‘The Lidless Eye’: The Second Excerpt from Jonah, a New Liberty Island Novel
Enjoy this and three more excursions into Jonah: A Novel of Men and the Sea, the debut novel of Howard Butcher
By Howard Butcher
Howard Butcher’s underwater thriller brims with authenticity, energy, and thematic depth. Buy Jonah: A Novel of Men and the Sea today on Amazon. Click here for the first excerpt, “The Tiger Shark’s Head.”
New Fiction: Field Trip Chicken
Mary Keen has to get a therapy chicken back to Harmony Farms, but the simple task spirals out of control…
By Bokerah Brumley
The compost demonstration showed all the amazing ways that poultry could break down waste while building soil. She had no idea a flock of chickens could be so industrious. Mrs. Applewood was convinced that chickens had an important role to play in the efforts to recycle matter and change it from something wasteful to something useful. Regenerative farming practices had the potential to change the world. But, still, there was something about that Miss Frizzle….
Zapped by the Trickster Roseanne
Part 4 in the Roseanne Reboot Blog Discussion
By Fred Tribuzzo
In Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, Otho Fenlock, the New York interior decorator, is caught acting badly and stripped of his hip clothes and arrogant ways and zapped into a leisure suit by Beetlejuice himself. Horror of horrors: the hipster becomes the hayseed. Thanks to Roseanne on ABC, the American left has been zapped by another trickster as funny as Beetlejuice; their screams and gnashing of teeth taking us back to the night of Trump’s victory. The American left has been caught in the middle of main street USA, trying to hide with skinny arms, not their nakedness, but their plaid leisure suit.
Whether it’s a zinger from Roseanne or a sublime factoid of historical reality from Victor Davis Hanson, the elites have been driven from the Garden of Hipness, even though they still control the educational system, Hollywood, and the media. The left is no longer hip.
PreTeena: April 2-8, 2018
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
When Did Star Wars Jump the Shark?
And can we finally agree that Star Trek has triumphed in the franchise contest?
By David M. Swindle
This week, the wildly successful, self-published thriller author Robert Bidinotto had some thoughts on the state of Star Wars today:
SOME TIME BACK, I watched “The Force Awakens” and was bored to tears. The plot was a worn retread of many elements of the original “Star Wars: A New Hope,” without the chemistry and light-hearted fun of that cast, or the sense of menace of a truly “big” villain. As Yogi said, deja-vu all over again. And the second “Star Wars” prequel trilogy was just plain dull. Now I’m hearing negative things about “The Last Jedi,” which I haven’t seen and probably won’t. Is it safe to say Mr. Lucas’s franchise has jumped the shark?
Imagining a Good Message Movie
Hint: First, make a good film
By Roy Griffis
This year’s Oscar-winning The Shape of Water applied this “building a story using only good-think legos” method and managed to squeeze a lot of them into one drippy film. Trouser Trout and the Hot Mute Chick –– working title –– was able to hit the trifecta of (allegedly) timeless tropes: saintly black woman is heroic, bad guy is a Bible-quoting sexual abuser who loves torture, and the saintly gay character is the quiet moral guide and center of the film. But wait, there’s more! Bonus points for the communist spy character who turns out to have a heart of gold.
Roseanne’s Big League Co-Star Brings Ratings Bonanza
Finding a positively-spun conservative character on the boob tube can be as challenging as finding a Blue Dog Democrat
By Mark Ellis
In the film Sideways, when Miles goes into the home of the easy waitress to reclaim Jack’s wallet, he hears muffled noises coming from the bedroom. The unsavory couple from the wrong side of the tracks are having sex on the bed, and their television set is on. Onscreen are Bush and Rumsfeld. In Little Miss Sunshine, while Dwyane and Frank wait in the lobby for the beauty pageant to start, President Bush is on the television. Frank (Steve Carell) switches the set off with a look of perturbation, as if viewing it was just another brick in the wall of their unfulfilled lives. In I, Tonya, in a scene set in the either the disreputable Jeff Gillooly or the deranged Shawn Eckhardt’s paneled basement (I can’t remember which), a Reagan poster is seen, and zoomed in on.
The entertainment landscape is rife with examples like this. This is Hollywood’s relentless message about conservatives: they are the bad people, the low-class people, the evil people that more evolved types must endure and hopefully overcome. Don’t get me wrong — I loved all three of those films…
Roseanne Barr Vs. the World of Leftist Slights
I am hoping that Roseanne, like Trump, doesn’t give a damn
By David Walls-Kaufman
The Left is so uncharitable. Whenever I see the multi-symbol “coexist” bumper sticker I think the driver probably really means they want PC book burning.
Take Roxane Gay, for example, writing in the March 29, New York Times, about Roseanne Barr’s new show. Gay introduces Roseanne to the uncharitable slant she will face for as long as Barr uses her star power to humanize the enemies of the Left.
Ms. Gay admits she used to love the original Roseanne show. Back then, Ms. Gay found Roseanne “edgy and provocative”. The 1990s “Roseanne” was “a smart, hilarious and groundbreaking show that covered a lot of important ground in prime-time television.” But now, suddenly, Roseanne is “noxious, transphobic, racist and small-minded,” even “absurd and offensive.” Moreover, “Her views are muddled and incoherent.”
Ready for the Human Sacrifice Before the Office Potluck Today?
Discover the fantastic fantasy of Sidequest, the new novel from Frank J. Fleming
By Frank Fleming
He dazzled you with the science fiction adventure Superego, Liberty Island’s debut title. Now Frank Fleming is back with a fresh, innovative take on fantasy. Order Sidequest today, now available on Amazon.
New Fiction: Looking for Karen
By Joseph McGrail
Susan closed the door of her father’s Toyota, looking through the window one last time to make sure there were no crumbs from her scone on the seat. “No eating in the car,” was one of those rules set by her father that was openly ignored by all of his children. She laughed.
She had parked at the bottom of the long stairway leading up to the Mullen Home for the Aged, and started the climb to the entrance.
Snowdrops and crocuses were coming up and the grass next to the receding snow was a bright green. The gardener had planted pansies in a bed beneath the Sacred Heart statue. Susan thought about her father saying you could use the statue for a sundial, Jesus’ extended arm as the perfect gnomon.
