The Good News, #18
Hello True Believers!
Welcome back to The Good News!
Something fun (interesting?) to get lost in this week:
I wish I could point to something to definitely say this is a real phenomenon, but alas, I can't find anything other than my own recent experience. Something I've noticed with modern television shows is that the scenes where there are more than two characters have become increasingly rare. My lovely wife and I have watched through Pluribus, Monarch, Dare Devil: Born again (I swear we do watch the weird stuff too haha), and I've clicked through a couple episodes of some other more recent, post-2020 shows I've got layin around the hard drive, and it seems like the days of "3 characters in a scene all interacting with each other" may be in the past? But then I think back to The West Wing, Buffy, or Northern Exposure (I'm sounding so basic right now I'm so sorry, I'll make up for it with the other recommendations haha), and I tcan't really remember what most scenes were like ... has anyone else noticed this? Or am I just so late to the game on this very obvious realization that this is just a well known "prestige TV" phenomenon?
A nice thing to listen to this week:
Lif Up Yuh Leg An Trample: The Soca Train From Port Of Spain (2004) (download here)
As an enormous Calypso fan (it's not just Belafonte out there, but he's also more than just the Day-O guy), imagine my joy when I learned that it grew and changed much like mambo fusing with other genres to become Boogaloo (have I got a compilation for you! (Sorry no link, that's for another day haha)). It grew into many things of course, but one of those was Soca! Soca itself never stopped growing and changing, but one of the pivot points in its history is finely documented here in this compilation. I can't do a better job than the historians over at Honest Jons (seriously, listen to everything they've ever put out/re-released), so I won't get too much into it, but if you find it a little too 'not-your-thing', read the article that goes along with the release as you listen and I think it can help you open your heart a little easier. Also, can you believe they released this back in 2004? That feels wild to me. Oh and apparently it's not available to stream anywhere so I've uploaded it to Mediafire for you to sample. It's basically impossible to buy so, I dunno, I don't feel negatively about this.
Honet
Terrific thing to watch:
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994)
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) was almost certainly the first time I saw drag in its, maybe, performative(?) state, as opposed to its satirical side. I'd seen plenty of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall sketches, but when they dressed up as women it didn't come off as capital D Drag; it was necessitated by the fact that those troupes were entirely men (as a side note, I did later appreciate that the fact that they were in drag was never played as The Joke, it was always just part of the production). Like To Wong Foo, Priscilla is also not what we might now consider to be what Drag Race has conditioned folks into thinking Drag is, but I suppose not everything can be Paris is Burning or Queens at Heart. All of that said, this is sort of a dual recommendation (almost quadruple recommendation at this point), but I think that many American movie goers would have been less likely to see the Australian counterpart to To Wong Foo, which is in many ways similar, but in many other ways much grittier and therefore more triumphant (in some regards). Both films follow a troupe of drag performers on road trips that will, as you may have guessed, change everything for all those involved. They're transformative, heart wrenching, and still give a little hope that people can be good to one another. Also, you've gotta see it if you're going to be ready for the upcoming sequel! (Secret fifth recommendation: See the movie Slay for a campier horror take on the premise).
A good read:
Foundation - Isaac Asimov (1951)
This is a hard sell, I recognize. It took me maybe 7 run ups to get over the finish line the first time, but when I finally held the entirety of the book in my head, and read it again, it revealed how thoughtfully structured it was all along. It's a dry, old sci-fi book, but I think if you just get through the first chapter, you'll either know if it's for you, or you'll walk away with something interesting to think about, even if you don't revisit it. Another good on-boarding point could be the first episode of the Apple TV series, which I didn't think, as a whole, was particularly good, and is VERY different from the tone and content of the first book, but I also never read past the first book so who knows, maybe I'm the jerk here haha.
And finally, our weekly pic of the pup, Apollo:
Be nice to each other, and we'll see you next week!
Best,
Luke