So, another day, another, I don't know, three and a quarter cents?
I recently speculated how many times I'd heard The Police's Every Breath You Take, one of my favorite songs, over the years. It made me wonder today how many times I have heard Billie Eilish's Everything I Wanted.
Well, I did the math, and if we guess that I heard it for the first time on, say January 18th, then I've heard it three hundred and eighty-two times.
If I didn't hear it until January 30th, though, that really messes up my math. By that count, I've only heard it three hundred and seventy-nine times.
Math is fun!
Big wrote a buttload of words yesterday, to make up for his gaffe on Monday. I did not. And I don't even care. Would you care?
A lot of the momentum is gone, as far as writing goes. To my horror, I continue to want to exercise, and do it more than once a day. The writing is much less so. Maybe you really do get endorphins from exercising.
Today, I went to the park, edited a bit on the new Dunesteef episode, wrote about five hundred words (half on the pizza story--which is about five seconds from being done--and half on this stupid Christmas idea Big put into my head), then I did the stairs. Because it's a beautiful spring day, I ended up drenched in sweat and exhausted. When I got home, I figured, "What the hay," and I rode my bike around my normal jogging path. It's literally crazy how much faster that goes by on a bike rather than on foot. Because I had done both, I told myself there was no reason to do an actual run tonight, so I'd have an extra few minutes to do what I choose (as long as that choice is to edit, record, or write).
There was still a little daylight left, so I sat down and worked a bit more on this Christmas story. I mentioned it, right? Someone gets an X-mas ornament with magical properties? Something like that. Well, I'm writing it, because I like the idea, even though I don't know where it's going.* That got me to well over a thousand words, and as a reward, I sat down and watched a thirty year old David Letterman rerun while I painted my Hulkbuster (which sounds like a filthy euphemism, but isn't). It was so relaxing that now I feel bad that I didn't go on my nightly run, despite being so exercised out that my feet are sensitive to the touch (you can't hit that many stairs at my age, I suspect, without the stairs eventually hitting you back).
I mentioned this Christmas story, and I worry about the tone of it. What I'd like it to have would be a darkly comedic tone, similar to a story I wrote a couple of years ago (might only have been last year) called "Bad Trip." In it, a divorced dad gets the chance to chaperone his third grade daughter's school field trip, but his ex-wife gives him the wrong address, and he ends up going to a decidedly non-child-friendly place with his kid and her schoolmates. It was an idea that came to me as I took my nephew to his field trip at some kind of harvest pumpkin patch, and I kept texting Big during it with these truly effed-up ideas of what his daughter and her friends could be looking at.
It was the blackest humor I've ever written (outside of that wonderful line in "The Spirit of Christmas," where the child looks over at where the friendly homeless man normally stands and exclaims, "Oh, no, Hobo Ralph is dead!" . . . which might not even have made the audio drama, but remains my Number Two favorite line I've ever written**), and I laughed through most of that pumpkin patch tour, hoping that Big was laughing too.
Well, I never shared "Bad Trip" with anyone, but I guess if someone donated to my show, I'd dust it off and see if it made anyone else laugh too. But that's what I would like this Christmas story to be like, where the basically-decent main character (who is obviously based on me) absolutely loses his mind about the holidays, becoming positively deranged about The Meaning Of Christmas. Honestly, I'd like to take it so far that he alienates his family, absolutely terrifies his in-laws, and makes his wife . . . well, maybe she respects him a little bit for the first time in their goddamn marriage. And then, at the end, when the spell is broken, he thinks, "What did I do? Did I lose my job? My friends? My wife?"
And they go, "Nahh, we figured it had to be some kind of evil magic spell or something, Brad. No hard feelings." And then a bell rings, and an angel gets his wings. That's right, that's right. Merry Christmas, you wonderful old building and loan! And nobody even mentions the shoplifting teenager Brad stabbed through the ear canal with a broken candy cane. The end.
At the end of the night, I wondered if I was missing out on that endorphin rush I keep blogging about, the one you get from running. So I decided to go out and do my regular run, or maybe a shorter version of it. But that was a mistake. I put on Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, and before "Brenda and Eddie were still going steady by the summer of '75," I was a gasping, lurching wreck. Honestly, we were right back to where I was the first time I went for one of those runs, the last day of January, where I could jog a block, then I had to walk a block, to keep from keeling over.
I ended up turning around and heading home before I'd even reached the halfway mark of yesterday's run. But I don't feel like a slacker or anything, I just overextended myself, pushed this body of mine (which has never been even remotely athletic) farther than it could go, and now I had to take a rest. I feel like writing might work that way too: some days you can write a ton, but there have to be lighter days too, where you only get the bare minimum (or less), so that you don't blow the trans-axle, and end up grinding metal.
So, I think I'll sit here, writing a few more words, then watch something, or read something, or just go to sleep. Tomorrow, come what may.
"Come what may." That reminds me of MOULIN ROUGE. You've seen that, right? Or are you too cool? Oh no, not if you're here, reading this. Do you remember the theme of that movie? Of course you do. It was "The greatest thing you will ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."
Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for such a small thing?
Words Today: 2,103
Words In April: 8,571
P.S. Every day I'm posting one of these:
Day 8. Well, I'm torn. I decided to pick "Chandelier" by Sia instead of my first pick, "18 and Life" by Skid Row. No reason, really.
*Gosh, I hope it doesn't end up in some kind of bloodbath, like Big Anklevich would've written. There are no happy endings in real life, couldn't there please be something approximating one in a story?
**My Number One? Well, it's from "Journey Into Another Dimension Through A Portal Near a Truck Stop Restroom." Yes, that award-winner. You know the line, right? It's "They come from another dimension where the Kardashians . . . are evil!"
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