Spank The Monkey

My Godawful Life

What's that you say? Updates have been a little sparse here since the beginning of the month? Well, I'm sorry about that. It's probably got something to do with how I FRACTURED BOTH MY BASTARD ELBOWS last week. Went arse over tit on the iced-up approach to a station, since you ask. (There was a lot of it about in the UK at the beginning of February 2009, to the extent that this BBC News report looks like snuff porn to me right now.)

Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that they were both minor fractures: I came out of the sling today, and I'm currently just sitting at home feeling a little bit sorry for myself. And while I'm in this situation, I can finally see the point of those miserable confessional memoirs that the bookshops are full of. You may have ugly bruises and achy forearms, but at least you can take comfort in knowing you're not being serially raped by all the members of your family. All I need to do is find a book whose opening paragraph makes me feel better about myself, and I'll be on the road to full recovery in no time.

I was born, by breech birth, in a run-down shack, after having been choked on the umbilical cord for half an hour, and was promptly dropped on the floor by the doctor, and when he went to pick me up inadvertently kicked across the room. It was to set the tone for the rest of my life.

Yeah, this could work.

Seagalogy: A Study Of The Ass-Kicking Films Of Steven Seagal

Just how bad is The Onion Movie? I haven't seen it myself, but the warning signs aren't promising. For a start, it's a film based around the rock-solid brand of The Onion, the best-loved comedy site on the internet: and yet you probably haven't heard of it. That can't be good. Nor can the fact that it's been sitting on the shelf since 2003 before quietly creeping out on video this year. In the UK, they've even changed the title to News Movie, because they genuinely believe that it's a good marketing strategy to fool people into thinking that it's one of those piles of shit from two of the six writers of Scary Movie.

Up until recently, I would have added one further proof of The Onion Movie's cast-iron crapness: Steven Seagal is, apparently, the best thing in it. In a short movie trailer spoof he plays a parodic version of his usual stock character, a man who brings justice to the world through his mastery of a little-known martial art. (It's a trailer for a film called Cockpuncher, by the way.)

Yeah, Steven Seagal. Let's all laugh at the tubby has-been action star, but do it somewhere anonymously on the internet so he can't track us down and break our wrists. I used to think like that, once. But Vern - the author of Seagalogy: A Study Of The Ass-Kicking Films Of Steven Seagal - has persuaded me that things may be a little more complicated than that.

The Bald Trilogy

I kept telling The Belated Birthday Girl that one of these days, we needed to see a Ken Campbell live show. The last occasion was even documented here, when it was announced last August that he'd be at the Edinburgh Festival doing some late night shows with improv musical group Showstopper. Unfortunately, there was no way we could fit him into our schedule, but we consoled ourselves with the knowledge that he'd doubtless be turning up in London again fairly soon.

By the end of the month he was dead. A Ken Campbell live show is now, as far as I'm concerned, exactly equivalent to pre-Katrina New Orleans: one of those wonders of nature I wanted The BBG to fall in love with the same way that I did, but events have conspired to ensure that it'll never happen.

REPOST: The Iliad

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 01/07/2004.

Um, you're expecting me to comment here about how The Iliad might have changed in the four years since this piece was written? Good luck with that.

REPOST: The Sandman: Endless Nights

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 11/12/2003.

Gaiman has dabbled in comics again on a couple of occasions since this book, with 1602 and Eternals for Marvel. I don't believe he has any plans to return to the Dreaming in the forseeable future, even though lots of people hoped he might in 2008 for the 20th anniversary of the first issue of Sandman.

Meanwhile, if you want to catch up on Morpheus' earlier adventures, they're collected in the luxury four-volume Absolute Sandman set. See Amazon links below.

REPOST: Bog Book Bonanza

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 01/03/2003.

I always thought that I might follow this up with a Bog Book Bonanza [insert year here] after another Christmas worth of lavatorial literature. Still might, one day, you never know.

Amusing tie-in between two of the books reviewed here: the writers of The Framley Examiner are now on the writing staff for Viz.

REPOST: Lullaby

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 01/10/2002.

Chuck's still writing, of course. If Lullaby was the first in his series of horror novels, then his time in the genre hit some sort of peak with Haunted in 2005, which contained a short story called Guts that frequently made people pass out during readings. (Download it now as a 10MB MP3. Go on. Dare ya.)

His most recent novel at the time of writing is Snuff. Expect more details on that one when he appears at the 2008 Edinburgh Book Festival.

REPOST: Steppin' On A Rainbow

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 07/10/2001.

The Kinkster is still churning out his detective mysteries, although these days they battle for shelf space with his non-fiction works. For example, You Can Lead A Politician To Water But You Can't Make Him Think tells the true story of what happened when he ran for Governor of Texas in 2006 (campaign slogan: "How Hard Can It Be?").

I've been back to New York twice since I wrote this piece, and the closest I've got to achieving an item on my list was looking in the window of Myers of Keswick while it was closed.

REPOST: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 06/05/2001.

Robbins has bucked his one-book-every-five-years trend by publishing two since Fierce Invalids: a disappointing post-9/11 novel called Villa Incognito in 2003, and a more satisfying collection of journalism and short stories in 2005's Wild Ducks Flying Backward.

REPOST: ATTACK! Books

Originally posted on The Unpleasant Lair Of Spank The Monkey 12/12/1999.

Steven Wells wrote to me and told me how much he enjoyed this piece: I even ended up on ATTACK!'s press release mailing list for a while. The company published three more books - Tommy Udo's Vatican Bloodbath, Stewart Home's Whips And Furs and Mark Manning's Get Your Cock Out - and then it all went quiet.

These days, Swells can be regularly found in the sports section of The Guardian, surprisingly enough.