iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 13h

Of all the Google alerts I receive for people with my name, this one has been by far the weirdest and most unsettling. There's a professor Paul Fischer out there who seems... obsessed with spreading his urine over students' belongings? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

From The Guardian: "A former professor at Macalester College in the Minnesota city of St Paul is facing a felony charge for allegedly spilling his urine on a student's backpack while he still worked at the school, costing more than $2,000 in damages, according to a state criminal court document. Paul Fischer, 55, is at the centre of the bizarre, alleged workplace misconduct case that led to his being cited for first-degree damage to property -- and linked to at least a half dozen such incidents involving urine at the liberal arts college over the course of a year."

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

You all know me, I’m an independent bookshop guy, but if you’re so inclined, THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD is nearly 50% off on Amazon today for Prime Day: bit.ly/4hIk6vp

A flyer for THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD Amazon prime day deal

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Went to Tempo v Dream yesterday. There’s a rabid, virulent, braying racism to the way crowds boo Angel Reese from minute one — a racism the fans would deny while being unable to explain why they hate her in the first place — that’s really disturbing in person. And damn she does not back down. #wnba

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I’m really looking forward to being at @vromansbookstore.bsky.social this evening with @drewmcweeny.com to talk Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, and 70s American cinema. Free RSVP. Come support a legendary bookshop and have a good time in the process!

Graphic for event on 20 April at 7pm at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, about The Last Kings of Hollywood

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Spotted you here at the Skylight tent and looking great!

Cover of the excellent BOOM TO BUST, on sale at the Skylight Books tent of the LA Times Festival of Books

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

LOS ANGELES! I’ll be at the @latimes Festival of Books tomorrow at USC, on a panel at 3pm, talking THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD and titans of American cinema. It’s sadly an all-male panel, which the fest say they tried to remedy, so I want to also share, here and tmrw, relevant books by women out now

Graphic for the LA Times Festival of Books

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

What are the odds he just has a repressed memory of Daniel Craig from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Daniel Craig in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, wearing his glasses weird, hanging off one ear

More Daniel Craig in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, wearing his glasses weird, hanging off one ear

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Evening free in London so I went to the theatre to see “OH, MARY!”. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.

Poster for OH, MARY! at the Trafalgar Theatre, London

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

These are my two favourite pages in the whole book. Years ago, the formidable @likaluca.bsky.social tweeted wondering why books don’t have credits, like movies, bc books, too, take a village, and I felt stupid and selfish it had never occurred to me. This was my village.

Credits for the book THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD, printed in the front matter, showing the names of the people who worked to make it a reality.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

They’re real, and they’re beautiful. THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD is out in *two weeks*.

Cover of THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD, by me. I wrote it!

Back cover of THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD, covered in very kind words from Steven Soderbergh, Shawn Levy, Brian Jay Jones, Michael Schulman, Josephine Riesman, and Mallory O’Meara. Which is a bit like being a basketball player and six lovely all-stars hyping up your recruitment tape

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

I always thought this hits at the core of it — toxic men are afraid of vulnerability and rejection, the men who appear not to be vulnerable or rejectable choke-slap-lift, and that’s the bond of admiration and honour and love, not for women.

"To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire... those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.
Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving."
- Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

There's video. Multiple videos. And somehow the NYT homepage finds a way to make its headline a literal "he says, they say." I'm so tired of that fucking rag.

NY Times headline: "Minnesota Officials Dispute Federal Account of Fatal ICE Shooting," alongside photograph of the victim's vehicle crashed into a post, cordoned off by yellow police tape.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Corruption covered up with nothing more than the most throwaway "just trust me, bro"

From Screen Daily: "A filing confirmed Paramount's tender offer is also supported by $24bn in debt financing from sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, as well as from Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, with these parties forgoing governance in the company. The executives did not directly respond to a question during the investors' call regarding why the Middle East funds would invest if they were forsaking governance."

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Nigel Farage is such a weirdo he not only fabricated a letter from a schoolmate saying he wasn’t racist, just super edgy — he also added in that his banter (which included hissing gas chamber noises at Jewish pupils) made him conspicuously “macho”

Farage read: "I was a Jewish pupil at Dulwich college at the same time and I remember him very well. While there was plenty of macho tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter, it was humour, and yes, sometimes it was offensive ... but never with malice. I never heard him racially abuse anyone.” (From The Guardian)

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

The replies feel like this conversation

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

*with the exception of Caitlin Clark, who had her team issue a “no comment”, because of course solidarity isn’t Caitlin Clark’s thing

Tweet by Tyler DeLuca reading “WNBA Players rallying behind Napheesa Collier” with an image of the Avengers assembling

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

It’s gross, and it’s also telling that the author’s suggested preferred version of a museum boils down to “this should be about the white cis canon primarily” and “can’t you make it more like Disney World”

“As I stroll through the entrance of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, I'm instantly enchanted. Here is Dorothy's Kansas house, the striped stockings of the dead Wicked Witch of the East protruding from beneath it, plopped in the middle of Munchkinland. I wind my way onto the yellow brick road, enveloped in the magic of Oz, which has been recreated to the last Technicolor detail. I may not be off to see the Wizard, but I am surely off, I feel, to discover the world of wonder that is the movies.”

“How to fix the Academy Museum? Imagine the curtain of the Geffen Theater rising to reveal an Oscar's Greatest Icons gallery of animatronic mannequins, an attraction akin to the Hall of Presidents at Disney World. Or a huge gallery similar to the hall of First Ladies' gowns at the Smithsonian, but with the greatest ensembles in Oscar history lined up. I ask Homma why there can't be an intern in a tux or a gown to hand me my Oscar, and why I can't make a brief speech. Just those two small things could be the difference, I argue, between a video clip that's splashed all over TikTok and one that remains, like mine, unloved inside your phone.”

