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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: October 2018

Buzzed Books #77: Melissa Broder’s The Pisces

30 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Melissa Broder, The Pisces

Buzzed Books #77 by Drew Barth

Melissa Broder’s The Pisces

Let’s talk about mermen. They’re old lore. More or less. We’re all familiar with the general structure of a person with human bits on top and fish bits further down. But that’s just the myth, and myths aren’t the whole story. The backstory for The Pisces is this: Lucy is recently dumped, recently writer’s blocked on Sappho, recently suicidal, and stuck in Arizona. As such, her half sister puts her up in her home on Venice Beach to look after the place and her dog, Dominic. And then there’s the merman, Theo.

The Pisces

Love is the driving force at the center of The Pisces.  The unconditional love of a dog. The love of a newly found partner. The love between people in similar circumstances. The love of those absent from our lives. But love isn’t sanguine here. This is the love hangover. This is what happens when love has pushed us to a point where we can see a merman and believe that he’s a good option. Because love in this context is something vicious. Lucy attends a support group for women afflicted by this kind of love through most of the book. They hold this fascinating mirror to Lucy to show what she could potentially be if she doesn’t find a balance. The women of the support group play like the Fates, showing the different paths that Lucy could head in should she choose.

At times, The Pisces feels like an extended Greek myth where we do get the whole story and not just a dozen lines from a broken carving. Lucy as a character almost follows the line of a Greek tragedy, from her dizzying heights to an almost meteoric downfall. Her story is so wrapped up in the ancient works, that she can’t see the story repeating around her even after the merman shows up. But we’re always so far in Lucy’s head that we can’t see these patterns either. We’re given her language and the flow of images that create a meaning from the small choices she makes. Every decision Lucy makes builds onto something else—from her love for Dominic to waiting on an ocean rock every night for her merman to arrive.

nd that’s ultimately what The Pisces does. The book gives us the fantasy, gives us the merman, gives us everything that follows a Greek tragedy, but twists all of that in such a way that we can’t help but laugh. Lucy’s exploits are heartbreaking and ignoble in equal measure, and yet the ridiculousness of having sex with a merman in her sister’s living room almost makes all of that okay. Broder gives us balance here, and that’s what we crave by the end: a balance for Lucy, a balance for her support group, her sister, Dominic, everyone. And it’s through that, we ultimately find peace.


Drew Barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 338: Horror Movie Poetry Night V!

27 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Horror, Live Show, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Event Horizon, Fright Night, George Romero's Martin, Nightbreed, Nosferatu, Penny Dreadful, The Prince of Darkness, The Skeleton Key, The Tommyknockers, The Walking Dead

Episode 338 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I am joined by Joshua Begley, AC Warner, Katherine Parker, Elise McKenna, Tom Lucas, Amy Watkins, Joshua Dull, Dianne Turgeon Richardson, and Vincent Crampton Count Orlock for Horror Movie Poetry Night V!

Horror films and shows such as Fright Night, Penny Dreadful, George Romero’s Martin, The Walking Dead, The Prince of Darkness, Event Horizon, The Skeleton Key, The Tommyknockers, Nightbreed, Nosferatu, and Twilight were addressed.

Horror Movie Poetyry Night 2

Dianne meets the count. Photo by John King.

Horror Movie Poetry Night V Doll

Her favorite color is red. Photo by Katherine Parker.

IMG_8974-1

Joshua Dull before a laughing fit. Photo by Katherine Parker.


Episode 338 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #247: Day of the Dead

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #247 by Jeff Shuster

Day of the Dead: Bloodline

Three times is not the charm.

Okay, Halloweenies. Your Curator of Shock is here with wrap up October with the George Romero classic, Day of the Dead. Get ready for zombies that say hello to their Aunt Alicia and prepare to eat a mouthful of Greek salad. Oh, wait. I forgot. I’m under a self-imposed mandate to only review movies from this decade. Fortunately, they released a Day of the Dead remake earlier this year titled Day of the Dead: Bloodline. Does lightning strike twice? Actually, this is the second remake of Day of the Dead, so maybe I should be asking if lightning strikes three times. Or maybe I should just get on to the review because I’m getting confused.

