New Joy Factory Monthly Podcast: Every City Needs a Danny DeVito Penguin!
A brand new episode of JFM just dropped. I’m joined by the delightful Andy of the Geek Salad podcast to talk about Batman Returns (1992). Is it the best Batman movie? Why does the movie still hold up? You’ll have to listen to find out! You can find the episode on Acast, iTunes, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also stream the episode below or right here on my website!
The Joy Factory Weekly Newsletter! (New Issue Up)
Heyo, folks. I’ve not been updating much on the blog. Hence the new posts today! For those that don’t know, I’ve started a newsletter (title in the, uh, title). It features a collection of interesting links, reading lists, books to check out, articles and other writing projects, interviews, and more! You can subscribe to the newsletter at GetRevue or here! Also: a brand new issue just dropped (#8, y’all)! Coming soon: an interview with the lovely Adri Joy! Thanks for hanging about. Have a good’un!
New Podcast: The Joy Factory Monthly!
Hiyo, blog follower ninjas! In case you didn’t know, I’ve been releasing a mostly-weekly new podcast as part of the Joy Factory project called The Joy Factory Monthly. You can find the show on almost every podcatcher (iTunes, etc.), stream the episodes right here on my website, and find episodes on Acast! If you don’t know what the show is about, here’s the simple pitch: each episode, I’ll talk about a joyful topic with a guest (or just you, the audience). The topics will be geeky and run the gamut from specific films or books to video games and culture to fascinating science and *joyful* news. Basically, it’s intended as a fix for joyful geeky content and represents my desperate attempt to not feel like the entire world is burning to the ground and we’re all doomed! If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, give the show a listen, subscribe on your favorite podcatcher, and give the show a five star review on iTunes! Oh, and a brand new episode just dropped! It features a conversation with Iori Kusano about the joy of video games, from the escape they offer to the NPCs and games living rent free in our heads, and much more! Check it out below!
Brokeback Mountain (2005) and the Unbearable Violence of Gay Love
In 2005, the United States found itself in a renewed culture war over the place of homosexuality in society. Just two years prior, the Supreme Court overruled Bowers v. Hardwick to establish sodomy laws as unconstitutional. None of this was new to civil rights activists, of course. Gay rights had been part of the national conversation for decades, especially in the wake of Stonewall (1969) and the DSM’s redefinition of homosexuality as non-pathological (1973). By 2005, the year Brokeback Mountain blew up the box office, Massachusetts had legalized same-sex marriage and a flurry of bans had swept the country, ushering in an era not just of tacit acceptance of bigotry against gay people but also of systemic, government-supported bigotry. All this was hot on the heels of decades of brutal murders of gay people, and an especially tumultuous 1990s, which saw well over a dozen murders and executions of gay men (and women), some of them so high profile that they would eventually lead to legislation designed to protect gay people from (or at least create greater punishment for) murderous homophobes. For a young man raised in a deeply homophobic culture, all of this was a bit of a shock, not least of all because my mother was a gay woman, and for about a decade up until 2005, my life had been packed with gay people being people with regular people problems. And here we were being asked as citizens to determine if other citizens had the right to live their lives without government interference. For me, there was no question that same-sex marriage should be legal.
Capricon 41: My Schedule (Panels, Live Podcasts, etc.)
Welp. It’s that time of year for Capricon, a Chicago-based science fiction convention to run virtually this year. Capricon 41‘s guests of honor include Aliette de Bodard, Brandon O’Brien, John Jennings, Michi Trota, and Dr. Cacophonie Tamayo, all exceptional individuals in general (and within their respective fields). Needless to say, Capricon is going to be on fire this year! This year is unusual, too, for the fact that I helped a little with programming, though not nearly as much as I should have or wanted to when I first chose to participate. It’s been a learning experience, though, and I hope to continue growing and being better at this going forward! With all that out of the way, here’s my schedule of panels (all times in CDT). Come hang out!
So Much For Rules: The Zany Sports Massacre of Space Jam (1996)
In 1996, a young 13-year-old me didn’t so much drag my family to see Space Jam as convince them by osmosis that this would be the most important film of our lives. In retrospect, I was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that of the animated films for kids in the 90s, Space Jam had a surprising impact. It earned $230mil worldwide on an $80mil budget in an era before one expected a blockbuster film to near or break the $1bil mark. And it spawned new merchandise and even its own video game (not exactly surprising for the era, but still a fun fact). While folks today look back at the film with humorous horror, critics of the day didn’t exactly hate it. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel both gave it a thumbs up. Leonard Maltin in his 2010 movie guide praised Michael Jordan’s performance and the understandably impressive visual effects for the time. Others were more critical, such as Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, who apparently did hate it and whose views are understandable given he directed numerous Warner Bros. productions and gave us Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1975)! Meanwhile, 1996 me, a most esteemed critic, would have told you that we repeatedly rented and eventually owned the VHS to Space Jam, and we played it quite a lot.