Weekly Geekly Rundown for August 8, 2025
Four Interesting Things
I normally start these posts with a discussion of some geek related thing I discovered on the internet that I found particularly interesting. Sometimes these are things that I have encountered organically and sometimes they are things that required hours of digging. I call these things Geekly Oddities and I love writing them.
This week I didn’t have to work at all to find examples of wonderful geeky things, they just kept flooding into my emails or my YouTube feed. At first, I did what I normally do and kept a web browser tab open with the item for later use, but when you start opening new windows because you’ve maxed out the number of tabs it’s time to end the serious backlog. In an effort to close six or more tabs at once, I’m sharing four “Oddities” this week.
The first is comedian Paul F Tompkin’s comedy bit where he impersonates Werner Herzog giving a review of the “Trader Joe’s on Hyperion.” In case you are wondering, yes there is a Trader Joe’s on Hyperion Ave in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles and like many of the places in Silverlake, it is a bit of a nightmare to get in and out of because Silverlake is one of those odd neighborhoods in LA that was settled by people from New York who expect places like grocery stores to be experiences that take place in the liminal spaces between routine drudgery and madness. The bit is very funny because it captures both the reality of the Silverlake Trader Joe’s and Herzog’s strange optimistic despair.
What do I mean when I say Herzog has a kind of optimistic despair? After all, he’s famous for making what seem to be almost nihilistic statements about the human condition. Take this Conan O’Brien interview with him from 2024. Herzog opens the discussion by saying that psychological therapy is a waste of time and that the 20th Century was a mistake. Even as he says these things though, there is something lying underneath those comments.
His disdain for psychotherapy isn’t an argument that it never serves a purpose, he acknowledges that there are those who genuinely need it at the end of that part of the chat. His critique is targeted at people who use it instead of facing reality. He’s mad at people who are unwilling to face the fact that life, for him, is struggle and that that struggle has a beauty to it. He also sees within the use of psychotherapy an attempt at achieving some kind of personal perfection and if you listen to why he thinks the 20th Century was a mistake, it was because it was dominated by murderous and cruel societies predicated on creating Utopia on Earth. He highlights how Communism, Fascism, and Nazism all thought they could achieve human perfection and that they killed millions to prove it.
But that’s not the height of his optimism, that’s him at maximum critic mode. Where you see his optimism is when, after acknowledging that Inline Skating is “okay,” he praises skateboarders. He praises them because they acknowledge the struggle, face it, even as they fail over and over again. There is no guarantee that any skater will be able to grind on a handrail. The most likely outcome is pain and physical injury, yet there they struggle. There are contradictions in his analysis, of course, both people attending therapy and skateboarders are seeking a kind of perfection, but one is living life in the moment (and a possible future) while the other is illuminating every recess of the present and past. I don’t know if I agree with him, but I know optimism when I see it even when it is hidden in conflict.
If you had asked me if I was interested in a spinoff series to the classic sitcom The Office, my first reaction would have been “no thanks.” I love both the UK and US versions of the show and I’ve enjoyed shows with similar conceits that were produced in the UK. I really liked W1A and thought it was one of the best shows about the television industry since Showtimes’ Beggars and Choosers. It stars Hugh Bonneville as Head of Values at the BBC, a position he has been promoted to after serving as Head of the Olympic Deliverance Commission as depicted in the excellent show Twenty Twelve.
My “no thanks” shifted to “I AM ALL IN” after I learned two things. First that while this show takes place in the Dunder-Mifflinverse, it is a sequel only in the sense that the people of the Toledo Truth-Teller newspaper are having their lives recorded by the same documentary crew who made The Office. As Twenty Twelve, which was essentially The Office: Olympic Planning Commission, here we have The Office: Modern Newspaper in Dying Industry edition. I love local media and despair at the decline of real news. Walter Lippmann, in Public Opinion, convinced me long ago that we need the news to help us understand our “Pseudo-Environments” better and Daniel Boorstin warned of the dangers of Pseudo-Events in his book The Image. I’m rereading Boorstin’s classic as I prepare for the new semester and I’m amazed at how insightful it is. I cannot look at the 24 hour news cycle, or social media, without thinking about his critiques.
