Still Alive

I've clearly hit the tough pounds. I've gone down to 207 and then back to 208 for no reason I can see--I didn't cheat on that day. If the stoppage continues, I may go 100% shake for a couple of days. It would be hard, but would definitely push me past the barrier.

I was strolling through some stuff on Tubi and came across this poster, and obviously I was gonna watch that. Who can look at that poster and pass it up? Not this guy.

It's not good, but if I'd seen in 1986 I bet I would have still enjoyed it. Scantily-clad warrior women who take off their clothes and go swimming in that weird on-their-back way with their bare breasts just poking out of the water? A tiger that turns into a naked woman? I'm all in, man.

Unfortunately, it's got bad looping and the fight scenes are laughable. People barely swinging their swords while extras pretend to do stuff in the background.

But whatever.

I've been watching some old TV--can't remember if I've mentioned it. Big Valley is surprisingly well written for a show as old as it is, and tackles stuff like racism, sexism, classism and more, and this shit was back in the sixties. And for the most part it doesn't do it in an embarrassing way. I'm almost done season 1--thirty episodes in that season. (and featuring a very young William Shatner in one episode)

Rewatching Quantum Leap. Still love this show. In my top five all time.

Rewatching Smallville. You basically just gotta watch the first episode, then skip ahead to season 2. Season 1 had that Supernatural thing, which was monster of the week--in this case, Kryptonite monster.

Then there's also Fall Guy, Matt Houston, Remington Steel. I'm reliving my youth.

I watched the V miniseries with my kid. Hadn't seen it in a while. He liked it, but I was surprised by how open-ended it was. Like, did they know they were getting a tv show after it? Because at the end of the miniseries the aliens are still in control. There's a plot thread about the girl being pregnant with an alien baby that's left open.

Maybe they did all that to ensure they'd get the regular series. Now I gotta go buy that so I can watch it. Pretty sure I don't own that.

Anyway, I plan on doing my interviews for the T2 making, and then really buckling down to work on it. I'm not sure how much BTS I really have, since we didn't have a dedicated BTS guy. That Stewie was slacking. Blame him.

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JINKIES!

So I weighed 227 pounds on June 11th. I am now down to 208 in only 16 days. It's pretty insane, given that I had two cheat days in there. (I didn't go crazy overboard, but I had a real dinner both times)

I'm sure that's the easy weight going. I fully expect to hit that wall soon, but I'm prepared for it. And at least I'm nowhere near that ungodly 230 number any more.

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Went over to my buddy Malfi's house since meeting at bars is sorta out right now. We hung out back and chatted all night. His daughters want to make a movie, so they kept coming down and asking us to stop talking about what we're talking about so we could "talk about OUR movie".

I told Malfi months ago I'd shoot it for them. They sent the script--it's basically ET rewritten by demented children, so it's funny.

After they finally vamoosed, we talked about all sorts of stuff. He's got some exciting stuff coming up, and a lot of movie people seem interested in that book of his that I read that's not out yet. It's funny that it could actually become a movie or show before it gets published.

He also pitched me on a movie idea he thinks I should do. Says he'll write the script if I'll do it. It's definitely an interesting idea that could be shot very cheaply--even more cheap than a Ttory. He just doesn't wanna do the work if I'm not willing to make it. And I get that.

We discussed writing, as usual, hitting topics from Stephen Kin to Ernest Hemingway to Terry Pratchett to racism and pandemics, and his band. We're all over the place as usual.

He also said he could probably hook me up with a publisher for my novella when it's done. He's published some of his through this company, and knows the guy that runs it very well. Says it's not a ton of money but the guy is honest and will get the book out there. That would be pretty cool.

Funny aside--he lives very close to the public library that I lived at as a teen. Used to go there all the time(it was brand new back then) to get a stack of sci-fi and horror books, or sometimes to use their computer because it had some games on it that my Atari 400 or 800XL didn't have. I mean, do you remember when you had to actually sign in for a time slot just to use a computer?

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I'm almost finished this very bizarre short story I've been writing for a while. I like it but am not really sure whether it's "good" or not. Always hard to be objective with one's own stuff, though I'm better at it than most, I think.

Once I'm done done, I'll put it away for a month and go back with fresh eyes.

No plans for July 4th. The wife and kid are going back to the beach, so I'll be hanging around working on random stuff. The Ttory 2 making of, for instance. It looks like that September con is going forward, which is cool. It's going to be in a convention center, so there should be a lot of space, and they say there will be sanitizing stations all over.

I'm debating whether I should make a limited Bounty dvd for the con. Not sure I have the time, along with also authoring the Ttory blu ray.

Guess we'll see.

Existence Is Exhausting

So on the good news front, I lost 8 pounds the first week of the diet. It's a little insane to think about, since the first time I did this diet, I was like 31 years old and lost 7 pounds. I weigh less now and lost more, but I did cheat my first week way back when. (I went to my favorite steakhouse)

I'm very hungry. But here's how you know I'm committed:

I drink a lot of shakes, and you need a lot of ice for that. So I needed ice, and you know where the ice is, right? 7-11. I have to walk past the slurpee machine to get to the ice.

It got worse. My kid wants a slurpee for dessert.

I can say proudly that I did it. I got him a slurpee, got me NO slurpee, and got the ice and came home. Man, pouring that slurpee gave me fantasies, like, that it was for me.

But one thing nobody's ever gonna take from me is my will power. I got it in spades.

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Here's that release party video, if you're super bored.



The book is available in paperback already, at least Amazon says so, even though the release date is supposed to be 7/1.
Paperback:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578675331/ref=as_li_ss_tl?pf_rd_r=9KM9BSDRVEAASE3C7EN6&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee&linkCode=sl1&tag=critblas-20&linkId=e2d60f892c0988f1554812bf10b97692&language=en_US

Kindle:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089DPJQS3/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

I assume Amazon will merge them sooner or later. Go ahead, add your affiliate link and pimp it if you want!

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I was a little stoned, sure, but someone linked this video and I started watching. It's kinda funny to watch his reactions and he's a likeable guy, but man it just reminded me how great this song is. The lyrics, the change of pace, the storytelling in it...

I ended up watching a lot of his videos, cuz he's listening to a lot of 70's shit I love. He did make me laugh a couple of times.



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On the bad news front, remember my FOC debacle? That I had to re-edit the movie by using the fully exported individual scenes to recreate it? I did all that. I exported a 24gig version of it.

Then I see that Amazon wants a trailer. I look all over and I don't have a hi-res version of it anymore. I take a look at the teaser, and it's like 15 shots. Fuck it, I say, I'll go find the original footage and recreate it. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.

I recreate it and notice something pretty quick. The original takes look better than the exported scenes I recreated the movie from.

So what I should really do is LITERALLY re-edit the movie using all the original footage. Back in the day we didn't have all the export controls we have today, so even though I definitely had it at high compression, it wasn't lossless.

I mulled it over. I mulled over suicide instead. I called Zig and complained.

Then I said, fuck it. It would take me probably 6 months at a minimum to do. I fucking hate the movie. (well, 80% of it) It doesn't look any worse than the dvd blown up.

I published it. It's not available, because apparently Amazon's been backed up since the pandemic started. No idea how long it will take. I also just half-assed a new poster that looks a bit like LGF's poster, just to keep the brand recognition.

My original poster guy wanted to redo it, and is now acting like he's pissed I don't want him to, but it would be a waste of his time. It would be like asking Jim Lee to ink Erik Larsen's pencils.(you comic guys will understand)

Anyway, now I really want to get dedicated to the T2 making of.

Oh, that reminds me, some fan of Ttory sent me a script he wrote. 105 pages. Called "A Survivor's Guide To The Ttory". I don't usually read other people's scripts because of legal reasons, but I'm fine with this because it would be like me writing Batman fanfic and then trying to sue DC.

It wasn't bad. One segment I'd even think about using if I ever did a part 3. It's confused on who exactly Carly is, and it does some things with the Dark Lord that I'm not planning on, but I've read worse.

And it's pretty flattering that someone likes the movies enough to do it.

