What I'm Watching (Drowning)
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Filtering by Tag: VIOLENCE
Books I Read in 2024: Confessions of a Serial Killer
If you’re looking to get into the mind of the serial killer BTK, aka Dennis Rader, Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer by Katherine Ramsland is one way to do it. Filled with communications between Rader and Ramsland, this book delivers an avalanche of detail about Rader’s crimes, offers hypotheses about what drove him to murder, and reveals what the layman and law enforcement can learn about people like him so as to better avoid/hunt them. This book is grim! You may have nightmares.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Books I Read in 2024: A Serial Killer's Daughter
A Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming by Kerry Rawson is not a good book. Written by the daughter of serial killer BTK, its greatest achievement is its title. Beyond that, it’s 135 pages of irrelevant backstory of the author’s life followed by her engagements with her father post-capture. The prison letters between the two are moderately interesting, but it’s like watching two people pretend a terrible thing didn’t happen with a few exceptions. Poorly written, badly edited, and only glancingly illuminating. Hard pass.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Books I Read in 2024: The Big Sleep
I decided to read The Big Sleep because one of the books I’m writing is a thriller. Generally speaking, this book is not for me. Hardboiled. High drama. Plot heavy. Tough guys and troubled dames. That said, I enjoyed some aspects of it: the literary flourishes, the narrative tension, the obsession with other people’s thumbs.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries #9
In this week’s edition of my sex-in-the-news newsletter, The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries: Pamela Anderson is The Last Showgirl, a sex doll factory tour, new erotic books, FUCK|KILL, and more. Hit the button at the bottom of the newsletter to subscribe and get all the sex news that’s fit to print in your email inbox every week.
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I Get Email (You Will Die Soon Bitch)
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Books I Read in 2024: End of Active Service
Have you read Eat the Apple? It’s a memoir by my friend Matt Young. It’s a wildly inventive memoir-ish recounting of his days as a Marine in the Iraq War. Now Matt has published a novel: End of Active Service. It’s an alarmingly intimate tour through the mind of a man who has returned from war—but the war rages on inside of him. It’s a really beautiful book about love, letting go, and starting over. I highly recommend it.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Woman Rewatches Man Bites Dog
I wrote something for HILOBROW: “Repo Your Enthusiasm (18): Man Bites Dog.” Give it a read and share it too.
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The Beauty of Ultraviolence
For HILOBROW, I wrote an appreciation of “A Clockwork Orange.”
An excerpt:
“In 2020, writing an appreciation of A Clockwork Orange seems like a near transgressive act. Despite its moralistic underpinnings, the 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick is a visual celebration of the worst that humanity can conjure.”
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The Interrupters
Image via Wikipedia
Great piece by Betty Márquez Rosales for The New York Times, featuring “the Interrupters” in Stockton, where “Covid-19 and the issue of police brutality have intertwined with the existing problems of gun violence and unemployment to create fresh ways of ensnaring young Black and Latino men.”
An excerpt:
“Stockton sits in the vast agricultural flatlands of central California, about 80 miles east of San Francisco. It is a working-class community that fell into steep decline after the Great Recession. A universal basic income project, investments in its downtown, and the election of its youngest and first Black mayor have generated optimism in the city. But violence remains a challenge. A 2018 F.B.I. report found that Stockton’s violent crime rate was the highest of 70 California cities with more than 100,000 residents. ‘A lot of folks in our community were in a crisis before the coronavirus crisis,’ Michael Tubbs, Stockton’s mayor, said.”
Read it here.
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The Trouble with the Tight End
The new Netflix documentary about Aaron Hernandez, “Killer Inside,” is 100% gripping and fascinating. I’m not really sure why this limited series is so compelling, since it’s not the most artful series ever created, but it doesn’t shy away from allowing the story to be complex, layered, and unspool over time. Watch it.
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Slasher
I wrote an appreciation of Charles Forsman’s Slasher for the Seriocomic series on HILOBROW. I highly recommend the Slasher series. It’s wild and outrageous and like no other comic I’ve ever read.
“Narratively, bad things happen, oftentimes at Christine’s hand: people die, people are brutalized, people are terribly lonely. But for Christine, murder is self-affirming. ‘I’ve never felt so relaxed,’ Christine texts Joshua after a fresh kill. ‘Like I’ve been holding my piss for 25 years. I know who I am now.’”
Read the rest here.
