Firehose #204: Epic

Also: About Bret’s grandma….

I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the most interesting fact-checks I came across of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey came not from the brainworms-addled anti-Woke pre-trashers still marring social media, but from, erm, my own daughters. “Circe was too chopped,” said the teen. “You wouldn’t even know that Odysseus was like Athena’s protégé!” complained the tween.

Turns out the kids, quite outside my influence, didn’t need The Dark Knight director consume their own bastardized versions of the literary patrimony of the West. There’s the Percy Jackson books and films, George O’Connor’s Olympians graphic novels, And a pretty fantastic story of a project you may not have heard of called EPIC: The Musical.

Per Wikipedia, EPIC is “a nine-part series of album musicals (referred to as ‘sagas’) written and produced in their entirety by Puerto Rican actor and singer-songwriter Jorge Rivera-Herrans. This musical project, released between 2022 and 2024, is a sung-through adaptation of the Ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey by Homer and takes inspiration from different musical genres as well as modern musical theater, anime and video games.” What’s cool is that Rivera-Herrans wrote the songs, then built and crowd-funded and fan-sourced the productions from the bottom up, auditioning singers on TikTok, encouraging anyone to make their own animations, then plucking the best, of whatever different styles, as Canon.

Coco says EPIC is more true to the source material than Christopher Nolan. She recommends the songs “Puppeteer” and “Open Arms,” but you could also just watch the whole damn thing:

* Speaking of highbrow, in this week’s back-from-the-dead Mailbucket, I lamented the online absence of the classic 2000 Adam McKay-filmed SNL short “The H is O,” in which bro-han pickup artist Ben Stiller is goaded into scoring … Glenn Frey. As played by Will Ferrell. Alert listener Iris promptly found the link, and now I shall tempt the gods by attempting to embed:

* IMPORTANT MUSICAL CORRECTION. On Episode #566 I made the regrettable error, pointed out by many of you, that American heroes Cheech & Chong had a song called “Beaners.” In fact, the song was “Mexican Americans”; “Beaners” was more a work in progress:

* OK, OK, news of the week. Those of you back-of-the-planers who think you didn’t needed to listen to the full Bret Stephens episode just because the naked-Trotskyite Mexican grandma stuff was in the opening bit, well, you missed what many in the Comments hailed as a top-10 show. Plus, the part where the New York Times columnist straight-up called J.D. Vance an anti-Semite:

Oh, and about Bret’s grandma….

He wrote about her at length six years ago. Sample:

She also rented an apartment on Barrow Street under an assumed name. Ostensibly, it was meant to be a studio where she could work on her painting. But, as she delightedly confessed in an interview more than 50 years later, its real purpose was to “learn certain things, sexually, so I could teach my husband” to become “a little more capable in that field.” […]

And there was the time she rented out her Acapulco home for $25 a week to Norman Mailer, sometime after “The Naked and the Dead” had made him a literary sensation. During his stay Mailer busted down a door in a drunken rage, assaulted his girlfriend, arranged to watch a sex act performed on a donkey and finally — this is the part that seemed to scandalize her the most — stiffed Annette on the rent and the maid on her pay. […]

Growing up, I knew I had a very unusual — if sometimes narcissistic — grandmother. A memory from when I was about 12 or 13, having a lunch of leftovers in her apartment in Mexico City:

“Bret,” she said, deadpanning it, “When sex is good, it’s really good.”

“Uh, OK, Grandma.”

“And when it’s not as good — it’s still pretty good.”

* Let’s clean things up. Here’s a clip of Moynihan on Uncomfortable Conversations w/ Josh Szeps, headlined “Michael Moynihan on Socialism, ICE & Lindsey Graham’s Butthole”:

* More on the late South Carolina senator’s preferences from pal Jamie Kirchick (#55, #347 and #394):

Was Lindsey Graham gay? As the author of a book about the history of gay Washington, D.C., it’s a question I’ve been asked frequently for years, and even more so since his sudden death last weekend. The South Carolina Republican’s lifelong confirmed bachelorhood, vocal intonation, and Southern dandy demeanor (if not sartorial choices) prompted many to conclude that he was, as they say in that part of the country, “light in his loafers.” Graham’s repeated attestations to the contrary had zero effect on those invested in the narrative that he was. Only about the matter of J. Edgar Hoover’s rumored cross-dressing (for which there is some circumstantial but no direct evidence) am I questioned more.

