Matthew Perry 1969-2023

It was November 4th, 1994, and I turned on the television for something to do (it was a Thursday, and Thursday night always meant something good on NBC, ever since "Cheers" debuted in 1982).  The show that was on had already started, so I didn't know what it was called, but a likeable, sarcastic young man named Chandler got stuck in an ATM vestibule with a Victoria Secret model during a blackout, while his buddies back in their apartment have various hijinks.

At one point, trying not to seem nervous in front of her, Chandler tells the beauty (Jill Connick) that "Gum would be perfection."  Of course, he then questions his choice of words (in an inner monologue that was--I think--absolutely unique for the series).  I didn't know the name of the show, but I knew how hard it was making me laugh, and that I liked the characters, especially the one I mistook for "the main guy."

Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing was my favorite of the "Friends," a series I watched religiously (even it's mediocre third season) from that point until its finale a decade later.  I know the show has its haters, but in a time when I was lonely and all-too-aware of the fact, I really considered these six fictional characters my friends, and looked forward to watching the show each Thursday, whether I had roommates to watch with me, or all by myself.

Over the years, they gave the character all sorts of interesting quirks and developments, and I was extremely pleased when they introduced a romance with Monica Geller, new insecurities that came with being with her (such as abiding her obsessive cleanliness and measuring up to the perfect ex-boyfriend played by Tom Selleck), and I ultimately rooted for the two of them to live happily ever after, rather than the constant focus on Ross and Rachel in the first few seasons.

There were good episodes and lesser ones, great laughs and small chuckles, but when all was said and done, I felt the show deserved its enormous spotlight, and I followed Perry to other projects, like FOOLS RUSH IN, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," and those two NINE YARDS movies he made with Bruce Willis.  Heck, I even watched "Go On" until it was canceled, and "Mr. Sunshine" until I couldn't stand any more.

Well, it was with sadness that I read today that Matthew Perry, TV's Chandler Bing, was found dead, of an apparent drowning in his hot tub.  He was fifty-four.  

Rest in peace, my friend.  Gum would be perfection.

Rish Outcast 241: Haul Out The New Year

Rish talks about "Haul Out The Holly," the first Hallmark Christmas movie he's watched.  

Then he tallies up all his New Year's Resolutions (and his old ones).

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

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

Logo by Gino "Haul Out the New Beer" Moretto.

11-4

 Day 12

Well, Jeff still didn't feel well, so we got ourselves another day to decompress (though only MOST of a day, because we have train tickets to Munich this late afternoon, and another set to Venice tonight).  After suffering through "Severance" for me, it was only fair to let Jeff pick the entertainment today, and he picked "Detectorists."  It's a British show about two friends (Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones) who spend their free time with metal detectors, looking for buried treasure in the English countryside.  It's ostensibly a comedy, and I did laugh a time or two, but more than that, it's a show that made me feel very, very sad.  I've heard it said that a big part of British humour is enjoying watching people suffer, and that seemed to be what this show was all about.  The only time--literally, even when sick or hit with sudden diarrhea or jammed into a train compartment with sweaty strangers--I've felt sorry for myself this whole trip was while watching "Detectorists."

However, Jeff says that the show doesn't make him feel bad at all.  He sees it as two friends who manage to find a spot of hope and joy in their otherwise-miserable lives, sharing this hobby they're passionate about.  Jeff says the show makes him happy.  So there's that.

While we were watching "Detectorists," I glanced up to see (what I thought to be) a woman or girl standing in the hall peeking out at us from the wall.  Of course, nobody was there, but a minute later, when I looked over again, I thought I saw her again.  Maybe there's a story in that, maybe not.

I won't be taking my laptop to Venice with me, because it's just too bloody big.  So, this'll be the last time I use it for a while.  Ironically, if I die, then nobody will ever read this (because I'm days behind on my blog).  Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows.

11-3

Day 11

Jeff had to go to work this morning, but he slept in as late as he could, so now I have a few hours to blog and wash clothes while we wait.  I told Emily that we didn't really need to go to Italy anymore, since I'd experienced so much, and she could just make a pizza and we'd call it good.  But the tickets are already bought, and it's gonna be in one of those sleeper trains you see in Bond movies, so they apparently look forward to it too.  That's tomorrow.*

This was a day to do nothing, and I spent hours of it blogging and copying pictures off my phone.  In many ways, it was a wasted day (I didn't even go outside until the very end of the night), but because Jeff and I have been sick (did I mention that he seems to have caught the same exact cough as me?), we needed a day to hang out and eat and watch television together.  My first day, we'd put on the first episode of "Severance," but I had trouble staying awake, and so he put on the first episode of a show called "The Detectorists," which I completely slept through.

"Severance" is a totally effed-up show about a group of people who work in an office, doing something so secretive that they've agreed to have a surgical procedure done so they will forget what they did the second they leave work.  But it goes both ways (like you're ex-girlfriend): they have no memory of their lives before they started work there, and as far as they're concerned, their WHOLE LIVES are working for Luman Industries.  The show is extremely well done, but it's also extraordinarily slow-moving.

