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Signed Book #4 in Our An Evening With Nadine Darling Giveaway: Rusty Barnes' RECKONING!

9/12/2015

One of my absolute faves in the past two years, Reckoning by Rusty Barnes.

Richard Logan begins his summer day as any fourteen-year-old might: working a farm job bringing in hay, avoiding his hard-headed father, and hanging out with his friends. When he stumbles onto an unconscious woman in the woods, he has no idea that the process of helping her will lead him into the darkness of the deeply held deceits of his rural Appalachian town. Both brutal and beautiful, RECKONING shows the seams and limits of family love and community tolerance while Richard discovers where manhood truly lies.

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in over two hundred journals and anthologies. After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a literary journal which was featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio, ending its ten-year-run in February 2012.

Sunnyoutside Press published two collections of fiction,Breaking it Down and Mostly Redneck. MiPOesias published two chapbooks of poetry, Redneck Poems andBroke. Cruel Joke Press published his poetry collection, I Am Not Ariel in November 2013. Sunnyoutside Press published his novel, Reckoning, in March 2014. His poetry book, I Cannot Be Saved, will come out from Cruel Joke Press in October 2015. His next scheduled book, a crime novel titledRidgerunner, will be published in May 2016 by 280 Steps. An essay appeared in Change Sevenrecently. Recent fiction has appeared in Plots with Guns, Interstice, and in the anthologyAppalachia Now. His flash fiction will also appear in the forthcoming anthology Best Small Fictions 2015. Two poems appear in Crow Hollow 19.

He serves on writing conference faculties and panels throughout the country, including recently with Associated Writing Programs, Somerville News Writers Festival, Writers@Work, The Parlor, and Grub Street Writers, as well as their annual Muse & Marketplace conference. He taught composition, fiction writing, and literature for over ten years at New England universities such as Emerson College and Northeastern University.

If you want to know more, friend him on Facebook, Google+ or check through his recentinterviews. If you'd like to read his poetry and get poetry-related news, visit Live Nude Poems.

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Signed Book #3 in An Evening with Nadine Darling Book Giveaway: Myfanwy Collins' 'BOOK OF LANEY"!

9/9/2015

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I am thrilled- beyond thrilled to get this fantastic book into another pair of hands. Adding to the growing list of signed books we will be giving away on October 2nd at AN EVENING WITH NADINE DARLING in Cambridge, MA, we are proud to include the brilliant THE BOOK OF LANEY by Myfanwy Collins.

After her brother is involved in a grisly murder-suicide, fifteen-year-old Laney is sent to live with her grandmother in the Adirondack Mountains. Laney gradually warms to her new home—especially her relationship with a mysterious neighbor—but before she can appreciate her new life, she must uncover the secrets that have haunted her family for decades.

Myfanwy Collins was born in Montreal but moved to the Adirondack Mountains in New York when she was still a child. She has since lived all over New England and worked as a waitress, a bartender, a nanny, a chambermaid, a clerk, a high school English teacher, a secretary, a ghost writer, and a traveling worker with Cirque du Soleil. She is the author of a novel, Echolocation, and a collection of short stories, I Am Holding Your Hand.

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Great Performances: Peter Fonda in 'Thomas and the Magic Railroad'

9/8/2015

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It's been a long summer, you guys, and nothing has made this long-ass summer seem longer-ass than The Sprout Channel running their Friday Summer Family Movies, or, what might better be explained as, Welp, These Were in The Budget. Now, look, honestly, I really understand wanting to do something special and having to work within one's means. For example, I have a book launch celebration coming up, the modestly named (by me) AN EVENING WITH NADINE DARLING, which will feature, fun, games, giveaways, and a few of my favorite writers and people, including Sarah Blake, the poetess behind the amazing MR WEST. I thought to myself, shit, why not have a little fun and book a celebrity appearance, and I went online and found a talent agency. They wanted to know my budget. I was like, "Oh, I don't know....I don't really need a big name. Maybe someone fun, obscure and a little retro."

And the guy was like, "Hey, how about Sisqo? Would that be OK?"

"OMG," I said, dying a little inside. Yes! My goodness, yes! Sisqo, who graced us with 1999's ubiquitous Thong Song, would be better than OK, he would be perfect. Certainly he, the diminutive artist who carved out a niche as the number one lover of ladies with "dumps like a truck, truck, truck," would know how to get the crowd going and have a little fun with us writers for a couple of hours. So, yes! Yes, yes, fantastic.

The talent agency guy was like, "OK. He needs seven grand plus flight and accommodations."

"Who does?" I asked.

"Sisqo. That's what Sisqo needs. Seven grand."

"Sisqo. The singer."

"Yes. Seven grand."

"Does he....need the money for an operation, or...?"

"No," said the talent agency guy, starting to get irritated with my lack of faith in Sisqo's earning power. "That's his asking price."

"Can he ask for less?"

"No. Look, it seems like Sisqo might be a bit outside your price range," said the talent agency guy in, like, the understatement of forever, "How about C+C Music Factory?"

"Well, I don't know," I said, because I wanted obscure, not, you know, Witness Protection Program. Would anyone know the group if they weren't performing their hit "Gonna Make You Sweat?" And if it weren't 1989? "I guess maybe that might work. If they wore name-tags or something."

"Awesome. Their asking price is $3500 plus flight and accommodations."

"$3500.....American?"

The conversation ended with me saying that I'd have to check with my publisher on the budget, and that "I'd get back" to them. Which never happened and will never happen. So, if Sisqo is sitting in a darkened room with a rotary phone in his lap, waiting for it to ring, I'm really sorry. I just don't have that much money to spend on irony right now.

