humor – Page 22

Review of Comic Book: The Movie

Comic Book: The Movie
Written & Directed by Mark Hamill; Performed by a Full Cast
DVD Video Special Feature – 7 Minutes [UNABRIDGED
AUDIO DRAMATIZATION]
Publisher: Miramax
Published: 2004
UPC: 786936230635
Themes: / Superhero / Comics / Fantasy / Humor /

The fictional Golden Age superhero Commander Courage is without doubt the greatest hero in comics for obsessed High School teacher Don Swan (Mark Hamill) in the mockumentary called Comic Book: The Movie. While the movie itself is well worth viewing it is one of the extra features on this 2 disc DVD set that is the most interesting for us: An original radio script supposedly first broadcast in the mid-forties, entitled “The Origin Of Commander Courage”. As most of the cast of Comic Book the movie is made up of animation voice talent they decided to do a dramatic “re-creation” of the script during a panel at the 2002 San Diego Comic Con. This brief origin story tells how Commander courage first got his unique super powers. The voice talent includes: Gary Owens (Roger Ramjet, Space Ghost), Maurice Lamarche (Pinky and the Brain, Futurama), Bob Paulsen (Animaniacs, The Tick) and Jim Cummings (The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Shrek)! Video of the recording session is provided as well but we’re asked to imagine sitting with our families gathered around an old Philco Radio, tuning in to the first ever broadcast of the “Commander Courage Radio Show”‘. The script is ridiculous, but then so were most of the origin stories of 1940s superheroes. The live audience laughs as the casts takes liberties with the script and improvise their own sound effects. Well worth a look and a listen!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Trailer Trash Savior by Tom Gerencer

Science Fiction Audiobooks - Trailer Trash Savior by Tom Gerencer Trailer Trash Savior
By Tom Gerencer; Read by Tom Gerencer
MP3 Download – 10 Minutes 9 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: www.TellTaleWeekly.com
Published: 2004
Themes: / Fantasy / Humor / Demons /

So the millennia have passed, and the time of the reckoning is once more nigh … not to mention that you’ve got a busted velvet-Elvis and the oil heat isn’t working. Find out what happens when the owner of a mullet and a used AMC Gremlin becomes “the chosen one,” and has to battle demons, various and sundry. First published in Brutarian magazine. Read by the author.

An underpaid trailer park resident is all that stands between the Earth and its total obliteration. Told in first person perspective, this odd clash of superhero style violence and the trailer park aesthetic works surprisingly well in this short story. The denizens of hell and worse planes of existence always seem to spring up during mealtime and if that isn’t bad enough our hero is forced to fight the unnamable forces of evil in a tackily decorated mobile home. This reading, by the author Tom Gerencer, isn’t bad at all – there is some backround hiss in the mp3 and the misnaming of a trailer park vehicle are all that mar the experience. Gerencer’s narration works pretty well here, and I think that has to do with it being a first person perspective tale – he isn’t forced to do different character’s voices – something best left to professional readers. This is the kind of story you recommend to a friend who’s in need of a really good laugh. Trailer Trash Savior is a full 4.6 Megabytes of downloadable MP3 for just four bits ($0.50 USD)! If you liked Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but maybe thought it was a little unrealistic for a teenage cheerleader to be the chosen one, and that say Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys would have made a better choice, have no fear the Trailer Trash Savior is here.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey

To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey©
By Cory Doctorow; Read by Cory Doctorow
FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD – 23 Minutes 37 Seconds [UNABRIDGED]
LINK: http://www.craphound.com/audio/Doctorow_-_Billy.mp3
Publisher: www.craphound.com
Published: 2001
Themes: / Science Fiction / Dystopia / Humor / Satire /

Billy Bailey was the finest heel the sixth grade had ever seen — a true artisan who kept his brand pure and unsullied, picking and managing his strategic alliances with the utmost care and acumen. He’d dumped BanginBumpin Fireworks (a division of The Shanghai Novelty Company, Ltd.) in the _fourth_ grade, fer chrissakes. Their ladyfingers were too small to bother with; their M-80s were so big that you’d have to be a lunatic to go near them.

