Oct 10

Starred Book Review: APOCALYPSING by Jason Anderson

Apocalypsing
By Jason Anderson
Genre: Science Fiction / Satire
Reviewed by Samantha Hui (Independent Book Review)

Jason Anderson’s Apocalypsing is a quick-witted, pop-culture savvy, sci-fi satire that is equal parts absurd and introspective. Reviewed by Samantha Hui.

Death and the apocalypse is as good a time as any to take charge of your life.

Domestic foibles. Impending armageddon. Aliens in the transdimensional afterlife. Jason Anderson’s Apocalypsing is a quick-witted, pop-culture savvy, sci-fi satire that is equal parts absurd and introspective. Through his trials in the afterlife, a modern man learns what he was missing in his living life. Anderson’s writing toes the line of cynicism and misanthropy but ultimately turns toward a message of cautious hope and pragmatic optimism.

“‘Black market baby formula is a thing,’ Wesley offered in corroboration.‘They removed tariff-rate quotas from processed sugar, then the supply drowned on the vine. It’s 120 degrees in Omaha and Americans can’t get Mountain Dew anymore. People are going to start killing each other in the streets over kids’ birthday cakes. Watch.’”

David Downey died a nobody: his best friends were comic book characters; his mother passed her agoraphobia down to him; and his girlfriend Stacey left him because he had nothing to offer to her, himself, nor the rest of the world. As luck would have it, even in the afterlife, David belongs to neither heaven nor hell.

Unbeknownst to either party, Stacey is a soul succubus who has trapped David in a purgatory of existing as her shadow. What had begun as a mission to become unshackled from Stacey’s unknowing clutches quickly becomes an odyssey of self discovery and world saving against an Anti-God under the guise of a democratic congressional nominee named Tag Gottfried.

“‘I’m sorry, but just to recap—you’re telling me I belong to a soul-sucking Jinni genie who descends from a long line of witch-people that used sex to blow off magic steam. Do I have that more or less correct?’”

Apocalypsing is uproariously funny and teeming with pop-culture references: Bobby Kennedy is David’s heavenly guide in the afterlife; River Phoenix is romantic and a sweetheart; Gandhi didn’t end up where you think he did. The characters in this book are quick on their feet and have sharp tongues. Even the aliens have imported all knowledge of current pop-culture references into their knowledge base.

The referential dialogue makes for some hilarious character interactions while smartly calling attention to the absurdity of our current reality. The Anti-God, Tag, pressurizes the in-world MARS virus, anti-immigrant sentiments, and economic inequality to bring upon a New Testament level apocalypse. Apocalypsing is a “plague on both your houses,” delivering a scathing critique of the division currently plaguing our political climate.

“‘I would note that the First Revelation does not speak of ammunition. There is no more powerful weapon than the microphone. Each word is its own arrow. The supply line is infinite. My mouth will be like a Gatling gun of glorious mistruths.’”

David is a sympathetic protagonist that many readers are going to identify with. He begins the book as someone who lacks introspection and courage, though his witticism keeps readers on his side. In his life, he was a cynical debt collector who was just a cog in the machine. He upheld that his failure to Stacey was due to him trying to protect her from the shame he felt toward himself and his family. He jokes that he died due to abandonment. Only in his death does he stop fearing for himself and putting his (after)life in action.

“‘The world is your oyster. It always was, you were just too busy metaphorically dying when you were alive to do anything about it. I recommend you take this opportunity to invert that process. Go swimming with ghost sharks. Maybe let yourself get eaten. Try to enjoy all thirty-one flavors.’”

Apocalypsing is a story about taking action. The apocalypse will not simply be a tragedy to live through, but an active verb of what the people will do to save each other’s souls in the end times. This book is hilarious, current, and—at times—tender. An excellent choice for fans of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Good Omens.

Purchase your copy of APOCALYPSING at Magical Jeep Distributing (official distributor of Roadside Press), at Barnes & Noble, other online book retailers or request it at your favorite, local bookstore.

Aug 04

Westley Heine reviews APOCALYPSING by Jason Anderson

A pop culture Book of the Dead, Apocalypsing begins with David, a freshly deceased ghost, who is more self-conscious about his looks rather than upset about being dead. If he knew he was going to die he would have worked out more and dressed up first. This nonchalant humor sets the tone for a journey that playfully suggests that death may not be relief from life, but at least there is comic relief. Bobby Kennedy appears to David to give orientation, a Virgil to David’s Dante.

