After Hours

It wasn’t until 2005 that, to my joy, I discovered the works of Takashi Miike. These were the days of dvd; and with Miike, very often dvd-r. It began with Audition (1999) and Ichi the Killer (2001), which are still his only masterpieces. Both of those films are perfect and deserve their own essays if I were to do justice in describing them. And Ichi the Killer has always been one of my favorite movies of all time. But what of the rest? There’s a lot to see. And I’ve spent many years going through them. Even just recently going back to the video store—Miike is the strongest argument in favor of the vanishing video rental house vs. online streaming—I was floored and amazed by my first time seeing Graveyard of Honor (2002).

     Graveyard of Honor is a bleak nihilist tale of an exiled Yakuza disintegrating into oblivion and the woman he takes with him—themes familiar to Miike’s work. Like Audition, Graveyard of Honor establishes a serious dramatic tone and holds it. This is a strength of Miike: his body of work ranges from pitch black serious drama (typically embodied in the genres of crime or horror) to zany, ludicrous  B and even children’s movies (even at the opposite end of this spectrum again there are crime and horror entries).

     The last decade also marks Jeremy Thomas coming on board as a producer for some Miike films. Thomas’ name has always caught my attention because of what projects it’s been attached to: Bad Timing (1980, Nicolas Roeg), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983, Nagisa Ôshima), Eureka (1983, Roeg), The Hit (1984, Stephen Frears), Insignificance (1984, Roeg), The Last Emperor (1987, Bernardo Bertolucci), The Sheltering Sky (1990, Bertolucci), and Naked Lunch (1991, David Cronenberg) are but a few.

     Thomas has been the producer on Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011)—my first time seeing one of Miike’s films in a theater and in 3D (of course the joke being that most of the movie is slow long scenes of dialogue in zen gardens with no real reason for shooting in the format?), Blade of the Immortal (2017), and First Love (2019). And for the time being not only has Thomas been collaborating on prestige Miike projects, but also ones that have received theatrical distribution here in the US.

     First Love is advertised as an action/love story about a boxer and a girl (apology if that’s being heteronormative with my nouns) with some stolen drugs on the run from the yakuza. This not only sounds like run of the mill Miike subject matter, but worried me as a premise similar to so many other True Romance types that it might not have even been worth my time. But was I glad that I didn’t miss the opportunity to see this in a theater.

     While I will admit First Love comes nowhere near the genius of Ichi the Killer or Audition, it maintains a consistent dramatic tone with excellent pacing and is genuinely suspenseful. And it also, in its own way, continuously defied my expectations. So, without spoiling anything, I really can’t say much else about the plot.

     The ensemble cast is the strongest part of First Love. The two teen star-crossed lovers the film centers around, again being vague to avoid spoilers, kind of exist apart from the dozen or so Rogue’s gallery of underworld figures that populate the narrative. The ensemble is so perfect because just as I began to realize how much I’d fallen in love with all of them, I also realized how there were so many but not too many. And okay, when the credits roll at the end, over the text there are portraits of each character and it made me giddy smiling at whatever magic made them all so individually entertaining and memorable.

     In order of my personal favorites I’ll just really quick mention a few. Seeking revenge against the perpetrators of an attack on her dealer boyfriend, JULIE is a volatile force of exceedingly menacing rage with an indomitable charm who’s  delightful every time she’s on screen. And in Miike’s dark world she faces the threat of danger from a Chinese thug who demands her at gunpoint to get naked, “bottoms off only,” which results in her spending nearly the whole movie in knit wool booty shorts, barefoot, and wielding the biggest crowbar they make. Then there’s ONE-ARMED WANG, who I’ll resist describing—yeah those two easily.

     And Ichi the Killer himself Nao Ōmori stars as a narcotics cop with a Beatles mop who carries the movie with a performance that early on, in rumpled trench coat, really establishes the crime genre with his weathered veteran who’s lived in this world long before we arrive on the scene.

     Maybe it’s just me but I feel like there’s a kind of Yojimbo-Fistful of Dollars thing (something that’s derivative of something that was actually inspired by it, does that make sense?) goin’ on where First Love’s female lead MONICA feels like The World of Kanako (2014, Tetsuya Nakashima), which felt like it was trying to imitate Miike in the first place.

