Favorite Quotes: March 2018

"As far as I’m concerned, you can drop off the Earth. That's a promise.”

-The Room

“With great power comes great mental illness.”

-Jessica Jones

“Sometimes she hears Troy is a cop. A toll collector. A professor. A musician. A stand-up comedian. Once she heard a terrible rumor he became a librarian, but she could not imagine Troy becoming the darkest of evil beasts, no matter what he had done to her. Is it even possible for a human to become a librarian? Diane wondered.”

-Welcome to Night Vale

“Nobody talks about Jesus' miracle of having 12 close friends in his 30s.”

-Mormonger

“The real road to hell was paved with all the friendships we made along the way.”

Isabel Zawtun

“I got a lot to say

I got a lot to say

I got a lot to say

I can’t remember now”

-The Ramones

I see people saying things like "We did not deserve Mr. Rogers." or "He was too good for this world."

No.

Mr. Rogers spend his life trying to convince you that we did deserve him, and deserve to treat each other how he treated us. We deserved him. He was the good we deserved.

-Jeremiah Tolbert

“I’m out of bullets!”

“How come?”

“Because I shot them all!”

-Hurricane Heist

“If our divided country can’t come together over a movie this wonderfully terrible, what hope do we really have?"

-Andrew Barker, review of the film Hurricane Heist

“You have to give The Hurricane Heist a lot of credit for getting to the point. It is a movie called The Hurricane Heist and it is about a heist that takes place during a hurricane and both the hurricane and the heist start happening almost right away.”

-Brian Gubb, another review of the film Hurricane Heist

“But you gotta be a, a hero. You want to be a champion. Well, let me tell you. People don't want a champion. They want to eat cheeseburgers, play the lotto, and watch television.”

“Somebody call somebody!”

-Se7en

“Let’s see where this goes,” Captain Paul said, and they all watched the ancient alien pyramid get closer into view, as they ate alien mushrooms from another planet, aboard their alien starship that apparently once belonged to ISIS. It couldn’t be more interesting."

"The planet was a lush green jungle full of life and beauty. It was pretty much like earth, except totally alien, complete with talking pineapples (probably). Big patches of the ground appeared to be shag carpet from the ‘70s. Monkey-lizard-birds were part of the local ecosystem and not just hallucinations. It also had more details about it that would make it seem more like Earth than an alien planet, but those are boring details and who wants to bore you here? Certainly not the author. Look, there are probably giant snakes you can ride complete with saddles and everything, so who cares that there are babbling creeks, a Starbucks, and clear, blue skies?

-Deadly Lazer Explodathon by Vince Kramer

Sgt. O'Brien: What are you doing?

Kirk: I want to follow it.

Sgt. O'Brien: I forbid you to. It's crazy. You don't know how to kill him, anyway!

Kirk: I know I don't, but I have no choice!

-Panic!

“I’m just so grateful to be so humble.”

-John Mulaney

“When everyone has to apologize for everything, then nobody will really be sorry for anything. And then people can be funny again.”

-Trevor Moore

-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And my Phony books are on Amazon here and my "legitimate" books are on Amazon here. Probably some other places, too.

Cinemasterworks: THOROUGHBREDS

Looking to win some popularity contests this week, so I'm gonna attack the new universally acclaimed film, Thoroughbreds.

I see pretty much everything now thanks to Moviepass, so some stinkers are inevitable. And I knew darned well I was taking a risk when I decided to see ALL FIVE MOVIES that came out last weekend (Hurricane Heist, Gringo, Thoroughbreds, The Strangers: Prey by Night, A Wrinkle in Time).

But little did I know the unendurable terrors that awaited me!

Well, not really. I mean, The Strangers: Prey by Night was okay as a stalk-and-stab film. Not much to it. The scene at the end where a character bleeds to death in a vivid blue swimming pool growing rapidly red while "Total Eclipse of the Heart" plays was a heckuva audiovisual moment. Gringo was a reasonably entertaining post-Tarantino nihilistic crime drama/comedy of errors. Hurricane Heist was exactly what it promised to be and I can find no fault with a film that makes its intentions so plain in the title.

But Thoroughbreds? Dude... Was so annoyed by it that I decided to give myself a pass on Wrinkle in Time. I loved that book as a kid and it was DARK. If ANY YA book deserved the generic YA McGritty cinematic treatment that everything gets these days, it's Wrinkle in Time. But nope, based on the trailer, looks like they took a dark, complex book and made a Disney Princess movie out of it.

NO SALE.

I WON'T EVEN SEE IT FOR FREE WITH MOVIEPASS BECAUSE THAT WOULD STILL BE FINANCIALLY SUPPORTING IT!

Alright, regarding Thoroughbreds' marketing campaign: the comparison to Heathers is duplicitous and infuriating. This film has zero clever social satire, zero fun, zero seriously challenging content, just surface coldness and apathy.

There is no story momentum whatsoever in the first 40 minutes. When something approaching a story development happened, I checked my watch and literally 40 minutes of wheel-spinning mucking-about had passed.

This made Phantom Thread look like a Michael Bay film. And much like Phantom Thread, it is painfully slow, with the only surprise in the entire film being a brief “Oh! Huh...” moment five minutes from the end.

The "music" in the first few scenes is distractingly awful. It's a bunch of random percussive noises that I at first mistook as background noise from the kitchen staff within the film. It makes Captain Beefheart sound like a metronome.

Anton Yelchin deserved better for his last film. Shoulda gone out on Green Room. Sad to say that. But Green Room was awesome.

Thoroughbreds' popularity and acclaim seems to be similar to Lady Bird, where people condescendingly pat the competent film on the head and give it a participation trophy for being directed by a woman. It seems people aren’t willing to be honest and objective about female-directed films in our current political/cultural climate. I get it. But being supportive doesn't mean you can't be honest.

So let's be honest: this movie is slickly made and the performances are fine. But everything it's doing has been done before and better by countless films. 

I felt annoyed for most of its running time and I regret seeing it. The Strangers: Prey by Night is basically failsauce but at least engaged my attention or had me in suspense for a couple minutes here and there. I don’t actively regret seeing that one. It was unpretentious and fine for what it was.

Thoroughbreds is the emperor without clothes. Or at least deeply mediocre clothes. And I will call it out as such!

There. All the world's problems: solved.

-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And my Phony books are on Amazon here and my "legitimate" books are on Amazon here. Probably some other places, too.

Kindle: Unlimited!

Well, I finally did it. I put all my Phony McFakename books on Kindle Unlimited.

If you're a Kindle Unlimited person, you can read them all for free here.

Except Henrika. I don't have the rights to that special girl. My one sacrifice to Big Publishing!

And YES, since you're all asking, this means you can read my brand-new book, Atonement Found, for F-R-E-E!

It's a delightful comedy of mad cow disease, police riots, cities on fire, milkshakes, TSA showdowns, rapture insurance, and vampires with ridiculous accents.

Happy reading, and to all a good night.


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

* * *

I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And my Phony books are on Amazon here and my "legitimate" books are on Amazon here. Probably some other places, too.

Massive Literary Success

Am busy revising books and writing Happy Chemtrails!

Learning all about chemtrails. Fun stuff.

Also I've been investigating authors who find success with self-publishing and the consistent factors seem to be:

-It's an endless series
-It has to be sf/fantasy/romance
-The covers have to be generic airbrushed vaguely sexual photos of women in space suits or bodices
-They have to be available for purchase in print/digital, but free on Kindle Unlimited
-The author must have a ridiculous name

Also based on my skimming of their work, the writing has to be terrible.

Not gonna name names (especially because the author name in question is super-uber-ridiculous), but this seriously drove me up the wall: the first paragraph of this mega-successful Kindle Unlimited author's book talks about this doctor and the stuff he's doing. The next paragraph is like, "Bla, bla, bla," her escort said.

Wait: whose escort? Who is she and why is this her escort? I went back to the first paragraph to see if I misread it and the doctor was actually a female doctor, thus making this person her escort. But no, there were two male-gendered pronouns in that paragraph.

I skimmed a little further and couldn't find any other females in this scene, so at no point is the identity clarified as to the "her" to whom this escort belongs. There were multiple similar grammar/context boners in the next couple paragraphs. And this is the FIRST PAGE in the FIRST BOOK of a series with 48 BOOKS (and counting). THIS IS HOW THE AUTHOR STARTS? AND STILL FINDS SUCCESS?

I'm jealous. Yes, of course. But it also makes me think I'm wasting my time trying to make my books good and fun and clever. If I'd just follow the five rules above, it wouldn't matter if my work was any good. I would make all the money in the world.

But isn't there more to life than making all the money in the world?


-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename

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I exist on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And my Phony books are on Amazon here and my "legitimate" books are on Amazon here. Probably some other places, too.