David Dubrow's Blog, page 27

2016 in Review: Top Five Books

I read about as much science fiction this year as I did horror, with some history, politics, and a few other genres thrown in. Picking favorite books from a list is, of course, a subjective sort of enterprise; how I feel about a book after I read it sometimes changes over time as I consider the quality of writing and story. I can tell if a book’s going to be worth my time from the blurb and the Amazon “Look Inside” feature. If the blurb’s substandard, the book is going to suck. If the first paragraph sucks, the rest of the book is going to suck worse. It’s axiomatic.

Reading book reviews is a secondary criterion for book selection at best, particularly in the indie horror genre: many “great” books have been shopped around to fellow writers and hangers-on for review who are eager to maintain a friendship instead of providing genuine (and necessary) critical feedback.

With that in mind, here are the five books that I enjoyed the most in 2016.

5. Mortal Gods: Ignition by Paul Hair: A short, punchy anthology of superhero stories that hint at a terrible, dystopian America, and the lengths some superhumans will go to change it, or at least survive. Highlights the ugliness of modern warfare.
4. The Ember War Saga by Richard Fox: Comprised of nine (!) books, this military sci-fi series was a lot of fun to read. I didn’t write an “official” review, but if blowing up aliens is your thing, these nine short novels will keep you entertained.
3. The Well-Built City Trilogy by Jeffrey Ford: A surreal fantasy series about memory, ethics, beauty, and a number of other themes that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn’t. Despite their density, fans of Jonathan Carroll (like me) will enjoy all three books immensely.
2. Dark Gold by David Angsten: I met David online and was impressed by how thoughtful he was, so I picked up a used copy of Dark Gold from Amazon (it’s out of print and not available as an e-book). Some weeks after the purchase, I figured I’d just read a couple pages here and there as time permitted, as I read everything else on my Kindle. It didn’t happen: I was drawn in and wound up spending several hours in a world of cocaine piñatas, bikini bottom-hidden gold coins, and a gigantic sea creature that’s as disquieting as anything I’ve ever read. A fun, fast-paced novel that reminded me of Eric Van Lustbader’s work (without the ninjas and communist apologia).
1.  The Final Cut by Jasper Bark: In 2015 I picked Jasper’s Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts as my favorite read of that year, so I know how it must seem to pick another Jasper Bark book as this year’s favorite. Still, I have to do it because The Final Cut is just so damned good. It’s deep, disturbing, and meaningful, written by someone who’s expert at making you feel what he wants you to feel: a rare skill. It’s not just horror, though it’s horrific. It’s not merely urban fantasy, though it’s fantastic. What it does is straddle the genre line, keeping you turning the pages even as you cringe.

If you’d asked me at the end of last year that I’d be picking these titles as my favorite of 2016, I’d have called you crazy. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2017.

A Love Letter to Michelle Obama

At The Loftus Party, I wrote a love letter to Michelle Obama:

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, FLOTUS Michelle Obama said of Donald Trump’s election, “We feel the difference now. See, now, we are feeling what not having hope feels like.” This quote has occasioned much anger, but the outrage is misplaced. We have been blessed by Michelle Obama as our First Lady these last eight years. Who else in history has been more possessed of a candid, unflinching sense of her own importance to a backward, racist people than Michelle O?

Click to read the whole thing.

2016 in Review: Top Five Movies

Through my association with The Slaughtered Bird I’ve watched more movies this year than last, particularly independent films. Some have been great, some middling, some terrible. A few have been real stand-outs, either through overall quality, or because I just liked them better. Even trashy films can be awesome. Here’s my list of the top five movies I’ve seen in 2016:

5.  The Invitation : A prime example of a film that’s not great, but one I quite enjoyed. Yes, some of it was silly in parts, but it had an overall, apocalyptic concept that tied it together and made it memorable.
4.  He Never Died : It’s usually a very good idea to avoid Henry Rollins in any guise, but in this movie he shone as an enigmatic, bizarre character in a  brutal, hyper-violent story that’s got several laughs and plenty of blood.
3.  Little Boy : It’s rare to see magical realism done right in any medium, but this film pulled it off. A poignant, if not terribly thoughtful movie about faith, family, and friendship that hits all the right notes.
2.  Der Bunker : Hysterically funny despite the subtitles, it’s a German film that also focuses on childhood and family, though with a much more bizarre set of circumstances. Weird, but relatable.
1.  Atmo Horrox : A film that’s so bizarre, so surreal, that it defies description. How can I describe the galumphing Catafuse, the french fry bucket, the horrible ghoul chasing the family man in a way that makes sense? I’m as surprised as you are that it’s my favorite film of the year, but when I sat down and thought about this list, Atmo Horrox topped it without effort. You’ve never seen anything quite like it.

