4/22/26
I woke up with Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones, Pt. II” rolling through my head, and it refuses to go away no matter how many times I listen to it. I’m guessing it appeared because Mary and I watched Him a few nights ago, and they used it effectively in that film (and what a great movie that is). As far as earworms go, there could be far worse songs. I’ve always thought Mobb Deep should be the focus of a docudrama biopic, along the lines of the N.W.A. movie or the Wu-Tang TV series. I think if they kept the focus on the friendship between Prodigy and Havoc, there’d be a great story there.
Speaking of, I was stunned to learn that Mary didn’t know about the existence of Krush Groove or Breakin and Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo. The latter two are notable these days mostly for the fact that they are Ice-T’s first foray into the mainstream, and the trope of youth teaming up to stop the shuttering of a community center, and — of course — the phrase Electric Boogaloo, which is now used as slang by people who weren’t even born when these films came out. But Krush Groove? A movie starring Run-DMC, Sheila E, the Beastie Boys, Kurtis Blow, the Fat Boys, Rick Rubin, and others as fictionalized versions of themselves? I saw that opening weekend, and wore out I don’t know how many cassettes of the soundtrack. I was familiar with most of the artists before the movie came out. I was 17/18 and in San Diego, and on weekends when my Navy buddies and I weren’t whooping it up in Tiajuana, we’d hit up various swap meets between San Diego and Los Angeles, driving up and down the coast, buying mix-tapes. So much cool stuff that hadn’t yet made it back to my friends in rural Central Pennsylvania — Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, Slick Rick, Whistle, Boogie Boys, Roxanne… the list goes on and on. 1985 was wild, man.
I haven’t seen Krush Groove in years. I should see how it holds up.
~
Women In Horror Year: Day 19
A Woman Built By Man edited by S.H. Cooper and Elle Turpitt
A Woman Built By Man is a collage of 21 horror tales that seek to crawl under the skin and deconstruct the many ways women are built up and broken down by a patriarchal society. And the many ways they're finally saying, "Enough."
Now, I know there’s a few of you out there right now who just read the description and are groaning about “Woke”. But let’s examine what that actually means. “Woke” is defined as “art that is socio-political”. If that is so then, my friend, Horror Fiction has ALWAYS been woke. Splatterpunk is woke. The films of George Romero are woke. Jack Ketchum is woke. Brian Hodge is woke. David Cronenberg is woke. Stephen King is woke. Richard Matheson, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and Robert Bloch are woke. I’ll even make the argument that H.P. Lovecraft was woke, albeit not in the way the term is used today. But H.P. Lovecraft’s xenophobia, racism, and fear of the other absolutely permeate his fiction. Indeed, his stuff wouldn’t be effective without them. I personally find his politics and social beliefs to be alternately laughable or repugnant, but those socio-political themes imbue his work, and any work that touches upon socio-politcal themes is defined as woke, so here we are.
I think, for many who aren’t brain-dead mouth-breathing morons simply parroting talking points and memes they’ve heard turdfluencers like Nicholas Fuentes or that Quartering doofus say, the initial groan upon hearing something is “woke” is that — for a period of time — woke was handled badly, shoehorned into things with all the subtlety of Clavicular hitting his face with a hammer. Representation and socio-politcal themes that weren’t organic or a natural, fluid part of the story, but rather wedged in by a bunch of old white guys in the marketing department who sensed $$$ in the air. And yes, that sort of thing is never going to lead to good stories. (It also leads to increasingly insipid pharmaceutical commercials, but that’s a topic for another day).
A Woman Built By Man is not such a book. Indeed, it’s about the furthest you can get from that sort of Woke By Marketing Committee slop. Cooper and Turpitt do a superb job selecting a line-up of absolutely powerful, gut-wrenching, HEAVY tales by a line-up of women who have something to say. It was a genius move, opening the book with Laurel Hightower’s “Every Woman Knows This” — the first sentence of which is a shot across the bow, and sets the stage for everything that follows. As I said above, these are HEAVY stories. It’s one of those anthologies that is best served if you sit with each tale, after you finish it. It’s also one of those rare anthologies with not a bad tale in the bunch. (My personal favorites were, in addition to the aforementioned “Every Woman Knows This”, the contributions from Gemma Amor, J.A.W. McCarthy, Hailey Piper, Olivia White, and Jill Palmer.
A thoroughly enjoyable, often uncomfortable, and genuinely disturbing read, A Woman Built By Man is available in paperback and eBook.
