2009 About Done, And About Godd*mn Time!

I still haven't gotten so old that I start to wax nostalgic about all the past years that have come and gone in my 39 pulse-pounding years of life.

No, I still see the end of 2009 and say, "F*ck it! Let's get to 2010!"

Frankly, there's nothing about 2009 to hold up and study, or reflect on. No Horatio's Skull to be found here. A whole bunch of people crying over the economy. A blizzard in Virginia for the first time since 1996 or whatever it was. I busted up with a girl. I injured the tissues in my chest and thought I had a heart attack, but it was just a sign of getting older. I'm nearer the end of my life than the beginning. These are high points in an otherwise non-detailed year.

Nothing I saw or read as entertainment utterly changed me, though I had some mind-boggling moments. The best thing I read all year was Darwyn Cooke's adaption of Richard Stark's THE HUNTER. It's a fabulous taste of severe criminal. I can't say Cooke is doing anything but the Lord's work in his endeavor to reproduce Stark's blocky, uncompromising prose into illustration. You just cannot imagine two things going together better than Cooke and Stark.

Other notables are the ongoing SCALPED trades, each one of which gets more sweaty and desperate than the last.

One of the best things I watched all year, for certain, is this made-for-Internet video from some flick called 500 DAYS OF SUMMER. It's magic, no joke.



Though not movies released in 2009, some of the more memorable, flat-out fun ones were:

PUNISHER: WAR ZONE, which illicited all kinds of pissing and moaning from "fans" of the property. I dislike the Punisher visually and in conceit, in comics, but this movie provided mounds of action value. WAR ZONE is homage movie about the 1980s action genre, without all the snide self-awareness.

David Mamet's REDBELT, a well-done movie about Mixed Martial Arts, for all intents. Mamet always goes over the top and doesn't hesitate to do so here. But it's Mamet and it's almost impossible not to be thrilled by Mamet-Speak and the strong assured hand he brings to directing his own work.

Another solid action entry is TAKEN, about Liam Neeson doing what you know Liam Neeson can do: give an intense goddam stare in the seconds before beating down on a man until you hear the man shit his pants. The whole movie is just that, and I had a wonderful time. I might have shit my pants while watching it, in fact.

I watched a Chinese ecological "animals gone wild) horror movie from the early 1980s called CALAMITY OF SNAKES. If you have an aversion to hundreds of real "attacking" snakes being killed, don't watch it. If you're ready to freak out, do watch it.

Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD was another head-slapper. Some things have to be seen to be seen.

MORITURI with Marlon Brando and Yul Brenner was the best Man on a Mission movie I saw. Fantastic production and Jerry Goldsmith score. Just superb.


The one flick I did see released this year, CRANK 2: HIGH VOLTAGE, was so insane and visceral that, again, it was hard to tell if it was really happening or if it was all in my head. Again, like WAR ZONE and most of the other high-point flicks here, not many are expected to love these movies. I loved them because they all did something different and affected me in different ways. They created unforgettable images, and wonderfully fun quotes, and I can't thank most of them enough.

So anyway, I'm ready to be done already with 2009. Like I was ready to be done with 2008. And like I'll be ready to move on from 2010. But at least there is the hope, the geniune hope, of some kind of unknown disaster or critical happiness or essential success, somewhere in the future. Or if not, at least the ability to say, "F*ck it! Next year will be better!"

And maybe it will.

Wishing Everybody a Better Than Swell Christmas!

Had a pretty enjoyable Christmas day. Unlike real people, I'm not burdened with a wife and kids, but sometimes that can be considered a good thing. Like, I get to sleep in more than most people my age. And during gatherings, I get to split whenever the mood strikes me. But I must say, I got some cool swag from friends, some good food as well, watched RIFIFI (Jules Dassin heist movie from 1955) for a movie evening. And for me, that's damn near a perfect day.

Blog Called on Account of Novel

Sometimes I don't know what the hell is wrong with me.

I guess everyone could stand to say that to themselves now and again. I seem to say it all the time. I'm lazy, but not in the usual way. It's more like I'm obsessively lazy. I'll do anything instead of the most important thing. So I'll spend too much time reading about old baseball players from the 1970s instead of writing my novel(s).

