Friday, September 6, 2013

Pain and Gain: Why are You Laughing?

My brother emailed to ask if I would recommend watching the new film PAIN AND GAIN. So I responded with a cryptic email that he misunderstood and so, to clear things up, I responded thus:

"You misunderstood me. I said don't watch. No, watch it. No, don't watch it. No, watch it. No, don't watch it. No, watch it. No, don't watch it. No, watch it. No, don't watch it. No, watch it. No, don't watch it. No, watch it.

It's that good. It's so dark and so good I'm ashamed that I like it.

It's like watching a comedy about the assassination of Martin Luther King or JFK, and Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and Jim Carry are the bumbling conspirators.

You're laughing at the antics because they are hilarious and well acted but at times you look around in shame that you find this stuff funny. But it is funny. It's like watching an eloquent junior high school bully picking on the fat kid. It's like watching your mom slip on her bum in the snow. Funny stuff, but maybe you shouldn't be laughing.

So funny that I had to stop the movie at times because of the brutality that I was enjoying.

It's like a Quentin Tarantino movie based on a true story--true story that ruined one man's life and took the lives of two others.

P"

Sisters Gambling While Kids Outside in Car

Gambling makes you irresponsible, and you both are fined $1000.

Fair punishment, huh? I don't think so. Punishment enough to discourage reprehensible behavior? Absolutely not.

For a gambler it is a mere nuisance. Another trip to the ATM machine at most. For a gambler, it's the price of doing business.

Let's see now, if the sisters have but a modest gambling habit, they're probably not unused to blowing a couple hundred bucks per gambling binge. And if they are complete degenerates--which the evidence implies they are--a thousand dollars a day is an average binge. It doesn't hurt a degenerate as much as non gamblers might think.

A degenerate gambler by his nature has thicker skin than that or he's not a degenerate.

Those kids are fortunate that the sisters took the time to see that the air conditioner was left on.

Read my book ALL OR NOTHING, and you'll see what I mean.

________________________________________

"South Florida Sisters Gambled in Casino While Kids Sat in Running Car"

Two South Florida sisters are facing child neglect charges after authorities say they left their young children in a car while they gambled inside a casino.

Malory Pierre, 27, and Romanie Pierre, 31, are both facing four counts of child neglect without great harm after they left four children inside a running car outside the Mardi Gras Casino in Hallandale Beach Sunday, according to an arrest report read by Broward Circuit Judge John Hurley in court Monday.

Both were ordered held on $5,000 bond and it was unknown whether they have attorneys.

According to Hurley, the sisters took the car full of children -- ages 8, 5, 4 and 2 -- to the casino Sunday evening and left them in the running car while they went inside.

A woman noticed the kids were in the car between 20 and 30 minutes and called 911. Police arrived and had to have one of the kids unlock the car, Hurley said.

The oldest child told officers that their step-mom and her sister went inside and left them there. When officers found and questioned the sisters, one of them said she had gone inside to use the bathroom, while the other said she went inside to ask a question, Hurley said.

But after a brief investigation, police discovered the two had gone inside and were gambling and had checked in at the player's club and were playing slots, Hurley said.

Hurley ordered the two to stay out of casinos if they post bond, but wavered when asked by prosecutors to order them to have no contact with the children.

"It's inappropriate behavior there's no doubt about it, however, I'm not sure that, there's just a part of me that says it may be going too far to keep them away from the children," Hurley said.

The sisters said the children were at home with their mother, and Hurley decided against keeping them away from their kids.

"Hopefully these two have been scared and have been put in jail and maybe shocked into coming to their senses that what they have allegedly done is extremely poor judgment and I'm not going to take their kids away," he said.

Lipshitz 6

Lipshitz 6
Reading T Cooper for Christmas

Punk Blood

Punk Blood
Jay Marvin

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Anonymous Rex

Anonymous Rex
Reading Eric Garcia for Christmas

Vinegar Hill

Vinegar Hill
Reading A. Manette Ansay for Christmas

Nicotine Dreams

Nicotine Dreams
Reading Katie Cunningham for Christmas

Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz
Pulitzer Prize Winner!!!

Edwige Danticat

Edwige Danticat
New Year's Reading

Greed

Greed
This Brother Is Scary Good

One More Chance

One More Chance
The genius Is At It Again/The Rapper CHIEF aka Sherwin Allen

Sandrine's Letter

Sandrine's Letter
Check out Sandrine's Letter To Tomorrow. You will like it, I insist.

All or Nothing

All or Nothing

Editorial Reviews of All or Nothing

New York Times--". . . a cartographer of autodegradation . . . Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu — the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand."

Florida Book Review--". . . Allen examines the flaming abyss compulsive gambling burns in its victims’ guts, self-esteem and bank accounts, the desperate, myopic immediacy it incites, the self-destructive need it feeds on, the families and relationships it destroys. For with gamblers, it really is all or nothing. Usually nothing. Take it from a reviewer who’s been there. Allen is right on the money here."

Foreword Magazine--"Not shame, not assault, not even murder is enough reason to stop. Allen’s second novel, All or Nothing, is funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable. P’s inner dialogues illuminate the grubby tragedy of addiction, and his actions speak for the train wreck that is gambling."

Library Journal--"Told without preaching or moralizing, the facts of P's life express volumes on the destructive power of gambling. This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups."—Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH

LEXIS-NEXIS--"By day, P drives a school bus in Miami. But his vocation? He's a gambler who craves every opportunity to steal a few hours to play the numbers, the lottery, at the Indian casinos. Allen has a narrative voice as compelling as feeding the slots is to P." Betsy Willeford is a Miami-based freelance book reviewer. November 4, 2007

Publisher’s Weekly--"Allen’s dark and insightful novel depicts narrator P’s sobering descent into his gambling addiction . . . The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as P chases, finds and loses fast, easy money. Allen (Churchboys and Other Sinners) reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing."

Kirkus Review--"We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don't play to win." Right there, P, desperado narrator of this crash-'n'-burn novella, sums up the madness. A black man in Miami, P has graduated from youthful nonchalance (a '79 Buick Electra 225) to married-with-a-kid pseudo-stability, driving a school bus in the shadow of the Biltmore. He lives large enough to afford two wide-screen TVs, but the wife wants more. Or so he rationalizes, as he hits the open-all-night Indian casinos, "controlling" his jones with a daily ATM maximum of $1,000. Low enough to rob the family piggy bank for slot-machine fodder, he sinks yet further, praying that his allergic 11-year-old eat forbidden strawberries—which will send him into a coma, from which he'll emerge with the winning formula for Cash 3 (the kid's supposedly psychic when he's sick). All street smarts and inside skinny, the book gives readers a contact high that zooms to full rush when P scores $160,000 on one lucky machine ("God is the God of Ping-ping," he exults, as the coins flood out). The loot's enough to make the small-timer turn pro, as he heads, flush, to Vegas to cash in. But in Sin City, karmic payback awaits. Swanky hookers, underworld "professors" deeply schooled in sure-fire systems to beat the house, manic trips to the CashMyCheck store for funds to fuel the ferocious need—Allen's brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming. Fun time in the Inferno.

At Books and Books

At Books and Books
Me And Vicki at Our Reading

Bio


Preston L. Allen is the recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature and the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction for his short story collection Churchboys and Other Sinners (Carolina Wren Press 2003). His works have appeared in numerous publications including The Seattle Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Asili, Drum Voices, and Gulfstream Magazine; and he has been anthologized in Here We Are: An Anthology of South Florida Writers, Brown Sugar: A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction, Miami Noir, and the forthcoming Las Vegas Noir. His fourth novel, All Or Nothing, chronicles the life of a small-time gambler who finally hits it big. Preston Allen teaches English and Creative Writing in Miami, Florida.