The Wu Way

Personal TWILIGHT ZONE MARATHON

2011-08-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

It's 6:28am and I'm about to enjoy my 4th episodes of a personal Twilight Zone marathon. A dear friend gave me Season 3 of the Definitive Edition of The Twilight Zone a few Christmases back, and it's been long enough ago that many of the episodes have slipped my memory, so I'm able to enjoy them again, almost anew.

I say "almost" because when I was a kid I bought Marc Scott Zicree's amazing book The Twilight Zone Companion and have read it many, many, many times over the last 2 decades. When I found the unabridged audiobook version on Audible.come, I bought that and have been listening to it again.

Anyway, the Definitive Edition of The Twilight Zone includes a segment in each show before the closing credits called "And Now, Mr. Serling". After each show, Rod Serling would pop up on-onscreen and tease next week's episodes. Then he would take a beat, then plug the brand of cigarettes he was (presumably) smoking. (If you're not actually that familiar with The Twilight Zone you may not realize that Serling was a serious smoker, and often appeared on-camera with a cigarette in his hand. And in the late-1950s and early-1960s, there weren't any FCC rules about people smoking on-camera.)

I was watching the "And Now, Mr. Serling" segment of "Showdown with Rance McGrew" and laughed out loud when, while doing his plug for Chesterfield cigarettes, Rod raises his left hand (which had been hanging inconspicuously by his side for most of the segment) to reveal he's holding a pack of Chesterfields!

My knee-jerk reaction was to be sad that poor genius Rod Serling had to do commercials in order to tell his amazing stories! The Young Artist in me, naturally, rebels at the injustice of this master writer being forced to whore his brilliant show (in a subtle way, mind you, in as dignified a fashion as one might hope for an advertisement) in order to get it on the air.

But then the Older, More Experienced Guy spoke up and made a fascinating point...

Any serious fan of Serling's work knows how Serling's writing was often adversely affected by changes demanded by the sponsors of the shows. Serling was famously anti-censorship, and rightfully so! His body of work was most infamously tainted and neutered by censorship by sponsors!

Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky are often remembered as two of the most important writers in Television's infancy. Serling wanted to entertain, sure, but he also wanted audiences to think. He wanted us to consider what was going on in the world, and how we live our lives.

And this was sort of antithetical to what advertisers want. Advertisers do not want us to think, they want to tell us what we want. That's what advertising is. It's the difference between Google and Bing: Rod Serling (and other thought-provoking writers) are like Google, in that they simply show us what's out there, and advertisers are like Bing in that they want to show us what they want us to see. If Serling writes a teleplay about racism in the South (in the early '60s) and one of the sponsors is Coke, and Northerners tend to prefer Pespi while Southerners tend to prefer Coke (again, this was the early '60s; I don't know if the delineation is still true) then Coca-Cola isn't really going to be thrilled with a TV show that's all about racism in the South. It's not because Coca-Cola was evil or racist, it's because they're paying for people to watch a program during which they can advertise their product.

But when they demand changes to the production of Serling's script that dilute the dramatic integrity of the piece, Serling (and Serling's fans) will naturally paint the advertisers as the villain.

HOWEVER...

Rod Serling created The Twilight Zone as a means of telling relevant stories without sponsor censorship.

He realized (and stated often) that if you tell a controversial story about racism in the South in the 1960s, but set it on Venus instead of in the Southern United States, the network and the Sponsors probably wouldn't catch the reference. The audience would understand what the story was commenting on, and we will duly think about the human truths the show wants us to consider. But the bureaucrats whose job is to de-fang stories with too much bite (which might upset some of the folks paying the bills) weren't really likely to see what was going on until the episode aired, and the rest of the world saw it with them!

It was a brilliant strategy, of course, and others have followed in Serling's footsteps. Gene Roddenberry did the same thing with every incarnation of Star Trek.

So immediately after laughing and feeling sorry for Mr. Serling as he holds up a pack of Chesterfields and assures us that "twenty-one great tobaccos make twenty wonderful smokes," I realize that if it hadn't been for the adversity of advertisers in Serling's career, I might never -- NEVER -- have known who he was!

Seriously!

I don't watch Dramas! I'm not going to hang out with a bunch of racists for 2 hours! I watch Sci-Fi and Horror and the like! If racist hicks are being haunted by the ghost of one of their victims, I'll TOTALLY watch THAT! But if it's just a story about how some people are too ignorant to allow other people to live in peace, I am so not interested in spending my time with those dumb fucks!

A specific example: The episode I just watched "Showdown with Rance McGrew"...

If this were a Drama, it would be the story of how phony and weak a TV cowboy is and how the Old West, as portrayed by Hollywood (in the '50s and early '60s), is absolutely nothing like what happened historically. Rance McGrew is a spoiled Hollywood TV star, and a coward, and a wimp.

I don't want to hang out with that guy for half an hour!

But because this was an episode of The Twilight Zone, that Hollywood dude meets the real Jesse James, who sets him straight about the way Old West outlaws really behaved. he terrorized poor McGrew (the way McGrew terrorized everyone on the set in the first half of the episode) and though the episode ends a little tragically for McGrew, it's a fun romp for the audience.

The point I'm trying to get to here is that The Twilight Zone forever changed my life after the first episode. the show went off the air 6 years before I was born, and yet even today it inspires and influences me! Rod Serling inspires and influences me! And had it not been for Network and Advertiser censorship, The Twilight Zone wouldn't have happened!

And I know this is presumptuous, but I think if Serling were with us today, he might agree with that. Serling seemed the type of guy with a great and realistic sense of perspective; he would probably downplay the influence he has had on generations of writers and storytellers, but I don't think he would have any problem crediting censorship for helping him create his legacy. (He would also be quick to point out that thought he wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show's 156 episodes, there were several other writers -- including Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Earl Hamner, Jr. -- had as much to do with shaping The Twilight Zone as he did...even though die-hard Serling fans, such as myself, might argue the point.)

But here's a bigger consideration: If censorship hadn't driven Rod Serling to create The Twilight Zone, would Star Trek exist?

How many works of speculative fiction are a direct result of Serling's couching of important stories within a fantastical premise? I mean, Sci-Fi authors had long been setting their social criticism within fantastical settings. Serling didn't invent the literary tradition. But he popularized it! The Twilight Zone was (and is still) viewed by tons of people who have never read Heinlein or Asimov or Clarke or Matheson or Bardbury, or even Verne or Wells!

Paddy Chayefsky is still hailed as a great and important writer, but I'm not sure I've seen any of his work. I never saw Network, but I did read his screenplay for it. But the rest of his work...I have no clue.

Had Rod Serling had an easy, painless career of telling the exact stories he wanted to tell in the way he wanted to tell them, I may never have ever head of him, or read a word of his work, or seen a single film/TV show produced from it. But because censorship drove him to create The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's work is a part of me! It has irrevocably altered who I am, and who I will be! And if my daughter, or my friends or family or coworkers are at all altered by my presence in their lives, they are also altered by Rod Serling's work!

How amazing is that?!

So even though I'm sad about the grief Rod endured because of advertisers, I'm also kind of grateful. Those meddling bastards gave me The Twilight Zone, which is to say that they gave me the gift of Rod Serling!!!

JUST GOT TO CHAT w/MY BABY TWICE!!!

2011-05-23T03:47:00.000-07:00

HOLY SCHNIKIES!!!

It's been a while since my Gnomey goddess has been able to get online. We've been keepin' the romance alive via texts and emails a lot lately.

BUT LAST NIGHT, THE DROUGHT ENDED!!!

Oops...

I just updated my Facebook status with a declaration that I just chatted with my baby twice in 4 hours. Which is accurate, but we video-chatted at 3:00pm (9:00pm on the Emerald Isle), and then we IMed for a bit around 1:00am, and then we video-chatted again just now -- around 5:30am.

So my update is technically correct. But what I intended to communicate was that I got to see her and hear her voice twice within a 24-hour period.

WHICH IS AWESOME!!! :D

AND...I don't know how, but I actually made progress on my outline!!!

More about that:

Okay, so I think I finally have my "first" novel and I've been slowly (VERY slowly up until tonight) chipping away at the outline.

First I got the general genre I wanted to write, then I found a circumstance I like (combination of location and why my characters are at the location). Then last week I worked-out a rough idea of how many and what types of people my cast might consist of. And I also figured out what my monster is going to be and exactly why it's killing folks. (When I said I had to work out my genre, I knew it was Horror, but there are many sub-genres to choose from, and I had to figure out which sub-genre I wanted to play with. I went with an update of the 1950s Creature-Feature. It'll be cooler than it might sound.)

HOWEVER... A clock has begun counting down!

I mean, I've always had the general countdown of "When I sell my first couple of novels I may be able to finally see the love of my life in person!" But generalized goals don't motivate as well as very specific ones. Changing-Your-Life-Into-Your-Dream-Life is too big to believe you can accomplish it. However, "Finish my outline before I take a brief vacation to go visit my mom next weekend" is a very useful goal because it's something I feel like I can actually achieve!

So I have roughly a week (and a half, if I need it) to complete my outline.

The reason, you may ask?

Because the Outline stage is where the "heaviest" creative "lifting" is done. You're making the BIG choices about the overall shape of your story.

You're still making hundreds of smaller, subtler choices when you write the actual pages. So you're still enjoying the creative process. And sometimes your characters behave differently than you thought they were going to, outline be damned.

However, the outline prevents that dreaded smasher-of-aspiring-authors'-dreams: The question "What happens next?"! With an outline, you KNOW what happens next! Even when things start going differently than you outlined them to!

I'm nowhere near the first writer to put it like this, but outlining is like taking a trip: You consult a map and plan the course you will take to your destination. Now, if you miss your turn-off, you can reconsult your map and figure out which street you need to turn onto to get you back to the highway. You still arrive at your destination, because you had planned out how to get there. But if you hadn't planned the trip, it might have taken you A LOT LONGER to arrive where you were headed. (And that's assuming some inbred mutants didn't pop your tires and chase you through the woods with their chainsaws! Always make a plan!)

So anyway, TONIGHT I made some serious progress in my outlining. I figured out who my main cast will be (the specifics of who they are and what they want during the course of the story), and what all their dramatic conflicts will be!

This is HUGE because if I think of a cool thing that can happen I have one, maybe two scenes. But when I know what my dramatic conflicts are, I have the bulk of the story!

Example: If one of my characters is a bank robber who has just pulled off a heist, and he and his partner duck into a Retirement Community sales pitch to hide from the cops and give themselves alibis, and his partner plans to double-cross him, I have several scenes right there!

1. The robbery
2. The escape from the bank
3. Ducking into the Retirement Community sales seminar
4. Making excuses (to one or more characters) why they are here
5. Trying to blend in
6. Main Guy notices Partner is acting weird
7. Partner tries the double-cross and succeeds/fails
8. Main Guy responds to Partner's duplicity
9. Maybe they try to keep their cover despite what's going on between them

...and so on.

That's 9 scenes. Depending upon how long I allow each scene to play out, that could be 9 chapters!

And that's just culled from an off-the-cuff situation I came up with an a single dramatic conflict. (Well, 2 if you count the dramatic conflict of them trying to fit in with a bunch of would-be retirees.) (Come to think of it, but 3 really, because the cops chasing after them is another dramatic conflict, which has to be resolved eventually.)

So I already had my main Story Conflict. Now I just needed realistic people with realistic problems who were going to be experiencing the Story Conflict! THAT'S MY WHOLE STORY! :D

And doesn't it seem a bit coincidental that I made such a huge dent after waking up early to see my Gnomage for the first time in a while? ;)

That woman is SO GOOD for me, in so many ways!!!

I had to post this, if for no other reason than to give myself a time-line I can look back on to check my progress on the novel. (My "first novel" if it sells, lol.)

And...you know...

...TO CROW ABOUT GETTING TO SEE GNOMEY!!! :D

I hope your weekend has been even half as fulfilling as mine has been!!!

Magical Weekend

2011-03-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

I should totally be writing right now. But I'm having a cool weekend and I just want to blog about it!

First off, I'm having a really great time, but I don't expect my weekend to necessarily be fascinating to anyone else, so please feel free to blow this entry off if it gets boring.

But it started with the successful payment of my rent Friday morning when I got off work! This is a beautiful and wonderful thing! Our management is really strict about rent, and payday fell in such a way this month that getting rent in under the deadline was a bit sticky...but we did it!!! :D So my weekend began with a resounding success!!!

When I woke up Friday night, I knew what I wanted to do: On a recent episode of Hollywood Babble-On with Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman, Kevin mentioned this low-budget Sci-Fi flick called Monsters, which he raved about. And checking with Netflix, I discovered that I can stream it! So when Brian got home Friday night, we streamed Monsters on the BluRay player, and IT WAS AWESOME!!!

This past Halloween we streamed several low-budget Horror movies, and I seem to recall that each was worse than the last. (In one film, presented as a documentary about a paranormal investigation, many scenes began with a graphic at the bottom of the screen telling us at what time the scene was starting. Coincidentally, EVERYTHING worth including in the documentary happened at the top or the bottom of the clock -- meaning that everything happened at 1:00 or 2:00 ("the top of the clock") or it happened at 1:30 or 2:30 ("the bottom of the clock"). It was uncanny! (Not to mention unrealistic and unimaginative.))

So watching Monsters was a real revelation, because it was GOOD!!! Mind you, the title not withstanding, Monsters is a Sci-Fi flick and not a Horror flick. Someone hoping to see Godzilla: All Out Monsters Attack! or even Cloverfield might be disappointed. The film is thoughtful and realistic, and very engrossing! At one point we paused it for a restroom break, and were shocked to discover that we had already watched more than an hour of the flick, and only had 20-something more minutes to go! It was that enthralling!

It was really cool to catch a movie that didn't get advertising or any media attention that was actually fulfilling to watch!

However, having just seen a wonderful movie on Netflix (and remembering our previous bad luck with low-budget, unknown flicks) we decided not to stain our experience and just switched to a few hours of conversation, then followed that up with Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory.

Have you seen this show?

It's this great Sit-com about a pair of young physicist roommates (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons) who have this all-American hottie (Kalye Cuoco) move in to the apartment across from theirs, and -- with the help of their other scientist friends (Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar) -- wackiness ensues. But it's smart wackiness! The jokes are genuinely clever, and the science is real!!! (The show employs actual physicists as consultants.) And it's genuinely charming, too! I get a kick out of spending time with these cats and watching their antics!

So far, Brian & I have watched the first 2 seasons, and Disc 1 of the 3rd season.

I really should be working on my script right now. :( But I'm really enjoying rehashing my weekend! :)

So Saturday, I woke up needing HOT DOGS!!!

Sonic has this promotion going on, and my last day of work was plagued with adds for these 4 hot dogs their selling for $1.99 each. In particular, I was mesmerized by the concept of the New York Dog: sauerkraut, grilled onions, and spicy brown mustard!!!

Now, I'm not usually a sauerkraut fan, unless it's stuffed into pockets of bread with hamburger meat -- a dish Mom used to make for us called German Hamburgers. AWESOME!

And I'm never an onion fan, unless their sauteed into mushy submission.

But, for whatever reason, the concept of the New York Dog had taken hold of my imagination, and I simply HAD TO try one!!!

So when I woke up Saturday morning (okay, "afternoon") I ran to Sonic and grabbed myself and Brian a New York Dog and a regular Chili Cheese Coney -- the Chili Cheese Coney was for safety: If the New York Dog was a dismal culinary failure, then I KNEW I would enjoy the Chili-Cheese Dog, and the meal would ultimately be a success!

Turns out, the New York Dog ROCKED! The next time I have some money, I may treat myself to a few of those! :)

Also, for me, this was quite a novel treat, lol. We usually can't afford to eat out, so being able to wake up and just go grab some breakfast is a special experience! (I feel all shiny inside!)

As we ate, Brian had The Big Bang Theory playing, which was nice.

After breakfast I dragged my laptop into the living room and worked on names for my characters, and worked on the general plot of the story.

Oh! That's worth talking about in itself...

Okay, so I started 2011 with the dogged determination that I will finish and shop a novel and/or screenplay! Probably more than one, but I don't need to put too much pressure on myself. So I started the year working on a particular novel that simply didn't want to go anywhere, so I switched (in early January) to a story that Brian and I had been working on (on and off) since at least 2006. Stop me if this sounds familiar: A slacker-type dude meets a Gray alien and they are pursued by Men in Black and have comedic adventures.

Sound familiar?

Maybe because that's the basis for the new British Comedy Paul!

The ever-brilliant Simon Pegg and Nick Frost beat us to the punch!

I have half-written and partially-written the script for this idea based on a character Brian created a couple of times, but it was never good enough for me and I always shelved it. In January I decided that I would finally make a go of it: No shelving it this time, write it to the finish and put it out into the world, whatever happens. One of the main reasons I felt the need to go full-bore with this idea was because I know what some people joke about but few people are willing to actually admit to with a straight face: There really, truly is a Collective Unconsciousness out there, somewhere, and if you've got a really great idea, 5 other people have also stumbled onto a very similar idea, too! So if you want to make your living telling unique stories, you damn well better strike while the idea is still NEW!

We struck while the idea was still new. But then we shelved the idea, twice, until I felt like I could do the idea justice. And now the idea has been done justice...by someone else!

That's the other thing: If you're a spec writer -- meaning you're writing for no pay, in hopes that when you're finished someone will buy your work from you (on speculation -- or "spec" -- of an eventual sale), as opposed to writing an assignment (paid) -- then you're already several steps behind in the game.

In other words, if Simon Pegg and I get the exact same idea at the exact same time, and we start writing that idea at the exact same time, Simon Pegg has to write the script, rewrite the script, then show it to a producer he knows. I, however, have to write it, rewrite it, then send it to agents and producers and studios. Now, as my script is going through the spec channels, these people are holding off on reading it for as long as they can because they have a billion other scripts they have to read this weekend, and all of them will SUCK! These poor Readers will force themselves to trudge through some of the worst writing the English language has ever produced, but they will keep whittling away at that pile of spec scripts (a pile that does not get any smaller, I might add) because that's their job.

Now, my script won't suck. But they have NO way of knowing that. They don't know my name. They've never heard of me. They have absolutely NO reason to believe that my script will be ANY better than the last 25 scripts they read this weekend.

The good news is that once they do get to my script, they will enjoy the read, and they will be SO RELIEVED to have not wasted their time (this time) that they will show everyone they know! They will happily tell everyone that they DISCOVERED the next great screenwriter! (That's their secret wish, in the heart of hearts, but they dare not voice it aloud because hard experience has proven to them that most of us spec writers are unskilled wannabes who appear to enjoy wasting their time by inflicting our talent-less garbage upon the Reader's talent agency/production company/studio.)

However...

Simon Pegg actually KNOWS some producers! He can get his script directly to them -- bypassing those poor, overworked Readers altogether. And -- just as, or more, importantly -- those producers know HIM! I say "Simon Pegg", and if you know who he is you think "funny, talented, smart" or any other number of positive adjectives. You hand a producer my script and he/she hands it to one of his/her Readers; you hand her/him Simon Pegg's script and she/he takes it home and reads it that night.

And that's all as it should be. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have spent many, many years proving that they are talented and entertaining and that people want to pay to see their work.

I pay to see their work!!! (I proudly own both the British and American releases of both Spaced and Hot Fuzz!) (I only own the American release of Shaun of the Dead.) These guys are AWESOME!!!

I'm going to see Paul as soon as (1) it's released here, (2) I have the money, and (3) I have the time off!!! :)

However, this created about 9 hours of stress for me, though, because when I saw the first commercial for Paul I went into shock. I had no idea what I was going to do next.

However, when God slams a door, She always opens a window, as the saying goes...

I had been struggling with Brian's & my story because it was coming along in spurts and sputters. I would get one piece of the story, and then I would hit a brick wall. (The problem I often have when writing.) And like all problems I run into over and over again, I have to look for a common denominator...and that common denominator is usually ME.

What was I doing wrong?

My Genius Friend Dave gave me some advice Monday night which amounted to this: make it easy on yourself. Much of writing (and, generally speaking, much of CREATING -- be it drawing, acting, comedy, animation, directing, producing, just CREATING ANYTHING) is grunt work. There are parts of writing which take great skill and consideration, and parts of writing that simply require practice. Genius Dave suggested that I try to do as much of the grunt work as possible up front, and try to save the really tough stuff until as late in the process as possible. And this makes sense to me! Do the things I know I can do well right at first, get as much done as I can do, and don't burden myself with the really perplexing aspects until I absolutely have to -- which just happens to be after I have easily accomplished most of the work! (Then it's too late to back out!)

In the past, I tried to tackle the hardest parts all up front...and I usually didn't finish the project.

At my age (I've celebrated my 39th birthday twice now), I have sort of run out of time for failure. I kind of need to just get out there and do it. Now. Before I no longer have the energy required to attempt to start a new career while working a day job. (I really got to this point years ago, but I didn't understand then what I understand now.)

And, as I said, I was really only stuck for 9 hours because, thankfully, a brand new situation appeared in my head as I arrived home after work that morning, and I sensed that I could turn this situation into a feature-length screenplay!

And that's what I should be working on right now, really. But I'm going to finish this blog entry.

So, anyway...

I told Brian the idea, and he laughed (an EXCELLENT sign) and so I'm hopping over to yet a third story in 3 months. (Btw, the reason I finally dumped the first story idea was that it was largely a Horror story, and after years of trying to write Horror I wanted to hop over into Comedy territory. I much prefer laughing to being scared. And I'd rather be thought of as "that funny guy" than "that disturbing, creepy dude." I guess I'm getting old.)

So while Brian replayed a The Big Bang Theory disc Saturday, I came up with character names and worked on the plot of the screenplay for a few hours.

After Brian went to sleep, I went into SecondLife, curious to see if anyone had created any TRON places yet. And to my joyful surprise, SOMEONE HAD!!! I bought some free Tron outfits and a free Tron identity disc, test drove an old-school Light Cycle, and bought a new-school one, then drove around this Tron-scape for a while.

Here's a quick glimpse of my fun:

Someone made a cool replica of the TRON: Legacy tanks. They're a bit small (judging mainly from the game TRON: Evolution, since that's the best experience of the scale I have had so far) but it's still way-cool! :)

Then there's the old-school, Classic TRON game grid...

...complete with full-scale Recognizers! :D

But there is also a new-school Light Cycle grid!!! (Why the f@&k didn't the makers of TRON: Evolution have the sense to create an entire Light Cycle level for their game?!! (If there is one, I haven't found it. There's just this one section where you're fleeing from mass destruction, so you race through the entire Light Cycle sequence in a couple of minutes. You don't have time to just drive around and explore the world. :P )

And whoever created these TRON sims went to the trouble of recreating Flynn's in-grid place! (In the bg.) VERY COOL!!!

Just a thoroughly fun place to hang out, this!!!

I ended my Saturday with some MST3K on DVD.

And now we have reached today, Sunday...

A couple of weeks ago, I bought TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY for my laptop. I have the PS2 version, but since buying the X-Box type game controller, I find I rather enjoy playing games on my laptop more. This is convenient, because not only can I play these games while I'm away from home (which I never am, unless I'm at work, but I enjoy the theoretical possibility, none the less) but if Brian is watching something in the living room, I don't have to interrupt him because I've gotta get my game on. I really enjoy starting up an audiobook and disappearing into a familiar game as I listen. (A habit I probably picked up pre-Gnomey, when I would spend hours in SL doing...well...nothing.) It's a wonderful vacation! Like sleep, a couple of hours spent in a videogame world can feel like a day...and then you still have the rest of your day left for other pursuits! Or, you can listen to the whole audiobook and spend virtual MONTHS in the game!

But I've sort of played TOMB RAIDER LEGEND to death, and TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD is a bit laggy on my laptop, so I bought TR ANNIVERSARY -- which I still haven't completed!

However...tragedy struck when I took my TRA out of my disc drive for some reason or another, and when I put it back in, IT NO LONGER WORKED!!! My drive couldn't read the disc!

But I've encountered this before, and I had found an easy fix: I get My Genius Friend Dave to back the disc up for me and play the backup.

Easy-peasy, right?

Not this time!

TRA seems to be rigged so that it won't play a copy. It asks you to insert the original disc into the drive, not the copy.

But what if my laptop won't read the original?!!

TRA doesn't have an answer for me, and apparently doesn't care. please insert original disc, not a copy.

F@&K YOU, TRA!!!

But that doesn't help.

But the reason I'm telling you all this is because I woke up with a hint of optimism in my heart and soul, and I stuck my original TRA disc into my DVD reader, just to see what would happen, AND IT WORKED!!! :D So I got to start off my Sunday in the Tomb of Qualopec and St. Francis' Folly!

Then I joined Brian in the living room for some more TBBT, and then we filmed a segment of "Kitchen Magic" for YouTube.

I might explain here that Brian & I shop at Magic Geek, and they're having a contest. Brian entered the contest, creating this cheesey magic-guy character who comically (but ably) performs magic in his kitchen. The clip is fun!

But, being a writer and performer, Brian envisioned this guy having a "lovely assistant" -- his bathrobe-clad roommate whom he had dragged in front of the camera to help him do some of his magic tricks.

Guess who the "lovely assistant" is. ;)

I've always enjoyed the physical juxtaposition of Brian's and my statures -- he's short and built like an 18-year-old swimmer, and I'm tall-ish and...not skinny -- and I prefer playing the straight man, so I adored this idea from the moment he proposed it!!!

Plus, doing stuff for YouTube is hassle-free: You're not going to make any money at it, so your only motivation is the fun!

So tonight we shot out first "lovely assistant" segment. It was a blast! :)

After that, we finished off the rest of Season 3, Disc 1 of TBBT (Brian had already seen most of it, but it was all new to me). And then I came in here to journal my fun little weekend.

Now I'm thinkin' I'll open up my TO DO files (instead of giving this new screenplay project a name, I've simply created a "TO DO" folder in which I will place all future writing projects, for the foreseeable future) and maybe knock out a few pages. And then I'll probably see if my DVD drive can still read TRA and play that for a few hours while listening to the rest of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen by Sir Wodehouse.

I hope your weekend was AMAZING, and I hope your week is even better!!!

:D

Working Vacation

2011-02-19T15:52:00.001-08:00

I'm enjoying Day 2 of a 5-DAY WEEKEND!!! WOO-HOO!

The end of 2010 was a bitch, and I knew I would have to burn a couple of Vacation days to recover and start 2011 fresh. But this year, instead of just grabbing the first days of the year that were available, I bid my time a planned a bit...I intend to have a Rough Draft of Brian's & my novel finished by April Fools' Day. So I am taking Monday and Tuesday off as Vacation days, in hopes of getting further with the novel.

My reasoning, when I concocted my scheme, was that by mid-February I would have a clearer impression of what was keeping me from finishing (the writing problems that lay in my path). I believe my reasoning was sound! Had I taken 2 days off last week, the novel would have had a less Comedy tone and a more Action/Adventure thrust.

Still, as of today (Saturday), I haven't done much actual writing work. Brian & I have had a VERY useful discussion about the story!!! That's awesome!!! But yesterday was about blowing off steam, and today has been about necessary tasks: I got my car inspected, got the oil changed, and sent off the payment to get my car registered. So YAY! there!!! :)

Currently, I am enjoying some drinks as I listen to the audiobook version of Murder, She Wrote: The Maine Mutiny. (I am so obsessed with Murder, She Wrote lately that I bought all the audiobboks from Audible.com. What's wrong with me? Is it because I just turned 39 for the second year in a row, and now I'm going to start baking my own bread and gardening?! I have no idea! But, for some reason, I DIG Jessica Fletcher and her adventures!)

Also, I've been reading old Captain America comics. It's cool; I am transported back into a world that I enjoyed when I was 15 or so. Captain America's New York in 1971 (back when he was teamed-up with The Falcon) is a cool place to hang out in! Not quite as cool as Cap's New York of 1983 (when I was reading each issue as it popped onto the shelves, and his partner was Nomad) but still a very evocative and (somehow) rejuvenating place in which to hang!

Also, may I just say that visiting New York in 2002 was slightly disappointing?

I mean, NOT REALLY disappointing...see, new York had -- back in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s this image of this filthy, chaotic, cesspool teaming with victims swimming together through this tide of humanity. You could TOTALLY believe that there were these superheroes and superhero groups operating throughout The City because there was so much pulsing humanity everywhere that Optimus Prime could do close-up magic tricks on a corner all day you might not know about it until you picked up the New York Times the next morning.

But, I mean, growing up with Marvel Comics (and, of course, all the movies of the '70s and '80s), you got this idea of this dirty, and yet somehow magical metropolis, where anything could happen!

And then, apparently, Mayor Koch happened, and teamed-up with the Disney Corporation, and now NYC is totally Family Friendly.

Now, as a tourist in NY for 5 days, I AM NOT COMPLAINING, lol. I mean, I was staying in Brooklyn -- when I was growing up, Brooklyn was supposed to be one of the toughest 'hoods in New York -- and I felt completely comfortable waking up in the middle of the night and going downstairs and across the street to buy some cigarettes and have a smoke outside. A lot of my time spent in New York (specifically, NYC) was spent on foot during the night hours, and I never once felt threatened or uneasy.

But there is this little-boy consciousness within me -- the cat that still reads Captain America comic books -- that is the slightest bit disappointed that New York is so safe and snug. You know what I mean? I mean, I would rather not be eaten by Jaws...and yet...part of me thrills at the thought that there may be a "Jaws" out there, trying to eat tourists, lol.

The cocktails are tasting TERRIFIC, so this may be an appropriate place for me to bid adieu.

MAY YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!!

:D

Straight-To-DVD Not Necessarily A Bad Thing Anymore...

2011-02-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

One of the painful lessons I learned back in the 1980s was that "Direct-To-Video" (VHS, back in the day) usually meant that the flick wasn't good enough to get theatrical distribution.

The breaking of my DtV cherry was a little turd called A Return to Salem's Lot. I loved the Tobe Hooper adaptation for King's vampire tale (Barlow is still one of the coolest-looking vampire in cinematic history, to me!), so when my then-girlfriend and went to the video store to rent a scary flick for a date night, and I saw (what I thought was) the sequel to Salem's Lot, I snatched it up!

What the flick turned out to be, however, was a confusing mess of "and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens" storytelling, written and shot and acted very poorly.

It was a bitter disappointment. Before that, I had no idea movies could get that bad! In fact, I don't know if I'm even remembering this correctly, but I could swear the "movie" was shot on videotape! (I recall a shot where everything is on fire, and fire looks different on videotape than it does on film.)

In my late teens and early twenties I had taken chances on DtV flicks, and the perception held.

In the 1990s, though, Disney began sequelizing their blockbuster animated movies into DtV -- and those sequels were pretty good! If you liked Disney's Aladdin, then The Return of Jafar was a fun little flick! The animation clearly wasn't good enough to cut it on the Big Screen, but the story was good!

Anyway, the reason I'm going on like this is because I just watched a couple of great DtV flicks! They're part of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies.

I don't remember exactly who started it, but whenever Marvel or DC release one of their Direct-to-Video features, they almost never disappoint!!!

The only exception I can think of is Batman: Gotham Knight. What a cynical piece of make-a-quick-buck-off-a-hot-property that was! If you haven't seen it, please don't bother. I swear to you, in one segment, Batman -- as well as most of the characters -- is shaped like a potato with toothpick legs and arms! Some may call it "artistic license" but I call it lazy! If an artist is so despondent about drawing an iconic character like everyone who has come before him, he should simply avoid iconic characters, not defile them! There were some segments that were well written, and maybe a couple that were well animated, but my memory is that no segments were both, and that the viewing experience as a whole was not worth the time or money I spent.

However, on the positive side DC Universe Animated Original Movies does not appear to have made that same mistake since!!! It appears they took a stylistic gamble, it failed (that is to say that it failed artistically; I'll bet they made their money back on the project), and they learned their lesson and moved on! Kudos to them, I say, for being open-minded and brave enough to take the chance and wise enough to learn from the experience!!!

Anyway, this elaborate lead-in is by way of sort of explaining why is was such a joy to me to watch Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman/Batman: Apocalypse this morning!

I streamed them on Netflix, and it's such a delight to do that and get such a thoroughly pleasant surprise!

I mean, when you stream a theatrical release that has gone to DVD, you have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie is likely to be, at least, watchable; that's why the studio paid so much to get it into theaters first.) And when you stream a Direct-to-DVD flick that you've never heard of before, you also have a good idea what you're going to get. (The movie may be watchable, but it's not likely to be good; otherwise it would have gotten a theatrical release, or at least aired on a Network or Cable station before it went to DVD.)

But when you stream one of Marvel's or DC's straight-to-video titles, you can bet that the movie will at least be good, and it may even be great!

The flicks I watched this morning were great! :D

Plus, I'm really enjoying a quaint, quiet Sunday! Friday was about drinkin' with my brother, blowing off steam from the work week, and watching the thoroughly awesome Red!!! Then Saturday was about getting my taxes done (YAY!), washing some dishes, working with my brother on our novel, and then watching some SpongeBob. (It had been a while since either of us had seen some SpongeBob, so I picked up a collection from the $5 bin at Walmart. Home Sweet Pineapple is the collection I got.)

Today, I still need to do some writing, and I really need some clean clothes. But since I share a laundromat with the rest of my apartment complex, and most who live here keep Normal People hours, I figure it might be best to do my laundry during the wee hours, when I'm not likely to be competing for an open washing machine or dryer. And I don't really have an excuse not to do my writing right now, except that I'm really diggin' on this simplistic little, no-pressure existence of just watching Netflix movies and TV shows (I caught a couple of Season One episodes of Murder, She Wrote episodes after my DC-palooza).

When I was a kid, one of my childish goals for my life was to watch movies and TV shows all day long, every day. As it is, I don't have cable at home (Time-Warner is the devil and they will not get my money if I can help it, unless and until they stop gouging people and start offering fair packages at reasonable prices!) so I'm not even tempted to spend all my time watching TV. And I'm actually thankful for that! I get A LOT more done because I'm not sucked into the boob tube. Still, the fact that I don't waste much time watching TV makes wasting a large chunk of today way on Netflix somehow particularly enjoyable! :) It's kind of novel.

I haven't decided if I want to return to Murder, She Wrote (I never watched the show when it was on the air, because it seemed to Young Ray Jay like some boring "grown-up's show"; but lately, I've become more fond of Mysteries -- I blame Agatha Christie, Sir Author Conan Doyle and Castle) or if I should hop into Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam while I have the time. I'm a huge Captain Marvel fan from way back, and one never knows when one's life is going to get unexpectedly busy.

Well...it looks like I just answered my own question. :)

I hope the rest of your weekend is blissfully fun AND relaxing!!!

:D

TISHA In Austin!!!

2011-02-05T19:14:00.000-08:00

So last night around 2:00am I'm watching Jeeves & Wooster (a new Brit-Com discovery for Brian and myself) and my phone rings.

Who is calling me when I'm actually awake and able to talk?

