Therefore, if bees were to become extinct as they do in Generation A (which is not out of the realm of real life possibility,) Douglas Coupland would cease to exist. Then who would we go to for such insightful and witty satire?
Find out more about Coupland and disappearing bees in my review of the author’s latest- Generation A- fresh from the oven and all hot n’ crusty over at ChuckPalahniuk.net.
Posted in Books, Criticism, Reviews
Tagged Baby Boomers, Bees, Chuck Palahniuk, Douglas Coupland, Generation A, Generation X, Millennials, Opinions Are Like Assholes
You know you want to touch it
…to read my review of Look At The Birdie, his new posthumous collection of prehumous stories.
Or, if you are a prude, and don’t want to travel via anal wormhole, click HERE to be taken to ChuckPalahniuk.net the old fashioned way.
Time again for another anecdote laced book review over at Chuck Palahniuk dot net. Whether you love or hate immigrants, this is the book for you:
A young immigrant travels to the land of ice and snow to whisper tales of gore on how he calmed the tides of war.
Cockroach is the story of a Lebanese immigrant living in Montreal after a botched suicide attempt. The metaphor of immigrant as cockroach is usually a negative one, but in Hage’s novel our narrator imagines himself scuttling beneath the feet of the privileged elite as a Kafkaesque badge of honor. He is a womanizer and a thief, and when he is not sneaking into people’s homes and stealing food, he is recounting his childhood in war-torn Lebanon to his court appointed shrink.
Support dime-a-dozen bloggers and the literary arts. Read the review in all its roach squashing, immigrant hating glory HERE.
Posted in Books, Criticism, Reviews
Tagged Book Reviews, Chuck Palahniuk, Cockroach, Deniro's Game, Immigrant Song, Immigrants, Insects, Lebanon, Led Zepplin, Opinions Are Like Assholes, Rawi Hage
New review up at ChuckPalahniuk.net
Four years ago, my girlfriend lent me Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake on our very first date. I was hesitant to accept, not only because that locked me into seeing her again, but because other than Geek Love, I had never read anything by a female author that I had actually liked. (Imminent backlash in 3… 2… 1…) Flash forward to the present and we are still together and I am anxiously awaiting the release of The Year of the Flood. Looks like I have fallen prey to not one, but two crafty she-devils.
Check it out HERE.
I feel a relapse coming on just looking at this picture.
Festival Fatigue is defined as a proportionate lack of patience in direct relation to the quality and quantity of films viewed in a short period of time. So was I a dick for flipping off the screen and walking out during The Revenant in front of the director? You be the judge.
Read all about it over at TWITCH. I am already receiving hate posts.
You can also read my encapsulated review HERE.
I’ve got a new piece up at Twitch about the Fantastic Fest reaction to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Prepare to have your genitals obliterated HERE.
Check out the scene in question below. It goes without saying that if you haven’t seen the film, you’re spoiling shit.
Let me preface this by saying, DAMN YOU WORDPRESS AND YOUR SHITTY FORMATTING ISSUES!!!
Radiohead – Harry Patch (In Memory Of)/These Are My Twisted Words
Radiohead
This is strictly B-side material, as far as Radiohead goes, so I’m glad these songs were released as one-offs. But any new Radiohead is good Radiohead, even if Harry Patch sounds like an unfortunate Native American name for a guy who doesn’t shave his pubes.
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Dysrhythmia – Psychic Maps
Dysrhythmia
Unclassifiable technical instrumental genius. Less like having your balls rocked off and more like sending them off to college to study Calculus against their will.
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The Mars Volta – Octahedron
The Mars Volta
The progsters least annoying effort since Deloused. No guitar solos = awesome. Glad to see Omar reign in his Santana worship for once.
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Baroness – The Blue Record
Baroness
Haven’t fully absorbed this one yet, but the artwork alone makes it worth purchasing. Baroness move further away from sounding like an old school Mastodon clone and continue to hone their own unique brand of rifftastic indie-metal. Loose as a goose and heavy as a moose.
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David Bazan – Curse Your Branches
David Bazan
David Bazan returns with his second solo effort, proving once again that it was the other guy in Pedro The Lion, whose name no one remembers, that had all the talent. Snooze.
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Mariachi El Bronx – El Bronx
Mariachi El Bronx
The Bronx can do no wrong. Who would have thought a straight up mariachi record could be so good? These dudes are gonna be the kings of the barrio streets, moving up to Shangri-la.
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Protest The Hero – Fortress
Protest the Hero
If Rush and Iron Maiden had a child and gave it up for adoption to The Dillinger Escape Plan and that child was sent to Julliard and took vocal lessons from that dude from The Darkness, that child would grow up to be Protest The Hero.
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Capillary Action – So Embarrassing
Capillary Action
The only thing embarrassing about this one is the cover. Mathy, Mike Patton inspired lounge jazz. A whole lot better than it sounds.
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Previously on Encapsulated Music Reviews:
Encapsulated Music Reviews Part II
It’s that time again. I’ve got a new book review up at ChuckPalahniuk.net. David Small’s graphic memoir of childhood horrors, Stitches. If you think you had it bad, you better check this one out before you complain.
Posted in Books, Criticism, Reviews
Tagged Cancer, Chuck Palahniuk, Comics, David Small, Graphic Novels, Memoirs, Opinions Are Like Assholes, Stitches, The Cult
Yee-haw!
Lazy post alert!
Here is a handy roundup of all my recent review activity scattered around the interweb.
BOOK REVIEWS @ ChuckPalahniuk.net
Leather Maiden by Joe R. Lansdale
Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Compleat Motherfucker by Jim Dawson
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliot
God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens
Blindness by Jose Saramago
MOVIE REVIEWS @ TWITCH
Deadgirl directed by Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel
MESRINE: L’instinct de mort and L’ennemi public n° 1 directed by Jean-François Richet
Written By directed by Ka-Fai Wai
The Forbidden Door directed by Joko Anwar
Bronson directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Crush and Blush directed by Kyoung-mi Lee
The Clone Returns Home directed by Kanji Nakajima
Magazine Gap Road directed by Nicholas Chin
And finally, it’s a little older, but here is a fantastic interview I conducted with one of my favorite authors, Steve Erickson. Fantastic because of him, not because of me.
Wow, this post turned out to be more work than I thought.
New book review up @ ChuckPalahniuk.net. Cult author Joe R. Lansdale’s Leather Maiden. A small town tale of infidelity, blackmail, and skinning people alive. For fans of Twin Peaks and His Girl Friday.
Not what you had in mind, is it?
