The Carrying On of a Wayward Son: The Podcast — Episode 1 with Andrew Hollinger

 

For a while now, I’ve been flirting with the idea of doing a weekly podcast. My first thought was to make it movie-centric — since that’s been the focus of so many other areas of my life lately. As I’ve continued to mull over the idea, though, it’s become more and more clear that this needs to be a project that’s almost completely void of movie-related discussion. I need an outlet in my life where I can flex my other creative muscles.

And so was born The Carrying On of a Wayward Son: The Podcast. In every episode, I will have an hour-long chat with a friend about anything and everything. These could be fond bouts of nostalgia about a shared past or dual brainstorming about a hoped-for future. Some of these podcasts will be with my current set of friends. Others will be with old friends I haven’t talked to in years. Even others might potentially be with people I’ve never even met before.

The first episode’s guest is a good friend of mine named Andrew Hollinger. Andrew and I met in 1995 or so when the two of us were in fifth grade. Starting of as fellow Cub Scouts in the same den, we later became classmates and then even later attended the same university. Andrew also was a partner in my first attempt at a podcast — Inkstain, a more literary venture that saw the two of us record pre-written essays. Andrew is currently a high school teacher in the Rio Grande Valley and a frequent writer. You can read some of his past work on his website at www.andrewhollinger.com.

So, without further adieu, here’s the debut episode of The Carrying On of a Wayward Son:

The Carrying on of a Wayward Son: Episode 1 — Andrew Hollinger

 

Twenty Things Not To Do When You Have Crippling Depression

Suffering from depression? Great!

1. Read through high school yearbooks — especially the places where friends wrote you personalized messages about just how far you were destined to go in life. Follow that with a good cry as you clip your name tag onto your brightly colored cotton polyester work uniform.
2. Lie in bed, listen to songs by The Hollies and reminisce over relationships that didn’t work out by reading the stash of love letters you still hide under your mattress. Quickly hide the letters when your shrew of a wife comes home and demands you stop dicking around and get dressed so the two of you can go to her ex-boyfriend’s funeral where she will publicly wallow in mourning.
3. Go through your cell phone and delete the numbers from friends you’ve lost touch with. Stare blankly at the two remaining numbers left in your phone’s address book before remembering your parents passed away last fall and their numbers should probably be deleted too.

Revisitation of All My Friends Are Funeral Singers Comes Up Dry

Imagine if Wilco did Beetlejuice.

When I first saw All My Friends are Funeral Singers at South by Southwest, I was blown away by the experience. Walking away from the theater, I was a little curious if my extreme enjoyment of the film came from the fact that it was a genuinely great movie or the fact that I had seen the film with a live soundtrack courtesy of Califone, the masterminds behind the film.

After watching the film from the comfort of my home — sans live performance by Califone — I’m a little disappointed to find that All My Friends Are Funeral Singers doesn’t quite live up to memories of my initial encounter with the film.

There’s No Giant Monkeys In This Rampage

Let’s go Bolling!

Rampage, the new film from director Uwe Boll, is morally reprehensible, utterly without merit and completely watchable.

Boll, no stranger to criticism, wrote and directed Rampage, a sociopathic bloodbath that plays like a mixture of Falling Down, Elephant and Grand Theft Auto — as seen through the eyes of an angsty teenager who consists solely on a diet of energy drinks, heavy metal music and a complete lack of hugs.

Brendan Fletcher stars as Bill, an emotionally distant young adult drifting through life seemingly without a direction. His days are spent either sulking in his parent’s basement, where he alternates between reading and wailing on his punching bag, or working at a local garage. Bill’s only friend is Evan, a would-be political activist who is all bite and no bark, and his parents want him to move out of their house. To top it all off, Bill can’t get a decent cup of coffee to save his life. Sure he has his problems but it’s not exactly like Bill’s living a tumultuous life or anything.

Don’t Bother Booking A Trip To The Sex Galaxy

Watch recycled movies! They’re good for the environment and okay for you!

I have a confession to make. I’ve never really been a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I know, I know. Me being a connoisseur of bad movies and not having a soft spot for MST3K is just ridiculous. I’ve certainly tried my hardest to enjoy the show — forcing myself to watch episodes long after I’ve established that I wasn’t really digging the show creators’ shtick. I’ve even tried Rifftrax, the latest project from the MST3K guys and no dice.

