The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

Have you ever tried to make a meal out of everything in your kitchen? It would take a real chef to make something good out of it. I mean, some people have a lot of weird ignredients they don't know how to use, like that last drip of caesar dressing. The Accursed is that meal, told from the perspective of a historian grandson to an early 20th century philophy professor at Princeton University, as well as through diary entries of the invalid wife to a local big shot.

If you've read any of Oates's longer works, you probably know what to expect. The Accursed is vivid, gothic, and expansive. It's so expansive I think about it almost ever day, relating it to the context of my own stupid life.

Oates highlights the darkness of growing up wealthy and religious in early 20th Century Princeton, New Jersey. She notes the hidden but universally damning aspects of systematic inequality. She even throws in characters like Woodrow Wilson, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Grover Cleveland, and Teddy Roosevelt to complete the milieu. This might be your thang if you have ever enjoyed using the term "goth".

The Quiche of Death by M.C. Beaton

Hold onto your hats. This cozy takes place in the quaint English village of Carsely. Agatha Raisin is our detective, who cheats in a quiche baking contest and loses. In fact her quiche is the suspected murder weapon.

Agatha can't let this fly. There's no way she had anything to do with this murder. She has to solve it! Are you curious about life as an old British lady? Do you like cottages, pubs, fairs, morris-men, and bicycle rides in the English countryside? If so, this is the cozy for you.

Color Out of Space (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Weird for a movie, not weird for Lovecraft, Color Out of Space was grotesque and terrifying... eldritch if you will. Like most new/high budget films, I was put off a bit by some of the visual enhancements, especially earlier when nothing terrible has happened yet. Once the scary stuff starts happening, the visuals are awesome.

Cage does an awesome job as an uptight, intellectual dad. I get Vampire's Kiss vibes when he freaks out, and I'm glad he's still pulling from that side of himself. All the other actors are great, too. We even get to see Tommy Chong in action, hopefully not for the last time.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. Color Out of Space
6. City of Angels
7. Gone in 60 Seconds
8. Matchstick Men
9. Vampire's Kiss
10. Face/Off
11. Honeymoon in Vegas
12. The Family Man
13. 8mm
14. The Weather Man
15. The Croods

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Since I read a lot this past fall and winter, I decided it was imperative to read some "cozies", and this one sounded the most cozy. It's about a bakery owner in Minnesota who bribes people with cookies, has a big snuggly cat, drives a suburban, drinks jug wine, and solves a murder. For weeks, it inspired me to mix an egg with my coffee grounds and make scandinavian style coffee. What a treat!

The book, though. It was okay. There were cookie recipes accompanying most chapters. I didn't use any of them. The murder didn't have anything to do with chocolate chip cookies. I know I'm supposed to get all excited about figuring it out before the book tells me who did it. Really, you can only ever guess up until a certain, anticipated point. I never thought, "Oh man, if only that guy hadn't been murdered in cold blood."

I think it's wrong to ignore the grave consequences of killing. Joanna Fluke doesn't think it's a big deal to kill innocent people. Murder provides mysteries and in the end, everything is actually better than it ever was before. Cozy!

Waifs and Strays by Charles De Lint

I still haven't read any of De Lint's novels, but I really liked his Best Of collection. So I bought this collection for my sister's xmas gift, intending to read it before giving it to her. Why not? De Lint's stories are magical and heartwarming, inspiring you to cultivate magic in your own world.

Sometimes if you stretch your sights just a bit, you can find the magic. It's so close and so fleeting. You will likely miss it every time if you don't look for it. De Lint tells coming-of-age stories for all ages. He thinks targeting his writing toward teens or young adults would be condescending. My kind of guy. You might put his stories into the trappings of Low Fantasy or Urban Fantasy, but he refers to them as Mythic Fiction. Maybe that's your kind of thing. I like it.

Eric Gordon's Greek's Pizzeria of Bloomington, IN

It's been a while since I've had a new pizza. Too long, actually. Is this life even worth living? I guess, if I must live. There used to be a Greek's Pizzeria in Bloomington, a long time ago, but I guess it closed. That was before I had affected such a discerning taste. Sometimes you don't know what you've got until it's gone and comes back again.

There are ratios in Greek's Pizza. 3cr/2ce/3ch. I'll rate their crust 5/5. It was delicious. Sweet, yeasty, and with a light dusting of garlic powder on its handles. It was sturdy, chewy, and bendy without being tough. This is a midwestern-style crust done right. I'll rate their sauce 4/5. It was tangy (by way of tomato), floral (by way of oregano), decently thick, and delicious, and complimented the crust so perfectly. Be aware, if you get sauce with your breadsticks, their breadstick sauce is not the same as their pizza sauce. I was somewhat bummed by this, because their pizza sauce was so good.

For style, I'll give Greek's a 3/5. It's a classic midwestern style pizza, no frills. The store is right next to the stadium, which will be convenient for some, but impossible for at certain days of the year, for those of us with a serious jones.

