Mf Galaxy

I don't need much of an intro to today's topic. We're talking Star Wars: Episode Eight – The Last Jedi. JJ Abrams and his writer-flunkies are out for this one, but they'll be back for number nine. This time the writer-director is Rian Johnson. Or is it Reean? Or Ree-Anne? Who knows. He's done acclaimed work including Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, and three episodes of Breaking Bad including its third last episode "Ozymandias." In other words, buddy knows a thing or two about storytelling. But how well can he do Star Wars? To help answer that question I'm joined today by two old friends: Stephen Notley, video game designer and the creator of Bob the Angry Flower, and Fish Griwkowsky, arts journalist and filmmaker. We're all lifelong fans of Star Wars and we met three days after the opening of the film, December 17, 2017 at Edmonton's Route 99 Diner to hash out The Last Jedi. And yes, today's discussion is 100% SPOILERS. Listen at your own risk. In today's episode of MF GALAXY, we discuss: How the film in

If you watch movies or TV shows such as Rambo or The Punisher and everything in between, you've probably seen how Hollywood explores PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. According to US entertainment, PTSD is the horror that former soldiers experience because of war: flashbacks and rage attacks triggered by cars backfiring and footfalls at night. But what if I told you that most of what you've been told about PTSD is wrong? That the causes are far more common and complex, and they're in homes and on streets across the world? That "classic" symptoms such as flashbacks are extremely rare? That the US military is spending a gigantic fortune to cure PTSD, but not for humanitarian reasons? And that the only real cure to PTSD is probably prevention? To discuss these questions today, let's hear from Cultural and American Studies scholar Kali Tal, who spoke with me by Skype from her home in Bern, Switzerland on December 8, 2017. With combined interests including historiography, cultural anthropology, and African

Okay, so you're a writer and you write a book and if you're lucky it sells more than ten thousand copies, but you probably sold far less than that and then you're looking through a bookstore and you find books written by Betty White, Robe Lowe, Patton Oswald, Miley Cyrus, Mindy Kaling #$%#@&!! Justin Bieber, who probably can't even read? And you get furious and think how the deck is totally stacked against you, because how can you compete against someone whose book publicity machine is the entire music industry or Hollywood? And then you get smart and say, "How can I get a cut of that action?" And the good news is, you don't have to be famous to do it. Enter author and now agent Nick Chiles. He's been in the writing game for more than three decades—not only as the editor-in-chief of Atlanta Blackstar, but as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and multiple award-winning education reporter, and now as a best-selling author and celebrity co-writer. Chiles has co-created books with singer Bobby Brown, with p

I don't know if there's anything like Jordan Peele's blockbuster horror film Get Out. Oh, there have been low-budget Africentric horror movies before, and this one was definitely low-budget: it cost only $4.5 million when the average Hollywood film is around $80 million. But Get Out has earned a quarter of a billion dollars around the world, which further puts the lie to the Hollywood claim that audiences in Europe won't watch films starring African casts or featuring Africentric stories. Plus, Get Out is an extremely political film. I don't mean it's partisan, though: the villains in the film would seem at home at any US Democratic Party fundraiser or power-play. I mean it's political, in that it's an unforgettable and horrific satire on US Whitesupremacy. The film and its ideas are so powerful that its central metaphor "The Sunken Place" has entered our culture and vocabulary. And for all those reasons and more, horror writer and UCLA film studies instructor Tananarive Due knew she had to teach a course bui

By the end of Malcolm X's second trip to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, he said at a press conference, "In every country you go to, usually the degree of progress can never be separated from the woman. If you're in a country that's progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. "But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed it's because the women don't have education. "So one of the things I became thoroughly convinced of in my recent travels is the importance of giving freedom to the women, giving her education, and giving her the incentive to get out there and put the same spirit and understanding in her children. And I am frankly proud of the contributions that our women have made in the struggle for freedom and I'm one person who's for giving them all the leeway possible because they'

Unless you're absolutely clueless, you know that self-declared Nazis, fascists, Whitesupremacists, and other extremists using a huge range of names, are on the march. Their goal is a race war. They have weapons. They have training. They're in police forces and militaries. They have media services in Canada, the US, Russia, and elsewhere. They've elected their confederates across the world. And their number one ally occupies the White House. Underestimate them at the peril of the planet. So how do you fight them? And who's had success doing it? Today's guest is a fascinating figure. He's a former US Air Force man who's spent a lifetime fighting American neo-nazis and was a pioneer of the early internet with innovative online tactics to fight Whitesupremacists. Today, in service of his cause he speaks across the United States. Liberal and conservative journalists try to smear him; Nazis try to fight him in the courts and lose. Why do they fear him? Because he doxxes them. That is, he exposes the Nazis who are h

Stranger Things, Season One, is the Netflix hit series that revels in 80s nostalgia and pays homage to everything from ET and The Goonies to Firestarter and Dungeons & Dragons. It's the story of four small-town American boys, Will, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, who encounter a mysterious girl named Eleven who possesses enormous power that threatens to destroy anyone who crosses her—even agents of the United States government. And all of them and the people they love are threatened by Lovecraftian annihilation from a force emanating from a place beyond reckoning: the Upside Down.  I love Stranger Things, and not just because I'm a child of 80s. I love it because it does what I tried to do with my debut novel The Coyote Kings: celebrate friendship and young love and science fiction and fantasy fandom and the heroism of young people. The series is enamoured with its non-glamourous setting and the innocence of its characters, chief of which are teenagers played by actual teenagers, harkening to the glory days

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, even though there were artists across the country, the Canadian hip hop recording and video industry was centered on Toronto, and the three giants were Maestro Fresh Wes, Michie Mee, and this episode's guests, The Dream Warriors. The Dream Warriors included Toronto's King Lou and Capital Q, and for the second album Subliminal Simulations added DJ Luv and also the rapper Spek from Montreal. Their top hits included "Wash Your Face in My Sink" and "Ludi," and along the way members collaborated with Michie Mee, MC Lyte, Maestro, Lillian Allen, Messanjah, Butterfly from Digable Planets, and Gang Starr. They also recorded "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" for the soundtrack to the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even though Buffy the movie was far from the pop culture icon that the TV series became, the crossed paths of Buffy and the Dream Warriors makes sense today. The Dream Warriors weren't interested in rapping about many of the fixations of the early 1990s—no degradation of African

What is the Zimbabwean musical instrument called the mbira? It's a wooden resonator box with metal keys, called kalimba in Cameroon and thumb piano in the West, although "chime-box" offers a better description of the instrument's sound. Its pristine voice is perfectly suited to cathedrals, ancient caves, and modern concert halls. But the origins of the mbira are lost in the mists of time. Westerners who know mbira most likely do so from the work of Zimbabwe's Thomas Mapfumo, a fusion musician who helped resurrect the mbira which the British colonial dictatorship had banned because of its religious and cultural gravity. Mapfumo's chimurenga (struggle) style was a cultural-nationalist concoction that changed modern Zimbabwean music, seizing it back from its own Euro-American aesthetic occupation. But today's guest has a different path to and with the mbira. It's not often a musician tells you an origin story that sounds like a quest straight out of the pages of an Africentric epic fantasy novel. But that's the

Natasha Deen is pretty awesome. She's a YA and children's writer who's written more than a dozen books, including The Not So Secret Case Files of Billy Vale, P.I., the Guardian series, and the Retribution series. She criss-crosses Canada teaching new writers and visiting classrooms, and she's won a string of accolades including nominations for the Sunburst and the Alberta Readers' Choice Award and wins for the Moonbeam, CCBC Best Pick for Kids and Teens. Readers keep coming back for her mix of mystery, action, horror, and humour, some of which arise from her own real-life experiences, and teachers keep booking her because her workshops and teaching guides offer genuine value. Deen met with me at the food court of Westmount Mall in Edmonton on September 26, 2017. She discussed:  How studying psychology can help you become a better writer and the major insight it gave her into herself What makes YA different from other niches, how it can change lives, and how writing it can make you sell more books in any