One thing I meant to mention last week but didn't is that on my first two days here in Germany, I waved at strangers, both on the train and on the street.  Finally, Jeff saw me doing it and asked why I waved.  "Just to be friendly, you know?" I said.  "Well, people don't really do that here.  No wonder that woman gave you a strange look before."  But the odd thing is, ever since he said that, I've been tempted to wave at people (old and young, but mostly little kids, especially those in costume).  And I don't know if I would've been inclined to wave at them before told me that (because it's just in my nature), or if I want to wave because he told me it's culturally inappropriate.  Funny that.

*Later, Jeff would tell me, "And you told Emily you didn't want to go to Venice."  But I had to explain, I did want to, most of all, but I felt I had already taken so much, so, so much.  When I got back, my niece showed me what one night at the New York Hotel costs, and it made me throw up a bit in my mouth.  Luckily, I had been eating applesauce, so it didn't look any different.

4/5 week in review (part 1)

4/3

I failed to go on a hike last month, and didn't really care about it.  But the weather is warmer now, and I knew that I didn't have rain or snow as an excuse.  So I did the traditional hike up the mountain here in town.  I'll admit that it was a bit of a bugger starting out (and my calves complained almost from the moment I started), but hey, I still managed.  What have you done, Derek?

Truth be told, I have been feeling out of shape and vaguely unwell for a while now.  So it does please me that I could manage the same hike that my uncle claimed would kill me in 2019.  I have to admit, though, that I did stop and rest about a third of the way through, going on YouTube and finding a video that talked for an hour about the top ten greatest rollercoasters in the world. 

It's getting to be springtime, with blossoms on the trees, and I really ought to start doing . . .  EVERYTHING again.

4/4

Boy, my legs were complaining today.  Sometimes it would take a few steps before I could even walk normally.  It reminded me of a post I saw on Facebook the other day that said, "To those of you in your thirties and forties, enjoy it while you can, because once you hit fifty, the Check Engine light will come on."

Every month, I record and edit an address to my Patreon supporters.  In it, I talk about what's going on in my little world, and try to share something interesting that happened to me.  This past week, I sat down five different times, trying my darndest to do just that (I also look at the goals I set for the previous month and set new ones for the month that's just beginning), and pretty much failed.  

I talked about a recent brush with eBay Horror I was experiencing, I sang the theme from "The Greatest American Hero" with Fake Sean, and tried desperately not to say anything about the Oscars.  All in all, I've got an hour and fourteen minutes of very little to say . . . AND it's the fourth of April already.

I wonder how other people with Patreon accounts do it.  I wonder if they feel a desperate need to be entertaining and/or insightful every month.

4/5

So, months and months ago, when the first trailer for MORBIUS came out (back when it was supposed to come out in July of 2020), my nephew leaned over and said, "Promise you'll take me to that when it comes out!"

Well, it got delayed, and then bumped, and then moved again* and finally came out last Friday . . . and boy oh boy, did it get pummeled by the critics and fans.  Right now, it has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that was enough for me to think I could give it a miss.

But my nephew remembered that I had said I would take him to it, so I arranged it with my cousin to go on Tuesday night (they have five dollar specials on Tuesdays), but because I was bringing my nephew, he felt justified in bringing his daughter, the one who calls everything "sick."

I knew it would mostly likely suck, and wondered if I was an idiot to go see it (I still remember Jeff's wife in 1997 after BATMAN & ROBIN got out complaining, "If you knew it was going to be bad, why did you go to see it?"  And then worse, shouting, "Why did you drag me to it then?"  But hey, people loved THE JOKER, and continue to love THE BATMAN, so I figured, if those folks hated MORBIUS, then I'm bound to like it.**

Well, it wasn't terrible, really.  By the halfway point, I was even thinking, "Hey, I'm enjoying this thing."  The special effects were really good, the vampire designs appropriately frightening, and Matt Smith is a cool bad guy.  Plus, unlike VENOM 2, the toned-down violence didn't detract from my appreciation of the film with confusing cut-aways and ham-handed TV edits.  But yeah, it falls pretty flat at the end, and sets up some kind of sequel/spin-off thing that, well, I have no reason to look forward to.

No, it wasn't great.  And the ending was the worst part (including their, what, three mid-credits sequences?), but hey, this is hardly the worst Marvel film, not by a long shot (not in a world where GHOST RIDER 2 and FAN4TASTIC exist).

*It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but it was supposed to be release July 2020, then March 19th 2021, then October 8th 2021, then January 21st 2022, then January 28th, then April 1st, 2022.

**A bunch of internet memes were going around saying that Jared Leto had the distinction of being in both the worst Marvel movie (MORBIUS) and worst DC movie (SUICIDE SQUAD).  But eff that noise.  First off, MORBIUS is hardly a Marvel movie.  And secondly, SUICIDE SQUAD doesn't even belong in the bottom ten worst DC movies (not if you can count STEEL and SUPERGIRL, SUPERMAN IV and JONAH HEX, BATMAN & ROBIN and GREEN LANTERN, and of course, CATWOMAN, directed by a guy named Pitoff).  So, put your childish exaggerations away, before I start ripping on the Prequels again.

Weekly Blog 3/28

3/22

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, but my sister called to say that she'd pick him up, so I didn't have to stay to watch it.  I had planned on finishing my library book ("The Hidden Palace" by Helene Wecker) from the uncomfortable bleachers, but instead, I went to the library, finished the book in comfort (hey, it's only seven days overdue), and blogged and surfed Wikipedia.

I met a squat, plain-faced woman with bad teeth this morning, who nonetheless struck me as pleasant and inherently good.  I tried to imagine a scenario in which she gets a curse placed on her wherein she would become beautiful and charming . . . one day a month. 

It's similar, I'll admit, to ideas I've had in the past, but I was pretty energized by the idea throughout the day, even going as far as to come up with a scenario in which the woman is a nurse who is kind to Lara Demming when she is injured, and Old Widow Holcomb decides to reward her (much in the same way she "rewarded" Tali Murray [was that her name?] is the "Remember The Future" story I wrote back in 2016).

What would it be like to become beautiful and popular, but only on the thirtieth of each month?  How would your life change?  How would you rearrange your schedule in preparation for it?  And how much would February suck (more than it already does, I mean)?  Thood for fought.

Now that I am sitting at a library cubicle and jotting down the idea, of course, it doesn't strike me as particularly good or unique, and that's too bad.  But I think I'll do what Big Anklevich always does, and put the idea in a mental drawer.*  If it keeps jumping out at me in the future, coming back into my head and recapturing my imagination, then I'll know I have something.  We'll see.

3/23

Really, this should be a continuation of yesterday's post, but ah well.  Yesterday, I also got an idea for a story for a comic book issue or a short vignette where Clark Kent is eight years old, and his parents are trying to teach him how to pass as human.  Jonathan and Martha decide that Tuesday will be Clark's human day, when he must do everything as though he's one of us, even though it will mean his chores will take hours and he has to be careful not to get burned or injured by things that couldn't possibly burn or injure him.  

Clark tries, but there's a lot to keep track of.  I really love the idea of Jonathan putting something heavy in a bag and when Clark carries it out to the pickup truck with one hand, he reveals that even a grown man would struggle with that, and his secret would be revealed if somebody else saw it.  The boy is frustrated, but he learns that by creating this Clark Kent persona, he gains empathy for how vulnerable and weak the human beings around him are.  It's not fair, but it helps mold him into the man that he'll become.

In audio news, I was asked to perform a short story for a podcast, and it was one by Edith Nesbit, who wrote "John Charrington's Wedding," the last Podcast That Dares episode I finished.  I read through the story (before recording), and the characters are obviously European rather than American (at one point, my character speculates, "Perhaps she wants a rise in her screw," whatever that means), and I wasn't sure what to do.  So, I started recording it with an English accent, but ten seconds later, I decided that if they had wanted an English accent, they would've sent the story to a Brit, not me.  

So I started again, voicing the narrator as an old man, and after about two minutes, I changed my mind again.

This time, I decided on a more gravely version of my own voice for the narration, but did a much younger voice for the dialogue.  Unfortunately, doing that particular character so effed up my voice that I started coughing so hard I nearly threw up.  That had never happened before (I've got the audio, if you think I should include it).  I stopped and got a drink, meaning to take a short break and then finish, and never came back to the story.  Whoops.

3/24

I took my nephew to his volleyball game tonight, knowing it would mean I wouldn't make it to the library.  But I didn't mind.  His team was just awful, and even though he wasn't the worst player on the team, he was pretty bad.  In the past, he's always seemed to know what he was doing in sports, but none of these kids seemed to know how to set up a ball so someone else could spike it.  At least they seemed to be having a bit of fun playing the game.  And my nephew is athletic--maybe he'll get way better in the coming weeks.

My buddy Jeff, who watches more television than anyone in the northern hemisphere, got a thirty-three disc boxed set of the "Columbo" TV series.  He was telling me about it, do I did a search, and discovered the series is streamable on Peacock.  I sat down to watch the first episode (directed by an incredibly young Steven Spielberg), and was vexed to discover that, just like the Eighties revival series that I watched on ABC, "Columbo" spends the first few minutes of each episode showing how the murder is committed (and by whom), thereby stealing every moment of mystery from the rest of the show.  I was saddened by this, but audiences must've been fine with it, because "Columbo" aired into the Nineties.

3/25

I emailed myself the "Balms & Sears" file (last used in February of 2021) so I could open it and look it over.  It's a story I've wanted to finish for five or more years now.  It's one of my resolutions for 2022 (and last year too).  I had planned to start at the beginning, reading through it and adding details, so that when I get to the end (of the previous writing), I'll be in the right mindset to finish it up.  But it looks like it's in terrible shape, with a lot of blanks for character names and clustery paragraphs with sketched-out sections.

So I took a scene I had roughed and turned it into a real scene, from beginning to end.  It was something I hadn't remembered writing, but I was easily able to get into the head of Alec ___ (I forget his last name), since I've thought about him for so long--a boy even more sensitive than I was.  It's funny how, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, this story has stuck in my craw all these years, whereas the thousand other ideas I've had had fallen by the wayside.

I had done a barely-adequate amount of writing, but I made myself run the full 1.6 miles before I would reward myself by finishing the "Columbo" episode I'd started the night before.

