The Two Mikes

The Two Mikes
Ever wanted to talk with someone about a book you just read? You could just join a book group and talk about it, drink a little, veer off on tangents, work back around to the book again, and finally wrap it up by picking the next book.

But what happens when the book you just read is about about hungry zombies or a haunted house, and your Eat, Pray, Love–reading friends aren’t really into reading it, much less discussing its finer points? That’s what we’re here for. We Two Mikes will be your virtual book group for discussing new and interesting and old and half-forgotten horror books.

If you want to follow along with us, look at the next forbidden book on the table and start reading.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Episode 69, Colson Whitehead's Zone One




The Mikes are as split down the middle like the remnants of a rotting zombie, which you can read all about in Colson Whitehead's  Zone One.  Do the literati have any business invading the sacred territory of the current zombie meme or is it best to be cordoned off and left for those hard-boiled horror writers who know how it is done?


It IS Cocktail Time!

Manhattan Is Burning.

2 shots rye whiskey
1/2 shot red vermouth 

Pour in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled glass.  
Top with Angostura bitters.

Flame an orange by warming over a flame and pinching so the oils catch fire and fall
on to the drink—or not; it takes a little practice.


End Music:  I Love New York by Madge.



3 comments:

Emphyrio said...

Spirited!

I found the reader had an odd lilt reminiscent of my Macintosh System Alert voices. Mr. Moncado's aversion to it is understandable.

Sounds like the big mistake Whitehead made was picking as a narrator an uncompelling, undriven nonentity.

Somebody should've handed him a copy of Save the Cat.

I'm just about done with zombies. Bob Fingerman's Pariah was festooned with glowing blurbs by eminent creators, and was crisply written, but his characters hole up in a New York apartment building and wait to starve to death.

When their deliverer arrives -- a girl with an aura or smell that repels zombies -- all they do is tag along hoping to score food and drugs.

That's a dramatic question?

Not a moment of scientific speculation about what caused the apocalypse. Not a moment of theological musing (one dimwit takes up reading the bible, but his thought processes are never plumbed).

Guess I was hoping for another Risen.

Peter Biskin's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls maintained that the Manson killings soured the whole zeitgeist of Hollywood; that a period of creative revolution, a great opening up, a feeling of endless possibility, ended overnight.

The ghastliness was certainly chilling.

Weird to think Manson's still alive. You'd think somebody would've given him a Dahmer treatment by now.

weso said...

Colson Whitehead came to my school to gaive a talk once. He is a man who loves to play with words. In fact the concepts of plot of character were never once mentioned.

Necronomipod@gmail.com said...

Hey, for those of you following along at home, we two Mikes have decided NOT to read Helter Skelter, for reasons we'll discuss in the next episode. Instead we'll be reading A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness.