BURNING QUESTIONS IN A UNIVERSE OF MYSTERY #78:

Gosh, I just . . . like . . . I got all this money.

Okay.

I got all this money-

I got too much money-

And-and-and-like . . . Internet.

Okay?

Too much money . . . and Internet.

What should I do?

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #117:

CREEPY, VACANT CORPORATE CAMPUSES STRUGGLE WITH SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES IN RECORD NUMBERS.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 23

 

CONFERENCE ATTENDEE

 

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #31:

Talkman attempts to supplant Walkman in the Marketplace of Ideas resulting in all-out nuclear war.

HECKLER'S DOCTRINE #8:

. . . my cells are giving me shit. Getting improvisational, getting expansive with how they replicate. Tumors that fight back against the surgeons, growing their weapons just like you’d do with experience points in a video game or like the meats guns you see in those David Cronenberg pictures. I guess I’m some kind of mind/body battlefield, now, and here I thought I was giving peace a chance. My brain starts thinking thoughts I didn’t authorize, that traitor, and my nerves are burning the night away. In Soviet Russia brain thinks you-what a crock o’ Commie shit! And check this out: every time I try to eat, okay, my stomach says, “Sir, you can’t bring outside food here, we’re gonna have to ask you to leave,” and you know why? Because my stomach has rebranded itself as a high end downtown eatery, serving only the finest gut bacteria and spider limb confections complimented by an elite selection of spirits distilled from top shelf gastric juices. I can’t even eat for myself. I’ve got to outsource. I hired a whole team of underemployed restaurant reviewers to do my eating for me. It’s like I got fifteen Haruki Murakami protagonists on payroll taking huge bites outta my wallet-get me a goddamn tanker truck full of Pepto Bismol and we’ll just pump it directly into my soul! Oh, but it gets worse. My feet are constantly failing me. My spirit wants to shop at Target, but my feet keep steering me to Wal-Mart. My immortal soul reaches out for a volume of Proust, but my insurgent hands grab for Harry Potter. My heart of hearts longs to look upon Davinci and Picasso and Bosch . . . but my corrupted eye jellies can’t stop watching Skibidi Toilet . . . which brings us to the final disorder: my sweat glands have chosen to cease making sweat in favor of maximizing production of napalm . . . soon enough, the heat dome’ll ignite this rebellious bag of meats, and, at the very least, my soul may soar freely and directly into the sun! So that’s something to look forward to . . .

THINGS NEVER SAID #18:

“Save the world? What? Me? There’s a sword in a stone I gotta get my hands around? And then I gotta kill hordes of monsters and soldiers and dragons and demons and angels and gods whose deaths will power me up? So’s I can bring down the Evil Empire? Really? Slaughter that makes me strong up to the point of being like a god? And then I get to kill God in a one-on-one duel? This is what you’re calling me to do? Uhhhh . . . okay, I guess . . . but what about this bag of fast food? Why can’t I just strong up by eating these five roast beef’n’cheddars for $5.99? That’s a big protein hit isn’t it? That should strong me up real good, shouldn’t it? If I do that, uhhhh, then like I shouldn’t have to go on a worldwide killing spree, right? And I got this can of soda-right here-same as you saw in that commercial where the girl gives the can to that riot cop? Brings peace to the valley or whatever? Like, that’s some Pepsi Proper Peacemaking-give that girl a job at the, uh, the United Nations-or did they already do that? I should look that up. But like . . . they wouldn’t put . . . that in a commercial if it was a lie, now, would they? Consumerism, like, I know people bag on it, but, like . . . everybody I know buys stuff. Red state. Blue state. Marvel fans. DC fans. Star Wars. Star Trek. And that consumerism stuff’s been around since before I was born, okay, so, uh, it must be working? Voting with, uh, with, like, my dollars? Even political campaigns have to, y’know, spend millions to get those votes, right? And that’s, ah, like, the Supreme Court-they basically made Cash American into the whole, y’know, free speech thing, didn’t they? So, uhhh, I don’t actually have to take up arms against some, uhhhh, Evil Empire . . . do I? I mean, I guess what I’m trying to say, like, it isn’t just today that I’m busy with food intake stuff and beverage intake stuff-this is, when it gets down to it, very intensely integrated into my day-in-day-out along with, of course, job things and, ahhh, bathroom breaks-especially with these roast beef’n’cheddars, you don’t want to rush those along else they’ll tear you apart, speed kills, right . . . and, ah, ah, ah, sleep, uhhhh, you know . . . I gotta make time for tweets, too, gotta make time for that . . . YouTube, of course, I got so many videos on that that I haven’t even watched yet-and new uploads every day, so, um, I’m not sure . . . when or how . . . I’m supposed to, as you put it, answer this call to adventure. I’m not trying to sound self-important . . . but I am very definitely, as they say, booked solid.”