Anyway, Sprout. And their terrible movies. One of the really bad ones they play a lot is 2000's Thomas and the Magic Railroad. This film was released in theaters, for some reason, and not just on DVD, or, better yet, not at all. It stars Alec Baldwin, who I guess was paying off a bet or something, as Mr. Conductor, who's left in charge of the railways of Sodor while Sir Topham Hat is away on business. And there are many, many problems in Sodor, including but not limited to a murderous diesel locomotive called Pinchy, and not enough Enchanted Gold Dust Powder to help Mr. Conductor and his nephew magically transport from place to place. And if you understood one fucking thing I wrote after the name Alec Baldwin, you either A.) have children, or B.) have had too much Enchanted Gold Dust Powder.

"Can we please hurry up into the future to when it's time for me to be a star again?"

So, Pinchy has an evil plan to rid Sodor of all the steam engines, for some reason that is never explained. Mr. Conductor farts out some theory that things have been worse on the island of since they lost an engine named Lady. Apparently, she went missing after Pinchy attempted to murder her years ago. This got me to thinking: who's driving Pinchy? The devil? Is he like Christine, or something? Wait, who is driving any of the trains, for that matter?

Meanwhile, some other nonsense happens. If you aren't familiar with the various Thomas the Tank Engine shows and reboots, there's basically two kinds: The creepy old version where nothing on the engines' faces moves except for their eyes, and the creepy new version where it's computers and everything on the engines' faces moves. This movie utilizes the former. Thomas and his friends run the gamut of emotions forced to only use their eyes for expression, like motorized stroke victims angling wildly for a sip of water.

Finally, we meet teenage Lily, played by the delightful Mara Wilson, who does her best with a role that insists she feel love for her stone-faced grandfather, played by a stone-faced Peter Fonda. Literally. Literally, Fonda, as Burnett Stone, has a reaction of quiet desperation for at least two-thirds of movie. His granddaughter comes to visit: he responds by looking tiredly off into the distance. His granddaughter asks him visit the train station with her and a local boy: he shakes his head ruefully and wanders off into the distance. The local boy runs to tell him that his granddaughter is missing and has been for hours: he nods in acceptance, and thinks about trains. It's as though his agent handed him the script for Thomas and the Magic Railroad and he was just like, "you know, it's time for that Oscar. I'll bet voters will really connect with this aging train smuggler."

Because, surprise! Peter Fonda has been hiding Lady, the missing train, in his shed for years. He's tried many different coals to make her run, but none of them......ZZZZZZZZZ. What?! Waffles?! Oh, right, that train movie. They finally get the old girl working, and then there's a scene in which Peter Fonda rides her down a secret railroad with all the intensity of Captain Ahab barreling toward his white whale, while everyone around him screams "it's working, it's working!" in regard to the train and not Fonda himself, one would imagine. The good news is that when Lady runs, she queefs out that special gold dust that Alec Baldwin and company require to defeat the villainous Pinchy. And, that happens, in some way. I think he falls off a trestle, or something, emoting his agony with his rolling, rolling eyes.

"I don't think this story line really translated into a full length movie, Mr. Baldwin."

So, anyway, that's how I spent my summer vacation. I watched some shitty movies and tried to book Sisqo for my book launch. Could've been worse, I guess, although I'm not sure how. Maybe had I been falling down a big flight of stairs while I was watching this movie or trying to book Sisqo. Maybe then.

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#2 Signed Book For Giveaway at An Evening with Nadine Darling: Robin Stratton's 'Blue or Blue Skies'

9/6/2015

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Next up in our cavalcade of fun, excitement and awesome giveaways- An Evening with Nadine Darling, October 2nd at the Out of the Blue gallery in Cambridge, MA- a signed copy of Blue or Blue Skies, a novel by the incredibly talented author and poet, Robin Stratton.

Robin Stratton has been a writing coach in the Boston area for over 20 years. She is the author of The Revision Process, On Air (a National Indie Excellence Book Award finalist,) Of Zen and Men, In His Genes, and two chapbooks, Dealing with Men and Interference from an Unwitting Species. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she’s been published in Word Riot, 63 Channels, Antithesis Common, Poor Richards Almanac(k), Blink-Ink, Pig in a Poke, Chick Flicks, Up the Staircase, Shoots and Vines and many others. She’d love to have you visit her at robinstratton.com.

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#1 Signed Book for AEWND Giveaway: Jeffrey N Johnson's THE HUNGER ARTIST

9/5/2015

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Oh, man, thank you so much to author Jeffrey N Johnson for donating a SIGNED copy of his fantastic book THE HUNGER ARTIST to the big giveaway we're holding at OUT OF THE BLUE GALLERY in Cambridge, Ma. for our ever-unpredictable AN EVENING WITH NADINE DARLING on Friday, Oct. 02. We are so excited and so, so honored to showcase this novel.

High school art teacher Carl Rittenhaur is in line to inherit the family farm, but his guilt over the deaths of his parents burdens him from claiming his legacy. His life gets a jolt when his ex-fiancé, who had once pulled him from depression and later abandoned him at the altar, returns to town with her two-year-old daughter in tow. She is in the last throes of a custody battle with the girl’s father, and Carl has been mysteriously named in the hearings. Tangled in an old romance and a corrupt family court system, Carl must find where his true hunger lies, either for his birthright and all its memories, or for this new family that may be his salvation.

Jeffrey N. Johnson's first novel, THE HUNGER ARTIST, is a finalist for the Library of Virginia's People's Choice Award. He was awarded the Andrew Lytle Fiction Prize by The Sewanee Review in 2011, and his fiction and poetry have appeared in Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Lake Effect, Real: Regarding Arts and Letters, Red Rock Review, Evansville Review, Potomac Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Dos Passos Review, Roanoke Review, Gargoyle and Aethlon, The Journal of Sport Literature. He is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a recipient of a Creative Fellow grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.

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The Kover of the Rolling Stone

8/31/2015

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Kim Kardashian West was on the cover of Rolling Stone a couple of months ago. OK, fine. Makes sense; it’s not like she didn’t have anything to promote. But, musician Sinead O’Connor had a problem with it. Like, a big problem. She posted to Facebook (picked up by The Mirror) about the cover, in a calm, diplomatic manner befitting her intelligence and 30+ years of experience in the music industry. Haha, no, she said this:

“What is this cunt doing on the cover of Rolling Stone ? Music has officially died. Who knew it would be Rolling Stone that murdered it? Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh can no longer be expected to take all the blame. Bob Dylan must be fucking horrified.

