Mother Nature - Sticking It To Me Again / Summer of '87

 

Had plans to go to the drive-in that's like 3 hours away tomorrow to see The Lost Boys. The sax guy would be playing there at a bonfire. Would have been my kid's first drive-in experience.

I say would have, because suddenly the weather report was saying it was going to rain pretty heavily. The report got worse and worse, basically saying there's a better than 50% chance of rain starting at 1pm then running all night.

Just like the one-big day on Saturday in Sleepy Hollow. So I went ahead and canceled the hotel. I'm going to eat the tickets, but whatever. Kind of a bummer, but the one upside is this:

When I first heard about doing it, I was hesitant because The Lost Boys is a summer movie for me. I never watch it at Halloween.

I still distinctly remember the summer of '87. I was still 16 years of age, and a virgin. I sometimes wonder how the teen life works nowadays, because back then the quest to NOT be a virgin was all-consuming. It was the height of embarrassment to have to admit that you were a virgin.

Is that still a thing now? I sort of feel like maybe kids nowadays are a little more promiscuous than we were, but that's based mostly on the episodes of Loveline I listened to back in the 90's where you could hear 12-14 years olds calling in and saying blowjobs were basically a way of saying hello. 

Either way, there was a night where my parents were going out of town and I had a couple of friends over, and we got WASTED. Sometime after midnight it was down to just me and one friend, and we were feeling horny so we basically thought we'd invite over this neighborhood girl who was known to be a little promiscuous. She lived down the street at her mom's house, but her dad's house was only two doors up from me.

(I had known this girl since she was like 10, since we grew up in the same neighborhood. About a year prior to the night I'm about to describe, we'd called her over to have drinks one time and I'd ended up making out with her a bit.)

She comes over. That's where my memory gets super hazy. The only thing I remember is drinking more, laughing, and then it's just me and her and I'm fucking her,  and I'm discovering how hard it is to fuck in a pool--water washes away natural lubrication and makes it a bit painful.

And I remember waking up on the couch in the morning with only jeans on. No underwear. 

The knowledge that now I wasn't a virgin anymore. I felt pretty good. And obviously wanted to do it again.

I called her up, asked if she wanted to go out to dinner with me. She said yes, so I took her out to dinner and more sex afterward. I figured we were dating at that point, and the next night I double dated with my brother and his girlfriend, and we went to see The Lost Boys at the GB theater that used to be near the courthouse.

 Afterward I took her to her mom's house, but her mom was home. I wanted to fuck--so she's like, come on. She pulled me around to the dark side yard of one of her neighbors and we fucked in the grass on the side of the house. At one point I had to hold my hand over her mouth because people walked by.

We banged over the next week and then it just sort of...fizzled away. 

But that's why part of me doesn't wanna ever watch LB outside of summer...it's firmly cemented into my being as a summer movie, tied to all those memories.

 

 

 

Back From Da Hollow

 

Took the trip to Sleepy Hollow. Took about 5 hours with the traffic and a stop. Weather was great.

We walked around a bit, tried to get dinner but the wait was super long and we had to make the pumpkin blaze. Ended up stopping at a diner real fast and cramming in some food. I had breakfast for dinner--was very good.

Then on to the blaze. Amazing as usual. We took some pics, and I think I got some good ones. I'll try to post some here later after I've gone through them all. Well okay, here's one iphone photo.

Since the weather was still good, and they were threatening rain the next two days, we went into town and wandered around checking stuff out, taking a lot of pics. Got the Sleepy Hollow sign to ourselves, which is hard to do.

I was getting ready to go to bed at like 2am when I saw an email that they'd canceled the block party and the hayride for the next evening due to the impending weather. I moved real quick to make alternate plans--bought some tickets to some extreme haunt with a crazy waiver. Sounded dangerous.

Next day it POURED. Sucky sucky. We went to the cemetery to try to get some pics, since the tour had sold out. We got some, but Mike got reprimanded for bringing a tripod in. Kinda stupid, but clearly they want more money for "professional" photography, even though you can take those kind of photos without a tripod.

I found Irving's grave and took a pic. Rain kept getting on my lens, so some of my pics have a blur in parts.

Then we went to that restaurant with the long wait and had dinner. It's really about the ambience. The food's decent but nothing to write home about.

On to the magic show--turns out it's in the building next to where the awesome Horseman's Haunt was when we went years ago, which they don't do anymore. The magic show was...okay. I paid $89 for "premium" seats...which were the exact same seats as the people behind me, but $35 more per ticket.

It was mildly amusing, and my kid got called for one part of it but it was pretty easy to figure how the tricks were done. If tickets had been like $30, would have been worth it.

Then headed to the extreme haunt. Again, bit of a disappointment. Wasn't that long, and certainly wasn't that scary or extreme. They scared my kid a little bit, but it totally wasn't worth the $60 a ticket. I bought the wife a hooded sweatshirt that was cooler than the actual attraction.

Tried for the 2nd time to get a slurpee at the local 7-11, but the machine was out again.

Back to the hotel--we decided to put Dark Harvest on, since I had it with me. Very stylish, with some cool shots, but some of the changes from the book are really bad choices. I probably would have liked it more if I hadn't read it.

Saturday, rainy in the morning but it cleared up pretty fast. We headed to the last show I'd gotten tickets for, a cirque show with a Hollow theme. It was pretty cool--we all enjoyed that. Then the block party was going on, so we stopped at that but it was insanely packed. 

The town was infested with people. We drove past the SH sign and there was like a line of 20 families waiting for pictures. There was a book sale--I ducked in fast and found like 4 book, but could have spent time there if I was alone.

We took off around 5:30 and got home at like 9pm. Tired.

Halloween is coming too fast, once again...

 

 

Funny Funny

 

So, went to the last Monstermania at Hunt Valley last weekend. Been going to that hotel for literally 30 years for conventions--comic, Star Trek, horror, nostalgia cons, etc.

I'll get into that in another post. The reason for this post is to gloat a bit.

Remember my dickhead neighbor? The one who constantly inconveniences me? The one who's turning his house into a hotel.

I'd filed a permit violation with the county cuz it was clear he hadn't filed for any permits when he dug up his backyard and installed sewer lines and then created this guest house--this is the pic I uploaded to the county. Note how I didn't even try to hide where I took it from. (I told him to his face I was going to call the county, and he said, "OK"...so fuck him.)

You can see the "shed" as he calls it--it's the actual guest house BEHIND the shed in this picture. It was fully built. Had a big foundation that came up about 3 feet off the ground. I think he only had to do some interior stuff to it.

Anyway, the county had sent someone out, but they couldn't see much because of the privacy fence the guy had put in--very loudly at 8am over the course of 4 days, hence my last straw with him.

The county posted that they put some 30-day tickler on his property, which I'm not sure what it is. Hadn't heard anything in a while, but suddenly for the last couple of days there's been a lot of banging and stuff going on over there. 

Wasn't sure what it was, since I can't see past the privacy fence. But I had some sticks on my roof that I had to get off, so I got up there and got a great look. It looks like this now:

Oh how this makes me laugh. He apparently had to tear down the entire building in that corner and start over. I now see on the permit site that he's applied for a permit to build a "shed", which we all know isn't a shed.

I'm going to look into what that permit entails, and if he's allowed to build sheds to be living quarters. If not, another complaint. Fuck this guy. He had the chance to just be a fucking decent neighbor, and he basically told me to go fuck myself.

Well, here I am fucking myself, but my dick is long and it's gonna be in your asshole too, pal.

 

 

 

 

How It Went

 

Sooooooo, you might be wondering how the first shoot I've done in 6 years went.

I'm here to tell you. Pretty so so.

My #1 problem is something completely new to me. I was having a hard time getting focus on anything. I'm usually a focus beast. I shot a lot of T2 on a lens that was wide open at 1.2, so the depth of field was MI-NUTE.

But I have a new wide angle lens, and it is SO HARD to figure out if it's focused or not. I almost HAVE to have the monitor hooked up. But that makes balancing the gimbal that much harder.

The OTHER weird thing is that I was having a hard time seeing my LCD screen on the camera--usually I look over my glasses and I can see good for about 2 feet.(the camera is too close to focus on with my glasses) But now it still seemed blurry.

So trying to rack focus was super difficult. The camera wasn't being too helpful on the focus-assist--probably because it was so dark. 

Then the dogs didn't cooperate very well. We might have gotten what we need, as I'd anticipated that and had workaround shots. 

The gimbal: Went out the window. I tried the first shot, but it was really hard to pull focus on this Sony lens. Could maybe have tried the autofocus, but have never trusted those that much. Then if you want to change lenses, you have to rebalance the whole thing.

I didn't have time for that, so we just gave it up, shot it T1/T2 style. Didn't want to, but whatever.

I know I have some pickup shots to do but I think we wrapped Chris. A couple of cutaways of the dogs, and then the final shot that I only need my brother for.

But it's pretty clear that I'll never have this done for Halloween. Not a chance.

I'm starting to assemble a rough cut now. Will figure out if we've got anything decent.

 

 

 

Shoot Tonight

 

Once more, back into the breach!

 

Don't know what it's gonna look like or whether it'll suck big time. Who knows? But hopefully it will be a little fun, and interesting to work on something super short. Can I get it done by Halloween though? Feels super iffy.

 

Been watching movies with the kid and wife(when available). We watched The Frighteners followed by Demon Knight. Couple days later hit a new movie called Totally Killer(not bad, but plot holes you could drive a freight train through) and then the remake of Dawn of the Dead.

 

Have a lot more on tap. We did the first two Halloweens last year, so we'll do part 3 and 4 at some point. I've already prepped him that part 3 has no Michael Myers, and unlike all of us from the 80's, he doesn't give a shit.

 

The book keeps losing and regaining #1 place. We hit #1 in horror anthologies and fiction anthologies. We started having a BESTSELLER tag on the book, which is very cool.

 

Anyway that's all for now--gotta go finish getting my equipment together.

 

 

 

Forgot about the weekend

 

I forgot to talk about last weekend--but first, let me tell you about the hell that was yesterday.

Had to go to the dentist so they could prep the crown for where I just had root canal surgery. I've had this done before, but yesterday it took 3 FUCKING HOURS. I have no idea why.

I had plans to go to the doctor afterwards because my finger is infected as hell. It's turning dark green on the fingernail and swelling up so I look like ET. Don't believe me?

Here's what it looks like:

That pic was last night and it's even bigger today. But I'd only put in that I'd be gone for like 2 hours--had to come back home, extend the thing, and went to the walk-in doc.

Guy gave me an antibiotic but said if it gets worse, come right back in and they'd probably lance it.

It's making typing and playing video games very difficult.

---

There was a local "convention" near me this past weekend. Figured I'd go by Sunday, since we were helping move Zig's stuff into a storage unit. We finished that early though, so I headed over Saturday.

I have convention in quotes because unlike most, it wasn't in a hotel. There was no nightlife, just the convention in what used to be an ice hockey building.

Didn't seem too busy. Not dead, but considering how much advertising I saw for it, not that busy.

Hung out with the Malf a bit. Saw some other friends, and forgot to take a single picture. So I went back Sunday and got some pics this time. Here they are:

This author asked me if I was MYNAME and I said yes. He said he'd submitted to the anthology, and had gotten the nicest rejection letter he's ever gotten, from me. Felt bad, but he seemed very cool. I didn't remember his story offhand, but I read over 400 stories...

That's Ken on the right--I've known him for like 25 years--he's an actor, and a fun guy.

No idea who this guy is above.

The director of the Drone Collector segment from Ttory. He's got a Santa Claus beard now so I didn't recognize him at first.

The weirdest part of this whole thing was the lady who owns the bookstore that sponsored Malf at this event. She's like, "You're Kevin, right?" I say yes. She says my last name. I say yes.

She says, "You probably don't remember me, but I went to the premiere of HH way back when." Then she told me she used to live in the area. She remembered going to my comic store to pick up tickets, and some other details. 

Talk about small world.

 

 

Mission Accomplished

 

Well...that's a relief. We hit #1!

Wasn't sure we were gonna do it--there's this one book that's been #1 for a while because it has the word King in it, and it's in the font of Stephen King, but it's NOT a Stephen King book. Talk about fucking sad.

But apparently we did it. I never saw it--I looked last night and we were #7, then when I got up we were #3 so I guess sometime in there it went to #1.

On top of that, three reviews came in and two of them named my story as one of their favorites. Cherry on top!

So to sum it up, I've hit every major goal for this: #1 Create a great book that I'M happy with #2 Create a great book that other people enjoy #3 Get to #1 status on the charts

The last goal is to make my money back, but that's not as big a deal. I'm sure I will eventually, one way or the other. I can see other Halloween books reappearing on the top list every October, so I imagine I'll see recurring sales year after year.

----

So now I turn to trying to shoot this short. Lot of tiny logistical things, but it shouldn't be too hard. Will it turn out good? No idea. But that's the good news; if it sucks, nobody ever sees it. (or I throw it on Youtube as just a fun little nothing)

Gotta get to the Halloween watching though--haven't watched any horror movies yet and we're already three days in!