My Report About My Insanity Essay

This week I read a "story" by Jilly Jacks (if that's a real name then mine is really Blackhall, come on!) called My Homework About My Pets Essay.

(Link)

Here's a thing that describes why I chose to review this:
"Assigned to write a homework paper on a family pet, a young girl turns-in a moving essay of sadness... and of a not-quite-understood horror."

I had to read that twice because I didn't know what the hell it was talking about. Turns out the story is similar, but much, much worse--like if you wrote random words on a piece of paper then cut it up, then put that in a blender, then dropped it on the floor and left it for your mom to clean up.

At first I felt bad cause I was like, "What if some little girl actually wrote this?" No, it was just a lazy, lazy, horrible, fucking insane person. Spoilers for the end of this review--I'm just going to say it was the worst piece of shit I've ever read. And have you SEEN the shit I've read!?

Alright, I'll try to give you a plot synopsis. A schizophrenic person hallucinates that one day she finds a cat and this becomes a fixation that she repeats over and over until something happens and she stops seeing the delusion. Maybe the daily electric shock worked?

That's about it, except yeah it's supposed to be a little girl, but seriously if this is from the point of view of a little girl, this author either has never met a child or has only met extremely disturbed children. This reads like one of H.P. Lovecraft's characters trying to describe the terror of seeing Cthulhu while on cough syrup and suffering Alzheimer's on top of the normal Cthulhu-induced brand of insanity. Oh, and Cthulhu is a cat.

Here, I'll give you a sample paragraph so you can see:
"Well I don't know where he came from one fall he just came right out over there at my house after school on our front steps right there and came out to see us kids! And he was an orange and black little boy-type kittycat is what he was but he had some grey stripes on him too but mostly he was getting pretty much skinny for a kittycat and if you looked really hard on him right there you could see all those ribs of cats that they have in them sticking out right there on his sides on him right there! And I'm not even making up that part!"

And it gets worse. That was the first paragraph of the story. By the end I was seriously doubting reality. I mean, nobody could have just smeared shit onto a document like this and published it on Amazon, right? My brain is gone and I'm sitting in a nursing home right now imagining that i'm making clever jabs at people on the internet while I'm really muttering about cats to my nursing assistant while she wipes my ass.

I know this was supposed to be all cutesy and gimmicky and shit like when an autistic kid writes a book that is a best seller, but, see, the difference is that the autistic kid really wrote that book himself and had interesting insights, whereas this story was written by a full grown asshole and it comes off as if that asshole thought they could fool us by writing whole paragraphs like, "The cat, the cat, and the cat right there, the cat, he, he right there, he, the cat right there! and then my mom, and then the cat, the cat he did right there, the cat, and then the faces right there were screaming at me through the wall while I was trying to sleep." That's not cute, you're a lazy fucking dick, and I hate you, "Jilly Jacks."


GOD!



Ratings:

Having the Elements of a Story: 1 out of 5. If I really stretch and think about it, wading through the endless bullshit and giving unlimited benefit of the doubt, there is sort of a beginning, middle, and end. But seriously this is comparable to a full grown man purposely drawing like a child and attempting to sell it to me, but with none of the creativity of an actual child. There is almost no dialogue, no real conflict, no characterization, no- fuck, there's nothing. It's SO shitty. Trust me, don't read it.

Funny and Cute: 0 out of 5. I can't reiterate enough how badly this missed the mark. This is like finding a homeless guy and dressing him like a little girl to try to make him adorable. It's seriously disturbing and I'll tell you why:

Ending: 0 out of 5. Suddenly at the end the little girl finds the cat's collar and, well actually I'll just let you read it.
"Found his little red collar with no bells in it either.
Oh yes I did and it wasn't even red anymore it was partly brown like DRIED BLOOD BROWN and it was cut right through not ripped torn it was CUT RIGHT THROUGH like a CUT and I found it right in the trash behind the garage of our house back there."

Uhh what the hell? Suddenly we go full psycho. And those caps are the author's. The little girl just fucking finally lost her mind at the end there, and fuck subtlety, we need CAPITAL LETTERS to substitute for actual plot because up until this last paragraph there WAS NONE.

