Now it's time has come to say goodbye to all our company. I contributed my voice to "My Clockwork Valentine," the last one of the HorrorAddicts story presentations Emerian Rich asked me to do. She works harder than an armless juggler, kids.
I voice a character pretty much exactly like me, a malevolent scheming villain with a Cajun accent, with designs on Blanche, a girl with a clockwork pacemaker. Check it out HERE.
9-28
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| Still more green than orange. |
When I first entered the canyon yesterday, I was shocked by how many of the trees have changed color, just in the week since I was here last. Now, it's gray post-dawn out the window, and only two of the trees I see are still green--everything else is orange and yellow. The way that some people react to pumpkin spice, and others react to the return of Mariah Carey's only good song, is how I react to the changing of the leaves. I SHOULD embrace fall, because Halloween is right in the middle of it, but I don't. Both I and my mother always associate autumn with oncoming winter, and we associate winter with oncoming death.
Because I went to sleep so early, I got up way early, which can be nice. I got another half a chapter edited (I find that the few action-oriented chapters are the easiest for me to do, and require the fewest edits*), and then, frighteningly, I considered going back to bed. It is only sixty degrees in here, so that might have something to do with it. I made a fire in the stove, but it promptly went out. Now the sun is coming up over the trees--that oughtta fix things.
Big Anklevich just put out his first short story collection, "Christmas Creatures" (either that or he's about to--the point is, he finished it), and like I guessed, it made me want to put out my own holiday collection. But I'm just a little too busy right now--my deadline for Abbie is just over two weeks away.
For the first time this whole year, the family that owns the cabin next door brought their kids over while I've been here, and they have been out and about, shouting and calling each other racial slurs (though I suppose one could be called Mick, and the other . . . Mike-with-a-K?). Their grandfather rigged a zipline from the second-floor deck down onto the ground, and they were (loudly) bugging him to set it up for them . . . and then it started to rain. It was just a drizzle, then it stopped, then it started again harder, then it slowed down, and those kids were so disappointed that . . . well, how terrible a person am I that I enjoyed the drama playing itself out while I watched in my blanket and pajama bottoms, farting and eating scrambled eggs?
Wait, don't answer that. I know what kind of person would be like that. I went to junior high with them.
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| Way more yellow than green. |
I edited the best chapter of the book (I may ask Abbie to sit down with me and talk about it, depends on how harried and unhappy I am by the time I finish), and it took more than two hours . . . plus there were a couple of paragraphs ruined by the short in the microphone cable**. I drank an energy drink (I've never really been a fan of those, being more of a soda guy, but I stole one off the set of the Christmas movie nobody cares to hear about, and I liked it so much, I bought a couple for days like today when I wake up early and are worried I'm going to crash), but it had so much caffeine, I can feel it giving me a headache.
I opened the next chapter, but maybe I should go upstairs and get a little exercise.
I did, in fact. I went four miles on the bike, which is longer than I've ever gone before (guess that energy drink was good for something), and instead of being cold, I came down again with sweat all over my shirt, even dripping down my arms. That can't be bad, can it?
I brought a number of DVDs to the cabin with me this week, including the original TRON, JEREMIAH JOHNSON, and the new PLANET OF THE APES Trilogy . . . but I didn't end up watching any of them. Time just ran out, or I was much more dedicated to editing than before. Ah well, there's next week, I imagine.
Exercise: Yes (24)
*Oh, don't get me wrong, I still have mistakes and mouth sounds even in those, but I guess I'm more confident doing action, because I do fewer takes and screw up a little bit less. I am often reminded of the times Renee Chambliss told me that she edits out her errors as she records (I am simply incapable of doing that), so that when she reaches the end, she's done. And when I asked her, "What about the mistakes you're not aware that you've made?" she told me she didn't worry about those. I guess it's a different style (like those actors who simply switch on their acting versus the ones who stay in character even between set-ups), except Renee makes her living with audiobooks (putting out a dozen or more a year) and I don't (I'm lucky if I get two).
**I DID order and receive a new one, and this one was six feet long instead of six inches.
9-27
I came up to the cabin last week to find about half a dozen flies buzzing around the windows. I was reminded of a visit last year when there had been dozens, and was grateful we didn't get a repeat of that (we'd bought a couple of those gross fly strips to hang, and those are always unpleasant). Today, however, I found at least a hundred crawling along the window, and the next window, and the next window. Had someone left a door open or something? I wondered, and when I went upstairs, there were a hundred more up there, except I can't reach the upstairs windows. I swatted as many as I could, then sucked them all up in the little hand vaccuum, and dropped them in the toilet so you could see:
But that only got about half of them. They keep buzzing and clicking the glass, trying to get out, I assume, but maybe not--multitudes of insects keep flying into the windows from outside, as though they can hear their cousins in here, and want to join them. It's so strange.
It's a couple hours later, and while I was killing flies for the seventh or eighth time today, I remembered last year finding a bunch of them in the space at the top of the back door, so I opened it . . .
And there were HUNDREDS of flies clustered there, in every available space between. It was horror movie stuff. I did vacuum up another fifty or more, but with the door open, they could just fly outside and to freedom. The ones that flew into the cabin I eventually swatted (unless they went up to the roof, which I might go at tomorrow using a ladder and the vacuum). I edited two more chapters in the book (I'm more than halfway through now--though just barely--and I found three more Thistle lines I'll have to replace when I get home), but damned if I couldn't hear the flies buzzing in the windows the whole time, driving me to distraction.
I went for my run, and it was in the upper fifties outside. I wondered if I should make a fire in the stove, but last week, it was in the forties, so I'm not going to bother.
Somewhere around 10:30, I started getting tired. I was falling asleep while editing by eleven. I even closed my eyes while typing this.
What a strange phenomenon . . . I'm going to bed now. Hopefully, I'll wake up all the earlier and get some more work done.
Exercise: Yes (23)
So, for the first time since last Wednesday, I hit the library, with a bit of extra time to spare, and did what I could to write. One of my goals this month was to finish either "The Washer Whispers," which I reckon is about two-thirds done, or "Balms & Sears," which is nearly--94 to 96%--done. I chose the latter, and remembered back in August that I'd gotten an idea for a little page long prologue, so I wrote that bit, and with around five minutes left before they kicked us out, I tackled the very last bit of the story. I wrote about two paragraphs, and then typed "the end," always in lowercase, as is my custom. They did make their announcement as I was saving the file, and emailed it to myself, suddenly afraid that all the work I'd done would be lost if I didn't get it sent to me in time, and then left for home, where I recorded with Marshal Latham for a little while.
Then it was up to me to achieve what I'd failed to do the night before: finish Abbie's book. I had one and a half chapters to record, as well as the author's note (I also had told my five year old nephew that I would draw him a turtle for his preschool class, the blank piece of paper right on my desk to remind me). Well, I didn't struggle with sleep this time, and got through all of it, including the re-lines of Thistle for Chapter 15, the author's note, and the copyright for the end. I was thrilled at my accomplishment*, checked the clock (it was about five minutes to two), and happily dismantled my microphone, drank some water, checked my emails, and went to sleep, a job well done.
Except my nephew Taysom's turtle picture. I'd blown it on that.
Hey, I'm exactly at the halfway point!Exercise: Yes (22)
*Of course, the editing will be hellish, and I'll probably have to scramble to make the deadline, despite all this September productivity.
9-24
Guys, guys, you need to take the anti-Biden stickers THE MOMENT the gas prices start to go down. God forbid someone think you mean that he was responsible for them falling, instead of just rising. Be a bit more consistent with your political vandalism, friends.
Exercise: Yes (20)
9-25
We had our last family get-together in the park this afternoon, and while my mom had made herself some kind of ghastly diet chopped fruit and salad dressing bowl, I stopped at Subway to pick up a sandwich. But when I walked in, I saw something strange: the kid behind the counter was wearing a blindfold, and was making a sandwich for himself totally blind. It was entertaining--either the kid had been dared by his coworkers, or he'd just volunteered to try it himself--and after I ordered mine, the still-blindfolded kid asked if I wanted him to make me one, free of charge. So, I watched the guy try--and fail--to put the right meat, cheese, and toppings on the bread--and then get it in the toaster and out again without getting burned. The sandwich, which he tried unsuccessfully to wrap up and tape, looked absolutely horrendous, and when I took it to the park, everyone commented on what an ugly job the guy had done, but I was happy to tell the story over and over as new people arrived. Heck maybe I'll tell it on my Patreon Address in October.
Sometimes, I'm not the world's smartest bear. When I was working on the Christmas movie the other night with my nephew*, a star, brighter than all the others became visible in the sky, and one of the other extras got his phone out to identify it (he had one of those apps that you point at the night sky, and it tells you what constellation you're looking at**). And when he said, "Oh, that's Jupiter we're looking at," I said to my nephew, "Cool, that's the one with all the rings."
I recorded another podcast with Big (I think that makes four in a row), and then, I sat down to finish up Abigail Hilton's book. Yes, you heard right--if I worked hard, I would be able to get to the end of the book (except for the Author's Note and retakes, that is). And about twenty-five minutes into the recording . . . I started to fall asleep.
Now, I desperately didn't want this to happen. I knew that if I just applied myself, and went for another hour, I'd have accomplished another of my goals for the month (not to mention getting that much closer to reaching my deadline with Abbie, and being able to die calling myself a man), but nothing helped. I stopped and got a drink of water, I slapped myself heavily on the face (hopefully, that neat sound effect was recorded for posterity), and I cursed the very ground I walked on . . . but I just couldn't do it. Every other paragraph I'd have to go back and do again, and so, sadly, I stopped in the middle of the second-to-last chapter, and thrust myself onto my bed, where all good things go to die.
Exercise: Yes (21)
*I still haven't heard from a single damn person who wanted me to talk about that experience, by the way.
**Oddly enough, if you point your phone at someone during the day, that same app will tell you when and where that person is going to die. Fun at parties, I guarantee you.
9-21
I saw a lady coming out of the pet store yesterday with a German Shepherd on a leash. The dog--my favorite kind of dog--was big and friendly-looking, with a wagging tail the size of the entirety of my mother's dog Remi. I was walking back to my car, and I started to think of that story I wrote ("Rest Stop," I think it was called), where the dude wanders out into the snow after his dog, and encounters a witch or the ghost of a witch or something. And I wondered if it might be worth it to follow up that story, to find out what became of that guy (Jordan, his name was), after his little run-in (literally) with the supernatural. And I thought of that old line from The Talisman, the one that goes, "What does it profit a man if he should gain the entire world, but lose his soul?" (I'm pretty sure that's from an old radio serial, probably "The Shadow"), and thought that would be a fun angle: that due to his encounter with Evil undying, he now has incredibly good luck in his new life (was it Montana he was moving to?) . . . but none of it brings him happiness, because, to paraphrasing an old saying, his soul just isn't in it. Who knows if I'll write that, but I thought maybe I'd have him team up with Will Choner in tracking down something valuable and lost, perhaps just a hiker who ends up off the trail out in the Rocky Mountains.
Got one more chapter edited. And I finished the Outcast that Big and I recorded a few weeks back (unfortunately, I kept cutting out mouth sounds as I went, despite NEVER bothering with that before, which kept things slow-going). Guess that'll wait for October.
I did a couple of miles on the exercise bike. It's fun to try to see how long I can peddle as hard as I can. My record is, um, about seven seconds.
It's been raining for hours, and it's so dark outside, I keep thinking I ought to head home (long before I normally do). Thing is, if I took off now, got gas, maybe stopped at the storage unit or took a shower, I could still hit the library, then head down to my cousin's when it closed. That sounds like a pretty full day, except it's cold enough that I feel like sitting here a while longer. I think I'll edit (some of) another story I recorded last year.
Well, that was a bust. I lasted about five minutes before I thought, "This one's a stinker, isn't it? Is there any point in doing the edit if I'm not running the story on my show?" Only YOU can answer that one, friend.
I realized that the month is almost over and I haven't done a "Rish On Records" piece this month. It's something I put out on my Patreon twice previous, and Gino Moretto even made me a cover for it:
So, I got one I recorded in August and started the edit, but then I looked at the clock, and an hour had passed, so I decided to pack it all in and say goodbye for another week.
Exercise: Yes (18)
9-22
Every year, there's a comic convention out of town that my cousin and I go to. Each and every year, he brings his kids and I bring my nephews, and by the last day, Ryan proclaims, "Next year, none of you will be invited, since you can't behave yourselves."
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| There are worse things out tonight than vampires. |
Exercise: Yes (19)
9-23
Every year, my cousin and I go to the local comic-convention (I guess I already mentioned that). And it occurs to me that, in all the years Big lived here, the two of us only ever went to it together once (I remember because he ended up locking his keys in his car and after we asked a pair of local prostitutes if they would give us a ride, Big's wife had to drive over to bail us out). This was more fun than the last couple of cons, even though I spent way more money, and my nephews found way less stuff they were interested in.
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My cousin took all three of his daughters all three days, as well as their cousin, and I took my two older nephews all three days. We chatted with a few vendors about what their lives are like (going from convention to convention, selling their wares), and artist Jason Palmer told me about his encounters with celebrities over the years (he wouldn't tell me if he was working on any official artwork for INDIANA JONES 5, so that can only mean one thing).
I think my favorite conversation was with a dude selling high-end comic books (for example, he had the first issue of X-men for $15,000). I asked him questions about scarcity and where he gets his books (most common answer: angry ex-wives or -girlfriends), told the story I always tell about the New Jersey family that found a copy of Action Comics 1 inside their wall--being used as insulation), and whether appearances by characters in the MCU and other films makes books' values skyrocket. The guy was really personable and friendly, and didn't mind talking to me for an hour despite me not buying anything, and now I wish I'd asked him if he'd let me interview him on his podcast.
I went to many, many panels (the first day, we skipped a few, but once the kids started getting tired, we went to them just to sit down), and had a good time watching Jodie Benson sing "Part of Your World" and listening to Bill Shatner talk about going into space and seeing the earth down below. If this is the last con I go to, it was a fine one.
Exercise: No
9-20
It's my nephew Kaysen's twelfth birthday today. I've been calling him twelve for almost a year. Usually, I go to my cousin's house on Tuesday nights, but since three episodes of "Cassian Andor" are dropping at one am tonight, we had figured we'd watch one of them, and call it a night. I have to go out of town on Thursday, so that means I can't go to the cabin tomorrow. But I got an idea: what if I went to the cabin today, got some editing done, and went to my cousin's tomorrow night, and we could watch all three "Andors," and I could also do the cabin thing?
So I did.
It seems somehow responsible, even though going to the cabin is pretty indulgent (once again, no one has been here since I visited last, making me wonder why I bother packing up all my food and bedding and suitcase and such).
There was a deer out front, eating leaves where my oldest nephew makes his campfires, and when I stepped out and took a picture of it, it took off like a bat out of that town in Texas near Big Anklevich that has thousands of bats. And it hurt my feelings. "Why do you recoil? I am no thief."
I got one chapter finished (there was a bit where Arcove was supposed to say "Roup," slowly, and I must've recorded myself saying it a dozen times, not able to figure out how to make that single syllable slow AND in Arcove's voice . . . and only then did I realize that Abbie had actually written "Roup, Arcove said softly"), started on a second one, and am going to put in relines in a third (one of the episodes had about five moments when the short in the microphone cord ruined the audio for a line or two). That feels pretty productive--and there's an hour or so before I usually go on my run.*
Now, it is pouring rain, though. The sky is that sickly yellow color that happens up here when it rains, but never does at home. It's pretty darn cold out, and I've put on long pants instead of shorts, and am thinking of building a fire again tonight (a skill of which I've never really gotten the hang**). Now the rain has stopped, and I know I should head out before it gets dark, but we've gotten to a pretty good part of the book, and I'm eager to at least finish the chapter (even if it means I'll be driving to the dam in the dark***). Abbie just used one of my favorite words, "transitory." I've never used it myself, but I still remember the night, back in September of 1989, when I heard that word for the first time.
I replaced the lines in a chapter, only to discover another bit that'll have to be replaced, and started on yet another chapter. I had felt like I was being irresponsible and indulgent by coming here today, but I've gotten more audio editing done this afternoon/night than I have the past five days put together.
As a reward (or maybe I should say, a "reward") I put on another movie I got from the library, JUPITER ASCENDING, starring Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum.
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It was an amazingly inventive Sci-Fi adventure flick, and the two leads were quite good (especially in comparison to the two leads in last week's movie), but I gotta say, every single time there was an action sequence, I mentally checked out, and couldn't follow any of what was going on onscreen. The first time it happened, I thought it must just be me, but it kept happening, over and over, and I noticed that, even though the special effects were splendid and ultra-realistic, they were shot in a way that was virtually incomprehensible, with just noise and flashes of light going on. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't as badly directed as a Michael Bay action scene, but directing action must be a hard, hard thing. Last week's movie (VALERIAN), as flawed as it was, was better than this, and I feel like TRON 2, which I watched three or four weeks ago, was better than both of them (though I wouldn't characterize any of them as Good). Also, characters were introduced, then discarded for the rest of the film, leading me to think that either a) this was originally a much longer film, and hacked way down for a shorter running time, or b) much like Rish Outfield writing a novel, it was made by someone who had no idea what they were doing. Since the Wachowskis have to have made at least one great movie in their careers (I've heard good things about SPEED RACER, so who knows?), I'll chalk it up to studio interference. Mila Kunis was neat-looking, though. I wonder what became of her.****
I remembered my self-suggestion to start doing sit-ups again (jeez, was that only yesterday?), and forced myself to lie down on the hard wooden floor and do fifty sit-ups just now. I cannot believe that I did that sort of thing every day for a year. Can you?
Exercise: Yes (17)
*Honestly, running along the dam until my breath won't catch is preferable than cutting out hundreds of little mouth sounds, some of which don't even show up on the waveform.
**Here's a bit of a digression: a couple of years back, there was a sudden deepfreeze at the end of October, and my brother-and-law and I came up here to thaw everything out and drain all the pipes, in case any of them were about to burst. And while my job was to find as many containers to fill with water we could boil, he started a fire in the stove, and got it blazing so hot that we had to open the doors and windows in below-freezing weather, and it melted the buckets and garbage cans I had filled with water to heat up around the stove. That dude knows how to make a fire.
***That reminds me, I saw what I thought was a dead cow alongside the road on my way here this afternoon. But as I passed it, I saw that it was an elk someone had struck and killed with their car . . . and then cut off the antlers (what would you use for something like that? Bolt-cutters? A chainsaw?), and left the rest of the gigantic animal to rot. I feel like you could destroy a Hummer if you crashed into one of those.
****Maybe someone else saw her embarrassing performance in the Oz prequel, and stuck her in director jail along with Sam Raimi, who only recently got paroled.
9-18
I'm a big Kevin Smith fan, and he's made a third CLERKS film. But the only way to see it would be to pay the crazy Fathom Events prices, and see it during the one week it's available (which I believe is more than it was supposed to be--there was enough interest they expanded the showings). I absolutely love CLERKS, and really, really like CLERKS II, so, at the last minute, I drove over to the theater to see CLERKS III.
And . . . shoot, I guess I hated it. It's hard to put my finger on what I felt, exactly, except that it didn't strike me as particularly funny, wasn't at all inspired, and made me much sadder than I would've expected. He brought back nearly everyone who worked on the first one in 1993, even the bit parts from non-actors in Leonardo, New Jersey . . . but I felt like all of that was somehow pandering instead of sincere. And then putting so much dramatic weight on poor Bryan O'Halloran (Jeff Anderson got to do pretty much what he did in the first one, only a bit douchier) was kind of hard to watch (when a real actor like Rosario Dawson shows up, it's practically night and day), and the sheer mountain of callbacks was practically overwhelming. Anyway, I went home, and had to go for a run just to feel alive again.
Even though I've gone running the last few nights, I do find myself pausing at some point before I get home, either to catch my breath, or put on a new YouTube video. Tonight, I vowed I would not stop, for any reason (just to see if I could), and deliberately chose a forty-one minute YouTube video, so I wouldn't have the excuse of stopping for another one.
I did quite well, until my phone, at the fifteen minute mark, shut itself off due to inactivity. I tried not to stop as I fished my phone out of my pocket and woke it up again, but in the seconds it took me to not only unlock the phone, but start up the video again, I technically had failed in my vow. Chalupa for you, but not for me. Not tonight.
Exercise: Yes (15)
9-19
I may not have mentioned this before, but I am feeling really weird about going to Europe next month. I keep getting this overwhelming feeling that I don't DESERVE to go on this most-expenses-paid vacation (hell, Jeff's already getting tickets to fudgin' Disneyland, so it really WILL be all-expenses paid if I don't stop him), and it's somehow sinful of me.* So, when I saw a bunch of books at the Savers thrift shop yesterday that I knew Jeff would want, I took a photo of them to send, and when he said, "I feel bad asking you to buy them," I said, "Well, I AM coming to visit you in a month," so I drove all the way back and bought them for him. Not that that comes anywhere near paying him back--I mean, he's flying me to a land where people sometimes start sentences with "Oy," for Bossk's sake--but it was the least I could do.
And speaking of doing the very least: I had the option of going to the library tonight and trying to get some writing done, but for once, I chose not to. I instead went on my run early, and sat down to record more chapters of the audiobook. I'm nearly there, and it helps that the last few sections seem to be shorter than most. Once I get the book done (I'll still have to record the Author's Note, I believe--I have the others--but I'll have to ask Abbie), I am going to go all the way back to the beginning and re-record all the lines of dialogue for a particular character, because I could never remember how I voiced him (it's a character that speaks once every six or eight chapters). Then, I'll have to edit it all, of course, and re-record the parts I messed up on (there are always some . . . you do it too, you know), and then, I guess I'll be done. Dare to dream.
My Aunt Blanca came over for Sunday dinner, and mentioned that I looked like I was in good shape. It was a nice thing to say, because a) a year ago, I was still doing push-ups and sit-ups every day, and b) I'm heavier today than I've ever been. I was trying to get healthier in preparation for my trip overseas, where I only assume that I'll be walking around all the time. Guess I should start doing sit-ups again, huh?
Exercise: Yes (16)
*I realize that's a crazy bullshit word for me to use, but that's how it feels. It's like, when my grandmother died in 1996, and I realized the last time I'd spoken to her was to ask her to use her car, having totalled my own one (jeez, I can't even remember what kind of car it was). It feels morally wrong somehow, taking advantage of somebody in a compromised position.
9-16
9-14
It had been raining today and last night, to the point where everybody but my cousin put on long pants instead of shorts, and I knew the cabin would be even cooler, so I took a jacket. And yeah, it's cold up here--in the fifties during the day, the forties during the night, and I not only put on my jacket around the cabin, but I slept in it as well.
I was pretty tired when I arrived, and started editing audio as soon as I'd had my stuff brought upstairs . . . but couldn't keep my eyes open. So I laid down on the couch, set the timer on my phone, and napped for a few minutes. And now I'm back, baby, with energy to spare! Okay, not to spare, but with energy sufficient to accomplish a bit more editing.
It was the hardest chapter (for me to record) in the whole book, and the editing was actually easier--although there were two lines that were Halvery's that I delivered in Roup's voice, so I'll have to do them over again.*
When editing Abbie's book got too hard, I'd switch over to an Outcast that I recorded with Big Anklevich (probably won't drop until October now), because it's so much less labor-intensive, but I found myself noticing mouth sounds or breaths that Big and I made, and cut out two or three of them before I realized I didn't have to.
I got a chapter edited, then recorded Frank Sinatra lines for Big's podcast. And man o' man, was he foolish to have me voice that character. Oh, not because I do a bad job, bucko--hell no, I'm firing on all cylinders there. But because now I can't stop talking like Frank Sinatra, even as I walk around the cabin, worried that it's gonna be miserable cold once it gets dark. But that's what the Big Man made long-sleeved shirts for, ain't it, sister?
For an upcoming episode of my movie review podcast with Marshal, I grabbed VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND WORLDS (still hard to get my mouth around that title) from the library, along with JUPITER ASCENDING, two massive Sci-Fi flops from the last decade, both of which I heard were pretty bad. By the time he and I get around to talking about it, I'm not going to remember anything about it, except how disastrous the casting was. Sigh.
Exercise: Yes (11)
9-15
That's it, middle of the month (already). Everybody out of the pool.
Okay, that's not true. It's more that the lifeguard blew the whistle and shouted, "Fifteen minutes!" to let the kids know that the fun is ending soon--you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here (at least not like fat Rodney Punder, who they found floating at the bottom of the deep end at the beginning of the summer, causing them to close the pool for nearly two months out of some kind of misbegotten respect for the dead).
Exercise: Yes (12)
*Maybe no one else would notice, but hey, maybe they would.
