TbP 21: Actually ... Love (f/ Joe Stremph)

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Sally Jane Black and I welcome that hero-legend of Regular Guy Style, Joe Stremph, to th studio to chat for two hours bout th consensus Most Important Topic o.A.T., though since this is 2016, we couldn't resist throwing some Trump in there, too

•    00:00  "Today I Met the Girl I'm Gonna Marry" performed by Nation of Ulysses
•    01:47  Hi, Joe Stremph 
•    04:11  What's the most fucked up thing you've done for love? | th Anime Girl 
•    19:24  The very first thing I said to my future wife | Jimmy Eat World 
•    30:47  Aspirational romantic comedies | not an alcoholic | day we first kissed : 10 Feb 1996                 | what Jews are like | bad maps | musicals 
•    58:00  If love stops existing, do you think there's something that could replace it ?  
• 1:08:00  Accurate cinema on love | Roseanne | Parenthood 
• 1:13:55  Tech difficulties | Victor Cayro cameo | adieu Sally | My Stupid Brother (Jesse                   Peretz 2011) 
• 1:21:55  Han versus Luke | more tech diff | th one-on-one version of you 
• 1:27:27  Th desire to be understood and to be psychic | "praise in public, critique in private"                     ethic | (off th record discussion) 
• 1:36:33  Winning & humility | a scenario that contains potential for mutual understanding                       | kneejerk liberals, kneejerk conservatives, Trump, risk, & accountability
• 1:49:07  Risk & love | Doblering | vulnerability & desire | weaponizing intimacy 
• 1:55:02  Engagement | more tech diff | devaluation of jokes, devaluation of engagement                           | cool Internet meetings | adult friends | and more tech diff | distance 
• 2:10:42  "Your Wonderful, Sweet, Sweet Love" performed by Th Supremes

 

TbP 19: G.O.A.T.

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This one went off th rails pretty early on w/r/t its intended topic and never got back on, fully.  Billy Ray's original intention, I think, was to set up th parameters of what it means to be th Greatest Of All Time, and den debate various G.O.A.T. candidates over various fields of endeavour.  Instead we ended up talking bout Livejournal again 80% of th time, general Internet ethics (10%), Stevie Wonder (5%), and gay filmmakers (5%).  Idlewild, Ryan Jackson, Abbas Kiarostami, bell hooks, James Booker, Los Bros Hernandez, Alison Bechdel, Akira Kurosawa, Sergei Parajanov, Persepolis, and Charlie bit me are namedropped in passing.  We are joined this week by Rena J of el jay fame, who was gracious enough to join us on v. short notice and ended up being our first ⚡solo⚡ guest in many moons after our other guest passed out drunk

Listen close for th G.E.O.A.T. (greatest ending of all time)

Table of contents:

• 00:00:00  "Sir Duke" performed by Stevie Wonder
• 00:03:52  Nominal attempt to stick to a topic | blah dee blah dee blahHH | etc etc etc
• 01:59:38  Bonus Track: a great way to start a mixtape or end a podcast
  

TbP 18: Aesthetes

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Went ahead and annotated this one, since it's a Saturday a.m. & I'm ill & industrious, and idle hands are th devil's playthings.  My initial idea was to encourage discussion bout how beauty can be this world's most powerful idea -- that, Helen aside, human people are launching 1,000 ships every hour on behalf of their versions of beauty -- that, @ core, most fights can be reduced to incompatible visions of what beautiful means and what ugly means.  That discussion never happened in an explicit way here, though it is nestled incognito under th discussion that did happen.  Billy Ray Stupendous & I could not be more pleased w/ th results.  We are joined this week by two luminaries of th el gay planet -- Jinx Malone and Mister Eden -- whose imprints on my own consciousness are deep not due to in-yr-face proselytizing, sensory bombardment, or even daily familiarity -- both remain, to my mind, foreigners who vacation in whatever country mine is -- but rather through th consistent, insistent, sneaky internal logic(s) of their worldviews ⚡⚡⚡⚡

Table of contents:

• 00:00:00  "Cannibal Holocaust (Main Theme)" composed & conducted by Riz Ortolani
• 00:02:55  Intro guests | vague outline of topic | Oscar Wilde quote re shooting piano players | personal aesthetics vs branding 
• 00:10:21  A very horror childhood | "... goofy ... visceral excitement ..." | th devaluation of fandom
• 00:13:24  False memory | psychosexual childhood | th Hammer Films dynasty 
• 00:19:00  Obsession | Blue Velvet (David Lynch 1986), dayface, & nightface
• 00:22:22  The Hidden Observer | neurosis or superpower | th writerly attitude | th universal fascinating inner life
• 00:27:33  Driven by unseen forces vs conspicuous curation | not-caring vs caring | ⚡millennials⚡, YOLO, FOMO, & Burning Man
• 00:34:51  Infinite, oceanic, & eternal | virtuous buzzkill | "You should feel the horror" | Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato 1980) | "disgusting hipster irony bullshit" | Inland Empire (Lynch 2006)
• 00:40:08  Billy's reclusive cinemania | MZA's risk advocacy | Jason X (Jim Isaac 2002) | black audiences | movies as sports
• 00:44:44  Fulci vs Romero | Burial Ground: the Nights of Terror (Andrea Bianchi 1981) | Blind Dead series | The Exorcist (William Friedkin 1973) vs Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski 1968) 
• 00:51:24  Cinemaphobias | :poop: | rape | Mike Kitchell shoutout 
• 00:58:39  Th end of sex & violence | economics of inoffense | Quentin Tarantino | Jackie Brown (Tarantino 1997) | talent in bad films 
• 01:07:11  Talking bout practice in bad films | Jess Franco & visual passion | th virtue of knowing what you're getting into | unstoppable zoom on bush | Barbed Wire Dolls (Jesús Franco 1975) | God's Gun (Gianfranco Parolini 1975)
• 01:15:00 Patrick McGoohan | Scanners (David Cronenberg 1981) | Jinx's shrine to the Paddy | "destructive glee" 
• 01:18:49  Regarding television | Columbo | Peter Falk, Hollywood rebel | Twin Peaks | "exasperated by the episodic nature of TV" | Breaking Bad etc | compactness of cinema vs cultural sprawl | British TV | Lost
• 01:30:33  Feature-length film's incompatibility w/ th novel | talking bout adaptations | novels vs short stories | writing for no audience | Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer 2009)
• 01:37:42  Return to Driven by Unseen Forces | anthology of el jay writing | honesty, unself-consciousness, Jess Franco, accidents, & el jay | ello.com | "zone of sincerity" 
• 01:45:07  On being part of no movement | kommentude & th "accidental discovery of something unplanned" | "the sister I wish I had" | song discussion | farewell adieu
• 01:51:08  Bonus Track: "Giu' la Testa" composed & conducted by Ennio Morricone

TbP 16: Livejournals of Future Past

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Look, you're into Livejournal or you're not, and it's not anyone's job to sell it to you or defend it from its detractors. What Billy Ray Stupendous and I wanted to allow ourselves w/ this episode was a bit of navel-gazing, a bit of choir-preaching, and a bit of self-back-patting, in accordance w/ El Jay's charter as set forth by th one true god Brad Fitzpatrick in 1999. Not sure if that stuff happened. Not sure what's on this podcast. We were joined by last-minute surprise guests Asphalteden, Herrdoktor, Horty_pie, and Koala_infestation. Clocking in @ something like two hours and a quarter, this one's for th frenz & fagues

Table of contents:

• 00:00:00  "Th Anthem of Fuck You Crew" performed by David Fox
• 00:02:24  ??????CONTENT OF SOME SORT
• 02:04:24  Bonus Track: "Clouds across th Moon" performed by RAH Band

TbP 12: Anticulture (f/ Lisa Carver & Mr Musty)

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This episode of Talking bout Practice is so good I'm probably a genius just for scheduling it. Please join me & Billy Ray "the Bedroom Genius" Stupendous as we execute a flawless takedown of two overrated geniuses, "Rowdy" Mr Musty and Lisa "The Hitman" Carver, in a no-holds-barred cage match ...... nah. Truth is there weren't a whole lot of disagreements in this one, only thoughts presented in a gentle manner by civilized adults. Fans of Mr Musty's Livejournal and Ms Carver's zines and books -- of which th latest is named Money's Nothing -- won't be surprised by their incisive interpretations and their oblique angles on familiar topics, though their shared affection for Kardashians and Furries might catch a few off guard. Th evening's topic? Culture, Counterculture, & Anticulture -- i.e., th Dominant, th Insurgent, & th Invisible. Th Assimilator, th Assimilated, & th Unassimilable. Th Lawful Good, th Chaotic Neutral, & th Ugly. Th Bad Ugly Good, th Ugly Beautiful Baaaad, & th Angelic Demonic Freakin' Week-end. We never did get around to defining our terms

Table of contents:

00:00  "In Spite of Ourselves" performed by John Prine & Iris Dement
03:30  Intro Mr Musty and Lisa Carver | What is a str8wad? | Mr Musty's three agents of culture | counterculture to culture: a process
08:44  Lisa on being assimilated by culture | two books published in one year
11:00  Kardashians vs Art Is Life movement
13:33  Baseline mass-cultural product has gotten really good | Family Ties
17:06  Agreeing on everything -- what a bummer | information saturation | "I wasn't using my privacy anyway" | seamlessness between culture and counterculture
19:25  UFO abductees | Anticulture is unassimilable | what UFO-acceptance culture would look like
23:44  Constituents' paranoid fantasies come true | how to get on a watchlist
26:30  On th gentleness of abductees, psychics, & witches | late Furry friend | shoutout to AA and Livejournal
31:07  Non-geographical vs geographical senses of self | tribute to New Orleans | Local conformity was an illusion | one possible advantage of geographical/local identity | can opener story: Culture, Counterculture, or Anticulture? 
38:33  Message from Culture: Yr Neighbourhood Is Not Who You Are | hashtags and their relationship to #identity #politics | Never go outside | Never go outside w/o yr smartphone | I'm going to keep my flip-phone
40:35  Young and untraceable | what it would take to get a visit from th FBI | th antiterror comedy | close enough for government work | Are you Saudi Arabian?
43:19  How to get along w/ Republicans | The fact that Ds and Rs don't talk to each other anymore is totally fucking up the country | hatred, or just wanting to win? | Nobody wins
50:55  Rs, Ds, symbolic fights, & real fights | things (politics, jobs, numbers) that are and aren't real 
54:44  Mr Musty and Ms Carver appear to disagree | ethanol story | abstractions tumbling downhill into th real | what businesspeople and politicians are supposed to be doing
57:58  Lego hypothesis
59:11  College is ... | "I don't think there should be school anymore" | de facto debtors' prison | Swedes | th grind | fake jobs
1:04:30  I never went to college | windsurfing Furry dream | Financial obligations multiply | MZA says something racist again
1:08:33  Resolved: I am going to own 10 of everything | on having 10 friends | 1 computer w/ 10 of everything on it
1:12:33  Why do you have physical books? | th comix problem | why painting paintings is more lucrative than writing books | Carver is th Klimt of now
1:14:29  The last, bloody, failed, rear-guard action to hang on to the physical book | those fucking millennials | over-under on th lifespan of books
1:15:54  Guys who need books to get laid | when girls got into comix | Craig Thompson's Blankets | classy people who make lists of books
1:19:33  On making a book interactive | on th seclusion of books
1:21:21  Differences in th new brain | Submitted: technology changes more than th brain does
1:22:16  Ode to th long form: Livejournal & Grantland as Counterculture | Now we are th slow grandparents | split attentions in th new brain
1:25:45  "Web sites are tools" vs "Web sites are houses" | remembering facts vs remembering locations of facts | What are street signs ? | wearable tech | drunks in driverless cars | th Apocalypse | th wristwatch, th map, th chicken nugget, & th printing press
1:32:42  Let's do a Diet show | th game-ification of incentives | You can't lie to yr iWatch | "I permit all"
1:36:55  Good-bye, Lisa & Mr Musty | good-bye, listeners
1:39:29  Bonus Track: a song whose royalty fee we paid in blood

 

TbP 11: Conflict of Interests (f/ K$, Nat, Ariel)

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Th road to being th world's best podcast is bound to incorporate a number of chaotic detours. This week on Talking bout Practice, Billy Ray Stupendous and I taste th nectar of chaos when, one hour prior to recording, I invite one of my OKCupid contacts onto th show.  Unexpectedly, she says yes, and we learn each other's names minutes before going on air. We are joined by two of th all-time best talkers, Kristin (Chicago's legendary Kdollarsign) and Nat (NYC's most powerful PR magnate).  Th nominal topic had been Conflict Resolution Strategies, w/ a significant head nod to Conflict Avoidance Strategies, and assumed forays into Passive Aggression, Secrets & Lies, Brutal Truth-Telling, Silent Treatment, Feigned Obliviousness, Steamrolling, Redirection, Gifts, Apologies, Prisoner's Dilemma, Skipping th Chain of Command, Trolling, Flaming, and These Aren't th Droids You're Looking For.  What happened next might give lovers of artful conversation pause and lovers of CHAOS a feeling that all's right in th universe. Big ups to Ariel (NOLA's head narcissist in charge) for bringing th combative spirit th 'cast has been missing. Warning/hype: a substantial 21% of th podcast is devoted to James Franco

Table of contents:

00:00  "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked in Tonight" performed by Rezillos
01:52  Ladies wearing clothes and a cam girl
03:55  Tonight's topic | When's the last time you were in an argument? | intro Kristin, Nat, Ariel
05:11  Two truths and a lie ... | K$ & th Big Piece of th Titanic | inner conflict & ethical boundaries
07:55  Natalie, do you get in fights @ work? | Olivia Pope style | th only nice celebrity in Hollywood
09:19  Bill Cosby scandal
13:42  "I used to date this guy who was a travel writer ..." | PR freebies & conflict of interest | Yelp is lame
16:11  Yelp for Grindr, Yelp for dating
18:30  Have you guys been sexcessful using an app? | OKCupid batting average | online charisma | online diligence | MZA is a nightmare
21:55  How do you resolve something w/ somebody that you think hates an entire category of people ? | "That's not how the patriarchy works"
23:42  Building an online profile | completely unmysterious | reading between th Internet lines | Livejournal shoutout again
27:55  Dating artists & writers, being a muse | "... fuck a book into 'em" → "... staggering act of narcissism" | bad writing chemistry
30:27  Anti-abbreviations | context rules everything around me | "I say lol all the time -- all the time!"
32:27  James Franco / Ted Bundy
42:19  James Franco says bye | Ariel says bye | everybody says bye
44:39  Bonus Track: a sad song that Nat requested