The Spy Next Door (2010)

Title  The Spy Next Door (2010)

Who's it for?: Kids who grew up with Operation Condor and First Strike and wish Jackie Chan was their dad.  The female fans who grew up with Jackie Chan's martial arts films and would like to see him be a parent. Maybe fans of True Lies and Kindergarten Cop who thought why not see an Asian person also do Arnold Schwartzeneggar's turn from action to family stories?

Who made it?:  Director Brian Levant, writers Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer and Gregory Poirier

Where is it?: Amazon

Length: 1:33:42  Like an hour and a half

I grew up watching Jackie Chan in movies, and it was always with extreme guilt that I rooted for his English speaking capability to grow. It's really my responsibility to learn some Chinese so I can better appreciate his earlier films like Sammo Hung's Wheels on Meals with the steering wheel prop used in a fight that led to a similar sequence in Rush Hour later.

The Spy Next Door delivered some classic acrobatic stunts that we've seen before but recontextualized the action within Bob Ho's mission to quit being an international spy and just get married and live a happy life in America.  The film gently delivers a blunt message that Chinese or Hong Kong to American people are not the Chinese government and do want the same things in life that we all want.  Outside of protecting company secrets or government or military strategies, 

For those of us who wanted more lines for Jackie Chan in Kung Fu Panda and more character beats in general for him in his movies, The Spy Next Door completely delivered that sweet fan service. There is a date scene where he as Bob woos a gallery artist who is already a mother of children.  He then attempts to win the love and respect of her children who then treat the relationship oddly like a competition.  I sort of forgive the lazy writing since it's an action movie but there are more character scenes than usual.

Ultimately I think it's the Rush Hour action to keep the kids safe that wins them over more than the parenting lectures in the style of Kindergarten Cop, but Bob Ho is very verbal and likable throughout the character scenes.  Chan has another "I hate English" blooper during the credits, but he succeeded at several wordy monologues in his second language.  How many of us can do that?  I'm still saving up for some Pimsleurs Mandarin CDs.

Bob Ho as a parental figure is a charismatic narcissist trying to verbally teach discipline while speeding through the organizational and transportation related chores of the day.  I feel kind of guilty admitting how enjoyable it is to hear him sing a lullabye to the youngest child in Chinese, and the movie team knows I secretly wanted a moment like this from Jackie Chan so there's more than one lullabye scene.  He acknowledges the emotional needs of the family somewhat while attempting to hide his spy job from them. The restaurant scene is fairly good too if full of written cliches.  The teacher conference is where my suspension of disbelief snaps-- I think the kids' mom should have gone instead and the scene should have failed the Bechdel test to deliver a report card conversation about how the family feels about Bob's contributions to their daily life.  Or have information he learned about them revealed to their principal who is so well played by Esodie Geiger that I wish they had swapped casting so Billy Ray Cyrus could be the principal and Esodie Geiger could be life saving law enforcement backup in the climactic fight.

The Russian spies in this film are almost too scary for a family film with their believable fight choreography and prop use albeit with somewhat cartoony dialects. Talking sounded cheesy but the meaning of their plans was an effective hyperbole about oil spill cleanup.  Chemicals used are not really this bad when they destroy shoes over time, but sped up for the weapon demonstration they made me want to look up the environment effects of oil spills and cleanup procedures. 

I should probably talk about Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez appearing in the crime plot as spy ally and traitor respectively, but I really don't want to.  There's maybe one good turncoat moment from Lopez.  Cyrus lacked character and sense of purpose, just there because there's a point in cop stories when you have to call for backup, and this time he's the guy.  Let's talk about the pet turtle instead.

I can't remember when a turtle appeared in previous Jackie Chan films, but Chan completely perfected his turtle gag for this film. It's a longer battle of holding the turtle, moments when it reaches out with it's neck and gets bite-happy.  I like the actual animal enough to forgive the pent up men in this world who are too obsessed with them. 

The film's one weak point is the kid characters, both due to shallow writing and maybe directing choices leading to weak performances.  I laughed the hardest at an entitled, "I'm going to make those kids like me."  Bob Ho reminded me of Arnold Schwartzeneggar in Kindergarten Cop and also in True Lies at the same time. The adversarial nature of the children shows weak writing and weaker directing, but they do have an arc where the oldest daughter as leader changes her mind and respects Bob, the middle child finds ways to be strong and take care of himself, and even the youngest child has a moment of success in defending the house from intruders.

