David Dubrow's Blog, page 16

Bits and Pieces 1/26/2018

I’ve (hopefully) got something really good coming next week, but for today you’ve got some bits and pieces. Normally I’m more on the ball with my posting schedule, but the flu season this year has hit Chez Dubrow like a sledgehammer filled with snot to the sinuses, so we’re all in recovery mode.

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On the heels of the Tolkien/Lewis book I read not long ago, I finished Alister McGrath’s C.S. Lewis – A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet. This biography focuses on Lewis’s fiction, Christian apologetic writings, literary criticism, and his other scholarly works as a way of helping us understand him. Despite that, it’s not a dry account by any means. It’s a loving but warts-and-all portrayal, showing us a brilliant man who, like all of us, had flaws that he tried to overcome, with varying degrees of success. There’s a bit of an overemphasis on date placement, with much of one chapter devoted to proving that Lewis’s stated year of conversion from atheism to Christianity is incorrect, but it doesn’t muddle the content too terribly. There’s so much I didn’t know about Lewis that I do now, including his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien (and how it fell apart), his WWII radio addresses, his unusual relationship with Mrs. Moore, and his employment at both Oxford and Cambridge, among others. Altogether an amazing book. I’ve said many times that the Narnia novels were the first books I read as a child, and I can’t help but thank Lewis as the writer who connected me with a universe of true wonder and sparked a love of fantasy that I’ll always possess.

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We need to have a talk about coffee. Well, not coffee so much as coffee culture. And not even coffee culture per se, but a certain aspect of it that I find inexplicable. I’m rather headache-prone, so I avoid all forms of caffeine as much as I can, but I do enjoy decaffeinated coffee on the weekends. (Yes, I know decaf has some caffeine in it, but not anywhere near as much as high-test.) And I’m a morning person! I know, I know. It’s a curse. Other people drink regular coffee, and I don’t care. I also don’t care that plenty of people need that coffee to get up in the morning. I do my thing, you do your thing, and we can all get along.

What I don’t understand is this bizarre enjoyment people take in explaining that they’re going to be assholes until they’ve had their cup of joe. We’ve all seen the memes: Don’t Speak to Me Until I’ve Had My First Cup. I Drink Coffee for Your Protection. Bring Me the Coffee and Back Away Slowly. Etc, etc. You need coffee. I get it. I don’t get the cheerful advertisement that your body is in such a state that you’re unable to function as a mature, well-adjusted adult until you’ve had a morning stimulant. You don’t need to be ashamed, but it’s not something to be proud of, either. Take a bennie like normal people.

Movie Review: Unlisted Owner

I reviewed the movie Unlisted Owner at The Slaughtered Bird:

So there I was, minding my own business, doing no harm to anyone, when Chris Barnes, proprietor of The Slaughtered Bird, called me on the telephone. *

“Hello?” I answered.

“It’s me, mate.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. Fucking wanker. I’m sending a film for you to review. Do it up right this time,” he said.

I couldn’t help it; I began to cry. “Please, don’t…don’t do this to me—”

“Quit blubbing, you big girl’s blouse. Have it for me by tomorrow.”

Click.

And that’s how I came to watch Unlisted Owner, the low-budget, found-footage indie horror movie I will review for you today.

Was the movie as good as the title? Better? You can find out by clicking and reading!

An Appalling Interview

Christian Toto interviewed Paul Hair, Ray Zacek, and yours truly on his site Hollywood in Toto:

HiT: “Bake Me a Cake” is ripped directly from the headlines with a sneaky twist. Can you share why you decided to tackle that topic head on?

Dave Dubrow: A writer friend suggested the idea behind Bake Me a Cake some time ago: a story about a mom-and-pop bakery asked to do “The Aristocrats” of cakes. He/She requested that he/she remain anonymous, which is one of the reasons why Appalling Stories is necessary: the far-left stranglehold on publishing is so pervasive and frightening that even moderately left-wing writers avoid controversial subjects for fear of social and professional backlash.

I had to write the story because the underlying concept behind it is playing itself out right now in the real world, and it’s as ludicrous as any fiction you can bring to mind. Sweet Cakes by Melissa has been ordered to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to a lesbian couple for not baking them a wedding cake.