Bloodline1

Day of the Dead: Bloodline is directed by Hèctor Hernández Vicens and is described as an action/horror film. The movie begins with a full on zombie outbreak on a city block. Zombies are tearing open the guts of their victims and chowing down. One has a coil of intestines wrapped around his neck like a necklace (maybe he’s saving them for later.). A young woman named Zoe Parker (Sophie Skelton) hurriedly walks down the street, trying to call her mother while pausing to observe the carnage. I think I’d be running at this point.

Day-of-the-Dead-Bloodline-Sophie-Skelton

We’re then treated to a flashback from six hours earlier. Zoe is a medical student who’s given the task of collecting blood samples from Max, a creepy dude who has the hots for her. The administrators at the hospital say he has the best antibodies they’ve ever seen. But he’s a kind of a stalker. The fact that he carved Zoe’s name into his forearm makes her uncomfortable.

Bloodline2

Later on, when Zoe is in the morgue late at night, trying to retrieve some kegs for a kegger party the other med students are hosting, Max shows up and tries to force himself upon her. Then a zombie attacks him. The zombie bites some partygoers, they turn into zombies, they bite other people, and soon there’s a full on zombie outbreak.

Fast-forward a few months later and Zoe is situated in an Army base/refugee camp, helping sick children and soldiers. She even managed to get herself a hunky boyfriend named Baca (Marcus Vanco). Baca’s brother, Lieutenant Miguel Salazar (Jeff Gum), doesn’t care about Zoe’s insistence on finding a cure or her insistence on going outside the compound to find antibiotics for the sick children. He relaxes on the latter, allowing Zoe to bring a small company of soldiers with her to the hospital she used to work at. They travel the urban wilderness in two bright yellow Hummers under cover of night. Zoe retrieves the medicine, but runs into an old friend in the process.

Bloodline3

That’s right! It’s zombie Max, and he is still crushing on Zoe. I have to tell you Max, if you didn’t have a chance with her while you were alive, those odds don’t improve when you turn into a zombie. Maybe if you were a sparkly vampire.

Bloodline4

He sneaks back with them into the compound by clinging underneath to one of the Hummers. Max eats some people in the compound, gets captured, but Zoe wants to keep him alive for study because he doesn’t try to eat her. Why? Because he’s still in love with her. Zoe thinks he might be the answer to a zombie virus vaccine. But is it worth keeping Max around just for a zombie virus vaccine? At one point, Max, the zombie, growls at Zoe, “You’re mine!” Let me tell you something, Max. Zoe is not you’re property. You have to be the most sexist zombie I’ve ever seen in a movie. You’re one step above a Nazi zombie and as we all know, Nazi zombies are the Talibans of the zombie world.

Think on that, Max.


Jeffrey Shuster 2

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #76: Because Everything is Terrible

23 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Poetry

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Buzzed Books #76 by Will Rincon

Because Everything is Terrible by Paul Guest

Because Everything is Terrible

Paul Guest’s fourth poetry collection, Because Everything is Terrible, wastes no time pulling the reader into his world. “First this happened: you woke in a dim glade, / pine trees leaning in, all around.” The twenty-two-page opening poem, “After Damascus” is broken into thirteen sections. Guest forces readers to experience the poem’s narrative that weaves war with dreams by writing in second person perspective. Trained killers are sweethearts, you smell your own blood, and “imagine what must feel like to drown.” Downtrodden to the point where you weep after John Wayne films, the narrative youis lost “inside your skull” and wishes “to be more intensely American.” The prose, while lyrical, drags you through mud and waste, making you realize that beauty can still be found in terrible things. Guest’s ability to find the good in the bad becomes therapeutic until you become comfortable with pain and accept that “your body is strange.” Through stillness and singing, you can learn to love chaos.

