johnny sokko and his flying robot

A young boy aids in the fight against a mechanized terrorist organization as the sole controller of a prototype giant robot.

I couldn’t sleep, so I wandered into the weird and comforting landscape of UHF television’s modern equivalent, which in this case is a digital antenna station on 56.4 here in Los Angeles, called Comet TV*

For the next half hour, I watched this magnificently bizarre thing called Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. As far as I can tell, there’s this little kid called Johnny Sokko, and like all the other kids in school were all “Johnny Sokko, you’re a stupid face!” so he was like “h*ck you guys, I’m going to get a giant robot and live on a boat for some reason. Oh, and also, I’m like 8 or whatever, and I’m in charge of a giant flying murder machine. So watch your step, bitches.” Johnny gets this this giant robot who flies, and he controls him by issuing commands into a gold wristwatch. Instead of telling the robot to breakdance for his endless amusement, Johnny cries a lot and makes the robot save the world from a squid guy or something who lives in a sunken spaceship, adjacent to a pineapple under the sea? It’s all a little fuzzy in the translation, I’ll be honest, but I think I got the gist of it.

Anyway, I probably made some of that up, but this is all true: There’s a Flying Robot who is vaguely Egyptian. There’s a Gargoyle Gang, the Emperor Guillotine, a military group of children who are called Team Unicorn and are the only thing between Earth’s survival and intergalactic destruction for some reason, and all the bizarre 1960s Kaiju visual effects you could ever hope for. The music is exactly what you want it to be, and at one point, an entire freeway overpass is destroyed, because who among us hasn’t wanted to do that!

A quick search on a few of the Internets made it clear to me that I was not just way late to the party on this (the short I saw was originally released in Japan in 1967, as Giant Robo because obviously) but I am also discovering this literally decades after it became popular with the cool kids. So if you’re like OH GREAT WIL WHEATON THANKS FOR WASTING MY TIME WITH SOMETHING I ALREADY KNEW ABOUT now you can feel like a jerk because it’s new to me, Roland. It’s new to me!

It’s weird, and fun, and overflowing with potential audio samples, so I thought I would share it with you today. Here’s what I think is the first episode, in which we meet Johnny Sokko, the Flying Robot, an unsettling sea monster, and more:

There are several collections of Johnny Sokko films at the Internet Archive. I guess you can also buy remastered DVDs if you want to go that route (though I strongly believe that the faded and aged look of the originals at archive.org is a significant contributor to the charm of the thing.)

Good luck. We’re all counting on you.

*It’s owned by the profoundly evil Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is a giant bummer. You can buy evil offsets by supporting ACLU and SPLC, if it makes you feel better.

depression (still) lies

One of the super fun things about living with depression and anxiety is how my idiot brain can go from “CAN DO!” to “EXISTENCE IS SUFFERING” faster than you can wish to take two strokes off your golf game. So today started out normal, and very quickly became a rough day. One of the ways I help myself through days like today, is to acknowledge that I’m sick not weak, and then take one step after another to get out from under the lead apron that Depression likes to drape over my life.

I just answered an ask on my Tumblr thingy that has helped me feel better, and I wanted to put it here, so it’s easy for me to find again the next time I need it:

Q: what can I do to bring myself out of depression?

A: It isn’t easy, and accepting and understanding that is the first and very important step to getting through it.

So I’m having a tough day today, and I know that it’s my mental illness taking small things that most people can probably roll past, and blowing them up into one giant lead apron of I CAN’T EVEN.

Knowing that and accepting it doesn’t make it go away, but it does give me a little bit of light in this darkness, to help me eventually find the exit.

We have to remind ourselves that Depression Lies, and one of the things it does, to keep itself strong and in charge, is tell us lies, like: I am the worst at everything. Nobody really likes me. I don’t deserve to be happy. This will never end. And so on and so on. We can know, in our rational minds, that this is a giant bunch of bullshit (and we can look at all these times in our lives when were WERE good at a thing, when we genuinely felt happy, when we felt awful but got through it, etc.) but in the moment, it can be a serious challenge to wait for Depression to lift the roadblock that’s keeping us from moving those facts from our rational mind to our emotional selves.

