Big Anklevich joins Rish for his new sketch "What It's All About." A father and son drive along, contemplating the meaning of songs.
Wikipedia may disagree, however.
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Logo by Gino "All About What It Is" Moretto.
My Uncle Jim died in September of 1990, and before too long, my mom came home from cleaning out his place with a box of LP records, which I pretty much claimed as my own. There were Elton Johns, The Human League, David Bowie, Gilda Radner, Rod Stewart, and Billy Joel in there, but the one album that most grabbed me, that I listened to the most times, was the soundtrack to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.
The songs really grabbed me, and not having seen the movie, I sort of imagined what might be going on in my head as I listened, and who the characters might be. Of course, the one that most clearly self-describes is Doctor Frank-N-Furter, who proclaims that he's just a sweet transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania (and that he's a sort of Doctor Frankenstein besides, making a man up in the lab, and that when he saw KING KONG he wanted to be dressed the same as Faye Wray).
I shared the soundtrack with my sister, and we used to listen to it together, first on cassette (I had made a copy from Jim's record) and later on CD (and even later on mp3, I suppose), and one October, I dressed as Frank N. Furter for Halloween, which some of my coworkers suspected was just an excuse to wear fishnet stockings.
I didn't actually see the movie until 2003 when my sister and I went to a midnight screening in Santa Monica, where they drew big Vs on our foreheads and the two of us were "deflowered" by the entire cast in the front of the theater.
While I didn't think the film itself was particularly good (and I didn't go back and see it again since that night), I have never not loved the songs in it, and very often think of my Uncle Jim when I hear them.
Oh, this is a roundabout way of mentioned that Tim Curry died this week. He was eighty, and had been wheelchair-bound since he had a stroke in 2012, but he still did appearances and occasional roles (mostly voice-work, though he did play the Criminologist in the ROCKY HORROR remake (the one with Victoria Justice), who was in a wheelchair in the 1975 film.
A delightfully weird dude, he had a bunch of famous roles, from the Butler in CLUE to Long John Silver in MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND, from the awesome Darkness in LEGEND (a film I've never otherwise liked) to the concierge in HOME ALONE 2, and of course, Pennywise in the 1990 IT miniseries. But to me, he was always that sweet transvestite, and so I wanted to quote one of his songs when he passed.
After much deliberating*, I picked:
That's from the end of the album/movie, and I listened to the song as I went for a run that evening. Cool.
In a way, Curry's only-partial recovery from his stroke enabled him to see how beloved he had become (and not just from Rocky Horror devotees), with him doing panels and photo ops at conventions in the last years of his life, and getting honors that might not have been given had his mortality been so visibly clear. I'm not sure if I expressed myself well there--I just meant that, when we see our relatives or colleagues or heroes ailing, we're often more likely to tell them we appreciate them than if everything's fine until . . . it isn't.
Regardless, I never knew my Uncle Jim was sick or that the last time I saw him would be the last time I saw him, but I think he'd have been thrilled that one of his records made such an impact on me. My uncle was not Tim Curry, but hey, we feel what we feel.
*This is only semi-amusing (and really, what in my blog is ever more than that?), but I was trying to remember the various songs to put a quote next to a photo of Curry on Facebook (since I couldn't very well put "Come up to the lab, and see what's on the slab"), and I did a search for "I've got to get out of this trap, before this decadence saps my will" (that one is Don't Dream It), and the phone came back with "This appears to be a reference to a song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, however, if it is instead a description of how you are feeling, maybe you should seek counseling."
I kid you not. I know A.I. gets a bad rap (and often rightly so), but come on, that was pretty nice.
Rish talks about seeing opposition to things people love (brought on by backlash to OBSESSION and TOY STORY 5) and wonders why that is. Is it human nature? Is he guilty of it himself? Will he talk about Olivia Rodrigo again? And of course, recent American politics comes into it as well. Can we still be friends?
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| Screenshot from just this week. |
Note: So, this episode turned out much longer than it was supposed to (*especially* the Patreon version), because I mislabeled one of the recordings and thought it was lost, then tried to replace it with some (now-redundant) additions, only to find the lost recording after I was nearly finished editing. Sorry, but not super sorry.
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Logo by Gino "I Ate What You Like" Moretto.
Guest-starring Big Anklevich, Rish airs his daddy issues and simultaneously proclaims his love for 4 Non Blondes' only hit song.
They chat about nostalgia, Van Halen, the title of this podcast, and of course, they talk Pixar. And does Big know any Smashmouth lyrics?
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Logo by Gino "The Realest Prong That Ever Was" Moretto.
"She was a crackhead, son, your dead mother."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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| 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.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.
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.*
"Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?"
*Except Carly Rae Jepsen. We both agreed on that.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In January: 2044
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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| * |
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?
"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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