Overall: 0 out of 5. That's right, z-e-r-o. I already said it, but I'll say it again. This was the worst piece of shit I've ever read. There was nothing creative about it. It was like being fed an entire box of packing peanuts, one by one, without water.



If you want something more on the level of a box of crackers without water, visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Eternal Discomforts

I just read Eternal Needs, and boy do I feel weird now. It's by Anne Connery (no relation).

(Link)

Here's a description which will immediately make clear why I decided to read this:

"A lone survivor adapts to a zombie-filled world where the Undead possess hunger of a different sort. 

A short story that's part erotica, part horror and ALL Anne Connery."

As I was reading this description I was all like, "Another zombie story, yaw-WAIT, erotica? Someone really wrote this and it's not a joke? Let's do this!"

But on a side note, Amazon keeps suggesting erotica to me ever since I did that review of the sexy cowboy story, which makes me sort of uncomfortable. I want to like write them a letter like, "Hey, I just got that one story so I could make some jokes. And the zombie one too, same reason. And the lactation erotica. And the animal one. Okay, the three animal ones. But seriously stop suggesting- what's this? Mermaids? Okay, this is the last one though, only because I think it will be funny. Seriously."

But if you want some more where that came from, the author of this story is also the creator of The Erotic Shakespeare: The Tragedy of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. But I mean, check out her picture:

I know, right? It's like, "Now THAT is a lady that likes, you know, cats and stuff." And apparently Shakespeare and zombie erotica. I am VERY surprised this lady hasn't written a vampire one yet.

Alright let's get to it. This story immediately had me guessing because the first line is, "Even the LAST MAN ON EARTH has needs." Caps included, each and every time she uses the phrase LAST MAN ON EARTH. Haha what the hell? Now I'm stuck in this weird limbo between funny, sexy, and...horror?

She does an alright job though, I pretty much immediately forgot a woman was writing it because she does a good job writing for men. It's just a little weird how apologetic the main character is.

If you hadn't already guessed, he has sex with zombies. But of course these are cleaned up zombies that don't decay and have some body heat and are super not dangerous. So he goes and catches zombies with a collar and epoxies their mouths shut and rapes has sensual sex with them.

But it's super not sexist in any way, she really wants you to know, because he feels super guilty (and super turned on) by the whole thing. Actually when she keeps pointing it out it really calls attention to it and makes you wonder what kind of person this story is written for.

Like, what's the message, or the fetish, or whatever you want to call it here? Because she is obviously really conscious of misogyny and keeps mentioning it. The main character also carefully showers the girls and houses them and painstakingly finds clothes for them and applies their makeup.

And she wants us to know that he really likes talking to girls, it's just a necessity that these ones can't talk so that he can force seduce them into consensual sex. But while I'm reading about all these ways he makes up for his seemingly weird fetish that he would totally not participate in if there were any real live girls left, I'm like, "Wait a minute, I thought she said this was erotic? Maybe she won't put any actual sex in and I won't have to do an awkward blog post today."

But it gets very much fucking awkward, dear reader, because he does have sex with them, and they like it because of zombie instincts or something, and when they have an orgasm their eyes clear up and they are brought back to a life long enough to respond to him saying, "If you can hear me, nod!"

And if you used this story for its intended purpose during that part, you have some explaining to do to your now totally messed up moral compass. Enjoy!

Ratings:
Making You Question Your Entire Belief System: 5 out of 5. I am not convinced this is a bad story. It might actually be a fucking great story, because obviously this lady wrote this due to the fact that it's a fetish. She was fully conscious of that, but made the narrator reluctant and guilty about treating dead people like this and making it clear that his drives made him do it. But the reader willingly reads this story, presumably to get off. So what does that say about the morals of someone turned on by it? She is literally shaming you while you jack off. (And personally that pushed me over the top.)

Sexiness: 2 out of 5. Seriously though, this story had very little of the erotic or the zombie categories that are supposed to make this "zombie erotica." But again, that phrase is intended for humor. I was actually very much reminded of people that are obsessed with real dolls when I read this. The guy loves to dress up near inanimate girls and do their makeup. There is most definitely a niche for people that think that's sexy, but it's almost certainly a larger group than even those interested in Shakespeare erotica.