     So First Love isn’t as insane as other Miike, but it’s exceptionally well executed. It’s like a late work of his displaying maturity and the proficiency of his craft. And though it lacks the disturbing sexual violence of Ichi the Killer or Dead or Alive (1999, Miike), that’s fine. I mean Miike has charted some truly deranged territory, that he’s proven, but First Love feels a little more friendly towards a wider audience. But it does have Miike’s trademark Japanese absurdist cutesy fun in a few bits. For instance, what has to be the film’s most memorable moment: let’s just say a small robot puppy, an elderly woman knocked unconscious, candles on a birthday cake, and I’ll leave it at that.

     Another quality that keeps me coming back to anything Miike is his eye for filming Japanese urban locations (and how often he does). And as settings for his Yakuza movies, these spots are vital. In First Love though there’re also a lot of scenes shot with a straw filter gel over the fixtures—basically a yellow cast over a shot, like in the boxing ring, the restaurant, the Triad lamp shop hideout, the hospital ct scan, etc…  Again, I’m no Miike scholar (but they exist, i.e. Tom Mes) but it’s worth mentioning the Triad’s role in First Love because so many of Miike’s films depict Triads in Japan or Yakuza exiled in China—The Bird People in China (1998, Miike)—or similar variants.

     In closing, as a huge fan of dark movies, in particular the crime subgenre of gangster movies, and having praise for Takashi Miike as one of the most endlessly fun and thought provoking master filmmakers whose work I’ve ever come across, I have to say I was surprised and thankful at how enjoyable First Love is.

The King of Comedy

The first time someone described my taste in movies as dark, I got defensive about it. The exact words used were, “You know, the kind of movies you like—dark.” At first I wanted to say no, wait, I’m normal! But now, many years later, I’ve come to accept it. I do like dark movies the most. As a fan of drama, darkness is something I require to fully engage in with a work of fiction. There’s a line in Moby Dick that reads, “That man who has more joy than sorrow is not complete…”  And looking back on the movies that have mattered most to me, they’re all dark. While the ones that aren’t have dark elements.

     The first movie I was obsessed with was Batman (1989, Tim Burton). I saw it multiple times in the theater. I collected Batman bubblegum trading cards and action figures. My mom took me to wait in a long line to see the Batmobile. I’d cherish any opportunity I had to leaf through a Batman coffee table book a kid on my block had. This same kid I remember urging me that I had to see Beetlejuice (1988, Burton), which marks my induction into auteur fanaticism. And okay, Batman isn’t that dark of a movie, but it’s pretty dark for a 9 year old.

     Jumping ahead to my senior year in high school, David Lynch had replaced Tim Burton as my favorite director. But the transition makes sense because they’re both artists who create dark worlds. And hey there’s also the coincidental sandworms link. If you’ll indulge me in an historical pop culture digression, recall that Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch) featured a soundtrack produced by Trent Reznor, featuring original songs by his band (along with songs by Marilyn Manson and others) and released on Reznor’s own label. And in my miserable small town senior year in high school, 1997 was nearing the end of MTV’s dominance over youth culture. Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys were ascending but the kids I hung out with worshipped Tool, NIN, Marilyn Manson, Korn, and Limp Bizkit. So the Lost Highway soundtrack was a huge deal. (JNCO jeans and Limp Bizkit are my worst memories of the late ‘90s.)

     But the ‘90s were also an era of a black comedy renaissance in indy film. I couldn’t get enough of films like Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995, Todd Solondz), Happiness (1998, Solondz), In the Company of Men (1997, Neil LaBute), Your Friends & Neighbors (1998, LaBute), and most importantly my discovery of Woody Allen. The first Allen film I saw (and in a theater) was Celebrity (1998, Woody Allen). And the mid to late nineties arguably represent his vintage years because of Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity—all rated R, uncommon for him, and all very dark.

