15 Goals For 2021 - May Update

I guess I'll check in on these every other month or so.

1.  Go on one hike a month.
So far, so good (4 for 4)

2.  Finally write the "Bossk PD" sketch.

I started it, but haven't finished it.  Tonally, it's a problem (it was a comedic sketch in my head, but once I started writing it, I thought, "Why can't it be a serious mystery story?").

3.  Collaborate on a story with Big Anklevich.
Nothing yet.  Big hasn't been writing, or overly interested so far.  Don't worry, I'll put a gun to his head before too long.

4.  Put out Christmas collection I was supposed to put out in 2020.
I finished editing another of the stories (just so I could delete the recording from my SD card), but haven't done anything else.

5.  Put out Audio collection I was supposed to put out in 2019.
Not only no, but hell no.

6.  Go to the Salt Flats in central (northern?) Utah.
Nothing yet.

7.  Finish "Only Have Eyes For You."
Yes, it's done.

8.  Publish "Hatchling." 
Nothing yet.

9.  Publish "Underdecorated" AND "Podcatcher" AND "A Sidekick's Errand."
The latter two are done and out there.

10.  Record "Know When To Walk Away" With Big.
Hasn't happened yet, but we've talked about it recently.

11.  Put out two "Tales of eBay Horror" episodes.
I put out one of the two in March.  The second is easier.

12.  Finally finish "Balms & Sears."
Not yet, nor have I opened the file. 

13.  Put out lost TGMG Thanos episode.
That is out there and available--Marshal even mentioned it on his podcast.

14.  Continue to exercise.  Why not?
Yup, so far so good.

15.  Maintain a positive outlook on life.
This does not sound like me.  Who made this list??

These are my completed writing projects in 2021:

1.  Only Have Eyes For You (D&B . . . novel-length)

2.  Jake From State Farm commercial (sketch)

3.  Heads Up (Horror, longer version and short version)

4.  Testing Anxiety 

5.  The Bad Man In Room 2 (D&B)

6.  The Company You Keep (Lara & the Witch)
7.  Untitled Lara Valentine's Day Story (Lara & the Witch)
8.  Rookie Mistake (sketch)

May Sweeps - Day 463

So, today actually was Mother's Day, and we had another Sunday gathering, with my mom, her family, my uncle, his family, and my Aunt Blanca.  My brother came over, and had bought my mom a new porch swing (we all pitched it, but he's the one who hauled it around in his truck), and told me we were going to put it together.

The instructions were pretty bad, actually (in the manual, all the pieces were lettered A to Z, but the pieces themselves were numbered), but we managed to get it assembled in less than two hours.  My sister's kids being what they are, I imagine the swing will be completely destroyed well before Mother's Day 2022.

If I were a real writer, I'd make it a point to go sit on that swing with my laptop at least once a week and write a few hundred words.  I'm sure I won't, however.  Probably not even once.

Sit-ups Today: 111

Sit-ups In May: 883

Every time I go to Walmart, I see this sunglass display with a little girl wearing Yoda glasses:

It never fails to upset me.*

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In May: 917

I finally sat down and forced myself to finish recording "Two Month Retreat."  It honestly shouldn't have taken, what, two weeks to get it recorded.  I still feel like I need to sit down and re-work the first scene.  I'll try to do that tomorrow.

Words Today: 344
Words In May: 4779

*Big Anklevich used to talk about how, in the Eighties and early Nineties, Star Wars fans were cool and chillaxed, and Star Trek fans were geeky and dressed in embarrassing costumes.  But then by the end of the decade (and into the 21st Century), the Star Wars fans also became embarrassing mouth-breathers in masks, Jedi robes, and Zuckuss costumes.  It bothers him to this day, that the fandom he previously considered cool, have devolved into quite the opposite.  I submit the above sunglasses photo as Exhibit A toward Big's argument.

My Voice on "The Deadbringer"

A while back, I was asked if I'd perform a character on a Fantasy/Horror serial called "The Deadbringer" by E.M. Markoff.  I play the main character's uncle, Eutau Vidal (try saying that in a natural way, kids), who runs a funeral parlor in a fantasy kingdom.  I don't show up until the second episode. but I'm definitely the main part in that show.

HorrorAddicts shows are really, really long, and packed with content, but you can find the start of the episode at about 29:00 at THIS LINK.

Oh, and here's a LINK to the first episode as well.  Heck, since I'm not in it, you might actually enjoy it more.

May Sweeps - Day 462

Even though tomorrow is Mother's Day, today was my mom's birthday, and her sister organized a surprise party for her in the park of a town, oh, twenty-five miles away.  We all were to bring food, a flower, and some kind of memory of my mother to share.  Turned out a bunch of people were participating, and my Uncle George was driving all the way up from Las Vegas to be here.

However, because it was a surprise party, my sister claimed she was taking her kids to their grandparents' farm, so it would be a small gathering of those who could make it.  And my mom didn't hear about the get-together until Tuesday, and she told her sister she was too busy to attend.  I said I'd drive her down, but she still said she wasn't going.

Essentially, we had to trick her to get her down there, and then I was told that a number of people were running late, and to try to stall getting my mom to the park for a while.  So we went to Walmart, where not only did I insist on both of us going in, but I checked out separately from my mom, so while she impatiently waited by the door, I was slowpoking it at a register with an elderly cashier, instead of the self-serve lines I usually breeze through.  And then we were going to pick up food, during which my mom complained about how late we were, and how upset my aunt was going to be, since she always arrives on time.

I told Mom that I'd gotten a text that my aunt was running late herself, so it was no big deal that we were now twenty minutes behind schedule and hadn't gotten my food yet.  When we got to the park, we were thirty minutes late, but only half of the people had arrived.  Eventually, it was a very large gathering, with way more people involved than I would have guessed (several of them I didn't even know).

One of my cousin's kids was dressed as Miles Morales, complete with mask, and ran around the park, uncomplaining, in a super hero suit.  When, later, my Aunt Blanca was reading everybody's memories of my mom, and Mom had to identify who had written each one, I came SERIOUSLY close to grabbing a piece of paper, and writing, "Living the life of a superhero, with the proportional strength of a spider and a black and red costume, can be hard.  But Aunt Mickey always gave me good advice about how best to use my powers."  

But I think there was probably something less than right with that little boy, and I didn't want to make anybody uncomfortable.*  

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 772

Push-ups Today: 100 (whoops, I meant to go back and finish--I owed 167--but I didn't)
Push-ups In May: 817

Oh, I meant to mention this the other day (but was far too embarrassed).  Do you recall one evening where, instead of writing, I chose to go onto eBay and bid on a bunch of comic books featuring the first appearances of various C-list characters? (oh, and Rogue--she's surely B-list)

Well, I actually won one of those comics, and it came today.  Yes, this is me holding a copy of The Demon issue 7, featuring the first appearance of Klarion the Witchboy.

Words Today: 230
Words In May: 4435

*Even now, I can't predict whether people would have found that amusing or not.  A couple of the younger people might have, but definitely not everybody.

May Sweeps - Day 461

My nephews went out to the desert a week or so ago (I wasn't invited) to do some kind of fossil-hunting activity.  They came back with several pieces of rock with trilobites in them, that they set on the porch just outside the front door.  Trilobites are really interesting, embedded in basalt (or whatever rock), but that's not why I'm typing this right now.

The reason I'm typing it is that, after shaving off my beard for last week's Hallmark movie, my facial hair has started growing in again . . . except that it's snowball white now.  That's a bit terrifying for me, who already disliked seeing himself in the mirror to begin with, but hey, what can you do?  And yesterday, my niece's boyfriend came over and said, when I opened the door, "I was admiring the fossils on the doorstep, and then another fossil answered the door."

It was a pretty clever line, really, but that didn't stop me from "fixing" the brakes on his car.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 672

The other day, Marshal sent me a copy of his Facebook screen, where it was suggesting he add Brandon Sanderson as a friend.  I know he sent it to taunt me in the same way that your ex will send you a picture of her on the beach standing next to a guy in a Speedo with a too-prominent bulge.

But today, I logged into Facebook, and what did I see?

I ought to add him, just to be nice.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 717

Tonight, I went to a play for the first time since the pandemic.  The last play I went to was the best performance I have ever seen (a Southern California production of "Sweeney Todd"), and this one was . . . well, not so much.  It taught me a lesson (however small) that I don't want to ever see a play again where everybody in the audience wears masks.  I can wait a few months longer, I think.

Something I enjoyed way more than that, however, was a YouTube video someone sent me the link to of those Bad Lip Reading guys doing another Star Wars clip.  This time, it's the Snowspeeder Versus AT-ATs scene from EMPIRE, set to a surprisingly-catchy Rap song.  I normally do not like these--Star Wars is sacred to me, remember?--but this one stayed with me all day, and I watched it about four times . . . and am about to watch it again.

Words Today: 481
Words In May: 4205

May Sweeps - Day 460

You know, if I had just fallen asleep last night without having written, this would all be over and I'd be free.

I act as though, if I miss even a single day, that I will never write again.  And maybe that's as it should be.  I feel I'm just going through the motions now, no longer inspired, no longer driven, just 

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 561

In just three days of extra work (and five minutes of waiting for a vaccination), I read all of Stephen King's new book, "Later."  I really ought to do a whole podcast about it, because it was kind of a bizarre read.  First of all, it was published by the Hard Case Crime imprint (of Titan Books), which specializes in putting out pulp detective novels and hardboiled mysteries, both vintage ones (by writers like Erle Stanley Gardner and Donald Westlake) and new ones (by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins).  King put out a book years ago (2005) called "The Colorado Kid," which was his attempt at emulating the mystery novels of old, then he put out another one (in 2013) called "Joyland," which was quite good (and was more of a Coming of Age-type story--with supernatural elements--than a mystery or crime novel).

This one, though, had no business being put out by Hard Case Crime, and it has this pulpy, sexy cover that deliberately misrepresents what the book is about.  In short, it's about a boy who sees ghosts, whose stressed and overworked single mother parent, discovers that her son has this haunting ability, and comes to believe it.  In other words, it's about 98.4% the plot of THE SIXTH SENSE.*

And it's pretty solid, and fairly underwritten (something you can't say about Stephen King works in decades).  It all ties up in the end, but leaves room for a sequel (although I found the ending to be the weakest part--something King critics bring up over and over again).  And it reminded me, in a fairly obvious way (if you've read the book), of my recent story "My Friend of Misery."  

I can't complain enough about the cover to the book, by the way.  I absolutely hate it, the way I hate things like "Look What You Made Me Do" by Taylor Swift or WAR OF THE WORLDS by Steven Spielberg (pieces that I loathe by artists that I love).  There is an international version of "Later," and its cover is, oh, I'd say about two hundred and thirty-five times better than the domestic one.

The book in no way makes me want to hurry up and write a sequel to "My Friend of Misery," but it did remind me that Brielle Montrose is still out there, and her brother's friend is now her friend.  And I like the possibilities of that, and the idea that I can catch up with her some day, if I decide to.

Push-ups Today: 167
Push-ups In May: 667 (shoot, one too many)

The spatula is my favorite utensil.  What's yours?

Words Today: 1010
Words In May: 3724

*And right off the bat--and a couple of times afterward--the story comes right out and says, "Yeah, yeah, this is like that Bruce Willis movie.  Except this is real."  And that didn't bother me in the slightest.  Yet when Ernest Cline did it in his book "Armada," which is a variation on THE LAST STARFIGHTER, but mentioned in the book that "Hey, this is like what happened in that old movie, THE LAST STARFIGHTER," I wanted to kick him in the chicken giblets.  I guess that makes me a hypocrite.  Or just a human being.

May Sweeps - Day 459

I type this super tired and sunburned.  More tired than sunburned, but still, one may contribute to the other.  It doesn't make me want to blog all that much.

I worked on a TV series today, outdoors, in a football uniform, and while they really exercised me for about an hour (might only have been 45 minutes), I was tired for the rest of the day.  It didn't help that I got home from my cousin's house at nearly three am the night before, with no words written, and forced myself to get at least 200 words before I fell asleep . . . and then my alarm went off only three hours later.

They hired a bunch of big athletic guys to play the real football players (although a couple of them were pushing middle age--I guess with a helmet on you'd never know), a pair of stuntmen to play the tackler and tacklee, some old men to play coaches, and a handful of other guys to play miscellaneous.  I was one of those.  I showed up on set, bleary eyed, squinting at the rising sun, without an idea of what I was there for.  "Did you bring compression shorts?" the wardrobe lady asked me.

"I'm not sure what those are.  Something you put on a sprained wrist or ankle?"

She handed me a pair, and they turned out to be longish boxer-type underwear.  

I put on my benchwarmer football uniform (four of us were guys who were in training, apparently), and was surprised by how elaborate the whole setup was.  It took a full minute to lace my pants up*, and two minutes just to loop my belt.  Later, I found out I had put the pads on wrong, like you see in this picture:

Turns out I wasn't the only guy who had the shoulder pads over our chest and back instead of our shoulders.  Whoops.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 461

There was a guy on the set whose arms were gargantuan, truly amazing, immense things, complete with veins so prominent, they seemed about the size of my own arms.  He had played in the NFL, and his kids had encouraged him to show up that day, and while he was a very nice guy (and way friendlier to me than he looked like he should be), he was making for the whole day approximately what he made in an hour in professional football.

I have never played football (I guess I played flag football a few times, centuries ago, but as a kid I wouldn't have played tackle football for a thousand dollars an hour.  Although that seems like a lot of money, considering I wouldn't have survived even a single hour, it wouldn't have amounted to much.

The way we were treated on Friday was so poor I did a whole podcast about it (I'll put a link in here in a couple weeks when I finish editing it), but I have to say that the way we were treated on this set was up there with the best, most respected and valued, I've ever seen extras treated.  No exaggeration, I personally was offered water five or six times throughout the day, and the P.A. in charge of us, name of Ariel, was so nice and concerned and accommodating**, that I fantastized about marrying her at the end of the day.

In the end, the coaches and whatever the heck we weres were allowed to go home early, since they really only needed the "real" football players for the last set-up, and I was immensely grateful to be sent home.  But I still had to do a little bit of regular work, exercise, and figure out something to write before I keeled over.

Extra work, while several yards from glamorous, does not pay well, but I continue to do it, and continue to want to do it, and that says something about me, doesn't it?

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 500

I was insanely tired, and wrote a paragraph--which I could easily turn into two paragraphs on a normal day--checked my word count, then wrote two more, and called it quits.

Words Today: 259
Words In May: 2714

*A few hours later, when I went into the bathroom to pee, I realized it would be a Herculean effort to get my pants down (especially with the belt, shirt, and jersey over them, so I chose to just hold it in.

**And determined to not only learn all of our names, but make sure all of us were comfortable and having a good time.  None of that was strictly in her job description, but made me want to go above and beyond instead of focus solely on snagging craft services and staying in the shade.

May Sweeps - Day 458

It's the fourth of May, and lots of people celebrate that now.  I took my nephew to a second-hand store, and they had a whole display of cheap Star Wars items they must have been hoarding over the last several weeks so they could put them all out today.  It was pretty cool to see--and on the monitors of their TVs, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was playing.

One of the TVs was one of those 4k resolution numbers that used to be everywhere, and the image was upscaled for that, so it looked really strange and shot-on-videoy.

I took my nephew (the three year old) to watch the first couple of minutes (honestly, I could've just sat and watched for two hours and five minutes or so, but I didn't), hoping he'd get excited about it.  He didn't recognize anything, not even Chewbacca.  Sad.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In May: 361

I'm still stumbling through this twin story, and still paying for my fool decision to name the main character Layla.*  I decided that, instead of being nicknamed "Lay," her friends call her "L," after the letter (or it could be "Elle," I guess).  But I have never used it since deciding that, so it's always Layla said this, Layla thought that, Layla didn't know, etc..

Except for today.  I was looking over my writing, to see if I had even managed one hundred words (I hadn't), and discovered that the main character's name had somehow become Lara today.  Whoops.

Push-ups Today: 166
Push-ups In May: 450

In honor of today, I took ten minutes (no more, no less) to grab a couple of figures and take a photo in the backyard with them.  I wanted it to look all jungley, so I picked a rosebush that might look like treebranches (not realizing you could see the wall to the neighbor's yard in the background).  Maybe if I had had more than ten minutes to spare, I could've gotten something really special . . . but I didn't.

I actually took three figures out with me, and tried to perch a Pteranodon in the bush so it looked like it was swooping down where Bossk (the big Bossk) wasn't looking.  But it kept falling down, knocking over the other figures in the process.  So I hung it from a higher one and tried to get a picture with all three in it, but it didn't work.

Words Today: 1038 (though I suppose if I really wanted to be a Star Wars fan, I'd have written 1138 words today)
Words In May: 2455

*Obviously, she's named after the Derek & the Dominos song (which has the greatest instrumental in Rock & Roll history), but also, because that twin girl I used to talk to all the time was named Kayla.  I just thought it would be cute (or irritatingly realistic) if two twin sisters were named Layla and Shayla.  Yeah, I don't know what got into me.

May Sweeps - Day 457

Well, moment of truth, kids.  It's the third of May, getting kind of late, and I haven't written any words today.  BUT, it's the third of May and I haven't recorded my Patreon address for the month yet.  Kind of leaning toward doing that instead.

Ah well.  I ran, did push-ups, and sit-ups today.  And worked a pretty full day too.  I finished editing "Dying Is Easy" today as well.  Not gonna lie, I think it would be okay to record my address and call that good.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 311

I still ended up writing a bit.  During my run, I had two ideas for the same scene in the story--one in which Layla talks to her mother about how her sister isn't the same (and is not believed), and one where she talks to another student whose boyfriend went on the same trip as her now-changed sister to see if he's changed too (and is not believed).

I chose the latter, and then thought, "Well, it's only natural that later in the story, the student--who I named Maysie--approaches Layla and tells her the boyfriend has indeed changed."  So I wrote that scene as well, despite them being a chapter or two separate.  To my surprise, it was plenty of words*, especially since I absolutely wasn't going to write anything tonight.

Push-ups Today: 69
Push-ups In May: 284

And here's one last thing: I tend to stay up EXTREMELY late at least one day a week (or ten days), usually recording or editing or falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.  And that's fine--with how much exercise I do, I find myself less tired after fewer hours of sleep--except that I end up paying for it a day or two later.  If I stay up till four on a Tuesday night, on Wednesday or Thursday, I become a bit of a zombie** and end up taking a nap whether I want to or not.

And then, when it came time to put an image on today's post, I did a Google Search for "Romero Zombie," and was surprised to see mostly gross Photoshopped images of George A. Romero as a lumbering zombie, rather than one of the undead from his movies.

Lower down, there they were, but which one would I pick?  Maybe the little girl from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (that's on the posters), maybe Bub from DAY OF THE DEAD, maybe the Cemetery Zombie from NOTLD that prompts Johnny to say, "They're coming for you . . . look!  There's one of them now!"  Or maybe the zombie nurse from DAWN OF THE DEAD, who always struck me as memorable.

There are a bunch of zombies in that movie, but there are two or three that show up multiple times, and get close-ups for some reason (including both Flyboy and Roger, and the super fat one with no shirt on that does a header into one of the mall's fountains toward the end).  But as soon as I saw the Zombie Hari Krishna, that's the one I chose.  It's just so weird that the filmmakers picked one of them to be among the living dead, and it amused me and my friends, who didn't know what a Hari Krishna even was, every time we watched it.

Words Today: 729
Words In May: 1417

*Not a ton, no--at this point, anything over 999 qualifies as a ton.

**Romero Zombie, not one of these shitty 28 DAYS LATER/Zack Snyder marathon running ones.

May Sweeps - Day 456

Did I really not write up a blog post for today?  Do I still have to?

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 200

In Houston, where Big lives, there's a discount store chain called 5 Below.  He (and various folks on the internet) talked about it like it was a magical, amazing place, where great bargains--nay, treasures!--could be found.  I went to one in Hemet, California (and bought cheap headphones I never used because they're too tight--except when I'm doing a Skype call), and one in Oceanside, CA (and bought nothing).

But now, they opened one nearby, in the town four up from mine.  It opened on Friday, but I was working, and I thought about going on Saturday, but we were painting (shoot, I should have taken a picture of the deck when we were finished.  Didn't occur to me).  But today, I did manage to get over there.

And they had a lot of empty shelves . . . and a ton of customers milling around.  Seriously, it was like going to the mall on a Saturday in December, with so many people curious about this amazing new store.  My nephew spoke to one of the employees, who described a lot of seemingly-excellent items they had had on the first day that had since sold out.

I left without buying anything (the line was super long anyway), but I dunno if it's going to join the list of weekly destinations I drive to.

Push-ups Today: 165
Push-ups In May: 215

I can't remember accomplishing anything today, except that I took my laptop with me, and went to the park for a few minutes to sit in the shade and write.  It was surprisingly busy for a Sunday afternoon, and I guess every young person in town had the same idea as me.  

Not that I'm a young person.  Or live in the same town as the park.

I'm not really sure what I mean.  Maybe I'll write a bit more later, but probably not.

Words Today: 540
Words In May: 688

May Sweeps - Day 455

Today is Saturday, and as some kind of Mother's Day thing (I'm guessing, since I wasn't part of the planning), my brother, sister, and brother-in-law cleared, swept, and sanded my mom's back deck today.  Then, they got the paint out to paint/stain the whole deck, and I decided to join them in it as soon as I got some packages shipped.  It was messy and a lot of work, but the group was big enough (as well as the nephews and a neighbor kid who's always hanging around) that it got done fairly quickly.

And the deck looks a lot better than it did three years ago when I painted it for my mom.  Ah well.

Anyhow, as soon as we were done with that, I drove over to the library to get some writing done, but had the option of blogging, typing up yesterday's notebook writing, or writing new stuff, and I chose to type up yesterday's writing.*  And blog a little bit.  My own daily writing didn't/doesn't really matter, and I frankly don't care.

Oh, speaking of not caring: I have to record a Patreon address for the month of May either tonight or tomorrow.  And here's the thing: I got stuck in traffic coming home from the shoot yesterday, and had planned ahead, so I recorded my address then.  It was going to be the usual (how I did on last month's goals, and what goals I'm setting for the next month, as well as any tidbits about upcoming episodes), but I thought I'd start with a fifteen or twenty minute recap of my extra work on this Christmas movie.  So, I started talking.

But at the half hour mark, I realized I wasn't close to done (and I still had twenty minutes left of my drive), so I recorded a new intro to make it a Rish Outcast episode.  And so the Patreon supporters got something special, I went on a fifteen minute tangent (might have been ten minutes, might have felt like seventy) that would only be available to them.  But when I got home, I was still recording, and I hadn't covered everything I'd wanted to talk about.  So, I sat in the parked car for another fifteen minutes to sum up.  All in all, my "Patreon address" ended up being about an hour and twenty/fifteen minutes, all talking about working on this Christmas movie (and I only skimmed over a couple aspects of it--honestly, it could've been a three hour show, if I'd wanted to).

So, that's good, right?  Except now I have no Patreon address, and it's the first of May.

Oh, and bugger me, I didn't manage any more words by the end of the night than I had gotten in that wee stretch between transcribing yesterday's words and the library closing.*  You may ask, "Rish, what did you accomplish then, if you didn't finish recording that story, writing a little while longer, getting your Patreon address recorded, or making up a list of goals for May?  Did you watch Saturday Night Live, then?"

Actually, no.  I didn't turn on the television that I remember.  I can't say what I accomplished (besides my usual exercise regimen), and that's kind of disturbing to me.

Sit-ups Today: 100

Push-ups Today: 50

Words Today: 148

*I had the main character in her Science class, learning about how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.  But it had been so long since I was actually in that class, that I wrote it as "the mitochondria is the workhorse of the cell."  Not sure if anyone would've cared, but it makes as much sense as "powerhouse."

**Which was odd, because they did their overloud announcement, and then they flashed the lights . . . and for the first time ever, it didn't matter, because it was still so light outside that turning out the overhead lights on us made little distance.  Ha.