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Also reviews for the latest episodes of Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, and Teen Titans Go!, the novel 11/22/63, the essay Guns, and the short stories Throttle, and In The Tall Grass.



The Simpsons "A Mid-Childhood Night's Dream"

What a NICE episode.

The bubble party dream was cute as hell. And Bart's teacher is super kind and wonderful.

I love Bart telling Marge she'll have to accept how he is now. And him being excited she liked the picture at the end. It was all pretty great.

I love that "Marge" works for the sign-in. NOT a common Scooter person name in 2023.

Granted, this is only the second episode of the year. But I still can't recall enjoying an episode this much in awhile. It's been even longer since we've gotten a good Marge episode. *****.




Bob's Burgers "The Amazing Rudy"

Kudos to the show for understanding Regular-Sized Rudy can carry an episode.

A lot of very very sad and moving moments before he gets the Belchers. What's cool is it makes you understand why the character shows up when he sees the Belchers places. Their dynamic is attractive to him. I'm wondering if that's why other characters show up too.

My favorite part was Louise saying she was going to walk Rudy back to the restaurant. I give Louise a lot of crap, but I love that she instinctively knows Rudy needs moral support and decides that's her role for the evening. Better yet, she doesn't make a federal case out of it which shows she's a good friend.

Pretty amazing episode, I think. *****.




Family Guy "Supermarket Pete"

So wait, we don't like Jeff Garlin now? Since when?

The Mickeycopter! See, Disney? Corporate synergy!

Delaware can do anything it wants now. Thanks, Sleepy Joe.

I guess it was fun to pair Brian with Joe instead of either Stewie or Lois, but the problem is Joe is too stupid to call Brian on his crap. And this was a pretty bad episode for that, even for Brian. The only time I enjoy Brian is when Stewie or Lois are taking him down a few pegs.

Of course Peter only got the job because he was mentally disabled. Here's the thing though. He is. Whether he denies it or not. It's already been established.

Can you imagine the hell it would be for whoever is In Memoriam after Betty White? I do not envy that person for that. Also I don't envy that person because they're dead.

Funny episode. Winner of Fox Toons was a tie between The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. ****.




Teen Titans Go! "Haunted Tank"

Haunted Tank, huh? DC has the weirdest premises.

Haunted House learns you do NOT want the Teen Titans as houseguests.

I thought the ending was kinda sweet.

Cool. ****.




11/22/63 by Stephen King

I love this book. I always have. It's probably one of Stephen King's best just going by quality. And yet whenever somebody asks me my favorite Stephen King books it always slips my mind in hindsight. There are legit reasons for that, but I can acknowledge that the book has a LOT going against it, and it being wonderful isn't the most memorable thing about it.

The premise sucks. One of King's worst. It's already a hoary sci-fi trope to have a hero going back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, but those types of stories are always unsuccessful because as Oz from Buffy The Vampire Slayer noted, "Hey, check it out." Gene Roddenberry was famously obsessed with making this crappy concept work for a Star Trek movie that never happened, and it's sort of become a sad cautionary tale about how that dude lost his touch in his later years. Frankly, I think his touch was always overstated, but sci-fi dealing with either saving Kennedy or killing Hitler doesn't work because "Hey, check it out."

The fact that the book is wonderful is great. But I always feel a little distant to it for the premise being terrible and predictable even if it's wonderful. I love it, but there is a little bit of shame attached to my love.

Why is the book great despite being a dead-end narrative premise? Stephen King did an amazing thing and decided to make the actual time-travel mission the secondary dramatic tension of the book which works like gangbusters. The actual drama is the epic love story between Jake and Sadie. A lot of it is sappy (most of the stuff of the small town high school plays and performances will make your teeth hurt) and Jake's various jokes to the reader before he has sex with Sadie wear pretty thin because they just don't stop. But King decided the hero's journey isn't having to choose whether or not to save Kennedy to save the United States. It's having to choose to give up his true love to save all of reality. THAT'S why a book with such an annoying and basic premise is so great. It's because it's not really about the lousy premise.

I will concede that the stuff with Jake shadowing Lee Harvey Oswald and George de Mohrenschildt IS pretty riveting stuff. I never even heard of the second guy before this book and came to believe his was one of history's greatest unsung villains after King gives us the scoop on him.

King Connections: Not just Shawshank, but the Derry stuff is VERY clearly connected to "IT" in a way few other novels set in Derry are. Jake meets an alternate version of Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier in perhaps the ONLY chapter Stephen King has ever written that made me NOT regret reading and suffering through the hot mess than was "IT". "The Clown" and "The Turtle" are both mentioned and this feel like a much kinder wrap-up than King gave those characters in the damn book.

I do have to lodge a BIT of complaint there. Derry has always had its share of evil and problems due to Pennywise. "Insomnia" and "Dreamcatcher" have both correctly pointed out that Derry is not like other towns. But the notion that Derry is this seething cauldron of hatred started in this book and continuing in "Gwenddy's Final Task" does not jibe with the decent characters from "Insomnia", "Dreamcatcher", and "Bag Of Bones". It's a total retcon. Don't tell me the people Ralph Roberts hung out with were largely evil. I met them. I know they weren't.

King has done a couple of other romantic books before. "Bag of Bones" and "Lisey's Story" while both ghost stories, fit the romance genre. But I never felt Mike Noonan's romance with Mattie Devore was entirely appropriate, and the stuff between Lisey and Scott Langdon is not just posthumous, but insular, and hard to relate to. Jake and Sadie's epic love story and the choices Jake has to make to give her up resonate far more than either of those books. It's a crowdpleasing romance. King as a writer is a crowdpleaser. Him turning an epic romance into that was bound to happen sooner or later, and it was worth the wait.

I think the most brilliant conceit of the story is that Jake as the narrator claims he is not a crying man, and reveals his wife left him for supposedly being emotionally distant. I'm not gonna say Jake is the most emotionally healthy protagonist King has ever portrayed (I think Jack Sawyer as seen in "Black House" really knew how to take care of bidness) but making this character confess immediately how difficult tears come to him and still making him one of the most empathetic characters King has ever written is a clever as hell idea.

The story of the Janitor's father was great as was all the trouble Jake had to go through on the first loop. The ideas of the past harmonizing and resisting being changed are weighty themes that we learn at the end that Jake actually doesn't understand the entire story behind those paradoxes and string ripples. THAT'S the part of the sci-fi that's great. Not him saving Kennedy. Because he can't. Because, hey, check it out. Also present day alternate Ellen Dunning chewing him out over the phone for not being there to save Harry in Vietnam is a great moment to show Jake that this crap isn't any kind of game.

The alternate timeline at the end King posits doesn't sound credible to me on its face, even knowing how scary populists are in 2023. Simply because I find it a stretch all of that stuff occurring so close to World War II. In fact, fascism's current toehold is due to people forgetting that horror. What makes more sense is King hinting the natural disasters the world faced upon that particular time ripple got people nervous and crazed enough to elect crazy people. And yet, in the alternate 2011, Hillary Clinton is President. Sort of how I feel about Biden. I'm glad he is where he is, but I don't think him being there will ultimately save us from ourselves. I love that King understood that notion way back in 2011. Because Trump's election shocked and disturbed him. It was a trauma for all of us and a surprise, but it's interesting King understood having a "Good" President at the helm really doesn't effect the larger picture if things are bad enough. I eerily noticed that from present day events.

King has a lot of cool observations about the past, including that although it smelled worse, the food tasted better. Also segregation SUCKED, and he calls out Dallas by name for its racism, which is a pretty brave stand to take. My favorite thing about the past is how everybody takes the modern sayings Jake says to them they've never heard before. Jake notices that in The Land Of Ago, any jokes even TINGED with sexual undertones are considered a laugh riot and outrageous, and adults using f-bombs in front of teenagers is unthinkable, and Jake is now the coolest teacher ever! I also loved the idea that Miz Mimi talks Jake out of shopping around his horror novel because he was born to teach, and the fact that he has the ability to bring out the best parts of students and nurture their talents suggests him being a schlock horror writer would be a huge waste of his talents.

Him getting in trouble with Sadie for singing "Honky Tonk Woman" was brilliant too. She actually dumped his ass over it! Good for her!

