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Fredrick Exley (1929-1992) – Photo of the writer as a vulnerable, sensitive young man. In many ways, much too vulnerable and sensitive for mid-20th century American society, a society where a man’s prime virtue is being tough. A Fan's Notes is the odyssey of one man’s unending heartbreak and retreat into an inner world of fantasy and dreams, a retreat, by his own account and language, punctuated by alcoholism and trips to the madhouse; or, put another way, an autobiographical novel about Fredrick Exley’s longtime failure in the years prior to when he finally staked his claim to fame by writing a memoir about his aching, painful life.First off, let me say bellying up to a bar, drinking, smoking, commiserating, cheering for a sports team while watching a game is not me, which is understatement. I recall walking into a bar when in college and found the whole scene sour and depressing. I haven’t even come close to stepped into a bar once in the past nearly fifty years.I mention since the Fred Exley in this fictional memoir is a bargoer who drinks, smokes, commiserates, and obsessively cheers for a sports team – the New York Giants. For these reasons and others, including much of the way he talks about women, I do not particularly like the main character. However, this being said, A Fan’s Notes is a well-written literary gush, reminding me more of Henry Miller than Charles Bukowski, a compelling, excruciatingly honest personal saga, overflowing with keen insights into human nature and caustic observations on American culture, a book I found, for a number of personal reasons, deeply moving when I first read back in 1988 published as part of the Vintage Contemporaries series. Rereading these past few weeks, I must say I enjoying every well-turned phrase and outrageous, boldfaced, audacious twisting of fact into fiction: author’s self-portrayal as a slovenly lout, alcoholic slob, misogynist pig, lowlife outsider, misfit and complete loser, not to mention misty-eyed dreamer and weaver of fantastic delusions. At the point when Freddie Ex finally pulled his life together enough to begin seriously writing, he probably had more than a few good chuckles and a few shed tears with each draft.  The first personal reason I found this novel moving back in 1988 is very personal: at the time I was having a mid-life crisis, working with a spiteful, nasty boss and unpleasant coworkers in what turned out to be, for me, the wrong career. I had to make a serious change and Exley’s novel, especially those parts where he reflected on the insanity of work world USA, served as something of a literary friend through it all, right up until the time when I made a successful switch. The second reason has to do with my friend Craig, a sensitive, vulnerable, highly artistic man who reminded me a great deal of Fred Exley. Actually, very much like Exley, Craig worked in the advertising industry, was fired because of drinking, and after marrying and having a couple kids, divorced and, like Exley, returned to live in the basement of his parent’s house. Turns out, Craig was simply too sensitive to function in the “normal” world. And similar to Exley, he idolized Hemingway and tried writing the Great American Novel but, unfortunately, he was no Exley – his writing, right up to the day he dropped dead of a massive heart attack at age 55, was overly sentimental and downright awful. I relate personal reasons since my guess is Exley’s A Fan’s Notes enjoyed an initial cult following comprised of men (and perhaps women) who, like myself, were either going through a phase of life-transition or those sensitive souls who, for a number of reasons, could never successfully function in conventional society. I also imagine many of these sensitive types, similar to my friend Craig, tried to write first-rate fiction but their efforts fell short. At least they could turn to A Fan’s Notes for some solace.  And I wonder how many of these sensitive souls had strong fathers like Fred Exley, when he writes, “Moreover, my father’s shadow was so imposing that I had scarcely ever, until that moment, had an identity of my own. At the same time I had yearned to emulate and become my father. I also yearned for his destruction.”

Set at a small affluent liberal-arts college in New England eighties, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future—or even the present—who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

Ah Bret, I loved you so, so long ago. For anyone who has not had the mixture of pleasure, horror, disgust and loathing which is generated by the reading of American Psycho, then you should probably start here to ease your way into the dismissive, violent and destructive world which Ellis describes. I read American Psycho in one long teenage school day (under desks during class/ behind a wall at break/ on the bus home) and was amazed that this man was actually a fully functioning author and not a psychopathic murderer who, I would happily have believed, penned his most famous of novels from the constraints of a padded room by narrating his tale into a dictophone after he was deemed too dangerous to be given a pen.To compare The Informers to American Psycho is like comparing a watered down lemon cordial to a shot of rocket fuel. The comparison is largely meaningless because American Psycho is so far off the scale of brilliant wrongness that there is no scale capable of measuring it accurately. The brutality, drug taking, narcisism and general self-absorbed-bastarditis exhibited in The Informers is not in the same category but it is still present and grubby. You won't like any of the people who inhabit these pages but that's ok ... maybe they are there to be despised so we can all feel better about ourselves. Thanks Bret, I feel like a paragon of crystalline virtue now.

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

You do not talk about Fight Club, but...Upon winning the Oregon Book Award for best novel and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, Chuck Palahniuk’s visionary debut novel, Fight Club, was shot to the veins of mainstream fiction. Following the success of its 1999 film adaptation directed by David Fincher, Fight Club gained cult classic status and has become a disturbingly accurate interpretation of our modern world.The unnamed male narrator, suffering from a long streak of insomnia, finds cure by attending cancer support groups. But when Marla Singer—a sallow, heavy-smoking nihilist—enters the evening meetings and mirrors his own fraud, his insomnia returns, so he confronts Singer to split schedules with him.On the night when his condominium mysteriously blows up, he calls Tyler Durden, whom he had previously met—under strange circumstances—on a beach. They agree to meet at a bar, where, after drinking, Durden asks him a favor, “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” The narrator swings the punch that cradled Fight Club into the world. Shortly, a multitude of men with white-collar jobs join them. Every weekend, in the parking lots and basements of bars, they hold these late-hour no-holds-barred-and-barefisted fights that “go on as long as they have to.”These one-on-one melees curiously evoke psychotherapeutic effects—resembling that of enlightenment—within the men: they are reborn from their entombed lives.Fight Club soon evolves into Project Mayhem, an anarchic army led by Durden, who seeks to fulfill his visions of global enlightenment through organized chaos, public unrest, and demolition.Fight Club is a social satire on the dehumanizing effects of consumerism: alienation brought by chronic materialism, illusory comforts, overindulgence, and career and lifestyle obsessions fueled by advertising. “The modern world is for business—not for the people,” as what the great psychoanalyst Carl Jung said.“It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.” Skillfully fusing Zen elements with Durden’s extremist ideologies, Palahniuk has written a provocative expression of metaphysical rebellion. The collective revolt against the existential vacuum is Durden’s nucleus and what draws men toward him.Fight Club’s noir ambience and the solid economy of its prose are reminiscent of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, but with the sharp nonlinear narration executing its plot; inheriting Kurt Vonnegut’s dark humor, Chuck Palahniuk is among today’s distinct and intriguing voices.

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist.

Cuphead is a classic run and gun action game primarily focused on boss battles. Inspired by the cartoons of the 1930s, the visuals and audio are carefully creat...

Real astrology at your fingertips, brought to you by Astrolabe, designers of software for professional astrologers since 1979!...

Jak and Daxter are quite a comic duo! Jak's the strong, silent type of hero, while Daxter's the obnoxious comic nut! The adventure takes place across a massive...

The next chapter in Final Fantasy takes the series to the next level. Final Fantasy VIII combines an epic storyline with dynamic role-playing elements, breatht...

An epic adventure across 3 cd-roms. What begins as a rebellion against an evil corporation becomes much more. And what erupts goes beyond imagination. With vivi...

The story takes place in a world called "Ivalice," in an age when magic was commonplace and airships plied the skies - the Archadian Empire, seeking to strength...

Final Fantasy's first game on the Playstation 2 is the first to use voice acting and a massive leap in the cinematic approach to storytelling. Stop reading and...

After an odd new medical student arrives on campus, a dedicated local and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue.

1985 American science fiction horror film by Stuart Gordon

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes

The adventures of high school and junior high students on the last day of school in May 1976.

Tough ex-con Corky and her lover Violet concoct a scheme to steal millions of stashed mob money and pin the blame on Violet's crooked boyfriend Caesar.

1996 American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by The Wachowskis

A sole survivor tells of the twisty events leading up to a horrific gun battle on a boat, which began when five criminals met at a seemingly random police lineup.

1995 German-American neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer

The magically long-haired Rapunzel has spent her entire life in a tower, but now that a runaway thief has stumbled upon her, she is about to discover the world for the first time, and who she really is.

2010 computer-animated musical fantasy-comedy film by Disney

A high school wise guy is determined to have a day off from school, despite what the Principal thinks of that.

Ben Sanderson, a Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his alcoholism, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.

A collection of expertly photographed phenomena with no conventional plot. The footage focuses on nature, humanity and the relationship between them.

After his wife falls under the influence of a drug dealer, an everyday guy transforms himself into Crimson Bolt, a superhero with the best intentions, but lacking in heroic skills.

2010 American black comedy superhero film directed by James Gunn

In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.

1971 dystopian crime film directed by Stanley Kubrick

Adam and Eden fell in love as teens despite the fact that they live on twinned worlds with gravities that pull in opposite directions. Ten years after a forced separation, Adam sets out on a dangerous quest to reconnect with his love

Donte Clark's poetic voice was honed on the violent street corners of a struggling city. Yet rather than succumb to the pressures of Richmond, CA, Clark uses his artistic perspective to help save his city from itself.

A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery.

Disgruntled Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski sets out to reform his neighbor, Thao Lor, a Hmong teenager who tried to steal Kowalski's prized possession: a 1972 Gran Torino.

A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid 1970s.

An exploration of the dark and miserable Basin City and three of its residents, all of whom are caught up in violent corruption.

2005 American crime thriller film written, produced and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez

An abortion clinic worker with a special heritage is called upon to save the existence of humanity from being negated by two renegade angels trying to exploit a loop-hole and reenter Heaven.

Both dumped by their girlfriends, two best friends seek refuge in the local mall.

1995 American romantic comedy film directed by Kevin Smith

A day in the lives of two convenience clerks named Dante and Randal as they annoy customers, discuss movies, and play hockey on the store roof.

1994 American comedy film directed by Kevin Smith

American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

A teenage boy finds himself recruited as a member of an elite team of pilots by his father.

Fuu, a waitress who works in a teahouse, rescues two master swordsmen, Mugen and Jin, from their execution to help her find the "samurai who smells of sunflowers."

The futuristic misadventures and tragedies of an easygoing bounty hunter and his partners.

1998-1999 Japanese anime television series

A teenage boy with a sex therapist mother teams up with a high school classmate to set up an underground sex therapy clinic at school.

A Complete and Definitive list of the Objectively Greatest films ever made, WIP

It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 

1979 American war film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

In the distant future high school kids are encouraged to become citizens by joining the military. What they don't know is that they'll soon be engaged

In the Initech office, the insecure Peter Gibbons hates his job and the obnoxious Division VP Bill Lumbergh who has just hired two efficiency consulta

A US research station, Antarctica, early-winter 1982. The base is suddenly buzzed by a helicopter from the nearby Norwegian research station. They are

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