#BoycottRollingStone”

After this harsh critique, I took it upon myself to check out the magazine cover in question, and there she was, Mrs. Kardashian West, in a jaunty little sailor’s cap, her full bosom teetering over the edge of a red bra, smiling coyly. She looked very pretty. She did not appear to be ruining music in the least.

I should mention that many, many people have graced the cover of Rolling Stone in its nearly fifty years, and not all of them have been musicians. The cast of Friends comes to mind. Al Gore. Johnny Knoxville. The girls of American Pie 2. Tori Spelling. Ashton Kutcher. The Olsen Twins. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Once, on a cover that seemed a little odd even to me, Laura Dern posed topless in a lei and jorts. These non-musical cover models were not really called out by anyone. No one suggested that they were cunts or that music was doomed by their presence. Life went on, and we all continued with the quiet desperation of our lives.

But here, in 2015, is Sinead O’Connor, livid. Here is music’s end: a pretty, popular, hugely successful woman on the cover of a magazine.

"Opinions, I haz them."

O’Connor’s opinion is not just her own, it’s the weirdly accepted opinion of thousands and maybe millions of people. Why do we hate Kim Kardashian West in a way that is so real and feels so….vindicated? What did she ever do to any of us other than starring in a reality show that none of us have to watch, selling products that none of us have to buy, or posting to an Instagram that none of us have to pay attention to? She seems a scapegoat for all the misplaced anger we feel for celebrities; a woman who has done nothing to “earn” her fame.

I must protest.

Kim Kardashian was born in 1980 to lawyer Robert Kardashian and Kris Kardashian. Her godfather was OJ Simpson, whom her father defended in his 1994 murder trial. In 2006, while she was working as a celebrity stylist, a sex tape between Kim and then boyfriend, rapper Ray J, was allegedly stolen and released to the public. That same year she and sisters Khloe and Kourtney, opened a clothing boutique called DASH in Calabasas, California. In 2007, she and her family appeared for the first time on their long running E! reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Over the following eight years she released three fragrances, recorded a song, sold a self tanner and co-authored a book, Kardashian Konfidential. She endorsed Midori liquor, Skechers shoes, Carl’s Jr, and OPI nail polish. She has supported recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and urged the U.S. government to acknowledge it. She created a line of contemporary jewelry called Belle Noelle. She and her sisters designed a clothing line, the Kardashian Kollection for Sears. She posed for Playboy. She appeared on Dancing with the Stars and The Apprentice. She created an online shoe company called shoedazzle.com. She donated her clothes to the Dream Foundation, a charity that grants final wishes to ailing adults. She traveled to Africa for Russell Simmons’ Diamond Empowerment Fund, which educates and empowers individuals in diamond communities around the world. She starred in two spinoffs of her highly-rated reality show, Kim and Kourtney Take Miami, and Kim and Kourtney Take New York. She and her sisters opened a second store, Kardashian Khaos, in Las Vegas. She began dating rap superstar Kanye West and was profiled by Oprah Winfrey. She gave birth to a baby girl, North West, and, aligning with her marriage to West, appeared with him on the cover of Vogue. She has an insanely popular online game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. She is pregnant again. Her estimated net worth- and this seems low, honestly- is around 85 million dollars. She’s 34.

Hot night out at the soup kitchen.

I guess we are all think the same thing, right? What a lazy bitch. No, no, really. Could she do any more? On top of all of that and every interview and every magazine cover and being a mom and pregnant and a wife, and an aunt and daughter and sister and step daughter? Why do we hate her so? Because she is beautiful? Because she seems to have such a charmed life? Because she is everywhere?

Well, you might say, she’s famous for having sex on tape.

To which I would answer: Fuck you. So what? Don’t buy it. Don’t watch it. A woman having sex with her partner and enjoying it, and not being ashamed of her body? That’s controversial?

Well, she’s a slut.

FOR HAVING SEX? What is Ray J, then? What year is this? Fuck you.

Her father defended OJ. That’s where they got their money.

When she was a child. What would you have done? Legally emancipated yourself? Go to hell.

She’s stupid and vapid.

Compared to whom? You? What’s the last book you read? Was it filled with LifeSavers?

She’s had a lot of plastic surgery/she’s so filled with Botox.

You know….even if she’s had work, which is absolutely none of anyone’s business, it’s her fucking body. And may I please go off book for a minute to discuss how this woman was treated while she was pregnant with her first child? She was pregnant, wearing what she wanted to wear, which, apparently, was not up to par for us, the sweatpants and cat-shirt wearing public, and we went balistic in our cruelty. She wore a black and white dress and was memed in a side by side photo with a KILLER WHALE. She wore a flowered dress and was compared to A SOFA. Can I also tell you that I gained seventy pounds with my first daughter. I was massive, and I felt like garbage, and yet everyone around me wanted me to know about my fucking glow. Had I gone through a fraction of what Kim Kardashian West was subjected to, I never would have left the house and I never would have stopped crying. Why was it OK to do this to her? How do we validate this?

She’s a bad mom. She’s rarely photographed with her daughter.

Yeah, well, that’s bullshit, but whatever. You ever seen Blake Lively’s kid? What about Mila Kunis’? But they’re just being protective. They’re good moms. If Kim Kardashian is photographed without her daughter, though, it’s because she’s a distant, shitty mom.

She opens herself to criticism. Every part of her life is tweeted, or Instagrammed, or in a magazine, on on TV. She’s a business.