Writing Hard

So I've been destroying the writing lately. I finished a first draft of what turned out to be a novella--39000 words--on an adaptation of my vampire script in less than two weeks. It's not as easy as just transcribing shit, because in prose you have to do what you really can't do in movies--go into the character's mind.

I'm going to do another pass and it'll definitely go over 40,000. What I do with it after that is up in the air. Self publish it? Adapt another screenplay into a novella and do one of them old double-feature books? Or something else entirely?

Been working on some scripts and another short story.

Tonight they had this online  book release party where the authors get together and talk about their stories and whatnot. The book's scheduled to come out July 1st.

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Other than that, been pretty quiet. Oh hey, did I mention that I got fat?

I came back from the beach and weighed 227 pounds. That is only three pounds less than my all-time high of 230. That was about 16 years ago, and I went on that crazy diet and lost 24 pounds in the first month on my way to a total lost of around 40 pounds.

So I said fuck it--time to order the shakes I used back then and see if I can still lose it.

In three days I lost 7 pounds. No exercise. Guess the shake still works. It's expensive, but hey, if it works. I am, however, starving right now. I'd kill most of my family for a Slurpee.

I'll keep you appraised of my weight thing. I'm not going to weigh myself every day any more, because I know I'll hit those times when, even though I haven't cheated, the weight doesn't budge. Those days are frustrating. If you space it out to see how much you lose a week, you don't really see those individual days.

The real challenge will be when my wife takes the kid to the beach with her parents. My tradition is to eat whatever and always get a Slurpee, every day she's gone. Can't do that this time. She leaves Friday, so we'll see how it goes. If I'm doing well, I may allow myself one cheat Slurpee.

So much for that...

So...woke up a couple of days ago feeling like there was just too much shit getting in the way of getting this short done.

I thought...do I really wanna attempt this when nobody else wants to? Do I really want to cut the corners I'm going to have to cut?

Then I get a text from my brother that basically sealed it--I'm not gonna tell the story, but suffice it to say that he got inconvenienced in the name of doing something for me that I didn't ask for, so he doesn't really wanna have to deal with any more movie shit.

He was basically the only other person who I could count on to help with movie shit, no matter what I needed.

I said fuck it. It's not worth the hassle. Called off the shoot. Whether I ever do anything else is pretty high up in the air right now.

On the good side, my summer's looking pretty cushy now. Just get the T2 making of done so I can start authoring the T1/T2 blu ray with all the extras. Only thing is, one convention I was supposed to be a guest at has been canceled cuz of the pandemic.

If the other one gets canceled, I'm not sure I'm gonna rush forward on getting these blu's done. They do sell, but not as well as the dvds, so I don't wanna be sitting on a couple hundred of these to the tune of over $1000.

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Went to the beach for a couple of days--the wife's parents beachhouse thing near Rehoboth.

They just started opening things up, so there's not tons to do there yet. They did open the movie theater down there. They were showing Grease, Jaws, the first Harry Potter, and some other movie I've never heard of.

Now, I wouldn't mind seeing Jaws again in the theater, but the kid was with us and that's a scary fucking movie, man. Do I want to give him a fear of the ocean when he loves it so much? Probably not.

We could take him to Grease, but then I saw the details about the theater. No popcorn unless you want pre-bagged gourmet popcorn. (weird flavors, no regular butter popcorn) You can buy bottled soda or water but no fountain sodas.

Honestly, I just don't do movies without popcorn. So we didn't do the movies.

We went out to lunch at an outside, on the beach restaurant. You have to wear a mask until you get to the table and you can take it off. A little weird. Tables are spaced WAY apart from each other.

We walked around the boardwalk, where you had to wear a mask until you got to the actual beach. It wasn't that busy, which was cool. The change of scenery was nice, honestly.

There was some crazy looking clouds and a wild sunset--wish I'd had the camera set up, but didn't think I was going to shoot any pics that night. So I got these with the iphone--this is right out of camera; I can probably make them look even better in photoshop.

Out the window, hoping my iphone didn't fly out of my hand... 

Anyway, back now.