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Episode 562 - Fat Face (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-02 14:42:18
Edited:
2021-09-02 14:43:31
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Patton Oswalt returns to help us size up the Michael Shea classic FAT FACE!

Warning: some language and themes not appropriate for younger listeners.

Mr. Cannyharme: A Novel of Lovecraftian Terror is available in paperback/kindle or as a limited hardcover. Grab more great stuff at Hippocampus Press!

Outro music: Night Creeps by Pitch Black Manor 

Comments

Trickfoot

That ending is Bobs Gnarly bruh! Sickwidit 👉🤏

Ratchbox

Amazing! I've been binging the podcast since I joined 5 months ago, and I finally caught up Tuesday. I've been seriously jonesing for my HPPodcraft fix since! Now we have a brand new episode, and a Patton Oswalt episode too. Plus I've already read this story so I'm ready to go! Thanks guys!!

Ketus

FINALLY. Another Michael Shea episode with Patton, love these episodes after barreling through Demiurge and Color Out Of Time. Hope you guys can cover Color Our Of Time soon (multiple episodes with Patton would ROCK), seriously awesome story that sent my mind reeling with possibilities for the CoC trpg.

Ben A

I saw this pop up in my podcasts and I let out an audible "hurray!"

Mistress Frieren

Any time Patton is on the show it's such a wonderful added treat. I love all the episodes but my Yog, the interplay between you three is infectiously delightful. The Shea stories are some of my favourite because he has a really unique perspective on the weird fiction genre and I suppose writing in general. I'm no Shea scholar but I feel there have to be intentional parallels between the status of his characters in society and their ability or proclivity to experience otherworldly phenomenon. Addicts and sex workers are so often looked down on and seen as living on the borderlands between human and wastrel. Just as the characters in weird fiction find themselves on the border of normal perception and the beyond. I always find it refreshing that Shea humanizes these people and makes heroes out of the marginalized.

Mandy Reznor (She/It)

Finally, my namesake has appeared! ...Though I'm ashamed to admit it, but I first encountered Shoggoth Lords while skimming the CoC TTRPG material, not by reading this tale, much as Chris mentioned. I've never even *played* CoC.

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

OMG - I read this! It really stuck with me… this was before I really knew much about HP Lovecrat and Yog Sothery in general. So I was almost totally caught off guard. It might have been in the anthology “Cthulhu 2000”… but I think it was a different anthology, because it featured “Lovecraft” in WAY bigger font then the actual title of the anthology. (Which also had a story called “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” in it… I think.) Those were the only two stories I read because I was specifically looking to read Lovecraft’s stories and I guess I judged a book by its cover. (Which was a monochromatic scene with little bits of red.)

Steve

You guys must have been smoking and drinking a lot in the 8th grade. Excellent show.

Ben Gilbert

Kelly girls were secretaries from the temp agency. I think Patton was referring to the Harvey Girls. There was a movie with Judy Garland about them.

Karlandos

You know, I'm not sure what I expected to happen especially after you guys mentioned hookers and pimps fighting back against the eldritch horrors and such, but then again the ending was oddly surreal and very horror movie-esque just imagining Fat-Face undo is person suit like a pair of pants and his hideous human head smiling while roiling around his jelly shoggoth body. Now that makes me think back to the Pool and wonder if the foreman dude is or was connected with the Shoggoth Lords although that seems pretty blatant to eat an entire house of rich people. Aside from that, the conversation about people just wanting to be told what to do because its easier was surprisingly eye opening in spite of how obvious it seems. Excellent work as always and look forward to you guys and Patton doing another collaboration on Michael Shaw Stories. I will definitely endeavor to pick up the books.

Pearce Duncan

This was my first Shea, 30 odd years ago when I read The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror volume 1 edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling. I think that was also my first exposure to George RR Martin (with the Gerald Kersh-eque “The Pear Shaped Man”), Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Tuttle, Michael McDowell and Alan Moore. I still have it somewhere.

Jim Cannon

Still haven't been able to find a copy of _Copping Squid_, the only thing of Shea's I've been able to track down is _The Colour Out of Time_, which is really good (although Shea commits the cardinal sin of so many modern authors of including HP Lovecraft, or at least his writings, which throws me more out of the story than if his existence as Cthulhu's daddy was just ignored). Great characters, a real command of setting, and some top-notch gore work, as is also displayed here with "Fat Face." That ending is brutal, if not unexpected, even anticipated. Still absolutely unsettling, even though you know the building is sound proofed, even though you know its coming.

UltharMeow

Great episode as always but I’m looking forward to Patton’s next installment of Needle In A Shea Stack. My best friend and I are avid quilters and the geometry of my latest quilt just isn’t adding up. I’m hoping for some insight. Also, Best Friend made a shoggoth quilt once (no joke - it looks like a puddle of eyes and teeth). She kept complaining that it was eating her needle and I’m starting to think that maybe she wasn’t speaking figuratively…

Red Wizard Matt

Hey guys, I have a really out of nowhere question. A friend and I are wanting to try our hand at podcasting because we both come from an oral storytelling tradion, but the concept of expensive equipment is a bit of a barrier. I remember you guys talking on past episodes of the podcast about potential ways around that, but I can't for the life of me remember which episodes those were. If you have any advice like a cheap microphone that doesn't sound like trash, or weird techniques for upping sound quality I'd really appreciate it. Love the show. You guys were my first podcast and remain to this day the only one I love so much that I stay current on.

Innsmouth Gold

That is such a great story and excellent episode too! Fat Face puts me in mind of the character from the movie Hardware... the wibbely wobbely man... https://youtu.be/hWQD-SXHIcw

Jason Thompson

I haven’t read the original story, but it sounds like the love poem is what puts this one over the top.

Sanjay Mathew

Bought Mr Cannyharme. It's amazing. The only bits that are off in my opinion are when Shea tries to write his characters speaking or imitating Black vernacular. It isn't quite at jive turkey level but it just strikes an off note in otherwise excellent prose. One thing has me thrown off a bit. We get repeated references to the AIDS epidemic but everything I find online says Shea wrote it in 1981 and set it in the 1960s. It's clearly not set in the 60s, I assume everyone's copy pasting an error, but the 1981 date seems a bit early for the AIDS epidemic to have consolidated in the consciousness. I suppose Shea may have reworked it later. All his stories seem to exist for me in a sort of timeless 1970s somehow, even though from what I can tell his short stories actually are mostly set in the 90s.

Andrew Brown

I feel dirty just listening. A creepy story.

Joshua Hart

Always my favorite episodes with Shea/Patton. Have you guys done Shea’s “The Autopsy”? Because you should do that one. ❤️

Robert Curtin

Finally a Shea story I'd read before! Though from your comments during the episode, I'm not the only one whose first Shea was Fat Face. Excellent coverage, always a joy when Patton guests.

Drix

Great episode guys, these Patton episodes are especially fun to me because he's literally the reason I found the podcast! Back in high school I had followed him on twitter, and one day he tweeted about the podcast and linked out to it. Already loving Lovecraft I decided to give the show a whirl. I think the first episode I listened to was Notebook Found in a Deserted House, and was instantly hooked. Went through all the original Lovecraft run and beyond, and now years later here I still am while finishing up college. Looking forward for more studies of strange stories and hopefully more Patton to boot.

Stewart

I have to admit I've never been a huge fan of Michael Shea, and this story demonstrated some of the reasons why for me. There was no real mystique to it - indeed, far from suggesting cosmic horrors and unfathomable powers from beyond, we have a "Shoggoth" who sounds like an incel. So far was it from the mingled cosmic wonder and terror that I think worked so well with Lovecraft (after all, the sense of wonder always served so well as the explanation why the characters would seek this stage out) that I don't think I'd even call it Lovecraftian - you could replace the Shoggoth with literally any monster capable of assuming human-ish form, and the story does not change, except perhaps for some of the specifics of the note he sends ("I fought the Turks, etc, uh oh it's a Dracula"). I'm glad you're about done with Copping Squid - I can't say I'll be sorry to see the end of Mr. Shea.

Anne Ominous

excellent episode per usual gentlemen - thanks for that! I picked up a copy of 'Cannyharme' and devoured it much like the people in the book were. Shea loved that city as much as I disliked it! I knew there was a reason I couldn't wait to cross those bridges and head back to the hills! It did NOT disappoint!

OnomatoPoeFan

Fat Face has to look like the baron from Dune.

Jason of the K

So I gotta know, what "car chases and exploding spacecraft and skull-spraying gunfights and screaming falls from the peaks of skyscrapers" double bill did she go see? The earliest publication for Fat Face I can find is 1988 so clearly one of those films is Die Hard (1988) but what spaceship sci-fi flick came out around then? I'm gonna go with Nightflyers or Beyond the Rising Moon :P