The remaining sixty-six pages explore everything that is terrible. America is a big focus, and Guest sprinkles the current climate of the nation throughout: “Nothing will be again as it once was,”  “nothing will be said of grief,” and “everyone I know is mad.” His poem, “Thinking about Disappointment” captures the uncomfortableness we often find ourselves in after waves of bad news in the media: “I want to be terrified. I want to sleep beneath / something so antique / even beasts won’t bother / to look beneath / no matter the ravening gush of blood in their ears.” Guest isn’t afraid to criticize what has become normalized: “the news / reads like a story of fire / and death and endless, insufferable / seasons” and an “industry / which will most harm you / upon its inevitable demise.” Often, his poems leave you with the somber realization that you have been wading through madness and there is no end in sight.

Guest’s obsession with destruction is somehow loveable. In his poem, “Being Reasonably Certain,” he pulls you down the spiral of accepting that “you’ve done the wrong thing, / even though it’s up for debate, / even though philosophy is no help / on the walk home, in the middle / of distraction in the aisle of a store / you swear is evil itself.” Like a beach current, you get pulled out in the tide. You know “that you will not be saved,” everything is in motion and “you’ve been thinking about obliteration. / All the time [you] spent swept up in its romance.” It is gospel, it is truth, it is “the idiopathic dumbness of dawn.”

And yet, Guest avoids melancholy. This destruction is celebrated for its utter completeness. The beauty is something to behold and it all feels like one long moment where you don’t want to look away. Such bleakness is shared by contemporary poets like Ephraim Scott Summers and James Longenbach. Guest embraces his approach and how few people will see his big picture in, “Eros Poetica”: “Always bad form to announce, this is a poem. / I’m not sure why. As if the few of us / who’ll ever read these lines / might think it anything else: / a letter to a dying monarch; / a guide to constructing something / without discernible parts. Like love.” And in a way, his collection is a guide. A hand to hold through all the bullshit that rolls downhill. A book to hug when we find ourselves in a muddy pit while the privileged look down on us. A part of ourselves that we are afraid to listen to or even consider.


Will Rincon

Will Rincon is an MFA candidate for fiction at the University of Central Florida. When he is not depriving himself of sleep, he enjoys board games, anime, and spending time with his family. He highly recommends you watch Battlestar Galactica.

Pensive Prowler #24: Justice League of Steppenwolf

22 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Pensive Prowler

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Pensive Prowler #24 by Dmetri Kakmi

Justice League of Steppenwolf

The following does not constitute a film review of Justice League. More a running commentary as my befuddle mind tried to make sense of the movie through an alcoholic haze.

As the movie begins (I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong with the title), I console myself with one fact. Even thought I don’t know what happened in Man of Steeland Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, I’m familiar with the main players: Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman…

Hold on. Who’s the black electronic kid in the hoodie? Cyborg? Never heard of him. Good thing he looks like disco inferno, circa 1979. If he’s ever unemployed, he can hire himself out as a disco ball.

And who is Amy Adams supposed to be? Can’t be Lois Lane. She’s not wearing a pillbox hat and making smart quips. Oh, dear, what a long face she has. Looks like a smacked bottom.

And right off, first kick in the gut: Superman is dead. In comic book parlance that’s like saying God is Dead. No wonder Trump’s in the White House and Melanoma is wandering the globe in a pith helmet.

Exhausted by the welter of new info, I fortify myself with a sip of martini, turn to screen and SCREAM.

A really ugly actor is pretending to be Batman.

Ugh, I need another drink after that. Nobody told me this was a horror movie.

Seriously, the guy squeezed into the Batman mask looks like one of those average Joes you see on amateur gay porn websites where they dress like a favourite superhero and get off with other wanna-be superheroes with bodies that are propped up with Enchiladas.

Only this actor—whoever he is—looks like he needs to have his blood pressure checked as well, and cut back on calories. If he doesn’t, he’s going to bring a parapet down on someone’s unsuspecting head.

Recovering, I pull out the iPad and hop on to IMBD. The puffy dude is Ben Affleck? Seriously, Mr Ben, you’re younger than me. Pull yourself together. You’re heading for a stroke.

