Lupine Podcast Club

Podcasts are still a relatively new venture for me. I mean, back in 2011 I guest-starred on one that was associated with a now-defunct website I was writing for. But until 2016, I didn’t pay very much attention. The time and commitment involved just seemed like too much, and I didn’t want to filter through all the crap to find the good stuff.

Still, around that time I had a number of recommendations from friends, and I thought it was time to dip my toe in. Since then it’s been quite the voyage of discovery – so while I don’t want to be that guy who’s always telling you to check out podcasts, you might enjoy some of these if you like this site.

I Don’t Even Own a Television

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably spent your share of time watching or reading about bad movies, maybe even listening to a podcast or two on the subject. That’s fun and all – but what if there was an equivalent for bad books?

Well, I Don’t Even Own a Television – or IDEOTV for short – steps up to fill that void in your life. J. Williams Friedman and Chris Collision take you on a journey through some of the best and worst trashy books on the market. I’ll freely admit that I am not a particularly fussy reader; I certainly don’t always agree with their takes, and I’ve personally enjoyed a bunch of the books featured. But both J and Chris are very funny and very easy to listen to, and you do also hear about some interesting books that you might not otherwise have come across.  

Oh No, Ross & Carrie!

As I’ve noted in some of my posts about reading, I collect old books about the paranormal and the unexplained. But in day-to-day life, I tend to think things need to be viewed a little more sceptically. And this is where Ross & Carrie step in. Ross & Carrie are both former evangelical Christians who are no longer members of the faith but have retained a fascination with unusual beliefs. In their own words:

Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, and claims of the paranormal, but take part ourselves. Follow us as we join religions, undergo alternative treatments, seek out the paranormal, and always find the humor in life’s biggest mysteries. We show up - so you don’t have to.

In a stark contrast to many other pieces of skeptical media, they largely avoid a snarky or condescending tone. They’ve been doing this in one form or another since 2011, covering just about every fringe topic you could think of – and yes, they have done Scientology. 

DEATH // SENTENCE

The second book-related podcast on here. Do you like extreme metal, leftist politics, reading and crude humour? I sure as h*ck do. DEATH // SENTENCE is the most recent entry to my regular listening, and indeed it seems to be a fairly new podcast, apparently having debuted earlier this year. Hosted by a British guy named Gareth and avant-garde writer Langdon Hickman, they’re two very well-read guys who cover a lot of interesting ground. 

Shelf Life – A Collector’s Podcast

As you might have guessed from looking at this site over the years, I like collecting toys quite a bit – so it’s only natural that I’d be pushing a podcast about toys on here.

Adam and Blake take you through the wild, whacky world of collecting, along with all the fun and frustration that comes along with it. The show’s been running since last year, and it’s really hit its stride. Highly recommended, and both great about interacting with their fans on Twitter too.

How2Wrestling

Irish comedian/wrestling tragic Kefin Mahon and his life partner Jo Graham talk through the basics of wrestling fandom. I came across Kefin through an episode of the previously mentioned IDEOTV podcast, and subsequently discovered he had been podcasting across a few different shows for years.  

Kefin and Jo do a fantastic job of making the oft-impenetrable world of professional wrestling accessible to the wider public. If you’ve ever thought about checking it out but weren’t sure where to start, I can wholeheartedly recommend How2Wrestling a fantastic way to kick things off. There’s also a great, welcoming Facebook group that’s grown as an offshoot of the podcast too – Team Friendship.

New true crime piece at We Are The Mutants

As regular readers may know, I write the occasional piece over at We Are The Mutants. Well, another one went up this week -- I tackle true crime for the very first time, with a look at the sinister history of murderabilia. John Wayne Gacy's artwork features prominently, so depending on your workplace, you may find it a little NSFW. You can read it here.

You can see other guest articles I've written for various sites here, too. 

I got interviewed!

As some of you are aware, I released my debut novella Lost Tunnels back in June. So the other day I sat down with the Australasian Horror Writer’s Association (of which I'm a member) for a bit of a chat about it.

You can see the whole thing here.