Ending: What_the_fuck out of 5. So if the story didn't cause a huge enough cognitive dissonance, the guy hears at the end that there is a camp of survivors three days walk away. Yes, as you might expect he looks at his padded rooms filled with pet zombie girls and realizes that he has been fucking zombies this whole time and getting off on the flashes where they come back to life mid coitus with a stranger. He realizes this, and he is sad that he has to leave. He goes to the store to get Viagra, vibrators, and Gatorade for a three day zombie sex marathon because he feels sorry for them, and no I'm not making this up. Just imagine for a sec nearly dying of exhaustion having sex with zombies, and then rocking up to a survivor colony. What the hell!?


Overall: 2 out of 5. I'm too confused about what the goal of this story even was to give it more than two points. But if her goal was to try to turn peoples' worlds upside down, to destroy my conception of reality, I would say it gets a 5.


If you want to read some guilt free zombierotica, visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Just Well Robbed

Today I read Just Well Loved by Rebecca Brae.

(Link)

I just want to point out that all of her book covers look exactly like that. YOU might think it's boring, but I think that her appreciation for pastel nature scenes and Victorian narration styles are really9238fu   

Sorry I passed out on my keyboard.

Here's a description:
"A chance meeting brings new hope to a beloved character trapped in a literary classic."

Fair enough. I am a fan of the short and sweet description. I mean, it's a short story, just freaking buy it and you'll find out what it's about! But that doesn't give me much to make fun of.

I was trying to figure out what the literary classic was, until I realized her description is backwards. Way to go, you had ONE sentence and you messed it up! Actually if you take this description literally it should mean like a beloved character, let's take Homer Simpson for our example, is trapped in a literary classic, like say Jane Eyre.

But what it really means is one of those short stories where a literary character is put in. Except, instead of putting Spock in the present day or something, this story is just in the same setting as the character was in before with the same plot as before and it's not stealing because...

It took me a couple of seconds to guess it was Quasimodo, and the annoyingly formal main character and her daughter see past his ugliness to the kindhearted and intelligent man inside and befriend him. Which is different from the theme of the original Hunchback because...

The story really points out that most people are shallow and, uh, I'm having trouble putting this into words because it's such a rare theme. If only there was a common saying or comparison I could apply in this situation, but I'll just have to settle for making my own, so here goes: It's like, you can't decide whether a movie is good or not just from its poster, you know?

Anyway, Quasimodo makes friends with these people and they make a picnic date for the next day and we all learn a lesson about acceptance of other races and his whole life is solved (except he's still horribly deformed), the end. 





Seriously I got nothing else to say because this story is as utterly unsurprising and bland as tofu that has been boiled for far too long by a British chef who was blinded in a terrible accident involving a spice-throwing ninja in a salt mine. Oh yes, I will torture the hell out of that simile and force it to happen sooner or later and you will take it!


Ratings:

Annoyingly Good Grammar: 5 out of 5. The whole experience was horrible because I felt like I was reading something from the early 1900s but with far more stick-up-the-assery, like if H.P. Lovecraft was forced to edit out all the jokes in The Importance of Being Ernest while Nobokov whipped him every time he used a word that sounded too relaxed, like "amidst."

Lessons Learned: 0 out of 5. There was literally no conflict in this story. Both the lady and her daughter were immediately like, "We accept you for who you are," and were not at all scared by the hunchback's ugliness. Not only that, but he also wasn't described at all and it was impossible for the reader to be startled by him because it is taken for granted that we'll be like, "Oh yeah, Quasimodo. I saw that Disney movie." The themes and metaphors that could be drawn out of his ugly ass are all ignored too. The Goonies did a far better job with the befriending a freak thing. There was also no internal conflict in any of the three characters, despite the author setting up the mother as the clear narrator, then skipping to the little girl for a second before ending with Quasimodo randomly thinking, "F-friends?" Yeah, way to make him smarter than he looks, better leave that to your summarize-someone-else's-story style descriptions next time.