     To briefly return to David Lynch’s significance as a dark filmmaker, I have to include David Cronenberg as being equally important for me. During my life those 2 Davids have been the masters of personal, challenging, original, dark cinema. And to wrap this all up and get to the part where I actually talk about Joker (2019, Todd Phillips), I’ll just say that reflecting on the characteristics of films by Lynch and Cronenberg is rewarding to find how vastly they differ. For one, I love how Cronenberg’s work from early on is so serious. When I get in the mood straight horror (no comedy) sometimes I can’t wait to watch early Cronenberg.

     Joker is foremost a comic book origin story that succeeds as a character piece. The setting is established superbly—sleazy early ‘80s NYC.  But most of all the film is exceptional in its intricate relentless contrast of tone between comedy and tragedy (or more like horror).

     The opening scene encapsulates the essence of the tonal contrast with JOKER (Joaquin Phoenix) in front of a mirror in a dressing room molding his mouth in an expression morphing back and forth from Thalia to Melpomene.

     When I say I like dark movies, I have come to understand what kinds and why I respond to them. But I also know my boundaries. Joker pushes those boundaries. Joker makes me uncomfortable and even scares me at times. But I enjoy it because it never forgets that it’s a comic book. The film scares me because it depicts a specific type of other: the person who wants to be famous or adored by crowds; who becomes unhealthily obsessed with celebrities and/or fantasizes about confronting politicians; who incites riots; who plans acts of terrorism; who gets so desperate he or she has nothing left to lose. And though I’ll make the distinction that Joker is a comic book and not a satire or political allegory, I will say it’s uncomfortably close to the current climate of society’s mass shootings in, of all public places, movie theaters. What scares me is the thought of someone identifying with the violence as a means to fame and knowing that those people exist. Also though I’m afraid of clowns (and circuses—all those animals in captivity is sad).

     Yet just at the moments I am scared, a joke makes me laugh spontaneously. Then I start distancing myself from Joker and saddened by his illness, his violence, then laugh again. Joker relies on zingers, and pratfall type jokes for its unexpectedly placed laughs, which I enjoy because it’s not like you’re laughing at the violence itself but at some Vaudeville shtick.

     The familiarly nasty 42^nd street of the ‘80s with its porno theaters, graffiti subway cars, and muggings provides the perfect setting for  Joker’s development, but also safely distances the terror from the present. Phoenix’s emaciated body and gaunt face display method dedication but also an added layer of depravity, enhanced with a habit of desperate chain-smoking; his hair when dry is a pathetic style similar to Anton Chigurh’s; and his polyester wardrobe is depressing, especially that maroon vest and slacks outfit [shudders of revulsion].

     To close I’ll say that I very much enjoy Joker. And even though it makes me extremely uncomfortable, its dark content never feels gratuitous or exploitative. Also, there are few movies that so heavily and consciously utilize the contrast between the smiling mask of comedy and frowning mask of drama.

     One very minor complaint I feel begrudgingly compelled to add is that after about the fourth time I saw the device where a character is reading something and we only see parts of a page to get a fragmented sense of the whole I felt like I'd had enough. Y'kow? A couple of times it's okay, but c'mon don't over do it.

Take You Down to the Dirt Drag You Through the Mud

Japón (2002, Carlos Reygadas) heralded the debut of the twenty-first century’s second new talent in world cinema (the first has to be Apichatpong Weerasethakul.) Who else for that matter has joined those ranks since? Steve McQueen? One might add Yorgos Lanthimos, although I'm not yet a fan. Japón is also primitive, authentic, fringe, and something else altogether rare in cinema, Mexican. I’ve read Reygadas’s follow up was met with disappointment, but cannot see why. I love Battle in Heaven (2005, Reygadas). Silent Light (2007, Reygadas) and Post Tenebras Lux (2012, Reygadas) yield the satisfaction of why some directors should be followed.

But Reygadas latest has left me resigned to any hope of his further sustainability. Guess that leaves Joseph Kahn as the only filmmaker to emerge in the new millennium who I still have hope in.

Our Time (2018, Reygadas) opens with a shot of children playing in the mud, in a location drawing a pastoral aesthetic familiar to most of the director’s other work. But then it turns into a movie about a jealous husband spying on his wife’s texts at which point I lost all interest. Oh and the husband is played by Carlos Reygadas. Like Bresson, prior to Our Time Reygadas understood the power of silence in his art, but not anymore. The Reygadas character is a boring middle aged whiner that makes this movie unbearable—and this complaint is coming from someone whose favorite director is Woody Allen.

