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“Hi boss can supply drugs”
Want more? Download "The Tumor." It’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."
“Hi boss can supply drugs”
Want more? Download "The Tumor." It’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."
Over at Forbes, I wrote about how I addressed a week-long tension headache with a $40 cannabis candy bar. Because why not? In California, it's perfectly legal. All I had to do is walk in the store and fork over the cash, no medical marijuana card required. My bespoke bar contained very little THC and an equivalent amount of CBD. Needless to say, it worked.
From "I Spent $40 to Get High From a Cannabis Candy Bar":
By the second hour, I did start feeling the effects of the THC. I'd taken such a small dose that it was almost imperceptible, but it did become more significant. I wasn't stoned. I was just ... more relaxed. Well, I was a little high. Everything seemed a bit more amusing, and the things I'd been obsessing over earlier in the day were passing by me like a deadheading train.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor" that's been called "a masterpiece."
If you haven't seen it already, watch "Operation Odessa." It's on Showtime, and it's a fascinating, brilliant, hilarious, gorgeous, energetic documentary involving three guys, a lot of cocaine, and a Russian submarine. If you love hustlers, international intrigue, and strippers, you will love this movie. My favorite character is Nelson Yester, seen here and known as Tony. He's a man with global connections who's the brains behind the operations. He seems unable to resist engaging in whatever series of actions will result in the highest yield with the greatest risk. "Being a player was in my destiny," he pronounces as if to be a man-of-the-underworld is a higher calling.
Buy "The Tumor" -- a new digital short story that's been called "a masterpiece."
I wrote a review of a new HBO documentary called "Meth Storm." Watching this movie is no fun, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. In Arkansas, ice is everywhere.
"Perhaps the wisest and most agonizing choice made by producer/director team Brent and Craig Renaud, Peabody Award-winning brothers whose credits include 'Dope Sick Love' and 'Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later,' was to plop a family down in the middle of this drug-fueled mess. Meet Veronica, a middle-aged mother who's been doing meth for so long she appears to have lost most or all her teeth. Meet Teddy, her son who gets high, goes to prison, gets sober, and, well, you have to watch the movie to find out what happens next. Her other adult children reel in and out of the camera's range and through various impoverished houses in which pets crap on the floor and people cover it up with blankets and clothes. All the offspring are trapped in the tortured struggle of buying into or attempting to escape the ever-whirling vortex that is their mother's seemingly contagious affection for meth in its pure form: ice."
"American Made" isn't a bad movie, but it isn't a great movie either. It's solid. It's like some slices of ham, a large spoonful of mashed potatoes, and some green peas. It does the job, but, I mean, are you going to rave about it? Probably not. There's Tom Cruise. Shining, well-haired, strapping. In this role, he's a grinning, adventure-seeking, drug and guns running American cowboy who makes a shit ton of money by simultaneously hustling the American government and South American drug lords. There are some fun flying sequences, and a good time is had by all -- at least for a while. Eventually, things go south, and then things aren't so funny anymore. It's based on a true story, but if you compare the two, there's not much truth to this movie. And, as was the case with "Atomic Blonde," you get a lot of action, but you don't get a lot of insight. What makes this guy tick? What are we to make of a man who made his American dream by being a hustler? These questions remain unanswered. The standout performance of the movie is by Caleb Landry Jones, who plays the main character's dumb hick brother-in-law and shines as an entertaining idiot. Otherwise, I'd say it's a soft pass.
On my Forbes blog, I wrote about the El Chapo manicure:
"As for what constitutes an El Chapo manicure, that’s simple: decals featuring Guzman, Swarovski jewels, decals of pesos, real U.S. dollars, gold-colored gun or knife charms, glitter polish, and religious items, like a gold-colored crucifix or a gold-colored medallion featuring a saint or the Virgin Mary."
Buy THE TUMOR, a digital short by Susannah Breslin that's been called "A masterpiece of short fiction."
The New Yorker has a semi-intriguing profile of Mexican actress Kate del Castillo's involvement in the whole Sean Penn-Rolling Stone-El Chapo saga. Now that Mr. Chapo is back in the pokey, del Castillo claims to be bizarrely unaware that Penn was doing a profile on him, despite her personal involvement in their meeting.
The piece includes some love-ish texts that The Chapo sent del Castillo.
"Amiga, if you'll bring the wine, I'll also drink yours. . . . I'm not a drinker, but your presence will be a lovely thing and I very much want to get to know you and become very good friends. You are the best in this world. . . . I will take care of you more than I do my own eyes."
Here's a quote I left out of my profile of a young entrepreneur making a cup for getting high:
Me: Who's your hero in business?
Him: Bernie Madoff. He sold dreams and thin air. That has to be applauded on some level.
This is the first time I've written about flakka, but, rest assured, it won't be the last. I'm super fascinated by it -- mostly because of the name. Also because Florida. In other parts of the country, it's referred to as "gravel." Florida is no slouch when it comes to the branding game.
Since flakka burst on the scene in 2013, the media’s gone crazy for the street drug that makes folks go nuts. Gawker’s Sam Biddle has a handy guide to all things flakka, aka Alpha-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone, a synthetic cathinone. It runs in the neighborhood of $5 a pop and purportedly makes those high on it act like superhuman zombies. The drug’s ground zero is Broward County, Florida, although its presence is slowly creeping across the country. In Ohio and Texas, flakka’s known as “gravel.” The drug can be swallowed, smoked, snorted, or shot, and flakka fiends have been known to attempt to kick in police headquarters’ glass doors and accidentally impale themselves on fences.
From my latest on Forbes:
Crack provides more instant relief and for me a more “fun” immediate high, but poker offers a broader satisfaction — and the high that comes with the potential of making money. Really, poker offers an entire framework for a constant flow of micro-highs and micro-lows in a well-lit, legal environment.
Buy THE TUMOR! "This is one of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."
Well, drug tattoos, that is. I spent way too much time searching Instagram for drug tattoos to create what I think is actually a pretty cool post for my Forbes blog, which should've been titled: "Instagram Your Drug Tattoo And Everyone Will Heart You." Or what have you. Do you know how goddamn hard it is to get good results for #cracktattoo? You're looking for someone who's posted a shot of their crack-inspired tattoo, and you end up looking at people's ass cracks with tattoos in them or on them. Also: #coketattoo. You think it is easy, but it is not. Do you know how many idiots have Coke the soda tattooed on them? Way too many. Also: People, get more XTC tattoos. Or at least let me know what hashtag to search so I can find them. There was also this insanely interesting one that had to do with like heroin and a pregnant woman combined in a tattoo -- or something??? -- and I saw it once, but I couldn't find it again. What I think ended up being the most interesting part were the sobriety tattoos. They were powerful, and I like how they had a function: to remind their owners not to go down the road again. Kudos. Oh, one more thing: Where the hell are all the flakka tattoos? Man. All I got was Waka Flocka Flame.
Buy THE TUMOR! "This is one of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."
The other night, I watched "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," and I feel sort of ambivalent about it. On the one hand, director Brett Morgen is awesome, and I loved "The Kid Stays in the Picture." I loved the movie's weird ways it tried to bring Cobain back to life: animated scribbles, disturbing shorts, raging audios. Visually, it's a mix of a multitude of sources, from home movies in the backyard to Nirvana on "MTV Unplugged." You get the impression that Cobain was: too smart, too sensitive, and too talented to survive: public scrutiny, celebrity, and drugs. The story follows him from nowhere kid to bratty rock star, awkward virgin to globally desired, broke to loaded. In a way, his back story isn't that remarkable. You remain unclear: Was this guy that great or was his timing impeccable? At a certain point, Courtney Love as Nancy Spungen shows up throwing around her tits, her messy blonde mane, her drug happy ways. The closest thing you get to a happy ending is the advent of Frances Bean, their love child. On the other hand, the experience of watching the film is not dissimilar to sitting through a 132-minute episode of "Intervention." Here he stands, our tragic heroine. We watch him: get fucked up, fuck over people, and fuck up his life. The only difference between "Montage of Heck" and "Intervention" is that Cobain's life story features more drugs, more money, and more notoriety. Surely, heroin isn't the only drug that rules this musician's fucked up life. The shots panning across acres and acres of thousands and thousands of leaping and dancing fans and groupies make you wonder how high you'd feel if you ever got so lucky. The most pathetisad moment of the debacle is when Cobain is sitting there holding his baby daughter and nodding off in a drug stupor. Years ago, I was a waitress in an Italian restaurant, and there was another server who was in the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink stage of his addiction, and I recall him drifting off during one of our conversations. It was just that glamorous. You feel bad in the end when they throw up a clip of him as a towheaded kid, and they remind you that he was only 27 when he shuffled off this mortal coil with a shotgun blast, but "Montage of Waste" might be a better title for it.
Buy my new short story, THE TUMOR: "One of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."
Confederate flag tattoo over track marks. #Florida
— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) March 5, 2015
A while back, I wrote about weed, real weed, being used in manicures (see: "For Marijuana Smokers, A Weed Manicure Is High Fashion"). I came across this interesting image recently. Found on That Darn Rachel.
"Cocked" is one of the pilots Amazon coughed up among those shows it may or not make. It's about a family, and the family business is guns! Kudos to Amazon for picking up that firearm. I was interested in seeing this show. After all, I have been known to shoot a gun. The opening scene takes place at something that is supposed to look like SHOT Show, and I have been. In any case, prior to viewing, I thought gun owners and 2nd Amendment fans would be excited to see this, but when Jason Lee, who plays the patriarch's bad boy son, does a bunch of coke and bangs the Shannon twins, I thought probably the NRA will not be sponsoring this program. "Beauty, bullets, and blow, what more could you wish for?" Lee's character considers after going down on either Kristina or Karissa. The other brother is Sam Trammell of "True Blood" fame, who's the good son, and who gets called home, sort of, to save the floundering business. Brian Dennehy is the dad. Some blonde is some illegitimate daughter who wants to take the whole thing over. A rival firearms manufacturer is trying to put them out of business. And so it goes. All great ideas. All wonderful fodder. And yet. Woefully miscast. And instead of going for drama, it goes for wild-eyed slapstick. What was missed: A "Sopranos"-type show in which real people with real lives and real problems just so happen to manufacture and sell America's most controversial product. That didn't happen.
(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)
The male porn star stared at his penis. It resembled a pin cushion. Too many Caverject injections. His penis stared back at him, annoyed and defiant. Somewhere along the way, he had lost control over his erection. The unblinking eye of the assaulted penis gored a hole right through him.
Time: 2 minutes
Word count: 73 words
(Inspired by a 30-day yoga challenge at my yoga studio, I'm writing 30 flash fictions in 30 days. One a day. 100 words or less. Time limit: 15 minutes. You can read all of them here.)
I TOLD EVERYONE I KNEW THAT I WOULD BLOG EVERY DAY BUT I BECAME TERRIBLY DEPRESSED AND SO I WENT TO THE DOCTOR WHO PRESCRIBED ME BLAÜG WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO REMEDY THIS DISEASE BUT CAUSED MY SCALP TO FORM A RASH AND LEFT ME UNABLE TO BATHE OR BRUSH MY HAIR OR TEETH FOR DAYS AT A TIME AND WHEN I LOOKED INTO THE MIRROR THE MIDDLE INDENTED AND MY FACE CONCAVED
Time: 4 minutes
Word count: 73 words