A clever plot mixes contemporary physics with theology to create a fresh vision of the beyond weaving through the battle of good and evil, some political satire, the perils of dating in the afterlife, David witnessing his own funeral, being beholden to his ex even as a ghost, that reuniting with long lost relatives is as awkward as it was on Earth, friendly aliens, eventually culminating in a show-down for all existence.

The dialogue in Apocalypsing is popcorned with mass media references which some readers may need Wikipedia at hand in order to navigate this Bardo. However, pop culture junkies will rejoice in the light approach to serious subjects like a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the Information Age. Hilariously there’s an Anti-Hell where an evil doer may be surrounded by happy people in perpetuity. Perhaps like a Pharaoh armed with his Earthly possessions in his tomb before entering the next realm, there’s a subtle warning that what we fill our brains with in this world will play on repeat in eternity. You might as well dwell on all the things you love. Ultimately, Apocalypsing is a love story.

—Westley Heine, author of Busking Blues: Recollections of a Chicago Street Musician & Squatter

APOCALYPSING is available for pre-order at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/apocalypsing/177

Jul 20

3 poems from THESE MANY COLD WINTERS OF THE HEART by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Demi-glace Gods

Nothing worse than being sauced
for other sauces,
demi-glace gods spooning out
all the simmering half-baked worship
at discount prices
and they say a dog and its human
grow to look more like each other
as the years go on,
the same is true of writers
and their writing
which does not bode well for me
or damn near anyone else
in this fluttering rapid eye
butterfly net world;
the food channel always there
when you are hungry,
fleecing tigers turned into rugs
like a highly unusual black shoeshine
way of roaring.

The Workers Will Reach An Agreement with Their Oppressors Next Week 

I am not some over courteous tailcoat doorman
waiting on tips that never come through –
I have read the papers as well,
seems all is well in this land of many discontents,
the workers will reach an agreement
with their oppressors next week,
so the rest of us can get to work, find that
able punch clock always waiting
to dock you a full half hour for a two minute indiscretion;
no wonder there are clocks everywhere to remind
you that your time was never yours
to begin with, even there at your birth:
the beginning, recorded right there on the certificate;
what a cruel complete prison to build around
those first pink wailing screams that seem
to spill right out of your splayed, exhausted
mystery juice mother while the many nurses working
a double sop up blood and offer an expectant
congratulations that comes for that missed smoke break
continuance of one thing after another.

Hopscotch Girls in the Rain

The handicapped bus pulls up to the curb,
lets a seriously stooped elderly gentleman with double-cane out –
someone must still care.

And I try not to blow it,
the candles have endured enough cake already.
Watching those hopscotch girls in the rain.

A baker’s dozen all in light summer dresses.
Lined up like ladies in waiting.

Making their way through a nimble labyrinth
of chalked numbers.

Barefoot chatterboxing.
A lucid moment I know they will never
get back again.

Quite impressive actually.

The others lost to song and clapping.
A light rain to be sure, but still a faltering sky
beyond notice.

Those successive brown pigtails
running the gamut.

 

These Many Cold Winters of the Heart is dancing splinters of Life, and that inevitable experience of Death that our common humanity demands we all share. A book of blue-collar poetry, with a surrealist bent, this work is also a reminder of the importance of that great swelling laughter that must always persist under the hard advancing glare of these many unforgiving days.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author who lives in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work has been published both in print and online in such places as: The New York Quarterly, Rusty Truck, Evergreen Review, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash and The Blue Collar Review. He enjoys listening to the blues and cruising down the TransCanada in his big blacked out truck.

These Many Cold Winters of the Heart is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/winters/172

Jul 04

Alan Catlin reviews THEY SAID I WASN’T COLLEGE MATERIAL by Scot Young

first published in http://misfitmagazine.net/

They Said I Wasn't College Material by Scot Young

Scot Young, They Said I Wasn’t College Material, Roadside Press, Magic Jeep Distributing, available on Amazon, 2024, 132 pages, $15

Young’s latest collection is a selected, mostly culled from before 2009. The title comes from an actual conversation with a guidance counselor who failed to see Young’s potential as a student. Scot, in addition to being the editor of the longstanding online poetry site Rusty Truck, has been an educator sensitive to the needs of students who often fall between the cracks as he almost did. His poems reflect a downhome in the Ozark’s personality who boozes, chases girls, is subject to all the foolishness of being young and feckless but who embraces a relationship that becomes a life partnership and mature adult. These poems are narratives told in everyday language of life lived  without pretention, often with humor and insight for those of us who like our poetry without garnishes, and a musical accompaniment you might find on your local bar’s jukebox.

THEY SAID I WASN’T COLLEGE MATERIAL by Scot Young is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/college/154

Jun 28

Steven Meloan reviews THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE by Dan Denton

The Dead and the Desperate by Dan Denton [hardcover book]Just got my signed hardcover copy of Dan Denton’s amazing memoir, The Dead and the Desperate, on Roadside Press. If you’re looking for a tale of personal purgatory but ultimate redemption, this is the book for you. There have been many literary takes on blue collar life in America—dead-end jobs, dead-end relationships, and often mixed with substance abuse or variations of mental illness. But as a deft and brutally honest storyteller, Dan Denton manages to make such well-trodden paths not only compelling, but literally a page-turner. You can’t wait to see what crazy shit will come down next.

And there is an overarching theme in the book of the soul-crushing toll that factory/blue collar life takes upon those trapped in grinding work hours, and living paycheck-to-paycheck. Yet amidst challenges and experiences that might have ended a lesser person, Denton manages a wry sense of dark comedy, mixed with an almost educational take on an American working class that has been ground down by our current corporatocracy.

Assorted short chapters of the book focus specifically on truly illuminating topics like the economics/psychology of sex work, the history of the factory as an institution, economic disparity, the rise of inner-city crack and associated incarcerations, mood disorders/SSRI’s/Big Pharma, the disintegration of “the American Dream,” and the social fallout of globalization.

But it is the all-too-human ordeals that drive the story—a descent into the depths, the road back, and then a “return with the elixir” (in the form of this book). Denton has come away with a hell of a life-tale, is now many-years clean and sober, and living the life of a full-time writer.

Not everyone has a compelling story to tell. And not everyone with a compelling story quite knows how to tell it. Neither of those things are the case with Dan Denton.

Read it and see!

—Steven Meloan, author of St. James Infirmary
The Dead and the Desperate [hardcover] is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/desperate/169

Jun 25

Alan Catlin reviews AND BLACKBERRIES GREW WILD by Susan Ward Mickelberry

first published in misfitmagazine.net

Susan Ward Mickelberry, and blackberries grew wild, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep, available on Amazon, 2024, 100 pages, $15

Susan is essentially a narrative poet reflecting on her past in the many places she has lived in and visited as an army brat, over a long and eventful life. A strong sense of loss attends many of these, especially that of her beloved husband and family members now long gone. There are exotic locations, scents, and sounds, and more staid, though still lush, at home poems in Florida. As life is a journey, Susan has a rich one to share touching upon locations and experiences many of us can only visit by watching travelogues or hitching a rich Rick Steve as he journeys from one exotic location to another. He may wax lyrical but he is no poet as Mickleberry most definitely is.

 

 

And Blackberries Grew Wild by Susan Ward Mickelberry is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/blackberries/155

Jun 24

Alan Catlin reviews CISTERN LATITUDES by James Duncan

first published in misfitmagazine.net

James Duncan, Cistern Latitudes, Roadside Press, Distributed by Magical Jeep, also available on Amazon, 2024, 84 pages, $15

Duncan’s narratives often put me in mind of late 50s, early 60s cafés featuring traditional folk singers. These were usually solo acts playing acoustic guitar with artists singing traditional  ballads and the occasional original song. Not that Duncan is a balladeer, per se, but his subjects often feature a rambling man, crossing the country, usually alone missing someone, or searching for someone new as most of those songs did.  He is often lonely, close to despair but not a defeatist; there is always another day, another ramble, new places to go and see and hopefully, a new love to find.

Jun 23

JD Monroe reviews THE DEAD AND THE DESPERATE by Dan Denton

first published at https://www.i94bar.com/reviews/books/3126-disaffected-dan-denton-must-be-your-new-fave-author

Disaffected? Dan Denton must be your new fave author

The Dead and The Desperate By Dan Denton (Roadside Press)

Way back in the New Wave/Post punk era, one of my only friends was a kid with a very similar name to mine. He was really into Depeche Mode and Tubeway Army, and he had a real hardk nock life with a dead father, abusive brother and corrections officer mother,

We met at some troubled teen diversion program. He knew some Kung Fu and kinda became my protector, as I was a scrawny-ass make-up wearing Ramone who was always targeted by bully dumb-fuck Ohio males for wearing eyeliner and being like totally into Bowie and the NY Dolls.

I always tried to get the kid to work on his keyboards so he could join my dirty punk band, I thought that might give him a productive creative outlet and elevate our sorta stupidly primitive Ramones/Cramps sound. He dabbled with it for awhile, but would always get sorta distracted by girls. He saw the two of us as rivals, whereas, I saw us as more like brothers. I really loved the guy.