And that’s the thing about Depression: we can’t force it to go away. As I’ve said, if I could just “stop feeling sad” I WOULD. (And, also, Depression isn’t just feeling sad, right? It’s a lot of things together than can manifest themselves into something that is most easily simplified into “I feel sad.”)

So another step in our self care is to be gentle with ourselves. Depression is beating up on us already, and we don’t need to help it out. Give yourself permission to acknowledge that you’re feeling terrible (or bad, or whatever it is you are feeling), and then do a little thing, just one single thing, that you probably don’t feel like doing, but I PROMISE you will help. Some of those things are:

Take a shower.
Eat a nutritious meal.
Take a walk outside (even if it’s literally to the corner and back).

Do something – throw a ball, play tug of war, give belly rubs – with a dog. Just about any activity with my dogs, even if it’s just a snuggle on the couch for a few minutes, helps me.

Do five minutes of yoga stretching.
Listen to a guided meditation and follow along as best as you can.

Finally, please trust me and know that this shitty, awful, overwhelming, terrible way you feel IS NOT FOREVER. It will get better. It always gets better. You are not alone in this fight, and you are OK.

You can ALWAYS talk to a mental health professional, too, if you have any thoughts of self-harm or feel hopeless. Some free and anonymous resources are:

NAMI’s helpline: 800-950-6264

OK 2 Talk: http://ok2talk.org/

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – Call 800-273-TALK (8255)

Crisis Text Line – Text NAMI to 741-741

Check in with me in a few days and let me know how you’re doing, okay?

For myself, today: I am getting off Twitter for at least the rest of today, and maybe until the end of the weekend. I am walking myself and my dogs. I am meditating. I am making sure I eat a nutritious lunch AND dinner (go me!). And I’m going to accept that, at this moment, my creative well is dry. It will refill in its own time, and I have to accept that I can’t force it.

take two minutes today to tell the FCC to protect network neutrality.

Without the Internet, I’d be just another failed actor struggling to make ends meet. Because I had the same ability to put together a website and reach an audience as anyone else, I was able to put my words on your screens, and eventually into a book that got into many of your hands. If Comcast or Verizon or AT&T or some other big telecom decided that regular guys like me had to pay some sort of protection money to have the same ability to reach you as Google or MSN does, I never would have been able to get WWdN off the ground, much less found Monolith Press, publish Dancing Barefoot, and start an entirely new career as a writer or have a second act in my acting career. There would be no Tabletop. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty happy that Tabletop is in the world.

We successfully fought to keep the Internet open and free just a few years ago, but it’s under attack again, another disastrous consequence of the Trump administration.

Here’s Consumerist on what is at stake (again) and why we are here (again):

Why is it in trouble?

The FCC that passed the Open Internet Rule was led by chairman Tom Wheeler, during the Obama administration. When the Trump administration took office in Jan. 2017, the FCC changed too.

At the end of January, long-time net neutrality foe Ajit Pai was promoted to the big seat and became the Commission’s chairman.

Pai has been gunning for net neutrality since the day it was adopted, if not sooner. So although in 2016 a federal court upheld the rules, Pai wants them reversed — and now, he has the means.

Because gaining a majority at the FCC is, on many key issues, basically a matter of partisan math, Pai will absolutely succeed if he wants to, regardless of literally tens of millions of people arguing against it.

Today is a day of action. Today, we are asking all Americans to take two minutes and contact the FCC, to make your voice heard, and make sure the FCC knows that you want network neutrality to be protected. Ars has a good collection of essential reading about network neutrality, but if you only have time to read one of them, here’s a concise guide to writing a comment to the FCC.

Two minutes, you guys. That’s all we need from you today. Please, take action.

5 things I want you to know

Here are five things I want you to know:

My friends, Kumail and Emily, wrote and produced a movie called The Big Sick. It’s about how they met and fell in love, and it’s wonderful. It’s a great date movie. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming without being saccharine, and it’s a true story! It’s a little indie movie, but it’s holding its own against big summer blockbusters, which is awesome. I want everyone to see it because it’s a great film (it should absolutely be considered during the award-o-rama season), but also because the way the studios work, it’ll only stay in theaters if it continues to outperform expectations. So please go see it, and tell your friends about it. (Those of you who are old enough to remember the early MeFi days will know where I got my linking style.)
Yesterday morning, Anne woke me up twenty minutes before my alarm did, because she needed me to hear the noise our air conditioner was making. It couldn’t have waited until I was ready to wake up, when I was starting to come out of my deep sleep cycle, because it was making a noise similar to putting a handful of ball bearings and some broken glass into a blender. It turns out that the motor blew out during the hottest three days of the year so far, because I am a fucking idiot who forgot to change the ten dollar air filter (in my defense, we did the math on the calendar and realized that Anne was in emergency surgery when I should have been changing it, so I may have gotten the reminder from my task list a whole second before I dismissed it forever). It was so hot in our house, things in our pantry were melting. I’m grateful that we had eighteen hundred dollars in a sock just for such an occasion, and by the time the sun had done its worst, it was repaired. So consider this your reminder to go look at your air filter and change it, if necessary.
I played games for the first time in months yesterday. My group was dealt a TPK when the last two members moved away in January, and I haven’t had anyone to play with. At first, I was happy to take the break, because gaming has been my job for the last four years. But as time went by, I became acutely aware of how significant gaming is to my life, my joy, and my reason for being. Tabletop is complicated for me, (and, honestly, Board Game Subreddit: maybe it just isn’t the right snow for you and you don’t need to rage at me about every single episode we do) and while I’m grateful as hell for everything it’s done to promote the hobby, the way Legendary has handled the fourth season and the relentless shitting on it and me by random internet strangers has taken its toll. I’d been so consumed by the things that made the show a bummer this season, and I’d been unable to play games for the sake of playing games for so long, I completely lost sight of how much I love gaming, how proud I am of our show, and the good it has done not just for my life, but for the thousands of other people who have shared their stories with me. So when we played Lords of Waterdeep and Splendor yesterday, it was like coming out of a fog of sadness for the first time in at least half a year.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Marley recently, and just this morning I came across a record I didn’t know about: Dreams of Freedom (Ambient Translation of Bob Marley in Dub). If you enjoyed the ambient tracks or the dub reggae I played on Radio Free Burrito, you have got to check out this record. It’s beautiful.
Speaking of RFB, I had an episode about 3/4 finished two weeks ago, but I really just hated it so I sent it to the land of wind and ghosts. I know that I’m overdue to release a new show, but I didn’t appreciate just how challenging it is to do a weekly podcast that isn’t about current events, or features interviews. I feel like I have to go to this mental box to find stuff to talk about, and recently it’s been empty and sad (HEY JUST LIKE ME HA HA THAT IS A JOKE AND NOT REAL AT ALL EVERYTHING IS FINE I AM FINE HA HA HA). So rather than force something that I think is shitty garbage that sucks, I’ve just been waiting until I have something worthwhile to make.

So that’s five things I want you to know on this lovely Sunday that’s way too fucking hot. What do you want me to know?

EDIT OH SHIT I FORGOT I WANTED YOU TO KNOW THIS ALSO BUT SIX THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS WEIRD TITLE SO I’M NOT CHANGING IT: I am honored to be a guest on this week’s Lovett or Leave It podcast.

Some pictures from today’s big old walk at the beach

“Do you you have to do anything on Monday?” Anne asked me.

I checked my calendar. “No, I turned in the draft of my Star Wars story, and I don’t think I’ll get notes on it until after the Fourth. Why?”

“Well, we’ve been so busy, we haven’t had much time to do anything together. I thought maybe we could go down to the beach, and take a big old walk together.”

“I love that. Let’s do that.”

So we went down to the beach today, and walked almost eight miles, had lunch, and got to spend a whole day together without anyone or anything getting in our way. It was really wonderful, especially considering that a month ago, we were in the emergency room together.

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