Escape Artists
PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on December 02, 2019, 03:56:34 PM
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PseudoPod 677: When a Beast Looks Up at the Stars (http://pseudopod.org/2019/12/01/pseudopod-677-when-a-beast-looks-up-at-the-stars/)
Author: Orrin Grey (http://pseudopod.org/people/orrin-grey/)
Narrator: Jon Padgett (http://pseudopod.org/people/jon-padgett/)
Host: Alasdair Stuart (http://pseudopod.org/people/alasdair-stuart/)
Audio Producer: Chelsea Davis (http://pseudopod.org/people/chelsea-davis/)
“When a Beast Looks Up at the Stars” was first published in Orrin’s third collection Guignol and Other Sardonic Tales
Show Notes
Werewolf Ambulance Podcast:
http://werewolfambulance.libsyn.com/
Pure Cinema Podcast:
http://www.nowplayingnetwork.net/purecinema
“What’s the earliest memory you have of your father?” my therapist is asking. Such a tired line, something that a therapist would ask in a movie. I don’t tell him the truth, of course. I cast around for an easy lie, the same one that I would give to Kenzie if she asked, though she never does. Tell him something about my dad wrapping Christmas presents in old shoe boxes, packing them in socks, a twenty-dollar bill stuck between two bricks, wrapped in faded paper. Something that could be cute but always felt mean-spirited.
My laptop case is lying on the floor of the office. In it is a letter on stationery from the Seldon Civics Committee or somesuch, a clipping from the Seldon Herald, complete with a grainy newsprint photo of the old Gorka Theatre, with its marquee like an art deco wave. I’m driving there from here, in a rented black Accord, but I thought it would be a good idea to get one last therapy session in before I go.
No, let me stop. That’s a lie, and I know it. Kenzie thought it would be a good idea, and she’s right, but I knew it would be a waste of time, and it is. I talk about Seldon, about my childhood, about my dad, but I skim over the surface, like I’ve taught myself to do. A rock skipping across a deep, black pond, never touching the water long enough to attract the attention of the beasts that circle below.
Listen to this week's PseudoPod. (http://traffic.libsyn.com/pseudopod/Pseudo677_WhenABeastLooksUp.mp3)
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The only way things could have ended worse for the main character is if the last film of the triple feature had been "Manos: the Hands of Fate" and the final revelation was that his dad was the dude who played Torgo.
As a movie fan I appreciated the numerous references. A humorous meta version of this story with a jaded critic similar to the main character in Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" making acerbic comments about the derivative horror elements would be interesting.