The plaintiffs’ hurt fee-fees are more important than the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Read the whole thing here!

Bits and Pieces 1/17/2018

Kind of a short week, what with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and my son being sick the last few days. He’s fine now, more or less; I attribute this to watching hundreds of episodes of The Amazing World of Gumball during something called Gumball and Darwin’s Couch Party. I enjoyed the show for a while, but I’m kind of Gumballed out for pretty much the next couple years. I do like Banana Joe, though. And Hot Dog Guy.

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As a lifelong fan of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, I was thrilled to find that A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18 was on sale. The rather lengthy subtitle describes the contents adequately, though the book shouldn’t be read as a biography of either Tolkien or Lewis. The author, Joseph Loconte, did exhaustive research into these two men’s lives, their writings, and the terrible years of World War One, and it shows in the text. One of the most riveting aspects of the book is its description of the horrors of WWI, and what such horrors did to the very soul of Europe (yes, I know Lewis was Irish). We can handwave it and say, “Yes yes, it was horrible,” but that doesn’t scratch the surface of the loss of humanity that war caused, and how we’re still feeling its echoes a hundred years hence. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

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It’s a bit strange for a Jewish man to be so interested in this stuff, but I watched the movie Risen not long ago. Part detective story, part gospel adaptation, it tells the story of Clavius, a Roman Tribune tasked by Pontius Pilate to discover what happened to the body of Jesus Christ after His resurrection. Joseph Fiennes as Clavius and Peter Firth as Pilate put in fine performances, though I’ll admit to liking Peter Firth in everything since his turn as Colonel Caine in Lifeforce. The movie was strongest in the beginning, with the plotting of the Sanhedrin and the interrogation of witnesses, but fell apart a little when Clavius began traveling with the Apostles, looking for the post-resurrection Jesus. What saved it from going completely off the cinematic rails was the Apostles’ sheer joy: they had found the Messiah, and despite what lay in store for them, had nothing to fear. Cliff Curtis as Jesus also helped, making Him a cheerful, human figure who you wanted to like. Overall, it’s an entertaining film.

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I recently read an article in The Federalist titled It’s Time to Call a Truce. It’s similar to my piece Endless War in that it describes the destructiveness of the Culture/Outrage War, and how the faux-outrage tactics being used to fight it are not good for either side. The writer, Nathanael Blake, expresses something we’ve all been saying for some time:

However, many on the Right only reluctantly decided to use such methods. They made a deliberate choice to try to force the Left to live by its own rules, such as the precept that those arousing the wrath of Internet mobs should be fired. The level-headed Jim Geraghty of National Review recently argued that conservatives can live with toleration or with outrage mobs, but that “what we won’t accept is a world where the rules only apply to one side.”

All in all, Blake’s article is reasonable, except for its call for a truce. You can’t call a truce in war until one side is utterly defeated. One side has to win, and the other side has to lose. Then the victor calls a truce. Insofar as there are no clear victory conditions in the Culture War, my original premise still stands: it can’t end. It’ll never end. Calling for a truce is foolish. Social media companies deliberately silencing conservatives and dimwits excluding science fiction convention participants over political differences show that this kind of ugliness is baked into left-wing ideology. As long as you make politics the barrier for entry to everything that’s not political, the war must go on. It’s happened to me. It’ll probably happen to you. Which side are you on: the instigators or the defenders? Does it have to happen to you before you stand up and fight?

I say this often, but it’s so important: the Social Justice Warriors may be in control of the news media, entertainment, and education, but believe it or not, they’re in the minority. They’ve controlled so much because we, as normal people, let them. We’re the tolerant ones: we tolerated their silliness for years as an unpleasant but necessary side-effect of supporting the inalienable right to free speech. It’s only now that we’re realizing our forbearance was a mistake. This notion of 47 genders is a fringe idea, not a mainstream concept. Socialism is a destructive, anti-human ideology, and claiming that it’s “cool” is a notion entertained only on the fringe, not the mainstream. Politicizing every aspect of daily life is something fringe elements on the left popularized. Western civilization is not advanced by these ideas, but is instead dismantled by them. We’re bigger than they are. We just have to sack up and fight the good fight.