First published in Interzone, To Market, To Market: The Branding of Billy Bailey© is set in a world in which advertising has taken over every institution. This dystopic tale is a fun little story. Billy Bailey® is a 6th grader, who’s something like a smarter Dennis The Menace®, but that’s probably selling Billy short. Dennis The Menace® is just a fictional character. In this REAL world, REAL people are by far the more profitable brands. If you’re a 6th grade boy in elementary school, you want to wear Billy’s© shoes, drink what Billy© drinks and say what Billy© says. Billy Bailey® is at the top of the brand list. Everything Billy Bailey© does is predicated on what he thinks will most benefit his brand. The Billy© brand is all about playing the rake, the prankster who always beats the authority figure, which in this case is Billy’s school principal. But when Billy® gets tarred with a pathetic M-80 down the toilet prank in his Pepsi Elementary© girls bathroom, Billy® must fire his agent and come up with a whole new corporate strategy – he better re-brand his image if he wants to keep his sponsors.

Doctorow does this as a plain reading. I don’t expect all authors to be gifted readers – that’s why they pay the professional narrators – but that isn’t the problem. The problem here is with the recording. It isn’t terrific. It sounds as if was cobbled together from more than one recording. Apparently it was recorded using the built-in microphone on his iBook©, but in the multiple sessions it took to record it must have been at different distances from the mic, because the sound is inconsistent. You can also hear the pages as they turn, and what sounds like a squeaking computer chair with other occasional background noises. Despite this, it’s more than worth the money – it is after all completely FREE!

Doctorow’s story is interesting and original. It tackles the invasion of capitalism into children’s lives, and does it with a biting satire. See, even in our world, a corporation has only corporate legal responsibilities and no moral ones. Seeing as corporations have all the legal status of persons in our capitalist society it is no small wonder that people might come to think of themselves as corporations. Heck, our celebrities really are corporations! This is a very sad world. Everyone uses catchphrases to define their personal “brand”, and everyone is jockeying for sponsors. Morality has been completely subverted by marketing. Those who are successfully marketed are good and those that aren’t…. well, they aren’t even worth thinking about – just has-beens or never-will-bes.

On Cory Doctorow’s website he says he’s planning to read all of his stories and release them as free downloadable MP3s. This is a wonderful idea, and I’ll be sure to listen in however he does it, but maybe he should take a page from James Patrick Kelly’s FREE READS website and consider recording in a professional studio. Apparently it costs about $200 per session, but the sound quality and consistency in one makes the recording archive quality. Kelly’s stuff is free too, but he does ask for PayPal donations.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Callahan’s Con by Spider Robinson

Callahan’s Con
By Spider Robinson; Read by Barrett Whitener
8 CDs – Approx. 10 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0786183470
Themes: / Science Fiction / Humor / Crime / Time Travel / Immortality / Telepathy / Florida /

Jake Stonebender, our favorite intergalactic barkeep, rivets us to our stools with yet another wild and wooly yarn about the goings on of his Key West cantina. This time though, it isn’t the end of the world that is the trouble. Instead, it’s a mountainous mole-hill of a thug named Tony Donuts Jr. who wants to make his bones by fleecing Jake and his neighboring businesses for “protection money”. Jake could solve this problem with straight-on firepower, but that’d only bring down more government attention on him and his hippie clientele. And more heat is what he doesn’t need – because wouldn’t you know it – a dedicated bureaucrat from the Florida family services department has been sniffing around to find out why Jake’s only daughter has not been to school since she was born some thirteen years ago! So Jake and his extended family set about concocting a sting so devious it will make Florida Swampland real estate look good. The grift involves, among other things, time-travel, the Russian Mob, and the Fountain of Youth!

