The Counterforce No. 27

Snakes, Killing It, Claudia O'Doherty, Brooklyn 99, Inside Story, Make It Stop, The Red-Headed Pilgrim, and more...

I had a lifelong fear of snakes until about ten years ago. It started when I was four and my dad picked up a garter snake in our backyard by the tail. I watched in horror as it simply curled up and bit him on the wrist. All the blood confirmed these were creatures I’d do well to stay away from. Then the next week my entire extended family went to see Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Still one of my all-time favourite films but ‘why did it have to be snakes?’ In 2014, right after moving to Framingham, MA, I decided to do something about this. I’d been terrified of snakes for 34 years and I don’t like being afraid of anything. I resolved to hold a live snake and thus banish my fear. I looked around for somewhere I could do this, a reptile sanctuary or other. But they were all over an hour’s drive away. BUT! One of them was coming to the library in Ashland, the town next to Framingham, for an event in three weeks’ time. I decided I would attend and ask the trainer to let me hold one. The day came around, a Friday morning at 10AM. I got myself all psyched up and drove the 15 minutes to the library. Taking deep breaths, I made my way to the door, only to be confronted with a poster for the event reading AGES 3-6. It had not said this on the website. But I was here and this was my chance. I walked inside and explained to the trainer why I had come. He could not have been nicer, saying that plenty of people do this and for me to stick around. I was one of only two male adults in attendance, and the only one without a child accompanying them. Everyone was cool about it though. In the midst of the demonstrations the handler gave me a yellow corn snake to hold. I was terrified as it slithered through my fingers, but it felt like plastic, kinda cool, and had not struck me dead. When it was over, I went up front to the handler, who said “I suppose you’d like to hold the boa.” I replied “No. But that’s what I came here to do.” The ten plus foot boa constrictor was placed in my hands. I counted to thirty and felt into the fear. When it was done I felt absolutely amazing, like a door had opened onto vast new possibilities. When I walked outside, feeling incredibly light, almost high, I noted the train tracks and sign for Montenegro Square across the street. A little over a year later, I found myself living in the house next door to that library and I would look out my bedroom window everyday and see the Montenegro Square sign. I have a theory that when we undergo a lifechanging experience like that, a psychic bond is formed with the particular locale we’re in, imbuing it with meaning for our lives and pulling other strong experiences to it. When I was a junior in college, a few months after an insane mushroom trip where I astral projected, I would lose my virginity in the very same house we were at that night.

All this is by way of saying that, although I think Craig Robinson is a fantastic actor and comedian, I was at first still apprehensive about watching Killing It, a show about hunting Burmese pythons in the Everglades. As usual when I have a stupid aversion to something, the phrase ‘oh how wrong I was’ ends up being completely apt, and now I freaking love this show, even starting it all over from the beginning after finishing the last episode of season two.

I’ve never been one who needs their comedy to be some biting social commentary in order to let myself enjoy it. I knew nothing of the 70s British politics Monty Python were sending up when I first started watching Flying Circus, but that didn’t mean the way they did it wasn’t delightfully ridiculous in and of itself. But for once, with Killing It, I really feel how hard hitting it is, with their portrayal of modern day America. The lengths people have to go to make money, the scams of every income level, our obsession with content and celebrity, and the sheer selfishness and complete disregard for others that drives so many people. In the midst of all that are Craig and Jillian, two characters with heart, who really care about others. And Jillian was my introduction to the wonderful Claudia O’Doherty, whom I now adore. I wish I could find her early stage shows because her whimsical humor is really something special. And the Pearl Jam joke in this sketch at 4:15 is so Young Southpaw. I especially I love the visible self-satisfied glee with which she delivers it and then basks in its aftermath

One of the co-creators of Killing It is Dan Goor, who also brought us Brooklyn 99. Another show I love, even despite Pynchon’s warnings in at least Bleeding Edge to ‘never watch cop shows’. The whole cast is great. Andre Braugher’s Captain Holt is such an incredible comedic character. Every time I remember his “I don’t want to sound dramatic but today has been…suboptimal” I break out in hysterics. But the crowning jewel, and perhaps my all-time favourite tv duo, is when Craig Robinson as Doug Judy joins up with Andy Samberg’s Jake Feralta. I rewatched all the Doug Judy episodes again recently, twice, and from season four onwards, they’re phenomenal.

Recently finished Martin Amis’ Inside Story. It is subtitled ‘A Novel’, and yes there is supposedly fiction in it - the character of Phoebe Phelps, he claims, and his immediate family’s names are changed to protect the innocent, I guess - but largely it is a meditation on three big figures who he had lost - Christopher Hitchens, Saul Bellow, and Philip Larkin (the lives and deaths of his father Kingsley, sister Sally, and cousin Lucy were explored in Experience). I say ‘supposed’ fiction because this Phoebe Phelps seems to be a composite of various women in Amis’ life, sharing many of the same biographical events that he gave to certain of his characters over the years. I’ve listened to a lot of Amis podcasts since his death and he does say that after a while Phoebe became complete fiction, but still her story intersects with the novels, especially The Pregnant Widow. Amis also reflects on 9/11 and offers advice on writing well, which I found very interesting. Simple stuff, but it’s often those guides that makes a sentence sing.

