just not for me. But this flick, eventually, made it pretty clear what happened. Constantine broke the one universe into a million by essentially killing baby space Hitler and the only way to fix it was to condense it back into one universe. After trying literally everything else (can you imagine being a normal person on one of these Earths? Just teleporting in and out of space and time every few months. And it seemed they were still going to work which is wild to me. I’m really never gonna get to retire if that’s how this place works.). I thought it was a really neat and tidy creative way to end a continuity. 

  But let’s talk about those flaws. Where this movie and the whole of the Tomorrowverse in general fell short for me wasn’t in the animation style, which grew on me after a movie or two. I think the main fatal flaw was a lack of focus on one character at a time. Starting in Man of Tomorrow, in which a Superman story is suddenly spread into a shared story with Martian Manhunter, all the way to Crisis which at times feels aimless as it floats between the perspective of Supergirl, Psycho Pirate and Constantine. (I get why they did this for this particular trilogy and overall liked the execution but I just wish it handed it off between movies a bit smoother) Every movie in the Tomorrowverse save one, The Long Halloween, is about multiple characters. Green Lantern has Adam Strange, Supergirl has The Legion in the future, Warworld is basically three short films. It never really goes deep enough. The reason I love the DCAU was because hey spent seven years telling stories that built up a deep love of each character. In the end, this rush to the end of the multiverse may not even be the filmmakers fault. 

  There are ten movies spread over just four years for the Tomorrowverse. That breakneck pace I can’t help but feel comes from the incoming change in leadership. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to see what James Gunn does with DC and all signs point to me loving his Superman for all the reasons I loved MAWS. But it definitely feels like the Tomorrowverse had a tight wrap up to make room for the all new, completely connected DC universe and it suffered for it. (I am excited for Creature Commandos though. I just wish it was an animated movie instead of a show.) Now, if I could talk to James Gunn, I’d only hope to remind him (or tell him if he doesn’t already know) that the animated teams behind these movies have been churning out good to great animated movies for 20+ years all while the live action movies, let’s call it like it is, sucked ass. In fact, they were sometimes so good that it made it even more frustrating that their live action counterparts were so bad. It seemed to me so obvious that you should be able to just tell the stories in the way the animated universe was doing it just with real people. It’s right there! So I hope Mr. Gunn is talking to these creatives and is keeping them around to make more movies. Hell, give them a promotion and let them write a live action movie. (Same goes for comic book writers. Seems a no brainer to bring in the people who write for these characters for years to do a movie. Which I think James Gunn is doing with Tom King but, well, Tom King is a whole other can of worms.) They deserve it for carrying DC stories through some dark times. 

  But I’m just some nerd who loves these characters (probably a little too much since I cried at the end of MAWS) and just desperately for the world to see them in all their glory. But what did you think? Am I wrong about the Tomorrowverse? Are you excited for what’s next from DC? Let me know about it below and I’ll see you next time. And as always, death to the algorithm.

Deadpool & Wolverine & Doom

   Hey Bub. Have you seen Deadpool and Wolverine yet? Well, it made almost a quarter billion dollars in four days, so if not, you’re the only one. Yes, Ryan Reynolds is back with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine to pull off a magic trick and “save the MCU” just in time for Kevin Feige to announce RDJ is coming back but as Doctor Doom? Directed by the Russo brothers? Wait. What’s happening? Let’s talk about it.

  Let’s start with the good stuff. The third installment of anything is hard to pull off, especially in comedy. By the third time seeing a magic trick, you’re usually over it and asking, what else you got? (Not to contradict myself but there is literally something called the Rule of Threes in comedy. So maybe this point will be more salient when the enviable Deadpool 4 comes out) Yet, D&W mostly pulls it off. By all logic, Deadpool should be a character too shallow to maintain a franchise but Ryan Reynolds has found a way to elevate the crass, dick and balls humor do the turn of the century teen boy comedy into genuinely funny rapid satire. Reynolds has somehow evolved from Van Wilder to the Puck of the MCU.

  I think there are two aspects to D&W and the Deadpool movies as a whole that keep the magic alive and they may seem contradictory at first glance. Basically, the folks that made this movie do two things right, they don’t take things too seriously and the that Deadpool very seriously. 

