I’m sorry for the gross things I eat, and I probably will not stop

Plus, Jim Ruland and I discuss episode 3 of HBO’s The Outsider

Jan 22, 2020

I’m trying to be less gross these days. It’s not working out too well.

This realization comes after a day that kept me in bed, suffering from the ravages of eating a spicy pizza the night before. I know my stomach and yet, time and time again, I subject it to jalapeño-laden torment. It’s a textbook example of an abusive cycle. (For the record, I’ll probably do it again. Luigi’s pepperoni, ricotta, pineapple, jalapeño pizza is the best slice in San Diego. You can @ me about this.)

The spicy pizza is the third incident in a string of questionable food choices I’ve made over the past month. I share these with you not as some sort of humblebrag, but as documentation for if I ever take it upon myself to do better. As unlikely as it is, it’d be nice to look back at this post and be like, well at least I don’t do that anymore. But you know what they say: you can’t teach an aged dog to fundamentally change his behaviors.

The egg

It’s, like, the best fried egg I’ve ever made. The shape is perfect. I’m not one to sexualize food items, but this egg has got it going on. The perimeter of the egg white has crispified into a state of godliness. The yolk is somewhere between over easy and over medium, a delicate thing not meant for the harshities of our world. I experience an acute form of sublime madness when I look upon my creation, much like the Romantic poets beholding Mont Blanc. The thought of consuming such a work of art fills me with divine emotion and I wonder if enlightenment is soon to follow.

I slide the egg gently onto my piece of toast and pick up the plate. I’m almost to the table when my hand tilts. The egg slips off the toast and splats across my floor like a headshot in a zombie movie. I feel like crying.

Five seconds pass. Then ten seconds. I stare at my failed creation on the floor as all windows of edibility close. Finally, I pick it up. The new egg is blurry from floor crumbs and cat hair. A ghost of its former beauty. Actually, it reminds me of those super grotesque and detailed close-ups from Ren & Stimpy.

I eat the egg. It only tastes a little floor-y. For a few hours, my throat itches from the cat hair, but I mostly don’t regret the decision. Mostly.

The chicken tender

I go to a Joyce Manor concert by myself. I prefer to going to shows with others, but going by myself provides the joy of anonymity. Being alone in a dark venue listening to loud punk music is a nice little treat. Nobody knows me, and I like that.

The show ends, and the house lights come up. I walk toward the restroom. I pre-partied at home in an effort to avoid paying exorbitant prices for venue drinks, but perhaps I overestimated that amount because my head feels a little heavy as I make my way to the men’s room.

But then I see it. Sitting on one of the tables is a plate of untouched chicken tenders. Well, one of them is touched—bitten in half.

I pass by the tenders and walk into the restroom. I already know that I’m going to steal one of the tenders on my way out, but the only problem is how?

While urinating, I build a mental schematic in my mind. I picture the tenders, the position of the plate on the table, the table in the larger context of the room. I think I’m being all Mission: Impossible, when in reality, my thoughts are more akin to that flying bubble that comes on when the DVD player screensaver kicks in. Either way, it feels like I’m onto something. Essentially, the plan is: I will exit the bathroom and, without hesitating, pick up a tender as I pass by. Bradford, you clever fox, my brain says.

I’ve figured out the how; I don’t even bother with the why. What does it ultimately mean for me to eat a piece of processed meat from a stranger’s plate? What’s it say about where I am in my life right now? Is this some displaced “fuck you” to “the man”? Or is this the first step in embracing my full-on garbage potential? I shake the implications away, because more time thinking means less time chicken tender-eating.

The plan goes exceedingly well. In one swift move, I pluck the tender off the plate and into my mouth it goes. It’s cold and kind of stale, but the taste is just right. Actually, no—the tender leaves a weird aftertaste, but whatever. Success tastes different for everyone.

INSIDE THE OUTSIDER

Episode 3: “Dark Uncle”

Welcome to Inside The Outsider, a conversation between punk-rock literary hero, Jim Ruland and me about HBO’s show The Outsider and the Stephen King novel on which it’s based. Each week the discussion will alternate between AWKSD and Jim’s newsletter, Message from the Underworld. Click that link to check out what we said about the first two episodes, and be sure to subscribe to Jim’s newsletter while you’re at it.