Unfortunately, while I was making myself some soup to watch with, my nephew and his mouthy friend came in, pulled out the hide-a-bed there, and turned on their show: they were having a sleepover.  If I had known that, I would have watched "Columbo" first, and then went on my run when the kids came in.  Ah well.

3/26

I'm back at the library, though I only have a few minutes before it closes (I have never asked why they would close three hours early on the one day of the week students don't have school or church, but I'm sure--in fact, I'll put it in all caps, I'M SURE--that the answer would infuriate me).

I opened the "Balms & Sears" file and started from the beginning.  By the time I reached the third page, I discovered that on Page 1, I Alec's grandfather's name was Nathaniel Besser, but on Page 3, it was  Arthur Brownwood.**   I didn't want to waste a lot of time deciding which it should be (I like Nathaniel better than Arthur, and Brownwood better than Besser), but figured I'd do a count, and see which one is used more.

And that was a waste of time, because even though Arthur was used once and Nathaniel was used twice, I just kept Arthur Brownwood anyway.

Actually, a great deal of the things I do are a waste of time.  And not just writing.

I looked through a scene, just like yesterday, and before I was done, they made the "Get the hell out, we got places to be" announcement.  I typed this bit, and now I'm on my way.

I did get to "Columbo" today, but each episode is so long, I'll never catch up with Jeff.

3/27

Oscar night is always special for me (although last year's show was pretty miserable, I'll admit), and I looked forward to it all day long.  Unfortunately, I had a lot of work to get done, so I DVRed it and put it off for as late as I could so I could get my end-of-the-month work in (still didn't manage 100%, but ah well).

Then, it turned out the DVR only recorded a little over half of the show, which I realized as soon as I turned it on (my mind said, "Well, maybe it's running late and the thing is still recording . . . but I remembered living in Los Angeles and the Oscars started at some crazy hour like four pm there so the East Coast could show it in Prime Time).  But ah well.

I won't belabor the point much except to say four things:

1.  The highpoint of the night was when Troy Kostur won Best Supporting Actor.  It was everything the Academy Awards mean to me, and I felt proud to be a human being for that entire segment, from the Japanese presenter worried about mispronouncing the names of the nominees to the sign language translator next to him.

2.  I would've predicted the lowpoint was when they did the big production number for "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and completely ruined the song.  Who would've guessed that changing the lyrics (to be about Oscar) and bringing in Megan Thee Stallion to rap would harm that song more than my nephew listening to it hundreds of times on repeat?  It was the worst of what people who make fun of the Oscars say about the awards epitomized.  But I would've been wrong about it being the lowpoint.

3.  The evening went so late into the night that I totally ran out of time to do my run, even though I changed into my sweats and planned to go out and jog around the block when my recording ran out.  So that means that, for the first time this month, I missed both writing and exercising in a single day.  Sorry.

4.  The Will Smith/Chris Rock thing sharted over all the goodwill (no pun intended) and good feelings of the entire night.  I, like many folks, squinted and tried to figure out if it was a gag that was happening, and rewound it to try to read lips (there were uncensored versions out there that I watched, as people kept sending them to me***, and those were even uglier), and then let it sink in that it was completely serious.  And everybody's got an opinion about it, sure, but seeing Rock try to continue on with the presentation and stumble over his words was one of those moments where my heart just went out to the television screen.

The recording ended, and I went online to find that the whole show had pretty much been uploaded to YouTube (it's probably down now, though I dunno how these things work), and I was able to watch the rest of the show.  I thought of Gino when Jane Campion won, because she is his aunt, but it's weird, all of the rest of the show was tainted due to the earlier outburst (although I commend Amy Schumer's jokes immediately after to try to lighten the mood).

Because I spent so darn long on the Oscars, I failed to either write or exercise today.  It was the first day this month, darn it.

Oh, Campion's not really Gino's aunt.  It's a joke about how small New Zealand is, and how . . . uh oh, Gino's gotten up from his seat and is walking toward me.

3/28

I got an email yesterday that made me pretty upset, and it makes me wonder why I am so easily rattled.  Just this week, I was recording a chapter of Abigail Hilton's new book, and my mom called, and she made this little offhand remark criticizing me, and I'll admit, it threw off my whole game.  I was seriously upset, and had to take a break from the recording to try and get back to where I had been (in my head) before.  I said into the microphone, "It amazes me that in a few short words she can make me this furious.  I should have grown out of this by now."

I transferred that file over and started editing it today, and sure enough, when I got to that part, I now feel a bit embarrassed (you couldn't hear what she said, but you could hear me tightly saying, "Yeah, thanks, see ya," before hanging up).  It made me wonder if everybody else has a relationship in their family that does that to them...

...and reminded me of my father and how incensed I could become with that man, and how, even though he's been gone since 2016, all I have to do is think about his reaction when I was recounting the Jimmy Smits enchilada sketch and I become fighting mad once again (works every time, Bosskdammit).  And I promise you that, were the man not dead, he would have no memory of that conflict from a decade or more ago.  It's only me that gets upset about it, and with no signs of slowing down.

There was a moment at the end of last year when I saw that same instant rage rise up in my brother, and it shocked me, because it seemed so unfounded.  But later, once he was gone and I could re-examine it passionlessly, I recognized a slightly beefier version of my own bad temper in that.  And it's strange that it's only certain people who can bring it out of me.  Big Anklevich, for example, has never made me nearly as mad in all the years of us knowing each other, as my mom can by making a trivial comparison between me and a homeless person.