Overall quality gets a 5/5. I think it's the best pizza in Bloomington. With just a little more sauce, it would have come out a bit less dry. But it wasn't dry like Domino's and Pizza X, completely goo-free. There were a couple bubbles on my pie, which are often inevitable. Neither of these nit-picks are strong enough to bring down that solid 5. I think someday I'll try to get a job there. Eric Gordon's Greek's Pizzeria gets an 85%! Great job EG-10, preparer of my selection. I'm going to have to look at this Pizza Forum.

8mm (feat. Nicolas Cage)

I remember the late 90s. Shock value was everything. The bad boys of rock and roll were Marilyn Manson and Eminem, and half the shows on MTV's prime time were about pornography. From the director of 1997's Batman & Robin, 8mm is about a private investigator named Tom Welles, played by Nicolas Cage. Tom is tasked to prove or disprove the validity of a snuff film, found in the safe of some very rich guy.

Jaquin phoenix's character, Max California, shows Tom the oh-so-seedy underbelly of the Los Angeles porno scene. Some guy pulls a gun on Tom because he asks for a snuff film. Then later on, we see him flip through a box of photos labeled "kids". There's also a share of satanism, bdsm, and drug use. Our main antagonist is a huge Danzig fan. So if you're also a huge fan, watch out. You might turn into a pervert. They say the hardcore stuff is dangerous.

This film was fairly entertaining and it had some thrills. The violence was violent and the bad guys were bad. 8mm was severely gratuitous, but terrible; definitely not good. 

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. City of Angels
6. Gone in 60 Seconds
7. Matchstick Men
8. Vampire's Kiss
9. Face/Off
10. Honeymoon in Vegas
11. The Family Man
12. 8mm
13. The Weather Man
14. The Croods

introducing the party stick

Hello. Your favorite friday night coorporate restaurant has an abundance of potato flour. In addition to their pub bites, they're also "offering" us these cool zesty fries. They're not like hot fries. They're like those weird shoestring potatoes that come in a can, only they taste better. That being said, they're not especially good. The Zesty House Fries were a bit too salty for my taste. Aside from that I had no complaints. Sometimes all you need is a dash of garlic powder and a pinch of onion powder to zest up your weird potato sticks. I hope TGIF eventually gives us new flavors of their Party Sticks, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Girl King by Mimi Yu

It seems like a good idea to read new books. New fantasy books, the kinds of books I might like to write and get published someday. What is being published right now? Like always, there is a pull toward the socially relavant in new media. People want to give visibility to characters that are not white guys, and I respect that. "Not About a White Guy" is a fine selling point, so long as it's not the only selling point. The Girl King is set in a fantasy world that is more like ancient Korea and less like Middle Earth. All the characters are markedly not white. Aside from these distinctions, The Girl King is just another coming-of-age medieval fantasy adventure. I wonder if most new fantasy is written for younger audiences and I just don't notice with the older stuff because I relate more to teenagers from the 70s than I relate to teenagers today. Teens of yore do have more visibility in literature. I guess that's something to chew on. The Girl King was okay. I won't think about it much in the future.

Birdy (feat. Nicolas Cage)

It's fun to watch my list grow, but we have such a long way to go. Birdy came out in 1984 and it has a dramatic soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. In fact, I wanted to sing along for a good chunk of the film.

The film touched on a lot of issues like mental illness, bromance, and the war in Vietnam. It touched my heart, telling of the friendship between Al Columbato (played by Cage) and Birdy (played by Matthew Modine). Birdy's more than a little nutty, but also very passionate and brave; the kind of guy you might naturally admire. Naturally Al, a normal guy, takes to the weirdo.

As times go, they were both drafted to Vietnam, where Al gets seriously injured. In the hospital he finds that Birdy has totally dissasociated, and it seems like he may never get better. Not unless Al can get through to him.

Both stars were great in this film. I don't think there was anything in Birdy that didn't work. It was good, however it didn't give me quite the ride of my top three.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. City of Angels
6. Gone in 60 Seconds
7. Matchstick Men
8. Vampire's Kiss
9. Face/Off
10. Honeymoon in Vegas
11. The Family Man
12. The Weather Man
13. The Croods

The Spell Sword by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Here is another totally-my-thing, 70s fantasy. The Spell Sword is like a sword and sorcery tale with a strong romantic element. Andrew Carr meets his love interest, Callista, through a fortune teller on a far away planet. Callista’s home planet is Darkover, eponymous with the world and series where this novel takes place. Epic.

In fact, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series comprises of over 29 books which don’t need to be read in any particular order. For those of you who don’t know, Bradley also wrote The Mists of Avalon and the other volumes of that series. She's a boss.