All right, here we go.

Episode 3 picks up in the barn where that poor farmhand found the clothes Terry Maitland was wearing on the night he allegedly killed Frank Peterson (thanks, security footage. Yay, surveillance state!). The barn has become a David Fincher-esque wet dream of police procedure, complete with industrial lighting, hanging cobwebs, clean-cut crime scene detectives and an ominous score that would make Trent Reznor proud (the music in this show continues to whip ass). The detectives discover that the clothing had been saturated in ectoplasmic goo at one point, which has since dried solid as evidenced by an officer breaking one of the socks in half (shout out to memories of being 13 years old, amirite fellow dudes?)

Later, Bad Cop Jack Hoskins goes out to the barn and is spooked by a fleeting glimpse of a man, and then immediately succumbs to a mysterious stinging in the back of his neck, as if some invisible assailant is tattooing it.

Ralph Anderson is still on administrative leave, but trying to make sense of the inconsistencies and outright strangeness of the case. His private investigator buddy Alec Pelley suggests that they enlist the help of Holly Gibney—an investigator with uncanny savant-like abilities, but zero social cues. Her appearance marks a dramatic shift in the show by balancing out some of the heavy-handedness with some welcome eccentricity. Holly also introduces the concept of a doppelgänger (which is where the episode title comes from: the Swiss word for it, according to Holly, translates to “Dark Uncle”), thereby forcing the possibility of supernatural into the grown-up world (Glory Maitland’s daughters continue to hint at it, but kids say the darndest things!). Simply, Holly’s the best. I’m stoked she’s on the case now.

We get a little more insight to Ralph’s buried sadness regarding the death of his son, which certainly motivates his investment in the case. There’s a good flashback scene where he tries to break up a fight between two drunks and ends up passively kicking the shit out of both of them.

Also, there’s a subplot of a man in jail who experiences increasingly explicit threats from fellow inmates. At the end of the episode, he kills himself. Why? Well, I know because I read the book, and boy, it’s good to feel that superiority. Ha ha ha.

Ryan Bradford: Hey Jim! Let’s start this off by talking about Holly. What are your thoughts on her?

Jim Ruland: I love Holly! I got a head start on reading Stephen King’s The Outsider while on a nonstop flight from Washington, D.C. I hadn’t read Stephen King for a long time, and I was less than enthusiastic about the experience. That changed when Holly Gibney appeared in the narrative. At that point, I was all in. I connected to the character immediately. But she’s not the same Holly we meet in Richard Price’s adaptation. “Just forget everything you knew about Holly” Richard Price said at the Television Critics press tour last week. “That was that Holly, this is my Holly.” In the novel, Holly is a detective who mostly works with bail bondsmen and insurance companies. In Price’s adaptation, she’s billed as one of the best. Enter Cynthia Erivo, who is amazing in her portrayal of the eccentric detective. I love how she’s got this uncanny memory but retains the vulnerability of King’s character.

RB: Yeah, Holly’s great. Definitely one of the strongest characters King has ever written. As I admitted last week, I enjoyed the first half of the book, but it definitely kicks into a higher gear when Holly shows up. But what do you make of her unique adeptness? I know there’s a history of savant-like detectives in mysteries (Lisbeth in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes), but I feel like in The Outsider—both book and show—it’s hinted that Holly’s ability is more in line with a mental illness. Am I wrong?

JR: I don't think so. Those hints are there, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. In the book, Holly is OCD but it manifests mostly as a fussiness that helps her with her work. I haven't read Mr. Mercedes, the book where she makes her first appearance, nor have I seen the adaptation where Justine Lupe plays Holly. But either has Price. Frankly, I was not okay with Solomon's description of Holly as a "bull goose loony." That's an awful way to describe someone with brain health issues. I hope the show expands on that, and I think it will. Holly has an exceptional memory, so it holds that she remembers the trauma of what she went through as a child when her parents took her to the doctor to find out "what was wrong with her." I'm really interested in the ways this show seems willing to explore trauma.