Wes Borg is a legend. In the 1980s he cofounded the influential sketch comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. He's written widely for the screen, beginning with the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie television series, and moving to the 2003 TV movie The Western Alienation Comedy Hour, serving as head writer on the 2004 series The Geek Show, and creating the short film Café Utopia. He's also appeared on CBC Radio's The Debaters and The Irrelevant Show. He wrote the comedy songs "The War of 1812" and "Toronto Sucks" even though people often attribute them to The Arrogant Worms. He co-wrote Piledriver! with Darrin Haggin and Ha! with Chris Craddock, and The War of 1812 with Paul Mather, and he's acted in various BioWare games including the Mass Effect trilogy and Jade Empire. He's received two Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards for his participation in the Trolls shows Kevin Costner's Naked Butt and Skippy Gets a Boner, and a Bronze Medal in the Calgary Winter Olympics Theatre Sports Tournament in 1988. In 2014

Full disclosure: I grew up watching the original Star Trek in re-runs. Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted the first year I went to university, and it was a major disappointment in many ways, but especially for how it handled Klingons: how they behaved and whom they represented. Mostly they behaved as obnoxious, single-minded, bloodthirsty brawlers, to be avoided and feared, mostly artless and without sophistication, and to be laughed at for their pompous seriousness and quaint and disgusting customs. Despite growing up among humans, Worf is such an idiot that with august earnestness he calls prune juice a "warrior's drink." He's so violent and stupid that in the Next Generation pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint" he aims a phaser pistol at the bridge viewscreen when the bad guy Q appears on it because he apparently doesn't know what TV is. Another Klingon is so egotistical and stupid that he attempts to headbutt Data, an nearly indestructible android, and knocks himself unconscious. Klingons are so gros

In the world of journalism, Robert Fisk is a rock star not just for the "songs" he's written but for the people he's shared the stage with, including Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Osama Bin Laden, whom he interviewed three times. Based in Beirut since 1976, Fisk currently writes for London's Independent, and over four decades he's covered the Iranian Revolution, the Lebanese civil war, the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan, and virtually every war or conflict in West and Central Asia. Having authored five books including his classic Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, and having received more British and international awards than any other English-language journalist, Fisk frequently defines his role not to "write the first draft of history," but, by quoting Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "to monitor the centres of power." A few years ago Robert Fisk was touring Canada on behalf of Canadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East. On January 31, 2013, I spoke with Fisk at the Union Bank Hotel in Edmon

As shocking as it is in 2017, HIV-AIDS disproportionately afflicts African-Canadians in Alberta. The reasons are varied and complex, which means fighting the pandemic here is all the more difficult. But the reality is that in this province, African-Canadians are six times more likely to be living with HIV-AIDS than the general population, and comprise 26 percent of all new HIV infections despite being only 2.5 percent of the population. While some people might want to avoid the subject due to stigma or mortal fear, my guest today isn't one of them, and she's dedicated her life to stopping new infections and helping those already afflicted. Morenike Olaosebikan is a health scientist and the founder of Ribbon Rouge, which uses fashion and the arts to raise money to fund relief and treatment for those affected, and to educate and empower those most vulnerable so they can avoid being infected, or share their human experience through the arts if they have already been affected. The Ribbon Rouge project is more tha

Mark Meer is possibly the most affable fellow in showbiz. He's a terrific stage actor, voice artist, and improviser, and I've known him since we were both cartoonists at university and worked together in the sketch comedy troupe The 11:02 Show. He's best known as the voice of Commander Shepard from BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy and has done other video games including Gods of Rome and Baldur's Gate: Enhanced. And he's not just someone whom fans love—he's a fanboy himself, and attended numerous conventions in costume. He's literally a pro at cons. He's also appeared in short films such as Tar Zombies Barbecued and Flight of the Polar Bear; and he's been a stalwart of the Edmonton theatre community for decades in ongoing longform improv such as Die-Nasty! and Gordon's Big Bald Head. And if that weren't enough, many radio listeners in Canada and the US know him as one of the actors in The Irrelevant Show. In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Mark Meer and I discuss: How video game acting differs from other types of

