Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 247

Nazi's. Jews. Spaghetti Westerns. The Golem. Cinema. Scalping. World War II. Leni Riefenstahl. Bowie knives. And Mike Meyers. Inglourious Basterds.

"It has a Richard Linklater film quality." Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine gets Modern Confessional'd. And likes it. A lot.

Be still our talky, pop culture, Richard Linklater loving hearts and big thanks to TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Collin Kelley for his fab review of Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine. We are most appreciative and for those of you seeking excerpt please do keep reading below. There you go.
"Self-doubt and miscommunication are rife in this novel and Tanzer peppers it with pop culture references and music lyrics that are almost Tarantino-esque. At 172 pages, it's a brisk, hyper read...

"Some weird fuckin' shit, eh, Bud?" We just read that Repo Man was released 25 years ago and we're now trying to wrap our brains around this fact.

The TBWCYL, Inc. 2009 Top Ten Lists are coming and today you get our Top Ten Books. No for real, you do. Just look below.

As there was much work travel and work furlough in 2009, there was much reading, hence we terribly excited to roll-out TBWCYL, Inc.'s 2009 Top Ten Books List, the first of our 2009 Top Ten lists, all of which we intend to post over the next couple of weeks. As with previous years, most of these books are from indie presses, which makes us happy, and many are written by friends, which makes us biased, though luckily, we love being biased almost as much as we love being self-absorbed. In terms...

Caleb J. Ross. Charactered Pieces: stories. And the Blog Orgy Tour.

We have had the pleasure of exchanging some e-mails over the last couple of days with the writer Caleb J. Ross, which got us excited about his new collection Charactered Pieces: stories, which in turn got us excited about the Blog Orgy Tour he's on to support the book, which made us think that it would not only be most necessary to mention all of this here, but that doing so just might change your life. So there you go.

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Fifty - "Vacation."

Beach. Read. Sea lions. Beach. Read. Run. Tide pools. Windy. Swim. Write. Read. Breakfast goodness. Zoo. Fish and Chips. Fresh. Read. Run. Walk. Sun. Run. Family. Read. Kind sushi. Home. Did we mention that we were back? Good. Did we also mention that it is Week Fifty of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year? No? Now we have. And now that we have we should also mention that one, if you would like to follow this project in its...

We're back. And what did we bring you? The new edition of This Book Will Change Your Life. Nice, right?

We travel, we read, we're back. And we have two entries for this edition of This Book Will Change Your Life. First, Fast Forward >>Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter by Eric Spitznagel. Now we should begin by saying that it is most definitely true that we are big fans of the Spitznagel, hence way biased, but Fast Forward is a great read regardless, all breezy and Spitznagellian, which is to say, funny, crude and sweaty, sort of furry and always verging on nudity. And second, Big World by

Some things we are digging as we prepare to briefly drop off of the grid.

Fact, we are sort of mostly briefly dropping off of the grid this week. And so we sort of thought we should leave you with some stuff to read and/or contemplate during our time away.
Yes, we're just good like that.
First off, Stories II from the most excellent short story writer Scott McClanahan is due out soon. This is quite good news. The dude is the bomb. We loved Stories. And yes we love him as well and we are not embarrassed to say so.
We would add, that Scott has also recorded a piece...

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Forty-Nine - "Decade."

It is Week Forty-Nine of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our quite self-absorbed focus on posting one self-portrait per week for one year and this week we have been rocking the top movies, books, records and television shows of the decade at the TBWCYL, Inc. And it has been good. Hasn't it? We hope so. We also hope you have enjoyed following the project on the Flickr and that you might still consider hitting us with a self-portrait all your own that we can post right here on This...

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live, stormy and all Goodchild.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and stormy. Or something like that. We have a new story Weather Report by Wayne Goodchild, which we are way excited to end the year with, and, as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, a music selection from Jason Behrends and Senate dithering prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, that we think you are the bomb, all of you. Big time. Okay...