Sounds of Light and Fury

Poetry: After the Yule

2011-12-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I've pretty much been at work since Christmas Eve so I haven't had a lot of time to write or do much of anything outside of just that, work. This morning though I took some time to write a poem I have been thinking about this week. As I drove through my brother's neighborhood the day after Christmas, and through other parts of town this week, I kept seeing discarded Christmas trees. When I went into a store I would see discounted Christmas decorations and themed gifts. It all seemed very sad to me. We spend so much time, pretty much starting in October, gearing up and hyping Christmas, only to throw it all away after one day. I wrote this poem with that thought in mind. That the Spirit of Christmas should be more than just once a year, the fellowship of man should be more than that. But it's not, and that's sad. I hope you like the poem, I'd appreciate any feedback.

After the Yule

The Holiday has come to close,

And the Christmas spirit is now repose.

For the weathers turned a cold, bleary bleat,

As the warmth of the season has grown complete.

Lights once bright have turned to dim,

The halls once decked have lost their trim.

Trees so green with ornaments bright,

Now lay in the street, a decay of blight.

And the sense of charity, once so profound,

Has lapsed again, to hibernate unfound.

All the feelings of mirth and cheer,

Are fleeting away, like Santa's reindeer.

How funny it feels that after just one day,

We all return to our selfish ways.

Gifts we gave, the meals we shared,

Are forgotten again, till next years cared.

The White Christmas that we coveted so,

Is broken in muck, the melted slush of snow.

And we say goodbye with smiles and mirth,

To the one day we give them worth.

All through the year we push and we take,

How often forgetting of charity's sake.

So consumed are we with our own selfish needs,

That we don't take the time for our hearts heeds.

If only we could saved some spirit to tithe,

A remnant of this day throughout all of our life,

We'd know that feeling everyone of our days,

But after the Yule, we lose the tides of our ways.

The 26th of December sees Christmas on sale,

That thought alone is the reason we fail.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

Chapter 35:

Ally picked her way through the trunk, looking for a matching boot. She had cleaned herself off using some tepid water from the basin in the room and now was looking to replace the ragged shreds of her clothing. She had dressed her wounds herself as best as she could, and Morgan, the man she had met on the road, had bound the worse of her injuries. She tentatively traced the bandages that he had wrapped around her feet before she laced the once missing boot up.

She wasn't sure how she felt about Morgan. He was strong and safe, but somehow seemed withdrawn. He wouldn't talk about himself or his past, just that he had fought in the war and that he was heading to town. He hadn't told her what he had found in the shed out back, but he hadn't seemed very happy about it. He had closed the door to the shed and walked back to her. Together, they had searched the house, finding it empty. Most of the house had seemed ransacked, and there were trails of blood and signs of looting, but in one of the rooms they had found the trunk of clothing.

After Abby had laced the boot she stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. The dress was a simple, durable affair of brown wool, buttoning up the side and had a divided skirt suitable for riding. The boots were simple leather with a short heel. Finally she had pulled a heavy cloak from the trunk and pulled her hair back under a scarf. She could see the bruising on her face and eyes, though her lip had scabbed over. It still hurt to breath from her bruised ribs and she limped when she walked, but even so she still felt worlds better than she had a few hours earlier.

She walked around, gingerly at first, but the more she moved her balance seemed to steady. She felt her nerves settled down for the first time in what seemed forever. She left the room and walked down the stair case, supporting herself on the railing. the wafting smells from the kitchen told her that Morgan had found some food, and she realized just how long it had been since she had eaten. Her stomach growled noisily as she walked in on Morgan, frying some bacon in a pan.

"I found a couple of unbroken eggs and some bacon in the larder. You need to eat something for your strength."

Abby murmured her thanks and dug in ravenously. In what seemed like seconds she had finished the meal and was sopping up the grease with a crust of only slightly moldy bread. They didn't talk much, but she watched Morgan eat out of the corner of her eye. He ate methodically, his eyes almost never looking at the plate. They shifted from the door to the big window, which gave him a view from out onto the front drive. He was always looking, always watchful, always so sad. She'd never felt safer with a more intimidating man.

After the meal was finished, Morgan told Abby to stand up. He led her outside towards the shed, the door still closed. Abby felt her throat grow thick and well up inside her. The feeling of safety she had felt just moments ago were fled from her and those jagged spikes of fear and adrenalin flooded her system. Morgan stopped them just before the shed and turned her to face him. He gripped her shoulders tightly and looked her in the eye.

"Abby, I can't imagine how you feel right now. With all the bad shit that's out in the world right now, this damnable black sun above our heads and worse yet, the death of your family and the torturous journey you've undertaken in the past day. What I do know is that you have to be one of the toughest women I've ever met to still be alive and still be fighting. You can't be afraid anymore. You need to know what is waiting for you out there."

Morgan pushed open the door and she saw the woman. Her face bruised and battered, his dressed rips, the ways her legs were spread....the gaping hole in her chest. Abby pulled her hands in front of her face before Morgan roughly pulled them away.

"LOOK DAMMIT! Look at what happened to her. It's not just those god damn monsters out there. Regular folk are just as bad as they are. You can't be afraid. You have to be strong. You have to be ready."

With that he pulled free a battered old Colt Revolver and a worn gunbelt. He turned her to face the tragedy in the shed as he buckled the gun belt around her waste. Abby forced herself to look at the woman, to look at the fear on her face, until she couldn't feel anything anymore. She stood there a long time, just looking, as Morgan never moved or said anything. After what felt like an eternity, she looked up at Morgan.

"I'm ready to go."

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: The Rain

2011-12-21T10:11:00.000-08:00

You can smell the rain before it comes in the desert. The air gets thick and heavy, the wetness palpable in the normally dry air. I had felt the rain for nearly a day now, but still it waited. I hiked my hat back on my head and looked upwards, the sun shrunken behind a mask of dark grey clouds. Soon, it would have to fall soon.

I spurred my horse gently into a trot and kept riding. I felt hot and sticky, the humidity clinging to me. I was still wearing my battered duster and it was starting to feel like a second skin. Dirt had mixed with sweat and grime and I hadn't seen a bath in what felt like a month of Saturdays. I couldn't wait to get out of New Mexico and into Texas, maybe get that bath... and a drink. In the meantime, I'd just settle for some damn rain.

It was well past mid-day when I came across it. Smoke, thin and trickling, a dark grey plume against the dark clouds of the sky. Maybe three hours in front of me. It wasn't unusual to see other travelers on this trail, though fires at this time of day certainly wasn't normal. Besides there was to much smoke, to much smoke for just a trail fire. Somewhere up ahead, a lot of people were probably dead. I jiggled the empty water skin at my side and cursed. I stared up at the cloudy sky and wondered where that rain was.

I made good time towards the fire, it was generally along the way on the trail, but I kept my Colt loose on my hip and my Winchester primed across my saddle horn. I doubted what ever tribe that had attacked those people had stuck around, not on this public of a trail, but hell, it never paid to play the fool. I gave my horse Brian a reassuring pat, knowing him to be just as thirsty as me, as we crested the last bluff.

It was then that I caught it, the wind pushing the smell of burnt death up the hill. It wasn't the first time I had smelled this scent, but Brian reigned up, eyes wide with fright. I calmed down the horse and climbed down off the saddle, throwing the reigns around a small tree as I walked towards the dying fire. I kept the Winchester close as I looked at the carnage. There had to be at least twenty bodies here, scalped, burnt, tortured...raped.

The fire still flared in spots around the four wagons, and the whole affair still smoked with the flush of embers. I walked through the massacre, taking stock of the dead, noting it for the sheriff in town, or better yet one of the Cavalry troopers that frequently patrolled the area. I scanned the horizon, pulling my hat off, and let out a deep breath. My throat, already thick and parched, felt like sand as I tried to work up enough spit to wet it down. God damn rain.

I had counted eighteen bodies before I saw her. She couldn't have been more than five or six, a small tow-haired girl, clutching a corncob doll. I'm not even sure when I dropped the Winchester, or when I felt the feel of earth from my knees. The poor girl had been burnt and beaten, like the rest of the victims. She'd been scalped, like some of the others and you could see the blood mix with the dirt on her face. I touched her cold cheek, my fingers trailing the lines of smudged tears on her face.

I don't know why it was her that caught me so. Maybe it was the fact that she still clutched that doll, or the way her tiny fingers gripped it. I could still see the whiteness in her knuckles. I had seen dead bodies before, hundreds, maybe thousands, in the war and afterwards. I'd seen grown men cry, severed limbs, even the brutal slaughter of homesteads in the wake of other marauders. But here, in this moment, I only saw my own daughter. Like it was her laying there instead of this other poor girl. Like it was my own daughter that had been killed. I closed my eyes and felt my cheeks turn wet. Soft at first, then harder, till the cold wetness seeped through to my very bones.

The sounds of thunder and flashes of lightning lit the sky, but I only looked at her. I stayed there for a long time, long after the last embers had been extinguished. The rain had finally come.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: The Tides of Christmas

2011-12-20T15:06:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

My laptop has been down for a while so I haven't updated as much as I would have liked. (well at all to be true) and while I still have no word processing program I can write directly in the blogger format. So I am going to get back to posting, at least one piece of short fiction this week. In the meantime here is a bit of a Christmas poem I started writing after I was struck by an image of the sky breaking over the mountaintops on my way to Flagstaff. It was a very beautiful and serene moment. I have been working on lines in bits and pieces for the last week or so but today i just sat down to type it out. I really like this poem, I thought it was a very different stanza structure with some nice word variations. I'd love some feedback.

The Tides of Christmas

Reddest sky bursts through stones,

The jagged spires of Earthen bones.

Azure rays stream from the dusk,

As the day rips free last ragged tusk.

And as the day gives way to night,

I feel the world in years twilight.

The wind, so shear, reaps its throne.

Cold and sharp, it cuts alone.

I stopped the car and gazed out West,

The tinge of winter in my breast.

I hugged myself against the cold,

As snowflakes fell, gently then bold

The hills dipped in bends and bows,

Fields of pines rest in rows.

And from above I looked below,

As the tides of Christmas began to flow.

The flecks of snow gave to flurries,

As the red lit sky begot blue tint furies.

Where the twinkled stars began to shine,

I saw the moony rays, a stream of line.

And the once green pines donned a white coat,

While the thistles whispered a windy note.

The Holiday was finally here,

As wintered sounded its snowy cheer.

I saw my breath in a puffy cloud,

As the chill wind chimed out so very loud.

So I jammed my hands in pockets deep,

And watched the snow build in piles steep.

I huddled in tight and looked to the sky,

To that one glimmering star upon so high.

And I thought to myself as I turned away,

Merry Christmas to me on this wintery day.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: My Day of Birth

2011-10-18T23:25:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Every year on my birthday I always post a new poem. It's usually some kind of reflection on getting older, or aging, or simply the passage of time. For me, this poem is about looking back and looking forward at the same time. It's about looking at the choices you have made, and how they set the path of your life before you. I hope you find something in the poem to take away. I honestly just really felt the poem, I wrote it very quickly, very organically. Thanks for reading.

My Day of Birth

When I woke up I felt alive,

Though much had changed.

Another year older now,

Of course my life had ranged.

A series of ups and downs,

Through the calm and strange.

But I asked myself why.

Sometimes life can't be explained,

You don't know what you'll face.

The days can blur right by,

As you're stuck in the race.

But those very best parts of life,

You can keep in place.

So never let yourself sigh.

I'm not proud of everything,

That I have done.

I've did both good and bad,

In the pursuit of fun.

But sometimes my selfishness,

Was the cost of one.

And sometimes that makes me cry.

I may not be the most perfect man,

On my day of birth.

Thirty five years have come and gone,

Through the full and the dearth.

But I look to the future now,

And I know my worth.

Cause I'll always try.

And that part of me can never die.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Idea

2011-10-12T20:51:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I know, I'm posting with some freaky regularity at this point. Though watch that comment jinx the whole matter. Anyway this poem came about while watching the film V For Vendetta last night. One of the actors in the film said a line, "Ideas are Bulletproof". It really got me thinking, about how many things in this life really are faulty, how fragile things are. So I set about taking that one line, and trying to create an idea itself, a simple poem about the immutability of thought and ideas. Enjoy.

Idea

My flesh may be pierced,

By bullet or blade,

My heart can be broke,

From a love gone mislaid.

The Earth may be burned,

By nature or man.

The skies can be polluted,

By the mechanics we ran.

My soul may be stained,

By the sins of my crime,

My skin can be weathered,

By the passage of time.

Rivers may be poisoned,

From all of our wastes.

Our lives are spoiling,

By our extravagant tastes.

But of an idea,

It holds no form,

It cannot be defeated,

Not by man nor by storm.

An idea cannot die,

Or fear mortal pain.

For in the minds of man,

It finds a purchase of gain.

Beliefs may change,

And will can be bent,

But the heart of the truth,

Can never be rent.

An idea can't be killed,

It's not of flesh or of bone,

It lives inside of all man,

And for that can never be alone.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2011-10-11T11:23:00.000-07:00

Chapter 34

Cody had met the odd mix of strangers a few hours after he'd had his fun at that old farm. He still had his saddle bags full of money and the sawed-off, but he had seen opportunity in the stage coach. A man as wanted as him would be sure to be recognized trying to sneak into Desperation, but amid these "upstanding" citizens he figured he might have a better chance, even if one of the bastards was clearly about to die.

He'd already forgotten the dandy with the shiny gun, he was no threat to anyone. That coward was never far from the stage and from the old man. Caleb may be an old cripple, but there was iron in the fossil still, but still Cody wasn't afraid of him either. That fat bastard, Bartley, driving the stage was even less of a threat. Hell the one inside the cab, the one about to die, posed the bigger threat than him. Jarrett knew there was no way that the diseased fucker would make it to town.

The only one that made him uneasy was the girl, the cripple's daughter, Eva. She was past 30, nearly an old maid, but damn if she didn't have curves. Those tight pants, the chaps, the strain of her breasts in the button down shirt. If he hadn't just quelled the fire in his loins a few hours ago Cody wasn't sure if he could resist her. Still, that iron strapped to her leg wasn't just for show and he didn't like the way she looked at him. Her hand never seemed far from that pistol, or even from the rifle on the side of her saddle. In the end though, no woman posed any kind of threat to Cody fucking Jarrett.

He was looking over the ridge, down into the valley, with the dim lights of Desperation in the distance. You could see the river flowing around the edge and emptying into the gulf, leading towards freedom for Jarrett, to Old Mexico. Still the town of Desperation lay at the edge of the edge of the valley and the surrounding farmland seemed over run with the monsters. From his perch on the ridge he could see the creatures, some of them mindlessly shuffling, other bent over the corpses of the dead. He looked to his side, at the dandy, Moore, peering down into the valley through his spyglass. he was about to ask for a look when he heard the old man cry out.

He saw Eva spur her horse back to the stage as he and Moore spun around. Cody checked the load in the sawed-off and hastened, wondering if the bitten man had turned. He beat Moore to the stage, who didn't seem to be in any hurry. Bartley, was still waddling off the drivers seat as he approached, though Eva was the first to arrive. She flung the stage door open, her rifle brought to bear. Caleb sat inside, the cripple cradling the poor bastards head.

"He.......he just shuddered once and let out a long slow breath. We're too late."

Eva lowered her rifle and climbed inside, holding her father in a sidelong hug. The old man seemed to age years before his eyes, suddenly seeming sadder and more pathetic with each passing moment. Cody curled his lip in anger and pulled out one of his Colts, his voice dripping with derision.

"End him."

Eva's face shot up, her face a steely mask of disgust as Caleb looked on sadly. Neither of these pussies had the stones to do what needed to be done. Cody looked to the dead man, Rex, and saw where the man had been bit. The bandage was black with seepage and pus, and you could see the fleshy tones of his skin already turning a spoiled yellow. It would happen sooner or later, but it would happen.

"Fuck this."

Cody thumbed back the hammer and fired.

Poetry: Limelight

2011-10-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So this poem was actually a very difficult one to write. It was inspired by the film Limelight, a early 1950's Charlie Chaplin film where he plays an aging clown who is past his comedic prime. I found it to be a sad story, about how this lonely clown rescues and re-invigorates a young dancer, while he can't even rescue himself. I wrote the whole poem about how everything funny eventually becomes sad, but the film as a whole made me think about how skills fade over time, and it's only a brief window where one is at his best. I hope the poem reminds people to seize the moments of time that you have, and take the opportunities as they present themselves. I hope you enjoy the poem.

Limelight

Laughter and cheer,

The smiling face,

The roar of the crowd,

Filling the place.

They clap and applaud,

Crying for more,

So happy and bright,

Over shouts of encore.

And day after day,

You give of your all,

Till the spring of life,

Turns the ways of fall.

Those cheers so loud,

Will lessen through time,

Humor once bold,

No longer in its prime.

As comedy it bleeds,

Begets itself to tragedy,

Applause will fade away,

Laughter's now an elegy.

So as the shine turns dim,

Burnt out from the bright,

You step away from the spot,

And enter your limelight.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2011-10-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

Chapter 33

Father Santiago felt the branches whipping at his face as he tried to brush them aside. He'd been running for over an hour, finding stamina in his legs that he had forgotten he could have. He could still hear the screams of his flock... of his brothers, of the people he had lied to. The screams of his old life dying.

Enrico stumbled, his sandal getting caught on a loose stone, and he scraped his hand on the bark of a tree to prevent himself from falling. His breath came in ragged huffs and he seemed to become exhausted all at once. He took a few more faltering steps and slumped down by the trunk of another tree. He'd cut through the thin woods near the church after he had fled, using the branches to hide himself as he made to the small creek that ran through the woods. He splashed partway downriver before cutting back across treeline to the main road. It was here he sat now, his thin breath running puffs of smoke in the abnormally cool air.

He looked at his hands as he sat there, his left hand bloody from the scratch, his right almost white, clutching the old pistol tightly. He unclenched his fist, feeling the raw pain and stiffness in his hand as he flexed his fingers. He hadn't seen anymore of the foul creatures since his mad dash, but Enrico knew they would be back sooner or later. One look to the blackened sun above and he knew that this was a godless land.

After he caught his breath, Enrico pulled himself up and slipped the gun back under his frayed robes. No longer running, he hurried along the edge of the road, ready to dart off the trail at the first sign of trouble. He continued to follow the trail generally south, as the road would eventually take him to the town of Desperation. It was there he would either find help, or find out the extent of his, and the world's, damnation.

He followed the road until nearly dusk before he saw the first of them. One creature, bent over a score of bodies, feasting on the ruined hunks of flesh. There had to be at least 7 bodies, some of them the foul creatures themselves. He stayed back, watching for other signs of movement, for more of them, but there was nothing. You could smell death in the air, the place was fetid with the rot of man. Santiago closed his eyes, forcing the remembrance of the last time he had smelled this same stench, forcing away the memories of Bull Run and his fallen friends.

With a final calming breath, Santiago stood and walked towards the creature. He wasn't sure why he was doing it, maybe it was guilt, or maybe he had run out of fear, or maybe, just maybe, he was to tired to be afraid anymore. Anyway he looked at it though, he had to get by this monster. This one creature epresented all that he had failed in in life. His hand clenched the pistol as he crept closer. The beast seemed oblivious to his progress. Enrico forced himself to look away from the bodies of the dead men he passed, ignoring everything, until he stood behind the monster. He thumbed back the hammer, and the beast whirled with an inhuman quickness. It's jaws were red with blood as he saw the broken black claws of the monster flash in the fading sunlight. He fired, and fired again, until the creature moved no more.

He stood over the body for some time. The faint echoes of gun smoke still wafting from the barrel of his gun. He let the guilt and fear wash over him as his free hand absently went to the worn rosary beads he still wore. He prayed then, standing there rubbing the beads, asking for a way to atone, for a way to forgive himself. He prayed for something to show him the path, for someone to end the pain. It was then that he heard the sounds of hoof beats on the earth and the click of the hammer of a rifle being drawn behind him. Enrico Santiago closed his eyes, and thanked a God he had thought forsakened, for his deliverance.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Poetry: Rainy Days

2011-08-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

It's been a long time. A really long time. Unsure how long it will be to my next post, but in the meantime, Rainy Days. Trying something from a happier place.

Rainy Days

Rain and shadows blur the slickened streets.

A misty haze that dulls the beats.

The fog and clouds submit the sun.

Yet the rays of hope aren't yet done.

For in the rain the waters flow,

Washing out the pains unknown.

And in the slush of gutters lost,

We can leave away the pains of cost.

Down the drains the hurt can flow,

Scrubbed clean, away they go.

And in the mask of hazey grey,

It can hide the things we want to say.

But if you're close and looking right,

The prayers you make can come to light.

For the closer you get to what you want,

The truths you seek need no longer be hunt.

Behind the clouds the sun may hide,

From the barbs and japes that others chide.

But even under the bleary overcast,

This shady coverage cannot everlast.

The winds will blow and clear the clouds,

And allow the rays of hope to cry aloud.

So rainy days are nought to fear,

Soon they'll give way to days most dear.

What is hidden will find the light,

A cleansing rain will make it right.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poety: The Heart of Me

2011-06-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I was looking through a wonderful art book by one of my favorite painters and illustrators, Tara McPherson. I am sure that I have mentioned on other blog posts how much I admire and love Tara's work, it's very haunting, and sad, and poignant. Underneath it though, there is a kind of wonder and mischievousness. Any time I am having a bad day, or feel sad, I can look through her art book and find inspiration. Some people may be motivated by authors, I have always found art to be a great motivator for me. I have no talent for art, I can't paint or draw, my art has always been words. But any time I look at a painting, or drawing, I have such an appreciation for the talent involved, you're creating an image of thought into form without words. And that really moves me.

Anyway, as I was looking through Tara's book, Lost Constellations, she did a series of paintings with a woman who had a heart shaped hole in her chest. Those pieces, so sad and fierce, inspired me to write this poem. Hope you like it.

The Heart of Me

I tried to feel my heart,

But felt an empty beat.

Didn't even feel the pain,

To numb for the defeat.

No prison held it hostage,

Not a cage of iron bar,

It simply wasn't there,

Just escaped so very far.

When I looked into the mirror,

The wound seeped no blood,

I saw the heart shaped hole,

Where tears flowed like a flood.

The water left a salty trail,

Pouring from my soul,

I thought the pain would hurt me more,

This part of me that wasn't whole.

I never cut it from my chest,

Or had it ripped apart by love,

My heart had simply left me there,

To float away, up above.

It longed for any kind of feeling,

Its wants were a simple cost,

To feel the flush of newborn love,

Or even of pain of ache not lost.

But all it knew was solitude,

The lone and lonely passage of time,

Until the day it could take no more,

For neglect was my greatest crime.

Now I'm left with this scar,

And a trail of dried, salty teared,

I'll never feel love or loss,

For the heart of me has disappeared.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: The Dancer

2011-06-14T01:00:00.000-07:00

The Dancer

I watched her dance, her movements lithe and graceful, her body twisting and bending in perfect timing to the music. She wore tight black leggings and a Lycra tank top, her right arm in a long spandex sleeve. Her long brown hair had been pulled into a tight bun, though one lone strand had stubbornly freed itself and dangled in the middle of her forehead. Sweat beaded on her brow and you could see a dark trail of perspiration running down the back of tank top. Still, it seemed as if none of these elements even phased her, as she leaps into the air, her legs scissoring. The music played, approaching the crescendo, as the young dancer entwined herself. As the cacophony of strings and piano came to a head, she spun a circle, pirouetting in a frenzy of speed and beauty, until the last strum of the string slowly died and she lowered herself to the floor, completely spent.

I listened to the applause as the troupe of dancers cheered for her performance, though my hands stayed silent. I watched her from the shadow of my balcony perch, darkness around me. I wanted fervently to cheer, to tell her how wonderful she was, how proud I was of her, but I kept my silence, unable to form words. I watched as she dried off the perspiration with a towel and took a drink from a bottle of water. I could hear her laugh, even see the twinkle of her blue eyes and I knew pain again. I had made many mistakes in my life, though leaving her, leaving her was the only one I ever wanted to change.

I shadowed her movements across the upper balcony, mirroring hers as she moved across the stage. The towel lay around her neck as she thanked the choir and the rest of the cast. The director embraced her in a long hug and I shivered as a tinge of jealously ran through me. How I wished that hug was for me, how I longed but for one embrace, even just one lonely smile cast my way. But I knew that my chance for any of that had passed away a long time ago.

After the director broke his embrace, she stood by the edge of the stage. I looked down to her as she continued to wipe away the sweat and drained the last of the water bottle. She made some small talk with a few of the other dancers, far to soft for me to hear from my perch. I listened to the shudder and click of the lights in theater shutting down, casting long shadows throughout the theater. After about 30 minutes or so, the rest of the troupe drifted away, until she was left all alone on the stage.

The only lights still on were the runners along the aisle and a single spotlight shining down on the stage. I moved my vantage point so I was staring down to her on the stage from the spotlight. She got up from where she had been sitting on the lip of the stage and began slowly stretching. I watched as she loosened up, noticing the concentration masked on her face as she went through a shortened warm up. My memory fell back to that first lesson, oh so many years ago. She had begged me for ballet shoes, begged her mother for them. She had been relentless in her determination even then. I recalled the look on her face as she unwrapped them on her birthday, with the brochure for her first lesson.

I missed a lot of those early recitals, even more of the later ones. By the time she was 14 I was missing all of them. It was my fault, my weakness. If only I had been stronger, if only I had told her what I knew now. Back then though, I only knew what I wanted. Or at least thought I had wanted. No, I'd taken a much more cowardly route, a path away from her and towards bigger mistakes. Shaking my head sadly, I broke off my revelry and looked back down on my princess. She was so much older now, a young woman, on her own in the City. About to play her first lead. Knowing that, even after all these years, I knew I had to come and see her, one last time.

She had started going through the routine that she had been practicing when I started watching again, doing the dance over and over until she had it just right. I hadn't realized what she had meant to me until it was too late. My little girl. I waited until she had finished the dance before moving. She stood back up, uncoiling from the spinning flurry of the final movements and rubbed the soreness in her arms and legs. She walked over to her bag, reaching in to pull out another bottle of water. The light seemed even brighter in the room now, no longer from just the spotlight, but from all around, a soft white glow that filled the room, but she didn't seem to notice. I knew my time was almost up, far far to short. I felt the pull of the brightness, the fabric of myself melting into the shimmering mist. I moved in front of that spotlight and reached out to her, so far away and yet so very very close. I cast no shadow on her, the ether of my being dimming away, and whispered "Thank you..."

My last memory was of her looking to the spotlight with a tear in her eye.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Poetry: The Compass

2011-06-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Here's another bit of poetry I plucked away at today. I really wanted to use the directions of the compass in a poem, sort of comparing the directions of the Earth to the sun and it's relation to your life. It's supposed to be a poem that tells a story, of questioning your own path to finding one out through the course of the poem. I am not sure if I accomplished that or not in the poem itself, but I think it's to a point where I feel like I have done what I can, where I have told what I wanted to say with it. I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say about how that worked, or what kind of feelings you had about the poem.

Anyway, enjoy the poem, I am going to keep plucking away at this keyboard.

The Compass

In the east,

The sun rose from my feet.

I watched the horizon break,

Never knowing it's own defeat.

Towards the north,

The chills set in my bones.

I saw no sun, just northern lights,

As the cold wind blew its tones.

Down to the south,

The hot and humid days,

I felt the sweat fall from my face,

As the sun beat it's heated rays.

But to the west,

The sun did fall to sleep,

So the day had come to pass,

For the black of night begins creep.

Directions lead us to and fro,

Along the paths which our lives may flow.

North or south, east and west,

May lead us to a place of rest.

Or down a road of love or pain,

Even back along a path once gained.

The compass of our life has no true north,

Only a promise of what may lie forth.

Life's a journey that you take,

Sometimes right, often a mistake.

But to never travel the path ahead,

That's a soul already dead.

So in the east,

The sun burns in the sky,

Breaking the night's hold,

Letting the darkness die.

Still in the north,

The wind may blow so cold,

But in those precious moments,

Life can play itself most bold.

But in the south,

Amid the sun drenched day,

I feel the warmth of light,

When the special moments pass away.

And to the west,

I walk towards the setting sun.

The day has come to it's end,

But life has just begun.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2011-06-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

RECAP:

Hey all!

It's been a while since I've posted a new chapter of my serialized Flash Fiction tale, Under a Dead Sun Past Sins. I thought maybe a nice recap post would be a good idea, to let you know about the story and about the characters. Especially since I have kind of rebooted my blog a bit.

Under a Dead Sun is a zombie western story that I originally wrote about 4 years ago at the behest of a friend of mine, who asked me to fuse one of my loves, westerns, with one of his, zombies. I wrote the first Under a Dead Sun story in a weird disjointed serialized tale that was designed to be read in any order. The original installment had 40 chapters, with a special cover post made by my best friend Jason. You can find a link to Jason's blog here under The Wild Bunch tab, as well as a link to the original short story serial under the Anatomy of a Blog section.

After I finished that story I decided I really enjoyed the Dead Sun universe and went back to do a second serial, this time told in a 5 character perspective. Each chapter would be told from a different characters point of view, with the story eventually intertwining together. My target is about 50 chapters, with each person getting the same amount of story, give or take. I like to keep things open to cut it a bit short or go a bit long.

That can seem like an awful lot of story to catch up on, so here is a quick run down of the characters so far.

Cody Jarrett- a wanted thief and stone cold killer, he murdered his two partners after robbing a bank in a neighboring town. He's trying to get to the town Desperation to take a boat down to Old Mexico. After shooting his partners, they rose as zombies and he had to kill them again, but not before losing his horse. Currently he's going under the alias Beau Johnson (one of the men he killed) as he hitches a ride with Eva May Saint's family. He's selfish, remorseless, and a survivor without scruples.

Eva May Saint- The only surviving daughter of rancher Caleb Saint, her crippled father. They have ventured from their ranch with Bartley, the portly stage driver, and Thomas Moore, Caleb's advisor, a dandy without real cowboy experience who secretly fancies Eva. They are on their way to Desperation because their friend Rex was bitten by another zombie and they are seeking a doctor. Eva is just past 30, considered an old maid by most men, but still attractive. She is tough, gritty, and has been raised to run the farm since her sibling and mother's death.

