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The Department of Tangents Podcast


Years ago, playing a sort of improv game with friends in which we all picked super powers based on our personalities, I dubbed myself “Tangent Lad.” I was not a very strong superhero, and I could not defeat a super villain on my own, but I could distract them with Monty Python quotes and football trivia. I have many times since apologized to an interview subject in my capacity as a journalist by saying, “I am either very good or very bad at tangents, depending on how you feel about tangents.”

I had a rough time coming up with the concept and naming this blog/podcast. I knew I wanted to create a place where I could address things I’m passionate about – comedy, music, and horror. Finding a name that communicated all three of those things proved a bit impossible. I bugged my friends, and they all tried to help. To no avail. Then I thought, maybe I’m approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe my lack of focus should be the focus.

As a journalist, I have written for The Boston Globe since 2000, starting out writing CD reviews and then writing a regular column on comedy for seven and a half years. I still contribute there, and to Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. I’m also a musician, and released my debut full-length album, Blue Skies and Broken Arrows, in March of 2015. And I’ve been publishing short horror fiction for a couple of years.

I like to climb into things I love and see how they operate. That’s what the Department of Tangents is for. The main thing here is love. To talk about the things that make I’ve loved forever, and some new things that might stand the test and be around, at least for me, for decades to come. I’ve had to be critical in my writing at times, and it might not all be nonstop roses here, but in the end, what I really want to talk about is the good stuff. That’s why I will regularly write about things I think are “Perfect,” even if someone can demonstrate empirically that they are flawed. Still perfect to me.

Also, fish.

I hope you, dear anonymous surfer person, will come to expect only the highest-quality, free-range, grass-fed tangents. And I hope some of you love the same things I do and find it useful. Or at least a welcome distraction until the others get here.

Jun 13, 2019

Nathan Ballingrud has a wonderfully demented imagination. He has a way of reaching into your brain and finding all of those creepy little corners where you hide the things that make you cringe and make your skin crawl. In his first collection of stories, North American Lake Monsters, there was a bit more realism in his stories and characters. Hulu has optioned that, and will start shooting an anthology series this summer.

In <em>Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell</em>, he goes for broke, to the point where he was worried he might be going over the top. Not worried enough, though, to pull anything back. In “Atlas of Hell,” a decapitated skull allows a mob lackey fetch demons and objects from the underworld. In “The Diabolist,” a young girl is left alone in her scientist father’s mansion when he dies with an imp trapped in a tank, and starts to fight back against the town that has always ostracized her.

In “Skullpocket,” flesh-eating ghouls sponsor a deadly fair for children. In “The Visible Filth,” which is now a film called <em>Wounds</em> on the festival circuit starring Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, and Zazie Beets, a bartender in a New Orleans dive fights his own jealousy and a mysterious stranger who contacts him through a phone left behind at the bar after a fight. Nightmare creatures attack a town and flay its inhabitants to make giant, singing skin structures in “”The Maw,” and pirates take, quite literally, a journey to the shores of Hell in “The Butcher’s Table.”

I talked to Ballingrud about his inspiration for these stories, which included Stephen King and Mike Mignola, how they’re all connected, the new film, and more. He finds all of this creepiness quite fun, which is good for us, because he’s got more stories on the way, and a full-length book he’s working on to release in 2021, which he says is set on Mars in 1930. You can find out more about his work on <a href="https://nathanballingrud.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">nathanballingrud.com</a> and find him on Twitter under <a href="https://twitter.com/nballingrud?lang=en" rel="noopener" target="_blank">@NBallingrud</a>.

Our featured track this week is a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” from their longtime backup singer Bernard Fowler. This is a spoken-word version of the song, as are all of the Stones covers on the new album, <em>Inside Out</em>. Fowler has been singing with the Stones for more than three decades now, and had the idea that he could put the lyrics up front by covering the songs in this style. He started doing it at soundchecks on tour with the Stones, and told Mick Jagger at one point he planned to cut an album. Jagger apparently gave his blessing, and the album was born.

Fowler is getting ready for the new Stones tour now, and I caught him before a rehearsal to talk about his album and his history with not only the Stones, but Herbie Hancock, Bootsy Collins, and more. Tune in next week for that. If you want to check out more of his work, you can find it on Spotify and check out his site at <a href="http://bernardfowler.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">bernardfowler.com</a>.