The weight of the kid plot in the script goes to Madeleine Carroll as teen daughter Farren.  She's most convincing in the restaurant scene [change focus from Bob checks if she is being asked out to what Farren accomplished in the scene.]  It's more irritating when she both starts the arc of the kids not accepting Bob and at the emotional climax when she begs her mother to not reject him.  I'm not sure whether it's more the script or her emotional communication.  It's definitely the script's fault that all the goals she is involved in are about dating [check one and Bob has to win her over to marry her mother, resulting in the trope of a wannabe parent quasi-dating his intended child.  It feels unhealthy and why can't she have meaningful goals he encourages her to take further on her own without a boyfriend, or show her already dating a chosen partner, or test whether Bob is OK with supporting her choosing a girlfriend or something?

It doesn't have to be a critically acclaimed movie to be super fun.  Despite its flaws, The Spy Next Door has a fun stage persona from Jackie Chan and repeats of his best moments with more meaning and charaacter story behind them.  I am sorry this film may have gotten a poor release during Covid, and I don't regret purchasing it to laugh, yell at the TV, and remain in awe of the action.  He's still got great talent as an acrobat, martial artist, and actor, and he's still fun to watch.

Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing and Hope

Title: Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope
Who's it for?: Queer Eye fans, black and gay or nonbinary folks, 

Who made it?: Karamo Brown with Jancee Dunn

Where is it?: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookstores

Length: 305 pgs.

Karamo Brown’s memoir shares his cultural identity and healing journey on his life’s path to becoming a social worker and mentor appearing on the TV show Queer Eye to help people make positive and permanent lifestyle changes starting from within.

Before stating, “I am culture,” in his audition for the reboot of Queer Eye, Karamo Brown had a very strong sense of self and pride in his personal cultural background.  After immigrating to Texas from Jamaica, his parents named him Karamo with a middle name of “rebel” to give him inner courage.  His father taught him to never let anyone else define him but to warmly tell others who he is and why he is OK so they can correct their understanding and see him as warmly as he deserves to be seen.   He eventually found for himself that some other family messages about race, sexual orientation, and addiction were less helpful.  Not everyone around him was receptive to his dreams of  hosting a talk show, dancing like Tisha Campbell Martin in School Daze, or marrying a husband.  However, Karamo was a good student and pursued the opportunities he saw as they became reachable.  He fought for the right to put up the flag and show community spirit to his elementary school principal, was a peer mentor in high school, then pursued business leadership in his mostly white high school and homecoming court at his historically black college where he trained to be a social worker and briefly ran for public office.  He had a crisis of faith, but reconciled Christian beliefs with homosexual orientation without cancelling out any part of himself for good.  He was damaged by patterns of addiction and abuse in his family that were difficult to look at because he was running away from his own feelings on his post-college rise to reality TV stardom on MTV’s The Real World.  From a particularly bad crash into addiction while making public speaking appearances after his season of The Real World ended, he healed when he realised he had a son from his teenage dating life for whom he had to be responsible.  Truly healing was learning to have difficult conversations with himself and improving his parental example for his son and then his second son as his family continued to grow while he continued as a social worker and honed his presenting skills on other shows for OWN and MTV.  He had met his husband and was stabilising a supportive home environment before the big opportunity to be the new culture expert on Queer Eye presented itself.  Having made huge changes in himself and still supported by family and friends, Karamo Brown was ready to broadcast his beliefs about building inner strength for personal healing.  On Queer Eye, he helps the Heroes find the reason they hadn’t changed before and the language to embrace a healthier outlook with which they may love themselves.

A high-spirited manifesto to boost self confidence and promote commitment to a better world.

Yes Daddy : Contains Hyperbolically the Worst Underreported Violent Sex That Could Happen to Gay Men

Title: Yes, Daddy

Who's it for?: Young gay impulsive people who like sex too much maybe.  People who need to spend more time looking at the reality of their party jokes.  Maybe people who thought they had to discard faith entirely to live while gay.  Or people who want to read different perspectives on attention seeking behavior and don’t mind graphic sexual descriptions and toxic relationship examples. 

Who made it?: Jonathan Parks-Ramage

Where is it?: Barnes & Noble

Length: 279 pgs

I can’t read 50 Shades of Grey or watch the films.  I don’t want to identify with a female main character whose first sexual experience is being dominated, manipulated, and controlled by a male partner.  Yes, Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage, has many of the same themes as 50 Shades of Grey, but the main plot contains a relationship between gay men who I can find empathy for without liking them too much, forgetting they are damaged people, or taking psychological damage.  So this book is perhaps the only sex thriller I will ever read because I can stay at a safe distance and not get it on me.

