The Fake Fruit Factory World Tour 2015 is so happening and we now have the video to prove it.

Patrick Wensink is A Brief History of Book Trailer Failure and quite Fake Fruit Factory at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

And this at Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Which is not to be missed. It just might change your life.

(Sketches from the) AWP 2015.

Kicked off yesterday with best panel of day with @annamarch, @WendyCOrtiz, @meganstielstra, and @BenTanzer. Hope today's is 1/2 as good.
— Susan Lerner (@susanlitelerner) April 10, 2015

#ff #babecity residents @silverbackedG @JDaugherty1081 @dreamingauze @notsolinear @geatland @eshonkwiler @wyllinois @BenTanzer @joelhans
— Lockjaw Magazine (@lockjawmag) April 10, 2015

Wherein we totally get to both talk the Anatomy of Humor with the Patrick Wensink and a cast of thousands, and do a reading, at The Writer's Block 2014 Festival in Louisville.

Truth. All of it. So do hit it, thank you.

Sneed Samarov Stielstra Wensink Tanzer Lost in Space Book Release Party live courtesy of the WordPlaySound yes.

Here yes totally awesome yes and with massive appreciations to the WordPlaySound too yes.

Lost in Space. The PUBLIC. Beautious.

I could listen to @BenTanzer and @meganstielstra all day. Phenomenal performances by everyone.
— James Yates (@chicagoexpatjy) March 14, 2014

We are Lost in Space Release Party!

It's true, there is Lost in Space release party. It is at the Public, yes, that Public, and it is on March 13th at 7:30.

The Public is located at 1301 North State Parkway and if you're not sure where that is please come stand here in the TBWCYL, Inc. corporate headquarters and we will be happy to show you where it is.

There will be words and drink, and as always, a laser light show that is sure to amaze.

The other readers rock, and are quite beautiful: Christine Sneed, Patrick Wensink, Dmitry Samarov, and the Megan Stielstra. 

And we look forward to seeing you there.

This Book Will Change Your Life - The Infects by Sean Beaudoin.

We well understand that zombies are this year's black. Vampires. Or whatever. And we dig it. We also understand that monsters in general, and maybe even zombies in particular, come to represent the socio-political issues of the day. That even in a society where violent crime is on a downswing, we live in a twenty-four hour, seven days a week, media world fraught with war, violent uprisings, and yes, school massacres, that we just cannot make sense of, much less escape, the need to fight a living dead that emerges from mysterious, possibly even nefarious circumstances, just makes sense in terms of popular entertainment and escapism. Which brings us to The Infects by Sean Beaudoin, which is yes, about zombies, zombies, who are at least partially, maybe wholly, a result of corporate malfeasance, a topic as current as any. But deconstructing zombies is not the same as talking about one's reaction to a book, even when said book does such a nice job of both hewing to the understood parameters of zombie culture and mocking them. So, what we will say is this, what is most entertaining about the wildly entertaining Infects is just how much fun it is. The Infects is full of humor, snappy dialogue, and knowing pop culture riffs, and while reminding us of what Patrick Wensink did best with Broken Piano for President and its takedown of corporate culture and its hold on the country, what it truly reminds us of is Lynda Barry's Cruddy, possibly the most fun we've recently had reading a book of any kind. This kind of fun is a gift, and writing it requires craft, and reading The Infects we were reminded that not only do we need to read more books like this, the culture needs more books like this, now especially, but at any time. They not only allow us escape, they just might change our lives as well. If only for a moment at that.       

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Fifty - Goat Boy, starring Patrick Wensink (and Megan).

Our most Wentastic Fiftieth Episode stars Patrick Wensink, yes that Patrick Wensink, he of the international media and bestselling novel Jack Daniels cease and desist viral stardom. It also stars special guest Megan. Sadly, it does not star Patrick's once awesome facial hair. That said, we are still quite thrilled to share this most Wensinkian of conversations with you, and we are fairly confident that it just might change your life, at least a little, maybe.

Where do you start?

Here. Or here. We suppose.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Broken Piano for President by Patrick Wensink.

The Wensink. Where to start? Lives in Kentucky. Which seems important. Daddy-cool. Definitely important. Author of quasi-bizzaro, near punk literature. Intriguingly important. Which we hope is important, and a real word, though is definitely important to us regardless. And we say this because we want to somehow capture what its like to find yourself caught up in a new author, who writes in a genre, you might not neccessarily read, and cranks out books you might not have necessarily encountered, but now you do, and have, and it feels like a discovery of sorts, something new you want to own. Sometimes that author is well along the way in their career and you pick through their work, seeking out themes, and highlights, which for you is exciting and fresh, and other times, they are new and fresh and finding their voice, and the Wensink falls in the latter category, and this too can be exciting, because you see the voice taking form, emerging and happening right in front of you. Which brings us to Broken Piano for President and the blurb we were most honored to provide and have only slightly altered here for your life-changing consumption.

"The last time we drank with Hemingway, wait sorry, it was not Hemingway, it was Jackie Collins. Anyway, the last time we drank with Jackie Collins she said to us that writing is not like dating in that when you write you have to commit. Every sentence. Every pause. Every juke, joke and feint has to mean something. This is especially true with absurdist writing, because what's on the page is not what you know to be right. Which doesn't make it wrong. Just warped. And different. Which is a good way to describe the endlessly fertile mind of Patrick Wensink. Warped. And different. In a good way certainly. We think. Maybe. Regardless, he commits to his stories and his vision of the world, from book to book and breath and breath, and with Broken Piano for President he not only continues to break fresh Wensinkian ground, he continues to find his voice, a warped voice surely, but one uniquely his own. And yes, we just dropped the phrase Wensinkian there, which we now here by officially claim as our own. Trademark pending of course. And Pat Riley be damned."  
      

We are Broken. Drinking. And chew.

Quite thrilled we are to play any role in hyping the Patrick Wensink's new joint Broken Piano for President, including, but not limited to today's reprint of our joint You Want Some Chew? which previously ran in the decomP. Big thanks bro and long live the Piano.  

Wensink. Broken Piano For President. Soon. Word.

We Who Are About To Die finds itself legally obligated to select You Can Make Him Like You as one of the best books it read in 2011 and we have a new found appreciation for the law.

This is a fantastic list. This is coolness. And we are most honored indeed. Big thanks to the Patrick Wensink and the We Who Are About To Die. Drinks, soon, yes? Yes.

These Books Will Change Your Life - Sex Dungeon For Sale! by Patrick Wensink and Don't Smell The Floss by Matty Byloos.

We know, and probably have even riffed-on the idea previously, we will get the interns on that, that we have a way, both us specifically, and all of us generally, to group things, people, ideas, events, what have you. That there is something inherently human, and maybe even necessary, that drives us to understand and organize things by means of clumping. Personally, we endlessly do this with everything, but certainly with books and writers, and we think this has something to do with the sheer amount we read and our efforts to understand and manage the endless words we consume, and something to do as well with laziness and convenience, two books fall into our laps around the same time and we start thinking almost immediately about their similarities versus say their differences. We want to make sense of the world, we suppose, and so here we find ourselves with two books by two TBWCYL, Inc. favorites, Sex Dungeons for Sale! by Patrick Wensink and Don't Smell The Floss by Matty Byloos, both authors trying to make sense of the world in their own way, yet similarly in that they are absurdist takes on the world, and lean towards the bizarro, a genre we might otherwise avoid, Seinfeld's most excellent bizarro episode not withstanding. The Wensink favors humor, as further evidenced by the recently consumed Black Hole Blues, taking situations that we almost know, or might know, both mundane and scary, buying a house, adultery, corporate marketing, suicide bombers and celebrity, and spinning them through his characters' cracked, and times confused, yet still humanizing, and humane, view the world. Byloos is less focused on humor, yet more absurd in his way in the subtlety of the stories and their ongoing focus on body parts, especially missing body parts, pornography, adultery, again and the ways children view the world around them. He is also different than Wensink in challenging the reader to ask what's real and what's not, with Wensink it's quite real, just off, and different, and manic, whereas Byloos leaves us to weigh what's metaphorical versus real, more darkness than light, and wacked regardless. Both authors though are ultimately about looking at what's around us, but doing so through the lens of fun-house mirrors, charming, but warped, funny, but terrifying, twisted, but filled with the promise of more to come, both on the page and off.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Black Hole Blues by Patrick Wensink.

Club Sandwiches. Physics. And Kenny Rogers. That's a lot. Enough maybe. But that's not all. No, there's more, much more. As we read the Black Hole Blues by newest TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Patrick Wensink we thought about how we will sporadically bump into themes that somehow inch their way into a number of the books we're reading. This is unplanned usually. We think. But it happens. We can't remember when it happened last, but it did, and does, and here we are with the Black Hole Blues, a novel which has any number of wonderful things going on, but still had two things that especially jumped out at us. First, it is a tale of siblings, and sibling rivalry and old hurts, which reminded us of the new Barry Graham joint Nothing or Next to Nothing, and struck us as a theme we never write about, even think about really. Then there is the biopic thing Wensink has going on here, in this case that of a faux legendary country singer, which reminded us of The Mimic's Own Voice by Tom Williams and its use of the faux biopic, which again is a theme we never to think to write about ourselves. Yet there it is, right there, a whole history created just like that and right in front of us. Meanwhile, embedded in the middle of all this sibling rivalry, old hurts, Kenny Rogers and the whole biopic thing, there is a story about the end of the world, maybe, possibly, and something else, parody and satire and touches of magic realism, as guitars and tour buses reflect on the world around them. And look at that, again, stuff we just don't write, or even think about writing, which ultimately reminds us how wonderful it is to meet new writers and not only lose ourselves in their work, but find ourselves waiting in anticipation of what comes next. Assuming of course, that the world doesn't come to end before we have the chance to actually find out.       

"Subtly complex." You Can Make Him Like You gets Vol. 1 Brooklyn'd. And likes it. A lot.

You Can Make Him Like You is almost sort of having a week. And we are digging it. First the Wensink and today some quite niceness from the always stellar Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Right? Please do take a look, please enjoy some excerpt and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, drinks on us for sure when next we meet.

"At its core, You Can Make Him Like You abounds with empathy for its characters, at times in unexpected ways. His levels of self-deception make Keith a subtly unreliable narrator: for all that he’s critical of his own behavior, his own worst aspects elude him. It’s notes like this that help make this book a more subtly complex read than one might first expect."

"Wit and love and uncomfortable truth." You Can Make Him Like You gets Patrick Wensink'd. And likes it. A lot.

Quite stellar author and by far our newest and favoritest BFF Patrick Wensink has some quite kind things to say about You Can Make Him Like You on the Goodreads. Big thanks sir and quite enjoying the Black Hole Blues. More soon. Here. For real. And drinks on us for sure whenever, and wherever, we next meet.

"Once in a while a book comes at the right time in your life. Tanzer's book of a 30-something guy dealing with his maturity and a budding family arrived perfectly timed. It's eerie how well Tanzer dissects the mind of a married man with wit and love and uncomfortable truth."

We Who Are About To Breed.

We are quite digging this new series from the most excellent We Who Are About To Die and the Patrick Wensink. We are also quite looking forward to participating ourselves. More soon. For real.