ALL CAPS: Judy Funnie Meets Maude Lebowski

[MUSIC] Brace yourselves for a noble horror because the Call of Coutulumistry program has returned. Yes, nerdy shows beloved RPG audio drama of Black comedy and love crafty and horror is back with an all new series. A chilling tale called The Terrible Secret of Black X, head to coutulumistry.com or find the Call of Coutulumistry program wherever you procure fine podcasts to come to the maddening call of Coutulum. [MUSIC] The following program is presented by the nerdy show network geeky programming for all nerds across the multiverse. All nerdy show programming is made possible by the generous support of listeners like you. To learn how you can support this and other fine geek programming visit nerdyshow.com. [MUSIC] Welcome to nerdy show, a ridiculous and relic journey into the fiefdom of geekdom in the land of nerdery where anything can happen and it usually does. For instance, it could be that this episode of nerdy show is in fact an all caps episode. Hi, I'm Cap. Almost 10 years ago, I co-founded the nerdy show network with several other slubs. Yeah, that's right, I said 10 years ago and that's the boy, let me look at my watch. Oh shit, that's coming up soon. On January 14th, it will have been officially 10 years since the first broadcast of a show called nerdy show featuring myself, Triforce Mike, John Hicks Carter, and the sort of Pete Best of the group, Aaron Holland. We go over all of our history in a earlier episode of nerdy show, which I'll link to on this episode's page. But the short version is it started as a radio program which was also broadcast to the internet and eventually distributed as podcasts. We jumped off the radio in only a few months time after having a surprising early swell of success and stayed on the internet thereafter. This is the first podcast of 2019 and let me just tell you it's been a spotty and crazy time getting here. At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, everyone's always like, "Hey, how was your holiday? How was New Year's? How was everything?" The days were fine. I hung out with Bohr and Brandon and Denica, mostly, if you're curious. We were all orphaned in Orlando together, not going out to different places, other than each other's homes and playing a lot of Smash Brothers. But, you know, I'd be, "Oh, it's good. It's good, but if they're a close friend, I'll tell them, "Oh, it was a hot mess. Let me tell you, it was a wreck." And it's not done being a wreck. 2018 was a crazy year. I was running both the nerdy show network and then also started running the consequence podcast network for consequence of sound. And I knew that that was going to be an ordeal. What I didn't anticipate was how much of an ordeal it was going to be by the end of the year. Where we were simultaneously, debuting the new series of The Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program on nerdy show, and also out of the blue, doing a series with Sony called The Opus, over on consequence podcast network. So far both have turned out great, but an already extraordinarily busy time of the year was just absolutely crushing. And it hasn't subsided. Now, I hate being a Debbie Downer. And if your name is Debbie, is that hard for you being named Debbie with the term Debbie Downer getting flashed around? Am I being insensitive towards you? Right in and let me know. All Caps episodes, if you haven't tuned in to one of these before, are, well, they're a mixed bag, but they kind of edge on a little bit of personal diary from me. The lone oldest surviving member of the original nerdy show crew, the figurehead of the network, the lone person who does this full time. And I know that this feed, the nerdy show feed, the feed featuring our titular podcast that started at all, has become in many ways a sort of utility for communicating directly to you, the people who've been around a long time, or in general are most connected to us, the people who make the podcasts. If you're new, well, hey, welcome. This is a, this is odd. Check out nerdy show's greatest hits. There's a lot of different kinds of things that we've done over the years, and I assure you it's fascinating. We've thrown a lot around to see what sticks to the walls, but it has always been a fun journey. Anyway, circling back, it's been a time. And so for those of you who are aware of our general ebb and flow of how we do things, there's probably some stuff you were anticipating. If you're on the nerdy show lounge hanging out and we're well aware of this approaching anniversary, you may be wondering, what are we going to do for that? You know what? I'm wondering that too. Still not figured that out. You may also be wondering, what about the top 20 nerdy things that the year? The thing that you folks have been doing since the very beginning, arbitrarily ranking a bunch of things that have no business being ranked together solely by the amorphously defined nerdy qualities therein. Unfortunately, we didn't, we didn't do it. I was compiling a spreadsheet all year long, but no, it was, it was too busy to work into the end of the year. I mean, this isn't just about me. This is the whole staff at large. We've been pulled in a great many directions in our lives, and that's just the nature of the beast. Truth be told, what I wanted to do is I wanted to do this as one last top 20 nerdy things of the year, which we also call our final boss episodes of the year, and then do a final final boss episode, which would in turn create a top 20 list of all of our prior 10 top 20 lists, best 20 out of 100 over the past decade of things that we deemed nerdy, which I still, I mean, I want to do it. It sounds fun as hell, but also we then have to retroactively do 2018. And like, folks, I haven't even seen Spider-Man yet. Like, everyone's telling me this movie's like the greatest thing. Max Acree, one of our lightning dogs designer says it's the Akira of 3D animation. Whoa, I mean, that's crazy. I mean, I really want to see it, but times are tight. Me even recording this is dubious at best. I probably would do better to just not let something come out, but I wanted to. I mean, I do a lot of things because I want to. It's a privilege, and I don't take it for granted. But also, I pay the price. So anyway, why are we here? We're here because I'm going to share with you some odds and sods in my brain. For instance, there were some comic books that I meant to talk about on a nerdy show episode several, several episodes ago, and then they just didn't happen. I forgot and slipped out, but like, I know that their comic themed episodes don't particularly track well. It seems to be more of a flame-on listener-based interest thing, but trust me on this. These are very much worthy of your attention. First is a book called "Die" by Kieran Gillin, who you might know from Wicked in Divine or Phonogram or Darth Vader or Dr. Afra or quite a lot of awesome stuff. He created Kid Loki. "Die" is based on in its simplest form, its gestational idea was "Remember the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon where those kids were just whisked away into a medieval fantasy world? What if that really happened? What if some kids were actively like, you know, abducted, let's say, by mystical forces pulled from their own reality and forced to become their characters? Like, it's all fun and games when it's a game, but what then? What if, while playing D&D, I became the salacious and scale Jamele-Dala Egbert III, Mr. So the Steam Tunnels? Might not be the worst, but think of all the SDVs, yes. I mean, they don't keep it wrapped up back then. And I'd like to think I can navigate a cloaca, but there might be a learning curve. Some folks have it easy, they get an upgrade, some folks don't have it so easy. So this book is a grim, grim, grim take on that premise. And in it, a bunch of kids disappear in 1991. They show up a little while later, having gone through a terrible ordeal, attempt to readjust to their lives after one of them, like, it comes back having lost an arm. One of them comes back having been biologically female when they weren't previously, and they all endured some horrible horrifying things because it's a medieval fantasy world. So they live their lives, they struggle with whatever PTSD and coping mechanisms and so on and so forth. And then they get pulled back in. And it's fascinating. This is not your typical medieval fantasy setting. This isn't rat queens with a different premise. This is some wonderfully unusual takes on the role playing tropes that we know and love. For instance, there's a cleric who is an atheist and the way that the cleric operates here, it sort of takes the idea that well clerics commune with deities to get things done to create miracles and so on. And how is that any different from a demonologist? So there's a different kind of relationship that happens here between the castor cleric and the deities that they're coming in contact with. There's also a thing called a neo, which is like a cyberpunk character in a medieval fantasy setting. Someone who's got cybernetics in them, but those cybernetics are like tied to some kind of like fairy magic that has a price. So you have to pay up. You put some gold into a thing in your body and boom, you're super powered, but only until the end of the day. And then you are looking for a fix you are essentially a junkie. And there's lots of fascinating thought that goes into this book. In fact, I recommend buying it in issues rather than waiting for the collections because there is back matter that is very fascinating. Like the characters, all their archetypes play with a different side to die and which die they play with has a parallel to the scope and nature of their classes. And I have no assurances that any of these pondering will end up in a collection. But for those of you who really love story crafting or game design or just general kind of game theory stuff, you know what I mean. role-playing is a coalescing of all these different properties. If you love not even just the nuts and bolts of role-playing, but the heart of role-playing and the history and mystique of role-playing, there is a wealth of very unique musings on the nature of the beast in the back matter for the book Die by Kieran Gillin, which is out now. There's two issues out. Get them if you can. Next up is a book called La Guardia by N'eri Okorafor, whose name hopefully I've said correctly. It's a story about immigration in a futuristic setting, an Afro-futurism story, where the state of affairs in Nigeria was elevated by it being sort of a first contact point for aliens and became an international gateway for extraterrestrial species interacting with Earth. It's funny, it's weird, it's kind of like what if the men in black universe was sort of like not secret, and in this it studies the nature of immigration of people traveling back and forth between countries and getting frisked in the preposterous nature of it, when they profile people but ignore things that they really should be paying attention to. Like Great Sci-fi, it is very of the time, and then also is resplendent with social commentary and ideas that are a bit beyond the time. Before I go on, I do want to give a shout out to the fine people who make nerdy show possible, and that is you, hopefully you're listening. Since the debut of the Call of Kuthulu Mystery Program series 2, we have had a steady influx of new patrons, which is very exciting and I'm so thrilled that you folks have joined up to help us produce this show. It is very expensive and very time consuming, and our hearts are very much in it, so the support to make this dream a reality, to push us into the direction that is really, I mean, no surprise there. Our audio dramas have always been very much the fan favorites and very much the favorite things that we do, so that is the focus of where nerdy show as a network, as a production house, is heading, and we could not even remotely begin to do it without our listener support, which has always been the only thing that has kept us going all this time, truly. If it weren't for you, this would have been a definably bad idea. So I want to give a shout out to new patrons, Mick Shouten, Jeffrey Summler, Elf 84, Philip S. Garcia, Dustin, and a new producer here at Nerdy Show, Aaron Ramsey, also a big, big thanks to Jamie's in the loan, who offered us two, that's right, two donations of a sizeable nature via the one time donation tool at nerdyshow.com/support. I should back up and say that if you would like to become a patron, just go to patreon.com/nerdyshow, we have a number of perks we have a number of tiers, such as the $20 and $50 tier where you become an executive producer and we'll find yourself credited in shows like the Call of Cthulumistry program. So Jamison wrote in and said, "Hey Cap, I'm well past my due date for one time donation and shout out. I love what you and Colin are doing for the Call of Cthulumistry program. Need to point out that the all caps episodes were great. Oh man, cool!" And I continue to lurk in Roosevelt when I can, keep being the amazing people that you are, and remember kids, hashtag halenoise, hashtag always be lurking, hashtag always be roseafelting. Jamison also requested a shout out for little brother and his little offspring, who he won't describe as a 10-foot for their birthdays which were in December. Happy belated birthdays folks, and thank you so much Jamison. This support is absolutely amazing. You single-handedly funded a massive chunk of the new music that we got for Call of Cthulum after the series started. Colin and I sort of, you know, we decided how much we wanted to spend, and then midway through the series, we decided we wanted to spend a little bit more. We're going to go crazy, but we wanted some tunes to help further diversify the scenes that we ended up building, and you combined with all of these amazing folks supporting us on Patreon all made that possible. It's absolutely wonderful to have you folks with us. And there are still many changes of foot, but I don't want my mouth to write checks that it can't cache. What you should know is that, like I said, there is a real emphasis on the continued production of audio drama and our expertise as producers of that content. We are developing projects that potentially extend outside of the Nerdy Show network even in terms of distribution. There are big opportunities with no guarantees. Just our attempt to take everything we've learned through all these years and make even bigger, better, more exciting, cool, dark, and yes, always nerdy shows that tell cool and unique stories. And I'm really glad that it all caps delighted, and hopefully this one will, too. There isn't much to it, but it definitely has a different vibe. I do think it's very important to communicate to everyone who takes the time to listen, and to share what I can that I normally wouldn't in a regular format show. You know, it's different, so let's make it different. Before I carry on, remember rate and review us on Apple podcasts. That's still a relevant thing to do. And rate and review us on pod chaser as well, where you can target specific episodes. You can say this episode of all caps was the best one yet, or it was a steaming turd. That's fine, too. I respect your opinions. And also, if you haven't, please do consider rating and reviewing our other series, Call of Cthulumistry program does get a fair amount of traction here and there. But based on Apple's algorithms, if we can get over 200 ratings and or reviews for that series, we will be more on the radar than ever before in terms of the number one marketplace for people discovering podcasts, Apple podcasts. Right now, last I checked, we're at 66. So not exactly halfway, but not exactly rock bottom either. We could really use the support there. It's pretty clear that's, that's, that's the big thing we're doing right now. That's, that's the focus. Oh, and, and if you haven't heard, if you're not listening to that series, one, you should, because I think it's great. I had a lot of fun doing it. And it's, uh, it's the biggest production we've ever done by, by a, by a long shot. But also, we have already recorded series three. That happened, that happened in the middle of recording series two. We haven't really had, uh, that kind of momentum on a show in a while, but we're trying to do things differently here. And we won't be able to pick up with series three as soon as series two ends. And no, we kind of had hoped to stick something in the interim between those two things, but that's not going to happen. I need a little bit of a recovery period to be quite frank. Um, we'll see how it goes. That probably won't happen either. Anyway, anyway, anyway, everything's great. I lead a charmed life. I can't complain. I'm just really tired. Here's another reason I'm really tired. I've been fostering kittens. If my performance in Call of Cthulhu series two wasn't indication enough, I am a lifelong cat person. I'd recently, my partner started working at an animal shelter. And it's, it's a kill shelter as is necessitated by the fact that, you know, in Florida, we have a lot of dogs and cats who don't have a, the seasonal die out in the winter. They live and they thrive and some thrive too much. And we end up with overcrowded shelters. So it just so happens every now and then someone will be like, Hey, uh, there's, there's a kitten here who's under two pounds. Otherwise, a completely fine, totally healthy kitten, because they will require us to feed them and give them more attention at a greater rate than we can possibly afford while taking care of all these other cats and dogs. They're going to be put down at the end of the night unless someone fosters them who wants it. And ideally, we'll live in a world without kill shelters, but I just want to emphasize that there is a real necessity for this kind of draconian practice. It sucks. It's awful. And there's a lot of things you can do like for example, if you find a stray cat, maybe leave them outside, maybe let them thrive in the outdoors, but, but you could, you could trap and release. That is viable. But if you bring a cat to the shelter, you are potentially participating in an overcrowding scenario. Anyway, it's a very complicated industry. I digress. So we're fostering some kittens. We'd fostered one kitten solo. And now we're fostering four siblings, two boys, two girls. And they're wonderful, really, really wonderful, boisterous, stripey, gray, and white cats. But recently, one of them just stopped eating and drinking. And we don't know why. Her name's Sorsha. And we're doing everything we can to take care of her, which includes staying up with her all night and sleeping on the bathroom floor where we've got her separate from everybody else. And ruthlessly violating her personal space by shoving things in her mouth that she doesn't want to eat, drugging her up with antihistamine pills to boost her appetite. It's a complicated process. And trust me, it is being overseen by physicians who have recommendations. But kitten mortality is a very tricky thing. And anyway, I'm not actually sure how I got on this, but there's a good chance we might end up keeping Sorsha if she survives. And she will. Anyway, that's exactly the kind of wonderful, sad, personal shit that you can expect from all caps. What a fun show. Yay! Here's something else I'm doing. I'm working with a friend of mine on a zine. I'm a multi-disciplinary artist. If you know me as podcasts, there's a lot of other stuff I do. I did a lot of other things before podcasting in terms of like aptitudes and skills and so on. Things that I've been passionate about since I was a child. So I get to use them in my jobs, but I don't get to use them for myself often. Lightning Dogs is perhaps the one thing that coalesces all of the things that are me into one space. Or at least most of the things that are me. It's still a collaborative effort, of course. But doing the Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program has been really invigorating because after we recorded, I did do a lot of auxiliary writing. I've created a new scenes to help increase the character development so things land better. So it just feels like a fuller storytelling experience so you can have all the fun and mayhem of the improvise. story telling that role-playing creates, and then also ensure that it has all the moments that you would expect if it was a scripted show as well. So this is the first time in a long time that I've let myself go down some rabbit holes, and we'll see. We're very early into the process. But working with her on this project, my friend Ashley Belanger, working with her on the scene, it's already dug up a bunch of really wonderful stuff from my mind and from my past. And I'm really excited at what it could turn out to be, because there's a lot of different ways it could go, all of them good, but all of them very different. Ashley is a person of note. She does incredible work. If you search her name, one of the first things you'll find is a series of articles she did for Teen Vogue about child marriages, and all the problems surrounding that in America, a multi-part series, exploring just the archaic laws that are still in place in the realities that I think exclusively young women have to deal with in places where that's a thing that happens, and it's more of them than you would think. But she also is an absolutely wonderful writer of fiction and poetry, and has produced a number of scenes, which I'll link to in this episode's page where you can pick them up. One that might be of particular interest is her most recent work. It's called Wonder Wonder, and most of the scene is occupied by a short story that is about a near future world where increased time in front of tablet screens has caused many people to suffer a variety of different hallucinatory symptoms, so much so that it's like a national epidemic, and society and industry has shifted itself around people who are oftentimes crippled by these hallucinations, which can be delightful or horrifying, and that the insular nature of modern society for these people has become even more insular and cause them to live their lives in drastically different ways. It's informed by a lot of real world hallucinatory symptoms that people can experience for a variety of reasons. I was really taken by the very unique premise and world that she created, which is dangerous and mysterious. And also, she's a really amazing mixed media artist. She does felt art, and if you look at the cover to Wonder Wonder, it's this beautiful hallucinatory thing of like a various cars and eyes and lights and patterns, and it's all done with stitches and felt. It's absolutely beautiful. I'm so excited to do a split scene with her. So our theme is sacred spaces, which can manifest in a lot of different ways. For me, the first thing I went to are shopping malls. And I don't know if I've ever gone on about that on nerdy show at all. My deep affinity for shopping malls and the way that shopping malls tend to manifest in my dreams, and the way that I feel that shopping malls and their architecture in general, particularly once from the 70s and 80s, all have sort of a dream-like construction. There's lots of dead ends. There's lots of places to go. There's lots of light and darkness, some of my best early memories and most vivid and also dream-like early memories for my childhood are of being in shopping malls and the process of shopping, of wish fulfillment, of going in there and discovering something new and not knowing what you're looking for and having things change. There's so many layers to it and I could go on and fill an entire podcast just talking about this. But I'm very excited at the prospect of exploring this because I've invested a lot of my personal time over the years in exploring the nature of shopping malls and musing on this thing that sort of became an obsession of mine because I realized how much my subconscious was fundamentally drawn to this and how it was captivated by the beauty of the architecture. Some malls are drab, some malls are charmingly drab, but some malls, some very rare and precious malls, are literally like palaces from a dream and one in particular, which no longer exists, it was called the Plantation Fashion Mall in Plantation, Florida. It was built preposterously across the street from a more successful mall in the late '80s and the Plantation Fashion Mall was a three-story tall, luxurious, glass-domed beacon. I've described it in the past as like the cloud city of shopping malls. It's just beautiful. When I was in college, the mall had been closed down and I contacted the owners about going inside and officially photodocumenting it. In the years that passed, a lot of people had come in and done their own dead malls, belonging illegally. But I actually contacted the people. I got permission. I went in with John West and we took a bunch of photos and video and captured the interior. I'll link to them on this episode's page. You'll see what I mean. It's a very unique space and there's a lot of charm there and a lot of stories, true and imaginary, but it leaves room for the imaginary. So, that's just one of the facets of things that I'm going to be tackling in my portion of Ashley and I split-zene. Primitively, I'm talking about it so soon, this might be a mistake, but who knows. But coming out of that, I wanted to share something with you that's rather unusual. It's a piece of fan fiction that I wrote with local shop, who you might know as one of the artists who works on lightning dogs. Two of our favorite fictional characters from the '90s who are artists are Judy Funny from Doug and Maud Labowski from the Big Labowski. They're both redheads, they have a similar haircut. They're both very pretentious but in charming way and these women were deeply influential to us both. I mean, if you've listened to Nerdcasting the Multiverse, you've heard me do my Judy Funny art podcast thing. The first and only time I ever cosplayed at San Diego Comic Con was as her. But a couple of years ago, I watched every single episode of Doug, both the Nickelodeon years and the much more lined but actually quite good Disney years for a project that I still intend to do and when it does come out in podcast form. If I get around to it and I desperately want to because it took a lot of notes, it will come out as a nerdy show episode. So my head was swimming with all this like Doug lore. I even bought a Disney era Doug series manual. I forget what the actual technical term is but it has features like all the maps of the town of Bluffington and all this other detail and it's a fascinating show, revolutionary. So we wanted to see what would happen when these two fictional artists women who we love so much, what would happen if they cross paths? What would that look like? So in the Disney years, there were several all Judy episodes and they were amazing. I can't really overstate how in love I was with her whole vibe. I really wanted to be Judy Funny and it took me a long time to realize I could be Judy Funny or like, you know, a serviceable like not quite so pretentious Judy Funny. And now, you know, that's a portion of the truth that I'm living now and I'm very, I'm very grateful to her for it. So anyway, we are Pete. We've gotten our emails and we bounced back and forth and we roleplayed this meeting between Judy and mod. And the reason I bring this up in relation to my work with Ashley is that we're hoping to do a piece where we're going to collaborate in that same way, which is something that actually hadn't done before. And the way that I roleplay in text is lots of paragraphs, lots of flow and local shop and I just love to have fun with characters, love to explore the truth of a character beyond the context that they're presented in. And I thought it'd be fun to share here on all caps because I haven't really ever shared anything like this before on nerdy show. And if we've done our job right, then even though we were roleplaying to sides of this, it'll coalesce in a way that makes it hard to determine who did what and all just flows together as one story. To say it was liberating to be free from the yoke and yokels of Bluffington was an understatement. Judy Funny's formative years at the Moody School was an oasis amidst the bumper sticker capital of the world, but she had quickly outgrown its confines. At Vole she could thrive in the collegiate environment and flex her creative muscles to the fullest. Nothing outside of a surprise visit from her family at a recital could cramp Judy's bold new level of expression. Fortunately the long drive plus her baby sister would provide more than enough barriers to keep the funny family at bay. Yes, Judy was flying solo at Vole, none of her classmates from Moody made it in. She could reinvent herself here, and it was a good thing too. Judy wasn't used to feeling outclassed, but amidst the raw talent on parade at Vole's performing arts department, she was no longer a big fish in a small pond. Though she knew her own raw creativity was enough, she couldn't help feeling the need to prove herself, make her mark on the venerable institution and win the hearts of her peers. So began her filth series. Turning against her previous methods, Judy abandoned the larger than life props that had been a hallmark of her earlier work, and focused on more intimate methods. She honed her mind, clothed in nothing but bluff co-blomper stickers, she scurried through the corridors mute and blind. She painted with every part of her body but her hands, using pigments mixed with spit and snot. It was a trying time, and Judy couldn't tell if she was digging deeper into her artistic soul or pushing farther away from it. She was making uncomfortable work. And from that discomfort, she had a breakthrough. Alone in her dorm room, Judy consoled her cramping abdomen and considered the prospects of working with her mencess. Was it too obvious? It had certainly been done many times before. She caught her ghostly reflection in the window, the bride of her room against the bleak, rainy day. Her bedroom at home was pink, a girlish bootwar, a child's bedroom. It hadn't reflected her external self-expression for years but remained apart of her. Outside she was image. In the confines of her suburban home, she was complacent. The dorm bedroom was Robin's egg blue. Stark, her posters from home, remained rolled, scraps, canvases, and blue voids. Who was this cramping, greasy, filth? The only comfort food on hand was a can of spaghettios, the result of her own penny-pinching. Judy had forgotten how much she hated them. She was in no mood to go to the common area and socialized and heated the can with a hairdryer. It worked too well. The hot cans scalded Judy's hand, the vibrant red tomato sauce splattering her stomach her thighs, and across the unstretched canvas laying on the floor. In a rage, she flung herself into the mess, rolling and flailing her body in the sauce, pasta, taking out her tampon and furiously flinging it against the white, punching and smearing her redness. If this was her art, then it would also be her rage. Exhausted and aching, Judy Rose, mad about the shitty food, mad about her aching guts, mad about her disenchantment with her own work, herself, mad at the freakish mess she made, who was either her finest piece in months or the worst, either way, Judy hated it. Dirt is all around us. Everything is shit. She murmured, feeling pasta owes ooze down her leg. The resulting performance was much simpler, but required Judy breach new territory. She'd never done any nude work with such a big audience, and she'd never exposed herself so loodly. It was only after she'd finished sucking the pasta sauce from her fingertips that she realized Maud Lebowski was in the audience. Judy was only vaguely aware of Lebowski in the art world, but as a female multidisciplinary artist, she was enough to intrigue. Judy had attended Maud's lecture earlier in the day, and left in awe, inspired. She was still uncertain where her own art was, but she felt more comfortable about where it was going, and the intimate, vaginal aspect of her latest piece felt more valid than anything else that had come from filth. Maud, on the other hand, hadn't been expecting to be impressed when she visited Vole. There were few glimmers of hope for the future of the art world to be found in such clean, polished surroundings. She wanted something raw and honest, and this was so middle-class. It wasn't until she saw Judy funny perform that she was interested at all. Her work was bordering on amateur, but filled with a genuine charm and far more evocative than anyone else's at the institution. She never considered the concept of SpaghettiOs being used in such a metaphorical sense before. Yes, there was something there, a flame worth examining it, closer proximity. Judy left the spotlight buzzed, but wearing her best somber expression. She stepped with a tipsy gate from the performance space, dragging a red finger streak along the gallery's bright white wall. Sorry, I missed the show. It was Alicia, a perpetually stoic art punk with a reverse mullet. It made an impression. "Oh yeah," replied Judy, trying to play it Blasey. She'd just come from the green room shower and didn't expect anyone. "Mmm," Alicia handed, Judy folded piece of paper. Judy tucked her towel tight and unfolded the letter. "Judith, I'm not often surprised. Accommodations have been made for me at the guest villa of the Dean's Manor through tomorrow morning. I've told the gate to show you in." If this is short notice I can be reached to the following address, though it may take some time for response as I'm presenting in Basel through the following week. For gods, Maud Labowski. Judy got dressed promptly and left out the back of the gallery. She briefly stressed it, the thought of doubling back to her dorm room for something else to wear but settled on her regular attire. Be honest, be centered. At the Dean's Manor, the gate man led her behind the stately red brick colonial building to a quaint bungalow sequestered in the rear garden. And as she approached, Judy saw an illuminated glass of wine float through a shaft of light. So glad you've come, Judy smiled nervously. Maud stood in the doorway looking over the young woman's beatnick-esque attire, sunglasses at night. Oh, youth. Maud had a reputation for being breast and hard. And that wasn't entirely unfounded. But those who experienced the harshest aspect of her personality were those who she would consider outsiders. Newscasters, low-level critics, the papers, Maud showed a much softer side to those she considered her friends or worthy peers at the very least. Judy was room from as funny to be either, with a simple motion, she gestured her in. Would you like a drink? Stepping into the light of the villa, Judy now got a clear look at Maud, a loose white shirt and black silk pants, tall leather boots. Certainly Judy chirped, preps, to eager. She was 18, but wine was nothing new to her, from snuck pubescent sips at grandma opals to late nights with Cassius and Serenity, and those weeks with flounder who was kind enough not to ask her age. But being offered a drink as an adult with no other thought given. That was new and it was gratifying. When it came to performances, Judy was dauntless, unflinching, but at the threat of her very self being on display, Judy's facade dithered. Something about this woman was so commanding. She wanted Maud to like her. She'd hid herself beneath an act before and the results were mixed, to say the least. She'd let her idol Gwen Gauntlet walk all over her by being too sheepish. No, this would be the new Judy, the real Judy. Judy graciously took a very full glass of red. I was surprised to get your letter, your presentation was very inspiring. There was silence. She nervously filled it. I'm flattered you enjoyed my peace. It's only natural I enjoy it. It was quite inspired, refreshingly different from a lot of the fledgling work I've seen lately. Well, thank you for saying so, Judy sipped tentatively. A lot had done her best to make this temporary abode feel more like home, but mostly that entailed, taking the less than in throwing art off the walls and hiding it in the closet. Bear walls she found inspired an ache to fill them. What do you want to achieve with your art, Judith? A platitude-laden monologue welled up, but Judy paused. She took a breath, inviting herself to remain bare. I'm in a transitional phase at the moment. I guess you could say I'm finding my way to something new, testing my threshold. She leaned on the arm of a plethora couch. Most of my earlier work was about perspective and scale, truth under magnification. My more recent projects at Vole have been more deconstructivist and intimate, but she realized she hadn't answered the question and hadn't really answered it for herself either. The only object hanging on the sparse wall was a decorative mirror. Judy caught a glimpse of herself. Models reflected over her shoulder. Stripping away preconceptions and mundane edifices to bring people face-to-face with truth, hopeful or grotesque, if I can make them feel their own wounds and in beholding them, they find the means to sow themselves back up. Her words shook with a dramatic gravity, surprising herself with a thesis she didn't know she had, and then delightedly turned chipper. Then I've done my job. How noble an aim that is. I find the truth of oneself to be subject that's always changing, ever-surprising to an audience. Mod drank and thought for a moment, looking Judy over. Judy, have you ever considered an apprenticeship under an unestablished artist? Judy choked mid-Sip. Muah? Well, I never considered the possibility, actually, but that would be thrilling. She couldn't downplay it. Her exuberant showed, was Mod Lebowski proposing to take her under her wing? Even if she ended up with one of Mod's associates, it was still an exciting prospect. "It's a trying experience," Mod said early, "but it is worth it, to be vouched for by someone with a right sort of reputation." She said her now empty glass in the table beside the bottle. Her lead was obvious, but also ambiguous, intent in plain view but undeclared. Judy sensed an invite to prove her worth. And she could work with that. She was an actor, of course. Sounds like you know firsthand, did you, study under someone? Mod looked thoughtful for a moment, wondering whether to tell. I was an apprentice once, she said plainly, and motioned for Judy to follow her down the hallway. Valentina Tuncianova, do you know her? I don't. Brilliant, but woefully overlooked. A Siberian performance artist, a shaman who danced interpretively the stories of her people. I performed with her, a piece called Bia too. The story of a woman mating with a bear. Mod smiled at Judy, mostly in rye amusement at herself, that she ever found that folktale as exciting as she had. But it was. Being Valentina's bear made it exciting. Judy, still nursing her wine, followed mod toward the back of the house. That sounds fascinating. There is not much in the way of pre-colonial heritage where I grew up, exploring tribal practices first hand would be thrilling. I have been planning a pilgrimage to Nepal. There's a thoughtful pause. It would be asking too much to invite you along, wouldn't it? It would uproot your studies. Mod, that would be absolutely amazing to experience such rich and vibrant culture. Composure, Judy, composure. I'm flattered, to be honest, and I kind of feel foolish about this, but I fought hard to get into this college, and now that I'm here, I can't shake the feeling that I've just traded one confinement for another. Mod smiled, Riley, pleased that her instincts were sharp as ever. So yes, if you're certain that she would have me, yes, that sounds like true artistic education. Mmm. When my plans are finalized, you'll be the first to know. The gravity of all this wasn't lost on Judy. She touched Mod's forearm, not sure how much affection, if any, the artist could take. Considering that she may have overstepped, she withdrew her touch, but kept close. I'm truly honored that my peace spoke to you enough that you'd consider me for something like this. Mod looked as casual as if she'd simply offered to buy Judy lunch. Think nothing of it. This will be good for both of us. Judy sat down her empty glass on the floor of the bar room, realizing now that they were in a makeshift studio space. I'd rather thread bear one, a few buckets of paint, rolls of butcher paper and boxes of notebooks, some written in but many blank. There was a camera and some lights, all simply to record inspiration if it struck sketches to be the foundation of serious work later. She scanned the contents of the room, wondering if she could decipher what Mod intended to work on. At first glance, it was just tools waiting for purpose, but there must be more. The camera and lights were pointed at a blank wall next to which were the rolls of paper. There was painters taping her by. She nudged the roll of paper with her foot. Getting ready for some large scale abstractions? I've been dabbling with some notions, but at the moment. She paused. Lips percing as she decided on her words. My body can't keep up with my mind. My arm cannot paint with a vigor of my imagination. Tell me about it. Lately I've been pushing myself to see with immediacy and all it's caught me is thrashing round with paint in my body, I can never tell if I like what comes out of it. Do you paint with your naked form? Judy let out an abrupt, too loud laugh accompanied by a heavy blush. She'd shown the pieces but she'd never been called upon to explain them. Yeah, a kind of a recent thing. It's invigorating. You should try a harness. The statement hung like a piano. Before Judy could commit to a mental image, Ma jumped ahead. What scale? Oh, rather small. I've only done that work in my bedroom. So modest, not after tonight, I suppose. She'd considered taking her more expressive painting to one of the public studios. She even had a private cubicle but private was subjective in those spaces. It wasn't modesty per se, but the work required a mood and a certain amount of spontaneity. Mod took the lens cap off the tripod mounted camera. Would you indulge me, Judith? It was a genuine question, not a command from an authority figure dressed up as an inquiry, but also Judy wagered it was a test. Did she work on her feet the level that model a bowsky demanded? It was a terrifying and sincerely exciting prospect. If this was an audition, it was a part Judy was determined to get. Wordlessly, Judy took hold of a corner of the butcher paper in tape. She stood in a paint can, getting the paper as close to the ceiling as she could. As she worked, Ma took a few steps back and photographed her quietly, documenting