  Conversely, I wonder if this book is a wakeup call about abuse for young men who are told they have to be strong and shown that women are disposable like the abuse only happens to women.  As a result of such toxically masculine thinking, sexual abuse of men is under reported and this book may be serving an important social purpose beyond being scary and provocative entertainment.  Anyone who has experienced sexual trauma would likely be triggered by the graphic descriptions of angry, dominating sex and should steer clear of this one.  As a demisexual woman who has boundaries precluding angry or drunk sex, I found the novel a safe space to meditate on how violence, alcoholism and sex become mixed without having to navigate a real relationship with my personal safety at stake.  The hook was bearable, and I stayed through the BDSM violent sex and normalized sexual harassment of gay men at work for the more important messages about gay men and their fathers, faith and sexuality, and the effects of fame and cancel culture in popular culture on my generation.

Sex sells, but until recently gay relationships were terribly underrepresented in entertainment media.  I’ll admit to being underexperienced in LGBTQIA literature, but on film I’ve seen two narratives of either hidden sexuality with surprising reveals or normalised sweetness and longing for gay relationships to be seen as equally healthy in comparison to straight relationships.  I used to feel like the gay community didn’t need the equivalent to the mass infantilisation of actresses and disposal of female victims that play out in detective stories too frequently.  But men don’t report sexual violence nearly as often as women, and I worry some of them are hiding survivor status due to toxically masculine rules about having to want sex and also be tougher than anything that  happens to them.  The first half of Yes, Daddy is full of domination, alcohol, and drugs.  The book throws out lots of sex, but the sex isn’t fun.  It’s dangerous, and readers are supposed to want the alcohol removed from dating.  Any hint of possible healthy relationships are ignored by Jonah due to the lack of impressing achievement in people his own age.  It’s also upsetting how easy the men around him find pinching Jonah or grabbing him at work well before he meets playwright Richard Shriver and his drunken friends who likewise find it easy to force sexual touch in semi-public spaces like kitchens and private parties.  Jonah is able to get attention from the powerful famous playwright by flirting with his youthful body, and he also has some body image attachment to maintaining his physique throughout the subsequent abuse and control issues he endures as his #MeToo story escalates from fantasy dating into a scandal with drunken parties and a private sex dungeon where he is treated like a discardable toy.  Anything you ever heard tossed out as a casual party joke is played out to show you that verbally creating awfulness just to destroy ideas wouldn’t be funny anymore if it were all real.  Jonah is a victim of toxic masculinity but also of his own lack of empathy for other humans with an inability to seek out healthier relationships.   

Neither the main character nor his famous romantic target approach life the way I do.  Jonah Keller is self absorbed and finds it easy to lie even to the point of ruining his evangelical pastor father’s life.  There are several points wherein Jonah lacks self awareness and I feel like I myself could easily have avoided this whole mess, but like a moth to a flame he decides he can endure abuse for public attention and access to an expensive lifestyle.  He and Richard Shriver both are more power hungry and have worse relationships with their families.  Richard has a stereotypically toxic relationship with his mother which feeds his writing with her rejection that made him an antisocial narcissist who wants to dominate and control younger partners.  Jonah should have had a better childhood by comparison with very involved helicopter parents, but their strict evangelical church destroyed their family union by rejecting homosexuality as a less common norm and leading Jonah’s father to force conversion therapy on him.  Retaliation in both cases led to public scandal and retreat by their children to spaces where they could be as defiantly different from their parents as possible.

I want to believe there already is more acceptance for homosexuality than either Jonah or Richard got from their parents.  I want to believe that both wealthy families and evangelical families are outliers for either too little attention or too many rules respectively.  Lightly mentioned but unresolved are faith communities that are accepting of gay members who are celibate.  Maybe it is too prying to reach a conclusion for everyone who was on an independent spiritual journey between the rise of the Westboro Baptist Church in the late 90s and the federal recognition of same sex marriages in the United States in 2015.  It just seems like a false solution that denies a key part of personal identity and biological and intimacy needs that are not socially conditioned away. To people who live in faith focused communities, Jonah’s arc may make more sense but fall short of a completely satisfactory resolution.

What I identify with the most in this novel is Jonah’s desire to impress a successful person into a productive mentorship or even creative collaboration.  Living in a fame obsessed culture in a capitalist country surrounded by advertising and people’s successes posted on social media, we are absorbing psychological damage to our self worth.  It’s easy to fall into a dream state of thinking you must be happy to be able to be creative.  I still wonder about the balance between pain and joy for people who are actually productive in their creativity.  It’s probably impossible to ever have an equal relationship with someone who intimidates you by always being more professionally accomplished, and if all you know about someone is what they choose to release to reporters, it’s impossible to gauge the true state of their mental health or whether you would be safe in their private company.  Pop culture writing sometimes has a catty and cynical tone, and it wore me down to hear Jonah repeatedly internalising it unto having hollower relationships with the people around him.  I was also saddened by a sidebar mention of child star problems of having early success and early access to alcohol and drugs with better understanding of how to work than how to maintain healthy relationships. We may be sick of cancel culture already, but it seems important to have documented here the currency of attention and the toxic way entertaining lies or hidden true crime stir public outrage and lead the general public to impulsive actions and the cheapening of their relationships with people who are not famous or powerful. 

Harder to endure is the flat othering perspective that it seems gay men have of women in general, though I know I’m not the target audience here.  Other than mothers with control complexes or enabling mothers to take money from, this book has a couple of female enablers who probably know that abuse is happening but don’t want to jeopardise their professional reputation or cut off money from a repeat customer by having Richard investigated.  The healthy relationship Jonah is ignoring with his coworker is connected to an aspiring songwriter who doesn’t have any dialogue but quietly achieves more success in the background than any of the men who are mixing sex and career goals.  It continues to bother me that Jonah casts his mother as equally awful to Richard’s, she shows very little emotional growth when I would have thought she would have been more likely to change than his father, and in the end she is abandoned to the same sort of fulfilment of faith community participation that divided her family.  If she was so willing to finance Jonah’s journey away from her to New York, you would think her final reaction to him and his dad would be more reconciling at the point that Jonah’s father shows growth as a person.

The main lesson in this book, of course, is that recognition comes from your efforts to develop a creative portfolio and business skills to market the work produced.  The substance you bring to a portfolio will outlast any attention seeking stunts or slander of other creators.  I wish, however, that gay men wouldn’t abandon female friends they’re not attracted to as soon as they find a great romantic relationship.  It would be nice to keep a dating free zone for building professional or emotional resilience together in friendship, and I wish it didn’t have to end with college and marriage to romantic partners.  I think whether it’s female friends, church service, or even therapy, cancelling all further contact with an entire group or concept doesn’t build your self worth or resilience.  After the nightmares, the end of Yes, Daddy left me thinking that boundaries can be rebuilt and resilience after bad experiences may be found.  But I’m not sure how many things Jonah cancelled forever.

Who’s it for? Young gay impulsive people who like sex too much maybe.  People who need to spend more time looking at the reality of their party jokes.  Maybe people who thought they had to discard faith entirely to live while gay.  Or people who want to read different perspectives on attention seeking behavior and don’t mind graphic sexual descriptions and toxic relationship examples.  I found a lot to think about, but it was never really for me.

It Never Ends: A Memoir With Nice Memories

Title: It Never Ends: A Memoir With Nice Memories! 

Who's it for?: Best Show fans, Friends of Tom, music geeks, creative underdogs, people who live with depression, New Jersey scene kids of the 80s and 90s, arcade addicts of the 70s

Who made it?: Tom Scharpling

Where is it?: Amazon!

Length: 279 pgs

Radio comic and television writer Tom Scharpling embodies the spirit of New Jersey as he recovers from depression while learning to write for television in tandem with his weekly comedy improv platform show in his comedic memoir.

Tom Scharpling grew up in New Jersey with a family of independent entrepreneurs and access to the New York music scene in the late 1970s through early 90s.  His childhood includes great adventures like setting high scores at pinball, a family court battle against arcade bullies, watching a classmate attempt to score a switchblade in Times Square while going to see Billy Joel in 1983 and even auditioning for The New Monkees! He also worried intensely about his mother’s health and nearly succumbed to depression at the end of high school.  Luckily his life didn’t end there, and he eventually channeled his music obsessions into radio comedy on his weekly platform program, The Best Show on WFMU.  A passion for prank phone calls and rock and roll both indie and hard led to a life changing relationship with punk band Superchunk’s drummer John Wurster and some lively improvised radio comedy like the legendary Rock, Rot, and Rule call about a fake book designed to be the “ultimate argument settler” for music fans.  There’s a lot of heart in his statements about creating and his commitment to trusting his creative instincts in the face of an audience that doesn’t initially understand what he’s trying to do.  At the same time as the platform show, he learned to write humorous content for both The Onion and the entire run of USA’s hit detective show Monk.  There are life lessons on the ethical approach to meeting heroes from encounters with celebrities like Patti Smith, Mickey Dolenz, Adam Sandler, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; some professional weirdness with Papa Roach; and some truly great music videos directed for Yo La Tengo and Aimee Mann by Scharpling himself.  His personal growth feels like an uphill struggle through family illness, fear of mental healthcare and its effects on memory recall, and a codependent fixer mentality. In places there are breaks for garbage food and addiction to gaming machines with even an obsessive knowledge of how to feel broken pinball bumpers and dislodge stuck character cards from a coin pusher game. There’s a horrible car crash on the eve of a horrible president.  Above all, there is Jersey pride throughout in a music trivia genius who always cheers the little guy and overcomes personal tragedy to summon the courage to make his next show a great party for his culture-savvy listeners. 