  For the Merc with the Mouth, everyone and everything are a target for ridicule. The MCU and franchise film making in general need you to believe that each movie, show and connected installment is just as important as the last so you won’t skip a single one. But for Deadpool, nothing is sacred. So his movie has no problem pointing at the slumping box office numbers elephant in the room. At the same time, while it treats IP films as comedic foder, it serves as a send off of previous iterations of Marvel movies and realizes that while these films aren’t sacred, they are special to people. The pre-MCU movies worked their way through shitty movie execs, bad sets, early CGI and host of other problems to lay the foundation that the MCU would build its empire on. Hell, Kevin Fiege got his start working on some of those movies. 

  When it comes to what I didn’t like about the flick, there’s really not much. Some of the jokes are a little inside baseball but hey, I play this baseball. So it worked for me. (Another thing I didn’t like that has come up in the aftermath of this movie, and this relates to the rest of the video, is that after all the cameos went over so well, there are rumors galore of bringing actors back to play these characters again. I just wish execs could let things die and move on. Wesley Snipes was already Blade and the whole fucking joke was that Channing Tatum didn’t get to make that Gambit movie. Move on! I fell like I’m talking to an ex.) For a brief shining moment, it seemed like the MCU was back to taking chances and having fun. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes. But that new found faith was shaken once Hall H came around. 

  I want to preface this by saying, I love RDJ. I think he’s a great actor and could absolutely crush playing Dr. Doom. That is, he could if he hadn’t already played Iron Man for 10+ years. I know what some of you are saying, “In the comics Iron Man becomes Doom.” But that is a subversion of an already established Doom. A twist on a familiar character. Doom has yet to have that solid foundation in the MCU so it feels less like a twist and more like a step back. A retreat in perceived safety. D&W works because, while it’s a warm familiar vibe for Deadpool, it’s a fresh exciting feeling for the MCU as a whole. Whereas bringing back RDJ and the Russos feels less like an exciting story opportunity and more the decision of a scared executive hoping to get more milk from that cash cow. 

  I’m sure whatever meddling exec that backed up that money truck to bring back the dream team isn’t thrilled with the lukewarm response but in the end, all that matters to them is the boxffice. From my perspective, I wish Marvel would take the Tom Holland route more seriously often. No offense to Mr. Holland but, I had never heard of him before Spider-Man and now he is Spider-Man. Find young unknowns sign them for a decade of movies and nurture their talent (and bank accounts) to serve the character. Make the MCU into an incubator for gifted youths *Xmen theme* so they can hone their craft on a large stage, like SNL or The Daily Show. (I spent way too long learning that riff on guitar just for that bit) But that takes investment and long term thinking. Not exactly what movie execs are known for. (Just see the recent rumors about the final Spiderverse film. Fucking suits.)

  But I guess only time will tell. I hope it works out because I like these dumb movies and want them to be good. But at the very least, if it is bad maybe Deadpool can make fun of it in ten years. Until next time, death to the algorithm.

