Tag Archives: Book

Book Review: RanDumb-er: The Continued Adventures of an Irish Guy In L.A! by Mark Hayes

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I recently finished reading a wonderful new book from Mark Hayes.  The name of that book is RanDumb-er: The Continued Adventures of an Irish Guy In L.A.  You can order it here and I seriously recommend that you should.

Mark Hayes is a comedian, a DJ, a writer, and, as you can probably guess from the book’s title,  he’s also an Irish guy who has found himself living in one of the most uniquely American cities around, Los Angeles.  In RanDumb-er, we follow Mark as he looks at American culture with occasionally hungover eyes and an often biting (but never cruel) wit.  Whether he’s dealing with a B-list celebrity who is busy predicting the end of the world, bravely trying to survive a date with a girl who insists on howling like a wildebeest, or experiencing a fake snowfall at the Grove, Hayes is never less than entertaining and sometimes even rather poignant.

He also realizes, early on, that all American girls love an Irish accent.  And it’s true!  Whenever I hear an Irish accent, I get all girly and giggly and one of the things that I loved about RanDumb-er  is that, even though it takes place in Los Angeles, it is ultimately an Irish story.  I think that the Irish have a special ability to appreciate the small absurdities of existence (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a fourth Irish myself!) and that’s what truly makes RanDumb-er stand out as a work of non-fiction comedic literature.  Any writer can capture the obvious weirdness of living day-to-day.  What makes Hayes so special as writer is that he picks up on the small oddities of life that we don’t always notice and he makes us consider them in a new light.

Consider the moment, early on in the book, in which Hayes has a panic attack when he realizes that he managed to accidentally leave his scissors behind in Ireland when he left for L.A.  In just a few pages, Hayes manages to perfectly capture the anxiety that comes with travelling.  Once  you get over the initial excitement, you suddenly realize that you’re somewhere new and that you can no longer claim to be able to completely control your surroundings.  It’s at moments like these that you truly realize how vulnerable you are and just how false your assumption of control is in environments both new and old.  Hayes captures all of this without ever failing to make us laugh as we recognize our own individual neurosis in his story.

(I have to admit that one reason why I related to Hayes’ panic over his scissors was because, when I was in 17, I went with my family to Hawaii and it wasn’t until we were all walking along the beautiful beaches of Honolulu that I realized that I had left my St. Vitus medal back in Texas and I proceeded, under the most brilliant blue sky and surrounded by beautiful people frolicking half-undressed on the beach, to have one of the biggest panic attacks ever.  Eventually, I recovered but trust me — not a day went by that I didn’t think about that medal.)

As a writer, Hayes has a very interesting and compulsively readable style, one that goes beyond the fact that he happens to be a very funny guy.  Hayes writes in a stream-of-consciousness type of style and the end result is that, after a few pages, you feel that you truly are inside of his head and you are experiencing Los Angeles — and all the weirdness that goes with it — with him.  If you cross James Joyce with Jack Kerouac and then add in a little Terry Southern and Tom Wolfe with a slightly less drug addled Hunter Thompson, you’ll have Mark Hayes.

Perhaps the best thing about RanDumb-er is that Hayes ends it with the promise of a sequel.  I, for one, can’t wait to read it and you should feel the same.  However, for now, you really should go over to Amazon, order your own copy of RanDumb-er and get acquainted with the continued adventures of an Irish guy in L.A.

RanDumb-er.  Read it.

Book Review: The Eurospy Guide by Matt Blake and David Deal

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, believe it or not, I feel very insecure when I come on here to talk about movies because, unlike most of my fellow writers and the site’s readers, I’m actually pretty new to the world of pop culture and cult films.  Up until 8 years ago, ballet was my only obsession.  It was only after I lost that dream that I came to realize that I could feel that same passion for other subjects like history and writing and movies.  In those 8 years, I think I’ve done a fairly good job educating myself but there’s still quite a bit that I don’t know and, at times, I’m almost overwhelmed by all the movies that I’ve read so much about but have yet to actually see.  And don’t even get me started on anime because, honestly, my ignorance would simply astound you.  What I know about anime — beyond Hello Kitty — is pretty much limited to what I’ve read and seen on this site.  (I do know what a yandere is, however.  Mostly because Arleigh explained it to me on twitter.  I still don’t quite understand why my friend Mori kept using that as her own personal nickname for me back during my sophomore year of college but that’s a whole other story…)

The reason I started soul searching here is because I’m about to review a book — The Eurospy Guide by Matt Blake and David Deal — that came out in 2004 and I’m about to review it as if it came out yesterday.  For all I know, everyone reading this already has a copy of The Eurospy Guide in their personal collection.  You’ve probably already spent 6 years thumbing through this book and reading informative, lively reviews of obscure movies.  You may already know what I’ve just discovered.  Well, so be it.  My education is a work in progress and The Eurospy Guide has become one of my favorite textbooks.

The Eurospy Guide is an overview of a unique genre of films that started in the mid-60s and ended with the decade.  These were low-budget rip-offs — the majority of which were made in Italy, Germany, and France — of the Sean Connery-era James Bond films.  These were films with titles like Code Name: Jaguar, Secret Agent Super Dragon, More Deadly Than The Male, and Death In a Red Jaguar.  For the most part, they starred actors like George Nader, Richard Harrison, and Eddie Constantine who had found the stardom in exploitation cinema that the mainstream had never been willing to give to them.  They featured beautiful and underappreciated actresses like Marilu Tolo and Erika Blac and exotic, over-the-top villainy from the likes of Klaus Kinski and Adolfo Celi.  Many of these films — especially the Italian ones — were directed by the same men who would later make a name for themselves during the cannibal and zombie boom of the early 80s.  Jess Franco did a few (but what genre hasn’t Jess Franco experimented with) and even Lucio Fulci dabbled in the genre.  Their stories were frequently incoherent and, just as frequently, that brought them an undeniably surreal charm. 

And then again, some of them were just films like Operation Kid Brother, starring Sean Connery’s younger brother, Neil.  (Operation Kid Brother was an Italian film, naturally.)

Well, all of the films — from the good to the bad (and no, I’m not going to add the ugly) — are covered and thoroughly reviewed in The Eurospy Guide.  Blake and Deal obviously not only love these films but they prove themselves to be grindhouse aficionados after my own heart.  Regardless of whether they’re reviewing the sublime or the ludicrous, they approach each film with the same enthusiasm for the potential of pure cinema run amuck.  It’s rare to find reviewers who are willing to pay the same respect to a film like The Devil’s Man that they would give to a sanctioned classic like The Deadly Affair.

Along with reviewing a countless number of films, Deal and Blake also include two great appendices in which they detail the review some of the film franchises that came out of the genre and provide biographies of some of the more prominent stars of the eurospy films.

The highest compliment I can pay to The Eurospy Guide is that, even with all the various films guides I own (and I own a lot), I found films reviewed and considered in this book that I haven’t found anywhere else.  Everytime I open this book, I learn something that, at least to me, is new.  The book was an obvious labor of love for Blake and Deal and I love the results of their labor.

So, if you already own a copy, you rock. 

And if you don’t, order it.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Smashed Blocked (performed by John’s Children)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Four years ago, I was in Recycle Books in Denton, Texas and I came across a book called something like “Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll.”  The book came with a CD that featured music by some of the bands featured in that book.  The first song on that CD (and my personal favorite) was Smashed Blocked, a song from a band called John’s Children. 

(It’s a good book, too.)