I Don't Even Own a Television I Don't Even Own a Television

Hi, all. Probably this won't come as a giant surprise, given our erratic schedule and limited output the past couple years, but the time has come to make it offical: We're ending the show. There's no beef, there's no stress, but there is some sadness, and we recorded an episode to announce the end of the show and talk through it a bit.
The goal is to keep the archive available, but the Patreon will be shutting down by the end of April, 2023, so download anything from there that you want to hold on to. It's been a lot of fun making this show for you all, and we encourage you all to ride the crab, keep reading crap, and try to make the world a little better any time you can.
Recommendations:

Start your own fuckin' band!
Music:
"No Regrets" by Dramarama "History Lesson, Part II" by the Minutemen

 

No, it's not a new made-up term for a sexual position—as far as we know!—it's the new Lucy Foley joint, The Paris Apartment! It's darker than a wine cellar, twistier than an alley in your favorite arrondissement, but, unfortunately, about as eventful as an afternoon sighing with ennui over a couple of Gauloises and a well-nursed café au lait in a Left Bank café.
Pat your new Karen O. fringe into an appealing dishevelment, make your best face to express that you have the darkest of dark secrets and make sure you've got a skeleton key for all your neighbors' places, because it's time to take a trip into what some people are calling ... la'part-a-ment Parisienne, but what we know to call The Paris Apartment.



Recommendations:
Paul Tremblay, The Pallbearer's Club Jane Peck, The Verifiers Diane Duane, The Door into Fire plus The Worst Bestsellers Ep on it!
Mood Music:
"Heads Will Roll" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Bastille Day" by Rush

With tramps like these, hoo boy, do things get real and stay there in a hurry as your humble hosts pop their clutches and tell Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon's Born to Run: A Novel of the SERRAted Edge to eat their dust! It's another novel of the urban fantastique, with an Irish pub described as "straight-edge", a couple battle scenes where you can really see the graph paper underneath the characters, and some of the most improbable radio playlists imaginable, and, as a novel of (sigh) the urban fantastique, one of us slides right off it and the other digs his eldritch fangs right into it. But not like that, the other way.
NOTE: This novel, while mostly lighthearted, does traffic in material related to child sexual abuse and exploitation, in way reminiscent of a particularly tawdry episode of SVU.
NOTE 2: Clsn now realizes he missed a good opportunity to pronounce it "elfs" throughout the episode and regrets the error.
Recommendations:
Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey Everything Everywhere All at Once Death Among the Undead, by Masahiro Imamura Seinfeld Bass Riff Variations
Music:
"Guinnesses" by MF DOOM (feat. 4Ize & Angelika "Shamrocks and Shenanigans" by House of Pain "Jesus Built My Hotrod (Redline/Whiteline Version" by Ministry

Well, friends, it's surely time to put on your red shoes and dance the blues, this time along with us as we lace 'em up and see The Playmakers Series series of hockey romance novels, in this case Gauging the Player: A One-Night Stand Sorts Romance by G.K. Brady. Believe us, to see the Playmakers Series make a scoring rush, the bright colors of the prose flashing against the milky e-reader screen, is to see a work of art in motion. As one character's beloved grandmother says, this is "No chickenshit crap, now, you hear?" It's a ton of fun to watch the will-they (again) / won't they (again) after they do, bigtime, and we invite you to drop your gloves, pick up your earbuds, and skate a shift with us as we watch two crazy kids try to escape the penalty box of life—together. It's the only book you'll ever read that nudges the entrance!
 

Recommendations:
Elden Ring Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Music:
"Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches "So Into You" by Climax Blues Band "work hard, play hard" by Palace Music

No know Jack? No, know Jack! Jack Reacher, that is, as we for some reason decide to experiment with CBS-grade Reacher-adjacency with Diane Capri's series-starting Don't Know Jack. This is a gaiden, in which the titular Jack is most present in his absence, as a wise-cracking pair of FBI Human Resources Detectives are looking to reconstruct a series of events more or less clearly laid out in a book available at any airport bookstore. NOTE: this is probably not a gaiden, but either way, absolutely do not @ us.
Anyway, if you want to hear some serious airport positivity, this is the episode for you! So grab your earbuds and make sure to leave early for your flight, because by the time this episode is over, you'll be saying "I Know 'Don't Know Jack'!".
 

Recommendations:
"Nancy" comics by Olivia Jaimes "My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Music:
"Happy Jack" by The Who "jack shit" by Teen Angels "Atom Jack" by Drive Like Jehu

We're off the dang map here, folks, because we don't know where we are, but we do know that here? there be monsters! Just in time for spooky season, we're taking on one of the giants of the bad-book genre, Hannibal by Thomas Harris.
This book is a big, corrosive bummer, with lots and lots of moments where the words on the page seem to rearrange themselves into concrete poetry of the author's middle finger extended, straight into the reader's face, and even more moments where the narrator is calling you "we" or being very, one might say scrupulously, careful to mention the race of every character (except the white ones) and the attractiveness levels of every lady-type character. Come for the shopping sprees, but STAY for the choppin—you know what, I don't even have the energy to finish this one. It's a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs. You think you know what you're in for. You don't. That's why...you need us! Take our hands and join us through a whirlwind tour of hog farming and new love.


Recommendations:
"Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade Werewolf (2016)
Music:
"I Slammed my Penis in the Car Door" by Sol Scribbles "Jazz Fart" by The Best Show "Lookin' for Love" by Johnny Lee