POP! WWE - Shawn Michaels (Wrestlemania XII)

Long time between drinks, eh? Life has been a bit chaotic the last few weeks, in part because I’m transitioning into a new role at my day job. Fun fun fun! But here we are again today. Hopefully things will be back to a more regular schedule shortly, but of course we’ll have to wait and see.

Shawn Michaels was one of my favourite wrestlers as a teen, but I have no real memory of how that happened. I was pretty indifferent to D-Generation X, so I can only assume I saw him pull off an impressive match on an old VHS or something. Given the limited access we had to WWE TV product in Australia back in the late 90s, it may have even have been as simple as seeing a photo of him and being impressed by his look.

His flamboyant in-ring work and outfits helped endear him to multiple generations of wrestling fans, both as a member of tag team The Rockers, as a solo star and then part of D-Generation X. A good relationship with management helped keep him in the limelight throughout his long career, but these days he works behind the scenes as a trainer. Now there are plenty of stories about his backstage shenanigans – and of course, the Montreal Screwjob is always going to loom large in his legacy – but the man’s talent can’t be denied. He’s one of the absolute best to ever step in a ring, and was one of the few wrestlers who was lucky enough to go out on a high. 

We did already get a Shawn Michaels POP, a year or so ago. It wasn’t bad, but it also just kind of looks like a dude with long hair and flamboyant pants. This particular figure is quite a bit more distinctive; it’s based on Michaels’ entry gear for Wrestlemania XII. He ziplined to the arena, and it looked amazing! You can watch it here, if you’re so inclined.  

In POP form, it isn’t quite as spectacular as the real thing. There’s a bunch of sculpted detail to capture all the intricate elements of the real outfit, but many of them remain unpainted, which is a bit of a shame. The prototype -- pictured above -- had quite a bit more coverage.

Perhaps the biggest issue though is that the face doesn’t really capture Shawn Michaels' likeness. He’s a very distinctive-looking guy, but at the time he didn’t have facial hair – so it’s tougher to capture his likeness in the limitations of the POP format, in comparison to say, Mick Foley.

Still, the white and silver outfit is quite unique among the WWE POPs yet produced, and it certainly stands out on the shelf. So Shawn Michaels is a good, if not quite great POP. I feel like the definitive one may still be to come, further down the line.

Don’t forget, you can stay in touch with me via the following means:

Twitter – @lupinebookclub

Facebook – www.facebook.com/lupinebookclub

You can also buy my horror e-book, Lost Tunnels, here  

Lupine Record Club: Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods

Here we are in 2018, with a new Immortal album! Northern Chaos Gods comes a staggering 9 years after their last release, with subsequent years caught up in a mix of touring, legal battles and of course, the departure of frontman Abbath. It’s not an issue that I necessarily want to dwell on, but it is something that’s kind of inherent to discussing this album. It's tempting to use language like “Black Metal Fleetwood Mac” but I feel that would be kind of lazy and also insulting to people on all sides of the argument.

***

The splintering of Immortal upset me quite a lot when it happened. I was making a tentative return to metal after a couple of years off, and there had been rumblings of a new album after the solid but not spectacular All Shall Fall. Abbath and Demonaz still seemed like an unshakeable duo, coming across as a favourite wrestling tag team in more ways than one. But obviously not all was well…and, well, I don’t run a gossip rag here, but let’s just say that accusations got thrown around from all parties involved.  

I actually met Abbath in late 2015, when he was visiting Australia to promote his then-upcoming first album. I was lucky enough to be by the stage door as he was finishing up soundcheck. He was very kind; he accepted my compliments graciously and took time to take several photos with an overweight 30-year old starstruck fan who was trying to find his place in the world again. It was a small gesture, but one that has stuck with me in the years since. So it’s fair to say that I would like a reunion of a more classic line-up, but who knows whether that will happen or not in the future?

Regardless, the dust has now settled and the various legal issues appear to have been resolved; Abbath has pumped out one album and has a second in the works, while Immortal have regrouped as the duo of Demonaz and Horgh.  Northern Chaos Gods has been a long time coming, but was it worth the wait?

***

I decided to be fairly extravagant for Northern Chaos Gods – I picked it up on LP, opting for the white with black splatter vinyl (only 500 released, folks!). I had reasonable faith it would be a high-quality product, if not life-changing.  

The sound harkens back to a pre-At the Heart of Winter Immortal, though the engineering and production is more in line with Sons of Northern Darkness – not surprising, given that Peter Tägtgren is behind the decks again and also filling in on bass. Lyrically, it’s exactly what you’d expect. Blashyrkh and Ravendark feature prominently. Immortal’s lyrics have always had the qualities of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign sourcebook filtered through the Norwegian landscape, which is very much one of the reasons I enjoy them so much.

Now I can’t say I was hugely shocked by any of this; Demonaz was the guitarist of Immortal for years before Abbath and remained the lyricist even after departing from active musical duties. In 2011 he also released a solo album, March of the Norse, which definitely shared some auditory similarities with his main band – this should have been a clue, if nothing else.

Yet while it blasts in all the right places, is incredibly and is loaded with the Immortal tropes we’ve come to know and love over the years, I can’t help but feel that there’s a certain X factor missing. The easy answer is to point to Abbath’s absence, but I don’t necessarily think that’s true; one need only look to All Shall Fall to see that his presence is not a guarantee of excellence.

Perhaps it’s more to do with the way the genre has evolved over the years. In the decades since what we now call black metal was developed, it’s taken on a huge myriad of forms far beyond what Venom, Celtic Frost, Celtic Frost and their fellow pioneers could have imagined. Today, staunch retro traditionalists exist alongside the avant-garde – often on the same concert billing – all competing for the listener’s attention. Northern Chaos Gods’ production marks it as a modern product, but in many ways it could have stepped straight out of the mid-90s.

***  

Immortal are, and will likely remain, polarising. Their willingness to embrace the inherent silliness of the black metal aesthetic – if not always knowingly – sours many who consider themselves more trve and kvlt. Yet their lack of involvement in the far-right politics or illegal activities of many of their fellow Norwegians has meant that they’ve also been embraced by many who might have never dipped their toes into black metal otherwise. Whether or not you feel that is a good thing is largely irrelevant at this stage, because that Viking longship sailed literal decades ago. *EDIT* And just to be very clear, I do not think those activities were good. Nor am I in favour of gatekeeping. 

In many ways Immortal were in a no-win situation for this album. Release an album similar to older material and be accused of trading on past glories; deviate from the formula and alienate the core fanbase. Ultimately, my suspicions about Northern Chaos Gods were proven correct. It is a high-quality product, though not life-changing – it’s unlikely to win new fans, but I suspect the band themselves aren’t too worried about that at this point. Perhaps more importantly, it sets a promising precedent for further material from the “new” Immortal.

POP! Movies – The Pale Man (Pan’s Laybrinth)

I had pretty mixed feelings when I first heard about Pan’s Labyrinth. In 2006, the only Guillermo del Toro films I’d seen were Blade II and Hellboy – both a lot of fun, but not necessarily inspiring confidence in the idea of a literal fairy tale movie. 

Additionally, Tim Burton was having quite a commercial renaissance at the time, and I was worried that Pan’s Labyrinth would hop on that train and become an overload of *cough* delightfully quirky *cough* imagery*. But I decided to make the trip to Sydney to see it. Fortunately, my fears were misplaced – it was a fantastic film, and one I think of very fondly to this day.

Aside from the faun, one of the most memorable characters/monsters is the subject of today’s review – The Pale Man. I suppose to modern eyes the Pale Man probably looks most like Slender Man or something**. But this was a pre-Slender Man world, so its design actually draws from the tenome, a creature from Japanese mythology.

A hideous, child-eating monster, he’s terrifying when he shows up. We never get a lot of context about exactly what he is or where he came from, but it’s readily apparent that he’s been eating children for quite a long time. del Toro has described the beast as a criticism of the Catholic Church; hoarding luxuries and preying on children.

The POP itself is…okay. The limitations of the format mean there’s not as much emphasis on the hand-eyes as there probably should be. Instead, it’s all about his horribly jowly eyeless face. Far enough, but something is definitely lost in translation.  

Additionally, he doesn’t include a stand, nor do his feet have slots for them. This is a problem, as his inhumanly skinniness is quite integral to the character. In tandem with the front-heavy head, the slightest amount of warping to the legs will render him nearly unable to stand. Mine does, but he’s definitely kind of wobbly.  

Since it’s been 12 years since Pan’s Labyrinth was released, it’s not unreasonable to ask why we’re only getting merchandise for the film now. I don’t really remember any from the time – it seems there’s been a few bits and pieces in the years that followed, but they’ve mostly been high-end busts and statues, well out of the range of the more casual collector. I can only assume it’s partially fuelled by the massive success of del Toro’s most recent film, The Shape of Water, which in turn has helped spark greater interest in pretty much all of his past films.

While it’s nice to get an affordable and readily available version of the Pale Man, I don’t think he’s a particularly great POP. The balance issues and the loss of some of his most distinct features in translation place him squarely in the “okay” column. Instead, I’d suggest waiting for the upcoming NECA figure, which also comes complete with his throne.

*I get why people like Tim Burton, and there are a number of his films I do enjoy. But he definitely has his signature style elements, and I had a very low tolerance for them at this particular time of my life.  

** Interestingly, Doug Jones did play a kind of ersatz Slender Man in a 2015 horror film.

POP! WWE – “The Demon” Finn Balor

POP! WWE – “The Demon” Finn Balor

Well, it’s been quite a few weeks since I last posted on here. Things have been a little chaotic, with me starting a new job, along with a variety of family illnesses. But here we are back again, and hopefully it won’t be anywhere near as long until the next.

As I’ve been watching wrestling again over the last few months, Finn Balor has become one of my favourite performers. He’s not being used as effectively as he could or should be, but he’s prominent on RAW and you can always guarantee he’ll put on a good show.

Now, at first glance he might seem an odd choice for a POP. He doesn’t tend to be the most flamboyantly dressed wrestler in the business – black, blue or silver trunks with matching boots. But every now and then, he’ll emerge for his matches as The Demon.

In layman’s terms, he essentially throws on a whole bunch of body paint to look like the demon king Balor of Irish mythology, who ruled over the evil Fomhóraigh. The look definitely has some similarities to Marvel’s Venom, but it’s still one of the better pop culture appropriations in wrestling over recent years.    

This isn’t the first time the Demon version of Balor has been released; originally there was a Chase of the regular figure which depicted him in makeup but without the headdress. I’d prefer the Chase to be the regular release, and this version with the headdress to be the Chase…but hey, that’s Funko for you.

The body sculpt is the same as the regular Finn, and the head appears to be a retool. It’s a surprisingly heavy piece as a result, though it doesn’t have any issues with balance. My only real complaint is that he looks a little too tall in comparison to most of his WWE POP! companions, but that’s simply a limitation of the format.

Now, the facepaint doesn’t work quite as well in Funko format as it does in real life, but the general effect is still conveyed. Additionally, they haven’t given him his usual back paint, but I can imagine this might have been a costing issue. It’d be covered up by the headdress anyway, so it’s not a huge deal. It all adds up to a fun, if slightly imperfect figure. In a line dominated by dudes with beards in tights, he definitely stands out.

Like many white people in Australia, I’m of partial Irish descent*. Accordingly, part of the reason I like Finn Balor** is because he doesn’t play to traditional and offensive “Oirish” stereotypes. You might be surprised to learn that there’s actually quite a bit more to Gaelic culture than potatoes, four-leaf clovers, Riverdance, Guinness and leprechauns. The fact that they haven’t forced him into a Lucky Charms outfit or similar is a shockingly progressive approach from WWE, an organisation which seems to aggressively seek controversy around race and ethnicity. Balor has helped give Irish mythology a bigger place on the pop culture landscape, and he’s a darn great in-ring performer.

It’s been quite a while since Finn has performed as The Demon, which is a shame. At the moment WWE seem to be using him as mid-card eye candy, rather than the guy who could convincingly beat the h*ck out of Kenny Omega. Still, with Summerslam and a high profile Australian PPV on the way, you never know what we could see in the near future.

*English, Scottish, Welsh and Finnish too. More Ancestry.com results to come from the other side of the family soon, hopefully.  

**Same thing goes for Becky Lynch