Brian Wilson - You Never Need To Doubt It

Many years ago, I wrote that "I may not always love you, but sure as there are stars above you; you'll never need to doubt it, I'll make you so sure about it.  God only knows what I'd be without you" were the most beautiful words ever written.  Not sure, twenty-five years down the road, if I wasn't right.

One of the first gigs I got as an extra in L.A. was for a TV miniseries called "The Beach Boys: An American Family."  I got to wear '60s clothes and have my hair combed/cut into an era-appropriate style, and play a fan at an early Beach Boys performance.  And between takes, I hung out (briefly) with the actors playing the band, asking them about their characters.  "I drown," proclaimed the one playing Dennis Wilson.  "And I just died," said the one playing Carl Wilson.  

I liked the Beach Boys' music, and to get paid to pretend to listen to them, while hanging out with the mom on "The Wonder Years,"* felt like I had made it.

Well, the Beach Boys DID make it--they're probably the greatest American band of the 1960s--with more hit songs that you could shake a surfboard at.  And Brian was behind it all, the chief songwriter, the genius with a shorthand that spoke to a great many young people about the ocean and fun and young love and excitement and California.**

Brian Wilson, founder and chief songwriter of the Beach Boys, died this week, at the age of 82.  There was a bit of fanfare, a few tributes, and at least one person expressed that "Finally, he is at peace," which struck me as unsettling, but yeah, the man had his demons.  His contributions to music can't really be overstated, though I do wonder if any young person alive today knows who the Beach Boys are.  If not, it's certainly their loss.

I probably haven't listened to Surfer Girl since my twenties.  And yet, while I stood by the library doors, waiting for everyone to leave, I surprised myself by remembering every single line from "Little surfer, little one," to "surfer girl, my little surfer girl."  And that's kind of amazing.

Brian Wilson had a ton of problems, and had burned a lot of bridges.  But he had absolutely nothing to do with their 1986 hit Kokomo, and that's a huge point in his favor.

Rest in peace, Brian.  Only God knows what music would be without you.

*During lunch, I asked Alley Mills if she minded if I called her "Mom," since my mom was a thousand miles away.  She said sure, and I said, "That must seem pretty weird to you," and she said, "No, I get that all the time."

**This guy may have done as much good for the ocean as Steven Spielberg did bad.  Whachoothink?

Lighten Up While You Still Can

I was bummed out earlier today when I heard that the townspeople of Bozeman, Montana are not fond of Star Trek fans who travel there to mark the (future) site of mankind's first contact with aliens.  Anecdotally, they have been known to brandish rake handles and corn cobs and suggest that Trekkies "shove long and prosper."

It made me sad because, just like Metropolis, Illinois, which proclaims itself the home of Superman, and Riverside, Iowa, which calls itself the future birthplace of James T. Kirk*, you'd think any town would welcome the kind of tourists that would come there for the day, buy mugs and t-shirts, take pictures, then scatter (of course, Bozeman is literally a hundred and eighteen times the size of my hometown, so maybe they don't need that kind of thing).

But then I found out that Winslow, Arizona, a little town that used to be on the famous Route 66 but lost all of its industry and tourism when the historical highway was relocated, has thoroughly embraced its minor bit of fandom.  You see, in 1972, the Eagles released the song Take It Easy, which includes the line:

         Well, I'm standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
         Such a fine sight to see;
         It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford,
        Slowin' down to take a look at me.

. . . and the lovely folks of Winslow (a little burg only nine times the size of my hometown) decided to honor the song by building a park (Standin' On The Corner Park) and tribute, where Eagles fans can go and, I dunno, imagine that a girl is slowing to look at them too.  Because wouldn't that be great?

There's a mural, a painting, a prop vehicle, and a statue of "The Troubadour," which folks say looks like Jackson Browne, who wrote the song.

In 2016, after Glenn Frey (singer and cowriter of the song) died, another statue was put up to honor him . . . all in an attempt to draw tourists to their little corner of the globe.  

People can go there, take a picture, buy a souvenir, and remember a great song.  And maybe they fill up at the Maverik gas station or Circle K, or have lunch at the McDonalds on Park Drive or the Brown Mug Cafe on Second Street.  And then, everybody wins. 

It's difficult to explain how much joy I got from reading about it and seeing the various photos people have taken over the years (it opened in 1999), because it doesn't really do anything, you know what I mean, and yet it somehow manages to mean something.

Would it kill you, Bozeman, to put up a statue too?

*Oh, and I just learned that Vulcan, Alberta in Canada has an annual Spock Day celebration, complete with a bust of Leonard Nimoy and a statue of the Enterprise.  All in an effort to lessen my sadness at Bozeman's (alleged) assholery.

A Mystery Solved

 During my run tonight, I listened to the following video on YouTube:

Long story short: the unanswered question of who sang The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet has finally been solved.  A German band, Fex, only together from 1983 to 1985, recorded the song, performed it a few times, and then went their separate ways, not reuniting until November of 2024.  Turns out that the track was not called Like The Wind, but Subways of Your Mind, and one of the members has both a live recording and a demo version to offer as proof that they're the long-lost band behind it.  After learning (after years of mystery) that hundreds of thousands of people (this video has 169K views, and a similar video by a disheveled dude called Whang! has 258K views*), the original songwriter reunited with the band, performed an acoustic version, and has been inundated with press and interview requests.

I have to admit that a couple of days ago, when I heard the mystery had been solved, I was hesitant to watch the Professor of Rock video about it, because the destination is (nearly) never as good as the journey to get there.  But tonight, on my run, I went ahead and played it, and it turns out, I was wrong.  I found myself surprisingly moved by the end of this road, and felt pure, unselfish joy that these former bandmates have found an odd class of success forty-one years after recording this song.  And I hope they put out records, sign autographs, appear on late night talk shows, go on tour, and put out new music, like every hit band gets to do . . . but usually decades after releasing their hit.

Are there groupies that will sleep with band members didn't find success until they were nearly seventy?

A photo of the actual rediscovered demo tape.

I have a (very small) connection with the song in that, since 2020, I've been using Subways/Most Mysterious Song as the theme tune to my fiction podcast (The Podcast That Dares Not Speak Its Name), both because I really enjoy the song and got a little thrill of knowing I could never get in trouble for using it, not in a million years (the version of the song on my computer is from September 2019).

So now, I wonder: should I keep using it?  And if so (of course I'll keep using it), should I use the newly-released, clearer-lyrics version or just the original, tinnier recording?  And should I retire the bit where Fake Sean Connery says, "The theme is The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet.  If you know who sings it, then you are the only one."?

*Turns out, his video is much more in-depth, talking about the details of how the band was tracked down, and how close it came to being discovered over the years, with no luck.  I discovered two things: that there's a reason Whang's coverage is the more popular of the two, and that I have serious mental problems that explain why I became so emotional watching the coverage.

But let me play amateur headshrinker for a moment and say that, in a world as shitty as this one, with so much injustice and greed and hatred and indifference . . . people have to take their victories where they can, even if they're just happy for somebody else's success, or that an unanswered question has now been answered.

St. Valentine (R.I.P.)

 I've always had a hard time with this day.  You understand.

***

I was boasting to Big the other day about how, in the Lara Demming stories, Lara continually expresses dislike for superstar Taylor Swift, which is so very far from my own opinion.  I am a fan, though I've never bought any of her albums, and know only a handful of her many, many songs.  

For example, I downloaded a track called "August" by Ms. Swift (purely at random), one I'd never heard before.  It tells about a cherished adolescent romantic experience one summer, and how fondly she remembers it . . . now that it's done.

It's familiar ground for a Taylor Swift song, and its refrain of "August slipped away like a bottle of wine, 'cause you were never mine," is like a lot of her best songs, and it occurred to me that the reason it resonates (with me) is because she's singing about a time that is over.  She lost her virginity (or the character the song is about, anyway) to some (presumably) dude, and for just a little while, all was right in the world.  

And then the world continued to rotate, and soon enough, it was all over, in the rear view, as I have grown fond of saying.

And that's what works about these Taylor Swift songs: there's a palpable heartbreak to a lot of them, some wistfulness, some anger, some regret, some embarrassment, maybe.  But the romance is in the rear view, and for me, that's so easy to relate to, even if it wasn't my personal experience.

There's so much negativity toward her right now--gotta be at an all-time high--so I figured, unlike Lara Demming*, I'd try to say something positive.  I especially like the bit where she says 

So much for summer love and saying "us"
'Cause you weren't mine to lose.

Fleeting, isn't it?  Just like life.

So, I listen to the song (over and over, as is my wont) instead of dwelling on this abhorrent day, and pretend that I share the bittersweet memory of that August day with the writer(s?) of this song.

Take care.

*I even toyed with writing a story where Holcomb surprises Lara on her fifteenth birthday with some happy news: that singer she hates so much has died in a tragic, one-in-a-million accident.  Lara is mortified, realizing that her complaints about her least-favorite singer have inspired her well-meaning guardian to murder the musician.  But when she opens her phone, she finds that Florida hip-hop artist Sailor Twift was killed in a bizarre petting zoo calamity.  She spends her birthday trying to decide whether to explain the witch's mistake, and when she finally does, Holcomb claims to have done nothing to anyone, and presents her more banal present to the girl: a candy cane that allows her to see in the dark.

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.

Blog 6/1

I heard a song playing on the radio as I pulled in front of the library just now that went, "And if I can't be close to you, I'll settle for the ghost of you."  I thought it would make for a pretty good basis for a short story.

Of course, that was before I Googled who sang it.*

Seven or eight months back, Marshal Latham commented that he would like to hear me read Stephen King's "Gramma," a short story from (I think) 1984.  And the last time I was at the cabin, I recorded it.  Today, I had planned on returning to the cabin, and I thought it would be cool if I recorded an episode to go with it.

But it rained the whole weekend, and got down to the forties here (which meant it was in the twenties there, and/or snowing), and my brother thought the cabin road would be muddy and fairly impassable.  So, I decided not to go down, but met my cousin for lunch, went to the store, and then drove back home.  Later on, though, when the temperature rose to the mid-seventies, I thought, Well, that makes it the mid-fifties at the cabin, so surely the snow would melt and the mud would . . . what, harden?

I asked my mom if I should take my car or borrow my dad's truck, and she practically forbade me to go, returning me in a sentence or two to about thirteen years old, adding, "But of course, you can do what you want, if you won't listen to me."

