April Sweeps - Day 454

I'm sorry.  I'm just too tired to blog right now.  I looked at the clock, sure it was three or four, but it's only 1:09am.  Not late for me, but I can't stay awake any longer.  I'm sunburned and tired, and I hate to go out for the month on a whimper, but a whimper it must be.  Goodnight.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 3116

I had quite a lot to say about the last two days' worth of extra work.  So much so that I started to record my thoughts for my Patreon address for the month of May, but after reaching the half hour mark, I realized it would be way too long, and it'll have to be its own episode now.  And when I reached the one hour-ten minute mark, I realized it would be a looooooooong episode.  Excited?

Push-ups Today: 165
Push-ups In April: 3325

I made it through two-thirds of Stephen King's new book today and yesterday, but I did take a half hour out of my reading to write in my notebook, just so, if it was a long day again, I wouldn't have to worry about whether I'd written or not.

Words Today: 748 (all in notebook--first time this year)
Words In April: 20,760

April Sweeps - Day 453

Look, I ain't saying today sucked--it didn't, in fact--but this was a fourteen hour day, easily the longest day I've had since starting this daily writing/exercise/blogging thing.  And I was really tempted to just say "It was a good run, but eff it."

But I forced myself to do 50 push-ups at 1:00am, and fifty sit-ups at 1:20am, and now it's 1:41am, and I'm going to squeeze out fifty words.  And that's all I can do today.  It's gonna have to be good enough.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In April: 3016

Today was the first day of extra/background work I've done in a year.  While I was there, waiting to be used--there was a lot of waiting around, which is typical, but because it was outdoors, it ended up being a lot of standing around, and that ended up being hard on my back (and a lot of other people, who complained about that, or the heat.  Or both).  I had gotten an email from my friend Jeff in Germany, where he talked about not liking cellphones and how he missed the lengthy letters we would write each other back in the day.

So, to entertain myself, and partially to piss off Jeff, I decided to send him a running commentary--all in audio--of what I was doing, seeing, and thinking of.  Honestly, I must've sent him ten different recordings throughout the day (and night), that he said only amounted to thirty minutes or so, but it felt like a lot more than that.

Being an extra is mostly waiting to be used, and if I had a thousand dollars for every time I've gotten on a set and NOT been used, but was just paid to sit and read (or worse, sleep), I'd have a lot more money than I do now.  Or ever will have.*  

That having been said, they really worked us on this shoot, probably since there were supposed to be many more people walking, milling around, and clapping.  They even did that thing first done in FORREST GUMP (it was revolutionary then, and now as old hat as the hero trying to save the bad guy from falling and the bad guy tries one last bit of treachery that leads to their death, or the female good guy being the one to take out the female bad guy, or a female character is horribly unpleasant but we accept her because she looks like Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon (granted, this one is a little bit newer.  But only a little bit), where they shoot a small group and then move them and shoot that and then move them and shoot that, combining it all digitally later so it looks like there are hundreds of people.

There were twenty-five of us, and a half dozen tuba players, and we got plenty of use, plenty of walking around behind the principal actors.  Several extras had those Apple Watch things (am I dating myself--by calling them things--even further than I did when referring to Reese Witherspoon as attractive?), and compared how many steps (ie miles) they had walked through the day.  The distance was unbelievable.  It was almost enough for me to want to buy one.

Or to want to sit down.

The thing that was most cool about the set was, because it was set in December, there was fake snow and fake Christmas decorations all over.  And on all of the spring tulips, they had put this thick white foam from a machine that looked like soap in person, but on the monitors looked EXACTLY like snow.  The problem was, the foam evaporated or melted or whatever foam does, and they had to keep spraying more on in between set-ups.

We were told the next day that we were not supposed to take any pictures (and apparently somebody did and posted them online, and they were baaaaaaaad little extras), but I had already done so, and told the A.D. (assistant director) that I'd taken photos of the foam.  And he said, "The foam?  What are you, some kind of creepy pervert?"

To which, I said, "Oh, you have NOOOOOOO idea."

It was a long day, with lots of activity, and very little of interest to you (I'm sure).  Suffice it to say, it was a warm April day (and night) but it's a Christmas movie, so we pretended it was winter, and that included wearing thick jackets and long-sleeved shirts, gloves, and scarves.  I got word that one of the Gen Zs actually put on socks!

(here you can see both the foam and them hosing down the street)

I made friends with an old man (well, he told me he was seventy-one, and that's not that old, really, but he looked old), who impressed me with his positive attitude and professionalism.  He and I were the only extras that worked both Thursday and Friday, and at the end of the day, he gave me a Diet Pepsi.**  Afterward, I thought, "You know, maybe I should call my dad, and ask if he'd want to work on one of these projects with me.  It could be something we could do togeth--"  

And only then did I remember that he's been gone nearly five years.  So, so strange.