A lively recharge to affirm sense of purpose for underdogs everywhere.

Naturally Tan (Memoir by Queer Eye's Stylist)

Title Naturally Tan

Who's it for?: Casual fans of Queer Eye, People who nothing about Pakistan or fashion business

Who made it?: Tan France with Caroline Donofrio

Where is it?: Amazon

Length: 304 pgs

The charismatic fashion stylist from the Emmy winning show Queer Eye expounds upon his rise to fame with much heart, words of wisdom, and fashion savvy jois de vivre.

Naturally, Tan France’s memoir includes both mention of Tan’s family background and of fashion retail and styling education. Tan’s grandfather ran a denim factory that inspired Tan’s expertise in clothing construction. Encounters with racism while absorbing colourism in Doncaster, England and Tan’s identity as Pakistani-British and also homosexual led Tan to intern in Utah in the United States where Tan eventually became engaged to Rob France whose art is present throughout this engaging memoir. Their dating stories are sweet and they have a sensible marriage that no doubt keeps a stable home foundation of supporting each other's goals despite the mental health attacks that come naturally with a dual career in fashion and the entertainment industry. Rob always talks Tan down from emotional ledges and is an equal hero in this book beyond their engagement story which proved useful for applying to a reality show.  Being cast as a stylist for reality show Queer Eye is also included, with resulting travel and award show elation when the team won an Emmy. There are fashion do’s and don’ts that transcend shallow fashion magazine articles when combined with dating stories and the design philosophy of blending Mormon and Muslim modesty with British style in designs for Kingdom State and Rachel Parcell. For readers who are not business-oriented, there is a genuinely nice overview to starting Kingdom State and some nice advice on taking interviews and how personal finance changes when one becomes a public figure. More unique to Tan's less common perspective are stories about an early smartphone enabling dating, sweatpants losing an important relationship due to letting self care go, crushes on male Bollywood stars in conflict with family assumptions, and special shoes that went missing after taking a solo trip abroad without telling family members about the risk that travel routinely is to personal safety. Other wild adventures include a past job as an airline steward, quitting a job for LGBTQ Pride, and dressing as Britney Spears for television changing Tan's mind about drag and accepting innate femininity despite a more gendered cultural outlook conditioned in childhood. Most important and poignant is Tan's September 11^th, 2001 essay about irrational stereotyping and racist treatment of Muslim and Sikh Americans following the World Trade Center bombing, and it's sort of a pity the happy ending and ongoing story of Tan's USA citizenship happened the year after this memoir's publication since everyone really should know that the United States still accepts new citizens even in the Trump era after nearly a decade of harassment in airport security exacerbating lazy thinking about the general public's unchecked racial bias and fear.

There are many laughs mixed with calls for empathy in this memoir which contains far deeper, more substantial content than you would expect from a reality television star, let alone most people in fashion.

Sidebar-- it's nice that Tan's humorous cowriter is credited on the book and not a ghostwriter.

Title:  Chunks
Who's it for?: Comedy fans
Who made it?: J. Elvis Weinstein
Where is it?: 800 lb Gorilla Records, Amazon
Length: 46 minutes

A pre-emptive note ahead of my review: J. Elvis Weinstein pronounces his name to rhyme with Albert Einstein and he added the Elvis because he likes Elvis Costello and so his initials would become the acronym JEW.  He had to do this because there was already a Josh Weinstein when he joined the Writers Guild, and neither he nor the Simpsons writer have any connection to Harvey Weinstein who pronounces his name with "steen" as differentiated from "stine" at the end.  Don't confuse him for that predator guy because both Josh's are gentlemen and professionals I presume seeing as they stay out of news about social machines that hurt women. 

When I first met J. Elvis Weinstein I asked him if he had a standup album because I wanted to know who he was individually among the Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers who had regrouped into Cinematic Titanic at live shows where I could meet them.  He didn't, but he'd been writing and performing standup at Acme Comedy Club in Minnesota for nearly his whole life.  Didn't he think it would be a good idea to archive something so important and key to his existence? He told me he hadn't really thought about it much but supposed he might get around to it eventually. Ten years later his first album shows me I was right about him and there are great mental depths to be discovered that just weren't convenient for a lot of people until now.