The Print Version of Appalling Stories Is Live

I’m pleased to announce that the print version of Appalling Stories: 13 Tales of Social Injustice is live on Amazon!

Now’s your chance to get a physical copy of the book that Benjamin Wilhelm, Staff Writer for NOQReport and noted advocate for veterans and Second Amendment issues called “A must-read for every patriotic American!”

Appalling Stories isn’t controversial for its own sake; it’s controversial because it tackles themes, characters, and situations that have suddenly become counter-cultural in a society marinating in politically correct agitprop. We use social issues as the setting, not the theme, bringing you entertainment first and foremost. The kind of entertainment that would send the Social Justice crowd screaming for a safe space.

Get your copy now before it’s banned for content!

Book Review: Hardened Hearts

I reviewed the horror short story anthology Hardened Hearts at The Slaughtered Bird:

I’ve whined before in this space about how reviewing books can be a terrible can of worms, particularly if you’re a writer yourself. Every positive review you write invites accusations of favoritism, and every negative review alienates the people in your own community.

So right now I’m going to have to alienate a whole bunch of writers, because I really didn’t care for Hardened Hearts. A horror anthology of short stories focusing on the theme of love, Hardened Hearts didn’t live up to the promise of its subject matter, and far too many of the stories within read as flat, leaden, and without affect.

Some books do it for you, and some don’t. Check out the rest of the review here.

Book Review: Wrestle Maniacs

More a treat for horror/dark crime fans than true devotees of professional wrestling, Wrestle Maniacs, unlike the sport it’s based upon, pulls no punches in its all-out brutality. Funny, disgusting, and over the top, when it hits it mirrors its subject matter in a way few short story anthologies can hope to emulate, and when it misses you’re left with the sweaty, sticky spectacle of a Montreal Screwjob.

The book begins with a foreword by Jeff Strand that’s blessedly brief and leads into Tom Leins’s terrific Real Americans, a hard-core tale of drugs, crime, and former wrestling professionals with names like Gringo Starr and Fingerfuck Flanagan. This story really sets the tone for the remainder of the book.

Nick Bullman, the protagonist of James Newman’s Ugly as Sin, returns in the offering A Fiend in Need, though you don’t have to have read the former to be entertained by the latter. This theme of returning characters continues with Joseph Hirsch’s Three Finger Bolo, a gut-wrenching tale of dirty, bloody fighting featuring “Bam-Bam” Abruzzi, the father of Hirsch’s Ritchie “Redrum” Abruzzi in the novel My Tired Shadow.

Fans of lucha libre aren’t left out of the wrestling spectrum with Hector Acosta’s From Parts Unknown, an arresting, bizarre tale of homecoming, and Gabino Iglesias’s revenge story El Nuevo Santo’s Last Fight. You might be forgiven if you thought that David James Keaton’s El Kabong was also a story of luchadores, but it’s not: it starts with the unforgettable line, “While I was still stumbling around trying to figure out why my pants suddenly didn’t seem to have any leg holes, police officers were pounding on my door eager to tell me my wife was found dead in a guitar case.”

Eryk Pruitt twists up the reader like a fish in a Boston Crab in his Last of the High-Flying Van Alstynes, a tale of loss, family, and mental illness. We travel back to pro wrestling’s pre-television days in Ed Kurtz’s Duluth, and Duncan P. Bradshaw’s Glassjaw, another story with a single word as a title, takes place in dialogue rather than action.

Patrick Lacey’s Kill to Be You is not only out there, but way on the other side of the galaxy. The universe, even. And you’ll definitely want to skip lunch before reading Jason Parent’s Canadian Donkey Punch. Just…just trust me on that.

The editor of the anthology, Adam Howe, has the funniest offering in the book (natch) with a Reggie Levine Clusterfuck (sic) titled Rassle Hassle. This time, Reggie finds himself in the wild and wacky world of wrestling, where his unique willingness to do almost anything to help a friend (or a casual acquaintance calling himself a friend) comes in quite handy. I only threw up once reading it, so that’s good.

You don’t have to like professional wrestling to enjoy this collection, particularly if you’re a pseudo-intellectual like me who looks down his nose at such low-brow fare. All you have to remember is the words of wrestling great Ric Flair: “Whether you like it or not, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going. Woooooo!”