Just for fun, I fact-checked yesterday's reference to Strom Thurmond speaking at my graduation, and that puts my graduating class either as 1955 or 1956.  Huh.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In April: 3160

So, one last mention of the story I started to record yesterday: usually when I sit down and perform a story, I add lines to it here and there.  This was no exception, but it was the first time I recorded a story and then thought, "You know, this is way too long.  I ought to go back in and cut out, not only the additions I just made, but about two hundred words beyond that."

See, in "Two Month Retreat" (or whatever the story's called), a young married couple has an argument, then the guy takes a walk alone to cool off.  That's when the story really begins (honestly, it could start right after the argument is done, if I wanted to be a screenwriter about it (there's this old suggestion that you start a scene as late as you can and you get out of a scene as early as you can.  I don't subscribe to that point of view at all, but it probably works great in editing***).  The story's not about the fight, but about the aftermath of the fight.

And the politics of the day really influenced that fight, so it takes up a couple of pages instead of the two or three paragraphs it needed.  Hmmm.

Words Today: 207
Words In April: 20,012

*Unless you want to support me on Patreon at this link.  You could tip me on Paypal, if you like, but I am no longer able to access that money, so maybe I should take the Paypal link down.  I'll explain on Sunday.

**To my horror, I thought it tasted just fine.

***Check out the first cut of any scene in STAR WARS, for example.  The Cantina scene, for example, originally began with Luke going into the bar and then looking around.  You see a bunch of humans (including Han Solo making out with a hot chick), and a few aliens, and an establishing shot of the group, and then cutting back to Luke taking it all in, but the droid alarm goes off and the bartender says (in an English accent) "Hey there, your droids, mate.  We don't serve their kind here."  Luke says, "What?" and the English Wuher says, "Your droids.  They'll have to wait outside.  We don't want them here, ya wanker."  And in the final edit, we start with a barrage of delightful aliens of every shape and color, lose most of Luke gawking, and don't see Han until a second before he introduces himself.  

April Sweeps - Day 452

Okay, today (for sure) I need to sit down and record "Two Month Retreat," which is a better title (I think) than "Two Month Itch."

So, I got my COVID test results back, and it looks like I passed.  But now, how will I ever get back all that spit?

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 2966

While driving, I was stopped behind a car, where someone had scrawled "poop" on their back windshield.

Ironically, they did it in toothpaste.

(This is what came up when I did a search for "Irony cartoon")

As of right now, I have zero words written exactly.  A nice round number.

I've spoken (at length) about the challenge of writing teenagers in 2021, when I haven't been one in . . . whoa, eighty-seven years (can that be right?).  

Honestly, I don't even know if kids are allowed to have their cellphones in class or not.  How old does that make me sound, huh?  Because I grew up in a world where teachers were allowed to hit you and we practiced atomic bomb drills in elementary school (not to mention all the rampant speculation as to whether Hawaii or Alaska or Puerto Rico would become state number 49).

(I first posted this in 2020, so I guess it's four years now)

I had to use a word to describe something as dated and uncool, and thirty years ago, I'd have used "hokey" or "lame," but I chose "cheesy" because that was a word I never heard until college (some people even used the hokey and lame term "cheeseball"), and Bossk knows if it's still in use today.  But I just had to go with my gut.

For example, I had a reference to the Weeknd's new song and Tik Tok on the same page, but I still feel a bit like a fraud, like somebody reading will say, "This old f**k has never listened to Save Your Tears--he only knows Blinding Lights, and I'll bet he's never done a Tik Tok video in his life, and has only seen the sexed-up jailbait ones."  

I am a fraud, folks.  I stopped being a teenager around the time the parents of today's teenagers were born.  To put it perspective, when I graduated high school, our guest speaker was Strom Thurmond . . . Junior Senator Strom Thurmond.  

Not only had we not yet landed on the moon . . . the moon had not yet risen.  So, yes, I'm a little bit out of touch.

Push-ups Today: 164
Push-ups In April: 3110

I had passed on working on this particular movie a couple of times before, because they wanted clean-shaven men (and presumably women), and I didn't have any pictures like that to send (I haven't been smooth-faced in I don't know how many years).  But this time, they didn't say anything about it, so I sent in my most recent picture, and when they got back to me, they asked if I would be willing to shave or not.  It would seem that there are no bearded men in the world(s) of this cable network,* but I said I would, and waited until I knew I would be working before I got out the razor.

I saw myself in the mirror three times since the shave, and all three times it was the scene from the Lon Chaney PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  One of the three times, I thought I saw my Uncle George in the mirror, and one of the times, I could've sworn it was my mother (and not looking a day younger than the last time we hung out).  The third time?  Well, I just muttered, "Who the f**k?"

I'm not saying I hate my face, but if you had a botched boob job by a cosmetic surgeon who went to jail for operating without a license while also tripping on mushrooms . . . how many topless beaches would you attend?  

Anyway, I did get half the story recorded, and the space ran out before I could do more, so I left it there.  It's quite not good, and since it was the story I wrote to please the creepy man on the bridge (it was a dam, actually), I suppose I got off lucky that he let me live.

Or did I?

Words Today: 1080
Words In April: 19,805

*Let's just say it's a channel named after a popular greeting card company.

April Sweeps - Day 451

I had to drive forty-five minutes today to get a COVID test in order to qualify to work on a television show again (forty-five minutes from home, then longer coming back due to traffic).  It was the first gig I've gotten since January, when I had to bow out of another series because I had gotten sick less than ninety days from the shoot.  I get that they're trying to be hyper vigilant, but it put me on some kind of blacklist, and I got absolutely no work in the four months since then.  

Of course, I almost never did, so I chalk it up as dislike for me from the casting agent (he was pissy to me on the phone once when I worked on "Yellowstone," and I wonder if he didn't make some kind of black mark in my file even then).  Anyway, I got there, and they gave me a plastic container and told me to fill it to the line with spit, and then write my birthdate on it.

Then they handed me an empty Big Gulp container.

I found that to be strange (my previous test was to jab a swab up my nose), but apparently a lot of people are doing it.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 2866

Last night, I decided the next story I would record for my podcast would be a dumb little tale I wrote last year called "Two Year Itch."  

But when I opened the file, it was another one of those stories that was cobbled together from daily writing, and was missing about a third in the middle.  So, I tried to track down those words and fill in the gap.  I only partially succeeded.

It would seem that, whatever I wrote on the 21st of September is gone, and that's the bit (or part of the bit) that I needed.  Very weirdly, though, there is a screen capture of that missing bit (well, some of it, anyway) in my blogpost from that day last year, where I mentioned that I tried to write a conversation about the devil in which neither character use that word, and when I tallied up the word count, it came to 666 words:

Well, it would seem that that image is all that remains of that day's writing.  Which is a bit creepy . . . but a lot more irritating than creepy.

What's frustrating (besides the fact that this kind of shite just keeps happening) is that I have to take time out of what should be my daily writing to try to copy down the above, and then fill in the rest of the gap, just so I have a completed story again (I found a copy from September in my desktop computer's 2020 folder, but it was even less complete than yesterday's version).

I did not get a lot of writing done (about 75-90% of it being rewrites), and I headed over to my cousin's house for the evening, having only managed some.  But some is better than none, and to my credit, when I got home, I wrote a tiny bit more on my twin story . . . but it doesn't matter now, because my computer shut off during the night, and when I restarted it (had to do it three times), there was nothing from yesterday in that file.

It's not a huge deal (except that I can't count the words, since I don't remember how much there was), since the rewrites on "Two Month Itch" were saved (apparently at 2:41am).  It might have been zero words anyway, right?

Push-ups Today: 100 
Push-ups In April: 2946

I was checking to see if I had a file of my D&B story "The Last Friday In December" today, to see if I could start recording it (in preparation for publishing it).  I didn't, but I found several stories in its place, alphabetically, at least.  There was "Last Call" and "Last Contact," which I wrote with Big.  There was "Last Minute Shopper," "Last Night of Freedom," and "Last Lunch At Charburger."  There was an old script called "The Last Resort" and an unfinished story called "The Last Boy On Earth."

Finally, I'm going to leave you with this:

When I first saw this picture of a Mickey Funko Pop Vinyl, my brain was convinced it was a three-eyed Mickey.  It still looks that way, if I squint.

Words Today: 438
Words In April: 18,725

*Although the file also has the title "Two Month Retreat" and "First Fight," both of which work better.

April Sweeps - Day 450

Today was cold and rainy and miserable, with clouds so low in the sky they look (right this moment) like fog around the mountains.  Even so, I wasn't outside in it much, except to pick up my nephew from school, go out to the shed a couple of times, and take the garbage barrels around to the curb.  Now I'm at the library, though, pretty close to closing time, having not had more than a few minutes' peace except for at lunchtime, where I sat down to watch a Marvel toy panel, and started falling asleep almost instantly.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In April: 2766

I was up till four watching the Oscars, though, so I think that's understandable.*

Apparently, it wasn't just me (in complaints about the Oscars, both the format and the many, many, many, many films that nobody has seen): it had its lowest ratings in the history of television.  And while that should make me feel in good company, it's too bad that the quality and the enjoyability had to decrease.  Hey, next year is sure to be better, though, right?

Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor (again), and is now the oldest person (at 83) to win that award.  A lot of folks are angry that a) Hopkins didn't show up to the ceremony, either in Hollywood or one of the satellite broadcasts, and b) that Chadwick Boseman didn't win for his last movie.  In fact, a saw a bunch of folks online calling Hopkins an a-hole for that.**  But hey, Boseman didn't show up either, and I don't hear you grousing about that.

Oh, this is weird.  Within ten minutes of me writing this awful, insensitive joke, Big Anklevich texted me the exact same awfully insensitive joke.  That struck me as particularly odd.

I had the hardest time finding this image (from last year), despite saying I'd use it over and over again.

Push-ups Today: 114 (it slipped my mind to finish the push-ups I was supposed to do.  Guess I need to do more tomorrow)
Push-ups In April: 2846

I didn't get a lot of words written (yeah, yeah), but one of those words was "twinship."  As in, "she felt little in the way of twinship at the moment."  I thought, when writing it, that I had made that word up.  But it turns out to be a real word.

A perfectly cromulent word.

Words Today: 661
Words In April: 18,287

*And then I sat for twenty minutes afterward, blogging about it, mostly because I'd drank caffeine after ten, and that's what it does to me.

**Though you know how the internet is.  It could be five people in the whole country that are saying that, but they're saying it so loudly that you'd think it's a million.

April Sweeps - Day 449

I don't have much going on today to tell you about. Last night, my cousin and I went out to see THE COURIER (we had tried three times to see it and this was the one that succeeded*) *The first time, two weeks ago, it sold out while we were in line (something that hasn't happened to me in, oh, twenty-something years), and the second time, I forgot about it and he sat at the theater waiting for me, wondering if I had parked someplace else.

I knew tonight would be busy, so I took my laptop out to the car, drove to the park, and typed for a few minutes.  I got almost nothing written, but at least I didn't waste any time surfing the net like I often do at the library--the place I go to write without distractions.

Sit-ups Today: 200

Sit-ups In April: 2655

Somehow, Oscar Night has rolled around again, and even though I have seen none of the films that were nominated (has anyone?), I simply had to watch.  But Sundays are my busiest nights with eBay, and it's the last Sunday of the month (you have to use all your paid-for auctions, or else they go to waste), so I did what I could to get them all done, and "taped" the Oscars.*

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In April: 2732

This was the weirdest Academy Awards I've watched, and didn't feel like the Oscars I grew up watching.  I'm tempted to say that it was mostly because of COVID (with several locations broadcasting at once where the nominees were watching) but . . . no, there was other stuff going on.  For example, instead of in the Kodak theater, or even the little ole Shrine Auditorium, they broadcast the whole thing from the Los Angeles train station (at least I thought I heard that right).  

For further example, instead of having a live orchestra [or even having a recorded orchestra], they had Questlove DJing with all the music, and he'd do the record-scratch thing from the Eighties and then play a song so loudly that you couldn't hear what the announcer was saying.  They went through the awards seemingly at random, giving out Best Picture with almost an hour left, before Actress or Actor.**  They didn't have performances of any of the nominated songs, and practically showed no clips, just for a couple of the awards.  Also, they didn't "play people off," but just let the winners say what they wanted for as long as they wanted (though they did bleep--badly--a couple of the statements that were made).  It was a bunch of people dressed up and sitting at tables, and two or three times I saw them talking amongst themselves, and worse, looking at their phones.

Oh, and a couple of years back, they introduced this super-tedious feature where the presenter for an acting award got to address and comment on the performances of each of the nominees, which brought that (and subsequent) Oscars to a screeching halt.  And THAT element they kept.

At one point, Harrison Ford came out, but he wasn't the same Harrison Ford I know.  He wasn't even the one who played Old Man Han in two of those recent Star Wars Sequels.  People are always making fun of the fact that they're doing one more INDY movie (about to start filming now), and that it should be called "Indiana Jones and the Land of A Thousand Wrinkles," "Indiana Jones and the Rest Home of Peril," or "Indiana Jones and the Cavern of the Enlarged Prostate."  

It always bothers me to hear stuff like that, but wow, seeing him tonight made me think of my dad, being almost unrecognizable, right before he passed.  Of course, we should've had two or three Indy films in the last twenty years (there's no reason those couldn't be as good as the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE films, the last four of which have been excellent), and I guess next year's will have to be the last.

You're gonna think I'm lying, but this oldster they had play Ancient Indy on the TV series?  He was four years younger than Harrison Ford is now.

Words Today: 648
Words In April: 17,626

Every year, Big Anklevich will call me or text me and ask if I'm watching "The gay man's Super Bowl," and I anticipated it this year, having already typed in a reply for when he asked.  But this year, he didn't.  Huh.

*DVRed is what I guess you would've said a decade ago.  I don't know what you'd say today.  Recorded?  Saved?  Qnosged?

**And the final award went to Anthony Hopkins for THE FATHER, and then he wasn't there, so they just said, "Okay, guess that's it," and cut to Questlove to play a song and say a few words like we were watching some kid's televised bar mitzva.  And that was it.

My Story "Troubled Child" On Journey Into...

So, a year back, Marshal Latham held a story contest on his Journey Into... podcast, and I sent him a story called "Troubled Child."  Now, somehow, it's been presented as one of the winners on his show.  Wish the story were as good as the song, kids.*

So, a married couple discover that their baby daughter is drawn to unhappiness, and seems to draw it into herself, like food or something.

The madman Marshal has once again produced it with full-cast, including a real childe to voice the child in the story.  Check it out HERE.

*By the way, not one of Journey's best.

April Sweeps - Day 448

I spoke to Marshal Latham the other day, and he said he checked in on my blog a week or so back, to see if I was still doing it every day.  I think that tells me that one of the three readers of this daily slog is not Mr. Latham, except for that one Thursday when I had four.

I do wonder why I keep it up, who I am writing this for, but hey, the internet is vast, and one day, when I'm gone, maybe somebody will stumble upon this thing and read through, and say, "Wow.  That Outfield guy was a giant piece of crap.  And not nearly as funny as he thought he was."

I can only hope.

And along those lines, I continue to write every day, having achieved my (rather pathetic) April goal of fifteen thousand words this month just this week (a squeaker, as they [may still] say in baseball parlance).

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 2455

My twin story now sits at about four thousand words (4150, to be exact).  And it would be past that if I had taken advantage of the time I have here at the library before it closes (24 minutes left) by writing instead of blogging--or worse, adding photos to old blog posts.

I do feel like this premise (twin sister goes off somewhere and when she returns is no longer the same) is a very good one.  But hey, you could take that premise and make either a much better, or much worse story out of it.  The premise doesn't matter so much as the execution.*

(I did a search for identical twins, but none of the first dozen results LOOKED identical to me)

For example, I got this idea today that one of the boys that goes with the sister on the trip (and returns changed) is either the boyfriend of or the romantic obsession of one of Layla's classmates/friends.  And she too notices something different about the boy, something only somebody who's memorized every detail and facet of another person's face would notice.  

I like that idea because it gives Layla a confidante, an ally who might understand what's going on (and of course, that girl could disappear or suddenly change her mind partway through the story, leading Layla to question her sanity . . . or whether her friend too has been "altered").  But I don't like it because the idea to begin with is that Layla knows her sister better than anyone could ever know somebody, because they're always together, and they LOOK identical.  

Nobody sees my face more than I do (lucky for them), but if I lived with a roommate/best friend, he or she would see it constantly.  And imagine if that person were my twin, with the exact same face (although, reversed, right?  I can't quite figure out how that works.  I only ever see my face in a mirror, so if I saw me as I truly am, it would appear backwards to me, right?).  It's actually a pretty hard point-of-view to put myself in.

Push-ups Today: 163
Push-ups In April: 2632

Here in the library, they set up a new display that I took a picture of:

It says "Where's my shirt?" and is made up of only Romance novels where the dude has his shirt off on the cover.  It's quite amusing, and a far cry from the folder on my laptop called "Where's my pants?" that's made up solely of photos of that dude from "Bridgerton."

Regardless, I managed 67 words before the damn announcement blared and the lights flashed.  That's less than the above paragraph about the proposed friend of Layla's.

Oh, and I've got to figure out a shortened version of the name Layla.  I refer to Shayla (the twin) as Shay half the time, and that's a bit of a pressure-reliever, but I'm not going to imagine a teen girl allows herself to be referred to as "Lay," regardless of her sexual experience. 

I really don't know how to write, despite doing it all these years.  Is saying that name, Layla, over and over and over again, going to get tiresome in the audio version?  Should I swap it out with "the girl" a few times, like Abbie Hilton told me not to do?  I guess I should ask Abbie about it, since she's the writer I know who makes the most money from it (or the writer I'm closest to that makes money from her writing).  Haven't spoke to her in a while, though.

Words Today: 437
Words In April: 16,978

The library was closed, and it had started to rain when I left.  I got home, and everybody was gone (except the dog, who ran out the door when I came in and then I had to go looking for her), so I decided to get my sit-ups and run done before it got dark, but had forgotten about the rain for some reason.  So, I went outside, and it was both raining and the wind was blowing at the same time, and it was going right in my face, like sand or salt striking at me, and I thought, "Dang, I might not manage this at all."  I decided to force myself to at least run a couple blocks, and then I would allow myself to turn around and run home (this is what I did when I had COVID, having somehow brainwashed myself into needing to exercise every day).

So, I went the two blocks to the corner, but instead of turning around, I turned right, and the wind was blocked there, and by the time I got to the next street, the rain had died down a little, so I kept going.  By the time I turned right again, the wind had stopped too, so I was able to do my whole run, only suffering at the beginning.  You could say it was a euphemism for something, but I have no idea what.

*Feel free to write your own version where a hot female twin goes off somewhere, and when she comes back, she is suddenly sexually attracted to her sister.  I guarantee that will be both better and more successful than my story.  Heck, I'll buy the first copy.