Chunks is J. Elvis Weinstein's first comedy album, but it's not a beginner effort at all.  I had been excited about him as an individual comedian because I could tell from his blogs on the now defunct Cinematic Titanic website that he is possibly the tightest joke writer on that team. He improvised effectively in the KTMA episodes of Mystery Science Theater, and his Twitter jokes are well structured, and there are many fun surprises in the order of ideas to be presented found in Chunks. For example, he writes a great sexual harrassment joke wherein he is both the perpetrator and the victim because he is talking to himself about being his own boss, thereby taking the reactionary gendered witch hunt out of the debate leaving only the situation to be avoided by everyone.  He is a master of assessing and then manipulating perspectives.   I can only conclude that he had a long queue of other projects as a producer as on Freaks and Geeks, America's Funniest Home Videos, and the Greg Kinnear show, and enough gigs doing standup and playing live music, that he actually had a huge time buffer before he could get around to this album.

Chunks is a time capsule of Mr. Weinstein's finest standup.  He discusses his mixed faith marriage and interprets Judaism in comparison to Christianity in a way I don't hear from random sampling of Jewish standup comedy but do hear regularly from him with Andy Kindler on Thought Spiral.  Unlike a lot of Jewish comics, they don't hyperbolize escaping from Judaism like many standups do as they escape parental control and childhood.  They like Judaism at least in part, and they make it sort of inviting and show that they get comfort from it as a family foundation.  Even while Josh says he doesn't get the symbolism of either Easter or Passover and that Christianity has more miracles than Judaism, I remember on Thought Spiral that he memorized the Ten Commandments movie during Passover and I think he actually likes it whether ironically or seriously because he returns to it almost as much as to The Boys From Brazil and Dr. Josef Mengele's scientific experiment war crimes which are less endearing and not in this routine.  And his slight chagrin at Christian miracles is a softer critique than, say, Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic routine.

Edgier chunks contain Josh's many times serving jury duty, which he says he gets because he must have "resting justice face."  He compares jury duty in Los Angeles to community theater-- "You watch a bad play, and if you don't like it you send somebody to jail."  If the Explicit tag on the album isn't enough for you, I will give a trigger warning for you that there are many descriptions of violence from both humans and animals.  Josh describes in graphic detail the most violent court cases he was in the jury for or read in the headlines.  He was also in at least one fight in his life that he was called to and stayed in somehow. He prefers animal violence to the true crime stories his wife enjoys.  I think his overall perspective is a healthy one that surveys other people's violent moments as theater with consequences that can easily be avoided. He doesn't focus on the rush of being in a fight so much as the character analysis of everyone involved, and his low energy deadpan delivery leads me to believe that he holds skepticism about fighting and talks himself out of it.

MST3K and Cinematic Titanic fans should note that none of his music jokes, the earworm medley pop hits radio station break, or his Steve Perry impersonation from the Cinematic Titanic shows made it on to the album.  He didn't play bass or keyboard either, though his music is regularly on Thought Spiral with songs also from his wife Allison MacLeod and cohost/comedian Andy Kindler.  This album is a self introduction to people who have managed to not know who Josh is for this long, and briefly mentions he has a lead role in a movie also just now because even after suggesting the people calling might want an actor and not a standup comedian/producer, the people calling demanded it because the role is one he is perfect for and he is too good to ignore for The Fiddling Horse.
  
He hasn't been Tom Servo since he was a college student, but his wry delivery doesn't entirely eclipse a good heart and healthy psychology which has been with him for life.  Aside from producing and music, standup is his best expertise and you won't find a better first standup album to study and learn from than Chunks by J. Elvis Weinstein on 800 Lb Gorilla Records and Amazon.

Rob Delaney: Survivor. Town crier. Disability-knowing empath. Child creator. Platonic example. Bon vivant. Bandage.

Title:   

Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.

Who's it for?: Comedy fans who appreciate @robdelaney, fans of Catastrophe on TV
Who made it?: Rob Delaney
Where is it?: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081299308X/ref=x_gr_w_glide_bb?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_w_glide_bb-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=081299308X&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
Length: 208 pages

I've been following Rob Delaney on Twitter since maybe 2010 and I saw some of the tweets in this book when they dropped or got retweeted, so there's a great "I was THERE, man!" feeling and also some great motivation to write my own book and find a way to fit some of my own tweets in. They are the best microblog time capsules that show how the author thinks and reacts to subjects both topical and timeless.  For reference, these tweets were written during the Obama presidency.

Mr. Delaney's book is so much more than just these intercalary tweet sections between the topical parts, however.  There are twenty great comedic essays about his childhood, travels, recovery from addiction, and transformation into a loving and responsible father who still loves to write jokes.  Despite a near self-destruction, he retains an epic jois de vivre to be envied by people who would have an easier time stopping themselves from bungee jumping off a bridge. 