The second thing that made me an instant fan of the show is that Domhnall Gleeson is playing a lead character on the show. While Gleeson has starred in a number of movies I’ve enjoyed, ranging from True Grit to American Made, it was his performance in About Time that made me a forever fan. As I mentioned in a Note a while back, I’m thinking of doing a post with a list of 13 films that I think are perfect. This will be the first in a series I’ll be calling the“ Five Foot Geek Bookshelf.” This is a double reference. The first, and more widely known, reference is to the famous list of 50 books Charles W Eliot compiled and edited while he was President of Harvard that he believed were central to a liberal education. While the list was created in the Nineteen-Teens, and has blind spots, if you’ve read all the books no one can deny that you are well read. I haven’t read every item in the Five Foot Bookshelf, but it is a life goal to buy a set and do just that. I am also referencing a series of articles written by Karl Edward Wagner, and others, published in Twilight Zone Magazine that focused on genre “classics.” Each list published in that magazine contained 13 entries, so I’ll be following that line.
My “Five Foot Geek Bookshelf” will have films, books, comics, and games that I think every geek should experience at least once. The perfect film list will include About Time as one of its 13 films and a large part of that film’s perfection is Domhnall Gleeson.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Bay Area Science Fiction and Fantasy afterschool television host Captain Cosmic. The role was played by Bob Wilkins who was also the late night Bay Area host for the weekend horror television show Creature Features. The Creature Features show was revived by former “Prince of Darkness” frontman Vincent Van Dahl (played by Jeff Bodean) in 2016 and has become a YouTube channel, a streaming semi-service, and a syndicated show that films new episodes every week from the fictional Poulter Mansion in the very real Bodega Bay, California. The city of Bodega Bay was selected as the home because it is where Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds takes place.
Other than the use of AI in the Thumnails for their YouTube episodes, I’m a fan of what the team at the new Creature Features are trying to do. This Saturday, they’ll be airing The Reincarnation of Peter Proud starring Michael Sarrazin and Margot Kidder and they’ve revived the Captain Cosmic television show. In the pilot episode Captain Cosmic, and his stalwart ally Robot 2T2, return to Earth and watch the first episode of the original Flash Gordon movie serial. It’s pretty cool and I’ll be seeing if my daughters like it of if it’s just nostalgia talking.
Last, but certainly not least, I have some really cool vacation plans coming up in the next year. This past summer was our last summer before our twin daughters graduate and go off to college. While both are applying to several places, our hope is that they will do their undergraduate right here at Boise State University. History wants to get an M.A. in Engineering and Mystery wants to start up her small business immediately after graduating from undergraduate in business, so saving the expensive part of the education for graduate school makes a lot of sense. As much as we’d like them to stay local for school, we are pretty sure they want to return when finished no matter where they go, that is no guarantee so this was one of our last family hurrahs.
We had a great trip to the Lagoon Amusement Park in Salt Lake City and visited Dinosaur Park in Ogden, UT for what was a fantastic time. I’ll likely share that experience in detail later. This prompted me to make sure that I schedule some very cool events throughout the year. I don’t know what we’ll do at Christmas Time, but at some point between the New Year and graduation, we’ll be heading off to Washington state to stay in a wonderful Hobbit House that overlooks the Columbia River. Mystery is a HUGE fan of Lord of the Rings and this will be a perfect fit for her desires. Now to find the thing that will connect with Mystery.
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
In my last Weekly Geekly, I shared a picture
tool of an upcoming line of action figures based on the old LJN D&D Toyline, but in his latest piece he has a ton of great pictures of all the action figures NECA had on display at Comic-Con. Luke’s been covering this beat for a long time and incorporates his interview with toy designer and publicist Blaine Rodenbaugh into his article to make it much more than a “this is really cool isn’t it” piece. Yes, the toys are cool, but so is learning about why they made the choices they made.
