Film Review: “Infinity Pool” (2023)

“A shitty book, six years ago, that no one read”

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

A malevolent, analog nightmare that continues last year’s horror pattern of casting our gaze on the rich. Above all, though, it illustrates the importance of supporting small writers like the main character (and me) lest they end up in a wretched crucible of events orchestrated by a member of the Cronenberg clan.

Indeed, Alexander Skarsgard is a small writer with a “shitty book, six years ago, that no one read” playing wealthy with his wife’s money, and because of this, a synthwave mix of gore, sex and The White Lotus befalls him. Read the books of the local writers in your life. You will be saving us from such a fate.

Someone has a skull tattoo and someone else gets their head bashed in, so you can see their skull. No full skeletons.

My VHS cover pull-quote: “Or perhaps we deserve such a fate. Either way:
https://nickperilli.com/cul-de-sac/.”

Book Review: “Melissa Etheridge’s Seminal 1993 Album Made of Two Overlapping Triangles Instead of One” by Nick Mehalick | Ethel Press (2021)

“This is not a prayer, but a swan’s song, the blasphemy done with intention,”

A work of self-discovery that evolves into one of spellbinding self-affirmation. Mehalick brings the reader with him on a path of rich confrontations with himself, a deity, family, music, etc., each piece either reveling in the traditions of form to firmly convey his perspective or outright exploding those traditions in the utmost punk style. Any veil between writer and narrator in these pieces feels especially thin, too, allowing readers a sort of comfortable access to the writer as he accepts, affirms, and meditates on his individual queerness. While it is an achingly personal work, it is also universal in its reflections. Readers are sure to find a bit of themselves in these stout pages, no matter who they may be.

My back cover pull-quote, tattered and folded underneath the seat of an El Camino: “Mehalick begins where many of the Final Fantasy video games end, fighting/addressing a God. In a bold twist to the JRPG formula, Melissa Etheridge’s Seminal 1993 Album Made of Two Overlapping Triangles Instead of One starts with that confrontation between man and supposed creator and then goes from there. This is cross medium conversation and intersectional genre discourse at its finest.”

Available to purchase now from Ethel’s shop!