Full of brain-smearing puns and gawdawful song parodies Callahan’s Con is guaranteed to entertain anyone who enjoys Robinson’s Hugo award winning fiction. Myself, I come for the jokes and stay for references. In this case a nice homage to literature’s most unlucky master criminal: John Dortmunder. Callahan’s Con is proof that not only can Robinson like to write in the style of Heinlein – as he did in the previous installment, Callahan’s Key, – but also that he can write in the style of Mystery Writers Of America Grandmaster Donald E. Westlake! Interestingly this means that that Jake’s first person perspective is stretched-out to include multiple viewpoints – as is the Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. I’m not sure how Robinson did it, but he managed to convey other character’s perspectives in a way I can only describe as fictionalizing the fiction. I should also note that in a break with tradition Robinson hasn’t merely added to the seeming ever growing entourage surrounding Jake – for a major of character in the series dies. Though this could be troubling it is handled with grace and a few tears.

Reader Barrett Whitener, in this third Blackstone Audio Callahan audiobook does his familiar and fun vocal gymnastics routine – spouting off one liners in a dozen comic voices. Whitener, an Audie Award winner, is well matched with comic material – it really and truly is his forte. Blackstone Audio has been known to use a mix of art from the hardcover or paperback and their own original cover art. Their own art has been steadily improving and I’m pleased to say this is the nicest original cover so far!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Tertiary Phase
By Douglas Adams, adapted by Dirk Maggs, performed by a Full Cast
3 CD’s, 3 hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: BBC Audiobooks
Published: 2005
ISBN: 0792735919
Themes: / Science Fiction / Comedy / Time travel / Space travel /

A review by Steven H Silver

When The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy originally appeared on the BBC from 1978-1980, it consisted of twelve episodes (called “fits”). The first six of these fits were later refashioned to form the novels The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Turning his back on the medium of radio for several years, Douglas Adams continued the story with the novels Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. This caused continuity problems when the decision was made to return the series to its original medium.

Following in the footsteps of Arthur C. Clarke, who decided to write a sequel to the more widely known film 2001 rather than his book of the same title, the BBC produced a radio sequel to the books Adams wrote rather than to the radio series. The result is the complete disregard for fits 7 through 12 of the radio broadcasts as the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase picks up where the now retitled The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase left off. There is a slight attempt to explain Zaphod’s adventures in those missing fits, but not Arthur nor that of Ford.

The BBC has successfully put together the surviving cast from the first series, which was more than they did for the second series. Simon Jones, Stephen Moore, and Mark Wing-Davey, who played Arthur Dent, Marvin, and Zaphod Beeblebrox on both radio and television, and Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect) return for their third series. Susan Sheridan, who portrayed Trillian in the first series has returned to the role for the third series. The replacement of Peter Jones (the Book) by William Franklyn and Richard Vernon (Slartibartfast) by Richard Griffiths works well.

The inclusion of Adams’s own voice for the character Agrajag is a nice touch. Since Adams died before the series could begin production, a recording of him reading Agrajag’s lines from the audio version of Life, the Universe and Everything was used with some resampling which allowed it to fit in quite well with the general flow and sound of the broadcast.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with the Tertiary Phase is the same as one of the problems with the novel upon which it is based. Notably, although it contains the characters Adams created for the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, the story itself is a plot originally created by Adams for the television series Doctor Who. Another difficulty with the Third Phase is that because it is based on the novel, Life, the Universe and Everything, it lacks the sense of originality of the first two series, which formed the basis of everything that came after.

The Tertiary Phase strives to recreate the feel of the original series broadcast twenty-five years ago, and manages to achieve that goal. However, both the dialogue and the plot lack the originality of wit which caused those first two series to be so successful and launch Adams’s career. Fans of the Guide will enjoy listening to the broadcast, and will eagerly await the final phase, but it won’t recreate the feeling of listening to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the late seventies.

