I, Allan Mott, simply don’t have the ego required to believe that any of you regular BOOKGASM readers have noticed – much less lamented – my absence from this fine, nearly-award-winning site during the past nine months, but I myself was shocked when I realized it had been that long since I offered up a contribution, and gave Mr. Lott the opportunity to go one day without reviewing another book about zombie-werewolf CIA agents going for one last score by breaking the bank at a 23rd-century gladiatorial casino. (Seriously, folks, can we give that genre a rest? It’s totally played out!)
The reason for my sudden abandonment of my BOOKGASM duties was a simple matter of no longer having the time to pull another disturbingly self-indulgent 2,000-word “review” out of my keister on a week-to-week basis. I instead decided to focus on more important things like my first novel, my own personal blog (www.allanmott.com, he plugged without a single iota of shame) and a part-time job that required me to spend an inordinate amount of time conversing with the stupidest people humanity has thus far allowed to exist.
That said, nary a day went by without me briefly thinking about the reviews I would have written for BOOKGASM, had I the time to spare. Not to toot my own horn, but a lot of them were pretty awesome. Invariably insightful and witty to a degree you seldom see anymore, it seemed such a waste to have them remain only in my mind, where I alone could appreciate their brilliantly condescending verve.
It is for this reason that I have decided, as a way to celebrate the passing of another year, to document the best parts of these unwritten reviews and allow you to enjoy at the very last a small glimmer of what the painful realities of time management denied you these past nine months.
From my unwritten review of HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS by J.K. Rowling:
“Ultimately what remains most intriguing about Rowling is not her status as a member of that small group of writers whose transcendently popular work has made them so successful they could literally kill an adorable wide-eyed orphan on national television without once fearing the possibility of conviction, but rather that she is the sole member of that group I would seriously like to bone (sorry, Stephen, John and you two LEFT BEHIND dudes, but it’s totally true).”
From my unwritten review of BORN STANDING UP: A COMIC’S LIFE by Steve Martin:
“As entertaining as Martin’s book is, reading it constantly frustrates the reader due to his obstinate unwillingness to broach the one question we all want him to answer: What do Bernadette Peters’ nipples really taste like?”
From my unwritten combined review of THE GOD DELUSION by Richard Dawkins and GOD IS NOT GREAT: HOW RELIGION POISONS EVERYTHING by Christopher Hitchens:
“In the end, one cannot help but conclude that the authors’ primary hope is not to ensure that you spend the rest of eternity being cornholed by the drooling hordes of Satan’s demonic army, but rather that their deliberate blasphemy will see to it that they enjoy that fate themselves—to which one can only shrug and say, “To each his own!””
From my unwritten review of SCHULZ AND PEANUTS by David Michaelis:
“By showing us how a sad, lonely and profoundly disconnected artist can fuel his pain into the creation of small works of genius — breathtaking in their haiku-like simplicity — Michaelis also inadvertently proves my own personal thesis that Jim Davis must be the happiest motherfucker who ever lived.”
From my combined unwritten review of RESCUING SPRITE: A DOG LOVER’S STORY OF JOY AND ANGUISH by Mark R. Levin and GOOD DOG. STAY. by Anna Quindlen:
“At the risk of sounding overly harsh and indulging in a massive overgeneralization, I have to say that the people who keep buying these books about dogs are the biggest assholes on this planet and have silently become the enemy we should all fear when we go to sleep at night.”
From my combined unwritten review of SLASH by Slash and Anthony Bozza and THE HEROIN DIARIES: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A SHATTERED ROCK STAR by Nikki Sixx:
“While to some these two works will seem to be little more than typical exercises in the continued celebration of the pathetic self-indulgences of perpetually adolescent addle-minded narcissists, all I can I say is that those judgmental pricks have never experienced the virtual-cumshot of five-starring “Sweet Child o’ Mine” or “Shout at the Devil” while playing GUITAR HERO II. Doing so forces you to justify and even admire the continued existence of these hard-rocking troglodytes.”
From my unwritten review of THE HARDEST (WORKING) MAN IN SHOWBIZ by Ron Jeremy:
“The mistaken assumption is that Jeremy’s unusual fame comes as a result of his Everyman appeal, but I would argue that the more realistic explanation is that as the most singularly unattractive human being to ever regularly appear in adult movies, he is simply the only male porn star anyone has ever actually noticed long enough to identify.”
From my unwritten review of WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION by Neil Gabler:
“As much as Disney didn’t like Jews, there is clear evidence that he hated lemmings that much more.”
From my unwritten review of INSIDE INSIDE by James Lipton:
“If anything, Lipton symbolizes the truth that the sin in sycophancy is not in the act of obsequious brown-nosing itself, but rather in whose anus you choose to insert your most prominent facial appendage. To wax ecstatic about the accomplishments of the truly great is one thing, but to do it for Anthony Michael Hall is distinctly another.”
From my unwritten review of ETERNALS by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr.:
“Ultimately what remains most intriguing about Gaiman is not his status as a member of that small group of UK writers whose innovative approach to the comic-book genre forever changed how stories of supermen and -women are told, but rather that he is the sole member of that group I would seriously like to bone (sorry, Alan and Grant, but it’s totally true).” –Allan Mott