Stealing Someone's Story: 1 out of 5. I would give it more, but the key here is she didn't successfully steal someone's story, I was onto that shit like immediately. She could have changed his name and gotten more points here, but she took some creative writing class where the teacher was like, "Take a favorite fictional character and juxtapose them into your story, and let's try to stay away from, uh, weird narrative styles from the turn of last century *cough*Rebecca*cough*," and she completely missed the point. What she heard was, "You can just steal other peoples' shit, plot, characters, and all and if you put your name on it, it counts as a different story." Even fan-fiction is a step above this because the characters are put into different situations, dumbass!

Overall: 2 out of 5. The writing was very coherent and it had a sensible, chronological progression. The only things this story lacks are plot, voice, logical narration, original characters, original themes, conflict, character arcs, and any entertainment value whatsoever. Small fixes, really.



If you want to read something with characters that aren't necessarily original, but are at least have names that are changed to things like Parry Hotter, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Wolverine...is the intellectual property of Marvel

This week I read Wolverine by Ulf Wolf. Hahahahaha. Really? Your pen name is themed like the things you write? That's like a guy choosing the name Blackthorn to write fantasy. Actually this guy is Swedish so, it's possible that his name is really Ulf Wolf, but I still have my doubts about a rhyming, themed name.

(Link)

Wolfstuff: Where wolf-like animal stories come from. Here's a description:

"The wolverine has not eaten for days. He has her scent. The deer is tired and bleeding, though still running. He can keep this pace up for days, she cannot. He knows that he will eat tonight. He will kill her well before dawn.

::
The warming March sun had shone all day. Although the air remained frigid in the many shadows, out in the open the surface snow was melting in its glare. Then, as commonly happens in early spring this far north, when the sun began setting and the shadows grew longer across the snowy field, the melted snow surface froze and soon the entire meadow was covered by a crust of icy snow thick enough in places to support a walking man, thick enough everywhere to support almost any child, and plenty strong enough throughout to support the wolverine..."

Et-cetera. I'm not going to post the full description because it goes on another ten paragraphs. Dude, it's a DESCRIPTION, you don't post the full short story there!

Anyway, this is a story about a minority serial rapist that chases a woman through her hometown. He can't wait to get his hands on her and it's only a matter of time. HOWEVER, in a sudden turn of events she stumbles upon some policemen, but she is hesitant to show herself because she is also a minority.

At least, that's my reading. Literally what happens is a really boring and excessively long account of a sex-hungry--I mean, bloodthirsty wolverine trying to satiate his murder rage on a hungry doe. She is about to give up when she finds some humans, and they of course save the day with guns. It really reads like it should be a metaphor though because it would be completely pointless to write a stupid story about animals, right? Right?

Since the guy is Swedish and presumably raised by wolves, I will skip the usual grammar gripe and get on to the more interesting gripes.

I had trouble connecting to these characters because they were freaking animals I don't care about. We did get to see some of the humans' points-of-view, but they were as exciting as a man that pretends he's a wolf all day and then writes a creepily detailed journal about it. Actually, I would read that.

It's pretty obvious that the doe will survive because the wolverine is sort of made out to be a crazy mass-murderer type and-- Seriously, how can you write about animals like they are people? I feel weird just summarizing this plot. But anyway, I did actually find myself rooting for both of them and sitting not quite all the way to the back of my seat, but on the other hand this effect quickly faded when I excitedly thought, "The End," and there was still another freaking quarter of this novella to keep reading. And it figures the super female defenseless deer is rescued by burly lumberjack men with guns. 

Because women can't do anything by themselves. HA! Stupid women.

Ratings:

Inconsistent Animal Sophistication Level: 5 out of 5. One minute these animals were using words like "obstreperous" (throwback!) in their internal monologues and the next they were talking about the strange men with their "fire sticks" and their "machine things" that "move" people. Seriously why would an animal not know the word for "gun" or "axe" but the word "boot" is totally commonplace to them? It just made feel like I was reading a description from the point of view of some savage that didn't understand what the big shiny bird that rode in the sky was (see my reading).