Morgan Randall- A former Calvary officer who left the service after he fell in love. He is part Indian and worked as a scout, helping to tame the west against his own people. After watching his commanding officer rape and torture a village, he left the military to marry. His wife and child died in childbirth and he buried them on the small farm they had lived on. He remained there until the uprising, where he had to kill his own wife and newborn baby all over again. He left the farm, dressed in his uniform, knowing that sometimes you can't outrun what you are. He's sad and tortured, but with a streak of good, wanting to make up for all the wrongs he has done in his past.

Ally Marshall- The last survivor of a family killed by Cody Jarrett during his escape. Cody beat her and left her for dead, only for her to wake up to see her murdered family come back to life. Defending herself she managed to burn down the stable and destroy the monsters her family had become, but was swept into the river running from another group of the monsters. She was attacked by another group of zombies after washing to shore and fled barefoot through the forest until running into Morgan. Ally has been beaten emotionally and physically and is totally alone in the world, except for the chance meeting with Morgan.

Father Enrico Santiago- A poor man from the New Mexico territory, he left home for the promise of the adventure of war. Born Edward Richmond, he joined and fought for the Confederacy. At the Battle of Bull Run he was injured and lost his nerve for war though, and stole the identity of a deceased Army Chaplain named Enrico Santiago. He surrendered to the Union and eventually wound up out west founding a mission. He's spent 20 years pretending to be a priest, but again lost his courage during the uprising. First letting the village around him die to the monsters, then running as his fellow priests were torn apart when he could have helped them. He's armed with gun he had during the war, but he's all alone. He's afraid to die and selfish, but wracked with the guilt of his own choices and weakness.

The zombies- They are the risen dead, come back to life. They were resurrected the same day the sun turned black. The sun still gives off heat, but the light is darkened and the day is cooler. The zombies can only be killed by destroying their brains, though the zombies are mutated. Their fingers are more blackened points, sharp claws use to tear into flesh. Their jaws are also slightly distended, with the teeth having broken or changed into sharpened fangs. They are slow moving and unintelligent, but dangerous in groups. The smell of fresh blood can quicken their movements in close quarters though, giving them deceptively fast lunging speed.

That's about all you need to know. I hope you enjoy the story as I plan to try to post at least a new chapter once a week. We are really getting into the bulk of the story and the action, so it should be fun and exciting. Let me know what you think of the story or post questions or suggestions in the comments. Thanks for reading!

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2011-06-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

Chapter 32:

Eva spurred her horse faster, down the trail way, the town of Desperation looming in the distance. She tried to block out the memories of her and Bartley; and even Thomas attacking those creatures at the roadside. The thoughts of the blackened blood spraying against the rock wall face, or worse yet, the sight of the poor woman the beasts had been feasting on. The thoughts seem to bubble into her conscious unbidden, no matter what Eva did to force them down. She suppressed a shudder and turned her mind back to the task at hand, saving Rex. In the hour since they had stumbled upon those creatures he had turned for the worse. His skin was turning a sickly yellow-green and he was covered in sweat. The bite mark was red and inflamed, the skin so hot that Eva wondered how it wasn't burning the flesh right off his skin.

She figured that they were about an hour outside outside of town when they ran into the stranger. He had blond shoulder length hair and was dressed in a black suit, twin Colt's resting crosswise on his hips. A thick layer of trail dust covered his clothes and the saddlebags hanging over his shoulder, but all Eva was watching was the sawed off shotgun in his hand. He had said that he had ran into some creatures in the woods that had scared away his horse, but that he was headed towards Desperation to catch a boat.

Eva's intuition flared every time she looked at the stranger, who had said his name was Beau Johnson. She didn't like the feel of the feel of the man, she didn't trust him. But her father and Thomas had agreed to let the man ride into Desperation with them. No man, no matter what she felt, should be left out here with more of those monsters wandering about. Eva didn't really agree with Thomas assessment, her gut said that he couldn't be trusted and to many times her gut had proven right. But time was of the essence, and she didn't have time to argue over it, with Rex's conditioning worsening by the minute. Besides, maybe one more gun would make a difference.

Eva bit her lip and tried to force the uneasiness away, but the tension lay like a thick knot at the base of her neck. The undead, the black sun, Rex, the stranger, it was to much, to fast. Instead she reassuringly patted her Colt and spurred her horse a bit faster, riding ahead of the stage and Thomas, ahead of the stranger sitting beside Bartley in the driver's seat. As she came the the edge of the forest line, Eva drew the reins back, drawing the horse to a stop. She dismounted on the trail face, just before the path wound down the side of the hill and into the valley, Desperation laying just ahead.

She felt the others draw up behind her, but no one said anything as they looked down into the valley. The outlaying farms were smoldering, small flickers of flames still evident. Columns of smoke billowed from Desperation itself, though most of the town looked whole. Even at this distance though you could see the creatures moving about the farmland. They shuffled, jerking and lurching, moving in a way nothing human ever could. Worse yet, you could see the dead they had left behind, ripped, eviscerated. The once lush green grasses stained by blood. Even the river banks that flowed along the edges of town were tinged with red. So many dead, so many people lost. Eva couldn't even summon a tear, so thick was the lump in her throat. She only felt her nails digging into her palm as she balled her fist in anger, in frustration.

It was then she heard her father's scream.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: The Dirt of Days

2011-06-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

So below is a poem that was really written in bits and parts over the course of about five months. As I let life get in the way of my writing, I kept meaning to get back to the blog and writing a little every day. Since I got my first comic book published though it has really rekindled my creative juices. Or at least shamed me enough to get back to writing. I'm going to try to post more over the coming weeks, maybe slowly at first, but hopefully with more frequency as time goes on.

Anyway this poem is a bit of piecemeal effort, stretched out over the many aborted reboots I've tried in the last 5 months. I sat down today and read it over, deleted the whole post, then retyped it in about two read throughs. I tried to channel some of the original flavor that the early drafts had while taking a new approach to the work. A lot of the references to washing away pain were in the original poem, but I feel the later parts were where I tried to freshen the take I had up on the whole poem. Anyway I hope you enjoy it.

The Dirt of Days

New days as they turn from the dark,

Silent nights break as the moon parts.

Open the dawn as the rains do come,

Washing away the evenings sum.

The dirt circles around the drain,

Futility scrubbing at the stains.

But nothing I do can wash it clean,

The sins of the flesh grown obscene.

I scrub and scrub, but never clear,

The layers of the filth and fear.

Broken trust and brittle lies,

Lay atop the dirt surmised.

Falsehoods lie, no cleansing truth,

Just words betrayed, my faith uncouth.

And 'neath the dirt and painful grime,

Lay the raw scene of the crime.

You hurt me most with words I said,

When my silence should have served in stead.

So now the lies have built upon,

A broken trust that can't go on.

You're dead to me, just lies and hate,

I no longer care to suffer this fate.

For I know the hurt will never wash away,

My lies and pain are the dirt of days.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: The Scarecrow

2011-06-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

The crows had been thick this year, the worst case her father had ever seen. They had been wrecking havoc with the crops, picking into her fathers corn fields particularly. Her family had been farmers on this land since long before the oldest person Molly had ever known, but times had been hard over the years and her family had sold a lot of the vast acreage they had once owned. Now they were down to just the corn fields and her father couldn't afford to lose any more corn.

Molly had watched from the window in her room in the old white farmhouse as her father built the scarecrow. He had used some of Tommy's old clothes and Molly didn't think that it felt right, but her mother had told her to shush. She had watched as her dad stuffed old straw down into the faded jeans and flannel shirt of her brother. Her dad had asked her is she wanted to decorate the face of the burlap sack he was using as the head but Molly had just shook her head no, running back to her room. Her father had dawn a crude face on the sack, thick black eyes and a ripped black slit for the mouth. He'd even put one of Tommy's old work hats on it, the floppy black bill drooping in the front, shading the scarecrow's eyes. She remembered jumping in fear as her father drove in the first nail, mounting the stuffed man onto a wooden cross.

At first it wasn't so bad. She didn't look out the window if she could help it. She tried to ignore the scarecrow. She didn't tell her mom or her dad, but something about the scarecrow felt...wrong. It frightened her. At night it was worse. The moon would cast shadows that fell through her window. The black silhouette of the scarecrow would lie on top of her as she tried to bury herself deeper under the covers. The ghost of her stuffed brother lying in bed with her. Sometimes she could feel the chills even in her sleep.

The worst part of the scarecrow though wasn't even the scarecrow. It was the bird. The lone black raven that perched on the stuff man's shoulders. While his smaller brethren had been scared away, the lonely raven remained behind. She first saw the bird as it pecked away at the blackened eyes of the burlap sack, like the bird already knew that the stuffed man posed no threat. She stood in her window, feeling a shiver run down her back as the crow stopped and looked at her. She felt the bird peering at her, her palms slick with sweat, her breath caught in her throat. The raven's wings stretched wide and it cawed, a brittle shriek that burned Molly's ears. She slammed the window shut and buried herself under her blankets, not coming out until her mother called her for dinner.

She tried for days to scare the bid away, from yelling and screaming to daring to throw rocks and stones at the bird. Nothing worked though. The bird would flutter away, only to return to his perch whenever she turned back towards the house. She tried to tell her father about the bird, but it was never there when she told him. It was always gone, unless she was alone. When she was alone, the bird was always there, waiting, staring at her.

The fourth day after the scarecrow went up, the storm came. The rain and wind lashed at the house, the sounds of thunder echoing through the halls, the crackles of lightning bursting through the sky. Molly watched through her window, the rain pelting the glass, almost obscuring her vision completely. But she could still see the raven, perched on the scarecrow's shoulder. Despite the window being shut and the howls of the storm, if Molly closed her eyes she could hear the beat of the crow's wings in the rain and the cries of the bird's protests. She sat at the window until late in the night, watching as the lit candle wore itself down to a nub. Yet all through the storm, the bird never left the scarecrow.

The power had come back on by the time the sun cracked through Molly's window. Leaves and stalks of corn lay strewn about the yard but the bedraggled scarecrow was still nailed to the cross. Molly went downstairs, her father was already in the field, but her mother was asleep on the big chair in the living room. Molly slipped into her boots and gently snuck out of the front door. She walked around the yard, picking her way among the wet grasses and blown debris, walking until she could see the stuffed man.

His hat had blown away in the storm, and one of his arms hung limply at his side. He was wet and torn, like a sad doll forgotten far to long. Molly looked for the raven, absent from his perch. She climbed over the wooden slat fence and edged through the stalks until she was in the small clearing. Broken shafts of corn lay around the cross, and Molly lowered herself to her knees. She brushed them away, finally unearthing the raven beneath the broken stalks. It cawed weakly, gently nipping at her fingers. One of his wings were bent at an odd angle and his inky black feathers were slick with blood. The raven tried to beat his wings and lift himself up, but fell back to the ground, broken and bloody. The raven turned one eye to Molly, staring again like it had so often before, and Molly knew what she had to do.

All of her fear melted away as she gently lifted the bird from the muddy earth. She stretched, letting the broken bird hop onto the scarecrow's shoulders. The raven nestled in, gently cawing at Molly, his black eyes never leaving her. Molly backed away from the straw man, a small smile creeping across her face. She hopped back over the fence and ran to find her father, out in the fields.

The storm had destroyed most of the surrounding farms crops, ruining the harvests for many of their neighbors. To her dad's amazement though, their crops went mostly untouched. Her father managed to sell their harvest for a record amount, safeguarding the farm for the next few years. Every day after the storm though Molly looked for the raven, but she never saw it again. Every morning and every night she looked at the battered old scarecrow in her brother's clothes hoping to see the bird again, knowing that she didn't have anything to fear. But the bird stayed away, leaving only the now comforting shadow of her straw brother to tuck her in at night.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: I Saw Her Standing There

2011-03-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I wrote this poem based on some of the personal issues a friend of mine has been having. Plagued with just many sad and bitter feelings about life, love, liberty, she has been trying to deal with it all. Listening to her stories was very sad, and I extrapolated the basis from that story into this one. The specifics to me aren't as important as the meaning, the motif. Happiness cannot be bought or sold, but given by a friend or loved one. Sometimes though, we realize these things to late to help.

I like how easy it was to write this poem, it took maybe 20 0r 30 minutes, it was very fast. The rhymes seem to come very readily. Enjoy the post and again, thanks for reading.

I Saw Her Standing There

I saw her standing there,

Staring out into the rising sun,

Tears long dried upon her face,

And wondered what she'd done.

She seemed so sad and all alone,

Imprisoned in her brittle shell,

By all the things that held her down,

Trapped in her own sweet hell.

I thought that maybe I could change,

And show her how to love,

To rescue her from bitter things,

And help her rise above.

Together we could see the world,

And all that life held dear,

The colors of the day and sky,

If only I was near.

But in that far off stare,

Clouded behind her eye,

I saw the truth of the hurt,

Buried to deep for me to pry.

Her sadness poised upon her smile,

The air heavy with the pall,

A weight that clung to her soul,

So damaged from the fall.

I wanted to make her happy,

And end her hurtful pains,

But some things run so very deep,

Like a poison in her veins.

I knew that I could never be,

The man to melt the ice.

That frosty coat upon the flame,

For I was far too nice.

She'd been to hurt, bruised and bled,

Seen too many things,

For me to change her painful past,

And dull the echoed rings.

I saw her standing there,

Turning from the setting sun,

How I wished I'd acted sooner,

Before her hurt begun.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: The Book

2011-03-13T01:00:00.000-08:00

Arthur pulled the faded book from it's perch upon the shelf, running his finger down the well worn spine. Wuthering Heights had been her favorite book. Every year at this time she had read it, nestling into the overstuffed chair by the fire, near the big bay window he had installed when they bought the house. She would sit there and read the book from beginning to end, her socked feet curled under a blanket, a cup of tea on the window seal. She would sit there and read her favorite book every Christmas Eve.

Arthur traced the worn embossed letters on the front cover, the blues and gold faded to the dullest of sheen. The binding of the book had all but worn out, but she never wanted a new copy. This copy had been given to her by her mother, and she treasured that above all else, except she had said, maybe him. He remembered when he had first seen that book. It had been Christmas Eve and she was sitting in a cafe across from the hospital where she worked. A lot of girls worked there then, all clad in their white skirts and little blue cloaks, but his eyes had been drawn to her immediately. She was alone in a booth, her feet tucked under her, reading the book and sipping a tea. There was a light snowfall fluttering in the air, and several flakes had settled in her red hair, around the small white cap. He had been drawn to her immediately.

He limped into the cafe, snaking an orchid from a fresh bouquet of flowers at the hostess station. Sitting across from her, he rested his cane on the seat and watched her, the way she sipped her tea, the way she turned each page. He sat there watching her for over an hour, so complete was her immersion in the book. The embossed lettering was more pronounced then, still bright and vibrant. He had never thought to break her reading, to interrupt her reverie, he had only realized later how captivated he had been by the mere sight of her. It was only after she looked at her watch, and sighed, that she closed the book and got out of her seat.

He looked away, taking a deep gulp of his now cold coffee, and struggled to his feet, grabbing his cane. He felt a flair in his foot, from the bullet, but he limped on, trying to get to the register at the same time as her. She was dropping her change at the counter when he walked up. He would never forget the second their eyes locked, electricity bounding between them. Arthur gave her the orchid he had stolen, and walked her back to the hospital, Annette twirling the white flower in her fingers. He had spent the rest of his leave with her, every afternoon for lunch, every evening until way past dusk, talking, sharing. He had proposed the night before he shipped out, answered by a tearful yes.

That had been nearly 60 years ago. Many things had changed since then, though in recent years he had come to use that old cane again. Cancer had taken his wife this past May, a long and painful battle that in the end had finally been to much. Nowadays he spent most of his time wandering around the house aimlessly, lost without his Annette. This was the first Christmas he would spend without her, the first time that she wouldn't read Wuthering Heights.

Arthur finally opened the book, running his fingers over the worn cover page. It was only then that he noticed a page in the back that had been marked. He flipped open to the page in question, one of the last pages of the book, and saw it. A single crushed white orchid. Marked at what might have been thelast page she had read before meeting him. He felt his throat grow hot and thick with emotion, and wiped away the building tears in his eyes. Had she saved this flower for over 60 years? He gently touched the dried and aged flowers feeling it's papery petals and missed his Annette more now than he had ever before. He closed the book softly, holding it to his chest as he looked out the great bay window in their bedroom.

A thick layer of snow had fallen the night before and earlier today their great-grandchildren had come over. He could still see their footprints echoed in the snow and the jolly old snowman they had made in the front yard. A gentle breeze rustled the scarf they had put on him but the old hat he had dug out of the closet still rested on his head. He stared out that window a long time, holding that book, until a gentle snow begin to fall against the setting sun. It was only then that he left the room, limping along with his cane.

He returned a few minutes later, a steaming cup of tea in his hand. He settled down into his wife's chair by the window and slipped off his slippers, his stocking feet tucked beneath each other. He rested the tea on the window seal beside the great chair and picked back up his wife's copy of Wuthering Heights. The snow outside continued to fall as dusk settled deeper in the distance. He held the book, realizing now, why this old copy of Wuthering Heights had meant so much to her. It wasn't just her family history, it was their family history. In truth, the first page and the last page on the storybook of their life together. Arthur opened the book and began to read, feeling for the first time since her death, a connection to the woman he loved.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: The Quiet Wake

2011-03-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Here is a poem that I have been working on for a few days. After the tragedy of the Earthquakes and Tsunamis in Japan though I re-worked portions of it to reflect some of what I assume some people may be going through now, dealing with loss and heartache and longing for those lost. I don't suppose it's all that uplifting but I didn't really have an uplifting poem in me after watching the tragic news coverage the past few days. I hope you find some measure of merit in the poem and I thank you for reading. I'll be back with some new Flash Fiction tomorrow.

The Quiet Wake

I had a dream in which I died,

But at my funeral no one cried.

I walked among the silent wake,

And wondered how the world could shake.

Torn from life by nature's wrath,

Whose fury cut out a path.

Storm and winds had come to head,

As the quake of Earth struck us dead.

So many taken by the raging storm,

Mine, a single life lost in form.

I looked to my father, lost in gaze,

Who said no words, his eyes a glaze.

My mother dabbed at driest eyes,

Her tears had now long since dried.

My brother sat and raged and fumed,

In remembrance of the fires that plumed.

My friend he sat, struck by thought.

Longing for the friend he sought.

But at the chair where my love did sit,

The empty space lay open, remit.

Taken too by the worldly clamor,

She now lay rest in death's own glamor.

So many lives were taken today,

As you hear the world stop and pray.

And even though many were lost,

Survivors often feel the cost.

But now I walk among my friends,

A ghostly shade here at the end,

I cast my eyes towards a burning dusk,

The rays of the afterlife shedding its husk.

I begin to think of those I leave behind,

And start to wonder what's more unkind.

To move beyond those you love,

While you await in Heaven above?

Or to long for something forever lost,

Regardless of the hurt it costs?

So as I fade into the sun,

The quiet wake falls undone.

I watch the pieces of my life,

Separate and break, their sorrows tithed.

A gathered band, unique in their loss,

As one last time our paths would cross.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Assorted Nuts!

2011-03-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

At this point I don't even know what to say concerning my posting schedule. I've just been awful. I am going to try to be more consistent and get a coupe of posts a week this month. I've already got another post in the can and ready to be posted, so hopefully that means I'm getting back on track. Also by Monday the house should be settling back down from the stream of visitors I've had this month.

If you've never been to my blog before I post bits of Flash Fiction, or short self contained stories designed to be read in one sitting. I also do longer form serials like the one I'm about halfway through now, called Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins. It's a sequel of sorts to the first Dead Sun serial I wrote for the blog, though you don't need to read it to enjoy the current one. It's my take on a zombie Western. I also posts poetry and the occasional movie review or travel blog, though this year I really want to focus more on the poetry and stories.

To get myself back on track, and out from the epic story that Under a Dead Sun 2 is turning out to be, I went back to the well, I went back to one of my favorite genres to write, the western. Below is an homage to the one man against the odds story, with my own kind of twist on it. Last Man at Bad Water draws its inspiration from films like High Noon and True Grit, though films like The Last Hard Man and Bad Day at Black Rock certainly were influences in the title.

I should be back tomorrow with a new poem, and hopefully Sunday or Monday with more Flash Fiction. I'll also (attempt) to get back to Dead Sun.

Oh, and before I go I can very proudly say that I am super excited to show off this book, Moonstone Comic Zombies Vs Cheerleaders #3 . I's scheduled to ship soon and it includes my first published comic book story! I owe a huge deal of debt to my friend Matt Hebb for doing the pencils and especially Jason Worthington for doing inks and finishes. They, along with colorist Tracy Bailey have made one man's dream very much a reality. Check out Jason's blog here and Matt's here . Tracy site is here !

Exciting times indeed!

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Last Man at Bad Water

2011-03-11T18:31:00.000-08:00

Flash Fiction: Last Man at Bad Water

I tasted bile and the coppery tang of blood on my tongue as I ducked into the alley by the stable. The corner of the building exploded, shattering in splinters that I felt burrow into the nape of my neck and across the shoulder of my battered duster. I could hear the cackle of Black Tom Bratton as he thumbed more shells into the breach of his scattergun. I didn't pause as I turned the corner though, but barreled hell sped down the alleyway, rounding towards the rear entrance of the stable. I threw all my weight into the door, busting the thin hinges off the frame and crashing headlong across the floor. I felt my Henry Repeater slip from my fingers as I landed hard, my left knee twisting the wrong way. I planted my left hand on the ground and forced my self to my feet, biting down as a wave of pain shot up my leg. I heard Bratton and his gang moving down the alley, making no attempt at subterfuge, and after casting a furtive glance at my Henry, I left it on the floor and limped towards the nearest stall.

The few short steps sent a wave of nauseous pain up my body, made me think my damn knee may have been broken, but in light of the current situation pain was the least of my worries. If I didn't do something quick, Bratton's boys would finish what they started at the Bank in Conception. Sheriff Marsh had taken two deputies and myself after the gang, and we ran them down here in Bad Water. Or so we thought. It seems Bratton knew we were coming, having bought off one of Marsh's deputies. The Sheriff had been pretty quick, and between him and his other deputy, they had killed 3 of Bratton's boys, though for me, that still left three of the motherless bastards, including Victor Lagen, Marsh's former deputy.

I pulled up behind the first stall and pulled out my pistol, an old Schofield Revolver that my father had purchased new once. The gun had seen a lot of action over the years, mostly by my father, but lately, it had come to know my hand as well. I softly clicked back the hammer and waited, peering one eye around the corner. The stable was dark, illuminated only by the doorway I'd bashed open. I kept the pistol close, not allowing the sliver of moonlight to catch a gleam on the old pistol. I could feel the warm trickles of blood from the splintered wood in my neck and the thick salty beads of sweat run down my brow, my entire body tensing for the next moment. I forced the throbbing in my knee down and swallowed another bout of coppery bile, as I let out one last long breath, finding that single moment of calm that comes just before you kill a man.

I saw the first silhouette fill the door and creep in. It wasn't Lagen or Bratton, the shadow cast by the long rifle he had in his hand marked him as the third man. I snugged closer to the wall as he bent down, looking at the Henry I had left on the ground. He left the rifle there and crept closer to my hiding spot. I could practically see the fear in his eyes, undoubtedly compelled by Bratton to follow me in here. I knew as soon as I struck, Lagen or he would be in the doorway to pepper wherever I was. I had to react fast, and hope that my knee could hold up just a bit longer.

I waited until he was nearly on top of me before spurring from the corner and grabbing him. My free hand shot to the stock of the rifle, forcing his first instinctive shot high. I used the hand with the pistol to wrap around his neck, resting the inner part of my elbow into the nape of his neck and forcing his body around. After the first shot I drove the rifle butt into his stomach, but he pushed back and I didn't get enough leverage, especially with the pain radiating from my knee. The blow did allow me enough time to bring the rest of my body around in a three quarter turn though, forcing his body in front of me. It was just in time too as Lagen burst through the entrance, his thin figure a black shadow against the door. I saw the glint of his pistol through the shadows and braced my arm hard against Bratton's thug. Lagen didn't hesitate as he fired, hammering the pistol back and again. I felt the first two bullets hit Bratton's goon and heard his cry of pain.

Using him as a shield, I reached down with my free hand and pulled the revolver loose that he'd kept tucked into the front of his waistband. I pulled it free as I felt the furrow of hot lead crease against my cheek. My thumb felt the cold steel of the hammer and my finger the welcome caress of the trigger and I returned fire. My first shot went wide, punching a hole in the thin wood of the stable wall overhead but my second and third shot found home. The first shot burying into Lagen's gut while the second shattered his kneecap. Lagen fell, but not before getting off another shot, a lucky burst that burned a hot hole into the meat of my shoulder. My left side was on fire as I dropped Bratton's man. I watched Lagen stumble to the ground, his right leg sticking out at an un-natural angle. I dropped my borrowed gun and used that hand to grab the wall of the stable and shuffled backward into the darkness.

I fell over a short wall, separating the entrance area of the stable and the individual pens and pulled myself along it. I could feel the hot trail of blood run down my cheek and shoulder as I gritted my teeth, forcing the pain down again. There'd be time enough for that if I lived. And right now, that was one hell of an if.

I heard Bratton laugh as he walked through the rear door of the stable. I clung close to the short wall, trying to keep my sounds of movement to a minimum. The man I'd used as a shield had started sobbing, begging Bratton to help him, to fetch a doctor. I listened for the click of the scattergun and didn't have to imagine what happened next. The shot sounded as I reached the edge of the wall and rolled myself into the small space the farrier used as an office. The only furniture was a scarred and scratched desk and a chair, both of which were more kindling than much else. Still I used the corner of the desk to pull myself to my feet and leaned my back against the wall, a fresh wave of pain shooting through my shoulder. The pain wasn't the worst part though, was Bratton's continued god damn laughing.

"William...William... Billy me boy. I know you're still out there, hiding in the dark from ol' Black Tom. Why don't you come out and we can finish this like men ought to eh? I'd hate to have to shoot you in the back. Though I gotta be honest with you..... and I've always been honest with you, I'd hate NOT shooting you even more."

He laughed again and I heard him load a fresh cartridge in the scattergun. He was to damn fast for me to try to take head on, even if my shoulder and leg weren't a busted up mess. I kept myself to the wall, listening for sounds of him moving closer, though all I could hear was his damnable soft chuckling.

"You're gonna make me do this the hard way are you Billy? You always were a stubborn little bastard. But hey, I always told you if one day you wanted to be the hero, that would mean facing down some bad men. Yeah, and you may have killed some men before, bad men even, but trust me... little brother... ain't no man badder than me."

I heard him move out again, away from me. I risked a glance around the corner, trusting the distance to be to great for any kind of an accurate shot with that scattergun, and saw Tom Bratton lift a stubby cigar to his mouth, striking a match along the barrel of his gun. I saw the red embers catch fire and watched his chest expand as he took a deep drag. His eyes shown, like black oil catching a spark, as he exhaled the smoke from his lungs in a long curl. He laughed again, not the manic cackle he normally used, but an almost soft laugh of genuine amusement. He stood in the doorway, his bulky frame filling it, the slow light of the cigar cast against the moonlight.

"Billy, it's about damn time we ended this. Your men are dead, my men are dead, why don't we finally figure out which one of us is the good guy. You take your time, I'll be waiting."

He walked out the door, leaving me alone in the darkened stable. I leaned my head against the wall and let out a long ragged breath, before stumbling over to the rickety chair in the office. I eased into it, my leg and shoulder protesting in waves of pain. I gingerly shrugged off the battered duster, throwing it across the desk. Lightly, I prodded the bloody hole in my shoulder and counted myself lucky that the bullet had passed straight through. Still, I used a part of my shirt sleeve and a bottle of whiskey I found in the desk drawer to clean and wrap the wound as best as I could. Hell, it only had to last a little while more anyway and then it wouldn't matter, one way or another. The wound on my cheek and the splinters along the base of my neck were fairly superficial and I cleaned those as well, dousing a bandanna with the whiskey; though not before taking a hearty slug myself.

As I cleaned my wounds, I thought to what he had said. One of us had to be the good guy. Growing up, our father had told us stories of fighting the Rebels at Bull Run, or hunting Indians with the cavalry after the war. We'd been young then, but Dad told us the gory details of war. Of what it meant to kill a man. I'd always kind of been scared to hear what Pa had done, but Tom.. well Tom loved those stories. Whenever we had played as children, I was always the Indian. Or always the Confederate. Tom was always the good guy.

When Tom got kicked outta the cavalry, it was inevitable that his cruelty and mean streak would have led him down this path. Even though I had tried to live a good life, working the farm that Pa had left, Tom's life always spilled over into mine. First, the death of my son, then, the death of my wife, both because Black Tom Bratton didn't like not having things he couldn't have. Tom had claimed that his son's death had been an accident in the woods, but there was no mistaking what he'd done to his Adeline. It had been six years since my son was killed, Caleb would have been almost 14 by now, nearly a man grown, but Tom had ended all that. I wasn't proud of the things I'd done to get here, but I'd be damned if this is how I'd let things end.

There wasn't much to be done about the knee, so I cut the duster into several strips and wrapped it as tight as I could. It hurt like hell, but at least I could put a little weight on it. I checked the load in my Schofield and started for the door, the front door this time. I limped out into the main street of Bad Water. It was a pitiful little town, mostly built around a copper mine that had dried up several years ago. A few stores and a saloon filled out the rest of the main street, but few people called this shitbox home anymore. I didn't have to look far to see my brother. He was leaning against a hitching post, smoking the nub of that cigar, the sawed down scattergun resting on his hip. The old bastard hated doing anything small, rifles and pistols were too small, to pretty he'd once said. He liked what that old scattergun did to people. He liked the look in their eyes when he killed a man. He cast the cigar to the side and made his way to the center of the street.

"Well, well little brother. You got more stones than I gave you credit for. I was sure I'd have to drag your sorry ass outta that stable. You've been a burr in my ass for too god damn long and frankly, I wanna send your sorry ass to hell the same way I did your wife."

