Finding entertainment in the vast digital wasteland

I am constantly on the hunt for stories. I'm not talking about stories to tell, but stories to consume. It could be movies, TV, magazines, blogs, books, rock opera.

I generally dislike serial TV. Breaking Bad and Sports Night are the only series I ever watched end-to-end. And I watched a ton of X-Files back when I had an antenna on the TV. Lost, Six Feet Under, Better Call Saul - all lost me by the end of the 2nd season. I don't like investing in these things just to have the storytelling fall flat. I hate walking away in the middle of a story, but I'm not going to sit through 60 hours of filler just to find out what happens. TV serials - at some point - always fall into the trap of filling a season instead telling a story. The Walking Dead did the same thing to me. They got so high on their own importance that it seemed they thought all they had to do was tease a death at the end/beginning of the season and I'd come back for another 12 hours to find out who. Nope. I'm out. So anyway, usually no TV for me, unless it's old Twilight Zones or Outer Limits. Anyone remember Eerie Indiana?

I'll cop to enjoying The OA and Stranger Things, but they're still in the single season probationary period.

I often wonder what I'm doing here because I don't read blogs - or other screen-bound materials because I prefer not to read off of screens. I've tried ebooks on my phone and tablet with minimal success. It's just not the same as an actual book. Clearcut the forests for my entertainment.

I prefer nice, heavy hardcovers. Paperbacks are good, but too floppy. Too many ads in magazines. And with a new baby in the house, what little time I had to chill with some reading material has gotten even smaller.

I don't pay for cable. I have some very fine friends who allow me to piggyback their Netflix and Hulu logins. Every so often I get a coupon for Redox and spend 25 cents on a rental. But that's it. Kids, mortgage, groceries. I don't even compulsively buy used books at Barnes & Noble anymore.

If it ain't free, I ain't gettin' it.

Which is why I love some of the podcasts I've found recently. Fiction podcasts are the absolute funky shit. I have a lot of long days of simple, monotonous work and on those days I just plug in and listen.

This is where it started for me:

OpenCulture: Just an endless list of free stories. All public domain. Mostly semi-pro reads done thru Librivox If you're a HorrorHead like me, this is a great way to experience HP Lovecraft. But that's just a few of the roughly 900 free stories. Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and more.

That led me to what is one of my favorite corners of the internet: The New Yorker Fiction Podcast. The New Yorker is famed for its fiction and with good reason. What I really dig about this program is that it features an author who has been published in The New Yorker reading a story from the New Yorker that they love. That's already a nice little bit of geek fun, but it gets better because, after the reading, they do a little dissection/discussion about it with Deborah Treisman, the New Yorker's fiction editor. The discussions feel very informal and friendly. I almost always feel invited to interject on some point. Sort of the literary equivalent of a good commentary track on a DVD.

The NewYorker also has The Writer's Voice. Simple. no-frills. Just a recently published story read by the author.

As a horror/fantasy/sci-fi type guy, the New Yorker products keep me from staying insulated in my little genre bubble.

As for the Genre Bubble, I like The Nightmare Magazine Stories Podcast. Horror at a literary level, I suppose. Here, you'll find horror from all corners of the globe read by a few excellent readers. One of the shortcomings of a lot of podcasts and the like is that many people just aren't up to the task of reading aloud and simply butcher everything they read. Nightmare does not disappoint.

Next is Clarkesworld. Clarkesworld is a wide variety of sic-fi. Not my area of expertise, but it seems to be some of the best in the game represented here. All stories are read by Kate Baker. To her credit, she never gets old or falls flat.

I just added Pseudopod and Escape Pod to my podcasts and am quite happy with these as well. Both are audio only platforms for horror and sci-fi, respectively.

Those are the way I get my reading fix in a life that's often just too busy to keep my nose in a book for more than 30 seconds at a time.

And if another person says to me that I should be watching Game of Thrones, I might strangle them. "yeah, but it's got nudity and violence" is not sufficient to get me to commit to staring at a TV for 80 hours - and it makes me question a person's genetic diversity when that's their evidence for it being a good show.

Why is everyone down on The Dark Tower?

