Category: 2026

400 Words on: Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

or, “You Made Me Promises, Promises”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

5 out of 5

Filmmaker & author S. Craig Zahler’s “Brawl in Cell Block 99” is a prison-fighting thriller, with an audacious literary-esque understatement. I’ll demonstrate using Lindsay Lohan…

In 2013, at her then-nadir, Lohan & disgraced porn performer James Deen headlined Paul Schrader’s social drama “The Canyons”. Schrader is the legendary screenwriter of Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” – but a type-A director, exemplified by Stephen Rodrick’s New York Times article on Canyons’ production.

One provocative point in Rodrick’s piece was distributors’ worries over Canyons’ slow, unmarketable first act. Directorial colleague & editing precisionist Steven Soderbergh offered to cut an alternate version himself, to what Schrader responded, “You know what [he’d] do if another director offered to cut his film?” And flipped the bird. “That’s what Soderbergh would do.”

[cont’d]

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nostalgia’s in atm

ou, une merde chaude par une journée froide

A poem.

her back is to the separating wall,
left thigh over right
under the table at the unhappily married
middle-aged debutante ball,

long faces and all,
and instead of a trombone in her lap it’s her phone
and i’m not leering from around a beam.
this time.


what’s the use of this personification
except to hold on to it for later?
drooling through my pillow case at the open mystery
under those Lululemon Kirkland Signature duperies,
clasping fruitlessly to post-workout legs
like plastic cheese bricks to hot broccoli reeds

that, again, no one’s forcing me to eat

and being fun & flirty and platonic won’t do us good either
because you’re another non-native English speaker,
and i’ve changed little carnally in twenty-five years.
i’d much rather just non-verbally roll around on the floor
but it isn’t my middle-school Québec exchange anymore.
it’s life.


it’s life.
but apparently nostalgia’s all in at the mome.

//wd 1.5.2026

Featured image “Impression of ‘Lonely woman embracing body in morning’ by Alena Shekhovtcova” illustrated by the author.

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