I hope to have my Top 5 Books list ready by the end of the week.

The Slaughtered Bird Movie Review: The Snare

At The Slaughtered Bird, I reviewed The Snare:

The film’s three characters are deliberately unlikable: the fragile, quite probably batshit-crazy Alice; Alice’s annoying, party-girl friend Lizzy; and Lizzy’s unbearably slimy boyfriend Carl, who steals the show as the person you’d most want in the world to be sent on a one-way trip to the Andromeda Galaxy. They find themselves locked in the top floor of a vacation apartment building (holiday flats to my friends in the UK) with nobody to help them for miles around, and deal with their situation in variously unacceptable ways.

Is this a film you want to watch before Christmas? Hanukkah? Eating a big meal? Click to find out!

Cindy Brady’s Big Sin

At The Loftus Party, I put the Susan Olsen situation in its proper context:

The public spat was terribly ugly and unprofessional, and even if Olsen hadn’t used the term “faggot,” she should’ve been fired anyway, because that’s not how adults settle differences. Nevertheless, Acord-Whiting initiated the spat by publicly whining about his difference of opinion with Olsen, as though Olsen committed a crime by disagreeing with him in the first place. In the end, Acord-Whiting made out like a bandit: he got publicity to bolster a career virtually unknown outside the rarefied, if smog-filled air of Los Angeles; he garnered sympathy from all the right people for having to endure online name-calling in this, the year 2016; and he exacted revenge against a political adversary (which, let’s face it, trumps everything).

Read it all to get the big picture.

2016 in Review: Top Five Posts

As the year draws to a close, let’s look at the five blog posts from 2016 that had the most amount of traffic.

Coming in at Number 5 (November 18) was my post on the 2016 U.S. presidential election: Why You Lost Is Because “I Won” . It described the forces that led to Donald J Trump being elected President of the United States, and seemed to have struck a chord with readers of a particular political bent.
The Number 4 post (May 9) focused on the artist Kukuruyo, and how he was attacked by progressives/leftists/Social Justice Warriors because of his political leanings: SJWs and Content Creators: Ideological Purity Required . It’s a theme I would return to several more times throughout the year.
Number 3 (May 16) was a more personal post: I Quit Facebook . In this post I discussed leaving the social media platform and why I did it.
For Number 2 (April), I’m combining three posts, though individually they’d take the 3, 4, and 5 spots themselves: the David A Riley saga. In Part One , I discussed how horror author David A Riley had been kicked off the jury for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers Association because a coterie of very loud, very angry Social Justice Warriors didn’t like his former politics. In Part Two , I interviewed Riley himself to get his side of the story, which nobody else had bothered to do. And in Part Three , I analyzed the contretemps, putting it into context.
The far and away winner for Number 1 (Feb 22) was Red Flags and Ginger Nuts of Horror , where I described how Jim Mcleod, owner of the site Ginger Nuts of Horror, kicked me off the writing staff and called me, a Jewish man, a Nazi for having opinions that millions and millions of other people share, and expressing those opinions on my personal social sites.

What’s clear is that the political material tends to get more hits, though some of my book advertisements and book reviews inched into the top ten. It doesn’t mean that I’ll be writing more political material; as always, I write about what I want to write about, and sometimes it’s political, sometimes, cultural, sometimes neither.

Get the Greek: Free December 9 – 12!

My Kindle Single Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale is free on Amazon from December 9 through December 12!

A perfect story to ease you the rest of the way through the holiday season, whether you trim a tree, light a menorah, or both. Click to get your free copy today!

The Evan Video

At The Loftus Party, I deconstructed the viral Evan video:

We need to talk about the Evan video. It’s gone viral, so it’ll be relevant for about five minutes; referenced by pundits for another five days; and watched by your elderly parents in five weeks, who will ask you if you’ve seen that Ethan video on the YouTube. Despite that we’re on the tail end of Evan’s relevance cycle, we should still discuss it. The video raises important issues, but not in the way the producers think. Take a look at it and come back. I’ll wait.

Click on over, watch the video, and read the piece. You’ll be smarter for it, I promise!

Uncaged Book Reviews – December 2016 Edition

Writer Amy Shannon was kind enough to read and review The Nephilim and the False Prophet on her website:

It’s not a typical end of humanity paranormal or even supernatural story. It’s explosive, full of action and there are some Biblical references, but it tells its own story, and the reader is brought right in, wondering if the end is truly near.

This review and several others were picked up for publication in the December issue of Uncaged Magazine. Click to read interviews and book reviews of other titles you might find worth your while!

(After you’ve picked up your copy of The Nephilim and the False Prophet, of course.)

