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Episode 418 - Copping Squid (Patreon)

Published:
2018-09-08 00:11:25
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

Hey, you guys party? Cool - check it out: This ticket booth worker wants to talk Michael Shea's Copping Squid. And it's totally Patton Oswalt!

Wait wait don't hit it yet. Listen to this: OUR READER IS K.J. MIDDLEBROOKS!

Next up: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

What? I'm way too squidded out to hear a title like that man.

Comments

Anonymous

This does suspiciously sound like a party I went to my freshman year of college

Anonymous

Once again, this was fun. (Also, Patton really should make "That's What Shea Said" if he ever consistently has enough time free.) As an aside, though, Stalinist communism WAS super racist--anti-semitic, specifically. (Also homophobic.) I'm not sure why that isn't remembered so well, but it might be because that deep systemic racism was kind of drowned out in the western mind by the general omnicidal tendencies of Stalin's regime. Really, I need to look into it more myself, because about the only period in Russia I have a somewhat clear grasp on is during the Great War.

Anonymous
>>15325074

Bahh, "He Said, Shea Said." Also, you need to have a talk with Patton about laying off the Human Chair routine. Rubbing up on your co-hosts is kinda creepy.

Anonymous

Great show guys. I'm definitely grabbing the book/s from Shea and pre-reading the upcoming stories. So far, I've loved every one. One of the best things about these stories is that, even though they are, on one level, a fresh take on the mythos, in another way, they are straight out of it, only we are seeing these stories from a different perspective than the one presented by Lovecraft. Instead of getting the point of view of a stodgy professor, a police inspector, or some fainting intellectual, we see the same type of story from the point of view of the people at the other end of the story. who are involved with, or find themselves on the fringes of these ancient cults., the sort of people who might end up dancing around a ring of fire in some fetid bayou, or jumping onto a heavily-armed steam yacht and heading for R’lyeh because the stars are right, rather than reading notes about said events in a comfy drawing room. That is awesome. In is also nice to read stories about Cthulhu set in a modern environment. Even though we tend to think of Lovecraft’s work in relation to the period in which he lived, and though many modern spin-offs, like role-playing games, are set in that period, most of Lovecraft’s stories where contemporary tales set in his “present.” Setting the tales in our present creates for us more of the type of verisimilitude that Lovecraft was after when he wrote.

Anonymous

I’ll confess I’d always assumed the title was a reference to something like “coping a feel” so I’d always figured Shea’s stories were more in the vein of “Eldritch Blue” ie erotica with tentacles. Happy to be wrong. :)

Anonymous

Sadly not my kind of story. I didn't know I could do speed reading until now and still it was a long twenty minutes. To me it felt like a sad mix of Pulp Fiction with a tint of Fight Club, Cthulhu T-shirts and too much nylon. I had hopes when they got in the car, cruising the city with mad Andre riding shotgun, Shea almost had me for a few lines there then came the downtown scene. Maybe if he had gone straight to the dog... At one point it could have gone surreal but at best it feels like Terry Pratchett, the bad kind of Terry Pratchett. Also can you use "hem and haw" together with "Ima"? At least it made stop frowning and smile for a second. Guess Shea just is not for me. :(

Anonymous
>>15327382

I am actually the opposite :) I don't like mythos stories set in a modern setting because it inevitably seems to entail low-brow characters (and does this story deliver...). I don't know why modern horror stories can't have academics or at least characters with a modicum of intellect but that sure is a huge turn off for me. :(

Wesley Vanroose

I would love to see serie where chutulu and other lovecraftian things exist in same universe where lovecraft has written his books and we al think it is fiction but there just warning's that these things are real and just few people know.

Anonymous
>>15335558

Be careful what you wish for : <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaruko:_Crawling_with_Love" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaruko:_Crawling_with_Love</a>

Steve

If Looming Towers is your bag, then Bitter Lake should fit the bill too: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bitter-lake</a>

Anonymous
>>15335035

I can see what you mean in a way, and personally I relate more to intellectuals than to street-smart people on the fringes of society. I've certainly never been in a knife fight, nor would I ever willingly get into one, however that doesn't mean that there aren't interesting stories to tell about that stratum of society. As a long-time pro artist, I can tell you that when you talk about creatives you sort of span the whole spectrum between intellectuals and street people, and really intelligent people can end up on the other side. I used to work with a sharp-looking, well groomed, super-talented, charming and smart visual artist, that could sell himself as a pro at the highest level but who can’t stop his continual slide to the dark side, and unfortunately now spends his life on the fringes and in jail periodically for petty crimes. I’m sure his life could inspire some interesting tales. Also, it doesn't entirely help your case that, in deriding the story, you compare it to, IMO, two of the best movies ever made. I get it though, Pulp Fiction and Fight Club certainly aren’t for everyone, and I have a feeling, based on a excerpt or two I’ve seen, that I would hate the actual book Fight Club if I tried to read it. BTW, in my book there is no such thing as too much nylon. ;)

Jeremy Impson

Guys this was the best episode! K.J.'s voicework was excellent. I'm glad my podcatcher downloads three different copies, because I think that's how many times I will listen to it. But I won't fall for Patton's little joke all three times, probably.

Anonymous

Loving the Shea stuff guys. I went and got all his Mythos related fiction and it's amazing how you see the change from the rather mediocre Lovecraft-pastiche Colour out of Time, to these unique Urban-mythos stories in his own very distinct voice.

