Rex Manning Day

Posted on by Josh Bales

Happy Rex Manning Day to those who celebrate. EMPIRE RECORDS is only a so-so film — I came to it as an adult, so I don’t carry the nostalgia for it like a lot of folks — but I appreciate a good film-inspired holiday. Going to a friend’s house later for an obligatory viewing.

I’m still around, and project three six five-ish is still a going concern. Since Spring sprang, I’ve been spending more time doing outdoor shit. It’s 64° F and sunny, and I would much rather be outside doing, well, anything instead of being on calls and spreadsheeting.

I’ve also been using my creative time writing fiction versus writing here. Short stories, not the novel I’ve been thinking about for far too long. If I can Once I finish these two short stories, then I will allow myself to focus on the longer, more laborious project.

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I saw the first READY OR NOT in the cinema and absolutely loved it, and have since rewatched it multiple times. READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME is not quite as good as the original, as is to be expected, but that still makes it better than most other films. It took the premise of the first film — young woman marries into an ultra-rich family of cultists who hunt her for sport after her wedding — and expanded on it in a way that is both absurd and logical. Radio Silence, the filmmaking collective behind both RON films, have become some of my favorite directors. Their two SCREAM movies were the best in the franchise, aside from the original, and ABIGAIL was also delightful. I kind of hope there will not be a READY OR NOT 3, but if there is, it will probably be a lot of fun.

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LAST READ: BUYING TIME, Eric Brown
LAST WATCHED A MINECRAFT MOVIE

The Walk Home

Posted on by Josh Bales

It was nice out after work, so we walked to our local pub for dinner. It’s an easy, ten-minute stroll each way. Dinner was fine, as it usually is there. On the way home, while we were waiting at the one stoplight on our route, three things happened quickly.

  1. A minor crash occurred about a hundred feet from us. (That unnatural sound of  a collision makes me wince every time I hear it.) The light changed green, one car accelerated… but the car in front of it did not.
  2. While we gawked at the two crash test dummy cars pulled into the gas station at the intersection, a lady began hollering at us from the intersection. We turned around to see it was one of our friends, possibly slightly drunk, waving at and shouting happily at us.
  3. As our friends turned left to go the opposite direction, one of those fascinating Kei mini trucks came driving towards us. We watched it, rapt. It too turned into the gas station, and we could see that it was covered in bumper stickers that read things like TONKA and MICRO MACHINE. It pulled up near-ish to the two cars that’d crashed. Then the crosswalk changed, and we continued home.

It made for a marvelously melodramatic walk home.

We have semi-joked about getting a Kei mini truck sometime. To me, it’s the ideal truck: a bed large enough to actually haul things, and a reasonably sized footprint. Basically, everything that the modern truck is not. I’d love to have one. We joked(?) that if/when her car dies, maybe we’ll replace it with a mini-truck…

RECENTLY:

  1. The Secret Lives of Six Body Doubles
    “I was like the body they pull out, like a chicken dinner. You know – bring out the breast, bring out the thighs, the legs.”
  2. Patient Hugs Armed Man to Stop Him Bombing Hospital

LAST READ: SYCAMORE, Ian Rogers
LAST WATCHED THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978)
LISTENING: COMPLETE NOCTURNES, Frédéric Chopin (it was the kind of day where I spent several hours deciphering complex Excel formulas written by me a year ago and needed a chill soundtrack, and Chopin fit the bill)

Beneath the Darkening Sky

Posted on by Josh Bales

On Saturday, we had not one, but two social engagements. One was a friend’s birthday brunch, and the other was dinner with my old comrade Sarah, her husband, and their adorable kid who I finally had the honor of meeting. A good day, but by the end of it, I was worn out from the socializing.

To unwind, we fired up the Solo Stove, tossed in some color packs, and lounged beneath the darkening sky. I enjoyed a Tatiana, and counted the stars.

RECENTLY:

For the most part, I try to avoid talking about the current, decidedly abysmal state of the world here, but then I’ll read a paragraph that drags Trump in the most artfully understated way, and I’ll want to memorialize it. From an AP story speculating about Trump’s Iran misadventure:

His social media post — 51 words, much of it in capital letters — did not have the appearance of a message that underwent the careful legal scrutiny needed to justify an attack on civilian infrastructure, said Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University and a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army who served as a military lawyer.

READING: SYCAMORE, Ian Rogers
LISTENING: CANTA EN ESPAÑOL CON LOS PANCHOS, Eydie Gormé and Los Panchos

Inventing Tropes

Posted on by Josh Bales
‘The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water’, J.R.R. Tolkien. August 1937

Finished THE HOBBIT yesterday morning, just before it was time to start working. None of my thoughts around the book are fully baked yet, but my initial reaction is I enjoyed it very much. I get why it knocked people’s socks off when it came out in 1937 — Tolkien was just out there inventing the epic fantasy tropes. Given how saturated the genre became over the last century, it’s remarkable how fresh THE HOBBIT still feels today.

More later, but I’ll also add that the thing most surprising to me about THE HOBBIT is that it’s made me actually want to read THE LORD OF THE RINGS. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

RECENTLY:

LAST READ: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LISTENING: CURRENTS, Tame Impala

076 – Motivations

Posted on by Josh Bales

I was staring out the front window this afternoon, dissociating in between work calls, when I noticed this little blotch of color in the mulch. I slid on my boots and went out front. It was gray, cold, and had just stopped snowing, and amidst all that gloom was this little bluish purple hyacinth.

The little flower seemed to me like it was leaning in towards the garden light, but to what end? Attacking, leaning in for a smooch, or perhaps trying to take shelter under the light? Couldn’t decide then, still can’t decide now. And I think I prefer it that way.

READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LISTENING: THE GREAT SATAN, Rob Zombie

075 – The Signal

Posted on by Josh Bales

Yesterday it was 70 degrees. I would have fired up the gas grill had the wind not been crazy powerful. Then, overnight, it was fierce winds and thunderstorms battering the house so intensely that it woke me up. And today… snow.

The Midwest truly is midwesting today. Fortunately, I stocked up on Sudafed recently — the good stuff, the pseudoephedrine — not that phenylephrine crap that might as well be a sugar pill for all the good it does. My sinuses will no doubt soon be thriving.

Back to work today. I only had about a hundred unread emails awaiting my attention (M had it far worse) and a handful of meetings. Now the rest of the week just needs to follow suit.

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Not just yes but hell yes will I watch an animated FIREFLY series.

The animated reboot is being developed through Fillion’s production banner Collision33 in partnership with 20th Television Animation, which controls the rights to the franchise. Married writer-producers Tara Butters (Agent Carter, Dollhouse) and Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, Flash) are set to serve as showrunners, in their first professional collaboration together, on the series, for which a script has already been written. Additionally, early concept art has been developed in collaboration with Oscar- and Emmy-winning animation studio ShadowMachine. The project is expected to be taken out to buyers soon. The series would be set in the timeline between the original, 11-episode TV run in 2002 and the 2005 feature film continuation, Serenity.

The video announcement featuring the full crew was cheesy as hell and made me happy. I don’t even care that it’s set in between FIREFLY and SERENITY, and not after SERENITY, as would be my typical lament. I’m glad, actually, that it will take place before the events of SERENITY — it’ll be nice to have Wash return from the dead.

READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LAST WATCHED: THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

074 – Yucca Yucca Yucca

Posted on by Josh Bales

We went to the Home Depot the other day and for a ridiculously cheap price picked up seven plants, including this Venus fly trap and a yucca for my office.

Some days, the words flow so easily here. My thoughts are organized and I know precisely what I want to say. Other days, writing here feels like swimming in mud. Today is one of the latter, so I’m going to call it quits and go spend some time outside.

READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LISTENING: INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, John Williams

073 – Greater Than the Sum

Posted on by Josh Bales

For my birthday dinner this year, we indulged and had cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, a petite filet mignon, and fried Oreos from Twist delivered to the house. Each thing on its own was very fine, but the combination of the three proved even better than the sum of its parts. It felt like going to a really nice buffet, but at home and with fewer children sneezing on the food.

The Galactic Projector continues to be a marvelous thing.

This is Mystic Mountain, a region in the Carina Nebula, being projected onto the ceiling of our Airbnb, so we could stare up at it while we lounged in the indoor hot tub. Being boiled alive and indulging in fwine and succulent fruit was a nice way to spend a couple of days.

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After 40-plus years, it looks like KING CONAN is finally happening:

In teasing King Conan, Schwarzenegger told the crowd, “It’s a great story where Conan was 40 years king [as] king and he gets complacent, and now he gets forced out of the kingdom, slowly. Then there’s conflict, of course, and then he somehow comes back, and then there’s all kinds of madness and violence and magic and creatures. Now, of course, you have all the special effects, and the studio system has plenty of money to make those movies really big. So I’m looking forward to all of those projects.”

There is a desire emanating from some quarters of the internet for KING CONAN to be a deconstruction of Arnold’s eponymous hero, à la UNFORGIVEN or LOGAN. I respect that position, and I’m sure it would make for a fine film (especially with Christopher McQuarrie writing and directing). It feels like the natural approach, at this point. But it is for that reason that I hope the filmmakers take the concept and story in a different direction. As much as I love the “miserable old crank is reluctantly drawn into One Last Job, starring a bleak setting and humorless tone” genre of film, it feels like the too obvious, too easy route to go with KING CONAN. As an actor, Arnold can be playful and charming. Injecting some of that energy into an older Conan the Cimmerian, one who’s been king of Aquilonia for 40 years and has learned a few things, could make for an interesting film. We shall see.

READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LAST WATCHED: ASTEROID CITY
LISTENING: EARLY DAYS, Los Retros

070 – Forty-Four

Posted on by Josh Bales

Woke up this morning to my phone politely notifying me that we were under a tornado watch until noon. This follows after having had several tornado warnings last month. This should perhaps feel more notable than it does, given Ohio’s tornado season doesn’t normally kick off until April. But as the Earth continues to get hotter, “normal” from a climate perspective will come to mean less and less.

Today I turn forty-four. Year forty-three was one of the best years of my life, so I’m looking forward to whatever delights, from the tiny to the strange, this forty-fourth year brings. It feels outré to say that during these incredibly fucked times, but now more than ever, we must embrace the joys available to us.

One of the gifts M got me is THE BOOK: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO REBUILDING CIVILIZATION.

I’ve been mildly obsessed with THE BOOK ever since I first read about it a couple of years ago. It’s a lovely object. Detailed, hand-drawn illustrations, and filled with a trove of useful information and instructions, ranging from the scientific, medical, technological, and societal. There’s even a small section about sex toys. I predict THE BOOK will come in handy during my golden years when I need to repair my bicycle so I’m not late to my job at Bullet Farm or wherever.

READING: THE HOBBIT, J.R.R. Tolkien
LAST WATCHED: sort of watched THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE last night, but I started dozing off about 20 minutes into it and the last hour of it feels a bit like a fever dream

069 – nice

Posted on by Josh Bales

Slammed the work laptop shut, turned off Teams and Outlook notifications and moved the apps off the home screen, and am settling for the five day weekend. I can feel my cortisol levels already dropping.

We’re having people over in a little bit to do birthday stuff. Cupcakes from Ele, pizza, California cocktails… it should be a chill evening.

M also decorated.