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62. How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba - I will never forget my disappointment at reading a Neil Gaiman collection of short stories and realizing that I hated his short stories. I liked his one shot stories in Sandman but even then, they were in the service of the bigger narrative. I even like the short chapters from American Gods, but again, in the service of a larger narrative.
Neil Gaiman needs a big canvas to spread out. His short stories are clever. Almost all of them are clever. They don't go anywhere with that cleverness. Even the Sherlock Holmes/Cthulu story is merely clever. In that collection, the only story that I honestly liked was the American Gods tie-in with a meditation on Grendel. I also hate China Mieville's short stories for the same reason. He's clever. He's very clever. Too bad he never gets around to telling the fucking story (although I don't like Mieville nearly as much as I like Gaiman so the disappointment is less).
So this is a comic book story with a very clever idea. What if a teenager went to a party and wanted to talk to girls and when he finally got up the nerve to talk to girls, they were all alien beings? Sadly, that's the only place where it goes. There's a much better movie adaptation that 86s some of the mystery surrounding the girls in order to give us a chase and a love story. The movie is a sweet movie with small ambitions.
Now, granted, there's one bit that is more interesting that the movie and that's the fact that the girls are way more mysterious and you never know if they are speaking in metaphors or literal descriptions of going to the sun. Also they don't make a lot of sense and there's an entire civilization that they are hinting at that neither the protagonist nor the reader understands. That's pretty cool and they really had to get rid a lot of this writing to make a coherent movie. Also the artwork by the guys who drew The Umbrella Academy is pretty sweet.
63. Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels by Kerrie Droban - Yeah, this non-fiction book is totally copaganda. And usually I'd be likely to dismiss it as the kind of book that makes cops look goods (even though it ends with the ATF fucking over one of their own) but these undercover cops are going after the Hells Angels, and I fucking hate motorcycles, especially Harleys. In fact, I'm all that broken up over Treat Williams dying because he died in a motorcycle accident and well, is a motorcyclist dying really that sad of an event?
The South Park episode where they proposed changing F-ggot into a slur against motorcycles made me so happy.
Seriously fuck Harley. Fuck anyone who rides a Harley and fuck the Hells Angels most of all.
Also fuck Sons of Anarchy. The show was ok for a couple season but then it went past the point where I fucking hated everyone in the show (and every fucking line about the club and Kate Segal's singing over the soundtrack for every damn "emotional" scene).
So yeah, give me Cops vs. Bikers and I'll side with the cops. Granted that's not really going to transfer over. I would probably side with the Bikers in a Nazis vs Bikers but mostly I'd like to sit back and watch them fight.
This book is a lot of filth. I mean it feels dirty. Everything feels dirty about the cops infiltrating the bikers from the drug usage to the lack of bathing to the whole "never take your jacket off" bullshit. There are fun scenes like when the undercover cop introduces his sponsor to a fake mafia guy only to find out afterwards that it's a real mafia guy (a rat obviously) and the whole "fuck you guys" attitude the guy is giving in regards to the Hells Angels is genuine. The ending where they fake a murder to get rid of one of the CIs working with them (because he's totally wigging out) is a bit anticlimatic.
Ultimately for all the time they spent in the Hells Angels, they didn't get much of anything. A few of them went to jail but most go suspended sentences. So this is even more copaganda since for all the drug dealing and gun smuggling and illegal sales and violence that the writer talks about (taken straight from the cops who were undercover), the fact that they didn't have much charges that stick COULD be a failure of the justice system to protect its citizens yada yada but it could also be a bunch of exaggerations and lies from a lot of guys who wanted to say how tough they were.
Neil Gaiman needs a big canvas to spread out. His short stories are clever. Almost all of them are clever. They don't go anywhere with that cleverness. Even the Sherlock Holmes/Cthulu story is merely clever. In that collection, the only story that I honestly liked was the American Gods tie-in with a meditation on Grendel. I also hate China Mieville's short stories for the same reason. He's clever. He's very clever. Too bad he never gets around to telling the fucking story (although I don't like Mieville nearly as much as I like Gaiman so the disappointment is less).
So this is a comic book story with a very clever idea. What if a teenager went to a party and wanted to talk to girls and when he finally got up the nerve to talk to girls, they were all alien beings? Sadly, that's the only place where it goes. There's a much better movie adaptation that 86s some of the mystery surrounding the girls in order to give us a chase and a love story. The movie is a sweet movie with small ambitions.
Now, granted, there's one bit that is more interesting that the movie and that's the fact that the girls are way more mysterious and you never know if they are speaking in metaphors or literal descriptions of going to the sun. Also they don't make a lot of sense and there's an entire civilization that they are hinting at that neither the protagonist nor the reader understands. That's pretty cool and they really had to get rid a lot of this writing to make a coherent movie. Also the artwork by the guys who drew The Umbrella Academy is pretty sweet.
63. Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels by Kerrie Droban - Yeah, this non-fiction book is totally copaganda. And usually I'd be likely to dismiss it as the kind of book that makes cops look goods (even though it ends with the ATF fucking over one of their own) but these undercover cops are going after the Hells Angels, and I fucking hate motorcycles, especially Harleys. In fact, I'm all that broken up over Treat Williams dying because he died in a motorcycle accident and well, is a motorcyclist dying really that sad of an event?
The South Park episode where they proposed changing F-ggot into a slur against motorcycles made me so happy.
Seriously fuck Harley. Fuck anyone who rides a Harley and fuck the Hells Angels most of all.
Also fuck Sons of Anarchy. The show was ok for a couple season but then it went past the point where I fucking hated everyone in the show (and every fucking line about the club and Kate Segal's singing over the soundtrack for every damn "emotional" scene).
So yeah, give me Cops vs. Bikers and I'll side with the cops. Granted that's not really going to transfer over. I would probably side with the Bikers in a Nazis vs Bikers but mostly I'd like to sit back and watch them fight.
This book is a lot of filth. I mean it feels dirty. Everything feels dirty about the cops infiltrating the bikers from the drug usage to the lack of bathing to the whole "never take your jacket off" bullshit. There are fun scenes like when the undercover cop introduces his sponsor to a fake mafia guy only to find out afterwards that it's a real mafia guy (a rat obviously) and the whole "fuck you guys" attitude the guy is giving in regards to the Hells Angels is genuine. The ending where they fake a murder to get rid of one of the CIs working with them (because he's totally wigging out) is a bit anticlimatic.
Ultimately for all the time they spent in the Hells Angels, they didn't get much of anything. A few of them went to jail but most go suspended sentences. So this is even more copaganda since for all the drug dealing and gun smuggling and illegal sales and violence that the writer talks about (taken straight from the cops who were undercover), the fact that they didn't have much charges that stick COULD be a failure of the justice system to protect its citizens yada yada but it could also be a bunch of exaggerations and lies from a lot of guys who wanted to say how tough they were.
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