April Sweeps - Day 447

I'm at the park right now.  I decided not to to do the library today, thinking I'd just grab a blanket and sit out under the sun, and write for half an hour soaking up lithium, but then I saw my three year old nephew running around and I offered to take him with me.  So, he's running around the playground, sometimes by himself, sometimes with other kids, having fun, while I sit here and try to write.  It's that twin story again--which is now going to be novella-sized at least, since the inciting incident hasn't happened yet and we're three thousand words in.

As I get older, I am more and more distant from my teenaged years, and yet that's what I'm always writing about.  This is the story of a teenaged girl (let's say seventeen, since that's the magical age Marty McFly was, and I have a 17-shaped scar on my knee) and her relationship with her sister.  It has to be at least somewhat realistic, even though I'm old enough now to have a daughter who's long past her teenaged years.  I have this problem often when I'm writing teens (it came up over and over again last summer when I was writing "Hatchling," which I really ought to make a priority to record--as soon as I make room on my one remaining SD card).  I don't want to make their dialogue (or thoughts) too adult, and yet I'll be damned if I'm going to stoop to using teenage slang of today, which is way stupider than the things they used to say on "Leave It To Beaver," which struck me as supremely backward and old-fashioned.

I did use a slang term in the dialogue today that made me feel pretty clever, until I realized it was almost twenty years ago I heard a Californian use it, and the teenagers that used it back then have almost surely since died of old age.  

When I actually was a teen, I'd chuckle at Stan Lee's use of faux-teen slang (like 'hep cat' and 'BMOC' and groovy) in the comics he'd written in the Sixties (I think he was around my age back then), so maybe I'm like that.  But I am what I am, and maybe I should give my niece a copy of my teen-centric stories for her to make notes on . . . which I'll never do, so I guess I'm not so worried about sounding like an old man after all.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In April: 2355

I made two mistakes on my run today.  The first was to leave the Autoplay on on YouTube, so that that execrable Old Navy commercial played TWICE, causing me--the second time--to veer right into traffic, praying for a sudden respite.

The other mistake, though, was to leave the Autoplay on on YouTube, so that after the Seth Meyers clips I was listening to ended, a Jimmy Fallon "Tonight Show" monologue came on.

Now, cards on the table, I felt that Fallon (who was a contemporary of mine) was one of THE most talented cast members "Saturday Night Live" ever had, right up there with Tina Fey, Phil Hartman, Kate McKinnon, and of course, Terry Sweeney.*  I followed his career with great interest, and was saddened when he broke his contract on SNL to go do movies, thinking TAXI with Queen Latifah would be his big break into movie stardom.

But wow, his "Tonight Show" monologue was bottom of the barrel, with one joke that I'd rate above a one star piece of shit ("From now on, all world leaders should be required to have at least one grandchild present for Zoom calls."**).  I understand that comedy is subjective, and that the jokes that I regularly send to Big Anklevich from the Seth Meyers monologue might not even be funny to him, but wow, I don't know that the "Tonight Show" jokes would've cut it for the Jimmy Kimmel show.

I guess that's a pretty harsh thing to say.  But then, I was never as handsome, funny, or talented as Fallon was, even at my peak (whenever that might have been).  And according to Deadline, his ratings are the highest they've ever been . . . though I can't imagine who watches late night talk shows anymore, since that had been the domain of old people even back in the late Carson and Leno runs.  Maybe it's women that watch Fallon, for much the same reason my generation watched "Baywatch."***  Oh, and lesbians are included in that as well, as I suppose they could imagine Jimmy Fallon was Rachel Maddow.

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In April: 2469

Words Today: 985
Words In April: 16,541

*Eddie Murphy, of course, remains the most talented SNL alumnus of all time.  Robert Downey Jr. does not count, because he sucked on SNL.

**And that's probably a two star joke.

***I didn't have "Baywatch" for self-pleasure purposes, myself.  But I did have "Charles in Charge," thank Buddha.

Rish Outcast 196: Murdertown - One Mile

Here's a tale I swear I've shared with you before, called "Murdertown - One Mile."  Not a true story, by the way.

Download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon (new exclusive episode on the way) by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Manslaughtertown" Moretto.

Music was "Ethernight Club" by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7612-ethernight-club
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

April Sweeps - Day 446

I felt pretty sick last night, and had a real humdinger of a headache that woke me around six or six-thirty am.  My friend in Germany got his vaccination shot the same day as me, and he said that he got really sick about twenty-four hours later, and calling in sick at work two days in a row.  He further said that those who have not gotten COVID tend to get sick on their second vaccination shot, but those that have had it get sick on their first.  He said being tired and getting a headache is one of the side effects.

So there.

Even so, here I am, at the library, blogging instead of writing.  

Sit-ups Today: 162
Sit-ups In April: 2409

Yesterday, during my run, I had this idea of writing a new Ben Parks story that starts, say, ten years before, with the Lean Rider on an adventure, with a sidekick we've never heard about, and something happens--say, he gets into a gunfight and kills two bandits, but leaves a third one alive.  And then we cut to the present day (1897 or so) and the surviving bandit has been obsessed with that day, doing nothing but practice in a hope to run into the Rider again, and this time beat him.  He comes to Trueno, Arizona, where the Lean Rider was last seen, and Ben encounters him.

At least I THINK this was the idea I had yesterday.  I honestly can't remember, except that it was going to start with a previous adventure with a previous sidekick, and then pick up a decade later with Ben.  It's so weird that I can't remember any of it (the stuff about the bandit wanting a second gunfight I made up just now for my blog), but I keep hearing that the best ideas are the ones where your brain keeps dredging them up, again and again, until you write them.  The ones you forget . . . well, maybe those weren't all that special to begin with.*

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In April: 2244

I noticed somebody with an amusing window sticker in the library parking lot the other day:

In case you can't tell, that's Mickey Mouse giving the finger.

Today, I saw this one:

I guess this is the sort of thing that Captain America smashed commies in the Fifties for, isn't it?

Words Today: 923
Words In April: 15,1556 (would it have killed me to write just one fewer word?)

*Still, that book I wrote "My Friend of Misery" was based on a dream I had, and promptly forgot having . . . except I had the foresight to record myself recounting the dream as soon as I woke up, otherwise, I'd have had no memory of it my morning.  And who knows if I would've written that story otherwise?

April Sweeps - Day 445

 "So, it's April 21st, and everybody knows today is Earth Day,
Merry Christmas, Happy birthday to whoever's being born."
Dramarama

Jim Steinman died yesterday.  He was a songwriter primarily known for his collaborations with Meat Loaf, the big, bombastic love songs he wrote in the Seventies and Eighties.  

His great track "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad," was slaughtered by me in one of my Storage Unit Serenades, and I remember the first time I heard it--a heavyset guy at the karaoke diner in the next town up was performing it, and in the part that goes, "I'll never be able to give you something, something that I just haven't got," belted it out with real, palpable emotion, making everybody stop what they were doing and pay attention.  I was a fan of that song ever since.

My favorite of his songs, "Total Eclipse of the Heart," was made famous by Bonnie Tyler, and I sang it (and Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)") on the drive toward my cousin's house.  And I gotta say, I really wrecked my voice doing so.*

I found myself tired this afternoon, and I don't know if that was a side effect from the vaccination shot yesterday or not (maybe I'm just a lazy sod, I dunno), but I was unable to go to sleep due to the shrieking children outside my window (which was closed).  One of those bastards has that gear-grinding adolescence screech thing going on, so it sounds like Froggy from "The Little Rascals" kicked in the Frankenberries, and I am tempted to kill literally every time I hear it.  So, I put on a YouTube video of a reading of an old MR James ghost story, and turned it up high enough to drown out the screaming (I could have put on a Corrosion of Conformity album, but I fear it wouldn't have been loud enough).

Weirdly, I woke up when the narration ended and silence returned to the room.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In April: 2247

Now I'm at the library, and I've got that dumb problem that hits one in three visits here: erectile dysfunction.  No, that's one in two visits.  This one is that I don't want to write, even though this is my designated writing time.  Things that would NEVER be important to me, such as the career of Betsy Palmer, the musical career of Cher, or what films Tony Leung is famous for.**

I only managed 147 words before I decided that I absolutely HAD to get out of the library.  Weird.  If it ends up getting hit by an asteroid, I guess I'll understand why I felt such an intense desire to leave.

So, another song Steinman wrote--this one a hit in the Nineties--was "It's All Coming Back To Me," which was recorded by Celine Dion around 1996 or so.  Just for fun, I put that one on as I was driving to get gas this afternoon.  Somehow, my vocal range is about an octave below Celine's, so it works out pretty well.  It might have to be my go-to karaoke song, if I ever end up having friends with whom to do karaoke again.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In April: 2144

I sat around after my run, eating a sandwich and watching "Modern Family," and I could hear my brother-in-law listening to music in the shower downstairs.  And I recognized the song: it was "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)," which seemed a little bit like that Baader-Meinholf Phenomenon I was talking about last week.

Also, I'm now in the fourth season of the show, and after 92 episodes, I have to admit that I'm getting a little tired of the previously-sacrosanct Taylor Swift Capital One commercial.  And I have learned to despise Jake From State Farm.

Yes, I know, welcome to the club.

Words Today: 359
Words In April: 14,633

*He also wrote "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" by Air Supply.  Maybe I'll wreck my vocal chords singing that one today.

**I also wasted a good long time looking up the post-"Little Rascals" careers of the "Our Gang" kids.

April Sweeps - Day 444

My sense of OCD really appreciates this day's number.

You know that song by fun. (lowercase, with a g.d. period) that goes, "What do I stand for, what do I stand for?  Most nights, I don't know?"  Well, that damned song has been bouncing around in my head for the last three days, ever since I forced my nephew to go to the store with me on Friday, and let him choose the station, and that song came on.*  Are you a fan of that song?  What about the part at the end where the music gets all distorted and shitty?

