Kevin Geeks Out About ROLLERBALL

(Click Here to hear the VIDEO DEATH RAY podcast about ROLLERBALL)

I love 1975's Rollerball.

I first saw the Norman Jewison movie as an adult while writing a comedy screenplay that was set in a 1970's vision of the future.

That project required me to spend weeks watching films like Logan's Run, Omega Man, Futureworld, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and more. Each movie offered a ridiculous world of tomorrow -- and don't get me wrong, that's part of what makes them so great.  I adore the very 70's aesthetic about the future -- whether it's the slightly-futuristic fashion, the oversized super-intelligent talking computers, the funky pseduo-Euro architecture, the relentless use of excessive snap-zooms, or the general self-imporance of message-y post-Viet Nam science-fiction that was about to be  made extinct by Star Wars and dozens of Star Wars knock-offs.

"I'm feelin' mean," Jonathan E in William Harrison's short story Roller Ball Murder

Book of the year: another truly geeky thing about me

I never talk about this, but I keep track of everything I read and at the end of each calendar year, I would nominate THE BOOK OF THE YEAR. An imaginary award given to whatever book had the most impract on me.

Here's the thing -- any book ever written could be nominated.  (But I had to read it that year.)

From there it's like any award, there's politics and in-fighting (did I mention I am the only one on the committee, but I will debate myself from time to time.) 

If I were to give an actual award, it would be a sticker made to look like the big foam hand with the extended finger to convey "this is #1"!   The same way books get an "Oprah's book club" sticker, I'd have a BOOK OF THE YEAR sticker with that hand. 

Now let's get to the actual list.  These are the best books I read between the years of 1996 - 2009. (Read the whole thing, or skip ahead to the end for a surprise.)   Lastly, please keep in mind this is not necessarily a list of recommended reading, it's just that the timing was right -- these books spoke to me, because they connected with my then-current situation and where my head was at.   I don't know that "The Best of Temp Slave" would mean as much to me today as it did 11 years ago. 

1996:  THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West 

The best required reading from my junior year of college.  I was totally swept up in this unflinching story of Hollywood in the 1930's.  West is a lean, mean writer and he gets at the loneliness of desperate people.  There's one scene that describes a sad sack sitting naked on the toilet, crying his eyes out waiting for the bathtub to fill-up.  It's a brutal story that doesn't pull any punches and I couldn't put it down.  The John Schlessinger movie is visionary, but I prefer the book's intimacy.  (Does that make sense?  Sorry, I rarely write about literature.)