Calypso (2018) by David Sedaris

Calypso (2018) by David Sedaris: Sedaris is an extraordinarily gifted comic writer whose observations about family, life, and the FitBit in this volume often move into an understated poignance that never becomes mawkish or overly flippant. The comic essays included here (no short stories this time around) appeared between 2016 and 2018.

The adventures of his family and himself go into some dark places here, including the suicide of a sister whom Sedaris and his siblings (there are six Sedaris children in total)  have been avoiding because of exhaustion for years... in David's case, eight. He never lets himself off the hook. He also never loses his almost-trademarked gift at portraying the absurd moments of almost any event, any person. 

Most notably himself. 

A sequence involving a snapping turtle, a beach house, and a non-cancerous fatty tumour on Sedaris' stomach really has to be read. Maybe with a bit of vomit coming up in one's mouth from time to time. Sedaris doesn't spare us his misadventures in stomach flu, falling off ladders on Christmas Day, and failing to interact in a meaningful way with his emotionally distant and physically and mentally declining nonagenarian father.

I think it's all pretty much dandy, the sort of humour that supplies catharsis and belly-laughs. It's not his finest collection of humourous essays -- that would probably be When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008). But it's a lot of sometimes serious fun. Calypso will certainly delight longtime readers of Sedaris, and it also serves as a fine introduction to his work. Highly recommended.

The Divided States of Hysteria (2017): written and illustrated by Howard Chaykin

The Divided States of Hysteria (2017): written and illustrated by Howard Chaykin: Legendary comic writer-artist Howard Chaykin stirred up controversy when The Divided States of Hysteria came out in single-issue form in 2017. 

Much of the flack came from the Left, an odd turn of events because Chaykin is vocally left-wing and has been for decades. But he's also been an expert at making readers uncomfortable for decades now. 

For example, he caused the late Harlan Ellison to have a world-class freak-out with his revisionist Shadow miniseries in the mid-1980's, a book which logically pointed out that the Shadow was a fascist sociopath and then ran with it all the way to awesomeness.

The Divided States of Hysteria is a near-future dystopia in which much of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government died in a terrorist attack before the book's narrative begins. Rather than offer a bipartisan fantasy of a perfect President within this scenario, as Designated Survivor does, Chaykin instead offers more chaos, horror, incompetence, and a group of "heroes" who make the Dirty Dozen look about as scary as the goddam Goonies.

At the heart of a lot of complaints, I think, is Chaykin's ability to make violence and fascist tendencies look attractive. It's sort of the point -- as some wag once pointed out, a lot of comic-book superheroes are fascistic, anti-government sociopaths. Or would be, if they were real. But isn't fun to watch them solve things with punches and explosions?

At the heart, though, of those complaints is also the inability of many people, left or right, to separate the representation of something from advocacy of that same thing, along with a a pronounced and escalating ability to take offense at anything that isn't pablum. Bland, inoffensive pablum. You're mean, Early! How dare you draw the aftermath of a completely plausible 21st-century American lynching AND PUT IT ON YOUR COVER! 

Identity politics also requires that one of the two people closest to being a hero in The Divided States of Hysteria, as a trans woman, SHOULD NOT BE REPRESENTED BY A HETEROSEXUAL WHITE MALE CARTOONIST!!!

But she is a great character. And dead sexy.

At one point, female terrorists detonate dirty bombs they've had implanted in their wombs. This is not a pretty scenario. I imagine Tom Clancy vomiting with rage somewhere. So too someone on the Left. Chaykin has decided to find ways to horrify the reader, and the same old beheadings and IED attacks and marathon bombings have lost the power to shock. They're becoming background noise.

In order to stop America's enemies -- and redeem his own devastated reputation, and avenge the deaths of his mistress and wife and family in a terrorist attack  -- a disgraced CIA operative puts together a team of four convicted murderers. They're up against a cadre of terrorist leaders and a Russian operative and the incompetence of their own country's government. The President they're working for, a replacement from the Cabinet's lowest levels, is a compromised hack. 

So five misfits.... well, 'misfit' is a bit of a misnomer. Besides our CIA protagonist, our heroes are a trans man who killed three clients in self-defence, a mob hitman with a serial-killing hobby, a criminal accountant who murdered a couple of dozen rich people with poison, and an African-American serial-killing sniper who's a really good shot and loves shooting white civilians in the head.

