StoryShedding: #3
A weekly digest from StoryShed Media for the week of Dec. 22, 2025
THE HOLIDAYS START HITTIN’ hard and fast now, cats. New year’s a-comin’ and you can feel the activity bubbling away under the winter ice. Soon it’s January 5 and the season is in the rear-view mirror for another year.
January is a good thing, if regarded with care and consideration.
That’s just my…
Warm Bake > Hot Take
I WILL ALWAYS REGARD octopi with the respect they deserve. I also never found “calamari” particularly delicious, so was happy to stop ordering it at restaurants. I’m sure there’s a preparation that’s mind-blowing, but not as mind-blowing as the smarts behind your average octopus.
I think I love them.
So, to inaugurate StoryShed’s forthcoming Season 11 on Stargazing, Episode 1 has a goal:
“I am determined to personally meet—and maybe befriend!—an octopus.”
Stay tuned.
But wait! There’s more!
After seeing Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet this past week, there was a scene I couldn’t get out of my mind. I needed to talk to someone about it. (There’s probably more about the film worth talking about, but this wouldn’t let me go!) I wondered if a sample of the shooting script was available online and Deadline.com did not disappoint:
This version of the script doesn’t indicate what Zhao eventually directed and kept after editing, which I explained to my friend Chris the meaning behind her camera choices in this scene. It niggled me but I think I’ve teased out an answer.
Zhao sets this scene as a single shot through the house window, almost as if the audience is a “Peeping Tom” on the Shakespeare family in the middle of the night. Will is up writing (and drinking, apparently) and Agnes has been roused from bed to see what he’s working on. He refuses to show her (or explain to us) what he’s writing or why it is important to him. But we can tell it’s vital—he’s distressed.
A lesser director would’ve cut away from the window, bringing us closer with the flattering aspect of “being closer to the drama,” maybe a two-shot of Will and Agnes. Zhao doesn’t do that—almost as an act of refusal.
In the end, it works. We will eventually see what he’s written (or will write) just as Agnes will in the theater with her husband’s production of Hamlet.
It’s the payoff we need, and one Zhao so richly delivers.
What Is the Sound of One Substack Clapping?
Confession: I haven’t been doing much Substack reading this past week. Had to dip into the workday for a short stretch, and now—through to the first week of January 2026, I have time to read your ’stacks. Yay!
Karl Straub’s Hot Plate! Print Edition Substack returns to classic comics—wherein he reminds me I once read Glen Baxter with relish (and no, not the sweet pickle kind—a particularly Baxterian reaction line if you ask me)…
For the holiday season, Ted Gioia‘s “Four Perspectives on Bing Crosby” took me straight back to my late parents’ musical tastes. “In the midst of the most savage war of the century,” Gioia writes, “Bing Crosby was a touchstone of decency and humanity for the troops on the front line.”
Oh for those lovely, sweet qualities once again.
Into the Shack
No, not StoryShitting (although that has happened before), when we re-enter the Shack, but more planning ahead and sharing with subscribers.
StoryShed Season 11: Stargazing will drop episode 1 no later than Jan. 15. Since the term “Stargazing” in my triad is about curiosity, each of the four episodes will tackle a separate question and attempt to tease it out in one go (I’m a little worried about length, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it). The loose plan:
Episode 1: Let’s Get Curious About Incuriosity (the octopus story)
Episode 2: Storytelling 101 With Steve and Rob
Episode 3: Did J.R.R. Tolkien Prove There’s Life After Death?
Episode 4: Au Revoir, Monsieur Libido?
A couple of those will be behind the paywall since StoryShed has added paid subscribers and they deserve the TLC. It also means you can upgrade your subscription to monthly (or yearly is your best value)…
See y’all in January!
The Morning Muse
YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING you want, it’s true. You can say anything. If you didn’t have to fear family wrath, societal shame, deportation or prison time, and you said what you said, what would you say?
That’s the spirit of the Morning Muse.
So here she comes again shakin’ everybody’s circuits…
Without further ado, the Morning Muse from the past week:
The Oaken Barrel Singers of Liguria
Jason Warblo, sound technician
Shut up, shut up! You had me at Mango Barbacoa.
Larry Dousman, Jr.
Kabuki, without the lingering aftertaste
When your paunch reflects your haunch you experience failure to launch.
…he looks like he shits Tootsie Rolls in fast succession
love surveillance
Richard Peru
corrugated prophet
Seppuku, but with raclette cheese
“There’s not a single likeable thing about you.” “Not true!” “How so?” “I like me!”
Emanating from a bakery that plays only Led Zeppelin: “Wanna whole lotta loaf…wanna whole lotta loaf…”
A retail Spartacus
First Octopus: “How would you like to be called a mollusk?” Second Octopus: “I would not like it one bit.”
Term for “gets up in the middle of the night to sadly rearrange all the furniture”…
Wabi-sobby?
Now we’re out, Scout.
Thought for the Week
Instead of a quote, here are some song lyrics that for me completely illustrate Daytalking, Nightwalking, and Stargazing through life’s stages.
“Morning of My Life by Barry Alan Gibb
[Stargazing] In the morning when the moon is at its rest
You will find me at the time I love the best
Watching rainbows play on sunlight
Pools of water iced from cold nights,
In the morning
’Tis the morning of my life.
[Daytalking] In the daytime I will meet you as before
You will find me waiting by the ocean floor
Building castles in the shifting sands
In a world that no one understands
In the morning
’Tis the morning of my life
’Tis the morning of my life.
[Bridge—Stargazing again] In the morning of my life
The minutes take so long to drift away
Please be patient with your life
It’s only morning and you’re still to live your day.
[Nightwalking] In the evening I will fly you to the moon
To the top right hand corner
Of the ceiling in my room
Where we’ll stay until the sun shines
Another day to swing on clotheslines
May I be yawning
’Tis the morning of my life
’Tis the morning of my life
In the morning
In the morning
In the morning…”
Tuneage for You!
“Morning Of My Life” The Bee Gees (1970; writer: Barry Alan Gibb; Live in Las Vegas, 1997) <3
I loved that Hamnet scene. Among other things, it depicts so well the frustrations of a writer.
Octopi are so fascinating. Have you heard about them escaping from lab tanks? They are escape artists!