Pork-Fried Champs—A group of committed athletes decide that, while they would like to win a championship they are also unwilling to give up on eating fried pork. As a compromise, they decide that they will become…
Astro Guide: May 26-30
Gemini (22 May – 21 June) Spring has sprung, the rose doth bloom more ruddy ‘neath the dew, and local fauns will decide you might be “one of the good ones” after all—even given That Thing…
A Warmer, More Approachable Salinger: On Joanna Rakoff’s My Salinger Year
Many writers have had a Salinger year, a period in which they read every word Jerome David Salinger ever published. It’s a common effect Salinger has on writers and readers. Once bitten by the Salinger bug,…
Star Wars: The Novels—Nothing could be simpler than taking the wildly popular Star Wars film franchise and extrapolating a bunch of other crap about it in book form. We could start with the children of Leia…
Honest and Unbiased: Blue Metropolis Literary Festival
Blue Metropolis Literary Festival Montreal, Quebec, Canada Five Stars I was recently in Montréal for the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival. The grand prize winner of the festival this year was the American Richard Ford, winner…
Ambidexterity
Don’t Be Afraid. No, Seriously, Don’t: A Review of When No One Calls
Director: Kenny Ortega; Cast: Alison Janney, Saoirse Ronan, “Nubbins” The challenge of modern horror is to show us something new, amidst the minefield of exhausted franchises and self-referential irony-fests. With When No One Calls, television director…
Robot Book—Pretty much reads itself. — Nuff Sed, Gorptown, PA
I’m Afraid this Birdhouse is a Metaphor
When you sign up for a woodworking class, you don’t expect it to be much more than the advertised four-hour class; I just wanted to meet some people and take a break from working on my…
Destroy Your Sweater: Costume Design and the Shared Future Principle
July 18th will see the release of Jupiter Ascending, the Wachowskis’ first wholly original film since 2003’s Matrix Revolutions. If you’ve seen the Matrix films, it’s a familiar story: an oblivious earth-dweller is visited by a…
Ideas for Shovels—Like, one with a rotating shaft and another with an electric head that rotates and shoots sparks from its eyes. — “Toe” Dunn, Carl’s Jr., MN
Show Him What He Lost by Losing
Breakups can be rough. Although no one here at Lip Service Magazine has ever been dumped, we’ve witnessed the pain it causes others in countless films and T.V. shows. Handle a breakup however works for you,…
Welcome to Venice Beach
Monday morning, I’m pulling a trailer containing a four-year-old girl, en route to preschool, both of us coming off a half-decade in the Middle East, and I’m feeling a little shaky about how things are going, wondering how it is…
The Old Bait and Switch—What at first seems to spoil as a family-friendly novel about a neighborhood tackle shop takes a titillating turn when it is revealed that the proprietor of said shop embraces notions of…
My Life Coach, Terry, Got Me a Personal Planner
My life coach Terry got me a personal planner. It is black, imitation leather and has a robust cover. With my personal planner, I can schedule dental appointments, job interviews, or a driver’s exam. And with…
Flame Trinket
Dynamic Content—Delivered to you in the form of a book. — Fapp Harter, Bougainville, KY