I remember the first time he tried to kill himself. My own first love who looked like Brigitte Bardot went to visit him in the psych ward (he was always sorta chasing whatever girl I liked.) He hung out with the preppies at the downtown high school and sorta sucked up to the Thai immigrant “Karate Kid” Catholic school bullies.

At least three times, i relocated him outta that town, cause I understood innately that anybody with any sort of unique creative spark was just gonna get dragged through the gauntlet back there if they refused to join the military, it was gonna be nothing but bullshit pinballing back and forth between factory speed, DUI’s, churchified never good enough, forgive my sins hallelujah and the psych ward again. Always more Judge Judy fire and brimstone punishments and no reward forthcoming, ever. Ohio is where they manufacture the corrections guards, you know what I mean? Just brute Tarzan dumbfuckery and 24 Budweisers a day, “Guns & Ammo” magazines, hunting, Hooters, meat lover’s pizza, and NFL forever, Amen.

For some crazy psychological reasons unbeknownst to me, he always went back to his hometown tormentors, maybe like, better the devil you know or something? He was a real good lookin’ kid, with a fabulous poofy new wave haircut. Sorta like a cross between Bono and that Cory Hart “Sunglasses At Night” dude. So he did get to sorta be the big fish, local girl magnet well into the grunge era, before losing his hair. That was another reason he probably stayed there. He was always getting a lot of girl attention, but man. I knew it was not gonna go good for any working class weirdo in that Fascist-ass tank plant town.

He ended up killing himself a couple years ago, ya know he just never found any peace or real love and it was always another probation violation, or bad breakup, another spiral of some kind whenever he quit his factory job in another fit of artistic fervor, you know the old Clash lyric, “No good for man to work in cages, hits the town and drinks his wages”? That was his bad luck story for decades. Once you’re in the system, it’s nigh impossible to escape their sticky traps, ya know? His grandparents gave him a trailer but he’d work for like three days, then crash for two, then it was always back to the grind and you can never work hard enough to please all the Ohio women folk who absorbed all the Judge Judy/Sally Jesse Rapahel daytime TV propaganda in the 90’s about how men all need to get another job, a third job, job, job, job, “J-O-B” Mcjobby job job forever, cause they don’t want no scrubs and all that capitalism slavery bullshit.

Another one of our high school buddies was a barber/old school O.G. real hip hop battle rapper and he was dying of lung cancer but still trying to hold down a minimum wage hairnet and polyester shirt job at Bob Evans, a hick breakfast joint, cause the womenfolk back there kept telling him he did not deserve love if he was not working two jobs or more. If you are poor, you are always supposed to be on the clock, working, ya know, mopping. “ABC=Always Be Cleaning”. “If you have time to lean you have time to clean”, “If you wanna get started on changing those urinal cakes and hit the baseboards of the men’s and women’s restrooms, that’d be super”, they tell you work will set you free, but that’s just some grotesque Nazi lie.

I used to have to take piss tests for dishwashing jobs back there, you know? The bloody wet apron and hairnet and all that shit, while the rich dudes sat at the bar talking about when they were on high school sports teams and looking for approval from racist old coaches. If you stay in one of those hellholes, you will always be forced to slave and eat shit and grind and grovel, they will chain you to the hot hose and make you scrub in the basement of the tumor factory until you keel over and maybe say you were “a hard worker”. That ain’t much heaven to me, really. You never even make enough to do anything much but barely get by-everybody has hardcore addictions, they come with the gig of being born working class.

I don’t blame nobody for wanting to seek out some kinda fleeting relief from the gruelling, non stop agonies of their meaningless, deadend existence there. Scrub and scrub and mop and beg….All so you can become some kinda Employee Of The Month someday, or get promoted to like, lead snitch/”crew chief” or some shit, “team leader”, or like, “compliance officer”. Like that’s something anyone should ASPIRE To. So my rapper friend was mopping the kitchen of Bob Evans and collapsed there one day and was finally relocated to hospice where he died.

Ohio’s a real bad place for sensitive artistic human beings-  don’t go to Ohio, it’ll kill ya, or turn you into a cop, not much in between unless you’re like a born rich kid. I used to be pen pals with this underground punk goddess from L.A., and she used to encourage me to write a memoirs, I took a couple stabs at it, but always felt like it was “too soon” cause I never really wanted to cause harm by telling all my doomed friend’s stories, they all had kids and parents and we had a bad, battered, bruising, bloody youth.

Eventually, that lady publisher turned me on to some amazing poets-a guy named Rich Ferguson who was so gifted he made me reassess all my own song lyrics and shit, and this dude, Dan Denton, the author of the essential, “100 A Week Motel” and also this latest one, that’s miraculously even better, “The Desperate & The Dead”. I think he’s maybe funnier than Bukowski in some ways, mainly because he’s so courageous and self incriminating and all his descriptions of dive bars and dead-end Ohio factory life are just so vivid and poignant and instantly recognizable to me.

This poet soul brother, Dan Denton has a big blue collar heart and is smart as hell, and he’s been chewed up for decades by the same relentlessly damaging Honky Death Machine that killed all my childhood friends off, one by one. If you ever read Mark Manning’s (also known as Zodiac Mindwarp) laugh-out-loud books like “Fucked By Rock The Unimaginable Confessions Of Zodiac Mindwarp”, “Get Your Cock Out”, or “Crucify Me Again”, or ever read long passages of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Kingdom Of Fear” out loud to your loved ones, or if you resonated with the outlaw comedy of Bill Hicks, this unflinching truth teller, Dan Denton is your favorite new writer. He is my kindred spirit and even wrote me into the book.

He’s a genius and a semi reformed fuck-up, the unlikely product of the Divided Slaves Of Amnesia’s midwestern slavery plantations. I’m grateful he quit the factory life to be a full time badass.. Get his books as soon as you can, he’s got Eugene Deb’s soulpower and a rock ‘n’ roll heart, like a motherfucker!

Jun 22

Alan Catlin reviews INNOCENT POSTCARDS by John Pietaro

first published at misfitmagazine.net

John Pietaro, Innocent Postcards: poetry ciphers, verse, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep, also available on Amazon, 2024, 87 pages, $15

Moving back and forth throughout the Cold War years to the present, Pietaro’s unusual but affecting collection effectively renders a state of mind that was dominated by Cold War politics.  I remember as a young child watching a goon from Wisconsin conducting a mock trial of sorts as chair of the House Unamerican Activities and thinking this mealy mouth demagogue was someone to despise as was everything he stood for. I was maybe 7 then and I didn’t know what a demagogue was but I sure as hell could recognize a hypocritical, two-faced liar in a way only kids can.  Nothing that happened since has changed my original impressions.

I grew up doing atomic air raid drills, ducking and covering under desks or assembling in the hallway where there were no windows, wondering how was this going to survive as we lived well within the blast range of an atomic bomb drop on NYC. Those were the years of above ground testing in the desert, exposing troops to the aftershocks and the radiation just to see what would happen. Those were years of naivety and innocence and the worst kind of “we don’t know what the hell we are doing” years. Not really. And we still don’t. I used to think the MAGA folks wanted to return to the 50s, assuming it was the 1950s they aspired to. I was right only about the 50s, though recent events have shown I had the wrong century. Pietaro knows all this, lived through most of it and gives us a chaotic representation of the life and times of the Cold War era.  As Ed Sanders said in an informal discussion 15 or so years ago, “I’ll put my FBI file up against anyone’s.” By which he meant size and depth. And a few years later introducing a Fugs poem/song “CIA Man” that has the line “someone is tapping my phone/line….”: he claims, they are still tapping mine. The implication was the 50s/60s  aren’t over yet. I fear he may be right. Innocent Postcards is a book for anyone who shares the same misgivings.

INNOCENT POSTCARDS by John Pietaro is available at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/postcards/160

Jun 21

Alan Caltin reviews DISPOSABLE DARLINGS by Todd Cirillo

first published in misfitmagazine.net

Todd Cirillo, Disposable Darlings, Roadside Press, distributed by Magical Jeep Distribution and available on Amazon, 2024, 84 pages, $15

Reading Cirillo put me in mind of working in the neighborhood bar and hanging out with the regulars. When I dedicate a book, as I often have,  “to the regulars as they made life bearable and you know who you are,” these dedications were not idle or facetious gestures. Over 25 years I worked the last bar, regulars saved my butt, made me laugh, never failed to tip, bought me drinks when I was drinking, hung out, and provided moral support when I needed it. While Todd was not literally one of those guys, I can see him as simpatico, as a guy who would have been someone you could shoot the shit with, talk sports, or writing, or just about anything else that came to mind. Needless to say, his poems have the same kind of easy, vernacular feel to them. None of these are overly literary or self-conscious in a way that makes you feel like you are being talked down to. When he references himself, it’s as much to make you laugh along with him or share his pain. In short, Cirillo is a regular guy and that his high praise where I come from.

Disposable Darlings by Todd Cirillo is available here https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/darlings/158