Holley Gibney

RB: Same here. What I like about these first three episodes is the seriousness in which it treats what is essentially a monster movie. The seedlings of those are in the novel, but I think King generally writes for an audience that doesn’t necessarily care about deep shit like trauma and grief (except maybe in Pet Sematary, which I think is his most serious work). In the case of The Outsider book, for example, you almost forget that that a child was brutally murdered because solving the mystery and cornball characterizations take center stage. The show has also made some pretty dramatic changes to Ralph Anderson’s character. In particular: the death of his son (in the book, his son is just away at summer camp or something) and the therapy sessions. How do you feel about the weightiness of that stuff? I can’t decide whether it’s an improvement or not. Do you think those add or fulfill anything that you thought was missing from the book?

JR: At first I was skeptical about the death of Ralph’s son. Here we go, I thought, a detective haunted by the loss of a dead [fill in the blank]. We’ve seen it a million times. But what the therapy sessions reveal is that he’s not haunted in the least. He’s avoiding his grief. I really admire how much Price’s version of the story leans into what’s happened to this community. I’m thinking of the scene where Jeannie checks up on Glory. Jeannie knows how lonely grief can be. Sometimes you need to say (and hear) things that people outside of that grief just can’t understand. When Glory asks Jeannie, “How do you live with it Jeannie? I really need to know,” Jeannie doesn’t sugarcoat the truth. She says something that only she can say because she knows it down to her bones. “It’s impossible.” That floored me.

The Outsider is triggering all kinds of heavy emotions for me. My wife’s best friend’s daughter was killed in the murders at Sandy Hook in 2012. We went to Newtown for the funeral service and grieved with the family, but really we were grieving with the entire community. Sadly, we went back last spring when that friend took his own life. I’ve seen what tragedy does to a place and I see that dark cloud in Cherokee City. I didn’t expect my response to be so heavy, Ryan, but so many portrayals of grief on television and in the movies, especially horror movies, just kind of mail it in. I think The Outsider gets it right, and it feels good to talk about it.

RB: I'm sorry, Jim. You've written about your friends and their daughter before, so I know a little bit about it—and it's truly indicative of how the aftershocks of a traumatic event creep through a community like a disease. I mean, as you know, the damage of Sandy Hook is still taking its toll.

Not that this anywhere near as heavy as your experience, but I watched “Dark Uncle” with an old college friend who just barely had his first kid. I've known this guy for half my life and it was both surreal and exciting to see him as a parent. But before we watched the show, we talked about whether parenthood made him and his wife more sensitive to movies/shows where children are in peril or harmed. I think his child is so new (this baby is only about two months old) that he hasn't really had time to think about that kind of stuff yet, but I have other friends that are parents who could no longer watch these kind of shows after their children were born. I get that.

I was also floored by that "It's impossible" scene between Jeannie and Glory. I've decided that Julianne Nicholson, the actress who plays Glory, might be the show's secret weapon. She steals every scene she's in with a perfect balance of despair and incredulousness, but also a willingness to accept the increasingly bizarre nature of the whole thing.

Getting heavy is one of the things I love about horror—it's a vehicle that allows us to discuss life's hardest shit. Probably the best, in my opinion. I think our brains are most adept to analyze the darkest aspects when they're wrapped up in horror. So, I guess for me, horror has always been a sort of therapy.

But this is a horror show. Did anything scare you in episode three?

JR: There's plenty of scary stuff. The show diverges from the novel to a degree that I don't think any of the characters are safe, meaning just because they survived the novel doesn't mean they'll survive the show. Plus, there's the whole story of Derek Andersen that has to unfold. I think the scene where Ralph has a mini flashback to when he broke up a fight as an excuse to beat someone was unsettling, and it's a side of Ralph we haven't seen before. If this story is set in 2019 and his son's tombstone dates his death as 2018, not a lot of time has passed. And yet there's a six-month window where he and Jeannie had a rough stretch but now things are good? This man is a time bomb!

But the thing that scares me most is Holly. Her "unique" qualities makes it easy for people interpret her actions as aloof or even hostile. That scene in the bar where she tells a stranger he's sitting in her seat. Or that scene in the parking lot in Dayton. Either one of those scenes could have gone the wrong way and resulted in a confrontation, and then what happens? Since you're an expert at it, I'm really curious as to how you feel her awkwardness plays on the screen.

RB: Before moving onto Holly, I just want to say that Glory’s child’s description of the stranger that enters her room was the scariest part for me. "His skin was wrong" and "the second time he looked a little bit like my daddy but... messy" are two really great/terrifying descriptions.

But yes, I was totally feeling Holly's awkwardness. What I like about her portrayal is that there's nothing really assured about her assuredness. She practically has a deer-in-headlights look in every scene, as if she's scared of her own potential. Those near-confrontations you mentioned have good tension, but for reasons that are hard to put your finger on. That's sort of what it's like living with anxiety: normal situations can seem like fight-or-flight scenarios. That failed attempt to see Terry's dad was also a good example of this, and perhaps a smoother PI could've swayed that intake receptionist, but it just fell apart. I loved Holly's introductory scene where she's naming make, model and year of every car that drives by her building. I really relate to the feeling of wanting to be alone to indulge her mental illnesses.

Speaking of frightening stuff, I can’t believe you didn’t mention the cum sock.

JR: The cum sock was truly terrifying! That scene in the barn, which was supposed to be scary, really wasn't, mainly because I kinda sorta knew what to expect. The clothes are covered in slime, but in the book, the cops are all, JESUS LOOK AT ALL THIS CUM! THERE'S CUM EVERYWHERE! HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SO MUCH CUM? Take it easy, Stephen. Supernatural residue/ectoplasmic goo looks like ejaculate. Got it. Even Bill Murray in Ghostbusters wasn't this undignified. The Coen Brothers have a spreading pool of blood in every movie they make. Does King do something similar in his novels, only with cum?

RB: Ha ha, yes. Didn't you know, Jim, that in the book The Shining, it's cum that comes out of the elevator instead of blood?

JR: Gah!

That’s it for this week. Sorry/not sorry it had to end on that note. Watch the show with us. It’s really good.

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THE ONLY CONCERT CALENDAR THAT MATTERS™

Judas Priestess

Wednesday, Jan. 22

OPTION 1: Open Oscillator 32 @ Whistle Stop. If you haven’t been to Whistle Stop’s regular Open Oscillator nights, you’re missing out. The open mic night for electronic musicians ends up becoming a strange, immersive experience in sound, and it’s amazing to see how nerdery and talent converge in such a way.

OPTION 2: Lil Boii Kantu, Ph4De, Sir Daniel @ Soda Bar. I’m hesitant to recommend this show because nothing makes me feel older than listening to Soundcloud rappers. But people seem to like this kind of weird, mumbly trap/emo/hip-hop, and I don’t always want to be Principal Skinner saying “no, it’s the children who are wrong.”

Thursday, Jan. 23

OPTION 1: INUS, Shake The Baby Til The Love Comes Out, Dimboi, Shades McCool and the Bold Flavors @ Bow Wow Haus (Chula Vista). INUS have that depraved mathcore sound that will satisfy fans of The Locust, but they also have wild piano parts that sound like action scene soundtracks in ‘70s giallo films. It rules. Also, AWKSD friends Shades McCool are always a great show.

OPTION 2: Dude York, Sixes, Sweetie Darling @ Soda Bar. There’s something very comforting and nostalgic about Dude York’s alt-pop rock. Like Charly Bliss, it feels like it came right out of the ‘90s. Imagine if Elastica and Veruca Salt had a baby—that’s Dude York.

Friday, Jan. 24

OPTION 1: Judas Priestess, Motorbäbe, Vixen Vendetta @ Brick By Brick. All-women tributes to Judas Priest and Motorhead? Fuuuuck yes. BYO balm, cuz your face is gonna melt.

OPTION 2: Cursive, Cloud Nothings, Criteria @ The Casbah (sold out). I really want to like Cursive more than I do. I love The Ugly Organ, but everything else just falls a little bit short for me. I think it’s Cursive singer Tim Kasher’s histrionic attempts to convey how hard it is to make music. I mean, sure, everyone makes art in different ways, but that dude has made a career out of being tormented. Cloud Nothings rule though.

Saturday, Jan. 25

OPTION 1: Cave Bastard, OhCult, Garth Algar, New Skeletal Faces, and Blood Ponies @ Soda Bar (matinee show, 2 p.m.). It’s probably illegal for bands that rock this hard to play before the sun goes down, so please don’t tell any cops. This goth/metal extravaganza is a fundraiser for staff member Tyler Arriola and his family, who recently lost their house to a tragic fire. Let’s help them rebuild (you can also support their Gofundme).

OPTION 2: Dream Burglar, Soda Boys & Daggers 86 @ Black Cat Bar. Dream Burglar is one of singer/guitarist Justin Cota’s many musical projects, but this is the band that would probably inspire me to drink the most while watching them. It’s scuzzy, lo-fi, unhinged garage rock, and it’s a lot of fun. Hell, I might just open a beer right now after listening to them.

OPTION 3: Doc Hammer, DethSurf, Run With Hounds, Full Blast Fun Boy @ Bar Pink. It’s not like we’re at a loss for hard rocking shows tonight, but party hardcore-ers Doc Hammer are wild. They’re like if early Refused weren’t so self-righteously serious.

Sunday, Jan. 26

OPTION 1: Casbah Tribute to Neil Peart @ The Casbah. As nerdy as Rush were, Niel Peart was indelible. The drumming pioneer was also a writer, motorcycle aficionado and wrote a lot of Rush’s songs—just seemed like an all-around badass. The world is less loud now that he’s gone, but a slew of local musicians are performing tonight to honor him. I feel bad for every drummer that got roped into this gig. Good luck, friends.

OPTION 2: Epic XVIII, Fall Risk @ Tower Bar. Because I made a pact with the devil when I was 15, I now have to recommend every ska show that comes to town. I didn’t make the rules, I just follow them. Pickitup pickitup pickitup at Tower Bar tonight.

Monday, Jan. 27

OPTION 1: Midnight Pine, Birdy Bardot, Chloe Lou and the Liddells @ The Casbah. I think this is Redwoods Collective’s last stint during their month-long residency at The Casbah, and they’re going out with a bang. This is your chance to see some of the most talented and soulful musicians working in San Diego today.

Tuesday, Jan. 28

OPTION 1: Mattiel, Calvin Love @ Soda Bar. Mattiel reminds me of retro ‘60s pop that belongs in spy movies. Wait, am I thinking of the Austin Powers soundtrack? I hope not. Ugh. This endorsement is not going well. Mattiel is cool and not at all like Austin Powers.

TWO HUGE LOSSES FOR SAN DIEGO’S ART SCENE

Over the weekend, we lost two great San Diego artists in rather tragic ways, and my heart is hurting.

Nancy Cary—a writer and board president for local nonprofit So Say We All—died suddenly on January 18 from complications that arose during surgery. I had the honor of writing with her and producing at least one storytelling show that she was in. Her stories were always disarmingly honest, and she had the power to find the profound in the benign. I always loved chatting with her after storytelling shows at The Whistle Stop, often commiserating on progressive issues. She was an unassuming, gentle person with a good heart—qualities that are increasingly rare. Goodbye, Nancy. Miss you. </3

San Diego punk legend Alberto Jurado died of a heart attack on Jan. 20. He was the singer for Death Crisis and then Death Eyes. I only met him once (my band Forest Grove was lucky enough to play with Death Eyes in December), but Jurado was a larger-than-life presence. I keep seeing people describe him as a “force” and I can only agree. His manic, wild-eyed stage persona was simultaneously thrilling and scary—the exact thing you want to front your punk band. After the show, we chatted and I was just so in awe of his sense of humor and humbleness. Truly a one-of-a-kind spirit. Goodbye, Alberto. Miss you, too. </3