My Fave Songs De 2020

 

I'm not doing a top ten list cuz it's just harder and harder to rank things. Here's the songs I listened to the most. (I think--I don't have any program or app or website that keeps track)

This one would probably be number one, though, if I put one up because I'm obsessed with this song and play it over and over in the car.

This next one is catchy AF. I don't know who this chick is, but I kept hearing catchy songs on the radio and they'd be by her, but none really caught me as much as this one.

Then there's this one, which featured the return of a band I've liked for a long time. Hell, the lead singer who's a big industrial guy, was part of another group that let me use two songs in my first film, HH. (the end credits song, and the song when Aric is sharpening his knives)

Good to see them still cranking out some good tunes.




It's cool to see some mainstream artists embracing the synth sound that's been making a pretty big surge in the background, and nobody had as much success as this guy did with this song:

This was a kid I discovered through a video game. I heard one song and was like, that's cool. Then another and another. But this is the earworm of the bunch that I couldn't get out of my head.

I'm sure I'll get crap for this, but what do I care? The ear likes what the ear likes, and it likes this song a lot.

I was not aware of this band, though I had heard that other hit from years ago. But they put out some catchy songs this year, and this was the best(I think).

This is weird, man. I haven't heard a song from this group that I've liked in probably 15 years, so for them to come back with a song this cool...strange.

Honorable mention to this one. Never heard of the group, and it just started airing so will it stick with me? I dunno, but it sounds like something that should be in a movie.

Mebbe I'll do a movie thing, who knows? I don't think I saw a lot that impressed me, but I'll have to refresh my terrible memory to be sure...

 

 

Moving On With Weirdness

 

 Soooooooo...another Xmas goes by.

Pretty uneventful. Xmas eve we went to my wife's parents to exchange gifts with them and her brother. Everybody wore masks and stayed away from each other, so it was weird. My father-in-law is really in rough shape. He's very old, has had cancer so they removed a lung way back, but he's just gotten worse and worse.

He laid down a couple of times while we were there because he was just too exhausted to stay out there and open presents. He also got a little snippy with me, something he never does. Both of my wife's parents are in rougher shape, and I think the many deaths of their family members and friends has really weighed on them. These holidays usually brought twenty to thirty people to their house, but it's not the 'Vid keeping them away this year; most of them have died.

Next day we went to my parents house. We didn't do a dinner there like we usually do; my wife fixed a turkey for us and it was great, so we ate before we left. At my parents house we exchanged gifts and chatted for a little while. 

I dunno, Xmases just don't feel like Xmases any more.

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Hey, remember that book I had a story published in? A review came out for it and the reviewer seemed to like it. Pretty cool. You can read it here:
https://t.co/CKGEsZYa0j?amp=1

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Okay, here's the weird. I hear from my wife that she's bought something for my son that she's calling a girlfriend pillow. He's wanted a girlfriend for a while, but he's had zero chance to socialize this year so that's been a pipe dream even more so than it would be normally because of his lack of social skills due to the autism.

So the wife saw some article about getting socially-challenged kids these pillows that they could hug and sleep with, that it might relax them a bit or something.

I'm thinking that it sounds pretty weird as is. Then it arrived.

It's a fucking pillow that's basically shaped like the upper half of a woman without a head. It has arms and boobs(no nips). 

So I tell my wife: "Great, when he gets a girlfriend and chops her head off and cuts her in half to keep the top half, this is on you."

Weird.

 

I Will Fucking Murder Everything

 

I think you know I'm only doing these posts to display some of the Xmas pics I've accumulated.

Anyway, tonight I decided to make the "family" Xmas cookies that I tend to make every year. Nobody does them now because the people who used to do them(my grandma and/or Aunt) are dead. So when I give them for Xmas gifts, people love them.

I'd rather just buy everybody in my family $100 gift certificates.

My wife got all the ingredients. I get set to make them. And the omen shows up immediately. One of the pieces to the cookie gun is missing. (I don't know what it's really called, but you put the cookie stuff into it and it shoots the cookies out in shapes)

I can't make these cookies without it. We search everywhere and can't find it. It's not in the box with the rest of the stuff, it's not in the "random shit we find" drawer, it's not downstairs, it's nowhere. I call my mom--she has one I can borrow, but I gotta drive down there and back. Gonna add an hour onto my time.

I do it anyway, the whole time thinking, I should just say fuck it and not do it. Should have listened to that voice.