Review of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams, performed by a Full Cast
6 Cassettes, 6 hours [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: The Mind’s Eye
Published: 1988
ISBN: 0881425671
Themes: / Science Fiction / Audio Drama / Humor / Aliens / Space travel / Time travel /

I have to cringe whenever an important milestone in Dr. Seuss’s surprisingly robust afterlife comes around, because it is inevitably greeted with a hundred grating “Seuss-like” paeans from every journalist, columnist and otherwise admittedly illiterate citizen who makes the amazing discovery that the English language is crammed to bursting with words that rhyme. More, even, if you make up a few of the words yourself. Douglas Adams can be similarly “inspirational”. Much of what is written about him is filled with disorientingly obscure citations and facile imitations. I appreciate why: He and Seuss made it look so easy, we can scarcely resist attempting to recreate their magic ourselves. But I will admit right now that if I could write like Adams, I wouldn’t be sitting here bashing out brief audio book reviews for an utter lack of pay. I will also admit that I have incorporated much of Adams’ prose into my own genome, and hope to transfer it genetically to my offspring (an aspiration my wife does not seem to regard with the same urgency). I will not, however, take a crack at trying to impress you with my abilities to mimic and quote. I don’t want to embarrass myself.

These tapes are of the very first incarnation of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Ur-myth that inspired a trilogy of four novels, a diabolical computer game, a television show, and an upcoming movie. More than just a recording of a funny radio play, these tapes represent the annunciation of Douglas Adams as the major talent in science fiction humor: a veritable shot heard round the world. The story itself is an ambling monstrosity of interplanetary adventure, time travel, and hidden questions about the meaning of the universe and the origin and fate of the planet earth. Of course, with all successful humor, what it is really about are the characters (in this case, chiefly Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, and Marvin the android) and the way they interact and bicker as wave after wave of crazy crap happens to them. The prose is exquisite (“They hung in the air exactly the way bricks don’t.” Oop! That was a quote, wasn’t it?), the settings range from imaginative (Magrathea) to bizarre (Milliways), and the information provided by the Guide itself is always tangential and hilarious.

But for fans of the books or the television show, what is truly remarkable about the first and second half of the tapes (the primary and secondary phases of the radio play) is not their utter perfection, but Adams’s uncanny ability to tweak them to even greater heights. The escape from Milliways is an excellent example. In these tapes, the use of an alien navy commander’s space ship is a little weak, but in the latter versions, the material Adams adds about the band “Disaster Area” and their cataclysmic concerts not only makes a better doomed escape, but contains some of the most memorable lines and images in the whole series. And the way he combines the primary and secondary phases of the radio show to produce an interweaving of the Dent/Prefect and Beeblebrox/Zarniwoop story lines in the novels not only increases the dramatic tension more organically, but also fills many of the logic holes that perforate the second half of these tapes. It’s like a graduate-level class in editing, only funny.

Of course, this radio play is not simply a virtuoso performance by the author, but a monumental ensemble production, as well. Mark Wing-Davey’s spacey portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox makes even Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman look pretty well plugged in, and Stephen Moore’s Marvin the android is a walking mechanical disaster of painfully amusing dimensions. Those are my two favorite performances, but the others are similarly tight: Simon Jones captures the bewilderment and hysteria of Arthur Dent perfectly; Geoffrey McGivern delivers a Ford Prefect who is helpful, roguish, and enigmatic; Peter Jones gives the voice of the book a zany, reassuring sound like a kindly but mad uncle; and Susan Sheridan provides a smart yet seductive Trillian Add in the myriad voices of mice, computers, doors, and smug waiters; the wonderful special effects of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; and the loopy grandeur of the Eagles’ “Journey of the Sorcerer” as the main theme and you have a work of audio magic that will tickle your brain and delight your ears.

But don’t believe for a minute that we all walk around quoting this radio play in our daily speech simply because it provides hours of silly hijinx.. Adams ventures beyond situational and linguistic surprise to grapple with the humiliating vastness of the universe and the mind-boggling possibilities of infinity, and it is this theme that anchors the series so firmly in the subconscious. Philosophy, religion, and calculation are shown to be helpless before the unrelenting immensity of everything, and the only response we are left with is either suicidal hopelessness or laughter. We are forever indebted to Douglas Adams and the BBC cast for saving us with laughter. So I urge you to buy, rent, or steal these tapes as soon as you can and begin stuffing as much of the prose into your memory as it will hold. What else are you saving all that underpowered gray matter for?

Posted by Kurt Dietz