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dantastic's review
3.0
How to Eat Fried Furries reminds me of the more demented episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. You've got the final episode for Ferret Force Five, a cult show from 70's, where the five ferret girls take their VW into space to stop a rain of shit from the cosmic Bung hole located near the tale of the Squirrel Nebula and stop a squirrel invasion; a "where are they now" piece detailing the fates of the show's stars, pseudo-Amish furry recipes, and the whacking of Santa Claus masterminded by the Easter Bunny.
How to Eat Fried Furries is 50% awesome and 50% WTF? The writing was hilarious. The Ferret Force Five piece was easily my favorite part, though it fell apart a bit in the final chapter. A squirrel empire from space and a rain of cosmic shit was a pretty good way to end that legendary series. The recipes were funny but wore a little thin toward the end. Extra points for multiple mentions of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The Whacking of Godfather Christmas, like the last sketch from many Monty Python episodes, was funny but mainly there to get me to the end credits.
While this wasn't my favorite book in the New Bizarro Author series, it was definitely one of the weirder ones. I'm curious to see what Nicole Cushing can do in a novel as opposed to a collection like this. 3 out of 5 stars.
Note: Here's an interview I did with Nicole Cushing.
How to Eat Fried Furries is 50% awesome and 50% WTF? The writing was hilarious. The Ferret Force Five piece was easily my favorite part, though it fell apart a bit in the final chapter. A squirrel empire from space and a rain of cosmic shit was a pretty good way to end that legendary series. The recipes were funny but wore a little thin toward the end. Extra points for multiple mentions of Pabst Blue Ribbon. The Whacking of Godfather Christmas, like the last sketch from many Monty Python episodes, was funny but mainly there to get me to the end credits.
While this wasn't my favorite book in the New Bizarro Author series, it was definitely one of the weirder ones. I'm curious to see what Nicole Cushing can do in a novel as opposed to a collection like this. 3 out of 5 stars.
Note: Here's an interview I did with Nicole Cushing.
xterminal's review
4.0
Nicole Cushing, How to Eat Fried Furries (Eraserhead Press, 2010)
It depresses me that this book is fiction. (We know it is fiction, of course, because Ferret Force Five actually went another three seasons before the sex scandal that ultimately destroyed the show erupted, sending so many of its stars into bad porn films directed by the infamous Stinkin' Rat.) This is because, even though I enjoyed it immensely and would love to tell you hoe wonderful it is, I feel duty-bound to inform you that the Furry Farmers of America have kidnapped Nicole Cushing and forced her to write this propaganda, passing it off as truth, in the same way North Korea kidnapped director Sang-ok Shin and forced him to direct the Korean science-fiction epic Pulgasari. (It is no coincidence, methinks that Pulgasari and Ferret Force Five were parallels on so many levels, nor that the FFA spent years brainwashing Cushing into believing FFF had been taken off the air three years before it actually was.)
Still, if you're old enough to remember that final season of Ferret Force Five, where the infighting amongst the writers led to some of the most insipid scripts ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public (I mean, come on, Scott Baio as a guest star playing an intergalatic one-eyed squid? How low can you go?), you've gotta give Cushing credit; the imaginary series-finale script she came up with is a helluva lot better than anything the show actually DID. The Squirrel Pope is a stroke of demented genius. If only the actual writers had come up with it and it had gotten filmed.
Outside the script, though, there are some much more distressing pieces. I assume they were originally written by FFA higher-ups and just given to Cushing to polish. Such a sweet, good-natured woman would never write such lies as can be found in the “expose” of the pseudo-Amish within these pages. None of it is true, and my good friends Josiah Miller and Olaf Olafferdssson have both gotten up on the stand in court in central Ohio to testify (using the classic meaning of the word, swearing on their own manhoods) that the pseudo-Amish have always practiced humane slaughter. And if you knew Olaf Olafferdssson like I do, you'd know not only that he is a man of great honor, but that he values Olaf Jr. far too much to allow anyone to sway him to perjury. Or so my eight sisters tell me.
It's a shame that such a promising new writer has found herself in the clutches of such an evil group. I have been told, however, by anonymous note that her ransom can be paid only in royalties from the sale of How to Eat Fried Furries. So while I cannot condone you actually believing what you read here, take pity on the poor woman. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy copies to give to all your friends as Christmas presents. Buy fifty to donate to your local homeless shelter. Soon, if we all pull together, Nicole Cushing will be free again, and will be able to write a series-finale script for Charles in Charge. *** ½
It depresses me that this book is fiction. (We know it is fiction, of course, because Ferret Force Five actually went another three seasons before the sex scandal that ultimately destroyed the show erupted, sending so many of its stars into bad porn films directed by the infamous Stinkin' Rat.) This is because, even though I enjoyed it immensely and would love to tell you hoe wonderful it is, I feel duty-bound to inform you that the Furry Farmers of America have kidnapped Nicole Cushing and forced her to write this propaganda, passing it off as truth, in the same way North Korea kidnapped director Sang-ok Shin and forced him to direct the Korean science-fiction epic Pulgasari. (It is no coincidence, methinks that Pulgasari and Ferret Force Five were parallels on so many levels, nor that the FFA spent years brainwashing Cushing into believing FFF had been taken off the air three years before it actually was.)
Still, if you're old enough to remember that final season of Ferret Force Five, where the infighting amongst the writers led to some of the most insipid scripts ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public (I mean, come on, Scott Baio as a guest star playing an intergalatic one-eyed squid? How low can you go?), you've gotta give Cushing credit; the imaginary series-finale script she came up with is a helluva lot better than anything the show actually DID. The Squirrel Pope is a stroke of demented genius. If only the actual writers had come up with it and it had gotten filmed.
Outside the script, though, there are some much more distressing pieces. I assume they were originally written by FFA higher-ups and just given to Cushing to polish. Such a sweet, good-natured woman would never write such lies as can be found in the “expose” of the pseudo-Amish within these pages. None of it is true, and my good friends Josiah Miller and Olaf Olafferdssson have both gotten up on the stand in court in central Ohio to testify (using the classic meaning of the word, swearing on their own manhoods) that the pseudo-Amish have always practiced humane slaughter. And if you knew Olaf Olafferdssson like I do, you'd know not only that he is a man of great honor, but that he values Olaf Jr. far too much to allow anyone to sway him to perjury. Or so my eight sisters tell me.
It's a shame that such a promising new writer has found herself in the clutches of such an evil group. I have been told, however, by anonymous note that her ransom can be paid only in royalties from the sale of How to Eat Fried Furries. So while I cannot condone you actually believing what you read here, take pity on the poor woman. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy copies to give to all your friends as Christmas presents. Buy fifty to donate to your local homeless shelter. Soon, if we all pull together, Nicole Cushing will be free again, and will be able to write a series-finale script for Charles in Charge. *** ½
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