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The House That Jack Built
3 Likes, 0 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "🎥 #larsvontrier #thehousethatjackbuilt"
I mean, is anybody a fan of Lars von Trier, really? I happen to be intrigued by him, because if you can say one thing about him is that he’s never boring. Or, at least, even when he’s boring, it’s because he’s doing something outrageous to death. Speaking of outrageous and death, LVT has a new flick out, and you don’t have to walk out of a theater at Cannes to see it. “The House That Jack Built” is available for streaming on Amazon. Convenient! Nothing like home delivered endless slaughter of women and others in scenarios in which the victim fairly makes the killer kill, I always say. The movie’s best kill, if you will, is the first one, when Matt Dillon, aka Jack, kills Uma Thurman, who plays a really annoying woman. Because this is LVT, you’re not sure if you’re supposed to laugh hysterically, feel grim, or just hold on for the duration of the ride. But, boy, can Uma take a jack to the head. In any case, you can look at the movie as a series of vignettes in which Jack murders people, or you can look at it as a meditative study on the creative process as told through the persona of someone who happens to use murder as his tool d’art. Frankly, the mutterings of Jack to a Virgil stand-in are the most interesting parts of the movie, particularly when Jack waxes philosophical about how matter dictates its form in art. Don’t search #thehousethatjackbuilt on Instagram, like I did, if you don’t want to have the penultimate shocker spoiled for you. It’s crude, but this is LVT, isn’t it? I won’t mention the part with the windshield wiper; I mean, that’s just ugly (or is it?). We have come to expect this sort of thing from the enfant terrible of Dogme 95. What I could never quite resolve with Jack is if LVT is trolling masculinity or wallowing in it. Toxic masculinity is a fair thing in which to flail. To attempt to redux The Inferno, the place to which the film devolves, is a mistake. Stay in your am-I-a-misogynist-or-not lane, LVT! Alighieri you ain’t.
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Trap Cake, Anyone?
Happy gang anniversary! | Photo credit: Cali Cake Dealers
These days, it's hard to find content that hasn't been covered everywhere else already. Sometimes when I'm looking for stories, I search random hashtags on Instagram. For some reason, Instagram is a place where you can still find curious things that haven't yet been seen, which is what everyone wants at the end of the day. In any case, I started out searching #crips, that took me to a #cripcake, and eventually I found gold in #gangcake. This is my latest profile on my Forbes blog, and it's about a woman who's running her own business, out of her garage -- like someone else -- and she isn't afraid to make the kind of "illicit" cakes that other more timid bakers won't.
"'I grew up with people who have always been in the trap life, who have always been associated with gangs, or what not,' she says. 'I'm not afraid of that type of lifestyle.' So far, she says, she hasn't turned down a cake."
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Tough Girls
15 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "That porn star @therealdelladane ⚡️"
Not long ago, I went to a strip club in the San Fernando Valley where porn stars and strippers were engaged in cage fighting. I expected it to be something like the WWE, but in reality it was a bit more like the UFC. I spoke to several of the fighters -- all women -- and it occurred to me that maybe fighting wasn't so different from stripping or performing in the adult business. It's about pushing yourself to extremes, taking your body to its limits, and enjoying the spectacle.
Buy a copy of my digital short story "The Tumor"! It's been called "a masterpiece."
American Made
"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.
The Return of Christy Mack
War Machine was convicted today in the trial of his assault of Christy Mack.
Maybe you're old enough to remember the "Twinkie defense"?
This guy offered up the "Raging Bull" defense:
"The defense attorney characterized Koppenhaver as a 'raging bull' with brain injuries from his fighting career and emotions inflamed by the use of steroids and non-prescription stimulant and antidepressant drugs that combined could have caused mood swings and violence that Leiderman termed 'roid rage.'"
Things I Learned at Muay Thai Today
Image via MAHQ
1. My upper body strength is hell.
2. I do better when I try and kick the boxing head gear off the top of the stand than when I'm trying to kick the air.
3. Those walking lunges are tiring.
4. I have about 25 minutes of go before I think: Oh, no.
5. I really, really like it, mostly because it's physically and mentally challenging.
6. My hips are tight.
7. Most of the other people at the gym are men. But not all of them.
8. If I go to ladies kickboxing class on Thursday night, I will get better faster.
9. Boxing is fun!
10. Working up a good sweat is a good thing.
What You Didn't Want to Know About Her
This sneak peek at the new upcoming graphic novel from Dan Clowes, Patience, makes it a must-read in my book.
Spoiler alert:
But then, the man comes home and finds the woman dead on the floor of their house. He's suspected of murder, acquitted, and sets out to find the killer himself. He meets a guy who has a time machine, and he uses the device to try to change the course of events that led to his girlfriend's death. He goes back to her teenage years, where he learns more about her and comes to terms with her sexual and emotional past—things he had not wanted to know about before her death. It's a time-traveling love story by a beautiful, twisted genius. We hope you like it.
[Vice]
El Chapo & The Girl
Image via Rolling Stone
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."