Slate put me onto Snarksmith, a book-reader’s blog, which led me to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Robert Downey Jr. as an inversion of Chandler’s Marlowe, and Val Kilmer as the gay LAPI who “shows him the ropes.” The concept is clever, but moment by moment it’s blisteringly funny. Still can’t decide whether my favorite part was Downey slam-dunking his “audition,” pissing on a corpse, or watching his finger get eaten by a dog. In the end, it was the ringtone: lying next to Kilmer, presumed dead, the cell goes off, prompting Downey to finish off the perps while hanging from the dead vic’s arm hanging out of her coffin. The song: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
SHE’S NOT THERE by Jenny Boylan
Uncanny and ferocious, the Kinks’ “Lola” as memoir.
LOVE IS A MIXTAPE by Rob Sheffield
The Nilsson of rock critics, in book form at last.
rock culture approximately
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