While I’m there, I check out Aquaman because—hate to tell you—there’s something wrong with him, too. Jason Momoa, Hawaiian. Lazy eye. Probably got hit in the head with a surfboard. I’m not kidding, he resembles a gecko with eyes looking in opposite directions. Must freak out the fish.

All I can say is, director Zak Snyder must have told the casting director to gather Hollywood’s most unsightly actors and bring ‘em in, baby, cause we is a gonna make Freaks 2. Jeremy Irons, Amy Adams and Diane Lane are the only decent looking people in sight.

A better title for this might be Justice League of Fuglies. If nothing else, it’d console mere mortals who are condemned to sit there, looking at Henry Cavill and Gal Gadot’s plastic perfection with envy. By the way, did you notice how Cavill is fully dressed when he’s dead in the coffin and half naked when he leaps out like a demented jack-in-the-box? What’s that about?

And right there it hits me—what’s wrong with the title. When I was a teenager reading these comics it was The Justice League of America. Not the neutered Justice League. But I suppose the abbreviation is necessary today. No one in their right minds would call a multi-million dollar blockbuster The Justice League of America, because—well—American Imperialism. Box office poison.

Even so that doesn’t stop the script from lodging the great evil in Russia and rubbing Putin’s nose in it by sending American vigilantes to save the neglected peasantry from dastardly overlords.

Next, I check out Gal Gadot on IMDB. Because—hate to tell you—there’s something wrong with her as well. Odd accent. Is it a cleft palate? No, she’s Israeli.

Look here, the Amazons came out of Libya (that’s north Africa for those who’ve never looked at a world map), made their way through Egypt and Syria to settle on the Black Sea, in north Anatolia, not too far from where I was born. That’s why I think of the warrior women like distant lesbian aunts. And I can tell you the gals around Samsun don’t look or sound like Gal Gadot. More like the Hulk.

At least the Flash is there to give my eyes a rest. He’s so perky in that body-hugging crimson costume. When I was in my teens I wanted to be the Flash. Why? So I could run away from gay bashers. If push came to shove, however, I’d be the Silver Surfer. Because who doesn’t want to surf naked in the sky?

For me the star of Justice Leagueis the villain, Steppenwolf. Check out his achievements:

  1. He says marvelous things like ‘Praise the mother of horrors.’
  2. He wears fabulous hats with horns that’d make Philip Treacy envious.
  3. He turns Russia into Mordor.
  4. And he generates more personality than Gadot and Cavill combined.

I laughed when one character said Steppenwolf is “the end of worlds” and “he needs only to conquer.” In other words, he’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk rolled in one. I for one hope he wins. And let’s me wear his hat.


Dmetri with Hat

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Episode 337: A Roundtable Discussion of Stephen King’s Danse Macabre!

20 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode, Film, Horror

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Danse Macabre, stephen king

Episode 337 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I am joined by Dale Lucas, Tom Lucas, and Elise McKenna for a deep dive into Stephen King’s 1981 treatise on the horror genre, Danse Macabre.

Danse Macabre 2

Photo by Katherine J. Parker.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Danse Macabre

Photo by Katherine J. Parker.

NOTES

Check out Don Peteroy’s amazing essay on how to read the entire Dark Tower series while still having a life.


Episode 337 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #246: Rings

19 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

The Curator of Schlock #246 by Jeff Shuster

Rings

Ring-a-Ding-Ding!

Rings1

I’ve been putting this off. 2017’s Rings from director F. Javier Gutiérrez is the movie responsible for Paramount cancelling the next installment of the Friday the 13th series of films. Apparently, Rings was supposed to be their new cash cow annual horror film series with new installments each year. Rings was a box office disappointment, so they cancelled the Friday the 13th reboot. Makes sense as they’re completely different types of movies. Kind of like when Disney cancelled TRON 3 over the disappointing box office of Tomorrowland.

tron

Instead, we’re getting another Nutcracker movie titled The Nutcracker: We Made This Instead of TRON 3. Yay.