Huh.

Okay, so I'm back at the library, and pardon my Spanglish, but I'm going to write the miercoles out of the book next few minutes.

I did work on "Balms & Sears" for a half hour or so.  There are several scenes, maybe a dozen, maybe more, in two different documents, written over a period of years, and no particular order to put them in.  It would take Christopher Tolkien going through my stuff to organize it into a coherent narrative. 

Basically, Alec moves into a new town in Colorado with his grandfather, starts going to school, makes friends with an unpopular fat kid, makes friends with a popular athlete, and makes friends with a girl with a secret just like his.  In between all these scenes, Alec interacts with his grandfather, who is not really his grandfather.  The stuff between the old man and the boy are my favorite bits, and it's obvious, looking over it now, that I'm writing Gramps as though he was my own grandfather, who, instead of dying in 1994, was still alive today, just well over a hundred years old.

I've been passionate about this story for years, so long that I don't remember the character names or which scenes I've written and which ones I haven't (there are a couple of pages in my notebook from the book, probably written in 2018 or so, including a bit where Gramps refers to Kellogg's Frosted Flakes as the cereal made in a mental institution.  I am absolutely sure that is based on something, a bit of trivia I have since forgotten, but I haven't bothered to look it up).  At this rate, I'll have the book finished sometime around August or September . . . and I can live with that.

Going back to the email at the beginning and the conversation with my mother: I wish I were a bit more unflappable than I am.  When I was a kid, my buddy Dennis's dad was one of those guys who (seemingly) never got upset about anything, and could weather a ton of verbal abuse from Dennis's mom, and it seemed to just roll off him like the duck's back saying.  I am not sure if that is an inborn characteristic or something that you learn, all I know is that, growing up, Dennis was easy-going and restrained, and his brother was hot-headed and quick to anger.  And it sometimes bothered me that I could see that I wasn't like Dennis at all, that I was prone to tantrums way more than he was, and even though I recognized that, it didn't mean I could do something about it.  I suppose I'll be working on that for the rest of my life.

*And did Stephen King suggest the same thing?  I honestly can't remember, so I'll credit B.D. Anklevich alone.

**You can see why I would've confused the two, since they're so darn close to one another, right?

***Okay, it was only two people, but I saw it so many times (and replayed and reframed and memes made of it) that it felt like something I was being bombarded by from all directions.

Weekly Update 3/21

 3/15
I did sit-ups for, like, four minutes.  It shouldn't count as exercise, but I'm counting it.
I also got my recorder out to podcast for the first time in a couple of weeks, and discovered that I'd left the microphone on, like I always do.  But this time, the battery had actually run out.  I had to buy a new one, and they don't seem to sell them individually anymore, but in overpriced three packs.  That's how they get you.

3/16
I did some writing tonight!  And heck, I'm gonna go for a run.

Wow, I did some sit-ups and my run.  This week may be better than last.

When I was a kid, HBO would occasionally have a free preview weekend, where the channel was available to everybody, and they'd pack it with the most exciting movies and specials, in the hopes of gaining new subscribers (who'd think the channel was usually this chock full of treasures).  Well, it turned out that Apple+ has done the same thing this week, and you can watch either all or a sampling of their programming for free, in the hopes that you'll sign on permanently.

Because of this, I was given the chance to see Ron Moore's "For All Mankind," an alternate history Space Race series I'd heard about for years.  I put on the first episode . . . and was utterly confused.  It took place in the middle of the action, with a ton of in-process storylines going, but without ever stopping to explain what is going on, who the characters are, and what their relationships to each other are.

I was utterly baffled, and stopped the show to make sure I was on the first episode.  It claimed that I was ("Red Moon"), so I continued, but I just got more upset as it went along.  How were we supposed to follow this action if we didn't know who people were?  How was I supposed to care about people seeing their loved ones again if I didn't know who knew each other and how?  How could I follow the action if I didn't know what any of it meant?

At one point, I turned on the subtitles, because I couldn't keep anything straight in my head . . . and the subtitles didn't match what was going on onscreen.*  So I turned them off again and continued the show, focusing as hard as I could to figure out who was married to whom, who was in charge (apparently, Ted Kennedy was president), how they got to be there, and what the situation in the world was.  Hell, I didn't really even know what year it was supposed to take place in . . . because the show didn't tell me.

I became very angry.  I consider myself a savvy filmgoer, and have more than a rudimentary understanding of storytelling, but I had never seen this before.  I was confused, and frustrated, and if I was confused and frustrated, how in the green hell is the regular, more casual viewer supposed to enjoy what he or she was seeing?

I stopped it again, just to make sure this was the first episode.  Yes, this was Season 1, Episode 1, "Red Moon," but goodness, I was tempted to turn it off, especially when a new group of characters was introduced about forty minutes in, that we've never seen before, but are not told who we're looking at.