Though surviving wild oat sowing is not sufficient proof to try any of these stunts at home, Mr. Delaney has been living a vivid life and responsibly explains what was at stake and could have gone worse in the adventures without consequences, and he is bluntly honest about the ones that hurt the most.  He's very lucky to be alive and we as an audience are lucky to get a percentage of his experiences in the reading  to shake ourselves out of mundane existential ennui and depression.

He also spent some time in France studying art and French and theater.  Though some of these stories read like fraternity pranks, Mr. Delaney is sharply intelligent and an emotive illustrator of moments both ephemeral and life-changing.  I think to appreciate his comedy you have to detach yourself from a need to apply the same social rules to everyone.  Also it helps to know that comedians have a tone of voice they use to look at negative subjects at a safer distance than the one in which they have experiences. The tone one uses to tell a joke is not the one used to apologize to parents and teachers or address cops at traffic stops. We have free speech just so we can indulge in theatrical interpretation of important matters and keep our self-worth separate from the theatrics enough to control our own emotions and make the outcomes better for those listening to us.

My favorite part of this book is Mr. Delaney's  literary voice which is similar to his Twitter feed in its  brazen balance between bluntness, devil-may-care optimism, and mock outrage and condemnation toward violations of his actually quite sound ethics system.  In my own comedy writing I sometimes get bogged down in the emotional weight of the subject I want to cover and am so overwhelmed and verklempt I have trouble getting back to the light riffing attitude that comedy needs in order to connect with an audience.  Or I imagine I'm going to be attacked by socially defined people for being too careless with the feelings of sensitive people who aren't even being targeted by the jokes (why do they lurk my head without showing themselves? nobody ever @s me on Twitter to say I'm an insensitive monster but I still have a brutal inner critic that never seems to manifest).  

Mr. Delaney's book probably shouldn't be my writing warmup, but if I'm trapped under a heavy mood or sensing a condemning socially defined lady ghost trying to control me with her pre-emptive psychological constructs, just a few minutes of Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. will leave said ghost gobsmacked and incapable of torturing me any further, since this kind of malevolent spirit is generally too afraid to learn life-saving information about STDs and fecal incontinence and rehab.  It's really the loss of that ghost and her sycophants that they aren't able to use comedy to make these subjects approachable enough to take action on when life happens. Anyway, I feel indebited to Rob Delaney, his book, and also his fun television show Catastrophe for giving me a mix of fun and hard experiences to envision and be prepared for if I ever find myself in closer proximity to them in my life or with friends.


This book is staying on my Kindle for as long as Kindle exists and if that's not my whole life I might buy it again. 

The Phoenix Project (2015)
Who's it for?: Fans of psychological science fiction drama
Who made it?: Ironwood Gang
Where is it?: Amazon
Length: 1hr 32 min

Conceptually, The Phoenix Project is a great statement about the balance between science and humanism.  The questions of "Can we reanimate a body?" and "Should we?" are separated here by iterations that increase the hope and excitement about this goal and then leave them pondering ethics in medical science.

Trigger warning: This film contains depictions of self harm in depression.  It doesn't have grindhouse levels of gore, but a few moments are potentially emotionally triggering if you or a loved one live with depression.

The acting performances are effectively competent in the team of out-of-a-garage scientists.  Corey Rieger plays project leader Perry Frank as a mercurial classic horror film control freak genius, and Orson Ossman adds some lighter emotional moments that offer a break from suspense, invite viewers to root for the Phoenix Project Team, and inspire empathy when machines or humans break.  Andrew Simpson as Devin Fisher conveys that this project is bigger than him and his personal stake is important to a degree that threatens his mental health.  David Pesta as Ampersand Garner did not leave much of an impression, but emoting less makes him rather more convincing as a scientist and gives him a Harold Ramis-like quality. His puzzle solving of a puzzle with all white pieces seems symbolic of the difficulty of ordering and manipulating the pieces involved in scientific research.

The one negative factor is the slow pacing with many similar shots of the guys archiving their project notes.  My attention span for the research documentary style of storytelling lasted for approximately 45 minutes, or up through the team's excitement at their first successful test.  As conflict increases between the team my attention wandered as Carter wandered from the team.  Devin's part of the story was important and I did follow those beats with my emotional engagement onward to the conclusion.  I think I was least interested in the argument between Perry and Ampersand around one hour to 1:07:00:00 in, which should have been fairly exciting but had some slow silent scenes with music around it that dragged it down somewhat to emphasize the stress under which the guys placed themselves.

Still, this film is effective in stitching together easily accessible locations into one setting while psychologically taking us out of the setting to ponder the greater implications of the team's research.  I never totally lost track of what was going on and the ending left me emotionally moved and continuing to yearn for there to be more human compassion in the sciences. 

