Author Bradley Sands is a student at Boulder’s Naropa University. We’ve never met, but there has been at least one close call (when AWP came to Denver). Two prior offerings My Heart Said No, But the Camera Crew Said Yes and Sorry I Ruined Your Orgy, speak well to his mastery of absurd fiction and the Situationist tactic of Detournement, or variation on a previous media work with a meaning antagonistic or antithetical to the original. Though written well before Charlie Sheen's recent ill-advised reification of “Winning” or Mel Gibson's telephone ranting or—well, I can’t think of who it was who called his daughter a pig, maybe one of the Baldwins—America’s worshipful grudge against Hollywood is its target.
In his latest published effort, Rico Slade Will F@!king Kill You, Protag Chip Johnson begins to lose his grip on reality and believes he is Rico Slade, an ultra-violent action hero who makes a point of tearing his victims’ throats out, pictured on the cover looking very much like Arnold Schwarzenegger with his head on fire giving the thumbs up sign (an apt metaphor for the deliberate lack of realism in today’s “action films”). This book lacks realism too, and it’s just as deliberate, but to a greater end. Causing real and imagined terror in the desperate attempt to revive his decrepit marriage with an expensive trinket for his wife as his psychotherapist chases after him and his money, Johnson/Slade slashes a brilliant wound of comedic chaos across the City of Angels, ripping throats out left and right.
From the jacket: “Rico Slade will kill as many people as it takes to thwart Baron Mayhem's evil scheme. Rico Slade will fu@!ing kill everyone.” Now that's dedication.
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