Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 18

FULL BLEED: ALTERNATE ANTEDILUVIAN EXPLANATIONS - 2

Awoke Friday, and remembered that I forgot a big chunk of what happened Thursday morning that I didn't include in a blog post that I'd write five days later.Okay, not really, but I forgot to mention that I did stop into Dark Delicacies the first day I was in town. I'd never been, to my shame, and wasn't disappointed. It's a great bookstore even if you don't really like straight-up horror but are into esoterica. Grabbed a two-volume private press survey of UFO photography, dated 1986. That's the good stuff, so far as I'm concerned. I like to put X-FILES as a hard demarcation (though there are some post-X-FILES documentaries that weren't a waste of my time). Honestly, anything UFO that takes place before absorbing the awful lessons of Cooper's BEHOLD A PALE HORSE is likely to get my interest. Unfortunately, that book has become the ur-document of UFOlogy, at least where it wanders over into popular culture, and it did Q way before they saw an opportunity to make some money off the Current Situation. But some grifts are really old, right? Actually placed a copy of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS there, and maybe that'll lead to more orders.Right. Back to Friday.Awoke and immediately saw the rising sunlight coming through the blinds in the front room and catching some sunflowers on the table so I of course raced over to grab some pictures. Okay, maybe I just stared at it for awhile because my brain wasn't yet processing anything and my head was pounding because I'd walked around a lot of LA yesterday and hadn't been drinking water and yeah, that happens. I wish it had been from wild consumption of margaritas with dinner, but no, simple dehydration. Yay. Breakfast and a lot of water and coffee. Coffee counts as hydration. Don't tell me different.Grabbed a friend from his place in Burbank and hit the road to Wonder-Con. Listened to a lot of old metal on XM, since the car decided to stop recognizing my iPod. Bright, sunny, beautiful morning. I forgot how great those were in Southern California. Realtalk: coastal Southern California is cloudy or overcast way more than it's sunny. I know, BAYWATCH taught you different. I'm telling you, BAYWATCH fucking lies. Trust me. I'm an actual person. So, yeah, great tunes, great company, great weather, so even being stuck in traffic on the 5 south can be okay. And here, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You can't tell anyone else or it'll get ruined. But if you're going to the Anaheim Convention Center for Wonder-Con, you've got a couple options when you park. 1 - try the Convention Center, which fills up very quickly. 2 - Go to the overflow parking out at the hockey stadium, which is exposed and hot and a fifteen minute shuttle ride while you stand out there in the sun and wait for the next shuttle - don't do this. 3 - Turn down Harbor Boulevard from Katella and park at Garden Center. You pay some money, sure. But it's a short walk and basically hassle-free. So thanks to my buddy for pointing that out. Now don't tell your friends this or everyone will be doing it and then nobody can do it again.Wonder-Con itself is a big and well-run show. This isn't a surprise, since it's now the sister show to the San Diego Comic Con. The big kahuna, the bad mammajamma, ground zero, the show to end all shows. The funny thing is that it's a smaller show now than Emerald City Comic Con, where I was, what, two weeks before? March has been a blur, I tell you. Three shows over four weekends (and I know some maniacs who went to C2E2 the week after ECCC). But, the fact is that it's a smaller show, both in floor space and raw numbers (unless they were hiding folks in the equivalent of SDCC's Hall H). This isn't a complaint, but an observation. As for the show itself, I don't know how much I've got to say. I mostly did rounds on the floor, said hello to folks like Tom Neely (he and his partner are working on the next chapter of THE HUMANS, titled "The Jungle" and I'm looking forward to that, you should too.) I also spent some time looking over artist's alley and seeing if there were folks who might be good to work with in the future. See, I've got a new idea that I'm in love with and it really needs the right artist as it has some odd requirements and POVs that aren't usual to comics. Unfortunately, a lot of what I found, and I mean a lot, were people selling prints of other people's work. Hey, I know everyone has to make a living and bringing your own material to a market that doesn't want anything new is hard. Ask me how much I spent making comics some time. Ask me how much time I have to spend convincing folks to look at a book called QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS. I know it's tough. It's still irritating to see that being a major sector of artist's alley at comic shows. It's one thing to have say, your webcomic or unique character prints and a few commissions or some fan art off to the side. It's another to have three walls of other people's characters and your straight-up redrawing of them. Blah blah blah, whine whine whine, shut up, dude, don't tip over the apple cart. Whatever. Honestly, though, I wanna see new stuff, not someone's redrawn old stuff.And the new stuff is out there, just gotta hunt for it some. But that's harder than standing in a line for Scott Snyder (which I saw a lot of people doing and more power to 'em.) Shout out to Nicholas Burman (who does sorta witchy sorta metal work) and Cryomera, who are both doing their own thing, tucked way away back in a corner of one of the less-traversed halls. I know. it sucks to be that far away from things, but you gotta keep soldiering on.Looked at a lot of overpriced Godzilla merchandise. Didn't buy any of it. Didn't really do any panels. Just looked at original art which is now so fantastically expensive that I can barely afford to do even that anymore. Oh, I did make one big find, that being a copy of Ron Cobb's COLOR VISION from 1980 or 1981, from the Stuart Ng booth. Cobb, if you don't know, was a cartoonist and designer (having done design work on movies like DUNE, ALIEN and STAR WARS, among many others) and I've been snapping up books of his work when I can find them. This has been on the list for awhile. Easily the most expensive thing I laid money down for (though I did think about the $2000 radio control Godzilla toy. Okay, not really. But still, I bet it's really cool.) Grabbed a few other oddities as well. Those'll be catalogued in a future post.Judging the quality of the show? Hard to do. These things have changed a fair bit since I started going to them. That said, they're still worth the time and effort, but a lot of that is seeing the people face to face. Well that and rummaging through grubby dollar bins for oddities that'll never get collected ever in anyone's lifetime.There's other stuff that happened at the show that I can't really talk about now. (Cagey!) But I hope to have an update in the near future.Left the para-paradise of Anaheim for a sunset drive back to the very familiar hunting grounds of Costa Mesa, where I lived for awhile after regularly haunting it as a kid since my dad worked at the LA TIMES there. It was easy to slip into a frame of mind where things were back then, the light, the atmosphere, cruising steadily over highways that I'd driven a thousand times before. Dinner with longtime friends and crashing out early because that's how I roll. Admit it, you're envious.

FULL BLEED: ALTERNATE ANTEDILUVIAN EXPLANATIONS - 1

You shouldn't look too hard at the titles. Sometimes they're just for fun.Spent last week and the beginning of this one down in LA, primarily to attend Wonder Con over a couple of days. That'll have its own little section on the off chance that other comics blogs/sites link back to this and ahahahahahahaha. Yeah, that hasn't happened in a long time.Landed in OC and as I passed through the baggage claim area, got hit with a "Welcome to Orange County" tape loop that for all the world sounded just like the "Adventure and excitement await you in the off-world colonies" slogans from BLADE RUNNER. But we're in 2019 now, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Orange County, at least Anaheim, are for all intents and purposes the off-world colonies, set up for the pleasure of travelers but unlivable in and of themselves. That and THEY LIVE ended up being a documentary, only juiced up with aliens when the fact is it's us, only us, man.Pleasantly surprised to see that my rental got upgraded to a Dodge Charger, even if it was that abysmal putty gray enamel finish. All these flat enamel weak-color finishes just need to disappear. At least when you got it in the fifties, they'd pair gray with salmon or some crazy stuff like that. Now we just get color blobs. Finish aside, the car was a dream for driving around LA in. Power when you wanted it, solid sound and climate control, which yes, you need even in March when the sun decides to come out and the Valley flips to mid eighties on the turn of a dime. Okay, so I spent a ton on gas money. Vacation, or at least a working vacation. Treat yourself. Self-care. Whatever else we're supposed to say to make ourselves feel better about the questionable choices we kick over.Spent Thursday at Tommy's (for breakfast and I don't want to hear any 'eew's from the audience -- you bought the ticket, you ride the ride.) Then drove up from OC to Glendale to the Museum of Neon Art for what has become basically an annual trek for me. Though I'll admit that this year, there was a lot more kinetic and non-neon modern art, or contemporary pieces that integrate neon into the works, but not the most amazing stuff I'd seen there. The vintage pieces out, including the fully-restored dragon from Grauman's Chinese and the Dr. Kilzum extermination sign, however, were worth the price of admission. Had a chat with the docent about the animated neon ban in the city and how the Felix Chevrolet sign, while restored nicely, is not a neon sign and lost a little magic for it.Glendale itself is really weird. I guess it always has been, but even more so. The downtown is ersatz, with a shopping district built up around the Americana building and apartments that feels like it's ripping money out of your wallet just looking at it. I park there for convenience, but always regret it later. The further you get away from that, the more it feels comfortable, like it's got a history beyond the last five years or so, blank spots filled in some. Drove over to Pasadena on the recommendation of a friend to check out Book Alley, which was worth the trip. Great selection of used titles in all subjects, including prints and restoration studio. I put back way more than I left with, and still left with an entire box. Clearly I require more stringent adult supervision.Tagged along on a trip to a prop auction held by a virtual/immersion theatre show and wondered about the weird micro-economies and media production ecologies that spring up around them. Seemed tenuous, but then maybe everything is like that when you start poking around the roots. Got to enjoy sitting in traffic on the 110 both north and south because, well, it's the 110 and that's just how it is. Watched a giant truck trying to enter the freeway from a dead stop at the mouth of the Arroyo Seco Freeway and was surprised to see that there wasn't that side on the way back. I don't know how that thing could possibly have gotten on with traffic screaming down at seventy miles per and no sight lines to speak of. But it's not a thing that can be redone now. Too entrenched.Over to Sierra Madre to crash with one of my friends all the way back from college in nineteen-DATE REDACTED. Let's just say that I've known him longer than I've not known him. Sierra Madre is great because it feels a lot like old California, only not paved over with all the new stuff just yet. Not as wealthy as Old Pasadena, either. Accessible by the Gold Line to downtown. Seemed like a pretty ideal compromise of quiet in the foothills and part of LA just the same. Could I retire there? You bet. Could I afford it? Maybe if I sell a few kidneys. Walked over to a great Mexican dinner, not far from shooting sites for INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Talked with said friend about the various crazy music scenes in China that he'd run across. Dig this. These kids? They didn't grow up on streaming. They grew up on the cast-off CDs of western music companies dumping them overseas for what amounts to recycling prices. Folks didn't care what they were getting as long as it was something new. Genre didn't really matter. I kinda want to go and give it a listen for myself. Shot some neon after the sun went down. Headed back to his place for an impromptu reunion of The Roswell Incident. I'm rusty. Not gonna lie. But I kinda want to be not rusty now. Just need to figure out how to fit that into my schedule. Even got to play my old Moog Opus 3, which I'd sold to him a few years back. Playing electricity sounds great. It's not the most versatile synthesizer, but what it does, it does very very well.Crashed out and I was not restless the entire night, which is unusual for me.Next up - Friday and Wonder-Con. Coming later.

FULL BLEED: IF I EXIST NOT HERE, THEN WHERE?

I know. I owe you some of that free hashtag relatable content. Didn't put up the collection of last week's interesting links. But hey, you're getting this for free, right?I mean free in that all it costs you is time and mental energy. And if you've been Extremely Online for any length of time, you know that it takes a damn lot of energy. Works those nerves down to the very last dendrite and then looks for more. Yeah, that Howling Pit can be internalized and that's probably the most insidious possible outcome. Then, as Dolores O'Riordian (RIP) said, it's in your head and we all know what the next line is, right?But that's the trap and the product. It has been for mass media ever since forever. Just look up this little bit from Marshall McLuhann I pulled out of a collection of his work last year: And that was the fifties, folks. Who knows what he'd have said about Facebook? Heat not light. Yeah. There it is right there. The clicks must flow. That's social media.Sure. You're tough. You can manage it. You can control it. It's not playing you, you're playing it. You're the boss. I used to think that and now I'm not nearly so sure. In fact, I'm sure I'm not.Thing is, the neutral click? It's never neutral, right? That engagement that we're all fishing for, hoping for? Going viral, that's the answer to obscurity. Go viral and suddenly the whole goddamn world is Cheers and everybody knows your name. You'll never go without a barstool or a beer again. That's the promise. That's why I kept on coming back.Think I've told you this story before, how back in the dark and olden days of the Internet, but really before the ascent of social media, I wrote a regular column for a couple of different websites. One of 'em was a for-profit enterprise staffed by volunteers who like me, were hoping that they could catch a wave and turn it into a regular gig. Some of 'em even did. Thing is, it was writing for the churn, not writing work on their own.That's why I contributed a couple hundred hours of my time and effort over a couple years for someone else to make money off clicks generated by my work. I figured, well, I could be a columnist for awhile, then everyone could see how smart and clever I was and they'd want to read the fiction I wrote. Don't laugh. It's stupid now, but that was a path back then.Okay, go ahead and laugh. May as well. Beats sobbing. Which I'm not. Merely noting the passage of time and change of perspective. It's not like they got to keep the archives of my work forever (though they did ask to and I told them point blank why they couldn't.) I was able to turn those columns into a handful of book sales. Oh yeah, big stuff. Figure I could buy a couple plates of tacos with the proceeds. But hell, they're mine. They don't belong to that other website, which is still going and still as far as I know not really paying anyone, but you know that someone somewhere is getting paid.Of course, I turned around and did it again, but this time for a friend who was paying the whole enchilada out of his own pocket. He might even be doing it still. Haven't looked back, really. And since you're reading this here on a personal website and not in a bestselling book, you can figure that I wasn't able to ride that wave to anything either. Weird, right? Something about repeating a process and expecting a different result. Wild. I know.However, there was a time that this sort of thing worked. And then it worked on Facebook. And Instagram. And Twitter. Hell, some people are out there printing up Twitter novels and maybe it's even working for them. Maybe they got a five book deal. Good for them. But that's lottery winning right there. That's not a plan. Hell, these days I'm not even sure it's an opportunity.Sure, you get to dunk on the political party or celebrity of your choice. Man, I sure showed them. I am way, way smarter than those guys.Oh wait. It was like mist on the Empire State building. Blink and you'd miss it as those little droplets just dissolve into something even less meaningful. Dang. Harsh take right there. And yet, we keep hammering away at them. It's not even Quixotic. I'm not sure what it is other than the screaming that I am indeed alive and I do matter, smash that subscribe button for more relatable content.What's more, the only stuff that gets traction is, for lack of a better word, mean. You gotta one-up. You gotta one-up the whole world. That's being Extremely Online. And like that story about the gunfighter who is the best in the world and all of a sudden, there's a million challengers? Only it's everyone challenging everyone.Right. You don't do that on Twitter. I sure as hell did. But you don't. Got it. Maybe you're even right. And being right is the only damn thing that matters. The world could be burning right the fuck down and who says it isn't, but damn, it's good to be a gangster. Who's right.That short sharp shock you gotta deliver on the regular. Pretty soon that little spoon you've been using to work the soil has been whittled down to something sharper and harder and meaner, able to draw blood if you dig hard enough. Yeah. That's the stuff. You're good now. I was good once.But if you wanna be that gunfighter? Don't get tired. A tired gunfighter is a dead gunfighter.I got tired. I am tired. Been that way for a long time. Anyways, I step back from that forum and I have to wonder how long until I cease to exist? You know publishers (not mine, thankfully) check twitter feeds and follower ratios right? You gotta exist if you're gonna sell books. Writer as product, baby. And what's the best product? Kicking at the pricks, taking on the man, you versus the world, only the world doesn't have to take a break. It's like the zombie horde. And if you don't have a slower friend that you can outpace, then it's just a matter of time.Hey, I can advertise on tumblr. Keep my presence fresh there.Or this blog. People still read blogs, right?Oh, yeah.We'll figure out this one together folks, but it's gonna take some time. I figure that I can't cut off social media completely (but don't hold your breath on me coming back to Facebook ever) but the rules of engagement are going to have to change utterly, at least on my part. That's fine. That's a challenge I can accept and work with. But yeah, reminding folks I'm alive, much less matter? Is that something that social media can even do these days? That's the real question.Heat not light. Smoke not fire. Enough smoke and you can't breathe, dig?--In happier news, I have a new dumb idea which is a lot of fun and probably only works as a comic book. So, anyone know any artists who want to draw broke-down future landscapes and cars and revenge against the entire system stories? It's a good time. I promise.I know. I oughta be working on VOIDMAW. I will when I'm ready.Forgot to mention that I'll be at Wonder-Con this week. Probably just Friday and Sunday. In Los Angeles Thursday, returning home Monday. If you know me, hit me up and who knows what will happen next.

FULL BLEED: THE MUSEUM IS FULL OF DEAD THINGS

I skipped out on ECCC last year. No particular reason, no big deal. Went pretty light on shows last year and that was in keeping with things. I was also trying to pull together a couple projects which just kinda crashed and burned and that’s not really encouraging. Of course, trying to show anyone new projects on the show floor is stupid. I mean, you can get it in front of your friends, but unless your friends are editors or publishers, not much traction is gonna come from it. Oh well.Flight up was fine except for a slow explosion of pain in my sinuses or upper jaw on the approach in. That was fun. Felt like a sorta Lovecraftian kinda bug thing just settled in and slowly turned in place, rubbing red tendrils of pain into the bone and flesh. Good start to things. Keeps you sharp.ECCC is bonkers. It’s been bonkers for probably the last five-six years. Honestly about as big a show as I want to go to any more. I haven’t been at SDCC for more than ten years and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Add to the giant crowds the whole metal detector and bag search thing, getting in and out is even less fun than it used to be. By the time I got to the floor at around 2pm, crowds were heavy, both up in the artist’s alley area and down on the main floor. Heavy enough that I had already planned on blowing off Saturday morning, given that if it was this bad now it was gonna be intolerable on Saturday. More on that later.Spent most of the afternoon just catching up with folks in person as opposed to over digits. It’s a necessary self-care thing. Digits are fine and all, but no replacement for an actual life, you know? Sure, there’s a lot of jostling and getting crushed in crowds and trying to push past the line of stunned flesh that’s congealed around the Funko Pops booth and you’re in search of cheap comics or at least a bit of breathing room.Then you turn a corner and come face to face with something like mortality. Ran into a friend who I’ve seen at shows basically forever since I’ve been coming to them up in NorCal. He seemed a little subdued, slow to stand after he’d called me over. His grip was strong but slow. He said “Yeah, so eight months ago, I had a stroke.” And that sort of thing hits you like a runaway Suburban. You absorb it and try to process it. Hey, he’s doing great after that. He’s a little slower, but still hanging in. Funny thing is he’s several years younger than me. Yeah, I don’t look my age. It’s all that sublimated rage and disappointment I suspect. Keeps the skin young, the hair dark, the eyes smoky and sputtering.But still, mortality. Found out about a death in the family the following day. Can’t speak to that here too much. It's a strange situation, one where the family sub-group didn't want visitors or anything like that. But, just, yeah. Mortality is right there. All the time. Standing on a trap door, just that sometimes you get the message that it’s gonna snap open and sometimes it just rips right open and oh well. End of sermon.I’m glad my friend is doing well and bounced back so quickly. It isn’t always like that.Spent a while processing that as I walked the floor. Crowds didn’t seem as crushing then, or I could just slip past ‘em easier. Found a place selling interesting old comics for a buck apiece, flipped through stacks for twenty minutes or so, came out with five. Big spender. Still would rather spend that cash on junky old comics than a chapter of a story in comics today. But I’m a retrograde Neanderthal and if you’re gonna tell me a story in six chapters, I’m gonna buy the trade. I know. I’m killing comics. Besides, I like the junky stuff because it’s so ramshackle and wobbly sometimes. But other times that stuff just sings a song of pure crazy, nothing held back, just a pure frenzy of activity trying to beat that deadline and move onto the next gig. That’s not a feeling you get much today. Not in the bigs, anyways.Spent a little time at my publisher’s table, selling copies of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS, but just a bit. Figured I’d use Saturday to do heavy selling, stay out of the traffic lanes and such. Because Saturday was gonna be insane, you know. It always is.Went out on Friday to sushi with some friends. Drank a Pink Godzilla, which sure does sound like something more...unseemly than it proved to be. Lotsa fruit and gin. It was okay. The sushi and ramen was better. Back to the room to read up on evolutionary biology, stuff that would make Lovecraft spin hard enough in his grave to shed diamonds. Hey, our HPL, he had some interesting ideas but was kind of a basket of mess.Saturday morning breakfast at Ludi’s. Spam and eggs and garlic fried rice. Nothing better. Drank coffee like a Dracula chugs down that O positive. As I’d already secretly decided not to go to the show as it opened immediately due to insane crowds, I made my way down to the Chihuly gallery, over by the Space Needle and the Gehry-designed MPOP (formerly the Experience Music Project, apparently). It was only a mile, past a string of bars and buildings waiting to be further gentrified, not such a bad walk. And like the Gehry work that I know, the building was big on organic forms, sweeping but lashed out in overlapping metal plates. On the blobby side, not as elegant as say the Disney Concert Hall in LA, but still an interesting subject in the early morning light, particularly the section that was all formed out of bronze (as opposed to flat or glossy solid-colored plastic — which I didn’t get, honestly, but I’m not the designer.) took a lot of photos in the cool and bright morning light. The Chihuly gallery would have given Lovecraft the shakes. It was almost all organic forms, creeping irregularity, no crenellations or even Edwardian severity to latch onto. I had a lot of fun there, just picking out curves and shapes to latch onto, color through glass onto textured walls. Very Carcosa but wonderful, which is the aesthetic I’m chasing around right now, at least on paper. I have to say that the work doesn’t come together very well out in the sunlight, not unlike neon. It’s all about light caught and refracting or glowing through the material, not just the global illumination outside.Yeah, the show was open by now, but I was still in no hurry to get there. So I headed into the Museum of Pop Culture, having been recommended the sci-fi film prop collection. And it did not disappoint. Annotated scripts of ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER? They got that. miniatures from DUNE? Sure. The marked-up copy of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP that Hampton Fancher used while adapting it to what would become BLADE RUNNER? Yikes. That’s not something you see every day.The horror film exhibit was kinda cool, too. Though I did have to suffer through dunderheads saying stuff like “God, dude, I hate seeing it this close. You can see what it’s made of. Takes all the magic away.” And, my dudes, the magic can’t be taken away unless you give it away. The Gill Man from CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON is just rubber, you dig? But it isn’t. Not in your head when you watch it. Just like say THE BIG SLEEP is only made of ink on a page, but you assemble it in your head to something totally different. So if you wanna say that you’re superior to this artwork and can keep it at a remove, well, go ahead. Just don’t expect me to stand beside you. As a kid, I read VFX magazines and behind the scenes books on all these movies obsessively. And you know what, it made the movies even BETTER. Because you knew in your rational brain that these were just ramshackle assemblies of plastic and wood, could only be shot from one angle else it fell apart, and it just doesn’t matter. STAR WARS was real even though I could talk your ear off about blue-screens and matte shots and animation armatures. So miss me with this stuff.I will say, however, that when it comes to certain exhibits and approaches, knowing the behind the scenes changes everything. Take the Nirvana shrine that was set up, tracing the bands history from rural Washington to conquering the world as if it were destined. The history was sanitized and well-scrubbed, missing the essential component of grunge that made it work: utter stupidity. And I don’t mean that in the pejorative. I suppose a better word is innocence, or un-planned-ness. Nowhere did I see the quote from Cobain that “Nirvana is just the Knack for this decade.” Because that ruins the narrative, dig?Now, sure, it was interesting to see the flyers and silkscreens and bashed-up guitars, the artifacts of the band. But you have to enjoy them as objects and not as things to be revered. I mean, good grief. Any time you put punk (I know, Nirvana wasn’t a punk band) or rock and roll or any fiery and consumptive youth moment into a shrine, you goddamn suck the life out of it. The museum is filled with dead things now. Reverence and rebellion don’t mix real well. Throw nostalgia into the mix and even crazier things happen. Suddenly shouts to tear down the system get preserved behind glass and set where they can’t be touched. To be fair, I’ve gone out of my way to cop the look of a xeroxed flyer, because it was appropriate to the project at the time. But seeing handbills cranked out at Kinko’s become precious is jarring. The disposable turned irreplaceable. Ephemeral turned into history. Yeah, that’s how it always is. Maybe because this stuff, this period was within my recent-ish memory, the weirdness is increased. Again, not that I was a teenage punk rocker or grunge kid, but this stuff was of a time where I was plugged into the underground and then above ground. It doesn’t belong in a museum, but out where it can be enjoyed.Live long enough to become the villain, right? I spent a bit of time thinking about how maybe some kids get dragged there by their well-meaning parents and then decide to make music that their parents goddamn hate, but other kids love. The cycle continues ‘cause it can’t do anything else. Meanwhile, more artifacts from the Paul Allen Family get taken out of storage and out on display. Rebellion becomes reverence.I wasn’t able to square the circle of the giant projection screens putting up images of The Doors, backed up by studio musicians and only half the original membership up front alongside the museum shop with its selection of Nirvana and Bikini Kill t-shirts. Maybe there’s nothing to square, maybe this stuff just is.Just like I wonder about what PKD would have thought of his somewhat-ascendancy into SF royalty, a thing which was definitely not coming towards the end of his life. Yes, he’d won big awards, but he was no Asimov or Clarke. Reality is weird. Institutions and enshrinement are weird processes.I made my way back to the show finally, hitting the floor at about one or so. Sat at the table and tried to move copies of QONT and TOMORROW’S CTHULHU. Maybe even did some. Always glad to be of service. Trying not to talk myself into going up to Norwescon, but that’s another show with a receptive audience, one I haven’t hit yet. One my publisher will be at.Sigh.Oh, yeah, one weird thing. Saturday didn’t feel as crowded as Friday. Maybe the downstairs floor was, but artist’s alley wasn’t. It was busy, but not a crush. You could get around, and sure, there was still a line for coffee in the afternoon, but it was just, y’know, busy. Not insane. Makes me wonder about the show, honestly. This was the third day of the show, out of four. And it just wasn’t that heavy. Maybe it doesn’t need to be four days? I know, that’s madness.There was a lot more stuff that went on beyond this, but these are the things that stuck with me. I got to see new work from friends, some things that haven’t been announced yet. So it wasn’t all mortality and illness and turnovers. There’s new work coming in all the time. Though I just wonder about the shape of the marketplace for it. But then I always have, mostly ‘cause I’ve never been an easy fit in there.I felt like I was going to have a lot to add here after finishing the draft last night, but that wasn't the case. Left lots of stuff out, but kept the important stuff in.I'll be back later this week, maybe to talk about FOG Con from two weeks back and to get you caught up on oddball links.

FULL BLEED: BUT DON'T JUST SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME

I love this song 'cause it's like if the Perturbator and Isabella Goloversic got all loaded up on NyQuil and recorded a Motels track. It's the best thing.So, to the meat of this missive.Inspirational true story. I started writing longform fiction in 1991.Last year, the first novel with my name on it was published. Yeah, I've put books up on Amazon, novels, commentary, screaming in the face of the storm rants. They've sold tens.If you'd told me that this is where I'd be in 2019, I'm not sure I'd have had the strength to start clacking out on the keyboards the words "Denver slept restless like a child's fever." which indeed did open the first novel that I ever wrote. Unpublished. Rewritten several times. Paid for professional editing which didn't touch structure, only copy, though structure and construction feedback was what I was goddamn desperate for. Dude liked the book. Didn't know why it wasn't published. I know why it wasn't. John Douglas said as much in his very nice cover letter rejecting it in 1992. He asked me if I had a fantasy novel to offer. I didn't until 1996, and even then it was backwards and inverted, unwilling to commit to a single genre or category.I've published a couple graphic novels, one of 'em almost published by someone not me. Almost. Actually can claim to have sold hundreds. No interest from editors in ability displayed, whether it's to put together a story from the ground up or get a project out the door. Hey, quality always shines through, right? You just keep hammering away long enough and a beautiful swan grows out of the corpse of that ugly duckling on the side of the road. That's what they tell me, anyways.You will be recognized. You gotta keep chipping away at that mine tunnel to get to the huge goddamn diamond that will solve all of your problems, if you just keep digging long enough. That or the tunnel collapses on you and you suffocate. Have a nice day. Just keep digging. Just keep digging. Digging digging. Just keep digging.Only maybe, maybe you won't. Maybe I won't. Maybe it's simply not going to happen.I'm going to speak for a moment on age and related issues. In 1991, I was 23/4. A fine time to start a career. A fine time to lay the groundwork for becoming an overnight sensation at 40. I'm 51. The only dudes that age getting work in comics (and prose is much, much friendlier, at least on the surface) at that age are those who've been working in it for a long time and were established decades before. You're not breaking in at this age. Sure, you can break in on the Kickstarter to fund your comics to sell on the convention floor (and I guarantee you the copies you sell will cover your table fees on a good weekend.) You can do that. I've been there. Only minus the Kickstarter part, taking out loans from family which have yet to be paid back, but everyone who worked on the book got paid. Everyone minus me, anyways.I'm not going to have a career in comics. Those who do, I admire your talent, hard work, persistence and luck, not necessarily in that order.I'm not going to have a career in writing. Not one that pays in any substantial form. Came real close with ghostwriting that was once-in-a-lifetime and just didn't have any way to sustain itself for a variety of reasons. Ego was a lot of that. On both sides, not just mine, though my contribution was hefty, in that regard.Oh, sorry, I stopped talking about ageism. I mean, I said that it's there. We all know it is. The overnight wunderkind baller talent storyline always moves units, gets likes, makes that jump from facebook posts to long signing lines. Lemme tell ya, the old creator, well they're just old. I mean, that's acceptable if they were Silver or Bronze Agers (even Chromium Agers are beginning to show some tooth length, unless they've landed management positions, then they'll never age out. But there is definitely a sell-by date in comics. Again, less so in prose, but it's still there. How many books we gonna get out of this dude before Social Security kicks in and he's done forever, right? Nobody wants to make a cash commitment on an unsure thing.Yeah, I know a bunch of 40+ folks still soldiering on and a lot of 'em are doing way better work than the stuff that sells 50k a month. C'est la fucking vie. I salute them all and I know they're all rolling that rock uphill. It's just not mine to roll, dig?As for prose, let me let you in on a little secret. I come from a family of writers. My parents both and sibling. Some of 'em big-time, regular on the NYT when it meant that you were selling more than at just Costco. Successes all. It's very hard to be in that company. And they're clear on not judging me. They're clear on that. It's very clear. Doesn't change the fact that I'm not even a gentleman novelist, y'know? Not even that.Hell, I'm not even a blogger anymore. You remember when blogging was a thing, right? Suddenly everyone had a voice and folks were launching into bigger and better things with it. You wonder why it's gone? 'Cause it didn't pan out. Sure, there's still some folks out there doing it (ahem) even on the regular, like clockwork. It's all still out there, just not the same community. Oh well. I'm not going to be an overnight sensation. I'm not even going to land that in thirty years (yeah, I see that 2021 date lingering up above the horizon like Sisyphus lost control of that stone and it's just rolling along gaining speed and momentum like it's been doing that forever.) My name ain't gonna ring. My work will never transcend genre. I won't be on the endcaps. There ain't never gonna be more than one of my books on a shelf in any store at any time. That dream is done.Is this a bad thing? Don't know. The jury's still out on that. I don't think that it is.I mean, if anything, it means I'm free. I can unchain myself from that ego and those delusions I let it feed me. Drop them heavy janks.I'm free. Whatever happens, the writing is mine. I get to scrawl my name on that particular diamond. Reviews can't kill me 'cause I'm already dead. Don't have anything left to bleed, so the obscurity and indifference can't suck me dry. The money doesn't mean a thing 'cause there was never any money in the work. The veil is lifted.You get it, right? The sky's wide open now.I'm free. EDIT to add -The stuff that's written about the books now? Eh, whatever. The cliques and in-groups and out-groups? Meaningless. I was always on the outside and that's were I'll stay. My friend Andrew takes in feral cats and he says there's always one that isn't comfortable anywhere but the cold and drafty garage on that old towel. That cat knows who he is. None of this other stuff matters. Only the work matters. Maybe that's insane. But hell, the whole goddamn works is insane. The machine is bleeding to death, as the kids say. If I'm gonna stay on the outside, then I ain't gonna grumble about it or stare longingly at that warm room, 'cause that warm room is inside. Can't go in there.

FULL BLEED: I LEFT MY THRONE A MILLION MILES AWAY

Getting ready to hit FOG Con (that's Friends of Genre) in Walnut Creek this weekend at the big I think Marriott hotel over there. Actually on a couple panels for it as well. Dig it.Friday 3/8 - 4:30Reading. Probably from QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS which I'll have for sale on the d/l.Saturday 3/9 - 3:00Panel. "What Have You Been Reading?" and I'm sure my answers will not dovetail with anyone else's. That's just by nature.Maybe I'll crash a couple more? I dunno. More than a little bummed that I only got picked for those, but whaddya gonna do when you're the free entertainment, actually you're the entertainment that it costs money to become in terms of gas, hotel, food, admissions and energy. But otherwise, totally free entertainment.Oh yeah, that's the fun thing underlying all of these shows, right? And hey, maybe you do get to be a guest and they comp your room and ticket and all. Then you're just free entertainment getting a couple meals out of it. I know. This sounds caustic. It's only supposed to be mildly so (and is not meant to pick on FOG Con in particular -- this is the way these shows operate at most levels.) You're supposed to do it for the good of the genre and that.Folks, SF is fine. Only misers need to save things, right? (Thanks Grant Morrison.) People will continue to write SF and fantasy and all those other things because it's what they want to write. Even if they don't get paid for it and can't make a living off of it. But that's most writing these days, in the era of the Howling Pit. Give that content away and hope to catch a tailwind to bigger audiences. Be happy when someone pirates your book because well maybe you'll get a paying reader out of that and then someone's attention and before you know it, you're a household name doing Amazon series and TED talks and all that. Folks, I find copies of QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS on pirate sites and I fucking despair of things. I'm nobody. N O B O D Y .My name is not known beyond my publisher and a handful of other readers (of which I am thankful for every single one). I'm not in a position to benefit from piracy--if even that's an actual thing. I suspect it's more a weary recognition that nothing can be done to stop it other than playing whack-a-mole with the pirate sites overseas and just hoping, HOPING that people stealing your work leads to more work later on, more recognition."But, Matt. Some artists choose to give away their art."They sure do. Hell, they'd be giving it away even if they didn't choose to."But this big artist says--"That big artist has been on the NYT for more than twenty years. They're fine. Their example does not apply to everyone."But Radiohead gave away a whole album if the fans wanted."So did U2. Both bands sell out arenas and are set for life if they've had a lick of sense. They were hugely-well-established, industries on their own. They weren't a band struggling to tour or to pay recording fees to make another record to hope to sell at shows. These aspirational wishes don't apply to the smaller artist. Sure, if you're writing fan fiction or thinly-veiled such, then go ahead and give it away. Worked for FIFTY SHADES, right?Anyways, piracy sucks. Folks who seed those places with advance copies (gosh, I wonder where they get them) are pieces of trash. But we live in a world that is often trash, gotta say. Yeah, it's expensive buying books. I get that. But have you priced comic books lately? Digital comic books, even? Three bucks or more. Lemme tell you how long it takes to read your typical contemporary comic book. About as long as it takes to read the first chapter of a prose book, maybe a lot less. I know, apples and oranges, just talking raw expense here.Books are expensive. It's expensive to produce them. Time, energy, focus, sanity, everything before the editor tries to beat it into shape and the cover gets paid for and printing and advertising and shipping. Real objects cost money to produce. Even digital products do. Same amount of work on the back end. Doesn't mean you should be charging fifteen for a first-run ebook or Great Caesar's Ghost upwards of thirty bucks for academic ebooks (yes, I browse academic titles which is why I don't end up reading a lot of the same things other people read, to tie back to my upcoming panel appearance.) And sure, if people stop paying for books, writers will still keep writing them. Sure. They will be pure writers then, doing it only out of love of genre and form. Then they will be free to write anything that their editor steered them away from! That'll be the only way to get honest writing! FREE BOOKS FOREVER!Or, they'll just keep working their jobs and maybe not writing any more because there's not even an aspirational step out of that Howling Pit.Okay, well, that was bracing. I've been in a fine mood of late and stuff like this doesn't help it, I know. But it's real and it's out there. It's a fact of life today. It's also depressing as all hell.But then so is ditching what you've written on a current project. Don't worry, I kept the pre-writing. But what I had wasn't working, the actual prose. See, I talk often about the ease of writing, but it's only easy when I find that vein. And right now I've been jabbing my forearm blindly 'til it looks like hamburger. But I'll find it soon enough, just had to ditch the path I was on now 'cause it wasn't getting there. Don't worry, it wasn't so much in terms of pages and it wasn't any damn good at all. None. Not a bit.I'll pick it up again shortly. In the meantime, it's screeds and getting my act together for this upcoming show. And then Emerald City Comic Con the following week. Then Wonder-Con two weeks after that. Busy month.Oh, and of course I've been pulling up the finest in linkblogging pleasure for you. Enjoy.This week's linksLogos via Ken Loweryhttp://reaganray.com/tag/logos.html1979's THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (via Mark Buckner)Jim Steranko's most famous romance comichttps://www.sequentialcrush.com/blog/2011/09/my-chat-with-jim-steranko-on-his-onlyCold/minimal synth--which is the backbone of my listening these days.THE OUTER SPACE CONNECTION 1975Retribution Gospel Choirhttps://retributiongospelchoir.bandcamp.com/releasesTrees- Sleep Convention - Red Carvia Mark BucknerBelgian coldwave (1979-1983)Ken Nordine and Tom Waits spitball movie ideas (via Colin Dickey)Urban exploration in Californiahttps://altaonline.com/trespassing-for-treasures/Esotouric Tours Amazon storefront - LA book intensivehttps://www.amazon.com/shop/esotouricbusadventuresHow the T2 soundtrack was madeThe rise and fall of Pioneer fried chicken in LAhttps://thelandmag.com/pioneer-fried-chicken-los-angeles-kaleb-horton/Kaleidotrope magazine submissions (hey, you might want a job)http://www.kaleidotrope.net/guidelines/International DarkwavePKD and Valis and Duncan Joneshttps://bowiesattva.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/philip-k-dicks-valis-and-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-and-duncan-jones/

FULL BLEED: BEFORE A THING BECOMES A THING

I said it was for free, never that it would be on schedule. So yeah, been a little while. Oh well.Looks like I'm slated for a single panel and reading at FOG-Con coming up in a few weeks. I'll post the actual particulars once the time comes. Nothing changed in other convention appearances. Spent some time with the ART AND ARCANA collector's edition that I got for Christmas. My relationship with D&D, as is everyone's, is pretty personal stuff. I played some, mostly played other games with much more streamlined combat systems, so more like storytelling with randomness thrown in. Had a friend who made long, elaborate scenarios which he imagined were much more intelligence tests for us than actual fun games, which is part of my falling out with things. Honestly, I spent a lot more time reading through the materials and assembling the world they suggested than playing the game itself.And as such, I have a pretty hard dividing line between stuff I come back to with regards to the game and stuff that I pass on or might note its presence, but no more than that. Let's stake that in the DRAGONLANCE campaign and book set. Even I at the tender age of college freshman could see that they were trying to generate a big new franchise rather than keep carving out a funky set of world(s) by piecemeal and suggestion. The books did nothing for me and the visuals attached to the campaign felt like retread material no matter how well-rendered they were.Of course, that was the path that D&D continued down in the pursuit of corporate profitability. I can't blame them. That's what game companies do now. That's not what a bunch of shaggy fantasy dorks do while working in their garages or rented offices. That's the pursuit of franchise. Which is not at all the same thing as stripping influences wholesale and strapping them together to make ersatz worlds, or getting your pals to do the line art even if they aren't technically great (though early D&D certainly did have some great artists, the very early stuff was, uh not) but they were enthusiastic. They meant it man.And to me, that is a million times more compelling than slickly-produced painted artwork getting you hooked into whatever game world/campaign setting they were trying to sell you this year. A lot of what D&D did in the early days felt like the kinds of things my friends and I could be working on, just a step or two removed in quality. Okay, DAT was a way better artist than anyone I knew in real life. There was a sense of just doing what came to mind, not having a grand quarterly plan, throwing stuff out there and moving on. It wasn't so calculated, so professional, so merchandisable.But then there's a lot of things that I really like much better before they figured out what they were gonna be. STAR WARS (never A NEW HOPE) is a great example. First trilogy? That's the stuff. And yeah, it was merchandised to hell and back again, but it was all ham-handed and for the fast turnaround, gotta generate that friction to stay warm because this thing ain't gonna last so cash it in now now now. The universe wasn't filled in, there were huge blank spaces, well, everywhere. Ask Marvel Comics. They generated how many issues of a universe that was just going to be discarded later (not even integrated into the Expanded Universe, which was to itself be discarded.) The Sunday Comics didn't make a lick of sense compared to the films, but they had Al Williamson art so who cared?And sure, STAR WARS was a huge success and a franchise back by 83 was said and done. But the nature of franchise itself meant a different thing 35 years ago. It wasn't quite so supercharged. The past is the unrefined future, you dig? You can find the seeds of it, maybe even raw veins of the future, but it takes time and desire to form it into something harder and sharper.So, yeah, I'll go out of my way to track down books and the like from the original trilogy (don't have room for portfolios or posters or even toys). That's the real stuff so far as I'm concerned. That's the stuff that means something to me. Just like I held onto my original trio of D&D books (sold my copy of DEITIES AND DEMIGODS, but was gifted a replacement some twenty years after that -- a story in itself, about lost world and technologies at this point) ever since junior high school. I paw through them occasionally, when I want to be reminded about possibility.Hell, I should probably bring up my TERRIBLE TOME pitch and art sometime. Maybe in a little while if you remind me nicely.As for other stuff I'm enjoying of late, the books STRANGE FREQUENCIES (by Peter Bebergal) and HIGH STATIC DEAD LINES (by Kristen Gallerneaux) are both delightful reads, deeply personal in their own ways as they spin histories out of technologies meant to bridge the gap between occult and mundane. Very much fuel for the fires on the current project, so to speak.Oh, right, about the ongoing work. The less said the better. I'll just let you know when the draft is done. It'll be better that way.Moviewise? Still making ill-informed decisions. Though BLIND WOMAN CURSE from 1974 was a welcome surprise. It's lady Yakuza boss versus strange witchcraft but has more personality and life in it than ten thousand made for Netflix horror films. And speaking of Netflix, I caught the first season of THE KINGDOM, which I really liked until I got to the end of the sixth episode and saw that it was also the end of the season. Of course it ends on a hard cliffhanger.Folks. This is bad. I'm all for serial presentation. But it has to be pretty regular serial presentation, you know? Don't end a season on a cliffhanger. It's a jerk move. I mean, week to week? Sure. Bring it on. The space between episodes does enrich things, lets the viewer stew in the sensations and thoughts. The problem is when something stews for too long a time, you get soup with barely-recognizable shreds of things in it. Which is too bad. THE KINGDOM was very well made and acted, solidly written. I'd watch a lot of it, were it structured otherwise. But it is, apparently, not."But what about TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, Matt?"Glad you asked. Given what TWIN PEAKS was, I never in my wildest dreams expected a third season, much less one 25 years later. And it chose a completely different path than most other serial television, particularly those that want to continue an old story. It stubbornly refused to be easy and jump into the expected. It is the exception that makes the rule complete.Here's some linkblogging to round things out. Until next week sometime.Laurie Spiegel on THE EXPANDING UNIVERSEBeware fake agentshttp://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/for-authors/writer-beware/agents/It came from the 80s, retro darkwaveFirst TV appearance of Ziggy Stardust uncoveredhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/29/holy-grail-david-bowie-footage-found-first-ziggy-stardust-tv/VALIS and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTHhttps://bowiesattva.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/philip-k-dicks-valis-and-the-man-who-fell-to-earth-and-duncan-jones/UNSEEN WORLDS reissued. If you aren't familiar with this, it's Laurie Spiegel's first (I believe) album, featuring some essential electronic work from the early years. If you're curious, dig into "Appalachian Grove" which is a great crossover of material versus arrangement turning things into something new altogether. Recommended.https://unseenworlds.bandcamp.com/album/unseen-worlds

FULL BLEED: WAVES OF NEGATION

Weird week last week, lots of chatter, but no blogging. Some quick stuff and some links then something more substantial maybe later on in the week.Arranged what looks to be the show schedule for this year. Lots of the usual suspects.FOG-CON (SF, CA) Hope to actually be on some panels for this one. And maybe even to have a chapbook version of THROUGH THE LIMBS for it. Not planning to be at any dealer's tables or anything, but if you see me at the show, hit me up.Emerald City Comic Con (Seattle, WA)Hopefully will be signing QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS at the Broken Eye table for a couple hours a day on Fri-Sun. Won't be there Thursday. Otherwise walking around and taking in panels. Wonder-Con (Anaheim, CA)Not tabling, just walking. There Friday and Sunday. Planning on arriving early to see Southland folks and take photos, maybe take in the San Fernando Valley Museum if it's open when I'm there. Bay-Con (SF, CA)This is a maybe. Haven't registered for it yet.Rose City Comic Con (Portland, OR)Maybe tabling with Broken Eye for a bit, otherwise wandering and hoping to crash panels.HP Lovecraft Film Festival (Portland, OR)Planning on attending and signing at the Broken Eye table, assuming that happens. Even if that doesn't happen, would like to attend and maybe speak on panels if they're willing to accept an outsider perspective. What's that? Heterodoxy in cosmic horror?! Shocking.If anyone reading this wants a weirdo perspective on a panel or to have me read or just take questions while enigmatically staring at the audience, then please, contact me. Even moreso if you want to cover travel costs. Yeah, that's the fun part. I get to pay to become free entertainment for folks at these shows. It's great!Tired of the current project kicking my ass, but sometimes it works like that. Just like the kitten on your lap sometimes decides to go hog wild, grabbing your arm, clawing and biting it to death. It only hurts 'cause I want it to be good, you dig?Okay, here's this week's and last week's links for your entertainment.Educational films at the Internet Archive:https://archive.org/details/educationalfilms?&sort=-downloads&page=3special callout - THE WAR GAME by Peter Watkinshttps://archive.org/details/thewargamereel2Life in THE PERIPHERAL. Oops. I mean right here and right now.https://newrepublic.com/article/152836/elwood-illinois-pop-2200-become-vital-hub-americas-consumer-economy-its-hellPedro Santos Krishnanda - via Empire of Dust on twitter - afrobeat madnessFangoria Presents: HOLLYDOOM (OST)https://lakeshorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/fangoria-presents-hollydoom-original-magazine-soundtrackThe Temple of Sethttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_SetThe NSA and Michael Aquino and the Temple of SetGAMES (1979) by SynergyThe definitive list of comic publisher guidelineshttps://jasonthibault.com/definitive-list-comic-publisher-submission-guidelines/Looking at NYC street life in the 1970shttps://www.vintag.es/2019/01/1970s-new-york-street-life.htmlNikon's Small World photographyhttps://www.nikonsmallworld.comMicrophotographyhttps://slate.com/technology/2014/02/nikon-small-world-competition-photos-of-animal-body-parts.htmlZauber's WAVES OF RESISTANCE, the playlist that got me into contemporary coldwave/goth back when I was heavy into writing QUEEN OF NO TOMORROWS.

FULL BLEED: THAT'S JUST PRIDE FUCKING WITH YOU

I used to be a pretty big fan of Quentin Tarantino, it's true. In the early 90s? It was hard not to. Okay, things got a little shaky after watching CITY ON FIRE, but RESERVOIR DOGS is not that film and vice versa. Sure, it would've been nice to get some kind of nod. I dug PULP FICTION a lot as well. Maybe it was the structure. Maybe it was the humor. The soundtrack certainly had a hand in it. The writing was sharp.Including probably the truest thing QT has put to film:"That's just pride fucking with you."And that's the real deal right there. Pride fucking with you. With me.See, me wrangling with a writing career (ha) has always been an issue. Namely my inability to even get arrested up until a little while back. Of course, once you get arrested and I'll drop the metaphor there, then what? You wonder if its ever gonna be enough.That's just pride fucking with you.Wondering about your place on the shelves or whether you'll even get there. Whether you'll even pay for all the shows you go to in order to promote the books. Whether you can even pay for printing. Yeah, you can make the argument that's pride fucking with you.The one place that pride can't fuck with you is in the book itself. Oh, there'll be all manner of fuckery after, don't sweat that. Reviewers will not get it, or you'll be cliche or you'll be too complicated or too predictable. Your pages will be too crowded or wait there's not enough of them (that's mostly in comics.) Oh, my favorite. "Maybe if you'd had a little more room, you could have really made something out of it."I've got responses to all of these, and again, it's pride fucking with me. It's not my place to answer these, even if I wish they were more glowing so maybe other people would talk the book up and oh, wait. Pride. Motherfucker. Right there. Goddammit. It's sneaky.But we live in a world where promotion is more than half the battle, right? You gotta lean into that personal brand and gather up an army. You have to. You have to do it out on social media. Generate that content. Pay to get it out there. Oh, right. Pride driving the howling pit. Though you could argue that this is more Thirst driving the action, but pride and thirst are interrelated when you get down to it. Pride drives the unspoken "I deserve" of thirst.Pride of genre identity, of which clique you belong to. You got past the gatekeepers, now you get to build the walls around genre yourself! Yeah, that's pride. Fighting about what category phrase you do or don't belong to instead of worrying about the work being the work. I mean, hell, you join up with a genre army to aim at readers, right. You deserve those readers. Pride, man. Right there.I've often said, likely to my detriment as an authority about writing, that the best writing is done without ego. The stuff that's happening when you know where you're kinda going but another pathway or two gets sparked and you explore a new territory. Where everything isn't on rails and you're just driving that heroic journey like it was at the Indy 500. I'm trying to remember, what kind of shape is that track? Where are you driving? Oh, right. A circle. Got it. But you gotta do what's expected so you can get that audience. There's that you, that ego, and the throbbing mass at the center of it?That's pride and the sting of being fucked with.Pride and ego, man. Right there. Of course all this is baked into the system now. You go out on social media to spread the word about the writing to get more readers and more social media reach and does any of this actually have to do with the books and making a quality book? Hell no. You can even argue that it runs counter to that and you might even be right. Maybe better to only exist as words, pull a Salinger or Pynchon. Maybe.Anyways, I continue to wrestle with this, but there's a conclusion that seems, well, inevitable. Just wonder if I'm brave enough to do it. To just do the work without worrying about the outcome. Oh yeah, you know that's pride. The whole "I spend a year on this thing and it goes out and disappears and boo hoo" and that's 100 percent concentrated pride and ego at work. And that's some seductive toxin, actual poison.Maybe ego destruction, or at the very least minimization, is it. I know, seems weird to say in the world we live in today, right? You may as well not even exist. Without the swagger and the boasting? Come on. That's worse than being basic. And yet the other stuff is just ego and window dressing. But that's enough to get by, it seems.This didn't go where I'd meant. But maybe that's okay, too.

FULL BLEED: EMBRACE THE AWFUL THING

I'll avoid talking about what's really important and instead talk about movies and other things. The really important stuff is too raw to touch on directly. Maybe I'll get back to it. Maybe it'll be suffused throughout all this.Recently caught ANNIHILATION on Amazon Prime. And as a quick aside before I dig into the film, I find Amazon Prime's programming way more compelling than Netflix at this point (I mean back catalog, both companies original offerings really don't blow me away -- I think this comes down to my problems with the expectations of form surrounding "prestige TV" as much as anything.) In terms of old movies, Amazon crushes Netflix. It's laughable how little competition there is. Amazon is basically what cable TV used to be, mixed in with a bunch of the UHF era as much as VHS. I've found a lot of stuff I'd never have watched (granted, a lot of it is bad on several levels, but at least it's watchably bad.) So yeah, choosing between the two, I'd go Amazon if I had to. There's a lot of joyfully watchable garbage there.ANNIHILATION is, however, not joyfully watchable garbage. Mostly because it's not joyful and it's not garbage. It's a very well-made movie. I joked on Twitter that "ANNIHILATION is just THE THING on quaaludes, right?" I said that about halfway through and I don't think I was wrong. Sure, I was glib, but I'm allowed to from time to time, right? So as I said, well-made, well-designed, well-acted. The script had issues, some in fundamental basis, much in just how it hadled humans talking and interacting. Spoilers abound from here. Punch out if you haven't watched it, and it's certainly worth watching as part of your cable subscription. I'll be working on the assumption that you've seen the movie and am not wild about breaking down the plot from scratch.ANNIHILATION is a weird beast. And before I get to the discussion of shortcomings, et al, I'm glad that Alex Garland and company are out there making weird beasts. I'd prefer that to the pre-programmed on rails all-for-the-story-and-no-waste sorts of content we get these days. I'd rather get an engaging film that provokes, even if it utterly falls short within its own boundaries. At least it's trying something, goddammit.As for falling short, that's every character who isn't Natalie Portman in this movie. Once we get out of South Point, there's not a bit of intra-character dialogue that really works, at least in engagement with other characters. So much so that I have to think that this is by design. And while that's a choice, it is perhaps not a satisfying one. As such, I'd rather have been Portman's character forging out on her own, and when we get to that is the genuine heart of the film, so again, perhaps by design. That said, it means interactions before that are frustrating, maddening even. (Spoiler for the book - my understanding is that the other team members are operating under hypnotic suggestion, but this is not a thread taken up in the film -- It would, however, explain some things.)This, sadly, goes double for the affair with David Gayasi's character in the film, which is handled in a perfunctory and dismissive manner. Perhaps there was an expanded bit to this (as the film already ran a touch long) but as presented, just, ugh. It also reminds you that there were better actors who could have had expanded roles and instead they're pushed off to the sides and left to flounder with scraps of motivation/lines. Every character who isn't Portman doesn't really matter. This even extends to her husband, the reason she's even in Area X in the first place.Which of course makes the whole trip...crazy. But no crazier than Kane (the husband) reappearing after a year on a mysterious mission only to explode into illness and everything else that this leads to. Disconnectedness and unreality play heavy on things *before* they're supposed to get really crazy behind the walls of the Shimmer. The non-linearity of the plot really doesn't help in this. I mean, I understand what they were going for, at least I think I do, but the constant flipping back and forth (some in thought, some in the recorded traces of the last expedition) just intensifies confusion without really offering illumination, at least until we get character reveals, etc. Sigh. Certainly not how I want to approach things in my own work. But ANNIHILATION wasn't my story to tell, right?Now, this is not to say that the film is not effective as a science-fiction/horror outing. It certainly is. Though the action sequences almost feel like a grudging admission of "this is just how it's done" and are incongruous between the longer moments of growing dread or wonder (though there's precious little of that, as it's subsumed by fear of becoming something else.) There's a great bit with the bear, even if it's...convenient for the story as it's turned.Ultimately, what I ended up pulling from the film, the only thing that really makes sense to me, is that trauma, human trauma, is what will keep us from being assimilated into this kind of entity, should it appear. Everyone who goes into Area X is broken, at least the team we're watching in real-time through the action of the film. All these women are broken in their own ways. Some of these breaks being significant enough that it prevents the characters from reaching the truth at the center of Area X. We can argue as to whether or not they're digested into the whole that is the Thing or not. Only Portman's character makes it relatively intact, trauma and all, to the primal cave.Portman's interaction with the unnamed Thing is certainly the centerpiece of the film, and where it's most effective. Largely wordless, we're left to action on the screen and character reaction to tell us what's going on (and honestly, just blurting things out would have destroyed any possibility of nuance or reader formulation, so thank goodness it was left as it was.) So the Thing tries to assimilate human trauma and instead leaves itself vulnerable to...well...everything. She feeds it the grenade left there by her dead husband and the doppleganger that the Thing has created, thus closing the loop of the plot and the whole works burns down.Alien fails to assimilate trauma, or when it does, is destroyed. Or you can argue something as simple as human mortality did the job.Granted, these reads only work if you don't watch the last two minutes of film where it turns out that both the doctor who's made it through all this and the husband-thing are SURPRISE alien clones with bodies and memories and glowy eyes and I honestly wanted to drop-kick the television when I got to that. It was not an ending I cared for at all, but it was the only way out of the corner that things had been painted into.So, it didn't stick the landing. That's too bad. It was an intriguing and weird journey along the way, even if the human moments didn't really happen for me. Oh, one thing that I was hoping for that they suggested but then just as soon shied away from, was the concept of refraction. Inside the Shimmer, radio waves and communications signals all get refracted into uselessness. So, it was suggested, did DNA. Which accounted for the transformations taking place amongst all the living creatures of Area X. I was just waiting for the suggestion that the thing was refracting time, unable to bear a linear timeline like you or I are chained to. That could have brough the husband back and allowed for all manner of strangeness, but we just didn't get that. Pity. I mean, that was right there. So close.As much as I thought ANNIHILATION missed, not just the ending, but trying to hang its coat on a hook of ambiguity and "I don't know", I didn't find it a bad movie. Momentarily infuriating, but no less so than, quite frankly, most of the "serious" SF movies to come down the pike recently. (Looking right at you, THE ARRIVAL.) I dunno, maybe embracing some level of trashiness just works better. Which isn't to say that SF can't do serious work, of course it can. Just that sometimes a little playfulness will get you further than po-faced seriousness. Maybe it just felt a little monotone to me. At any rate, I'm interested in reading the book, even if there's some things that throw red flags for me, namely the aforementioned use of hypnosis as character non/driver. I've thought about it more than many other films after watching, so that's a success at any rate.--As for the rest of what's eating me. Well, it's just like throwing rocks into a pool and watching the initial splash and then it's like it never was. Like you never even threw the rock in the first place. And it takes half a year to make the rock, dig? I mean, that's a raw truth, painful to work with.I'll be back later this week with some links to dig. Stay safe out there.