They say scorpions
Are solitary
But really they are lovers
Dancing in darkness
to find their mate
By the side of the road, I screamed myself hoarse, pacing back and forth, unable to stop looking at the flattened car. I want to die, I want to die, I want to die, too, I kept saying.
A silver-haired woman with still-taut cheekbones smiles from the ad. A pitch for magic potions aimed at women with crow’s feet and creases. A woman like me, experienced in flutters of self-doubt and twinges of loss. Vulnerable to the seductive pull of junk science and sly text—serums with proven clinical strength, the latest in anti-wrinkle technology. Sweet-smelling fruit extracts to moisturize, rejuvenate, illuminate. Who doesn’t want to glow with renewed vitality?
Our naming the men reached its peak with the Prophet. The gist of the joke is this dirty little man walking quickly around town, always with his head turned slightly to the right, mumbling and gesturing to himself as he goes, is actually talking to God.
we feed
the economy. &, this kind of ejaculation
keeps us
checked. ‘Cause we’re so much worse other-
wise.
So when an entire gallery of mystical beasts,
purple toads and mountain boomers,
are made into Real Life and available to me,
now that I’m out of fresh episodes of nostalgia,
you have to know I’m going to lose it.
Boarded up, the windows are now
closed eyelids of the sleeping, and the silence
dressing this place hangs loosely
I aimed
my red pen & spoke,
You will not
get a thing for this ride!
I want to be clean. I want to be clean in the way that birds are when they molt, shedding their feathers to grow newer, brighter ones. A snake grinding against rough wood to slip itself out from its old skin, leaving it in its slithery path. A hermit crab, buried underneath the sand in the early morning, eating the exoskeleton that it sheds.
Gabriel Ricard looks back on the (screwed up) year that was 2017 and ahead to the (hopefully less screwed up) year that will be in 2018, in his latest Captain Canada column.
Featuring: Amarcord (1973); Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014); Fantastic Planet (1973); Thor: Ragnarok (2017); Justice League (2017)
There’s the “windsor knot.” That silent addict—on time for his (breakfast, lunch, dinner) release. For the ritual that screws him into his dry clean shirt, afterwards. He has trimmed. He has yanked on his beveled black sock.
He’d been dead for thirty years,
but I’ll play Scrabble with anyone.
Phantom Thread, at its heart, is about control—the lengths we will go to grasp it and who we choose to yield it to. Luckily, control is what Paul Thomas Anderson does best. Don’t let the first half of this movie, which pretends to be about a fashion designer (Daniel Day-Lewis, brilliant for, supposedly, the last time here) who takes in a young waitress turned model (Vicky Krieps, brilliant for the first time here), fool you—Anderson is spinning a fiendish yarn, with surprises so dark they make 2017’s other provocateurs, Darren Aronofsky and Yorgos Lanthimos, look like rank amateurs.
The Drunk Monkeys staff picks the Top 10 Films of 2017.
A weird year on the small screen, from David Lynch to Demogorgons, gets wrapped up by Drunk Monkeys as we chose our Top 10 in Television for 2017!
Our selection for Best Book of 2017: We Are All Terminal But This Exit is Mine by James H. Duncan
The Greatest Showman has all the razzle dazzle you’d expect, but was as fake as the original circus P.T. Barnum put together. The film was too short to tackle the complexities of the Barnum story, using catchy tunes to distract from the fact that there was no real story. While the song with Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman was the duet we never knew we needed, the music was not enough to carry the film and the fact that they abandoned character development and plot. Even at the height of conflict, the film failed to be ‘the greatest show’.
The best of the rest of 2017.
The strength of the Star Wars prequels (and, yes, there were strengths) was that George Lucas didn’t allow his fanbase to tell him what they thought Star Wars should be. The Force Awakens gave fans only things that they knew to be Star Wars™. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi splits the difference, and is stronger for it. Though whole plot lines could be jettisoned, the core of the film, and the way it wraps up the 40-year-long journey of Luke Skywalker, make it one of the most compelling installments of a franchise we all need to stop arguing about.
PODCASTDrunk Monkeys RadioFilmcastThe Last Jedi
After two years of waiting, Luke Skywalker finally speaks! So what does he have to say? Find out in our ::spoiler filled:: review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson's controversial latest installment of the beloved space-fantasy franchise.