Tenses: 2 out of 5. After the first section of this, I had to go back and check because it felt like I had been suddenly hurled into present tense. And indeed, the first part is past tense. "Fine," I thought, "he's just experimenting with this to set the pace." And that excuse worked until he started messing it up. Some things would be twisted into strange sentences referring to the past in present tense, then there would be a past tense sentence just stuck in there, because if you can't figure out how to express it, then fuck it! (Writer's motto.)

Sounding Stilted Due to Trying to Set the Mood: 5 out of 5. This guy was writing part like he had just watched Planet Earth (highly likely) and part like he was trying to add suspense--which he was. The result was that every contraction and simple sentence was ripped out of the story entirely. I can't imagine talking to this guy. "Kids, amirite?" "They are a group of individuals which can not and will not be deterred from their insatiable curiosity, especially-" "Shut UP!"

Overall: 2.5 out of 5. It was mostly written well and stuff, but it was just boring as hell.

If you want to read something else that is boring as hell, visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall 

The Shit

Today I read The Pitch by Adriaan Brae. You got too many vowels in your name, bro.

(Link)

Description:

"A light-hearted, satirical, look at the troubles faced by con artists in a more enlightened age."

The story is almost as short as the description, but a much larger waste of time. Also, I have no idea why there is a broken light bulb for the cover. Maybe it was a bad idea to write this story? HAH, take THAT guy who will never see this and doesn't have a chance to defend himself!

I think there were actually more grammar mistakes than words in this story. It's super easy to fix in three simple steps:

1) Read your story after you write it

2) Is there a space after every fucking opening quote mark, like this?---> "   Bob shit his pants--hard." If so, take out the fucking space.

3) If your sentence somehow manages to have any fucking punctuation at all, is it hanging outside the quote marks, like this?---> Craig sniffed. "   Did you just shit your pants"? If so, tuck that little bastard back where it goes; it's obscene to just have it hanging out there, flapping in the wind.

Anyway, in this story, the super forgettable main character with the personality of a white cardboard cutout gets a strange call on his skull implant. It's in the future, and the author really wants us to know how many cool things he thought of, like ads in your skull and--whatever, who cares?

The man on the other line offers him everlasting life for ten percent of his income until he dies. If you guessed religion, you win! It goes on like this with the caller trying to sell religion and the guy making "funny" remarks. For instance:

"   What do you mean I need to follow certain rules" ?

"    Like you can't sleep with men.".

" What ab5out hermaphrodites"   ? &

Wakka wakka?

It turns out the guy doesn't accept and it is revealed that the caller is a struggling con-artist trying to run a scam he got from the ancient con-artists. RELIGION SLAM!

Ratings:

Clever: 1 out of 5. First, all credibility is ruined by the horrible typos. I can't harp on that enough. There's also the fact that this story is like five words long, which is a good indicator that this Adriaaanie guy couldn't think of anything else. The jokes were also almost as bad as the 90's classic "Laughing out Loud"

Buy it used on Amazon for $0.01 (seriously)! Yes, that's Kelsey Grammar.

Back on track. The premise of this story is also not very clever. It's the old and tired "Let's deconstruct religion into what it literally is for some larfs," gimmick. But at that it's not worth the thirty seconds I spent reading it, especially because it assumes we'll all just abandon religion once we have computers in our brains.

Setting: 0 out of 5. I got to say I have a problem with just listing shit until the reader is bullied into realizing it's the fucking future (both in the sense that I do it too much and in the sense that I hate when other people do it). If it reads like: "Joe Spaceliver put on his nanosocks and strapped his plasmadildo to his cryobelt and stepped across the platform to the bulkhead of his spacepartment, then palmed the fazelock to his antigravmagnetodoor which whooshed up to futurereveal the spacecitytropolisplanetscape-" I GET it already, we're in the FUTURE fuck.

Subtlety: 0 out of 5. The guy might as well have called up and said, "Hey, do you want to join my thinly-veiled satire for religion?" and the story could have ended there. For it to be funny or neat or whatever the hell this was going for, I have to make it more than two paragraphs before I'm like, "Oh, he's making fun of religion. God, what time is it? Don't I have better shit to do?"

