New Shoot: "The Night We Didn't Read Myra Breckenridge"

Once again, my body has taken it upon itself to remind me that I’m not as young as I used to be. All because I had the audacity to shoot a short movie. Lousy body.

A quick little “prequel” to Demon Divas has been in the works since our first screening of the feature at Cinema Wasteland. While the movie went over better than we’d hoped, the majority of the audience really responded to the Book Club characters played by Gwendolyn, Stacy Bartlebaugh-Gmys and, especially, Bill Homan as the bizarre and flamboyant Max. Knowing that we wanted to do a few things to round out the inevitable DVD, we started kicking around ideas for a companion film. Things gelled for me, storywise, with a visit to Scarehouse in Etna.

As we’ve long espoused, Scarehouse is an awesome haunted attraction outside of Pittsburgh. I’ve championed this haunt for years, not just because the owners, Scott and Barb and Wayne Simmons are good friends of ours, but because it’s just quite simply an awesome and elaborately-put together experience. One room in particular caught my imagination: a library being slowly demolished by some Elder God—tentacles bursting through the book shelves and a giant mechanized eye peering through a gaping hole in the wall. I love this room. By the time we finished our trip through the rest of the haunt, I had a skeleton of a story in mind.

Obviously, I don’t want to give too much away… so I won’t. Suffice to say we designed a script that could be shot in a maximum of two days, in two locations, with a minimum of characters and crew. It would be a down-to-the-basics shoot—short, quick and funny. What made this movie different for us is that it would be the first time we’d shoot a sequel/prequel with characters we’d used before. We’ve done little Necro-Phil promos, of course, and I’ve done continuations of things in different mediums (the upcoming Severe Injuries follow-up graphic novel, for instance), but I saw this is a new little challenge to see if we could reproduce some of the magic from Demon Divas in a new setting. Albeit goofy and way more over-the-top.

The Simmonses were already onboard and would provide anything we needed, including a trio of really talented make-up artists (Chris, Dejah and Dale), and since their pre-production prior to the Halloween season lasts pretty much from February to September, they’d be at the site anyway, so long as we didn’t mind a little hammering and sawing while we worked. Since that was something we’d gotten used to while shooting Splatter Movie at the Hundred Acres Manor, we were completely in our element. We’ve also gotten pretty good at ADR over the years, so even if that proved to be a necessity (and it did) it wouldn’t be a problem.

The short, under the working title of “The Night We Didn’t Read Myra Breckenridge”, really harkened back to our salad days—bringing our friends together for a quick shoot in exchange for gas money and doughnuts, after weeks of emails trying to nail down a day when six people would actually be available at the same time (with varying time-limitations), everyone chipping in to wear multiple hats as cast and crew, and making-it-up-as-you-go style of filming utilizing the limitations of the environment to our advantage.

The main drawback came on Monday, however, when I failed to reach Tonerwoods’ Jason Thompson in time to utilize him as DP. Selfish bastard decided to take a paying job instead! So I was more or less on my own as my own DP and camera. Now, as I’ve whined ad nauseum, I’ve studied cinematography, I know the principals of good lighting, I even have a decent lighting kit, I just hate doing it. There’s no joy comparable to having a lighting crew at your disposal to make everything pretty. My lighting style can be summed up by “enough light to get an exposure, preferably with proper shadows”. But, fortunately, I wasn’t alone. In addition to Gwen, Stacy (but not Gwen Stacy) and Bill, Amy was doing her usual acting and producing and crewing, Michael Varrati and Mike and Carolyn Haushalter were all available to make the requisite magic.

Another drawback, however, was shooting HD to P2 cards. I am not an expert at this. In fact, the only other times I’ve worked with this type of technology were when shooting other Demon Divas inserts. In those cases, I was dealing with seconds-long inserts, and nothing of real length or involvement. When the Diggerfilms hommes shot DD for us, they had two cameras and card-readers at their disposal. There was no loss of productivity during footage capture. I had only our HVX, a laptop and hard drive. So every fifteen minutes’ worth of footage required a real-time dump accompanied by panic. I had redundancies in place—after transferring, I burned the shots to DVD as a back-up, in case the hard drive decided to fail on the way home, but it was still nerve wracking to the extreme. As Bill and I discussed, even back in our film days, if a roll got damaged or came back out of focus, at least we still had it. The damaged reel still existed. A failed hard drive after a wiped card eliminates all proof that we did anything at all. And since I seem to be an enemy of all technology, these possibilities weighed heavily on my mind throughout.

On the happiness side, though, we had awesome sets to run amok on (even with the added joy of trying to find the hidden outlets to tie into with lights), outstanding make-up effects and cool-as-hell mechanical coolness providing coolitude. The coolness level was upped even higher due to the presence of our star, courtesy of Tom Sullivan and Pat Reese, one of the original Evil Dead Necronomicons (which should give you a hint of the plot).

But the nice thing was the feeling that we were back to the basics, doing something for fun. It’s been more than a year since we shot anything substantial and since we have a big project a ‘brewin’ for the fall, it was essential to get back into practice, particularly as the new project will have to be professionally structured and regimented. This short was loose and collaborative—everyone tossed out ideas, making the scenes the best they could be under the restraints we had (space for people, lights, choreography—everything had to be done right then on the spot).

This required forcing my body into odd positions to get the best angles. Rolling on the floor, using the Bill-built steadicam when possible, balancing, crouching, using my back to boom and tilt. By the end of the shoot, I wanted to curl up and die but my spine wouldn’t allow it. But we finished on schedule and the footage really does look terrific. As much as I hate production, it was definitely a satisfying experience.

We have one short day of pick-ups ahead of us to shoot Bill’s character’s wrap-around, but once that’s done, the Demon Divas project will be complete and the official DVD will likely see a release at October’s Cinema Wasteland. By then, we’ll hopefully be neck-deep in the next feature and starting forward on Happy Cloud Pictures’ second thirteen years. 

 Photo by Carolyn Haushalter

I Think, Therefore I Am...I think...

I’m a professional writer. I know this because I fill out a tax return every year and say good-bye to a large chunk of my hard-earned pay wrested from the hands of publishers and producers. I’ve been a more-or-less pro writer for a little under fifteen years and I’ve written for multiple mediums including screen, radio, print and web. For “fun” I also write this here blog (and this here blog). Recently, it was brought to my attention that bloggers are not “real writers”. To which I say, with my trademark perspicacity, “Huh?”

Now, I’m not a big fan of the word “blog”. It’s not because it’s a portmanteau word—I love those, particularly at brillig, when the slithy toves gyre and gimble in the wabe—but because it’s kind of an ugly little thing. Short for “web log”, it was shortened by mankind’s need to abbreviate things. To me, “blog” always seemed too close a relative to “blob” and “bog”, both shapeless mires in which nouns (persons, places and things) get sucked into and trapped. So out of sheer pretentiousness, I usually refer to these here blogs as “columns”. Because that’s what we used to aspire to back in the days when we were still “print journalists”, back in the days when there was still print. My journalistic heroes were many but my top favorite was Harlan Ellison, simply because he insisted on filling his columns with whatever he wanted to write. Harlan did that because his interests and opinions were many. I wanted to do that because I’m lazy and easily distracted. But I digress… Oh, and I like to digress.

So I’ve always treated this “blog” as a full-fledged legitimate “column” for which I am not paid therefore must adhere to no restrictions. This is the freedom all writers yearn for. If only there was some money attached…

But as an acolyte of the written word, I tend to read as many web articles as print. If it’s well put together and thought out and the letters are placed in the correct order to form sentences describing something I’m interested in, I’ll read it. I’m a little more anal than others of my demographic—I’ll spell-check texts and email before sending; I use full words in my Tweets (another word I don’t particularly care for)—but I’m not a media snob. Print, web, film, video—whatever. The message is what’s important.

So imagine my surprise when I was informed, by no less than a dozen sources within a single fortnight, that “bloggers” were not real writers, and should therefore be ignored.

Granted, there is no shortage of semi- to sub- to il-literate “blogs” out there, that read as if written by many monkeys short of an infinity, typing with their elbows, but you had that in the print days too. Ever try to slog through US magazine? There have been full issues printed without vowels, for Chrissakes! What makes a blogger less of a writer than a print author? Is it all about money? I know a goodly number of web writers who are paid for their work. Are they “real” writers because of the paycheck? What if they’re subliterate lesser primates but still land some dough from indiscriminate employers? Still valid because of the dollar sign and decimal?

Which is not to say that I haven’t ranted and raved and flapped my arms about how subliterates stormed the web with the intensity of the Normandy Invasion and devalued the written word. That those willing to write for free have shoved us “professionals” aside and unless you were already Neil Gaiman when the tide came in you’re out of luck because the “talent gap” has narrowed to the width of an unbent staple and the battle cry of agents has become “Not Accepting New Clients At This Time Unless You’re Stephanie Meyer”.  Or Dan Brown (oh how I long to secure a position to pick fleas from their prose).

But the jealous and/or frustrated howling aside, what makes a print writer “real” and a web writer “not real” ? And does that mean they’re actually imaginary? In which case, can I get my job at Cinefantastique back? Obviously, talent was removed from the equation long before Harold Robbins hit the best-seller lists, long before Ain’t It Cool News was launched, so what are the qualifications? I’m still a “professional writer”, but the majority of my writing is done for either non-paying publications, websites or, even more often, my own gratification. But if so much of my work appears here, in “blog” form, does that devalue my status? And, if not, why not? What yardstick are we using here? The late Daniel Robert Epstein ran his own blog and conducted high-water mark interviews for Suicide Girls.com, a site that was popularized by women wearing only tattoos and facial jewelry. So was he not a real writer because of the blog? Was he a real writer because of the interviews? Or does it really not friggin’ matter?

I think I’ll continue to smugly judge people by the quality of their work. Crap is crap, whether it’s virtual or print. The reverse is true too. If you care enough about your work to ensure it’s worth reading, then, I think, that’s what makes you a “real writer”.

I return you now to your “real” life.

Return from the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Convention

Last weekend, Amy and I made the seemingly endless trek to the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Convention in Nashville. We were accompanied two-thirds of the way by a vicious storm testing our windshield wipers to their very limits. The second we crossed into Tennessee, however, the sun took up residence in our backseat and remained there until we arrived at our hotel. The next day, a tornado touched down, swept away some visiting whiny Kansas farm girls and left the hotel without lights for a little more than hour. Not letting little things like threats to life and limb deter them, horror fans flocked from far and near to join the festivities and hobnob with the likes of Bill Moseley, Debbie Rochon, Bill Johnson, Caroline Williams, Ari Lehman and, from Repo! The Genetic Opera, the Graverobber himself, Terence Zdunich, who doesn’t care how you pronounce his name provided you’re friendly.

Except for a secluded show called ConCarolinas, this was the deepest south we’d been as guests at a convention, thanks to the support and lovely human beingness of Ben and Stacy Dixon. While horror and tattoos are universal ice breakers, I have to admit that the majority of stand-up comedians have it right: there is a difference between the Yankees and Confederates.

I’m not talking about the obvious stereotypes like self-proclaimed rednecks or white supremacists because, frankly, you’ll run into those no matter where you go. We live within spitting distance of West Virginia and from our porch you can hear the banjos. Sure, there was the guy walking around with a t-shirt emblazoned with the Pillsbury Doughboy in Nazi gear proclaiming “White Flour”, and I complimented him for the adorable racism. And there was the charming fellow who liked everything Clive Barker did, “But I heard he was gay, so I don’t know about him any more.” And the three shaved-headed gentlemen who asked me, very discreetly, if Splatter Movie had any of them “colored actors” in it. To which I responded, “No sir. Splatter Movie contains 30% fewer blacks than any other movie.” Which must not have been a high enough percentage because they left the movie sitting where it was, untouched and unloved.

No, I’m referring to the fact that, as a majority, the people who visited this show were by and large the nicest con attendees I’d ever encountered. Mayhap there’s a sarcasm shortage in the South, or maybe manners come free with tanks of gas, but I’ve never been to a show where I was called “Sir” so often I started to wonder if I’d acquired some sort of clandestine knighthood. Little kids, old people, that mishegoss of age range in between—all of them “Sir”’ed me up and down for three full days. Amy got “Miss” and “Ma’am” a lot (I only got a couple of “Ma’am”’s). People held doors for us poor emburdened vendors and guests. And even the mouth-breathing morlocks that infest every convention seemed to have their clue-free crassness under control. The nearest we got to insults (aside from the good-natured ones from George, the vendor of hockey masks next to us) was from an awkward guy who told us flat out he wouldn’t buy one of our movies because “I ain’t never heard of ‘em. They’re not from Hollywood, huh? Those always look better.” So for the first time in my long career as a merchandise-warmer, I did not have to cheerfully order a single attendee to “get the fuck away from my table”. It was a nice change of pace.

It’s still not the best economic climate to do too many shows in a year, of course. I heard a goodly number of folk complaining about varying states of unemployment and there wasn’t too much money to go around (particularly not after one certain guest’s price-gouging for autographs), which was a common complaint among the vendors. Because of the timeframes required by the tattoo artists, Full Moon is a marathon show as well—11am to 11pm on Saturday, for instance, that left most of us bug-eyed and twitchy by the day’s end—so there’s more time to kill painfully and bloodily than the average convention. But if the folks weren’t buying, they were at least talking.

Sure, we got a couple of plants here or there, yammering away about Freddy vs. Jason in the same tone-of-voice you’d discuss fiduciary dividends, until you’re ready to pepper-spray them and call for security. But for the most part we were visited by nice people who shared similar interests and wanted to pass the time by sharing thoughts and feelings about gore and horror.

Among the topics discussed:

Remakes. As inevitable as inexact change and body-odor, the remake argument was debated by more than its share of folks on either end of the spectrum including, for the first time in my recent memory, a couple of older guys (as in “close to my age”) who are actually for the darned things. I’m used to hearing the Generation Shrug crowd extolling the virtues of the new Texas Chain Saw movies over the original ones, claiming they cannot connect to any movie made prior to their recent birthdate, but very few old timers ever come down on the ‘Pro’ side of remakes or sequels. There were a number of hardcore guys who were simply beside themselves with glee over the impending release of the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie and had valid arguments for wanting to see it, slickness aside. They wanted to see the story updated, they wanted Freddy’s origin and new CGI-enhanced make-up. “The stories should be updated,” one told me. “They’re our society’s fairy tales. Everything gets adapted for the new generations. Otherwise, I guess, we’d just be running in place.”

My own feeling about remakes has been well-documented in these very virtual pages. Basically, it falls into the categories of “There’s nothing I can do about it” and “I’ve got better things to worry about”. I bristle as much as the next guy over the latest reboot or reimagining announcement, but since nobody asked my opinion in the first place, and it’ll happen with or without my approval, I’ve opted to conserve my frustration for matters of more importance. Like:

Whether or not Repo! The Genetic Opera is “good” or not. Again, another subjective argument stemming from an incredibly polarizing movie. On one side, you have the die-hard and will-die-for-it cult fans and on the other the virulent haters-of-all-things-Repo. I don’t run into too many people who are merely “meh” on the subject. Like religion and politics, each camp is sincere in its stance on the film. Of course, I unabashedly adore the film and not just because I know a couple of people in the cast. I think it’s a well-made gothic musical with a sick sense of humor and some terrific performances, not to mention a catchy soundtrack. And for every reason that I enjoy it, there is a cadre of people who hold to the opposite opinion. Except some of these opinions are simply wrong, at least in the way that they’re stated. For instance, the one person who declared that, “No one in the movie can sing!”

“Not even one of the virtuoso sopranos in the world?” Amy countered, citing Sarah Brightman, “Or the musical stage stars like Anthony Head?”

Finally, the critic conceded his point but insisted that the movie was an “interesting failure”. And to that judgment, he’s perfectly entitled. If you don’t think it works, or it’s boring, or confusing, or sloppy, or whatever, that’s all valid. But to declare a sweeping opinion as fact, that’s where the gloves seem to come off. Personally, I think it’s a literate and intelligent melding of rock opera, music hall and grand guignol, but what the hell do I know? I can’t even pronounce Terence No-Good-Nik’s name correctly. But we did buy his comic book (The Molting, which turned out to be quite good).

Getting placed in an “overflow ballroom” has its advantages. Like the rest of the folk in the “overflow” vendor’s room, Amy and I joined the party late. Booked as guests a mere month before the show began, we were placed not in the main guest and vendor ballroom but in one down the hall on the opposite side of the movie and panel rooms. It took some maneuvering and huckstering to alert attendees that the room existed, but Ben and his staff (thanks, Mark!) made sure people knew we were there. Plus, we were much, much closer to the bar. Which only mattered on Sunday when signs went up around the hotel notifying everyone that “personal outside alcohol is not permitted”. Having finished a bottle of home-bought rum and half a box of wine, all we could say in our defense was, “Oops.”

A naturally-growing herb, outlawed by the alcohol, tobacco and lumber industries, had a miraculate medicinal effect on my back. I don’t have much more to add to this except, c’mon fellas—legalize and tax the shit out of marijuana! Even after the high wore off, my back felt fine for hours! Let the pharmaceutical companies turn it into a pill if that will make everyone happy.

There can never be enough zombies in the world. As make-up guy Chris Pezzano and his sidekick Pixie demonstrated, people who dress like zombies are performance artists and endurance athletes. He stayed in that get-up long after the point of sanity, to the point where he wound up with chemical burns on several patches of skin. Dedicated to the dead!

Caroline Williams liked Europa’s Cry. I don’t have anything else to really expound on this but it was really nice to hear. Oh, and Bill Johnson said such nice things to me at one point, I almost cried. Almost. Manly tears. Again, that’s all I have to really say about either experience. These horror people are good friends.

Blackouts at conventions are neat. Having experienced the infamous Cinema Wasteland Blackout of 2006, I’ve become a fan of such occurrences. While there was a modicum of tornado panic as the lights started to flicker before extinguishing altogether, there was a strange energy present in the room when we were thrust into the dim glow of laptop screens and emergency overheads. It was a shared experience we could all tell our grandchildren. And I’m proud to announce that, despite lasting for 72 minutes, the blackout did not cause any of us to go instantly feral or cannibal.

It takes less time to go from PA to Tennessee than it does to return. I’m not sure if there was some sort of time-space distortion or if someone deliberately picked up Pennsylvania and moved it further away during our absence but even with the time-difference, it still took us longer to get back home than it did to get there.

So, should next year come around and we’re not all living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, wearing animal fur and fighting rabid weasels for scraps of carrion (which is apparently what is going to happen during our first year of “Obamacare”), I would recommend that everyone within shouting distance make your way down to next year’s Full Moon show, get a tattoo, get liquored up to dull the pain, and then spend your last bit of money on something gory and independent, be that DVDs, artwork or free drinks for hard-working horror folks. We also accept checks or medicinal herbology. Oh, and pharmaceuticals. No livestock, please.

 

Italian Horror Grindhouse Double Feature - from fps Films and The Hollywood Theater, Pgh, PA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

On Friday, April 23rd, 2010, fps Films and the infamous Hollywood Theatre located in Dormont, PA, are presenting a Grindhouse Double Feature. The films will be presented with a Short Subject and a reel of vintage Horror Movie Trailers. Everything in the program will be projected on 35mm film! No digital projection on this program. It will be a full evening's entertainment for the incredible price of $6! Tickets will only be sold at the door on the night of the show.

The first film of the Grindhouse Double Feature is REVENGE OF THE DEAD (1983). The title is misleading since it's not a traditional Zombie movie—it's actually a retitle of Pupi Avati's ZEDER. Instead of shuffling brain dead flesh eaters, this film takes a science fiction approach to the resurrection of the dead and it's horrific consequences. To quote the Italian Film Review overview on Facebook:

"In short, Zeder is a little bit Pet Sematary with some Argento-style pseudo-science and a conspiracy that rivals that of Short Night Of Glass Dolls."

The second feature is near-legendary: Dario Argento's masterpiece, DEEP RED (1975). The print we're playing has the screen-title THE HATCHET MURDERS but it is the one and only DEEP RED. Not much else to be said about DEEP RED, but if you're one of those people who haven't heard of it or seen it (for shame!), it's a taut, stylish murder mystery starring David Hemmings (BLOW UP, BARBARELLA, GLADIATOR) and Daria Nicolodi (SUSPIRIA, OPERA) that will absolutely keep you guessing until the very end!

These films are regarded by Italian Giallo (murder mystery) aficionados as two of the finest examples of the genre (and a secret Gabrielle Lavia Double Feature!!!).

It all starts at 10:00pm at The Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA (On Potomac Avenue, just south of Pittsburgh; a few miles from the Liberty Tubes on Rt. 19). Vomit Bags will be provided for anyone who can't take the HORROR (or if you need to put your popcorn in something)! The Hollywood Theater is a BYOB theater, so feel free to bring the beverage of your choice.

Come one, come all! It's an experience you won't want to miss!

Want more encouragement? Check out the fps Films Grindhouse trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s71DeATAr6A

Post-Wasteland Summations (as much as I can recollect)

Another wonderful Cinema Wasteland has come and gone and, as usual, I feel like Spring has finally arrived. Of course, the temperature plummeted from 80 degrees down to around freezing, bringing with it snow flurries, hail, frogs, locust, the usual lake-effect results. But did that deter any of us? Nay! Nay, I say!

By Sunday, all of us suffering from two-day hangovers were greeted early in the near-noon by the great big flaming ball of death we like to call The Sun (which is a mass of incandescent gas…), searing our blood-shot retinas and revealing to the world that those of us who hadn’t woken up in the same clothes had gotten dressed with the assistance of animated… not birds, the other things—boll weevils.

My personal highlight of the weekend was the surreal moment when mysterious bagpipers arrived and paraded through the bar. Nobody knew where these brave souls came from nor, later, where they went. Nor if they were indeed playing “Amazing Grace” or “Camptown Races”, NOR did it matter! Fortunately, my drunken shriek—“Oh, no! Terrible monsters are attacking those little old ladies!”—went unheard. No bagpipes were harmed during the making of that merriment.

Moments prior to the pipers and a mere half-hour before Jill of LixOnline asurped a corridor for some impromptu hula-hooping, there was some ill-advised inebriated rounds of Twister, wherein many a spectator learned that “Left Foot Red” and “barely-there thong” did not go, so to speak, hand in hand. The less said about the deafening echo the better, but a lightening storm of camera flashes lit up the lobby.

In the “I must be beloved or else I’d be pummel’d” Department, I twice discovered the nippy nature of the weather adverse to my liking, leading me to steal jackets right from the backs of exterior smokers—one person I knew, the other person I knew not. While I brought “borrowed” jackets right back upon my return from my car, I was met with only bemusement. That’s typical of the love amongst the Wastelanders.

My important lesson learned: never laugh while inhaling medicinal medication. It holds up the circle and yields much pointing and mocking. And you risk burning your fingers as you attempt to pass. Also, for future reference, it is ill-advised, after meeting 42nd Street Pete’s daughters, to refer to them directly as “The Spawn of Pete”. Neither of them appreciates it.

Amy and I participated in two film projects—a Canadian-helmed mockumentary starring Rachelle Williams and a non-mocking documentary about Chris Seaver’s Low Budget Pictures oeuvre. As a reward for our participation in the latter, we were given screener copies of two of the newest LBP productions, Deathbone and the oddly touching Geek War, both of which were written, performed and edited by Seaver and company in the car on the way to the show. Six more were filmed in the elevator prior to their screening of I Spit Chew On Your Grave.

All attempts for Michael Varrati, Amy and I to speak only in exposition were thwarted by the demons rum, vodka and “Shut the fuck up!”

The ever-ubiquitous Troma booth was oddly subdued, possibly due to the absence of your Uncle and Mine, Lloyd Kaufman. He was greatly, greatly missed by fans and friends and acquaintances alike. I myself missed being accused of homosexual activity any time I attempted to pass by. And I mean that with all of my heart.

Attention Tom Savini, we have your grandson. In case you were wondering.

To all bootleggers: while I neither condone nor condemn your behavior (not officially, anyway), the MPAA is not a law enforcement organization. If someone comes to your table brandishing an “MPAA Badge” and “confiscates” some of your product, it’s a scam. Please feel free to accompany them outside with your largest neighbors and reduce them to pavement stains. (Legally, I neither condone nor condemn physical violence. Assholery, on the other hand, is not something of which I am a fan unless I am the perpetrator. And even I have more class than that.) If they identify themselves as F.B.I. and their credentials look legitimate, I offer my congratulations for stimulating the economy in such a way that the big boys have taken notice—Kudos!

For Happy Cloud Pictures, it was a banner event, for we unveiled the 10^th Anniversary DVD of a little thing we like to call The Resurrection Game, along with the companion Dead Life Graphic Novel and annotated screenplay / scrapbook. Records show that we gave away more DVDs than we actually sold but that’s primarily due to the fact that nearly everyone in attendance had something to do with this release in one way or another. The included documentary features many faces familiar to the Wasteland family, including Mario Dominick (“Films on the Fringe”), Michael Felsher (Red Shirt Pictures), Art Ettinger (Ultra Violent Magazine) and the immortal 42^nd Street Pete. (If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you’re the only one. And don’t you feel foolish?)

Mucho thanks extended to Ken and Pam Kish and all the Wasteland staff and family. The wait for October will be an eternity!

Even Manic-Depressive C'Thulu loves CINEMA WASTELAND! 

Snow fun at all

Like many folks across the grand Eastern part of the country, we’ve been buried beneath a metric fuckton of snow. Because of the magnitude of the storm, life down here, particularly in Waynesburg, has descended into martial law. In normal winter conditions, people act like it’s never snowed before, so they drive like blind moles in the midst of grand mal seizures and stock up on perishables. They did that too this time around, but early Friday, before the storm hit, and only because the Super Bowl was pending.

Friday afternoon, the snow came. All of it. At once. Twenty-six inches of snow landed on us like a confused and plummeting sperm whale. Or, perhaps, like God’s white, angry vengeance. It left Pennsylvania paralyzed. Pittsburgh’s poor mayor, Little Lord Ravenstahl, was left stranded at his ski lodge and had to run the city from there. And about as well as he would have had he been in the city anyway.

Then power went out across the state. In our area alone, some eight-point-three billion people were left without heat, water, power, phone, transportation—everything short of gravity. Amy and I were stranded at my parents’ place from Friday to Sunday so we had all the heat and power and water we could stand. But sixty miles away were our four terrified dogs and three ambivalent cats that needed us (in the first case) and were curious about our absence (in the latter case). So finally, Sunday, we braved the highways and headed towards home.

Stopping off for supplies in Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club was a lot like how I imagine the world will be just days into the Mad Max cataclysm. All that neighborly charity we heard about on the news was absent in the capitalistic Meccas. I watched a guy fill his shopping cart with about a dozen snow shovels. Another bought all the D-cell batteries he could find. Neither of these things stood out as too unreasonable—until I heard on the radio about the man who was arrested for buying every gasoline-powered generator from a Home Depot and opening his own black market across the road, selling said machines at double the price he paid. I can only assume the generators were impounded as evidence, though, as none of them made it back to the stores. At one Lowes we stopped in, there were people sleeping on the shelves, waiting for new stock to arrive.

Before we left the familial homestead, we watched a lot of local news. One usually mild-mannered reporter stated that “it’s a good thing that groundhog went back into his hole, or there’d be people lining up to punch him in the mouth!” Which served as a reminder to all that burrowing rodents control the weather. Personally, I felt sorry for all the correspondents slowly freezing to death in the cold as they warned people to stay indoors. I was waiting for the inevitable meltdown—worse than the call for ground hog lynchings—like: “Wanna know what it’s doing out here, Ted? It’s fucking snowing! Do you know where my testicles are right now? Just beneath my ribs, you son of a bitch! Come get me!”

We fought our way down barely-touched roads. PennDot had been, allegedly, working all night to clear the “major arteries”, but because of “the people who stubbornly remained on the roads”, their work was impeded. Thus we passed many an over-turned and plowed-in vehicle on the road sides and medians. Upon finally reaching Waynesburg, we saw downed powerlines everywhere, phone poles snapped in half by the weight of the winter wonderfuck, branches in the road and trees—! Oh, the miserable trees, bowed over, snapped in twain and thrain! Four-ain, in some cases! I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember trees being such pussies when I was a kid. But there they were, surrendering to the white and cutting out all our great and wonderful wire-bound technology.

Along our route, as we inched along a buried state road, a little old man in a red Carola refused to move out of the center of the road and ran an oncoming Jeep aground. And then kept on going! Fortunately, the Waynesburgians are a hearty lot, most of whom who own trucks built primarily for terraforming planets, and were able to tow some of the lost souls from the slush.

Our house was, of course, without power. Or the rest of the amenities you take so much for granted. It was two degrees warmer inside than out; our dogs were traumatized, needing intensive therapy amounting to running around three times and forgetting why they were so mad. The cats didn’t move—not that they were frozen but because they were only vaguely interested as to why we were back. The road from our house, which has been described by friends as “The Borgo Pass Minus the Green Flame” ala Dracula, was impassable. Our phone was out so we had no way of telling anyone we were alive.

Watching our breath mist in the air, then freeze, crack and sift to the floor, we set about making the place habitable. First, we threw on every warm piece of clothing we had, just to the point where we both resembled Randy from A Christmas Story, dragged the mattress from the guest room and set up camp in front of our kitchen gas heater. The blue flame jetting from the wall was off set by the orange flicker of every candle in the house, lit and arranged around the sink. It took some trial and error to rid our four square feet of chill. One problem was known—whoever built our house failed to insulate the outside kitchen wall from the rest of the world, so there was a cold breeze coming in from under the sink. Blankets were hung. Couch cushions were utilized. So was swearing.

Fortunately, I’d bought the national debt’s worth in new books so we had plenty to read by the eye-killing dimness of the candles. Of course, our contacts had frosted over by this point, so it was off to sleep by quarter-to-eight on Sunday.

The rest of the week was no better. Phone calls to Allegheny Power yielded only a recording that said, “We’re working on it. Leave us alone.” Fighting our way like hearty pioneers into town, we took refuge at Stryker’s, the restaurant Amy more or less manages, and stocked up on heat and light. Once there, we called PennDot twice about our road. Amy was polite—“We have a lot of older people here on the hill and they can’t get to the warming center if the road remains in the condition it’s in.”

I wasn’t—“Look, if you don’t plow Bluff Ridge Road, someone is going to die!”

By the next day, plows had come. And buried everyone’s car again.

Allegheny Power’s website, designed more than likely by a one-armed six-year-old, stated that all electricity should be restored to the county by no later than Friday. Come Wednesday morning, that had been updated to “Thursday at 11:59 PM”…i.e. Friday.

Venturing to another Wal-Mart in the hopes of finding something battery-powered (a heater, a toothbrush, a guided missile, whatever…), I got to watch a man throw the tantrum of his life. Upon being told they were sold out of something (I’m still not sure what he was looking for; perhaps his dignity), he swiped the contents of an end cap to the floor. So I opted to browse in Ladies’ Lingerie (the department, wiseguys) until he went away. Since I’d been using our car battery to keep our cell phones charged (on the off chance they could be used for starting fires via some app we hadn’t yet encountered), I decided to top off our gas. I went to three different gas stations around town, each time encountering that neighborhood’s version of The Humongous and his gang of brigands. People cut each other off to get to a pump, they screamed, they cursed, punches were thrown. And these weren’t even stations in danger of running low!

So “community” had devolved into “every man for himself” within hours of the white stuff’s arrival. And silly me, I thought better of the human race. In fact, one of the news sound-bites I saw repeated at least three times on Saturday was a man-on-the-street-in-his-car who told the microphone in his face, “This is a natural disaster. Where the hell is Haiti helping us?”

As of today, we’re still without power or heat or water. We do have phone service, so we can call people who have these amenities and live vicariously through them. But we remain in the dark and marvel at how dependent we’ve become on technology. Even our generation, which witnessed the birth of the internet while we were in our late teens, have somehow gotten umbilically attached to the electric teat. But at least we’re inside. We have some semblance of heat and, therefore, civility.

Otherwise, we too might be gnawing on the bones of our own savagery like those out there. Just seeing what happens to people when it snows makes me shiver at the thought of what will happen when the zombies finally do come. We won’t last ten minutes.

Happy Cloud Pictures celebrates 13 years.

Screw You, 2009!

As we prepare to send 2009 back to the wretched depths of hell from whence it came, let's take a minute to put things into perspective.

As far as years go, 2009 was one long Trail of Tears for many of us. BUT, and this is an important conjunction, if you're reading this, you got through it. Maybe you picked up a few scars or lost a few limbs, but you're alive. In a Nietschean, Darwinian way, you survived. So in another twelve-plus hours, when we're watching that giant testicle descend toward the remains of Dick Clark and whatever the heck Ryan Seacrest is, let's take a deep breath just before "2!" and exhale a giant puff of relief at "1!"

And from all of us at Random Acts of Mike Watt and Movie Outlaw--okay, basically me--here's to a much, much better 2010.

Regarding EUROPA'S CRY...AN ANGEL'S TALE

As I may have mentioned ad nauseum, there’s a new book out on the market that I had a hand in. Europa’s Cry…An Angel’s Tale was a project brought to me by award-winning artist Michael Apice and I consider it to be one of the best things I’ve ever written.

I met Michael at the 2004 Pittsburgh Comicon. Like most of the big time artists I know, I was introduced to him by stunt-woman and model Jasi Lanier, who was working with the likes of Joe Jusko, Dave Nestler and Jeff Pittarelli at the time. Michael and his colleague, Romik Safarian, were a couple of good-natured Long Islanders with contagious accents and sick senses of humor. They were both putting on art demonstrations throughout the weekend and I got to watch, over a period of a few hours, Mike airbrush this gorgeous painting of an angel. As he and Jasi talked, he mentioned that he was looking for a writer to work on this very personal story he wanted to tell. He’d been through four or five different guys and while they were all talented, they weren’t interested in the story he wanted to tell. They kept wanting to take it into different directions, away from his concept. “One guy wanted to turn it into a cyberpunk story,” he said. “And that wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

So Jasi grabbed me and dragged me over to his booth. At this point, both Amy and I were used to this behavior from Jasi. She’s a match-maker at heart. So many of the contacts we have in the industry directly resulted from Jasi intervention. Michael and I talked and continued to talk for the rest of the weekend. The story he wanted to tell was the story of an angel sent to Earth by God to “minister to the sick”—i.e., people fallen so far from the path to Heaven that this angel, Europa, was literally their last hope. “Not the people on Touched by an Angel, who are basically good but lost their way. I mean the people Jesus searched out—lepers, murderers, thieves, the ones who are basically damned already but can still be saved.”

At first I wasn’t initially interested. If you read my stuff regularly, you already know I consider myself a “Recovering Catholic” and an agnostic teetering on the brink of atheism. Sometimes that happens when you grow up in one faith and start studying others. Mike, however, was a hard-core, to-the-soul Christian.

But the story intrigued me because it wasn’t specifically a Christian story. Yes, he had the central conceit of angels and Archangels, God and Jesus, but at the heart, the Europa story was one of redemption—not only of human beings but for Europa herself. Like all great speculative stories, Europa, being not of this world, would be the perfect mirror for humanity. When I told Michael I wasn’t interested in writing bible stories for adults, he didn’t even bat an eye but basically repeated back to me the above. The idea wasn’t to make this preachy or even religious. The stories should be about faith, in a higher being and in our fellow men. Why are we here and what are we supposed to do? The core of all fiction, really. And through these ideas I realized I had a way to explore the nature of my own tentative faith.

I’m fairly well-versed in the bible and have studied bits of kabalistic gospels, not to mention The Divine Comedy (as both a literal and satirical poem), Milton’s Paradise Lost, a smattering of Geoffrey of Monmouth and a whole lot of Gaiman’s Sandman. Other things, too, started to swirl around in my head as I turned the story around. So much could be drawn from to enrich these stories so as to speak to readers of any faith. As long as you believe in the central conceit—“God” sent “an angel” to us in modern times—but stayed away from proselytizing as much as possible, we really could have something very, very special on our hands.

Through our conversations, and a few phone calls over the next few days, I had a basic idea of what he wanted and banged out a first draft in a couple of days. We decided to go for broke with the first story—Europa’s initial mission would be to try and save a pedophile.

Which meant I would have to get into the head of a type of person I found abhorrent on a personal level and try to understand him psychologically and emotionally. I couldn’t make him an abject villain, a hand-rubbing Fagin lurking in the shadows of an elementary school. How the hell would a reader relate to him then? Who would care if he were doomed to hell or not. The people I’ve met through the years who were pedophiles, you’d never know it by talking to them. That’s the primary terror as pedophiles don’t go around with flashing signs over their heads indicating that’s what they are. They carry this secret, horrible shame under a veil of intense rationalization and cognitive dissonance. If I could get the audience to sympathize with this character, even a little, then we might have a chance with this proposed series.

Even though the story and writing came easily, I worked harder on Europa’s Cry than I had on anything previous. Because it was something that I felt could be very important. If not to readers than at least to Michael and me. Thankfully, Michael provided me with a character through which I could express my own opinions (as Europa operates very much in his voice) in the form of the devil in female form: Patience. Using Patience as her own personal advocate, I could introduce moral dilemmas without having to worry about the prose turning evangelical. And though we have the angels referring to God as “the Father”, we’re going to address the nature of God as well in subsequent stories. And what’s so amazing is that Michael Apice is allowing me the license to do this, to work out my own issues at the same time as following his storyline and utilizing his faith as the backbone.

What we both hope to achieve with this series, should it catch on (and even if it doesn’t), is help people understand that it’s okay to question. It’s okay to feel doubts, and it’s okay to find solace, in your faith, whatever it may be. Especially if, like me, you’re not 100% sure what you believe in. Because ultimately, the Europa stories, as we have them tentatively mapped out, really asks what we, as individuals and as a culture, believe to be right and wrong. Was God wrong to give mankind souls and Free Will, as Patience believes, because we aren’t worthy? Are we worthy of this gift? That was the foundation of the first war in Heaven—it was fought over our existence. Did the winning side really win?

It took a long time to get Europa’s Cry from concept to page. Because that it’s neither fish nor foul—not strictly Christian but not strictly anything else—we opted to put it out ourselves and it took a while before technology caught up to our desires. It wasn’t until recently that print-on-demand was affordable, manageable or even reputable. Now it’s no different than self-distributing your own movies. All the hard work is on our shoulders but, of course, it always was.

I’m looking forward to doing more of these and I hope everyone who reads the first story finds something of value in it. We’ve already had one person tell us that it’s “offensive” to Christians, even though a Christian was the motivating force behind it. To which we replied, “If your faith can be shaken by one piece of fiction, maybe it wasn’t that strong to begin with.”

I still haven’t figured out what I ‘believe’ to any concrete degree, and I wished I saw things more through Europa’s eyes, with her unyielding devotion to “the Father”. Unfortunately, I tend to see the world more from Patience’s point of view. Hopefully, that can change the more I write.

If nothing else, Europa’s Cry  is worth picking up solely for the six pieces of Michael’s artwork. If you do decide to pick it up, it’s a quick read at 40 pages. Right now it’s available through Amazon and through our personal sites, mike-watt.net and michaelapice.com. If you order through us, we’ll likely even sign it for you (I know I will). But feedback is what I’m most interested in. I want to know what you think.

Seasons Greetings to One and All!

And here's to a much, much better 2010!

Mike Watt and Amy Lynn Best

Conversations for Parties

What’s the opposite of “going green”? I want to do that. I want to stuff polar bears into Hummers and leave the air conditioning on for them. And the radio. If I had a crop duster, I would sky-write this blog every day with the biggest words I knew. And I would sign each entry “Agamemnon Zithertopolis, Master of Pro-Antidisestablishmentarianism”. Then I would add, “A Go-Go.”

Alas, I’ve already lowered my carbon footprint by not mowing my lawn all summer. I did this not because of political conscience but because of broken tractor. To counterbalance this act of eco-friendly emission-elimination, I haven’t turned off a light since mid-July.

“But don’t you believe in climate change??”

Of course I do. I also understand how the Earth works. It’s been warming and cooling since, well, the dawn of atmosphere. I think it’s a little egotistical to think that we’ve had that much of an impact.

“But…but…we’re killing the Earth!”

No, actually, we’re not. We could create cities out of landfills but all we’ll be doing is ruining the Earth for us. The Earth will be fine. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if all this climate changing is the Earth’s equivalent of trying to rid a virus by inducing a fever, in other words: us. We’re the sickness and the Earth may be trying to sweat us out.

Don’t believe me? Haven’t seen WALL*E? Go visit a vacant lot. Now look down. See the cracks in the asphalt? What’s growing up through them?

Yep, the Earth is going to be fine.

“You’re evil!”

Probably. Like all right-thinking people, being a cynic is a hobby of mine. Sometimes I’m cynical out of sheer frustration with the general population and sometimes I adopt this stance just to amuse myself.

I was at dinner once with some friends and a new acquaintance that insisted that she was a member of PETa, despite wearing leather. She also swore she was something called an “ova-vegetarian”. She liked a good egg every now and then. Whatever. All animals should be protected. I turned to a buddy and said, “You know what’s fun? Taking baby seals and banging them together like chalkboard erasers.”

She demanded that everyone at the table not smoke because this area was “officially” the non-smoking table. Even though we were in the smoking section of the bar (back when such sections existed). We all responded by lighting up. And only three of the dozen of us actually smoked.

Then she got her teeth into other topics. “There wouldn’t be as much violence in the world if we had stricter gun control! We’re such a violent society. Shooting each other, having abortions! Abortions! No one should be allowed to have an abortion. Or a gun!”

“I own a gun,” I said.

“What do you need a gun for?” she demanded.

“Drive-by abortions.”

I recommend that the hard-core cynical of you in desperate need of amusement try to work the above phrase into casual dinner conversation as often as possible. However, please be sure you know CPR.

“You’re going to Hell!”

Yes, but if climate change is indeed happening as drastically as they claim, Hell will probably be more than a few degrees cooler by the time I get there. Besides, I know for a fact that Satan thinks I’m amusing. Maybe he’ll cut me some slack.

My place in the food chain

Friends and family have long marveled at what they call my “picky eating habits”. I don’t look at my habits as picky any more than I consider their eating habits to be “haphazard”. We all like different things, right? That’s why “Baconaise” was invented.

For instance, I don’t care much for salad. Or, really, vegetables of any kind. I consider eating plants to be unnatural. Animals eat plants and I eat animals. Basically, I’m cutting out the middleman.

But really it’s a moral issue with me. I really can’t condone the way salad is killed. Ripped apart with the bare hands? Barbaric.

I’m really not hip to anything that isn’t an animal by-product. There are some vegetables I’ll eat—corn, peas, cooked carrots—but only because they go perfectly with roast. There are other vegetables I avoid because of the texture. I’m not a fan of the “surprise crunch” that you get while shoveling, say, an omelet into your mouth and getting the unpleasant grit of a green pepper bit or an onion. I order my cheeseburgers without salad toppings like lettuce or tomato for that very reason: cheeseburgers are not crunchy and should not be. I get a crunchy cheeseburger I prefer to think that it’s either burnt or still contains an amount of hoof. The lettuce and tomato just add ambiguity.

Salads, to me, look like large bowls of lawn clippings. I don’t eat those either.

Now, admitting this to people, an odd question usually asked of me is “do you hunt?” Maybe that’s a reasonable question—people who dig salads often do their own gardening. But no, I don’t hunt. In fact, during hunting season, our land is notorious for harboring deer. There have been some seasons where the higher grass of my land undulates like a storm-tossed ocean from all the deer lurking within.

And when interrogated about my not hunting, I offer this simple explanation: I am a modern man. I take advantage of supermarket technology. I like that I can buy a lump of meat, wrapped in cellophane attached to Styrofoam, take it home and eat said meat lump without having to go through the bother of gutting, deboning and de-cute-ing.

If you are a hunter, and you eat what you hunt, bravo. But if you’re simply hunting for sport, wouldn’t you be better off going after something that can fight back? Like a transient or a Mormon? Unless the deer wear armor, I don’t see much sport in it. Of course, judging from some of the people in my area, staring wistfully at my deer-choked property, perhaps the allure of hunting boils down to freezing your ass off in a tree in the hopes that something soft and fuzzy wanders by with a target on its head.

Which brings me to my final reason of not hunting, directly relating to supermarket technology. Years before I was born, man also invented indoor technology, complete with forced heat, blankets and satellite TV. When I’m hungry, I can go into my kitchen, open the box where cold is stored, take out a de-cuted lump of meat, fry it up on my heat-generating box, and eat it without worrying about a kamikaze crunch or a pair of big brown eyes staring up at me begging me not to kill it.

No, it’s not the sort of philosophy that religions are based on, but it’s a fair summation of why I’m not invited to dinner too often.

Someone is spying on me...

It’s nice to know that people read me every once in a while. A few years ago, I wrote in this very blog that there are only two constants of the human race: 1.) All women are crazy; 2.) All men are stupid.


These two tenets are fun conversation starters at parties. But no one I know has every disagreed with me.

Now, I just read that ABC has a new sitcom in the works called Women Are Crazy, Men Are Stupid. Reeling from the unfairness of this—no check at all, ABC?—I read further to learn that there’s a book with this title by Howard Morris and Jenny Lee (Full title: “Women Are Crazy, Men Are Stupid: The Simple Truth to a Complicated Relationship”), published this past September.

Which led to further outrage! My God—a conspiracy to keep this white man down! I feel like Billy Blaze in Night Shift—“Wash ‘n drys. I had the idea for those. I ever tell you that? I invented them! Except they already had ‘em.”

Needless to say, I’ll be boycotting this show until Morris, Lee or someone from ABC formally apologizes to me and offers at least a loaf of fresh baked bread as means of making amends.

Review: I SELL THE DEAD (2009)

[Note: until Blogger gets around to restoring HEY, DID YOU EVER SEE THE MOVIE...?, deleted by their robots for "spamming" after I fulfilled their desire that I "monetize" my blog, this review will reside here.]

Irish director Glenn McQuaid’s feature film wants you to know that, despite evidence put forth in movies like The Body Snatcher and The Doctor and the Devils, grave robbing is actually a merry way to make a living. Sure, it’s unpleasant and distasteful to the law, the church and to public opinion in general, but you can make great friends and have smashing adventures!

McQuaid’s tongue-in-cheek horror comedy drops us into the middle of a prison where professional ghoul Willie Grimes (the outstanding Larry Fessenden) has just had his head separated from his body by the guillotine’s blade. His partner, Arthur (Dominic Monaghan, holding his own amidst very colorful character actors), makes his last confession to the hulking but pleasant Father Duffy (Ron Perlman). He reveals how he apprenticed to Grimes under the employ of the blackmailing anatomist Dr. Quint (Angus Scrimm!), and the life he and Willie led as two of the best body snatchers of their time. When things don’t go as planned—such as when a corpse turns out to be a vampire, or the body of a circus freak is revealed to be a dead alien—they somehow manage to turn things to their advantage, whether it’s to get out from under the bad Doctor or to get one over on the vicious Murphy Gang. Occasionally, grave-robbing leads to love (or, at least, opportunity), but more often than not seems to be way more trouble than its worth. Which is how the poor rapscallions found themselves in the gaol awaiting the big chop.

There are no words to adequately describe just how much fun I Sell the Dead is. The script is solid, the performances are all perfect and the direction is right on with camerawork and editing just this side of Evil Dead lunacy without ever feeling forced or derivative. While Monaghan is the hero, Fessenden is the star. However you feel about his own movies (like the deliberate Wendigo or simply slow Habit), Fessenden’s performance will likely go down as a favorite of the horror lover once I Sell the Dead receives its deserved wide-release. Like a genre Cassevettes, Fessenden throws himself into everything he undertakes and his own love of the material shines through to the very end. 

Which isn’t to give a short shrift to the supporting actors. Scrimm and Perlman are, it almost goes without saying, tip top and having the time of their lives. As the Murphy gang, John Speredakos is a gleefully murderous Cornelius (so rotten his drug of choice is the powdered bones of the dead!), Alisdair Stewart is a cartoonishly menacing dog-toothed Bulger, and Heather Bullock memorable in her small role as the disfigured Valentine—whose visage is so horrifying that, once revealed, even a zombie screams. The mixing of genres never feels forced, either. In fact, with all of this taking place in Arthur’s narration, the story takes sharp left turns not into parodic comedy but in classic tall tales and Munchausean epics. Zombies and aliens are not out of place in this graveyard yarn, but merely the odd spice in the familiar but still intriguing stew.

Though I Sell the Dead was produced on a limited budget through Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix, it never looks cheap. Attention was paid to period detail, both in costume and dialogue, but not at the expense of the mischief. 

I Sell the Dead saw a very limited theatrical release in late 2009 but has been picked up by IFC and Anchor Bay for DVD and On Demand. There’s even a comic book tie-in available through Image, but it falls short of the magic of the movie. Once it’s more widely available, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not seeking it out. 

I Officially Welcome Me Back

A few weeks ago, I received an email from someone I’d never heard of, asking specific questions about me. Normally, this would be in the form of a survey or a message from a deposed Nigerian, but this time around, it was from a reader I didn’t know I had.

“I know you’ve put out a couple of books this year and are working on a couple of film projects,” my reader asked (and asked me to withhold his name should I choose to discuss this—more on that later), “but I honestly miss your blog. I used to look forward to it, even though, by your own admission, it was ‘infrequntly updated’ [sic—but I believe an honest typo]. Do you have plans to return to it because I really did enjoy reading it.”

To which I responded, predictably, “So you’re the one.”

Glancing over the entries this past year, I was astonished at how little I had written for Random Acts. As my reader pointed out, I was focusing on other things, including a collection of articles, including many of these very blog entries, called The Incomplete Works of Mike Watt Vol. 1 (with an introduction by legendary bassist Mike Watt—now available for order through Amazon or mike-watt.net…ahem…), so I could easily make the excuse that I was avoiding blogging until the collection was out in order to avoid feeling compelled to jam more recent entries into the lovingly-sloppy mix. But the truth is, like so many of us, 2009 kicked my ass.

I won’t go into a blow-by-blow recount of the tragedy stack—I’m in the mood for neither sympathy or a pissing contest as I know for a fact everyone had their own garbage shower this year—but in a nutshell, emotionally, physically, financially and spiritually, 2009 was the biggest metaphysical crotch-kick I’ve ever gone through. Both Amy and I and many, many family members and friends experienced soul-crushing hardships and set backs through this, the cruelest of years in recent memory. None of us, praise be to whomever, wound up dead or ill or homeless, but that’s because I think 2009 wasn’t trying to kill us, just leave us metaphorically maimed and close to death. All in all, 2009 was a loyal adherent to Nietzschean philosophy, though dammit, I don’t feel much stronger after this year-long staring contest with the abyss. I certainly don’t feel like an Uber-anything, that’s for sure.

But, as my father succinctly put it at Thanksgiving, he and my mother having gone through the wringer themselves this year, while it’s no comfort to say ‘it could have been a lot worse’, we all came out the other side alive and intact.

We may have lost friends, but there are many others who stayed. Life got hard, but we still had blessings to count. The Big White ‘X’ stalked us throughout the year, but it didn’t always find us. The falling piano didn’t always crush us.

Which isn’t to say that I didn’t find myself so desperate for better karma that I turned to witchcraft and shamanistic advice. I sent missives out to multiple deities during numerous moon phases just to make sure I covered all bases. If you think it’s silly to ask both Jesus and Jupiter for help, then you had a better year than I.

So while I sit here, as usual, trying to keep my head down and just survive the remaining two or so weeks left in 2009, I understand, too, that a “better” year has as much to do with attitude as it does luck or karma or curses. I know all too well that 2010 won’t be better if I don’t believe it will. My mindset is directly linked to my destiny. If I allow the events of 2009 to keep me flattened, then I’ll simply slip under 2010’s door like an unwanted Chinese Restaurant menu, rather than stride boldly—or, better yet, kick it in—and announce, “Hey, 2010, you fucker! I’m here!” Though, on second thought, maybe it would be best to knock politely, preferably with a year-warming gift, and greet it cordially, rather than call it out as soon as the Times Square ball drops.

Still and all, rather than wait and see how 2010 is going to treat us, I’m already planning to make the best of things. 2010 marks the 13^th Anniversary of Happy Cloud Pictures and we already have several things in the works to celebrate that including the 10^th Anniversary Special Edition DVD of The Resurrection Game, complete with never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage and testimonials from all sorts of lovely people who feel that it’s well worth your time. Res Game will have a number of neat tie-ins as well, including updated editions of The Dead Life comic book and a long-awaited updated novelization which will also include the sequel story, After Strange Flesh.

This is not to mention official releases of Demon Divas and other super-cool things. New merchandise to part you from your money, that sort of thing. So whether or not 2010 co-operates or not, you’ll see more than enough of us in the future.

In closing this first-in-a-long-time blog, we’d like to thank everyone who has stood by us this past horrific year and especially those of you who supported us and our work these past 13 years.

Which brings me back to my unknown reader. When I told him how much his message meant to me, and asked if I could publish it in whole or in part, he agreed but, again, asked that his name be kept private. And I understand his reasoning behind it, but I still have a cynical grin on my face as I think about it. He was so passionate and encouraging, but doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.

I like to think that he’s less concerned with privacy and more worried anyone finds out he’s a fan of mine. I like a good sense of shame in a devoted reader. It creates the impression that I’m somehow a guilty and forbidden pleasure, like masturbating in a staff meeting. You shouldn’t do it, but dammit, it feels too good not to!