Another Layer on the Cake

This delves into politics, but stay with me. It involves you, too.

There’s a website called Buzzfeed. If you’ve seen social media, you’ve seen something from Buzzfeed, because it posts lists like “The 25 Gayest Pictures of the Pope” and “27 Cat Pictures That Are Never Not Funny”.  Buzzfeed also has a news division, which has as much to do with real journalism as Japanese bukkake videos have to do with personal intimacy. A recent Buzzfeed piece attacked the Christian hosts of an HGTV show called Fixer Upper because they belong to a church that has beliefs different from whatever the Buzzfeed editorial staff believes. You can read the details here:

Reporter Kate Aurthur, who was unable to obtain comment from the couple, wrote only that their church stood “firmly against same-sex marriage.”

“Their pastor considers homosexuality to be a ‘sin’ caused by abuse — whether the Fixer Upper couple agrees is unclear,” a headline with the article said.

The Buzzfeed article is a blatant, disgusting attempt to ruin the careers of the Gaines couple because they might think differently. The Fixer Upper hosts were minding their own business, climbing the ladder of success, and simply found themselves under attack from a media outlet looking for a scalp. That’s Buzzfeed’s form of journalism.

Going to switch gears for a moment, but hold on. It’s all building up to something.

The other story is that Kellogg’s, at the request of a tiny but loud handful of progressive activists, has decided to pull all of its advertising from the conservative site Breitbart.com because Breitbart has a different political outlook than they do. Here’s another story about the dust-up:

Breitbart has drawn flak for its controversial articles, such as a piece that warned of “Muslim invaders” and another that dubbed conservative thinker Bill Kristol a “Renegade Jew.” The site had 19.2 million unique monthly U.S. visitors in October, up from 12.9 million a year ago, according to ComScore Inc.

Sounds pretty inflammatory, doesn’t it?

It isn’t. The “Muslim invaders” piece was written as satire by a gay man (his sexuality is relevant if you read the article), and the “Renegade Jew” piece was written by David Horowitz, a Jewish man concerned about Israel and America’s future under a Clinton administration. Note the lack of context in the Bloomberg article I quoted; it’s a smear attempt.

A few years ago I wrote an article for Breitbart about plot over politics for storytellers; it was a great honor for me, because Andrew Breitbart was one of my heroes. Breitbart.com is not a racist, anti-Semitic organization, despite the smears from an advocacy press devoted to eliminating all ideological opposition.

Kellogg’s is deliberately limiting its customer base, telling you, the customer, that if you don’t toe the progressive line, it doesn’t want your business. It’s virtue-signaling. So now I’ve got to drop Kellogg’s products from the shopping list.

I ask this all the time, but it’s still relevant: aren’t you tired of having somebody else’s politics shoved into your face at every turn? Aren’t you sick to death of every little decision becoming a choice between just living your life and participating in a stupid ideological battle? That’s what the American left has driven us to. It’s not enough to sit in front of Fixer Upper after a long day of work; Fixer Upper‘s hosts have to have the right beliefs or they’ve got to go. You can’t just eat cereal: the cereal company has to approve of you. Bruce Springsteen won’t play for you if you don’t let men into women’s private areas. Target wants you to know that it wants men in women’s private bathroom and changing areas.

Now that the Social Justice Warriors and other progressive ideologues have had their faces rubbed into the muck of defeat by the tiny little hands of Donald Trump, a man who ran specifically against their agenda of social engineering, they are furious. Losing isn’t going to make them just stop. They’re going to redouble their efforts, sticking it to us stupid, cousin-humping hicks in flyover country harder than before. This Culture War is going to get uglier than you ever thought possible.

I got to experience the Culture War firsthand when Jim Mcleod, owner of Ginger Nuts of Horror, kicked me off the writing staff of the site and called me, a Jewish man, a Nazi, for having a set of beliefs that millions and millions of other people share. So I’m pretty familiar with it.

I know you didn’t ask for this. I sure didn’t. Do you really think I want to try to explain to my kid why we can buy some cereals and not others? Why we no longer go to the “red store”? They’re the ones doing this to us. That’s what you’ve got to understand: this is a war and the Social Justice Warriors have decided that if you’re not with them, you’re the enemy. They really, really do hate you. Get that through your head. They hate you, even if you don’t hate them. Even if you’ve never even heard of them and didn’t give a damn. While you’re minding your own business, they’re thinking about how much they hate you.

Now’s the time to start giving a damn. Vote with your feet. Don’t go where you’re not wanted, which means not buying products from people who hate you and not consuming the media made by people who hold you in contempt. Recognize that you’re in the crosshairs of an implacable enemy, and behave accordingly. Anything less is asking for abuse.