Overall: 2 out of 5. I don't even know why that many points. Maybe because he was polite enough to stop after a short time. I would say because it's at least legible, but it almost isn't. Points for trying to be clever, I guess.

If you want to read something that is obviously trying to be clever, visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.

Movie Action

I know I said I wouldn't do another movie this week, but I saw so many good movies that I just had to share. I settled on Machi Action by director Jeff Chang.

This movie is about the actor that plays Spacehero Fly (Bolin Chen) and his best friend Monster (Qiu Yan Xiang). For a while their Power Rangers style TV show is a hit, but after ten years their ratings are terrible. The CEO of their network steps down and hands over the company to his daughter (Guo Xue Fu). She decides to call in a Japanese expert to revamp the show, leaving Fly and Monster replaced by the new, hip "Face" (Owodog).

This movie is pretty fucking brilliant if a little disjointed in places. There is a villain (some guy who was forced to play the bad guy when he was a kid and just got the shit beat out of him by the other children wearing Fly masks) but he only shows up like three times. When he does show up, it's usually entertaining because he does stuff like robbing kindergartens on tuition days while the kids are stoked that the villains from their favorite show are playing with them. Another time highlights how much this movie satirizes Taiwan--they rob an English cram school during a performance. Funny because he asks the teacher how much for an English lesson and she says 25,000 dollars, so he says, "Fuck you," and a little boy repeats, "Fuck you." It's supposed to be funny because he's giving a free English lesson, but really it's just hilarious to watch little kids swear. Small "heh" moments like these accumulate through the whole film, but aaanyways, now, proportionally, this post has more of the villain than the actual movie. Let's get back on track.

This movie has so many great things about it: Funny cameos, references, and completely random shit (like an Orgazmo poster in the background--awesome). They got the Power Rangers parody down pretty damn well. They even have the spandex-clad foot soldiers that sit around in their own group and don't really talk but make sounds exactly like the putties from Power Rangers. You know, this sound:

Damn those girls are hot. And as a kid I never really appreciated the writing. An environmental message AND multiple puns for taking out the trash? Brilliant. Oh yeah the Machi Action--so anyway for random shit it struck me as hilarious when the Japanese guy came in and asked who the hell these guys were and they just made their putty noises and one lifted up his arm and for some reason they pixelized his arm pit hair. Haha what the fuck?

Face is also a brilliant rival for Fly because where fly was the old-school, clean-cut hero with a mullet, Face is the new, hip, effeminate, eyeliner-wearing, singing and dancing Asian superstar type. And his name is Face. After Fly's last episode where he is brought to his knees by a spray of toxic lotion by Monster and then dissolves into space protein (I can't make this shit up), Fly and Monster try to make ends meet by doing the home shopping network selling Tiger Penis (another awesome Taiwanese reference). Meanwhile, Face is boosting the image of the new Spacehero by doing music videos. I can't say enough about how perfect this character is, but if I keep going we get into the realm of shit which is shit that you have no idea about.

Alright, but my favorite part BY FAR was when Fly went around trying to get acting gigs and failing because his acting style consists of only ultra-dramatic movements. At one point he shows his previous commercial work from an ancient VHS, and they are mildly funny with his superhero movements and mullet, but I cracked up for like five minutes straight when he did a parody of my favorite Taiwanese commercial in history. Get ready, because I found that shit on the Youtubes:

Other than the funny parts, this movie actually has a really serious message to it, which is nice. It turns out Fly and his little brother worshiped the Spacehero that came before, and his little brother wasted away and died while Fly was promising to be a hero for him. It's also revealed that the CEO of the network has kept the show on the air for so long because he believes that some shows are important because of their message, no matter the ratings. I have mixed feelings about how they handled all this, but it left me with a generally warm feeling, so why not.