While at Comic-Con, Luke was able to sit down with actor Tony Hale to discuss his role in the new Angel film Sketch. Angel was founded as a religious alternative to the typical Hollywood studio and many of their early offerings were overtly spot on in their religiosity. With Sketch, Angel has taken a step back from citation and shifted into parable. It’s an approach closer to what older religious films like Going My Way or It’s a Wonderful Life used to take rather than the God’s Not Dead evangelical approach. Angel isn’t an Evangelical company though, they were founded by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (and yes, I will always write out the whole thing since they prefer to not be called Mormons), and are taking the Donnie and Marie approach rather than a confrontational one. It’s an approach used by the online channel BYU.TV, whose Studio C was regular viewing in our household for a period of time. As many of you know, I’m a practicing Catholic, but I am deeply appreciative of people sharing the light of their faith.
What’s been amazing about Sketch is that it has received praise across the political spectrum of film critics, demonstrating that good storytelling is good storytelling. There have actually been a number of films that have transcended the culture wars this year with Sinners (a great vampire film) and this week’s Weapons getting praise from all sides. I imagine the only exception to be the person that Luke calls the Worlds Critic in Hollywood, but from what I’ve seen that person’s beat is outrage generation.
Luke’s interview is thorough and doesn’t read like a junket piece. It reads like a conversation. There’s a moment at the end when Tony asks Luke about one of his tattoos and it’s a great moment of connection for both the participants in the interview and those of us reading it.
While the current them of Dr.
’s Horror Moments series is on the horror elements of The Sopranos, her most recent entry connects the Sopranos to a horror trope that many a young child has encountered at some point, especially if they ever read Alvin Schwartz’s In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Tales. In this case, she discusses ‘The Green Ribbon’ which is a wonderfully Gothic tale that teaches you the tragic and jaw dropping consequences of falling in love with a Fashionable French Femme.Dr. King provides a wonderful rundown of the history of the tropes in the story and highlights two versions for us to approach at our leisure. The first is Washington Irving’s short story ‘The Adventure of a German Student,’ a tale that is included in the excellent Library of America collection American Fantastic Tales of Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps. It’s a wonderful collection of stories that I visit from time to time when I’m looking for something new to read. I’ve never read it cover to cover, so I missed this Irving tale. That will soon be remedied. At some point I’ll have to write an article how Irving’s style influenced H.P. Lovecraft, but that will have to wait.
The other story Dr. King highlights was written by the Mastermind behind the Musketeers himself Alexandre Dumas and is called ‘The Woman with a Velvet Necklace.’ In this case, there’s no modern collected edition with an insightful editorial introduction for me to recommend, but there is a translation that was available on Archive.org and is in the public domain. I’ve included a link to that story below.
In case you are wondering if everything I read is pop culture related, I assure you that it isn’t and this week’s
by Crystal Lewis is a great example. Lewis is one of those wonderful online resources that helped make my dissertation process easier. I’m not quite finished yet, but I don’t think I would be at the final stretch like I am now if it wasn’t for Lewis and others. The most recent Weekly touches on a number of issues in Qualitative research, some I agree with and some I disagree with. The first article she shares, ‘Open with Care! Consent, Context, and Co-production in Open Qualitative Reasearch’ interestingly touches on some of the issues between artist and subject touched on in a recent short story. How do we prevent qualitative research from overly objectifying the subjects of research, who just happen to be real people with real lives with stories of their own? I was particularly fond of the Column Names as Contracts article and was resistant to it at first, but am probably going to adopt this system in the future and teach it to my students. may have left Substack, but they are far from dead. In addition to creating a new website their magazine Wyrd Science returns with Issue # 7 for another exploration of the strange worlds and new horizons of tabletop games. The magazine has a particular approach to role playing that is similar to that of the old Interactive Fantasy Magazine from the 1990s. That magazine sought to connect literary criticism and game criticism and featured gamers with academic background applying Critical Theory tools to texts. It was the first place to feature game designer Greg Costikyan’s design essay I Have No Words & I Must Design (a very Harlan Ellisonesque title), but the magazine never really found its audience. As skeptical as I am of modern analytical trends in literature and narrative gaming (I think they stagnated in the 90s and need fresh ideas), I like engaging with those approaches from time to time and seek to problematize the problematizations they create. Those kinds of articles are only a small percentage of what Wyrd Science offers and I’ve been a backer since their first issue and cannot wait for the next one.
