David Michael Newstead's Blog, page 3
May 30, 2025
Things in Old Books
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
So I frequently look at little free libraries or used bookstores. And if there are names or other identifying things in an old book about its previous owner I will try to figure it out. So last month I picked up a book at a little free library entitled International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. This particular little free library was filled with foreign policy magazines and things like that. The international politics book specifically had a woman’s name written in it and the year 2009. I got on LinkedIn to investigate. Who is this person? What’s their story? Turns out it’s a USAID Foreign Service Officer who was until recently stationed somewhere in Asia. Then I would guess… she got rif’ed (reduction-in-force), moved back to the U.S., and cleaned all the foreign affairs books and magazines out of her house as she searches for what she will do next.
May 23, 2025
The Road of a Thousand Eyes, Version 1
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
James left Baltimore carrying his old pocket watch, a suitcase stuffed with cash, and a Colt .45 tucked under his jacket. He caught the last train that night, rushing through Penn Station as cigarette smoke trailed behind him like car exhaust. Within a few minutes, the city and his old life disappeared behind him. He had enough money on him to start over, he thought, shedding his past as easily as someone changes their clothes. Out West, James told himself, it would all be different. He just had to get there and outrun the men looking for him.
The whole ride he couldn’t sleep. Instead, James relentlessly followed the moving hands on his timepiece. He had planned a hurried and convoluted route to evade anyone on his trail. He boarded trains South to DC, West out passed Shenandoah coal country, North to Cincinnati. Would they be waiting for him in Chicago, he wondered. His eyes were wide and bloodshot by the time he ate breakfast in Indianapolis: eggs and toast washed down by a dozen cups of coffee. From there, he hopped a bus to St. Louis, crammed between a pair of grandmothers. Along the way, his only real companions were that goddamn pocket watch and the suitcase he never let out of his sight.
Long before St. Louis, James got off at some no-name downtown. He found the nearest hotel and slept for what felt like a week. He shaved and put on a new suit and wore glasses he didn’t need, but that was just the beginning. By the time he was standing on the train platform in St. Louis, he’d become an entirely new man. Over the years, “James Robert Armstrong” performed this feat many times: in Boston and across the boroughs of New York, in Philadelphia and Trenton, Richmond and Baltimore. There was always a new identity to conjure up out of paperwork. He excelled at that! Then, his appearance changed accordingly. And a new mark and nefarious scheme weren’t far behind as the cycle repeated itself over and again.
But the sins from a thousand crimes and various misdeeds had started to accumulate, following him around like a bad smell. He had stolen the money in the suitcase like all the other money before it. Guilt wasn’t exactly the right word for what he was feeling, but whenever he caught his reflection from a certain angle or sat up unable to sleep, James recognized the cost of his falsehoods and the lives he’d ruined. He could still picture each of them… The deaths were regrettable, no doubt. Then again, those things had really been the wrongdoing of another man, some discarded version of himself he detached from whenever necessary. That was his mindset at least. He repeated it in his head on each segment of his journey like saying more often made it closer to the truth. He changed trains again in Kansas City, switched personas again with ease. Except his peace of mind could never quite withstand the constant ticks emanating from the pocket watch. It was the only relic left from his younger days. The engraved initials on the back were the very last hint to an identity he abandoned long ago.
L.L.G., it read.
He ran his fingers over the letters out of habit, almost remembering, but being sure to stop himself. There was no point to it. The past was always behind him, the future ahead, and he’d decided either California or Colorado would be his destination. It was fertile ground for new endeavors, he smiled to himself.
Barreling down the tracks, his train snaked across the countryside. It cut through mountains, over rivers, and into forests and when he finally crossed over into Colorado, James Armstrong was relieved. The tension in his shoulders finally loosened. At the next stop, he would get out, determined to eat an enormous steak dinner. He wanted to celebrate his next chapter and the fortune he stole to make it a reality.
“30 minutes to Denver,” the conductor repeated to everyone onboard.
James put his pocket watch away, muffling its rhythmic sounds. He spent that time envisioning his meal. With each passing second, the food and drinks became more elaborate and expensive in his imagination. He relished all the ways he could begin again. With that money, he could atone as much as he needed to, while living a leisurely existence beyond the reach of his origins.
L.L.G. was long dead, he told himself. The life of “James Robert Armstrong” would soon be a distant memory too.
As he went to disembark, suitcase in hand, that was the first time James noticed the figure. In the crowded train aisle, one silhouette stood out among the other exiting passengers. For an instant, his dark eyes cut into James with a glance. The man was simultaneously cold and angry, then he simply evaporated into the smoky haze of the train platform. The others walked away going about their business, while James stood there and fearfully clawed at the handgun in his jacket.