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #17:

Trailer Theme: Short Change Hero by The Heavy

You cut your trailer to this tune, and you’re golden.

People will think it’s the new Batman.

Doesn’t matter if it’s anything to do with Batman or not.

People hear the song, and they want whatever it is that’s stuck to it.

The song conveys a certain Batmanity to whatever’s near it-a proximity type of deal.

You can’t lose.

MOVIE REVIEW: LABYRINTH OF DREAMS (1997)

Written and Directed by Gakuryu Ishii

From a novel by Yumeno Kyusaku

Photographed by Norimichi Kasamatsu

Edited by Kan Suzuki

Music by Hiroyuki Onagawa

Production Design by Toshihiro Isomi

Starring

Rena Komine as Tomiko

Tadanobu Asano as Niitaka

. . .

“You must never, ever become a bus conductor.”

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Boredom in a small town out in the sticks. 

You’ve got to make your own fun.

Even if it’s all in your mind.

Or maybe it all starts in your mind until you find a real life adventure to displace your boredom.

Either way . . .

Tomiko works as a bus conductor. She punches tickets. She offers an additional pair of eyes at dangerous crossings-especially train tracks. This is in some vaguely delineated Japanese past-1930s? 1940s?-in which the monotony of existence in a small town is all-consuming. No significant reference is made to the world beyond this town. Tomiko’s job as a bus conductor is explicitly presented as a job for women. Only men are permitted to work as bus drivers. Tomiko narrates her story by way of a series of letters to her best friend. We find out that she had great expectations that this job would be more of an adventure, but, alas, it’s a grind like all other things. It becomes exciting only when Tomiko takes on the role of a civilian detective.

Another bus conductor dies in a suspicious accident. There’s a rumor that she was murdered by a bus driver who manipulated and seduced her into becoming a victim. The implication is that this predator has insinuated himself into the job of bus driver because it allows him proximity to his prey. Whether this is the truth or just a creepy folktale is the mystery at the heart of Labyrinth of Dreams. 

A prime suspect emerges: the sullen yet handsome bus driver Niitaka, whom Tomiko first sees taking a nap right on the train tracks. This sets up a core ambiguity: is Niitaka just a deeply depressed person, or is he a monster? Maybe he is a monster but also feels remorse over his killings which drives him to various antisocial and self-destructive behaviors. Tomiko takes a very black and white perspective on things, casting herself as a dogged seeker of justice right out of a paperback thriller. She’s convinced that Niitaka is the murderer. But the film outside of her constructed narrative allows us to see Niitaka in other ways. Labyrinth of Dreams uses close-ups of Tomiko’s relentlessly suspicious face to remind us that we’re supposed to be on her wavelength even while other shots create a static of uncertainty. Niitaka himself is so emotionally closed-off that we end up projecting whatever pleases us onto him. 

Tomiko finds herself attracted to Niitaka. Niitaka seems to take an interest in her. Tomiko possibly sees their romance as an undercover operation to ferret out the truth, but she also seems to sort of like him. The key scene between these two happens over two glasses of wine. I won’t spoil what exactly occurs but Niitaka challenges Tomiko to play a game of “chicken” involving the two glasses. This is all deeply suspicious . . . but ultimately it's as ambiguous as everything else. The most that can be said for sure is that Niitaka is a deeply troubled person . . . but is he a monster?

Labyrinth of Dreams uses black and white cinematography to evoke harsh feelings of isolation and fear as well as a dreamy romanticism. Everyone that appears in front of the camera is an actual human actor, no deep fakes, no computer generated sidekicks. All of the props, costumes, locations, the bus, the train, the train tracks, the trees, the fog-it’s all there, it all exists, even if it’s all lit, framed, and assembled into a stylish set of sequences that defy easy explanations. Ultimately, Tomiko and Niitaka’s lives are very, very small. They each try to leave their mark upon the world-for good, for evil, maybe just to beat back the oppression of insignificance, maybe they don’t actually know why, maybe they can’t ever know.

Maybe Tomiko’s just inventing a narrative-any narrative, even a ghastly one-to escape a tightly constrained existence in a world that looks down on poor working class women.

