Rish Outfield's Blog, page 2

Rish Outcast 313: In Security 6

Rish talks a little more about working at the library. In this volume, we get:

1) When a bomb threat calls
2) An exchange of puzzles
3) Sleeping beauty and the runaway toddler
4) The new librarian's new "friend"

Bonus . . . 5) Oh, no.

If you wish to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wish to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Gin Security" Moretto.

Crappy Halloween

So, I got an episode of the Outcast all ready to go for Halloween, uploading it and completing the blog post . . . only to realize days later than I never posted it.  So, that ain't great.

I ended up working on Halloween night, and it was fine (the library was probably the most dead I have ever seen it--is that irony?), but at one point, I looked at the monitors and I saw someone standing in the corner, their back to me, BLAIR WITCH-style.

I zoomed in, and the person didn't move, just standing there in the corner, like the end of that terrible, terrible film.  "What the fudge?" I might have said aloud.

I kept watching, hoping to understand what I was seeing.  And eventually, I did.  Turns out, the woman was using the outlet there to charge her phone, but was also looking at it.  

What fun.

Marshal & I Face A Terror From Beyond Space

Once again, Marshal Latham and I have reviewed an old movie, this one 1958's IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE on the Outfield Excursions show over at Journey Into...

This was not a great movie, but it did influence Ridley Scott's ALIEN (along with Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES), and tells the story of the first manned expedition to Mars, which encounters a deadly alien life form, which naturally stows away on the rescue ship.

Check out our review HERE.

Not To Fifty!

Early this summer, I got it into my sick head that I would record Fake Sean Connery either quoting a dozen or so movies, or quoting a dozen or so pop songs, and post them every so often on his Instagram page . . . to see if people had a good time trying to identify them. I picked half a dozen songs on the first day and recorded them up at the cabin, and did another half dozen the next week. And another five or so a week later.  I was having a good time.

By the time I started posting them, I had double the amount I had intended to do. Before long, I had recorded fifty of them, some easy and some hard. And I thought it would be interesting to count how many songs I had done from each decade (assuming the Eighties would rule . . . since, after all, the Eighties rule). Maybe that will be interesting to you as well.

1920s - 1
1940s - 1
1950s - 1
1960s - 4
1970s - 6
1980s - 19
1990s - 8
2000s - 3
2010s - 2
2020s - 5

To my surprise, I learned that Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon was released in the Sixties, not the Seventies.

To my further surprise, nobody out there gives a mechanic's lugwrench about my little endeavor. But I enjoyed it very much--so much so that I think I'll continue to at least one hundred, regardless of the apathy of any potential Instagram viewers/followers. Sometimes, you create art (or "art," in my case) for an audience of one.

I'll see you at the century mark.

Abbie and I Become Assassin's Apprentices

Have you ever read The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb?  I haven't, but a fan of Abigail Hilton's books recently mentioned that her favorite books were those by Abbie and "The Elderlings" series by Hobb.  Abbie forwarded me the comment (since the listener said she was a fan of my narrations of the books), and I asked her if she thought I'd like the Hobb books.

Abbie said she thought I would, and wondered if I'd want to do a podcast where we read the books and talk about them.*  So, I went out and got " The Assassin's Apprentice ," which is the first book in the series, and I started reading just as soon as I finished the previous book I was enjoying.**

If you too would like to read the book, then, hey, we could be brothers.  Or sisters.  Or heroes.  And if you want, you can hear the first episode of our joint podcast HERE (Abbie's page) or HERE (my page), where Abbie and I exchange questions and answers in a way that may be entertaining to you (but I make no guarantees).
Note: Abbie is very smart (or very educated, or both), and that can be intimidating. But I enjoy hearing about her breadth of experience or knowledge, and don't feel insulted if she has to mansplain something to me. I imagine we'll get tons of that as we go on with the books, especially since she has read them (the first three, anyway) before and I haven't. Of course, Abbie doesn't know that Alex McCrindle played General Dodonna in STAR WARS, so, well, you know.

*I initially misrememebered ME being the one who suggested we podcast about it, but I was wrong.  As I was about spelling "misremembered."
**That one was Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel "Far From The Madding Crowd," which I honestly only read because they made a movie of it, an annoying habit I have.

Object Of Unknown Origin

This is another post from a while back that I abandoned once nothing came of it, but as I was deleting the photo, I decided to jot it down anyway.  For you. 

Look, Damien, it's all for you!

Since I am always late for work, I sometimes leave books to return or what I'm going to eat for lunch in my car, and have to go down to the underground lot at some point to retrieve them. Since I am 92% unsupervised (and that number is rounded down), no one cares that I do this, and one of the many times I went down, I saw an object sitting against one of the garbage cans in the lot.

But I didn't know what it could be.

It was a black cylinder about eight inches tall and five wide, with a white cover or lid, and a curious blue button on the top. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before, except maybe a grenade in a Science Fiction movie (not totally dissimilar to the charges Han and Leia used to blow up the shield generator on Endor's moon).

People lose things every single day at the public library, and people toss their garbage on the ground even oftener, but this might have been either . . . or it might have been something else.

So, I took the above photo of it, and I sent it to my boss with the message, "Any idea what this is?"

Almost immediately, he texted back, "Tent lamp maybe?"

"Ah," I thought aloud, and went back to my desk.

But a minute later, I got a call from my boss (he's Head of Security), asking where I'd seen it and if I had left it there. I told him I assumed somebody lost it, so I left it, but I could take it to Lost & Found, if he wanted me to.

"It's not that," he said. "I'm just worried that somebody's going to see it and call the police."

"But you told me it was a tent l--"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure. Did you pick it up?"

"No," I said, not adding that I was a bit afraid to do so, just in case it was some kind of explosive (we had gotten a bomb threat around this time when I wasn't there, and I'm typing this the day after my nephew's high school [and the one just north of it] got a bomb threat).

He said I'd better go down and get it, in case visitors to the library were freaked out by it.*

Once I'd picked it up and examined the object, I realized that it was a harmless portable lantern, and tonight, as I was typing this up, I discovered that there's a battery-operated lantern almost exactly like it right here in the family cabin (except the one here is even more bomb-like in its shape and coloring, sinisterly enough). 

Inevitably, by the time I get fired from this job too, I will have racked up several more experiences like this. Hopefully, at least a little wisdom will come along with it.

Rish

*That's not an entirely unlikely scenario--twice in the short time I've worked there, people have come up to me to report an item suspiciously left alone somewhere in the library, and I was told of an incident a couple of years back where the bomb squad was called in to dispose of a worrisome package, only to discover it was something utterly banal and inexplosive, but after it had been collected by a robot and pre-detonated in a safe container.

No, I Mean That Literally

You think your life is a dumpster fire?

Well, you and the public library have something in common.

The fire department visited my workplace today as a tossed cigarette started a surprisingly-large fire in the recycling dumpster on the north side of the library.  

While waiting for the firemen to arrive, my coworker Abe ran out and pulled the flaming representation of the Michael Bay Transformers movies away from the building, where it quickly melted the entire container into a bubbling, stinking puddle of charred filth (see also, THE REVENGE OF THE FALLEN).

It did create quite a smell, and the entry doors are propped open as we speak to air out the building (though I can't say if *opening* the doors when the fire was outside makes scientific sense to me).  I can't say that I participated in putting out the fire in any way, but I did take a picture, and made three or four lame jokes about dumpster fires.
Oh, add this one to the list.

Rish Outcast 312: Heads Up

Rish presents a very short story he wrote a number of years ago for a match-the-image contest, about a boy who gets a strange visit from his brother in the night.

Then Rish talks about floating Danny Glick and the last time he saw A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984).

Download the file directly by Right-Clicking HERE.

Support me on Patreon HERE!

Logo by Gino "Foreheads Up" Moretto.

My Voice On "The Wax Shadow" on HorrorAddicts

A lot of the stories Emerian Rich writes for her podcast* have a female main character and female supporting characters. Sometimes, there's a dude who grabs one of the women's butts on the subway or tells her he's gonna kill her daughter if she doesn't give up the briefcase . . . and in those cases, she lately calls me to voice those guys. Everybody else, she voices herself.

But with this new story, "Wax Shadow," it's almost completely the opposite. This tells the tale of Josh Anton, up and coming star of action movies, who is gifted with a wax replica of himself, one that looks remarkably like him. But when Josh spreads himself too thin, the wax version decides to take his place for a little while, to help him get back on his feet.

I voice a whole mess of characters in this one, from Josh and his doppelganger, to his brother, to a talk show host, to a deliveryman, to an Action star from the past that lives down the block (Emerian did change the gender of Josh's assistant to a woman, or it would've been even more).

I tried to make Josh and his brother and his artificial twin sound similar, but slightly different to one another, and that turned out to be a real challenge (sometimes Josh sounds a bit KeanuReevesish, and that wasn't entirely my intention). I'm not sure if it's even apparent in the finished product, but I did try.**

If you've got the time, check it out HERE.

*It's more likely she writes them elsewhere and puts them up on her podcast, since she also publishes collections of them . . . like I oughtta do more of.

**Usually, I can alter the pitch or the accent or the age of the character so they sound distinct, but this one gave me way less wiggle room. By the way, when you were a child, did you have a Wiggle Room? I was always jealous of my friend Steven's Wiggle Room. It seemed so wondrous and freeing and fun. Until they found the bones, that was.

I Don't Know Where He Gets It

My nephew Kayden asked me what time I went to work on Monday, and if I could help him with his English project before I left.  I asked him what the assignment was, and he told me he had to write a narrative story in the first-person that was at least 750 words and had to have a resolution.

He thought maybe he'd write about a court case with lawyers and a judge, and I asked him, "Do you know anything about courtrooms?  Like, do you watch any shows about that sort of th--"

"No," he said, "you're right, that's a stupid idea."

I told him it wasn't stupid, but that he should probably write about something familiar, like school, or golf, or family, or fishing, or buxom young women that like to wear white t-shirts and suspenders in the rain.

He said, "Okay, sure."  

I said, "Alright, what do you want it to be about?"

He didn't know.  I strongly suspect that's why he wanted my help with it.*

So, I kicked several potential ideas at him, of things I knew he was familiar with, that wouldn't be too difficult to riff on (I may have tossed out that old chestnut "Write what you know"), and he picked a fishing trip with him and his friend and his little brother.  It starts to rain on them, and his little brother goes back to get ponchos and/or umbrellas, so he has the keys, and they're lately locked out of the car because of that.

I gave him a couple of notes, feeding him a set-up that could pay off at the very end of the tale, but mostly letting him write the story. And I was surprised by just how hard that was for him, just how bad he was at it, and how not enjoyable this task was to him. It was supposed to be at least 750 words, and at the two or three hundred word point, he asked if it was okay to stop. We could resume work tomorrow, the day before it was due. But I told him we should push on through to the end, and tomorrow, we could do revisions.

The story, as I said, was about him and his friend and his younger brother going fishing, and they get lost in the woods, and then a bunch of wolves chase them ("bunch" is the technical term for a pack of wolves). And to my surprise, he chose to end the story with the wolves eating his little brother.**

It was a surprise because it's not something a lot of kids--a lot of normal kids, anyway--would have gone for. It instead seemed like something I would have gone for at his age. And a lot younger, if we're being honest. So, was that my influence on him? Was that him writing something he thought would please me? Or is it possible that this sort of twisted morbidity runs in the family?

To my surprise, he wanted it to end with his little brother getting eaten, instead of sacrificing his friend's life, or having all three boys escape.  "Are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, "having it end that way?"

"I can write what I want," he said.  "The teacher said it could be about anything, as long as it was long enough."

Well, it was long enough.  I have to admit that I made matters worse, though, by saying, "How about nobody believes you about the wolves, but later, a farmer shoots one, and when he cuts it open, they find your car keys inside it?"  He liked that idea.

I did a word count when we reached the end, and we were at 864 words, which exceeded the assignment. I saved the file (for once) and told him, tomorrow, we can read it aloud and make whatever fixes it needs, then he could turn it in.

But that didn't happen. The next day, he told me he didn't want to work on it anymore, and that it was only supposed to be a first draft anyway. So, I emailed it to him and he handed it in. And he got 100%, which felt pretty good.***

The next assignment was to do a polish on the story, to fix whatever notes the teacher had given, by Kayden said he wasn't going to bother, as he'd already gotten 100%. Now, I don't know if that means that there were no mistakes (there surely were), or that it couldn't be improved (it surely could be), but if the teacher didn't find anything wrong with it, the boy wasn't willing to put in any more work. So I guess that's where he's not a chip off the old block (do uncles have blocks?). At least not totally.

RBO

*I get that this sort of activity is painful drudgery to some people, but man, it's the sort of assignment I ate up in elementary school, junior high, high school, and college.  In fact, I even thought it was fun walking him through it, though it was a challenge not to try to take over the narrative, or correct him when he said, "Me and Chris kept running as fast as we could" and such.

**Not just biting him, or killing him, or infecting him with werewolfism (the technical term for lycanthropy), but eating him.

***I had worried that the teacher would say, "Uh, no. You need to rewrite it so it has a more appropriate, positive ending." But who knows, maybe he thought it was refreshing.