Ron Moore was the greatest writer of "Star Trek," and because of that, I followed him through the various shows he did afterward (like "Carnivale," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Roswell**"), but this was asking too much of its audience, like if you watched MEMENTO but Nolan never clued you in that it's happening in reverse.  It broke my heart a little because it made me feel stupid, and I have worried over the past six months that I have gotten dumber (around eighteen IQ points).

I started to watch the second episode, which takes place in 1969 (years earlier than the previous one), and didn't include a "Previously on..." to clue me in.  And that episode actually took pains to tell you who people are and what is going on in the world.  Before turning it off, I remembered how FOX didn't like the pilot episode of "Firefly," wherein everybody meets and goes off in space together, and commissioned a second episode where the characters have a typical adventure (which they aired first) . . . but even that introduced the characters and worked as a stand-alone episode (which this shit did not).  It breaks my heart a little to type all this.

3/17
So, following up on yesterday's post: I went back to the TV to continue the second episode of "For All Mankind," and was again baffled that the second one worked so much better as a pilot than the first one did, and I thought, "You know, I think I'm going to go online (instead of continuing to watch) to see if anybody else felt as upset about it as I did.

So I went online, and to my horror, the description for the first episode, "Red Moon," did not match ANYTHING that I had seen the night before.  The description was of an episode that did what a first episode of a television series is supposed to do: set the stage and the characters so that the audience can understand and root for its protagonists.

I kept reading.  To my further horror, the episode I watched last night appeared to be Episode 10, the season finale of the first year of the show.  Again, I hung my head, convinced that I was an idiot.

I went back to the television to double-check: According to it, I had already viewed the first episode, and twelve minutes of the second.  The tenth episode was unwatched.

I no longer blame myself or Ron Moore.  And not really even you, to be honest.***

Now I'm at the library again, where I chose to write this rather than write fiction.  But ah well, I can do both.

3/18

I did check again last night to see if, maybe, the first episode had been fixed, but no, it was still the tenth.  And I tried watching the tenth, just in case they were switched (it's the sort of mistake I would make), but it was also the tenth episode.  So I just went ahead and finished watching the second episode, then went on to the third.  And I really, really like it.  The Soviets beat America to the moon, and so the Space Race continues, and at the end of the second episodes, Russia puts a female cosmonaut on the moon, and suddenly, America needs to put their own women (including blacks, lesbians, and be-otches) into space as well.

There's really no way I'll be able to watch all of the episodes in the hours I have left (of the free preview), but I almost never get to the end of any show anymore, whether I want to or not.

Oh, and I went for a run again tonight, not that that's what I came here to talk about.

3/19

I watched another two episodes last night.  I like it so much, I think, if the first episode had shown up first (like it was supposed to), I'd be on episode nine or ten by now, instead of episode five.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: a lot of people decide they want to be writers when they see something really bad (and realize they could do better) or see something great and are inspired to imitate it.

For the last hour, I've sat here at the library, thinking about writing but not necessarily writing, and spending (wasting?) a ton of time reading about the fates of the characters on "For All Mankind" in our universe.  I did, however, submit my short story ("Fountain of Knowledge") to the contest, after having been informed by Marshal Latham, that he beat me to it (and good for him).
It will not win, but I didn't really write it for that.

3/20
I couple of days ago, I got one of those emails that said, "There was a data breech at our company, and it is recommended that you change your password."  I ignored it, which is my solution to everything.

And then, today, I got an email that made me pause and reconsider.  The subject line was my password.  I clicked on the email.  It was a blackmail message that said it had hacked my computer some time ago and it saw the naughty websites I'd been going to.  Unbeknownst to me, it had activated my webcam and had some incriminating video of me that it would release publicly . . . unless I paid them $4800, after which, it would destroy the evidence.

Below that, was another email with the exact same subject line and message, except a slightly different link to where I could send my forty-eight hundred dollars.
You may think I took this seriously, since the email specifically mentioned my birthmark, underdeveloped phallus, and sexual fetish featuring the music videos of Ke$ha . . . except I don't have a webcam.  So there.

Anyway, it gave me enough pause that, after I deleted the emails, I went through and changed my password on a number of websites, resetting them and trying to replace the corrupted one with something I could remember.

And dang if that wasn't a real challenge.  First off, some sites wanted a capital letter or a number in there, or worse, both, and how the devil could I keep them all straight?  After all, I've had the same password since Hector was a pup, and we tossed Hector into the deadfall past the Pet Sematary just last August.  I imagine it will vex me for the next few weeks.

3/21

I had planned to go to the library and write (probably finishing this blog there), but I called Big and he told me they were expecting a tornado (or several) in Houston and he was stuck at the station until one o'clock, waiting around for the worst to happen.  We ended up talking for quite a while, and when I realized this, it was too late to hit the library.

So, I did my usual 1.6 mile run and no writing at all.

Today was the last day of the free Apple TV+ sample, and I started watching "The Morning Show," a series about the morning news with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.  Because I worked in the news for a brief space of time, I've enjoyed watching shows about it, and I think Big has expressed the opposite feeling (of course, I was there less than a year, and he's been there more than twenty). 

Aniston and Witherspoon have very similar on-film personas, and I've always suspected they were playing themselves in most of their projects, and (whether it's a cruel double-standard in Hollywood or not) that has made me like them less than some of their contemporaries.  Regardless, I didn't make it far into the show (I had intended to just watch the first episode, since I knew I didn't have time for more) before the free trial expired, and they hoped I would subscribe so I could watch more, but I wasn't hooked.

Later at night, I got sick to my stomach, and even though I'm an old, old man now, I had that silly internal debate I used to always have of "Should I make myself throw up so I can feel better, or should I just tough it out?"  I seriously do not get how I could have not learned this lesson yet.  The last time this happened to me (jeez, it was so recently, I'll bet it wasn't even February, but March 2022), I thought, "Nope, I'm gonna throw up now," and suffered for less than one minute before hitting the bathroom.

And yet, tonight, I groaned and wandered around, trying to continue watching television, hoping the nausea would go away.  And when I finally went to the sink and had at it . . . I felt instantly better (like you do, what, 75-90% of the time).  Will I never learn?

*This should've been my first clue that something was terribly wrong.

**Apparently, he came onboard in the second season, a while after I had stopped watching the show.  Huh.

***It reminds me of the time Jeff and I watched EASTERN PROMISES on DVD, and struggled to make sense of all the Russian being spoken throughout the film.  Finally, Jeff clicked on one of the options, and English subtitles showed up whenever a character spoke Russian from that point on.  I felt like a dumb guy then too, except, to be honest, I could follow the action a lot better in that movie than I could on the tv show last night.

January Sweeps - Day 710

My cousin and I got together, and we're very near to the end of the "Seinfeld" series.  We went back to that show "Evil" and there was an absolutely delightful episode about a YouTube video that was driving teenaged girls insane* and the viral video portion was eerily accurate to the amusing, stupid, effed-up, nonsensical shite that kids watch today.

I ought to post more about it, but it gets harder and harder to do these posts two years in.

Then it was "Book of Boba Fett" time.  After a so-so first episode and an excellent second one, we were back to the mediocre.  The last show brought us an intimidating and wonderful-looking Wookiee bounty hunter . . . and this episode defeated him.  Big Anklevich compared him to Captain Phasma in FORCE AWAKENS, but he's probably closer to a certain helmeted guy introduced in EMPIRE and dispatched handily in JEDI.  At least there was only seven days of speculation about what he would do and how cool it would be to see a fight scene with hi.

Much worse, however, this episode introduced a "biker" gang from the streets of Mos Espa that all looked like cyborg CW actors who drove pristine, brightly-colored, floating Vespas . . . and it was garbage right out of the Canto Bight scene in LAST JEDI, only it made less sense because it was on the dusty, poverty-stricken, corrupt and dangerous backwoods hellhole desert planet of Tatooine.

It absolutely didn't work, like when you find out there's a monthly drag queen parade in the 900-person town of Froglick, Arkansas.**  And then, a couple of days later, I read an article online about how other fans were complaining about it, and that they really didn't understand "Star Wars" (and its influences).

But there's a reason they cut out the guy wearing bluejeans in "The Mandalorian," dude.

Now don't get me wrong, I love me some "Power Rangers."  Just as much, in fact.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 1111 (cool number)

I actually got pretty into the story today.  It's gonna be long, and I will be proud of myself if I actually finish it.  Heck, I'll be proud of you too.  Proud of the world.

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In January: 1092

One more thing: I realized that on the last day of January, it will have been two years of blogging every single day (and two years of writing every day too, just one day fewer because of Leap Year), and that that is the PERFECT time to stop.  Can you imagine, two years of doing something every day, with the Sword of Damocles hanging over you, and no will of your own?  I'll have to ask Marshal Latham about what that's like.

Words Today: 822
Words In January: 6962

*Turned out that there was an audio track hidden in the video on a frequency that only people under sixteen could hear, that was telling them to kill themselves.  Love it.

**And it's been going on since 1871.

November Sweeps - Day 688

My nephew (the now-fourteen year old) finished watching all seventeen seasons of "Grey's Anatomy," and then moved on to something called "Private Practice," which is apparently a spin-off that's gone, holy shit, six seasons of its own.  The lil bastard watches five or six episodes a day (on schooldays) and more the rest of the time, and I berated him for it once again.  Why would he watch something that I hate when he's never watched any of the Disney+ Marvel shows?  

So, he said he would watch the first episode of "Hawkeye" with me this afternoon.  I was happy to watch it again, and it was over quickly, with plenty of time to get work done and go to the library after.  But then we went on to the second episode, and watched that through, and that was fine too, but I was a bit rushed now to get my work AND get a library visit in.  But my nephew hit Skip, and the third episode started up.  I told him, "Hey, this is the last one, okay?  We'll watch the first three, and then on Thursday or Friday, we'll watch the second three."  I would have very little time to write and get my work done, but I could make do. 

Unfortunately, when the third episode ended, he hit Skip to start watching the fourth.  I told him I couldn't, got up, and turned the TV off.  I went to my room, looked at my to-do list, and heard the TV in the living room come back on.  He had started watching "Hawkeye" without me.  Well, that couldn't stand, so I went back out there and said, "No more episodes, I can't watch with you."  He said, "So?  I'll just watch it by myself."  It bummed me out, so I sat on the couch for a minute before getting my work done.  A half hour later, the episode was over, and I hadn't moved.  Now, there was only time to get my work done OR go to the library.  And my nephew Skipped to the fifth and final episode.  I grumbled, but stayed put.  When that episode ended, I threw my coat on and drove over to the library with less than an hour to spare.

And now, I've spent ten minutes blogging.  Sigh.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In December: 2011

I typed about four hundred words, and that's good an all, but I misspelled the word "position" just now, and couldn't figure out how I'd gotten it wrong ("positition"), then got it in my head to look up the old video game Pole Position on Wikipedia . . . for no reason whatsoever.  It became this thing in my mind that I absolutely HAD to do, I can't explain it.  I think my more religious relatives might say that it was the Devil whispering in my ear, tempting me away from what is right (would Devil be capitalized?  It's a title, right?), but why would Beelzebub* want me not to write, or to care about Pole Position, a game I haven't thought about in, what, thirty years?

I also wrote a couple of paragraphs on "Hatchling" before I recorded, which was smart because it didn't eat up any audio space.

Push-ups Today: 111
Push-ups In December: 2045

I took my mom to the doctor's office today, and they did all sorts of memory tests on her.  It was rather fascinating, although I felt bad that she struggled with them, although she didn't technically fail any.  I think I'll talk about it in my Patreon address next week, since it was so strange.

Words Today: 949
Words In December: 12,494

*He lets me call him "Bill."

December Sweeps - Day 678

My oldest nephew doesn't do much beyond watch TV all day.  Apparently, there are seventeen seasons of "Grey's Anatomy," and he has watched sixteen of them.

I had made myself some food and was going to watch an episode of "Modern Family" (I'm on the seventh season now), and my nephew said he wanted to watch with me.  So we did.  But as soon as the episode ended, he skipped to the next one, and the one after that.  I told him I needed to go record my friend's book, and he said, "Aww, just one more."  So we did. 

I had never watched that many episodes in a row--I feel too guilty--but the Seventh Season ended, and he wanted to spring right into the Eighth Season, despite not having watched the show before.  So, we watched a couple more, and I didn't feel too terribly about it, since it was something we were doing together (and at least he was taking a break from fudgin' "Grey's Anatomy").

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In December: 1000

When it came time for my exercise, my nephew said they'd had a push-up contest in Gym class, and the winner did eighty-seven push-ups in a row.  So I thought, "Can I do as many push-ups as an Eighth Grader?"

Push-ups Today: 87
Push-ups In December: 1023

I was in Walmart the other day, and the dude in line ahead of me had a package of adult diapers in his cart.  I felt a bit sorry for him (he seemed pretty young for that to me).  Then I started thinking about at one point I'd have to start wearing them.  Surely before I got to his age--maybe next year (maybe now).  Then I felt a bit sorry for me.

Words Today: 335
Words In December: 6150

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.

April Sweeps - Day 434

Rap star DMX died today.  I'm not a Rap fan, so I shouldn't care.  But he had an album called "It's Dark and Hell Is Hot" that would make me smile whenever I saw it while working at music stores between 1995 and 1999.  Such a cool title.

You know, I would rather do sit-ups, 150 push-ups, and run 1.6 miles than blog today.  How are you doing?

So, allergy season is upon us.  I awoke looking like this:

Which, granted, is only 3% worse than I normally look, but still.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In April: 1000

Eventually, I did take an allergy pill, and when I woke up, it was too late to go to the library (which I think I've done every Saturday this year).  So I grabbed my laptop and went to the park instead.  I spread out a blanket and sat by the stream, in the shade of a much-beblossomed tree, like I did a few times last year (this was the first time in 2021 I've done that, though).

I wrote a scene with a gay character in it, which isn't typical for me, and I have to wonder if I would've made this character gay if I hadn't been watching so much "Modern Family."  I certainly wouldn't have made reference to that show, like I did today.  But it reminds me of that thing I told you the other day, about how one of my Facebook friends vowed to never write another story, book, or dirty limerick without having LGBTQ representation in it.  You remember that, right?  And how I said, that I vowed--just as fervently--never to write another story, novella, or children's coloring book without making reference to breasts, no?

Well, it occurred to me that I haven't done any boob work in this current story.  That I can think of.

I did one of those word searches, and didn't find any.  I wonder if it counts if I just change Miss Andrews's name to Mrs. Juggs.  

(NOT the first result that came up on an image search)

You ever been part of one of those diets that makes you write down everything that you eat all day?  Well, today I ate so much that were I to list everything I ate, from the apple to the sugar cookie, this blog entry would qualify as a novella.  

Push-ups Today: 157
Push-ups In April: 1057

While I was cooking dinner, my nephews were watching a "Friends" marathon on TV tonight, and they didn't cut out the opening titles (still cut out the end credits completely, and part of the theme song), so I ended up joining them after a while.  These were Season Six episodes, with a fat Chandler, and when we got to the episodes where Chandler wants to propose to Monica but to keep it a secret he makes her think he doesn't want to get married and Richard comes back and he DOES want to get married, my thirteen year old nephew started to get bored.  I know this because he announced that he was bored, and so when Monica proposes to Chandler instead, he announced that he was going to bed, perhaps missing that I was crying like a very little girl.

Words Today: 875
Words In April: 6222