Dear Harvey,
Check it, bro. I know times look tough right now what with the exposure of your perversions and all but I’d still be willing to work with you.
In fact, if you green light a Toilet Gator movie, I will totally come up to your hotel room and watch you take a shower and masterbate.
I’m totes serious dude. Just watch though. No participation. I have my dignity.
Should I give up on the dream of becoming a rich self publishing millionaire capable of bagging super hot chicks or should I just accept I’m a normal schlub and be with a female schlub until I croak?
Give up writing and be a loser like everyone or bet it all on Toilet Gator?
Discuss
…is that even though my mid life crisis has halted all posts you 3.5 readers are still doing a lot of reading on this fine blog. Thank you.
Hey 3.5 readers. Your old pal BQB here, fresh from defeating the Yakuza. Never get on the wrong side of a Japanese gangster, let me tell you.
For those of you who have been reading this blog intently, you know I’ve always said there was a time limit to all of this. The older a person gets, the more problems they have until they are eventually crushed by the weight of them.
The Alleged Man i.e. the man who allegedly pretends to be me is no different.
You see the poor guy starting dating. What a dumbass. He met someone but there are some issues. He isn’t sure yet whether those issues are surmountable.
He’s a bit broken up about it so much so that running a blog about a magic yeti fighting bookshelf caretaker just seems childish to him now. I know, right?
The Alleged Man is a big dreamer, a man of big ideas and appetites who lives in his head because the real world rarely cooperates with what he wants.
In short it was easy for old AM to slip into a coma for a few years where he believed this illustrious blog and a subsequent self publishing enterprise would lead to him being rich enough to score super hot chicks.
That’s right. You’re all in this for the art. AM is in this for the chicks.
This AM faces some choices. He could stay single and alone in the hopes that Toilet Gator, the best novel ever written, will be a smash hit and score him lots of chicks…or he can give up and, no offense, be one of you normals, waking up next to a normal chick every day and shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond till he dies.
You might say AM should continue to self publish but there’s the rub. What if Toilet Gator is a success? All the chicks would want him but he’d have already committed to someone. It’d be very frustrating. He’d have to abandon Toilet Gator altogether.
So yes I am asking if it is wise for my friend to stay alone in the hopes that a novel about an alligator who eats people while they poop will be a success.
Thoughts?
Dear 3.5 Readers,
I’d like to apologize for not blogging much lately. I was kidnapped by the Yakuza and am currently fighting them. When I am free of the Yakuza I will blog more.
Sincerely,
BQB
Guns and comedy!
BQB here with a review of the indie action comedy film, “Killing Gunther.”
Meh. At the outset, I was a little disappointed. The promotional artwork for the film show Arnold Schwarzenegger extensively, indicating that Arnold plays notorious hitman “Gunther” and a team of hitmen assemble to take him down.
Technically, that’s true. However, Arnold’s presence in the film comes late and is more or less one step above being a glorified cameo. In reality, comedian Taran Killam leads an ensemble cast of killers he has recruited to meet his ultimate goal – “Killing Gunther.”
Bobby Moynihan, Alison Tolman and other funny people pop in throughout the film.
Oddly, the film is told “documentary style” similar to sitcoms like “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.” It seems unlikely because it’s just doubtful that a bunch of criminals would admit to and/or engage in so much criminal activity on film but if you grant the film a little leeway there are times when it actually gets funny.
At first I was disappointed as I was expecting an Arnold filled film only to get Killam instead. However, Killam’s character grew on me. As the film progresses, we learn that Hammond, Killam’s alter ego, has been abandoned his entire life and if he could just kill the world’s most notorious hitman, he could prove his life had meaning. Adding to the motivation is the fact that Gunther boinked Hammond’s ex-girlfriend, played by Killam’s real life love Cobie Smulders of “How I Met Your Mother” fame.
It’s weird. I found myself caring about the characters. The only laughs for me came at the end when Arnold fools the team with a series of unlikely disguises. The credits roll with Arnold singing a country western song in his Austrian accent.
Mixed feelings. I loved Arnold as a kid and there was a time when if the film included Arnold, it was a guarantee it would be good. I can’t knock the guy. He’s done way more with his life than I have. I just wonder if there aren’t a few better roles for this guy rather than him just acting like a goofball on screen.
Then again, he looks like he really enjoys doing it.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
BQB here with a review of “Sleepers.”
In the 1960s, four wayward boys growing up in Hell’s Kitchen end up in a reform school where they are abused in unspeakable ways.
In the 1980s, after “sleeping” or lying in wait for years, they strike against the guards that abused them. Shakes (Jason Patric), a newspaper clerk, serves as narrator/orchestrator of the grand plan while prosecutor Brad Pitt throws a case to get friends Tommy and John (Billy Crudup and Ron Eldard) off the hook for shooting the most abusive guard, Nokes (Kevin Bacon) in a restaurant in plain sight of multiple witnesses.
It’s a tale that weaves across several decades, proving that pain knows no time limit, nor the desire to settle the score. While the plan to give the guards their comeuppance is masterful, it is somewhat sad to see that revenge, even when carried out to perfection, doesn’t always heal old wounds.
There is, of course, the moral debate. Did the guards deserve their comeuppance? Yes. Did they deserve murder? Debatable. On the one hand, they were terrible people who did terrible things. On the other hand, we do have a criminal justice system and perhaps the boys turned adults could have exposed their crimes instead.
Rounding out the cast is Robert DeNiro as the priest who stood by the boys in their youth and again in adulthood. He must make a choice whether or not to lie under oath and it is clearly a choice he does not take lightly.
“The Count of Monte Cristo” features prominently in the story, the Count having once been a prisoner who lied in wait for years before finally getting his revenge.
One thing that struck me is this film has a number of actors who went on to do bigger things but played bit parts in this film. I can’t think of their names but rather just their later characters. Bunchy from Ray Donovan is a bully in the reform school, Roger Sterling from Mad Men is an English teach who introduces the boys to the Count of Monte Cristo, Michael from Burn Notice is one of the guards and Bunk from the Wire is a gangster that helps with the revenge plot.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
#best3.5readersever
A sick kid! A scary killer! A daring escape attempt!
BQB here with a review of “Desperate Measures.”
I always thought this film got short changed and deserved more play. Personally, I think it’s one of the best roles Michael Keaton has ever had and as far as I know, it’s barely recognized.
Andy Garcia plays a cop whose son, Matt, requires a life-saving bone marrow transplant. That’s right. The kid will croak if he doesn’t get it.
Well, wouldn’t you know it? The only person who is a match is none other than Peter McCabe (Michael Keaton) a psycho killer permanently locked up in solitary confinement because he’s proven to be ultra violent and essentially a Hannibal Lector type who can kill a man with his pinky finger unless he’s restrained at all times.
Garcia brokers a deal, getting McCabe to agree to donate his bone marrow in exchange for more prison benefits. However, McCabe has other ideas. The viewer watches as McCabe takes a number of mysterious steps and, as we quickly learn, he’s plotted a masterful escape.
From there, the action is intense as McCabe fights his way out of his hospital and later to a car chase. All the while, Garcia’s goal is to capture McCabe alive, seeing as how his marrow will be no good to his son if he is dead.
Thus, Garcia must get between McCabe and Cassidy (Brian Cox) the cop charged with hunting McCabe down. Cassidy and other police don’t really give a crap if McCabe lives or dies, they just want him stopped and thus Garcia must play both sides in order to get that marrow to his son.
Keaton is scary in this role. Yet, there are occasional glimpses of humanity. Briefly, he takes young Matt hostage and tells him, “I’d of done that for you if I could have, kid” and it’s somewhat convincing that he wishes he actually could have donated the marrow to the boy had his escape attempt not been more pressing to him.
Although, I mean, yeah at the same time the man’s an evil bastard so we can’t pat him on the back too much. The plotting and execution of the escape attempt, all the details and planning that eventually fold out before our eyes – first, we wonder what is he doing and then it all becomes clear.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Hope you are all well
Bookshelf Battle 