His meal that night was as good as spoiled from the paranoia. Afterwards, he transformed his hotel suite into a barricade with that same pistol ready at his side. All night, James ran through countless scenarios, replaying his long trip from start to finish. A thief was one thing, but if he’d been followed since Baltimore or even Kansas City, his life was in real danger. He contemplated going back, pivoting South to Florida or North to Canada. He could take a boat to the Caribbean or just drive a Model T off into the desert to Mexico or to parts unknown. James tried to recall who among his fellow travelers might have ratted him out along the way. Then, of course, there had been all the train porters, conductors, taxi drivers, hotel clerks, waiters, maids, fry cooks… Every man in a booth he bought a ticket from was now suspect, every chatty bartender a potential informant. Had he escaped or simply delayed his own execution? He spent the night carefully taking stock of his ammunition and formulating a plan.
The next morning, James jumped into action. The California coast was now his goal. He bought a battered old suitcase, wore workman’s clothes, and buried himself beneath an unremarkable façade designed to blend into any crowd. He mapped out a dozen routes and ten different opportunities to alter where exactly he was headed. A midnight train out of Denver would take him through the Southwest and onto the Pacific. From there, anything seemed possible, he thought.
James boarded the train that evening with his head down, his eyes focused on a copy of the Bible he’d taken from his last hotel room. In the rumbling darkness of a mostly empty train car, somehow James had fallen asleep. When he woke up again, it was still pitch black outside. He’d lost track of the time and where they were. Anonymous mountains and trees rushed by his window as the locomotive pressed onward through the night. Disoriented, James shuffled into the aisle, hoping to throw some water on his face and smoke a cigarette. Then. There. With a half-lit cigarette jutting from his mouth and his hands fumbling around with matches, he saw the man’s silhouette again. It was like a shadow following his every movement. He just hadn’t been aware of it when he first got up. In the dim light, he couldn’t get a clear view at the man’s face. James strained his eyes to decipher who was in front of him, but it was no use. Panicked and alert now, he dropped the matches and reached for his gun. In response, the silhouette didn’t move a muscle.
In that instant, James felt the blade carve into his back as a hand covered his mouth. The silhouette before him looked on at his victim struggling against his unseen accomplice. This fit only lasted a moment before James fell to his knees, his muffled cries going unheard. He was still conscious when they dragged him to the door and rifled through his belongings. The watch, the gun, his wallet – all pilfered off him. Weakened, he tried to stretch his right hand out to block them or fight them. That’s when the final wound came. The silhouette firmly grabbed his shirt and dug a knife deep into his abdomen. The door opened. In the moonlight, James thought he saw a sliver of a familiar face. He groaned at them, then the pair threw him from the moving train.
As the murderers shut the door, the rest of the passengers continued to slumber. The culprits traded an emotionless stare before fading away back to their seats. Lingering, that towering shadow of a man traced the sides of the pocket watch between his thumb and forefinger, eventually putting it in his coat for safekeeping.
“Goodbye, Lawrence…” he sneered.
May 16, 2025
The Road of a Thousand Eyes: Intro
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
I found this old newspaper ad on accident the other week. I do a lot of history research and I was looking for something unrelated in the Baltimore Sun. This is a really trippy train advertisement from 1909 for the Rock Island-Frisco Line in the Rocky Mountains. “A thousand eyes insure your safety. Every mile of track is scanned every day…” It continues like that. The artwork is definitely eye catching, but feels like a horror movie. After thinking about it for a while though, I decided I’m going to try to write different short stories inspired by this one image. The short stories won’t necessarily be related to each other, just different interpretations of a story that could be based on this picture. Stay tuned for more.
May 9, 2025
Pending
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
Lately, I’ve been going through a lot of historical records and old files for a project I’m working on. This has actually been really fun and educational, but one random find made me laugh. I was digging through some manila folders from the mid-1950s when I came across one marked “Pending.” Sure enough, there were a couple pieces of paper in there about specific people to get back to and a few to-do list items. Then, I stopped to really think about it… Wars have been waged. Nations rose and fell. People were born, lived, and died. But these things have been pending this entire time and I guess, at this point, they always will be. And one day, mine and everyone else’s last to-do list will be left flapping in the wind forever as some cosmic joke about time and mortality. Eternally pending.