No. She’s a businesswoman, and a really good one. She is not a woman who gives us what we want, which is to be affected by our vitriol, so we try harder and harder. We’re angry that she doesn’t hate her body, and she isn’t ashamed that we’ve seen it. We hate that she is not like other female celebrities, that she knows she is beautiful, that she doesn’t apologize for it and self-deprecate. We hate that she loves her life, perhaps because we hate ours, and it’s easy to bully a person who won’t fight back, a person whom everyone else is already bullying.

I don’t know what exactly spurred Sinead O’Connor to call a pregnant mom a cunt and say that she ruined music, but I know that a lot of people were very quick to applaud her. At this point the hate for Kardashian West feels like some warped game of telephone: one person whispers one thing to another, and by the end of the line whatever was said has become so distorted and wrong that it’s funny, but in this case everyone believes the last whisper- it is as comforting and familiar to us as hearing our own names said aloud. We don’t have to like a person, or put money in their pockets, to admit that they deserve the most basic respect. We don’t have to buy the magazine to know the woman on its cover is human. What I know for sure is that I will defend this woman, not because she needs me to defend her, but because people shitting on her day in and day out for fucking stupid, antiquated reasons that no sane person would ever, ever attribute to any other woman "IRL" is blatant, shameful fucking sexism. You can go ahead and talk yourself out of that, you can try to, but in the end you won’t be able to. Because you know what you’re doing.

Recently, in C magazine, Kardashian West talked about being body shamed while pregnant:

"I couldn't help it, and everyone would say, 'She can't stop eating.' I delivered at 180, and they were like, 'She's 210 pounds. She's getting dumped because she's too fat' and all these ridiculous stories. It really took a toll after the fact, when I was losing weight. I gained 50 pounds, and it's tough to get it off….

"Before I was always smiling, and so into being out and about. After I had the baby, I was like, 'These are the same people that made fun of me, and posted the stories that were so awful, calling me fat for something I couldn't control.'

"I don't want to smile for them. I don't want to be out. Even if I was more confident, I just didn't feel like being that girl who was going to be smiling for every photo. It changed my mood; it changed who I was; it changed my personality a lot."

I'd stop if I were you, Internets. If I were you, I'd stop.

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Benny and Joon: A Love Story Filled with Hilarity and Criminal Neglect

8/24/2015

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Johnny Depp's journey from 21 Jump Street heart-throb to sunglasses wearing hat with scarves is long and storied. Some say it started with Cry Baby or Edward Scissorhands, the beginning of the endless bro-affair between Depp and his wild haired director paramour, Tim Burton, but those of us in the know, i.e., old with a lot of time on our hands, understand that Depp would always find a way out of any Peter DeLuise-containing prison, from the very time he graced our movie screens in A Nightmare on Elm street, as a thoughtful young man who gets eaten by a bed. We've always had sense of him, as with Brad Pitt, as a very, very good-looking person who feels stymied by his attractiveness, and starts trying out various limps and face putties and outlandish accents, perhaps as a means to make himself more approachable to us, the ugly, weird speaking, limping public. Thus, the early nineties were filled with small strange movies in which he played small, strange characters. And none of these movies were smaller or stranger than Benny and Joon. (Author's note: That was a lie. There were like 90 smaller and stranger films he was in, actually. Try sitting through Arizona Dream without alcohol, for example. Jesus, what did we ever do to you, Faye Dunaway?)

"Hi, it's not for me. This movie just really, really needs help."

So, Benny (Adian Quinn) and Joon (Mary Stewart Masterson) are an adult brother and sister living together because their parents have died in an accident. Also because Joon is Schizophrenic, but we don't actually know that for certain because Benny and Joon is not the sort of movie that says the word "Schizophrenic" out loud. We know that she is "sick" and at times goes into difficult rages when she doesn't take her medicine. Well, shit. Can you guys please be more vague about that? "Sick," "difficult rages" and "medicine" are all terms that apply to me after a Taco Bell run, so we might need a little more info to fully appreciate the deep subject matter of this particular film. No? Oh, it's just Johnny Depp pretending to be caught in a windstorm to the delight of others? Ok, my mistake. Anyway, while Benny is at work, he generally leaves Joon with a housekeeper (untrained, it seems, in dealing with a Schizophrenic person) but Joon has managed to chase them all off with her erratic behavior. And that's a real pain in Benny's ass, apparently. Why can't his mentally ill sister be more like him, he wonders, an unlikable man who spreads his dissatisfaction with his life everywhere he goes like a kind of angry, sighing chlamydia? God, *get it together, Joon.*

In scene which is ABSOLUTELY NOT A PLOT DEVICE AND COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE, We learn that Benny enjoys spending time with a group of guys playing a special poker game, the stakes of which are not money. I know, I know. I thought an orgy, too, but sadly, the fact that there were no orgies was only one of the many ways that Benny and Joon disappointed me. Joon, who was permitted to join the game because wackiness, loses a bet against Benny's good buddy, Mike, and Mike's Cousin Sam (Depp), comes to live with Benny and Joon as Joon's Housekeeper. So, in a third of a movie, we've gone from deeply neglected mental illness to human trafficking, but, man, are these kids cute as the dickens, or what? Did I mention that Sam is illiterate? OMG, you guys, we are exactly one online porn addiction and one Annette O'Toole away from a really kick-ass TV movie.

"I totally made this up, you guys. This is totally my bit."

Benny, Joon and Sam visit a local park, where Sam starts doing all these Charlie Chaplin slash Buster Keaton-like crazy tricks with his hat and cane, and pretending to fall and shit, and, inexplicably, people are all about it. Yeah, ok, look, I know people, and with people, there is a very fine line between "that's interesting" and "I don't want to hurt you, but I will." And, nothing makes that fine line finer than a fucking mime. But, even Benny, who hates the world and everything in it, is enchanted by this adorable copyright infringement, and suggests to Sam that he could be more than a criminally unfit caretaker for a Schizophrenic woman. He could move on to bigger and better parks! Eat out of much nicer garbage cans! Don't be a fool, Sam! Don't waste your talent on these common rubes and park squirrels!