Oh, alright.  To each their own, I guess.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 2033

I came to the library today, and nobody's got masks on.  Just the employees.  Oh wait, of the seven people I currently see, one does have a mask on.

More amazingly . . . the drinking fountains were back on and available again!  Honestly, I've missed that more than the lack of human companionship during the pandemic.  You see, I didn't have that to begin with.

Did you know that in some dark corners of this country, drinking fountains (or water fountains) are known as "bubblers?"  Isn't that the worst thing you've ever heard?

And speaking of terrible things . . .

So, I had an appointment this morning, and it fell apart, so I thought I'd go over to Walgreens and ask about the COVID vaccine again.  The last time I went there, they were all booked up, and explained to me how to make an appointment, but it seemed too complicated, so I never did it.  This time, though, I asked the lovely employee (she's worked there long enough I've seen her without the mask on) how I make an appointment, and the manager overheard and came over to tell me that they had some doses of the vaccine that are expiring today, so they had to give them to someone.

He told me to walk up and tell them that, and I did.  There was only one girl behind the pharmacy counter, 

While I was filling out my paperwork, a big hillbilly-looking dude came up and stood in line in front of me.  When I say big, I mean, about six-three or six-four and about three or four hundred pounds.  When I say hillbilly-looking, I mean he wore overalls and had a scraggly grey beard over a foot long.  Think "Buddy has an axe to grind.  A big axe."

This guy's name was not Buddy, though.  He said it when he went up to the window.  I'll tell you what it was next time you see me, if you want another laugh. 

He was not there to get the vaccine, he mentioned in a gravely, Southern-tinged voice, but to pick up a "perscripshun," and when I finished my paperwork, the girl behind the counter said I could just come up and give her the form and her pen back (instead of waiting in the line again).

As I came up next to him, I couldn't help but notice the pinky ring he wore on his huge finger.  It was a swastika, complete with red circle around it.  I did a double-take, since I figured I had to be imagining things (kind of like when I allow myself to believe that Blondie the Walgreens employee recognizes me).  

I thought about trying to take a picture of it for you, and promptly put that out of my mind.  But in scouring the internet, this seems to be the best representation of what he wore:

It's so weird that you would wear something out in the open like that, but after the last four and a half years, nothing should surprise me anymore.

The actual vaccination bit didn't take any time at all (and it didn't hurt in the slightest).  The kid who stuck me didn't seem too knowledgeable, and would be around my own son's age . . . if I had had a kid a decade ago.  There was a big list of possible side-effects and warnings and such, but that's not why I hadn't gotten the vaccine yet, when so many other people had.  Just yesterday, Seth Meyers on his show mentioned that in the U.S., they passed the milestone of more than half (51%) of Americans having gotten the vaccine . . .

. . . and that made me think: Why am I not among them?  I hear statistics all the time ("67% of Americans approve of Joe Biden," "31% of filmgoers have gone back to the movies since the pandemic," "98% of Americans have never heard of the 1987 Slasher Film SLAUGHTERHOUSE ," "57% of adults would not pee on a homeless person," etc.) and I often consider myself on the "right" side of the argument.  A lot of the people who refuse to take the vaccination have made it political, or racial, or are conspiracy theorists, and I didn't want to be lumped in with those fear-mongering, pinky-ring-wearing types.

When I got home, I had a message from my friend Jeff in Germany that he had gotten his first shot (Moderna for him) today as well.  I guess that makes us brothers.

"Who makes the sausage?"  We may never know.

So, I got the vaccination (Pfizer for me), and three weeks from now, I'm supposed to get the second one.  And that was pretty good use of my time (even if I only got three pages of my new book read while waiting for my turn).

Push-ups Today: 161
Push-ups In April: 2197

My arm is really killing me right now.**  They said there would likely be side-effects, and I remember years and years ago, that I got one of those injections they called "peanut butter shots," and had been freaked out by the horror stories the other kids promised were in store for me . . . and then there were no adverse effects at all.

I had intended to come here and write more of this twin story (I'm leaning toward calling it "Identical" or something along those lines), but I got an idea for YET ANOTHER Lara and the Witch story, and I started to jot down my thoughts, but then wrote the opening scene.  And now I need to go, if I'm going to get my run in before it's time to meet my cousin for our hang-out and TV watching.

Words Today: 1283
Words In April: 14,274

*The whole song is bouncing around, not just that part.  There's a baffling line at the beginning that goes "Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle; Some nights, I wish they'd just fall off."  Not sure what that means, although I imagine a castle made of Legos, for some reason.

**Dang, that's an exaggeration.  It hurts when I move it, and is sore to the touch, but it's not throbbing in pain or anything.  I'm fine, and fully intend to do push-ups and sit-ups and running later, even if it hurts.  Especially if it hurts.