In this issue...
Roleplaying Games & the Cold War!
The Caves of Qud!
Undaunted!
Rick Priestley!
Why we love Oldhammer!
Through The Hedgerow!
The Triangle Agency!
And lots more including new columnists, a new section on films, TV, books and more, loads of reviews and news, incredible art commissioned just for this issue. We could go on and on but for once we wont.
Cover art by Alexey Gorboot
Matt Davids of
, author of The No Prep Game Master, has published his latest newsletter and really makes me wish I was attending the Archon convention where he’ll be discussing the following films, all of which are among my favorites. I’ve long been a defender of Johnny Mnemonic and it was nice to see it start to get respect after the “noir” version was released. The biggest problems with the film were technical and effects driven, not narrative or performance driven, and shifting to black and white let audiences see that.discusses a pivotal film in horror movie history, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in the latest newsletter. Tobe Hooper’s film shocked audiences and critics alike by redefining how brutal a film experience can be. I remember the first time I saw the film. I was probably too young, but I pushed through it. It was a visceral experience. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but it was very different from anything I’d seen before it.Remembering 'Ladyhawke' - A consideration of the often criticized 1985 Richard Donner fantasy film
Exploring 'Enemy Mine' - Two enemies are forced to work together in this 1985 science fiction film
'The Last Starfighter' Revisited - A look back at 1984’s science fiction failure that became a classic
'Johnny Mnemonic' Revisited - Keanu Reeves enters the matrix before he entered The Matrix in this 1995 cyberpunk film
Delving into 'Dragonslayer' - A consideration of the groundbreaking 1981 classic fantasy film that was a flop
I’m not saying that the upcoming Sword & Sorcery anthology Swords & Larceny was pitched and negotiated at Robert E Howard’s house during this year’s (or last year’s) Howard Days, but I am saying that a lot of the contributors are people you are likely to meet if you ever get a chance to go. Swords & Larceny is coming out in September of this year and is edited by David Afsharirad and by one of our community
who lives in Texas and writes . It features stories from Bill Willingham (Fables, The Elementals), James Enge (Morlock Ambrosius stories), and A Lee Martinez (Gil's All Fright Diner) and many more. I’m very much looking forward to the book and have preordered it already.
Goodman Games started off as a company publishing “Old School” adventures for the 3rd edition of Dungeons & Dragons. They used the Open System License to produce dozens of excellent modules and an expansive setting for players and DMs to use. When 4th edition came out, they were one of the few companies to pay Hasbro for the right to use the Game System License and they produced a number of relatively successful products for that game as well, but as that line faltered the demand for support products evaporated. Joseph Goodman wasn’t caught flat footed though as he had a back up plan.
One of the criticisms of 4th edition was that it had become too much like a Massive Multiplayer Online RPG and didn’t feel like the Old School Roleplaying games felt. While I personally think that 4e is a great game, and don’t think it’s an MMO at all, I do think that the kind of play it inspires is very different from that of 1st edition AD&D. The older game was based on pulp fiction and had a pulp feel. The new game was based on modern fiction, and designed to appeal to Magic and World of Warcraft players. and was thus more “heroic” and less grounded than the original game.
