Original Geeks Podcast: Episode 75

My new novel, The Salvation Shark starts next week on Laugh at Yourself First, so I'm not posting a story this week. New chapters will be posted every Monday and Friday. If that's not enough, listen to my review of PREDATORS on Episode 75 of the Original Geeks Podcast. If you've been listening to the show, you were then eagerly awaiting my review of Camp Blood: Friday the 30th in Dallas, TX August 12-15. Two weeks before the event, after probably 75% of the attendees had already booked hotel rooms and paid for airline tickets, the event has been moved to May 13th, which technically would be Friday the 31st.

Being 2 of those 75%, we either lose $400 each for plane tickets, reschedule our flights any time in the next year, but pay additional fees, or go to Texas anyway. Luckily, we have a friend Brett Tribe, in Austin, which I hear is much cooler than Dallas anyway. I've driven through both but never stopped. Kevin and I are looking for a show. We don't care about being paid, but we won't turn down anything you offer. We would appreciate the opportunity to perform, and maybe sell a few books and CD's. Kevin plays bass in Swath, and Dance-A-Tron. printisbetter.blogspot.com has links to both bands. Kevin and I used to perform as Lament Configuration about a decade ago, that I'm sure you saw if you were here with me in Binghamton. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: BURN

Read BURN, and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

If you're here with me in Binghamton, you were probably in the crowd of six people that saw me read BURN a few times in the Oracle Phoetus days. It would have appeared on our debut album, "BOOZE, BOOTS, & BOOBS, which remains in perpetual limbo due to the restraining order Brett Tribe placed against himself. We played punk rock shows and poetry readings, and considered ourselves Literature's greatest band. I once sat through a poetry reading where a girl ascended the podium with her laptop computer, and introduced her work with, "I wrote this yesterday and it should probably be revised." I would have figured that out on my own by listening.

While I still love the Internet, it has created a world where a person can write a poem about their cat at breakfast, publish that poem on a website by lunch, and still have another ready by dinner. I've seen people publishing a new book of their poems every week. This astounds me, as some of my worst took days, or even weeks before I finally gave up. You understand when you read the books, and see it's mostly the same poem. An illusion has been created that poetry is easy. Some people still say they enjoy mine, and I hope you do as well. I don't write poetry these days, and I don't read poems either. I cringe at the thought of reading poems from my favorite authors, so the one you have handwritten on a folded napkin in your back pocket probably isn't going to change my mind either. If you've enjoyed Print is Better or Laugh at Yourself First, I hope you'll consider buying one of my printed books at lulu.com/tbstarlight. You can download most of them free beforehand. Dollars Per Hour is funny.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: The Witch King's Sword

Read "The Witch King's Sword, Episode 10" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

Thank you to all the people who came out Saturday to the spaghetti dinner at the East Maine Fire Department. Wherever my brother is now, I hope he's proud that so many people were there to put in the work and make sure his name continues to help people, just as he did when he was alive. We met our goals, and the money raised should be enough to cover the legal fees associated with incorporating as a not-for-profit organization. As a result, I'm exhausted, and I hope you'll forgive me for being short on words. I've been letting these things run a little long the last few weeks. Episode 10 of "The Witch King's Sword" introduces two characters I've been writing about since high school, but unless you're name is Roland Balazar, there is a fairly good chance you've never read any of those stories. Thank you also to the person at the Art Mission, who said "Nice Pics" under the place I wrote 'printisbetter.blogspot.com' in purple chalk on the bathroom wall. I'm skipping a picture again this week, mainly because I don't want to touch a camera when I punch out from the Day Job. I'll make it up next week, I promise. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: AIN SOPH

Read "AIN SOPH Part 2" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

Friday afternoon, I was at the ART Mission helping my ladyfriend prepare for First Friday. A woman approached me with her two children, asking if I knew where the dinosaurs went. If you're here with me in Binghamton, you surely know that meant the hundred or so cartoon dinosaur statues displayed around town. Decorated by local artists the "Gronks" are a tribute to cartoonist and local-boy-done-good, Johnny Hart. As a knee-high creative, it was inspiring to have a big literary-type star like Hart in my back yard, and as an elementary and middle school student, I read "BC" and "The Wizard of Id" every day. I never got to meet Hart, but I did attend his wake to thank his wife for all the wonderful work he gave us.

At first, only one of the "Gronks" decorated the ART. It was some kind of Dinobot, covered in hundreds of rusty, jagged metal plates. In my opinion, easily the most badass of the statues, but not the safest option for your kids to climb on. I noticed the day before that Sludge had been moved from the doorstep to the street corner and replaced with a statue decorated in small mosaic tiles. This statue had been unfortunately placed too close to the downtown bars and in less than a month had its ribs kicked in and its mosaic scattered to the gutters and the Susquehanna river.