Pitch Please: Jazz

  Hello and welcome to Pitch Please! It’s a show where I give you a guided tour of a rabbit hole you might not have fallen down…yet. Today we are talking about Americas original art form, Jazz.
  So I know what you’re thinking,
  "Jazz? Isn’t that just for old men? I mean I knew you were old but not that old. I thought you were a punk."
  You’re right. I am old. Thanks for bringing that up. And I am a punk, but I, like anyone interesting, like and listen to a WIDE variety of music. There’s 1500 records here. If they were all punk records, it’d get dull pretty fast.
  I got into jazz in the 6th grade when, after a story too dark for the internet, I first discovered music as more than just something to have on in the background. It was really the first time I consciously decided to really get into something. And I figured, if I was gonna be a music obsessive, I should start at the beginning and the beginning of modern music for me was jazz.
  Now obviously there was music being made in America before jazz. There was ragtime, classical, blues, folk, etc. But jazz came about just as the technology to record music was invented and the LP, which is a format we still have today, was popularized which meant it spread far and fast for the time. That plus the touring vaudeville shows and being born in the port city of New Orleans meant it became Americas first cultural export. By taking European classical music that these early jazz pioneers had been trained in and mixing it with musical traditions born of the slave trade, (of course it goes back to slavery. This is an AMERICAN art form after all) these black musicians (love to burst any of the racist bubbles out there but yes, jazz was created by black folks. So was rock n roll and hip hop and techno and really almost everything else worth talking about in American culture. They made it and folks that look like me stole it, which seems to be our legacy. But I digress) created a new form of music that could not be created anywhere but here. Best of all, it was party music.
  When I worked midnights at 7-11 (something I’m sure I’ll bring up too much on this channel) I used to play music all night trough a shitty set of speakers in the corner. I’d plug in my iPod and try to drown out the infinitely idiotic general public as they shambled in throughout the night. In the morning was when the crowd switched from drunks and junkies to folks coming in for their morning coffee. One morning, one of my regulars (a woman who got an extra large French vanilla coffee, two packs of Pall Mall red shorts, a paper and had a son with a heroin problem) came in and heard me listening to jazz. She made the mistake of saying that all jazz sounded the same. (This seems to be a common sentiment seeing as I also was in a band briefly with a drummer who said all jazz used the same drum beat. He didn’t last long. In the band or in life if I recall after taking one too many percosets and driving off a bridge) Seeing this as an educational opportunity, for the next few weeks, I played a different type of jazz every morning at work. It made for some interesting mornings.
  The fact that there are so many ways to play jazz is why it caught fire across the globe. It was a truly NEW music. Completely new things RARELY happen. Imagine turning on the radio and the DJ plays a song that sounds like absolutely nothing that came before. It’s a whole new approach to arranged sound. And most importantly, it gets you fucking moving. You’d flip out too. The last time that might of happened was when people started making music with computers. This variety is one of the things that attracts me to jazz. You can always go deeper and find something new to love. There is a subgenre of jazz for every occasion. Rainy night, feeling lonely? Cool jazz. Looking to freak out? Free jazz. Wanna dance? Dixieland or swing. Cocktail party or anime about a space bounty hunter? Bebop. There’s always something new around the corner.
  That playability that allows jazz to be shaped and morphed into new and exciting things make it, along with the blues, the root of all the music I love that comes after it. The improvisational nature of the guitar solo or jam band wouldn’t exist without jazz. You can draw a direct line from Louie Armstrong to The Stooges and from there, all of punk rock (Louie Armstrong to Miles Davis to Coltrane to The Stooges for those of you who want me to show my work).
  A few years after I became a music nerd, I also started down a path to become a musician. This is also around the time YouTube came into existence. (Again, yes, I know, I’m old) Let me tell you, I would spend hours watching jazz drummers like Buddy Rich and Max Roach and just thinking to myself, I am never gonna be this good. Jazz musicians have an UNREAL amount of talent. The complex timings, the inventive song structures, and the improv skills! They’re unmatched in any other music genre. Honestly, if you’re just starting out making music like I was, it might be best to brace yourself or risk being discouraged. It’s probably almost as discouraging as seeing a child prodigy that’s leagues better than you when you’ve been playing for multiple decades.
  So if I’ve convinced you to give jazz a shot, great. I’m gonna give you some record recommendations in a second but first I’m gonna give you some advice on HOW to listen to jazz. Because that variety, while amazing, can also make jazz seem daunting and impenetrable. People will hear something labeled jazz and assume, like my former customer and former bandmate, that it all sounds like that so they must not like it. What’s important to do, not just with jazz by the way but any art you trying to get into, is to find what you like about what you’re listening to and, just as importantly, what you don’t like. With all that in mind, let’s go through some tentpole albums and artist and from there you’ll be able to drill down into the subgenres you like.
  At the forefront of almost all movements in jazz you’ll find one artist that is out there pushing the boundary. We are talking about, of course, Miles Davis. Miles Davis started off in the 40’s in a group led by the great Charlie Parker (someone else you should listen to), he quickly struck out on his own and started pioneering new evolutions in jazz. I’m gonna recommend two very different albums here to highlight the breath of his output. The first being his first outing as a bandleader, and probably my favorite jazz album?, The Birth of Cool. It helped spawn cool jazz (go figure) and just kinda has everything you want from jazz. It’s got fast numbers and drum solos, slow songs to be romantic to, and just a great warm production that falls just perfectly between early rough recordings that are tin-y and harsh and more modern production that can be too surgical and sterile. The last song, Darn That Dream, is one of my personal favorites and was on many a mix CD I made for high school crushes.

