Sugar My Bones

Today’s ep is a MARK-PICK ™: Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A story of a blue-collar family man who becomes so obsessed with the notion of extra-terrestrial intelligent life that he alienates (heh….) his super-chill hippy mama with his extreme acts of indoor terraforming. We talk about:• How Mark and Ross, as ten-year-olds which imaginations completely co-opted by the glory of Star Wars, were primed for more space stuff. They WERE NOT, however, ready for

Mark in DC (ish) and Ross in HK restart the pod with a ramblin' reappraisal of John Boorman's 1981 Arthurian romance Excalibur! Discussed at length: how Ross' D&D-addled pre-teen mind failed to reconcile plate mail's role in the bedroom; how dang-blasted beautiful the film is, all emerald green moss and twinkly silver armor; reconciling the olde English theatre hamfest with fairly gritty action; and reveling in the stacked cast of Irish and British genre luminaries at the dawn

Ross explains how their upbringing in the heart of the Upper Connecticut River Valley (UCRV)--where the hippy hippy shake of Vermont meets the Live-free-or-Die hardboiledness of New Hampshire--forged his childhood reading habits into sword-and-sorcery cocktail: one part Tolkien to two parts Howard, with a generous dash of the post-cataclysmic. This is the Tale of the Horseclans, with an awkward lurch into the role-playing game it inspired.Recs and Wrecks: Mark dusts off his collection of the

In this episode, Mark takes issue with the surge in reverential reboots of classic irreverent properties, namely Ghostbusters and the Muppets. Also, he confesses that he never really got into Sesame Street, which hits Ross hard. Not as hard as when privileged movie stars are allowed to skip Hong Kong's quarantine rules, but still. Recs and Wrecks: Ross still wants to recommend The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hess, but we ain't there yet. Mark says Wolf Hall, Ross says Gangs of London; Anglophilia

In which Ross tries to decode his lifelong attachment to a superhero born of the 1970's Marvel Lunarverse, whose love of convertible truncheons rivals DareDevil--Moon Knight! He argues that MK owes his derivative origins more to The Shadow than the Batman, and sketches out his Ultimate Retcon, cribbing heavily from Simon Schama to set Marc Spector amongst Jewish mercenaries guarding the Nile 2500 years ago! Valuable lessons--about religion in comix, and the Religion of Comix--are learned by all

Apparently, adult Mark's deep-seated suspicion of both Artificial Intelligence and modern plumbing has its roots in the Six Million Dollar Man's struggles with his semi-sentient nemesis, the Venus Death (nee Space) Probe. And don't get him started on the Wild, Wild West. Mark and Ross also congratulate themselves of having predicted the Logan's Runnassiance in the last ep--although they perhaps saw it coming with a little less gender rigidity. Recommendations: Ross thinks Street Kings (2008) is an

Ross and Mark dissect (eventually) 1977's solitary television season of Logan's Run! This involves ruminatin' on the film, the book, and the transition from 'dystopic' to 'heroic' scifi in the 1970s...call it the Planet of the Apes to Star Wars journey. Or something. It is preceded by Ross' grousing over being still locked down in Hong Kong post(ish)-covid, and inevitable comparisons to Logan's Domed City ensue! Hittin' you hard, on the nose, in this first episode of methodical misremembrance!