Rish presents F. Marion Crawford's 1911 short story "For The Blood Is The Life." Drink up!
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Logo by Gino "The Stud Is The Life" Moretto.
Rish talks--at length--about a library patron suffering from mental illness, he tries to say "Who cares?" more often, watches Active Shooter Training, plays detective in The Case of the Stolen Backpack, and facilitates a proposal. And says "of course" a lot.
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Logo by Gino "Out Security" Moretto.
He has continued to write short stories and on occasion has me do a voice or two on the full-cast audio versions. But he has also embraced the demon-fed technology of the day, and creates motion videos for his stories. It's certainly not what I would do . . . but isn't that the beauty of other people?
Well beauty or not, here's his tale, "The Hollows," in which both Big and I lend our voices (though not our faces this time*) to the experience. Teen Josh has been forbidden to hang out in the dangerous section of woods near his neighborhood, but his friends manage to get him out there. Big mistake.
You can check out the video HERE, or, since it's on YouTube, I could just post it below:
Years ago, when I worked in L.A., I heard there was going to be a faux anti-mutant protest as a promotion for the X-MEN movie. I called up my friend Erik and bought a posterboard and made up a pair of protest signs (one was of Blinky the Fish from "The Simpsons" with a circle-slash through it, and the other said, "Do your duty, report a mutie!"--which I was quite proud of), and we went to the venue to participate in the protest. When we got there, we were told that it was not a real protest, and only paid Fox employees were allowed to march in the parade. It saddened me, and I swore to never raise my hand in protest again.
Yet here we are, twenty-five short years later, and I'm up to my old tricks.
After watching Marvel's THE THUNDERBOLTS (spoiler warning), Rish muses about the possibility of solving problems with a hug instead of a fist.
And Fake Sean tries his own squeezin, touchin, and lovin.I had two odd experiences today that, because they happened on the same shift, I felt motivated to blog about.
First off, in the computer section, there was a man sitting at one who, as I walked by, gave me a . . . uh, you know . . a straight-armed salute. I found that strange, but hey, sometimes people do that.
But then he did it a second time. Because the guy's a regular, I approached him to suggest that maybe he not wave in that way because it sort of looked like, you know. But when I went around, I could see he was watching a documentary about Adolf Hitler. I went back to my desk.
I guess I found it amusing enough to sit down and look for when he did it on the security monitor to put the image into this post. Scrubbing though the footage, I found him saluting at timestamp 4:46:39 . . . but that wasn't when I was on my rounds. So I ran it backwards a little. Turns out, he did it again at 4:43:56, and at 4:43:50. After five times, I stopped keeping track and closed the program. It wasn't remotely funny anymore.
But not long later, I saw a young couple come in right before we closed, one with a camera and one with a bag filled with something I thought were ice cubes at first. But as they went about their "business," I realized the bag held googly eye stickers, and I later learned they had been through the academy building and the parking garage before this, making their mischief.
Before my eyes, they proceeded to walk around, sticking them to posters and displays and worst of all, to the statue of the little boy outside the children's library.*
It was the first time was ever sad not to be armed on this job.
At the end of my shift, I told my boss about the googley-eyed bandits, and he said that he had just spent a few minutes walking through the building, peeling eye stickers off walls and statues and photos of our donors. Just like the Nazi-saluting library patron, my boss didn't find it remotely funny.
I was bummed out earlier today when I heard that the townspeople of Bozeman, Montana are not fond of Star Trek fans who travel there to mark the (future) site of mankind's first contact with aliens. Anecdotally, they have been known to brandish rake handles and corn cobs and suggest that Trekkies "shove long and prosper."
It made me sad because, just like Metropolis, Illinois, which proclaims itself the home of Superman, and Riverside, Iowa, which calls itself the future birthplace of James T. Kirk*, you'd think any town would welcome the kind of tourists that would come there for the day, buy mugs and t-shirts, take pictures, then scatter (of course, Bozeman is literally a hundred and eighteen times the size of my hometown, so maybe they don't need that kind of thing).
But then I found out that Winslow, Arizona, a little town that used to be on the famous Route 66 but lost all of its industry and tourism when the historical highway was relocated, has thoroughly embraced its minor bit of fandom. You see, in 1972, the Eagles released the song Take It Easy, which includes the line:
Well, I'm standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
Such a fine sight to see;
It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford,
Slowin' down to take a look at me.
. . . and the lovely folks of Winslow (a little burg only nine times the size of my hometown) decided to honor the song by building a park (Standin' On The Corner Park) and tribute, where Eagles fans can go and, I dunno, imagine that a girl is slowing to look at them too. Because wouldn't that be great?
There's a mural, a painting, a prop vehicle, and a statue of "The Troubadour," which folks say looks like Jackson Browne, who wrote the song.
It's difficult to explain how much joy I got from reading about it and seeing the various photos people have taken over the years (it opened in 1999), because it doesn't really do anything, you know what I mean, and yet it somehow manages to mean something.
Would it kill you, Bozeman, to put up a statue too?
*Oh, and I just learned that Vulcan, Alberta in Canada has an annual Spock Day celebration, complete with a bust of Leonard Nimoy and a statue of the Enterprise. All in an effort to lessen my sadness at Bozeman's (alleged) assholery.
C-3PO figures tend to be plentiful. He's a popular, perennial character that requires few paint applications (especially if you're doing a die-cast figure). His design isn't quite as useful for customs, since other protocol-type droids had different style heads, but the figures are cheap and plentiful. So I grabbed one and took a picture of it to send to Big, warning him I was going to do something unholy to it.
I guess it's been enough time to do another Robert Bloch story . . . hasn't it?
This one is the 1951 Lovecraft homage, "Notebook Found In A Deserted House," about a twelve year old boy who discovers that the only thing worse than a mystery is the answer behind said mystery.
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Logo by Gino "Perverted House" Moretto.
If you like, check out last week's Tales To Terrify podcast, where you can hear me perform the story "The Sin Eater's Chrysalis" by Matt Hollingsworth.
It tells the story of a lonely, bitter man who, like his father before him, is able to consume the sins of the recently-dead so that they can go to Heaven, using some pretty disgusting supernatural methods. But every consumption takes its mental and spiritual toll on the sin-eater, so he determines that nobody will follow in his footsteps. It's a dark one, more so than . . . gee, any story in memory I've been asked to do, and way more so than anything I've written. Sound fun?
I suppose this could be considered a cursed production, because I recorded and edited the story, sent it in, and only heard back the next year to learn that the podcast didn't have my audio. Not a huge deal, since I always keep my file until the show is released . . . except this time, apparently. Not sure why I had deleted it, because now we were both a bit scragged.* Even so, I sat down and re-recorded the story, transferred it, and re-edited the sucker. This is the ONLY time I've ever done this, in the, what, fifteen years I've put in narrating stories for podcasts.
Was it worth it? Go TO THIS LINK to find out.
*Of course, about a month later, I did find the original recording on my back-up SD Card, though far, far too late.
One of the subgenres we like to visit on our Outfield Excursions podcast is the Indiana Jones knockoff, and strangely, I seem to enjoy these more than Marshal does. So I was happy to sit down with him and watch FIREWALKER, a Cannon Films adventure starring Chuck Norris, Louise Gossett Junior, and the girl from FLASH AhAhhhhhh GORDON.
But if he ever finds an Indy Jones KO with Jean Claude Van Damme in it . . . that's a bridge too far.