Anonymous
>>15347861

Actually I thought I'd give Shea a second chance and read a few pages from the Colour out of Time last night. What's not to like? Two old misanthropic anthropologists, a Jaws like setting and even nylon (Shea had a thing for it apparently) thrown off in there. While I agree Shea's writing was better in Copping Squid I wouldn't call it mediocre in Color out of Time. Also, I wonder at the value of uniqueness [not in a trolly, "take that Sanjay Mathew" way (I understand I'm new here and would like to make clear I mean no offense, a feat not easily achieved on the web when opinions differ)] - versus preserving a "mythos story" feeling. I guess the problem is that this last point seems to me a matter of convention and ultimately aporetic.

Anonymous

Went to pick up a copy of Copping Squid on Amazon UK -- two used for £924.25 each! What a bargain! As y'all said, there's always a hustle.

Anonymous

When Patton mentioned he worked at a movie theater taking tickets,I was hoping Chris or Chad would have mentioned that Lovecraft was spotted by a friend of a friend working a booth in Providence once.I have yet to see any acknowledgement in a Lovecraft letter or anything other than speculation.He might have considered the employment not worth mentioning in his circle of friends or a bit embarrassing.Seems like a good job as with only one showing he would have 15 minutes or so of selling tickets then he could just read between movies.

Anonymous
>>15368934

Marc Laidlaw's "The Boy who Followed Lovecraft" (available at <a href="https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2011/fiction_the_boy_who_followed_lovecraft_by_marc_laidlaw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/winter_2011/fiction_the_boy_who_followed_lovecraft_by_marc_laidlaw</a> ) makes good use of this possibility.

Anonymous

This one really touched my ink-stained ika heart, gents. One of the problems I've always had with the original stories and the Call game was trying to work out how anybody ever became a cultist. This story had a good backstory for that as well as a great, clear analogy to drug addiction. Clarity. I'm very happy to have been out of the States for the opioid crisis. Crises. Curses. But I've kept up and the hollowing out of towns could easily be the start of a very dark investigation. A setting that would, I think, work a bit better than San Fran. Ah, that's just picking at denuded bones. Loved it.

Anonymous

Great story, great episode. And I gotta say, though I'm a fan of Patton's comedy work, what I really love here is the combination of excitement and insight he brings to these episodes. It's so cool to hear somebody who so obviously loves these stories, and has gotten into the deeper ways that they work through their connections to real-world vice and street culture. Great stuff again.

Anonymous
>>15378552

It reminds me of what True Detective did with the sort of post-agricultural industrially-poisoned landscape of Louisiana, and the poverty and corruption-driven social dysfunctions of that milieu. I think adding a dose of weird fiction to gritty urban drama can both connect those very human problems to a wider sense of metaphysical disturbance, and also provide some distance for an outside audience to be able to consider these sorts of stories without turning away out of mere disgust and lack of empathy.

Anonymous

Damn it!!!! You got me reading "Pimp", thank you you bastards for recommending this.

Anonymous

Super excited there's more Patton Oswalt episodes around the corner. Funny how he shows up in a lot of nerdy interests such as Agents of SHIELD and MST3K on Netflix. I love that he is as passionate about the stories as you guys are. He takes an A++ show and adds another plus.

Anonymous

What is the outro music? It's been used before but I haven't come across a credit. I would love to know if it's from something else or was produced for the podcast, and who wrote it!

Anonymous

This is one of my favorite Shea stories. I had a really similar job when I was in college (working at a 24 hour, no ID required check cashing place in one of the more notorious neighborhoods of my city) and weird stuff happened all the time. I only did that job for a few months, but it made a huge impression on me. I was barely out of my middle class, suburban high school and that job was a very educational experience for me in terms of learning some unpleasant and disappointing things about the world and how it actually worked and how hard and brutal life is for so many people. I encountered a lot of people very similar to Andre in this story. I think the metaphor of cultist as drug addict is an apt one and Shea uses it effectively. Lovecraftian monsters from beyond space and time are fictional horrors, but drug addiction is a real one. I appreciate Shea's ability to use the mythos to write about the scary stuff from his own life and experiences and to use them in a way that, to me at least, is pretty novel.

witchhousemedia
>>15400601

It's an original for the show (by Fifer), but not available separately yet. Will likely end up on an HPLLP music, volume 3 album (coming out eventually!).

Jason Thompson

These Shea stories are really imaginative and I appreciate that they're set in my hometown of San Francisco but... .... they somehow have an underlying sense of hopefulness to 'em that makes them work better as sci-fi stories than horror to me XD This was the grimmest of the three so far, though!!

Anonymous

OK - this might be too "inside baseball" but I'm curious about how many of these stories you guys covered with Patton. Did you do all of this in one crazy long day of recording or did you break it up into multiples? And did he already listen to the show or did you guys reach out to him? I don't know how other folks feel about it, but I like to know more about the "how the sausage is made" stuff and that might be a useful topic for one of the Patreon bonus episodes. Any other supporters interested in that sort of thing? Or is that too much of a "deep cut?"

Anonymous

When at the end of the show you thanked Patton for introducing you to Michael Shea, I did wonder if this meant that you have both borne witness for him! Soon you too will be out seeking blood money on the streets and getting in on the hustle.