While other designers where trying to recapture the feel of 3rd Edition, Joseph Goodman went straight to the well that inspired 1st Edition. He went and read every book featured in the recommended reading list (Appendix N) of the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and then he made a game that tried to capture the feel of that fiction. That game is Dungeon Crawl Classics. It’s a game that can be brutal at “Level 0” in a manner that’s called “Mudcore” because the party is made up of Gongfarmers and Purefinders instead of Veterans, but it’s also a game that feels more and more epic as you progress. I highly recommend you check it out.
I remember the first time I heard The Who. My dad was playing Tommy and the song ‘Pinball Wizard’ came on and I was hooked. They were the first 60s band that spoke to me in any real way. I liked the Beatles and Stones fine, but they were as emotionally distant from my experiences as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. It was when I heard Pete Townsend’s hand shredding riffs that let me know I wasn’t alone. By the time I heard and saw Quadrophenia I was a full on fan. I love how Quadrophenia shows that all the ways we divide ourselves from one another socially, whether Rocker or Mod or Jock or Nerd or whatever, are all lies. Even the Posh Mods we envy might end up to be a Bellboy. The rage of the older to the younger generation are a denial of their own failings and fears. I’ve never been an overt Punk. I never dressed the part. I got good grades. I played Soccer and Wrestled in High School I was on the speech and debate team and took AP classes, but I had my own anger. Still, I’m just a Minor Threat.
Speaking of being just a Minor Threat as angst ridden as I was as a teen I was never self-destructive. I just wanted to fight for a better life, to find love, to find friendship, and to resist “interesting times” and to fight for an ordinary world.
Okay, that was a terrible segue, but Ordinary World is one of the best songs that Duran Duran ever recorded. It demonstrated that they were still capable of making meaningful music, years after their peak. It’s a song that is distinctively Duran Duran while also updating the sound to a post-80s sound that presages bands like Coldplay. It is a beautiful song and it connects with me in the same emotional places as the rage of The Who while being far more optimistic. Listening to it now, is like drinking pure nostalgia. Looking at the video, I think it was recorded at the Huntington Library Botanical Gardens in San Marino. It’s one of the most beautiful locations in the Los Angeles Area.
I’ll finish off with Nicky Youre and dazy’s song Sunroof. While the song is only a few years old, it feels like it was released when I was a kid. It’s timeless and it’s a song that has special meaning for our family. When we were driving on our first Idaho vacation, we went to Yellowstone, this song would come up from time to time and the whole family would sing together. I was reminded of that moment last Friday when I spent my annual “Daddy Daughter Day” with my twins. We were driving from Meridian to Boise and this song kicked in as it began, my daughters began singing and I knew it was going to be a perfect day. It was and as simple as the song is, it is a perfect musical representation of joy and companionship.
There are a lot of movies about motor sport and racing, but there aren’t a lot of good movies about motor sport. I’ll be including a couple in my upcoming “Five Foot Geek Shelf” list of excellent sports movies. Similarly, there are a lot of movies about fighting sports but very few excellent movies about fighting sports but very few truly excellent ones. Warrior is a truly excellent movie about mixed martial arts fighting, but that’s because it’s not about mixed martial arts fighting. It’s about struggle and redemption. It’s about rage and desperation. It was directed by the director of the excellent hockey movie Miracle, as well as the surprisingly good Accountant films, and the film is far more subtle than the film’s trailer suggests.
I won’t spoil the ending except to say that no matter how the fighting turns out, there is an opportunity for every character to win emotionally. The film highlights how we can inspire one another and how vital our one on one relationships are. Tom Hardy is exceptional as are Joel Edgerton, Nick Nolte, and Jennifer Morrison. It’s a movie filled with actors who are “workers.” Morrison is one of the best examples of that as is Frank Grillo. Both Grillo and Morrison do a lot with their relatively small scenes. I’ve included the trailer and a clip from the film so you can really feel the contrast.
Great stuff, Christian! This has reminded me that I have a copy of Werner Herzog's 'A Guide for the Perplexed' which isn't mine and I might need to give back to someone. I need to get on and read it!