The woman took her daughters on a scavenger hunt, but so far only found these two statues at the locations marked on her pamphlet and a poster on the wall. I feared the work of a copycat inspired by the Carmen Sandiego copycat that was popular in theaters last week. The Press & Sun reported Sunday that the "Gronks" had in fact been moved to a secure location to relieve them of the merciless vandalism against them. It was the kind of thing that would be funny if it happened in a movie. I myself saw dinos tagged, teeth blacked out, and several of the caveman riders stolen off the backs. The damage was so extensive the reporter could not tell how many broken bodies still lay in the secret workshop awaiting repair. Mayor Ryan could not be reached for comment, which makes me suspect him guilty of living out his well-known childhood fantasy of getting drunk and ripping the head off a brontosaurus. I've been trying to write about the destruction for weeks, but the story made me too furious to finish. I'm glad someone at the Press finally overcame their own rage. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: AIN SOPH

Read "AIN SOPH" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

The Day Job has had me on heavy touring through small towns and motor lodges with spotty Internet service, so there hasn't been much time to keep up on my blogging. I hope I haven't ruined anyone's weekend plans. I'm reposting AIN SOPH for these two weeks because last week, while I was huddled under a plastic tarp with my coworkers trying to shield our campfire from the rain somewhere in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains, I typed the last pages of a sequel before the battery on my laptop expired. We couldn't find Higgins the next morning, but there were bear tracks all around the muddy clearing the company considered "accommodations." I won't even tell you about the continental breakfast. This is the revised version of the story that was in NUGE FOR PREZ.

If you are here with me in Binghamton, I hope you'll join me at the spaghetti dinner to raise money for my brother's scholarship fund. It's going from 1-5pm July 10th at the East Maine Volunteer Fire Department, 847 East Maine Rd. There will be food, music, and prizes donated from local businesses including free golf lessons, oil changes, and KGB fm. The first twenty families through the door receive a copy of my book, Man-In-Sea. If you are not one of them, you can buy your own at lulu.com/tbstarlight. All proceeds from book sales benefit the Matthew Juser Memorial Scholarship. My next novel, the Salvation Shark starts 8/6 at Laugh at Yourself First. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: Danglehorn

Read "Danglehorn," and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

There probably are acceptable times to beat a seventeen year old girl into submission. Say she's a wanton murder about to perform a ghastly execution on an innocent bystander. Go ahead, action hero, knock her out. Beyond that, I can't see any reason that would make it acceptable to pause to consider the situation, wind up, and jack a teenage girl in the jaw. As the Seattle cop struggled struggled and choked one teenage girl that was resisting arrest, her friend tried to push the officer away. This man armed with a gun and trained in hand-to-hand combat felt so threatened by the situation he needed to take out the second girl fast and effectively, fist-to-jaw style. The cell-phone video is on the net for you to form your own opinion, but the response I received to my outrage was in defense of the officer, who was only doing what he needed to pacify a suspect. After all, it's common knowledge that you don't jaywalk in Seattle.

I'm not saying we can't forgive the guy. He did get hit first, and the girls were resisting arrest, and one or both of the girls probably did do something to instigate or escalate the situation unnecessarily, and the girl's history reveals this is not her first physical confrontation with a police officer. This guy thought he was doing his job. He thought he was doing the right thing. Unfortunately, the officer was wrong. Seventeen-year-old girls rarely look like anything else, other than maybe sixteen-year-old girls, or sometimes eighteen-year-old girls, so I can't imagine the officer mistook her for an adult man, with whom this action may be more explainable, if not acceptable. Punishing a guy that got pissed off and made a mistake is not the important issue. Instead, a precedent needs to be set to deter the next guy who thinks he's doing his job. After all, isn't that the theory our entire justice system is based on? Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com

Laugh at Yourself First: Danglehorn

Read "Danglehorn" and more short fiction, scripts, and very little poetry at Laugh at Yourself First.
pauljuser.blogspot.com

I hope you are enjoying Danglehorn. The story has five scenes, and will finish this Friday. As I mentioned last week, this was the last Theatricks by Starlight show. We did three performances before the company finally imploded due to actors unwilling to keep their drama onstage. The cast of this show was the best I ever worked with, and bringing Danglehorn to life was the most fun I ever had doing theatre. If Theatricks had to end, Danglehorn was the show to end it on. You are making a mistake to pass up working with Brett, Jason, Joe, or Kristen. As for the costumes, Anna has moved on to purses. You can find her on Etsy as BirdsintheMirror.

If you're here with me in Binghamton, our shale may no longer be up for sale! Apparently, the pigs are salivating at the possibility of making Utica an even bigger hellhole. than it already is. No offense to any Utica readers. Our second-rate Marcellus may not yield as high-quality methane. For landowners atop both formations, I urge you to watch the film, "Gasland," that debuted this week on HBO. The documentary was begun in Pennsylvania less than an hour from where I live. Water is poisoned, the land is wasted, and more than enough people have been killed to say the mission is a failure. Congratulations to Vera Scroggins, who I found interviewed in an Upstate periodical warning against letting the Frackers in New York. She has seen widespread destruction in her hometown, where the New Year is celebrated with exploding concrete water wells, and water faucets can be ignited. If that sounds delicious to you, don't let me stand in your way. You can drink my share too. Watch me bring it all together. The daughters of Vera Scroggins ran the theater where we did the first "Danglehorn" performance. I got to see my name on a marquee. Thanks for reading.

-Paul
printisbetter.blogspot.com