Joshua P. Simon's Blog, page 17

The Carol Burnett Show

There have been a lot of infommercials lately for DVD collections of the Carol Burnett Show. I’ve actually stopped the channel flipping to watch them as it brought back memories of enjoying the reruns with my mom when my sister and I were kids.

This in turn led to me and Leah to watching clips on YouTube.

The Elephant Story is probably one of the most famous skits. As hilarious as the original story is, the outtakes here are even better.


Here are a couple more:

Anything with “Mrs Wiggins” is gold.


The Dentist

Music Monday - Spiritual Beggars - On Fire

Such a great underrated band. Hard rock at its best.

Killing Time


Street Fighting Saviors


Dance of the Dragon King

Master of the Flying Guillotine

Growing up, I used to watch a lot of movies on WGN each Saturday. For a while, this included martial arts movies of the 1970s. By today’s standards they probably will be silly to most people, but I loved them. In fact, as a child of the 80s I was fascinated by them.

One of those movies that still stands out the most to me is Master of the Flying Guillotine. It has quite a few awesome moments including the ending fight scene below where the master battles the One Arm Boxer.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip of the master walking as I remember loving the deep rhythmic music that sounded with each step (very creepy).

Man, I wish they’d replay these movies again.



As a fun fact, the flying guillotine is actually based on a real weapon used at one time. It wasn’t thrown but rather dropped from a tree on people passing by. And yes, it did decapitate them.

Music Monday - The Winery Dogs

I was late in getting this album, but since I bought it a few weeks agao, the album has been in constant rotation. Great musicianship was expected considering the band members. However, these guys sound like they’ve been playing for years. Great cohesiveness. Great hard rock feel. Strong emotion evoked.

One of my fav albums this year.

Time Machine


The Dying

My Top Ten Favorite Comedies

Below are my top ten favorite comedies. This was harder than I thought it would be to do, especially ranking the bottom half of the ten as many of these movies hold sentimental value and would probably move up and down the list based on which one I’ve seen most recently.

10. This is Spinal Tap


9. Wayne’s World


8. Ghostbusters


7. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy


6. The Three Amigos


5. Dumb and Dumber


4. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me


3. Airplane


Johnny has all the best lines in this movie full of great lines….

2. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation


1. The Princess Bride


Honorable Mentions: I could easily list a dozen here but decided to go with my 11th and 12th spots which would have been Blazing Saddles and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

So, which ones did I miss?

Music Monday - LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out

Sorry, a day late since I was busy at work yesterday.

I saw an article about Mike Tyson the other day and this song randomly popped into my head. It’s amazing how well it actually holds up. Great flow. Though I don’t really listen to a lot of rap anymore, I did quite a bit in the early to mid 90s.

This is definitely a classic.

STEEL AND SORROW is now available as an audiobook!

Steel and Sorrow: Book Two of the Blood and Tears Trilogy is now available as an audiobook through the following outlets!!


You should be able to listen to a small sample at each location.

If all goes according to plan, Trial and Glory: Book Three of the Blood and Tears Trilogy should be released later this year.

As I’ve mentioned before with my previous releases, please leave a review at the place of purchase and spread the word to others. The best form of advertising for authors is through word of mouth and reviews act in this same way.

Thanks!

Music Monday - Hole

So, let’s do three weeks in a row of 90s bands that have women fronting them. If they’re good, why not?

I know Hole gets a bad rap, but that first album still holds up well. (I guess that makes sense if the rumors are true about Cobain ghostwriting it. Ha.) Anyway, here are a few of my favs from the album.

Violet


Doll Parts


Miss World

Writing Update

It’s been a few months since I’ve done a writing update so here we go . . . .

1. Audio books
a. Steel and Sorrow was completed a couple weeks ago. Now, I’m just waiting for ACX.com to approve the files and upload to Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. Hopefully, that should happen sometime in the next month or so. Keep checking here for the official release date.
b. Trial and Glory is currently in production. I’m hoping for it to go live before the end of the year.

2. Short Stories
a. I had planned to do a couple of these this year, but I don’t see that happening right now. I actually did start a couple short stories earlier this year (a couple thousand words on each). However, I lost interest and moved on to the two series below. I guess my heart just isn’t into writing shorter fiction at the moment.

3. Rondel and Andrasta series
a. Book 1 is done and will be going to beta-readers this weekend. It’s around 84K words and is a sword and sorcery adventure story.
b. Book 2 has been started. I’ve written about 16k words on the rough draft. I hope to have it completed and off to beta-readers by the end of the year.
c. I also hope to start Book 3 by the end of the year.
d. My plan is to make these mostly stand alone adventure stories with Rondel and Andrasta visiting various parts of the world for each book. I have quite a few story ideas right now. My goal is to keep the books between 80-100K words which will allow me to write them at a quicker pace.

4. Tyrus series
a. Book 1 is done and has gone through a couple of edits. It’s currently around 80K words.
b. Book 2 has been started. I’ve written about 45K words on the rough draft.
c. Although I love the series so far, it will probably be a while before any of it is released. Since it’s told in first person POV, I feel like I want all four books written (or at least the first three done) before I release Book 1 in order to make sure the series is paced well.
i. That being said, it will probably take me a while to finish the series because I’ve decided to work on these books intermittently between the Rondel and Andrasta series.
ii. The general premise of the Tyrus series is that a great ten-year war has ended and some of the soldiers are finally returning home. The world has changed drastically from what they remember and each has to find their place in it.

Considering the above, it is very likely that other than the audio books for the Blood and Tears series, I probably won’t be releasing any new material this year.

Conversely, I’ll probably end up releasing 3-5 books next year to make up for that. So, that’s definitely something to look forward to . . . .

Music Monday - L7

Last week’s trip back to the 90s was Veruca Salt. This week is L7.

I opted not to include my favorite song by them since there’s some vulgarity in it (included in the title). Instead, I went with probably their biggest hit. Very underrated band.

Pretend that We’re Dead