I haven't put anything on my page here and it depresses me. It's like when I keep putting off doing the burpees/shadow-boxing exercise which keeps me (in my mind) in fighting shape. Actually not really in fighting shape, or much shape, but at least I feel like I'm not a flabby blob. Which when you're 39 is something you can turn into fairly quickly.

By the way, a "burpee" is a particular kind of exercise which is really good for your bod. Seen here in action:



But as I was saying, blogging ain't exactly an easy job either. Yet it's sort of necessary, if for nothing else to have a "place" in this current world. Which is sad, but true.

One of the problems I have is how ready I am to quit. Quitting is a disease. "F*ck this, I'm out of here!" type quitting, for you Will Ferrell fans. I'll quit in this aggressive manner in order to put all the blame on everyone else. Which works wonders when you have to live with yourself.

I'm writing the latest incarnation of my novel series, which is like saying I've built my new rocket to the moon. I'm not an astro-engineer, if you understand, thus my "rocket" won't exactly make it to the moon. The same could be said for being a writer.

A "writer" really is a state of mind. It's a general statement about a position in life, a career choice once dominated by very romantic notions. With the surging Internet populace, and blogs, everybody is a "writer." Saying you're a writer in today's world is like saying you're a biped. The classification has lost whatever romance it ever had, and we aren't marveling at being able to stride upright. Not since we first did it, way back when Arthur C. Clarke's Monolith from outer space taught our Neanderthal ancestors how.

A writer of novels is nearly anachronistic, considering the death of the written word (again, Internet). People say there will always be novels as long as there are stories, but is that really true? I just saw the "official" sequel to Bram Stoker's DRACULA in a bookstore today. Did that story need to be "official"? Whose ego was stroked by being the one to write a sequel to DRACULA? Isn't that like writing the sequel to MOBY DICK? Does this "official" sequel officially cancel out all other incarnations of Dracula ever seen in print, television and the movies?

So what I mean is that I feel antiquated before I've even had a chance to succeed with a writing career. I'm no dummy, wooden head and heart. But it doesn't take a genius to be a writer. It takes craft, and determination, and at least respecting the genre being operated in. If you're not writing genre, you aren't interested in being published. Which still doesn't mean you have to write the 500th knockoff of "CSI" or some zombie thing or, god help us, DRACULA. But you can write the genre with an eye toward an evergreen approach. Used to be, writers like Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, Ross Macdonald, Richard Stark and John D. MacDonald did exactly that. They defeated expectations by producing original work of high craft, but genre stories all the same.

I'm a little weak where the novel is coming from, in this case. My case. THE HUNGERING DOORWAY is the first in a series. Same protagonist, Thurman Dart, who is in fact never the same man in any of the books. He may look the same, sound the same, and have the same fighting style, but he's different every time. He has a new identity. Or rather, a new identity to him. He's a little bit Len Wein and Carmine Infantino's comic book character "the Human Target", a little Cordwainer Bird (see Harlan Ellison), and a shake cheese of "The Prisoner." I want to pull off having a character who is motivated only by what he pretends to be. More importantly, Thurman Dart exists in a world where the Pulp characters like Tarzan and Doc Savage and the Shadow have actually lived and influenced the culture, and history. I want to focus on a man like Dart who is "more" than human, as the Pulps tend to be, and yet he can only function when he is one of "us." Any of us would want to be Thurman Dart, but Dart spends all his time trying to be "ordinary" in order to fulfill his mission. He's a sasquatch trying to wear a suit. And of course his jobs often bring him into direct conflict with other Pulps, who seem to have withdrawn into their own secret society in recent decades.

If all this sounds derivative, then I've actually accomplished part of the goal. At any rate, my blogging may suffer at times, but I feel it's important not to quit. Keep doing burpees, keep doing the blog, and finally accomplish the goal of forging this series of books I've always wanted to do. Plus, with the gauntlet thrown here, I'll be expected to carry through. God knows I rarely expect it.