Took me a while to finish Inside Story as I am a slow reader. So the fact that I flew through these next two books in a week really attests to how good they are. I try to institute a ‘no buying things’ rule when I’m on tour. It usually quickly goes out the window, but one does try. Not buying vinyl on the last trip was easy because it was often over 90 degrees out and making the eleven hour trip home with records in the car would not have been wise. But when I was at Two Dollar Radio HQ in Columbus, Ohio I picked up Jim Ruland’s Make It Stop and Kevin Maloney’s The Red-Headed Pilgrim. And loved them both. I’ve mentioned Jim Ruland’s writing on here before, his awesome Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records. It took me a couple chapters to get into Make It Stop, not sure why, though long COVID has been a factor lately, but once I did I could not put it down. Its setting is the near-future, but it could really start happening tomorrow the way for-profit healthcare is going. Amis comments on this too, when discussing moving to America and away from the National Health Service: “…if any Amis gets so much as a headache or a nosebleed, it will be far simpler and thriftier for the four of us to fly first class to London, take a limousine each to the Savoy, and then, the next day, wander into one or another of the NHS.”

Make It Stop are a vigilante group, busting those out of rehab who have been detained under ‘conditional release’, i.e. until they can pay their bill. The story is gripping, full of action and subterfuge, and in this way it reminded me of a James Bond novel. But also funny too. I laughed out loud at the mention of a ‘hate crime against a corporation’. And there’s a double Buzzcocks reference in one section that had me stop reading to message Jim how impressed I was with that. My favourite part though is the description of Evil Dave’s Black Sundae, which would be at home in any of Pynchon’s California novels.

Flipping thru the books on display at Two Dollar Radio, I was sold on The Red-Headed Pilgrim when I saw this as the opening line of Chapter One - “As a child in Beaverton, Oregon - a suburb of Portland the way the Monkees are a suburb of the Beatles…” And when reading it proper I knew it was gonna be awesome a few pages later when the narrator, after running away from high school football practice, is sent to a psychiatrist:

“Your parents tell me you’re afraid of pain,” said Dr. McClanahan.

“I don’t like it,” I admitted.

So simply put and hilarious. It’s not so much the ridiculous events - which are non-stop - but Maloney’s succinct way of wording them that gives the true humor of the situation. The book continues this way from here on out. That is until his marriage is on the skids. Although it doesn’t get less funny, there’s more of the dark ring of pathos to it when very real emotional pain comes into play. But no doubt about it, this is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. I haven’t laughed this much at a novel since Steve Aylett’s Lint or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. Highly recommended.

SEVEN SONGS

I found an old mixtape that I made in 1996 and would listen to all the time in my car back then. It’s called ‘Travel First & Lean Towards This Time’. I had digitized it some years ago and finally listened to the cds in my car the other day. I couldn’t remember what was on it except for Can’s ‘Yoo Doo Right’. And I assumed Joy Division’s ‘Ceremony’ as that’s where I took the title from. Surprised to find that song wasn’t. The mix is an ethereal collection, pieces that would take me to a certain spacey place, and what I would be striving for with my own music at the time. It’s funny, Shazam worked for almost all the songs, except for Beaumont Hannant’s ‘The Hunted’ which I luckily finally remembered the name of. But before I did, I sent it to Rick Webb to see if he had a clue what it was. He texted me back ‘This sounds like you’. So this week’s Seven Songs are some selections from this.

Beaumont Hannant - ‘The Hunted’

James - ‘Burn The Cat’ . I still say James on the Laid tour in 1994 was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. They eschewed the hits and really stretched out musically, pushing the music in a powerful way. I have very fond memories of buying Wah-Wah when it came out. I very much did not want to go to college but early on in my time in Boston finding this and realizing how easily I could now get the import records I’d been reading about helped lighten my depression a bit

Aphex Twin - ‘Xtal’. I love the hi-hat pattern on this, it has stuck with me in a powerful way

Spiritualized - ‘Angel Sigh’ (from the Medication EP). This song is so gorgeous, and this is superior to the album version

Tortoise - ‘Magnet Pulls Through’. Man, I love that bass line and the way the drums interact with it

Richard H. Kirk - ‘So Digital’ . My favourite piece of music by Richard H. Kirk. I love everything about it. The melody, the beat, the way it all moves…

Public Image Ltd. - ‘Radio 4’. This piece sums up that mixtape really, lovely and ethereal, and quite a surprise after all that comes before it on Metal Box

I’m also collecting all these Seven Songs lists here on a monster Apple playlist