There’s a subplot in Our Time about a bull fatally gorging one of the ranch hands. The other cowboys try to track the bull down to put him down, but never find it. Then at the end we see the bull fall off a precipice to its death. The shot is obviously CGI, and while I’m in no way condoning animal cruelty, this comes off as a symbol of the compromises to be found all over the movie that amount to so many diminishing returns, and the death of the wild nature that used to make Reygadas's movies so captivating. Japón infamously features shots of animal cruelty; Battle in Heaven has sexually explicit shots that involve blow jobs and nude fat Mexicans; but now, a smartphone with texts that reveal an affair.

Also, Silent Light beautifully already explored infidelity in a marriage. Which just makes me wonder even more what if anything is the point of Our Time? 

Bone Hoard of the Dancing Horror

This is another Dungeon Crawl Classics module I ran for son for his Wilderlands solo-campaign based in the city of Tarantis.  I hooked it by saying the magic user studied scrolls and notes taken from the previous dungeon and claimed he could deduce the location of a lost chaotic temple (yay!) not far from the city.  The party purchased supplies to outfit the expedition and made about a five day trek overland due south to the Brath Woods (including building raft to cross the Trollraun river).  They knew which five-mile hex in which to search for the entrance to the dungeon but I required a "1" on a 1d6 to find it – they got lucky and found it on the first day!
 

Like other DCC modules this does not feature "regular" monsters.  In this module (please note this review includes spoilers), the chaotic legacy of this former temple, combined with the experiments of a neutral wizard who wanted to forge an anti-chaotic sword (the "Fellblade of Dellsparro"), has resulted in (a) a weird fluid that will make your bones and flesh meld together, (b) rats with no skeletons that attack you like flopping, leaping leeches, (c) the titular giant "insect like" creature, which makes piping noises out of its back and wants to draw the skeletons out of the characters bodies, (d) a 80-foot centipede abomination made entirely out of bones, and (e) little six-inch tin warriors who try to kill you.  The dice rolls all basically went the party's way, but not without one character almost getting her skeleton drawn out, and another losing a point of Constitution due to the weird fluid, and another getting impaled by the bone centipede.  But they got the Fellblade and plenty of loot (although they missed some magic items, either by not finding a secret room or simply not realizing some items were worth taking).

 

On the way back, a day out of Tarantis, they were confronted by ten bandits, to which my son jumped for joy!  These opponents?  He knew all about these opponents – no weirdness this time!  Sure enough, the party made quickmeal of the bandits.  The entire party is now a mix of 2nd and 3rd levels. 

This concluded a two day period where we played "D&D" almost exclusively throughout the day.  We completed Well of the Worms on a Friday and this adventure on a Saturday. 

The Adventurers in this session were:

Hoaback Hoagan, a 2nd level fighter

Famdok Famba, a 2nd level cleric
Raknon Sablain, a 1st level magic user
Cardith, a 2nd level cleric (partial NPC)
Simghai Tsith, a 2nd level fighter(partial NPC)
Selylla, a 2nd level thief (partial NPC)
 

Well of the Worms

This is a Dungeon Crawl Classics module which I ran for my son, in what is now collectively the third in-house campaign underway.  Inspired by a post I read elsewhere, I printed my map of the city of Tarantis on multiple 11"x17" pages and taped the whole thing together into table-sized map, and based this new party (3 characters plus 3 semi-non-player characters) at the Blue Moon Inn near the harbor.  My feeling was that the visual aid of a table-sized map would viscerally bring the experience of a city-based setting to life in a way mere words or a handout-sized map could not. 

The module had some various hooks but I simply opted to locate the titular well out in the alleyway behind the Inn, and to have everyone awoken in the middle of the night by the news of the murder of the family residing in the house next door to the Inn.  And so down the well the party went!  This dungeon is actually pretty linear (please note this review includes spoilers), with actually very little combat against just a handful of monsters.  However, it greatly makes up for these first-glance deficiencies with really, really good monsters.  I have subsequently discovered that this is the standard approach for most if not all Dungeon Crawl Classics modules – low treasure (DCC uses a non-treasure XP system), a low monster count, even a rather mild degree of difficulty on the monsters, but the monsters and other things encountered in the dungeon, and what the monsters & other things are doing in the dungeon, are dialed up almost exponentially in terms of weirdness, originality, and icky-factor.

This module, for example, includes zombies who are "sleep" in walls of mucus, are covered in said mucus, can projectile vomit acid, and feature distended bellies full of writing maggots!  There are also pits of titular worms eating corpses and a big queenie worm that's pretty gross.  This all works really well in conjunction with the "I wonder what's in the next room?" inherent tension of a dungeon crawl, except better because the occupants are not things you have read about before in the Monster Manual!

Again, as before, I manipulated treasure and experience points to make sure that the entire party leveled up to second level (except the magic-user who progresses so slowly anyways).  This was also my first session using the Labyrinth Lord rulebook instead of the red and blue Basic/Expert books, and that alone made sped the game along nicely.  Also, for Goblin Gully and Forgotten Necropolis, I had experimented with 1" square cardboard chits on a dry erase grid to conduct combat, and for this session I went back to "theater of the mind", which is just as dramatic but way faster in combat resolution.

The Adventurers in this session were:

Hoaback Hoagan, a 1st level fighter

Famdok Famba, a 1st level cleric
Raknon Sablain, a 1st level magic user
Cardith, a 1st level cleric (partial NPC)
Simghai Tsith, a 1st level fighter (partial NPC)
Selylla, a 1st level thief (partial NPC)

 

Hail, Caesar!

Okay so real quick I just wanna mention two reference points for my appreciation of the new Tarantino movie. First, the most amazing documentary I’ve ever seen is the “30 for 30” O.J.: Made in America (2016). Also relevant: Hail, Caesar! (2016, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen).

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019, Quentin Tarantino) is crafted around its setting—Hollywood, in August 1969. And its milieu of superstars and hippies, rising talents and fading has-beens, residents and transients, all overlap and blend together in a period rock-fueled kaleidoscope of a party time-capsuled at the moment right before its end. This thing’s gotta get nominated for the Best Sound Editing Academy Award.

The most fun is the way Robert Richardson, ASC wall to walls the proceedings with a Titan crane, making Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood Tarantino’s own studio product in homage to the era he’s romancing; and, Bob—who won his first Oscar for JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)—also uses 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, various aspect ratios and laboratory processes to distinctively recreate the era.

And Robbie’s SHARON TATE is the glue that holds the narrative together. So what if she doesn’t clock in that much spoken dialogue while on screen? It’s Pudovkin’s principles in action. 

Sturgill Simpson

What happened to Jim Jarmusch after Ghost Dog? Stranger Than Paradise (1984, Jim Jarmusch) is the quintessential indie; Down by Law (1986, Jarmusch) and Mystery Train (1989, Jarmusch) are exquisite fateful road movies photographed by Robby Müller; and Night on Earth (1991), a fun segue into his two greatest works: Dead Man (1995, Jarmusch) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999, Jarmusch). (Counting Down by Law as prison movie seems a fitting trilogy.) Maybe after the wilderness of Dead Man and the urban Ghost Dog masculine genre forays he’d said all he could say?

The Dead Don’t Die (2019, Jarmusch) is a zombie comedy. Those two words together didn’t give me much hope going in, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt anyway. What a disappointment.

Even out of loyalty to maybe the single greatest American indie writer/director of the 80s and 90s, one can only find the remnants of his former talent. Jarmusch’s once spontaneous humor that would arise out of workshop chemistry between a tailored script for a handpicked ensemble is not to be found in The Dead Don’t Die—or at least it doesn’t feel that way. The meta-humor and attempts at a post-zombie genre concoction feel labored.

The slow pacing, abrupt punchline edits, and droll humor held my attention, but it comes off as second rate from the artist who perfected it over 30 years earlier. Yet with Bill Murray in the lead role I can’t completely dismiss The Dead Don’t Die. A few months ago I was on the set of Zombieland 2 and heard Bill Murray improvise a two and a half page dialogue scene for a couple of hours and saw him in action. He comes up with all of his jokes on the spot and just keeps riffing continuously. So yes, when I watched The Dead Don’t Die I was definitely in a Murray mood. It still sucks though.

I am offended at the pointlessness of having Tilda Swinton’s character in this movie and the arch of her storyline. 

The Forgotten Necropolis

This is a one-page dungeon type adventure of my own devising which I ran for my daughter using the Dungeons & Dragons B/X rules.  I knew she liked dungeon crawling moreso than hex crawling or role playing in villages, and give the players what they want, right?  So I had her create a separate party all her own of three characters.  These characters (the "Blackroot Three"!) I also located in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, although they started out at the southern edge of the Glow Worm Steppes and were making their way to the regional "metropolis" of Tarantis to seek their fortune.  A characteristic of the Wilderlands is that human settlements are typical small and far apart from each other, so it is easy to justify that the spaces in between contain abandoned, haunted, or re-tenanted towers, forts, tombs, catacombs so forth.  I therefore like to think this terrain is almost literally littered with remains of long gone ancient civilizations, and that although you may stumble upon a tomb, if you try to return to it you may simply not find it, the country being so wild and untamed.

Keeping with an earlier stated overall motive, I wanted to run a good orc adventure this time.  This posed the question: why are these Orcs in this dungeon.  What I devised was a simple tomb the party camps by, containing a single room underground (already long ago looted), but one wall of which has very recently been broken through, leading to secret stairs.  This in turn leads to a central domed chamber with a massive pentagram on the floor and bas reliefs of demonic worship (I also want lots of demons in my setting).  From this hub are further stairs leading down to undisturbed burial chambers, each eternally guarded by skeletons. In the last of these chambers the party finds the orcs' camp and two prisoners.  The prisoners reveal that the orcs are a tribe recently defeated by another orc tribe, but that the chief has found a map or clue indicating that there is cache of magical weapons in this necropolis.  The prisoners (now freed and part of the party as NPCs) insist they must stop the orc chief since he had previously sacked their village.

From the orcs' camp another wall is found broken through, leading to more stairs, a large cavern, and another burial chamber, at which the last of the orcs, including the Chief, are attempting to break through a large stone door.  After defeating the orcs, the party notes some depressions on the door which match brass sigils set into the floors of each of the burial chambers found at the upper levels.  The party removes each of the sigils from above, and inserts them into the spaces on the door, and the door at last opens revealing the crypt of an ancient king and his champions in the classic form of skeletons seated on thrones and benches, along with some +1 weapons and armor (which includes the necessary treasure experience points to level up the entire party to 2nd level).

The Adventurers in this session were:

THE BLACKROOT THREE

Hitty - a first-level figher
Fafnyr - a first-level fighter
Amber - a first-level cleric

JOINED BY

Matis - a first-level fighter (partial NPC)
Lina -  a first-level fighter (partial NPC)

Goblin Gully

I ran this one-page dungeon as a follow-up adventure to Giant Slayer for my kids using the B/X rules.  I'm pretty sure by this time they were using three characters a piece and maybe had a hireling (a longbowman) as well.  Also by this time I had plopped the setting into Wilderlands of High Fantasy by Judge's Guild, in the area maybe 100 miles north of the Citystate of Invincible Overlord.

Although not their first experience with a role playing game, Goblin Gully was my kids' first experience with something resembling a dungeon crawl, and I must say that I found them to be much more engaged with this adventure than with the prior one.  Goblin Gully is an old prison pit from long ago that a band of goblins has recently taken up residence in.  I forget how I hooked the party into taking care of it.  The Wilderlands village nearby had a chaotic-type leader who I decided didn't really give a shit if goblins were in an abandoned prison or not.  My kids were shocked that a "leader"  would be so visibly uninterested in solving a problem.  However this is a theme of the Wilderlands' setting, with the majority of human settlements being run by powerful chaotic-types rather than wise law-types.

The adventure as written (please note this review includes spoilers) described goblins as the almost sole occupants of the dungeon, except for a pudding-lite monster living at the very bottom as the "boss-fight".  I kept the goblins but threw 3 dire wolves (a significant upgrade in degree of difficulty) into the first room containing goblins, made two swords found in a secret vault +1 each, and upgraded the pudding-lite to a full-blown Black Pudding (another bump in difficultly).   I figured the Wand of Cure Light Wounds they acquired in the prior adventure should be sufficient to push them through these fights.  I had also put together a "basic adventurers kit" list of equipment that they could buy and be done with, which included two flasks of oil, torches, and a tinderbox.  When the time came I would slyly suggest using those on the Black Pudding.

The first fight against goblins and dire wolves ended with one character slain (alas poor Edric!) and the party beating a retreat out of the dungeon.  This was entirely due to absolutely atrocious dice rolling by the party combined with the higher difficultly of the dire wovles.  However, with the help of the aforementioned Wand of Cure Light Wounds, the party was able to return to the dungeon the next day fully healed, while the goblins and wolves were only partially healed.  The rest of the dungeon went quickly, and it was at this point that I realized the kids seem to take a simple joy in finding out what the next room contained, and in tension of deciding to go into room A or room B.  The fight against the Black Pudding was sufficiently dramatic, especially as one character was engulfed and had their armor eaten (the Pudding was slain before it could start eating the character). The players recoiled as the description of the Black Pudding's "million tiny mouths chewing at their armor".

The Adventurers in this session were:

Zamor, a cleric

Parry, a thief

Solyssa, a fighter

Garfield, a magic user

Jatton, a fighter

Edric, a fighter - SLAIN
Walter, a npc longbowmen hireling

A note on HEAVY TUNES of 2019: Dancin' in the Ruins: Try(-ing) to feel (better)

Couple weeks ago, just trucked at work, main assignment in nigh-omnishambles, bummed and exhausted, no obvious joy to be sensed or found, and leery of retreating to any known founts of less-bad for fear of tainting the good thing with bummer vibes, I collapsed onto the mattress, tiny glowing misery rectangle in hand, Bluetooth enabled, thereunto to mash the OH CRIMONY JUST STREAM ME ... SOMETHING button.

What came up was, perhaps predictably, Operators, Radiant Dawn. Maybe my endorsement will be found to be compromised, because Dan and Devojka are friends of mine, but if you try to enforce a position that a critic can't like the stuff a friend makes ... that's just actually sad, man. I mean, like: what do you stand for? How do you live?

Those are, maybe not coincidentally, some of the questions the record asks.

Wrote a song about how things feel static to the point of hallucination here under late capitalismhttps://t.co/VBel7VEuzn

— Boeck N9ne (@DanBoeckner) April 5, 2019

Anyway, the record was good from the moment I heard a note of it, and fantastic the night they played it for me (and, uh, I guess a couple hundred other people in SF or whatever), but that night, pummeled and scraped empty and just tired ... it was exactly right. The insanely good motorik beats of Faithless and Low Life, or the extremely precise sentiments of my state listening that night in Terminal Beach and Come and See or the basically perfect textures and flourishes everywhere (if I don't cop out like this I'm just going to name something great about every song, which may bore you) (and this is, after all, for you), all of it was just ... the word is perfect.

Maybe "this is very good if you're depressed" isn't the recommendation you want to hear. Certainly it isn't the one I want to give! So let's talk instead about the world we've found ourselves in, the one we inherited and tacitly, quiescently allow, daily. My state's on fire, my work besieged, my home threatened, my brothers and sisters caged, my every value rejected and punished. Nearly all of the good things that matter and that we might care about seem to be in ruins.

And yet: we're alive, and we can't just give up / succumb to despair—if we do, there's no point to any of this—hence ... dancing:

(Stick around for the chorus: it's worth it.)

You—we, I—gotta find bright spots. Some of them will be people who understand you. Others will be people who make you feel better. This record does both, and it's hard to ask for more than that. You're gonna be tired tomorrow anyway, and it'll be hard to do what needs doing, always: you might as well dance all night tonight, and give yourself something to smile about.

—Fat, kinda tired

Note one: As Marx said, and as I suspect Operators would agree:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways;
the point is to change it.

Note two: we're not fucking dead yet. And we're not giving up.