"Tom, I don't give a shit what you have to say. One way or another, one of us is gonna be the last man here. This ends."

My finger eased over the pistol, index finger dancing along the tip of the trigger guard. Tom didn't even move, like cold stone, some kind of damn statue, grinning that fucking grin at me. We never broke eye contact, me looking into that liquid blackness. It's a helluva thing to kill a man, let alone kill your own brother. I forced the throbbing in my leg and shoulder, the roar in my mind, all down, burying those feelings somewhere deep; beyond my thoughts. I let out that final long breath, drawing on that calm one more time, just one more time, and flashed for my gun.

The sound of thunder filled my ears and shots fired. I felt my chest grow hot and wet as black edges crept around my vision. I remember falling, my hand clutching a pistol still smoking, my bullet, to slow. I hit the ground but by then I didn't feel it, even my leg and my shoulder felt numb. I saw my brother standing over me, both barrels of that scattergun smoking, and lean down to whisper to me, in that fucking chuckle of a whisper.

"I guess we know who the good guy was at last little brother."

I vaguely remember him loading another shell into the gun as a bright light filled the sky above me. I thought I saw my wife, my sweet Adeline, before the twin barrels of the moon thundered one last time.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T18:24:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

It's been quite a while since I blogged, and really I have no valid excuse. Ever since I moved I just haven't found the motivation. I did sit down today and start to wok on a poem and it came pretty easy. I am hoping that I can use this success to site, my writing back into some meager semblance of shape.

Below is a Valentine's Day poem, something of lost love and heartache. It's hard being alone on this day, it's usually a day where I find myself kind of sad and introverted. I tried to foster some of these feelings into the poem. Enjoy the poem as you will. I'll try to police myself better to offer more output in the coming days.

Valentine's Day

Time has turned, the future past.

Today won't stay, never last.

The breaking dawn will turn to dusk,

As the horizon sheds its rotting husk.

The change occurs, it cannot stay,

As all tommorrows become yesterdays.

Looking at all the time left behind,

The past seems longer and more unkind.

Places you've been are but a thought,

Where you're going, you've never sought.

Future days seem shorter then,

As the known outweighs the unbegan.

And when you look into the rear,

All you see are dashed hope and fear.

The failures seem to weigh much more,

As the triumphs feel but tender sores.

Your hindsight seems to capitalize,

On all the things you thought you'd try.

And as you hope to change your fate,

The times not left, you're out of dates.

Flowers crushed, bound in book,

A withered love that time has took.

Crumpled poems tossed to flame,

The burning love snubbed by blame.

Pictures taken of love brand new,

Now yellow and faded, cast astrew.

Another Valentine's Day has come around,

But here we wait, our love aground.

End of Time.
Gerrad!

Introspection

2011-01-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

This past month has been one of marked changes for me. Moving from my house, which I could no longer afford, to a one bedroom aprtment (which I think I actually prefer)combined with accepting a new postion at work at a new high volume restaurant, I have honestly never felt more under pressure than this. The enormity of the month has just been stifling. Add in Christmas and New Years and a much welcomed visit from my Dad, I feel like today is teh first time in a long time I have had to collect my thoughts.

As often, I thought about how alone I have felt this past month, not having someone to share my frustrations with, and worse yet, boxing up these feelings and not expressing them. I even turned away from my blog, turned away from the only form of expression I have often felt I have had left. This year I have one simple goal, one resolution to hold myself too. Change. I want to change how I feel about myself, how I feel about my accomplishments, and how I fit into the world around me. Change doesn't necessarily mean giving up things, and this blog is certainly something i don't want to give up on. I am going to change what I think about on this blog, taking it away from movies and popular culture moments, and focus more on my actual writing. I want to write about things I am passionate about. And while that may mean old school movie reviews or blogging about my travels, I don't want to confine myself to a certain output a month. I will make one promise. I will finish Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins this year. We are about halfway through the story at this point, and I will be posting a summary chapter this week before diving back into the narrative.

2011 lays ahead of me in a endless path of possibility, I need but take the first step of a greater journey. I greet the future today, my eyes to the rising sun, the cold breeze of dusk at my back, the bold unknown lying ahead.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Assorted Nuts!

2010-12-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

So yeah, I've been absent for a while. A lot of drama has been going on with my personal and professional life and it's been in a huge turmoil. I've been targeting a slight reboot of the site in the new year. I promise to get back to poetry, Flash Fiction, and finishing the latest Under A Dead Sun storyline, as well as working on some new stuff. In the meantime, I promised a friend of mine a new Christmas story and I posted one. Hopefully its just a fun, feel good tale of Christmas romance that you can enjoy.

Check back in January for a slightly new look and some new content. I haven't given up on this little dream of writing yet, and I'm hoping to have a better year that 2010 was.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Merry Christmas Abby

2010-12-24T09:39:00.000-08:00

The snow storm had gotten worse in the last hour as Abby DeVale looked out the window. The tarmac was covered in sleet and ice, and the mild snow storm that had been so cute and quaint three days ago had now closed the airport. She has been on assignment for work, snapping photographs in Alaska for the magazine. Yet here she was, now, on Christmas Eve, far from home. The airport had been closed for the past two days, it was a smaller airport, the kind designed for Cessna and local charter flights. She was supposed to have taken her charter flight to Anchorage and catch her connecting flight flight home to Seattle, but those chances had been dashed by the sudden blizzard.

Abby thought back to the previous week, when the magazine had asked to to shoot the pictorial at the last minute. The magazine usually used Norman Adders, he'd been the senior photographer for the last 15 years. Abby had only been with the company six months. Still Norman's wife had been in a car accident and he didn't want to leave her. With it being Christmas week, no one else wanted the assignment. Abby saw it as an opportunity. By taking the gig she could prove herself to the editors and hopefully get some better assignments in the future. They were already raving about the images she had emailed back and had hinted that she may even be up for the New York assignment next month based on what she had shot.

The only downside had been David, her boyfriend. He had said all the right things, acted so positively when she had gleefully informed him about the opportunity the magazine was giving her. It was only now, when she looked back on it, that she could see the hurt in his eyes. This had been their first true Christmas together, despite dating for the last three years. David had been in the military when they had first met, a photographer for the US Army deployed in Iraq. He'd been giving a lecture at Abby's university, showing some footage he had shot in Afghanistan. She'd hung around after class to ask him questions. She always said it was a professional interest that had intrigued her, but truth be known she had thought he was cute. They eventually met for coffee, and within the first date they both knew it was something special.

Abby and David had a long distance relationship most of that first year, her finishing school in Los Angles while David continued his tour of duty. Even after David's tour finished, he worked as a civilian liaison to the military, coordinating many of the journalists who followed the military in action. That was how they had finished their second Christmas as a couple. Abby finished school and took a job for a small magazine operating out of Seattle and David and her leased a small apartment together. The relationship worked because both loved to travel and both loved what they did, and it made each moment they spent together that much more special. Abby suspected now that David had been looking forward more to this Christmas than she had first suspected.

Abby stared out the window into the snow storm and suddenly felt very, very alone. Trapped so far away from David, and alone on Christmas Eve. She watched the dull overcast of the afternoon fade slowly into the dark whiteness of snow at night, sitting at the window, her feet tucked beneath her. She stayed there until the airline attendant came and told her that the snow wouldn't be letting up anytime soon. He also told her that since tomorrow was Christmas, there wouldn't be any flights out. Abby nodded numbly, pulling on her overcoat. She wrapped herself into her warmest clothes, securing her scarf and putting on her gloves and mittens as the attendant arranged to give her a ride to the little bed and breakfast that she had been staying at the past two days. They hurried together to the car and slowly drove to her room. Abby muttered her thanks, watching the snow rage against the window of the car.

She told the attendant goodbye and hurried into the home. There was a roaring fire in the hearth of the common room as Abby got her key from the hostess. The old woman who ran the inn gave her a smile and a hug, telling her not to feel so sad on Christmas Eve. Abby gave a small lopsided smile, and nodded, before trudging back upstairs. All she wanted to do right now was to curl up under the covers of the bed and cry. Every time her mind wandered, she could see the hurt in David's eyes when she left, she could hear the longing in his voice when she had called him. Now that she wouldn't be home on Christmas, she dreaded calling him. She never really knew how much Christmas had meant to her before. She thought about the dinner that David had planned to have, the candles lit by the window overlooking the Puget Sound, the smell of his herb roasted chicken. Just a quiet evening with the man she loved. It was only in that moment that Abby really understood that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with David.

Abby reached her room and thumbed in the key, pushing the door open, her bags tucked under her arms. She expected the dark cool of her room, but was surprised by the soft red glow of cinnamon scented candles. Her bed was covered in white rose petals, like snowflakes on a field of deep red. She dropped her bags, covering her mouth in shock as David emerged from the bathroom. He was wearing a black suit and tie, a huge smile on his face as he approached Abby. She was speechless, her eyes wide as David came right up to her. He gave her a huge smile and lowered himself to one knee. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black box, opening it as he looked up deeply into Abby's eyes. She gave a small shudder as tears begin to flow from her eyes as she stared at the slivery glint of the wedding ring resting in the box.

"Ho...How?"

It was all she managed to stammer as David pulled teh ring from the box, reaching for her hand with his free one.

"A little snow wasn't going to ruin my Christmas plans with you. I'm so proud of you for doing this assignment, and I'd never ask you to choose between an assignment and me, you never have and that's one of the reasons I love you so much. This is our first Christmas where we were going to be together though, and I couldn't bear the thought of not spending it with you. After you told me about the snowstorm yesterday I called your pilot, who confided in me that the chance of you getting clearance for today was going to be next to impossible. I took a flight to Anchorage and rented a car, I drove all night to make sure that I was hear for when you got home. I have a very important question to ask you that just couldn't wait until the 26th. Abby DeVale, I love you more than life itself, and every time I come home to you that love deepens. I want to spend the rest of my life coming home to you. I love you. Will you be my wife."

Abby nodded furiously as he slipped the ring on her finger. She looked at the gem sparkling back at her through thick tears, her shock only broken by a deep kiss from David.

"Merry Christmas Abby."

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Trick or Treat

2010-10-29T09:37:00.000-07:00

Trick or Treat

Bobby Hodges pushed his mask onto the top of his head and hefted the pillow case he had been using as a bag all night to inspect his haul. The bag was at least three quarters full and a lot of it was quality candy too. None of that candy corn or those orange and black wrapped things that he hated. He was especially looking forward to that full size Snickers Bar that Old Man Holliday had given out. Full size candy, truly the holy grail of Halloween candy treats. All in all, it had been an impressive night of trick or treating and he had managed to hit his whole neighborhood plus the apartment complex next to their development.

This was the first year his parents had allowed him to go out on his own. He had just turned 13 and had been helping out watching his kid brother after school since Mom had gotten that part time job at the Toys ‘R Us a month back. Mom had said it was just cause she was bored, but he knew things had been tough this year. She was probably working there to save some money for Christmas. He’d even re-used his costume from last year to help out, not that he really cared if he was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle again, Bobby Hodges was all about the candy. Still as a reward they had let him go trick or treating with his friends instead of going with them and his kid brother, Kevin. He’d agreed to be home by 9:30, but most of his friends had to be home by 9:00. That’s when he decided to hit the apartment complex.

Bobby looked at the light up display on his watch and realized he only had 8 minutes to make it home before he was late. He swung the pillow case over his shoulder and tossed the dying glow stick he had pulled off the of his neck into the street. He grabbed the plastic Bo staff that went with his costume (cause Donatello was his favorite Ninja Turtle) and hurried down the street towards his house.

There were still a few people on the street trick or treating and he watched them as he made his way home. He recognized a lot of the costumes, Spider-Man, Batman, Princesses, skeletons and ghosts, and a whole lot of vampires, even girl ones. There were a few he didn’t though, like the guy dressed like some kind of yellow square with pants or the kids with the bulky metal headbands and orange karate suits. It didn’t rest long on his mind though as he rounded the last corner, coming up on Oak Street, his street.

Bobby lived at the end of the street, before it rounded left and made a big loop back towards the main avenue. All of the houses were pretty much the same on the outside, there were really only four models to choose from. His parents had chosen the only two story model and had it built, their dream house. Bobby had lived here practically his whole life. His dad loved Halloween though and always decorated the house. Some years they even did a haunted house in the garage, though not this year. Probably because of Mom having to go back to work. Still Dad had gotten out the old decorations and had done the place up grand. The hanging skeleton, the smoke machine, the creepy music, spider webs, the works. Dad usually dressed up as Frankenstein too and handed out candy from the lawn chair he sat up in the front yard.

Bobby slowed his pace as his house came into sight, realizing that something wasn’t quite right. He walked the last few steps and stood in front of his house, confused. It was his house all right, but all the decorations were gone. He didn’t understand, he had helped his Dad put them up two weeks ago. Heck, they had been there just a couple of hours ago before he went trick or treating. But they were gone. The hanging skeleton, the fog machine, the creepy music, heck even the porch light was off. They never turned the porch light off when he was outside after dark, let alone on Halloween. Yet here the house was, dark and plain, so unlike what Bobby remembered.

Bobby walked up to the front door and walked through, entering the dark foyer. The whole house was dark, just a single light on in the living room, the light that his Mom always left on when they left the house. Bobby began to wonder if both of his parents had taken Kevin out trick or treating after he realized the whole house was empty. The kitchen and living room was dark and his parent’s room was empty. Dad’s wallet and keys weren’t in the bowl by the door though, so that meant they HAD to have left. Bobby shrugged it off though and headed upstairs to his room, candy in tow. All that meant was he could sneak a few Three Musketeers bars before his folks came home. He pushed open the door to his room and flung his mask onto the bed and dropped his bag of candy in the middle of the floor to his room. He turned his desk lamp on, shedding some light in the dim house.

Something was odd about his room though too. It was his room all right, it was just…different. His posters were still on the wall, Spider-Man and the Turtles and Super Mario staring down at him, but his room was clean, un-naturally clean. His Lego stacked neatly in their bin, his action figures put away in their cases, his books and desk neatly organized. Even his bed was made, and unless his Grandma was coming over Bobby NEVER made his bed. Bobby shrugged it away again and began rummaging through his bag of candy. He turned on the TV in his room while he rummages, watching the end of It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown before he fell asleep, half a Twix bar uneaten in his hand.

Frank and Marilynn Hodge came home at 10:30pm. They never stayed at home on the 31st anymore, especially after Kevin had moved out. They usually went to a movie, or dinner, anything to try to forget the date. Frank punched the garage door opener, but stopped well short of the drive way. He looked to his wife, whose face went pale. There was a light on, a light in Bobby’s room. He felt his wife snake her fingers through his and grip his hand as he eased the car into the driveway and put it in park.

They both went through the front door and walked slowly up the stairs, stopping at Bobby’s room. His wife’s grip seem to tighten even harder as he reached out with his free hand and turned the knob. The room was empty, as empty as it had been for the last 15 years. Though Bobby’s desk lamp was on. A light that neither had turned on since that night 15 years ago when Bobby had been struck by that car speeding out of that apartment complex. Frank over to turn off the light but stopped when his foot brushed something. He bent down and picked it up. A crumpled Twix wrapper, left in the middle of the floor. He turned to his wife, watching fresh tears roll down her face, as he clocked off the light, once again, plunging the preserved room into darkness.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Birthdays

2010-10-18T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

As is my usual habit here I try to write a poem on my birthday, about the passage of time of growing older, something to commemorate the coming year. This year my poem is really about embracing all the things you've done wrong in your life and realizing that those mistakes allow you to be at the place you are now, for good or for bad. Getting older is merely a state of mind, I certainly don't feel more different today than I did yesterday, age isn't about the passing year, its about the passing of life. One year of opportunity is nothing in comparison to a decade of them. This year for me was about embracing the wrongs of the past, and living to the fullest extent of the future. As always, thanks for reading.

Birthdays

Years have passed that were rough,

Times I've face have sure been tough.

Decisions I've made have been mistakes,

And all the consequences and the breaks,

Don't get any easier with the years,

Or get washed away by shedding tears.

But as this year comes to an end,

The fruits I've sown I can't defend.

All I can say is after all these days,

I know now three hundred sixty five ways,

To make mistakes and fuck up your life,

How not to pay the dues you should tithe.

Or all the other ways I've screwed up then,

Can't even say I'm sorry or defend it when,

My life's a mess from from my poor choice,

Or when my words caress without a voice.

So as this new birthday comes to pass,

I'll view my life from a looking glass.

Reflecting on the many reasons,

I messed up these past four seasons,

One could certainly say without a doubt,

About all the things that life has held without,

There are plenty of reasons to feel sad,

When the older you get starts to turn bad.

And each new birthday fills you with despair,

I want you to look back and compare.

And if you live your life like I do mine,

As the years have passed you can find,

The things in which you've been blessed,

Are more important than why you've obsessed,

About getting on and growing old,

So listen to me and do what you're told.

The zest of life is yours to grasp,

If you just let go of to the fears you clasp.

And live your life like each day is your last,

Cause at the end, it passes by so fast.

Birthdays are not about the passage of time,

But remembering that the joys of life can be sublime.

The habits of life and love you can never shake,

But the world around is yours to take.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-10-17T00:52:00.000-07:00

Chapter 31

Morgan had found the young girl on the side of the road leading towards Desperation. The poor thing had looked terrible. Her dress had been reduced to mostly rags and her body was a mess of cuts and scrapes. She had deeply purple bruises across her stomach and ribs as well as welts on her scalp. Her face was slightly swollen and blood still trickled from the fresh split in her lip. She had been shoeless and her feet had been a mess of cuts and burrs. Her hair was still damp from her douse in the river and she still smelled of of smoke. He had gotten off his horse when he had found her and took a knee in front of her, moving slowly. One not to frighten her, but two, well... the second reason was just in case. She had been curled up into a ball, but when she finally looked up, raising her head from between her knees, she had embraced him in a fierce hug, a fresh set of tears shuddering from the poor girl.

He had wrapped her in the blanket from his bedroll and helped her onto his horse, telling her he'd escort her to Desperation. She had nodded and they had rode in silence for a long time. After a while though, she had regained her composure somewhat and at Morgan's gentle insistence had opened up. Her name was Ally Marshall she had said, and told him her story. About the blond man killing her family and attacking her. About waking up in the stables. And about her family rising from the dead and her eventual escape down the river. Morgan hadn't told her about his wife or child, he didn't think she needed to hear it, but he listened intently. He now knew that it wasn't just his farm, that somehow, the dead were walking the earth again. He looked to the dead sun overhead and thought about the old stories of his people.

After Ally finished her story she closed her eyes and rested against Morgan's back. They rode in silence for a while, until the woods gave way to a scrubs, eventually settling into more farmable land. The pair rode quietly, coming up to a sprawling farm, it's house set just beyond the trail. The front of the house had tethers for horses along a small open air stable, an old way station for horses apparently that looked like it saw little use. A length of fence ran alongside the road towards a gate in the center. Morgan eased the horse up towards the gate and slid down, reassuringly patting Ally's leg.

Morgan held up a hand, motioning to Ally to stay with the horse.
"I'll be right back, just stay here. I won't be out of sight."

She had nodded silently, but he could see the fear in her eyes.

Morgan slid free his revolver and thumbed back the hammer, creeping slowly towards the main house. The house was deathly silent and the hairs on the back of Morgan's neck stood up. He crept up the steps to the porch, the front door wide open. He stuck his head in the house and looked around. The foyer was covered in blood, running from the top of the stairs into a pool on the floor in front of the main door. Morgan grimaced and pulled back out, following the porch as it ran around the perimeter of the house. As he turned the corner, he saw a shed behind the house. In front of the shed, he saw two forms laying on the ground.

They didn't move, but Morgan still moved slowly. He crept the gun in front of him, his finger tight on the trigger. He gave Ally a reassuring wave that he didn't quite feel himself and slowly approached the two shapes. He pointed the gun at the first shape until he was close enough to make it out. It was barefoot, wearing only coveralls, but it had been one of them. Despite the gaping hole in it's head, he could still make out the clawed fingers and sallow skin. A few steps later he saw the second one much the same, though obviously this had been the lady of the house. Her dress torn down the front, exposing the festering wound in her chest. Her head too had been split wide open and from the looks of it, by a shotgun. Morgan walked towards the door of the shed, slowly pushing it open with the barrel of his gun. Inside, he found one more body, shot in the head as well. Her dress had been torn off her body, leaving her naked and exposed, bruises and purple blemishes marking her skin. The only difference between this victim and the two outside was that this poor girl had still been alive before she was shot.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: To Simple

2010-10-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I thought I really needed to do a love poem, something more upbeat and impassioned, especially with the kind of foreboding poetry that I have been writing of late. This poem is about how sometimes words cannot express all the emotions that a person makes you feel. That sometimes people make you feel in ways that you just can't put into words. I don't write a love of love poetry, but I am definitely a bit of a classic romantic. I very much want to be able to express these feelings, these longings, to another person but I tend to write poems to an idealized love. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the poem! Thanks for reading.

To Simple

Love is to simple a word,

To express so many things.

From feelings bold and passionate,

To sounding what your heart sings.

It cannot convey in words or speech,

Even text can fall so short,

The facets in which you lift me up,

And hold my soul in court.

Poems or rhyme may hold no verse,

A beauty that you can’t undo.

Perfection given earthly form,

Each time I come to think of you.

Even music is a dull affair,

You cannot be contained in song.

No verse or chord is worthy yet,

Your majesty is just too strong.

I struggle to find the words to say,

To express just how I feel.

The day you came into my life,

Is when the world became so real.

Even prayer cannot demonstrate,

The love and warmth within,

You’re my savior, an angel of the heart,

My lust for you my only sin.

Adore, admire, praise, and covet,

Each are but a pale lit dare,

To words or actions I hold so dear,

For a lady without compare.

As grammar fails to truly show,

All the things you mean to me,

Know that my heart is yours,

And everything I’ll ever be.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-10-11T10:17:00.000-07:00

Chapter 30:

Ally had been forced to cut through the forest, leaving the protection of the river behind. Her feet bled from the rocks and shrubbery but she moved through the wilds as fast as she could. Fresh tears ran down her face, tears from a mixture of pain and fear. She remembered her experience at the river and bit her lip, trying to force down another wave of panic as she ran through the forest.

She had been making her way down the riverbank, following the shoreline, picking her footing as she moved towards Desperation. Then she had seen them. Two people, at the riverbank, bent over at the edge of the water. Her heart had soared. She felt the rocks stab at her feet as she ran towards the duo, waving her arms and shouting, feeling that for the first time today, something right was going to happen. She ignored the pain and continued running down the shoreline.

It was the smell though, that was the first thing that tipped her off. A smell like rot, or decay, something spoiled. Her running faltered, slowing herself as her cries had rousted the two strangers ahead. As she neared them, the two men looked up and Ally saw them. Monsters. Like her family. Their face was covered in blood, their black teeth glistened with gore. They had been bent over by the river and she saw now why. A body lay in the water, ripped apart as the creatures had been feasting on the carcass. Entrails had been ripped out of the poor man's chest, his head caved in. The water down river ran red with blood.

Ally stopped, her heart in her chest. All the pain and soreness seemed to drain away in an instant, replaced by fear. Stark raving fear. The creatures slowly stood up from the dead body and began moving towards Ally. She stood rooted to the spot, taking in the monsters. They had decomposed badly and wore scraps of rags as clothing and were riddled with maggots and dead flesh. They were covered in dirt and mud, their bodies having turned sour and moldy. But those claws and those teeth were all too real. They shuffled close, mouths gaping and let loose an angry hiss. They were mere feet from her when finally the grip of free released her and she screamed. She turned and ran, straight into the wilds beside the river and never look back.

That had been at least a quarter of an hour ago. Ally had finally stopped running, her breath coming in ragged gasps and all the pain and aches seeped back into her as the adrenalin ebbed. Ally stumbled a few more steps as the forest gave way to a hard packed trail. She dropped to her knees, finding it hard to breath. Ally sat by the road, pushing down a fresh wave of tears and trying to catch her breath. Her whole body shuddered, and Ally felt utterly defeated. She didn't care anymore, didn't want to run anymore, didn't want to live. She finally gave into the grief, and sobbed, knowing that she no longer cared what happened to her.

Her grief was finally interrupted by the clipping of horse hooves down the road. Ally didn't bother to move or hide though, she just sat there and waited. She didn't even look up until the clip clop of the horse stopped. She saw a man on horseback, a man in a cavalry uniform, and she cried again, a fresh set of tears. Though this time, the tears were of relief.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Word Balloon: Fell

2010-10-10T23:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Whenever October rolls around I like to pick a darker comic book for the column, something from the horror or occult genre. This month I chose writer Warren Ellis and artist Ben Templesmith's Fell, from Image Comics. While not necessarily a horror comic, it does deal with a lot of familiar Halloween themes. It's a comic very much about the darkness of humanity and the vileness of real life, though there is a sub-text dealing with implied magic and the power of belief. It's a complex book that shows sometime the truly scariest things in the world are the people around us.

Fell is about a disgraced homicide detective named Richard Fell who is re-assigned to a precinct named Snowtown, a dark city rife with urban decay, separated from the city by a lone bridge, isolating it from the regular world. Snowtown is abnormally cold, a cursed city that is made up of an impoverished amalgamations of several inner cities. Cloaked in mystery, you are never told why the people believe the town is a blight or why working there is considered exile for the police force. The inhabitants have even taking to marking doors and people with a protective marker, hoping that Snowtown will not turn its ill will on one of its own, succumbing to superstition and old beliefs as the world around them has descended into darker times. Still, Fell is assigned to the precinct's minimal police force and is determined to make a difference where many others will not, trying to help the impoverished town improve itself and to protect its inhabitants using his renowned powers of observation and deductive skills.

Snowtown is a dark, dank place, where vileness is an everyday topic that must be dealt with in Fell's struggles to better the community. His sole point of light in this otherwise feral city is Mayko, a bartender who takes Fell under her wing to guide him in the ways of Snowtown and act as a sounding board for the cases he is working on. She also acts as a foil to the bleak desolation that surrounds Fell while in Snowtown. She even goes so far a to brand him with the protective marker that the citizens have been placing around the city to protect him as well. Despiet the early branding and the friction it causes between them, Fell and Mayko grow close to each other.

Fell is a very different sort of comic, designed specifically as an experiment by writer Warren Ellis to produce a line of more affordable comic books in a market where comics are pricing themselves out of business. Fell is a 20 page comic, 16 pages dedicated to story, and 4 pages dedicated to what Ellis called Back Matter. Back Matter was where Ellis would expand on the concepts discussed in the actual comic book itself, answer email questions, and generally experiment with the medium. By pricing this slimline comic book at $1.99, Ellis strived to make the comic worth the price by offering less comic pages than a normal comic, but densely packing each issue with material. Another way he expanded on the book's density was to adapt the nine panel grid system, where each page is based on a nine panel layout. This causes each page to tell more of a story, thus giving the reader a better bargain for their dollar. using this format, each issue, while smaller than a regular comic, contains more story and additional material, making it a better value.

Each issue of Fell was a self contained story, another trick to make each comic more reader friendly and essentially create a better comic value for each issue. The reader was getting a complete story each time they bought a comic, never having to follow several issues in order to understand the entire story. That being said, Ellis did write in several things that rewarded readers who bought each issue, mostly in the form of a recurring character whose mystery deepened with each appearance. She was a short nun, dressed in a habit wearing a Richard Nixon mask and each issue her actions became more and more suspect. If that sounded bizarre it is, but Ellis is a master at taking the abnormal and fitting into the strange landscape he creates, and the nun's appearances in Snowtown simply amplified the darkness that permeated Fell's city Each issue dealt with a different kind of horror, from child abuse to murder, but Ellis always managed to cloud the results with in mystery that was Snowtown. Each issue causes Fell to slip a little further into teh darkness of Snowtown, and draw a little bit closer to the darkness inside himself. Ellis was trying to create value for the reader while crafting a story that changed expectations.

Warren Ellis is one of my favorite writers working today. He caught notice doing work for DC/Wildstorm in the late 90's, working on series like Stormwatch and The Authority and books Desolation Jones (a series I covered a few months back in this column) as well as his seminal runs on comics like Planetary and his signature series Transmetropolitan. Ellis has always been at the forefront of establishing new media and new ideas in comics, embracing the internet culture way before many other writers, always writing with a mind toward the future and about the inequalities and darker ambitions of man. Fell was his attempt to continue these themes in a format that both rewarded the reader and boldly redefined what comics could mean in terms of new publishing formats.

Ellis teamed up with artist Ben Templesmith, who gave Fell a ghostly, acid washed atmosphere, perfectly capturing the darkness and otherworldliness of Snowtown. Templesmith was best known for his work on publisher IDW's 30 Days of Night series with writer Steven Niles. 30 Days of Night was about a group of vampires who take over an Alaskan town that is plunged in darkness for months at a time. He was the perfect artist to bring his grim and gritty look to Fell, illustrating the horror of everyday life while keeping the whole series in a kind of murky sharpness. His art work always suggests far more than it shows, making the reader imply more about Snowtown than may even be there. His art so perfectly accentuates the mood and tone of the series that its hard for me to imagine anyone else drawing this book.

Fell was designed as an ongoing series and actually thrived when it was fist published in 2007, despite many industry pros claims that Ellis' publishing model would fail. In truth, the lower price point and Ellis' dense story telling style, combined with Templesmith's pitch perfect art, made the book an unqualified success. In a rare occurrence for comics, the book actually gained readers as it progressed, causing the first issue to go back to print 5 times. Subsequent issues also saw multiple printings. Ellis and Templesmith stated that they didn't make much money on the project, though for them that wasn't the point. They did turn a profit, but it was more important for them to show what they could do with the format and proving it to the world. It's a strange concept for many people outside of comics, to work on a series out of love for the medium, even though you can make more money on other projects. It's simply the love of the medium that guides you, and the love of creating genre changing books like Fell that motivated them. Most creators would say you don't make comics to get rich, you make comics because you love them.

Unfortunately for fans of the series, the book has been plagued by a series of shipping delays, the last issue coming out nearly two years ago. A combination of Templesmith's other artistic commitments at first led to the initial delays, though since in the end of 2008 much of the problems have been Ellis' fault. After a computer crash led to the loss of Ellis' scripts, including multiple issues of Fell, he spent much of the time catching up his contractually obligated commitments, though he has stated recently that work on a new issue has begun.

Fell is a perfect book for this time of year, dark and creepy, hinting at the darker undertone of the world around us, with just a hint of the fantastic. The book's cutting, murky style is a perfect fit for Ellis' work and his characterization is at the top of his game. The creators manage to ft each 20 page comic with more material than most full size books and it is a real value for your trade dollar. Fell is also a really good gateway book for fans of Ellis, as it borders Ellis quirkier mainstream approach while hinting at the gonzo surrealism of some of Ellis' more subversive and gonzo work, like Transmetropolitan and Black Summer. this is a fine comic, published by two creators making something truly unique in this day and age, a book for the comic book fan. Not something as simple as a mindless rehash or a spin off, but something original and fresh, using an approach unheard of in modern day comics. Check out the first (and sadly sole) trade today, collecting the first 8 issues of the series. Image Comics Fell: Feral City (Volume 1), by Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith, a book that proves there is nothing quite as frightening as the real world. Happy reading!

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: A Dream Denies

2010-10-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Wrote this poem during the past few days, where I have been just mind numbingly exhausted. The material was pretty easy to come by, considering how damnably tired I was. Its not the first poem I have written about being tired, but then again, I do seem to recycle subject matter a bit here and there. Anyway, it's a bit of a shorter work, but I like the symmetry and I knew when I wrote that final line, that it was the place to end the poem. Anyway, thanks for reading.

A Dream Denies

Eyes so heavy, blurry vision.

Sleep depraved, my own volition.

Long swept days of ill reform,

Staving away sweet slumbers norm.

Toils to grind for all the day,

Yet no lullaby tonight can assuage.

Fickle dreams on the edge of sleep,

Lay out of grasp, to far to leap.

To snore, to rest, to nap in kind,

Would feel so sweet to this weary mind.

Angst and pressure, my thoughts a-twirl,

These reasons why sleep can not unfurl.

Weary bones and tired muscles,

Exhausted soul turns and tussles.

But every time I close my eyes,

Sleep, perchance, a dream denies.

An empty black, these silent rooms,

All of which my conscious consumes.

Cannot find the way to peace,

As my reward this night is simply fleeced.

I toss and thrash in tussled sheet,

Praying the day to draw complete.

The sun has set the stars now shine,

Yet I'm wide awake and far from fine.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-10-06T03:59:00.000-07:00

Chapter 29:

Cody stuck to the main road as much as possible, listening and watching for any kind of activity. He wasn't sure what time it was, but based on the position of the sun it was at least mid morning. He hadn't seen anything like the Johnson Brothers this morning, but he hadn't seen anyone else either. He felt uneasy, nervous, and Cody Jarret did not like feeling that way. He hitched up his saddle bags and continued down the trail. Fifteen minutes later, his nerves went away as he found someone else.

The farmhouse had been built along the road and at one point had been a watering hole for the stage and horses in the early days before Desperation had been built, which meant that Cody was still a quarter of a day from town. Nowadays it was just a farmhouse. It was the screams that alerted Cody. He crept up, staying close to the border fence that ran alongside the trail, separating the farmland from the road. He could see two more of the abominations clawing at the door of a shed behind. One creature was barefoot and dressed in overalls, a giant festering wound seeping gore from his neck. The other was wearing a nice dress, though it had been slashed down the middle exposing her chest. The dress was covered in blood and you could see were her chest had been split open. They each had the same gaping mouths and black teeth, like before, and their fingers twisted into sharpened points, streaked with red.

The screams were coming from a small shed. As he drew close he could tell the terrified screams were a woman's, a truly terrified woman. The two monsters battered at the door and Cody could see the frame buckling under the inhuman assault. The screams intensified as more of the door was beaten away, the cries seeming to fuel the beasts into a frenzy as they drew nearer their prey. Cody could see the door giving way, as if whoever was trapped inside the shed was bracing it themselves.

Cody felt that feeling of warmth bubble up in his stomach. He felt it spreading throughout his whole body. That special feeling he got whenever he killed a man. He had been surprised by the Johnson Brothers this morning, but he knew now. He knew that whatever these fucks were you could kill them. And Cody Jarret dearly loved the feeling of killing a man. Cody debated whether to use one of his beautiful Colts, or the sawed-off he had taken from the Johnson boys. In the end he settled on the shotgun, simply because he was already holding it.

He tossed his saddle bags over the short fencing and then hopped over himself. He breached the barrel of the shotgun, checking the twin shells in the chamber and slammed the barrel shut. He thumbed back the hammers and whistled, watching as the two creatures spun away from their panicked victim in the shed and slowly begin to stalk towards him. Cody smiled, his mind processing as the monsters drew into range. They seemed thoughtless creatures, based solely on instinct and need. Not capable of thought or complex action. He smiled even wider as he drew the shotgun up and fired. He smile descended into a mad kind of laugh as he ejected the spent shells, loading again. The creatures still moved futility, their chests gaping holes. The ground was streaked with a multitude of spoiled pus and blackened blood as Cody walked towards the monsters. They still clung to life, teeth gnashing as Cody brought the rifle up. He didn't even aim, just jammed the cold barrel of the shotgun into the thrashing mouths of the beats and fired. His laughter died down as he finished the monster's off, his once manic laughter replaced by a euphoric calm as he re-loaded the shotgun.

He walked up to teh shed, his body tingling and alive. He slowly pushed the door open, finding no resistance. He held the shotgun to the side as he peered inside, finding the loan occupant. A young woman, no more than 17 or 18, was curled in the corner crying. Her dress was torn and she had lost a shoe, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She uncurled herself, slowly realizing that Cody wasn't one of those creatures.

"Are..........are you alive?"

Her voice cracked, brittle with fear and trauma and Cody said yes. She bounded from the floor in a blur, wrapping her arms around Cody, her body pressing tightly against him. He wrapped his arms around her and felt another familiar feeling. A feeling he had ignored too much the past two days. That feeling that came directly after he killed a man, a different kind of warmth spreading across his body. He pulled her even closer, her soft bits pressing against him and Cody told her everything would be all right now.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Beginnings, Endings, Endings, Beginnings

2010-10-04T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Kind of a weird poem effort below. Trying something very structurally different, where I built the poem based on the number of words in the stanza. The poem starts with one word lines and increases by an additional word each stanza. Finally it crests with a five word line only to then de-structure itself back towards the one word line. I took several attempts at the poem, more than normal for me. The poem itself was written in pretty much one sitting, but I have gone through the lines several times tweaking the wording and flow to make the poem more or less sound better. To iron out a better verbal flow. I'm still not sure as to how great the poem is of itself, but I enjoyed using it as a learning exercise and as a writing tool. It challenged me in a different kind of way that was fun. Enjoy!

Beginnings, Endings, Endings, Beginnings

Beginnings,

Endings,

Choices,

Defending.

Empty promises,

Broken dream,

Forgotten words,

Feeling obscene.

Cut to wit,

Pain so raw,

My blood flows,

Cold heart thaws.

In these darkened halls,

Hearing the silence walk,

Enduring these lonely days,

As my heartache stalks.

Time goes on, ever fast,

Simple moments just slipping by,

Fleeting hours, they tick away,

Only failures left to try.

Cast a gaze behind,

Yesteryears come and gone,

Happiness tuned to dusk,

Bitterness breaks the dawn.

Alone and awake,

This lonely night,

Regrets so fresh,

Reliving the sights.

So cold,

Here alone,

Craving changes,

Never atoned.

Endings,

Beginnings,

Choices,

Misgivings.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-10-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Chapter 28:

"PEDRO! GRAB YOUR MOTHER AND GET UP THE STAIRS!"

Father Enrico pulled Father Ruiz by the sleeve away from the door to the church. The creatures had broken through and were moving over the rubble of broken furniture. Enrico aimed slowly, trying to measure out his shots to have the maximum effect. He pulled the trigger slowly, deliberately firing when he had a clear shot, aiming for the head whenever possible, purely on instinct. Pedro skipped past him towards his mother Maria, who was still rocking herself in the corner saying the Lord's prayer. Brother Romero had taken a broken piece of table leg and had backed towards the stairs leading up.

"Ruiz! Romero! We must get to the stairs, it will form a natural bottleneck where we can face these damnable monsters!"

He saw them both nod and make for the stairs. Enrico fired again, watching one of the monster's head explode in a black shower as the monster fell lifelessly to the church floor. Enrico took aim again and fired, and again, long dormant instincts rising to the surface. He watched the cursed beasts fall under his assault until the old pistol clicked empty. At the sound of that "click" all of those old fears bubbled to the surface though. The realization of the situation came flooding in as he reached into his robes for more bullets. The dead walking, the sun dying. Hell coming to Earth.

Enrico managed to jam two rounds into gun before the monsters made their final surge. Seven of the creatures barreled through the door, gore glistening from their blackened fangs. Brother Romero ran up the stairs as Father Ruiz called for Maria and Pedro. Pedro was desperately pulling on his mother, trying to drag her from the corner. Maria was crying hysterically, wailing her prayer through blubbered tears as her son pleaded with her to move. Enrico was trying to load his third shot when the first creature descended on the pair. Enrico watched in horror as the monster swiped his long claw across Pedro's back, dark red tears through his flesh as the boy let out a scream. His mother never even broke her prayer as another creature descended on her son, tearing at his flesh with a sickening ease.

Enrico willed his hand up, his once calm aim now jittery, as he tried to bear down on the two monsters. It was then he saw Father Ruiz throw himself at the creatures. He had no weapons, he simply pulled at the monster, his hands around his neck, willing the beast's maw away from the wailing boy. He succeeded for a second, until the smells of fresh blood enticed the other creatures into a frenzy. The horde descended on the Ruiz, claws and jagged teeth tearing at Ruiz' flesh. Even the mother's once incessant prayer was choked off into screams of pain and terror as the monsters feed on her flesh. The cries of the three victims filled the church, screams of pain, or fear, cries for a God who wasn't answering.

Enrico wrenched his gaze away from the horror unfolding in front of him and looked at Brother Romero, still holding the broken table leg. Tears rolled down the young man's face, his eyes tinged red with sorrow and fear, and he heard tehboy call to him for help.

"Father....please...."

Enrico looked away from the young man, twisting his head even further from the abhorrent sounds unfolding just yards from him. he saw the cleared doorway, free from monsters, free for the moment. A chance. He looked back to Romero, as the first of the feeding creatures broke away from Ruiz's body, gore and entrails hanging from his mouth. The monster began shuffling towards Romero as Enrico slipped closer to the door. He looked back to Romero, his eyes tinged with tears, and whispered his failure.

"I'm sorry......God I'm so sorry......"

The creature stalked towards Brother Romero, drawing closer to the petrified young man. With a lump in his throat, Enrico turned away running for the open doorway, hearing his one time brother's cries. The pleading cries for him to come back, to save him. Begging to not be left alone. Another demon that would haunt Enrico's dreams. Another failure on his part. For the second time in his life, he ran away from the people whom he had taken an oath to protect.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Assorted Nuts!

2010-10-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Happy October!

Yeah, last month surely didn't go according to plan. I really wanted to do 30 posts, and I fell about 7 short. Still I think I did have some quality posts and I am a little proud of the amount of poetry I managed to crank out. It was a combination of several things that lead to the lack of output at the end. One was a clear lack of topical material, though I think the second reason was more the matter. I simply hit the wall. I just had no desire or energy to write. Personal issues with my car and such weighed in on the matter too, but honestly I can say I am disappointed in myself. I am not setting a post target this month, but I certainly am shooting for more of a regular output.

I do have some fun plans this month for posts though. I'm planning on at least two special posts, a flash fiction short story for Halloween as well as one of my annual poems. You can also count on Under A Dead Sun to really start amping up and seeing the characters start to come together. I also have some other non blog writing to do so hopefully this will be a busy month. I'm taking my last week of vacation this month as well so I want to do some serious writing that week to boot. Anyway, enjoy the blog, thanks for reading, and most importantly, thanks for listening.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Concert Time! The Pixies

2010-09-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I'm a bit behind on this post but last Friday my friend Jason and I caught The Pixies in concert. The Pixies are one of my top 5 all time favorite bands and one of the last bands that I felt I utterly had to see live in concert. The Pixies are one of the proto-punk, alternative bands that were responsible for ushering in the alternative rock revolution of the early 1990's. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana called them one of his primary influences and claimed that Smells Like Teen Spirit was his own personal attempt to rip off the Pixies.

The band formed in the mid 80's and found some middling success with their first EP Come On Pilgrim and found slightly more with their first full length album Surfer Rosa, featuring soungs like Gigantic and Where Is My Mind. Though it was really the 1989 release of the seminal Doolittle Album that gave them a taste of success, with songs like Wave of Mutilation, Here Come's Your Man, and Debaser. The band was made up of leader singer Black Francis, bass player and back up vocalist Kim Deals (who would later form the Breeders with her twin sister), Lead guitarist Joey Santiago, and drummer David Lovering. The band is heavily influenced by religious and social imagery and has a sound that swings from vocally melodic to fast and abrasive. During their tenure from the late 80's to the early 90's, the band found huge success abroad in Europe, but only mild success in America. The recorded five albums, the height of which was Doolittle, before in fighting between the increasing controlling Francis and the angry and ostracized Deal. Deal wanted more input on the writing and creative side and Francis didn't want to relinquish control. The constant struggle between the two lead to the breakup.

Years later tensions lessened and the band agreed to play some reunion shows in Europe which led to the band playing more together. Much of the band's reformation is captured in the wonderful documentary loudQUIETloud, which chronicles the bands first tour in nearly 15 years. The success of that tour and the passing of time really showed the band the legacy they had left behind and have played more shows over the years. Last year they booked a few dates to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doolittle and the success has carried the tour to additional dates, where I caught them in Mesa.

There was an opening act by a band that was called Fuck You. I don't even want to waste time talking about them as I hated them. It sounded like something a step above white noise, but cranked extremely loud. The Pixies took the stage around 9:15 and played nearly 2 whole hours. Since the tour was celebrating the Doolittle album, they played the album in its entirety, including some unreleased B sides. They played 20 full tracks off the album, ending with the song Gouge Away. My personal favorites were Here Comes Your Man and Debaser, as the crowds really got into those songs and enlivened the performance. After Gouge Away, the band left the stage as the audience chanted for more, and they came out to play the encore. They started with a variant take of Wave of Mutilation, which they had already played. This time they played the UK edit, a wonderfully slower version of the song that I'd never heard before and was awesome. They ended the encore with the song Into the White. One of the few Pixies tracks where Kim Deals is on the vocals, they flooded the stage with white smoke and played the song illuminated in a smokey shadow of white. It was a great effect that really sold the song. You couldn't see any of the performers, only their shadow, as Deal sung the haunting lyrics of Into the White. Amazing.

What was even better? They came out to do a second encore, playing 4 of their best non-Doolittle hits, starting with Veloria, then going into three of my favorite tracks, Dig For Fire, Where Is My Mind?, and ending with my favorite Pixies track, the Kim Deal sung Gigantic. It was an amazing end to an amazing performance. I couldn't believe my luck in getting to hear so many of my favorite tracks and the great stage value they gave in the show. It was even better that I got to share it with my best friend Jason, who rarely goes to shows anymore. Still, its been a great month for concerts for me, with The Pixies, Weezer, and Devo (all top 10 bands for me) this month. I always worried that I may never get the chance to see the Pixies play live, with the tensions and history of the band, and to be able to be a part of the show was fantastic.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

Chapter 27

Eva signaled Bartley to hold up and he reared back on the reins, stopping the stage. She had been riding ahead, ensuring the trail remained clear for the stage when she saw them. More of the creatures, creatures like what Evan had turned into. There was at least 4 of them, huddled around....something, rending pieces of flesh from the carcass of whatever it had been and devouring the guts and brains of the poor dead thing. Eva wasn't sure what to do. There was no way around the monsters if they had any hopes of getting the stage into town they would have to go through the monsters. Rex simply didn't have the time to go around and neither he nor her father could take cutting cross country in their condition.

She looked back at Bartley who was holding up his battered old rifle. He mostly shot the old thing to start the herd moving, she wasn't sure if he had even fired it at another person since that Indian raid all those years ago. Still, he had used the weapon in self-defense at least, she was less sure about Moore. That dandy was the biggest fraud she had ever seen. He may be a financial wiz, but killing a man was another thing entirely. She rested her hand on her own revolver, wondering if she had the stones to kill again. In the moment her instincts had kicked in against Evan. Cold blooded killing though was another thing. Then again, could you really kill something that had already died?

She crept back to the rest of the men at the stage, a few hundred yards away. They had moved as slowly and as quitely as close as they could, but now they had to decide on what to do next. Eva knew what the answer was, even if she didn't like it very much. She looked up at Bartley and nodded, understanding what she was going to say without needing words. Bartley and her had worked together a long time, he'd been around her almost her whole life, sometimes they didn't even need to speak to know what they were thinking. What her father and Thomas would say, well that may be a different story.

Moore was talking to her father in hushed tones, the door to the cab open. Her father was seated across from Rex, who still tossed and turned feverishly, moaning in pain and discomfort. Moore leaned into the cab, but cut short his conversation as Eva drew closer and instead leaned back, an ill smile hitting teh corners of his mouth.

"Dad... Thomas, there's no way around the four... things... on the road ahead."

She cast a glance at Rex, still writhing in fevered pain.

"Let's be honest here, Rex look's worse than he did ten minutes ago. We don't got the time to cut around them and frankly we are equipped to travel with his cross country."

Eva pointed left out mentioning her father's infirmary, but it hung in the air unspoken. Her dad tugged in the corners of his bushy mustache, his mind a whirl in thought as Thomas spoke.

" Eva, what you're suggesting then is that we.... ATTACK these creatures? How do we know that they even mean us harm? Surely we can just ride by them or ignore them or something."

Caleb cut short the pointed response that had been on the tip of Eva's tongue.

"Thomas, I appreciate what you're thoughts, but I think my daughter is right here. Four of those monsters are ahead of us on the road. We don't know where they come from, or what they are, but based on what we have seen we don't want to take the chance of getting exposed to them, or even exposing our horses to them. It's obvious they have some kind of infection, based on what we are seeing happen to Rex. Plus we know hey are eating something that use to be alive. I think... God help me, that we are better suited to put them down, like we would a rabid animal."

Caleb had said that speech with a heavy heart, tugging forlornly at the bushy end of his mustache. Moore simply scowled and stalked away, drawing his gun and muttering curses. Caleb would stay with Rex and the stage, while Bartley, Eva, and Moore would take care of the creatures ahead. Bartley gingerly got down from the drivers seat of the stage while Eva pulled her rifle from her saddle holster. She checked the ammunition for at least the third time today and walked up with Bartley. Moore was waiting for the two of them, his pistol drawn and the three of them stalked closer to the creatures. They were still tearing at the carcass of what they killed, but with less fervor. There was a good 30 yards between them and the creatures with no cover so they left the safety of the underbrush. They stalked closer and Eva nodded at each, all three pulling back the hammer on their respective weapons with an audible click.

The creatures turned at the sound of the click their faces covered in gore and spittle, black fangs gleaming in the sun. It was then that the three saw what the monster's had been eating. Or what was left of it anyway. It was covered in bits of entrails and blood. The stomach had been ripped open and the skull cracked wide as the monster devoured their contents. The simple dress she had worn was torn and ripped, but the young girls dead eyes stared straight into the soul of Eva. All three of them fired.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Introspection

2010-09-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Well... I failed. I really tried to keep the posts going but I honestly had such an awful couple of days that I lost motivation to do pretty much everything. A combination of work, personal, and auto troubles really just bummed me the fuck out. A very heavy set of apathy just set in and even looking at the keyboard filled me with dread and loathing. I'm pretty sure that there is a poem in here somewhere now, dying to express the anger and resentment that I have been feeling the past few days, but I don't think I'm ready to mine that particular gemstone just yet.

I finally started to shake the doldrums of my apathy last night when I was hanging out with my friend Jason. We headed out to Mesa to check out The Pixies in concert (which I will cover in a column later this week) and it finally got me to a level where at least I didn't quite feel so angry, or bad about myself. I don't know, it just feels like more and more these past few weeks I feel really isolated and alone, as more people around me fulfill different parts of their lives, personally, professionally, I feel like I am failing at my own. I know a lot of my problems are ones I have created for myself, yet sometimes it feels like even though I am the key to solving the problems, I can't find the lock the key fits in.

If I really turn the magnifying glass on myself, I know what the real problem is. It's the isolation. I feel absolutely surrounded by people everyday, and not one of them has a damn idea. That no one really knows me. I feel like my brother has this whole other life that I only get to look in on, that the girl I like has no feeling for me. That my best friend is a world away. Maybe I am over analyzing my life, I don't know. I'm certainly over exaggerating it at least.

Everyday ends with the setting sun, and the only illumination is darkness.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Memories

2010-09-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

Twenty posts in twenty days! I can honestly say I am starting to feel the effects of writing every day. I'm actually a little burned out. Not of writing, most days I would tap out something on the computer to just write, but having postable work to put up has been the issue. As the month has gone on I no longer have a backlog of topic ready to write about, in fact the cupboard is pretty bare for topics other than the next chapters of Flash Fiction. I'll figure something out this week I'm sure. Only 10 more posts to go.

As for this poem, it was written in about an hour this morning. I read an article on Alzheimer's Disease that had popped up on my homepage and it got me thinking about losing your memories, losing the fabric of your life, and I wrote a poem about wanting to cling to those things in the end. Enjoy and thanks for sticking with me!

Memories

Memories fade,

Like the setting sun.

A reminder of times,

Long since begun.

A lifetimes of years,

Can seem the span of a day,

Yet the seconds of a kiss,

Can feel like hours replayed.

But as we grow old,

The seconds between,

Grow closer together,

The future less unseen.

Stories once lived,

Are now but a dream,

Those tales are but stitches,

Your life in the seams.

As the years tick away,

The more you forget,

Trying to remember,

Your world by the bit.

Lost in the revelry,

The stories of your life,

The good times and the bad,

Cut loose like a knife.

They say in the end,

You've only your thoughts,

What happens to us then,

When you forget what you sought?

So I cling tight to my dreams,

As they slip through the cracks,

These precious grains of sand,

That I will never get back.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Concert Time! Fall Frenzy: Weezer and Devo!

2010-09-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I spent the better part of Saturday at Arizona's Fall Frenzy concert. A huge outdoor festival style concert, this was the years second show. It's 3 straight days of music outdoors at Tempe Beach Park. It was a great local for a show, it's right along one of Arizona's trendiest shopping district on Mill Avenue, right beside Arizona State University's campus. There is always a huge influx of teens and college grade students there and it's the perfect vibe for this kind of outdoor show. The use of the word fall in the title might be a little mis-leading as it was still in the 100's throughout much of the show, though the weather cooled off considerably once the sun set. This year the three day show kicked off on Friday with Sevendust, Shinedown, The Cult, and headliner Stone Temple Pilots. Sunday was more of a hard rock bend with Stone Sour, Avenged Sevenfold, and Disturbed headlining along with several other acts.The only day that really intrested me, especially at the exorbitant ticket prices for a 3 day pass, was Saturday. That day featured AM Taxi, The Dirtyheads, Blue October, Devo, Primus, Sublime with Rome, and Weezer.

I should point out that of the 7 bands mentioned, I'm really only a fan of two, Devo and Weezer. Such is the price you pay to see some of your favorites though. I got to the show a little late and missed AM Taxi completely but i managed to catch the Dirtyheads set. They have one song that is getting a lot of airplay on Phoenix radio called Lay Me Down, a song in which Rome (the new singer of the reformed Sublime) accompanies them vocally. They have a kind of reggae rock feel to them and honestly I didn't really enjoy the set personally. I will say the crowd was into it when they closed the set with Lay Me Down.

Up next was Blue October, a band that has had some success on the radio with a couple of hits, noticeably Hate Me and Into the Ocean. Going into the performance I wasn't really a fan either way, though on the drive down to the show I listened to a really engaging interview with the bands lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, as he talked about some of the troubles he's faced, noticeably two suicide attempts. As he has recovered he has dedicated part of teh money generated from his shows to charities helping to fight suicide and help those in need of counseling, which he had said really made a difference in his life. As they performed the songs, accompanied by electric violins, mandolins, and whatnot, you couple almost feel the palpable emotion coming from Justin as he sang. I was especially impressed with him as the say Hate Me to close out their set, he really laid everything out in that rendition of teh song and you could feel the aggression and emotion and memories that the song had cause bubble up during the performance. I was greatly impressed.

Up next was easily one of my favorite concert appearances of all time. Devo. A band that first broke onto the scene nearly 40 years ago took the stage and had a really awesome show. They erected a huge video board behind them that ran a strange allotment of classic Devo footage along with pop culture art and video in this weird medley of music and movie. The came out wearing grey futuristic jumpsuits and masks that covered their eyes, noses, and parts of their head, and set into a great performance of Don't Shoot! (I'm a Man) from their latest album which very much had a Don't Taze me Bro vibe to it. They did a couple songs off the new album, including Fresh, which I really liked having not heard that one before sliding into their biggest hits. All in all they did four costume changes, from stripping down the grey jumpsuits to show us that They ARE men, to the tear away yellow radiation suits of Jocko Homo to the flower pot hats of Whip It and Girl U Want.

I loved everything about the performance and I truly wished they had not been placed on at the brain scorching time of 4:30pm. To see the whole display and antics of the band at night would have really set it off. I am not sure if the whole audience really got the whole Devo experience, I heard comparisons to the band being like watching your father sing. I didn't see that all. I thought they put on a great show, a hybrid of the 80's and today and really proved themselves to be the father's of nerd rock. Their renditions of Mangaloid, Girl U Want, Gates of Steel, and the closing number Freedom of Choice was an experience I'll never forget and I am so glad I got to see them in concert. For me at least, they still had so much magic.

The next two acts are not bands I particularly like, Primus and Sublime with Rome. The pop that Les Claypool brought with his guitar work certainly shamed the reaction that the 20 something crowd had to Devo, but i thought the performance was fairly uninspired. Admittedly I could be the only one who thinks that. Claypool is certainly a virtuoso on the guitar and can make some especially unique music with his instrument, but I thought they didn't have much stage presence. Claypool put on a pig mask for a few songs while singing, and danced a few lazy circles, but they did get some good reactions during Jerry Was a Racecar Driver and My Name is Mud. All in all they were ok.

Next up was Sublime featuring Rome. Here I will admit to hating the band. I didn't like Sublime when they first came out in the mid 1990's, and I like them less now that they are basically a glorified cover band. Rome, replacing deceased lead singer Bradley Knowles, sounded like a pitchier version of the singer. Arizona alternative radio has always loved Sublime far more than I ever thought possible and within 3 songs I was already miserable at my spot close to the stage. So miserable that I forced my way out of the main concert area and watched the rest of the band's performance on the monitor back by the vendors. Let me preface this next sentence real quick, I don't mind people's personal choice to smoke, cigarettes, marijuana, whatever. It's a choice. There was so much weed being smoked up in the pit area that it made me nauseous. Shortly after the band sang Date Rape, I made my way out. It was overwhelming... and fairly miserable. I will say this though, they kept the rest of the crowd into it by singing all of Sublime's hits, like What I Got, Bad Fish, Smoke Two Joints, and the rest. For most people this is the first chance they had to see the band live, even if it was with a new lead singer.

The end act though made up significantly for my disinterest in the previous two acts, my all time favorite band, Weezer. They came straight out on stage to a roaring version of Hashpipe that the crowd was really into despite some technical issues with the equipment. Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo then went into a little speech about how they had been flown in on a private jet for the show and that it had actually been a little scary but hey, that's how the band rolls in 2010. He commented then that you have to take some risks. When then the band launched into Troublemaker and Rivers did just that the rest of the show, jumping on and off the stage recklessly and really interacting with the audience. The band stayed pretty close to thier hits, including Undone- The Sweater Song, Say It Ain't So, Perfect Situation, Island in the Sun, and even threw in Memories, their single off their newest album, Hurley.

It was during my favorite Weezer song, My Name is Jonas, that the show really went off the rails of normalcy. Grabbing a light up baton from the crowd, Rivers led part of the audience in an almost Olympian syle parade around teh perimeter of teh concert area to teh refrain " The Workers Are Going Home. before ascending a bank of ATM machines to sing Beverly Hills from atop of them. He didn't stop there either, as he continued to circle the perimter he ascended the fencing of teh VIP area and did a tightrope like walk across the fence top while singing Pork and Beans, specifiaclly the lines, "I'm a do the things I want to do" and "Excuse my manners while I make the scene."

He then made his way back onstage to sing the first encore, a medley cover of MGMT's Kids and Lady Gaga's Pokerface, complete with a blond wig and stage rolling gaga antics. They closed out with having some members of the audience come on stage and sing If You're Wondering If I Want You To before closing the show with Buddy Holly. I know a lot of die hard Weezer fans have called the bands latest efforts more commercial or soulless than their original efforts, like Blue or Pinkerton, but god damn they can fuck off. Weezer is the perfect rock band, fun, poppy, and audience pleasing. this is the second time I have seen them live and I have yet to be disappointed. They made the day out in the hot sun so worth it, cementing their status as one of my all time favorite performers.

In the end, I am deeply grateful for my pal Genji having hooked me up with his ticket and I wish he could have been there to enjoy the Weeze with me. Devo and Weezer was simply one of the best concert experiences and I can't wait for either to return! Tune in later this week for my take on another seminal band, The Pixies, as they show up in town Friday!

End of Line.
Gerrad!
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Chapter 26

Morgan spurred the horse down the trail. He'd been on the move about an hour by his reckoning of the sun's movement and he hadn't seen any other sign of life. He mostly cut across country, his horse wading through the tall grass. He tried to stay in the open field as much as he could, unsure of what exactly was happening. His mind turned over the events of the morning over and over, analyzing what exactly had happened. He couldn't be sure, but the blackening of the sun and the abhorrent resurrection of his wife and child had to be related somehow. He wasn't so superstitious as to believe that he was the only person who experienced this phenomenon, but at the same time he wasn't sure what to believe.

He knew how to kill the foul creatures, he just didn't know why they were resurrected. He brushed his hand across the edge of his father's tomahawk, feeling the single feather braided into the leather thong on the handle. He remembered his father telling him stories of Indian lore, telling him the stories of his forefathers. His father had been half Indian, a bastard child who had never known his own father, having been raised alone by his mother in the foothills of the Dakota's. He had grown up in a small village listening to group elders tell stories of their gods and of the old ways. Still he had never been accepted fully by the tribe and when he became a man, he set out on his own. Eventually his father had met his mother, and they married. His father never talked much about his mother, who had died of pneumonia a few years after Morgan's birth. He didn't even remember his mother, knowing only that she had been a run away too, though his father had often called her whore in the drunken rages after her death. His father grew more angry and resentful after she died, often taking those frustrations out on Morgan, whipping and beating him for no reason at all.

His father had tried to teach him the old ways, but after the death of his mother, Morgan didn't care for any God, the Christian one his mother had believed in, or the spirits his father did. Morgan was hurt, and angry, and destructive. One day the anger in Morgan's heart was to profound, and he stole away from his father, taking with him his few meager possessions, his rifle, and his father's tomahawk, the latter mostly out of spite. He had been 11 years old then. He spent the next two years eking out a meager existence, hunting for food and wandering from town to town. It was in Bisbee though that he ran into the man that would change his life. Lt. Martin Branager, US Cavalry. Branager hired the then 13 year old as a scout and errand boy, using him to translate among the different tribes of the Dakota's. Morgan idolized Branager, working with him for 3 years until enrolling in the Cavalry at 16 under Branager's command.

Morgan fingered the feathered leather thong on the tomahawk and closed his eyes, memories flooding back of the things he had done with the weapon during his time of service. He remembered the tribes they had attacked, his own people looking at him as he struck them down or herded them to a reservation. The names they had called him. He had been so angry in those days, just wanting to hurt anyone he could. He had idolized Branager and believed he was following Uncle Sam's orders. For the first time in his life, Morgan had felt like he belonged somewhere, that he was making a difference. He had believed Branager when he was told that life on a reservation would be safer for the Indians. It wasn't until years later that Morgan found out about the depths of Branager's depravity. Until that raid on that Blackfoot village. Morgan closed his eyes, burying the deep lump in his throat as he watched his comrades....his friends, slaughter those women and children. He watched as Branager gleefully struck down people who had peacefully surrendered, listened as his captain ordered him to scalp that young woman. He remembered the feelings of betrayal and the loss. The fear. His hands quivered in anger and guilt at the thought of it.

Morgan was broken from his revelry when he saw the river in the distance. He could continue across country and go through Hicken's Gorge, or follow the river the long way around. Cross country was quicker, but the Gorge was a mountainous path that boxed you in. The river would take longer but allow him more room to operate. He wasn't sure if there were more creatures like his wife out there but he knew enough of the old lore to believe that he couldn't be the only one to have experienced it. He pushed his hat back on his head and stared up at the dead sun, looking at the long black tendrils that stretched out from the once hot orb. He damn sure knew that he couldn't be the only one. He resettled his hat and spurred his horse towards the river. It would take longer to get to town, but right then Morgan Randall wasn't sure that was a bad thing at all.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Time Rewind: Gone With the Wind

2010-09-17T13:15:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

*edit* This review got REALLY long, sorry if I got carried away*

I thought today would be a great opportunity to do another Rewind column, one to keep the streak alive or posting 30 times this month, but mainly because I really want to talk about the film of the moth (or of last month), 1939's cinematic masterpiece, Gone With the Wind. I watched a wonderfully fascinating documentary on the film entitled The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind, which really rekindled my passion for the film and for the performances. Way way back when I first started this column I wrote a Rewind piece on Hollywood's Greatest Year, 1939, a year that saw the release of more historically memorable (and truly great) films than any other. The year 1939 is considered Hollywood's banner year, with the release of a score of films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Gunga Din, and Stagecoach among others. You can read the overview here

The story of Gone With the Wind is about Scarlett O'Hara, a southern belle growing up on a wealthy plantation named Tara. It starts off on the eve of the American Civil War with Scarlett secretly pining for southern aristocrat Ashley Wilkes, despite her knowledge that he is to be secretly wed to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. After she confesses her feelings to him, Ashley tells her that he feels the same, but he is still going to marry Melanie. The exchange is overheard by Rhett Butler, disowned from his family and un-popular for his stance that in a war of the states, the South doesn't have the resources of the North and would lose. When war is announced, Scarlett agrees to marry Rand, a member of the Hamilton household, ostensibly to make Ashley jealous and to stay close to him.

During the war Scarlett is quickly widowed and moves into the Hamilton house to stay with Melanie to cheer her up, despite her true intentions, which were to wait for Ashley's return. She runs in Rhett again, now a Confederate hero, who announces his plans to win her over, which she adamantly refuses. She does steal a kiss from Ashley though, furthering her resolve to win him over despite his claims that he will never follow up on his feelings. As the war progresses, Scarlett and Melanie try to help the wounded soldiers, until the city is besieged by the Union Army. Scarlett helps Malanie deliver her baby during a difficult pregnancy though and manages to compel Rhett to steal them out of the city and to return them back to her home, Tara. Rhett guides them out of the burning city and the two share a passionate kiss before he returns to the war. Scarlett is left to discover her hometown nearly destroyed, though Tara still stands. Her father is stricken mad with grief over his wife's death, and Scarlett steals, herself, vowing never to be hungry again.

As the war draws to a close, Scarett is forced to become the family's source of income. She fashions a grand dress from her mothers curtains (a famous scene) and turns to Rhett, whom she believes is still rich. Discovering that he is broke and in jail, she instead turns to stealing her sister's fiance, Frank Miller, and through her own efforts, turns grows his business profitably during the re-building of Atlanta, by agreeing to work with Yankee contractors. She even manages to convince Ashley to run her sawmill by plying on his (and Melanie's) sympathies to keep him close. Sadly, Frank is killed after Scarlett is attacked and after another refusal from Ashley, Scarlett marries a newly fortuned Rhett.

Rhett vows to build Scarlett a new mansion in Atlanta and to rebuild Tara and the two have a daughter together. Rhett does everything in his power to win over the cold Scarlett and to ingratiate himself back into society, though Scarlett pulls farther away and tells him that they will not have another child and that they should sleep in separate rooms. Rhett tries to ignore his feelings of jealousy and after a night of drinking, announces that this is a night she won't ever forget and takes her to bed. The next morning, sober and disgraced, he apologizes and offers her a divorce, which she refuses. He leaves with his daughter in anger, but returns to find Scarlett pregnant with his child, though she doesn't want to have it. After an argument, she falls down some stairs and suffers a miscarriage. Rhett is racked with guilt and anger, which is compiled by the additional tragedy of the death of thier daughter and of Melanie, during a second pregnancy. With Melanie dead, Ashley is distraught and collapses, torn apart by grief. It's only then does she realize that she never really did love Ashley, that she loved Rhett. But by then, Rhett didn't care, walking out of her life for good, leaving Scarlett sobbing on the stairs, unsure of what to do next.

There are so many facets of this film that are fascinating, not the least of which are the trials an tribulations that were involved in getting the picture made. Gone With the Wind is a film based on a novel by first time author Margaret Mitchell, a girl raised in the south of Atlanta and who had been brought up being told stories of the devastation of the South during the Civil War by her mother. She was told about the splendor of the the Southern elite classes and the brutal falls from grace that many suffered during the war and their failure to recover afterward. As Mitchell grew older though, she very much immersed herself in popular culture. She defied modern convention at the time by becoming a reporter for the Atlanta Journal under the pen name Peggy Mitchell and writing a weekly column. It was during a period in 1926 when she broke an ankle that she first started the 10 year on and off project that would become the only book she would ever write, Gone With the Wind, based off the old stories her mother had shared. During a time where America was still in teh grips of the Great Depression and trying to ignore the growing perils around them in the world, Gone With the Wind gripped the country. The novel would go on to sell over 30 million copies and merit Mitchell with a Pulitzer Prize.

Film producer David O. Selznick had been a hot shot executive at arguably the biggest studio of the late 1930's and would present itself as THE major studio into the next decade. Selznick, though, wanted to be his own boss and make his own pictures. He had married Louis B. Mayer's daughter and using the connections he had made while at MGM, launched his own film studio on the old RKO lot, Selznick International Pictures. He produced some of the late 1930's better films, The Prisoner of Zenda, the original A Star is Born (which would be remade multiple times) and The Garden of Allah, all independently. Selznick was a perfectionist and wanted the best of everything put into one of his productions. He was even the first U.S. producer to bring Alfred Hitchcock to America, with Hitch's first American (and Oscar winning) film Rebecca the year after Gone With the Wind.

Selznick purchased the rights to Gone With the Wind from Mitchell the same week as the book was released after much consideration for the then unheard of sum of $50,000 in 1936. What began next was one of the longest pre-production tenures of a film in cinema history. Selznick turned to one of the premier freelance scriptwriters of the time, Sydney Howard, who was tasked with the herculean effort of trimming the novel down to a manageable film length. The nation was obsessed with Gone With the Wind, and the screenplay had to satisfy the expectant public. He worked on the piece for months, turning in a treatment in September that would have been nearly 6 hours long, and finishing the first draft in December of 1936. The script would go through numerous revisions over the 3 year production on the film, and despite the fact that only Sydney Howard is credited with the script, at least 5 other writers took turns at the script including Ben Hecht (another favored writer of Selznick) as well as Selznick himself, who reportedly once took a vacation in 1937 and took the script with him, in 4 suitcases. At one time Selznick, Hecht, and another writer, locked themselves in a room for 7 days and churned out another version of the script. Most believe that Howard was credited with the screenplay in the end for two reasons. One, the final script (which was never actually compiled as the scenes were often re-written the night before the shoot) most closely resembled his draft. The second reason was Howard's untimely death in 1939 after an accident on his far and it was considered a posthumous gesture of gratitude.

Selznick was an independent studio and one of his greatest concerns was the mounting costs of the picture. After a year of work on the piece and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, he didn't have a script or a cast yet. Teaming with his close personal friend and Selznick Picture favorite, George Cukor, the two launched casting sessions while the picture was still being written. The casting of Scarlett was a national phenomenon, gripping the country in a frenzy. Nearly every leading lady of the day was interviewed and screen testes, from Katherine Hepburn and Tallulah Bankhead to Betty Davis. During 1938 a few clear front runners presented themselves, Joan Bennett, Jean Arthur, and Paulette Goddard. Goddard was the favorite early on though all three were still in contention in December of '38. A dark horse candidate had presented herself though a few months before, that of Vivian Leigh. Goddard had been in pictures for nearly a decade and had made a huge impact with Charlie Chaplin in his masterpiece, Modern Times. Leigh had starred in little of merit, but had come to America after leaving her husband and child to run off with acting great Laurence Olivier.

Even before the picture had been cast, Selznick needed to make room for the sets to be built. In order to clear enough lot space, Selznick decided to burn down all the structures on the backlot and use the footage for the burning of Atlanta sequence in the film. In truth, during the film, the burning structures of Atlanta are sets from The Prisoner of Zenda, The Garden Of Allah, even the great gates of 1933's King Kong are pulled down around them. Trick photography and stunt doubles were used during the filming that night to capture the scene, along with every Technicolor Film Camera in existence. Selznick invited many people to the filming to watch, including his brother Myron Selznick, one of Hollywood's first agents. The legend goes, Myron brought Vivian Leigh with him to the burning, and introduced her to David with the line, "Hey Genius, Meet your Scarlett."

Vivian Leigh had been acting for several years and went through a her screen tests, showing a range and talent that had not been as apparent in her earlier works and quickly won the part, officially getting it on Christmas Day 1938. Casting Rhett on teh other hand was a different matter. The entire populace of America knew exactly who should be Rhett Butler, the King of Hollywood himself, Clark Gable. Gable was under contract to MGM and in order for Selznick to get him to play the part, David had to cut a very lucrative deal with MGM. They would get distribution rights to teh film and 50% of the gross, in exchange Selznick would get $1.25 million in cash to make the picture and Gable. Gable wanted nothing to do with the picture, having made a period drama in 1937 which had flopped and Gable did NOT want to be embarrassed. Louis B. Mayer sweetened the deal by offering Gable $50,000 extra to essentially pay off his current wife so he could divorce her quietly and marry Carole Lombarde.

The other two principal actors also came with a price. Ashley Wilkes was played by Leslie Howard. Howard didn't want the role as he thought himself to old at 46. Despite his reluctance, he was really the only actor who had any command of the role in Selznick's eyes. Howard's dream though was to be a producer. To get him to commit to the role, Selznick offered him a producer's role in what would turn out to be Ingrid Bergman's breakout role, Intermezzo: A Love Story. Howard took the role and never complained throughout the process, though he never learned anyone else lines or read the novel his performance was based on, He gave exactly what he promised he would give. Olivia de Havilland desperately wanted the role of Melanie. She was under contract though but had once been a part of a packaged deal from Warner Brothers with Errol Flynn to be the film's lead when they were vying for the deal that MGM eventually got. Selznick auctioned many actresses, but it to de Havilland's personal plea to WB studio head Jack Warner's wife for her to get clearance to take the part.

Principal photography finally began in January of 1939. Selznick, while very involved with pre-production and casting for most of his pictures, usually didn't spend that much time on the set. For Gone With the Wind, he was on set daily. He and director Cukor argued over scenes and styles of the film, reshooting scenes constantly. Cukor was very much known for his ability to coach and direct women and Vivian Leigh loved working with him. They both had the same vision of Leigh, fiery, resolute, compassionate, tough. Clark Gable hated Cukor. He thought he was soft and didn't feel like he could trust the director to ensure that his performance in this "woman's film" didn't make him seem weak. Eventually the conflict on set grew so tense that Cukor walked off the set and Selznick told him not to come back. Surprisingly the two remained close friends. Shooting was halted for 17 days while Selznik worked on the script and arranged with MGM to get veteran director Victor Fleming. Fleming has replaced Cukor on The Wizard of Oz month's earlier and was pulled off the last few days of shooting their to take over the floundering set. Fleming took one look at the script and called it a mess and restored much of the Sydney Howard's version, who had taken another revision before his death.

Gable and Fleming got along famously and Fleming ran a tough set. Leigh, whom at one point adored the idea of filming this movie, did not get along with either. Her and de Havilland would often go see Cukor on the weekend who continued to coach the women on the film secretly. Despite this, or maybe even because of, Leigh would often ask to shoot longer and later, anything to accelerate the filming of the picture, one to get away from Fleming, and two, to return to her love Laurence Olivier, whom she was not allowed to see during filming. Selznick wanted his star to be "pure" and didn't want images of the two taken together.

Still filming on the movie stretched on, with Selznick insisting on re-writes and both he and Fleming pushing themselves physically with stimulants. Tensions stayed raw on everyone's accounts (except reportedly Leslie Howard) and even Fleming walked off the set for 2 weeks, replaced by Sam Wood. Allegedly Fleming left due to exhaustion, but most people believe it was punishment for Selznick's overbearing ways. he eventually returned and filming completed after 125 days.

Editing and effects works began immediately, a situation proven even more difficult with the fact that there was no real shooting script, Selznick having re-written the film so many times the only real copy was in his head. He and the film editors would lock themselves in the editing bays for days at a time, working 22 hours straight often, in order to get the film ready for its release. Many new techniques in special effects were also create on this picture. Much of the scenic shots and every ceiling was a matte painting or painted on glass and seamlessly added to the film. Even the music was done in a rush as Selznick wanted composer Max Steiner and waited until well after filming was completed to engage him on the picture. Steiner was contractually bound to another project at the time. The score was so far behind that when they previewed the first cut of the film in November of 1939, they used the score from the Prisoner of Zenda as enough music had not yet been written to accompany the picture.

Gone with the Wind debuted in Atlanta in December of 1939 and was an instant smash. The film went on to garner 13 (of the then available 17) Oscar nominations that year, winning 10 including best picture, best actress (for Leigh) best supporting actress (Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy the caretaker and was also the first Black actress to be nominated for the award, let alone win.) It also won best screenplay for Howard and for technical achievement in film making. Even Selznick was award for his efforts in film making as a whole. At the time, Gone With the Wind cost nearly 3 million dollars to make, marking it was one of the most expensive films of all time, though it would make it back at the box office. When adjusted for inflation, it remains the highest grossing film of all time, a huge task given it 3 plus hour running time.

Gone WIth the Wind carried a legacy as one of the greatest films of all times, even at the time of it's release. The scale and grandeur was unparalleled and the film's reputation certainly preceded itself. It made Vivian Leigh a star and gave her teh first of two Oscars. Despite being one of Gable's least favorite films, it remains a picture of his legacy. Hell, the legacy of Gone With the Wind would over shadow everything David O. Selznick would do for the rest of his life. Despite his success with films like Rebbecca, Spellbound, and a Duel in the Sun, nothing would ever quite measure up to Gone With the Wind. It cast a shadow on his career as both the pinnacle of his achievement, but the pinnacle of achievement at the zenith of Hollywood's golden age. Eventually Selznick sold the rights away to the film, where they eventually were picked up by MGM. Selznick was known to take gambles on a picture, as evidenced with this one, and it was only a matter of time before his gambling caught up with him. He sold his rights for $400,000 in the early 1940's. in order to keep his studio afloat.

Personally, while not my favorite film of all time, I do mark it as the greatest piece of film making I have ever seen. Every performance is powerful. Leigh literally alights the screen with her passion and the scope of the picture never fails to awe me. If you have never seen this masterpiece, do yourself a favor, and watch it. This is what a film can mean. This is really what a film can be. Gone With the Wind, from Selznick International Pictures.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Element

2010-09-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I thought with the rather dreary nature of the poetry that I have been writing this month (and damn, I haven't wrote this many poems in one month since I first started the blog!) I thought it was time to do something brighter. Happier, love poetry is harder for me to write, mostly because I am rarely in a place of my own to channel these thoughts but today I really wanted to try. I will freely admit to looking an one of my favorite artists for inspiration for this poem today, Tara McPherson. The very first line of the poem is the title to one of her paintings, The Weight of Water. That title stuck with me as I looked through her art book for inspiration. Her art is usually very sad and forlorn and it helps me get my mind around other ideas. That particular piece provided the initial idea for the poem, using the elements kind of abstractly to belay the relationship of life on love.

I can tell a bit of a change in the blog for me since the restart. I am much more interested in writing creatively, new flash fiction or poems, than recycling movie reviews or other things. I'm certainly not giving up on them as I do enjoy the process, but lately I think to keep the motivation of this incredibly daunting goal which I have set for myself, 30 posts in 30 days, being more creative and less...well, opinionated or educated, has certainly been a key factor in my creative output.

As always, thank you for reading and any feedback is very much appreciated.

Element

The weight of Water,

In snow or ice,

The cost of love,

To pay the price.

The taste of Air,

Whether smokey or sweet,

These choices we made,

For a life so complete.

The feel of Earth,

So grain or coarse,

It's the words that we say,

When we make our choice.

The sounds of Flames,

Flickered or enraged,

That ring on your finger,

Marking us engaged.

Fire and Earth,

Water and Air,

These bring to life,

All the ways which I care.

But one element,

I did leave, remiss,

The joy in my Heart,

Brought to life by your kiss.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter 25

At first she just felt cold. Her fingers flexed slightly and she felt her chest seize up violently. She was face down in some sort of grass, as she forced her aching body to roll onto her side. Huge coughing racked her body and she spit up what felt like gallons of water. After a few minutes the coughing spasms ended, her lungs raw from the experience, Ally Marshall rolled over onto her back, staring into the black sun overhead.

She was shivering and soaked to the bone, the sun still not casting as much heat as it should have been, but she was to hurt and to tired to try to even warm herself. Her dress was covered in blood and mud, tattered nearly beyond recognition. Her face and lip still ached, though the numbness in her hands had dulled the throbbing from her ripped fingernails. The last thing she remembered was falling into the tide of the river, those creatures, creatures like her father had been, coming after her. Ally dug the palms of her hands into the wet, grassy earth and pushed herself up. The river was calmer here, forking around a lazy corner, and she realized that she must have washed ashore.

Ally gingerly sat upright, her back side still sore, feeling the throbbing in her head, and shifted the scraps of her dress to cover herself as best as possible. She sat there for several minutes, letting some of the rawness leave her aching lungs and tracing the bruises and cuts on her face, arms, and ribs. Eventually though, Ally knew she had to do something. She stared emptily at the flow of the river, wondering what choices she had. Alone, hurt, and scared, she didn't have any family left. All she was left with was her. Hot, wet tears trickled down her face, leaving the echoes of salt at the corners of her mouth, and Ally cried. Her raw lungs began to ache again and she laid back down in the muddy grass and cried. For a long time Ally just laid there, and wondered if she hadn't been better off dying at the hands of that criminal with her family, or letting those creatures kill her, or better yet drowning in that damn river.

It was a long time before Ally moved again, she wasn't even sure if she had blackened out again or not. Her eyes were red and puffy, and despite the numbness in her limbs, much of the soreness had flown back into her bones. Ally attempted to pull herself upright, wincing with each movement. She felt her bare feet squish into the wet grass and she took a few shaky steps forward, stopping to hold herself up at a tree. Her dress hung limply at her side, still wet from her experience in the river. She hung onto the tree, letting the last bout of vertigo wash away and sucking deep breaths into her ragged lungs.

Eventually she settled down, the tears having dried on her face, and she looked up at the dead sun overhead. So many things in the last 24 hours had gone wrong. Her whole life was seemingly over. She only had one option, to make for the nearest town, Desperation. At least the Sheriff or Marshall would be there. She could tell them what had happened to her family, about the bandit, she could find someone to help her. Ally looked down the river bank and though the shrubs and trees and chose to follow the riverbank, it would be longer, but without shoes or any kind of protection, it should be safer. It would trail around to the trading port and maybe she could even find a boat or a ride to help her. It was better than walking through the wild barefoot. Ally set off then, the cold sun above her, and headed towards her last hope, towards Desperation.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Word Balloon: Blacksad

2010-09-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I quickly realized this month that in order for me to reach my goal of 30 blogs in 30 days, I am going to have to double up on the columns this month. Which I think will be okay, as I can make up for not having columns the previous two months. For this column I thought we would take a look at the best comic I purchased at the San Diego Comic Con this year, Blacksad, written by Juan Díaz Canales and drawn by Juanjo Guarnido. The volume I picked up at con is published by Dark Horse Press, though the series has been in publication in Europe for several years though this is it's first major distribution stateside. I remember looking through some French versions of the book years ago and not really getting the whole sense of the book, or really understanding the vibe of teh whole thing. Maybe I should point out though that I like to pick up European graphic novels while at con, even if they happen to not be translated. I first starting doing this with books like Sky Doll (which I reviewed on here last year) and The Bouncer, as an excersise where I would try to extrapolate the story based on the drawn action. It was a helpful tool in setting storytelling and pacing notes as I write. Strangely I remember at the time not being blown away by Blacksad those years past. This year though, Blair Butler, a comic book reviewer who works on G4TV (and whose opinion on comics I greatly respect), recommended the book to me personally, along with a few other fantastic comics. I picked up the book in a beautiful hardcover at con, this time with an English language translation. What I read blew me away.

Blacksad is a crime noir story set in the 1950's, though instead of humans, the story features anthropomorphic animals. John Blacksad is an anthropomorphic cat who also happens to be a classic noir detective. Dark Horse's collection features the three current books in print (with one due out in Europe later this year) compiled into a single trade. There are three different volumes, each on playing on classic 1950's story plots. The murder of a famous actress with ties to Blacksad's past, a story about racial intolerance, and another tale depicting Russian spies and stolen nuclear secrets. The stories are a well worn path, but writer Canales sets the book up in such a way that even though Blacksad suffers from the foibles of the classic noir detective, personality traits like an unflinching code of black and white ethics, the pursuit of an idealized justice and a propensity to protect women, as well as the pursuit of the truth no matter the consequence, the book is staged in such a way to make these compelling signature traits and not character or storytelling crutches or faults.

First let's take a look at the three different tales compiled in volume 1. The first story pits Blacksad in a murder mystery where he has to find out who killed his es girlfriend. The story is very much a staple of the detective genre, the hard boiled un-compromising detective, the rich mogul, the impotent police chief, and, oh yeah, the red hot bombshell. The second arc is much more of a political statement, though still rooted in the 1950's mentality of the show. It's a tale of political corruption and racism, white animals, or pure animals, against the mixed colors of the masses. It very much draws on the political turmoil of the 50's between the white and black cultural tension lines, while drawing on a little hint of leftover Nazism and Klan mentality. The villains are white polar bears, white ferrets, albino pigs, and throughout it all, like a any good noir story, a beautiful woman caught in teh middle who's allegiances are not quite what they seem. The third arc is a straight up political thriller, Russian spies stealing political secrets with our detective stuck in the middle of a real boiler. Add in a deadly femme fatale who wants to run away with Blacksad, and you spell all the elements of a classic noir thriller in the vein of Hitchcock.

Despite the easy familiarity of these traditional plot elements, writer Canales and artist Guarnido really find success in the presentation of the material. Canales shows a real range in adapting each anthropomorphic animal into the perfect real world counterpart. Whether its the slipperiness of a lizard hitman, the innocence of a distraught schoolteacher (a doe), the German Shepard of a police chief, the sultriness of Blacksad's ex lover, a fox, or even the die hard curiosity of our detective as a cat, each character is well thought out and completely formed. he even approached the "staple" stories of the noir genre with some outside the box thinking, something that is especially well done in the third arc with the Russian spy. What sold me though was that you were immediately immersed into this world and the fact that the main characters are animals no longer matter, you are deeply ingrained to the story by that point. It really adds a layer of subtext to each character, a level of relatability or at least as a point of reference, for each character to be a summary of the image that his animal archetype represent.

To get top that level of subtext though you have to have some really great art to go along with the series. Guarnido brings just that. From characters to background, he sets the mood and tone of the series. He really captures the look of New York or Las Vegas in the 50's and 60's, from design to costuming. It all pulls the work together to give it that 50's feel. His characterization is lush and vibrant, making them appropriately sexy, or funny, or tough, as the situation needs. I remember looking at the first big splash page in the collected and being blown away by the composition and color of the piece. It was amazing.

That's not to say the book doesn't have a few hiccups. Like I said it does suffer from some of the foibles of true genre work (though I feel like it elevates itself above standard noir tales). You won't be surprised by the direction of the story, though I do feel you will find some interesting twists in the tale. the weakest of the three tales is easily the racism tale, as it never really dives into the concepts of so many different types of species are prejudiced against other types simply based on skin or fur color. I realize that the writer is trying to tell a broad scope story about the pointlessness of measuring oneself against the skin tome of another, but when using animals it would have been just as easy to use animal species to tell the same point. I have heard that this was merely another means to demonstrate the futility of of the argument, but from my point of view it really just boils down to making the story more black or white, if you will pardon the pun.

All in all Blacksad is a really great comic carrying a flavor that you will not find anywhere else on this continent. It's so tough to find good translations of quality foreign comics as many of them don't get the same exposure that super hero comics do. There are some serious creators over there working on producing long form original graphic novels and its a shame we don't get to see more. Blacksad is a top quality book that tells a fantastic story with gorgeous art. Dark Horse continues it's trend of picking unique titles that fit outside the normal mainstream of capes and cowls by adapting this great work. Check it out and if you like it hopefully Dark Horse will release volume 4 in the coming months. The deluxe hardcover edition of the comic is gorgeous and should be available at most retailers or online- Blacksad, by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido from Dark Horse Press. You won't regret it.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Every Passing Day

2010-09-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I gotta say, It hasn't been easy, but I'm currently on my 30 for 30 streak and I'm still on track, though really I need to start branching out in some different territory. By the 20th day its just going to end of being alternating Flash Fiction and Poetry posts. I've still got an idea for a few more columns, specifically a make up column or two on the Rewind or on the Word Balloon.

But I digress, let's dive into the origins of this poem in particular. It basically stems from a few objects. One is a poem I wrote a few months back called Seasons of Age, where I tell the poem as each stanza as a measure of time. I wanted to use that same motif to tell a story, in this case a love story. The thoughts of unrequited love and heartache, and even loneliness permeate a lot of my poetry because I think that's a way I deal with some of the personal demons I'm facing. The story in the poem today is a fictionalized version of things from my past, things that shaped some of my experience, and some complete artistic bullshit. You can decide what parts are real and what parts are not.

At any rate the poem is really telling s story of love through a series of chance meetings, what happens at each meeting, and how things wind up in the end. It's certainly not a poem that breaks any conventions in content, though I did think I broke some contextual contents, telling a much longer form poem that relays a story more than it relays an ideal. Maybe its a subtle difference, or maybe I'm just full of shit and waxing hypothetical. The bottom line is I wrote the poem and I hope you like it, or find something that you resonate with. Thanks for reading.

Every Passing Day

I met her once

When we were teens.

A schoolyard crush,

Had paved the scene.

Her dark red hair,

Dyed from brown,

With bluest eyes,

That upturned my frown.

I never did quite say,

The feelings hid inside,

Just bottled them up deep,

Wanting quite to cry.

She had her own sweet love,

Of whom I could not match,

So I pined away alone,

An itch I couldn't scratch.

I met her a second time,

Much years had passed us by,

Older now in life,

But how I wished to try.

We'd went our separate ways,

Unhappy years between,

Choices that we'd made,

Emotions turned obscene.

She'd found her true love,

But watched it turn so sour,

Divorced and deeply pained,

More alone with each hour.

A passing chance in hand,

Had brought her back to me,

But the moment wasn't right,

Her hurts to deep to see.

The third time I'd hoped,

Would be the fateful charm.

Months had ticked right by,

Since that wicked harm.

We talked and we chatted,

Throughout those many days,

Though never once did we meet,

As I whiled the hours away.

'Till that chance did come,

As the time fell right by,

When the moment came in close,

And I gave it one last try.

I asked her to meet with me,

Just two friends alone together,

And hoped my burning dream,

Could repel the trials it weathered.

The next time we did met,

Was that very night.

I took her hand in mine,

Finally pushing away the fright.

We laughed and we smiled,

Though I skirted the reason,

The things I wanted to say,

As my heart did threaten treason.

But as our meal drew shut,

The moment came so real,

I uttered those words I held close,

And finally told her how I did feel.

I poured out my soul,

The years of bottled remiss,

She took my hands in hers,

And sealed it with our first kiss.

I saw her everyday,

Creating this momentous life,

A love that we did share,

That of man and wife.

She filled my every hour,

Making up for those missed years.

As every passing day,

Gave way to newer cheers.

This life we so shared,

Intertwined in deepest love,

Happiness was never far away,

Shown down from up above.

It was worth all the wait,

This passion that did transcend.

I thought no price to high to pay,

To grow a love with no end.

The last time I saw my wife,

A bitterer day I'd not know,

This gathering of dearest friends,

Shared memories they did bestow.

Reflections of a joyous past,

Though I felt these salty frets,

They told those happy stories,

I knew only the regrets.

We never did grow old,

Or had the time we thought,

The years had just slipped away,

Opportunities now so fraught.

I said my goodbyes,

A last and cold farewell,

The flowers on her grave,

Me alone in this cold hell.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

Chapter 24:

Cody backed up down the trail as the brothers slowly shuffled towards him. His eyes danced over them, from the wickedly blackened points of their fingers and teeth, to the oozing pus filled bullet wounds. He tried to avoid the bloody path of entrails streaming from Buford, but the dusty earth soaked up the gore leaving a trail back to the campsite that continued to draw his eye. His fingers had automatically thumbed back the hammers on his twin Colts, and he kept the guns trained on each of the advancing horrors. He managed to look skyward once more, at the burnt out sun overhead, and briefly wondered what fresh hell he had walked into.

Cody's mind worked in a whirl, how the fuck do you kill what you already shot dead? He could probably outrun the things, but his money was still back at the camp and he'd have to go around them. Worse yet, Cody didn't like running from fights. His mind raced for an idea as the creatures came closer, each shuffled step bringing them that much nearer to him, when he lit upon an idea. Cody narrowed his gaze, taking aim, each finger dancing over the trigger as he squeezed them repeatedly.

He watched as each of the creatures kneecaps exploded in a shower of black ichor. The monsters fell to the ground, buckling under their own weight, their legs a shattered mess of bone, blood, and seething pus. Cody calmly ejected the spent shells from his pistols, loading in new rounds as he approached the creatures. The brothers were still alive, trying to pull themselves towards him as he approached. His hands were a blur, as he re-sheathed one of the pistols and brought the second up, hearing that welcoming click as he chambered the next round.

He approached Buford first, watching as the brother clawed at the earth, trying to pull himself closer to Cody. His strewn entrails were pooling in lumps on the ground as it dragged his stomach across the ground. Cody eased around towards its side, as it futility clawed, trying to change directions towards him. He took aim at the outstretched claw and fired again, ending the hand in a shower of blood and sinew. The shattered limb fell to the floor as Cody took aim again, lining the barrel of the gun with Buford's head. He stared into the snarling maw, teeth gnashing at him, and fired once again. Finally the creature fell silent, it's body going motionless with one final shudder.

Cody took aim at the second brother then, as Beau had pulled himself to his knees. Beau didn't try to move toward him like Buford had, instead he let out a hissing screech, flinging bile and pus from his cracked jaw. Beau's claws opened and closed in anticipation as Cody walked closer, the screech lowering itself to an incessant hiss. Cody took aim again, the pistol just feet from Beau's snapping jaw, and fired. He watched the brother he had already killed once die again. He fired again, ensuring that there was little left of the brother's brain to merit whatever sorcery had re-animated it.

With the black sun overhead, Cody returned to the camp. The horses has fled in a panic, and after ten minutes he gave up on trying to find them. He stripped down his saddle, securing the goods he would need into his saddlebags, cramming in the meager essentials along with the stolen money. He looked at his rifle and left it, opting to take Buford's sawed-off shotgun. He added the spare bandoleer to his pack and headed down the trail towards Desperation. Now, more than ever, Cody wanted to get the fuck out of this country.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Introspection

2010-09-10T23:23:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Today is the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. This was one of those indelible moments in history, one of those times where you always remember where you were or what you were doing when it happened. A watershed moment in infamy, as well as history, like the Kennedy assassination, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, or Pearl Harbor. It's a time in your life that will inevitably be carried with you, a reminder of loss, of fear, of tragedy, and ultimately of hope.

I know exactly where I was when the news first broke. Asleep. My old room mate bounded into my room and told me to wake up and said that America was under attack. There was so many things that we didn't know in those early days and hours. I remember groggily thinking that he was crazy but I shuffled out of bed and out towards the TV. I remember watching the news footage, at the time I had awoken, the first tower was the only one that had been hit. We watched with horror when the second one fell. The worry and panic and fear of the unknown knowing that another airliner had crashed into the Pentagon. I'll never forget the footage that I saw on TV that day, the smoke, the fires, the fear. Watching people leap from buildings to their deaths.

I had to go to work that day at noon. I know I dressed hurriedly to watch the news reports and drove to work listening to the news on the radio. Every station was covering it. I'm not sure we served a single customer that day or did any work at all really (though I'm sure we did) I just remember being rooted to the little TV feed we had in the store. It wasn't even a real TV, just a digital display that fed news bits to customers waiting in line. We turned on the radio and watched those news bits for information eagerly, wanting to know more about what had happened. I know my team at the store was scared and I remember saying a lot of things that at the time I didn't feel, telling them to stay positive and be hopeful and that everything was okay, when secretly I was afraid we were headed towards World War 3.

For me though, the one thing I remember most about 9/11 wasn't the acts of terrorism (though I'll never forget those) it was really the days and weeks after the attacks that stick with me. Never before had I felt such a sense of pride or patriotism so prevalent in this country. The whole nation had bonded together and it felt like there was nothing we couldn't do, no task to great. For the first time in my my life I understood the cost of freedom and the price of liberty. I imagine it's a lot like how people felt when Pearl Harbor was attacked. It was a singular act that united a nation.

Even in the trailing months and years as the fervor of patriotism gave way to the usually cynicism of politics, I never forgot those moments. In 2006 I got the chance to go to Shanksville, Pennsylvania a place important in the memories of 9/11 that never gets quite the same reverence that Ground Zero did. Shanksville is the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93, the 4th plane that was hijacked that day. The passengers aboard the plane had learned what had happened on their cell phones, about the towers and the suicide bombings, and they overpowered the hijackers and crashed the plane. For me this was always a moment that struck me during this time. This group of strangers came together to save people. While I am sure that they didn't envision crashing the plane as the inevitable outcome, they had to know what would happen when they attacked. It became to me a message of self sacrifice and of unequivocal hope to me.

To overlook the crash site and to see the memorial that people had erected themselves, messages written down to family members lost and little alters erected, it was a powerful experience. I never got to see Ground Zero in my one day in New York City, the weather was so bad it prevented us from doing any of the things I wanted to do. To be able to see this moment from such a pivotal event in my lifetime was awe inspiring and something that I will never forget. It's really the first time I understood truly what sacrifice meant. Of what freedom and hope and liberty really cost.

Today is the day where I remember what people have given up in the name of freedom. I salute those that serve, those who have served, and those who have sacrificed so that i may know true freedom. Thank you all.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Travel Blog: SDCC 2010: The Summary

2010-09-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I've been meaning for quite some time to write down my thoughts and ruminations from this years San Diego Comic Con since I epically failed doing an update from the actual event. I did not take an exorbitant amount of pictures this year, something I always MEAN to do but never in truth actually get around to. Still I have uploaded a few pics with captions down below for your viewing pleasure. I can easily say this, SDCC 2010 was one of the best comic con experiences I have ever had.

I've faithfully been attending Comic Con since 1992 and the key to making it a fresh and enjoyable experience each year is that you have to grow along with the show. Comic Con is such an undeniably different experience than it use to be, if your tastes and likes haven't evolved along with the show, then you are in danger of losing the core element that is Comic Con, an unabashed love of popular culture. Because that's what it is now. A pop culture con. Sure comics are still a huge part of that experience, but it's so much more. Comic Con is more now about the experience of whatever passion you have that falls under a much larger umbrella of popular arts, from films, TV, video games, actors, actresses, web features, Asian culture, manga, underground, urban art, and yes comics. It's really Nerd Prom.

This year was a markedly different experience for me. Every few years my interests change into what my driving force at Comic Con is. For a while it was solely comics, but over the years I have flirted with many other areas of interest, to manga, to films, to Star Wars, to my vinyl art phase of the past few years. This year though, was about meeting this online community of friends I have become a part of. A while back I joined a message board for an actress named Olivia Munn, co host of Attack of the Show. Over the past year as I've ventured deeper into social media and on the forum, many of these people have become friends to me.

This was the first year that a large number of them would be in attendance at Con. It was an opportunity to meet a group of people whom I had been chatting with for such a long time where we would all be in one spot at one time, a group of people gathered from all over the world. This was a unique opportunity to be sure, where we had members from New York, Texas, England, Australia, it was a chance for a disparate group of people to meet for the first time.

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself though. It can't be said enough that my favorite thing of all about Comic Con is getting the chance to hang out with my best friend Jason for 5 days. We have both been attending Con since 1993 (I went one year before) and it is an ingrained part of our life, a tradition and custom that we both look forward to every year. This year was no different, despite his ardent claims of me "cheating" on him by hanging out with other members of the forum. = )

Wednesday is preview night at Con and it's usually my favorite night of the trip. Wednesday is usually the least crowded evening (except the waning hours of Sunday before close) and everything is fresh and new. It's impossible to see everything in teh slim 3 hour window you get that night, but it is plenty of time to make a few key visits and one of my favorite stops is artist Tara McPherson. Tara is an artist I've mentioned on the blog plenty of times before and she is always a wonderful person to talk with. I'm a huge fan of her artistic style and even her personal style. Her artwork is hugely influential in my writing, inspiring me personally. Also the fact that she remembers me every year is another bonus. I bought a great print that she designed this year that's hanging in my house and I plan on adding at least one more next year.

We made a few other pit stops and I got to chat briefly with a few of the forum members before we continued the rounds. Thursday was the big day for our meet up though. One of the forum moderators had talked to Olivia Munn and she had invited 16 of us to a special private meetup with her in one of the restaurants at her hotel. I can tell you that all day Thursday I was very anxious and excited to meet with her and I really don't remember much of the actual convention itself. I know that many of us meet the the G4TV booth to talk where I learned the details of the meetup. That night we all met Olivia at her hotel and she bought us all dessert. It was honestly fucking incredible.

She was completely down to earth, funny, and despite only really having 30 minutes to hang out with us, she spent much closer to an hour (maybe 45 min) talking, taking pictures, and joking with all of us. To be a part of that and to have her thank us for being fans was mind blowing and easily ones of my favorite comic con moments ever. Add in to the fact that this was also really the first time that many of us met for the first time in a group. It was pretty crazy. I think it was also a moment where I realized that anyone who would go to that kind of effort for her fans when she clearly didn't have to was someone who was very special. I appreciated it.

Friday was a day spent in signings, from an Olivia signing in the morning, to being able to chat with another artist that I love, David Mack, was a huge deal. David is the writer and artist of Kabuki and a beautiful painter. One of my favorite super heroes is Dazzler, this very 70's Disco themed hero that in all honesty is pretty cheesy (but then again that's a part of the appeal to me). David did a wonderful brush and ink sketch of her in my book that I really thought was amazing. Just watching his process and method was fantastic. The other truly epic thing that happened on Friday was meeting my friend Shawn. It's a well known fact my love for the 1992 Christian Slater film Kuffs is pretty unabashed. A running joke is my constant lording of the film over others incessantly. Shawn actually painted me a picture of Kuffs. It's gloriously epic. It's a three dimensional image of the films movie poster in black and white. Made from what I think is foam, he shaped each piece and painted it. It's one of the most awesome presents ever given to me. Friday night Jason, his girlfriend, Autumn, and a few other friends Matt and Lauren, all went out to eat at a great little English pub just outside the Gas lamp district.

Saturday was another big G4 day. They broadcast a 4 hour live show from the Convention and a bunch of us wanted to watch it. We managed to snag some prime standing room seats for the show. Many people crowd the booth, which itself is an elevated platform on the show floor, making it hard to be able to stand and watch the show as Fire Marshall's constantly clear the crowds for safety purposes. We got a prime seat though and manage to watch about 2 hours of the broadcast (and even made a few appearances in the background!) before being ushered along. From there we headed over to the joining hotel to watch the live Attack of the Show panel. It was another opportunity for so many of us to meet up again and chat. It was fun, funny and a great experience.

That night Olivia had a book signing of her autobiography. Olivia secured 16 VIP passes for those of us who had been at the dessert meet up and made time to thank us again and take pictures while she signed her book for us. It was kind of surreal being there and seeing other people look at us in all honesty, pretty jealously. She spent the first 15 minutes signing stuff for us and taking pictures again before she started on the rest of the line. This signing was at a Borders downtown and a lot of people had been there a long time waiting. After the book signing and much hugging, about 20 of us wandered down into the Gaslamp and ate a huge dinner at Rock Bottom. It was a great way to end the night and bond with these people, these friends.

Sunday was dedicated to a few things. One was entering a trivia contest at the G4 booth where I placed pretty well, walking away with several T shirts and a gift certificate to ThinkGeek.com for $100. It was pretty cool. Finally my obsessive knowledge of Ninja Warrior and Harry Potter paid off in dividends! I also spent some time diving through some old comic bins looking for X-Men comics. My big comic kick lately has been writer Chris Claremont's X-Men run from the late 70's to the early 90's. I'm nearing in on completing his run and I managed to find a few key books that I needed. Along with that I helped Jason dive through the bins looking for classic horror comics and covers, he has really been drawn to the outrageous covers artists like Nestor Redondo and Joe Kubert did in the late 60's and 70's.

Add in these factors plus being able to hang out with my best friends, I truly loved comic con. I walked away with a couple of wonderful pieces of art, met two of my favorite people in the world, and had the chance to embrace an entirely new group of friends. Olivia's treatment of me at the dessert meet up was truly unique and one of the most memorable things I have ever done at con. Plus my friends being there. I am the type of person to who friendship means a lot to and the people I met at Comic Con were far nicer than I expected. And I got to hang out with my best friend Jason. A guy couldn't ask for a better trip. See you in 2011!

Olivia Munn Fan Group at her Book signing.

It's Kenneth Braghn, director of Thor.

One guys sweet Darkseid costume. I really wish I had snapped more costume pics this year.

Olivia at the dessert meeting, signing an autograph. I liked the very intimate nature of the pic. And of the event.

Ms. Munn and me at the dessert meet up.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Echo of Feeling

2010-09-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Once again I have delved into poetry. I actually wrote this the day after I wrote my last poem, The Tempest. In the little forward I wrote to the poem I wrote a line describing poetry as an echo of feeling, heck I even mentioned it in a previous forward to the poem before that! The echo of feeling acts as a reminder of how the author felt in that moment or writing. That line stuck with me all night and I wanted to see if I could fashion a poem out of it. Only a very few times in writing poetry have I ever really decided on the title of the poem before I start writing, usually just in special theme poems, like when I have used this blogs title or in some of the numbered anniversary ones. Mostly I like to pull the title of the poem out of the writing, by finding a word or phrase that really captures the theme of the poem. Here I worked in a reverse order, but it was still a fun exercise. I enjoyed the process that came from trying to work one particular phrase into the poem without trying (to hard at any rate) to force it. As always, feedback is welcome.

Thanks for reading again guys and I hope to be able to continue to plug away at my goal of 30 posts in 30 days. Honestly, it's a little daunting.

Echo of Feeling

Strained my ears,

To hear the beat,

The sounds of love,

Ring incomplete.

I prick my skin,

A drop of blood,

Yet feel no pain,

Just a numbing flood.

I suck the wound,

This coppery taste,

As silent tears,

Trickle to waste.

My eyes do dim,

In darkest haze,

The streets of love,

Are a miring maze.

No map is there,

This road unled,

I stumbled down,

A path grown dead.

Companions left,

Who once lit the trail,

My hurts just churn,

No hope avail.

Now at the end,

I feel so lost,

Emotions once lush,

Have paid the cost.

There are no words,

To say goodbye,

My failures mount,

Nothing to try.

As all that's left,

Are a soul still reeling,

My broken heart,

But an echo of feeling.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

Chapter 23

Father Santiago and Father Ruiz thundered down the stairs towards the screams. Enrico didn't even bother to try to hide the gun anymore, though in his left hand he drew the rosary beads on his waist up towards his lips. He uttered a prayer of forgiveness under his breath and kissed the beads and he descended the landing and looked in on the main room of the church. Brother Romero was trying to push more pews against the door with the help of young Pedro. Maria seemed to have gone into some kind of shock and was uttering the Lord's Prayer over and over in the corner. Enrico watched as Father Ruiz moved to help the others ply more barricades against the door. He watched them and then glanced at the gun in his hand, and felt himself thumb back the hammer for the first time in twenty years.

He took a long steadying breath and marched towards the barricaded doors. His brown robes sweeping behind him, he jumped on the first set of stacked pews and maneuvered as close to the door as he could manage. He could smell the fetid creatures even here, the smell of rot, of decay, of death. Their blackened pointed claws tore at the thin wooden frame of the church doors, the creatures not seeming to care that the splintered wood was ripping their sallow flesh. Enrico signed the Cross over his chest, and offered one last prayer before lowering the gun at the doorway.

"God.....please forgive me."

He jammed the old pistol into one of the gaps in the door and fired. He felt the gun buck in his hand once and old instincts took over as he thumbed back the hammer again. He kept firing until the gun sounded an empty click, pulling the trigger again and again. Enrico jerked the gun back and reached in the pockets of his robes for more rounds, when the creatures rammed against the door again. He lost his balance and fell backwards, his arms flailing wide. His left arm dragged against one of the splintered door fragments, slicing deeply into his arm and spraying blood against the battered door frame. Enrico let out a hissing wince and he struck hard against the stone floor of the church. He felt the pistol go scattering to his side and felt the blood trickling down his left arm. Brother Romero helped him into a sitting position, his mouth agape. He started to speak to Enrico, who pushed him aside and pulled himself towards the gun.

Suddenly, the creatures seem to surge in unison, a fervor gripping the beasts, as the door broke apart in splinters. The monsters tore at the pews and other barricaded material in a frenzy, as Father Enrico rolled over, filling his hand with the gun. He jerkily pulled himself up, hand slipping into his robes pockets for a few rounds of bullets, and backed away from the monsters. He glanced at the tear along his arm, it was deep and long and might require stitching, but he gritted his teeth and forced his fingers to move quicker, ejecting the empty rounds from the gun and loading in a fresh set. Enrico began backing away as the murderous beasts bucked at the barricade. It would only be moments now. Finally, the gun reloaded, Enrico snaked one arm around Brother Romero and drew him farther back into the small parish. He shouted at Pedro to get back as well.

"Everyone, quickly, find something to arm yourself with!"

"But... but what about our vows? We took an oath to never harm another living thing!"

Enrico cast a glance at Brother Romero, watching the fear, and deeper yet, belief, in the young man's eyes. He cast another glance at the monsters that were bursting through the doors. One creature in particular, wearing faded overalls and workboots, his long white beard tinged red with blood and entrails. His face was distorted and misshapen, black teeth glistening with gore and sharpened claws tearing at the pew with abandon. Even through the mutation he saw the man that had been his most devout parishioner, Rodrigo Santa Vera. Father Enrico briefly closed his eyes and sighed.

"Brother, today, there is no God."

Then he took aim.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Time: Rewind: Woman of the Year

2010-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Every month (okay, okay I missed some time but I'm working on it!) I like to turn on the Wayback Machine and do a movie review of a film made before the year I was born, 1976. The last few columns have been about some of the great female actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age, and I thought for this column I should turn the spotlight on the actress many people would have considered the Queen of the Silver Screen of the Era, Katherine Hepburn. The film I picked to highlight was the first film she made with her most famous leading man, Spencer Tracy, called Woman of the Year.

Hepburn was a Hollywood maverick in the 1930's, an established box office draw in the early parts of the 1930's had already netted her two Oscar nods (she would net 12 total nominations with 4 wins over her career!), with one victory in 1933 for the film Morning Glory. She came from a wealthy and aristocratic family and often imbued her roles with the same sense of culture and breeding. Despite her upbringing though, she was very progressive in her personal beliefs and was very active physically. She was often a trendsetter for female empowerment,expressing her own opinions even when it wasn't a popular one and had a very prickly relationship with her fans and with the media, who could find her arrogant and off putting. This attitude eventually led to her problems in the latter part of the decade as the negative press led to a series of theatrical flops and the label of "box office poison." After severing with her former studio, RKO, Hepburn signed with MGM. She relaunched her career with the hot film Philadelphia Story with co-stars Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, landing herself another Oscar nod in the process. Signing with MGM also eventually led her to her partnership with Tracy, both professionally and personally.

Spencer Tracy was also a huge hit in the 1930's under contract with MGM. He had won back to back Oscars in 1937 and 1938 for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Whereas Hepburn excelled in her own style, Tracy was known for his diversify and range. From prickly grumps to tormented souls, to love struck fools, Tracy excelled in any theatrical medium. Both he and Hepburn had long wanted to make a film together and when the chance arrived to make Woman of the Year, the chemistry between the two was so palpable, they started a secret off screen romance that lasted for over 2 decades until Tracy's death in 1967. This film also launched one of the most lauded acting duo's of all time, Hepburn and Tracy. The pair would go on to star in 9 films all together, the first of which was this months Rewind pick.

Released in 1942, the films stars Hepburn as Tess Harding and Tracy as Sam Craig. Both are journalists at a New York newspaper, Hepburn is the daughter of a diplomat and immersed in international political affairs and has studied abroad. Tracy is a blue collar sportswriter who has worked his way up in the paper. The two begin to clash in their respective columns, specifically over baseball, but as Tracy educates Hepburn on the rules of baseball, a romance blossoms, which quickly leads to an engagement and marriage, despite their wildly different backgrounds. They quickly find a disagreement in the marriage though over having children. Tracy is ecstatic at the concept of having a biological child, and is crestfallen when he discovers that Hepburn isn't pregnant, but rather has adopted a young Greek orphan, who Tracy can't communicate with due to the language barrier..

On the night that Hepburn is to be awarded the prestigious Woman of the Year award, the couple has an argument. Hepburn wants Tracy to accompany her to the dinner and she insensitively insists that the bellboy can look in on the young orphan in their care. Tracy decides to stay with the boy, mortifying Hepburn who is afraid of what people will say when her husband doesn't attend the event with her. She leaves for the banquet, and Tracy decides to return the boy to the orphanage and walks out on the marriage.

The couple are estranged until Hepburn's father and her aunt (who had raised her) announce they are getting married after years of ignoring their feelings and making the same mistakes. The words at the ceremony ring true to Hepburn and she returns to Tracy's home in a last ditch effort to prove that she can be good wife, and a good journalist, at the same time.

On the surface Woman of the Year is very much a romantic comedy that has been told many times over. Star crossed lovers from different worlds meet and fall in love, have hardships, and reconcile. It's not so much the story that matters, but the chemistry. Hepburn and Tracy have a dynamic rapport between them, and the story of Woman of the Year has an echo even in their real life romance. Tracy was a devout Catholic and believed that divorce was not an option, despite being estranged from his wife. Though just like in the film, both Tracy and Hepburn came from completely different walks of life, Hepburn's blue-blooded aristocratic upbringing, Tracy very much the blue collar workman. Despite their different backgrounds though, Woman of the Year launched a 20 year romance that both a known relationship in Hollywood and teh media, yet never commented on by either actor due to Tracy's beliefs. Even at Tracy's funeral in 1967, Hepburn did not attend out of respect for his family. It was a strange and dynamic relationship, but the love each actor had for each other could be felt through the screen.

Woman of the Year is but one of nine pictures the duo made together. Some would argue that the pair made better films, like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, or Adam's Rib, but I'd argue that none was more important. Tracy brought Hepburn down to Earth, and Hepburn made Tracy bigger than life. The two fed off each other in such a way that each film that made was better because of the sum of the parts, they had the ability to elevate a script beyond the standard trappings of convention and find a deeper chemistry. Woman of the Year is a wonderful light romantic comedy powered by two incredible performances. It's the film that proved Hepburn was still a viable box office threat by giving her a third Oscar nod, and its a film that continued to build on Tracy's reputation as an actor who could hold his own in any circumstance, even against the formidable Katherine Hepburn.

Woman of the Year is fun, light, and deeply enjoyable. I encourage you to check it out sometime, either on TCM or via a rental. It's a classic romantic comedy by two actors just coming into the prime of their game. Hepburn is light and serious, straddling a line of aristocrat and fool, deeply in love, yet unsure of how to really be in love. Tracy is a mixture of exacerbated romantic and realist, also deeply in love, but unsure of how to stay married to such a strong willed woman. It's the very definition of compromise, and the very definition of romance. The film is very much a blend of light hearted fun and quality script writing and acting. It's a thoroughly enjoyable picture, check it out. Woman of the Year, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, from MGM in 1942 and one of the studios biggest box office success. It indelibly holds up today and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: The Tempest

2010-09-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Still on trend here to complete my goal of one post a day for 30 days. Admittedly I do not have the backlog I had hoped to have built up but hey, what's the fun of a challenge if not to test yourself.

Anyway this poem came really easy, I think it took maybe an hour. I didn't really trouble shoot a lot with it, I liked the ease at which it flowed and that after a few months of not writing poetry that it felt really free to get back into the process. Anyway enjoy the poem, I thought it to be a nice bridge to some of the darker work that I think I have a better line at, with a bit of hopefulness at the end. I do detect a similar entry hood in the first 2 stanza's of this poem and the last poem I wrote, but I felt that they diverged enough to merit not changing them. I have always felt that each poem should be read on its own merit, as each poem is a moment in that authors life. An echo of feeling as it were. So in that regard I am OK with the opening lines having some resonance, as long as they each tell a story unto itself. At any rate, I'd love some feedback.

The Tempest

Under the fallen snow,

Cold, alone, no place to go,

The wind is howling in the vale,

As snowflakes yield to slurry hail.

The Heavens fade into the dark,

As the starry twinkles blacken stark.

Clouds of umber and stormy hues,

Alight the sky as lightning cues.

The tempest strums, the winding gale,

As the forcing wind surges the rail.

Thick, wet rain in stinging sheets,

Strike at the earth in binding feats.

They howl and bark, in rumbled voice,

As Mother Earth purges all choice.

The ground is beat, water rung and blowed,

As the storm unfurls its terror bestowed.

And I hold my arms up to the sky,

Knowing true the weather's but a lie.

Frigid, wet, and soaked deep to bone,

Yet unwashed are these sins untoned.

The rain and hale and stormy sleet,

Just remind me that I'm incomplete.

For no weather, cold nor warm,

Could ever help to quell the storm,

Of feelings bright or darkest blue,

The things I feel when I'm with you.

So all this storm can ever be,

Is a blustery reminder of you and me.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-05T00:07:00.000-07:00

Chapter 22

Eva had composed herself in the time it had taken to move Rex into the kitchen, grimly wiping away the tears and trying to ignore the breakdown she had experienced. Emily had started boiling water while Bartley was unrolling field dressings. Her Father sat in his chair, the lines of worry etched on his face. Eva walked over to Rex, who was laying across the hastily cleared dining room table. His face was contorted in pain as he clutched his right hand. Two fingers had been cleanly severed off and a portion of a third was missing. The skin around the wound was already hot and swollen, the blood turning from red to a dull black. She didn't want to say what she was feeling, she wasn't sure anyone did. Rex had been bitten by Evan. Evan had been bitten before whatever the fuck had happened to him had happened. She sincerely hoped the two weren't related. Rex had been like a second father to her growing up.

She looked over at Thomas, whose face was still ashen, as he jerkily reloaded his revolver. His brow was sweaty and his nerves showed, though to be honest, after her collapse in the foyer, she shouldn't really judge. She watched as Bartley and Emily cleaned the Rex's wound, running the injury through warm water and dousing it with alcohol as Rex let out a cry of pain. After several minutes Emily began wrapping his hand in the lineaments, as Bartley walked over to Caleb, wringing his hands clean on a towel. Eva moved closer to her father, feeling the looming presence of Thomas over her shoulder, and listened as they spoke in hushed tones.

"Caleb, his hand is bad. I've bandaged it up, but there's something not right about it. Evan, or whatever the fuck Evan turned into, bit his fingers clean off. It's already starting to show signs of infection. With the kind of stuff oozing out of that wound I'm afraid to even try to cauterize it closed. We need to get the Doc up here right quick."

Caleb ran his gnarled hand over his face, pulling at the edges of his mustache, his mind working at the best possible solution. The smart thing to do would be send off a rider to fetch the Doc, that a single rider could get there and back with the Doc in about half a day if they pushed the horses. Still something tugged at his sense, even he knew that things weren't right today. With little Evan turning into some kind of monster and Rex getting bit, and that damned black sun overhead, today was not a day to do things the normal way.

"Bartley, go hitch up my wagon. We'll take Rex ourselves to the Doc in Sedition. It may not be as fast as sending a rider to fetch the Doc but I don't like the idea of people running around alone right now. There's something wrong, we can all feel it even if we don't want to talk about it. I think it's safer to stay in a group, to keep together until we know more. We'll take Rex together."

Eva went upstairs and got ready herself. She poured some water from her pitcher into a bowl and scrubbed her face and hands clean and slipped into a fresh pair of pants and shirt. She slipped her vest back on and affixed her chaps as well, securing her gunbelt on he hip. As she grabbed her hat, she made her way downstairs to the gun cabinet they kept in the sitting room. She took her Winchester and ammo belt out and flung them over her shoulder, checking to make sure that the rifle was loaded. Eva cut back through the kitchen, noticing that Rex had already been moved out to the barn. She went out the kitchen door and followed the path around.

After her father's injury had rendered him unable to ride, he had purchased an old stagecoach that he refurbished to meet his needs. It was easier for him to travel when he needed to and far more comfortable. It could easily fit 6 people in the cab, which was plush and cushioned for long travel. There was a luggage rack which had been converted to hold her father's chair as well. Bartley and one of the ranch hands had hitched six horses to the front of the stage. They had already helped her father into teh cab, and were now loading Rex into the cab. Emily looked on, her face still streaked with tears, slightly shaking. Eva told her and they ranch hand to fetch her horse and they took off running. Thomas and Bartley had just finished securing Rex into the cab when her father craned his head out of the cab's window.

"Eva, you don't need to come. You've just gotten back. You should rest. Bartley and Thomas will accompany us. We should be fine."

Eva just fixed her father with a hard stare and nestled her gloves on as Emily came back with her horse. She checked the straps and harness on her saddle and slipped her rifle into its holster. She stuck one foot in the stirrup and smoothly mounted the horse.

"Dad, if you think you can stop me from coming along to help Rex, you're plain crazy. He's been like an uncle to me and I'm comin.'"

Caleb just smiled and nodded to Bartley. She watched as Bartley deftly maneuvered his ample frame into the driver's seat and spurred the horses on. Thomas Moore stayed close to the stage, face still sully and ashen and trying not to show it. She told Emily to stay over in the bunkhouse with the rest of the help until they returned and to not wander off. She gave one more look at the farm and spurred her horse after the stage, not realizing, that this was the last time she would ever see her home.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Word Balloon: Ex Machina

2010-09-04T15:54:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

In getting back into the flow of writing columns for the blog, I knew without a shadow of a doubt, what my comic book pick of the month was going to be, Ex Machina by writer Brian K. Vaughn and artist Tony Harris. The 50 issue maxi series is published by DC Comics Wildstorm imprint and the series just came to a close as the 50th issue was released last month. Ex Machina is a look at the term super hero in very much a modern sense of the word, it's a look at what would happen if a so called super hero decided to really make a change.

The name Brian K. Vaughn maybe known already to some of my readers, as both a writer on the famed TV series Lost and as the writer of one of the very first books I covered in this column (and one of my favorite series of all times) Y the Last Man. Vaughn has consistently moved away from main stream super heroics in recent years, choosing more to focus on Lost and Ex Machina, though rumors abound that he is at work on a new series. Vaughn has stated that Ex Machina was created to be a voice for his frustrations with our current government (when he launched the series in 2004).

Tony Harris has been the series artist from the beginning. An industry veteran, Harris is most famously known for his epic run on Starman with writer James Robinson, one of DC's most influential books of the 1990's though he has worked on several properties over the years. His stylized art gives a real depth to his characters, showing wide ranges of emotion and feelings. His style makes each character not just a stylized figure, but adds a real depth of passion to each.

The book itself is about Mitchell Hundred, a civil engineer who is exposed to an alien device in an explosion. It scars him permanently (the scars look like circuits) and Mitchell finds out in the hospital that he has the ability to communicate with machines. A lifelong fan of comics, he along with his friends Bradbury(a former marine who witnessed the explosion with Hundred) and Kremlin (a former communist defector who believed that Mitchell's power was a cosmic sign) create a super hero persona for him. Calling himself the Great Machine, Hundred uses his ability to communicate with machinery to create a jet pack and fight crime.

Hundred quickly realizes that fighting crime isn't as easy as it seems and wants to quit, alienating Kremlin n the process. When he uses his powers one last time during the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he realizes that he may be able to truly make a difference somewhere else, and runs for Mayor of New York. Kremlin believes this to be a terrible decision based on his own dis-illusion with Communist Russia and opposes the electoral bid but Bradbury sticks with him. The 50 issue series unfolds as Mitchell Hundred deals with many of the thematic issues that rival today's government officials; health care, censorship, gay marriage, abortion, civil rights, riots, public service strikes; all the while flashing back and forth to Hundred's time as The Great Machine.

Ex Machina is a book that delves into the real world of politics and political relationships, it's material that is very much outside the normal realm of capes and cowls. Using these pretense of super heroes, Vaughn and Harris manage to tell a story that highlights many political views. Its certainly material that most fans of the medium turn to comics to get away from, yet here they are presented in a timely and well thought out manner, under the guise of a super hero comic. Vaughn really embraced the same concepts that Obama would look towards nearly 4 years earlier, how to embrace change. How to make a difference in a set political system. The first trade paper back of the series, titled Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days, dives right into Mitchell's first days in office, facing things like media censorship, and sets a tone for the series that no issue is taboo.

As the series progresses, Mitchell is forced to re-examine the relationships in his own life, from his deputy mayor's support of gay marriage, to his public liaison's death, each tragedy resounds in Mitchell's life in its own way. Vaughn and Harris even dig into the personal demons of Mitchell, showing his relationship with his mother, and the consequences his actions as The Great Machine had on people, not just the people he helped (or hurt) as a super hero, but what it has meant to his best friends, and the sometimes dangerous paths it set them on. The series even shows how the appearance of a "hero" must inexplicably lead to the formation of a "villain" where Hundred is shown facing off against other characters, both in his past as a hero, and in the present as the mayor. Not only must he face these threats, but he must also face the threat of the decisions he has made. Sometimes teh greater good comes at a very personal cost.

In closing, this book is about a set period in one man's life. From the birth of his powers through his 4 years as Mayor of New York, to his ultimate future in the final issue, the book is about one man's insistence that a single person can make a change. He realizes that being a super hero isn't so much about foiling robberies or stopping criminals, but how he can use his abilities to help the world. How his choices weigh upon him, and the sacrifices he must make personally and professionally to enact that difference. Ex Machina, literally meaning an ex machine (playing on his former life of a hero) is a comic book that made you think. It doesn't forget it's four color roots, but it expands beyond the medium to tackle real issues. It's another reminder of why this medium is so great, how comic books are not just bits of escapism, but are tools that really can tell an important story.

I encourage you to check out Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days from DC/Wildstorm. Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris weave a tale of serious importance that is also fun and entertaining. Vaughn cements himself as perhaps the king of the independent comic book scene of the decade with this book and Y the Last Man. As the man said, its time for a change, and this book certainly fits that criteria.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Sounds of a Friend

2010-09-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

First post in a long while with some poetry in it. I wrote this after feeling some of the things I was discussing in my reboot column a few days ago. It's been strange these past few months and I don't know how to figure it out. It's like I'm experiencing this weird sort of loneliness and apathy. I've always been OK by myself, I enjoy it sometimes, but more and more so I feel like I don't have anyone to talk to, or react with, and sometimes it's kind of crushing, spiritually at least. This poem is certainly an echo of that feeling. Anyway, I hope you like some measure of it, it flowed pretty easy in comparison to some other poems, it took maybe 30 minutes tops to write? It came very fast, very rapid, so that's another reason I think I was dialed into the topic, as it was something I am very much feeling in the moment. Thanks for reading.

Sounds of a Friend

Cold and dark and all alone,

Sitting by a silent telephone.

Straining hard to to curb the tears,

Lost among my soulful fears.

The quiet calm throughout the house,

Belays the tumult of my heart's carouse.

The lights are off like I'm not home,

As the darkness staves off a sunny loam.

My voice can speak yet I say no phrase,

Not caring if these feeling are but a phase.

Instead I wrap the blanket tight,

Huddled with a feeling I can't fight.

Emptiness seems to fill my bones,

Listening while silent loneliness rings it's tones.

I don't want to be this way,

These feelings drag on day by day.

So trapped against a failing life,

My failures piercing like a knife.

And each new cuts bleeds some more,

As my resolves washes out from shore.

So still I wait here in the dark,

My apathy and hate so stark.

Like a stranger living in my own skin,

Who doesn't know where to begin.

Waiting to hear the sounds of a friend,

But knowing only silence in the end.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-09-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Chapter 21

Morgan Randall stood at the edge of his wife's grave. His body was caked in sweat and dirt. His back still glistened with a dusty sheen as he patted the earth down in front of the grave's simple marker. He ran his wrist over his brow, wiping away the sweat, and slowly slid to his knees, still holding the shovel. He let the tool go and began to replant the upturned bluebells around the memorial. Slowly, Morgan picked up each each flower and gently placed each back into the fresh earth. His throat was thick with emotion, but he forced himself to bury it down deep. He couldn't let himself think about the fact that this was the second time he had buried his wife and child. That this was the second time that he had killed them.

Morgan had replanted all but one last bluebell, the stem of the flower too ruined to be re-planted. That flower he he took in his hands as he stood up, casting the shovel to the side. He stood, fondling his wife's flower, staring at the replanted marker, and said goodbye for the last time. This place had to many memories, to many bad thoughts to try to stay here any more. He looked up at the black sun, which was nearly to mid-day by now, and knew that whatever had brought his wife back, wasn't over. He cast a look at the farm he had built for his wife, the place he had made to leave his old life behind and knew that there were some sins you just don't get to escape from. Some things cannot be taken back, no matter how hard you might try. No matter how hard you might love someone, you can't escape what you are in the end. It was time to leave this place.

Morgan said one final goodbye to his wife and turned away. He walked over to the water pump, filling the bucket with cold water and rinsed the sweat and blood and dirt from his body. He peeled the torn pants off, wadding them up into a ball, and tried to wash out the past several hours. Every time he closed his eyes though, his wife's hand plunging through the earth came crash in, or his still born child mewling up at him from her grave.

Once clean, he walked to the house. The living room was a bit messier than his wife would have let it get, but he walked through to their bedroom. He hadn't opened this door in all the months since his wifes death, preferring to sleep on a pallet in the living area, the memories of this room had been just to painful. He had only been in here once, to clean the blood and the after effects of the birth away, to return this room to the way his wife would have kept it. It still smelled like her and he tried to block the scent, and the memories, from his mind as he strode to the wardrobe in the corner. The wardrobe had been in his wife's family for decades and had been part of her dowery upon their marriage.

Her father had been overjoyed at the prospect of his daughter marrying a military man, despite Morgan's insistence that when his service was up he was going to start a farm. Still, he had been happy, and the wardrobe had been one of his wife's most prized possessions. He opened it up and saw her dresses still hanging inside. He brushed his fingers across her dress, remembering the feel and the way his wife had looked in them. She hadn't dresses, but each one had been cared for meticulously. Morgan sank to his knees, sliding the dresses to the side and found what he was looking for, a simple brown box kept at the bottom of the wardrobe, and pulled it out.

Placing the box on the bed, he opened it and looked down upon its contents. The uniform was just as he had left it, cavalry blue with still a hint of a shine on the buttons. He removed the clothes and began putting on a uniform he had thought he had left behind. His wife had met him in this uniform, and she had thought him handsome. When he had left the cavalry, she had him keep it, to remind her of the man she fell in love with. All it reminded Morgan of was death and betrayal. Maybe that was all he was good for though, death and betrayal.

He finished dressing and slid on his boots, high riding boots that had been a part of his uniform, and returned to the wardrobe. The bottom of the closet had a drawer which he slid open and he removed the final elements of his uniform. His cavalry revolver and another item. A small hatchet. His father's hatchet. He hefted the hatchet and tried to block out the images it contained. His wife had never known how much pain the weapon brought him, how many regrets had been spilled in blood with its blade. She had only known it was his fathers. He attached the weapons to his belt and left the bedroom for the last time. As he left the house he grabbed his rifle of the mantle and settled the cavalry hat on his head. He headed for the barn and saddled his horse, leaving the home he had made for the last time. He never looked back.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Assorted Nuts! REBOOT!

2010-09-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone.

Talk about a loss of focus, or lack of motivation, or whatever. I kind of gave up on writing for a little while. I still love writing and the act of creating,but I just lost the drive, the push, to do it. Even now as I type I feel a concentrated lack of excitement that I use to have. I'm hoping that by writing again and making myself get back into a routine, that I can re-kindle these old feelings. That I can somehow find my bliss, find that thing that use to make writing seem so important now that the feeling has faded.

I know a lot of it has to do with my living situation. I kind of realize I really hate living by myself. It's lonely, I find myself feeling really shut in and trapped, isolated. By not having that other person there I feel like I have lost a lot of the things that at one point defined me. I had the wonderful opportunity to live with my best friend for almost 5 years and I place zero blame at him moving on with his life and moving in with his absolutely awesome girlfriend, but when he left I found that a lot of my motivation did to. Not just my motivation to write, which I feel was always inspired by my friends great artistic talents and via his incredible will and work ethic on his own, but to do almost anything at the house. He came by the house last week and compared me to a squatter in my own home, and I really realize that I kind of am. I am there, yet I am not. I feel like I am squatting in my own life right now. It's kind of depressing to be honest.

At any rate the first step towards trying to restructure my own feelings is getting back to work on this blog. I want to create a really aggressive goal for this month and seeing how close I can get to it. 30 posts in 30 days. Starting today. Some days may have long posts, some short, but in the end, everyday I am going to endeavor to have some post on this blog. I'll start off with some simple stuff, getting back to Word Balloon columns and Rewind posts, but mostly I want to get back to doing some short fiction, both via returning to the World of Dead Sun, and by diving into some other stories, getting personal. Poetry is something else I have missed, despite my lackadaisical writing efforts over the past two months. I even want to look back at some of my Comic Con experience, which I can honestly credit as being one of the most fun trips I have had since I started attending them back in 1992.

Tune in tomorrow, where the one thing I can absolutely promise, is that there will be a new blog post.

1 down, 29 more to go.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Assorted Nuts!

2010-07-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

Happy July everyone!

Hard to believe that we are nearly halfway through the year already. Before I start off with my monthly recap, I thought I should take a few moments to point some things out. In recent weeks I've started to pick up some followers (yay!) for which I am very grateful. I always say that I don't really do this blog for anyone but myself, but to be honest I enjoy it when other people offer feedback, good and the bad, as they are helpful tools in helping me to improve. So firstly, welcome new readers. Secondly the point of my blog is pretty simple, I write about the things I enjoy. Short stories (actually micro fiction or flash fiction) which are even shorter tales, poetry, movie reviews, comic books, and whatever other random bits of nonsense I feel like writing about.

There is a small measure of structure though. Under the Anatomy of a Blog section on the right, you can see tags which can let you navigate through some of the 600 plus posts on the website. It's dissected by general topics, like poetry, movie reviews, travel blogs, ect. Or you can pick on some of the individual flash fiction stories I wrote. Currently I am writing a flash fiction serial, I get about a chapter a week up) Called Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins. It's a sequel to my first attempt at writing serialized short fiction, though I am using a far greater structure with this one than I did the last. I tend to write about different kinds of things, some of my short stories are more science fiction or horror, but I also have some stuff that I would consider more emotionally charged and dramatic, though those tend to be shorter in chapter form, 1 to 3 installments. Feel free to navigate the tabs and leave comments on anything you like.

Anyway, July is usually a pretty big month for me on the blog and this month will certainly be no exception. In addition to my regular features, San Diego is hosting the Comic Con International again in a few short weeks and I plan on updating my blog daily with the goings on. Also look for the current chapter of Dead Sun to really start to come together as characters should be in the process of meeting up and arcing towards bigger and more bloody confrontations for them. I have also been feeling the need to post some more dramatic stuff in terms of the fiction I've been writing.

Anyway stay tuned, this will be another huge month for me and I'm more excited than ever to keep working on the blog.

End of Line
Gerrad!

Movie Time: Rewind: Charade

2010-06-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

As promised here is this month's installment of the Rewind, where we look at great films of yesteryear, particularly ones made before the year of my birth, 1976. The last two months I have spotlighted two of my very favorite actresses, Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers. For this month I'm continuing the trend and adding another of Hollywood's greatest leading ladies (and another personal favorite), Audrey Hepburn. I highlighted Audrey in a film some time back and honestly I am a bit surprised I haven't picked more of her films to look at. Audrey was for my money, the last of the great actresses from the studio system.

By the 1950's, Hollywood's Golden Age was in its twilight, though the early and mid 1950's still held some measure of the Hollywood muscle of old. While most of the studio's major stars were aging, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, James Stewart, there was an entirely new crop of leading ladies, like Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelley, and the indemmable Audrey Hepburn. She burst on the scene in the early 1950's with her Oscar winning turn in Roman Holiday, and was a bona fide box office smash with pictures like Breakfast at Tiffanys when she teamed up with another of Hollywood's greatest stars, Cary Grant, to make Charade, this month's feature.

the film starts of as Regina (Audrey Hepburn) meets a charming stranger while on a skiing vacation. The stranger, Peter Joshua (played by Cary Grant) is dashing and handsome and re-firms Regina's belief to ask her husband for a divorce. When she returns home to Paris to ask him for one, she finds her apartment empty and the police inform her that her husband had been murdered. At his funeral she noticed several peculiar people inspecting her husbands corpse for signs of life. She quickly learns why though, as a CIA official (played by Walter Matthau) informs her that her husband was part of a secret mission in World War 2 to deliver $250,000 to the French Resistance, but he and his team hid the money instead. His team was made up by the same people who were inspecting her husbands corpse. The CIA believes that Regina has the money, even if she doesn't know where it is.

Regina runs into Peter Joshua again though in Paris and he agrees to help her, unabashedly admitting that he too is looking for the money, but wants to keep Regina safe as her husbands former team is also tracking her. Unbeknown to Regina though, Joshua is also working for them under an assumed name though none of the men trust each other. The plot really begins to twist as Grant's character changed identities again and members of her husbands former team end up dead. Regina is attracted to Grant's character, even though she doesn't know what side he is playing, though her role as damsel in distress is twisted as she becomes the one perusing Peter romantically. In the end it's a race to find the truth, of the characters identity, of the characters intentions, and for the money before it's to late.

Charade was directed by Stanley Donen in 1963 and marked a passing for both Donen and Cary Grant in a lot of ways. Donen was considered a bit of a Wonderkind in the 1950's teaming up with Gene Kelley and later on his own, to direct some of the biggest musicals of the decade. Films like An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain with Kelly, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Funny Face with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. As the musical faded in popularity at the dawn of the 1960's, Donen turned to light hearted drama and suspense and nothing epitomized that better than Charade. Cary Grant meanwhile was nearing 60 and was beginning to doubt his ability to be convincing as a romantic leading men in films. He had first turned down this film as he didn't want to be the romantic aggressor to a woman nearly 25 years his junior. He only came on board after screenwriter Peter Stone (who along with Donen was desperate to get Grant for the part) re-wrote sections of the film overnight to turn Audrey to the sexual aggressor.

Both Donen and Grant would go onto to make additional films finding moderate success. Donen would team with Audrey again in Two for the Road and find success with Gregory Peck and Sofia Loren in Arabesque, a film designed as an un-official sequel to Charade originally. Grant would make just two more films before retiring from film completely, the film Father Goose, a light comedy, and Walk, Don't Run. truth be told, Charade was Grant's last great film and despite the moderate success Donen had, it was his last true classic. It was also in a sense, one of the last really great studio films, as by the mid to late 1960's, the studio system was all but dismantled and given way to freelance work. (I know that Grant and Hepburn were freelance during this film too, but the whole style and scope of the film is still very much in that method).

Let's also not forget Audrey. At this point in the film, Audrey is the number one female box office draw in the country as many of her contemporaries had retired or moved on. Grace Kelly had become Princess of Monaco, Marilyn Monroe had died. Audrey was at her peak. She had just finished filing Breakfast at Tiffanys the year before and was just a year away from her biggest hit in My Fair Lady. I think one of the things that was so great about Audrey is that she played so well with so many of Hollywood's greatest actors. William Holden, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper and here with Cary Grant, she made the age differences between her and these actors a non factor. She could play innocent, dark and mysterious, comedic, whatever the role and her leading man needed. Her biggest assets I think was her ability to bridge the gap between the generations in film. The 1950's and 1960's were two vastly different decades in terms of movie-making and audience expectations. So much of the 50's were about that "Leave it to Beaver" attitude, about women wanting a family and marriage and being proper. Audrey could walk that line and help bring woman's roles to a forefront, playing characters of looser moral backgrounds but still maintain her feminine edge. It's especially evident as she progresses films in the 60's, with her afternoon dalliances with Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon, or her party girl mentality in Breakfast at Tiffanys, or as the sexual predator right here in Charade. She manages to play these roles very dignified, doing what many would call un-dignified actions for the time and place.

Back to the film itself. the film is very Hitchcockian in nature, built around suspense with a plot full of twists and turns. Duplicity is the nature of every character and you never know who you can quite trust. The film even uses the Hitchcock staple MaGuffin, a word used to describe one small point about witch the whole plot is hinged, a device that Hitch used in almost all of his films, in this case, the missing $250,000. It's been called the greatest Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made. A large part of that is due to director Donen, whose camera work and shooting style were taken to new heights in this film. Even Hitch's panache for scenic locations is used, with the filming of this picture occurring in Paris. Audrey was also filming (nearly back to back) Paris, When it Sizzles with William Holden at the time. Donen really captures Paris beautifully. Also writer Peter Stone's fantastic script keeps the film turning at every angle, right up until the incredible twist ending, of which even Hitch could be proud.

I should also point out the quality of the supporting cast involved. Walter Matthau as a CIA agent, James Coburn and George Kennedy (most notably of the Naked Gun films) as members of Audrey's husbands WW2 team. Coburn is great in his role as the films heavy, and Kennedy shows a range as well that is often not associated with the films he makes in later years. All the actors have a really fun rapport with each other, from the flirtatious banter between Grant and Hepburn, to the trickery between the group of thieves, each actor really finds some substance in his role.

Charade is a film that captures so much of what made Hollywood great for so long. It's fun, light, and exciting, and bridges the generational gap for Hollywood. It features two of Hollywood's biggest stars of all time in a terrific performance. I've certainly shown Cary Grant films my fair share of love over the course of these posts, with North by Northwest and His Girl Friday, and Charade is certainly a welcome addition to those films. Audrey is a star in her own right and while Charade may not be her most famous role, it's easily the role that made me realize just how powerful her on screen presence could be. In a world today where stars are teamed together in films based on name alone, its so refreshing to see a film made with the biggest stars of their day that doesn't sell you on anything but the quality of the film. Another bit of trivia about this film is that it is actually in the public domain thanks to an error in copy writing, so it should be even easier to watch. be sure to check out Universal Pictures classic Charade, a fun mystery starring two of the most charismatic actors of all time. It's classic cinema at it's finest.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-06-29T00:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter 20

Ally Marshall was sore all over. The blackened sun had risen high in the sky, nearing mid-day and she still laid slumped against the boathouse. The fire had consumed the stable, but the muddy earth so near the river's shore line had confined it there. The embers of the building still smoldered slightly as Ally slowly regained consciousness. She must have blacked out after stumbling from the stable, but it seemed as if a few hours had passed since then.

Shakily, she used the boathouse wall to pull herself to her feet, fighting off another vicious wave of vertigo and she woozily regained her footing. Her head still throbbed from the lump the outlaw had given her, and she stumbled down to the rivers edge to look at herself. Her reflection in the water was a fright. Her face was bruised on one side from the slap and her split lip had swollen. Dried blood ran down her chin and across her puffy jaw. Her dress was tattered, burnt and torn from the scuffle and caked in mud. She lifted it slightly, seeing her ribs and stomach having turned a deep bruising purple. She winced as she gingerly touched them. Even her knees, elbows, and backside were scraped and cut from crawling acorss the packed earth in teh stable. Worse yet was the throbbing in her fingers, a few of her nails had been pulled off in the scuffle and they were thick with blood.

She slowly sank to the muddy river bank and splashed the cold water on her face, allowing the bracing water to soothe her aching fingers. She thought she wanted to cry, but her whole body just felt numb. Ally washed her face softly, tracing her swollen cheek and split lip gently with one of her fingers. Her hair was smokey and frazzled and she tried to pull it back into a semblance of a pony tale again. She looked at her ruined dress and didn't even try to clean it, she just sunk back down along the shore line, pulling her knees up to her chest and felt that lump in her throat grow, but no tears came.

Ally rocked like that slowly, feeling the cold sink into her skin as she rested on the muddy banks. Her mind whirling at the devastation of the last few hours. Her brother, father, and fiancee dead. Then to have them rise to life and try to attack her. The dead sun overhead. Her whole life, dead, just like that. She was scared and lost, and worst of all, alone. She looked bleakly on, her eyes heavy and red.

The sun started to slowly drift higher in the sky, approaching noon when she first heard noise. Slow shuffling footsteps along the dusty trail far from the river bank. She saw them first, a small mob of the creatures, the same things her father had turned into. She wanted to move, to scream, to run away, but her body wouldn't move. The monsters continued down the trail, and as the rounded the wall of the boathouse, they saw her. They moved quicker then, an urgent kind of shuffling, grossly distended jaws working in anticipation. As they grew closer instinct finally kicked in, and Ally did the only thing she could do, thrusting herself off of the muddy embankment and into the cold rushing waters of the river. The last thing she remembered seeing was the cold black eyes of the creature as it lashed out at her.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Word Balloon: Stray Bullets

2010-06-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I ALMOST forgot about this month's edition of the Word Balloon. I thought we would take a look at one of my favorite writer/artist's David Lapham. I previewed his Vertigo book Young Liars last year as being one of my favorite books at the time. Sadly that book was canceled at the end of last year and he has been moving onto numerous other freelance projects for several publishers, including Avatar, Marvel, DC/Wildstorm and Marvel. For this edition though I thought we would look back to the book he is most known for, Stray Bullets, his self published comic series that he first launched in the 1995.

Lapham broke out as a penciler working for the now defunct Valiant Comics in 1990. He worked on several of their books and helped make the publisher a real threat in the industry in comics hey day during the speculator boom in the early 90's. At the time people believed that buying comics and saving them for years would equal a huge windfall in years to come as the books grew in value. This led to gross over publishing of books and piles of low quality work being produced. It also led to numerous smaller publishers and independent creators having more opportunities to make comics. As the market fell out of comics in 1995 and 1996, Lapham decided to publish his own comics to tell the kinds of stories that he wanted to tell. Heavily influenced by crime and pulp novels, he forsook super heroes of all kinds and drove into a crime noir series call Stray Bullets under his own publishing label, El Capitan.

Stray Bullets was a huge sprawling story, set over the course of a 20 year period telling the story of a group of people, interconnected in ways they were unaware of. Each issue would spotlight a different character in a different time period, not always chronologically. Where Lapham excels though is in his ability to make characters so different. His people are flawed and not heroic, often victims of circumstance and bad choices. He may be one of the best writers of characterization working in the business right now.

The first volume of his series is called The Innocence of Nihilism. the first trade collects the first seven issues and while there is not a readily apparent pattern in the wide range of stories told, Lapham is introducing you to the cast of characters you will get to know more about as the series unfolds. The series is set from a period of time ranging from the mid to late 70's to the mid 90's, very much echoing the formative years of the creator. It sets up the series regulars, Virginia Applejack, a young girl who is brutally shown the horrors of real life. Orson, a young introvert who learns just how far to far is when he falls in love with a needy older woman. Frank and Joey, two small time hoods who realize the value of life just as the shouldn't. Beth and Maria, two young girls entering into a world far over their heads. Oh, and Amy Racecar, the worlds biggest and greatest gangster, and possibly the purveyor of the end of the world.

It also sets up other characters who will have bigger roles as the series unfolds, the brutal mobster Monster, the enigmatic Spanish Scott, the gangster boss Harry, among others. It's a hugely sprawling story that can't be neatly summed up in a few blurbs. It's a comic one part Pulp Fiction, one part film noir, with a dash of inter connectivity like Lost. Each issue is a stand alone tale, you don't need to read one to enjoy the next because read apart from each other, they act as a stand alone tale. When read together though they weave a pattern that sheds even bigger moments of characterization, highlighting what are perceived to be ancillary characters in the tale you're reading, and showing deeper moments of characterization from tales you have already read.

There are several beats in the series that I thought were just brilliantly tragic. Issue 2, Victomology, unfolds the story of young Virginia (Ginny) Applejack. The ending of that issues is like a punch to the gut, where a series of events beyond her control shapes her life tragically and brutally. The ending of issue two is the moment the series bought me hook, line, and sinker. This one event even leads to the series most popular character's creation, Amy Racecar. The epitome of childhood fantasy gone unchecked, the story is ultimately one of illusion and mis-direction when you realize just why and how Amy is the way she is, and how, and even more importantly why, she connects to young Ginny.

The regular series itself lasted 39 issues before Lapham put the series on hold to take on more freelance work. It was easier on his to produce work on the freelance level and more financially lucrative, though not as personally rewarding. This became a more increasing concern as he grew his family and took on bigger responsibilities as a provider. On the one hand I enjoy that he is writing more work regularly, but on the other I miss his hand behind the pencil. Especially after the cancellation of Young Liars, which was a far more fantastical take on the elements and themes he touched on in Stray Bullets, though grounded less in crime and more in conspiracy.

The art of Stray Bullets is fabulous as well. Lapham is great at expressions and his use of the 8 panel grid system really lets the story unfold as you are reading it. Breaking down each moment really sells the opening and closing pages where he expounds on the action in bigger panels. It's story telling structure at a very rigid level but it forces the story to move and unfold in such a way as to increase the tension each panel. Lapham is also a master of expression, from fury to sadness to joy, each character tells so much story through their body language and expression. I think he may be the best artist working today in conveying the grief on a persons face. You can seen the dynamic growth and maturation he develops over the course of the series, becoming a better storyteller as the book unfolds. Remember this was his first real writing gig. Still, even in these early issues you see the natural talent he has in breaking a story down elementally.

Stray Bullets isn't a comic that can be summed up with a neat little bow. It's complex and deeply wrought. It's the essence of independent comics. It's even more impressive knowing that when this book came out, storytelling wasn't what sold books, the art did. Most books from he late 1990's don't hold up well. This is one of the series I found during that time that helped me rediscover my joy in collecting comics. Books like Stray Bullets, Bone, Preacher, and Kabuki showed me how great and varied the medium could be. For a long time I didn't read too much mainstream Marvel or DC because they were not telling the stories that these creators were. Stray Bullets is one of my favorite comics series of all times and I hope that David Lapham gets around to returning to his creator owned roots at some point. Until then, I will always have the great run he left behind. Stray Bullets: The Innocence of Nihilism, Volume 1 by David Lapham. Just a really great graphic novel that challenges the role that comics can play. Read it.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: I Killed the World

2010-06-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I know, three poems in one month, rivaling my Flash Fiction output for once. At an rate my goal over the next 2 days before the end of the month is at least two more posts, the next chapter on Flash Fiction and my Movie Time Rewind segment for the month. I haven't been really consistent the past few months and I am hoping that after Comic Con next month I can post a bit more regularly.