The Challengers of the Unknown these are not. Challengers of the Unthinkable, maybe.

The violence is horrifying. The art is slick and gorgeous and horrifyingly clinical at atimes. The 'sound-design' from letterer Ken Bruzenak is fascinating enough that it gets its own 4-page explanatory essay at the back of the volume. Over it all hangs a question Chaykin has been asking and answering for a long time in his work -- are these the heroes you want? Because this is what they would really look like.

I mean, there are other questions. And the whole thing, complete with the cynical 'voice' of an omniscient narrator running along with the narrative, is a compelling action narrative, blood-soaked and morally dubious. But it's also a compelling examination of the heroism people love when it's sanitized in everything from James Bond movies to daily news reports of Seal Team 6 and Our Brave Black Ops Boys in Afghanistan. 

And I haven't even delved into the sexual and racial politics explored throughout! The Divided States of America delves into an America besotted with sex and violence, sometimes at the same time, sometimes as the same thing. 

Along with the narration comes a recurring series of images of death and horror from various American sites. The terrorist groups themselves are a mixed bag too -- an All-Star, Dream Team-up of White Supremacy and Black Power and Islamicism, coordinated by a Russian operative who's also a Hollywood movie producer. It's doom alone that counts, all moving towards a final attack on a telethon for a wounded America, complete with the President, to be destroyed by the same groups who are also the event's public donors.

It's not so much that the satire and the violence both blister. It's that the entire book seems entirely plausible. Chaykin's been examining the puritanical, pornographic nature of American culture for decades. The American love of violence as a solution, and the attendant separation of the world into Good and Evil, Us and Them. Now all accompanied by the eternal chatter of social media.

Bang bang, screw screw, shoot shoot. Highly recommended.

100 Years Of Trump In the Time Of The General's Labyrinth Of Cholera Foretold

Robbie the Robot is a Symbol  of a robot who can make bourbon

Should you get a chance, watch Forbidden Planet and the TOS Trek episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before" back-to-back.

Clearly, Trek episode writer Samuel Peeples watched Forbidden Planet and intentionally or not recreated a lot of it in the Trek episode. But the two have radically different takes on god-like power and the human condition.

In Forbidden Planet, Morbius is innocent -- he didn't know that the Krell iPhone player would create a murderous Creature from the Id while he was listening to Krell iTunes. And when he's finally convinced of this evil from inside, he throws himself at the monster to save Captain Detective Frank Drebin and his own daughter and, in dying heroically, saves them.

Cool contact lenses Brah !

Gary Mitchell, though, is clearly a dick from the get-go. He's sexist, he treats Spock like shit, he gropes a female yeoman when they're entering the galactic barrier, and he later reveals that he held Kirk in contempt before they met and manipulated Kirk into dating his first great love (Carol Marcus?). He even seems to resent taking a poison dart for Kirk on the planet of the Giant Dart-Throwing Rats.

Gary Mitchell is clearly Kirk's frathouse buddy whom Kirk feels great friendship for. But in actuality, Mitchell was always a prick. Kirk wants to believe that the galactic barrier changed Mitchell's personality, and Spock enables this by being nice and saying things like "That is not Gary Mitchell." 

What do you mean it's supposed to be 'T'?

But Spock, whom Mitchell is nothing but a dick to, is clearly being respectful of Kirk's misguided affection for his old frathouse kegger buddy. Gary Mitchell, Kirk's supposed best buddy, DOESN'T EVEN KNOW KIRK'S MIDDLE INITIAL !!!!!! Either that, or the 'R.' on that gravestone stands for 'Retard' and Mitchell was just about to explain this joke when Sally Kellerman hit him with some Force lightning, motherfucker!

Why is there a pink barrier around the Milky Way ?

To shorten this up, "Where No Man Has Come Before" predicted (and warned against) the Trump Presidency: it told a story about a guy who was always a dick who got away with it because some people thought he was funny and he wasn't ever going to sit in the captain's chair. 

But then Gary Mitchell wins the 2016 election and only a Jewish Canadian Iowan, a Jewish American Vulcan-Human, and special guest star Sally Kellerman can stop him. Note also that the woman given superpowers (Kellerman), while initially attracted to the Dark Side by Gary, soon sides with the good guys. Power doesn't corrupt her -- it ultimately lets her see the Evil of Gary "The God" Mitchell and fight against it. Absolute power corrupts only the corruptible!

Just like Trump in real life!