* The forever-hawk also came up on this week’s Reason Roundtable:

* Speaking of Reason, my colleague Jacob Sullum got some well-deserved love this week from Mediaite, in a piece titled, “Reason Magazine Comes Out Swinging Against Confirming Todd Blanche as AG: ‘Brazenly Corrupt.’” I’m cited/quoted near the end. From that:

Another Reason contributor, editor at large and former editor in chief Matt Welch, has also used his column space to excoriate Blanche, featuring him prominently in an article titled “The Most Corrupt Presidency in American History, by the Numbers.”

Mediaite asked Welch, from his perspective as the magazine’s former editor-in-chief, about the libertarian take on such issues. For libertarians, replied Welch, there is a strong interest in “power,” specifically the “critique” and “suspicion” of how it is exercised and imposed. […]

[T]here is … a negative side when we see a “cronyist machine trying to politicize what should be nonpolitical,” using government agencies to go after the president’s enemies and political opponents.

“This is appalling from a libertarian point of view,” said Welch, and these problems had only gotten worse “comparing Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.”

It might be “inconvenient” to have these problems pointed out for the libertarians who voted for him and support some of his agenda, but ignoring that is “not our job as journalists.”

This current administration is “corrupt in a way that we just have not seen, and we need to confront that,” Welch concluded.

* Kmele and the Tanglers this week talked about cyclosporiasis, public health, and suchlike:

* Wait, what fresh hell is this??

Well, it’s an advertisement for the first-ever live show by one of our illegitimate-baby podcasts, Ask a Jew! Chaya Leah & Yael are for some reason going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Aug. 10, inviting on past Fif’ guest Nadav Eyal (#382, Members Only #305). Tix here. Also! The extremely unauthorized Fifth Column Dallas Meetup Convention Thingie is on for Nov. 13-15, deets & more questionnaires here.

And a reminder that on Nov. 4-6 we will be podcasting from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s Soapbox 26 conference in Philadelphia, along with fellow speakers Sarah Isgur (M.O. #314), Noam Dworman (#549), David French (#191, #325, #365, #555) Nick Gillespie (Special Dispatch #72, #379, M.O. #251, #551), Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427, M.O. #276), Jacob Mchangama (#102 & #344), John McWhorter (#84, #121, #188 & #366), Matt Taibbi (#226, #348), and Ilya Shapiro (#361), for starters. Make sure to use the discount code FIFTH to save $50 on tickets.

* Time for Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

A Spanish-language film set in Mexico might not be what you’d expect from the British director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, but with its blend of grittiness, humor, and a touch of the surreal, Highway Patrolman fits right in with Alex Cox’s oeuvre. Youthful Pedro Rojas (Roberto Sosa) is a newly minted member of the national highway patrol, much to his father’s dismay. Assigned to a rural area of northern Mexico, Pedro’s idealism is eroded by each passing day’s danger, graft, and boredom. His life then takes a turn for the better (or does it?) when he marries Griselda, a domineering farmer with a willingness to overlook his drinking and dalliances, so long as he keeps bringing home the kind of cash that only a corrupt cop can swing. Pedro’s appetite for cash and increasing hubris complicate his life, yet this is no clean morality play: it’s one of those rare films in which you really don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that alone makes it worth watching. Stream on the Criterion Channel; buy the the BluRay; here’s the trailer:

* Comment of the Week comes from Richard:

I subscribe every month for the “are we recording this part” 🤣🤣🤣

Sendoff: Jennifer Precious Finch was a badass Gen X punk rock art girl, who died of brain cancer Saturday at age 59. She was the bass player for L7 during the band’s glory days, back when punk rock was magically becoming mainstream. Played in a mid-‘80s band with Courtney Love, dated Dave Grohl, flipped back and forth between L.A. and Seattle, taking quality alt-rock photos along the way. Did I see L7? Don’t think so, but you can never rule it out. They were universally understood to be dead cool, back when people were still leery of such things. Finch leaves behind many admirers, some other rock projects, and a bunch of songwriting credits, including this one: