jaedmc

Love is a Mix-Tape by Rob Sheffield Picked by Rippa Read and Reviewed by Televiper Sadly Televiper's review got destroyed during the cataclysmic events on our old home world. But it seems like there are several who have read it, so I feel it's best to open this sucker up and get to talking about it.

I thought it was see the world from the other person's eyes and realize all highschoolers are going through the same miserable shit.

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore Picked By CSC Read and Reviewed by JRGoldman So when I signed up for this, I was really excited to get a book that was well outside my wheel house. I read a good amount, but I’m rather particular in what I read, so this would be an opportunity for me to branch out. That being said, I was sort of relieved that the book I got, A Dirty Job, was seemingly something that I would enjoy reading, or at least had enough of a genre skew that I would be comfortable as I read it. I will say that I had no notion of what to expect outside of having seen the book at book shops before. So, obligatory plot summary before we go any further: A man, Charlie Asher, a “beta male”, witnesses his wife’s death after a seemingly healthy childbirth. Unfortunately, he also witnesses a gigantic black man in a mint green suit in the room while his wife dies. This event leads to Charlie being thrust in to the world of “soul collecting”, in which Charlie, along with Minty Fresh (the aptly named giant black man in the aforementioned suit) and some other more minor characters are tasked with basically being the grim reaper. Before we go any further, I feel as though I should mention that while I was reading this book, I pictured the character of Minty Fresh as Ernie Ladd, which added immensely to my enjoyment of the novel. Anyway, Charlie has to juggle his second hand store and crazy neighbors and family with his new found powers, lest the forces of darkness get the souls and rise from the sewers. Also, his infant daughter seems to have the ability to kill things with a look, so there is that. This whole book is basically a romp. I would classify it without hesitation as a “beach read”. I say this not as a bad or good thing, but merely a thing. In some ways, I really liked this book not because I necessarily enjoyed what I was reading, but because it reminded me that there were books out there that don’t strive to be great art, but are just there to be enjoyed. Just like I sometimes want Miller Lite instead of Johnnie Walker Blue, sometimes I want a book I can knock off in a couple lazy days. All that being said, there were parts of this book that I did not enjoy as much as others. I fully realize that this may be me being a stick in the mud, but I found that the author made many of his more minor characters stereotypes and jokes rather than actual people. For example, the two neighbors are a Russian woman who likens everything to being “like bear”, and an Asian woman who can’t pronounce her rs and tries to cook anything that moves. I feel as though Moore is a good enough writer, and clearly a very creative man, that he should not have to rely on shtick and casual racism as humor. The other thing Moore has a bit of trouble with as a writer is making clear the passage of time. The book is carefully divided up in to three parts, but within those three parts, time just jumps forward seemingly at random. I would read a few pages before realizing that a few years had passed, and it would always make me feel as though I missed something important or wasn’t reading carefully enough. Because of these things, I would probably be hesitant to read another of Moore’s works, although I would not be shy about recommending it to someone if they were looking for something a little on a lighter side. Despite those minor issues, I had an absolute blast doing this project and would gladly do it again. I can’t thank Jae enough for putting all this together.

Fun Fact: Jimmy Stewart wanted to play the Cary Grant part. Hitchcock told Stewart no because he felt Vertigo didn't make much money because Stewart was too old. Cary Grant is 4 years older than Stewart.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway Picked by Phil Schneider Read and Reviewed by The Unholy Dragon I wasn’t really sure what to expect here. I kind of upped the surprise and tried not to read any synopsis or details beforehand…I didn’t even read the back of the book. That left me totally unprepared in the best possible way for one of the wildest books I’ve ever read. This thing is…wow. A sci-fi, war, espionage, action thriller with existentialism and ninjas and mimes. It’s completely off the wall crazy and yet establishes enough internal logic that it all feels strangely natural. The thing is pretty long. When ‘no more than 300 pages or so’ turned out to be ‘nearly 600 pages’ I admit I was a little nervous. Especially because the pages are dense. It’s a quick read though, owing to the pace and the engaging nature of the protagonist. The writing in this thing is super slick and well delivered, building things you’re not necessarily paying attention to at the time for big payoffs down the line. There’s ONE BIG TWIST in the book that I caught the foreshadowing for, but didn’t figure out the full extent of so kudos to that. The characters are memorable and oddly enough, in a book of crazy sci-fi and off the wall stuff, I think I most enjoyed all the martial arts stuff in the end. I’m already wanting to read more Harkaway (and frankly I could even do with a sequel to this) who, of all things, is John Le Carré’s son, something I found out after reading. Between him and Joe Hill I’m feeling pretty good about second generation authors. It’s weird, because even though I wasn’t sure what to expect here, I feel so blown away that it still feels like my expectations were exceeded. It’s tough to collect my thoughts because the book is just so…everywhere and engrossing and FUNNY that it’s hard to think objectively about it. I adored it start to finish though, and I never would have looked at it twice without the rec despite it being so very much my kind of thing. If this is the kind of book I could expect in a swap like this, I’ll do a ton of them. Thanks for the pick, dear benefactor.

Maybe. I'm not sure. If I put sheet music down for Beethoven's Fifth can you play it? If Bret and Bulldog go over every detail of Summerslam but Davey forgets and Bret has to take him through the whole damn thing, is that carrying? They plotted it out before hand probably just like guys plot it out in the E today. If Ryback goes out there and can't execute is there not room for a Daniel Bryan to make the match good?

I don't understand what you mean. I do have a bad memory though.

I think Warrior is a good call. I like Warrior. He brought energy, charisma, a ridiculously awesome body, and a character. And I can say that I enjoy a lot of Warrior matches. It's usually because one guy is doing great bumping/selling while Warrior runs around. Or they do a good job of beating his ass and selling his comebacks like the scariest shit. I'm not a big fan of the word "carry" in general. It's real, but I think fans over use it with no real backing to their claims other than they just don't like a guy. Kofi Kingston sucks a lot, but there have been times where he's stepped up with other dudes. I don't feel like Dolph Ziggler ever carried him, I think they both just clicked together. Same with Kofi/Swagger, who had some good matches a few years back.

You could keep them on the stage as the match is going on. Each team would have a bunch of sandbags to create some kind of cool trench HQ. They'll have monitors set up like the announce table so they can get a good looka t what's going on in the ring.

EDIT Oh, I see. I thought you were just looking for a chart. I'm dumb

Can't think of anything good in the last 5 years that wasn't a Blockbuster? Quick pass on Flickchart 2008 had The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road, Gran Torino, In Bruges, Man on a Wire. JCVD, Let The Right One In, Frost/Nixon 2009 had Moon, Whip It, Black Dynamite, Mother, The Brothers Bloom, An Education, Cracks, Paper Heart, The White Ribbon, The House of the Devil 2010 had 127 Hours, I Saw The Devil, Social Network, Black Swan, Biutiful, Incendies, The Trip, Greenberg, The Kids are Alright, Winter's Bone 2011 had Melancholia, The Skin I Live In, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Take Shelter, Killer Joe, Win Win, Tree of Life, Hanna, Carnage 2012 had The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, The Cabin in the Woods, Zero Dark Thirty, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Holy Motors, I dunno...Watch more movies?

There's a roadside attraction and there's some Vatican assassins, and some free lovin, baby.

Uh Oh. a Phantom Wrestling Promotion in Florida saying they're the next big thing on Twitter. I've seen this fucking movie before. And it ended in a Steel Davey Richards.

Indeed Machete Maidens Unleashed is fantastic as well. I immediately watched The Big Birdcage and was not disappointed. Sid Haig forever.

FUCK YEAH TO 30 POUNDS. If you're not comfy with the machines I suggest your basic calisthenics. Pushups, lunges, squats. etc etc etc. You'd be amazed at what you can achieve with just these exercises. This will probably get you more confident so you can go on to lifting with the machines. Depends on what you want to achieve with your muscles. I've lost 80(and still a ways to go) and it's been primarily off of Hindu Squats and Pushups. I feel stronger than I ever have in my life. I think it's funny that you feel intimidated. You've just found out that you can lose this weight in like half the time you thought you could, so don't let some bolts and bars scare you. OWN THAT SHIT. Good luck!

I thought Insidious was lots of fun until the last 10 minutes. And then I wanted to punch it in its stupid face. The jump scares were quality and they did a good job of framing halls and doors so that you weren't sure what was going to be there. Sometimes it was nothing, which created some good tension. I also like that when the family gets creeped out of the house they're like "Fuck it, we're moving". You hardly ever see that in a movie, at least not until the very end like Amityville. There were some really good ideas that were kind of loosely held together by a weak story.

Oh that's the stuff.

If you can DVR it or whatever, make sure you watch High Sierra and Treasure Over The Sierra Madre. Bogart is great in High Sierra, and his relationship with the girl with the bum leg is really refreshing. It seems very paint by numbers at first but it makes an interesting twist that drives the film home in the final act. Treasure Over The Sierra Madre is legit one of the best fucking movies ever. And it's an incredibly Bogart performance. Steve McQueen's The Cincinnati Kid is kind of like The Hustler Redux w/ cards. The world they create is fun and the final game is rock solid. You also get Ann Margret, Tuesday Weld, Karl Malden and EDWARD G. MOTHER FAHKIN ROBINSON as your supporting cast. Hit that shit up. Lana Turner's The Postman Always Rings Twice is rock solid and she's gorgeous. And of course I HIGHLY recommend The Three Muskateers which was my Movie Club pick on the old dead board. It's got Gene Kelly doing incredibly stunts and some fucking badass fights. On Catherine Deneuve Night I recommend Belle de Jour. It's Bunuel and it has dream sequences and Catherine Deneuve. You really shouldn't need more of an excuse. The Hunger is a wacky one and is most notable because it has David Bowie as a vampire and Tony Scott Directing. So..you know...duh, watch that. For Gregory Peck check out Hitchcock's Spellbound. It features a mind bending dream sequence directed by Salvador Dali, that you should see. If you haven't seen Rebel Without a Cause, check that on Natalie Wood day. It was supposed to be apart of these teen vagrant exploitation flicks from the 50's, but director Nicholas Ray directs a movie that's a lot more sympathetic. It also features, I think, the first gay teenager on film. Great cast and great direction. Check it out. William Holden has two obvious ones in The Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Wild Bunch, so I'll recommend Executive Suite. A CEO of a company dies unexpectedly and the board scrambles to determine the new king. Features a lot of really great dialogue about the balance of American Value's like hardwork vs. Capitalism and Profit margins. Still timely and looks more like a tragedy now that we're so far removed from it and all the crap we churn out for people to buy. The final speech has some great lines in it. Watch it. Cat On a Hot Tin Roof on Elizabeth Taylor day was a DVDVR Movie Club pick. It's good, but a little cut off at the knees because of censors. Paul Newman is tremendous in it. And of course you should watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? which besides being a great movie, struck a huge blow in the old film rating system. It Happened One Night for Clark Gable is a great date movie and also stars Claudette Colbert, who is a great old school star that doesn't get talked up enough. Gable is big pimpin as usual. And clearly you should watch My Fair Lady on Rex Harrison day. He's extra bitchy in that one, and you know, AUDREY.

Oh I hadn't heard about the Warrior payday bit. That's some horseshit. Everyone and their mother knew Rude was putting in some king sized work for that match.

This was my first Tom Robbins and I read it when I was 14 I think. My mom had it on her shelf and the cover looked like this: So I started reading it and I was like "The hell?" But for me, the writing is what changed me. I love the way he writes and I think it highly influenced my own writing. I write a lot of poetry because it's easier for me to express my ideas this way, and to see him write a book that felt like a mix of prose and free verse was mind blowing to me. To me his writing is always about a free flow of ideas and feelings. The plot...somewhat secondary. It's rarely about Point A to Point B, it's about the road in between. So I was reading this and I says to my mom, "This book is awesome mom." And she was like, "You can read that? It was too frickin' weird for me, man." Some friend had given it to her long ago. I was mildly disappointed that I couldn't share this with my mom, but also excited because I "got it". Made me feel kind of special. It's like destiny handed this book to my mom, not because she was supposed to read it, but because her son, years and years later, was supposed to.

ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION by Tom Robbins Picked by JaeDMC Read and Reviewed by Supremebve My DVDVR Summer Reading Book was "Another Roadside Attraction" by Tom Robbins. At first glance I thought it was written by Tim Robbins which made me think it was going to be some sort of super blowhardy piece of shit, but when I typed the title into Amazon I was relieved when it said Tom instead of Tim. With that said, I had no idea who Tom Robbins was or what the hell this book was about, but I signed up so I was going to read it like a good soldier. Overall I would say it was pretty good, despite my initial reservations when I noticed that it was written in a pseudo poetic verse. I was a journalism major and I have a pretty strong opinions on people making their writing take away from the actual content, but I digress. It was a story of a woman named Amanda, her son named Baby Thor, (I'm pretty sure it was just Thor, but they only refer to him as Baby Thor. I am also strongly considering nicknaming my penis that.) her husband John Paul Ziller, their pet baboon Mon Cul, and their friends Max Marvelous and Plucky Purcell. If you are anything like me, you will see those names and think, what the fuck am I reading? Well I would describe this book as what would happen if "The DaVinci Code" was written by a pothead in the late '60s. Amanda is the main protagonist but the book is written through the diary of another one of the characters (I won't reveal who, it is kind spoiler). The diary skips around a bit, changes focus on different characters fairly often, and sometimes goes on tangents that don't really ever go anywhere. Somehow it works and eventually you actually care about what happens to these crazy hippies(seriously, one character only wears a loin cloth). My favorite character, and I would guess he will probably be yours if you decide to read this, is Plucky Purcell. Despite spending less time with him than probably any other character, his actions push the story forward. The letters he writes during his crazy adventures are also the funniest parts of the book. Amanda, John Paul, and Max Marvelous get probably about 65-70% of the screen time, but without Plucky this book would be about a bunch of weirdos hanging around in a roadside zoo. When I first started the book I wasn't really into it, but as I continued reading I began to realize that I was being taken on a crazy, drug fueled, blasphemous ride that I was really beginning to enjoy. It was almost completely different than anything I would have picked myself, but once again I realize that stepping out of my comfort zone usually ends up being a fairly rewarding experience. The characters were strong, the writing was good, and the end made me really think about whether or not the characters did the right thing(in my opinion they did, and even if they wouldn't admit it I think the antagonists would agree that it was the best possible outcome). I would say the book exchange was a good experience and I'm down to do it again.

CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller Picked by Hedges Read and Reviewed by Odessasteps Full Disclosure: I listened to the unabridged audio book and did not strictly read the book. Also, once I was finished, I went back and watched the 1970 movie with Alan Arkin. I first read Catch-22 as an undergraduate, but not since then. So, even though I had the option of choosing another book, I chose to keep it, since I wasn't sure what I would and would not remember from my reading 20+ years ago. Without doing the research, it seems to my memory that Catch-22 was one of the first cynically-humorous looks at the military, the military industrial complex and war. We all probably much more familiar these days with MASH, but Richard Hooker's novel was published in 1968, seven years after Catch-22. It is, of course, one of the best novels of the era, with its depiction of the folly of war and the absurdities of modern life. The structure of the book, with its repetition of dialogue, often gives the feeling of listening to an Abbott and Costello routine (especially when listening to the audio book). And, of course, nothing represents the circuitous nature of things that the whole concept of Catch-22, which was invented by Heller in the novel. Wikipedia defines Catch-22 as "a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot or is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules." Yossarian wants Doc Daneeka to ground him from flying because he is crazy. But Doc cannot, because if if Yossarian wants to be grounded, he isn't crazy. Another noticeable aspect of the book its disjointed flow of time. The novel jumps in time in various events surrounding the main characters, often coming back to Yossarian's inability to save Snowden. In that way, with non-chronological narrative and World War II setting, Catch-22 also evokes memories of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five (published after Catch-22 in 1968). Heller, like Yossarian, was a bomber pilot in WWII, having flown 60 missions in 1944. That said, many of the criticisms found in the book are anachronistic, discussing things that were not actually part of WWII, including McCarthyism (Colonel Black's pointless loyalty oaths) and the military industrial complex, as personified by Milo. Milo's slogan "What's good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country" is paraphrasing something said by the former president of General Motors before Congress. In hindsight, I believe listening to the audio was a good choice. Given the nature of the dialogue, it was good to hear it spoken rather than just read on the page. Jay O. Sanders does a great job distinguishing between characters and to my ear, made his Yossarian sound remarkably like Alan Arkin. Catch-22 is certainly a book that holds up well today. As someone who seems daily the kind of bureaucratic nonsense that still can be found in the military 50 years later, it is just as fresh is it was in 1961.

Escape 2000 is brilllliant. There was an Aussie Exploitation doc on Netflix Instant a while back that turned me on to some of these incredibly fun movies. Tarantino was one of the talking heads. OH!!!! And UNDEAD(2003) is another fun Aussie flick. I had an absolute blast watching that.

Best Worst Movie was on Netflix not too long ago. That's how I saw it. Lost in La Mancha is tremendous. It's about Terry Gilliam trying to make a Don Quixote film with Johnny Depp. Epic Fail. It would be a good double feature with Hearts of Darkness, the Apocalypse Now doc. You can see two directors go mad, but one produces a cinematic classic and the other one produces...nothing.

Yeah, I know. I thought about pulled pork right after I submitted the post. But in my defense...my good news that I posted about last night left me cloudy and disoriented today. Also I'm a low hung fruit kind of guy.