Hey, guys — I was notified yesterday that I’ve received a really nice honor from Spillwords Press. I’ve been nominated for the online magazine’s Author of the Month for June 2020. (The editors were kind enough to recently select three of my poems for publication: “This Windy Morning,”“Lie To Me, But Brightly”and “Blue Wolves Move In An Indigo Wood.”)
There is a voting process, and it’s quick and easy; if you are feeling so inclined, you can cast your vote for me or any other nominee by clicking the link below. (Voting will be held from today through Monday.)
I realized just last night that there are actually people walking around with the surname “Faust.”
I sooooo want a friend with that name so I can repeatedly ask them every weekend if they want to go bargain hunting with me.
We’d have a great deal of fun, is what I’m saying.
I’d challenge every opinion they express, on any subject — even the weather. When they got fed up, I’d wink and tell them I’m just playing devil’s advocate.
Ludwig Devrient als Faust 1873, Holzstich nach F. Th. Hildebrandt
I got some great news today — Poetry Pacific will publish my poem “The Writer” in its next annual edition. The poem will be published online in May 2021; I’ll post a link here when it appears.
Poetry Pacific is is “a literary e.zine committed to promoting and publishing the very ‘best’ contemporary poetry in English it can find.” It really is a terrific place to peruse the latest in indie short poetry, as well as artwork from around the world. I really encourage you to give the site a visit, and consider submitting your own creative work.
If you see an abundance of “The Thing” or “Blade Runner” posts today, it’s because both films opened in theaters 38 years ago today.
We … need a holiday or something. But “Thing/Blade Day” sounds too much like “Sling Blade Day.”
Anyway, both films resonate just fine in 2020 America. “The Thing” is predicated on paranoia about those around you. “Blade Runner” is technically about cruelty to illegal immigrants — and how “human” we all are depending on our reaction to that.
Hey … let’s not even get started on (the overrated) fan favorite “Tron,” also released in 1982. If you want to talk about a movie about a guy trapped in a virtual world and its parallels to the social media age, then I’m gonna need some more coffee.
“Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell” (1978) was yet another made-for-television movie that rocked my world when I saw it in early grade school. But it didn’t age well — not even by a narrow margin. When I saw it on TV again a few years down the line, like maybe when I was in junior high, I realized it was … truly a third-rate horror movie. (It was every bit s campy as the trailer below suggests.)
It wasn’t all bad, I guess. It stars Richard Crenna. And whatever special effects they used to show the titular monster after its demonic transformation were surprisingly decent for a 70’s TV movie. (I actually wonder if they used the same rotoscope process that Ralph Bakshi used in the same year’s animated “The Lord of the Rings.”)
Like spilled obsidian liquor
indelibly defacing lace,
like a gleaming needle leaves
glissading sable scars of curling script,
let slip the sliding
black racer snakes to trace the page.
Now’s the time to order your copy of Buk 100: My Old Man, A Birthday Greeting.Click right here for Newington Blue Press’ limited edition chapbook. Only 100 copies will be printed in this initial run, which celebrates what would have been Charles Bukowski’s 100th birthday.
When you read it, be sure take a gander at two poems of mine: “First Smoke” and “Guerrilla Poet.” (The latter piece is an homage to my good friend and colleague in the writing world, poet Dennis Villelmi.)
I hope you guys are looking forward to a great weekend! No matter what you’ve got planned, remember Buk’s advice — “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
I remember Laser Tag as an exciting but fairly brief blip in 1980’s pop culture. A lot of the kids I knew got excited about these commercials, a lot of us asked earnestly for Laser Tag guns Christmas, and … none of us got them. (Our parents seemed unanimous that they were too expensive.)
Ah, well. The subsequent buzz around my neighborhood was that our parents were probably wise, anyway — we heard later that the guns hardly worked, making the product nowhere near as cool as the commercials depicted. (I am linking below to Kevin Noonan’s Youtube Channel, by the way.)
And then the fad faded — all the hubbub around Laser Tag (and Photon, its cheaper competitor) just kinda went away. It sort of makes sense. Paintball was alive and well as an edgier, more subversive, and more exciting sport; I can’t imagine how these gaudy electronic products could compete with that.
The Wikipedia entry for Laser Tag had a couple of surprises for me. For starters, the technology for the products’ infrared light guns and sensors was developed by the United States Army in the 1970’s — I guess it was an Ender’s Game-type scenario. And the first game system using the technology was South Bend’s Star Trek Electronic Phaser Guns in 1979. (Those toys were released in conjunction with the premiere of that year’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.”)
Didn’t see that one coming. I’ll bet those toys fetch a nice price among collectors.
Anyway, there was another Laser Tag commercial that everybody talked about back in the day … it depicted American and Russian teams competing in a dystopian-future tournament, in which the Statue of Liberty was the trophy. It’s smile-inducing. I couldn’t find a really decent copy of it to link to here, but you can find it on Youtube.
