Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 24

FULL BLEED: INTERIM

Relatively quick note here. Which would make for two blog posts on two consecutive days, something that hasn’t happened since, oh, 2008 perhaps.

Today I drive with my wife to San Francisco. Tomorrow we consult with a surgeon regarding actual and literal brain surgery to help alleviate the dual symptoms of her Parkinson’s disease. I say dual symptoms because the medicine used to deal with the symptoms currently creates its own set of problems as much as it clears them up.

We don’t know the ti...

FULL BLEED: 1983 AND OTHER TERRORS

Given the year I call out, you all probably know what recent Hot Media Thing (at least on the internet) I’m going to talk about. Yeah, STRANGER THINGS. And I promise not to spend a lot of time on it because I’ve got other things to do. (Also: SPOILERS.)

So let’s start with some honesty. I didn’t hate STRANGER THINGS. I didn’t love it, either. So I’ve violated the single canonical rule of reviewing media on the internet: either you’re writing to tear something down or to venerate it. There is...

FULL BLEED: DEEP WATER

Teased this one earlier this week so I should actually commit to it. Life got in the way for a little while, which is why I’m doing it now and not a couple days ago when it was fresh.

So I was listening to one of those shows that turns up on NPR (yes, I listen to NPR sometimes when I’m driving because there’s nothing else that has even half a goddamned brain) that sometimes has interesting content but has become so beholden to remaking the wonder of radio that I often lose patience before th...

FULL BLEED: CONDUIT

Buckle up.

Readers over the last year or so will note a decided edge in my voice, which rises and falls at times but never falls away, not completely.

I want to say that it’s time to put that edge away, but there is no occasion for that, probably because I’m backed into a corner and you never know when a knife is going to come in handy.

What I talked about last summer or so, you know, in that Black Phase post? It’s still here, never going away. The condition does not improve, only can be mas...

FULL BLEED: AND WHEN YOU FALL

Little catching up to do here. Meant for this to be a weekly update thing, but I’ve already botched that. Maybe I’ll talk about my trip to the Lush show in San Francisco and how it’s nice to be a grownup sometimes. Of course, you have to put up with a lot of unrelenting bullshit, at which this week has excelled.

Said bullshit often originating from quarters that you have precisely zero control over. And that’s often the most unrelenting kind, because you get to feel powerless over and over a...

FULL BLEED: SOME FRIENDLY

Yeah, there haven’t been any updates for the last six months by my or anybody else’s reckoning. Sue me. No subscriptions to fulfill, no contracts to honor and who even reads plain old blogs anymore? Gimme that branded content!

So in the time that’s passed, I’ve watched my 48th come and go, tried to keep the kids on an even keel, make everyone’s Christmas wishes come true and held out hope that the new year would be better than the old one (which had some high points, but was marked by a con...

FULL BLEED: NINETEEN AND SIXTY SEVEN

I was born between the assassination of JFK and the Apollo moon landing. That’s usually how I mark myself by American events. I could get a little more specific, but this covers the bases, both high and low. Granted, these happenings don’t have the punch that they once did. When I was younger, it was smart to have a conspiracy theory on JFK but we for damn sure landed on the moon. Well now we get to distrust everything. Hooray. Good work, dudes. Fight the power.

So I turn forty-eight today....

FULL BLEED: THREE-LOBED

Good news. I’ll spare you the kind of entry that I’ve been doing for the last several months. Tell your friends. No serious issues here. Nope.

Instead I’ll talk a little about my experiences going to three different, even very different comic shows in the last month and a half or so. Long Beach Comic-Con (hereafter LBCC), Rose City Comic Con (RCCC) and the Alternative Press Expo (APE). I’ve gone to all of these shows for some time, and they’ve all undergone changes, some more extreme than ot...

TULPA

That being a thing that pretends to be another thing in order to find itself some benefit. Doppleganger, mimic, cuckoo, what have you. A thing that pretends to be another thing. Like the dog in Carpenter’s movie of the same name.

It’s tough to pretend to be a thing that you’re not. At least it is for me. And I got paid pretty handsomely to be something that I wasn’t for several years, or rather to write material that really wasn’t me. I did the best I could, which was pretty good, I thought,...

FULL BLEED – BUREAU OF LIGHT AND SHADOW

Well, that was fun, I guess. Looking back on that takedown of the first episode of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD.

Fun but pointless when you get down to it. No value to it other than lancing a boil. Probably should bear my own admonition to do better in cases like this.

Been behind on posts here. Busy trying to get enough done so that I don’t feel bad about disappearing for five days back down to Los Angeles (yes, I did live there for a time, so I can say ‘back down to’). Looking forward to it. Just...