Movie Review: The Rizen

I reviewed the sci-fi/horror film The Rizen at The Slaughtered Bird:

Most of the movie takes place in an underground scientific facility, which would have worked better if they’d tried harder to make the endless series of corridors look a little different. As it was, you can tell that they shot the film in pretty much the same hallway over and over again despite the long stretches of walking. Frances begins the story by awakening, wandering the corridors, and finding an unconscious scientist. The rest of the movie concerns itself with why they’re there, who they really are, and what those horrible humanoid monsters prowling the halls are supposed to be.

Did the movie get a rise-er, a rize out of me? Only one way to find out!

Stranger Things Season 2: Review

In this piece I’ll be spoiling the hell out of Stranger Things season 2, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, now would be the time to read one of the other articles on this site, or, better yet, read a good book written by a fine writer.

This was the season where nothing happened. None of the principal characters changed in any significant way, and many of the same events from the first season repeated themselves in this one. Just like in season one, a new girl (Max) enters the friend group and causes chaos among the pre-adolescent protagonists. Will Byers is once again held prisoner by a horrific, otherworldly force, and is freed only at the very end. Once again Will’s mom trashes the whole house to solve Will’s terrible mystery. Nobody died except for characters introduced in this season, so it was a wash (I was kind of hoping that Bob Newby would turn out to be Soviet spy, but that didn’t happen). We learned very little about the main monster, the smoke-thing looming menacingly over the town like a post-Christmas credit card statement. Apparently it’s referred to by the writers as The Sentient, which is about as silly a name for something as The Situation.

It took an entire plot-miring episode, The Lost Sister, to give Eleven a badly-needed makeover. Why does Eleven’s left nostril bleed when she uses her powers? Because both nostrils bleed when she really, really uses her powers, that’s why. John Byers and Nancy Wheeler finally hook up despite a lack of chemistry that I can’t believe isn’t deliberate. The introduction of Max (a diversity pick? I ask, you decide) diluted the friend group (“the party”) such that Mike Wheeler ended up becoming entirely unnecessary the entire season, which was a shame: the show needed his vulnerability and childish stubbornness. Mr. Clarke, one of the only grown-ups in the show who wasn’t full of shit, was pretty much written out of the season, replaced by moderately-amusing conspiracy nut Murray Bauman.

Steve Harrington stepped up as a decent, even heroic character, even if he had to be saved by a little girl from being beaten to death by Billy, the unnecessary antagonist. (Note that Billy is the only human bad guy in the show; Paul Reiser’s ineffectual, uninteresting replacement of Matthew Modine eliminated all major human antagonists.) Dustin turned out a bit more likable than expected. Lucas wasn’t tested enough in this season to make him interesting, though his little sister was hysterical.

So what’s next for season 3? More teenage psychics, no doubt. #8’s Shadow-like powers were very neat, if not terribly well thought-out. What is the Upside-Down, anyway? It can’t just be a whole other universe that just happens to have its own rules and ecosystem; it’s clearly a horrific reflection of our own. What does The Sentient/Situation want? Will Hopper and Dustin suffer ill effects from breathing in the demonic farts of the disgusting tunnel-anuses? Will the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who this show is clearly aimed at get their fill of 80’s nostalgia in depictions of old-style candy bar wrappers and coin-op arcade games?

We’ll find out late this year, I suspect. I’ll be there. Will you?

2017: The Year in Review

It is the curse of age that the older you get, the faster that time seems to move. I am not young, so the days go by in eyeblinks. My son, who is not yet seven, helps me retain a tenuous link to youth that keeps me from wearing my slacks up to my sagging pectorals and the hair from sprouting more than a good inch and a half from my ear canals. At this rate I’ll be writing next year’s Year in Review post after lunch tomorrow, and the one after that before my tongue has cleared the last fragment of potato chip from my molars.