Rings is a sequel to 2002’s The Ring and 2005’s The Ring Two. I don’t remember much about those movies. I think Brian Cox electrocuted himself to death by dropping a plugged-in VCR into a bathtub full of water while standing in it. Ring Two featured Naomi Watts being terrorized by deer created from some really bad CG. They didn’t leave a huge impression. The basic gist of the series is that there’s this cursed video tape. You watch this video and you see all sorts of strange imagery like a woman brushing her hair in a mirror, a wooden chair, a nail going though a finger, etc. Then a phone rings, you pick up the receiver, and the voice of little girl says, “ Seven days.” In seven days, your television set will turn on and a ghost girl comes out of your TV to psychokinetically kill you. The only way to avoid the curse is to make a copy of the tape, have someone else watch it, and stick them with the curse. The only way they can avoid the ghost girl is to copy the tape and have someone else watch it. And so on.

Rings2

Rings begins with an airline passenger who watched the video, but was too stupid to pass the curse on to someone else. Samara, the ghost girl, comes out of the panels up in the cockpit trying to kill the guy and the whole plane goes down as a result. Fast-forward a couple years later and said passenger’s belongings end up being sold at some sidewalk sale. A biology professor by the name of Gabriel Brown (Johnny Galecki of The Big Bang Theory fame) purchases the VCR because he’s interested in vintage technology.

I really don’t understand VCR aficionados. They were junk then, and they’re junk now. And yes, this is coming from a guy who knew how to program his VCR. I never missed an episode of Felicity. That’s something I can be proud of.

Professor Brown hooks the VCR up to an HDTV and watches the cursed video. Then Samara calls him up, gives him the “Seven Days” pitch, and Professor Brown witnesses some strange phenomena like rain rising up instead of falling down. One has to wonder, does the curse hold the same power if your watching an old VHS tape through and HDTV or even a 4K TV? That’s going to be a downgraded image. I’m thinking this time around Samara would only have the ability to give you a really bad headache at the end of the seven days.

Professor Brown starts running experiments with the videotape by having his students watch it, copy it, and pass it along. He wants to scientifically prove the existence of life after death. That’s rather intriguing. I applaud Professor Brown and his pedagogic practices. I start to get high hopes for this motion picture, and then we’re introduced to Julia and Holt, a good-looking, but boring young couple who get involved with Professor Brown’s experiments. When Julia watches the video to save Holt from the curse, she gets new images along with the old ones.

Rings3

And this is where the movie takes a left turn. Julia and Holt travel to some podunk country town to discover the origins of the curse. They run into a blind Vincent D’Onofrio who used to be a priest who murdered his daughter or his granddaughter.

RINGS

I don’t know. They gave up on the only thing the movie had going for it, the science angle. I don’t care about them solving some stupid American Gothic mystery. Paramount, do us all a favor. Don’t just cancel Friday the 13th. Cancel all of your horror movies. You don’t know what you’re doing.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #75: Convenience Store Woman

16 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

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Buzzed Books #75 by Drew Barth

Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman

There’s familiarity in a convenience store. Safety, even. We walk into a convenience store and have certain expectations about what’s likely going to happen. Familiar drinks, chips, candy, hot dogs rolling away.

Convenience Store Woman

It’s within this familiarity we find Keiko Furukura: thirty-eight year-old part-time convenience store worker at her local Smile Mart. We’re given a glimpse into the life of a woman with thoughts like:

It is the start of another day, a time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move. I am one of those cogs, going round and round. I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.

Simply the thought of remaining a dedicated store employee keeps her sleeping well at night. It’s a position that’s typically overlooked. But they are brought out into the fluorescent light for us to see.

