I’ve recently decided to give away all of my writing that’s not currently under contract to a publisher. Novels, short stories, whatever. If I write it, I’m making it available for free. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’d like to share my personal and political rationale for this.
Old friend Seamus Cooper, author of The Mall of Cthulhu, stopped by yesterday and dropped off a story in manuscript form. “A little break from my arcane studies!” he said before disappearing into the night. I present it here for your amusement.
I had a three-hour solo drive to do, so I went to the ol’ Libby app to grab an audio book. Ah, here’s Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song! With narration by a passel of respected celebrities!
I’m not a Dylan cultist, but I do know he’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of (American, at least) popular music, and he has written some great songs, so I thought it would be entertaining to hear a well-informed master of the craft give some insights into various songs.
WOW, was I ever wrong.
Everybody else in my house is sick, which means horror movies on the big TV for me! This week’s selections go from the sublime to the ridiculous, and if you think you can tell which is which just by the title, you’re absolutely right!
The Netflix show, not the anti-reproductive-freedom Sex Pistols song. (How did John Lydon end up a fascist? Real head-scratcher!)
Anyway, Bodies actually concerns one body that is found in four different time periods and investigated by four different detectives. The performances are top notch, the script is smart and convoluted and features a number of those WTF twists we expect in a time-travel show. (Yes, Futurama fans, a character in this show does in fact do the nasty in the pasty and thereby become their own ancestor, just like Fred Ward in Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann).
But what I’d really like to talk about is the moral courage this show displays. This is gonna involve some spoilers, so…
Oh, wow, this is a gloriously awful movie. Christopher Atkins (star of The Blue Lagoon, A Night in Heaven, and The Pirate Movie) and Michelle Johnson (of the execrable Blame it on Rio as well as Waxwork and Death Becomes Her) star as a TV reporter and her cameraman who investigate a series of bird attacks.
So I read Schrader’s Chord by Scott Leeds over the weekend. It’s a horror novel about cursed records that open a portal to the land of the dead. I’m a music nerd with a soft spot for stories about forbidden texts (or, in this case, records) filled with dangerous arcane knowledge. So this should be right up my alley.
Content warnings: emotional abuse, severed hand
Everything changed the day she found the hand.
Went to The Sons of Italy hall in Watertown, MA for a Chaotic Wrestling show last night. There was a canine-related urgent care visit early in the evening (everything but my wallet is fine), so I wound up getting there late and missing sneering heel Ricky Smokes beating smarmy babyface Brad Cashew. (Am actually quite gutted about this because apparently they made the folding chair legal for this match, and also I think Cashew’s got the making of a great heel, but I don’t really care for him as a face. But I guess he’s got that hair, so…)
I also missed a couple of other matches—my friend Greg informed me that the heels were winning everything—and arrived just in time for….
On Saturday I was in Manhattan visiting my older daughter and we saw Jackie Hoffman on the street. (You know, the annoying co-op board lady in Only Murders in the Building!)
We talked about how she has pretty much the perfect level of celebrity, because if anyone approaches her, it’ll likely be with a compliment, and it’s not like she can’t go to Trader Joe’s for fear of being mobbed by fans next to whatever yuzu-related product they’ve just released.
My daughter then told me that fans consistently stake out Taylor Swift’s home in Manhattan, hoping for…a glimpse? Maybe?
Why do we do this? What is it that we hope celebrities, and artists in particular, can give us?