“To see something like that, to discover that the world you thought you’d lived in was a lie, a thin shell of respectable rationality over a roiling core of madness?” – Eric Williams, “Dead Man’s Knock”
“Worst they can do is say no,” my parents would often tell me when I was a kid. It never seemed like a satisfactory solution to whatever I was anxious about—would SportsCom let my band book the pavilion to play a show? Would our friend from church who’s older than my parents let my band borrow his PA system? Would anyone come to the show? All of these questions were life or death for a 16-year-old. My parents, on the back end of their 40s, understood the world a little better. You gotta learn to act like you’ve been there before. By “there,” I mean “alive long enough to self-regulate.”
All of this is to say that if you’re going to do an interview podcast, sometimes that means cold-messaging a writer you’ve been reading/admiring for 13 or so years, asking them for 90 minutes of their time, and then acting like you’ve been there before. No one cares that you won a first round series, Sacramento Kings. No one cares that you won a division, Los Angeles Clippers. Starstruck is off-putting, plus, as a wise man once told me, “no one’s competing, we’re just trying to do what we love.” What we love being the written word. So without jumping over Craig Ehlo or shooting Joakim Noah finger guns everywhere, lemme just say it was a delight to interview Kelly Dwyer. Formerly of the Ball Don’t Lie crew at Yahoo!, formerly of SI and ESPN, now writing one of the best NBA newsletters out there. He can jam a sick riff on guitar, and once introduced the No Dunks guys to Hot Doug’s. That’s a better life resumé that most presidents.
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Of course, sometimes? You’re going about your daily life, not knowing that there’s anything to be afraid of. Then the entire fabric of reality is ripped apart, and you’re left a shell of yourself. That’s where this week’s book comes in.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
A book that helped me distinguish a little bit between cosmic horror, Eldritch horror, and Weird Fiction. Though I believe there are elements of all three. I’m not sure, this genre journey is still new to me. But this is a book that goes beyond gooey tentacles and unnameable gods of the deep. This is a book that will disquiet you in smaller, stickier ways. A book whose cover matched its contents. A book that knows how to celebrate the worker. A book that knows how to celebrate the monster. A book with an honestly great story about two podcasters riding public transit. Was it written specifically for me?? I’m not sure, I’m covered in six-foot-long moth dust. I’m talking, of course, about TOADSTONES by Eric Williams.
TOADSTONES by Eric Williams: it’s a high compliment if I compare someone to Jorge Luis Borges. I love Borges, but have read very little of him, and understood less than that. I have not read JLB since starting my journey into Weird Fiction these last couple of years, and reading Eric’s book really made me want to pick up Ficciones again. These stories are not impossible to read, but they often leave you feeling unpleasant or unsettled (extremely complimentary). I read this one close on the heels of Every Galaxy A Circle, and they paired well together. TOADSTONES would also pair well with North American Lake Monsters.
Many of these stories do two things that I think are particularly effective for achieving unsettled (how’s that for a sentence, what if yr supervisor at yr job was secretly a Dagon?). 1) they never go quite where you think they are going to go, poking at genre conventions or upending a character’s expectations. 2) they often end early. I don’t mean to say that they feel unfinished, but more like: the entire world changes in some horrifying way. Then someone is happy about it. And that’s the last line. There could be more story, but that would make the actual story on the page less interesting, you know? Sort of like The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp, but for adults. Eric pushes your imagination to fill in the gaps, except the gaps are exactly where your imagination doesn’t want to go. A few other things Eric is really good at: pervert freak narrators (“Hogna Xibalbaensis”), workers (“Waking Dr. Hatch,” “Sweeping The Threshold,” “Mudlogging”), and vampires. Seriously, my new favorite vampire story is in this collection. Honestly, closing with the last two stories is like facing Greg Maddux for eight innings followed by Mariano Rivera closing you out.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? In honor of KD, let’s listen to future AISHLTA feature Steely Dan. I had to teach “Third World Man” recently, it’s a good bass line.
- This Week in ICE: Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just An American Fantasy by Sarah Borus in Defector, ‘It Wasn’t Right.’ Car Wash Workers Cope With Lingering Impacts of SoCal ICE Raids. by Ernesto Ureño in Capital & Main, Ilhan Omar Says ICE Agent Sat Outside Her Town Hall In Car With Mismatched Plates by Jennifer Bendery in HuffingtonPost, Don’t call them ICE detention centers. Call them camps by John Washington in The Guardian, Here’s the Manual for ICE’s Electric Shock Gloves by Joseph Cox in 404, Baltimore’s new Fells Point ID checkpoints are ‘obviously unconstitutional,’ lawyers say by Madeleine O’Neill in Baltimore Beat (not explicitly about ICE but absolutely about ICE)
- Don Nelson Followed His Bliss and Changed Basketball by Ray Ratto in Defector
- Good Work, Don Nelson by Kelly Dwyer in On Hoops
- What if LeBron picked Philly over Los Angeles in 2018? by Kelly Dwyer in On Hoops
- Did someone say ‘Joe Smith?’ by Kelly Dwyer in On Hoops
- BONUS SIXTH LINK: That “do-or-die” moment is a strike by Kelly Dwyer in On Hoops
What’re you still doing here? Hey, not to end on a downer, but here’s a video explaining a thing that sucks. My time at Cracked.com was probably the Silver Age, I was a contributor from 2020-early 2022, then spent 2022 on increasingly larger contracts until the new EIC didn’t like what I did. Not sure if I’m legally allowed to import some of my columns to this blog, but I might just do it anyway. In that 2007-2017 era Jason’s talking about, it really did feel like the internet was a place for learning. It also felt like there’d be endless archives of things. Turns out, no. You still gotta write stuff down on real paper. You still gotta print out photos.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Hey, Kelly Dwyer got kicked to the curb by a website, too. It happens. Jobs do that to people. But you, non-CEO reading this blog, whomever you and wherever you are—your work is valuable. Don’t let the shareholders convince you otherwise.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris