USELESS/USEFUL, Vol. 3: ‘When the Clock Broke,’ ‘Unclear & Present Danger,’ ‘Mahashmashana,’ and ‘Abortion, Every Day’

Welcome to the third installment of USELESS/USEFUL, in which we discuss topics of interest, broken into two categories. USELESS covers topics that have to do with pop culture, music, film, etc. – and the term “useless” is used lovingly, hearkening back to the DIY Brooklyn venue Fort Useless and the community around that. USEFUL covers topics like relief efforts, charitable campaigns, and social issues that we want to draw attention to. We’ll also share about projects going on at Stereoactive Media. Here are our topics for this episode...

USELESS ITEM ONE: ‘When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s,’ is a book by John Ganz that I’ve been reading. I’m only a third of the way through it, but I already consider it a valuable decoder ring for both the 1990s and today. Early on, it gets into the rise of David Duke to a quasi-mainstream perch in the GOP as he tried to move past his KKK and Nazi past – or at least framed it that way. And eventually it gets to the even further mainstreaming of some of what Duke stood for that occurred when Pat Buchanana ran his insurgent 1992 primary campaign against incumbent President George H.W. Bush. It’s impossible to read either of these sections and not recognize the clear parallels with the more recent rise of the Donald Trump era, which we’re currently living through. Really, though, I guess it’s more that Trump is indebted to Duke and Buchanan for widening the so-called Overton Window enough for him to slither through. The book is much more wide ranging than just those two important stories, though, and best of all, it’s a really smooth read that manages to thread a lot of needles in a seemingly effortless way.

USELESS ITEM TWO: ‘Unclear & Present Danger,’ a podcast hosted by both John Ganz and Jamelle Bouie. This is a show that combines often trashy (but fun) pop culture with rather high brow, insightful takes on, again, the 1990s – often related, again to our current day. I started listening to this show because I was a fan of Jamelle Bouie, both for his incredibly sharp writing about current events and his appearances on podcasts I enjoy – namely Blank Check, Doughboys, and We Hate Movies, though now that I think about it, I believe I first came to know of him through his appearances on a different type of podcast: Slate’s Political Gabfest. ‘Unclear & Present Danger’ focuses on action movies that came out after the Cold War. Their first episode covered 1990’s ‘The Hunt for Red October,’ and they’ve moved chronologically from there, with their most recent episode covering 1997’s ‘The Saint.’ My favorite part of the show tends to be when they look at the front page of the NY Times for the day of a film’s release and pick out some stories that might offer a bit of context for something in the movie or related to today. And their takes on the films themselves tend to delve into the politics either on or under the surface of the narrative and how that may or may not connect with the politics of the time. To my mind, the show is a really perfect amalgamation of high and low brow – and both extremely entertaining and informative. When I first started listening, I’d heard of John Ganz, but didn’t really know much about him, but I really came to enjoy listening to him and Jamelle Bouie talk. And over the course of the show, I heard him talking about the book he was writing that really tied well into the theme of the show, so it was really great to finally go out and buy ‘When the Clock Broke’ once it was out.

USELESS ITEM THREE: ‘Mahashmashana’ is the latest album from Father John Misty and I’m enjoying it immensely. I have to admit that, for quite a while after I first became aware of him, I was resistant to his whole thing. In retrospect, I admittedly mistook for hipster schtick what was actually satirical observation. For whatever reason, though, sometime in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, I had one of his songs on and the tone of it just hit me perfectly and I locked in to his particular lyrical bent – a mix of tones that tends to weave back and forth between sardonic and what I can best describe as a fleeting sense of sorta-maybe-sincere-but-please-don’t-hold-me-to-it. Not quite sure what it could have been about that moment in time that made that tone connect with me... Anyway, it also doesn’t hurt that everything about his recordings is completely in the pocket, from the interplay of melody and harmony to instrumentation and production. I mean, even if I wasn’t a convert to his work, I’d have to admit it sounds immaculate in a casual kind of way that is disarming. So, yeah, ‘Mahashmashana’ continues that trend while expanding on it and I highly recommend it.

USEFUL ITEM: If you’re like me and a lot of people I know, Election night and the days since have been incredibly disappointing – to put it lightly. Where I am, in Florida, we were really hoping ...