May 2, 2025
A Moon Too Far #2
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
Contrasts. Before and after. Fifty people leave on a secret mission across the stars. Nine return. Minutes before the fighting, the group is confident and disciplined, checking their weapons and reviewing the plan. After their excursion, the few who remain are quiet and shell-shocked. Wounds are extensive, casualties are high. Despite everything, their mission was a success. A special, long-range stealth shuttle had propelled them beyond the front, safely navigating asteroids, and hiding in nebulous clouds of gas. The team was silently shepherded to and from some dusty, anonymous rock. Their target was a crashed alien vessel, waiting for rescue. But theirs was a war within a war, a particularly bitter clandestine battle occurring beneath the surface of grander maneuvers. And with each passing year, the stakes as well as the costs of this secret strategy only grew. Then, an opportunity! Military intelligence had tracked and pinpointed a damaged vessel believed to be carrying members of the alien’s leadership caste and, more importantly, the rare genetic crystals integral to their society.
The planet awaiting this special operations unit was a desert, uninhabited and uninhabitable. The alien ship lurking there was severely damaged, its shields down. However, their hope that all aboard had perished in the crash was short-lived. Automated defenses and three surviving guards claimed twelve lives in the first minutes of the engagement. Lasers crisscrossed the night sky around them. Two guards evaporated against an onslaught of laser fire, but the last managed to retreat to the interior of the ship. The masked soldiers followed in pursuit, their battle continuing inside the curved caverns of this inhuman vessel. Five remaining guards made the men pay dearly for every inch that they advanced. Finally, they reached their primary target and claimed a pale, cylindrical crystal the size of a kitchen table. Its contents could very well change the course of the war. And next to it? A stasis cell holding a blue and green scaled member of the leadership caste.
Had there been more time or reinforcements the wrecked ship itself would have been a valuable prize. Unfortunately, their departure coincided with the belated arrival of the alien’s rescue party. Fourteen men died in the ensuing chaos. It was a firefight of mammoth propositions with no real chance of victory. All they could do was buy time for the others. So with their cargo safely aboard, the remnants of their team shot through the atmosphere and returned to base at lightning speed. On the way, one of them succumbed to his wounds, while another finally pulled the mask from his face and revealed the ruinous scars of a lifetime spent at war.
April 25, 2025
A Movie Theater’s Obituary
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
I tend to have a mini-existentialist crisis when a movie theater I love closes. In my hometown, there was one theater I saw some memorable movies in growing up, the Apollo Theater, that was sadly demolished and turned into a used car lot. Another theater, attached to the mall, closed while I was in college, but they didn’t tear it down. Just boarded it up and forgot it was ever there. Since then, I’ve periodically driven by that section of the mall and I always wonder whether anyone bothered to gut the theater’s interior before that happened? Because if they didn’t, there’s potentially a fully preserved 1990s movie multiplex with seats, screens, projectors, and an abandoned concession stand behind a nondescript façade. I guess I’ll never really know…
Fast forward to the 2020s and the pandemic immediately wiped out several theaters near me. It was very unfortunate. One was on the 4th or 5th floor of a mall that also went out of business, so the building doesn’t even exist anymore. Down the street from that, there’s an historic Art Deco theater that closed, but it continues to be the subject of speculation about whether it will reopen again in some form. Who knows if or when that will ever happen. More recently though, E Street Cinema closed in March 2025. I watched a lot of great old and new movies at E Street over the years including documentaries, artsy independent films, and a few blockbusters. It was the kind of theater that hosted midnight showings of The Room (2003) or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). It had a bar and was underground, literally, so I’m not sure what else that space could really be used for, if anything. Its 20-year run as a downtown movie theater marked an important, but difficult chapter for filmmaking. When it opened, the rise of streaming and the financial pressures of the pandemic weren’t on anyone’s mind. People just wanted to see good movies and that’s what they got.
Before it shuttered, I managed to go to one more showing at E Street. I took a few pictures so that whatever it becomes next, I’ll be able to remember what it once meant to people.
April 18, 2025
Movie Theaters!
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
Once a upon a time in the 1940s, after the Second World War, but before the rise of television, 90 million to 98 million Americans went to the movie theater every week. For context, this was when the total U.S. population was only 140 million people, so around 70% of them were regularly going to the movies. By the early 1950s, however, a massive change was underway. Weekly movie theater attendance rates declined by 50 million Americans. Simultaneously and not coincidently, a quarter of a million new television sets were being installed every month in homes across the country. This was the seismic impact of television. And while the history of cinema has many chapters and pivotal moments, any perceived golden age is always set against unforgiving business realities. The pandemic was certainly one of those and marked a change for movie theaters on a scale not seen in decades. Personally, I can measure the city I live in by the number of theaters that were operating when I first moved here over a decade ago compared to the reduced number that are hanging on today. Another just closed recently, much later than those immediately swept up during lockdown. Except, a different massive and likely permanent change is already happening. Decreased attendance, smaller audiences, less revenue, fewer theaters, and a new chapter to navigate in order to create what people love and determine where they get it from.