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

I got a similar error message logging in (did it look like this?), but then I clicked Create Account and just created a different one using an alternate email, it took me in, and I was able to enter the draw. In case that works as a workaround when you try next...

Error on sign in screen for World Cup ticket pre-sale.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

My brilliant friend Danit has written a post-partum page-turner of a novel — with the best cover you can imagine. I’m loving reading it and I think you’d love to read it too bookshop.org/p/books/tele...

Cover of Danit Brown’s TELEVISION FOR WOMEN, showing a woman and her baby in fragmented squares

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 13/07/2025

This pairing will, for obvious reasons, always be my personal favourite.

Poster for PULGASARI, a Godzilla rip-off made in North Korea by kidnapped filmmaker Shin Sang-Ok

Poster for crappy sequel 3 NINJAS KNUCKLE UP, directed in Hollywood by Shin Sang-Ok under the pseudonym Simon Sheen, who I legit thought was brother to Charlie until well into my teens

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

The face I’m submitting to Bluesky for verification (O.S.)

That scene from The Boys where Butcher, instead of sending the politician lady he’s made a deal with the info he’s promised to send, sends her a picture of a (his?) butthole

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Skip Prime Day and treat yourself: THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD is on @barnesandnoble.com’s 25% off pre-order sale for another 48 hours or so. Link: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-k...

Pre-order THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD from Barnes & Noble between July 8-11 using the code PREORDER25 for 25% off

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

This photograph, by the brilliant Maureen Lambray, might also just be my favourite film-related photograph ever, btw

Cover of Paul Fischer’s THE LAST KINGS OF HOLLYWOOD, showing the young Steven Spielberg, Francis Coppola, and George Lucas in 1977, posing for the camera

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

How exactly is this kind of rhetoric any different from the threats, blackmail, glorification of violence, and xenophobic antagonism uttered by any terrorist organisation

“There was already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. (From the CBC)

“Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian empire,” [Trump] added. (From the CBC)

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

How long has this been Ezra Levant’s Wikipedia photo?!

Screenshot of Ezra Levant’s Wikipedia page, with a photo of a dog turd in place of his picture

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Somehow, my daughter’s bracket is more reasonable than mine. (What can I say? This ND team feels wobbly to me, and I’m a Syla Swords believer)

My ten year old daughter’s NCAAW March Madness bracket, predicting Notre Dame to win it all over UConn.

My NCAAW March Madness bracket, predicting UConn to win it all over Texas (and Michigan to knock Notre Dame out in the second round)

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

She’s just come home (in full 80s Madonna get-up, because they’re doing dance at school) and decided she would try to adapt the movie from the book for herself

Sasha vs zombies
Written by
Crosby Emma Fischer
Copyright goes to mallory o'meara cuz she is very awesome.
If u hate on her, my mom will come and find u. (I will too)

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

This one’s for you and @malloryomeara.bsky.social — my ten year old has decided to make a short film with her girlfriends and she figured she’d name it after the book that gave her the inspiration

The cover of a screenplay, titled GIRLS MAKE MOVIES, with the scribble “Producer’s Copy” in a ten year old’s handwriting

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Heather O’Neill, in her brilliant novel WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS, efficiently summing up the mediocre white man, his empty appeal, and his invented grievance:

Highlighted text from Heather O’Neill’s WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS: “Although Philip wasn't especially smart, his lack of intelligence made him bitter, and that bitterness could come across as a superior sort of cleverness… He didn't believe he felt inferior because he was inferior. He thought he was inferior because others made him feel that way. He took his feelings of inferiority as an act of aggression against him. The Arnetts believed that if you wanted something badly enough, it should be yours.“

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

A gaggle of corrupt, fascist drunks and rapists working for the Russian tyrant whose paid misinformation got them elected. Or: exactly what everyone knew they were, except for the ignorant, social media-pilled, straight white losers who insisted otherwise.

Headline reading “Hegseth Says Return to Ukraine’s Pre-War Borders is ‘Unrealistic’”

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Let’s have Justin Trudeau shut the lights off across New England for a week and see how the senile old cunt likes it.

Donald Trump post claiming the USA “subsidizes” the existence of Canada, without which “Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country” and arguing Canada should become a US state. Basically, being a mental senile moron. Evergreen.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

They were running a *training mission*, at night, around a hugely busy airport, cutting off incoming paths to a runway? What the fuck?

Photograph showing the flight paths of the commercial airplane and Army helicopter that collided near Reagan National Airport. The airplane is shown coming in for landing at a runway. The helicopter path is shown cutting it off.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Pot Says It Has Evidence Kettle Is Black

News headline reading: “OpenAI insists it can’t sufficiently train AI models without copyrighted material”

News headline reading: “OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor”

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Is the New York Times currently sponsored by the word loyalist

New York Times headline calling Devin Nunes a “pugnacious Trump loyalist”

New York Times headline calling Richard Grenell “a combative loyalist”

New York Times headline calling Kash Patel “a longtime loyalist”

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

As a guy who wrote a book about Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea, lemme tell you: that first paragraph is full-on Ri Chun-Hee on KCTV stuff.

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Trump is going to be hunkered in his bunker considering the end and the NYT will be portraying it as “a test” of how “radical” his presidency might be

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Paul Fischer @pfischer.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

Current headspace: getting really angry at things like this. I’m all for positivity & hope, but the world IS going to end for some people. They’re going to die, be deported, be imprisoned. The Nazis are coming. It’s gonna take more than vibes from those of us who know OUR little world might not end.

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