Ratings:

Best Scooter Scene Ever (Of Which Taiwanese Movies Have a Hell of a Lot): 5 out of 5. So Fly is told he is the worst actor ever by a porn director and his love interest rides back with him to comfort him. From the back of his scooter she starts to sing the Spacehero Fly theme song and he breaks down into the most hilarious crying face ever and joins in. Both touching, a huge reference, and fucking funny as hell (Yes I used "both" for three things. You got a better word!?).

Sound Effects Ruining Things: 3 out of 5. Not everything in the movie was funny, and what may have been funny originally was often ruined by sound effects. I don't know why Taiwanese TV and sometimes movies feel the need to add like "Boioioioing!" randomly while I'm watching shit. Yeah, Indian movies do it too, now that I think of it. Like the porn director with his hand stuffed casually down his pants is mildly funny until there is a big uncorking sound effect while he pulls it out to shake hands.

Wandering Storyline: 3.5 out of 5. I enjoyed most of the things that were jammed into this movie, but it was pretty lengthy and I felt like I had come out of a blackout sometimes when I was suddenly like, "Who the fuck is this actress? Oh yeah, he's in love with the makeup artist from half an hour ago."

Overall: Also 3.5 out of 5. Nah...4. 4 out of 5, because I just remembered it was pretty funny when he did his home shopping network pitches and then commanded, "CALL!" while wearing a Power Rangers suit.

READ! amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

Au Gratin Taipei

I just watched Au Revoir Taipei by director Arvin Chen.

So I was like, "This kinda seems like Superbad, but toned down for Taiwanese audiences." I mean, look at Jack Yao here:

Now look at Michael Cera:

I mean, I guess his jacket IS zipped up, and a different color. And that subway is much less crowded than the one in Au Revoir Taipei. But it just seems sort of similar, I mean, who is this Arvin Chen gu-HEY! The director isn't even Taiwanese!

Anyway, this is the same sort of misunderstanding-with-the-police-and-criminals-causes-a-night-time-adventure-through-the-city film that Cera is always in. If he could speak Chinese, I bet he would have been in it. It does a pretty good job with the characters, though, defying most of the Taiwanese stereotypes all the other movies have (because the writer is fucking American, probably). The wannabe gangster is effeminate and in touch with his emotions, giving his kidnapee advice on love. Susie (Amber Kuo), the love interest, defies her little girl looks to lead Jack Yao chasing after gunmen and running from the cops. Kai (Jack Yao) doesn't ever grow the balls to stand up for Susie (except once, but he hits like a sissy and gets punched to he ground immediately). And the dumb convenience store worker/friend is- no wait, that's pretty accurate--but he gets a pep-talk from like everyone to go for it with the girl he works with and he doesn't, which is refreshingly real.

The cop character is pretty good too, I mean, check out his CHIPs hair and leather jacket!

Plus a dumb chubby sidekick? Nice. The cop also gets left by his girlfriend and you think it's going to be another Hong Kong formulaic thing where he's either too badass for his woman or gets her back (actually let's face it, YOU don't think that because YOU don't watch a bunch of Chinese movies for no reason) but he ends up being so inept at his job that he loses Kai when he spots his ex and ends up in a hilarious shoving match with her date.

Oh yeah, I never said what the plot is. Uh so Kai's girlfriend goes to France and he spends all his time in a book store teaching himself French where Susie works and tells him he can't just sit there and read shit for free. His girlfriend leaves him and he makes a deal with a gangster he knows for a ticket to France to win her back. Hijinx ensue. Yeah, it's a date movie, take your girlfriend. Or rent Superbad.

Ratings:

Cool-Looking Shit: 5 out of 5. The cinematography is pretty good. And check out these gangsters:

Sappy Love Shit: 3 out of 5. Again, love story. But the cop and the convenience store worker don't get their girls. Also, the ending is pretty good, considering you know there's going to be love involved. Basically, though, there is enough mildly funny/interesting shit happening for it to not be hijacked by the love thing.

Me Posting Funny Shit: 0 out of 5. What happened here? Alright, I promise I'll find a terrible fanfiction or something to review next time.

Overall: 4 out of 5. Yeah, not bad. Superbad was better. Have I mentioned that you should see Superbad? God I love Michael Cera.

If you want to read some erotica with Michael Cera in it, visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall