Category: Reviews
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Note on a Napkin, to a Napkin by Peter Mladinic
Jacobson moves from scene to scene with the ease of a seasoned storyteller.
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MITCHELL KENNEDY’S TOP 5 MOVIES CALLED OPOSSUM
He rolls up into a ball and plays dead and they go away.
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Alt Tyrant by Hugh Blanton
The longest section of the book is the acknowledgments section going on for four pages with a lot of [I’ve removed this person] strewn about it.
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REPORT: IF WE COULD JUST GET THESE PEOPLE RUNNING FOR THEIR LIVES WE COULD MAKE OUR OWN GODZILLA MOVIE
People never seem to scurry and scream.
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EWWW: THIS PEORIA-AREA MAN SHAVED HIS LEFT PELVIS
‘The trouble for [Darren] is that he was definitely shaving his pelvis. Why was he doing that?’
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Not This Time by Hugh Blanton
Perhaps Duchovny is unaware of cliché, or maybe he just can’t avoid it, but there are two poems here about the hole in his heart.
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Book Excerpt: ‘GAFFE THE GIRAFFE’ by Dr. Mitchell M. Seuss
He was also the ugliest giraffe in the world, his mother told him.
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BEST OF THE GORKO 2025
The real gift of 2024 was the creative work submitted to this space by more than 100 contributors: humor, short fiction, CNF, poems, and more.
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The Performing Poet: On Sarah Kay’s A Little Daylight Left by Hugh Blanton
The poems in End of Empire are completely humorless.
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Mitch’s Movie Mash: Shades of ‘Bridges of Madison County’ Genius
When Mother first told me about 50 Shades of Grey I thought I would never get past page 69.
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Upcoming Movie: ‘The Fog of Dr. Parchisi’
The latest entry in the Dr. Parchisi canon, and we recommend this one.
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Unnecessary Fiction by Hugh Blanton
Eloghosa Osunde’s latest novel Necessary Fiction opens up with an unnamed narrator giving us a list of his personality characteristics he wants us to know about himself.
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Call Us What We Bloviate by Hugh Blanton
The book’s prefatory poem promises and warns, “This book does not let up.” Heed that warning.
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Farce and Conflict in Suburbia: On Jessica Anthony’s ‘The Most’ by Hugh Blanton
‘Eventually she stopped playing tennis altogether, and now Virgil told her everyday how beautiful she was.’
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: J. Archer Avary & Parker Wilson
Mini reviews of new books by J. Archer Avary and Parker Wilson
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Upcoming Movie: ‘Potato’
Yet the film does portray, in gritty existential realism and stark but heartbreaking beauty, potato.
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The Unbecoming of Metaphor: Book Review by Hugh Blanton
Imprecise metaphor can, and should, be a delight, but in the hands of an unskilled writer it goes beyond imprecise to downright wrong.
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Inside Working Class Literature by Hugh Blanton
Poet George Vincent found (and made!) the time to sit and write between working twelve-hour shifts at a pizza joint.
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: Murderapolis by Anthony Neil Smith
If you are looking for a strange slice of genre fiction with tons of action and what I take to be the Professor’s own tequila recommendations, Murderapolis will take you where you want to go.
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: Two by Adam Johnson
The Gorko reviews two contemporary classics from the warped metaverse of indie lit’s one and only Adam Johnson
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: Two by Benjamin Drevlow
The Gorko reviews two rude and pissy, tender and lovin collections from the hard-bouncing editor of BULL
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Perigo, the tell-all expat Bible: a collaboration of Colin Gee and Nate Belisle
Captain B and Serio narrate in scathing Facebook prose and verse their escape from cartel war-distressed Mexico, and further adventures.
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Mitch’s Movie Mash!!! Jurassic World: I Spit on Your Grave
This dino flick is nothing at all like Deliverance, or the rape-revenge classic I Spit on Your Grave.
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: Cletus Crow’s Phallic Symbols
69 pages of verse devoted to the most infamous of human appendages, the penis.
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Where I Come From: book review by Hugh Blanton
The Anna Karenina principle applies here: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’
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We Is Series Gorko Club of Books: Wilson Koewing’s Rolling on the Bottom
Many of the stories read like the author’s notebook, in fact, seemingly without endings, and then back to the literary prose Koewing is master of.
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Mitch’s Predictions for the 97th Academy Awards
Predicting this year’s winners was particularly difficult due to the fact that I no longer watch movies.
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Post-Beauty and Almost American Surrealism: A Review of Damon Hubbs’ Venus at the Arms Fair by Sean G. Meggeson
My associations call it James Tate dressed as Breton writing Catullus while doing poppers with Black Francis as Pete Townshend’s ‘Empty Glass’ plays at the bar.
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MITCHELL REVEALS THE FOUR WORDS HE LOVES TO HEAR DURING A MOVIE
The four words that will drive every man absolutely wild during a movie.
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Provincial Squirming: a book review by Hugh Blanton
Readers, critics, and editors scream for something different.
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REVIEW – JD CLAPP ‘A GOOD MAN GOES SOUTH’ BY JOE WEST
If you are hoping for a fast, gut-punch read to while away the hours at your slave job, A Good Man Goes South will please your palate long after each story is finished.
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Mitch’s Movie Mash: 10 Holiday Movies That Almost Killed My Dog
These are in fact exactly the movies to AVOID if you have the hemorrhoids.
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BEST OF THE GORKO 2024
The real gift of 2024 was the creative work submitted to this space by more than 75 contributors: humor, short fiction, CNF, poems, and more.
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My First Book Review: a book review by Hugh Blanton
As you can probably guess from the title, My First Book is Honor Levy’s debut collection of short stories.
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High Anxiety Dining: The Barn Kitchen & Bar by Torrey Kurtzner
While trying to determine the good from the bad, we rarely consider the dining needs of the stoner. That is, until now.
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My Summer Vacation: Book review by Hugh Blanton
Somehow, a post-menopausal woman decided that the What-I-Did-Over-Summer-Vacation genre would make for a great novel. No, I’m not kidding.
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Mitch’s Movie Mash!!! Joker: A Goddess Called Foley (2024)
Yes there are many scenes of over-the-top, incredibly gory cop-on-clown violence, but do not think that this is your typical superhero-meets-slasher.
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Plot Hole Exit: A book review by Hugh Blanton
Fire Exit had the potential to be a good story but was ruined by the plot hole, repetitive/overwrought prose, and sappy sentimentality
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Just a Dream – Go Back to Sleep: A book review by Hugh Blanton
If your vision of reality is shaped by, oh let’s say, the comments section of the NPR Facebook page, your reality may not be a good point to start a surrealist story.
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MITCH’S MOVIE MASH: 3 MISTAKES YOU’RE PROBABLY MAKING WHILE WATCHING ‘MAXXXINE’
With these three simple pointers your MaXXXine movie-going experience will be as poop-your-pants, pee-your-knickers terrifying as ours!
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Book Excerpt: ‘Wondering Stars’ by Mitchell Orange
Gorko subleaser and Entertainment Editor Mitchell Kennedy has been working on his own multi-generational epic, one that places himself at the center in the character of Cheyenne Argot Bluefeather Mitchell.
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Wandering Confusion: A book review by Hugh Blanton
Wandering Stars is the latest novel from Tommy Orange and it’s a hot mess.
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‘Ode to Eno Peeing in Duchamp’s Urinal’ by Mark Blickley
As I unzip, I wonder, do flies have a soul? Is there a fly heaven where they can go?
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‘Blood Elves: For the Honour of Gladiswiel II’ review by Trixie McCarbre
It is a (thankfully) short film that follows the escapades of rugged, outcast hero – Swarth Drfenlorng, played by Alistair Ront of Twelve Days as a Sexually Frustrated Werewolf fame
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MITCH’S MOVIE MASH: WHO ARE THESE OSCAR FELLOWS
The words of Ampersat Lemon Reilly were blurry and the room where I was taking my bath (the master bath) began to spin.
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INVASION OF THE ELEPHANT DOG CREATURES FROM SRIXON 5: A MITCHELL KENNEDY ORIGINAL
Read all about the seventh and eighth hypothetical installments of the planned intergalactic bow-wow series below.
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MITCH’S MOVIE MASH: ‘WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY 2’ – HONEY IS THICKER THAN BLOOD
Once we clicked PLAY on our Betamax antique home entertainment movie recorder, the hunt for honey was on!