When the New Democratic Party of Alberta formed a majority government in 2015, I quipped that night that Alberta had just become a Western democracy. After all, it was the first time in forty years that the governing Progressive Conservative Party had been voted out. But my joke depressed me. After all, it's just not normal or healthy for any jurisdiction, let alone one of two economic engines of a G-7 liberal democracy, to be shackled to any one party for almost half a century. My joke depressed me because it meant we were just a petro-state. But hey, even Alaska under Sarah Palin paid higher oil royalties to its citizens than Conservative Alberta did. What is up with that? But two years into the NDP's first provincial government, the devastated PC party and the official opposition Wild Rose party have merged under the slogan "Unite the Right." Yep, that slogan. Just a coincidence? Sure… and yet as it turns out, if you drew a Venn diagram of the US "Unite the Right" constituency and that of the Wild Rosers,

Today's show lets me reach back into the archive for a conversation with a remarkable man who died far, far too young. That man was the Sudanese-Canadian musician, singer, lyricist, music producer, and band leader Tarig Abubakar. Abubakar came to Canada in 1988 to build his fame and fortune in North America, and despite a rocky start he'll tell you about in this episode, he formed his pan-African band the Afro-Nubians, toured the country four times, and delighted hundreds of audiences across Canada. He also released three superb albums: 1994's Tour to Africa, 1995's The Great Africans, and 1997's Hobey Laik. His bandmates included guitarist Adam Solomon, Joe Slant, and Mohammed Hagelamin. Together they were named band of the year at the Toronto African Music Awards. Tragically in 1998 while visiting his home country, Abubakar died in a car accident. He was only 34. In 2005, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a CD of two Afro-Nubians' concerts. Thanks to streaming services, you can access some of t

This show is mostly about creators in various fields showing and proving what they know about how to make what they make and how to make money from what they make. Today we get to combine two fields: making movies and making novels. Jeff Carroll is an amazing creator. He's worked as a booker at comedy clubs and also managed comedians, which gave him access to plenty of working comics whom he could cast the movies he wrote and produced, including his Blaxploitation/ B-Movie/ Grindhouse films such as Holla If I Kill You and the award-winning Gold Digger Killer. When his distributor went belly-up and took his money beyond the grave, Carroll leveraged his existing intellectual property by turning one of his features into a novel. He's also a speaker and known online as Yo Jeff the Hip Hop Dating Coach. So the man definitely knows how to hustle to keep on reaching audiences through multiple venues. In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Jeff Carroll discusses: The ideal locations for indie movie-making and why you shou

Hip hop at its finest is a poetical, political voice for those whose voices have been silenced; it speaks to the anger, the dignity, and the triumphant joy of the oppressed. If hip hop is the music of the dispossessed, then no one in North America should have a greater claim on it than the First Nations. Combine that revolutionary rage and cultural crucible with artistic passion and power, and you have what was Canada's finest hip hop band—WAR PARTY. Formed in 1995 under the leadership of Maskwacis Cree artist, lead vocalist, and executive producer Rex Smallboy, and co-vocalists Cynthia Smallboy, and Thane Saddleback, War Party won the Canadian Aboriginal Music Award for Best Rap Album in 2001, and were the first Indigenous crew featured on Canada's Much Music channel. The video for "Feeling Reserved" exploded across Canadian television in 2001 with a powerful set of voices and images that was thankfully bling-bling- and booty-shaking-free. Instead, the video showed everyday people with extraordinary voices a

Super Sikh! That's right. He's a Sikh. And he's a secret agent. He's a Punjabi 007 who fights for girls' education and loves the music of Elvis Presley, while holding down a fake I.T. job to convince his parents that he's not risking his life for truth, justice, and the five Ks of the Sikh religion. Super Sikh is the co-creation of Supreet Singh Manchanda, artist Amit Tayal, and writer Eileen Kaur Alden. While Alden was working on a career in screenwriting, her friend Manchanda approached her about creating a family-friendly Sikh action hero for comic books. They went to Kickstarter looking for $5000 to create their first issue. They got more than $22,000 in pledges, and in 2015 began publishing. Now they're up to issue number four and their fans love the comic enough that several issues have gone into reprints. The comic has done more than thrill readers with great stories and inspire Sikh kids. Background research for the comic and its title character led its writer, Eileen Kaur Alden, to change her life in