  On the other side of the Miles Davis spectrum, we have the 1970 album Bitches Brew which is a landmark piece in jazz fusion. A four sided, 93 minute sprawling freakout, Bitches Brew is music that makes me wish I did drugs. I mean, the dude puts his trumpet through a wah pedal. It’s a journey but a fun and freaky one so hit the lights and just go with it.

  Next up, we have a member of Miles Davis’ band, John Coltrane who pioneered his own evolutions in jazz which I’m sure Miles was perfectly fine to share the spotlight for. (Only one of them was worshiped as a god though, sooo…) Coltrane was one of the greatest in hard bop and this is really exemplified on Giant Steps. Almost all of the pieces on this album have become jazz standards. You know it’s good when people have to learn it in school, right? Polyphonic has a video explaining why the title track alone is so revolutionary and he explains it much better than I could. What I will say is it’s a great record for a summer backyard hang. From Giant Steps we have the evolution of Coltrane himself into a post bop era with A Love Supreme. If Giant Steps is a backyard summer hang, this is a midnight deep conversation hang. It’s cool and confident and just feels like a record from a man trying to shine his light for all to see.

 

 

  Coltrane for me though is at his coolest when he’s pioneering free jazz. Which is why I’m gonna recommend the record Interstellar Space. Another chaotic album full of long tracks made to be put on as a soundtrack to your own inward exploration. This record opens you up to a tempo-less soundscape made by artist pushing their instruments to do things they were not deigned to do. Plus it’s the only time I’ve ever like sleigh bells.

 

  There are countless jazz musicians I could recommend further like Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday (who is one of a handful of artist that if you don’t enjoy I think there might be something medically wrong with you), and on and on. Honestly all of them worthy of having their own dedicated video. Luckily, with jazz, all these artist were constantly playing with each other. So if you find someone you like, you can follow them around and you most likely bump into the rest. But I’d like to leave you with someone very special to me, Thelonious Monk.
  Thelonious Sphere Monk was a composer and pianist unlike any other. His improvisations were confounding, his compositions eclectic. You never knew where on the keys he was going and that is thrilling. And yet, the result is soothing and inviting. So much so that a lot of his original works have become jazz standards. It’s music that as you hear it, makes you want to know the mind that could think like this. A mind that could compose like this and take two seemingly disjointed ideas and fit them together so beautifully. All this makes Monk one of my favorite musicians of all time. Plus, he’s got such a cool name. Thelonious Sphere Monk? Come on!
  There are two records I’d recommend if you’re looking to get into Monk. First is Solo Monk. I’m a sucker for simplicity. Just an artist, their instrument and their song. No fancy production tricks, no band to hide behind. Just them and their composition, straight down the barrel of a microphone. That is exactly what you get with this record. And also with this record by Art Tatum. Recorded secretly at a party. No frills. Just a great artist doing what he does best. Perfect for a rainy day or late night.

  On the other end of the Monk spectrum is this record, Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane (Remember him? I told you they all bump into each other). What’s great about Monk playing in a group is his ability to play in the spaces where the other members aren’t. He plays almost against the others, filling in the gaps in a way that teeters on discordant in a way that makes his playing stand out but never tipping into complete noise. He’s still playing with the band but doing it while playing where they’re not. It’s something I try to keep in mind whenever I’m playing with anyone (Even though I play a very different type of music). How can I play something unique while elevating the song and everyone else playing? It’s a very hard thing to do but always does it with style and here’s he’s doing it with another giant of the jazz world. What a treat.

  And with that I think we’ve come to the end of the first episode of Pitch Please. I hope this is just your first step on a journey of loving jazz. If you’re already a jazz freak, let me know some of your favorite records down in the comments. Do all the normal YouTube, social media things of course. If you are interested in reading this rant instead of having to stare at my ugly mug, I’m gonna post this script as a blog with embedded songs so you can hear what I’m talking about without me getting a copyright strike. I’ll link it in the notes below. Stay tuned for more as I record them, and as always, death to the algorithm.