I look forward to seeing more films from Ironwood Gang!

If At Birth You Don't Succeed (don't give up on leaving your parents' house and making a living)

If At Birth You Don't Succeed Who's it for?: Bitter disabled people who need to laugh more, ableists who didn't know they were being ableist
Who made it?: Zach Anner
Where is it?: your local library, hopefully, or http://ifatbirthyoudontsucceed.com/ and Amazon:
Length: 352 pages

Zach Anner is one of the most prominent disabled celebrities who is changing the public image of what being disabled is like.  His autobiography If At Birth You Don’t Succeed jumps around in the first thirty years of his life to present the most interesting moments in the optimistic tone of his comedy. Having had his own TV show on OWN and a few hit web series, Mr. Anner has always connected warmly to everyone he meets while acknowledging his disability but never in a way that garners pity or sadness.  He’s happy and having fun, and why shouldn’t everyone else have fun with him?  Cerebral palsy and a wandering eye may be the first thing some people notice about him, but there are so many more interesting facts to know. This book shares the best public success, then the worst gastrointestinal challenge while in pursuit of that public success, then all the times he found a challenge but just kept rolling along anyway.  The very first thing everyone should know about Zach is that he finds something to be happy about no matter what circumstances he finds himself in, and he can take jokes as well as he makes them.

Zach has made his life’s work about traveling and recording his experiences as a disabled traveler.  Reading his book, it seems like it never occurred to him there was any reason not to travel or that his disability should ever keep him at home.  From an early childhood story of running away from home with intent to meet his celebrity crush Cindy Crawford to his Riding Shotgun webisode about exploring tree villages in Canada, once Zach sets his mind to a travel destination he always finds a way to have a decent adventure.  His brother or friends help him along the way to leave his chair and climb up to the tree village even after a larger public bridge forbids him to cross it.  In another story he road trips to NASA to pilot the Mars rover training simulation.

As a female reader, I did find some of the early chapters tried my patience with Zach’s attitude toward pursuing romance.  His sense of humor with regard to dating comes on very strong, appearance focused, and a bit objectifying to portray girls as potential lays.  (This is true for most of his dating stories though not for his appraisal of the female chef who was the other person in the final round of the OWN network reality show competition.) But he also comes across as sincere and a gentleman who actually does value the feelings of any lady he spends time with.  Once he meets his wife Gillian Grassie, a harpist and singer-songwriter  whose music is beautiful and also worth checking out on YouTube, they travel together for a bit before getting married.  Accessibility barriers don’t stop Zach from attending Gillian’s concert in Germany or visiting her family home, and then she visits Zach in California and they go to Disneyland.    

In the end, I left this book with a feeling that no excuse is good enough for not pursuing your dreams on some level, yet you also have to forgive yourself for imperfections and just roll with whatever punches life throws at you. 

Spontaneanation is an Impulsive Gift of Aural All Sorts

Spontaneanation!
Who's it for?: Fans of Intellectual Comedy, Those who like celebrity interviews
Who made it?: Paul F. Tompkins, Eban Schletter, many guests and friends and guest friends
Where is it?: http://www.earwolf.com/show/spontaneanation-with-paul-f-tompkins/ and the iTunes store, and https://soundcloud.com/spontaneanation on Soundcloud!
Length: About an hour per episode give or take 15 minutes.  Divided into a half hour interview and half hour of somewhat scripted, somewhat improvised comedy.

Like St. Paul in the Bible, the scales have fallen from my eyes once my ears heard the good news that is Spontaneanation! 

Spontaneanation is like a streamlined version of the much loved Pod F. Tompkast with an improvisation focus. It i€™s now just one interview and one improv-enhanced fictional comedy play without continuity from week to week so we the fans benefit by hearing it more often in smaller doses that might even add up to more monthly content in production math that seems WITCHCRAFT.  This muggle mind balks at figuring it out. 

I particularly loved the La Mariposa story in the dumpster behind Dennys in the first episode with Busy Phillips. The Justin Kirk episode with the performing arts high school sketch was another high point that should knowingly nudge the sides of anyone who has community theater connections.  Then there was an insightful interview with songwriter Aimee Mann which I identified with since I too want people to like me and get worried-sad about that not happening universally.   And there are so many more fun interviews with people such as Tompkast frequenter Jen Kirkman and comedic expert John Hodgman.  

Aside from hearing fun people, it's the great contrasts in subject matter between artistic beauty and fears of lowly mundane existence and grime that keep me coming back. Just make me laugh, I say! And Spontaneation does!

https://soundcloud.com/spontaneanation