My favorite reaction of one of the people in the past whom Jake freaks out with his honesty is the nosy and awful school superintendent who threatens to fire Sadie for supposedly "living in sin". It's not just that Jake threatens to expose the out-of-wedlock baby she had as a teenager that makes him scary. It's the fact that he ENJOYS how upset he's making her that makes him awesome. One of the reasons a reader might distrust Jake's first person take on events is that he's simply a little TOO much of a magnificent badass. Only the fact that Jake also admits his real failings which is why I'm half ready to believe a person this awesome existed and did this crazy, unproveable, sci-fi thing. I WANT badass sci-fi heroes to be people I can root for, by the way, not people I'm creeped out by. Jake Epping / George Amberson is everything I wish Roland Deschain had been. Roland SORT of came around by the end. But the things he did were still unforgivable. If Jake does a cold-blooded thing here (like when he shot Frank Dunning in the cemetery) it's because it was the right thing to do.

"How we danced!" King really going for the feels there. I love the interrogation at the end. Jake REALLY put both the FBI and Dallas Police on the spot. Just because he knew so much true stuff that he could tell a damning lie to sink them all and he'd be believed. I thought the phone call with John Kennedy was painful and unfunny, but when he talks to Jackie, you realize that was a narrative choice King made. Jackie actually understood what a close call it was and took it deadly seriously. Jake positing that JFK thought of himself as untouchable back then is both extremely uncomplimentary and probably sadly accurate. How else can you explain the guy traveling in an open-roofed car in Dallas with the amount of death threats he got? The FBI and Dallas Police dropped the ball, but if Kennedy actually had a lick of sense about the subject it never would have been a factor.

King notes in the afterword that as unlikely as it was that Oswald was lucky enough to pull off what he did, people DO get lucky. People win the lottery every day. Are the events that led to Oswald's lucky break amazing in the breathtaking incompetence of everyone involved? Yes. But they are also plausible and the simplest explanation. Occam's Razor.

The dance as the end is kind of creepy due to elderly Sadie's confusion, but I will give Jake a pass JUST this once and declare it romantic. It's really not on paper, and probably frightening, but after what he went through I'll give him that. I wouldn't for most other characters who pulled a similar move.

I love this book and will invariably give it five stars. And yet it always slips my mind when discussing my favorite King books because the premise is so flawed. Which makes the fact that the book is awesome an amazing secret. *****.




Guns by Stephen King

I've talked crap about King's nonfiction before, but honestly, even I'M a bit surprised how badly this essay has aged.

King says a couple of true things (like that America isn't a culture of violence and the most popular entertainment isn't violent or gun-related). Or his blazing indictment over the media's ghoulishness towards the survivors every time gun massacres happen.

But man, honestly, I don't need to hear about the opinion on guns from the dude who wrote "Rage". I took special notice that although he recognized how harmful is was, he STILL refused to disown it. Apparently because he believes there was some "truth" present. What, the truth that you used to be a terrible writer, Uncle Stevie? I can't think of any larger "truths" that torpid, idiotic gun porn novel uncovered.

I think perhaps the stupidest thing King says here is that if he had a political wish, it's that all liberals were forced to watch Fox News for a year and all conservatives to watch MSNBC. I was like "Man, this guy does NOT get it." King's frustrating politics back in 2013 were classic bothsiderism which says King was both a lazy thinker, and not interested in solving the actual problem. It was much more important to him he tells any conservative readers he had left he understood where they were coming from and that liberals were equally guilty for the current polarization.

In absolute fairness to King, this was well before Trump ran for and won the Presidency, and King's opinions in the years since that happened put the blame for the situation where is belongs. But man, Stephen King was NOT a kid in 2013. It pains me to read political opinions from him that foolish when he was well into his 60's.

I also believe another thing that dates the essay is King names the shooters. In the years since, we've learned not to do that, and give them the posthumous fame and notoriety they craved. But King gives it to them which is another reason the essay has aged terribly.

I was never crazy about this essay but for some reason it hits me even worse in 2023 than it already did. *1/2.




Throttle by Joe Hill and Stephen King

I need to see Duel at some point. I've been searching the streaming services for it for months.

Vince's fury at his son at the end was righteous. I didn't like much of the story, but I liked that.

All right. **1/2.




In The Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill

Stephen King has written unforgivably appalling stories. What makes this one perhaps more disgusting than any of the rest of them is that he wrote a story of a pregnant teenage girl being beaten into a miscarriage, and her brother eating the dead baby and feeding it to her... WITH HIS OWN SON. How does the dude sleep at night? I don't understand him sometimes, and I don't want to. 0.

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