So, instead of driving down there, I opened my recording files of "Gramma" from last November, and started editing them.  And the story was just so good that I wished that I'd been a grownup and gone down to the cabin anyway, so I could record an episode for it and ask the musical question, "Could I ever write a story as good as this one?"

And it made me wish that I wrote all the time, way more than I do, kind of like The Alien does, and I could just challenge myself to write a story inspired by "Gramma," in much the same way King was apparently trying to write a story inspired by the HP Lovecraft mythos when he penned "Gramma."

But instead, I came to the library, and will do what I can with the hour before it closes, working on "Balms & Sears" again, creeping lethargically toward its end.

Writing or Exercise:  Writing

*I assumed it would be BTS or the Jonas Brothers or Blackpopcicle or something, not suspecting the truth would be far darker: Justin Effing Beiber.

January Sweeps - Day 720

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 2044

A stranger told me that Meat Loaf had died today.  I was in a waiting room, and there was this aging stoner who was telling anybody who cared about Meat Loaf dying of COVID after recovering from back surgery, and I was sad to hear it.  The guy really wanted to tell somebody about his love for Meat Loaf, and I was a receptive audience (at least for the two minutes I was sitting there).  He also told me that comedian Louie Anderson died, but I couldn't call myself a fan (even though he was a fine stand-up).

When Jim Steinman (who wrote the majority of Meat Loaf's hit songs) died last year, I remarked how much I loved his music, though I wasn't aware of him until recently.  Meat Loaf was a pretty similar situation, as I really only knew the hit song he had in 1993* (later), and the follow-up in 1995.**  But it was really a dozen years ago, when my family went out to a karaoke restaurant, and this heavyset dude sang an impassioned "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," that I thought, "Dang, I ought to listen to some Meat Loaf songs," and grabbed his excellent "Bat Out of Hell" album.

And I became a fan.  There was something so profound and bombastic about his music that it really spoke to me, and I especially enjoyed listening to his songs while running these past two years.  Meat Loaf died from complications of COVD.  He was seventy-four.

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In January: 1878

I asked Fake Sean Connery to record a song for me today, and he kept screwing up one line (so much so that I started over again at one point).  I had picked the song because it's been particularly challenging for me to sing in my own voice, but except for one line, it was easier than in my own voice.  So weird.

Words Today: 569
Words In January: 11,676

*"I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)."

**I'd Lie For You (And That's The Truth)."

December Sweeps - Day 693

All is quiet, on Christmas Day.

Whoops, that was a misquote.

Joni Mitchell put out a new video for her 1971 song "River," in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary, and I listened to it a couple of times while surfing the net.  Its melancholy is absolutely delicious, and Joni says at the end of the video that it's "a Christmas song for people who are lonely at Christmas! We need a song like that.”

Well, I certainly do.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In December: 2511

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In December: 2545

Words In December: 369
Words In December: 14,435

Rish Outcast 209: Adams At Large, Etc.

 Rish talks a lot.  And shares a sketch about Bryan Adams.  Sort of.

Feel free to download the episode by Right-Clicking HERE.

And feel freer to support me on Patreon by clicking HERE.

Logo by Gino "Still At Large" Moretto.

November Sweeps - Day 647

Today was the first day of the year that I heard Christmas music playing.  

Now look, I don’t want to feed into the idiotic “War on Christmas" conspiracy theory, but I could stand to have at least two weeks (if not a month) between constantly hearing This Is Halloween and the deluge of It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.  But hey, I know it makes some people happy.

And plenty of other people a lot of money.  And really, that’s what it’s all about.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In November: 933

Every day this week, I have awakened before my alarm, my body telling me that I’ve overslept.  And that’s cool, that’s fine—I understand it’s a side effect of Daylight Savings Time ending (or maybe it’s the 5G chip I got implanted along with my vaccine getting switched on.  Have you considered that?  Why haven’t you considered that?*), but I will admit that it’s given me a bit of extra time each day this week (oh shoot, it’s only Tuesday.  That means it’s been happening for only three days.  Sorry, let me delete the above paragraph).

Today was miserable weather--it was grey and rainy and cold, and I doubt I’ll make it to the cabin tomorrow because of it (the snow that’s presumably there), despite nearly killing myself there a week ago--and I was shivering and unhappy without a jacket on in the morning, then in the afternoon, I’d put on my jacket, but had to take it off again as I got all sweaty raking up wet, heavy leaves from the lawn, before I jetted over to the library to get some words in.  I keep telling myself to do 500 words, at least. 

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In November: 982

What I said at the first about the Christmas music?  I keep hearing these jokes (or seeing memes) about Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You being the absolute nadir of holiday songs, and how it marks the end of the peaceful fall season (and/or sanity), but once again, I consider myself quite the opposite of a Mariah Carey fan . . . and I totally dig that song.  Haven’t heard it yet this year—we’ll see what happens when I do.

Well, I finally reached the end of reading through (and formatting) the Will Choner story.  Not sure where it’s going next (I wonder if I ever did), but I got over seven hundred words in (all of them either “Will said” or “Armin asked”).

Words Today: 753

Words In November: 7258

*Because THEY don’t want you to consider that.

October Sweeps - Day 611

I realize I talk about Taylor Swift a lot on this blog (or on my podcast, or in my stories--having thrown Swift references four or five times in my Lara & the Witch novel), but allow me to do so once more.  I got her latest (at least I assume it's her latest, she puts out an album every six months or so) record from the library the other day, hoping to listen to it when I finished the audiobook I've been listening to on my drives.  And I finally got tired of the endless discs of the audiobook (Fantasy novels have to be the most sprawling, overlong books of all the genres, since their readers have absolutely no problem with a Brandon Sanderson book that's twice the length it should be), and popped in the album.

And except for the two singles I heard on the radio, none of the songs were particularly good.  It gave me pause: why do I love Taylor Swift so much, really?  

But hey, there's a reason none of those other songs were singles.  Unless you're young, we've all bought albums before because we loved a song on the radio, only to find out it was the only great (or even good) song on the album.  I guess this is like that.  

Her stuff still speaks to me, but every once in a while there are stinkers, like that song where she blames the patriarchy for not being as successful as Leonardo DiCaprio.*  You can't only write perfect songs.  Heck, I write stories, and even I don't love them all.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In October: 462

Push-ups Today: 200
Push-ups In October: 590

Words Today: 344
Words In October: 1960

*I did a quick check, and Taylor Swift is worth twice what DiCaprio is, so so much for that load of righteous indignation.

June Sweeps - Day 498

I saw a picture online where someone had Photoshopped an image of Taylor Swift to look like a monster.  I thought it was strikingly, well, interesting.  I discovered that there is a whole contingent of artists that take images of celebrities and turn them into goths, superheroes, demons, giants, and Bossk knows what else.  I really wish I had gotten into that instead of writing.  But ah well.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In June: 1427

Today was Sunday, and I usually go out and do stuff (by myself) on Sundays, drive, hike, go to neighboring towns, kill, etc..  I listened to Olivia Rodrigo's album again (which is strange, considering there are some records I bought and never listened to more than once), and liked it a lot more than I had the first time.  I suppose I'll buy a copy the next time I go to Target (or the time after that--I go there a lot).

Even though the songs revolve around her break-up with her boyfriend, they really are quite varied in tone and attitude.  And I can't help but think of the dude who inspired them, and the way that would affect you ("You're the dude drivers license is about?  Holy crap, let me get a selfie with you!"), whether it would be a millstone around your neck everywhere you go, or whether it would be a point of pride.

But then I thought about what young, popular guys are like, and you know, there's no way he's not a preening peacock about it, perpetually pointing it out even when people don't bring it up, and proclaiming, "She'll never love anybody the way she loved me, she said it herself.  How awesome is that?" before chuckling and trying to get two hot cousins into a three-way with him.

*

Girls can be pretty nasty, no doubt.  But guys are bad in a different way.

Or maybe they're all the same, I dunno.

Anyway, back to Rodrigo.  

I remember thinking it was notable that she would put out a whole album just with songs about that one particular topic, but no, in revisiting it, there was a single song about a friend she had when she was younger who was gone from her life.  My guess is, the ex-boyfriend could claim that song's about him too.

My whole family was gone today, so I could've sat around in my underwear at home, but instead, I got a pizza and ate it all myself.

Took me two meals, though.  I must be slipping.

Push-ups Today: 183
Push-ups In June: 1598

During my drive--as I try to do every week--I called and bothered Big Anklevich.  I've no idea how much he dreads my phone calls, but until he says so, I'm gonna keep making them.  This time, I talked to him about this idea I had for a future installment of "Caller I.D.," and asked him about the one I just finished, if the protagonist got off too easy, or if there should've been some kind of difficulty or consequences of his time-traveling actions.

Big and I talked about it for a while, and at the end of the day, right around the time I usually watch John Oliver, I sat down and wrote a scene between Chad (the main character[s] of the Caller I.D. series) and a cop (Detective Harrell, from "podcatcher").  It ended up being a nice little scene, with a bit more of Chad's nervousness and doubt, and even though it doesn't affect the ending of the story in any way, I think it makes it a better one.

Words Today: 1655
Words In June: 10,527

*This was the first result for my image search.  It wasn't EXACTLY what I was looking for, so I did a second search, this one for "smug douche" and this was the first picture that came up:

Who says the internet is a waste of time?

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.

March Sweeps - Day 422

Not much to say, not much to say.

At least the library is open late now.  I just got here, and normally, it would be closing in fifteen minutes.  But here I am, with time to kill.  Wouldn't it be refreshing if I used that time to write, got my words, then cleared out of here long before they started flashing the lights and banging on the intercom?

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In March: 3079

Yesterday (or was it two days ago now?), I posted a super low-res copy of the poster for NOBODY, which was a pretty enjoyable movie.  There's something magnificent about the poster, though, about that image of Bob Odenkirk getting punched that I'd really like to replicate with myself.  If only I had friends who could help me set it up.

Of course, I could go to the pawn shop over at Center Street and State and call out "By the way, Biden won the election!" and I might get something similar, but who would think to take the picture?

It's absolutely silent here at the library right now.  It is downright scary.  I think the majority of students didn't know they'd be open this late, and all went home, so it seems like it's just me and the creepy homeless guy over there (I say homeless, but I don't know that that's what he is . . . he could be a ghost).

I've only got 82 words so far, but I'm really in the home stretch on this story.  If I forced myself, I could finish it right now.

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In March: 2981

I heard that old Michael Jackson song "She's Out of My Life" today for the first time in, oh, years.  It never gets played on the radio (I heard it a couple of times while living in L.A., but never here), and it's always struck me as amazing and unappreciated (it's the one where Michael's voice cracks on the last line, in a moment you would think Quincy Jones would have cut out, but instead ends the song with*).  

It was the last single off "Off The Wall," in 1980, and the first I heard of it was Eddie Murphy mocking it (and Michael) in "Delirious," his first concert film.  To my horror, I discovered that it has been covered by Josh Groban . . . and no exaggeration, I would never be able to like the song again if I ever heard that version.

I was tempted, hearing it again after so long, to put it on my short list of songs to do in my Storage Unit series, but wow, I don't know if I can pull it off.  It takes a level of competence I may not possess, and probably a bit more pathos than I can currently muster.  I'll stick to writing stories about high school girls, thank you very much.

And speaking of which . . .

Well, I finished the story, right before eight-thirty.  I've no idea if it's good, but I sure like it.  I sure like the Lara Demming stories too.  Maybe if Abbie Hilton checks it out, and we ever speak again, she'll like it too.  Tomorrow, I get to move on to a new story, and probably come up with a title for this one.  Guess I've got to look at that website full of insurance company slogans again.  Weeeeee!

Words Today: 1856
Words In March: 26,017

*According to Jones, they did around ten takes, and Michael would break down in every single one.  Now while that sounds like bullshit (to me, anyway), it sure works for a story.

February Sweeps - Day 384

I did two story pitches in the last twenty-four hours.  Not professional pitches, but just telling others about two story ideas and getting their opinion.  The first was to Big Anklevich as he was stuck in the car driving home from work last night.  There was a story contest I saw with a premise I thought I could get behind, and I told him my idea.  Unfortunately, I later discovered that it was one of those writing contests where there's a fee for you to enter it, and I'll admit that that deflated my excitement quite a bit (Big likened it to a vanity press saying, "You pay us and we'll publish your book!").  He did suggest I write it anyway, not necessarily for the contest, but I have SOOOOOOO many works-in-progress that will never get completed that it seems foolhardy to even consider that.*

The other pitch was today, to that twin that I have been pestering, telling her I had come up with a twin-centric story for her.  About halfway through the pitch, she said, "Wait, where is this from?  This is something you've made up?"  I couldn't tell if she was impressed or disgusted (probably the latter), but it was a pretty darn good idea, if I do say so my own self, and later, I came up with the way it could end, but didn't quite dare bother her with it, since she seemed less-than-impressed that I came up with a story about her and her sister.** 

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In February: 1822

I came to the library and found almost no one here (my suspicion is that young people have exciting and fun things to do on Friday afternoons, and they're off doing them), and sat down in the exact same chair I sat in yesterday.  But yesterday, I was annoyed to discover that the legs were uneven in the chair and I rocked back and forth as though there was a hole in the floor or something.  Of course, I am far too lazy to get up and sit somewhere else, despite this chair rocking to a John Cougar Mellencamp song only it hears.

I got very little writing done in my time at the library.  Although, in my defense, I did write up notes on my story "Identical" (although it might be better to call it "Exact Duplicate"), so that, a year from now, when I stumble upon the file, I say, "Oh, I had completely forgotten about that idea!"***

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In February: 1963

I saw somebody online mention how much they loved the song "Drivers License" on Wednesday or Thursday, and remembered hearing a few seconds of a song called that after leaving my cousin's house Tuesday night (playing 9s and 10s to stay awake until the icy road did it for me).  I checked out the song myself, frankly pretty dubious, since the singer/songwriter was born in 2003 (she turns eighteen tomorrow.  Whoa).  

But to my surprise, "Drivers License" by Olivia Rodrigo, which is apparently the biggest hit song of . . . the 21st Century? . . . completely wrecked me.  It didn't matter that I have stains on my pillowcase older than Olivia Rodrigo or that I've been around way more than twice her lifetime (while only racking up a third of her life experience, oddly), the song totally spoke to me and broke my heart.  And I've listened to it a dozen or more times since, like a fudgin' Zoomer.

My whole life I've been afraid of saying I love something, because you put yourself out there when you do ("Holy smoke, I love SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE."  "That movie's gay and so are you."), and it's so much easier to just say you hate something (which I do often . . . maybe too often).  But dude, I'm old enough now (I've started getting those Reed Richards white streaks in my hair right above my ears) that I need to just own what I love and give as few shits as possible that people feel differently.

So, hey, I'm a fan of this song, even with that awkward "insecure" in the second verse.  I guess it's like my unabashed love for Taylor Swift, that Ed Sheeran song where he says "grass" but makes it sound like "cross," or PEARL HARBOR (which I apologized to Kate Beckinsale for asking to autograph the poster of), or just last week talking about that "Golem and the Jinni" book, or JENNIFER'S BODY, or the greatest movie ever made, 1987's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.  Except the last one is kind of meant to be funny, even though it probably isn't.**** 

Words Today: 550
Words In February: 13,770

Christ, I'm gonna keep talking.  We always--we old people, I mean--always talk about how worthless and stupid teenagers are (I know, I do it too), and how their feelings aren't real feelings, their life experiences aren't real life experiences, and when they get older and grow up they'll understand that all that drama in high school was for nothing.*****

But at the same time . . . it is real.  The teenage years tend to be (a generalization, yeah) when you fall in love for the first time, break up for the first time, make new friends and lose them, and experience so much newness that I can forgive them for all the noise and melodrama.  I remember what that was like . . . because it was five minutes ago.

And this girl, Olivia Rodrigo, really seems to be feeling it in the song (whether that's manufactured by her billion-dollar record label or not).  I believe it when I hear the song, and that's half the work right there.  And I feel it too, even though her experience is surely 99% different than my own (or lack thereof).

Part of me will never get over my bitterness about my teenage years (and believe me, I've enough bitterness to fill a Smiths album, two Counting Crows singles, plus a Fallout Boy EP), and that may be why I'm always writing about teenagers.  In a lot of ways, I never evolved past that stage of development--I'm still that kid that wanted to cry because the Eighties were over and I never got to do anything in them.

I'm never going to be a successful writer, I realize that.  But I'm gonna keep writing my "little stories" (as my dad called them), because that's what keeps me sane(ish), and because it gives me purpose and a feeling of control in my life.  And maybe, just maybe, somebody will read one of them one day and say, "Wow, that was really excellent, and exactly what I wanted/needed to read tonight."  You never know.

Yes, this is what you think it is.

*I got this idea on the drive to the library just now of doing an Outcast episode where I talk about unfinished stories/novels, and read either Edgar Allan Poe's last incomplete story or one of my own, or both.  Still think there's something there worth talking about.

**I had told her, a month or so back, "I'm gonna write a story about it, about identical twins," but she must not have considered the icky implications of that.  And by icky, I mean, absolutely no implications whatsoever.  

***Stephen King would tell you that, if you forget about an idea for a story, then it wasn't that good an idea to begin with.  According to him, it's the ideas that nag at you, over and over, to write them, that make the best stories.  And I'll bet Big Anklevich would agree with him.

****When I first saw it in 1999, I proclaimed it to be the GOAT, and it upset my roommate so much I've never not said it since.

*****I often talk about the one production of "Romeo & Juliet" that I went to in college, and how the director said (in the program) that the titular characters were a couple of naïve, pubescent know-nothings that threw away their lives for no reason at all, and how wrong-headed letting someone like that direct the greatest romance in stage history seemed to me at the time (and even more so to me today . . . like whenever I'd hear Jack Sholder, the director of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 [and about five other horror films] complain that he hated Horror, and yet the only jobs he got offered were in that genre and how I'd think, "You ungrateful knob.  Stop doing horror movies and go on the effing dole then, and let somebody who loves that subject matter take over), but I still was both thrilled and moved by it, regardless of the director's attempt to screw over his own production.

Rish Outcast 189: The Werewolves of London Guy

This is the episode I'd wanted to do all summer, where I sat down and talk (however briefly) about musician Warren Zevon.

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, just Left-Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Werewolf of Wellington" Moretto.

February Sweeps - Day 283

I was talking to somebody today who was super excited that they've started playing Christmas music again.  I expressed the opposite view and she said, "What, you don't like Christmas music?" sounding (perhaps) either hurt or offended.*  I said, "Well, you're young, maybe you've just heard it all less than I have."  She said, "Oh no, I've probably heard it more than you: I listen to Christmas music all year long!  I never get sick of it."  I didn't have any answer to that.  

Do you?

Then she said, "It just makes me happy.  It makes a lot of people happy to listen to.  And people need a reason to feel happy nowadays."  I did have an answer there, so I said, "Well, we got one Saturday."  It was maybe the cleverest thing I've ever said to her, but she did not comment on that.

A couple of minutes later, All I Want For Christmas Is You started playing, and she amended her statement, your honor.  She is not a fan of that particular song, apparently.  "But I respect your opinion," she said, endearingly.  

"Uh, no, you don't," I said, "because this is the only Mariah Carey song that I love."  

You know that I never heard that song before LOVE, ACTUALLY?  Same with "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell.  Sometimes, the way you're introduced to a song makes all the difference in how you feel about it.

But gosh, the bonny lass is totally right in that all of us have things that--whether popular or not--make us happy.  And we should not be ashamed of those things, or embarrassed that something pleases or entertains us, or shines a little light in this dark, dank world we all share.  For example, this has always amused me:

Your mileage may vary.

So, today is Tuesday, and I haven't had a headache yet.  I had to take my car to the shop this morning, and there it sits.  I got some editing done and some writing done, so hey, things could be worse.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In November: 1149

Push-ups Today: 92
Push-ups In November: 359

The other day, I wrote the reunion between Will Choner and the girl he rescued from kidnapping (now calling herself Beth).  She drives him home, and he just stares at her while she talks.  I really enjoyed writing it--the sort of thing that makes me wish I could write every single day.

Anyway, I thought I'd record that bit for you and post it here.  Maybe you can encourage me to finish it, if you were a fan of the first two stories.  Or maybe I'll abandon it, like I do practically everything I start, and this will be the only evidence the tale ever existed.

Enjoy.

I got my car back, sped over to the library, and typed frenetically until they kicked me out (which turned out to be thirty-five minutes after I logged in).  But I got a lot of writing done, and am still digging it.

I was trying to think of a clever name for their finding-lost-items business, and the best I could come up with was Rediscovery.  Seems like the story could be called that too, if I really liked it.  If you have a better one, let me know (and I already decided against Finders Keepers). 

Words Today: 2083
Words In November: 9615

*I prefer to think of it as hurt, but who am I kidding?

August Sweeps - Day 193

Today was my early day again.  It was a good day.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd still be better off dead, but hey, give me my minor peaks among the many valleys, would you?

My nephews are starting school again next week.  They will be going half days every other day, but not on the same odd days.  Part of me wonders what it's all about, Alfie.  But this too shall pass.

After hearing that damned Harry Styles song dozens of times this year--and pretty much always changing the station (you see, kids, I still listen to the radio, because I am a hundred years old.  But when a hundred years old you reach, look as young you will not), because hey, who needs it?--I finally ended up stuck someplace where I couldn't change it . . . and darned if I didn't like the song.  

My, how the shitey have fallen.

Because I have to do my runs before I go to my cousin's house on Tuesdays, it means running during the--eeeeeeeeieeeie!--daylight.  But the upside of that is that I actually see other joggers when I'm out and about . . . and they're nearly always female.  Why is that, I wonder.  Is it because our hateful patriarchal society has inculcated upon women that they must be in shape, whereas men are free to get fat and still succeed in life?  Is it because men exercise in gyms and garages and on treadmills and women actually use the outdoors as their gymnasiums?  Is it because our hateful patriarchal society has trained me to ignore the male joggers that I see and only notice the female ones?  Or are there just way more females than males in this world, the way Brigham Young intended it to be?

Whatever the answer, an attractive young woman was jogging in my direction, and instead of fleeing for the safety of the indoors as they usually do when they see me, she smiled and kept on running.  I hope she lives to be a hundred too.

A few years ago, when I was just starting out selling on eBay, they bought PayPal (which is an online banking site where you can send and receive money), and promptly announced that all eBay transactions would now have to be paid using PayPal.  No more money orders or personal checks (which I did accept), no more "carefully-concealed cash" (which I did accept)--you had to pay using PayPal, which charged a fee for every received payment.  So suddenly, in addition to eBay taking a fee for using their site (a Final Value Fee), and in addition to what you pay to have an eBay Store (if you do), you had to pay a transaction fee to PayPal.

I could've stopped selling then--I hope a lot of people did--but I didn't.  I was over a barrel.  Where else was I going to go, Yardseller?  It was just the price of doing business--the vig, so to speak.

And then last year, PayPal announced that they were going to stop refunding their transaction fees if you gave someone (or were forced to give someone) a refund.  That was something of a blight, because I'd always played ball with the people who had purchased multiple items but didn't ask for a combined invoice with cheaper shipping, or those who had buyer's remorse and wanted to back out of the transaction, or lied and said it was not them that purchased the item, or even the lovely folks who lied about what they got and demanded a refund after the fact.  Now, I would have to eat even more of that money than I ever did before, so I changed my own policy of giving people shipping refunds if they overpaid, because I still had to pay PayPal, even if I made nothing out of the transaction.*

But now, in August, eBay has stopped using PayPal (there's probably an interesting--but infuriating--story behind that), and users pay eBay directly, then in three to five business days, they send me the money.  On paper, that's great, and I don't even mind having to wait to be paid, since I should be getting paid today for what I sold last week, and next week, today's payments will get transferred to my bank.  But for a decade, I've shipped everything using PayPal, and that's still how the process is set up on eBay today.  But I have no money in my PayPal account anymore, because the payments are no longer going there, so my savings account gets charged.  No problem, you say, except that I am only allowed six transactions on my savings account per month before I am charged a fee . . .

. . . and that means that I am already over the six transactions, and am racking up these obnoxious fees right and left.  So I changed my fallback payment source on PayPal to be my checking account instead . . . but it kept charging my savings account.  So I changed the payment source to be my credit card . . . but it kept charging my savings account.  So I tried to remove my savings account from my PayPal account altogether, so it would no longer BE ABLE to do so . . . and it wouldn't let me because I still have pending transactions going to that savings account.

It went from a lose-lose situation to a lose-lose-lose situation.  Not sure why I'm telling you all thi--

Oh yeah, I didn't feel like working for a little while.  Well, mission accomplished.

I accidentally called a girl "honey" today.  That has literally never happened to me before.  It's something I've only been called myself by my mother and waitresses at diners and truck stops.  It's not like I'm mortified or anything (somebody once told me the story about accidentally calling someone the British slang for cigarettes, and I couldn't get it out of my mind, the horror of that . . . which this can't be nearly as bad as since it's a term--What?  It is?  Oh, sorry.  I didn't realize.  Maybe I'll hold off publishing this one for a while), but it does make me think I've been writing too many days in a row.

Either that or I should be institutionalized for a while.  Or both.

Sit-ups Today: 123
Sit-ups In August: 2315

Went to the park again, just as the sun was getting low in the sky.  I didn't have much to write, and texted Big that I only had sixty-six words written.  By the time he let me know I only needed six hundred to go, I had sort of got into the rhythm of it all, and made it nearly to a thousand before deciding it was time to take off.  If I end the story where I was thinking I would, I should be done either tomorrow or the day after.  This may turn out to be a really lame place to end the story, though.  Guess I should decide whether the point of the tale is the hatchling itself or the relationship between the boy and the girl.

Words Today: 1051
Words In August: 10,880

I just glanced at the clock and realized it was 3:41am.  Whoops again.

*This is something I suffered greatly for recently when an eBay hiccup suddenly made available a bunch of items I had listed in October, and hadn't had in months, and almost twenty of them sold before I realized what was happening.  I had to swallow all of those fees, and PayPal just beat off harder in the corner.

August Sweeps - Day 191

I had an interesting dream last night.  I was training for some job--the details evade me now--and has part of the training, I had to put on a diving suit and breathe in that pink liquid oxygen from THE ABYSS.  My instructor was not particularly concerned or gentle with me, only warning me, "Okay, this is going to be bad," when the helmet started to fill with the stuff.  

I started to hold my breath, and then thought, No, I'm going to be brave and impress her, and I started to just gulp the liquid in.  But it burned like inhaling alcohol, and my body thrashed, and I realized I didn't know if it was supposed to be like this, or if something was terribly wrong.  I tried to ask her, but I couldn't speak, as my lungs were filled with pink goo.  Not a nightmare, per se, but one I thought about quite a bit when I woke up.

I awakened all cottonmouthed, like I had been chortling alcohol or strange men in a Newport Beach danceclub, though I'm pretty sure I hadn't been.

Hopefully, it's just COVID-19.

I got more movies from the library a couple of days ago (they're about to start charging late fees again and I think I still have items I checked out from Before that I haven't seen in months), all starting with B.  BROKEN ARROW (Jimmy Stewart), THE BEST OF ENEMIES, BEN-HUR (Heston), BULLITT, BLACK SWAN (Tyrone Power), THE BLACKHEATH POISONINGS, BUTTLOVE VOLUME 18, BROOKLYN, etc.  The library has a pretty wide selection.  

The flick I chose to put on was BRIGADOON, and though I know I've never seen it, I keep feeling that I have, and recently.*  It's one of the worst kind of Musicals--one where the songs are too long and the narrative stops dead in its tracks for them, and worse, it's got tons of dancing in it.  I understand that you've got Gene Kelly front and center, and not having him dance would be like hiring Jackie Chan to play Robert T. Ironside**, but it's just so egregious and elaborate and endless (and other e-words) that I found it hard to take.  If there's one art-form I don't understand, it's dance, probably because the only kind I relate to is the kind of dancing Billy Idol sang about.

But even so, there's something so charming and remarkable about the film that I'm enjoying it in spite of myself.  It's funny when that happens, kind of the like the Dua Lipa song I'm always going on about.  I remember the first time I heard it (it's called Break My Heart, baby), wanting to change the station because it was just so annoying, and for some reason I didn't.  And the next time I heard it, I was again shocked by its intentional obnoxiousness, but again, I didn't turn it off.  I keep hearing it on the radio, and liking it a little bit more each time, despite knowing it's not for me.

  

And now, mid-August, it's up there, in my top three or four songs of the year, and I say, with only mild chagrin, that the part that goes "Centre of attention, you know you can get whatever you want from me, Whenever you want it, baby" is my favorite part of any song in 2020.***

But I digress.  I'm supposed to be up here editing and writing, just the one day on my own, in which to get in as much as I can.  Oh, and sit-ups.  Always plenty of sit-ups to be found around here.  Like moths, which are constantly getting into the cabin somehow, and littering the windowsills with their dried husks.

Dancing with Myself.  He had a song called "Dancing with Myself."  

Well, it's just past noon now, and I only have nineteen words for the day.  Not sure I'm entirely cut out for this writing thing.

When I'm at the cabin, I tend to have very little embarrassment or body shame (except for last month when those kids made fun of me for having my shirt off).  I lift antique milk cans (that's NOT a euphemism, though yeah, I do that too), I try to jog (usually failing), and I tend to get more sit-ups done because I can do them throughout the day, and not just when everybody has gone to sleep.  Today was pretty good.

Sit-ups Today: 571 (okay, if that's not a record, I'll eat my hat)
Sit-ups In August: 2042

I decided to leave the cabin early--literally every time I sat down to read my R.A. Salvatore book, I'd fall asleep (seriously, it happened three different times), so I packed everything up and got ready to go.  But then I thought about a scene I'd considered writing last night, where Rick encounters a rattlesnake (the story takes place in Arizona, in the same town as another of my stories, so I'm pretty darn confident there would be rattlers in the hills where he found the egg), but I'd forgotten about it.

So I sat down and wrote it, and gee, a half hour or more passed.  I'm really, really close to the end on this now.  I think, if I spent the night tonight (not that I can, I've got work to do tomorrow), I'd have it done.  But I can try to finish it this week (it's past 20,000 words now), though I have so many more distractions at home, I don't know if I have the will to do it.  We'll see, as long as I don't crash coming down the mountain.

Words Today: 1605
Words In August: 8717

*I checked out MRS. MINIVER a month or so back, and the same thing happened: I realized I had already seen it, and just in the last two or three years.  Yet I had no memory of ever checking it out and even now wonder how I could've forgotten it completely.

**He was a TV lawyer in a wheelchair.

***Yeah, I spelled "center" wrong.  But she's British, and it just seemed like the thing to do.