Ah-nold

My claim to fame today:

I don't even really know how to navigate Twitter, but this is pretty cool: Arnold Schwarzenegger re-tweeted my tweet! (Did I get that right?) Not gonna lie, been a huge fan for years, and since Arnold actually runs his own Twitter unlike a lot of celebs, this made my day.

Monte

I'm typically an early riser, the first one up in our house. As such, one of my normal duties is, or was, rather, to feed the dogs and let them out. I would usually find Monte, our Boston Terrier, scratching at his kennel, desperate to head upstairs and have his breakfast. More than anything I've ever known, Monte loved to eat.

What he didn't like was being outside, so he would handle his business and come running up the stairs, begging to be lat back inside so that he could lick his bowl in the off chance that he missed a morsel. If he ever did, I never saw it, but that didn't stop him from looking anyway.

Villains Pecking Order

If you watch enough movies, especially those of the action genre, you will eventually begin to notice that there seems to be a natural pecking order for groups of movie villains. For whatever reason, certain classes of villains just seem to work better than others. So being of a curious nature, I decided to keep a close eye on the various movies I watch to decide if I could correctly sort out the various groups of villains and establish once and for a definitive pecking order.

1. Nazis

As seen in Raiders, Last Crusade, Schindler's List, Inglorious Basterds, Captain America (for all practical purposes). There is one indisputable fact. The world can’t agree on anything but this – we all hate Nazis. Even Nazis hate their fellow Nazis deep down. 

The undisputable king of movie villains

2. Eastern Europeans

As seen in Die Hard, Die Hard 3, Air Force One, and often played by Sean Bean. These guys fare shockingly well. They are often bland, but overall, thanks to highlight reel performances from the likes of Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman, they ultimately are very effective as villains, and Hollywood doesn't mind using them.

The ABCs of Dinkology Review

In some ways, The ABCs of Dinkology is a hard book to describe. It seems simple enough to say that it is a combination novel/graphic novel and leave it at that, but to slap an easy label on something that defies labels doesn't seem fair.

What we have is a coming of age story in the vein of a John Hughes film in the 1980s - think "Sixteen Candles". In The ABCs of Dinkology, the main character, Max, opens the story awaiting the return of his girlfriend from college, and if you see where this is going, in Max's case, things turn out even worse than what you might anticipate for him. Naturally, this leads to the typical breakup angst, only it is magnified due to both the nature of the breakup and by other events that take place during the book. I would rather let the reader navigate these twists and turns without giving away more.

As far as the graphic novel sections, these fit seamlessly into the narrative. I was afraid it would come off as distracting or gimmicky, and it didn't at all. They were a natural part of the story, and served only to enhance rather than detract.

My only complaint was that the ending was rather abrupt - my understanding is that this is the first part of the story, but there is nothing in the book that indicates as such. Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the second chapter of this story, when it arrives!

Penny Park Review

I discovered "Penny Park" thanks to a review in our local paper. Truth be told, I kind of figured the writer had overstated his praise of the album. But I was intrigued by the concept, so I decided to check it out.

When I did, I was blown away. The writer was correct. This is an outstanding album.

The concept of this record is that the songs follow the theme of one summer in the old Peony Park amusement park in Omaha (the summer of 1989 in this case), and our narrator's obsession with a girl named Penny Park. It's a catchy blend of nostalgia, love, and fun, with enough variety between the 21 songs that it always feels fresh, all the way through the end of the record.

I'm a huge fan of the Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen, and in a strange way, this feels like a mix between the two with a dose of Third Eye Blind thrown in. I'm not much of a music critic, but that's the best comparison I can make with my limited musical knowledge. I highly recommend this album, and I do not think its appeal is limited to only those from Omaha. I barely remember the park that the theme is drawn from, but I will be playing this album for years.

Preview of Novel #2

Perhaps I should explain, seeing as I don't know what you know about vampires. You may be reading this a hundred years from now, and by that point, it's very possible that every other book on the shelf is about vampires. So you might know everything there is to know about them, but I don't want to assume. 

The above is a sample from the rough draft of my next novel, or at least the one I've been working on -  I may never publish it though I've personally had a lot of fun writing it. Regardless, it's way too early to share this as I have just now finished the rough draft (and by rough, I mean, dear God avert your eyes and hide the woman and children rough), but what the hell, nobody really reads this page anyway! So here's a preview to my second novel tentatively title Adventures of Braxton Revere. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

Chapter I

New London

I warned them. Nobody can say I didn't warn them.

Course, it didn’t do any good, because nobody listened. I expected as much. After all, they never did before.

But that’s never an excuse to not do the right thing. So I said my piece and was ready to leave it at that, but was it appreciated? Course not. They laughed at me, and threw things, and all around just made life miserable. And they kept right at it on the few occasions I ventured into town for food and supplies. That didn’t stop the shop keeps from taking my money, but that should surprise exactly nobody.

Still, even after being treated poorly, I felt awfully bad when word came that the Brown family had been murdered, even though I could clearly remember the oldest daughter being one of the many laughing faces that taunted me. But it was no matter. Nobody deserves to die the way they did. Nobody.

I wouldn’t be a Revere if I felt any other way.

Sure, it proved I was right all along. I’d be lying if I said that a small part of me wasn’t happy for that, but hell man, I didn't want to be right that badly. Besides, I didn’t need to hear about a family being killed by a murderous pack of vampires to know I was right. I knew I was right, and that was good enough for me.

Still, after all these years filled with scorn, ridicule, and worst of all, pity, maybe people wouldn’t think I was crazy. Anyone with any sense would’ve made plans that day to do what needed to be done to stop the impending rise of evil. I could see it clearly - the entire town would take up arms and join me on a vampire hunt, the likes of which would once and for all eliminate Ralugard and his ilk in one swoop. It was time for war. And me, Braxton Revere, the Vampire Killer, would be the general.

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