In January I released my short story Beneath the Ziggurat as a Kindle Single, to generally positive reviews. I explained the genesis of the story here (it’s probably not what you think). Later that month I interviewed author Adam Howe for the release of his newest Reggie Levine story in a satirical piece that we thought was pretty funny, at least. January was also the month in which I reviewed episodes one and two of Charles Band’s Ravenwolf Towers serial horror program.
February was Trancers month, in which I reviewed three of the Tim Thomerson Trancers movies (the review series stretched into March). I reviewed the original film here , Trancers II here , and Trancers III here . Then I moved on to the other two Trancers films, Trancers IV: Jack of Swords , and Trancers V: Sudden Deth . So yeah, I’m kind of Tranced out.
I read and reviewed Adrian Cole’s Tough Guys in March, which turned out to be my book of the year. Despite that I had read a great book that month, March was rough for me: I contracted the worst cold I’d ever had, something that progressed into an illness that required steroids and antibiotics to knock out. During that time I watched more television than I would have liked, and reviewed the high- (and low-) lights.
April is indeed the cruelest month, and during that time I showed the reading public my much-prized Atmo Horrox cards. I also wrote a guide for people interested in writing for other websites in exchange for Exposure Dollars, the coin of the current internet realm. This piece helped crystallize my decision to stop writing for The Loftus Party, as my Exposure Checks kept bouncing and nobody thanked me for coming into work.
May was the month of terrible movies. I had watched and reviewed so many of them that I had gained very minor notoriety for ripping them to shreds. One filmmaker so admired my deconstruction of the awful Strip Club Massacre that he sent me his own horrible movie, titled Gimme Head: The Tale of the Cuyahoga Valley Bigfoot . It was pretty much as bad as one might expect, so I performed as required, proving that I aim to please.
Things got brighter in the month of June, when I watched what turned out to be my favorite film of the year, Deep in the Wood . I also wrote my most-read piece of 2017: Twitter Is the Worst Thing Ever Devised . Like I said, everyone loves to complain about social media even while we continue to make it a cesspool. Sadly, June was also the month in which my former boss Peder Lund passed away. Peder was an adventurer, a Special Forces A-team leader in the Vietnam War, and a brilliant business owner. From the loaded .45 revolver he kept on his desk (on it, not in it) to his legendary glower to his incredible generosity, he was the most interesting and remarkable man I’ve ever met.
I wrote my favorite piece of the year in July, when I talked about the value of forgiving yourself , a thing so many of us find hard to do. It focused on separating the you from what happened to you, and understanding the difference between a bad experience and a bad decision. As is often the case, it didn’t get the kind of play I hoped it would. With writer Paul Hair, I also wrote an article describing Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer for the website Hollywood in Toto.
The dog days of August saw me penning a piece about not alienating your customer base with your horrible politics (everyone’s politics are horrible and contradictory and poorly thought-out), a theme I would later return to. I also wrote a review of My Tired Shadow from an advance copy given to me by author Joseph Hirsch.
In September I made the glossary for my Armageddon series of novels live on the website. This was also the month I flew out to Los Angeles to mentor some fiction writers for the Calliope Writers’ Workshop , sponsored by Taliesin Nexus. This was during the Hurricane Irma disaster, making it quite an interesting and experience. Later in the month I interviewed noted book reviewer and writing promoter Nev Murray .
October was a particularly dark month, not least because it hosted the worst mass shooting in American history, which I talked about here . Political activist and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s disgusting crimes came to light not long after this, and I brought up a number of issues that hadn’t been addressed here and here . Just before Halloween I reviewed the indie horror/sci-fi/comedy film It Came from the Desert and interviewed its director Marko Mäkilaakso.
Things for the site began to wind down in November, but I got a few good pieces out there. One was a review of Ann Bridges’s novel Private Offerings , and another was my article Endless War . There I gave the reading public the terrible news that the cultural divide was never going to heal, at least not for decades, if not centuries.
In December Obsidian Point released Appalling Stories , a short story anthology I wrote with Paul Hair and Ray Zacek. Using social issues as the setting, not the plot, it’s an entertaining collection of old-school tales that stick a thumb into the politically correct eye of the current publishing culture. The print version will be available early next year.

So that’s 2017 in a nutshell. If things go well, 2018 will see the release of The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, the last book in my Armageddon trilogy. We’ll see what happens after. Whatever it is, it’ll be extraordinary. I guarantee it!

Happy New Year, and thank you for reading.