I enjoyed watching the movies that were heckled on MST3K but sitting back and letting other people heckle a movie for me has always just seemed lazy. If I am going to take the time to watch a bad movie, I’d rather listen to the taunts and jeers coming from the mouths of my friends and myself.

The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It Here To Remind You Shit Happens

A movie the filmmakers hope will make you laugh until you’ve spoofed all over your pants.

I’m not sure when “spoof” became a dirty word but, after watching The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It (henceforth referred to as 41-Year-Old Virgin), I feel as desensitized as if I had just spent the afternoon with a ex-con/pirate with Tourette’s.

The film is, as you may have guessed from its obnoxiously long title, a spoof of the films directed and produced by Judd Apatow. Director Craig Moss, a filmmaker whose only previous claim to fame had been directing a short film titled Saving Ryan’s Privates, co-wrote 41-Year-Old Virgin with writing partner Brad Kaaya. Together, the two of them made a concentrated effort to jam-pack as many pop culture references and unfunny sight gags into an hour and a half as they possibly could.

Supersonic Man: Saving The World … One Porn Mustache At A Time

Superheroes! So damn hot right now!

With the success of Iron Man 2 and the looming madness of Marvel’s continued Avengers franchise and Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film, it’s clear that superhero films aren’t going anywhere — pretty good for a film genre that almost died out a little more than ten years ago.

After the crippling disaster that was Batman and Robin and the trail of the dead superhero franchises that paved the way to Joel Schumacher even getting the job in the first place, at the turn of the decade superhero films looked to be going the way of the Western or the Las Vegas prostitute who is accidentally murdered in a night of carnal pleasures, taken out to the desert and buried next to a coyote den.

Then came X-Men, Bryan Singer’s mostly mature look at comic book heroes, and everything changed. Now, superhero films are more often than not targeted to the parents of children instead of the bright-eyed toddlers wearing Superman underoos.

Final Storm May Not Be A Great Film But It’s A Great Uwe Boll Film

The Raging Boll refuses to take a fall!

A half-decent Uwe Boll film? Sounds crazy, right? While Final Storm won’t be winning any major awards anytime soon, the latest film from notoriously terrible director Dr. Uwe Boll isn’t as much of a stinker as you might suspect. In fact, unless you catch his name in the credits, you would never even suspect the Raging Boll had anything to do with this vaguely supernatural thriller.

Steve Bacic and Lauren Holly star as Tom and Gillian Grady, a married couple who have escaped to the countryside in order to patch up their faltering marriage. Along with their teen son Graham (played by Cole Heppell), the family has made a good life for themselves – even if they do have their occasional squabbles.

As the story begins, the world is being beset by a series of devastating storms — each bring ruin and chaos to whatever part of the world they appear in. In the wake of the storms, people are rioting — or even odder, just up and disappearing.

Birdemic Is Everything You’ve Heard and More

The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!

There are bad movies and then there are bad movies. Birdemic: Shock and Terror is a film so awful, so misguided, so wondrously terrible that it transcends pure technical miscalculation and becomes a masterpiece in garbage. Birdemic is officially the worst movie I have ever seen — but it may also be one of my new favorites.

Birdemic first flew into the public consciousness in 2008 when director James Nguyen crashed the Sundance Film Festival in a van plastered with props and signs — one of which, according to legend, misspelled the title to his own film.

Despite not being accepted into the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, Nguyen rented a local theater and showed the movie to a sparsely populated audience. From there, the Birdemic spread.

The film is an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds but it is also so much more (or less, depending on how you look at it). Alan Bagh plays Rod, a stiff-walking, awkward talking software salesman who finds his attempt to woo an old high school crush crushed when a flock of eagles begin attacking (and spontaneously exploding) all over his tiny California Bay city.

NoBody’s Perfect, But This Film Sure Tries Hard To Be

Not your father’s pin-up calendar.

When brainstorming ideas for a picture calendar, one wouldn’t normally jump to idea to take the 12 months and accompany them with nude photographs of 12 people born disabled due to the side effects of Thalidomide, a stress reliving drug popular in the late fifties.

Niko von Glasow, himself a victim of the drug, did have the idea and NoBody’s Perfect chronicles his attempts to gather 11 other people who are willing to strip down and expose themselves — something that many of the victims of Thalidomide have long been uncomfortable doing.