Beermas/Cagemas double feature! PBR Coffee: this is not an unholy combination of pbr and coffee, it’s like a super sweet Frappuccino thing. I thought it’d be like the sort of thing a dockworker would drink to fight a hangover, a pbr with coffee dropped in, and I was wrong. It’s so sweet it’s almost impossible to drink. The Rose, I’m told, was excellent, and at about three times the alcohol content of a beer, it was a hit. Season of the Witch was almost a movie. It had characters with a purpose and a plot twist of sorts, but at the end of the day it was kinda boring. Did learn from the credits that Gabor is like Mike in Croatia. Fosters is like any decent cheap beer, but being large is a plus. The opening is also small, like the standard opening from before someone invented the wide mouth, so it gets comedy points because it just looks hilarious. The Shandy was pretty good, though the consumer might have still been working through the Rose at that point. Drive Angry is kind of like one of those movies that seems like it was written by me when I was 17. I thought for sure it’d win this year’s Cagey Award for Most Inappropriate Onscreen Relationship, but somehow that’s avoided and instead Cage has sex with a waitress while also having a gunfight, which leaves the waitress understandably traumatized, but also is a good example of the weird tone in this movie. If you’re gonna make that scene, you have to make the waitress a sick weirdo who’s into it, or who like blisses out when she orgasms and doesn’t even remember the gunfight (give her a line like “gunfight? I don’t know. I definitely saw fireworks.”) It’s not as fun as-is. Anyway, it misses the Cage sweet spot because it’s not so weird that it works, and it’s not so fun that it works, it’s just kinda…there.
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Beermas/Cagemas Day 3: Beer 1: fine, though not so much cucumbered. Beer 2: not a huge flavor punch, but boozy. Trapped in Paradisen solid premise, does take place on Christmas. Cage has an accent that fades in and out. John Lovitz should get paid to just do reaction shots in other movies, his “ain’t I a stinker” grin is perfect.
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Just a little sneak peek at something I’m working on.
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Amazing Spider Web Cast Issue 026
This one’s all filler, no killer. Well, some killer. Pretty cutting commentary on the quality of Halloween costumes.
Helpful Snowman Radio Ep 477
We embark on a journey. To a land. Of models.
Beermas/Cagemas 2: Left beer: tasty, delicious, drinkable, would have like 5. Right beer: interesting, super sour, probably best split with a friend. Had a taste of baked crust which was kind of mind blowing. Primal: phoned-in piece of shit, basically Die Hard meets tiger King on a boat. Had so much potential, but mostly squanders it by having no plot. I don’t need a ton of plot, but this one is like a bad guy is loose on a boat, he kills people, then he’s thwarted. Nic Cage is not bad, however, easily the most watchable thing on screen, much better than a bad CGI leopard. I think this was action crap with no aspirations to be anything more than action crap, so they didn’t “go for it” in any big way, and the result is an oatmeal of a movie. HOWEVER, I’m nominating this for best closing shot as it features Nicolas Cage with a cane and a parrot on his arm on the deck of a cargo ship. Out of context this makes no sense and is wonderful. In context it’s also nonsensical, but what are you gonna do?
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Beermas/Cagemas Day 1: A pumpkin beer that was pretty solid, a kolsch that was not bad, and Frozen Ground, a sincere thriller about a serial murderer/rapist with a former Disney kid starring as a prostitute. It’s definitely not bad, although a montage of all the real life victims at the end wasn’t exactly in the spirit of Cagemas. But if you like those based on a true story movies, you’ll probably dig this one. Bonus: the story takes place in the early 80’s, so no sequence of looking things up on the computer filmed from over a detective’s shoulder, a sequence that all filmmakers can feel free to skip, sort of like the way you don’t show us every time the detective takes a dump or eats a sandwich.
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Amazing Spider Web Cast Issue 025
Smythe, Spider Slayers, and what’s possibly the Platonic ideal of an early Spider-Man comic.
Helpful Snowman Radio ep 476
We challenge the challenges of the internet. The WHOLE internet.
Over at @litreactor (On Litreactor? With Litreactor? From Litreactor? Provided by Litreactor? Posted by Litreactor? Hosted by Litreactor?) I’ve got a new column about #PhilipKDick and the story of his grave. I call it “Grave Matters.” Not really. That’s stupid.
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Helpful Snowman Radio Ep 475
A trip through internet memory lane. Which isn’t a particularly long lane, but it DOES involve a moon man advocating beating people up, so there’s
Bunch of my stuff is free to celebrate the day I burst forth from my mother. Link in bio. Get something and if you want to be a special birthday friend, give it a review on Amazon or goodreads, whichever you feel is moderately less evil.
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Someday they’ll collect the gems from my columns, and they’ll be quoted all the time, and kids will be as sick of me as I was of ben Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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Podoween 2021 Wrapup
Well, that’s another one for the books. We explore for a haunted statue, make a tasteless plug, and…wait, if this is what’s in books, no
Podoween 2021 ep 33
A GRAVE mistake. Grave? You’ll get it. Just listen for maximum tastelessness.
Today on @litreactor: I’m smart! I told you assholes.
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Podoween 2021 ep 30
And with this toddler coffin box, we both hit our stride and alienate our audience.
Day one of vacation: sorting through the mailbox where I keep all the scraps of ideas. This one is pretty old, the start of Here’s Harold, which is disgusting and I’m very proud of.
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I’ve taken a handful of Litreactor classes over the years. Totally worth it. You get more individual attention and feedback than you would in a writing program, no exaggeration. They make great gifts, too. Put them on your wishlist. No supply chain issues! If you’re new to writing, awesome way to get going. If you’ve been at it for awhile, you’ll learn something, whether it’s from critiques of your work or seeing what’s going on in the work of others.
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Podoween 2021 ep 26
Grasshopper plague and the best horror movie never made.
The opening of my paranormal detective novel, Ghost Dick.
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Nic knows. From my latest at @litreactor
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Podoween 2021 ep 23
A ghost or a forgetful lady and a crew too lazy to pick up a hammer?
Podoween 2021 ep 21
The lynching of a guy who…was kinda asking for it. A charming detail I forgot to include here, when the masked men went to get
Podoween 2021 ep 20
Aaaand either a ghost or forgetful, incorrect person on Facebook. You be the judge.
Podoween 2021 ep 17
The murderer next door. Well, across the street. Whatever. Close enough.
Podoween 2021 ep 15
La Llorona and the legend of the attractive woman ghost.
Podoween 2021 ep 14
Fort Latham. And its twice-moved cemetery. It’s like you guys WANT to start a curse.
Podoween 2021 ep 13
A second Crossing. Cross me again and you’ll regret it!
How much do you want to know about #candyman? I’ve got that plus more, PLUS my hot take on the new movie. Today at @litreactor
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Have we reached peak spooky movies not even coming up with a new name? Or are viewers really so dumb that they won’t know a movie is a Scream movie unless it’s called Scream?
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When the golf tournament where you play golf once a year moves to October.
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Ghost Plants Meth
Just because we didn’t get to everything Podoween this year, some bonus: A man in the area claimed, when police responded to his call claiming
Podoween 2021 ep 05
A good rule to live by: The Helpful Snowman Teenager Rule
For a limited time, buy My Mother’s Silver Bowl by yours truly and after buying, read it for free. This incredible offer is only available during October, spooky season, so I’d jump on it now.
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Vampire grave? Someone seems to think so.
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Posted @withregram • @litreactor Today on 🔥LitReactor🔥: The return of Unprintable! With new host, @robbolson .
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Posted @withregram • @litreactor Can’t believe it’s been 10 years. Let’s celebrate!
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A little podoween preview.
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Whoever ordered the Ghostbuster costumes for target did not know that you need a bunch of venkmans, a few zeddemores, a couple stantzs, and like 2 spanglers.
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The return of the pornupine. Today at Litreactor.
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In our last podcast, we went through this book that uses a clumsy metaphor and an elephant named Kevin to send an anti-trans message. Politics aside, the story is pretty nonsensical and the drawings are BORING. listen for full review. Helpfulsnowman.com
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Just found out that “Willow” Tolkien was a full inch shorter than me. It feels good to be objectively a better person than him and I will take this victory with zero class or dignity.
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Helpful Snowman Radio ep 474
We explore a conservative children’s book that explains the pros and cons of the ability to pee out a fire with your boy parts.
I’m very proud of my attempt to make libraries metal over at Litreactor today.
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On the right is Pete 2019. On the left is Pete 2021.
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We’ve seen a lot of weird book news in the last decade. Some asshole demolished Ray Bradbury’s house. Some asshole murdered his business partners and then wrote a children’s book about saving the environment. Some asshole closed a famous bookshop after some other assholes ran it into the ground. Some assholes were reading topless to prove a point about…freedom? Another asshole train wrecked a Chuck Tingle dating sim, though I’m not sure who to pin it on. Read about 10 years of assholes over at Litreactor.
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Wise words about a very unwise book: The Heist-est Heist Ever Heisted. By me. I’m PeteR.
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Every day I have a column up at Litreactor is scary clown day.
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Thoughts of the Week
The lower your apartment is into the earth, the nicer it sounds. “Garden level” for example means, “Your apartment is planted in the ground, like
Totally unrelated to this story, I make a little coin from writing here and there and appreciate the support in these truly trying times. Helpfulsnowman.com
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I can’t decide if it’s funnier that this person shares a goodreads account with her husband, like the way some people share emails, or that she gives the story a star rating, then repeats the star rating, in text, at the end of the review.
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Today at Litreactor we talk about prepping for an author interview so you might actually sell a damn book!
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This Week’s Thoughts
I figured I’d do it this way instead of on Twitter because Twitter can go eat a dick. Please feel free to copy and paste
Just in case you consider celebrity advice legit, here’s a list of ALL the celebrities who have a PhD or higher. Of all the celebs who have the money and time to get it done, 17 have elected to go this route.
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