As a character, Keiko Furukura is fascinatingly strange. She has worked in the same convenience store since eighteen and has no issue with this vocation at all. And it is through the convenience store that she has become a person. With each new employee or manager, she takes on aspects of them as a way to appear more convenient to them. A character, Sugawara, has a particularly boisterous way of speaking in the morning. As such, Keiko adopts aspects of it into herself. Another character, Mrs. Izumi, has a particular taste in fashion that Keiko then slowly begins to imitate after researching certain brands. These subtle mannerisms she picks up only reinforces her own character: Keiko is a blank slate without the convenience store. But as a character, that’s what she wants. Even if the world around her, namely her friends and her sister, scream and cry for her to change, she is incapable of doing so because who would she be without the Smile Mart?

At times, this book can be devastating. The interplay between individuality and conformity, work life and real life, all unwind as we question ourselves. Is my work self just a modified actual self? Do I make these decisions for myself or for the people around me? It’s this constant undercurrent in a novel that is fairly light in tone. It’s as though Keiko herself is so direct in her thoughts and actions that the Smile Mart self is the only self that exists for her. And that’s what makes this book devastating in a good way. We as readers can see something askew in Keiko, but does Keiko see it in herself? Possibly. Or maybe she’s just what she wants: a good convenience store employee.


Drew Barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 336: Sean M. Conrey!

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Episode 336 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to the poet Sean M. Conrey about poetry, religion, trees, and our long ago time at Purdue University.

Sean M Conrey

TEXT DISCUSSED

The Book of Trees


Episode 336 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #245: Wish Upon

12 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #245 by Jeff Shuster

Wish Upon

Whatever happened to Ryan Phillippe?

Wish1What’s up, home skillet? Just your resident non-boomer here, curating the most shocking movies he can get his hands on. I thought I would review a young adult movie this week. We’re all about the young adult movies here at the Museum of Schlock. Heck, we even installed cellular phone chargers up on the fourth floor, free to use for any young patron gracing our establishment. I’m even thinking purchasing some of those super cool Dance Dance Revolution arcade games for our lobby. Super cool, huh? Oh, this week’s movie features that actress who plays Barb on that Stranger Things show you kids are so obsessed with.

Wish3

Tonight we have 2017’s Wish Upon directed by John Leonetti. It’s all about a 17 year-old girl named Clare Shannon (Joey King). Clare doesn’t exactly live a charmed life. When she was little, her mom hanged herself in their attic, and Clare was the one who discovered the body. To top that off, her father, Jonathan Shannon (Ryan Phillippe), is a dumpster diver. I’m not kidding. He goes through trash and brings home treasures that he hoards away in their house.

Wish2

Hey, I understand. I was a compulsive DVD collector, but I learned to control myself. All four seasons of Heroes have been removed from my shelf. Plus, I only have three copies of Nightmare City in my collection now instead of four. I got rid of the fourth one when I bought the Nightmare City Blu-ray. Still waiting for the 4K restoration. I want to make out every follicle on Hugo Stiglitz’s beard!

Where was I? Clare’s dad digs up a mystical Chinese wishing box and gives it to her as an early birthday present. I think it’s a special kind of father that gives his daughter trash for her birthday. I can’t get over the fact that Ryan Phillippe is in this movie. Wasn’t he married Reese Witherspoon? The last thing I remember him starring in was that Studio 54 movie, the one with Michael Myers (the actor not the masked killer). I seem to recall Michael York chatting about how great swinging London was. I wish I could go back in time to the London of the 1960s, hang out with Caroline Munro and Count Dracula. Instead, I’m stuck in the era of instant messaging and selfies.

Oh yeah. The cell phones are out in full force again in this one. Oh, and cyber bullying. The resident mean girl at Clare’s high school posts a video online of her beating up Clare while letting the world know that Clare’s dad is a dumpster diver. Clare goes over to the wishing box and wishes that the bully would rot away. Wouldn’t you know it? The bully gets necrotizing fasciitis. In other words, her skin rots.

Wish4

Awesome! But then Clare’s dog dies from being eaten by rats. Clare then wishes that hottest guy in school would fall for her. He does, but then her estranged uncle drowns in his bathtub. Each wish has a terrible consequence for someone else. Are you getting a Monkey’s Paw vibe from this movie? Think on that.

I have the sudden urge to go wade through some trash.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

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