But, Sam has other plans, for example, getting down in the biblical sense with Joon while Benny is away pursuing some tired-ass subplot with a waitress played by a pre-EVERYTHING Julianne Moore. Benny keeps on with his pestering Sam about his career, and Joon gets pissed and lets slip the fact that she and Sam are now romantically involved. Benny flips shit and throws Sam out because now he cares very deeply for his sister, not like before when he would just let any guy he won in a poker game be her number one caretaker, not protecting her from physical and emtional experiences that she might not be able to metabolize in her state, even if they are with DREAMY, DREAMY FLOPPY HAIRED SAM.

"Oh. What have I done to another human being?"

Sam and Joon run away- And god knows where these two are going. 7-11? Maybe!- but, on their city bus ride to nowhere, Joon starts to hear voices in her head and begins arguing loudly to herself. She cannot be consoled, and Sam ends up having to take her to the hospital because all of the sudden this movie is wondering whether or not True Love can take the place of, like, Clozaril. Benny and Joon's doctor are interested in having Joon move into a group home, where she can get the care that she needs- not just from drifters,- and for some reason that's a really bad idea, the villainous group-home. So, in the end, Benny is basically like, well, fuck it, why don't we get you an apartment of your own, Joon, and Sam can live with you and Julianne Moore, who has nothing better to do, will try to make sure you guys don't burn the house down when she's not at work, in the can, or otherwise living her life. So that's what happens. Fantastic!

I mean. Yeah. Look, in the Say Something Nice Challenge, I guess it was cool, for one brief, shinning moment, for Johnny Depp to have a romantic lead who was roughly his age. Now, if Mary Stewart Masterson were still working, she would be cast as the frail Nana to Johnny Depp's new romantic lead, Elle Fanning. So, that was a nice touch, maybe, for 22 years ago. (clears throat.) Well.

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REGARDING HENRY, It Sucks Really Badly

8/17/2015

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Mike Nichols' Regarding Henry came out in 1991, when I was a self-important acting student (as though there's any other kind) at San Francisco's School of the Arts, otherwise known as "The School That Brought you Margaret Cho And Nothing Else of Cultural Value." My horrible compadres and I were discussing upcoming movies during class one day, because what else would we be doing? Studying our craft? LOL. One particularly tiresome boy proclaimed that Regarding Henry would win Harrison Ford the Oscar. Now, this was no outside thinking on his part; many, many entertainment shows and magazines had said it first- but, as I say, I did not like his boy. He had no sense of personal space, and he smelled like relish and thought he was a really good actor. He was not. Neither was I, of course, but I was way more delusional.

So, I said, "You haven't even seen the movie yet."

He said, "but I just KNOW."

I said, probably wearing denim overall shorts with one strap undone over bicycle shorts and a bootleg Bart Simpson tee-shirt from the flea market and also a faux leather necklace that showcased the outline of the continent of Africa, "That movie is not gonna win shit."
Somehow, despite my cruelty and terrible fashion choices, I was correct. Not only did it not win shit, it also did not deserve to win shit.

"I'm a very bad man. Very good men don't do their hair like this."

In the movie, Harrison Ford plays Henry Turner, a real late-eighties, early-nineties kind of heartless lawyer asshole who lies in court about medical negligence in the case of a poor old lady in a wheel chair and wears his hair in a slicked-back Gordon Gecko meets Angry Otter sort of way. He's an A-1 shit to everyone he comes in contact with, from his secretary to his long suffering wife Sarah (Annette Bening) who has a really sad life of being pretty and rich. Henry and Sarah have a 12 year old daughter, Rachel (Mikki Allen), who he doesn't give two shits about. By this point, you might be wondering why such a terrible man might have such a great wife and kid who are both so kind and still so affected by his cruelty. And the answer to that is: NO REASON. I mean, did Henry used to be an awesome guy, or something? Was he skipping merrily though the fields one day picking wild flowers when he was kidnapped and brainwashed by an evil law firm?

Anyway, Henry goes to buy cigarettes and John Leguizamo shoots him. Maybe Henry had said something unkind about House of Buggin'? He pays the price by suffering serious brain damage and amnesia. He can't do anything, and receives physical therapy from Bradley (Bill Nunn, who was Radio Raheem in Do The Right Thing.) Bradley dances around the hospital with his Walkman(!) and most of his dialogue centers around his desire to have sex with every woman he comes in contact with- basically what I'm saying is that it's a really dignified role.

"Thanks for helping me love dogs, nameless gunman."

So, when he's able, the first word that Henry says is "RITZ." (Ugh. More about that terrible payoff later.) Everyone thinks he's talking about crackers, and that becomes a thing. Henry, now a wonderful person because he has brain damage, learns to walk and talk and read and paint elaborate paintings of boxes of crackers. Anyway, he goes back home and now he's basically Jesus with more approachable hair. He's a great friend and husband and dad now, too. OH, I WAS SHOT, HERE'S A PUPPY. I HAVE BRAIN DAMAGE LET'S EAT COOKIE DOUGH, I HAVE NO SIDE EFFECTS OTHER THAN BEING A WONDERFUL, INNOCENT MAN CHILD.

So, eventually, Rachel goes to boarding school because Shitty Henry From The Past set it up and apparently everyone is just still going along with it because reasons. Henry makes up a lie that he can remember his first day of school and that he was scared, too, but it worked out, and makes a nervous Rachel feels better. OK, keep in mind that Henry doesn't know what a bra is, but he can concoct elaborate lies to emotionally support his child. Oh, my God, why doesn't John Leguizamo shoot US ALL in the head, right? I mean, just as a parenting tool.

"Is this some kind of....toilet paper?"