I get back and start mixing ingredients. It's the worse part. Trying to cram 7 cups of flour into the butter/sugar mixture is something that takes a lot of work and time. I do it and finally get to the putting the cookies onto the sheets, and my mom's "gun" isn't working right. I have no idea what's up, but the cookies won't come out and stick to the pan. They just mush up into a weird ball.

I'm pissed. So I'm thinking about ways to jury rig the other gun to make it work. It has a cap that's used to store the cookie templates that screws on the end, but there's a 1 inch gap so you can't use it to make the cookies. (unless you wanna make 2 inch thick cookies, which I don't)

But I think--fuck it, I'm gonna saw that bitch so it'll fit right, maybe that'll work. It's a pain in the ass because I have the world's dullest hacksaw, but I do it. I have to sand the plastic edge with my wife's nail file because I don't have a file or sandpaper, but it works.

I start making the cookies. It's working for the most part, but the occasional cookies aren't coming out right. They also seem to be a bit flatter than usual, which is weird.

Worst part--they taste...weird. I double check all the ingredients. They're all brand new, not expired, and I used the correct ingredients in the correct portions. But there's some weird taste that fucks the whole thing up. I have no idea why.

I usually make two batches, one that's green(Xmas trees and wreaths) and another batch that's half white(Snowmen/dogs--don't ask) and red(wreaths). I skipped the 2nd ones. Took me about 3 hours just to do the first ones.

I was feeling pretty homicidal by the time I got done. Merry fuckin Xmas indeed. 

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I've submitted my new story to one publisher. It fits another, but I  have an extra week to send there and I'll find out by then whether it gets accepted to the first. If they turn it down, I'll shoot it to the other. The first one is the one I want to be in.

I've been working on ideas for that other story that I want to submit to the cool-cover book I showed you last time.

Also found out a fairly big horror author is working on a novella with my novella's exact title. I don't want mine to come out afterward and people thinking I copied, so I hit Malf up about that publisher he'd recommended I send it to. He wanted to read it first, so he's gonna give me some notes and I'll edit it and get him to hook me up. Hopefully the guy will publish it and we can beat that other guy to press.

Let's just say I'm keane to beat him to the punch.

 

 

 

Almost the 2nd Best Holiday(or 3rd if you count Steak and BJ day)

 

So the mail is all fucked up, huh?

I got people on that online auction place who haven't gotten their packages and are complaining. Four of the five of the packages I dropped off last week haven't even been logged into the system at all. Makes me look bad.

Also, I ordered some photo books for presents for the in-laws, and they were last seen at a post office in New Jersey on December 11th. Yeah, not feeling like I'm gonna get them in time.

Hey, that video got released--check it out if you haven't seen it. We shot it for nearly $0 dollars in the midst of the pandemic. But if I do another one, it's gotta have a story cuz I don't wanna just shoot people singing and playing instruments.

 Tonight we went across the bridge to try to get some pics of the conjunction. Looked promising getting over there, but as we shot time lapses of the sunset, the clouds moved in and covered the entire sky. You could barely see the moon.

Total wash as far as anything in the sky, but I got a couple of okay pics while it was daylight, plus another cool iphone lapse. They're on instagram if ya wanna see 'em.

Showed the kid Night of the Comet. He seemed to like it. We're gonna try to watch Better Watch Out before the holiday is over. 

Also, don't ya hate it when you put a holiday-themed book away and then forget about to read it on the holiday? I've done this a couple of times with H-ween themed horror books. This time it was with an Agatha Christie book--Murder For Christmas. I've never read this one so I'm hoping it's fun.

Tonight's my kid's xmas concert online, so they'll be playing those videos I shot. I'll try to put them on Youtube but who knows whether they'll get flagged for him playing known songs.

 

Night Shoots

 

 There was going to be a meteor shower so my brothers were going out to shoot it. I figured, sure, let's go.

We got there before sundown and shot some pics, some time lapses.I took two cameras since it's so hard to capture the meteors.

We moved to a better spot once it was night. And man, this meteor shower did not disappoint. They thought there'd be up to 30 meteors per hour, but most of the hours blew that away. At one point we saw like ten in a five-minute span. We even managed to catch some of them on camera.

This was the best meteor I got on a frame.

My brothers hanging out near my younger brother's camera. One of them was better at standing still than the other.

My patented low-to-the-road shot.

One of the last shots I took. My older brother's battery died and he'd left his other battery on the charger accidentally, so he was pretty bored for quite some time. I offered to let him use my 2nd camera, but he didn't want to.

It was cold as shit, I can tell you that. A lot of getting in the car and waiting, then getting out to adjust or move the cameras.