The Spell Sword isn’t perfect, in especial regard to the technicalities of story telling. However it's immersive and fills the role of a great fantasy story. It just doesn’t make you think too much and if you try to think about the story too much, you’ll indubitably question it’s plausibility. All the while we could be instead questioning the plausibility of our own life stories, and respond by picking up another fantasy novel.

a snack for my great grandchildren

 

This whole time, all I've ever wanted was to find a snack to love, and to pass that love down to the end of my bloodline. From this Christmas to the final Christmas, may we cherish the barely descript flavor of these air-filled nets of fried potato flour, and reminisce on all the great times we had at TGIF's. Pub Bites are going to be bigger than Santa Claus.

Wait. I don't know if I've ever been to a TGIFriday's before. When I was a kid, we used to buy bags of their weird potato skin-flavored chips. They were far better than these stupid things. And the people over at Friday's probably expect I want my $2.40 back, and they're probably laughing about it right now. Bastards.

Deer Creek split with Ice Troll

When I think about music in Colorado, I picture John Denver getting off stage and receiving a lit joint from Dave Matthews, the headlining act, ready to tear it up in front of a sunset on a mildly frosted mountainside. Further in town, the walls of a house are shaking because in the basement Deer Creek is drilling to hell with their epic american doom metal.

Do they have delay pedals? You bet. Does their drummer know exactly when to finally hit us with some mountain-solid double bass? Finally, yes. Some of their riffing can get repetitive, but I give them a pass because it's so catchy and sludges so well. Melodic vocals in metal can be a real deal breaker for me. Often they're too clean and christian, or they're too hyper and power metally. You know, almost happy. Paul from Deer Creek hits that sweet spot; lifeless at times, but never weak, and never ignoring the value of creative phrasing.

On the other side of this tape we have Ice Troll, who I don't know as much about. They play instrumental ambient metal, which can be really cool, but I think ambient music lends itself too easily to songs without structure; songs the band didn't think were worth memorizing. It's cool if you can play well and make cool sounds, but Ice Troll just keeps rocking out at the same pace, with no surprises and no hooks. Heavy muzak. Low effort songs played by good musicians.

This tape can be bought here.

How to Avoid Making Art (or Anything Else You Enjoy) by Julia Cameron

I read the ebook of this, expecting it to be a longer, with more details. Among illustrations, it illuminates all the excuses people make for not doing creative work, no matter how passionate they are. Often alleged artists don’t know how to get back on track, especially once they’ve gone into adult mode. The need to be artistic is often trumped by the need for security.

It is commonly considered responsible to follow every suggestion made by our parents, employers, and the fear-mongering media. Why should we be troubled to make art? We are exhausted from doing everything we are told and if we are doing everything we are told, then why should we need to do anything else? Due to our lack of creative fulfillment, we find ourselves compelled to follow even more responsible suggestions.

By eliminating creative outlets, I find people tend to remedy their lack of satisfaction by consuming more instead of creating anything. Why not? Don’t you sometimes feel guilty in the face of so much targeted advertising? Tangent over. This book doesn’t go into any deep theories, however it does show that excuses can take a lot of time and effort to validate. I know what it’s like to want to make more art and to not do it. If you find yourself in that situation, I strongly recommend this little book. It's probably at the library.

Face/Off (feat. Nicolas Cage)

In 2018 I went to an Ozzy Osbourne concert. 4/5 of the band, including Ozzy, were kind of just rocking and having a good time, taking it easy. It's an easy gig. But on stage left, we had Zakk Wylde; one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. He doesn't even need to care about how the song is played because he can just shred the whole time. He made the show both boring and exhausting, and the set was like two hours long.

Much like Face/Off, with a strong hook and all-star cast. I see John Travolta on the poster and assume it's going to be a great film. All the acting was great and the practical effects were stellar. It would have made a great comic book, but instead it's an action movie with a capital A. Nearly every scene suggests a one in a million chance of success over failure and it's a success every time for our hero Archer, against bad guy Castor; both played by both John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.

The action scenes just go on for way too long and it's very clear every time something happens which might come into play later. So there are no surprises, but we don't notice because everything is so violent and extreme amidst constant face-touching. Archer wants to rip Castor's face off and I want to rip my own face off and smoke a cigarette in the hospital with no face. Let's see those rankings.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. City of Angels
5. Gone in 60 Seconds
6. Matchstick Men
7. Vampire's Kiss
8. Face/Off
9. Honeymoon in Vegas
10. The Family Man
11. The Weather Man
12. The Croods

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

The ebook of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland came free with my Moon Reader app. And I asked, 'Why shouldn't I take some time and participate in something so culturally significant?' I don't get what's so great this book. Did it become such a cultural phenom just because it's kind of weird?

Alice does weird stuff and weird stuff happens in a weird place. The Disney animated film was fun, sure, but the book didn't especially amuse me. I never worried about Alice. If she died, it would be just as bad as if the Queen of Hearts died. Who cares? Maybe I'm too dense to understand.