Meanwhile, all the jerks at the law firm have let Henry keep his job, not as a lawyer, of course, but as a guy who goes around and looks at things and sits in at meetings asking questions about birds. Eventually, I guess, taking a break from the Etch a Sketch with which he must have been provided, Henry runs across the paperwork that proves that the hospital was negligent in THE CASE OF THE OLD WHEELCHAIR LADY, which, coincidentally, was the title of the most depressing Scooby Doo episode ever. So, Henry runs into a meeting all like, "OMG, GUYS, WE WERE WRONG LET'S GIVE THE OLD LADY ALL THE MONEY AND THEN TAKE HER OUT FOR A NICE MEAL MAYBE OLIVE GARDEN WHERE THEY HAVE NEVER-ENDING BREAD STICKS." And, everyone else is like, "Um, Henry....can you just sharpen these pencils, or....?" And he gets fired, in a scene where his old mentor with crazy eyebrows is like, "So, sorry, Henry, we thought you'd be way stupider than you are. Our mistake."

Concurrently, Henry and Sarah are having a magical love affair, with deep fulfilling love making and hand holding and PDA in the park, until Henry, who I guess is like fucking Encyclopedia Brown all of the sudden with his goddamned snooping, finds evidence of an affair Sarah had when he was still an asshole. He confronts her, and she's like, "Dude, look, it was before you were shot with that enchanted good-guy bullet," but Henry gets mad and runs away, and in the process spies the RITZ hotel and is like, "Oh, haha, it was never about crackers, I was actually fucking a woman from work at this hotel." And then he goes back home like, oh, never mind.

The film ends with Wonderful Henry obtaining the evidence that his law firm lied in the case of the Wheelchair Lady and giving it to her like, "hey, sorry we ruined your life for a bunch of years, may I please use your bathroom?" There's zero consequence to this, also. The law firm doesn't sue his ass or anything, and no one mentions how Henry and his family will be able to remain in their post high-rise apartment now that all he can do is paint pictures of one kind of cracker. He and Sarah pick up Rachel at boarding school and the three of them go home as a big happy family. And, shockingly, no, no one received and Oscar for this powerhouse shit-storm of a movie, which was actually written, oh, my god, by a young J.J. Abrams. So, take that, delusional boy from acting class, whatever your name was. I'll bet you're feeling pretty foolish right about now, 24 years later. And then, haha, here's me with my hounds-tooth bike shorts and my Charles Barkley Nikes and my plastic glasses with a condom as one lens, being a winner!!

2 Comments

Whatever, Rudy

8/17/2015

6 Comments

As a writer, wife, and step/mother of seven, I hate many things. Yes, hate; I know it’s a strong word. Whoever implied that motherhood increases the likelihood for compassion and grace in a woman has never sat up until five in the morning with a snot-filled child, watching Barney the dinosaur tenderly dance with someone’s grandfather on the Sprout Channel. They’ve never been asked if they’re having twins when they’ve very clearly explained that they are having a single child, and then have the asker ask if a second child might be in there, somewhere, “hiding.” They’ve never stood in line at Walgreens with infant suppositories, covered in child vomit and grape flavored liquid Tylenol as the guy in front of them pays for his newspaper in Canadian pennies. But, of all the mild, non-personal inconveniences of my life, I’ve never hated anything so much as I hate the film Rudy.

If I may explain: a few years ago, my husband and I hauled the kids to my mother in law’s condo in New Hampshire for a week during summer vacation. Being August, It was wet and hot and oppressive, much like wearing the Batsuit around constantly, and there were intermittent thunderstorms, which meant we spent a lot of time in the condo, slapping at mosquito bites and watching movies. My middle stepson was playing flag football that year, and excitedly informed us that his coach considered the 1993 film Rudy to be required watching for all team members. Now, I should mention that I graduated high school in ‘93, also known as America’s Most Unintentionally Hilarious Year. We all knew how pathetic we were in our overall shorts and jean waistbands that rose to damn-near chest level. The theme to my prom, for example, was “WHOOMP! (There it is!)” And we knew better than to give any credence to most of the non-Jurassic Park movies of the time, such as Rudy, Cliffhanger, and basically any Hugh Grant vehicle post-Divine Brown. But, whatever, it was free on VUDU, which should have been enough of a warning, and we had no place to be, so we all piled into the living room to watch Rudy. Big Mistake.

The film opens in the sixties, in bluecollar Illinois, with Rudy Ruettiger, the tiresome youngest of four boys who loves Notre Dame Football in a thinly veiled ploy to receive acceptance from his drunken stereotype of a father, played drunken stereo typically by national treasure Ned Beatty. (All drunks in the nineties were played by either Ned Beatty or Charles Durning, and casting calls consisted mainly of the two of them showing up to audition in their underwear, stinking of gin. They would fall over nothing, proposition a potted plant and then lock themselves angrily in a supply closet. Whomever did it the most naturally got the job.) Little Rudy loves Notre Dame so much he plays recordings of Fighting Irish coach Ara Parseghian’s motivational speeches and makes his dimwitted best friend, Pete, watch him lip-sync and act them out. And the best friend just has to sit there and take it, when all he wanted probably was a nice meat loaf dinner and a few hours away from his own drunken stereotype of a father.

Got a few bucks, kid? I feel like a Zima.

Flash forward several years: Rudy has become Sean Astin and is going steady with Sherry, played by Lili Taylor, appearing here in full “a check is a check” mode. He still has dreams of playing football for Notre Dame even though he has terrible grades and is like five feet tall with little or no athletic talent, but Sherry is not there for that. She takes him around to some shitty little house for sale and is basically like, well, Rudy, I’ve listened to you go on and on about Notre Dame for about eight years and presumably haven't even gotten any hot Hobbit sex out of it, because you’re Rudy and probably can’t reach climax unless it’s to a recording of Coach Parseghian singing Happy Birthday, Mr. President, so I’m gonna need us to get married and buy this house. Rudy answers in the way he usually does, by saying something about Notre Dame. So, Sherry’s like, yeah, it’s been fun, enjoy lipsyncing to dumbass Pete until you’re fifty.

BUT THEN PETE FALLS INTO LAVA AND DIES.