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Getting ready to submit one of my new stories to two anthologies. I'm also finishing up that H-ween story that I'll look around for a place to submit it to later. I finished my vampire novella which I passed to Stewie. Appears he was entertained, which is cool. He's got some notes I'll look over before I pass it to the Malf to maybe submit to that publisher he uses for his novellas.

 I started turning my killer scarecrow script into a novella. Translating them into prose is a lot of work, because there's literally zero character-thoughts in a script, but that's pretty much what prose stuff is.

Also, Malf hit me up and gave me a link to an anthology right up my alley looking for submissions. I don't have a story for it yet, but he'd gotten an invite to submit from the publisher that he's thinking about. It's a mostly-invite but partial submissions so I can also submit. Check that cover--man, that's badass. Reminds me of some of the horror/sci fi book covers I used to find in my dad's box o' books in the basement.

So I'm mulling some new ideas for it, plus going back through some old stories to see if any of those give me inspiration to revise them if the subject is close enough to this. They're looking for "original alien horror stories with a The Thing/Alien/The Blob/Critters/Night of the Creeps kind of vibe."

I had one story that was close to being published back in the 90's, I think it was the last story I ever submitted to a magazine, but the ending was way too much of a rip off of Night of the Creeps(that's not why they rejected it). Maybe I can retool and fix it a bit. I always liked the set up.

Either way, been doing a TON of writing.

Oh, also watched Night of the Comet with my kid and he liked it. I figured, since it ends a lot happier than Anna.

 

Anna Fam Watch

 

 So the Xmas watching has begun pretty hardcore in my house. Hell, it started before December. The wife started watching all those shitty Hallmark movies, one after the other. They are the worst.

I had told her that I was gonna have her watch Anna and the Apocalpse with me, and we'd let the kid watch it too. 

So last night we sat down to watch it. I can tell my kid's pretty bothered by it in parts because he gets a bit agitated when people die, or when stuff just doesn't work out. (He's been watching a lot of the Hallmark movies with my wife)

The movie ends--I can tell my wife isn't the biggest fan because, as one of the movie's best songs tells you in the beginning, "There's No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending", and they're basically letting you know that this isn't gonna end happy. My wife wants her movies to end with happy endings, and so do I, but not in the way she wants them. Giggity.

And I look at my kid and he's got a frown on his face. I say "Did you like it, buddy?" And he says "Yeah, I liked it," with that frown on his face. I say, "You don't look like you liked it," and he suddenly puts a fake smile on his face and says, "I liked it."

He's always afraid to say he doesn't like stuff, and I have no idea why. Anyway, I'm gonna show him Night of the Comet, a more traditional, fun movie where the good guys all come out fine. 

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Got an email from the company that's offered me a job to let me know that the clearance process has definitely begun. I'd already known that because my wife got a questionairre to fill out about me plus I've been getting numerous notices that my credit is getting checked at various agencies.

This whole thing should be interesting but I'd be lying if I didn't say a part of me feels like I'm not going to have any time to be creative once I have a job. Like, where am I gonna find 40 extra hours a week to work, while still doing the stuff I do now?

Guess we'll find out.

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That music video I shot comes out December 20th. I went over to Malf's and dropped it off on a thumb drive--a bunch of different versions and formats. We hung out in his backyard at his firepit. It was pretty cold but not too bad.

He started with beer but then dove into a bottle of Scotch, and Malf got pretty drunk. I haven't seen him this drunk outside of a convention. We chatted about all sorts of shit but it turned into a pep talk for me, which was weird. I didn't go there looking for it, but it's nice that Malf's a pretty big cheerleader for me. He definitely doesn't want me to stop making flicks.

We talked about a bunch of shit, and the next day I got him the revised treatment for something he'd pitched me. He liked what I did with it so we gotta get together again and hammer out the last minute details, then we'll sit down and write it.

This whole pandemic shit is fucking us up. His wife doesn't want anybody in his house, and it's really getting too cold to hang out in his backyard. But I'm feeling the time crunch cuz like I said, when I get this job, everything stops for it. 

My plan is to excel at this job and make myself invaluable so the pay starts getting great. I mean, it's already pretty nice, especially since I have zero experience in it but I wanna start making serious dough. To do that, everything else is gonna have to take a back seat.

These are the things keeping me up at night(and making me grind my teeth).

Did I tell you about the teeth grinding?(just searched--turns out, I did tell you back in 2019) It's another one of those perks you get when you get older, I guess. I bought a cheap mouth guard from Azon--you put them in hot water, then in your mouth so they mold to your teeth. It's not terribly uncomfortable but it's not great. Also you have to wash it after every use which gets old.

 

 

I Am A Zombie

 

 Haven't been sleeping great. Like five hours a night. 

So I woke up relatively early yesterday and was like, Guess I'll go get something done today.

I need to get some new eyeglasses. The ones I have now are like 6 years old and have a small scratch. We get free glasses every year, but most years I'm too lazy to go get a pair. (cuz I have to get my prescription renewed blah blah)

Anyway, go to the store for them and they want to take your temperature before you go back to the eyeglass area. The girl points the temperature gun at my forehead and is like, "Just gotta make sure you don't have a fever...okay, so your temperature is...95.1, you might be dead."

We laugh, but I'm thinking...I have never heard of having a low temperature unless you're cold, and I wasn't cold at all.

I didn't get glasses though--I'll get them later, maybe I'll tell you that story--but I go home and try our home temperature gun. It says 94.7.

Obviously I looked that shit up and you don't want to see a list of possible causes of low body temperature. It's not great. Your best case scenario is stress. Worst case is diabetes or cancer. So I'm hoping it's just stress.

Later that night I checked again and it said 97.1, so at least I was closer to normal.

 Did I tell you that I finished the music video? Can't remember. Least that's off my plate.

Must Get These Done AKA To Do List

 

 First off, I'm back on the 80's sex comedy jag. This week I noticed that Porky's 1-3 are on Prime for free so I was like, fuck it, let's do this.

 I've seen part 1 in the past ten years, so no surprises there. It's still fun but nowhere near as racey as it was back in the day.

Part 2, which I think I've seen, didn't seem too familiar to me. Not as fun, but still okay.

For some strange reason, as soon as part 3 starts(titled Porky's Revenge), I started remembering it. It starts at graduation when Pee Wee dreams that he sees this hot Swedish student's boob pop out--you can see her above. She was a Playboy model back in the 80's.

Then the movie continues, and man, it came back so fast. I must have seen this quite a few times when I was a teen to remember it so well. It's pretty fun, which is weird because Bob Clark didn't have anything to do with the writing or directing.

Hopped over to something called Gas Pump Girls. This is pretty bad, but still cheesy fun if you're looking for it. My favorite part is near the beginning when this girl sits down alone at a gas station and breaks into a full-on song number. I'm thinking, "Oh, it's a musical."

It was not. That was literally the only time anyone sings in it.

Then hit State Park, which is okay. Has the girl from NOES part 2 in it.

Not sure what else is up on tap. Hope Amazon keeps getting these on there for free.

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TO DO LIST - this is for me so I can try to keep track of what I'm supposed to be doing.

--Finish the book adaptation of the vampire script. It's basically done, but I'm just going through again and touching it up. Mebbe I'll let a couple of friends take a look and see if they think it's okay.

--Finish that Halloween story I started. I know now what happens in the end, just gotta get it down, get happy with it, and get it out. It's funny, the Malf gave me the title for it. He said it was one he was saving for it he came up with a story to fit it, but I could have it because it fit mine better.

--Revise that other weird story and send it out to somewhere to see if I can get it published.

--Get serious about doing the Ttory 3 script, of which I have about ten pages of notes so far. Not that I think it will ever get shot, but because it occupies my mind. 

-- Finish the Sharknado script. It's not Sharknado, but it's a pretty ludicrous premise like that. I don't want to put it out there. It's a little more than halfway done.

--Finish that goddamn Halloween script that I've been working on for over 10 years. It's actually the origin story of Smiling Jack, though it was never intended to be. You'll see what I mean if you ever read it.

--Finish the "Autasm" screenplay that I've been working on for 15 years, and fuck it, maybe turn it into a book.

--Turn the screenplay that I was going to shoot as a movie last year into a novel or novella. Hell, might as well take that scarecrow screenplay I wrote and turn that into a novella too. I'd hate for nobody to ever see what I wrote, and it's too big budget for me to ever shoot.

--Get serious about the other two books I started. One is a sort of time-travel thing--but in a way that I've never seen done--and the other is a sort of Under The Dome/Darkness At The Edge of Town kinda thing.

--Maybe work on that superhero screenplay that dances in my mind on occasion. I wrote the opening years ago, and every once in a while I think of new scenes. Doesn't have an antagonist yet, which is the main problem.

I'll probably add more, but that's off the top of my head. I got the music video done--they're going to release it on December 20th. I'll post a link when it's up.