Read "1408" by Stephen King!!!

One of my very best and longest... um, oldest? No.

Chuck, one of my best friends and I guy I've known since we were both kids, blogged on his MySpace page that he was excited about the upcoming John Cusack flick 1408. I read what he had to say about it being adapted from a Stephen King short story, and then I remembered that I had seen the trailer before!

AND IT LOOKED GOOD!

I don't know how it happened, but somehow when I woke up yesterday before work, I got this obsession to read this short story.

Or, preferably, to let someone read it to me, lol. If you know me you know I'm obsessed with aural storytelling, for reasons I will probably never understand. I like me some OTR, I love me some BBC Radio dramas and comedies, and I love me some audiobooks!!!

So the first thing I did when I woke up was log on to my IM to see if my baby was online.

Duh.

But when she wasn't, the SECOND thing I did when I woke up -- as I waited to see if my Gnomage would log on -- was wikipedia "1408" and find out where it was published.

Turns out that it was originally recorded for BLOOD AND SMOKE!!!

Here's why that's exciting to me:

In 1999 I remember being in Walmart, in the audiobook section (which was considerably smaller then; not that it's huge now, lol) and I was excited to see that there was a new King audiobook! I was EVEN MORE excited when I read the back and discovered that this was an AUDIO EXCLUSIVE! King had read these 3 short stories that hadn't been published in an anthology, and you could only enjoy them here, on audio!!!

Stephen King's cool that way! Like the first couple of chapters of THE PLANT that he tried to sell for $1 a chapter over the Net! He tries new things! (I read THE GREEN MILE between March and August on 1996 in it's original 6-part format, waiting eagerly each month for the next installment.)

Anyway, so I was excited when I saw that king had released 3 new short stories EXCLUSIVELY for my favorite medium! (Well... one of them. It's really a toss-up between audio and film. And TV when it's done well, lol.)

But I was also broke. :( I was really just teasing myself by looking in the audiobook section anyway.

So time goes by, and by the time I could afford to by it (surprise, surprise) it's no longer available. (At Walmart. I could have bought it at Barnes & Noble or Borders Books for, like, $15.00 more. But 15 bucks is 15 bucks.)

And more time passes and I get excited about other things, like ya do...

So jump ahead to yesterday, and my discovery that "1408" was originally released on SMOKE AND BLOOD, and then later published in print in EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL.

But the fact that it was published in audiobook form means that I can hop over to my go-to online media store: iTunes!!! (Buying a Video iPod was one of the best investments I have ever made, lol!!!) So I track down BLOOD AND SMOKE, find the page, click on "Buy"...

...and get a message telling me that this item has just been updated, and my be available on another page.

Hmph.

I had a similar situation with DEATH RACE 2000. Only it was reversed: I couldn't get to the individual page for the movie to buy it -- a message informing me that the item was no longer available -- but I could purchase it off the Search page. (So I did, naturally, feeling gleefully as though I had sneaked past The System somehow, hehe.) But the BLOOD AND SMOKE page didn't have a section below where I could buy it at all.

Hmph.

And then I remembered my old-school audiobook stand-by: Audible.com!

Audible was a revelation for audio-whores such as myself before iTunes, and it still possesses THE BEST selection of audiobooks! I was super psyched when I learned that Audible and iTunes had hooked-up, because those are both 2 great services that are made exponentially greater in tandem.

But what iTunes may not have, Audible still MAY have!

So I dusted off my old Audible Manager, went to the site and seached Stephen King.

AND THEY HAD IT!!! YAY!!!

Now, realize that I had woken up early enough that I could have stopped by Borders on my way to work. But there were 2 problems with that: The CD version of the audiobook was likely to be maybe as much as twice as expensive as the mp3 audiobook (and it is), and also this was SatSun. On SatSuns I do ridiculously little work during my shift (well, compared to the rest of my work week, anyway, lol) and so I actually have time to listen to a short story on my iPod, before the other 2 operators' shifts are over and I'm left all alone in the station. However, if I bought the audiobook on CD I could only listen to it in my car and at home.

But on the iPod I can listen to it while walking down the stairs to my car, in my car, and while walking into the building. Then I turn it off, do some work, and resume the story during my next stretch of down-time.

iPod RULES!!!

Besides, had I bought the CD version, it was just gettin' converted to mp3s anyway, lol.


So for half -- or less -- than what I would have paid for the CD version, I bought BLOOD AND SMOKE and downloaded it to my iPod and I got to listen to "1408" last night!

AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!

It's one of the great horror short stories EVER, hehe! It reminded me of the type of thing Lovecraft wrote, but more effective. Lovecraft would write these stories that were intellectually scary, but you often didn't FEEL scared. You know what I mean? But King nailed it! I was freaked-out for a little while after I listened to the story, hehe. It really messed with my head.

Very nicely done!

Plus, I got to hear another King short story, which was really good, "Lunch at the Gotham", and I have another short story still waiting for me, "In the Deathroom".

So that's cool!

Also, both last night and tonight I got to have a couple of good conversations with my dear friend Kelly! He's been busy making a living as a professional editor, so we haven't been able to really chat for a while. Now 2 nights in a row we've been able to shoot the breeze, and that's cool!

Other than that, though, this has been a really chill day.

OOH! It started storming after Mom & Brian & I left the Chinese food place! That was way cool! I went to bed too late this morning, and I was exhausted when I woke up for Family Dinner, so I went to bed maybe half an hour after we got home from dinner, but I got to go to bed to the sounds of rain and thunder! That's always nice. I don't know why, but a storm outside always make me feel all relaxed and cozy when I'm in bed, hehe. The sound of rain always makes me want to STAY in bed, lol.

I miss my Wendy-Lady, tho'. I hope I get to see her before she goes to work. :D

Which is a couple of hours away, so I'm gonna wrap this up.

PEACE!!! :D