That’s how I remember it, but apparently it was an explosion at the steel mill, where he and Pete had taken jobs with Ned Beatty. Before dying, though, Pete gifts Rudy with a Notre Dame jacket he saved up for for like nine hundred years, and Rudy weeps tears of joy and the rest of his family is like, awesome, now he’ll never shut up about Notre Dame. Anyway, Pete dies and Rudy is inspired to make his dreams come true and not end up dumb and dead like his dumb, dead best friend, so he travels to Indiana and hassles a priest until he gets a scholarship into a nearby college with hopes of getting good enough grades to eventually transfer to Notre Dame. Along the way some bad things happen to him: he’s treated poorly by snobby Notre Dame girl Mary after he low-grade lies to her about being a fellow student, a thing she kind of assumed since he wears that jacket- which by now must smell like if a chili dog grew an ass- everywhere and is constantly fucking hanging around, a groundskeeper played by Charles S. Dutton shakes his head and scowls a lot at him, and, worst of all, he meets a character played by Jon Favreau. The latter, named D-Bob (too easy), inexplicably offers to tutor Rudy in exchange for helping him to meet some hot ladies. Right, because Rudy is such a stud, with his stinking jacket, and his witty rapport about Notre Dame, and the way he stalks the groundskeeper in hopes that he can roll around on the football field like a dog rubbing itself on the carcass of a dead gopher.

Eventually, the rich, snotty Mary, who, like all of us, is concurrently intrigued and repelled by Rudy, finds some fug girl for D-Bob to date and D-Bob in turn helps Rudy overcome his deadly- JESUS, TAKE THE WHEEL- Dyslexia, and Rudy is finally able to wiggle his ass into Notre Dame and the football team as part of some Sad Boy Program. Naturally, new head Coach Dan Devine, who wants to win games and, for some reason, is painted here as the bad guy, is like, Well, shit, you’re a nice kid and all, Rudy, but I run a football team, not a fucking Hotdog on a Stick. You’re too short to be a mascot and too uncoordinated to sell peanuts, and you really weird-out the groundskeeper, but maybe, someday, you might be allowed to actually buy a ticket to a game, if you sit far enough away so that the players don’t have to see you. Then, in a twist that EVERYONE saw coming, the actual good, talented players on the Notre Dame team are like, fuck it, let’s compromise our season and professional careers by going against our coach to get that little bastard into some record books that no one will ever read or care about because, RUDY. That happened. I actually stuck around through the credits, because I was expecting a last scene in which one of the Notre Dame players is like, So, what’s that kid Rudy dying of, anyway? Oh, nothing? And he’s a grown man? So, we just…? Well, what the shit’s he gonna do now, go back to Illinois and drink with Ned Beatty? Jesus, you guys, what the hell was the point of any of this? Charlie? Gomez? Moose? (gives double bird.) Fuck you guys, I’m gonna go watch Maude.

Not pictured: Realism

So, I’m sitting there with the kids, in the midst of all this TRIUMPH PORN, and suddenly it occurs to me: Does Rudy even have a mother? Then answer is yes, she bakes a pie in one scene and shows it around, I think. It’s during a scene in which Rudy returns home from Notre Dame during the holidays to find that his ex-girlfriend Sherry is now dating one of his doofus brothers, because HOW ELSE IS SHE GOING TO GET THAT HOUSE? Without one of the Ruettiger Brothers SHE’D BE LIVING IN THE GODDAMNED STREET LIKE A HOBO.

There’s like four fucking women in Rudy. Sherry, the hopeful homeowner; His pie baking mother; Melinda, the rich girl who was mean to him once; and, eventually, the plain faced girl who was just barely not-ugly enough to date Jon Favreau. And that’s what really pushed the bile to the tip of my throat: the fact that my stepson’s coach, a coach to both boys and girls, would recommend this movie, a movie in which a young woman’s greatest dream consists of entering a loveless marriage as a means to own property. And, sure, look- I understand that Rudy, the Rudy that Rudy is named for, doesn’t really come away with any hot shit, being that he works his little ass off for an honorary mention in Notre Dame history as a guy who played one game for five minutes, all in hopes that his drunken father will look up from vomiting in a urinal long enough to slur something that sounds like that’s my boy, but consider the lives of the women in this shit-show. In stark contrast to the men, they are generally not even drawn broadly enough to want anything. Only Sherry, reflected through the dead eyes of Lili Taylor, has passion for one thing, that sad, tiny house, and we still leave the film knowing that she somehow does not deserve it.

For my money, there’s only one movie that girls and boys can watch together and feel the camaraderie that makes up a real squad, and that’s James Cameron’s Aliens. Vasquez. Hicks. Ripley. Hudson. Frost. Bishop. All the men and women and androids of the world coming together to kick some alien ass and to tell Paul Reiser he’s full of shit. Everything else is like Rudy, a weirdly incomplete tale that separates the dreams and goals of boys and girls, honoring one, negating the other. Could it ever be that we want the same thing, the same happiness, the same intergalactic peace? Could it ever be that we both might win? That we both might walk off into the sunset with our smelly Notre Dame jackets strewn over our shoulders, feeling validated and represented, and, nicest of all, part of the same goddamned team?

6 Comments

The Un-pology

4/25/2015

1 Comment

"Can we work like one more really horrible joke in here? For the fans?"