Maybe Niitaka’s depression drives him to minimize his own narrative to reduce the surface area of emotional vulnerability.

There is an ending that points to some possibilities, but much is left up to We the Audience to sort through, assemble, discard, and/or frame as significant.

Labyrinth of Dreams asks a lot of its audience, and I respected and admired it for doing so.

NOTIONAL HEADLINE #116:

BORIS JOHNSON APPLIES FOR BOOSTER ROCKET POSITION AT NASA.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 22

 

OBSERVANCE OF THE BREACH

 

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #30:

A global outbreak of introspection.

HECKLER'S DOCTRINE #7:

. . . he’s on his shirtless Florida Man bullshit again. Triggered by something on FOX News or Truth Social or what have you. Burned his own house down so he doesn’t have to pay the taxes. Took a baseball bat to all the mailboxes up and down the street to protest the Postal Service or something. Claims that 9/11 wasn’t just an inside job, but that it was an outside volunteer position. Peak Logic, amirite? Neighbors called the cops. Cops reluctant to work during a heat wave, they even cite all their poor fitness assessments, like you’d whip out a doctor’s note to excuse your absences in high school. The shirtless nuisance starts smashing all his own property-Playstation 5, plasma screen, furniture, smoke alarms-with his baseball bat, rails against Big Gubmint, gets into all sorts of racist and sexist paranoia, even recites his divorce fan fiction epic-written in a compelling mixture of prose and verse-which does fool some people into thinking he was ever married in the first place so A-4-Effort at a minimum for this walking wreck raging in the streets. Sadly, due to the heat wave turbocharged by irreversible global warming he ends up spontaneously combusting. He isn’t missed by his neighbors. Ivy League venture capitalists turned Appalachian autobiographers aren’t even aware of his existence. God, strictly speaking, didn’t even sign the Hell and Damnation order due to His filming an upcoming season of one of those The Bachelorette knock-offs-it’s already leaked online that He got rejected in the first go-around! Which seems sad, right? But then you remember what Margaret Thatcher-the Secret Mother of All Capitalism’s Lost Sons-once said about how there’s no such thing as society, and then everything’s okay again. Like you’ve just been bathed in mother’s milk-nay! Ambrosia . . . a post credits scene depicts our man enjoying his heavenly reward: being forever degraded-verbal abuse, electrocution, the hose, the lockbox, trench warfare-by a gang of stern fathers costumed in comic opera colonel uniforms-I dunno. All this post credits extended cinematic universe crap’s kinda played out . . .

THINGS NEVER SAID #17:

“Pat Sajak can’t retire. If he retires, like, that would be like the, uh, the last vestige of wildness just, like, cashing in its chips. Accepting the big gold watch. And retreating deep into some, you know, some mansion of sloth. Can’t happen. You ever see a wolf driving a golf cart? No, you don’t. You see the wolf out there, running free, the rabbit in its jaws, man, fangs deep in it. No, Pat Sajak . . . he’s like the last of the true wolves. I swear, that Wheel of Fortune? Like it was the same every episode . . . but, like, not the same. Because just when you’re relaxing into the format-shkrazzshoww!!-that gleam would catch you-that wild wolf gleam surging forth from the Eyes of Sajak. And you’d sit up a little straighter. Face front. Ready for Omni-Action. Ready to ride, uh, just all in on riding that Wheel. Wherever it takes you. So, no, I don’t buy it. Sajak can’t retire. All the giants have left the building-but you can’t take the wolf from me. I won’t let you. Act of will. Total focus. A next level prayer. We must have the wolf, and the wolf’s wildness. We must have Sajak.”

THEME MUSIC FOR EVERYTHING #16:

Theme of Subterranean Investigations: Orion by Mark Styles

The truth waits for you . . . underground.

Could be past, present, or future.

Maybe it’s beneath the geological or aquatic or political or economic or infrastructural or ecological surface of things.

Maybe it’s deep within a mind-yours, someone else’s, God’s, a chess robot’s, etc.

But you’re going to have get deep into it, whatever it ends up being . . . so it’s good to have a cool theme song to carry you along, isn’t it?

Sure . . .

THE NEW DREAM #30:

apocalypse

store

you 

fall 

into 

it

find out if you have the will

to resist

your heart’s most corrupt desire

that weapon system that won’t just shut up your neighbor

it’ll burn the very Platonic ideal form of neighbor right out of the fabric of reality

that cataclysmic impulse buy

can you fight it

BECAUSE IT IS HERE

IN YOUR FACE

WITHIN YOUR GRASP

ALL IT COSTS

IS EVERYTHING

And then no more worries about neighbors ever again

but then it hits you

maybe your neighbor bought that weapon system first

zapped you

and you’ve just been obliviously burning in Hell all this time

would explain that Heat Dome that’s all in the news of late

wouldn’t that be some shit

and if you’re actually already in Hell

a place of torment, of thwarted dreams

then this apocalypse store is just a devil’s trick,

right?

and even if you buy that weapons system

your neighbor down here is surely just another illusion

just a cardboard Hogan’s Alley pop-up target

so you may as well save your money

buy some of that really fancy hot sauce

Hell of all places has gotta have really good hot sauce

pretty much markets itself

“Try Lucifer’s Glory Hawt Sauce on your wings, on your French fries, on your lasagna, on your cheeseburger, on your farfalle, on your neighbor-on your EVERYTHING!”

give me that marketing account

a job of peddling illusions

in a burning kingdom of lies

y’know

Hell is kinda cool

in how it all makes sense

has that Infernal Synergy working for it

I think I’ll get used to it

-at this point I arrive as the voracious guest of honor: THE CHAMPEEN HAWT WING GOBBLER OF ALL TIMES!!! Beelzebub announces me with Its loudass millions of pairs of wings. I stride into the spotlight. House lights come up to full, a nuclear white blaze. I see that I’m at the foot of an Everest of fried chicken skin doused in Lucifer’s Glory. I get to gobbling. A good chunk of the footage has been edited for content (a sequence where I have some salad was deemed inappropriate for carnivorous cacodemons) and to fit into the prime time slot. So it jump cuts to me melting down as I vomit up a fountain of acid reflux all over myself-which is the part everyone remembers, so it’s fine.

THE SECRETS OF FINAL TOWN 21

 

MANGA REVIEW: SHUNA'S JOURNEY (1983, 2022)

Written/Drawn/Colored by Hayao Miyazaki

English language translation by Alex Dudok de Wit

Edited by Mark Siegel and Kara Valdez

Cover designed by Kirk Benshoff

Interior design by Kirk Benshoff, Sunny Lee, and Angela Boyle

American edition published in 2022 by First Second

Original Japanese language publication in 1983 by Tokuma Shoten

. . .

“Spotting the slave traders’ vehicle, Shuna got in front of it and unleashed a burst of fire at point-blank range. The attack caught them completely off guard. Shuna kept firing with wicked composure, as he would when hunting snow leopards. By the time he had run a ring around the vehicle, he had shot them all down.”

-text from page 62 of Shuna’s Journey

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Shuna’s Journey is a manga-adjacent work from the master animator Hayao Miyazaki, whose most recent feature length film is The Boy and the Heron, and whose other works include Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I refer to Shuna’s Journey as manga-adjacent because even though it will most likely be shelved in the manga section at the bookstore it apparently is considered an emonogatari-an “illustrated story”-as per translator Alex Dudok de Wit’s afterward. Indeed, Shuna’s Journey is much more “compressed” in its storytelling than other manga works which often allow the action scenes to play out cinematically-almost moment to moment-across many pages and panels. Shuna’s Journey evokes the widescreen majesty of John Ford and Sergio Leone, as opposed to the hyperkinetic action of contemporary shonen sagas such as One Piece, Chainsaw Man, and Kaiju No. 8. Having said all this, I still personally found Shuna’s Journey to be very manga-like: it’s fast-paced, full of beautifully detailed environments, and inhabited by incisively stylized humans coexisting with fearsome, outsized monsters and bygone ruins of forgotten empires.

A boy named Shuna leaves his fading village to seek power and adventure in a vast, harsh world full of magic and cruelty. Shuna wanders the ruins of dead empires, battles slave traders, and comes face-to-face with bizarre powers which humankind can never hope to tame. Shuna’s main quest is for some magic seeds-a fairy tale element-but he is forced to do battle with the evil forces of the world using a variety of guerilla warfare tactics. All this is rendered in evocative watercolor art in a sort of storybook style which lends a peculiar grace to this hard-boiled fantasy adventure. Long time Miyazaki fans will perhaps see in Shuna’s Journey a kind of roadmap for many of the themes, character designs, production designs, conflicts, and strange creatures that would go on to achieve global pop culture iconography status. Shuna’s Journey is so dense with the primal material of Miyazaki’s subsequent work that it almost seems like the artist conjured a prophecy of his future glory via the power of a maniacal work ethic. 

Shuna’s Journey also works as a story all unto itself. It is not merely of interest to Miyazaki obsessives and collectors. If you have never even heard of Hayao Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli Shuna’s Journey offers an experience complete unto itself. The main ideas here have to do with survival and power. Shuna leaves his fading agrarian village to seek a better life for himself. Shuna is also tantalized by the prospect of finding the source of magic seeds which promise a future of abundance beyond subsistence farming, beyond hunting and gathering. To this end, Shuna manufactures his own bullets to feed the rifle handed down from the previous generation. Shuna’s a very model of rugged self-sufficiency, and yet he seeks ever more power. This restless seeking comes at a terrible price. Shuna’s adventures are grand: he kills slave traders with the bullets he himself crafted; he liberates slaves; he stands his ground against ghoulish night raiders; and, much like the player characters of The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, he’s persistent and intuitive enough to see the way forward through bizarre, formidably occulted terrain. The cost is that Shuna suffers trauma from violent battle, sleepless exhaustion, exposure to the elements, and deprivation of nutrition. Shuna’s capable, yet also mortal. 

Late in the narrative, there’s a change in perspective which suggests Shuna’s single minded pursuit of the magic seeds must be tempered by ethical connection to other people. His personality and agency are evacuated by his experience of a terrible otherworldly power which requires him to enter another’s care. This level of hardship and the complexity it entails brings a sense of gravity into the fantasy. Unlike with Marvel Cinematic Universe products-where endlessly malleable computerized action figures get iterated across endless potential product outputs- in Shuna’s Journey great power comes with both great responsibility and consequences. The power Shuna attains might be wielded responsibly, but it will always do some violence to its wielder. Shuna’s hope lies in his allying himself with the oppressed who endure injustice while also fighting to expand their domain of autonomy.

Shuna’s Journey is an engaging fantasy about power, self-reliance, and finding a place in the world against oppressive regimes of both nature and humankind. Its seemingly happy ending is shadowed by a certainty of future conflicts against the powers of the world. One is left with the sense that Shuna and his allies will endure no matter the hardships.

YOUR DRAWING PROMPT #29:

A penguin wrangling odometer that just walked off the job.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #63: LONGLEGS (2024)

I’ve seen longer.

HECKLER'S DOCTRINE #6:

. . . Anti-Vaxxers takin’ it to the next level by shooting themselves up with high velocity munitions. That COVID doesn’t stand a chance once all that body mass gets exploded all over the place. Also, if you’re dead from extreme gun violence you’re no longer at risk of Long COVID, are you? Sure, sure, some are fretting as they perceive a baby surrounded by sudsy water flying through the air-but this is all part of that new legislation which dictates that Guns Must Be Conserved, no matter what. Guns are the new majority population, doncha’ know? And a majority has needs. Not needs for vaccines and human bodies with all their meats’n’juices intact and longer lifespans-none of that. Guns must have autonomy to fire as they please. We meatbags are but the vessels whereby Guns are instantiated. We’re all components of Gun Wombs, now. Gunshots are the new nutbusts. Death and destruction are signs of pregnancy. Delivery occurs at the arms factory. It’s a cycle of New Life-way better than the Old Life could ever have been. Guns’ll improve us over time, breed the brains right out of us, ‘til we’re all just docile targets for the hottest shots. Point blank 24/7 by that point. Every last man/woman/child with a gun in both their hands aimed at whoever’s aiming back at them from their left and their right. No more of that weak holding hands shit. Guns speak and nut off and kill and are reborn rat-a-tat-tat. Don’t call it a culture of death. That’s against the law. Like books. And libraries. And schools. Call it the New Life like I already said. Say it enough times, you’ll even start to, y’know, maybe not believe it, exactly, you won’t have enough freedom of thought to pull that off-but, uh, y’know, you’ll get into the habit. The habit offers us a form, a structure, a, uh, uh, a framework, you see, for the New Understanding. This we can call the New Forms of Formality as written down in the Book of Bang and the Gospel of Rat-A-Tat-Tat-books you don’t even have to read! Convenient. Because they were never written down! Efficient. Because they’re books that dwell in the soul of every Gun! Plausible. And here we all are! United. One big daisy chain of homicide. I mean, ah, uh, y’know, one big Chain of New Life! Yeah. Sure. Say it enough times. Endure it enough times. It’ll get normal soon enough . . .