the forthcoming pieces development. The small clicks, like the reassuring muttering of the audience before performance, proof of stakes, gravity, everything an artist needs to soar. The wall was covered and so Judy went to work on the immediate floor. That was the most important part. Judy looked over the colors, lime green, red, yellow, royal blue. She cracked the paints open with a screwdriver, then it was time to get to work. Off with the glasses off with the beret. She undid her purple shirt, her plain bra, her leggings and maroon thong. The camera came unmounted, gentle clicks slowly panning as mod pastes and observed. She didn't want to get too close and altered Judy's energy. She admired her life form backlit against the wall, lit with worklamps. If only there was music, but, well, mod's presence made Judy's hair stand on end. Judy put her hand in the green and smeared it over her left breast. She dipped her foot in the yellow, foot on the wall, hand on the ground, breast kissing the paper, and so the dance began. Mod watched and reserved judgment of criticism, far from an easy practice for her, but Judy's naked poise, her truth, made it easy to simply absorb what she was doing, raw and beautiful. What Judy felt tonight wasn't rage. It was truly a dance, one that she was having with herself and who she wanted to be. She'd done a great many things within the scope of her suburban existence, but now it was time to be more. Her thoughts evoked large sweeping motions, pooling the colors together and pushing them outwards. She was in the womb, then born again, fetal and rolling, only to spring, smearing and splattering painting into the wall. Her whole form was a glut of color, leaving full body imprints. She used her tongue. In a way, she'd been making love with dance and paint, murmuring, sometimes screaming, sweating and moaning. Mod wasn't terribly surprised at what Judy was capable of in this differing medium. She'd seen similar passion in her prior performance, but the unexpected delight of such a fresh and uninhibited private display. She held the camera in front of her chest, short of breath, wonderful. Judy rolled to a partial headstand facing the wall, folding slightly at her waist the tips of her toes dotting yellow and red. Then her leg spring outward, bringing her back flat against the floor. She turned on her belly and ground it into the surface, nuzzling, slithering forward. Pointed towards Mod now, she rose up in co-pose, eyes closed. Judy's chest was a vomit of color. What skin remained was glossy with sweat. She grabbed her ankles, arcing to bow pose and rocked on her abdomen and release. She fanned her legs out and around, swooped her hands across the floor, collecting what paint there was, with a yell per upper body burst up, flinging the paint against the wall in a spray. The flame mod hoped to witness. She could sense burning from her core, an emotional nature that she, in her structure, deeply admired. Judy's fingers scratched lines of paint. From her pelvis to her chest, she gripped and tugged on her nipples, finding a new degree of sensation she sucked breath in and drew her limbs to her like a dying bug. But in that moment, as her breath released, she remembered herself and realized she'd gone much further than she intended. Judy opened her eyes, and for the first time since she began, she looked at Mod. Mod was too transfixed at first to say anything. But when the word came out, it was low and breathy, startling, Mod whispered. Remembering herself after a long silence, she took one last picture and set down the camera. It was going to be a good one. Judy spat terrible paint taste and colors, spinning around on the floor, witnessing her work for the first time. Maybe it was the scale, or maybe it was Mod inspiring her to look somewhere new to channel this energy. But for the first time since she dabbled in this frenzied style of painting, Judy liked what she saw. So that's that, no real plot, no real ending, just sort of a character portrait that went as far as we wanted it to, letting us play around in their mutual head spaces and exploring aspects of the characters beyond the confines of where we knew them, which is one of the great joys of fan fiction. And that's where I'll leave this episode. It's been a very strange and meandering thing, but I suppose they all are. I feel like I might have started a subject only to divert without really filling in all the blanks, but ooh, an era of mystery, I hope. What comes next, frankly, I'm not really sure. But you will hear from me and the rest of the gang very soon. Be sure to check out Discography, Mark with the Seas podcast series on the Consequence Podcast Network. A new season just started and it's chronicling the who? Mark's favorite band and definitely one of my favorite bands. In fact, you can hear me on two of the forthcoming episodes. If you know the band, at least in part, then you'll get to really, really know them in this. And it's a fascinating and expansive story. And if you don't know them at all, then it's a great way to learn about this extraordinarily influential music group. But what's so very, very special about this is that this depiction of the who's chronology also includes all of the solo records, which is, I mean, it's a massive undertaking that Mark has done. It's truly wonderful. This is one of his finest works, and in terms of podcasting, this is like his magnum opus thus so far. And honestly, I think it's got to be among the greatest who documentaries of all time, and certainly the most thorough ever. So I think it's wonderful. I highly recommend it if you want to check that out. That's Discography. And now I shall get out of your hair. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for joining me on this always peculiar outing that is all caps. I will smell you later. ♪ On a bright night like tonight ♪ ♪ When nothing is yours and everything is yours ♪ ♪ Listen to these words ♪ ♪ This should fall ♪ ♪ They tell you to maroon yourself ♪ ♪ Maroon yourself ♪ ♪ And believe in my dream for me ♪ ♪ Believe in my dream just for me ♪ ♪ And we'll break the mold ♪