IT'S TISHA!!! :D

She and some friends drove down to see Skrillex at Austin Music Hall tonight (they're there as I type), and she was winding down for the evening and suddenly realized, "I'm in Austin!"

So we caught up a bit and made plans for breakfast around 1:00pm today.

She got up around noon (early for her, she informed me; and I didn't have to tell her it was early for me) and called me to plans for food. She was coordinating with her friends, trying to figure out some place cheap: "Wendy's? Wendy's is fine by me. (pause) We're in Austin. (pause; then speaking to me) Thundercloud Subs."

I dig the image in my head that one of her entourage asked "Where are we?" and then, discovering they were in Austin, decided they needed Thundercloud! (I have no idea if that's how it played out, but I like to think it is.)

It worked out nicely because I set my alarm for noon (when Tisha and her friends were planning to wake up) and I tried to get to sleep around 3:00am...

I ended up finally falling asleep around 4:00am. But that's still a triumph for me! On work nights -- when 9:00am is a desirable time to meet Morpheus -- I often don't pass out until 11:00am or later. So getting to sleep so early was awesome!

Then I slept for about an hour and a half, woke up from a really cool dream, obeyed Nature, then went back to sleep and repeated this twice more. I finally woke up around 9:30am with a brilliant idea for the novel Brian and I are co-writing, and I finally ran out of stuff to write about the time my alarm clock went off!

Then Tisha's wake-up call.

A WONDERFUL way to start the day off!!!

So I was showered, shaved, dressed and on the road a little after 1:30pm when Tisha called to say that they were going to eat at some of those parked food trucks on South Congress (near Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds).

Then, about 5 minutes later, she called back to say they were eating at Homes Slice Pizza.

Ah, to be young and spontaneous again! :)

When I got there, I roamed around a bit and played Cell-Phone Tag with Tish until she finally told me they were actually outside More Home Slice Pizza! (I had only just learned of Home Slice Pizza! I had no idea there was also a More Home Slice Pizza! (And how COOL is that idea!))

So we finally located each other and Tish introduced me to her boyfriend and her friends -- all of whom are VERY groovy folks!!! -- and she warned me that they may, any or all of them, spontaneously burst into English accents throughout the day.

I didn't mention that Brian and I are currently watching the complete series of Jeeves & Wooster (or that our discovery of Jeeves & Wooster was the result of my finally breaking down and reading several of P. G. Wodehouse's stories and novels originating those characters) but I did favor them with my limited range British dialects (you know: posh, Londoner, more southerly England) and they approved.

And I wasn't the one to brag about my British hottie this time; it was Tisha! :D (Thank you, Gnomey, for making me a little bit cool in my daughter's eyes!!!)

Then we set about strolling up Congress and popping in some of the shops.

It was a groovy day!

I'm sad to say that I hadn't seen Tisha for...well, it seems like a year or more! It was really cool to get to spend some time with her!!! And her friends; Tisha always hangs with cool folks! It reminded me of cruising around the mall in the '80s with my buds. (Except -- a note for readers that are 40 or older -- the term "bud" has a different meaning now than it used to.)

The only drawback to this day is that it is now 9:55pm, and I ant to go to sleep.

I shouldn't go to sleep. I should stay up until at least 6:00am so that tomorrow isn't such a fight to get back into my normal sleep schedule. But I may go ahead and crash out and worry about the consequences tomorrow.

Am I terrible? Am I terribly old? ;P

I'm not really concerned. I GOT TO HANG OUT WITH TISHA TODAY!!!

:D

January 2011 State of the Union

2011-01-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Union is good, baby!!! :D

And when I refer to "the Union", I am, of course, referring to me.

That is to say, things are groovy here in my little universe! :D

Just a couple of days ago my Gnomey-Goddess texted me to tell me that she was cooking, and to ask what dish I would like her to cook for me when we finally get together!

I mean, HOW frickin' COOL IS THAT?!!!

This is an AMAZINGLY hot chick who has stuck with me in a long-distance relationship for 4 years (because, in 4 years, I'm still trying to figure out how to make a living that can bring us together finally) and the question pops into her mind, "I wonder what dishes Ray Jay will want me to cook for him."

OMG!!! How AWESOME is that!!! :D

Now don't get me wrong here: When Gnomey and I are married, I'm not looking for a life where she cooks and cleans and I drink beer and watch TV or anything. lol In fact, I am actively trying to develop my culinary abilities now, so that when Gnomey & I are together I'll have an array of dishes I can cook for her. I'm not fantasizing about subjugating my future wife and cramming her into some 1950s Americana fantasy of "how it was back in the Good Ol' Days", lol. (Dude, she would so kick my ass if I even tried that crap, and that's a lot of what I love about her!!!)

Still...you have to be overwhelmingly flattered to find out that your lady thinks about things like what dishes you would like her to cook for you!!! OMG!!! :D

So Ray Jay's doing well right now!!!

And then, on top of that, thanks to some very generous Christmas money from my mom, step-father and Gan-Gan, I NOW OWN A KINDLE!!!

I got the Wi-Fi variety (I'm paranoid that if I had gotten the 3G version, they would find a way to charge me a monthly bill for the 3G service later on, down the road; besides, Wi-Fi gets me books just fine, thank you very much!) and I splurged and bought the protective case with a built-in book light, and I bought an extra recharge cord, and then I bought a small library of books for my Kindle! (Most of them are paranormal reference books that I will be dipping into from time to time for the foreseeable future.)

AND...I converted a text file of a friend's NaNoWriMo novel and downloaded it to my Kindle, and you would not believe how much easier it is to read off my Kindle versus reading it off my laptop!!!

I'm not trying to sell you on the Kindle, mind you, I'm just crowing about my new toy...but THE KINDLE IS SO AMAZING TO READ FROM!!!

Okay, it fits in your hand like a paperback novel, only BETTER because it's a fraction of the width and weight! But you can adjust the size of the text so that it is as large as a hard cover OR LARGER, so the print is actually easier to read! Plus, there is a Page Forward and Page Backward button, one on top of the other, on BOTH sides of the device! So you can flip forward or back by pressing your thumb (righty or lefty)! So you can tear through some prose if you're really exited about what you're reading!

And check it out...The Kindle power cord can be plugged into your computer, OR it can be plugged into A WALL SOCKET!!! they somehow managed to design an adapter that can recharge a media device FROM A WALL SOCKET!!! (My iPod and my OPAL mp3 player both have to be recharged from a computer! Not my Kindle!)

So all the great things my friends have been telling me about the Kindle? ALL TRUE!!!

I'm particularly jazzed about the fact that I can control the typeface (/font size)! When I joined Texas Spirits, Paula wanted us all to read Ghost Hunter's Guidebook by Troy Taylor, because there were several newbies joining the team all at once, and she (very astutely) wanted to make sure we were all on the same page about investigation technique. So I bought the book, and I was frustrated by the font and typeface that the publisher had chosen! First, it was a smaller press, so they chose a smaller typeface (font size) so that they could print more words on fewer pages. (It's a sound economical choice, but harder on the reader.) But they had also chosen a "spooky" font, so the words were even more of an eyestrain! Despite Taylor's excellent information and writing style, the book was such an annoyance to get through!

If I had had my Kindle back then (I don't think I could have afforded the Kindle back then, honestly; I think they were $240 or something) I could have changed the font and typeface to my preferences and zoomed through the book in no time!

And here's another nice point...

I have maybe 10 books loaded on there now -- 8 of which I want to keep on there; and one of the books is actually all 5 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels plus a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story!!! -- and I've barely made a dent in the 3-Gig storage capacity!!!

Very soon I will load ALL the Sherlock Holmes novels/short stories by Arther Conan Doyle, and I'll bet I still have way more than 2 Gigs of storage!

So life is way-groovy right now! :)

Then, last night, I woke up to a Little Caesar's breakfast! Brian was asleep, but he had, apparently, ordered us both some Little Caesar's before he passed out! He got me Sausage & Mushroom, but he had slipped in 2 slices of his Pepperoni & Mushroom for my dining pleasure!!!

HOW FRICKIN' COOL IS THAT?!! Little Caesar's doesn't deliver, so my little brother went out (in the rain) and picked up these tasty pizza pies for us to enjoy!!! He wasn't even awake to receive the praise when I discovered this, lol! He's just all "Here's some awesome food that will drive you mad with pleasure; I'm going to sleep now"!!!

My only consolation is that I have recently discovered Alessi Pesto, which can turn a piece of buttered bread into a gourmet Italian snack food. It also turns pasta, butter and Parmesan Cheese into a meal you feel like you should have paid $50 for!

PESTO RULES!!! :D

So I'm trying to convince myself not to feel guilty about this ASTOUNDING gift of delicious food my brother has given me.

Also, Brian & I have become re-obsessed with magic, lol! When we discovered Chriss Angel and Mindfreak back in 2006 (thanks to Our Genius Friend Dave) our childhood interest in performing magic tricks re-ignited. Angel makes a traditional illusion feel like he just invented it on the spot.

No, that's not it: Angel makes an illusion feel (somehow) like he's performing REAL MAGIC.

So anyway, this year Angel released several magic tricks to toy stores, including this huge set with 250 illusions. (You get the props/gags for, like, 12 illusions, but the How-To book tells you how to do many, many variations on those illusions. so you're really getting something like 75 different illusions. You could perform a 90-minute magic show with what you get, if the people you're performing for have never seen a single magic show in their life.)

For Christmas, I persuaded Santa to give Brian this Chriss Angel magic set.

Brian frickin' LOVED it!!! I swear, I think it has been a long time since I got my brother such a PERFECT gift! This has fired-up his imagination and enthusiasm in ways I simply could not have predicted!

AND...it lead him to do some research, which revealed that there was a 500-illusion Chriss Angel set out there!

His first thought was to buy the 500-illusion set for me, and borrow any props/gags he needed (should he find himself performing magic). But I finally convinced him that he (because of his enthusiasm and interest) should own the more complete magic set. His nature is to want others (particularly his brother) to have more than he has, but I finally logic-ed him into simply buying the set for himself.

To make a long story short(er), we've been watching Seasons 1 & 2 of Mindfreak (the only seasons we own) a lot lately, and we've been talking a lot about illusion-performance technique.

To be perfectly honest, I am dying to make salt disappear into my fist, and then pour it onto the table for somebody!!! Or to disappear a signed dime and make it reappear somewhere else!!! But I don't find myself in many social gatherings, and anyway I should probably practice more before I perform these tricks in public.

So 2011 has been pretty magical for me, so far.

Ooh!

I went to the store to buy some beer for the weekend, and I found a copy of Season 4 of Samurai Jack for $10!!!

$10!!!

I bought it!

Gendy Tartakovski is one of the most BRILLIANT animators (we're talkin' Brad Bird-/John Lasseter-/Phil Vischer-/Matt Groening-brilliant) of our generation, and I get to own a whole season (the final season, even) of his work for $10!!!

So that's what I plan to fall asleep to tonight (/today, I guess).

OH!!! AND...

Last Saturday Brian & I got to see TRON: Legacy for the 3rd time at the Lake Creek Alamo Drafthouse!!! I had Fried Pickles while I watched the flick! (First time -- excluding a failed attempt to make my own a couple of years ago -- since the late-80s that I've enjoyed that particular taste sensation!)

TRON: Legacy (in 3-D) so friggin' ROCKS!!!

Okay, it's way past time for me to go to bed...

I hope you all have an EXCELLENT weekend!!!

PEACE & LAUGHTER!!!

:D

Workin' Thru the Holidays

2010-12-28T23:28:00.000-08:00

OMG!

Ray Jay is an EXHAUSTED boy.

There are dumb things going on at work, so every shift is an uphill climb for the foreseeable future. But this condition is exacerbating the fact that I'm working on Day 9 of a 12-day work spree. Usually I'm taunting my friends with the fact that I work 4-day work weeks (even though I work a full 40 hours, just like anyone else) but now I'm just hoping I can make it all the way to Saturday.

It hurts.

I mean, the way my shift used to be, I wasn't going going going for the full 10 hours of my shift. But the job has been changing since last September so that my work day has been increasingly filled until I didn't think anything more could be fit into my schedule. But when I found a new groove, more duties were added (or, sometimes, formerly simple(ish) duties are complicated so that they take much longer to accomplish) until I was certain I couldn't do everything during my shift. But then I would find a new groove, and then more junk would pop up.

I'm half-convinced that someone "at the top" wants my department to just up and quit, so they can hire a whole new batch of less-experienced (and cheaper) employees to fill our positions, and they don't have to pay us severance.

But we're all too poor to quit.

Blah.

I'm just venting, I guess.

I hurt. :P

Okay, I need to get back to work.

I hope YOU are ENJOYING your Holidays!!! I wish you more fun, laughs and sheer joy than you know what to do with! If you find yourself feeling like everything is so awesome that you wonder if it's really happening, THAT is the amount of joy I wish for you!

07:25 am

2010-12-24T05:25:00.000-08:00

The last few hours of my shift were crazy, and I had to stop at the store to pick up a few items before everything closes down for Christmas, but I'm finally home!

:)

AND SANTA'S ON THE MOVE!!!

Papau New Guinea!

And you can see me on the map there! I'm off to the right, kind of two o'clock.

Oh, wait. I can see me in the picture (or, you know...Texas, anyway) but the way this blog crops pics, you might not be able to see it.

Never mind.

But when I look at the pic, I almost want to say, "Yo, Saint Nick! Over here! It'll just take a sec and I won't tell anyone!" But the dude's been doin' this a while, and I certainly understand how annoying it can be when you've got a groove going and someone messes with it.

I'm content to wait.

You know what? Since I've become an adult (at least technically) and I've moved in with my little brother, Santa doesn't bring me nearly as many clothes as he used to. Is that weird? I mean, when I was a kid, clothes were, like, the most disappointing presents you could get at Christmas (or on your birthday, or any other occasion on which you might receive presents). But as an adult, I clothes wouldn't bug me anymore. And yet all I get nowadays are cool things that I actually want. (I mean, after I received the clothes, I wore heck out of them and enjoyed them...it was just that moment when you tear off the wrapping paper and open the box that clothes were a disappointment. Nowadays, though, I might actually be excited to open a box and get a shirt or pants, lol.)

Also, I've got more questions about Santa now that I've been investigating the paranormal for a couple of years. I mean, clearly he exhibits abilities that are non-human. And some of the literature refers to him as "a quite jolly old elf". So does that put him in the realm of fairy? (What we would categorize as "an elemental"?) I mean, he appears humanoid, so I'm not leaning toward "cryptid", and we can't rule out "extraterrestrial" or "extra-dimensional" being. (Particularly with his seemingly curious ability to manipulate Space/Time.)

Still, my gut suggests "elemental".

I'm not swayed toward "psychic" because although physical teleportation falls within the realm of "psy" or "psychism", popular reports claim to have witnessed him "rise" up the chimney, not simply vanish. (It seems that if he simply disappeared, the poem would have said something like "and laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, he frickin' disappeared, dude!")

An argument against Santa being extraterrestrial is the classic old documentary Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The EBEs from Mars seemed to assume that Santa was an Earth native. Which, again, give credence to the "elemental" (or "fairy") categorization.

Still -- like most things having to do with elementals -- the majority of the literature we have to study on the subject is mythology and folklore. (Literally, "fairy tales".) So I don't know how far I could possibly get doing such research.

See, that's one of the main reasons I'm not a ufologist: Ufologists, by necessity, are forced to study their subject second-hand, from the reports of eye witnesses. They always arrive on the scene after the fact. At least cryptozoologists can attempt to track their prey once they discover a likely stomping ground; but ufologists have to depend largely the stories they are told, and dig the truth out from that starting point.

(One of the other main reasons I'm not a ufologist is that they tend to have degrees, and a keen knowledge of subjects like Chemistry and Geology and Astronomy, and other subjects that make my head hurt.)

OOH, CHECK IT OUT!!! Santa's in Australia!!!

8:03 am

I wanna go to Australia.

First, though, there's a certain goddess in England I would rather visit! ;) Then, it would be awesome to visit Australia with her!!!

If you are deriving any amusement from this blog, you should totally go follow Santa's progress yourself!

Unless, of course, you're reading this after the fact. Then the link would be kind of pointless.

Anyway, I need to get some sleep. My shift tonight should be fairly easy, since it's Christmas Eve and everyone except for Production and the News department has the day off. Still, I need to be alert for those unexpected occasions. (That's probably the only reason my department hasn't been automated yet: Human's deal with the unexpected and the unexplainable a bit better than computer programs...for now.)

Besides, empty TV station or not, Management still frowns on tardiness. ;)

I hope you're having a LOVELY Christmas Eve!!!

And LOVE TO MY GNOMEY if you should happen to read this before we talk!!!

02:52 am

2010-12-24T00:52:00.000-08:00

I just peaked in on NORAD's site again, and it looks like the party's about to begin!

WOO-HOO!!!

I wish I were snuggled up in my living room, watching The Bishop's Wife or Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas, sipping Egg Nog right now.

Not that I'm complaining.

I've been lucky enough to have many Christmases and New Year's Eves off the past few years, so it's only fair that I work through both this year. Besides the one holiday that I MUST get off these days is Thanksgiving, when Brian & I drive up to Louisiana to spend a few days with Mom, her husband and our Gan-Gan. And I've been lucky enough to have that week off every year so far!!!

So I'm content to work this weekend.

Plus...the paycheck's gonna be HUGE! ;P

03:11 am

02:24 am

2010-12-24T00:23:00.000-08:00

I took a quick break to check in on Santa's progress to find that Santa and his helpers are taking a break, too!

Very groovy! :D

I need to get back to work now, but hopefully Santa and his crew will continue to blow off some steam. I think a person should be allowed to really ENJOY their work shift, you know? Not be forced to rush, rush, rush until you're stressed and ready to hurt folks.

Anyway, I hope YOU are relaxed and really having a GREAT time! (Actually, at 2:24am, I guess I hope you're sleeping comfortably.)

PEACE!!!

SANTA'S GEARIN' UP!!!

2010-12-23T23:05:00.000-08:00

December 24, 2010
01:06 am

I'm working through the holidays, but to get a bit of the spirit, I'm tracking Santa's progress via NORAD's official Santa Tracker site again this year.

It appears that about 6 minutes ago, Santa began preparations for his annual gift-delivering voyage.

In year's past, I always started tracking Santa on what was, for me (in the Southern United States), Christmas Eve. And I never understood why I had missed the journey. But tonight, when I came into work, just out of curiosity I logged onto http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html to see what was going on, and I saw that the countdown had already begun!

Then I figured it out: Christmas Eve for me is Christmas Day for someone else, lol. I mean, I kind of knew this to some degree because my Gnomey-Goddess is 6 hours ahead of me. But I guess I just didn't realize that the other side of the planet might have a full 24-hour time difference.

Still, it looks like he hasn't left just yet, so maybe it's not a full 24 hours.

Anyway, I hope to continue to track Santa's progress in real-time as my job allows. I'm hoping that by the time Santa hit's Austin I will be feeling all Christmas-y and jolly.

Evidence Review Weekend...

2010-11-14T03:54:00.001-08:00

For the first time ever (well...in the almost-2 years I've been investigating the paranormal) I am AHEAD OF SCHEDULE for reviewing evidence for our current case!!! :D

The last few times I have procrastinated until Sunday, then found I didn't have enough time to look at/listen to everything. But this weekend I spend a day celebrating the Toy Story franchise (which I blogged about), then I made myself a pot of coffee and some breakfast...

SIDEBAR:
I do not recommend Fettuccine and White Clam Sauce. I saw some in HEB yesterday and I'm thinking "I like white sauce! I like sea food! White Clam Sauce must be a culinary gift from God!!!"

It's not.

(By the way, I haven't tried the Red Clam Sauce, but I don't think it's the color that's the problem, I suspect it's the clam.)

I boiled up a big pot of fettuccine, baked a Michael Angelo's Eggplant Parmesan (always a winner, whether you bake it or nuke it!), and opened a package of Hawaiian Bread dinner rolls my li'l bro' bought for me, and I was fully prepared to be both entranced and delighted.

I had maybe 5 bites of the Fettuccine with White Clam Sauce before I had to give it up as a failure.

Now, keep in mind that I can boil up fettuccine, top it with butter and Parmesan Cheese, and enjoy it like it was fresh from Romano's Macaroni Grill! (Well...you know...maybe Olive Garden.) I've eaten fettuccine with every type of Alfredo sauce available in grocery stores, and thoroughly enjoyed the meal!

(I don't recommend Walmart's Great Value brand Alfredo sauce, though...it kind of sneaks up on you afterward.)

AND, on top of my love of pasta is the fact that I simply do not waste food. (If you haven't read my blog in a while, I don't really have tons of money to throw around.) So abandoning half my meal is simply not something I do easily. (I once made Kraft Mac & Cheese and dumped a bunch of Cajun seasoning on it, hoping to make it special. It was not special; it was painful; but I believe I choked a lot of it down. And a box of Macaroni & Cheese is about a quarter of the price of White Clam Sauce and a box of fettuccine.)

How can I describe this? Clam Sauce tastes, roughly, like the sea.

Not like seaweed, or salty, or like water...but like the sea. Have you ever gone out to the beach, run out into the waves, gotten pulled under by the undertow and swallowed half a lungful of water? That's kind of how Clam Sauce tastes.

Or if you've ever seen The Perfect Storm, those fishing boats those guys are on? Clam Sauce tastes the way those fishing boats look.

END OF SIDEBAR.

So I made myself a pot of coffee (which I'm drinking with Chocolate Mint Truffle creamer tonight) and a big breakfast of Italian (style) food, then settled into a night of evidence review. I listened to my hourS (notice the capital "S") of audio footage and a NotePad document (for taking notes) and listened.

And now I'm done! :D

Had I put it off until tomorrow (well, later today, but I haven't been to sleep yet) I would probably be wrapping up the evening with hurried notes to my teammates explaining how I would find time before or after work over the next few days to finish my listening.

But -- probably since I didn't procrastinate (much) this time -- I had time to review a bunch of pictures taken during the investigation, too!

Now I have a video camera angle to review tomorrow, and there may be some more audio that needs to be listened to. But for now, I can kick back and goof off until I fall asleep!!! :D

I just got this AWESOME audiobook: UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record by Leslie Keane. (I bought the physical book a month ago, but haven't cracked the spine yet because the physical book I'm still reading now is Stan Romanek's Messages. I usually have one (or two) physical books that I'm working on and an audiobook. A like listening to the audiobooks while I'm playing videogames or driving or whatnot.) So I may listen to some On The Record for a while to relax.

I hope your weekend is going GROOVY!!!

:D

TOY STORY 3!!!

2010-11-13T06:17:00.001-08:00

I FINALLY SAW IT!!!

:D

I wanted to see it in 3-D in the cinema, but I didn't have the money. :(

Still...AWESOME flick!!! Seriously powerful, whatever format you see it in, I'm sure!

So, I used to have this cool DVD set with the first 2 Toy Story movies, but I lost the set along with (literally) thousands of dollars worth of movies the first year Brian and I moved in here. So I haven't had a copy of either movie (well...I do still have a VHS copy of the first Toy Story from way back in the pre-DVD days of home video) for 3 or 4 years now.

And that was kind of okay, because I had seen Toy Story and Toy Story 2 several times each, and PIXAR kept putting out new flicks every year, and I was more in the mood to watch the new ones as they came out than to go back and watch the Toy Story films.

However...

Earlier last week I was grabbing some groceries at Walmart and saw The Toy Story Trilogy: The Ultimate Toy Box Collection!!! 10 discs -- the Ultimate Toy Box Edition of all three movies on Blu-Ray, plus all three movies on DVD, plus the Digital Download discs for all three flicks -- stored in a replica of Andy's toy box, for $70!

It's a bit expensive, and I might be able to buy the same set in 6 months or a year for half the price (maybe), but when I got paid Friday I simply could not resist collecting all 3 flicks (including the one I hadn't seen yet) in one fell swoop!

And I so don't regret it!

I bought Brian and myself some Domino's last night (I had the Chicken Alfredo Pasta breadbowl and the Sausage Marinara Pasta breadbowl, and the two lava-brownie things) and we watched Toy Story 3!!! It was awesome!

Afterward, we watched all the extras on the feature-film disc, then popped in Toy Story.

Brian has to work this morning, so I watched TS3 in my bedroom with the audio commentary, and am now working my way backward through the 2nd and 1st movies with audio commentary. (Those PIXAR folks are frickin' GENIUSES!!!)

BUT FIRST...

I had some unfinished SModcast business to attend to...

Back when TS3 was still in the theaters, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier talked about in on episode #124: "Schindler's Toy Box", and at one point they announce that they will be spoiling the ending, and to stop listening to the podcast if you haven't seen it yet.

That episode has been sitting on my MP3 player ever since!

So it was with great joy and relief that I FINALLY got to finish listening to that episode!

It was cool, too. I re-listened to the whole thing, and it was cool to hear some of what they said before the spoiler alert now, having seen the film. And what they had to say about it was cool, too.

So I have had just a Toy Story-filled day today!

I should be reviewing evidence, though. I mean, I still have 2 days to do it (I haven't been to sleep, so right now is still part of my "Friday" since it's early Saturday morning), but in the past I have found that if I don't get to the evidence review early I may find myself staying up late Sunday night (which is really Monday morning, for the rest of the world) cramming until the very last minute.

Still...it's been a long week at work. I deserve some down time.

ALSO...!

My Genius Friend Dave gave me this really fascinating idea for a project. I'll probably go into it more soon, but let me just say that My Genius Friend Dave continues (yet again) to earn the moniker I've slapped on him here! (He could hang with the PIXAR folks, and not embarrass himself!)

Okay, the sun is well up this Saturday morning, which means that my night should really be done. But I still have some Toy Story audio commentaries I want to watch before I go to sleep, so I'll sign off for now and get to it.

A shout-out to the love of my life, who has been busy lately but still finds the time to make me feel all special!!! xoxoxo

May your weekend be DELIGHTFUL and delight-filled!!!

:D

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

2010-10-31T05:05:00.000-07:00

So far, I'm having a GREAT Halloween Weekend!

...you know, in my own, low-key way...

My holiday began Friday morning when I got off work.

I'm dead broke, rent ate my whole check (as it usually does at the end of the month), but I had planned ahead for this Halloween's festivities. I dropped a chunk of change on Universal's The Legacy Collection for 4 of their classic monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon!

The Wolf Man has been a part of my Halloween celebrations since the mid-1990s, when it aired and I caught it on VHS. It's not a long movie, so I was also able to fit Gary Larson's Tales from the Far Side Halloween special on the same tape. And when that Halloween mood came upon me, I'd pop the tape in and watch.

As a result, I've become rather fond of The Wolf Man, and come to associate it with Halloween (beyond the natural association of the mere fact that he's a Universal monster and a classic Halloween costume).

But the last few years I haven't been able to trouble myself to dig up the VHS, so this year I was sort of missing Mr. Talbot. (Laurence Talbot, the name of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s character when he's not eating villagers by moonlight.) So I Netflix-ed the DVD.

But when I went to watch it, the main menu asked me which feature I wanted to see: The Wol Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Werewolf of London or She-Wolf of London.

Huh?!

I hadn't heard of the 3 other films. And 2 of them, it turns out, were only available on another disc. I checked Netflix, and they didn't offer that second disc.

So what is this amazing thing I have stumbled onto?!

Amazon held answers for me:

Back in 2004, as a sort of promotional tie-in with big-budget stink-bomb Van Helsing, Universal Studios apparently re-packaged their classic monster movies into these uber-packs: The Legacy Collection! As part of the Bonus Features in each package is the director of Van Helsing giving a short history of the monster, then talking about how he is going to treat the character in his film. (I was about to type, "Not well," but that's really not being fair. Mr. Sommers clearly loves the characters, and Van Helsing is clearly a love letter to the Universal classics, it's just that Sommers appears to have let the script get away from him. Toward the end of Van Helsing, I remember thinking that just watching the dailies -- after the special effects began coming in, that is -- there is no way anyone associated with the film could have guessed they were making a terrible movie! If you watched the scenes alone, separate from each other and out of order, you would be convinced that this was an awesome flick! It's just when you put all the scenes together, in order, that you become bored an unimpressed. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was good, though! I was disappointed with The Mummy, and I didn't see any of the sequels, but I dug G.I. Joe!)

Since the short promos for Van Helsing talk as though the movie isn't out yet, I'm guessing Universal released the Legacy Collection DVDs before the movie -- to remind people why they loved the classics, or to introduce new generations to them -- in order to perk-up interest in the new flick.

Naturally, when this was going on, I was unaware because I was -- as ever -- broke.

BUT...

...my broke-ness actually worked in my favor this time!!! :D

If you look on Amazon right now, you can get all these amazing collections for just under $20 each! And if you buy one of Amazon's 3-fers, you can get a whole mess of them for less than that!

Which is what I did with my birthday money this year! :D

I bought the Frankenstein collection, the Dracula collection, the Wolf Man collection and the Creature from the Black Lagoon collection!!!

But what's amazing is that I wasn't just buying 4 classic movies, I bought ALL the (official) SEQUELS, TOO!!! :D

So going into the Halloween season this year, here's what I'm working with:

Frankenstein (1931)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
House of Frankenstein (1944)

Dracula (1931)
Dracula (1931 Spanish Version)
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Son of Dracula (1943)
House of Dracula (1945)

The Wolf Man (1941)
Werewolf of London (1935)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
She-Wolf of London (1946)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

That's the better part of 3 decades of Universal Studios classics!!!

It's insane, too, because though most of these flicks really wouldn't sell on their own (the and Son of... and House of... flicks, especially) Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature really should be sold separately, from a value standpoint! One could argue that in both cases, the sequel somewhat eclipses the original!

But I'm immeasurably glad that Universal made this minor oversight, since I feel like I've gotten away with highway robbery, lol. (When was the last time you paid for entertainment and felt like you were the one on the better end of the bargain?)

Naturally, I broke into the DVDs long before they came. I watched the Making-Of featurettes for all 4 franchises, and watched Creature, Wolf Man and Dracula with the film-historian audio commentary. I even watched Dracula with Philip Glass's score, and I love it!!! I didn't know who Philip Glass was when Southpark dissed him in a Christmas episode, but that guy is a genius!!! (Well...at least, his score for Dracula is genius. I'm not familiar with the rest of his work.)

One more thing about the classic horror flicks: Every time I watch the original Halloween (John Carpenter's version, the real one) I can't help but notice how all the TVs are playing old black & white horror flicks, and it makes me kind of want to experience that. I mean, I watch black & white flicks all the time (whenever the mood takes me, anyway) but I've never spent Halloween that way. When I was a kid, a teen and in my 20s, Halloween was always about going out, not-being-home. Then in my 30s, when I didn't have the money or sleep schedule that allowed me to go out, I usually gravitated to newer horror flicks, stuff that still scared me.

So this year, I'm reveling in the Classics!

And reveling I am! here's how my Halloween is breaking down this year:

Friday, October 29, 2010

I started out by logging into Hulu and watching the latest episode of Castle, assuming this macabre-yet-fun show would surely have Halloween episode, right? Wrong. Oh, sure, the episode was good! But it was too good, in the wrong way. It's this deeply moving character piece that had me in just the wrong mindset for a Halloween-y good time.

But I recovered, and watched House of Frankenstein, the first of the "monster mash-ups" with most of Universal's line of monsters: The Mad Scientist (played by Boris Karloff, interestingly), the Hunchback (the Mad Scientist's assistant, naturally, but in a subplot clearly lifted from The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Dracula (played by a cowboy in an Abe Lincoln hat), Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster!!! It was the second-to-last of the "Golden Age" of Universal's monster films (excluding the Abbot and Costello Meet... parody pics, the cycle wouldn't start back up again, in earnest, for almost another decade with Creature from the Black Lagoon), so it was guaranteed to be a bit of low-quality, schlocky fun!

And it didn't disappoint!!! :D

And watching all the behind-the-scenes stuff about the making of these films -- particularly the Frankenstein films -- I had to watch Gods and Monsters finally, the film about the end of James Whale's life. It didn't really have much to do with the making of either of his monster films -- except to sort of suggest where some of his creative inspiration for bits of them came from, and why he was such a master with macabre imagery -- but the film was really good.

Too good, though, in the wrong way.

So I followed Gods and Monsters up by watching the rest of Them!, and that movie is just surprisingly great! Made in 1954, it's clearly the 2012 of its time! I was seriously surprised at what they pulled off with that flick! Now, I mean, my daughter and her friends aren't going to watch it and be impressed. (I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch it.) They can create more convincing special effects on their iPhones. But for what they were working with back then, Gordon Douglas must have been the Michael Bay of his day!

Then I fell asleep to House of Dracula.

When I woke up Friday night, I listened to a couple of episodes of Spooky Southcoast, watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on Hulu, then tracked down "the Halloween episode" of Quantum Leap and watched it on Netflix (because Tim Weisberg mentioned it on one of the SSc eps).

And I'm blanking on what else I watched...

Is it possible that I went to sleep to Invasion of the Body Snatchers? No, I remember waching Gods and Monsters and Them! Friday morning, so I must have fallen asleep to Body Snatchers Thursday morning.

Actually, I think I'm getting some of this out of order. Hmph.

Okay, I know for sure that tonight when I woke up, Brian and I watched the end of Young Frankenstein (he was watching it when I woke up, so he saw the whole thing) and then we listened to Spooky Southcoast live!!! :D We almost never get to do that. And tonight was a psychic who has what she believes is new information about Ron DeFeo (the guy who lived at 112 Ocean Avenue and murdered his entire family back in 1974, before the Lutz family moved in and left after 28 days, sparking off the "Amityville Horror" phenomenon). It was a creepy show than ran half an hour longer than usual (probably because they somehow knew Brian and I were listening).

Then after that, Brian & I enjoyed Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein!!! HALLOWEEN FUN!!! :D

When Brian went to sleep (poor guy has to work tomorrow) I popped in Son of Frankenstein, The Ghost of Frankenstein and I was partway into Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man when I paused to write this entry.

After I finish FMTWM I will have seen ALL of the Frankenstein series! :D (Actually, I need to rewatch House of Dracula, because Frankenstein's Monster appears in there, but I fell asleep long before his scene popped up, lol.)

AND THE COOL THING IS, I STILL HAVE PLENTY TO WATCH!!! :D There are several awesome classics on Netflix that I queued, and there are plenty of horror flicks in my Hulu queue, too! (That's completely leaving out my vast DVD library of horror titles, intentionally.)

So whatever happens between this moment and All Saints' Day, I know I'll be having a funky-fun time!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

:D

PARRRRRR-DEE!!! hiccup

2010-10-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I could not imagine what my 40th Birthday might be like. I mean, I couldn't even imaging being 40, much less the details of what turning 40 might be like.

Well, this weekend, I have found out.

IT'S AWESOME!!! :D

When I was growing up, turning 40 officially put you "Over the Hill" and meant you were now on the fast track to senility, a retirement home, and DEATH. You're 40th Birthday party was, inevitably, an Over-the-Hill party, and every single card, present and party favor in someway reflected this. (We threw such a party for my Pops when he turned 40.)

Now, the unspoken spirit of the Over-the-Hill party wasn't actually mocking a loved one who was now, officially, "Old", is was more a subtle mockery of the idea that the loved on in question really was old just because of the number of years he had lived.

But I lucked out, on a couple of counts:

First, thankfully for me, "Middle Age" has been pushed back another decade. I think it's because women closer to my age simply refuse to wither and look not-hot, so people like Teri Hatcher (this is my guess, anyway) forced the Middle-Aged limit to be pushed back.

Secondly, that whole "Over the Hill" fad seems to have simply vanished, like parachute pants or something.

Also, I could never have imagined, when I was younger, that turning 40 could feel so young!!!

Like, I heard "older folks" say things like that when I was a kid. Say that they didn't actually feel old. But I could never have guessed how literal they might have been! I don't exercise, or eat particularly well (thought I don't eat particularly badly, I don't think) so my body isn't in the type of shape I think it should be. But even still, I'm not short on energy, and there aren't any activities I fear taking part in. (Besides, you know, moshing, gang-rapes, self-mutilation, robberies, that sort of thing. But that's really nothing to do with how healthy I think I am.)

So anyway, how did I celebrate?

Like the past few birthdays, I kept it low-key. I don't have the money to throw myself a lavish party, and honestly, the party would just be getting started for me about the time everyone else was saying Goodnight.

So my B-Day started with some well-wishes from my little bro' Friday morning when I got home from work. There was a bigass Birthday card waiting for me! The envelop was covered with Brian Edwards ORIGINAL artwork!

Front...

...and Back...

And then the card itself -- IT'S 3-D!!!

:D

So as Brian's getting ready for work, he's also making sure the weekend of my 40th gets off to a fantastic start!

Since Brian bought us a Blu Ray player a couple of weeks ago, I decide it might be cool to watch a Netflix movie on the Big Screen.

The HD TV Brian bought is kind of profound! It makes movies look like they're actually on the Big Screen! And you have no idea how wild this is until you watch an OLD movie on it! For the first time ever, you feel like, you are watching this ancient flick the way it was intended to be seen!

And you can tell, watching an old movie on a HUGE screen, that this is exactly what the original filmmakers had in mind when they designed and shot their flicks! On the Small Screen, it looks cheesy and, well, old-timey. But on a Big Screen, the flick seems somehow more significant, more important. It seems like an event!

So to kick off my 40th Birthday Weekend, I decided to watch what I am told is the 1950s "Giant Monster": Them!.

But first, I figure that turning 40 is one of those occasions wherein it is socially-acceptable to get krunk, so before work Thursday night I bought me a bigass bottle of Tito's Homemade. I already had a bottle of Pina Colada mix in the fridge, and when I poured the remains into a 32-ounce cup, then dropped some Tito's in it, I had me a powerful party drink!

So I kicked back with my Paint-Thinner Colada and popped on Them!! (The first exclamation mark is part of the title, but the second is meant to express my enthusiasm for this endeavor.)

And let me tell ya, this was an awesome way to start off my weekend! Them! is a surprisingly good flick! It holds up well! As the main character are exposed to more and more of the mutant monsters, I'm thinking "How could they afford to shoot all this?!" I mean, you're not going to mistake Them! for Transformers, but watching it, I think you'll see that Transformers might not have been made if not for Them! going there first!

Unfortunately, Them! was kind of too good of a movie...

See, I anticipated it being a bit more laughable, and I imagined that with that heavy-duty dose of alcohol in my bloodstream, I would be up until Brian got off work, laughing with myself and watching half of Netflix's streaming library.

Didn't happen that way.

Them! had me genuinely transfixed. It sucked me in so that I barely finished my one drink, and around 9:45am (the normal time I've been getting to bed the last week) I felt my eyes getting heavy and decided to go ahead and get some sleep.

Now before you accuse me of being old, know that I stay up way past my bedtime entirely too often! I'll get obsessed researching some phenomenon and discover that it's 2 or more hours past the time I should be asleep. So the fact that went to bed at (for me) a reasonable hour has nothing to do with being old. I just recognized, quite sensibly, that I could resume celebrating after I woke up, and I could celebrate with my brother, because he would be home from work by then. :P

And that's how it played out. I woke up Friday evening, and I slipped off to do a bit of shopping. One thing I bought was Season 2 of Castle and Dollhouse. I was looking forward to watching several hours of Castle with Brian, since we're both huge Nathan Fillion fans. (I followed Castle's second season on Hulu, but Brian didn't, and season 1 was half a season. So this was gonna be cool!)

I also bought a bald wig, 2 blood-soaked machete's and an ax.

This was the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume!!! :D

I'm not sure exactly how this became a thing with me, but I had been missing my old Jason Vorhees mask...

See, back in 1987 or so, some company released a "Serial Killer Hockey Mask" (the "generic" name for a copyrighted character's iconic trademark mask) for Halloween. It was this amazing plastic replica of Jason's mask, only it didn't have the chevrons (the red marks on the brow and cheeks of the mask). But I -- clever budding filmmaker and long-time theatre alum that I was -- figured out that I could cut the chevrons out red electrical tape and recreate Jason Voorhees's iconic mask! :D So I did.

I remember this one school costume party where my best friend Tommy and I pulled an incredibly subtle Halloween prank on some classmates of his:

He was invited to this school function, and I was not -- it was for one of his classes or extracurricular activities or something. My Jason Voorhees costume consisted of a plaid shirt, jeans, this cool gray bomber jacket I owned, a bald wig and my Jason hockey mask. (Maybe a plastic glow-in-the-dark machete that I had spray-painted silver, too.)

The idea (and execution) was elegantly simple:

We were both wearing jeans, plaid shirts and bald wigs. He brings me to the party, and I stay outside in his car. He goes in wearing the bomber jacket and hockey mask (and maybe sporting the machete, I can't remember), mingles, and then makes an excuse to come outside. Then he passes me the mask and jacket, and then I go inside. I mingle for a bit, then go back outside, and Tommy finishes off the party.

And that's exactly how it came off...except for one detail: Someone pestered him for a peek beneath the mask. He succumbed ("succame"?) to the pressure and allowed that person to see beneath the mask. (If I'm not mistaken, it was a cute chick, so I can't really blame him.)

So now it was my turn...

I donned the mask and jacket, and went in.

I found myself in conversation with folks I had never seen before. All these years later, I couldn't begin to recall what was discussed. I just remember keeping my replies as vague as possible.

Now, one thing to note is that in 198-whatever, Jason Voorhees was like a rock star! Someone sporting a semi-decent Jason costume was bound to get attention back then. And I got me some attention, lol.

And then it happened: A cute chick wanted to take a look -- just a peek -- at what I looked like beneath the mask.

Hmph.

I mean, I denied her at first, but there is a certain point in which saying "No, I want to keep the mystique" is no longer socially acceptable, and I turn into a freak-ish asshole who is way too into his Friday-the-13th fantasy. And these weren't my classmates: they were Tommy's!

So then I let the cute chick peek, and her reaction...

"Huh. Okay."

She didn't recognize me!

Why should she? I wasn't a part of her class (or extracurricular activity, or whatever it was)! I HAD GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT!!! :D

I believe I remember trying to hang out as long as possible (a small group of people had glom-ed onto me the moment I had entered the building, so I didn't want to look suspicious in my exit) but then taking the first opportune moment to get the hell out of there and get Tommy back to his party.

As a teen, this was a wonderfully horrifying and thrilling ruse to pull off!

AND WE PULLED IT OFF!!!

My exposing my face to the cute chick didn't seem to have spoiled the game for Tommy at all! This wonderful prank was a resounding success!!! :D

So successful, in fact, that none of the witnesses probably even know that a prank had been pulled, lol. (My buddy Tommy and I probably could have been criminal masterminds, if our hearts weren't made of gold.)

However...

I lost that mask sometime in the transition between teenager and twenty-something. :(

And I don't recall when it started, but I've been missing that gorgeous mask for a few years now.

I mean, look at your local Halloween supply stores! When you see a "Serial Killer Hokey Mask" nowadays, it's not made with hard plastic, and the hole configuration is barely reminiscent of the classic Jason Voorhees mask!

What's WORSE is that the "official" Jason Voorhees masks don't come close to recreating what I had!!!

The Jason masks you can buy now are either post-Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part 6 or they're made of uber-flexible rubber -- not hard plastic, like a real hockey mask!

Perhaps I should clarify: This Jason mask I had created was absolutely as close to a Hollywood prop as a middle-class kid from Odessa, Texas could create! It was blind luck that some Halloween-mask company had stumbled onto the original mold (or something very damned close to is) of Paramount's Friday the 13th series hockey mask, and that all I had to do to create this amazing replica was add some chevrons made of electric tape!

And then to realize that 20 years later, luck was less blind -- Paramount had, apparently, taken whatever legal action they needed to to make sure that any successive "Serial Killer Hockey Masks" look nothing like Jason's Red-Wings-based design, and none of the officially licensed "Jason Voorhees" masks could ever be confused with Hollywood props -- was a bit devastating. :(

I mean, it's not like my world was crumbling around me or anything. But it was a considerable disappointment.

But then, one night a couple of months ago, my brother called me, all drunk, lol!

He was thinking about my birthday, and looking on eBay to see if he could find the Jason hockey mask I most preferred...

Now, when I'm looking to buy some long-lost-something-or-other, I look on Amazon.com, but when Brian is looking to purchase the in-purchase-able, he goes to eBay...

AND, to be fair, eBay did have an impressive number of really impressive Jason Voorhees mask replicas!!! They seemed to have every mask from Part 3 to Jason X!!!

But I noticed an interesting phenomenon...the best masks seemed to come from this place called www.frightstuff.com.

It turns out that FrightStuff.com sells the raw materials you need to create your own Jason mask, starting with the blank mask from the original Jason mold!!! :D

You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Part 3? You can buy it there!!! You want the mask from Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan? You can buy it there!!! It appears that Paramount Pictures has been using the same mold for all of their Jason sequels -- and New Line altered the mold for Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X, but not Freddy Versus Jason -- and FrightStuff.com somehow scored that original mold, and offer it to you (us) for an amazingly acceptable price!!!

There was this one blog that has an EXCELLENT overview of the differences between the Jason masks, but it appears to have disappeared, but there is another one here: http://www.jason-voorhees.info/jason-voorhees-mask.html.

The one that influenced me (that doesn't, apparently, exist anymore, gave a phenomenally-detailed explanation of just exactly what was different from film to film, which gave me a more precise understanding of what I really wanted out of a Jason mask: For me, I wanted a mask. My favorite movies are Part 3The final Chapter (Part IV) and Jason Lives (Part 6), but the look of Jason is Part III! While he's still a living human, before he becomes a super-zombie.

I mean, from a cinematic standpoint, you can bloody-up the mask after Part 3, but you can't ever take it back to that level of cleanliness. So, for me, the Jason I want to capture is the pre-ax-to-the-head, pre-machete-to-the-brain, pre-resurrected-from-the-grave Jason of Part III.

In short, the mask I used to own as a teenager...

But here's where it gets COOL...

The drunken conversation with my brother tips me off to this one-off site that is working from the original Paramount Pictures molds...

So I can spend $50 there and buy an completely NEW, unblemished copy of the mask AND (included in that price) a copy of the chevrons!!!

I CAN MAKE A PRISTINE JASON VOORHEES MASK, THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE FIRST MASK IN PART III!!!

(Of course, I can also dirty it up to look like any version of the mask from III to VII. But what I want is Part III.)

So, with one paycheck, I buy the mask kit and not only recreate the blind luck of my childhood, but recreate a masterful replica of one of my childhood icons! (Like, I could sell this thing on eBay, if I weren't as invested in it as I am.)

So then, my next question is this: What the hell did Jason wear in those movies?

It took a couple of days of research to discover than Jason Voorhees had, basically 3 outfits: 1-With the sack over his head, he wore overalls and a blue plaid shirt, 2-with the hockeymask he wore a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt with brown pants, and 3-after he was a zombie for a while, he worea gray overshirt over a black T-shirt and gray/black pants.

My Jason is Part III, so he was wearing a Hunter Green overshirt over a white T-shirt and brown pants. (He continued to wear this for The Final Chapter and Jason Lives: Part VI, with the exception that in Jason Lives he had picked up a web belt (containing more weapons) that gave him a more slimming look than he had sported in Part III or The Final Chapter.)

So this weaves into my narrative in that I had used one paycheck to buy the $50 Jason mask, and then I used another paycheck to buy the Hunter Green overshirt, the white T-shirt, and the brown pants to complete Jason's wardrobe. (I normally wear black worker boots, which blend right in with such a costume.)

So with my Birthday money, I needed to buy a bald wig.

I also bought a couple of props...

My favorite prop urns out to be an official Paramount Pictures "bloody machete". You'll see why...

I dig the fact that this machete is "property of Camp Crystal Lake", lol.

So, the completion of my 2010 Halloween costume was quite an exciting aspect of my birthday celebration for me!

(Yes, I'm a nerd...)

So then, after I got home from shopping, my li'l bro' put on The Wolf Man, the remake of the original 1941 Universal Studios monster flick. I dig on the original because it's highly atmospheric and not the least bit scary (attractive to me because I'm so old, lol). But the remake is super-awesome because it seems to capture the atmosphere of the original and provide a mystery that keeps you guessing until the end!

Then I watched a couple of episodes of Castle: Season 2 with Brian, until he fell asleep. At that point, I realized I had a couple of Season 3 episodes I could watch on Hulu but I got sidetracked...

There was this live episode of 30 Rock that aired before I got to work, and that I wanted to see. I adore 30 Rock, but I couldn't imagine how they might pull off a live episode, so I was dying to see this! When I logged onto Hulu, I saw that the new (live) episode of 30 Rock was up, too. So I watched it.

THE EPISODE IS ABOUT LIZ LEMON TURNING 40!!! :D

How cool is THAT?!!

So -- via one of my favorite shows, doing a live episode -- I got to enjoy a star-studded 40th birthday celebration online! (Seriously, what are the odds on one of my favorite TV babes turning 40 on an episode of TV that I don't end up watching until 2 days later, which happens to be my 40th birthday?!! Seems a little coincidental, no?)

I watched both the East Coast and West Coast feeds, and after that I was tired of messing with Hulu, so I switched to the last 4 episodes of Dollhouse (DVD) and saw how the series played out.

That took me into Saturday, the 16th...

I woke up Saturday, and Brian already had himself a meal planned, so I grabbed me some takeout from Texas Road House -- Country-Fried Sirloin, plus side -- and settled into an audiobook I recently purchased from Audible.com, The Grays by Whitley Strieber. This unabridged audiobook wrapped-up most of my attention for the remainder of Saturday night and Sunday morning. In fact, I finished the book Sunday evening at Moonie's Burger House, where I enjoyed a Plain Jane combo -- no onions, mustard, no mayonnaise -- as my li'l bro' slept a home. (The meat isn't really different than the nukebale patties you might buy at H.E.B., but the veggies are fresh and the buns are to die for! Making the meal, all in all, quite enjoyable!)

And that brings us up to NOW...

When I started writing this blog entry, it was around 2:00am. At the moment, it's 6:30am. So some of the ideas I had about what I might do to finish out my 40th Birthday Weekend (such as watch some new Castle on Hulu or watch some No Ordinary Family) seem a bit frivolous, considering...

But is has been and extraordinarily cool 40th Birthday for me!!! :D

I hope your work week -- however old you are -- is AMAZING!!!

Ray Jay :D

UNHOLY SMOKES!!!

2010-10-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

I have a new favorite videogame:

LEFT 4 DEAD!!! :D

It's like Resident Evil back when RE was mostly about fighting zombies!!!

The fact that I'm a fan is kind of funny because I've had this game for quite a while now, and I'm only just now playing it.

I bought it near the beginning of the year. I had purchased a USB controller for my 2 newest Tomb Raider PC games (2 od the Crystal Dynamics titles), and I was loving them so much now that I could play them the right way (the keyboard/mouse way wasn't working right, like with the old Edios games) that I decided to look for a Horror title. Left 4 Dead 2 was being advertised at work all the time, so I thought I'd try out the first one.

It sucked! Even with this amazing new controller I had, it was all but impossible to manipulate!

So I let the game sit...

Then, maybe a weak ago, two different friends told me that they could play the game just fine with the keyboard/mouse.

So I finally tried it...

...and OMG!!! AWESOME!!!

It had never occurred to me that some newer games might still be designed for old-school maneuverability! (THOSE are some visionary cats there!)

So now I have a new zombie game! And an AWESOME ONE, too!!! It's more what I hoped RE would grow into, but CapCom went in a different direction. (You're killing more human-like creatures now. They're just sick people, not really zombies.)

It's like I'm in the most badass Romero flick ever! (Except for 2 things: These zombies run, and they're infected with a "zombie virus"; Romero would never let his zombies run, and zombification isn't an infection, as many people assume. In Romero's world, zombie bites kill you like any other bite would, and once you're dead, your corpse is reanimated by whatever reanimated all the corpses in the first place; but it's not a virus.)

Um...

I did some other cool stuff this weekend, too...but I'm kind of still buzzin' on my zombie-shootin' high at the moment.

Ghost Whisperer: Season 2

2010-09-11T07:50:00.000-07:00

One thing I really, really dig about Ghost Whisperer is the town of Grandview, NY! I've always been a sucker for fictitious small towns, particularly ones with quaint town squares! I don't know why, but I think I can trace it back to Back to the Future.

But Grandview is particularly cool to me because every day in Grandview feels like sometime around Halloween!

No idea why that is. Maybe it's the cinematography, maybe it's the art direction, or the color timing. No idea. But it's neat! :)

So I'm just getting into Season 2, which means I'm almost done with the series.

I've watched it kind of weird.

See, I rented the first 2 discs of Season 1 from Netflix some time ago, just to see if Brian & I liked the show. Brian never ended up watching them, but I watched those first two discs, and I dug the show.

But...

After the first 8 episodes, I was exhausted from crying, so I gave the show a long break. (Mock me if you must, but the nobler nature of Man moves me to tears, and I'm not ashamed of it. So nyah!) Plus, I think there was other stuff that I was more excited about at the time.

But this last 2 years, my paranormal research and investigation got me thinking about the show again. Particularly when I started working on my own fictitious paranormal story. Just how did Ghost Whisperer manage to tell believable, true-to-real-life-accounts stories week after week? I kept running into walls with my paranormal novel because real-life paranormal events might be scary for, like, 5 seconds, but not for 21 chapters! I have a great deal more sympathy for writers of Supernatural Horror, because real-life ghosts just aren't that scary. (Unless you've never experienced one before and/or firmly believe they don't exist; then they can be quite frightening, I'm told.)

Also, my paranormal studies have sort of given way to more metaphysical topics lately. You read everything out there about ghosts and paranormal investigation, and you're eventually going to run out of books for a while -- until they write some more. Plus, everything you learn in fact-based paranormal research is going to lead you to ask tons of questions that, currently, only faith-based research offers possible answers for.

So, when this desire to pick Ghost Whisperer hit me again, I had a little extra money, and Walmart had a (marginal) sale on Seasons 3 & 4. So I bought them.

And I dug them!!!

Well, I prefer Season 3 to 4 -- and if you've seen the show, you can probably guess why.

Btw, SPOILER ALERT!!!

I don't plan on giving away any specific spoilers, but I'm feeling lazy, so I'm going to write this as though you've already seen more of the show than I am.

So if you haven't seen the first 4 (of 5) seasons of Ghost Whisperer and intend to watch it, please turn away now for your own entertainment safety!

So anyway, Season 3 is a bit more Horror-y, kind of. And Season 4 is good, too, but I was a bit bugged by what they did to Jim (her husband).

Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Jay Mohr was a frickin' regular on the series by Season 3!!! How cool is THAT?!! I've always loved that guy and felt he was underrated as both and actor and a comedian! I mean, people who know who he is love him and give him credit, but many people don't know who he is.

After finishing Season 4, I went online to see how much it would cost to pick up the first 2 seasons, and saw that they cost more than what I got the 3rd & 4th seasons for! :(

So I took another Ghost Whisperer hiatus.

But this hiatus turned out to be blissfully brief! Maybe a month and a half after I finished season 4, Walmart had the first 2 seasons on sale for $20 each!!! :D YAY!!! I could own almost the entire series! (I don't know if 5 is out yet, but I haven't seen it.)

Also, Season 3 was a bit disappointing because it apparently went to air around the time of the Writer's Strike; it only had 18 episodes instead of 22. So the fact that Seasons 1 & 2 were both pre-strike (and each contained at least 22 episodes) AND were both before the Thing-That-The-Writers-Did-To-Jim was more cause for cheering!

But I didn't immediately hop back into the series. Not because I was adverse to going backwards, chronologically, but I've spent the past couple of weeks immersed in books. I tore through Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest by Christopher Balzano, Witness to Roswell, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up, The 30-Second Commute, Jay Mohr's memoir of his 2-years on Satyurday Night Live called Gasping for Airtime, and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. At the moment, I'm only reading Messages: The World's Most Documented Extraterrestrial Contact Story by Stan Romanek, so I've got some free time to get back into the show.

I pretty much went through Discs 3 & 4 this week after work a couple of mornings. So I finished up Discs 5 & 6 yesterday and today.

Which puts me on Season 2.

I watched what I thought was the first 2 episodes of season 2 and was curious that the writers didn't do more with Season 1's cliff-hanger. They just breezed past it! Which was more realistic, I thought, but it seemed uncharacteristic: I tried to get Brian to watch Season 3 right after I bought it, thinking he would dig on the ghost-story like gangbusters, and would probably appreciate the spiritual aspect of the show; but he was immediately bored because the first episode of the 3rd season was a "clean-up" episode, where they untangled the continuity knots that Season 2's cliff-hanger had created. (Most of the show was a good, stand-alone episode, but Brian had had a long day at work, and the way the episode started just made him feel like there was tons he had missed out on. So he passed out. He still hasn't seen a full episode. Also, he may be a bit turned-off because I warned him that every episode made me cry, and I don't think my brother is quite as unabashed about crying as I am. We're Texas boys, after all.)

So anyway, I was a bit pleasantly surprised that the writers had simply glossed over a cliff-hanger maneuver that could so easily be turned into a high-drama episode or two. (Particularly after what they did to Jim in Season 4!)

THEN...Jay Mohr's character, Dr. Payne, walks into Melinda's shop and says "Remember me?" and I'm wondering if maybe he had shown up in one of the first 2 discs of season 1 (which I watched years ago)!

So I went to Wikipedia.org to read about his character, and discovered that he had, indeed, been introduced in Season 2. Introduced.

Also -- and this should have been a dead giveaway -- Camryn Manheim's character Delia was just part of the cast all of a sudden! I mean, there was a place for her character to fit into the cast -- one that had been made very apparent by the end of Season 1 -- but it it had sort of been implied that over the course of the summer, the character had slipped in and now she was there. I've watched enough TV and movies to fill in the blanks for myself, but writers usually make some sort of a deal out of the introduction of new characters. (Still, to my credit and the credit of the writers, the thing they changed about the show at the end of Season 1, they did with a great deal of skill and subtlety!!! They didn't spoon feed us, their audience, they gave us credit for being able to follow along! it was really impressive!!!)

But when Dr. Payne walked in -- for the first time in the series, I thought -- and started talking to Melinda as though he were referencing events in a previous episode, I had to wonder if I had somehow missed some episodes, or maybe I was watching...

I checked the DVD case...

The brain-trust that designed the DVD cases used an efficient, no-waste design in which both covers of the case held a single DVD. No wasted plastic, very "green". BUT, they chose to put Disc 1 where you expect the DVD to be on regular one-disc DVD cases (you open it up like a book, and the disc is on the right side, attached to the "inside back cover", if you will, because the "inside front cover" doesn't have a place to hold a disc) and they placed Disc 2 on the "inside front cover". But this is stupid, in my opinion, because Westerners read left-to-right. So we're going to assume that the disc that's on the left is the first disc in the series of 2!

In other words, I had popped in Disc 2.

So now I'm going to watch Disc 1, which means I'm probably going to have to sit through at least 45 minutes of untangling-the-cliffhanger-mess before they settle into the Season 2 normal-episode groove.

I mean, it will all be worth it. I know I like episodes 5 & 6, because I already watched them, lol. But that Episode 1 mess...blah.

The lesson: Don't do season-ender cliffhangers, kids! I know logic dictates that this will ensure your audience follows you to the next season, but it's really just a waste of story time! Check out Buffy Season 7: Joss had a 3-episode arch, with the 3rd- and 2nd-to-last episode BOTH being cliffhangers, and then the last episode just being one long Climax! THAT is how you do a fulfilling cliffhanger! Ratchet up the suspense within the season, and then send your audience off into the summer hiatus talking about how great your show is, not "what's going to happen next year?" Next year?!! Screw that noise! The Batman sitcom in the 1960s had a cool idea: The wrap-up to the cliffhanger occurred that same week! You didn't even have to wait 7 days to find out what happens next!

I know, I know: I watch TV shows on DVD so what the hell am I complaining about?

I dunno, really. I just have a long-standing grudge against season-ender cliffhangers, going all the way back to Star Trek: The Next Generation. It feels like insecure storytelling to me. It's not real storytelling, because -- as I said -- the first episode of next season is less about telling a great story and more about untangling the needless mess you created at the end of last season and getting the show back on track. It's a waste of my time. You could be telling me a GOOD story instead (rather than an obligatory story).

The-Thing-They-Did-With-Jim happened within the season, PLUS I felt like they were earning something. They made a very creative choice -- I didn't like it, but maybe the actor, David Conrad, was getting board with his character or something -- and then the writers eanred the right to keep the actor on the show. We wanted something to happen, story-wise, and it was something that shouldn't be allowed to happen by story logic. So the writers had to put the characters, the world, and us through a lot of emotional turmoil to make this story-thing happen, and that makes sense to me. In all the Indiana Jones movies, Indy fails; but the writers (and the characters) put up such a heroic fight that by the end of the flicks, we don't mind that Indy didn't achieve his goal: We're just happy he made it out alive!

But these season-enders are, I feel, just page-filling. Harve Bennett said that Star Trek III: The Search For Spock practically wrote itself, because Spock was dead, we wanted him back, the Klingons new about the destructive potential of the Genesis devise, so there ya go! The moment we, the fans, discovered that the Klingon's new about Genesis' destructive potential, we could have written Star Trek III. I think Bennet and Nimoy and company did a splendid job with the flick, so I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out that if I hadn't been 13 when ST III came out, I might have been bored with the story.

I am now 39 (soon to be 40), have studied writing for 18 years, and "clean-up" episodes seem like a needless waste of time.

Stay in school, don't do drugs, and don't write season-ender cliffhangers, kids!

Okay, I have now bitched about season-ender cliffhangers for as long as it would have taken me to watch the damned Season 2 clean-up episode and get on with the good stuff, so I'm going to stop now.

SOME EXCITING NEWS:

I'm broke this week, but Brian is willing to take us to see Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D Sunday!!! :D WOO-HOO!!!

Also, my daughter turns 20 today!!! I don't get to celebrate it with her, but I know she's going to have a good time! (Hopefully not too good a time.) ;P

You know, if you asked me how old I am, I feel like maybe 29 or 30. So there's this real disconnect for me about the fact I have an adult daughter. I mean, every year she gets cooler and easier to relate to, but i don't feel proportionately older. I remember as a teen watching the original Planet of the Apes and that joke about "Don't trust anyone over 30," but now that I'm significantly older than 30, the joke seems pointless to me. (Plus, Heston was 45 when he delivered the line.)

Okay, so it's getting late, so I should stop rambling and get back to the clean-up episode so I can move on to the rest of Season 2. (I usually eat my vegetables before I even start on my steak, just to get them out of the way.)

I hope your weekend is FILLED WITH LAUGHTER!!!

:D

There is Something WRONG with Nathan Fillion!

2010-09-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

I know, I know "You like him so much, why don't you just marry him?" right?

But Nathan Fillion fascinates me!

It's been WAY too long since my last dose of Catsle, and Hulu has been bombarding me with clips and teases for Season 3 (so close, yet so far away!), so I popped in Season 1 on DVD and watched the first 6 episodes, then I went back and listened to the audio commentary on episodes 1 and 5, and on Episode 5, at the end, Jon Huertas claims to be playing the guitar for that kickass theme music they have, and actress Molly Quinn picks up the joke and claims that she whistled on the track.

If you listen to enough DVD commentaries, you hear this type of thing: The artists doing the commentary jokingly claim to have performed other tasks, and it always gets a laugh out of me!

But just the split-second after Molly says "I whistled," Fillion declares "Through her nose."

WHY?!

If you've seen the show, you know that Molly C. Quinn (Castle's daughter) is a gorgeous young woman. And the way she plays Alexis Castle makes you either want to call your daughter and just tell her you miss her, or if you don't have a daughter you just want to go out and have one immediately! She's just smart and fun and funny, extremely lovable!

So Jon makes his joke, which catches you off guard and makes you chuckle; then Molly makes her joke, which is funnier because she's lying about having performed a lesser musical task; but then Nathan comes in and thrusts the mental image of this beautiful young redhead whistling through her nose into your mind!

Again, WHY?!

My brother is the same way: You make a joke, and then he immediately tops your joke with an entire run on the subject that create the most ghastly mental images, until you can't breath because you're laughing so hard!

There's this perverse part of me that wants to be envious and resentful of the man who is Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Caleb, Bill Pardy, Dr. Pomatter, Alex Tully, Captain Hammer, Steve Trevor, and now Richard Castle...enough, already! Shouldn't there be a ceiling on how many iconic characters an actor gets to play in a career?!

But it's that "Ferris Bueller" thing I mentioned in an earlier blog entry: How can you begrudge the seemingly unending fun of a guy who's life's mission seems to be to make sure you're having as much fun as he is?!

I think maybe Nathan Fillion figured out, as a young child, that this world is filled with unimaginable amounts of fun, but that most of us will never have the balls to go out there and enjoy most of it. So he made it his mission to have enough fun for the rest of the world (the entire planet!) and be sure to take every opportunity to share all that fun with us!

He's like the opposite of a sin-eater: Instead of taking away out sins by taking them into himself, Fillion takes as much pure joy into himself as possible, then spreads it out to as many of us as he can reach! He's a fun-spewer! That's what his is!

Nathion Fillion, Fun-Spewer! New, from HASBRO!

OMG, when is Castle gonna start up again?!! :P

Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow

2010-08-30T01:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished my first Hidden Object Game -- Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow!!! :D It was cool!

I hadn't really played a Hidden Object Game before, so my closest frame of reference was the Where's Waldo? books from the late 1980s. Except that once you find an object in the game, the object disappears after you click on it, so you don't accidentally find it again.

(Note: Half a second of researched reminded me that Where's Waldo? was actually originally Where's Wally? as the creator/illustrator, Martin Handford, is British. Just in case my sweety's reading this, I want to give her -- and any other non-US readers -- a frame of reference.)

I really enjoyed the Where's Waldo? books, because they not only provided puzzles to be solved -- puzzles that always yielded to dogged, relentless perseverance (my favorite kind of puzzles) -- but also each image (which, itself, told a story) provided the viewer with any number of micro-stories within the macro story. Like those tiny illustrations in a Sergio Aragones did outside or in between the panels of Groo the Wanderer!

The Sleepy Hollow game wasn't as deft at storytelling as Arogones or Handford, but it was a lot of fun, none the less!!! Whoever composed those images was kind of genius (and kind of a bastard, too, cheating as they did from time to time), but the games has a system of "Hints" that you can collects, so that you can accrue Hints throughout the game that help you find some of those less-clever, more-diabolical hidden objects.

If I were trying to write a review for Amazon.com, I would be less honest and probably write something like this:

I gave the game five stars but it doesn't deserve them. It only took me nine and a half hours to finish the game what a jip! The artwork is amazing and the levels are challenging and that music really provides a cool atmosphere while your [sic] searching for the items and once or twice the voice of the headless horseman made me wet myself but I'm not going to admit that to you because I want you to think I'm cooler than I suspect I really am and did I mention that I solved the game fast? Grammar is for wimps.

Something like that. (I sometimes suspect that sites like IMDb and Amazon must have de-editors: persons who are employed to go through all reviews written and make sure they don't contain an overabundance of proper grammar, spelling or punctuation (which falls within the purview of grammar, I know, but punctuation on the Net sucks and I don't believe I can emphasize that quite enough).)

[I know: I like to use parenthesis a lot, but I believe you will find that my use of it is grammatically correct.]

This weekend I also watched The Losers with my brother, spent a day in bed, ill, and also watched Death Race! great fun! (Except the being ill part. Nothing to worry about, just a mild infection of the gum on one side of my mouth where I've had a root canal and crown. Never -- so far -- lasts longer that 24 hours, and I'm good now.) Brian just bought this HUGE big-screen TV (I believe he said it was 32 inches) and, luckily, Netflix had just sent us a few Action flicks! And they were both AWESOME!!! :D It was like seeing these movies in the cinema!!! :D

I also finished reading this book called Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government's Biggest Cover-Up, which firmly lifted me off the proverbial fence and set me down on the side of the certainty that extraterrestrials crashed outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947, and the United States government (or, parts of it) retrieved the craft and the bodies!

AWESOME book!

Skeptics of the paranormal decry that if there are these strange things going on in the world -- ghosts, UFOs, cryptids (cryptozoological animals), etc. -- where's the proof? Well, as far as the issue of extraterrestrials visiting our planet is concerned, Witness to Roswell is the proof! Using the same standards of proof that the United States Justice System uses to send a human to be executed (or not) for his/her alleged crime, the authors Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt provide a preponderance of evidence -- as well as a staggering amount of evidence -- intended to cast "a shadow of a doubt" upon the 4 official explanations that "debunk" the Roswell incident as mundane.

When I say this book floored me, please understand that I "hunt ghosts". I have recorded numerous inexplicable voices and sounds, and thrown them out as possible evidence because a skeptic could possibly concoct mundane "explanations" for them.

AUTHOR'S RANT:

No kidding, in the attic of an historical building, I recorded what sounded exactly like an old-time radio or TV news broadcast! I am a huge fan of OTR, and I have worked for TV stations that broadcast the local news since 1995, so I am uniquely versed in the speech patterns of news broadcasters from the 1940s-1960s and 1990s-2010s. Watch Good Night, and Good Luck and then watch Dateline and/or your local news, and you will see that there is a cadence that news anchors and reporters adopt or affect that is vastly different starting around or during the 1980s. This EVP -- and it is an EVP, even though we decided not to present it to the client -- was maybe 2 minutes long, in this droning male voice using the same cadence of speech as a 1960s newscaster reading a news story! There is no other sound like it, and no reporter or news anchor nowadays uses that same cadence (no one anywhere does; it's a wholly unnatural way of speaking)!

Then to top it off, there were no TVs in the building that the recorder could have picked up on. And if there were a radio in the building, we never once heard it turned on over the course of 2 investigations. AND, if it HAD been turned on, it would have had to been tuned to an OTR NEWS STATION to produce the sounds that this recorder recorded! (Because, as I have emphasized before, no newscaster uses that cadence anymore, not even NPR, or BBC News.)

So I remain convinced that I recorded the sounds of the Past on my RCA digital recorder. Maybe it was a radio news broadcast from the 1960s or earlier, maybe it was a TV news broadcast from the 1970s or earlier, but it wasn't mundane or natural.

AND YET...

And this is the important part...

When my fellow investigators voted to chuck it as evidence -- after I put up a minor fight, of course, explaining my reasoning as eloquently as possible -- I obliged. Because when a skeptic (read "cynic") can explain away your "evidence" it isn't really evidence.

END OF RANT.

My problem with the Roswell incident is in my ability to imagine the events of the 4th of July weekend and beyond.

Early on, I heard a theory, liked it, and bought into it. Aliens crashed at Roswell; cool!

But then I hear someone else speak -- someone who claimed to be a witness of some sort -- but they didn't fit into my understanding of the events. And after a while, there were so many "eye witnesses" and they were claiming all kinds of (seemingly) tangential events that my mental construct of the events couldn't hold them all.

"Okay, I can imagine a nurse at the base seeing the aliens, but who is this woman who claims to have been a girl who visited the site? I remember one boy and one girl, so how could this other girl have been there and gotten a piece of the memory metal? Wha--?!"

I have to admit: It became easier, after a while, to simply believe the skeptics. "The reports claim that a boy and a girl were at the site, so where did this other girl come from all of a sudden?"

My problem (and theirs) was one of scope.

My mental image of the Roswell incident was, I am embarrassed to admit, formed largely by movies and "dramatic recreations" of the events. My mental image was limited to the 5 to 15 minutes any given visual entertainment medium could allot it. I didn't pursue books on the subject, so if it didn't fit into a movie or a podcast, I wasn't exposed to it. And if it could be squeezed into a podcast, but it didn't fit into my pre-conceived timeline, then it was easier for me to take the skeptic's way out. "I dunno, maybe something happened there, but it might not have been an extraterrestrial crash."

So then Mr. Carey and Mr. Schmitt compile their decades of research into a coherent timeline that even I can follow and DAMN!!!

Seriously, if I weren't already a believer in the possibility of alien visitation, I would be now!

AWESOME book!

OH! And I watched this great documentary called What On Earth? Inside the Crop Circle Mystery!!!

The documentary isn't really about the UFO phenomenon at all. It examines the circles themselves, asking more metaphysical questions presented by the appearance of inexplicable crop circles. For instance, if they are from any non-human means, why are they being left?

Now, first you have to get over the question of the apparent "debunk" back in the early 1990s that 2 English dudes created all the crop circles since the 1970s, but I believe the documentary handles that question nicely.

Once past that, you get to ponder the really cool questions and ramifications.

Wow, I guess I've had a pretty full weekend for someone who spend a whole day sleeping, lol.

So here's to an even cooler week! May yours surprise you with an embarrassment of abundance!!!

:D

IT'S BEEN 4 YEARS NOW!!!

2010-08-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

On this day 4 years ago, Gnomey agreed to be my RL girlfriend!!! :D

What do I mean by "RL girlfriend"?

If you weren't reading my blog 4 years ago, you may not know that my brother Brian and I spent 2005 in SecondLife. Before that, I had spent my non-working time writing, playing videogames, and watching movies.

Actually, the writing-thang has been my main avocation since 1998. I chose a job that allows me time to think and daydream and imagine during my shift and pays me little enough to keep me motivated to switch careers as soon as I figure out how to get into writing as a career. But the downside of devoting my life to writing is that I developed an acute lack of any actual LIFE. I couldn't afford to go out with friends, and I certainly couldn't afford to date (chicks, apparently, prefer not to eat Jack in the Box or Taco Bell when they're on a date), so my social interaction consisted of email/phone conversations with my friends, workplace interactions and my relationship with my brother/roommate.

Then we learned about SecondLife, and that changed things! The interface is like a First-Person Shooter, but everyone in-world is a REAL PERSON somewhere on the planet! PLUS, if you owned land, you could CREATE YOUR OWN ENVIRONMENT! So imagine you could create your own videogame for yourself! You want to be in a haunted ghost town? Then you make it! You want to be in the jungle? Go make it! Wild West? Get busy!

Or, you could just wander around the hundreds of environments others have created, meeting people or hanging out with friends.

I've published too many posts on the wonders of SL already, and this entry isn't about that.

The most important person I ever met, however, (aside from my daughter, when she was born) I met in SL: MY GNOMEY-GODDESS!!! :D I met this smart, funny, kind, caring, fun-loving, adventurous woman in SL and got to know her, then developed a crush on her, and then one day she told me she had a crush on ME! Then very quickly we became bf/gf in-world, then very quickly after that we began talking on the phone and emailing and video-chatting as RL (or "Real Life") bf/gf, and when SecondLife stopped working on her computer and she couldn't go in-world anymore, I re-joined the "real world".

It's been an interesting ride, so far! For a year or so we video-chatted or voice IM-ed every day, but then my life got crazy, then her life, and we don't get to chat daily anymore. But I love her as much as I ever have, and seems to still tolerate me, lol. ;P

And today we've been a couple for 4 YEARS!!! :D

We don't get to do anything particularly splashy to celebrate because she's busy taking care of stuff that isn't my story to tell. But she wished me a happy early-anniversary yesterday and then wished me happy anniversary today! :)

And I just want to say, God bless you, sweety, for continuing to put up with me this long! ;P

It's been a while since I've blogged, so I'll give you a quick update on what I've been up to.

Um...there's work.

And writing.

Brian's & my mom has been recommending this TV show for a few years now: Two and a Half Men. We finally Netflix-ed it, and we've spent this weekend watching it. I literally started Friday morning, after I got off work, and have been watching it since. (It's 4:02pm Saturday afternoon as I type this.) We had already seen Season 1, so I started with Season 2 and am almost done with the 1st disc of Season 3 at the moment. (I took a break to sleep, then do some writing.)

On the writing front, I may have discovered the first (and perhaps ONLY) FREE online screenwriting course!!!

I had reached a wall in the development of the novel I'm working on, so i was looking for inspiration, and I came across Steven Barnes Free Writing Class! It's a 9-week course that he encourages you to download all at once, and then do the work week by week.

I read through the first 2 lessons in 30 minutes (each lesson is 3 or 4 pages long) and I did the assigned homework for Week 1 when I woke up a couple of hours ago.

I really dig it so far!

The lessons are short, but packed with concepts! If you've never studied writing or screenwriting before, you may want to do some additional reading in order to fully appreciate many of these concepts. But it's a simple and direct method (from what I've read so far, anyway) so the additional reading may not be necessary at all. (I started studying writing in 1992, so I don't really remember the questions I had back then or how much I could have or could not have comprehended.) I'm sure that taking his UCLA course would be much more instructive since you would be hearing his explain each of these concepts in detail, but who knows: If I had access to this free online course in 1992 (before the World Wide Web existed) I might have been working as a writer for well over a decade by now!

So anyway, I'm sort of starting back up from scratch with my novel. I'm not ignoring the work I've done, but I using it and adding to it as the class dictates.

And once I sell my novel (and probably a screenplay or a couple more novels, realistically) I will buy a house, then go get Gnomey and drag her over here to the States! And with luck, maybe we can celebrate our 5th anniversary TOGETHER!!! :D

I hope you are enjoying your weekend, and that your week is delightful, too!!!

:D

P.S. Did anyone catch the meteor shower? Friday morning, between 5:00am and 5:30am I climbed up onto the roof of the TV station I work at (my shift was done and there wasn't anything for me to do but ride out the clock) and saw 3!!!

The first I saw was this really fast-moving flash of gold that streaked across the sky and then vanished.

The second was and intensely bright white ball that appeared to cork-screw into the Earth's atmosphere and then disappear. But it left a sort of com trail that faded slowly from vision.

Then the third was what you think of when you imagine a meteor, the tiny falling star.

It was AWESOME!!! :D

HAPPY 4th OF JULY!!!

2010-07-04T23:02:00.000-07:00

I'm having the bestest, most awesomest 4th in years!!! :D

My bro' & I are watching a DVD of fireworks displays while listening to John Williams' Star Wars scores! (Specifically, we lined up the End Titles from each of the 6 movies and are listening to a sort of sampling of all the main themes from each movie, back-to-back. The way the music and the fireworks displays line up at times is profound!)

Brian got home from work around 9:30pm, and I was about halfway through The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (which is a magnificent flick!!!), so we watched the rest of that together, then went out on the porch and watch some of our neighbors perform their own fireworks shows.

This year, our neighbors weren't quite as enthusiastic as in previous years. And the ones that went all-out were obscured by trees. :(

But Brian pulled out some firecrackers he had left over, so we amused ourselves for an hour or so by hurling Blackcats and Cracker Balls off our balcony. It was pretty cool. :)

Then, after Brian waited a bit too long to throw one Cracker Ball -- resulting it in igniting in his hand, so that he had to throw it downward, so that it exploded as it passed the bottom two apartments, entirely too close for comfort.

After that, we came inside and started the fireworks DVD. ;)

But I'm having such an AMAZING time I just had to blog about it!

I hope your 4th was really, really awesome, too!!!

:D

MST3K ON HULU!!!

2010-06-29T21:09:00.000-07:00

That's right: If you live in America and can watch streaming online video, LIFE JUST GOT BETTER!!!

The amazing and wonderful and hysterical Mystery Science Theater 3000 is NOW ON HULU!!!

The timing of this is a bit odd for me because I have been watching MST3K DVDs for a month or so lately. Netflix has a great selection of them, plus I own several of them already. And after several weekends of MST3K, my li'l bro' and I (naturally) moved onto Cinematic Titanic DVDs and RiffTrax (both the MP3s that you listen to while you watch your DVDs, and the DVDs they have available, too, because Netflix has some of them and because I bought some of them recently)!

So to log into Hulu and find that they are now carrying MST3K was AWESOME!!! So now I might be able to watch some of those flicks that weren't released in the DVD collections! (I'm still dying to see Time of the Apes! I have a bootleg from their KTMA days, but I never saw the Comedy Central version, and Netflix doesn't have it.)

Also, if you're a fan of Shawn of the Dead, you can watch the BBC series that first introduced us to the genius of Simon Pegg and Edgar Weight: Spaced!!! :D Edgar wasn't a writer on the show, it was written by Pegg and co-star Jessica Stevenson, but you can totally see how the comedic collaboration on Series 1 & 2 of Spaced evolved into the cinematic genius of and Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz! The TV show has that same irreverent, frenetic sensibility of the flicks that would come later. :D

Sad news for my Gnomey-Goddess, though: It appears that Hulu can only be accessed in the States. :(

I had mentioned it to her a couple of times, but she didn't seem to know what it was, then I recently read something (it may have been the Wikipedia entry) that said that Hulu was limited to the U.S., which is a bummer. There is so much GOODNESS on there, we should share it with the world!!!

But then, I supposed that would compromise distribution rights (or something boring like that).

And that's kind of a shame, because I would like nothing more than to maybe Skype my Gnomey and set up a date night where we both watched an MST3K together or something! (Nerd? Me?)

Still...my little world just got a bit brighter! :)

And I hope yours will, too!

MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, FTW!!!

Ray Jay's Vacation Blog!!!

2010-06-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

Day 1:

Dear Vacation Diary,

My vacation is going ever so swell!!! :D

Actually, I started celebrating Sunday! I got a text from my Gnomey-Goddess!!! (She loves me, by the way.) Then Sunday night, after I had woken up a bit, I continued the celebration in earnest with some RiffTrax Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope and Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Very funny stuff!

Then I woke up tonight (Monday night) as late as I please, and started in on some RiffTrax Jaws!!!

Brian got home and I chatted with him a bit, and now I have the option of finishing Jaws, watching Rifftrax take on Tron or watching their take on Jurassic Park!

Seriously, RIFFTRAX!!!

Okay, one superwonderfulamazing thing about RiffTrax is that you get the MST3K experience with big-budget movies!

Which is cool enough!!!

But another fantasticalicious aspect of the RiffTrax experience is that it takes those DVDs you've watched over and over again (until every scene you watch simply reminds you what's going to happen 3 scenes from now) and turns them into a new viewing experience!!!

I don't think I would ever listen to RiffTrax in a cinema, because it would be impossible for me to stifle my laughter at wildly inappropriate moments for the rest of the audience (who paid their money to watch the film as the filmmakers intended)! (Plus, the first 15, or so, times I watch a movie, I prefer to have the experience the filmmaker intended.)

But I think RiffTrax is an AMAZING way to get more use out of the movies you've already watched a bazillion times!

For instance, I read Jurassic Park back in 1991, not long after it came out. The buzz for the movie started a year or so before the flick was released; people who hadn't even read the book were going "Stephen Spielberg and dinosaurs?!! I'm so there!!!"

Then I saw the movie in the cinemas 3 or 5 times, because I just couldn't get enough of it! (Plus, this was back when movies stayed in cinemas for months and months if they were making decent money.)

Then, when the flick came out on VHS, I (and everyone else) snapped it up and watched it dozens of times. They produced so many copies of the VHS that after a couple of years, you could get a free copy in your breakfast cereal.

Then we switched over to DVD, and I distinctly remember that the major impetus for my finally (begrudgingly) buying a DVD player -- and rebuilding my considerable film library from scratch again -- was this specific set of Jurassic Park and Lost World: Jurassic Park that included the CD soundtracks to both films! (I had only recently bought my first CD player because you couldn't get Delerium's Karma on cassette.)

So that was another couple dozen viewings of Jurassic Park.

I ended up having to pawn $500 worth of DVDs in the early 2000s to make rent one month, and I lost that set. But then a few years ago they released another set, this one including Jurassic Park III (which I had missed when it was in the cinemas)!

So there's another 5 or 6 viewings of JP!

Now, when I want the Jurassic Park experience, I'll pretty much replay the movie in my mind or reread the book. (Although, I've read that book so many times I have it more or less memorized, too. But I still re-read it every year or so because it has scenes that haven't made it into any of the 3 films, yet.)

HOWEVER...

For a mere $3.99, I can download an MP3 that makes the movie a brand new thing for me!!!

How wicked-awesome is THAT?!! :D

AND...

If you've taken a couple of days off from work to relax and enjoy yourself (but you're not rich enough fly somewhere, or even go meet your friends fro dinner or a movie or something) (and, you know... you keep vampire hours and your day begins when your friends are settling down to dinner, and continues on while they're asleep), you can enjoy enjoy a fun double- or triple-feature with some of your MST3K friends!!!

Hmm...

I fear that last paragraph made me sound the slightest bit pathetic...

Anyway...

Okay, so that's what I'm going to do now. I think I'll finish Jaws, then probably move on to the dinosaurs, then wrap it up with Tron.

Sounds like a plan.

PARTY!!!

:D

Cheese, Glorious CHEESE!!! :D

2010-06-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is, but I like me some B-Movies!!!

I think part of it is that since B-Movies can't rely on star power, they rely on genre. So people might not, say, watch a movie just because it stars Greg Evigan, but they might watch it because it's a Sci-Fi/Horror flick. (Or because it has a dinosaur on the movie poster/DVD cover, which means it's a Sci-Fi/Horror flick.)

Another aspect may be that since they don't have the money to give special effects or monsters much screen time, they have to fill those frames with character.

One more aspect: A major studio production wants to get as many people watching their films as possible, so they may "soften" or dilute any ideas that might prove too provocative or controversial for the mainstream. But low-budget flicks know they're not going to have many viewers, and their films cost so little to make that they don't need many; so they don't shy away from controversial or provocative ideas, and let their audiences find them.

Bottom Line: I think the well-meaning B-Movies have to try harder. And I guess that's part of what draws me to them from time to time.

Part.

The rest is... I don't know! Some of my fondest memories are of TV mini-series -- like the original V and it's sequel mini-series V: The Final Battle and Stephen King's IT and Stephen King's The Stand! Then there were these classic made-for-TV movies like Dark Night of the Scarecrow and Duel! I guess -- particularly when I was younger, and couldn't necessarily go to see every movie I wanted to -- I liked the fact that some "big events" were willing to come to me. And then, as I got older and fell in love with filmmaking, maybe I saw similar traits in some of these schlocky old B-Movies that (before the straight-to-VHS, and later straight-to-DVD markets) were made to go straight to the drive-ins, or before that -- during the days of doubles features in cinemas -- the movies that showed after the animated shorts, news reels and this week's installment of the current serials or chapter-plays, and before the Main Attraction (or the A-Movie). The low-budget films always seemed to be trying a little harder to surprise you and shock you.

But that's all retcon. I don't know, for sure, what my primal draw is to these red-headed stepchildren of the Hollywood hierarchy.

I just know that when they're done well -- when the filmmakers are really trying to do their job right -- these things can be a genuine pleasure to watch!

Now, not all low-budget movies are created equal, mind you.

There are the H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds out there, "knockbuster" hack jobs that seem to the viewer to be an exercise for the filmmakers in what it might be like if they really were filmmakers. These movies leave the audience feeling ripped-off, like someone tricked them into wasting their money/time. A viewer gets the impression that the filmmakers are either the victims of guileless incompetence, or are maliciously callous confidence "artists" (no pun intended there) who want to make money, regardless of who suffers.

The above category isn't just for knockbusters, either. there are films like American Nightmare that aren't trying to cash in on anyone else' viral buzz, they're just inexperienced and/or unskilled. But the effect is the same. You just feel ripped-off and disappointed.

Then there are the Troma-type lazy low-budgets. I have a deep, dark pit of rage that seethes for filmmakers like this. By "Troma-like" I mean films that are ostensibly Comedy films shot on a low budget, making Farce out of film genres. The reason I hate these so passionately and so thoroughly is that I believe the term "Farce" is really just a mask for creative laziness and/or incompetence. I have only seen a handful of Troma films, so I'm not really talking about that studio specifically. (The few films of theirs I have seen definitely fall into this category, but since I haven't seen a majority of their work, it would be unfair to claim all or most of the filmmakers who work for the studio are equally cynical or incompetent.)

What I'm talking about is filmmakers who are afraid to stick their creative necks out and/or put in the time and effort required to compensate for their low budgets, and just slap together 90 minutes or so of mediocre-to-poor footage and call it a movie. Then they cynically cover their story holes and gaps in logic by throwing in some ineffectual slapstick, and claim the movie is a Farce.

Real Farce is incredibly smart and subtle, and takes even more creative effort than the genre or subject you're spoofing. It also possesses the same emotional satisfaction as the genre being spoofed. Easy jokes that fail to actually make the audience laugh, slapped in a series of random scenes poorly conceived, poorly acted and poorly shot do not make a Farce.

I suspect this category of "filmmaker" (they do make films, in the technical sense, but they are not the artists that real filmmakers are) possesses the technical and business savvy to collect the pay check, but they hide their creative insecurities behind a facade of "Comedy" -- if you don't really try, you can't fail, can you?

So when I talk about B-Movies, I'm not referring to hacks collecting a paycheck. I'm not talking about filmmakers who don't really care if audience enjoy their work, but just want to make money off us.

When I talk about B-Movies, and my love for them, I'm talking about the filmmaking underdogs, those cats who just never caught the breaks Spielberg, Lucas, Bay, Scorsese, Soderberg, Hitchcock, Hawks, or any of the number of directors or writers whose names you know caught, and so they do the job and get none of the acclaim (and just a sliver of the money) of their famous counterparts.

I'm talking about folks who love their job and try their hardest to make movies that audiences will have fun watching! The work horses! Not the American Dream, but the American reality!

THESE CATS ROCK!!!

AND... I find that I enjoy the fruits of their labors!

Granted, I'm more likely to hit Walmart at 12:01am to picks up a copy of Iron Man 2 instead of 100 Million BC, but that's just because Iron Man 2 has better press.

Which brings me back to why I wrote this entry...

This weekend is another weekend dedicated to hard paranormal work. I have hours and hours of audio and video to review by Monday morning. HOWEVER... my mom is in town this weekend, and this was the night she dedicated to seeing her boys! :) So I'll be a diligent psuedo-scientist Saturday and Sunday, but TONIGHT is for FUN! :D

And, for whatever reason, tonight I'm in the mood for some B-Movie goodness!!!

My day started with me waking up un-goddly early (I set my alarm for 4:00pm, shudder) so that I could hose my rocks off and have clothes on by 5:00pm.

But then the day got immediately fun when Mom picked Brian & me up and we went for a couple of hours of conversation and culinary orgasm to Red Lobster. (Say what you will about chain restaurants, but I have never had a less-than-excellent meal at Red Lobster!) (Shrimp Fettucini... Mmmmmmmmmm...)

When Mom dropped us off, I made a run to Walmart to buy a few essentials (so I don't have to leave my cave at all over the weekend), and to browse their DVD isles.

I wasn't looking for a mainstream release. I was looking for a knockbuster.

What I found was -- so far -- GOLD! For $5.00, they had a double-feature of Journey to the Center of the Earth and 100 Million BC!!! IT HAD DINOSAURS ON THE COVER!!! :D And they both star Greg Evigan!!! (My last memory of him was in the made-for-syndicated-TV movies based on William Shatner's TrekWar novels, and they had that fun, cheesey B-Movie feel to them!)

And did I mention...? $5!!! :D

There was also another DVD that intrigued me: It was called Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, and it occurred to me that SFX might be far enough along by now that even a low-budget movie may be able to pull off this type of slick by now! :)

I mean, it's gonna be bad, sure. But maybe it will be bad in that Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack way, right?

But this flick was, like, $7.50.

So I can drop $12.50 for all 3 movies, pay $7.50 for just the 1 movie, or pay a mere $5.00 and get 2 movies.

No contest, right?

I also bought this 2-disc DVD set of 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoons. It's like a sampler set with full episodes of the Mr. T show, Chuck Norris's show, the Ed Grim show and the like! I HAD TO buy this, also, because I knew Brian would flip out over it!

Brian has to be at work early tomorrow, so I got home, popped the first disc of the 80s Toons in and watched the first few episodes until he crashed. Then I retired to my room with the Asylum Double-Feature disc (the one with the dinosaurs on the cover!) and started watching.

I started with Journey to the Center of the Earth and I'm diggin' it, but I keep wondering about this Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus!

And then an idea hits me! "I wonder if Netflix has the movie in their Watch Now selection."

THEY DO!!!

So here's my plan for tonight:

1. Drink a lot of beer as I
2. watch Mega Shark Versus giant Octopus on Netflix,
3. then finish Journey to the Center of the Earth,
4. then watch 100 Million BC!!!

It's BRILLIANT, right?!! I'm an entertainment GENIUS!!! I should be getting paid a bazillion dollars a year to tell cable channels what to air on their stations!

That's my Friday Night!

I hope yours is actually cooler (if that's possible), and if it's not, make the rest of your weekend THE AWESOME-EST!!! :D

HAPPY TOWEL DAY 2010!!!

2010-05-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Do you know where your towel is?

32 years ago, Douglas Noel Adams gave us a most eccentric look at life among the stars! And today, WE CELEBRATE!!! :D

I have to admit that this Towel Day sort of snuck up on me. I didn't bother to take the day off or anything.

By lone (admittedly weak) means of celebrating has been to go to sleep listening to BBC's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Quandary Phase this morning, then listening to Douglas read Life, the Universe and Everything upon waking and on my way to work.

Soon, I need to really do the day up right. Like maybe next year. I'll take the day-of and the day-after off work, then figure out some cool thing to do with my bro to celebrate. It'll be a bit hard to figure something out, though -- I've reread every book Adams wrote, re-watched and re-listened to every version of Hitchhiker's Guide and Dirk Gently that are available numerable times. I'll have to think of some new activity that can be combined with a viewing of the movie or a listening of the radio series, maybe. Like, watching the move on my laptop while attempting to hitchhike across Austin? Or listening to the radio show in a cave?

Or something. I've got a year to figure it out.

Anyway, whether you celebrated Towel Day or not, I hope your day has been AWESOME!

And if not, make tomorrow SUPER-COOL!!! :D

Dad-Blamed TV Writers!!! :(

2010-05-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

BASTARD TV WRITERS!!!

I just watched the Season Finale of Castle and those cursed writers are leaving me dangling for the summer!!!

GGRRR!!!

I wanna be a little bitch here and name names:

First of all, from the quick online research I've done, the man to blame here is Andrew W. Marlowe. He's the guy credited with creating such lovable, fascinating character and placed them in such an addictive world. AND... that little bugger that wrote one of those heart-breaking, keep-you-squirming-until-next-fall-when-the-show-is-back-on-air Season Finales!!!

Heartless prick! :(

Do I realize I'm being petty and childish?

Yes, I do... And I realize that those of you with cable and TiVo and don't work at a TV station -- and thereby watch more TV than I do -- are saying, "Don't be such a wuss! Season Finales are always cliff-hangers!"

But dammit, the guy has created such an addictive world!!!

And, in particular, he has created one of those perfect and compelling Ross & Rachel/Tim & Dawn relationships -- dramatized by a couple of the most lovable actors in TV right now, no less -- that just makes you wanna see them together and happy!

And now he's given us ambiguity!!! :(

I mean, yeah, sure, most likely the first episode of Season 3 will resolve the ambiguity and we'll be right back on-course for another season of fun flirty and crime-solving, but still...

Call me a sissy, but I like a Season Finale that promises HOPE for the next season! Did you ever see the TV series of The Dresden Files? THAT gave you HOPE! The Mystery-of-the-Week was solved, and everything was okay, but then the coda for the episode hinted at the potential for even more fun romantic tension for the (theoretical) second season!

THAT is a GREAT Season Finale!

Cliff-hangers are weak sauce. They are insecure writing. They're like those Big Bosses at the end of some levels of video games that nigh-impossible to kill. The game creators are afraid that if the game is too easy you won't buy the next installment. But I don't buy Tomb Raider games for the challenge, I buy them for Lara Croft and the world of Tomb Raider! Same with TV series. I don't watch them because I 3 months of anxiety; I watch them because the stories and characters are awesome!

Seriously, if Castle hadn't ended with a cliff-hanger, would it really lose any viewers over the summer? For the reals?! Who watched Castle and thinks, "If only things were more tense and anxiety-giving"?

By the way, I don't want to let the Writer's Room slide here! Andrew W. Marlowe may be the creator and the guy credited with writing the script for "A Deadly Game" butTV shows aren't written in a vacuum. IMDb.com lists David Grae, Alexi Hawley, Will Beall, Elizabeth Davis, Terri Miller, Terence Paul Winter, René Echevarria, Moira Kirland, Jose Molina and Barry Schindel as writers for the show, and you know -- you know -- that all of them took devilish glee over how much they would make us squirm with this awful ending!!!

Bastards, one and all!

May they all feel guilt and shame for manipulating my emotions that way!

I mean "our". "Manipulating our emotions that way," is what I meant to type.

I'm not shaking my tiny fists at the heavens for on my own behalf... I'm standing up for all of us who love Detective Kate Beckett and Richard Castle and want to see them fall blissfully into bed together!

...

Okay, so maybe it's mostly about me... Say, 10% Me, 90% All Castle Fans.

Or maybe 40/60...

Maybe more 80/20, BUT STILL...

...it was mean of them, and I don't approve.

Will I stop watching the show out of principal?

NO FRAKKIN' WAY!!! I friggin' LOVE that show!!! I'm just bitter that I can't watch the next episode next week!

Castle is CLASSIC!!! (Did anyone else catch the fun little in-joke of Castle watching His Girl Friday on his laptop? GENIUS!) I mean, in a world of 24 and Battlestar Galactica how can you NOT love a frivolous little series wherein the mysteries get solved every week and the angst is kept to a minimum?!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the AMAZING writing of the above mentioned shows. But I'm just saying that life has plenty of drama in it, and I am thankful for folks who just want to entertain me for an hour or so! In my teens/20s, I really appreciated entertainment that dealt with Big Issues, and I still enjoy that in the 2-hour format of movies or the self-contained space of a novel. But if I want to be horrified by man's inhumanity to man, I'll watch a documentary or watch the news. Screw the news, actually --it doesn't really present a fraction of the entire story anymore -- if I want to deal with the Big Issues, I'll ask my friends what's going on in their lives! THERE lies the true drama of life on this physical plane!

And then there's the other extreme: Brainless sitcoms that don't make any sense unless you turn your mind off and just go with the less-than-logical story logic of the hack writers of the show. I hate those types of "entertainment".

So a show like Castle is just the right temperature for me: Smart, yet fun!

And if I'm honest, this season's finale could have been much worse. It's not like they killed Beckett or made Castle an outlaw or something.

Still...

I was having a wonderful time up until the very end of the episode.

And now I'm bitching about it.

And now I think I'm done.

Horror Flicks in Buffy-Town!!! :D

2010-05-22T09:06:00.001-07:00

I just watched George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead in Sunnydale's Sun Cinema!!!

:D

How did I get into the fictitious town of Sunnydale? Why, SecondLife, of course! :)

Someone just a bit nerdier than I am (well, maybe not nerdier, per se, but they certainly have more money than I do) bought a sim and recreated Buffy's stomping grounds.

The did a pretty good job, too!

They built Sunnydale High -- including the quad, the lounge, the library and other areas seen in the TV show -- and the Magic Box and the Bronze (though it's a restricted area, which doesn't make sense since the fictional Bronze is a public meeting place), AND the built a working cinema, where you can go and watch actual movies FREE!!!

And you can guess what's showing now!

It's a really lucky break for me, too, because I'm a HUGE fan of Romero's Dead movies, and I've been waiting forever to see this one! I was excited a couple of years ago when Diary of the Dead came out, and even more excited when I read that Romero was going to keep making them! Rebooting the franchise -- by the guy who STARTED the franchise, no less -- was a stroke of genius to those of us who can't get enough Romero-zombie action!

AND, these newer movies are better than the first ones! Not to be blasphemous, but let's be honest: Romero was learning his craft for the first 30 years.

I mean, I love Night of the Living Dead, but I believe anyone who is honest with themselves will admit that its production fell a bit short of its potential. Great story, EXCELLENT concept, decent film.

Then there was the classic Dawn of the Dead, which is a much better movie! The pacing feels quite slow by today's standards, but that's because it was made in the 1970s. Film pacing didn't pick up to the fevered pitch it is now until the 1990s.

But seriously, I've never really been a fan of Day of the Dead. Great title, and I was excited to see it just because it was the long-awaited sequel to Dawn, but in the end it was pretty dull. There were some intriguing ideas but forth in it, but the action was well bland and the story was pretty laborious (it was pretty much people in a bunker, talking, until the huge zombie kill-fest at the end).

In my opinion, the Dead series REALLY came alive (please pardon the pun) with Land of the Dead!!! Finally, the production matched the vision, and the film was brilliant!!!

The only problem with Land was the question of where the hell does Romero go from there?!

His answer? Sheer brilliance! Go back to the beginning! Start from Zero Hour and continue forward again.

AND, Romero decided to make the new batch of Dead films as an independent, like he did with Night! Dead flicks are about characters dealing with the loss of Society, so you really don't need a huge budget. Talented "no-names" can deliver their roles just as well as expensive stars! And the cost of special effects and special makeup effects have come way, way down in the last 2 decades! Back during Night and Dawn, Romero and Tom Savini and everyone were creating the Special Effects field! Now it's just another department, like wardrobe or props, on a production. And though there used to only be one Tom Savini, now there are generations who grew up learning from him! AND, they're entering the field with newer, easier and more effective (not to mention cost-effective) methods than what Savini had at his disposal! :D

So I thought Diary of the Dead was an awesome restart, and I was dying to see how Survival of the Dead would follow up...

My verdict? SUPERIOR!!! It's a great flick! Never boring! Fascinating! Scary, natch! :D

AND I GOT TO SEE IT IN SUNNYDALE!!! lol

That is, in my opinion, a really cool way to spend a couple of hours! It fed my freak-fix in so many ways! :D

May 2010 Is Starting Out GROOVY!

2010-05-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

This has been an AWESOME weekend!!!

First of all, my Gnomey Goddess has been a bit chattier this past week that she's been able to be recently. So the work week went by particularly pleasantly! (It's indescribably what getting a text from her in the middle of a shift is like! But it's a bit like Santa interrupting your work so he can deliver a huge, shiny package!!!) So it's not like I was miserable before this weekend arrived, lol. I was doing quite well! :D

And then my weekend started with a Payday Friday -- which is always just a little extra cool for me because I work 10-hour days, so at 6:00 am Friday morning, when everyone else is getting up to begin their last day of work, I'm beginning my weekend! And on paydays, that means I get off work and have money!

Now, that's night as glorious at it might at first sound, because I live a sort of Peter-Parker existence... I grew up on Spider-Man, and one of the things that drew me into the book was the fact that when he wasn't fighting super villains, the poor guy was just trying to pay his rent, lol. When you're 12 or 14 years old, that seems a great deal more romantic than it does when you're 39. ;P So on paydays, I don't really have money to blow; but when I'm lucky, I can pay most of what needs to be paid (like, say, rent, gas and food) and then maybe buy myself a treat.

I was lucky this week!!!

Filled up the car, bought enough food to last me until next paycheck... and then...

First, I bought AVATAR on DVD!

I got to see this in 3-D in the cinemas, but my poor brother did not. So it was super-exciting to be able to get Avatar so Brian could share the joy, too!!!

Next order of business: the A Nightmare On Elm Street remake!

When we were growing up, Brian & I were Horror movie fans. (We still are, but back then we were quite a bit more obsessive about it.) I was a huge Jason Voorhees fan, and Brian's guy was Freddy Krueger. One of my proudest moments as a brother was when I was able to score Brian a Special Edition Nightmare DVD Box Set (the one where the spines of all the movies make up a picture) as a present for Christmas or his birthday. (I don't recall now which.)

Brian, naturally, learned about this remake way before I did. He and I are much more open to the prospect of remakes than most guys our age. (We grew up in the 1970s & 1980s, when the term "remake" usually meant that someone took a great older movie, stripped out everything that made it a great film, then slapped it on screen with better effects and a lot less substance. But in this new millennium, anyone who is honest with themselves has to admit that the term "remake" often means "quality" in every way, including writing.) But when he discovered that Rorschach from Watchmen was the new Freddy, he got really excited about it. It's produced by Michael Bay (whose work I love with a passion and who, you may have noticed, produces BADASS Horror movie remakes)! Now, neither of us got to see the Friday the 13th remake in the theaters: we had to wait for DVD. So I was bound and determined to take my li'l bro to see this new Nightmare Opening Weekend -- Opening Night, if possible.

And why not? I'm off on weekends now, and when Brian works Fridays, it's usually early. So, conceivably, the only thing standing in the way is the money. (Believe it or not -- nowadays there are probably more who can believe it than who can't -- $20 can be a deal-breaker.)

But the Universe smiled upon us, and after paying for rent, food, gas and Avatar, this paycheck bought me 2 adult tickets to the 9:50 pm showing of Nightmare Friday night!!!

:D

And the flick was good!!!

It was largely a jump-scare movie (with loud noises forcing you unexpectedly out of your seat every 10 minutes), but the writing and acting and cinematography and everything was excellent! And even though us old folks have seen Robert Englund in the makeup for so long that the original Fred Krueger seem irreplaceable, Jackie Earle Haley (who has a bit of a serial-killer name himself, doesn't he?) masterfully steps in and reminds us that truly great actors can make a role their own. And the writing helped him out: This Fred Krueger is a little different than Mr. Englund's Krueger -- this guy is a dead-serious monster!

Now, the anti-remake movie nerds may argue, "Yeah, but Freddy is supposed to be funny, too!" But I don't believe they understood the character... In the first 2 or 3 movies -- and I was the age range the studio was marketing to when those movie first came out -- Freddy's humor was more disturbing: The fact that he was cracking jokes and enjoying what he was doing made him a deeply unsettling killer! This was a guy who, by all accounts, you just didn't want in your life! He killed kids for fun, and now he tortures you when you're most vulnerable -- in sleep -- AND if he hurts you in your dreams, it becomes reality in your waking life, too! AND THEN, he's enjoying himself!!!

I think the "humor" element in the later Nightmare films (I put "humor" in quotes because the gags never once made me laugh) was a result of unskilled filmmakers who misunderstood the character. (Robert Englund, I should note, can't be blamed because his job was to play whatever the writers gave him straight, and hope that the directors and editors knew what they were doing -- which they, increasingly, didn't.)

When filmmakers undertake to remake a classic, their job -- as I see it -- is to take all the elements that made the original a classic, remove the "cheese" factor of now-dated writing and special effects and acting (stuff that worked back-in-the-day but doesn't work for current audiences) and then try to take those elements that work a little farther. The folks who made this new Nightmare (particularly the writers), I feel, accomplished that in spades! They didn't muck around with any of the elements, just for the sake of "making it their own", but they did alter the character of Freddy just a hair, so that he can never again be mistaken for a Comic character. And I think that was genius! You want to make a Comedy about a serial killer? Go make a sequel to Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. (That flick is dying for a franchise! It's brilliant!) But unless something goes horribly wrong, people will never again go see a Nightmare sequel with the expectation of giggles. (Unless, you know... they are, themselves, seriously disturbed.)

I so did not intend this blog entry to be a movie review, lol.

So my point was this: BRIAN & I GOT TO SEE THE NEW NIGHTMARE FRIDAY!!! :D

WOO-HOO!!!

It was awesome!

Then we came home and unwound with some Avatar. (The movie is just as good with repeated viewings!)

Then, Saturday was always going to be great for me: Texas Spirits had an investigation scheduled!

That was cool, too!

The folks we investigated for were really nice people. You couldn't call their house small, lol, but there were fewer rooms than we've been investigating recently. So we had an intimate team of 3 of us, which made this investigation unique. (Doing anything in larger and smaller groups always changes the way an activity flows, so it was really neat experiencing how a group of 3 works! Typically, we are 4-6, but we're done investigations where all of Texas Spirits are with us, then we've got up to 20 guest investigators.)

The only thing particularly paranormal that happened last night was that my stomach became very chatty during the 2nd phase of our investigation, lol. (I woke up unusually early (for me) and so breakfast came around 4:00 pm (instead of around 8:00 pm, which is my norm) and so I got hungry a couple of hours into the investigation. Lesson learned.)

There was one room, in particular, that was interesting. I look forward to reviewing the video and audio we captured.

So Night 2 of my weekend: AWESOME! :)

Now I'm onto the last night of my weekend...

I woke up around 3:00 pm again, hungry. So I made some delicious food. I'm hoping Brian & I can see Iron Man 2 next Friday, so I watched the Behind-the-Scenes stuff on the Iron Man Bonus Disc again while I ate. And while I cooked, I listened to a Ghost Chronicles podcast (episode 89) featuring Frank Joseph, author of a ton of books exploring the history of Atlantis, including a book which just came in the mail Friday: The Atlantis Encyclopedia -- if you've ever read a book about Atlantis and thought that some of the archeological evidence was interesting but that the theories the author came up with seemed far-fetched, The Atlantis Encyclopedia is for you! It is an astoundingly comprehensive examination of the evidence, and simply offers the theories as just that: theories. It's not trying to sway you, just show you (in great detail) the data that is out there.

I was hoping to stay awake until at least 6:00 am, to get my sleep schedule back on track for tomorrow, but I crashed around 6:30 pm and didn't wake up until after midnight. :(

So getting up (and then STAYING up) tomorrow may be interesting, lol.

Still, in the time between now and the time I force myself to go to sleep...

I've got some evidence I can review, naturally. And I'm excited about what might turn up there!

Then I've got this book I'm enjoying: Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and Paranormal in the Freetown Sate Forest by Christopher Balzano (excellent writer, formidable mind, and always fun to listen to when he pops up on Spooky Southcoast). I've been listening to him talk about the paranormal on podcasts for years now, and his book on investigating was the first one Brian & I read when we finally decided to get our hands dirty, so to speak; but I had never read his first book, the one that put him on the paranormal map. The book was so popular, and he continued receiving so many new reports, that he eventually followed Dark Woods up with a second book about the area: Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle, which I now own, too. So I'm eager to finish up Dark Woods so I can get to Ghosts of the Bridgewater Triangle, AND THEN I can read Brad Steiger's groundbreaking Worlds Before Our Own.

So my paranormal non-fiction plate is spilling over with tasty treats!

However...

I logged into Audible.com, hoping to find some non-fiction audiobooks on Atlantis (I'm becoming a bit obsessed, it seems), and I was pleasantly surprised to discover I have a credit!

...I joined this club-thingy they offer where you pay a monthly fee and you get a significant discount on every audiobook you buy from them, but you also get a credit that equals the price of any book every month, so even if you don't have any disposable income, you still get at least one "free" audiobook every month. With my aural fixation, this really does save me some money. But more than that, they now have ALL the Dresden Files novels!!! (In fact, that's how they finally got me to subscribe: I was about to buy book #5, and it was cheaper if I signed up right then (even paying the initial subscription fee) than if I were to buy the book without the subscription.) There are plenty of books I can buy for cheap with my discount, but many of the Dresden Files books (since they're still new to the audiobook format) are kind of expensive. I've read 6 out of 13 so far. And Butcher keeps putting them out. He has said that he plans to write 20 books in the "series proper" (if you will) and then finish the series with "an Apocalyptic Trilogy". So now that all the books so far are audiobooks (my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE way to enjoy these masterful adventures), I hope to catch up to all the die-hard and maybe enjoy book 14 or book 15 (and on) as they are released! I doubt I'll sign up to any of the forums and to debate and discuss the exciting new directions Butcher has thrown the series into... but it would be neat to be able to.

Anyway, so I subscribed to Audible's club-thingy, pretty much, so I can catch up on the Dresden Files series. (And, as a side benefit, I don't pay so much for Nick Pope's Summer of the Saucers or one of Doreen Virtue's books.)

But TONIGHT... I logged into Audible and discovered that I had a credit!!!

And there are a couple of fundamental shifts in poor Harry Dresden's fortunes in Blood Rites that had me bursting at the seams to see what happens next!!!

AND NOW I CAN!!! :D

So there's a good possibility that that's how I'll spend the rest of my last day off. ;)

I have to say, what Jim Butcher has created with The Dresden Files is amazing! It's this world that I just REALLY enjoy hangin' out in!!! I listened to the first 4 books in the series maybe 4 times each, because Buzzy Multimedia only produced audiobooks for the first 4, and then they released, like, Small Favor or White Night -- one of the ones that was being released in hard-back at the time, but was way ahead in the chronology of the events of the series. So I kept returning to the first 4, just to get my Dresden fix. BUT NOW...!!! I'm moving forward in Dresden's adventures!!! And though Butcher is the type of writer who is willing to change his hero's circumstances irreparably, the world itself -- Harry Dresden's Chicago -- continues to feel like a beloved vacation spot, someplace I always enjoy returning to! Honestly, reading the Dresden Files novels gives me very much the sensation I used to enjoy catching the new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer each week, back in the 1990s!!! I probably can't describe it better than that. And watching Buffy reminded me of the feeling of a new Friday the 13th or Star Wars or Star Trek movie being released when I was a kid! You know that you're going to have a great time, no matter what!

So, put that way... I guess I know what I'm going to do next...

I believe it's time Jim Butcher, James Marsters (who reads the audiobooks) and I take a walk around north Austin and see what trouble Harry Dresden gets himself into (and out of) this time!!!

:D

The Edwards Boys Conquered the 2010 FRENZY!!!

2010-04-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

It was a bitch this year, but WE DID IT!!!

Valuable lessons were learned...

First off, I thought going in that the script we completed would represent a Rough Draft of a script we would later rewrite and sell.

That's not quite how it happened.

What this script -- the one with which we won the Frenzy -- represents is actually a road we don't want to go down with this concept.

WHICH IS VALUABLE INFORMATION!

Indeed, the reason Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio (of Pirate of the Caribbean fame) got out of the Writing-For-Animation game (they wrote Disney's Aladdin, The Road to El Dorado and, of course, Dreamworks' Shrek) is because of this sort of thing...

They reported that writing for an animated feature was about exploring every road possible before settling down on the road actually taken by the animators.

Apparently, live-action filmmakers aren't quite this comprehensive when they ask for rewrites on a script.

Stephen King, in On Writing talks about "writing in cold blood" and how hard it can be. (Ironically, he's talking about how he prefers to write without an outline, because he prefers to discover each scene as it unfolds in his imagination. I am talking about writing a story that I already know is uninteresting to read because I am, myself, bored to tears with it.) This was excruciating because halfway through it I knew that this version of the story wasn't the best one.

But that's not what this blog entry is about.

WE FRIGGIN' DID IT!!! :D

My li'l bro and I took a story from concept to (a sort of) completion in 30 days!!! :D

I had my Frenzy beard goin', too. I shaved it off an hour ago, without taking the Before & After pictures, but I figure you aren't really interested in seeing me all scraggly and then clean-shaven, lol. ;P I think I did the Frenzy-Beard-Progression blog a couple of years ago.

This happened late Saturday/early Sunday morning, but I'm only blogging about it now because right after I had our pages validated, I told Brian, then disappeared into the rest of Chuck: Season 2, then slipped right into Medium: Season 5. I let someone entertain me for the last 31 hours or so, lol.

I should be asleep -- so I can get to work on time tonight -- but I'm still sort of in Celebration mode, lol.

I look forward to a week with minimal obligations. I hope yours is SMOOTH and RELAXING, too!!!

:D

Rick Castle is Ferris Bueller!

2010-04-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just came to this realization.

I just bought the DVD for Ferris Bueller's Day Off (one of my all-time favorite movies, ever, but one I bought on VHS and saw multiple times in the theaters when it first came out) and one of the Bonus feature featuretts was about the character. They were describing this amazingly charming character who seems to be wish-fulfillment for the audience, while at the same time being portrayed by an actor who, somehow, seemed to be as beloved as the character.

And I thought of Castle/Fillion!

The character of Rick Castle simply has too much going for him: He's handsome, has an adorable family, is ridiculously successful in his career and, because of his career, can fulfill every whimsy he might invent. But he's played by an actor who, one could argue, is just as over-privileged: Nathan Fillion is handsome, funny, fun, smart, is one of Whedon's go-to stars (a fact that, in and of itself, should make all of us fan-boys hate his guts in envy) and seems to be having a genuinely good time being Nathan Fillion.

But it's impossible to dislike the guy. And thus, when we watch Castle, it is equally impossible to hate Castle.

Okay, sure, he has his pick of the hottest women on the planet, including the indescribably tasty Det. Kate Beckett played by the indescribably tasty (and talented) Stana Katic. And, sure, he has more money than God and can get away with anything anywhere with anyone.

But, somehow, we sense that he deserves what he gets. Why? I really don't know. Maybe it's because he appreciates these breaks the way we would like to appreciate them if we had the chance. Maybe it's because we would really like to believe that -- deep down -- we are Castle -- smart, attractive, fun, and talented.

But part of it must surely believe that we just plain LIKE the guy who is playing the role, and we can't begrudge him an ounce of his success, even if we wanted to.

I have never met or interacted with Nathan Fillion, but I came close once...

In 2005, I flew to L.A. to attend the Creative Screenwriting Magazine Expo, where Joss Whedon was a featured guest and Nathan Fillion presented Whedon with an award as a Sci-Fi writer. (This was just after Serenity had been released in theaters.)

I had gone there, mainly, to see The Master talk about his craft. But I had fallen in love with Fillion from his performance on Buffy as a REALLY evil guy, and then (via DVD) his performance as Capt. Mal.

It is, in retrospect, noteworthy to comment on hos Fillion graciously introduced and honored the amazing Whedon -- feeding into all our fan-boy worship of Whedon and not taking an ounce away from it -- and then disappeared into the background as soon as it was Joss's time to take the stage. Then, after the talk, when everyone was standing in line to get Joss's autograph and ask him the questions we couldn't think of during his lecture, Fillion was nowhere to be found.

But then...

...and this was a world-changer for me...

...during the break between lectures, some buddies and I were out in front of the building, taking a smoke break before Robert McKee, or whomever we were going to listen to next, we see Whedon, Fillion and their handler (a little hotty I had never seen before or since) exiting the building.

RIGHT NEAR WHERE WE WERE STANDING!

It was SO COOL! We were about to be mere feet away from Captain Malcom Reynolds and the man who brought him -- and Buffy and Angel and Willow and all those amazing characters -- to life!!!

As they passed, they trio didn't slow for autographs or to make acquaintances or anything. Which was only to be expected. (If they had, they would NEVER have made whatever appointment waited for them next.)

I was an extra for 4 days on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. I played one of the hundreds of Vulcans you see in the out-of-focus background at the Khitomer Conference at the climax of the movie.

One day, I'm walking onto the set after lunch, and just as I'm about to cross the threshold from off-set to on-set I can't see the red light -- the device used to let everyone know if a scene is being shot -- so I stop abruptly to get a better look.

I feel someone bump into me from behind.

I turn around, and there is Captain James Tiberius Kirk, in full costume and makeup!!! William Shatner has bumped into me because I stopped shot before entering the stage!!! reflexively (being a Texas, born and raised) I say "Sorry." But Mr. Shatner doesn't acknowledge the apology, or even make eye contact.

But I'm not disappointed by this. See, I have been a film flunky for a large part of my life, even in 1990. I TOTALLY get Mr. Shanter's position: He is an actor doing a job, and he needs to focus on that job entirely. He's on a set with, literally, hundreds of extras, some of whom are pros and many of whom are newbies. If he stops and connects with any one of them (us), he could be sidetracked for hours!

William Shatner isn't just a movie star, he's a living legend! He has spent DECADES of his life being recognized (probably in the most inopportune moments any of us can imagine) and having to figure out what to do in those situations.

So I'm guessing that he has probably been forced to develop some sort of "no eye contact, no acknowledgment" policy JUST TO MOVE AROUND IN THE WORLD. I can walk down the street and smile at everyone I see, because I am (as far as they know, anyway) nobody. But when William Shatner makes eye contact with a stranger, they may try to talk him up for half an hour!

So I didn't feel the least bit slighted or anything when I cause Mr. Shatner to bump into me, and he didn't acknowledge my apology. (We were, after all, there to do a job, right?) I still adore and respect and hero-worship this amazing artist!
BUT...

I tell that story as a preface to why Nathan Fillion is so amazing!

So it's 2005 again, and I'm polluting the air with some of my closest friends outside the Creative Screenwriting Magazine Exposition, and Nathan Fillion, Joss Whedon, and an unknown hotty (presumably a handler for Mrs. Whedon and Mr. Fillion) are exiting the building...

Joss and the hotty exit the front doors in the expected fashion: heads down, eyes averted. (Mind you, even at this point -- well after Buffy, Angel and Firefly, Joss Whedon is a living icon.) But Mr. Fillion...

This may sound homo-erotic, but it felt more spiritual at the time...

I swear to God that Nathan Fillion locked eyes on each of us as he exited the door! But more than that, I could swear that he was trying to communicate telepathically to us! The expression in his eyes seemed to say "I SO appreciate your support of Firefly and Serenity and you guys are SO important to me!"

Now, granted, this memory is 5 years old, and is thereby could is probably distorted by the sand of time. I mean, there is no way he could have known that we are die-hard fans of the work he was a part of, much less his work, specifically.

But allow me to point out that I've been telling this story since that very day. Even if it has grown in its significance to me, it's based on an actual event, which is the eye contact that Nathan Fillion made with us -- a group of wannabe screenwriters -- and the odd, seemingly grateful expression in his eyes as he (and Joss and the hotty) walked past us that day.

How could you NOT want the best for that guy?!!

And to back up my claim, listen to any interview with him! Watch him in the bonus material on the Buffy, Firelfy, Serenity or Doctor Horrible DVDs! He has yet to appear in public in any way that contradicts what I thought I saw in his eyes in that brief 2005 encounter.

So Rick Castle gets to sleep with swimsuit models, makes millions as a Mystery novelist, is best buds with the mayor of New York City and will (eventually) get to see Detective Beckett naked. He also plays with RC helicopters and plays paintball with his daughter and gets distracted when pretty girls appear near him. HE'S US! He's a Fantasy-Fulfillment character!

And the fact that he seems to be played by an actor who ACTUALLY IS US (just, you know, maybe better looking and supremely talented as an actor) just makes it all so much more fun living in his shoes for an hour each week!

To Nathan Fillion, the Ferris Beuller of our day: YOU RULE, SIR!!! THANK YOU!!! :D

Script Frenzy: Day 15

2010-04-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Script Frenzy is halfway finished, I'm 20 pages behind-schedule, I have a lull in my work shift...

And I'm blogging.

I've hit a bit of a brick wall. Brian & I never finished outlining the script, and I figured I would be able to sort of outline as I go, but at the moment that's not how it's working out. :( I wrote the pages for what we outlined, and now I'm stuck with that age-old writer's question: "What happens next?!" I've got maybe 2 hours that I can write before my shift gets busy again, but I don't know what to write!

I mean, as a Buddhist I feel like I should simply take this as it comes, that what will happen will happen, and when it's supposed to happen. I should simply enjoy the free time and maybe listen to some more Insomnia and just take it easy.

But my writer's guilt keep screaming at me that I'm 20 pages behind schedule, I have 40 pages I need to write before next week (60 pages, total, due by this coming Monday), and I have time to write available to me that's going to waste!

It's hard to be serene and simply follow the flow of the Tao with that writer guy making so much racket in my head.

There's a small (very small) part of me that's thinking "Just write; don't worry about if it's crap; the goal of Script Frenzy is to write 100 pages."

And I guess I could do that.

But there's this perfectionist part of me that can't stomach the idea of writing crap. (Actually, depending on which philosophy of writing you take, this perfectionist bloke could be my biggest problem as a writer.)

...

My buddy Pete just gave me a fortune cookie. I kid you not: My fortune is as follows:

"The greatest danger could be your stupidity."

I would assume this was a prank, except for the fact that Pete read his fortune and it sounded perfectly normal.

Prank fortune cookies could be a cool idea. I'm sure they exist, but I wonder how funny the fortunes are.

Okay, so it seems like the best choice I have for the moment -- with 20 pages to complete before tomorrow, then 10 pages a day to complete over the next 4 days -- is probably to just start writing, good, bad or ugly. (I predict very, very ugly.)

Thanks for the chat.

:)

SCRIPT FRENZY: Day 1

2010-04-01T23:20:00.000-07:00

April 1st, the first day of Script Frenzy!!! :D

I'm stoked!

Brian & I have a loose schedule, and we're going to start in earnest tomorrow, Friday.

I've done a bit of work tonight (at work), and I hope to do a bit more before my shift is over. I want to bring some stuff to the table when Brian & I get started. (I know that he has been filling pages of one of his notebooks with notes about this.)

If all goes well, Saturday or Sunday we'll have what I call a Combat Outline with every scene in its place, and next weekend I'll write the first 40 pages.

Although...

It looks like TSPI may have a new case. So I may spend next Saturday investigating. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

But for the time being, I'll assume nothing and move forward with the Frenzy as planned.

I'M SO EXCITED!!!

Know how I spent the hours leading up to April 1st? Watching The Phantom of the Opera!!! My friend Nicole got us THE MOST AMAZING SEATS!!! We were SO CLOSED!!! It was AWESOME!!!

AND... It was the best production I have seen! I've seen the show at least 3 times now (I think I've seen it 4, but I can only definitively remember 3) and last night was clearly the best performance! VERY cool!!! :D

Oh... :(

Our Internet isn't working at home. :( For the foreseeable future (which, hopefully, will only be another week or two) I will only have Net access at work.

That may put a kink in our Script Frenzy experience... You update your progress by uploading the pages you've written to the Script Frenzy site. But if we can keep our schedule, we should be finished with the script on Sunday, April 25th. So I'll be able to upload the final pages from work on Monday, April 26th.

If, however, we fall behind with our pages, things could get complicated -- assuming we don't have Net access at home by the end of the month. The last day of the frenzy is Friday, April 30th. If I don't finish the pages until then, I'll need to find access to the Net before midnight.

Still... The schedule has what My Genius Friend Dave calls "slop time", meaning that I designed it with the assumption that some days I'll fall behind schedule and some days I'll get ahead. So, hopefully, we'll finish up days before the competition is over.

We'll see. :)

Okay, I should probably do some work, then see if maybe inspiration shows up allows me to get a bit more outlining done tonight.

Hope you have an EXCELLENT week!!! :D

SCRIPT FRENZY 2010

2010-03-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

After taking a year off from the annual Script Frenzy contest, I'm signed-up for this year! Just a week away!

But this year I'm doing something a little different: My brother is writing with me!!! :D

Brian & I are finally hunkering down to bring a screenplay to the Finish Line! We've written several short films together, and helped each other with ideas on some animated shorts we've done, and we've created a few feature-length ideas to be co-written sometime in the unknown future.

But this April, we are actually sitting down together and co-writing a draft!!! :D Come May 1st, we will have a completed script!

That's monumental! That's, like, a step toward a new phase in life!

I mean, potentially, anyway. Brian digs story, but if he actually gets into writing then that's a new source of income for both of us! (I love writing, hate writing alone, so having a writing partner would greatly increase my output!)

Blah.

So that's the exciting thing going on in my life for the next month.

I'm tempted to say that I'll keep you updated on our progress, and I may do that, but it's also possible that writing 110 pages in 30 days will make me loathe to approach the keyboard at all if I don't have to.

So we'll see.

Meanwhile, have you been watching Castle?! Very groovy! It's the only show I'm following this season. (I'll watch everything else this summer when the DVDs come out. I'm even behind on Dollhouse.)

Okay, I need to get back to work now.

PEACE!!! :D

Fiscal Answers

2010-03-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

In these times of financial uncertainty, I find myself working harder and longer just to pay most of the bills. Surely it will let up soon, right? Surely there will be some release?

I can't trust the predictions and "reportage" of the media -- they clearly don't have a clue what they're talking about.

And I certainly don't trust anything the government might tell us -- they want us malleable, controllable. If telling us everything is okay when it's not will make us play into their plans, that's what they'll do. Or if telling us everything sucks when everything is, indeed, fine will get us to behave the way that serves them best, they'll tell us everything sucks.

But if everyone has an agenda, everyone wants to manipulate me to serve their own end, where can I turn for answers? Where can I turn for the Truth?

Luckily, there is an ancient master of Mun-Ki Do. Her name is Bong Pang-duk, and her mission is the enlightenment of primate-kind!

Did I mention that she's a spider monkey?

Bong is also a master of her own interpretation of the I Ching. And if an earnest supplicant is willing to travel to her remote home (and perhaps bring and extra lulo or dragon fruit), then she is willing to share her insight.

I didn't have any lulos or dragon fruits, but I scored a small bag of cashews and a bottle of V8 Splash and began my pilgrimage.

Now, luckily for me, I didn't have to travel all the way across the border. Bong Pang-duk lives in an abandoned house that sits on a dried-up lakebed in Northwest Austin. So the drive was only 20 minutes.

For answers to the future of society, I really got off easy!

So I climbed down into the lake bed and hiked to where the abandoned house sits, I humbly placed the cashews and V8 Splash on the front porch, and then meditated quietly for the next 90 minutes.

Actually, I meditated for about 15 minutes, then I drifted off and had a nice little nap.

I was awakened by the slam of the screen door.

There, darting around the porch, the roof, the lake bed floor, the water slide attached to the house, the roof again and then back onto the porch, was the glorious Bong Pang-duk!!!

Respectfully -- and very, very quietly -- I asked her what was in store for our country financially.

Bong tossed a pawful of ancient coins into the air, watched them fall, noted how they landed, and then began to translate in a series of complex postures and stances:

DIVERGENCE
Avoid conflicts arising from uncoordinated actions. Seek reconciliation of differing opinions; convert conflict into creative tension.

NEEDING
Bide your time. Attend to the necessities.

There may be no winning this one; show good grace.
Reevaluate your point of view. Be flexible.
Present your side reasonably; expect good results.
Don't needlessly perpetuate an argument.

After her dance was done, Bong popped the top off the V8 Splash and took a drink.

I blinked.

"What the hell was that?! Are things gonna get better or not? I can't fill my gas tank with 'Divergence', can I? What, am I gonna make some 'Needing' soup?"

In my unthinking annoyance I stood, and that was a mistake. Mun-Ki Do is a brutal and efficient art, and Bong is a brutal and efficient master.

When Bong was done handing my ass to me (not literally, thankfully) I limped back to my car and drove home.

But since the knowledge came at such a humiliating and high price, I decided to reconsider Bong's answer to my question...

...and I got nothin'. It's gibberish to me.

Sorry.

Maybe I shouldn't ask questions about humanity's future of a monkey living in a house in the middle of a dried-up lake.

2010-03-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

Hello, Blogosphere!!! ¡¡¡Estoy aquí!!!

As is usually the case, this last few weeks my life has been interesting enough to blog about, but I have been too busy to blog.

And my life remains interesting, so I don't so much have the time to blog, but I'll hit you with a key-note blog in hopes of (more or less) catching you up and sharing with you stuff. (A more eloquent sentence, I am sure, has never before been crafted.)

Okay, the big deal is that last week I went on a Texas Spirits Research Team (TSRT) investigation -- which is a Meetup.com group organized by Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations (TSPI) for people who aren't necessarily interested in working on client cases, but want to actually investigate paranormal phenomena themselves -- and it was a BLAST! TSRT investigations are great fun for me because, since we aren't investigating for a client (who may be afraid of their home or workplace), there is no time limit on when we can review the evidence. We're just out there to see and hear what we can, and have a good time!

And since Brian is a member of TSRT, I got to investigate with my li'l bro!!! :D

This one was a a cemetery in Kyle, TX, where there is a "hanging tree" used, reportedly, to hang folks back a long time ago.

Or was it that a single person was found having been hanged from the tree one time a long time ago?

I need to do more research.

I haven't reviewed my audio yet, but I didn't have any specific incidences there that night.

Except...

Well, there were odd temperature fluctuations, and a general sense of not being alone in the cemetery, and several times I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye, would turn to look at it, and found an odd pattern of shadows that ALMOST recreated what I thought I saw -- but not exactly.

Scientifically, I would have to say that the shadows were mere illusions, no matter how imprecise the shadows were when I took a second look. But the experience added to my general sense that there were "folks" who inhabited the cemetery, and had done so for a long time. You know? Like they understood how to remain unseen by visitors?

I really need to listen to that audio.

And we have another TSRT investigation Saturday. The Courthouse in Gonzales, TX. I'm told that there are sections of the courthouse that the local police don't like to go into!!! :D

You know where Brian & I will be spending a lot of time Saturday!

Checking my notes here...

Right!

Okay, the last time I blogged I was listening to HEAT WAVE by "Richard Castle". Last week I read I AM THE NEW BLACK by Tracy Morgan!

Awesome book!

It was a great deal more raw and straight-up than I ever would have imagined a comedian to write! I mean, Tracy Morgan is such a mystery -- his characters are crazy, and he comes off as pretty nuts when he's interviewed on Conan O'Brien or where ever, but for him to cultivate this persona of insanity, one would assume that he's fully aware of how he is being perceived, right?

Like, we joke about people in Hollywierd being crazy, but it's hard to imagine folks making that much money for that long ACTUALLY being mentally unstable, right?

After reading his book, I think I have an idea about who Tracy Morgan really is. (Maybe.) He's an actual, honest-to-god street kid from the Bronx! Not like a rapper who grew up in a tough 'hood and then built a mystique to make him seem tough. Tracy's stories do not cast him in a "cool" -- or even flattering -- light. The way he tells his story, you totally get the feeling that he's has to be letting you in on his life, because otherwise the stories would be neater and tidier and Tracy would be the Hero, rather than an emotionally jacked-up kid just trying to sort out what Life is supposed to be about.

Dude! I CRIED a few times reading his book! It's kind of powerful!

I mean, I was moved to tears once or twice reading George Carlin's autobiography, but I expected that. Carlin has always shown himself to be a very deep, thoughtful person. His comedy was based on his insights and observations.

But Tracy Morgan's comic persona is kind of the opposite: He's Chico Marx, he's Jerry Lewis. He plays the fool. The comedy in his characters usually come from the fact that the character thinks he understands what's going on, but we -- the audience -- can clearly see that he's clueless. (And maybe a little unbalanced.)

Plus, Tracy's characters tend to come off as cartoon-ish (in the very GREATEST way!), so perhaps that contributed to why I was so surprised to be so deeply moved by Tracy's story.

Whatever the case, I was MOVED!!! If I didn't love Tracy Morgan before, I certainly do now! This is a beautiful cat, and this planet is so much better because he's swapping oxygen with us!!!

On a much lighter note: I'm finally watching GILMORE GIRLS, Season 7!!! :D

See, I was this HUGE GILMORE GIRLS fan back when it was on. Some of the best writing and acting on TV!!! And the bonus, for me, was that it aired on one of the station I work for, so I got to watch it at work! :)

But then, toward the end of the Season 6, my job kept me running around while GG aired, and I started missing episodes... Then it was announced that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was leaving the show after the 6th season... Plus I didn't like the way the Luke & Lorelai storyline was going...

So I allowed myself to fall out of the show completely.

And a few years passed.

I never lost my love for the show, though. And I always intended to eventually finish the series.

Then last September (I believe) I got that familiar itch again. I needed to return to Star Hollow!

I don't remember if I blogged about it then, but I spent money I didn't really have and bought Season 1 on DVD so I could, at least, begin from the beginning.

AND IT WAS AWESOME!

And I was out of money.

But my friend Traci is just as big a fan as I am, and she owns the whole series on DVD, so I figured I would borrow the rest of the series from her eventually.

But then Christmas brought a BUNCH of money to me, and just after Christmas Walmart had a sale: The entire series for $20 each.

So I bought the rest of the series.

(I feel like I probably have blogged about this before...)

And I watched the first 5 seasons in January, and it was good! :D

But then I came up to Seasons 6 and 7...

And I stopped watching.

I got busy, but I didn't resume the series when I could have because I was afraid of the frustration I remembered from when Season 6 was originally airing, and of the complete UNKNOWN of Season 7.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, after I finished up my evidence on the Pflugerville case, I popped in the first disc of Season 6 and was transported back to Star Hollow.

And it was much better than I remembered Season 6 being!!! :D I just fell right back in step with the Girls and their lives.

So I am now poised to watch the 4th disc of Season 7! I am SO CLOSE! The story is almost told (well, in American TV terms, anyway.) Just 7½ more hours!!! (Approximately.)

So that's exciting for me! I remember hearing that Amy Sherman-Palladino knew what the last line of the series was going to be. I'm curious to hear what the last line of the series is! Plus, I'm hoping that there is some sort of retrospective featurette for the series in the DVD Extras. (The series has painfully FEW extras, so I'm not holding my breath. But I don't want to even check before I finish the series, lest my curiosity lead me into spoilers that I can't un-see.)

And then, my biggest news at the moment: I GOT TO ATTEND A KEVIN SMITH Q&A

LAST NIGHT!!! :D

He came to the Long Center for the Performing Arts and talks for, like, 3½ hours!!! IT WAS BRILLIANT!!!

It was my second time to see him live, and I was a bit freaky because I listen to SModcast weekly, and I just never get tired of hearing the cat share his take on life!

I mean, it's very much like this: Imagine your favorite band produced an hour or more worth of new songs EVERY WEEK, and they put them in a podcast.

You have all their albums, you've seen them in concert once, and you have heard EVERY SINGLE PODCAST they released -- and they were good about releasing them pretty much every single week. And then a close friend, who is just as obsessed with the band as you are, invited you to see them in concert again. You've just listened to their latest podcast maybe 2 days ago. You go to the concert... AND YOU LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!!!

Like, you've got to be thinking, "I'm kind of a freak, right?"

I mean, luckily, I'm fully aware that I'm a freak. But still... my fascination with Kevin Smith has to border on stalking, lol. ;P

Oh, and I don't think I mentioned that not only do I own all 3 "An Evening With" DVDs and have watched them multiple times, but I have watched the audio-commentary for all his movies (except ZACK & MIRI, which didn't have an audio-commentary) multiple times.

And I STILL can't seem to get enough of him, lol.

Outside my concern for my mental health, however, the evening was really amazing for me! I took the night off work and got to go out for an evening!!! (I NEVER do that!) And the show was followed by hours of cool conversation. Then I got to come home and crash WITHOUT SETTING MY ALARM!

:D

If you check the time-stamp on my blog entries, you may notice that it is still technically Friday morning as I write this. I came home, fell asleep to Disc 3 of Season 7 of GILMORE GIRLS, then woke up and wanted to enjoy my day off.

Which I am about to do.

You interested in HOW?

Lats night, on my way home from the show, I stopped off at a new Walmart to grab some food for the week, and I found that they still have several of the re-releases of the FRIDAY THE 13TH flicks WITH THE 3-D SLIP-CASES!!!

Now, my excitement requires a bit of explaining...

I grew up with Mr. Voorhees, and the FRIDAY THE 13TH series was MY series!

HALLOWEEN had stalled after III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, and didn't resume until I was almost out of high school. So Jason was my boogeyman! (Brian's was Freddy, but I connected more with Jason, for some reason.)

And, as I KNOW I've stated more than once here recently, I am a 3-D WHORE!!! I can not get me enough 3-D! In the '80s I watched every 3-D movie that came out, JUST BECAUSE IT WAS 3-D!!! (You can imagined how psyched I am now, though I usually don't have the time/money to see most of the flicks in the cinemas.)

But when FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D came out, I was still too young for Mom and Dad to let me go see it. :( I went to see YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 3-D (or something like that) and snuck into FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D to watch a single kill (the dude who just gets out of the shower) but I was too much of a coward to brazen it out and watch more of the flick.

And that was a huge disappointment for me.

I mean, I know it's lame, but it was.

I had found this LP of music from the first 3 FRIDAY THE 13TH flicks, and it has this AWESOME 3-D cover of Jason smashing an axe throw a window, and all the glass shards were blasting out at you!!! But that was all the 3-D Jason I had.

And that album is gone, now, naturally. It disintegrated into the mists of Time.

So now imagine how stoked I was the first time I walked into Walmart a few years ago and saw the first re-releases on DVD IN 3-D SLIPCASES!!!

But there was one problem...

Since I have been Artist-poor for decades now, I have developed certain mental mechanism to prevent me from spending money that I shouldn't. One of them is the line "I already have that; I don't need another." Before these 3-D-cover re-releases came out, the entire series (the first through VIII: TAKES MANHATTAN) was released in a box set. And (naturally) I couldn't afford to buy the box set when it first came out, but I managed to buy it for a great price a couple of years later.

So I already owned all the movies.

So I had no practical reason to buy these new releases with 3-D art. :(

So I didn't.

Then a couple more years pass...

I don't know if you've noticed, but 3-D artwork is on the rise. You can buy birthday cards that are so badass you want to hang them on your wall! And -- for whatever reason; maybe it was the release of the FRIDAY remake -- I started missing my single LP cover with Jason in 3-D... And then I started regretting not having bought a couple of those DVDs with the 3-D cases.

My reasoning was like this: These cases had badass, don't-need-glasses-to-see-it 3-D images, and they were GOOD! (The ones with the hokey mask had the striping of the fake Jason in Part V: A NEW BEGINNING, but at least the artists had the decency to change the striping from blue to red. And the images WERE GOOD!!!) By now, buying one of those DVDs JUST FOR THE COVER would cost me about the same as buying just the artwork would cost. I mean, I have 2 discs that I don't need, but...

So last night, when I checked out this new Walmart, I saw that they had my 2 favorite covers: PART 3 and PART IV: THE FINAL CHAPTER.

AND THEY WERE $7 EACH!!! :D

So I broke down and bought them.

Now, the particularly cool part is that PART 3 IS IN 3-D!!!

I mean, not REAL 3-D. it's in that anaglyph where they leave the images in color while still coloring each eye blue or red, which tends to render the image in close-to-black-and-white while also rendering a 3rd image that prevents a TRUE 3-D experience (rather than simply rendering the film in black-and-white and then coloring the different eyes, which would create a PERFECT 3-D experience, like they did back in the '50s), but still... Its sort of A version of the flick in 3-D.

So now, after I sign off, I am going to -- for the first time -- watch

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 IN 3-D!!! :D

(Part 3 is the one where he gets the hockey mask, btw!)

Hope you have a PHENOMENAL weekend!!!

:D

Miss Me?

2010-02-22T02:11:00.000-08:00

I just checked my blog and noticed that I am writing this just 2 days away from a full month's absence.

Sorry about that.

But I've been busy! :D

First up, we -- Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations (TSPI) -- just wrapped-up the longest investigation I have been on so far... AND... it was my first case as lead investigator!

Can I just say that having the title "lead investigator" really doesn't add anything to the experience, except a little bit of stress? lol ;P I mean, in all honesty, investigation is a group-thang. I had tons of possible EVPs that were voted down as evidence (because there simply wasn't a way to guarantee that they weren't the result of contamination, not for any other reason -- just not good "evidence"), so it's not as thought the lead investigator has any extra say, lol.

Nor should he/she!

Evidence is evidence, and something that can be explained away simply isn't proof of the paranormal. There really isn't in wriggle room there.

But my point is that I have heard of other groups of investigators (not naming any names, mind you) who cat-fight and back-stab over their titles within the group, and I simply do not get it. The work is the work, and if your title is "investigator-in-training" your contribution is every bit as valuable as the lead investigator's.

In fact, this case spanned 2 investigations, and we had a few members who made the 2nd investigation and not the first... Their work was every bit as valuable as those of us who were there from the start.

When you're looking for the Truth, title means nothing.

You can quote me on that.

No, please. Quote me on that. I want that to become a saying. "You know, it's like Ray Jay Edwards says: 'When you're looking for the Truth, title means nothing.'"

Say it as often as you can. I'm hoping to become famous off that line.

So anyway...

I spent a few weekends solely working on the case, then a weekend sick (it was the most demented thing: I'm fine during the work week, then I'm off, and suddenly I can't get out of bed, except to grab another roll of TP to blow my nose with, then I'm fine in time to go back to work, lol), but THIS weekend I got to watch a whole lot of movies and catch up with my li'l bro!!!

Let's see, I watched Couples Retreat, Jennifer's Body, Zombieland, The Wedding Crashers and Grandma's Boy. QUITE a weekend!!! :D

And so well deserved, if I may say so myself! (And I may... It's my blog.)

OH!!!

AND I may have discovered my BEST EVP yet!!! :D It's Class A, perfectly clear and you don't need headphones to hear it! It's a woman's voice saying "Hello?" and then laughing. But I and 2 other investigators went over audio and the video, and we confirmed that the only people in the house and audible at the moment of the recording were myself and another man!!!

THAT is why I do the paranormal-thang!!!

It's cool, too, because it's not the least bit threatening or scary! I mean, the spooky ones are cool in that Goth, Halloween-y kind of way. But the non-spooky nature of this EVP is cool to me because it sort of illustrates the nature of the paranormal as I see it -- It's just stuff happening, stuff that is "odd" because we understand it, but not necessarily odd or scary in nature! :D

Oh, then jumping back to the superficial, entertainment aspect of my life, I am listening to the unabridged audiobook version of Heat Wave by Richard Castle.

Have I mentioned that I'm a nerd?

I love Nathan Fillion and all that he does, in principal, but I am so into Castle on ABC, because it is a very cleverly-written Mystery series with Whedon-esque/Sorkin-like banter between Fillion's character and the uber-hot Stana Katic's character!!! (If you haven't seen The Spirit, run right out and rent it NOW!!! You won't believe how versatile Katic is!!! She is so super-cute as the cop in The Spirit, versus her badass character in Castle!!!)

I know, I've blogged about Castle before, and I even have a link to the show on Hulu attached to this blog. But I'm a huge fan of the show!

And that lead me to buy Castle's audiobook, and I'm listening to it now. (Well... not right now, as I am writing to you right now...)

It's fun because the ghostwriter who wrote the novel has found a way to make the novel very much like an episode of the show! It's brilliant! It's as though the Writers' Room for the show gather around and figure out an alternate-universe episode that would be too expensive to shoot, so they made it a Rick Castle novel! :)

I did no research going in, so I seriously expected this to read like a Mystery novel, with no tie to the show at all. But as I'm listening to what they've done, I'm please to discover that Castle wrote himself into the story, creating that fun back-and-forth that he and Det. Beckett share on the TV show! It makes the novel not just a tie-in intended to make some money off the popularity of the show, but a sort of extension of the show itself!

It's kind of funny, because in the world of Castle, Castle isn't that original an author, lol. I'm working on a story about a group of paranormal investigators, and I am using more imagination to distance any real people/cases from my fictitious universe than Castle appears to be using. But then, Castle has sold 26 bestsellers, so you have to figure that maybe he doesn't have the energy he had when he wrote his first 5 bestsellers, and so maybe now he actually is plucking more from "real life" than he might have when he was young. And, really, a lot of what keep him on the Best Seller list, at this point, is his name: People know they're going to enjoy a great read, so they buy his books as soon as they come out. He doesn't have to prove himself anymore: The name recognition is enough to generate the buzz to push the sales into the millions with each book.

And the part of this that is most funny is the fact that I would not have considered any of this if I hadn't been reading a "Richard Castle" novel!!! :D The release of the novel and the design of the novel actually buried me deeper into the "reality" of the TV show!!! :D

I've heard of show where you could get text messages from the characters, but I think releasing a novel "written" by the novelist main character may be a STROKE OF GENIUS!!! Because when we read the work of our favorite author, we read so much into the fiction! We search for the real-world truth that may exist beneath the fiction. (I know I do it with Stephen King all the time.) So releasing a fictitious author's book naturally seems to cause us to give that author more "life" than 20 season of a TV series could do.

It's very cool!

Anyway, it's my last day off. I'm airing the Olympics at work, and it takes a lot of my mental energy to deal with (since it's a live event, I have to pay attention the whole time for our local commercial breaks) so I'm gonna get back to my Castle novel and maybe play some more Tomb Raider while I'm listening.

I hope you have a GREAT WEEK!!! :D

'Sup Foo's?

2010-01-24T20:41:00.000-08:00

I apologize for the disrespectful title there. I don't know what overcame me. I don't usually talk like that, and I do not believe any of you are "foo's".

Anyway...

Exciting weekend for me!

Yesterday I woke up at 2:00pm to be at a 4:00pm set-up for a 9:00pm investigation! I found myself driving home around 4:20am.

It was a cool investigation!!!

It was the second time at this one location, and it shared a similar sort of pattern of activity: It starts out weird, then quickly seems to dissipate into near inactivity.

The last time we investigated this location, early on 2 of our team saw an inexplicable shadow move across a window, then about 6 minutes later one of our EMF detectors (one with sound) goes off for a minutes straight.

This time, we were all closed into separate rooms small teams, but we heard someone walking around. At one point someone comes clomping down the hall, rattling the door to the room I'm in as they pass. I finally poked my head out the door to see what was going on, and I see another investigator, looking down the hall.

"Did you hear that," Stephanie asks me.

Yeah I heard that! How could I not?

But it turns out that there was no one walking around! After that stretch, we all compared notes to discover that we were all sitting quietly in our rooms, wishing everyone else would settle down and stop making so much noise!

I'm going to go through my audio and create a time line of the noises so we can then compare my time line of the video and verify that no one (alive) was walking around!

Very exciting! :D

In fact, my entire day has been, and will be, reviewing the hours and hours of audio I recorded last night.

And then we get to do it all again next weekend!

This investigation -- Part 2 of which was last night -- is for a client, but they aren't afraid in the location. they just want to see if we can come up with some answers to some of the strangeness they've been experiencing for years.

Next weekend is a client investigation in which the clients are afraid to be in their home. That's the whole reason groups like TSPI exist! Proving the existence of paranormal phenomena would be cool (if can be done) but helping people not be afraid, when no one else is willing or able to, is the core and the "bottom line" of why we exist. And the reason I'm proud to be an investigator! :)

I mean, you know me... I'm proud to be a nerd, geek, fan-boy and any other category I fit into. I just enjoy being ME! But when I say I'm proud to be a paranormal investigator, I mean that in the more traditional sense. This is maybe the one thing I do that isn't entirely selfish and/or self-serving. ;P (Note that I say it isn't entirely self-serving, lol. It's, like, 60° self-serving, 40° helping others. Maybe 70°/30°, something like that.)

OOH!

Since we started setting up at 4:00pm, we took a dinner break, and we all went to eat at a place called Casa Garcias! GOOD FOOD!!! Last year many of us ate there before going, as a group, to see Paranormal Activity at one of the Alamo Drafthouses (while the movie was still in its limited run, if I remember correctly) and I enjoyed a for-reals Chimichanga. This time I got adventurous and tried the Shrimp Enchiladas...

DUDE!!!

Okay, not only was it wicked-tasty, it was filling, too!!! I had some pancakes and egg patties (nuke-able stuff that I could gobble down quickly) when I first woke up, then I had these enchiladas for dinner, and I wasn't hungry for the rest of the night! It's not, like, one of those huge plates, either, that makes you think "Oh, Daddy's gonna be stuffed tonight!" It looks like a rather modest meal, but that stuff FILLS YOU UP! :D

Very cool!

And my buddy Mike turned me onto Coca-Cola Zero! Usually, if I drink soda it's Diet 7-Up (no calories or sugar or anything, but it still somehow has that diet aftertaste I've been addicted to since I was 13) or Diet Coke. (Mostly, though, I drink water, coffee, or hot tea. Or beer, but that's usually for the purpose of getting my buzz on.)

And I discovered that I like Coca-Cola Zero! :)

I probably won't change my drinking habits, but now there is a beverage that bridges the gap between Coke drinkers and Diet Coke drinkers! Like, if I'm buying soda for a party or something, I can pick up some Coke Zero and share it with mixed company!

That's pretty cool, yeah?

Okay, I've got about 6 or 8 more ours of wakefulness, and a bit more than that of audio to review. So I'm back at it.

Have a groovy week!!! :D

Livin' Like A Rock Star!

2010-01-14T23:12:00.000-08:00

Today has been an AWESOME day for me!!!

Okay, so yesterday I got to talk to my Gnomey Goddess for and hour or something. It was a really long, wonderful conversation. And we set up a probably-date (just meaning that as long as nothing unexpected popped up to foil our plans, we would get together at such and such time) for 4:00pm-ish this afternoon -- which is 10:00pm-ish her time.

Before I went to sleep after work, I watched an episode of Gilmore Girls (I'm on Season 5 now), then fell asleep to a Zencast, and actually woke up and hour and a half before my alarm clock woke me!

OOH! And I woke up from a really groovy dream that gave me a cool character for some future story! Which I was able to remember in full (the character, not the dream) and jot down in detail! (That's significant for me because I don't always get to jot down very good notes after waking, because the more alert I become, the more the idea fades from memory.)

I pad into the kitchen to grab some water, and find that Brian has left some money for me (to pay back a loan), and so I can eat more or less whatever I want today!

Plus, it's my "Friday" AND we're back to our normal schedules at work, so I have someone working with me tonight, which means that my workload is embarrassingly light! I can write most of the night, if I wish! Or play Tomb Raider on my laptop! Or read!

So from the very get-go, I was looking forward to and awesome day, and now I've got even more awesome-ness in my day!

So I call up my baby, but she isn't online. And that's fine, because she isn't expecting me to even be conscious for another hour and a half.

Time enough to check my email and watch another episode of Gilmore Girls! :)

And I order some Domino's sandwiches! (Their Sliced Italian Sausage & Peppers sandwich is EXCELLENT if you cancel all the peppers and order extra Italian Sausage and Provolone!!!) SERIOUSLY good sandwiches!!!

I get a text from my baby saying that she will be online soon, a few minutes before I would have woken up. She's such a SWEETY, all considerate and stuff! If I hadn't beaten my alarm I would have woken up to this consiederate text! (have I mentioned that she is an AMAZING woman?! She SO IS!!!)

When she comes online we have this WONDERFUL conversation!!! She tells me what's going on in her world and I think I updated her on what I'm up to, and we do the lovey-dovey thing and all that. I think today's conversation must have gone on for a couple of hours! It was like a regular date, except for the parking and the spending money and the getting-dressed-up and all that! (It was actually quite romantic!)

But she eventually has to go to sleep. So we make plans for tomorrow and I still have an hour or so before I have to get ready for work!

I get to hear from a couple of my friends on IM, too! I'm never awake during the day, so it was quite a pleasant surprise to get to have conversations with 2 of my ghost-hunting buddies! John popped up to say "Hi" before Gnomey came on line, and then Mike and I had a great conversation after Gnomey went to bed!

There is, like, this WHOLE WORLD that's going on when I'm usually asleep! :) And today I got to be a part of it!

So then I hope in the shower and head off to work, listening to a new episode of Paranormal Podcast on the drive in.

It's all dark and foggy and rainy, too!!! :D It's like the set of a Sherlock Holmes movie, except with more neon and cars! The rain is light and warm-ish, too! Just my type of weather!

So then I get to work, and it's normal... BUT... The last couple of nights have been more stressful than normal. So "normal" tonight is actually kind of EASY! :D (God bless Relativity!) And I already told you about the overnight potion of my shift tonight: Teamwork equals LESS work!

Then my friend Traci calls out of the blue -- just after the bulk of the "hard" stuff of my shift is completed -- and I get to girl-chat with her. (She tells me about her boyfriend, I tell her about my conversation with Gnomey, then we braid each other's hair and have a pillow fight.)

And now I have just over 4 hours left in my shift and then MY WEEKEND!!! :D

I can listen to another podcast, or play Tomb Raider or do some reading, OR ALL OF THE ABOVE!

AND...

The chances are very good that I get to have another long conversation with my Gnomey Goddess when I wake up tomorrow!!! :D

I mean, I doubt tomorrow is likely to be as just straight-up groovy as today has been, but it doesn't matter! I have had today! if I pass out right now and wake up and I'm at home and it's already tomorrow, and I don't get anything else out of today, it was still an AWESOME day! And even if something happened and Gnomey couldn't talk with me tomorrow, we still had an amazing conversation for the last 2 days! (But today's conversation was PARTICULARLY nice!!!)

Like, I've had the type of day that makes me really, really thankful! And the day isn't even over yet! And if I get nothing else out of this day -- if I just finsih my shift, drive home and fall right to sleep -- I've still had an AWESOME day!!!

How often do we get that? How often do we find ourselves in a moment where we're MORE THAN happy with everything we've received, and we seriously could not ask for more? Like, you can eat a Chinese buffet, but you know you'll be hungry several hours down the road. But this day has been, for me, like eating a pizza buffet, and I know I won't be hungry for the rest of the day!

You know?

It's been an awesome day. :)

I hope you have an awesome day soon, too!

Maybe TODAY! :D

24° In Austin...

2010-01-08T03:09:00.000-08:00

It's friggin' COLD in Austin this morning!!!

I like it! :D

Okay, so Christmas just KEEPS giving!

I just got my paycheck from the ridiculous amount of overtime I worked last month (whihc includes some Holiday pay) AND THEN... I go to Walmart to buy a few essentials and maybe pick up Season 2 of Chuck (they didn't have it in stock) AND GILMORE GIRLS IS ON SALE FOR ASTOUNDINGLY LITTLE PER SEASON!!!

This is one of my favorite shows ever, of all-time!

I love this show so much that this past September (or November, maybe? I'm not sure) I spend a small wad of cash that I kind of didn't really have, JUST so I could watch (and re-own -- long story) the first season, because it had been SO LONG since I had seen a single episode!

AND NOW THE ENTIRE SERIES HAS BEEN RE-RELEASED FOR RIDICULOUSLY LITTLE!!!

So I now own every season of Gilmore Girls!!!

That includes the last season, which I never saw! Stuff at work and in my life (somehow, I don't remember because it was a while ago) conspired to force me to miss the 2nd half of the second-to-last season of Gilmore Girls, as well as the entire last season.

SO NOW I HAVE A SEASON AND A HALF THAT IS BRAND NEW TO ME!!! :D

But that's not all!

Apparently, Seinfeld has been re-released, too! So I bought Brian the last 4 seasons. Which is cool, because he digs on Seinfeld. And a few Christmases ago I got him the first 3 seasons (which is the first 2 volumes, because the first 2 seasons were, like, summer-filler seasons), but they didn't really have any of the episodes Brian remembers so fondly.

Apparently, Seinfeld didn't really get going until a few seasons in.

I say "apparently" because I'm one of the few people I know who wasn't a fanatic. I liked the show, but when we aired it at work, I watched an episode or two and never really got into it. I didn't dislike it at all, and I was glued to the set when the series ended, but I had Friends, which was practically tailor-made for me at the time.

But then I saw an episode in syndication a few years ago, and found that I really enjoyed it. Apparently, Seinfeld is one of those shows (for me, anyway) which actually improves in syndication.

Anyway, so I'm hoping that most of Brian's favorite episodes aired in the last 4 seasons. If so, the dude is pretty much set!

Now, if I were a selfless man, I would have gotten Brian the entire rest of the season, and gone without a couple of seasons of Gilmore Girls for myself... but I'm not that guy.

Okay, I have some hot Whataburger (Bacon Cheeseburger and Onion Rings!!!) and some Gilmore Girls waiting for me, so Bye For Now!

:D

Ringin' In 2010

2010-01-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'M ON THE INTERWEB AND I'M NOT WEARING PANTS!!!

I LOVE YOU, INTERPANTS!!!

I'm usually asleep, like, 3 hours ago but I'm off this week and I don't know when sweet Morpheus is gonna bend me over and make me his prison girlfriend.

Am I talking too loud?

I think all the 30 Rock I've been watching may be having an inverse effect on my brain-grapes, because words that normally come don't come and the words that come are wearing fishnet shirts.

Are you sure I'm not talking too loud?

BE A CRAB! FIGHT THE WORM!!!

I feel like a kid during summer vacation!!! A can eat all the chocolate chip cookies I want and I can make my green beans stick to the ceiling 'cause Mom and Dad are having Daddy's Birthday.

I LOVE YOU, DADDY'S GREEN CHIPS!!!

Is it too early to be drinking vodka? 'Cause it tastes like Friday night!

I'm gonna get real with you, Internets... I've got some important stuff to do before I go to the work building. But the feeling of a fan on my bare elbows is intoxicating, like a dog nose behind my ears! I MAY NEVER WORK AGAIN!!!

I LOVE YOU, DOG INTOXICATION!!!

I'm pretty sure these drawers weren't on my head when I started writing this blog entry. I don't remember where they go, but they sure look festive! :D

STAR WARS!!! SO MUCH STAR WARS!!!

I think I'm gonna go eye-eat some more lovely nonsense!

I LOVE YOU, TRACY FEY BALDWIN!!!

:D

Happy New Year's Eve

2009-12-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

I hope, as you review your 2009, that you find little to regret and MUCH to to be thankful for! AND... plenty to giggle about!

Have a blast tonight!!!

:D

AVATAR in 3D

2009-12-28T00:33:00.000-08:00

I just got back from one of the most intensely beautiful films in a while!!!

Not to over-hype it, lol. ;P

But I totally get why everyone -- famous folks and friends alike -- are excited about James Cameron's Avatar!

First, this summer I got the sense of some online buzz about it, if only because James Cameron was back behind the camera. The man makes the highest-grossing film of all time, a film that everyone universally seems to love and hail, and then the cat disappears for the better part of a decade! Some might wonder if he had any more films left in him. Some might wonder if maybe he's afraid to make another movie -- after all, how do you follow up Titanic? We all knew the ending, and yet we all went to see it multiple times while it was still in cinemas.

I had a hint that this movie would probably be great, because I saw Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Solaris, and knew that Cameron produced it. Not just produced it, though -- there are many, many levels of producers in Hollywood, and some of them are just business guys who took lunches on the studio's dime. Cameron was an active producer on Soderbergh's Solaris, and even did the DVD audio commentary with Soderbergh.

So I knew Cameron was up to something... I didn't have a clue what, though.

But, as I said, I figured it would be good. Here's why: Behind and beneath -- running throughout, really -- of Cameron's work is a soul, a beating heart. It's really the only thing that ties all his work together. Sometimes his soul is laid bare and stamped on every frame of his films, like The Abyss and Titanic. And sometimes the soul is masked by spectacle and/or comedy, like T2 and True Lies. But how else could you link works like Titanic and The Terminator? What other creative element binds them?

And when you watch Soderbergh's version of Solaris, you can see Cameron in the amazing visual effects (another creative element that marks Cameron's work) and you might be tempted to stop there. But I've seen enough Soderbergh to have sensed a more "spiritual" (for lack of a better adjective) quality in Solaris than in, say, Erin Brockovich or Ocean's Eleven. There are areas of the human condition that Soderbergh is interested in, and areas that Cameron is interested in, and Solaris appeared to me to be a blending of those two artists.

Still, even after seeing the first trailers for Avatar, I wasn't quite sold.

I mean, I knew it would be great, and I would have bet real money that it would be a better movie than I expected. I grew up with Cameron's work. I grew up on Cameron's work! One of my favorite movies of all-time is The Abyss! But the trailer didn't really show me anything that grabbed me, in particular. I mean, I LOVE blues and greens, so the blue people in the forest was definitely a plus. The trailer promised that James Cameron trademark action. And you've got to like a movie where a self-absorbed military ass is transformed by an aboriginal people into a deep, thoughtful person. (Which is what the first trailer suggested would be the case.)

But what really started to get my attention was when stars who aren't in the mvoie started talking about how excited they were about Avatar!

I mean, these people were doing press for these other films that they were in, but when they talked about Avatar, they sounded the same way my friends and I did in high school, when the release of a certain movie with a certain star or a certain director was a major event in our life! For that moment, they weren't stars, they were fans!

And how often do you watch stars turn into film geeks?

I mean, if you know them personally, maybe you see that a lot. But I don't know any personally. I see them in their work, or I see them promoting their work. Or on behind-the-scenes featurettes on their DVDs.

So it caught my attention when this started happening.

But that's not what sold me...

When my Gnomey and I got a chance to chat for a while week before last -- like really talk for a while, for the first time in some time -- she was all about Avatar! She loved this movie and couldn't wait for me to see it!

That's when I was 100% SOLD! My baby wants me to see it? I'm SO THERE!

The problem with seeing new movies for me, though, is time and money. I had already made a date with my li'l bro to see Sherlock Holmes on Christmas Day. That was time and money already spent.

I didn't know when the next time I would have both the time and the money would be, but I was determined that I would see Avatar AS SOON AS I could! I wanted to be able to talk to my baby about this movie that had so affected her.

She mentioned how good the music was, so I bought the soundtrack. And James Horner's score is awesome! :D But that's so substitute for the experience of seeing the film.

As it turned out, I got tonight (Sunday night) OFF! I had been scheduled to work straight through the rest of 2009, but just recently the other overnight op, for whom I was filling in, changed his mind and decided to work tonight!

AND, as fate would have it, I had some money!

In fact, the Alamo Drafthouse right next to me (so close that I've walked there before, though I didn't tonight because it's so frickin' cold in Austin right now) is showing it in 3-D!!!

Now, if you don't have an Alamo Drafthouse in your town (which is likely, since it's a local franchise that only recently started expanding to other cities) I need to describe the Drafthouse experience...

They don't serve popcorn, and overpriced hot dogs and nachos. They do serve overpriced candy, but that's not what most people buy there. At the Alamo Drafthouse, you can buy a REAL burger, or pizza, or some gourmet sandwich, and BEER. :) You can buy nachos, but they're not those cheapo cinema nachos, they're REAL nachos! Or you can buy Cheese Sticks or Jalapeno Poppers, if you're just looking for something light.

Me, usually I barely have enough money to buy the movie ticket. I usually don't eat when I go to the movies. If I can scrounge together enough money to get into the theater, that's absolutely good enough for me! :D

But tonight was an EVENT.

I woke up just before 9:00pm. It was too late to hope that my baby would be online, so I didn't bother. I did, however, check Fandango.com to see if the Drafthouse had a 9p-or-later showing of Avatar.

THEY DID!!! 10:00pm!

So I hauled myself out of bed, did some dishes (not apropos to the story, but they needed to be done) and headed to the movie.

I was already a little bit hungry, so I decided I'd shoot the moon and have me some Drafthouse food! This is a ridiculous extravagance for myself, but what the heck? It's that magical time after Christmas and before New Year's Day, when that magic of the Yuletide celebration is still in every breath you take! Plus, this was a magical Day Off! I was supposed to be working tonight, but magically, I wasn't! Plus, when I watched this movie, I knew I would be watching it with Gnomey!!! :D (I do most things with her, even though she's not with me physically at the time I'm doing them, but this was different; this was something she really wanted me to do, so that makes it even more special!)

Another fun aspect of the Drafthouse experience is that instead of playing boring-ass commercials before the feature, they fill the screen with wild & wacky pre-show stuff. Tonight as I was standing in line, or sitting and waiting for the movie to start, I saw the trailers for Return of the Creature in 3-D, Giant Gila-Monster and It Came From Outter Space in 3-D. Whether you can afford the food or not, a movie at the Drafthouse is a REAL movie experience! :D

For breakfast, I settled on this awesome Chicken Parmesan sandwich with REAL, steak-cut fries! You wouldn't believe the chicken patty, either! I've had a lot of Chicken Parmesan -- some from nice restaurants, most cheap frozen stuff you nuke at home -- and there was a subtlety about the seasoning of this Chicken Parmesan sandwich that I've only experienced in restaurants!

But none of this, the Drafthouse movie going experience, compared to the film!!!

Cameron has created this world for us that, at first, feels more or less like "typical" James Cameron... It's the future, it's high-tech, the military is all around... It's gorgeous! (You know, in that high-tech, gritty, futuristic sort of way.) And the way he used 3-D is GENIUS! It's not the old-school, stuff-poppin'-out-at-ya-because-this-is-a-3-D-flick shtick. Cameron uses the 3-D to thoroughly convince you that everything you see is real! And if it were real, THIS is how it would all look!

And starting you out in the gritty, militaristic, mechanized world is the PERFECT beginning for this movie! Because, very shortly, he introduces you into this world of organic, orgasmic beauty!!! A lot of filmmakers use special effects in films to take you to places you've never been before. (Cameron has done this in most of his movies. But, then again, EVERYONE does that now, lol.) But this film... It's all alien and beautiful, but most of the beauty can be found right here, on Earth! It's the beauty of a hike in the woods, or the look on your loved one's face!

Okay, I could get off on a tangent here about the gorgeousness of everyday life, but I'm not going to. It's all been said before, and when you see the film, you'll experience it for yourself.

And THAT is kind of the point of this movie...

I'm sure professional movie reviewers will comment on the "Green" themes or spiritual themes or whatever themes Cameron has woven into this amazing film experience, but what I am profoundly struck by about this film is the LIFE. This action-packed, intensely emotional, 3-D, mostly CG wonder that James Cameron has given us feels like living!

I don't know how to explain it better than that.

I'll put it this way: When I was a kid, the movies that I loved the most were the ones that made me immediately want to go outside and play. Like, after seeing Star Wars I wanted to go outside, gather the neighborhood kids and be Luke Skywalker (though I was usually Chewie, but that was fun, too). After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark the kids in the apartment complex and I ran outside and got as dirty as we could hurling ourselves off jungle gyms and the like. Superman: The Movie had me running around as fast as I could with my arms outstretched, imagining what it felt like to fly.

Tonight after the movie, I spent half an hour running around the parking lot, leaping from one car rooftop to another...

Just kidding.

But what I'm talking about is that really good movies (the ones I prefer, anyway) tend to make me intensely aware of all the tiny little components of being alive, all the millions of second-by-second miracles that life as to offer. When I was a kid, these miracles included being able to run fast, kicking up dust, leaping off things and crashing to the ground. As an adult, they tend to include the colors of things, the textures of things, a single breath of air. And always, one of the most powerful elements of life, when I was a kid and now, is the ability to feel emotion.

What an amazing thing, emotion!

The ability to be filled-up with this inexplicable sensation that can make you weep tears of joy! Or the ability to feel appreciation -- deep, profound appreciation -- for something you already have not something that you hope to one day attain)! How cool is that!

I'm getting all abstract now, which is probably my cue to move on, lol.

But Avatar is a great movie and great fun! If you don't experience a sense of awe when you see it, you might want to have someone check your pulse.

Know what else is amazing?

Sherlock Holmes!

It's awesome for a whole other set of reasons. A very different film from Avatar, but no less amazing!

I did get to see it on Christmas Day, before I went into work. I didn't get to see it with my li'l bro, however, because he was exhausted and couldn't keep his eyes open, lol.

It also has an excellent soundtrack, this one by the astounding Hans Zimmer! He greats this musical soundscape for Holmes that places you intimately inside his world.

Very cool!

Sherlock Holmes was so cool that I finally broke down and am reading the novels for the first time. I've read the collections of short stories several times each, but I've avoided the novels. So last night I picked up A Study in Scarlet (the story in which Watson meets Holmes for the first time) and am enjoying it.

One thing that amazed me about the movie was how faithful it is to the cannon! I've heard a few complaints, based on the TV ads for the flick, along the lines of "I like Sherlock Holmes, and that's not Sherlock Holmes." I was concerned about the same thing when I saw the first couple of trailers for it. It seems like the trailers are actually designed to make you think Guy Ritchie and company are raping the mythology, lol.

But I have 2 notes for anyone debating seeing the film because they're fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories:

First, in the first 2 minutes of the movie the filmmakers sort of explain to you why this more energetic version of the legend is going to work. (It's a subtle thing, but within the first 2 minutes, if you're worried that the visual style is going to violate Doyle's creation, you'll go "Okay, I get it!")

Second, whatever happens throughout the movie, by the last 2 minutes you'll discover that the filmmakers really weren't taking any liberties at all with the original.

Both of these will make perfect sense after you've seen the movie. Because there are times when, if you know Doyle's work well, you go, "Hey, wait a minute..." But then when the movie wraps up, you realize that the writer and director were toying with you and your expectations.

If you've seen Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels you know that Guy Ritchie is an amazingly clever filmmaker. And after you've seen Holmes you realize that he is the perfect artist to reinterpret the characters/world for a new generation!

Okay, I've actually been blogging for a few hours now, and I have a couple of things to do before I go back to work tomorrow. So I bid you adieu for now, and I hope you have a KICK ASS New Year!!! (I will be working New Year's Eve, but I'm taking the first week of 2010 off, so I plan to celebrate the birth of the new year in my own way.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

:D

5 Days Till Christmas

2009-12-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

I AM WRITING THIS ENTRY ON MY VERY FIRST LAPTOP!!! :D (Santa came early to the Edwards house.)

I now have a laptop! I can now live out my fantasy of sitting in a coffee shop or in a park or on the porch and writing!!! :D

How frickin' cool is THAT?!! :D

Does this mean I'll actually get more fiction writing done in 2010?

We'll see.

The truth is that I could have already been writing longhand in coffee shops or on the porch. But I haven't been.

Still, 2 things are true:

1. I seem to be open to more and better ideas when I'm outdoors.
2. Writing is sexier when it's being done one a laptop!

It feels cooler, more sophisticated to be writing on a laptop, lol.

I know, I'm a dork.

And probably old-fashioned, too. I'm guessing that teens and college students don't fantasize about writing on a laptop. That's passe by now. I'm guessing writing on a NetBook or and iPod Touch is probably more chic.

But what can I say? I'm old.

And not rich.

So writing on my very own laptop is the fulfillment of a 15-or-so-year old dream of mine.

So...

Five days till Christmas! Is everyone excited?!

As I've mentioned, I'm working through Christmas Eve and Christmas (and New Years Eve) but I plan to see SHERLOCK HOLMES before I go in to work Christmas Day! How long has it been since we've had a Sherlock Holmes flick in the cinemas? Was it YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES? Maybe WITHOUT A CLUE?

Although, in my heart of hearts, those two aren't really for-reals Holmes flicks. I mean, they're both absolutely great and fun, but, you know... They're sort of alternate-reality Holmes films. You know? Like, SMALLVILLE is to the Superman mythos -- It's Clark Kent and Metropolis and everything... but it's not really SUPERMAN Superman.

In fact, this will be my first time EVER to see a Holmes flick in the theaters!

I watched the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce flicks on VHS first, then DVD. I've watched ALL Holmes films on home video. (Naturally.) It's gonna be SO COOL to watch a Sherlock Holmes film in a movie theater!!!

What else is going on in my life at the mo...?

My Gnomey's a SWEETHEART!!!

That's nothing new, but she never loses her effect on me, lol.

I've watched the first 2 episodes of the new V series! That's going well. I'm not emotionally invested in it like LOST or CASTLE or DOLLHOUSE, but there's absolutely nothing negative I can say about it. I love their angle of Hope as a weapon, and the stories are tight, and the actors are SO COMPELLING to watch! The visual effects are good. There's no bad there. I suspect that in a few more episodes, the writers will have figured out how to own me. In fact, I still have 2 more eps to watch on Hulu... maybe they already have.

Brian is the greatest brother/roommate/friend a dude could ask for! My portable DVD player went out some time ago (the one I used to use to fall asleep to DVDs in my room), so my li'l bro bought me a DVD player for my room! I already had this little TV in there -- in HERE, actually; I'm writing this in my room! I haven't had a (working) PC in my room in SO LONG! I haven't had MY OWN COMPUTER in YEARS! I met my Gnomey Goddess on one of my brother's computers, lol! -- so I come home from work one morning to find UP playing in my room!!!

And Brian's just as broke as I am! But he wanted his bubba (that's how he refers to me, his bubba, lol) to be able to watch movies in my room again!

Dude is a PRINCE!

And this is, like, 2 weeks before Christmas, lol. He simply couldn't wait for me to have his present.

He gets that from our mom, I think. She and our Gan-Gan are the reason Brian & I have laptops. :) (Note: "Gan-Gan" is our maternal grandmother. I started calling her "Gan-Gan" when I was young, dumb and full of... youthful enthusiasm. I thought it was cool to call things by cutesy names -- and, I guess, it kind of was. It was the '80s. But the moniker has sort of stuck. my friend, now full-grown adults, some with kids of their own, still ask "How's Gan-Gan doing?")

DUDE!!!

I finally read Deepak Chopra's novel WHY IS GOD LAUGHING?!!! (That's not an exclamation of curiosity; the question mark there is part of the title. The three exclamation points are MY grammatical expression, whereas the question mark is the expression of the author within his title. Just wanted to be clear.)

I remember seeing the book around the time that THE LOVE GURU hit cinemas. But I never seemed to have the money handy to pick it up. (Because, as you know, I can't just buy the book... I have to buy the audiobook, if it exists, because I'm me. And the audiobook is always well-more expensive than the book.) Then I finally saw THE LOVE GURU on DVD -- thanks to the great and wonderful and loving Netflix!!! -- but I STILL didn't have the money.

Now, as you know, I have purchased and read many, many books between the time that THE LOVE GURU hit DVD and now.

BUT...

I had FORGOTTEN about WHY IS GOD LAUGHING? and so I didn't buy it.

Before now.

But Brian and I are working on 2 comedic novels, and we're playing with the idea of writing some sketches that we can shoot and edit and post on YouTube -- you KNOW I'll tell you about them and link up to them if/when we get them made and posted -- and so I've been itching to buy another copy of my old Comedy text book THE COMIC TOOLBOX by John Vorhaus. This is THE book on Comedy writing if you're an insecure writer looking to hone your comedy skills! I've read a few other authors, many legends in the field of writing Comedy, and NO ONE explains it better than Vorhaus! I don't know why that is. But like, if you want to know how to write, you go to Robert McKee and Karl Iglesias, neither of whom have written a screenplay (to my knowledge) in their life! but if you listen to what Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon have to say about writing, you'll be amazed and astounded and impressed, but it won't necessarily make YOUR script better. I think the same is true for Vorhaus. I don't know if he's ever written a screenplay or sitcom, but his take on how to write Comedy is sheer revelation!

They say -- rather snidely, if you ask me -- that "those who can't do teach." But it seems to me to be that many of those who can do, actually CAN'T teach. Not well, anyway. I mean, Stephen King, Michael A. Stackpole and William Goldman come to mind as exceptions to the rule... But you're always going to have the exceptions, right?

Anyway...

So I'm at Amazon, tracking down THE COMIC TOOLBOX, and some angel from Above reminds me about Deepak's novel about a comedian who goes on a spiritual journey -- the novel that Dan Akroyd and John Cleese praise, I might add -- and I happen to have enough money to buy BOTH!!! :D

And it turns out that WHY IS GOD LAUGHING? is great!

Whodathunk!

This is actually the 2nd Deepak Chopra novel I've read! Back in 1996, when I was living in Georgetown and could get a library card without paying a yearly fee for it (grumble, grumble, grumble, freakin' North Austin politics and their questionable politics, grumble, grumble) I listened to Deepak's OTHER work of fiction! It has to do with King Arthur and the gang, and there are these time/space slips, and it's very, very cool! I was just then getting into the Hindu/Eastern/Quantum Physics way viewing Time and I had heard about this guy Deepak Chopra who wrote all these books and was teaching people about the mysteries of Life, and so when I discovered he had written a novel and it was on cassette and I could check it out from the Georgetown Public Library, I pounced on it!

It would still be a decade before I would discover what Deepak Chopra and his work were really all about, but it was cool to get the taste. Plus, if you really want to experience non-linear Time -- Time as described by Eastern yogis and quantum physics -- read this book! Rollicking intensity! Besides Michael Crichton, who knew a doctor had such an adventurous side?!

So anyway, Deepak has written 2 novels -- out of 50+ -- and I've read them both, lol. And I haven't, YET, read a word of his non-fiction, lol.

But I've watched and listened to several of his talks. This man is AMAZING! He can tell you that simply thinking that you are healthy can make you healthy, then explain the intricate biological processes so clearly that you simply have no choice but to believe him! I mean, after he explains it, you feel like a million bucks, all energized and youthful and invigorated! GENIUS! Plus, he's got this sly wit and dry sense of humor that makes him easy to listen to. Oh, and don't forget the accent! Something about his very deep, very calm Indian accent makes you think of the voice of God, lol! James Earl Jones or Deepak Chopra, THAT'S what God sounds like!

THIS IS SO COOL, being able to write this!

For a while now, my physical location has limited my ability to write!

I mean, not really. It's all in my head.

If Stephen King were here, he'd call me a puss and tell me I'm not really a writer, I suspect.

I don't disagree, either, but I'm what Eddie Izzard might call "a Comfy Man", lol. I'm no Spartan, I can't fight naked, or live in a box with no bed. Stephen King and Scott Pressfield (author of THE WAR OF ART) are all about "write, no matter what the conditions are". But I'm, artistically, a wimp. If it's not fun, screw it; I'm not doin' it. I'll be creative when I FEEL creative. Otherwise, I can find some other way to occupy my time. I have an RCA Opal, I can let some other creative soul entertain ME. ;P

But anyway, lately I've had trouble being able to write.

In the past -- when Brian had 2 working computers -- I could slip off into his room (which he never used anymore, except for storage) and write on his computer. I met my Gnomey Goddess there, fell in love, wrote at least 2 short screenplays there, one short story, one audioplay, a handful of chapters of a doomed novel, and 2 feature-length screenplays in that room on that computer.

But then it broke down. :(

And, honestly, I haven't been able to write much since.

Something about the conditions one writes in seems to ease or stop-up the flow of creativity.

I'm writing this entry with Notepad, so I have no way of knowing how many words I've written so far, but it feels like a fair few! I can't seem to stop typing! The words keep coming and I feel compelled to type them out!

You can't write a work because... well... there's WORK going on.

And I really couldn't write on the Common Computer, because the chair was so uncomfortable and and space was just... I don't know... it seemed "restrictive" somehow. Read your email, respond if you have to, then get the hell out!

But sitting here, in my room, on my bed... Somehow this just feels PERFECT!

OOH! And I can't wait to see what it feels like to actually GO SOMEWHERE and write!!! :D

I remember, in 1998, my former boss had an extra laptop that he loaned to me. I was living with a roommate in Central Austin (I have yet to live alone... Curious... But usually I live with family, or a hot girl I intended to marry, or my ex-wife. (Who, you know... Was my WIFE wife then...) So the 2 times I live with "roommates" stand out in memory, for some reason.

Anyway, I may have done my best bit of writing back then. It was 45 or 75 pages (my memory can't decide on which) of a feature-length film that has yet to be completed. But the concept was, apparently, so good that two of my best friends, who happen to both be aspiring directors, fought over who was going to direct this movie when the script was completed.

Again, this was more than a decade ago, and we were young enough to hold pretty grandiose ideas about how our lives were going to turn out. Now, one of the friends -- the one that won the battle, actually -- is a husband and father of two AMAZING young girls, and the other is a producer in L. A. but he has yet to direct his own movie. And me... Not sure what I am. I am a blogger, a spiritual journeyman, a paranormal investigator, and I suppose an aspiring writer still.

And I'm Gnomey's boyfriend!!! :D xoxoxo And I'll one day be her fiance, and then her husband, and then the father of her children!!!

Which reminds me of a strange mental journey I took earlier this week! :)

It was the last couple of hours of my shift at work, and my mind wandered to what I might say to my younger self if I could travel, say, 20 years back in time.

At 19, I was thin and sexy, I was at what now appears to be my creative height as an actor (assuming I don't sprout an acting career in the future). I had just performed a lead in the "adult" production of THE NERD (I played Hammond, if you know the play) after more than a decade of playing leads and supporting character in the "children's" productions. I was "taking a year off from school" because, deep down, I suspected I was going to find my way to Hollywood and become a superstar, and skip the whole "higher education" process completely.

And I was also about to become a husband and very young father.

Now, twenty years later, what might I advise my younger self.

The exercise wasn't completely masturbatory: If the tale turned out interesting enough, I might make it a novel. There's certainly a market for it. What teen wouldn't want to learn the secrets of experience from an older version of himself/herself? And what adult wouldn't be intrigued by the possibility of hanging with his/her younger self? If I fit in enough humor and charm, this could be a sure sale!

So I explored it over the course of an hour or so...

You've got a pretty hot 19-year-old me who is at a sort of superficial peak, and you've got a you've got a sort of charming 39-year-old me who is at what may be a sort of spiritual peak. (Actually, I don't really feel like I'm "peaking". I really feel like I'm, maybe, a quarter of the way up a staircase that leads to whatever my next peak will be. But for the sake of the possible story, the character would need to be at a peak, or else there's really little point in telling the story, lol.)

So the 19-year-old me believes he's going to go to Hollywood and become the next Michael J. Fox. The 39-year-old me is the blogger you've come to sort of know. (Actually, if you read this blog, you probably know me in real life. But I'm tend to blog as though I have readers who only know me through this blog, lol.)

I considered the twists and turns my life was about to take -- failed application to the U. S. Coast Guard, a stint in Hollywood as a professional Extra and a failed actor, 17 years of study as a writer, author of a single unpublished Young Adult Horror novel, divorcee, more-or-less-absentee father to Tisha, working behind the scenes at a local TV station, rather than in front of the cameras of a Network TV show, non-degree-holding member of the national workforce making just enough to stay in electricity and a home and sometimes food, blogger, avid porn fan.

At 19, I thought I would be a rich and famous movie star by now.

When I examined the choices I was going to make in the next 20 years, how might I advise myself? How might I help my younger self avoid the needless pitfalls, and make choices to optimize my younger self's Life experience?

There's the old cliche, "If I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't change a thing." This works well for popular entertainment, because it makes us feel more comfortable with the mistakes we've made and the mis-steps we've taken in our lives. We walk away from the movie, or put down the novel, thinking "Whatever I do, it's all going to work out okay in the end." But intellectually, we know that this is probably a lie we choose to believe, so that we can just do any stupid ol' thing we feel like doing in the moment.

So I carried on a silent conversation with my younger self for an hour or so, re-examining the actions (or reactions) I took and where they lead me.

And I discovered a truly mind-boggling fact. Something I couldn't believe, but something the facts only verified, and could not dissuade.

I honestly would not change a thing in my past.

How freaky is THAT?!! I mean, you hear the old saying, and you know it's probably bullshit from an Old Timer to make himself feel better about his pathetic lot in Life, but when I honestly, candidly re-examined my choices and where they got me, I CAN NOT honestly imagine a better outcome!

I mean, could I have made choices that landed me a savings account and a better monthly income? Hell yeah!

Could I have made choices that resulted in less emotional pain? Fuck yeah!

But at what cost?

I'm being dead serious here.

My financial choices:

Until 2008, I read about the paranormal as entertainment, searching for ideas for Horror stories. It wasn't until around October of 2008 that it actually occurred to me that I could investigate this stuff for myself. I could learn for myself! I could take all the theoretical knowledge I gained from my reading and apply it to real-life situations and discover my own truth about the paranormal!

And my real fascination with the paranormal is a study of that shadow-land where the spiritual meets the physical. If I were a rich and famous movie star, I seriously doubt I would be exploring ANY aspect of the spiritual. Seriously, I grew up a fundamentalist Christian, and even still, I was A SLUT! I was perfectly comfortable telling my friends about how they would burn in hell if they didn't stop listening to stand-up comedians (whom I worshiped, too) who cursed, and yet I was getting laid by any hotty who was insecure enough to let me into her panties.

I was a shallow, shallow dude.

And yet, my very strict beliefs about how inescapable hell is are directly responsible for my deepr, more thorough exploration of my relationship to God. Just exactly HOW MUCH does He want me to die and suffer, lol? Why is He pissed off at me, and can I ever make Him not pissed? If He's "all love" then why did He create us to be unlovable? Etc.

My original belief system made it a sin -- I mean, "SIN!!!" -- to even explore paranormal subjects. As much as I wanted to be the Karate Kid, I thought I couldn't learn martial arts because Satan was hiding in Eastern Philosophy, lurking to turn me away from the path of God and lure me into eternal hellfire!

But it was one of my "bad choices" that led me to a deeper, more effortless, more fulfilling relationship as God as I (now) understand Her. (Btw, I don't really believe God has a gender, but I prefer the feminine because it forces me to think of Her in more open-minded terms than the masculine, which I grew up with.)

I'm not trying to preach to you or sell you on anything here, I'm just describing my journey.

But my spiritual identity has A LOT to do with how I perceive myself. And so I couldn't advise my younger self to change any of his choices regarding his spiritual path. Every choice he was going to make was going to subtly guide him to the spiritual landscape I now inhabit. And I know for a fact that THIS is where he wants to be right now.

But more than that, my younger self doesn't know that there will be something called "paranormal investigators"! as far as he knows, there are these nerdy eggheads called "parapsychologists" who have to deal with all the unpleasant aspects of academia, but don't get to make the money a PHd is supposed to afford other folk! My younger self has NO IDEA that some people will find relief from serious fear when he brings to bear his knowledge of the paranormal, and that some people will treat him like a rock star when we wears his investigator uniform, lol. He has no idea that the subject he studies now as a form of entertainment will one day become valuable, useful information for people who simply never gave as much attention to this topic as he has. In other words, by simply being himself, interested in what he's interested in, he will one day HELP strangers!

So if this younger self makes choices that lead him to more personal wealth, he's going to get distracted from the paranormal which, for him, is just a minor curio in which he occasionally indulges when something shinier isn't attracting his attention.

And THIS cat, this younger me, is going to LOVE being a paranormal investigator!!!

Who knows? Maybe in 2011 or 2012 his experiences in and knowledge of the paranormal will even gain him some notoriety.

But what about the heartaches? I know this cat has some seriously emotionally trying times ahead of him. For one thing, he will spend a decade alone, knowing there "must be" some perfect woman out there for him, with absolutely NO proof to corroborate his faith. This guy will spend some lonely, lonely nights imagining a perfect woman that he has no evidence exists. If I offer him a few pointers, he might be married to a great woman in the early 1990s, living a "normal" life and raising 2.5 children in a house with a white, picket fence.

If I help my younger self out, I can see to it that he holds onto a couple of the "good ones", or at least avoids a couple of the "bad ones".

But then there's Gnomey.

I have QUITE an imagination. I'm a writer. I can dream up a woman who is so sweet that your heart just goes out to her and you only want to protect her, and yet she's so sexy that you really, really want to just bend her over and do really naughty things to her, AND YET her physical appearance is just girl-next-door-ish that you really believe you have a shot with her, and only YOU perceive her TRUE beauty and sex appeal. It's not a hard task, actually. I just have to imagine everything I want from a woman, then consider my own insecurities as a man and as a human, then consider what Life has taught me about getting what I think I want, then meld all that into a character who possess the qualities that attract me so much that I want her, but who had flaws (to make her believable) but her flaws are small enough that they don't distract from the positive attributes.

I have imagined many, many incarnations of my "perfect woman".

And then I met Gnomey.

You hear these "spiritual truths" throughout your life. You hear that, for instance, holding our for the "right" whatever makes all the waiting worth it. You hear that everyone has a "perfect someone" somewhere out there, waiting for them. "Patience is its own virtue". Blah, blah, blah.

These "spiritual truths" aren't much comfort when you're on a 10-year "dry spell".

And yet...

This perfect combination of "failed" dreams and optimism, of closed doors and unforeseen opportunities leads the 36-year-old version of myself to meet a woman who possesses ALL my ideals about what "the perfect woman" is like AND BLOWS THEM OUT OF THE WATER!!!

When I got married at 19, I remember considering all the times I had been without a girlfriend and thinking "Thank God I'll never have to be lonely again".

An ironic thought, to be sure.

But now that I have my Gnomey Goddess, I am genuinely SO thankful for all she has given me that if something happened (and I have NO reason to believe it would, God bless) and she decided to break up with me, I would honestly be GRATEFUL for the time she shared with me! I mean, how perverse is THAT?!! This woman, effectively, loves me so thoroughly that Ever After is beside the point! I mean, usually we're looking for that person we want to spend the rest of our life with. And I have found a woman that I SO want to spend the rest of my life with, but if I didn't get the rest of my life, I would be cool with the time we've had with each other!

I get to have my cake AND eat it, too!

I somehow got to fall in love with a woman who makes all my ideals about perfection look half-formed, I got to experience HER falling in love with ME, I get to be loved by her and to love her, and her love for me -- however much it turns out to be in the long-run -- is ENOUGH for me!!!

How insane is THAT?!! Imagine you're at a buffet that you paid A LOT to attend. And imagine you eat absolutely EVERYTHING you want, and after an hour or so you're full and completely sated. BUT THE BUFFET IS STILL OPEN! If you get hungry in another hour, you can eat MORE! And if you're hungry an hour after that, YOU CAN EAT MORE! You don't have to leave! It's just THERE, right there in front of you! And if, for whatever reason, the owner actually does escort you out of the restaurant and tells you the meal is finally over, you feel contended that you have eaten WAY MORE than your money's worth. BUT YOU HAVE NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT MOMENT WILL EVER COME!!! You may well be allowed to stay at that restaurant for the rest of your life, continually enjoying that amazing feast, forever more!

And if I advised my younger self to avoid any of the emotional low points he has ahead of him, he might never experience this feeling. One emotional low point leads, inescapably, to this emotional high he has waiting for him when he becomes me. I mean, as a writer I might be able to contrive some situation which allows my younger self to avoid the lows and still experience the highs, but even I wouldn't believe they were actually possible.

So where all this is leading is here:

In my imaginary conference with my younger self, I discovered that I simply could not, in good conscience, suggest that he make any choices different from what I, myself, chose.

In all sincerity, no bullshit and I'm not being sentimental here, if I had it all to do over again, I genuinely would not change a thing.

How messed-up is that?

I sincerely hope you're enjoying your holidays, and I very genuinely hope that should you ever take the time to look over your past choices, you discover that you are exactly where you want to be!!!

:D

13 Days Till Christmas

2009-12-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

Finally found a moment to blog.

I've been busy!

Looking back, I see that I last posted back in November. Since then I have finished Under the Dome -- which was AWESOME!

PLUS, it has a cameo by a friend of mine, Reynolds Wolf, who was our morning weather guy back in the '90s, and now he's at CNN! So how weird is it to have and old friend pop up in a Stephen King novel?!! Cooler still was the fact that I appear to be the first person who knows him to have read the book, because I got to be the guy who told him! :D That was a neat feeling. His response was, naturally, "Really?"

Brian & I also drove to Louisiana to spend Thanksgiving with Mom, Gan-Gan and Mom's husband. (It seems weird calling him my step-dad because I'm 39 years old, lol. I think of him as Mom's Boy-Toy. Mom's Man-Thang. Is that wrong?)

I've also read MICHAEL CRICHTON'S LAST NOVEL, PIRATE LATITUDES!!! It's a PIRATE NOVEL!!! :D MICHAEL CRICHTON WROTE A PIRATE NOVEL!!! :D

It was awesome!

The visual authenticity of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is matched by the EVERYTHING authenticity of Pirate Latitudes. What I mean is, the way everything looks realistic and believable in the Pirates movies, everything in Crichton's novels feels that real. Anyone who has read his work knows Crichton is fascinated with historical and technical details, and is a master at entegrating them into a tight, fast-paced, exciting story. The historical detail in Pirate Latitudes is no exception. You feel as though you're cruising around in mid-1600s.

What else?

I'm working.

What I mean is that I'm filling in for a co-worker on vacation. This Sunday will be 1 of 2 days I get off for the rest of 2009. I'm off Sunday, then off again next Sunday, then the next time I'm off work is January 1, 2010.

But this isn't a bad thing!

First of all, who couldn't use overtime nowadays, right?

Secondly, overnight on the weekends is pleasantly uneventfuly usually. (Unless something blows up... which happens... but, thankfully, not often.) So I may get to catch up on my Hulu queue. I'm behind several episodes of Castle and Dollhouse and Ghost Hunters, and I added V to my queue and haven't even watched the first episode yet. So I'm hoping to empty my Hulu queue out by the tiome 2010 rolls around. (We're having computer issues at home, so I haven't been watching much Hulu at the house.)

Anything else?

I haven't heard much from my sweety, but she texts me whenever she can. The holidays always seem to be busy for her, and I imagine they are more so this year. (♥LOVE YOU, GNOMEY!!! xoxoxo ♥)

OH! The paranormal-thang is AWESOME! I lead my first investigation with Texas Spirits recently!!! :D And I think I did a competent job! It was freaky, because I'm directing people who are much more experienced than I am! And they're following my lead!!! :P It's wacky!

I'm not really into titles, so being "lead investigator" on a case doesn't really do anything for me (besides make me anxious, lol), but what I'm floored by is the fact that these cats that I love and respect seem to think of me as an equal. (I guess I've got them fool, huh?)

Also, I've been corresponding with a couple of people who have questions about possible paranormal activity, and it's really neat to be able to share my thoughts on the subject! You know? Like, to have someone ask me a question and be interested to hear what I think about a paranormal matter. VERY cool! :) I feel like a legitimate member of the paranormal community, lol!

I know, I'm a nerd, right?

OOH!

SHERLOCK HOLMES!!!

CHRISTMAS DAY!

I'm working Christmas, but I am making it my mission to see the new Sherlock Holmes flick ON CHRISTMAS DAY!

DUDE!!!

Holmes is one of my FAVORITE, FAVORITE, FAVORITE characters of all time! I love the original Conan Doyles stories, I love the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies, I love the Rathbone/Bruce radio show, and I love the Jeremy Brett series (1984-1994 by Granada Television)!

Now, it seems wierd to me to have a Yank playing Holmes -- like having an American play Bond (or, for that matter, like Angelina Jolie playing Lara Croft) -- but if you've got to cast an American as Holmes, Robert Downey, Jr. is DEFINITELY a good candidate!

Plus, this new flicks looks like it's going to explore some "new" aspects of the Holmesean mythos.

Like, for instance, the action angle!

In the short stories, the action always takes place "off screen", as dialogue. "Oh yes," said Holmes, "I had to rough up eighteen hooligans before being thrown off a train crossing a hundred-thousand foot bridge, and then I was forced to duel Jack the Ripper with sabers before vanquishing a sasquatch with a straight razor, but finally I was free to look at the footprints inbedded in the clay surrounding the murder site and I noticed..."

Apparently, Conan Doyle simply wasn't interested in the action as much as the deduction, so he never wrote those parts, merely had his characters refer to them.

Then, I believe, Holmes went to the stage. Well, the theatre doesn't really lend itself to action set pieces so, again, the action elements of a Holmes story was de-emphesized or removed.

Then, if I'm not mistaken, Holmes moved to the radio... Again, not really an action-friendly medium.

Then Holmes moved to the big screen... BUT...

By now, everyone is used to a sort of non-action style Holmes. Plus, it's more expensive to shoot action scenes than it is to shoot talking scenes. And I'll bet part of the appeal of Holmes for the studio was the fact that they could simply film a stage play (logistically speaking) and still rake in Big Budget box office. (I don't know how much the Holmes films made when they we in cinemas, but they made 14 of them, so I'm guessing they made plenty.)

So, basically, generations have grown up with an inactive Holmes.

Jeremy Brett energized the personality of Holmes with his performance, but that was still a TV show, so action still remained largely off-screen.

So I'm excited to see an Action-Hero version of Holmes! I think it'll be fun. Plus, there have been flicks in the last 15 years or so that have played-up some of Holmes' more eccentric personality traits, but usually in a more somber way. It looks like Downey, Jr.'s interpretation of Holmes is, like Brett's, that sort of manic energy, dropped into a Guy Ritchie scope! :D

FUN!!!

PLUS... WATSON!!!

I blame Nigel Bruce for being so loveable as Watson and for being so talented as a comedian, but Watson WAS NEVER a bumbler! EVER! In the Conan Doyle stories, Watson is a doctor and a war vet! He may not be as smart as Holmes, but NOBODY is as smart as Holmes. (There is Moriority and Mycroft, but that's it. Holmes is in a league of his own, and that's the point of the character.) Watson was smart enough to continue to get calls from Scottland Yard to help them on cases after Holmes (apparently) died! That fact really doesn't jibe with Nigel Bruce's intepretation of Watson.

Still, the long-standing popularity of the Rathbone/Bruce team in 14 films and 7 years on the radio has created this sort of inescapable image of Dr. Watson being an affable bumbler.

The Granada TV series(s) did a whole lot to repair that image, though. There are now generations of folks who know that Watson is competent.

But THIS Watson...! Jude Law, dude!!! :D THIS is gonna be an AWESOME Watson!!! In fact, the trailers and commercials I've seen so far sort of make Holmes look like the oddball! Like, Watson is this cool, competent guy, and Holmes is the freak... which... is really the way the relationship would have worked out, if you think about it. I mean, yeah, Holmes was famous and all, but he was a geek. Watson was really the one you would rather have a conversation with. Like Monk and Sharona/Natalie: You talk to Sharona/Natalie, and let her deal with the crazy genius freak-guy.

Blah.

So anyway, I'm stoked! I SO can't wait to see this flick!

Merry Christmas to me! :D

Okay, I'm goign to go do work now. There's not a ton to do, but it would be wisest for me to go ahead and do it before I slack any further.

Enjoy your weekends and the season! :D It's the greatest time of the year!!!

UNDER THE DOME!!! :D

2009-11-19T23:58:00.000-08:00

I have spent this week enjoying Stephen King's latest opus, Under the Dome, and I am SO loving it!!! It's HUGE, too! 34+ hours of audiobook listening. But the vastness and complexity of the story is part of what makes it amazing!

It's crazy, I was in the middle of Furies of Calderon (audiobook) and about 1/4 into Seeking Spirits (hard copy), AND after this past Saturday's investigation Mike loaned me Collison Course by William Shatner and John loaned me the Starhunter box set. So it's not like I was looking for entertainment, lol. If anything, I was budgeting my time to get through this embarrassment of riches.

But then I'm in Walmart, shopping (essentials) and I see that King has a new blockbuster out, and it looked COOL! A small northeastern town finds itself TRAPPED UNDER AN INVISIBLE DOME!!! :D

I mean, in the hands of just about any author besides King, Koonts, Crichton or Adams I probably would have scoffed and forgotten about it. But I've read enough of King's work to know that he can make the silliest of notions work! (He somehow finds the reality of the most unreal situations, and forces you to invest your emotions into the characters trapped in that circumstance.)

And as I'm listening to this, I'm struck by what genius horror writers King and Koontz are!

If you study the horror genre long enough, you will find that one of the psychological tricks horror writers use is to have characters enjoy the Darkness... If you want to create a human monster, you have that character do horrible things, and enjoy doing it. For some reason, it's really, really creepy to watch a person enjoying doing something that you have difficulty imagining real people doing.

When this is done poorly, you get sexy vampires who always smile coyly when the kill their victims, or evil geniuses who laugh ominously when they reveal their evil plans.

But when this is done well, you get the creeps whenever that character is in the chapter or on the screen.

Then, if the horror writer is particularly ambitious, he/she might have one of the main characters enjoying doing some dark deed. There is a literary theory that horror stories are about breaking down people so that they are, themselves, almost monsters. (Some folks swear by this, but I believe it's merely one of several approaches to writing an effective horror storie.) So, maybe, in the climactic battle, you might have the hero not only dismantle the monster, but really get into it, like in a sick way. (Think about the ending of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter when Corey Feldman's character hacks up Jason, killing him, then can't stop hacking. His sister pulls him away and hugs him to her, but the camera reveals his expression: His bloodlust is still up, and he may have been permanently altered by this experience.)

But what I've noticed King doing in this book (and Koontz in some of his work; and more besides these two, I'm sure, but I'm not really widely read (I like who I like and I generally stick with them)) is a bit more insidious -- and may be a contributing factor to why these novels are so effective: King makes you, the reader, enjoy the Darkness!

Here's what I mean: King creates characters who are so... inhuman that you really, really want to see them killed! You want to see them tortured and tormented in the most excrutiating ways possible!

I've never really noticed this before.

King makes me hate these characters. He makes me want to watch them die. (And, I suspect, I'm not the only one to react this way.)

Since I was a kid, I've always gotten of when the really, really bad man is stopped by the really, really good guy -- usually mortally. But because a staple of the horror genre is gore, when the bad guys die, they die bloody!

You expect it.

You're disappointed if you don't get it.

One of the best novels I've ever read is a Koontz novel (the name of which I won't reveal here for reasons that will be obvious in 2 seconds) and it contains one of the most frightening human monsters of all time (on par with Hannibal Lector, or Hitler) and his ultimate end... left me unfulfilled.

Which is sort of ironic (if I'm using the word correctly here) because the point of the novel is the power of people loving and looking out for one another. I hated any chapter that featured this character because the warped way he thought and acted made me feel like I needed a shower every time he took the page, whereas I adored every paragraph and sentence with any of the myriad other characters in the book! I loved these character because they were good people getting along the best they could in unfairly difficult circumstances, helping each other out along the way.

But then when the "monster" is removed from the picture (which is, basically, what you're waiting for from the start of the novel) in a fairly tidy manner, I feel a little cheated because he didn't die horribly enough.

How warped is that?!!

And earlier in life, I didn't find anything wrong with my emotional reactions -- wanting the bad guys to die horribly -- because these were fictitious characters, these were "people" who had never lived, except in imagination. And that was good enough for me.

But these past years my intention -- the desire behind my thoughts, feelings and actions -- has become important to me, and monitoring my intentions has become an ongoing practice of mine.

And it has been quite an interesting revelation to observe the intricacy of the craft behind a master writer's work! I didn't notice it in the last 2 King novels I read -- Duma Key (AWESOME!!!) and From a Buick 8 because the "bad guys" were supernatural. I don't actually feel a desire to seek out sick, twisted retribution against a vicious hurricane that ravages hundreds or thousands of victims, even though my deepest sympathy and empathy is with them.

So it was quite interesting, and not a little disturbing, to notice how quickly and thoroughly I desire the blood of an evil character. (And I tend to imagine myself to be so "enlightened"! Tisk, tisk!)

And I'm not certain, but I think the way I discovered King's skillful use of this "enjoying the Darkness" (that's not, like, an official term for this literary device, just one I'm calling it for now) tool is because he also used a simple, wide-spread literary tool when he finally killed off a couple of minor monsters in this book I'm reading now:

He made me empathize with the monsters.

Movies are a bit simplistic with the application of literary tools, because they're looking for the biggest bang for their buck, if you will. Finding out that the shark in Jaws II is the mother of the other shark (if I'm remembering this correctly, and not confusing it with another Jaws movie) gives the monster motivation, but you don't empathize with it. On the other hand, whatever version of Frankenstein you watch, you totally empathize with Frankenstein's creation, but you're not likely to be frightened of it.

Novels are a great deal more complex.

In this one (and this is just a teeny-tiny shard of the story, barely even a sub-plot, really, in the scope of this huge story) King creates these 2 human monsters, who are monsters for the duration of their literary lives... until they die. Then, with just a few words, you sort of feel bad for their fate, despite the inhuman things they have done to earn their end.

Shakespeare was right: "What a piece of work is man..."

I had no idea I was particularly complex! And yet, here I am lusting after a "person's" blood when I never would have imagined it possible! (Regardless of whether or not the "person" is real, it's my intention that interests me in this particular matter.)

Also -- and perhaps this is my original point in writing this entry -- HOW BADASS IS STEPHEN KING?!! :D

9 on the "Narcissistic Personality Inventory"

2009-11-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Have you heard about this test?

Dr. Drew was on Conan O'Brien tonight, and he mentioned this test, and I immediately had to see if there was a copy of it online that I could take! I found it reprinted here...

The test says that the average score is 15.3, that celebrities generally average 17.8, and that Dr. drew himself scored a 16.

And I scored a 9.

Not sure what to make of that.

I mean, obviously, I don't want to score too high, because that means I'm really narcissistic.

But...

Surely scoring low means I have self-esteem issues or something, right?

But I don't think I have a poor self image. I mean, I quite fond of me. In fact, I'm a huge fan of me! (I wouldn't go so far as to suggest there should be more of me wandering around the planet, because then I would be slightly less special. I suspect a single me is probably the perfect amount of me in the world.)

But a 9?

The test further says it's important to consider which traits are dominant in my personality. Some traits, like authority and self-sufficiency, are more useful than others, like vanity and entitlement.

So I broke down my stats, and they are as follows:

• Authority: 4 (out of 8)
• Self-sufficiency: 0 (out of 6)
• Superiority: 3 (out of 5)
• Exhibitionism: 1 (out of 7)
• Exploitativeness: 1 (out of 5)
• Vanity: 0 (out of 3)
• Entitlement: 0 (out of 6)

So I seem to be right down the middle as far as my sense of authority (which makes sense if you've ever asked me "So what do you want to do tongiht?").

I, apparently, have no self-sufficiency. I don't know if that's fair...

I seem to feel fairly superior. Make of that what you will. I have been accused of being a pompous ass before, so perhaps this result confirms that assertion. ;)

1 out of 7 in Exhibitionism... Well, if you saw me without a shirt, I believe you would be grateful for my lack of exhibitionism.

I seem to be 1/5th exploitative. This seems like a fairly healthy number, right?

I appears to have NO vanity. :D I'm not sure how accurate this test is, but I'm fine with this result! ;P

And I appear to have no sense of entitlement. That's probably good, right? I mean, I've known some folks who seem to have a 5/6 or 6/6 Entitlement, and I'm happy to think I'm not like them.

But still... a 9? Aren't we naturally supposed to be a little more narcissistic than that? I mean, most folks score somewhere around a 15.

Hmm...

You think, maybe, it raises my score a little that the first thing I did after taking this test is blog about it?

The Men Who Stare At Goats... THE BOOK!

2009-11-06T01:22:00.000-08:00

The movie looks like it's going to be awesome, but I just finished reading the book, WHICH I LOVED! :D

The difference, put simply, is that the book is completely non-fiction -- the information therein researched and verified as thoroughly as possible by the author -- and the film is a work of fiction.

I'm still going to see the movie! It looks like a hysterical flick, and if they can balance the duality of comedy and disturbing fact the way Jon Ronson does in his book, then the flick should be a great after-movie-coffeehouse-discussion topic! In fact, if the filmmakers get a larger audience discussing some of the things the book brings to light, then this could be an all-time favorite movie!

The book deals with Military Intelligence investigating paranormal abilities, with the intent of creating super-effective, super-inexpensive super soldiers .

It is not, however, a pro-paranormal book, lol. It's clear that Jon Ronson puts NO stock in claims of the paranormal abilities, and a lot of the humor comes from just how silly such people look to non-believers!

In fact, it gave me a new (much more amusing) vision of myself on Saturday nights, wandering around in the darkness looking for ghosts with equipment that was most decidely not designed for that purpose. :D

But that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

As Ronson tracks the effects of this stort-lived experiement in military human potential and observes how the ideas proposed in the 1970s have morphed into techniques for current PSYOPS, the book looses some of its wacky humor, but remains edge-of-your-seat riveting.

I had actually wanted to read the book before I found out there was a film version. It was mentioned (if memory serves) by a guest on one of the paranormal podcasts I listen to, which piqued my interest. (In particular, I believe the guest mentioned the military experiement in which a soldier stared at a numbered goat, attempting to burt its heart, until the goat next to it toppled over from a heart attack.) So when I saw the commercials for the flick, I figured I should read the book before the movie comes out because (a) the movie looks hysterical, and I suspect folks will be talking about it for a while, and (b) if I saw the movie first, I might be less inclinded to read the book. (I'm a lazy sort.)

Plus, it's always more fun to have the book in your mind when you see the movie. They have to cut a lot of information out of books to transform them into movies, and that extra information can sometimes make a poor adaptation a little more enjoyable. To illustrate: The Harry Potter films work just fine the way they are; Twilight was fine as a film, but the book is better (natch) and the movie is better when you know what's missing; the film version of Hannibal (if you even remember that flick) is really weak, so seeing the movie after having read the book makes you feel better by reminding you that you had previously enjoyed a different incarnation of this story.

But in the best of situations, it seems to me that a great adaptation of a great novel just create 2 great -- but different -- products. Like the Harry Potter films, Jurassic Park and other good Michael Crichton adaptations, the good Stephen King adaptations, as so on... No matter how good the movie is or how many times you watch it, you still get in the mood to go back and reread the original from time to time.

So, anyway, I wanted to have the book in my head before I saw the movie.

And I'm SO GLAD I did! :D GREAT READ!

Okay, just 1 hour 45 minutes left in my shift, so I'm going away now.

Hope you had a great Guy Fawkes Day yesterday!

:)

The Ghost Light of Bragg Road

2009-10-27T00:28:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was an AWESOME weekend!!! :D

Texas Spirits hit the road last weekend for a field trip to see the ghost light of Bragg Road in Saratoga, TX!

Bragg Road is this straight, 8-mile stretch of dirt road lined with trees on both sides and swamp on the other side of the trees. The road is just barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other going opposite directions IF one of the cars is stopped and pulled over to the side as far as they can go.

The reports are a glowing ball -- maybe the size of a tennis ball or a volleyball -- that can change colors from pale blue to yellow to greenish white, that shoots down the road, sometimes darting in and out of the trees, and sometimes even passing into and through cars that happen to be on the road. The ghost light can be differentiated from passing car headlights (about which I will talk in more detail shortly) by the fact that it moves up and down and sideways, varying in speed. The ghost light might, according to reports, zoom down the road toward you, darting in and out of the treeline, then pause maybe 15 feet in front of you, hover there for a minute or so, then shoot off faster than lightening, disappearing up into the night sky.

The backstory is less interesting...

See, whenever an area -- anywhere in the United States, like, anywhere -- with a ghost light, the legend is always one of 3 stories:

1. A railroad engineer/conductor was beheaded, and now he travels the tracks, carrying a lantern, looking for his head.

2. Some young lover was meant to meet some other young lover at a specific place, often so they could run off together and elope or something. But the other young lover was killed, and thereby failed to make the rendezvous, and now the one young lover wanders the area still, searching for his/her soul mate. (I don't remember what the specific size/shape of the ghost light is attributed to... maybe it's the young lover's ghost carrying a lantern for the search.)

3. There is something called the Will-O-The-Whisp that has something to do with unbaptized babies or something like that.

(I'm at work, so I can't be bothered to do the research to refresh my memory, lol.)

But wherever you are in the U.S., if you go to a place with a ghost light, you will get one of the first two back stories as "historical fact" to explain the ghost light. (I don't think people really go in for the Will-O-The-Wisp theory anymore.)

Well, the Bragg Road Ghost Light just mashed-up the first 2 stories -- just to cover all their bases, I suppose. ;P

HOWEVER...

The fact that people employ an age-old, oft-duplicated urban legend or folk tale as back story to explain a phenomenon DOES NOT negate the existence of the phenomenon. It just means that human nature is that people feel a little safer with weird stuff when they have a recognizable story to explain it. (It's similar to our need to name things and categorize them, even if the categories are as random as "normal" and "paranormal". It's simply a Human Thang.)

Making the Bragg Road Ghost Light more intriguing is the fact that Paula, founder of Texas Spirits Paranormal Investigations, ACTUALLY SAW THE LIGHT! :D

So you KNOW I was excited about this investigation!

[Quick Note: Please don't think that I blow off research and background in general. If I were making an official report or writing a chapter in a book or something, I would be much more thorough. But since this is a blog entry, I'm being much less formal. I'm just trying to convey the experience of this weekend here.]

More intriguing, still, is the fact that John investigated Bragg Rood, too, at a different time, was not there for Paula's experience, and did not experience the ghost light.

So two of the people whom I look up to as investigators have opposing experiences with Bragg Road! And I get to investigate it for myself now!!! :D

Stephanie and Mike picked me up from my casa at 10am, which was a really nice start to my Saturday morning. Then we hooked up with Jesse, Paula and John, and I rode out to Kountze (where we had hotel rooms booked, though Bragg Road is in Saratoga) with Paula and John. This is where I got to hear their past experiences investigating there, and then I got to talk their ears off about different paranormal stuff I usually don't have an opportunity to ask their takes on.

When we got to Kountze, we checked-in and got to meet our cheerleaders for the evening: Paula's sister had brought some friends to investigate Bragg Road with us! I call them "cheerleaders" because, at first, they talked to us as though we were celebrities, lol. It was a nice ego-boost. ;) It was also cool that these non-investigators were going with us because I would get to gage the investigator response to anything that happened against the lay-person response (for lack of a better way of describing it). In other words, when a door slams by itself in an abandoned asylum, normal folks run away, and investigators run toward the slamming door. So it would be cool, investigating Bragg Road for my first time, to have 2 different perspectives through which to view whatever we all experienced out there. (It's like 2 different sets of data gathered from the same experiment, or a scene in a movie shot from two different cameras at two different angles to the action.)

As it turned out, I ended up getting 2 shots at Bragg Road.

Phase 1:

It turns out that Bragg Road -- or "Ghost Road", as it is locally known -- is something of a hang-out on Saturday night. We spent several hours watching head lights make their way slowly down either side of the road. There were times when the lights, on either side, were so distant that the stretch of road we were on was really, really dark (except for the moon, which shone extremely bright with no street lamps or buildings around).

It was really cool, too! I got a kick out of walking up and down the road in the darkness, hearing something on the other side of the trees from time to time, imagining that I was going to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot disappearing deeper into the woods. (There were no reports of Sasquatch sightings, but a guy can hope, right?)

The heavy traffic during Phase 1 turned out to be quite useful. Car headlights and swamp gas (literally, swamp gas!) are two of the go-to debunk theories for the Bragg Road ghost light. The road lies between stretches of swamp, and the road lies between 2 stretches of highway. So seeing what headlights on the road looked like -- particularly as they looked when they were at the ends of the road -- was really informative.

So Phase 1 lasted a few hours, and really wasn't the slightest bit spooky, but was fun. And it gave me a nice sense of the road. A "feel" for it, if you will.

Phase 1 ended after a few hours of nothing happening and our guest investigators, having learned of a near-by cemetery and an old local legend about a hotel that burned down, decided they wanted to go explore (possibly) more fertile paranormal territory.

Jesse and I, and two of our guest investigators, spent quite some time wandering around intersection of Bragg Road and Old Bragg Road, looking for signs of at least a foundation where a hotel could be, even if it burned down decades ago.

No luck there.

We also swung by Sutton Cemetery for a peak. (You can't investigate Texas cemeteries after dark unless you have permission -- Texas cemeteries are off-limits to the public after sundown -- and we didn't have permission.

I believe it was around 1:00 am when we all got back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel, I stepped outside for a smoke, and reflected on the night. The whole day had been a lot of fun! It was very cool!

When I got back inside, I found that Jesse had been looking for me. Was I interested in going back to Bragg Road?

My response was something akin to "Hells yeah!"

Mike had work stuff he needed to do, so he and Stephanie stayed at the hotel. And Paula and John had investigated the site before, so I suspect that had something to do with their choice not to go back out tonight.

So the party for Phase 2 was Jesse, 3 of our guest investigators and myself.

The guest investigators, it turns out, BROUGHT FOOD, which they shared! :D Tasty sandwiches and muffins, and even brownies! :) So we ate a bite before heading back out to Bragg Road.

Paula let me borrow her car for the return trip... poor, silly woman. It's a stick-shift, and it's been years since I owned a stick-shift, but I didn't grind her gears too badly. ;P (I'm inserting this part of the story just to torment Paula, should she read this entry, lol.)

Phase 2 was when things got interesting...

Along the 8-mile stretch of road are approximately 4 niches where you can pull over and park or turn around. The road gets really rough at the north end of the road, and Paula's car rides low, so for this second trip, we intended to stay on the south half of Bragg Road. So we pulled into the first niche and parked.

The moon had disappeared now. All the traffic had cleared out, taking their Saturday night adventures elsewhere, apparently. So, as far as we could tell, it was only the 5 of us on Bragg Road now. The road was almost pitch black, except for the stars directly above us.

We started off walking north down the road.

We were, maybe, a quarter of a mile away from where we had parked when we saw a tiny pale-blue light down at the south end of the road, where we had entered it. The tiny blue light quickly split into 2 lights: headlights. A car was coming down the road toward us.

Bragg Road creates a sort of optical illusion -- things seem closer than they are. I speculate it's because we -- American, 21st Century human beings -- are simply not accustomed to looking at a straight road a mile or more longer. We've grown up seeing straight roads, but they never expand 8 miles! And it's 8 miles of trees, so there are no buildings or street lights to tell your brain "That's about 2 blocks away". The visual references we usually have are not provided here.

So -- thanks to all the traffic traveling up and down Bragg Road during Phase 1 of our investigation -- we knew it would be a long time before the car that had just entered the road would reach us.

Maybe 3 seconds had passed before we turned back toward the south end of the road and saw that the headlights had disappeared.

Well, that was odd, we all agreed.

There was nowhere the car could have turned into because there were no turns on the road, except for those 4 niches. Had they been traveling faster than most, and pulled in where we had parked Paula's car?

Jesse said, "Paula's car is locked, right?"

"Um... no." We were, as far as I could tell, alone on the road. I hadn't thought we needed to lock Paula's car.

So Jesse and I head back for the niche, flashlights pointed ahead of us. We weren't running, but we weren't strolling, either. Most likely, no one visiting the road this late was looking for trouble, and they hadn't been there long enough to make a thorough search of Paula's car, even if they...

Paula's car sat alone in the dark niche, unmolested.

There were no other vehicles in sight.

We shone out flashlights back down south, looking for evidence of the vehicle we had seen (we thought) pull onto Bragg Road. Some of the cars, earlier that night, would drive down the road with only their parking lights on. Since they we forced (because of the uneven dirt road) to travel so slowly, there was very little chance of a mishap. Others traveled with their lights off completely. Again, as long as they didn't drive off the road into the trees, it was unlikely there would be any trouble. Also, the trees lining either side of the road were so dense that it was impossible for a car to stray far. (They would have to pay to have the dent knocked out of their bumper, but that was about the worst likely to happen. There was no chance they were going off-roading from Bragg Road.)

But our flashlights didn't catch the glimmer of any vehicles on their way up the road.

That wasn't surprising, though, as out flashlight beams, while impressive, were not likely to reach half a mile, much less a mile down the dark road. But another thing we had learned from Phase 1 of the night was that you could trust your ears on Bragg Road. Even when a car was creeping up on us without its lights earlier in the evening, we could still hear the low rumble of its engine. Even when you can't see it, you can hear that there is a car somewhere around you.

But Bragg Road was silent, as well.

We discussed it, and the consensus was that the only logical possibility for a car to disappear was by backing out, only it would have taken the car longer to back out than the time it took for it to disappear. In all honesty, the car really couldn't have reached the niche in which we were now standing in the time it took for the lights to disappear.

It was a genuine mystery.

It wasn't anything like the reports we had heard of the Bragg Road Ghost Light, and we all agreed that the light looked like headlights.

Let's call this "Experience #1".

So, we decided to drive Paula's car north, to the next niche, and park there. This way, we could explore the road further north than we had been able to thus far tonight, or would be able to if we simply kept walking north from the previous niche.

Once again, we set out wandering northward.

I still hadn't seen the Headless Horseman or Bigfoot, but the walk continued to be cool.

One of the guest investigators, Donna, slowly became convinced she was seeing something up ahead. It looked to her like the orange "cherry" of a cigarette. Like, maybe, someone way down the road, standing there and smoking.

Or something.

She and I found ourselves walking a bit faster, unconsciously sort of racing to find out what it was that she could see and the rest of us could not.

But then Jesse made a point: If this thing were the ghost light or anything paranormal, we wouldn't be able to catch up with it, most likely. It would probably continue to recede further and further away, like the end of a rainbow. And if it were just a guy smoking, perhaps we didn't really want to catch up to him. He might want his privacy. there were a (very) few homes off the road (much farther down), and if it turned out to be a resident of Bragg Road, they might not appreciate a bunch of strangers pestering them at what now must be 3:00am. And if it were an optical illusion, then -- again, like the rainbow example -- there was a strong chance we would never catch up to it.

One thing that seems to prove true again and again is that paranormal phenomena doesn't seem to be "catch-able". If you chase it, you loose it. Every time. It seems -- not just from my very limited experience, but according to those who have years, and even decades, of experience in the field -- that if the paranormal wants you to experience it, it will present itself to you.

So Jesse, wisely, turned us all around to head back in the direction of the car.

We didn't talk much, so the profound darkness was joined by a creepy silence that you only experience when you're that far removed from the city.

As we walked, Donna, kept looking behind her. I did too for a bit. Since we were the only ones on the road, I could comfortably walk backward without worry of bumping into... well, anything, really.

We hadn't quite covered the (maybe) quarter mile to the car when we all saw a pale blue light, far in front of us, somewhere near the south entrance to Bragg Road.

We stopped and watched it.

It was a single light. This didn't look like car headlights.

The blue-white "ball" (for lack of a better description; we had no way of gauging how far in front of us it was) grew brighter, more intense, and turned yellow.

We murmured to each other that it was, indeed, a single light. This was not, as far as we could tell, the headlights from a car.

But still, we didn't have a clue how far away it was.

Then the bright yellow light became more intense, and green. It was sort of golden in the center, but the edges were clearly green. We all confirmed this to each other.

As the light grew more intense, I wondered it it was moving closer to us.

But it wasn't moving up or down, or sideways. It remained directly in the center of the road.

And then it was gone.

What the hell was that?

We ran to the car, hopped in, and drove as fast as we safely could toward the south entrance to the road. If it was a car, we wanted to be able to rule that possibility out.

It felt like it took us forever to get to the entrance!

The unfriendly road wouldn't allow us to move too fast, lest it vibrate Paula's poor car apart. Besides, if a car had decided to park in the middle of the road with its lights off, we could be right on top of it before we even saw it! (This had happened to Jesse and me during Phase 1, when we were on foot. A pickup truck, no less! Right there in front of us and we didn't see it until it turned on its lights and started up! Gave me quite a start.)

As we drove, I think I made a joke about who else was secretly hoping that the light appeared in front of us, passed into the car and just hung out with us for a few seconds. But that might have happened at some other time that night.

I was almost on the highway before I even realized we had exited Bragg Road. (Did I mention that there are no streetlights anywhere?)

I stopped, and we discussed what we had just witnessed.

The fact that we didn't pass -- or run into -- a car or truck meant that we had seen the ghost light, right? That was the reasoning of the guest investigators. It was reported to change colors and to simply disappear.

Jesse and I pointed out, though, that it was also reported to dart around the road (sometimes ducking into the trees), and be seen to disappear straight up into the air, or to the side. This light, as far as we could tell, remained perfectly still.

Besides this, I had a theory that might debunk what we had just seen...

The theory began as a way of explaining to myself how those headlights we had seen earlier might simply disappear the way they had.

If you look at a map of Bragg Road (like the one above (click on it to see the entire image)) you'll notice that Farm To Market Road 787 appears to head straight up into Bragg Road, then veers-off to form a sort of lower-case "y" shape. If it didn't veer off so swiftly, 787 would become Bragg Road.

Now, I know a little about the physicality of optics from my years making short films with my buddies -- as well as my study of special effects, my study of slight of hand and illusion, and my obsession with 3-D (even when you see 3-D naturally, with your naked eye, the perception of depth is still a sort of optical illusion, though a reliable one) -- and if my understanding is near accurate, here is what I believe we saw:

Experience #1 - Because of the darkness, the treeline and the distance from the south entrance to Bragg Road, we couldn't really know if the headlights we saw were on Bragg Road.

We might have seen a vehicle traveling up 787, but because it appeared to be between the treeline, it looked like it was on Bragg Road. Then when it veered west -- the way 787 does -- the trees blocked our view of the headlights and it, effectively, "disappeared" as far as we could tell.

Experience #2 - This is where my logic gets a little strained...

At first, the headlights in Experience #1 appeared to be a single light, either because the treeline blocked one of the headlights or because of the sheer distance from the entrance. Then the single pale-blue light seemed to split into two separate lights, revealing the source to be a vehicle.

For Experience #2, we were maybe a mile further from the entrance.

So is it possible that, at that distance, a pair of headlights might seem to our eyes as a single light? The light we perceive, at that point, is being forced through the treeline which, in effect, would be like forcing it through a cylinder of solid material.

Have you ever tried to shine a wide flashlight beam through a pinprick in a thick, black cloth? It looks like a star in the night sky. If you have a large enough light source and enough pinpricks, you can actually simulate a night sky. We did this back in theatre when I was a teenager. The effect isn't like you're getting a tiny sliver of the light radiating from the source, but as though all the radiance from the light source is forcing itself through that tiny hole.

The light seems to become brighter, rather than diminished. Focused.

So what about the color changes, though?

I can't explain this scientifically, but here's my theory: Assuming Experience #2 was a car, the headlights might have appeared blue-white when it was furthest away from us, and possibly traveling down a slight incline in the road. Then when the incline leveled out, the light became yellow and more intense. Then as the car got closer, that yellow light might have (and this is where my logic really strains) picked up the green from the leaves of the treeline that was focusing the beam of headlights into a single, intense ball of light for us.

That makes sense, right?

The explanation was really for Jesse's benefit, because our guest investigators weren't interested in debunking their cool experience.

After that, we headed back to the hotel because it was a little after 3:30am and we all had a long trip ahead of us in a few hours.

I rode back to Austin with Jesse in Stephanie and Mike's car (they live up north, closer to me, while Paula and John live WAY south). It was a fun trip! Even after a mere 4 or so hours of sleep, I didn't feel drowsy the whole way back!

So, just between you and me, here's my take on my Bragg Road experiences...

I don't really know how much water my "explaination" holds, scientifically. I don't know enough about optics to be able to even know where to start researching my theory to prove or disprove it.

Also, I don't know if the stretch of 787 just south of Bragg Road is long enough to allow a vehicle's headlights to do what I attempted to describe just now. I, stupidly and amateurishly, failed to note exactly how long Experience #2 lasted, and by now my memory is way-fuzzy.

I know that the light didn't move the way the light Paula saw moved. And the perfect stillness, centered-ness of the light we saw is more in line with my explanation. But I also have no idea how far ahead of us it was. If it were the Ghost Light and it were near the southern entrance to Bragg Road, might it not have been able to bob up and down, left and right and still appear, to us, to be standing still and centered? If it were that far away, might it not have been able to dart up into the sky, or sideways into the trees, without us seeing the tell-tale tracer of light that revealed which direction it went?

I'm not trying to make this paranormal, and I'm not trying to make it not-paranormal. I believe true skepticism questions both sides of an equation. I know zealot skeptics who will accept any explanation that points away from the paranormal, and I know zealot believers who will accept any explanation that points toward the paranormal. But as an investigator, I simply have to admit that I don't have enough data either way.

Still, I've got 2 interesting experiences under my belt! :D

Also, even though you're not supposed to enter cemeteries in Texas after dark, I might -- maybe -- have pulled out my digital audio recorder when we stopped by Sutton Cemetery and I might -- maybe -- have pressed Record, and so I might -- maybe -- have caught some voices that aren't supposed to be on the track I recorded. ;P

I still need to listen to it.

Tonight might be a good night to do that, huh?

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

:D

AWESOME Birthday!!! :D

2009-10-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

This has been a great weekend!!!

My weekend started with money in the bank -- a rare occasion for me, lol. I worked a couple extra days a couple weekends ago, which took care of ALL my bills (to date) and scored me a night of fine dining -- Pappa John's pizza for Brian & myself -- and scored me a couple of books!

First, I'm doing my shopping after work Friday morning, and I see that the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book is out! When I first heard about And Another Thing... I wasn't certain whether or not I would be reading it, since it's not by Douglas Adams. But I picked it up in the store and read the introduction, and I laughed out loud twice!

So I'm 192 pages into it (just finished Chapter 9 (of 12)).

Eoin Colfer is quite clever and whimsical!

The other book I picked up was Jason & Grant's second book about their adventures in The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which Brian is currently reading. (He, too, has been cramming his head full of paranormal research, but he paused all his reading to dive into Seeking Spirits, as I probably would have done, were I not working on H2G2, Book 6 of 3).

We also watched some Castle (Season 1) and the first disc of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And listened to some Spooky Southcoast and a few episodes of Paranormal Podcast.

AND...

I got past the place I was hung-up on in Level 6 of Tomb Raider: Underworld -- the second swinging roof-hammer in Valhalla -- and am now on Level 8!!! :D

I'm a bit stuck again, at the moment, though. I jump down the thing, kill the giant monster-guy, grab the gold brick, jump over to the little island thingy, climb the other thing, swing over to get the other gold brick, but then when I swing back to the one platform thingy I always overshoot and land in the toxic pool.

But that's okay!

I'm on the first part of the LAST LEVEL and I am not too terribly far from defeating Underworld!!! :D

Then, hopefully, the game will let me go back and re-play my favorite levels, like the previous games did.

Oh, and also, a lot of people posted some really sweet things to me on Facebook, which is cool!

Oh, and did I mention I'm really diggin' KISS's new album, Sonic Boom?!! They've got a couple of anthem-type songs that stand up to my all-time favorite KISS songs from any era! :D

So life is pretty groovy for Ray Jay!!! :D

OH! And check it out...

Last night/this morning, as I was winding down for bed, I did a tarot spread for the main character of one of the stories I'm working on, and it was FREAKY how informative it was!!! On the one hand, the reading provided me in-depth information about the character that was truly enlightening (which is what I expected), but on the other hand, the reading ACTUALLY CONFORMED to the fictitious fate I had already worked-out for my character! (Which I did not expect!) I'm talking about some specific aspects of the character's "life"! It was uncanny! I don't think even Carl Jung could explain what the hell's going on there, lol!

But it was very, very cool!

Okay, I really need to get back to work.

So PEACE!!! :D

Happy Birthday To Me...

2009-10-15T22:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, technically it's no longer my birthday.

But since I'm off come 6:00am, I'm gonna celebrate another day. I've got some Castle Season 1 at home, and Netflix is supposed to be sending some Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip tomorrow, too. PLUS, my li'l bro scored us brewskies, so there we go! :)

My celebration today was as follows:

I got home to my friend Traci's b-day present: The Psychic Tarot Oracle Cards by John Holland. It's this GORGEOUS deck with a bit of a more positive bent than the well-known Rider-Waite deck. (If someone says "tarot cards", the images that immediately pop into your mind are, most likely, from the classic Rider-Waite deck.)

I'm a fan of divination tools, but I've never really explored tarot cards too deeply because the decks creep me out! I'm not kidding, I just get this very negative buzz off traditional tarot cards. I'm even talking about regular playing cards used as a tarot deck. I don't know why, it's just creepy to me.

But John Holland designed this deck that's completely not creepy! I knew there were different types of decks out there, and I've sort of browsed them from time to time online, but never really found a deck that I connected with.

But then my buddy Traci hooks me up! I think I can learn tarot from this deck.

Which is COOL!

Because, first of all, even Carl Jung recognized the value of using a divination tool in order to see a problem or situation from a new perspective. He specifically discussed tarot cards because they work with archetypal images and notions which connect with the subconscious. So whether you believe God (or one of His angels) manipulates the cards in order to speak to the person asking for advice (be it you or someone you're reading for), you can still see how the random images flipped over during a reading can give the mind something to free-associate upon, freeing up the querrant's creative problem-solving abilities and allowing them to, possibly, see a solution where they previously had seen an impassible problem.

But I'm not planning on setting up shop in the back of a New Age book store anytime soon. I'm excited about these cards because you can use them to help you create fiction! :D

This isn't an original idea. That is to say, it was original when whoever first thought of it thought of it, but I am not original in my usage of it.

You'll hear many writers talk about receiving stories, or characters or situations, as though they were a gift from somewhere. You'll hear writers talk about "the Muse". But whether you believe in an unseen force, or merely recognize the mind's own astounding and ineffable inner-workings, using tarot cards is an interesting -- and FUN -- way to battle Writer's Block! :D

But I'm not trying to be politically correct here, I TOTALLY believe in unseen intelligences helping us out in our physical journey! (I named my blog after the concept of wu wei, after all.) I'm a completely metaphysical cat. I have observed, over the last 2 or 3 years, that my intuition seems to be almost paranormal at times, and I'm hoping that learning my new tarot deck will hone these inexplicable insights that I sometimes get.

It happens, approximately, once in a blue moon now. So I'm hoping to increase that frequency to, maybe, once in a full moon, then maybe once every other weekend.

If I turn full-on psychic, I'll let you know. :)

Telepathically! :D

OOH! OOH!

I'm writing on something! It sort of combines EVERYTHING that I'm into, believe in, believe in the possibility of, or just read about!!! I don't know if it will grow into a short story, novella, a novel or anything at all, but it's fun writing it! If it grows into a novella or longer, I'm thinking of calling it 2012: The End of... some stuff...

Catchy, no? :)

Oh, right! I was telling you how I've celebrated my birthday so far...

Okay, so after I got to know my new tarot deck a bit, I watched Black Eyed Peas' new video "Meet Me Halfway" -- which was GORGEOUS! Then I went to sleep listening to a playlist made up of my favorite skits from (meaning, "the majority of") all -- seriously, ALL -- of Monty Python's albums!

Then I woke up and started listening to SModcast #95 -- which just happens to be EXCELLENT! Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier carried me through the processes of cooking breakfast and lunch, getting ready for work, and my drive to work. Once here, they kept me entertained as I got my night's coffee brewing, then I had to take a break. Then, after the heavy-lifting of my shift was complete and everyone left the station in mine and Pete's hands (on Thursday's I'm not the only one here overnight), Misters Smith and Mosier kept me laughing past midnight, carrying me through the end of my official 39th birthday.

By the way, "SModcats 95: RB07701" is worth listening to, if only for the "audiobook" version of Shootin' the Sh*t with Kevin Smith: The Best of the SModcast!!! I mean, I love the episode because I love SModcast, but the "audiobook" bit is brilliant!!! :D

So then, when SModcats wrapped up, I sat down and started typing this.

And now I'm off.

And I plan to be... well... incoherent from the time I get home from work until sometime late Friday night/early Saturday morning, so you won't be hearing from me too soon. (I try to stay away from the keyboard when I'm drinking. I get very, very happy, you see... And all these words from the farthest depths of my vocabulary surface and start hurling themselves at my fingertips... To say my prose becomes "whimsical" is sort of akin to saying that Grandma getting drunk and burtsing into a stip-tease is "sexy", ya know? I mean, Grandma may be in terrific shape for her age, but you still just don't wanna see that!)

International Ray Jay Day!!! :D

2009-10-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

As I type this sentence, I will turn 39 in 41 minutes!!!

YAY ME!

My birthday plans, you ask? WORKIN', BABY!!! :D

Dat's right! Ray Jay is a workin' fool, baby!

I got an early b-day present... Last week TSPI took some group pics for our NEW WEBSITE... And I sent the once of me to my Gnomey-Goddess AND SHE SAID SHE THOUGHT I LOOK CUTE!!! :D hee-hee I mean, I know she's just being a sweetheart, but I don't care. She didn't break up with me after seeing them, so everything's cool.

How do I know she's just being a sweety? Well, you decide...

(Click on the pic to see the whole thing. The pics looked smaller when I previewed this entry. Sry.)

I love the pics, though! I've only seen Paula's pics so far, but they're great! (I just can't help lookin' like a bit of a dork because... well... I AM a dork, lol. But I'm a (soon-to-be) 39-year-old dork who looks 30, lol! So there! I got carded for smokes before work tonight, actually!)

Plus, we're a handsome bunch, aren't we?

PLUS... We're good at figurin' out perplexin' stuff, too!

OOH! And Paranormal Activity last Saturday was a blast! I had a lot of fun! :D

Wait, wait! I gotta show you one more pic...

The Boys of Texas Spirits

I'm the pasty one.

What's the sexy-sounding phrase for "pasty"? Is there one? Like, if you're filling out a resume to be a model, what's a more appealing way to say "trout-belly white"?

I think we should have a Texas Spirits calendar. Right? Like, we could sell it as a fundraiser?

No one else in the group is with me on this, though. :P

Okay, so guess what...

I think the Universe wanted to give me a birthday present, because one of the shows I air during my shift is late Night with Jimmy Fallon and you know who the guests are tonight?

MONTY-FRICKIN'-PYTHON!!!

I kid you not! As I type this, the remaining members of Monty Python are all together on the Jimmy Fallon show!!!

Like, how often does that happen?!!

And what are the ODDS that would happen just as the clock ticks over to the day of my birth?!

I'm tellin' ya... Someone Upstairs kinda likes me. ;)

(I mean, have you SEEN my girlfriend?! That's not MY doing, lol! That's Divine Intervention.)

So, officially, my first birthday present was from Brian. Back in August he gave me a MEL 8704 -- otherwise known as a mel-meter!!! That was just super-sweet of him 'case those thangs ain't cheap.

Then my 2nd present was from God. That's the Monty Python episode of Jimmy Fallon.

Then #3 is waiting for me at home, lol! I was talking to my friend Traci last week and she said she had gotten me something for my birthday. I started to do that knee-jerk response that we all do, "Aw, that's sweet, but you shou--"" when she cut me off with "NO, it's AWESOME!" Whatever she's giving me, she doesn't have one, yet, and she's jealous, lol. So I'm looking forward to whatever it is!!! She gave it to Brian, so it's waiting for me at home when I get off work.

No, wait, that's the 4th present, and God gave me the 3rd, because yesterday my sweety said she liked my ghost-hunter pics, so THAT ONE was b-day present #2. :D

Oh... Huh...

Just noticed, Michael Palin isn't on the Jimmy Fallon show. It's 4 of the 5 remaining Pythons.

Wait, what am I doing still writing this? I'm going to watch the Pythons.

PEACE!!!

:D

Pondering PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Before I See It...

2009-10-09T02:19:00.000-07:00

Even after that last entry, I can't seem to stay away from the blog, lol.

Actually, I just want to jot down a few thoughts before I see Paranormal Activity so that I can compare these notes to my thoughts and feelings afterward.

My big question is this: Will Paranormal Activity's scare scenes -- designed to work for a mainstream audience -- actually work against the experience of the paranormal audience?

Here's what I mean...

If you were on an investigation, and you experienced all the stuff that the kids in Blair Witch experienced, it really would freak you the hell out. Everyone investigating would flip out, because 98% of the stuff you experience in an actual investigation just isn't as overtly inexplicable as the things those characters experience.

And I was thinking about how mainstream audiences responded to Blair Witch because (I speculate) the scares weren't nearly as "hard-core" as mainstream Horror scares, right?

So...

If Paranormal Activity has as many scares as a mainstream audience needs to be scared by a movie, will that prove to be too much to hold the Suspension of Disbelief from folks who actually study this stuff?

Like I said, if you read enough accounts of actual haunting activity (never mind actually going out and investigating these claims, I'm just talking about reading 2nd- or 3rd-hand accounts in books) The Blair Witch Project is convincingly realistic.

By comparison, consider this:

Rambo: First Blood, Part II is basically a Western from the '60s or '70s. (The former gunslinger strolls into a corrupt town, then ends up shooting up all the rustler outlaws.) But the Action elements (the stunts, the reason you watch the movie) are designed to be bigger and more intense than what you've seen in previous movies of this type.

However, when you watch the movie now (well... and back then, if you weren't a 15-year-old when you watched it, lol) you laugh, because in pursuit of bigger and more intense action the writers/director/stunt coordinators/et. al. sort of ignore basic physics, lol. Yeah, you've never seen action like that before, but that's mostly because previous filmmakers were concerned with realism.

So my query, going into Paranormal Activity, is whether or not the film will go over-the-top in order to satisfy Horror film-goers' expectations, and whether that (if it is the case) will actually detract from the believability of those who study this stuff.

Now, on the other hand, The Exorcist stands up to the scrutiny of clergy and others who have actually witnessed exorcisms, and the movie scares the bejeebers out of just about everyone who watches it. It manages to be believable AND monumentally scary at the same time.

And the titular "activity" of the movie will undoubtedly be "inhuman" (or, as it is popularly known, "demonic"), so there is a great possibility that the flick will be both believable and mind-numbingly scary. (Everything I've heard first-, second-, or eighth-hand about "inhuman" activity is just mind-pummelingly disturbing, so I'll probably scream like a little girl at the flick.)

Anyway, like I said, I just wanted to jot these thoughts down -- for myself, really -- before I see the movie so that I can compare notes afterward.