The Bad Humor Man

The other day, my nephew went with me to the store.  He never goes, so as a bribe, I told him I'd buy him something.  Strangely, he chose a huge, oversized tennis ball which would put you in the hospital if you ever hit it with a racket.  But I discovered later that he was using it to play basketball.  I saw it in the basket, and thought, "There's a joke in this somewhere."

So, I took a picture of it, and while I was mowing the lawn, I pondered on it.*

In the end, I came up with this post on Facebook:

If you can't read it, I said "Warning: This is what will happen if Hillary is elected in 2016."

Now, whether you think that's funny or not is both relative and open to debate, but my niece posted on it almost immediately, saying, "This is very Gen Z humor, I'm impressed.  10/10."  That pleased me.  But why is it funny, exactly . . . if it IS funny?

Is it the nonsensical nature of the post?  Is it the fact that I'm warning you about something that has already not happened?  Is it that it's a parody of the garbage we used to see on the Far Right, trying to stir up fear in old people already terrified of change?  Or is it that I, a city-loving Liberal with at least one (?) gay friend, would post that kind of propaganda?  Or is it just that the idea of a tennis ball in a basketball hoop is weird?

My cousin, who is Gen X like me, replied to my niece, "low key I don’t get it no cap"

I guess I was aping an image I saw online a few years ago that I thought was both hilarious and totally effed-up, where there was some kind of baffling human/monster hybrid on a jungle gym, along with the caption: Athiests, if God doesn't exist, then how do you explain this?

I tried to find it just now, but couldn't.  The best I could do was this (which is sort of the same thing):

I found a couple more, both pretty good:

There's admittedly a law of diminishing returns with this sort of thing.

Here, I'll try one myself:

Anyway, enjoying my time in the sun, I created another hopefully-funny non sequitur, and posted it on Facebook.

Appropriately twisted?  Maybe.  Funny because of it?  Well, maybe not.  Nobody else seemed to think it was funny (or appreciate that I gave the tomato and angry look).

Somebody immediately got on there to defend the Bible verse, and explain what it actually means.  And that's pretty close to the opposite of funny.

I don't know why certain things are funny, and I don't know why certain things don't work.  I remember Han Solo getting a big laugh in RETURN OF THE JEDI when he says, "I dunno, fly casual," and it's been exactly forty years and two days, and I still don't get the joke.

My pal Jeff really loves this animated Wes Anderson film called THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX, and he sat me down to watch it.  And I was in Hell, the whole time.  I have never had a more negative experience with a movie (and we're including WEST SIDE STORY), and I'd liken the way I felt throughout to how I felt the second-to-last time I got food poisoning.

I hated the movie so much, it made me wonder if Jeff and I could even be friends anymore.  And after I stabbed him in the neck with a letter opener during the end titles, he wondered the same thing.

I find the words "chunder," "C.H.U.D.," "Chima," "chalupa," "Temecula," and "chingazo" extremely funny, and use nearly all of them multiple times a day.  My guess is, you don't feel the same.

And there was that lovely Jake From State Farm commercial, where the husband is on the phone with his insurance company (although they make it look like he's talking to a prostitute (or even more likely, a Slovenian underage prostitute), and his wife, suspicious, comes downstairs and says, "Dennis, who the f**k are you talking to?" (it was a pretty progressive commercial for its time, pun intended) 

And the poor hapless henpecked husband says, "I'm on the phone with Jake from State Farm."  The wife goes, "Jake from State Farm, at three in the morning?" and takes the phone away and says into it, "What are you wearing, 'Jake From State Farm'?" with eye-rolling sarcasm.  They cut to the shlubby guy at the insurance company, and he says, "Uh, khakis."  The wife hands the phone back and says, "She sounds hideous."

Funniest commercial of the year.  Sure to win the prize for--

But then the commercial continues, and the husband says, "Well, she's a guy, so..."  And that's not only the end of the commercial, but the end of humor everywhere.  All the good will and energy created by this almost-perfect commercial is destroyed by that last line.  It's like when you were a child and you were so excited for Christmas, listing off everything you hoped you'd get, and your Uncle Ali shouted at you, "YOUR GRANDMOTHER DIED OF SYPHILLUS!"  Remember that?

Now, I don't know if you agree that that final line ruined the humor (I know that the trans community took issue with it, for some reason that was probably NOT about killing any residual comedy), but if you don't, how about this?

Okay, I was editing audio for ten minutes, and dedicated forty-one minutes to this blog post, so now I feel shame.  But while I'm at it, let me say that I watched the 2011 Jake From State Farm commercial again just now, and there is literally .2731 seconds between the wife saying "She sounds hideous" and the husband saying "Well, she's a guy so," so I suppose it is possible that it's only me.  But I don't care.  I'm right on this one.  Don't make me post another Kinison.

*My favorite of the late night talk shows is Seth Meyers, and often, his writers will come up with more than one joke that he runs for a given image, and he'll sometimes present two or three of them, occasionally even mentioning which writer came up with which one (ESPECIALLY if they bomb).  And this makes me wish I were writing bad jokes for a living.

Rish and Marshal Discuss the End of The Mandalorian

Or is it just the end of the season?  Listen to one of us rant on the "Star Wars: Delusions of Grandeur" podcast.

Here's THE LINK to the latest episode, where Marshal and I do what we do, when we do what we're doin to you.

Note: I feel like this episode is about a month late, but I just kept finding priorities to put ahead of it.  In fact, I still had two priorities I should have finished before it, but I felt too guilty.  But now I feel guilty for missing another deadline.

Queen of Rock & Roll 1939-2023

 Tina Turner, the Queen of Rock and Roll, passed away. I was a fan.

The first time I ever watched "Saturday Night Live" by myself (a lovely tradition I've continued for nearly forty years) was not for the guest host or the cast, but for Turner, who was on the radio with "What's Love Got To Do With It" at the time.

Anyway, Tina Turner died today, at age eighty-three.  She'd been sick for a while, living out her final years in Switzerland, where she had repatriated a decade ago.

Big Anklevich has told me time and time again over the years how much he hated Turner's music, mostly due to her voice (which Juggy Murray, president of her first record label, described as "sounding like screaming dirt."), but it's never come between us as friends.  After all, he knows what I think of his favorite band.

Something remarkable (and unheard-of in 2023) is that, when I first became a fan, when "WLGTDWI"" and "Private Dancer" and "We Don't Need Another Hero" and "Better Be Good To Me" came out, she was already in her forties, having been half of Ike and Tina Turner in the Sixties and Seventies.  But she had this enormous comeback, with hit after hit, like "Simply The Best" and "Typical Male" and "I Don't Wanna Fight Anymore" and the theme to GOLDENEYE, and when Big and I talked about her silly title ("The Queen of Rock & Roll"), we couldn't really come up with somebody else who deserved it more.*

We took a few minutes going through honorific titles for various other artists (there was a whole page for it on Wikipedia), playing a sadistic game where I would ask Big who was known as The Chairman of the Board, or The Voice, or Godfather of Soul, or the King of Swing, or The Artist.  Before I knew it, I had wasted two of Big's precious hours with the game, and he hung his head in shame.

Anyway again, I wanted to say something, because I was a big fan, and was happy to see her get the recognition she had earned from such an enormous career, and music that reached me so profoundly that I still remember that first SNL I watched, waiting to hear that song.

"Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?"

*Except Carly Rae Jepsen.  We both agreed on that.

Rish (in two languages) on HorrorAddicts' "The Living Room"

This HorrorAddicts dialogue job was a fun assignment.  My voice can be heard in "The Living Room" by Amanda Leslie.  In it, I appear as a paranormal investigator, one with a reality show ("Ghosts: Believe It"), and a Catholic priest, performing some kind of cleansing.*  But . . . Emerian Rich only sent me the bit of the story with my lines in it (so if you want to go to THIS LINK, we can find out what the story's about together).

*Both this and the next episode have Latin in them, and I never know how to pronounce Latin.  But whenever I hear it in movies, it sounds so much like Italian, that I tend to deliver it the exact same way (except, since it's a dead language, there are fewer people noticing when I mispronounce something than if I did it in Spanish or Italian . . . or French, where I mispronounce everything).

Rish Outcast 250: I Have So Many Names

Rish talks about character names, and the problem with naming them after people you know.  He also complains (briefly) about his audiobook project.

Note: I was thinking about doing something special for my 250th episode.  Instead, I did this.  Maybe 300?

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To become a Patreon supporter (truly, the greatest of names), go HERE.

Logo by Gino "I Have So Many Dames" Moretto.

Lara and the Witch Part 8

A month or so back (maybe slightly more), I started on a new Lara & the Witch story, when I got stuck on the one I'd started in February, which I was calling "Wookin Pah Nub."*  In the story "The Company You Keep," there was a single throwaway line of dialogue where Holcomb asks Lara if Perpetua Trevorly has been bothering her again.  When I was editing the audio of the story, I paused and thought, Why would Perpetua Trevorly be badgering Lara like this, and might there be a story in it?

Well, of course the answer is yes.  There's a potential story in every namedrop or vague reference I write in these things.  The real question is, whether there's enough of a story in it to carry me through to the end.

And, in this case, anyway, the answer was yes.  And a very simple, enjoyable yes.  It was harder to find a title I liked than getting to the end of the fifteen thousand word story.

This one is called "Here To Help," and it comes from a State Farm (Insurance) slogan.  In it, Lara is approached on the street by a strange woman (Perpetua Trevorly), who claims to be a friend of Lara's mother's.  I'm not a good enough writer to have a theme in my stories, but if I did, this one would have the theme of, DOES No Good Deed Go Unpunished?

It takes place when Lara is fourteen, and a month or two after the Valentine's Day story "The People You Touch."  This makes it the eighth official Lara & the Witch story (the others being "Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands," "Made Just For You," "The People You Touch," "The Company You Keep," Bundling Made Easy," and "When You Need It Most").

At this rate, I'll probably publish it around 2026, but I started formatting it today, and that's usually the step I take right before sitting down and recording the audio version.  So, you never know (which has to be some insurance company's motto, right?).

*It's a great title (I'm sure to change), and a pretty good idea, where Lara tries to set Holcomb up with a nice man on a dating app, after the witch has only ever previously made contact with total creeps.

Hike One

So, it was a warm, sunny-ish day, and I went on a hike, for the first time this year.  I wasn't planning on it--I was wearing the wrong pants and the wrong shoes--but I felt like I ought to.  For various boring and emotional reasons.

I drove way up north, passing four different potential hiking trails, to get to the one I first hit during the pandemic (it was closed halfway up due to the winter the first time, and closed due to the COVID pandemic every time afterward).  The last time I'd gone, I lost all cell service a mile or so before reaching the path, but they seem to have put up a new tower, because I still had during my walk.

It's still officially closed for the season, with signs that said the bathrooms and drinking fountains at the base weren't accessible, but I found both of them working, so we must be days or hours before reopening for the summer (the urinal didn't flush, though, I found out only after using it.  Sorry).

Everything is green, the sky is blue, and though I saw no animals, something moved through the brush higher up on the trail from me, and left only a waving branch when I tried to get a look.  I assume it was a jackalope.

I thought I was the only person hiking the trail, but as I got up to the most photogenic part of the climb, I saw an older couple coming down the trail toward me.  And I had to push them off, Your Honor, you understand.

I went up another quarter mile or so, all familiar terrain, even though I think I only ever went there in 2020 (maybe a single time the next year), and suddenly, I could go no further.

The trail was covered by a strange landslide of snow, effectively ending any further progress (unless you wanted to risk going over the hill of ice).  I took a couple of pictures of it, but nothing quite captured how impressive it was.*

In front of the pile was a sign that read "TRAIL ENDS - DO NOT CROSS."  But I didn't need that sign (shoulda taken a picture of it, though).  All the way up the hill was one long snowy portion, with no snow anywhere else.  

So, I had no choice but to turn around and go back down the hill.  No big deal, but I remember literally running down the hill in the past, and I'm glad I didn't, because there were a couple of places where the hiking trail was cracked, from either landslides or tree roots pushing up the concrete (or possibly the Great Old Ones trying to emerge from whence they slumber), and I'd have gone sprawling.

I got to my car and drove home, aware that this might be the last time I ever go there.  Hmm.

*And I was glad that the old couple had seen something so majestic right before their unfortunate fall(s).

Exercise Update

 I did miss a few days, but I'm not gonna stress about it.

As much as exercise sucks (most of the time), it's always enjoyable to color in the little squares.

Apropos of Nothing

The other day, my buddy Jeff called me from Germany, to tell me he was watching the Fede Alvarez remake of THE EVIL DEAD, called, horribly, eViL dEAd.  It was a movie I was too afraid to watch (heck, I couldn't sit through the trailer), but he was going to give it a watch.  What's worse, his wife was in Portugal on a . . . get this, a yoga retreat.  Obviously code for something.*

So, Jeff, alone in the house, watched EEEEEEEVILDEEEEEEAD, by himself.  And then, he went to the cinema--again, alone--to see EVIL DEAD RISES, with no one to hold his hand, and then came home on the train to an empty apartment, one filled with shadows, lack of reassuring pets, and windows so large an NBA player-sized murderer could climb through them.

Honestly, this image is effed-up enough I am hesitant to put it on my blog.

But he's more of a man than I am, that much is clear.

So, I was going to go for a run tonight, and around ten-thirty, I finally changed into my sweatpants and light-colored running shirt . . . then watched YouTube and pretended to edit audio until nearly midnight.  Finally, though, I shut off what I was watching (er, I mean, editing my next podcast), and got going.  And I found, disturbingly enough, the front door was open.  It was five minutes to midnight, and the door was not unlocked, but open.  

Gulp.

Thanks, Jeff, for not dragging me to see EVIL DEAD RISE with you.

*Kids, if I ever tell you I'm going on a "yoga retreat," feel free to give me five, wink, and say, "Congratulations, man, but make sure you save your photos in a special, hidden folder."

Podcast That Dares 41: The Squaw

Yikes.  Rish presents Bram Stoker's short story, "The Squaw," a tale where the title is somehow not the most problematic part of it.  

Warning: Despite being from 1893, this story is particularly rough.  Listener discretion is advised.

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, come on, just click HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Chief" Moretto.

My Voice on "Bye, Baby Bunting" on HorrorAddicts

*

Wow, here we are, a new batch of HorrorAddicts podcasts, all or most of which will feature my voice.  This one barely qualifies, as I only have one or two lines in the whole thing.  But hey, a gig's a gig.

The story this time is called "Bye, Baby Bunting" by Leslie Warren, about a new widow and mother, and a baby with a mouthful of teeth.  And yellow eyes.

You can check it out HERE.

*Pretty kind of them to use one of my baby pictures for their cover art.

Audiobook Update 5-6

Well, there you go.  All done, barring relines in the last couple of chapters.  I even got a Closing Credits and got that done too.  And I've got to say, doing this silly daily blogging thing, and making my LGBT-friendly progress chart, really helped me stay motivated.  

I look forward to accomplishing many new things in the rest of the year, but I've been in the revenge business for so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life.

Audioboooook Updaaate - 5-5

I can't believe it . . . I just began editing the final chapter of the book.  I'm sure there will still be errors to correct and chalupas to re-heat, but wow, this has been quite an accomplishment: my longest and most ambitious audiobook project to date.  

Audiobook Update 5-4

I'm really focusing on editing today, and up ahead, I can see the finish line, not so far away.  In fact, I can see somebody waiting for me there, somebody to cheer me on, no doubt . . . but why is he wearing a black hood and holding a scythe?

Audierbook Update 5-3

Sadly, yesterday (and most of Monday) were the first days that I haven't worked on "Cormorant" in months.  I fully intended to yesterday, after focusing on editing my Patreon address (still only half-done) on Monday . . . but I fell asleep as soon as I Noise Reduced the file, and didn't wake up again until it was time to either go to bed or go to my cousin's house.  So I did the latter.

Today, though, I was back in business, and decided not to go to the library to write, but to instead focus on editing this.  The end is in sight.

Audiobook Update 5-1

 *

Anyhow, I'm getting close now.

*I liked this image, of parents covering their childrens' eyes, but the stern-looking dad covering his bored daughter's eyes bothered me.  Much better was a stern-looking dad covering his delighted son's eyes.  So I switched it.