I've been pondering this for over a month now.
Why is everyone down on The Dark Tower movie?
Everyone should be down with The Dark Tower.
Did it deserve multiple 3-hour installments?
Yes.
Did it get them?
No.
Was 90 minutes too short?
Yes.
Am I tired of Universe-In-Peril stories?
Very.
Does this necessarily make it bad?
No.
My wife won a couple tickets to the movies. We spent them on The Dark Tower, even (especially) after hearing how bad it was from every critic and fanboy and Johnny-come-lately. I went because I love the Dark Tower Mythology. I expected a bad movie. Maybe if I didn't have the background knowledge from the gazillion pages of the books, I would have felt a bit lost. Don't think so but not sure on that one.
Did I get a bad movie?
No.
Did I get a great movie?
Hmmmm . . . .
Of course I suffered little disappointments that all gazillion and one pages weren't condensed and represented on the screen. But, really, that's about it. And compared to how much I disliked darlings like Inglorious Basterds and The Avengers, not to mention Batman Begins and bloated tripe like The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Tower was not only not bad it was actually great. Not a great adaptation, but great entertainment.
I just sat back, stuffed my face with popcorn and thoroughly enjoyed seeing a few bits and pieces of my favorite series of books splashed across the screen. Good CGI. Great in-jokes for King fans. Idris Elba made a fine Roland. Matthew McConaughey looked a bit too mannequin-ish for my tastes but was calm and threatening in a way that I enjoyed. Top notch casting and performances all around. Seems a shame we're not likely to get this group together again.
The fuckin' low men? Nice little touch there.
The gunplay was top notch, even in a world inundated with topnotch gunplay (I'm looking at you again, John Wick).
but at an hour and a half, there just isn't enough of it.
of anything.
Still . . . .
I had fun. I saw a couple of my old friends for the first time in years.

Maybe I'll revisit their novels soon and hope that Netflix or HBO or Hulu gets ahold of The Dark Tower and does right by it with several well-produced seasons of Television.
I hope the movie (which doubled its tiny budget) inspires a new audience to read its source material and spawns the adaptations it deserves.
Do I want more?
Yes.
Am I happy with what I got?
Yes. Yes I am.

On the occasion of my idol's 70th birthday

So here we are, September 21st, 2017. Stephen King is 70.

First of all: Happy Birthday, Steve. (Just FYI, I don't know him personally, I just read that he prefers Steve. I try to use that whenever addressing him as though he were here, even though my instinct is to call him Mr. King)

Second of all: Thanks.

On July 3rd, 1991, I was 13 and you were not yet 44. On that day, I did some volunteer work for the library in my hometown setting up for their annual independence day book fair. As payment for my services I was allowed to choose any books I wanted. I chose a novelization of one of the Friday the 13th movies. It even had a selection of black and white stills form the movie in the middle. It sucked. It was unreadable even for a 13 year old boy looking for some blood and guts and boobs. The other book I chose was this:

a 15 year old paperback. I had to hide it from my parents because my dad thought Stephen King was a pornographer. I read it under cover of darkness in a week.

With that book, I went from reading the Hardy Boys and Caldecott winners from the kid's area at the library to reading grown up stuff.

Salem's Lot terrified me. I remember pinching the pages between my fingers to the point that some of them ripped. My pulse pounded just in anticipation of reading it. And when I got to the end, I wanted more.

MORE!!!

Because of this one book, I read a thousand more. I read a few Dean Koontz but that wore thin pretty fast. Ditto Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, John Grisham. All the other prolific/popular writers seemed to be more or less repeating themselves in story, style, structure. Not so Stephen King. I noticed he reused a few phrases. In the early years, it seemed that someone's flesh would run like tallow once a story. But it didn't seem he was reusing ideas or forms. Each book was fresh and I couldn't get enough. I made myself a deal: I would never read any King books back to back. It would be too easy to rip through the entire Stephen King library.

In those gaps, I discovered Chuck Palahniuk, Dracula, Frankenstein, Lonesome Dove, The Art Of Racing in the Rain, Terry Brooks, Ray Bradbury ....

Through it all, I learned most about authenticity. It's strange to think that a man known mostly for supernatural horrors taught me more about authenticity than anyone else. The stories were surreal and honest and never felt like someone was trying to push me to think one thing or another. They just made me think.

Then, of course, I found my love of writing. I briefly toyed with trying to write heavy, important stuff. But that's just shit. I like camp. I like accessibility. I like chills and thrills. I like vulgarity. I like making you think. I'm not going to tell you what comes after this life, but i'll sure as hell give you the opportunity to ponder it.

I try to tell scary stories. Sometimes I succeed.

Finding 'Salem's Lot at age 13 was perfect timing for me. I was a very sheltered boy with a big imagination. I was ready for bigger things and I feel very lucky to have found Stephen King that day. I also feel lucky to have been able to distinguish between 'Salem's Lot and shitty book based off a mediocre horror movie. A year earlier and I might have preferred the one with pictures in the middle - then who knows what might have become of me.

So, Mr. King - um, Steve - Happy Birthday!
And Thanks!