Tonight we’re going to do things in reverse.
Normally I begin a diary with an anecdote, memory, or something similar, then usher readers below the Orange Non-Plimsoll Kaiju Line for this week’s trip into the wilds of Badbookistan. That includes lists of upcoming topics, which I do at least every quarter to give my fellow Kossacks an idea of what to expect if they’re foolish enough to read these diaries instead of running shrieking into the night. This has worked pretty well for the six-plus years I’ve been writing about terrible books, films made from terrible books, or people/places/things that should be in books, often but not always of the terrible persuasion.
Not tonight. Tonight we’re going to start with the updated diary list for the remainder of May, plus the June and July diaries, followed by a very special surprise below the Thin Black Line:
5/27 — Of Bad Neighbors, Bad Fans, and C_____ C_____’s Laptop
6/3 — All Hail Thory McThorface!
6/10 — Infancies of Famous Americans
6/17 — California, There I Went!
6/24 — I Lost on Jeopardy — Or Did I?
7/1 — Summer of ‘17 Bad Cover Art Edition
7/8 — Women of Wonder
7/15 — Christian “Science”
7/22 —The Possibly Non-Existent Ropemaker’s Daughter
7/29 — The Star-Spangled Golem vs. the Alt Right
Don’t these sound like fun? Or at least a tolerable way to pass a steamy summer night?
As for the special surprise…
Remember how I’ve been working away at a paper for the Kalamazoo International Medieval Studies Congress?
Remember how I had to reschedule a whole month’s worth of diaries, plus last week’s?
Remember the hints I’ve been dropping about how hard this one was because it was about something other than textiles?
Well...tonight you get to see the results with your very own eyes. Because thanks to the good offices of Ken Mondschein of the Societas Ioannis Higginsis, this year’s session was filmed in its entirety and is now available on YouTube! The panel, formally titled, “’Can These Bones Come to Life?’: Politics and Diversity in Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation,” had an overall theme of identifying and confronting white nationalism’s creeping influence in historical European martial arts (HEMA) and popular culture, and I was honored to participate.
All three papers are very much worthy of your time and attention, but if you want to see what I look like, how I sound, and what I presented, skip ahead to 28:30 for “(Re)Imagining the Star-Spangled Golem: The Medieval Roots and Modern Controversies Surrounding a Comic Book Legend.”
So as they say in the Common Speech of the West...
TAKE IT, WALLY BALLOU!
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Were you aware of the influence of the alt right on medievalism and popular culture? Had you heard of the Hail Heard Round the World? Does any of this surprise you? Anger you? Do you have any ideas of how to respond? Did you have the slightest idea I looked so ridiculous on camera? It’s a Saturday night, so you know what that means….
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