Yeah, it's been a hell of a week for Hollywood. In some good ways, such as the heroic journey of Bruce Jenner, and some not so good ways, such as the news from the set of the Adam Sandler film, The Ridiculous Six, currently shooting in New Mexico. The production hired several native american actors and a cultural adviser from the Navajo Nation, the latter because they wanted to the film to have a measure of accuracy. See, by the time I got that far in the story, my eyes had rolled halfway back to Ohio. Adam Sandler has been making shitty comedies since I was still in high school, and to give you some idea of how long ago that actually was, the theme to my prom was WHOMP! THERE IT IS! Most of Sandler's films center around his character being an idiot and people reacting to that with disappointment, much in the way people reacted to The Three Stooges when they made the transition from mild-mannered business men to kooky, squawking lunatics (and, oh, Jesus, that's the entire premise for the Michael Douglass film Falling Down.) Yes, Sandler went on to some artistic success with director Paul Thomas Anderson in Punch Drunk Love, but keep in mind P.T.A. does so well with a lot of diverse (read: bad) actors because he makes them go against their first instincts. For instance, if the character in Punch Drunk Love was buying a lot of pudding because a certain loophole in the products' promotion allowed him to accumulate a staggering amount of frequent flyer miles, enabling him to travel the world with the woman he loves, Adam Sandler's first instinct as an actor might be to bare his buttocks and dunk them into a vat of the pudding, as though to determine its flavor. This is what makes alternate methods so attractive.

Anyway, eventually, the Native Americans hired to culturally police the set of The Ridiculous Six became irritated and offended by the material and a great number of them left, much like the audience of any Adam Sandler film released after Happy Madison. The Native American actors and the adviser took umbrage as certain aspects of the Sandler-penned script, such as female characters named "Beaver Breath" and "No Bra," a woman portrayed urinating while smoking a peace pipe and inappropriately positioned feathers on a tee pee (I'm guessing in the shape of a penis, or whatever. Don't ask me why.) In addition to all of this, producers seemed to not know or care about the difference between the different tribes, and, when approached with all of this, suggested that if the Native Americans were so sensitive, they should just leave.

So, ok, the producers of this film asked for advisers from the Navajo Nation so they wouldn't get shit wrong and then they got mad when the advisers told them that they got shit wrong. Awesome. That's like the makers of Spongebob Squarepants inviting marine biologists to the set and then going ape-shit when someone suggests that crabs might not father sperm whales and covet bags of money. Who the hell goes to an Adam Sandler movie for accuracy? The most valuable lesson to be learned from this movie in particular is in finance: if a film is slated for a big screen summer release in 2014 and now it's getting made for a Netflix only release at an undetermined time, some one, at some point, dropped the goddamned ball. The notable thing happened later, when Netflix released a statement concerning this whole debaucle:

"The movie has ridiculous in the title for a reason: because it is ridiculous. It is a broad satire of Western movies and the stereotypes they popularized, featuring a diverse cast that is not only part of – but in on – the joke."

Well, no, actually, several members of the diverse cast came forward with deep cultural and emotional concerns, and the producers of the film suggested they smoke-em some cock and not let the sweat-lodge door hit them in the ass when they left, but whatever. There's not even half an apology in that statement; it's just random, tired words put together by a person who was probably wearing underwear constructed from Hulu's tears and black Amex cards when they wrote it. He or she might as well have responded with a statement that was just a block of text cut and pasted A Weekend at Bernie's 2's Wikipedia and then REST IN PEACE ROBERT URICH again and again until they ran out of room.

That same day, Avengers 2: Age of Ultron actors Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans, interviewed in support of the film, were questioned (by a woman) about female character Black Widow and how she seemed to work alongside different male avengers in different Marvel films. Renner responded by calling Black Widow "a whore," "a slut," and, "a trick." Evans laughed uproariously at this, clapped, and agreed that she was "a complete whole." Renner ended this cavalcade of class by dismissively reminding everyone that Black Widow has a fake leg. So, one last slap in the ass to you, disabled people. Don't rest too easy, ok?

"LOL WE'RE THE WORST!"

Evans' PR person reacted quickly with a short, acceptable apology. Renner, on the other hand, farted out a statement that reeked of back-washed Kahlua and cigars lit with hundred dollar bills:

“I am sorry that this tasteless joke about a fictional character offended anyone. It was not meant to be serious in any way. Just poking fun during an exhausting and tedious press tour.”

Man, and I just thought he was being an asshole. I'll have to learn not to judge people by their words and actions from now on. And this half-assed explanation about being tired is 100% in my book, because it's not like he's out at all hours partying and drinking. I mean, what a homebody- have you seen the awesome Holly Hobby needlepoint he sells on Etsy? And, tedious, sure. He's staying at Days Inn during the junket, right? In that room right next to the ice machine? And I've heard Robert Downey Jr. is up to all hours of the night kicking the soda machine, trying to dislodge that one last Mr. Pibb that's caught. HE CAN SEE IT THROUGH THE GLASS, IT'S RIGHT THERE. How it possesses him! What.....no? They're all on Disney's Dime....staying in the finest....best of everything....oh, ok. I must've been thinking of every other person on the planet who isn't playing an Avenger.

The real star here is the Un-pology, the thing people give you when they know they have to say something and they resent the hell out of it. It generally begins with something like "I'm sorry such and such offended you..." which can be easily translated as, "Sorry you're such a sad-ass who wants to ruin our fun," or, in the case of Netflix, can just be a corporation shruggingly trying to convince us all, in the absence of any true evidence, that an Adam Sandler movie is a comedy. In both cases, the guilty parties get away with it because we're going to consume their products regardless of what they say or do. What, are you going to cancel Netflix? I'm not. There are like five kids in my house who would hunt me for sport if I even threatened to change the wi-fi password- and I am not a fast runner, you guys. Everybody is going to see Avengers 2. Yes, so they can bitch and moan about how it's inferior to the first one and how badly it did whatever to their childhoods, but they're still going to see it, more than once in many cases, so what can any of us really say?

Well, I can say, tinged with hypocrisy, that it sucks to hire people to help you and then insult them so personally, and I can say that it sucks for millions of kids around the world to see Hawkeye and Captain America call the woman who fights alongside them a whore, a trick and a slut. For those of us who were old enough to be offended by the latter, the price is not much- maybe irritation and the presence of a few self-important, long-winded blogs (ahem,) but to the child, the teen, the young person who reads comic books and sees these movies as a means of nurturing some sadness, some feeling of isolation, this lesson is a powerful one.

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