Anyway onto the poem. Certainly returning to familiar territory this time. I was feeling a little down on myself this weekend and I plucked this out over the course of a few hours, tweaking it until I liked it better. I can certainly see the darker influence of the types of music I have been listening too lately in the poem. I tend to not listen to music as I write, I find it distracting, but I will listen to music before and between writing to stir the juices creatively. I don't like to listen to a lot of music though, just a few songs to set the mood. More than that and I feel it takes me out of the moment. I'm very much a believer in capturing the particular moment in a poem. If something takes to long or you have to try to hard, then you really aren't capturing what you are feeling at the time.

There are occasions where I will write something and work at it and realize it's not coming along. I may hang onto the general concept of the poem to re-attack it later, but rarely will I use, or re-use anything that I wrote during my first attempt. I know some writers do this during brainstorming sessions, where an idea may be good, just the timing for it isn't. I approach my poetry very much the same way. Oh well, enjoy the poem and feel free to leave any feedback, positive or negative. Thanks for reading!

I Killed the World

I never went back home,

Lost on the trails of life I roam.

So many years I spent alone,

Walked a million miles unknown,

Forlorn these many years,

I left a trail of tears.

And though you were not there,

It's like I felt your stare,

Gazing down upon my broken heart,

As I tore the damned piece apart.

God you died so long ago,

I just didn't know where to go.

Even when I close my eyes,

I remember all your cries.

If I could wipe the tears away,

Or even have just one more day,

To hold deep within my arms,

And buffet you from all that harms.

But in the end I lost control,

And there's nothing left to console.

Your smile was my only friend,

But here near the end,

The joy it brought has died,

No matter how hard I tried,

I can't pretend to care,

Just cast a gazeless stare.

And all I see is an endless night,

Forgotten and lost my will to fight.

For what we had has spoiled and curled,

Without your love I killed the world.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-06-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter 19

Cody Jarrett woke silently, his hand coiling to the nearby Colt revolver. It was dark, almost overcast, but not as cold as it should have been if it was still pre-dawn. Still, the hairs on the back of Cody's neck were standing on end and he had a feeling, a feeling that something wasn't quite right. Cody slowly rolled to his feet, holding the Colt in front of him, finger dancing over the triggers. the starlight had all but faded as last nights fire crackled with its last, lonely dying embers.

Cody knew someone was out there. He heard the subtle movements, the small stirrings of motion. Even along a well known trail, you never could tell who may be out, especially in the early parts of pre-dawn. Plus with as much money as Jarrett was holding, he certainly didn't want to take any chances. Cody walked gingerly to the edge of his small campsite. The horses were nickering nervously, putting Jarrett even more alert. He walked the perimeter of the camp, his eyes detecting nothing in the fading twilight. Jarrett eased his way back towards the campsite, slowly bringing the barrel of his Colt up and easing the trigger down.

Cody came up to the horses first, approaching at the backside of his camp, and ran a hand over the animals, trying to soothe each of the mounts. The horses were pulling at their tethers and getting more and more agitated by the moment. Cody could read the growing fear in their eyes as they danced about skittishly, his calming motions bringing no comfort to the frightened animals. Finally one of the horses reared back, whinnying loudly and pulled loose its tethered stake from the ground. The other two horses bucked and did the same, pulling at the branches and other bits of shrubbery by which they had been tethered.

Cody made a desperate grab for his horse, diving at the animal, trying to snake his free hand into his man. the horse was to fast though, as it bolted through the broken hillside, away from the trail. Cody's dive landed him in a small clearing by his camp and he tucked himself into a roll as he hit the Earth. Cody followed through on the roll and came up quickly, smoothly drawing his second pistol from his belt and cocking the hammers on both. He brought them up, loaded for bear, fingers hovering over each rigger, and finally saw his attackers.

Beau and Buford Johnson were moving towards him. Though the Johnson Brothers he had known just hours ago, were far unlike what he had seen before. Their skin was yellow and sour, and their fingers ended in sharp blackened points. Their mouths were distended parodies, wider and lined with razored yellow and black teeth. The front of Beau's chest was still riddled with the four bullets that Cody himself had filled him with before, the red blood that stained the front of his shirt was now etched in blackened pus and ichor. His brother was worse, the two bullets that Cody had fired had similar effects but the belly wound had festered, the spoiled skin cracking. He shambled towards Cody, a stream of his own entrails spilling from the oozing sore and dragging behind him, leaving a trail of dark blood and bile through the dusty trail.

"Mother fucker...."

Cody half whispered the curse, the guns still poised in each of his hands. How do you kill something you already shot dead? He looked at each brother, slowly backing up. It was then that he noticed the breaking dawn behind the two monsters. The cresting sun turned dark and black. Long Stygian tendrils stretched from the inky orb, casting a pale overcast on the sky. Cody Jarrett looked at the dead sun, then back to the two creatures bearing down on him, and realized how truly fucked he was.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Seasons of Age

2010-06-21T15:08:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Look at this. Three posts, three days! I actually got inspired to write some poetry this weekend after watching Toy Story 3. There very "coming of age" aspects of that film really resonated with me and I thought would make a good topic for a poem. I haven't written a large amount of poetry this year, mostly because I'm trying to do some different kinds of material and not the same forlorn love stuff over and over. I mean I'm fine doing that if I have a fresh take on it, but I don't want to write it simply for the sake of writing it.

This poem is a pretty straight forward affair. Each stanza acts as one of the four stages of life. A child, a young adult, middle age, and growing old. Each age has its own perceptions and take on things, and this is my version. i hope you like the poem, and I will try to be back soon with more updates. Thanks again fro reading.

Seasons of Age

In the first it seems so slow.

Moments come and moments go.

All your days break in the morning sun.

As you play and shout and have such fun.

Worries, cares, are burdens not,

As seething troubles have yet to rot.

Colors flair and flowers bloom,

But Spring and Summer will fall to soon.

In the middle it feels just right.

When days and years are not yet slight.

Romance and love have come to crest,

As life and times are but an easy test.

You feel as if you cant be hurt,

The dangers of life are but flirts.

And as the boy becomes the man,

Only then can he see the plan.

Near the end it gets more fast,

As time grows short and doesn’t last.

Carefree ways have now found burden,

As responsibilities are far more certain.

Wistfully you recall past days.,

Of times when you weren't set in ways.

A wife, a child may come to bear,

Sooner yet, strike graying hairs.

But at the end it's over then.

Past by so quick you can't pretend.

Children have grown and left behind,

And the life you live is no longer defined.

The seasons of age have grown so cold,

As Winter's grip has turned more bold.

And as your last breath leaves your lung,

It's only then you end what you begun.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Review: Toy Story 3

2010-06-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I had a great opportunity opening day to catch an early matinee of Pixar’s Toy Story 3 with my newest movie going companion, my niece Lexy. At 5 years old she is quickly becoming a movie buff and she really enjoys going to see movies on the “big screen” as she says. Needless to say this is a boon for me because it gives me a valid excuse to catch many of these animated films that I would normally not go to. Well, I’ll be honest, I would see the Pixar ones, but all the rest are iffy. Still Toy Story 3 may have been her favorite film yet that we have seen together and I will be the first one to admit, Pixar Films may be the best movie production company making films today.

Toy Story 3 is a sequel 11 years in the making, focusing on the continuing adventures of a group of toys led by Woody the Cowboy, voiced by Tom Hanks, and Buzz Lightyear, a Space Ranger voiced by Tim Allen. They are accompanied by a series of other toys like Jesse the Cowgirl (Joan Cusack) Rex the Dinosaur (Wallace Shaw) Hamm the Piggy bank (voiced by Pixar perennial John Ratzeberger) Mr. Potato Head 9Don Rickles) and several others. Just like in real life, 11 years have passed for the toys as well, and their owner Andy has grown up and is on the verge of entering college. The toys have not been played with for a long time and are now worried that they will be either relegated to the attic or thrown out when Andy moved out.

Woody stays true to Andy, believing that they will be sent to the attic and one day played with again but the rest belive that they will be thrown out. When Andy finally gets ready to leave, he bags them all except Woody (who he intends to take to college, presumably nostalgically) with the intention of storing them in the attic. They accidentally get mixed into the trash though and conspire to escape by sneaking into a donation box headed for the local daycare. Woody follows them, trying to convince them that Andy didn’t want to throw them away, but they believe that greener pastures lie at the day care.

When they get there they are greeted by a phalanx of new toys, led by Lotsa, a strawberry scented plush bear voiced by Ned Beatty and Ken (of Barbie fame) voiced by Michael Keaton. Lotsa has a southern twang and seems very approachable at first. Ken is vain and narcissistic, living in his own dream house with a huge wardrobe. The toys believe they have found paradise, a Mecca where they will never get old or thrown out as new kids always come to play. Woody tries to convince them otherwise, but when they decide to stay, he leaves, intending to return to Andy. He is waylaid during his escape however and rescued by Bonnie, a young girl who’s mother works at the Daycare. While with Bonnie, he learns from her toys what the rest of his friends come to find out. Sunnyside Daycare is no Mecca for toys, its more of a prison, where certain toys get preferential treatment and others are abused. Woody returns to help his friends escape and get back to Andy before he leaves for college, but they quickly learn that Lotsa has no intention of letting that happen.

Once again, Pixar has created a great movie and is already my choice for film of the year. The film is a wonderful blend of humor, action, and pathos. Honestly, the action sequences in this Toy Story are the greatest to date, with the film climaxing at a huge waste management plant. The action is frantic and wide screen. Even the beginning Wild West play scene is bigger than any Toy Story action sequence we’ve seen. It ingeniously blends all the toys in multiple settings in such a way that it becomes both thrilling and immediately charming. It also has the taunt thrills of a classic escape movie, fueling elements of great noir prison films the likes of James Cagney use to be involved with.

Toy Story 3 also continues the culmination of Pixar films really finding a deeply soulful resonance in its movie going audience. While I didn’t get quite as choked up as I did during Up (I cried twice) or Wall-E (I teared up once) I definitely got choked up in the last 20 minutes of the film. The film morphs so seamlessly from genre to genre, that by the time you get to this very pivotal coming of age moment for these toys, it really hits you with a deep impact. As each toy faces an unknown future, as Andy himself faces his past, you really feel empathy for these characters. It’s a story that has grown with its audience, and while younger viewers may not pick up on the significance of the moment, you sure do later.

Honestly, I have nothing negative whatsoever to say about this film. Even in Up, which I think is a more emotionally impactful film, I found slight flaws that didn’t work for me. In Toy Story 3 I can’t find any. Visually the film is flawless. Pixar is the gold standard for computer animation and this film is certainly no exceptions. The 2 actions scenes that I mentioned are shot with such scope and detail, that its hard to imagine them looking any better. Even down to the wear and tear on some of the toys, no detail escapes the animators vision. I was especially impressed with small details like Lotsa’s white fur spots being slightly soiled from years of use and the wear and tear on Tag Along Telephone (whose voice work alone made me realize how much I’d love this film, voiced as a quick talking 1930’s prison thug)

The story elements are perfect as well. For a film that straddles so many different genres,. it does so flawlessly. Each character is perfectly rendered and unique, from Woody’s faithful yet slightly acerbic cowboy to Buzz’s machismo laden heroics. Wallace Shaw’s voice work as Rex is always welcome, giving the dinosaur a “mouse that roars” quality. Even the new characters blend in flawlessly. You can actually here Michael Keaton having a blast with the role as the hilariously out-dated and vain Ken. Tom Hanks voice characterization as Woody really grounds the film in believability and gives the audience a great anchoring point in the film. I also thought the sequence where Buzz is reset to Spanish was highly amusing as well. From cocksure tough guy, he turns into a sort of Spanish lothario that adds some much needed humor during a particularly tense action section of the film. I also want to give Ned Beatty props, voicing Lotsa as a gentlemanly southerner, but with the twist of a few words and inflections, gives his huggable bear persona a level of intimidation.

All in all, Toy Story 3 is a triumph of a film. Fun, funny, and poignant it continues to show why Pixar Studios is maybe the best group of film makers in motion pictures today. The film has something for all ages and will be just as good a film at age 6 or 60. In a season of slumping cinema and lackluster films, Toy Story 3 is the first film to live up to its much lauded hype. I personally think that the deal Walt Disney Studios made to incorporate Pixar was both bold and smart. Pixar President John Lassiter knows quality films and I can’t wait to see what they have got coming up next. In the meantime, check out Toy Story 3. It’s a powerful film that delivers on every level. I simply loved it.

End of Line.
Gerrad

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-06-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Chapter 18

The screams of the living had fallen silent hours ago, now it was merely the occasional shriek of the undead or the sound of tearing flesh that permeated the mission walls. Father Santiago sat in one of the pews closest to the pulpit, one hand caressing his rosary beads, the other absently patting the gun hidden deep within his robes. He watched the few remaining people under his care either pace the floor uncontrollably or lose themselves in an endless retinue of prayer. Father Santiago himself prayed for some sort of answer, but he knew deep down inside that one wasn't coming. Hell on Earth had come, and there was no salvation for a sinner like him.

They were all in the main chamber of the church, the front doors locked tight. Enrico had over seen the barricading of the door and windows, having pushed rows of empty pews in the way to block the door. Still he looked at the few remaining people with him. Maria and Pedro, the washerwoman and the stable boy. They both had worked for the parish for many years, helping out the church. Maria did their laundry and often helped make meals in exchange for room and board in a small shack on the parish property. Pedro was her son and tended to the small flock of animals on the church grounds. His father had been killed running with a band of outlaws and had led to the duo's adoption by the church.

Lastly were the two junior members of the church staff. Father Ruiz was the elder of the two, though still nearly 15 years Enrico's junior. Earnest and heartfelt, Enrico could see the guilt of leaving the others out to die was weighing heavily on his shoulders. Brother Romero was the youngest of their order, fresh to the parish and on his first mission. He was the most rattled, huddled in front of the effigy of Christ, offering the Lord's prayer over and over.

At first Enrico had tried to bolster their spirits with words and prayers, but after a while, the screams were just to loud and they all fell silent. Enrico finally got up and went upstairs, determined to look out the window and gauge how bad the epidemic outside had gotten. When they first had barricaded the doors, Enrico had watched from the seond floor window. After the first few minutes, he had turned away and kept others from looking, the sights he had seen were even worse than what he had envisioned during the war. Now that the screams had long been silent, he had decided on another look. He told his small clan his intention, and went upstairs, nervously patting the only sign of reassurance he had, the pistol.

He slowly pushed open the window, peeking out. Blood and eviscerated remains lay strewn about the courtyard area. Enrico choked the taste of bile back down his throat. Still, he didn't see any of the creatures on this side of building. Enrico used the few moments he had alone and pulled the gun out from beneath his robes. He held it in his hands, trying to subdue the images of the last time he had held a gun. The images of men's faces staring blankly back at him, their eyes glossy and devoid of life, with him holding the smoking barrel. Still, knowing what lay outside, the even fresher memories of the horrors he had seen just hours earlier over wrought those old images. Pictures of men and women, changed and mutated into some sort of creature, eating the flesh and entrails of the living. Even now, he felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

"FATHER ENRICO! Where did you get that gun!"

Enrico turned around, his head flush with sweat, and saw Father Ruiz looking at him. He still held the gun in his hand, unable to answer. He looked at the gun and to Ruiz, whose dark complexion was a mask of worry and astonishment. Unfortunately for both Father Ruiz and Enrico, there was no time to answer, as the sounds of splintering wood downstairs were accentuated by the screams of Maria. The creatures were breaking through the barricade. Hell would wait no longer.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Review: Shrek Forever After

2010-06-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

It's been out a few weeks already, but I did catch Shrek Forever After a little while back with my niece, in which I got to take her to her first 3D movie. She loved the film and I found it to be a much better turn this time around than the third installment of the series. Shrek 4, for abbreviations sake, was much closer tonally with the second film, not quite managing to over top the magic of the first movie, but retaining enough humor for both adults and children to enjoy equally.

Shrek 4 sees the main cast of the film return. Mike Meyers as the vice of the ogre Shrek, Cameron Diaz as his wife, the once cursed Princess Fiona, Eddie Murphy as Shrek's best friend, the maniacally cheerful Donkey, and Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots. They all fit in very comfortably and have a great rapport as each character. I also think one of the great bits of Shrek has been the quality of the voice acting, from the main characters to the supporting cast, like the Gingerbread Man, Pinocchio, and the Three Little Pigs, each has a very unique voice and plays really well of each other.

The film starts out with Shrek entering a serious mid life crisis. He's forgotten why his family and friends make him happy, succumbing to the endless repeating of teh same stress filled days. He longs for the days when he was fear as an ogre and just wants to have a bit of freedom, away from his crying infant children and the constant pressures of being a celebrity (for his heroic actions) Everything comes boiling to a head at his triplets first birthday party, where the stresses just get to him and he snaps at everyone. After storming out of the party, he gets into another fight with his wife Fiona and yells at her that he wishes things were the way they use to be before he met her. She leaves him, saddened, and Shrek storms away. Meanwhile, Rumpelstiltskin (voiced by writer Walter Dohrn) overhears Shrek's pleas and conspires to get revenge on Shrek> Years earlier Fiona's parents were willing to sign their kingdom over to Rumple in order to break the curse on their daughter, but seconds before they signed, news reached them of Shrek freeing the Princess. Falling on hard times, Rumple believes this to be his big break and tricks Shrek into signing a contract with him. In exchange or granting him a single day to be the ogre he use to be, Shrek agrees to give up a single day from his childhood. Little does Shrek know that the single day he gives up is the day of his birth.

At first Shrek enjoys his time, scaring villagers and living the carefree lifestyle, but when Shrek realizes the enormity of his problem, he sets about to confront Rumple and reclaim his wife and friends, who no longer know who he is. After confronting Rumple, he and Donkey escape slavery to join up with Fiona and her ogre resistance force, which is dedicated to stopping Rumple who has now taken over the kingdom thanks to Shrek's failure to save the Princess. With no Price Charming to save her, Fiona had to save herself and has become embittered about the thought of love. Shrek finds out the one loophole in Rumple's contract is that he has one day to make Fiona, his true love, fall in love with him again or he ceases to be. The question is, can he make someone believe in love who doesn't anymore.

Overall the film does find a nice balance of comedy and drama, really bridging a nice gap with the series and righting the ship a bit for the franchise as a whole. Myers brings his usual charm to the role while Murphy continues to churn out a better comedic performance in these films than in most of his live action ones. I wish we had a bit more of the supporting cast though, other than the introduction of Rumple, many of the characters that they have developed over the past 3 films kind of fall to the wayside here and they don't really bring in anyone new. I'm sure Puss in Boots, arguably the break out star of the previous installments, has a lot on tap for his own planned feature next year, but I'd have liked to seen the Gingerbread Man or one of the other characters accelerated.

One of the things you cannot question is the films look. The animation is spotless, you can really see the smoothness and the texturing in this film is on a whole new level in comparison to earlier installments. They also did a great job with the 3D. While not the best 3D film to date, I like that they used 3D to enhance the picture and didn't add a bunch of sequences to highlight the fact that it was in 3D. Nothing felt forced or wedged in like I have seen in other 3D adaptions. Dreamworks has really established itself as a potential threat in terms o animation quality with the likes of Disney, though everyone is still chasing the masters at Pixar.

it's certainly hard to match the quality of storytelling in a sequel, especially when one compares it to the source film. Very few films get better as they are sequeled and even more get worse after that. It was nice to see a film improve after having such a lackluster third installment. While Shrek Forever After may or may not be the swan song for every one's favorite ogre, it is a much more fitting chapter to end the series on if it does. Though i still believe there are more tales to tell in this world, Shrek 4 is one of the few films this year to not disappoint. I had a good time with the film, and while I wouldn't call it a masterpiece, in a struggling cinematic environment like the one at the box office today, it is a fitting use of your money and will deliver on the promise of a few laughs. If you liked Shrek 2, then you'll like Shrek 4. Thanks for reading!

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Begin the Begain

2010-06-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Another bit of a publishing break but hopefully I can keep up a better and more productive clip. I have been working on blog posts the past few days, trying to get a few good entries on. I re-wrote that last chapter of Dead Sun about 4 times before I posed the version you read. I wasn't fully happy with how i captured the scene, but in the end I got it to a point where I though that I could live with.

As for this poem, I've written it a few times over the course of the last few months, scrapping and starting over, mostly using the poems title, a play on words from an old Fred Astaire dance routine that I liked the sound of, though I have modified it to my purpose. Begain isn't really a word, the original word I based it on was Beguine, which is a type of ballroom dance. As I modified the word, begain means to go back to the beginning of where you once were, sort of like to begin again. Begain. I liked that I invented a word to tell a story, and for that alone the poem is a positive one. Enjoy the poem and I'll be back with more work as soon as I can. Thanks for sticking it out with me.

Begin the Begain

Softest sounds on the oldest road,

Sweetest tears tell a well worn code.

Blackest hearts bleed the brightest blood,

While gentle streams grow to bursting flood.

Unknown eyes follow familiar details,

As fickle fate tempts life's new trails.

Unwashed of filth, the darkest stain,

To be clean within, and begin the begain.

Bad decisions and choices once made,

Ring the dirt, and never quite fade.

Each moment much worse, till the bristols brown.

As darker times engulf the broken ground.

While hateful words give to bitter days,

This calloused soul wanders astray.

And each moment you fall further from me,

The more subtly stings the regretful agony.

As faceless dreams besiege my sleep,

This painful harvest that I reap.

Those simple words I should have said,

Lost again, stricken by a heart left dead.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-06-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Chapter 17

Eva shot out, jerking Emily back from the creature, which snapped its jaws wildly at her, blood and slaver spewing from its maw. The monster rolled off the couch and onto the floor, flailing inside the linens that it had been wrapped in. Eva looked up and watched Rex kick himself back from the creature. He was on the floor, clutching a bloody hand, as he worked his way from the trashing creature. Eva pushed out the hysterical maid and slapped her thigh, feeling for the comfort of her gun. Her hand came away empty though, her gunbelt still hanging from the hook in her room.

"FUCKER!"

Eva angrily turned back into the parlor, watching as the creature ripped free the last remnants of the sheets and hungrily approached Rex, who had pulled himself upright. Blood was freely flowing from his hand and he was grimacing in pain clutching at his ruined fingers. Eva looked for something she could use as a weapon, anything to slow the monster down. Finally seeing no alternative, she dove at the beasts legs, knocking it down in a pile. Rex dived sidelong and grunted in pain as he landed hard on his bad hand. The thing that had been Evan hit hard as ell, Eva laying across its knees.

Reacting quickly, she jumped up, driving a knee into the monsters back and grabbing a fist full of the creatures thin lanky hair. Rearing back, she pulled as hard as she could and drove its face into the wood paneled floor. She repeated the blow, driving the clamping jaw again so hard she hear the bone crack. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the creatures claws reaching back, thick black nails flexed towards her. One knee still in the monsters back, she kicked her free leg wide and drive the claw down. She stamped her boot repeatedly on his hand, making a thick, pussy pulp of the claw after a moment. Eva also arched away from the other claw that was reaching for her, but with her weight and position on its back, it couldn't get close.

Eva pounded the things face again, before it flexed mightily, arching its back. Eva, losing her position, kicked off, scrambling backwards. Turning halfway, she came up in a roll at the entrance to the parlor. Rex was leaning heavily against the doorway, face flushed and breathing hard. She turned her gaze back to the monster, who had rolled over itself and slowly standing up. One of its hands was uselessly hanging from its side, while the other supported itself against the couch. It's face though was a mess of broken bone and shattered black teeth. Thick congealed rivulets of black and green blood and pus streamed from it's face, as it tried to work its broken jaw open. It's eyes settled in on Rex though, black and gaze-less, and shuffled forward towards him, it's broken jaw giving him a crooked smile. Eva shot a glance at Rex, who just grimaced.

Then she heard the sounds of her fathers wheelchair, and looked at Thomas pushed her father don the hall. Her eyes fixed on the gun at his hip.She reacted quickly, bounding down the hall quickly and pushing Thomas' arm up, drawing the gun in a smooth motion. She thumbed open the barrel, ensuring that Moore at least kept the fucking thing loaded, and spun the chamber shut once she was assured. She heard Moore and her father say something, but she ignored their pleas and went back to Rex, who was creeping father back, his ruined hand leaving a trail of blood down the corridor walls.

Eva rounded up, leveling the revolver between her and the creature at it turned around the corner and fired twice, working the hammer in quick succession. Both shots hit the creature square in the chest, the close range knocking the monster off its feet. Eva sighed deeply, wiping the sweat from her brow, when she sa the creature move again, slowly rolling over and pulling itself upright once more.

'Mother fucker."

Eva thumbed the hammer back again and used the heel of her boot to kick the creature hard in the mouth, knocking the shuffling thing onto its back. Then she squeezed the trigger again, point blank, between the monster eyes. There was an explosion of black liquid as the creatures brains splayed against the floorboards. Finally though, it fell silent and motionless, its dead eyes staring up at her. Eva kept the gun trained on the monster, the adrenalin coursing through her as crashing into her nerves as her brain began to comprehend hat exactly was happening. Her hand began to shake uncontrollably as she stood over the monster, the gun still pointed at the thing, until she felt the calloused hand of her father run up her arm and ease the gun down. She fell to her knees, body wracking with sobs as she cried into her father's crippled lap. Her cries were muffled and she buried her face deep into her fathers chest, and were not broken until Rex, pale and sweaty, fell to the floor. He was clutching the hand where he had been bitten by the monster. His eyes unfocused and dreamy as he grunted in pain. Yet all Eva could see through her tear strained eyes was Rex's hand. Bitten by the creature. Bitten like Evan had been.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Assorted Nuts!

2010-06-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

Happy June Everyone!

Another month has passed as we reach the mid point of the year. I took a few moments to reflect on what I have been working on over the past 6 months, and while I feel that volume 2 of Under a Dead Sun might be one of the better things I have written, as well as being one of the few things that when I re-read doesn't fill me with self loathing, I can't help but feel discouraged a bit. My productivity is down. Way down. Last year I posted nearly a 190 times, the year before, nearly 230. Yet now I am merely on track to post about 140 times. I thought that last years output offered a nice range of material, better writing and more thoughtful production. While I AM happy with the quality of the things I amdoing, I guess I feel I should be more productive.

Still lets focus on some bright spots. Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins has been a real treat to write. i honestly look forward to writing these installments each week and I have been anxiously waiting to craft the last story centering around Morgan. Facing his on daughter like that was a moment I had thought up early on in the series, in my attempt to give each character a different kind of troubled past, forcing a man to kill his own beloved family was one of the first things I had thought up. Really each character has come into their own for me and I am looking forward to the coming tales, where barring a story change, should see some of the cast begin to come together in the wider tale of things.

I also hope to get back to some more poetry after really struggling with inspiration for topics this month. It took far to long to hammer that last oeice out into something resembling a decent attempt. Hopefully I can find a bit or illumination and not have so much struggle with them. Plus you can look forward to my next installment of the Movie Rewind where I will continue to highlight great actresses of Hollyood's Golden Age taking a peak at Audrey Hepburn.

Still, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Dead Sun and any feedback you have about my work. Good and bad, anything to help me get better. Thanks for reading and I'll try to do better this month.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-05-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

Chapter 16

Morgan sat on the ground, his dead wife laying just feet from him, dirty streaks lining his face from where he had cried. His hands ached from clenching them so tightly and he tried to not make eye contact with the thing that had once been his wife. Still, there was that soft cry that echoed in the air, drifting from the upturned grave of his wife in the garden, a cry that chilled Morgan Randall's far bones deeper than even that of killing his wife for a second time. Randall wasn't sure how long he sat there, minutes, hours, time seemed to blend together. He never looked at the Black Sun above him, simply staring out into the the empty fields he had once envisioned filling with his wife. Finally Morgan rolled over and slowly pulled himself to his feet, trying to ignore the dull ache that stemmed inside him.

His battered body was caked with sweat and dirt, the cut along his arm having dried a bloody trail down to his wrist. He watched his hat on the ground as it ruffled in the slight wind, but left it there as he slowly hobbled to the barn. He ran his hands through his hair, brushing them away from his eyes and felt the salty residue of his sweat. The doors were still open to the barn from this morning and he went inside, returning seconds later with a shovel. He slowly walked towards the upturned grave, the mewling cries still echoing in the air around them, only stopping when he was a few steps shy of the grave. He looked at the churned earth around the grave, seeing his wife's precious bluebells uprooted and laying on the ground. The bluebells that had once been the sole bright spot of the farm. Taking a deep breath, Morgan steeled himself and crossed the last few steps.

He looked into the grave to find his stillborn daughter kicking her arms and legs. Her tiny fingers had morphed to black points, though not as long or as deadly as his wife's. Her tiny mouth was also distended, though she had no teeth to nash at him with. Still, her skin had sallowed and turned a mottled yellow while her eyes had become as blackened as the sun above. Eyes that looked up at him, dead and devoid of emotion. Slowly, Morgan lifted the shovel, closing his eyes and begged for forgiveness, and for the second time today, killed someone he loved again.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Poetry: Shadow of my Heart

2010-05-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

It's been a significant time since I have done any poetry, and despite the major blog dump the past two days, I have been at work here. This poem I started a few weeks ago and finally felt like returning to it. I scrapped most of this poem in it's original version, just leaving the snowy grave line and a couple of rhyme schemes.

This poem changed from its original topic, which was much more upbeat, to this kind of sadder poem after re-connecting with a friend of mine who has been facing some thought times. I've always had a close spot for her and I can tell I channeled some of those feelings into this poem. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and I'll try to do a better job of posting up some more work in the coming weeks.

Shadow of my Heart

The snowy grave on my heart,

Is brittle and cold,

It pumps slow, so slow,

When it once flowed so bold.

The flowers that bloomed,

Have withered and died,

The blossoms turn to,

Tears of petals I've cried.

You're like a ghost,

A shadow of my heart,

Who's gone away,

So hauntingly far apart.

I don't know what to do,

Or how I'll carry on,

When all the chances that come

Are suddenly gone.

Just walk through the cold,

To a place where I am unknown,

The empty halls echo,

As I waywardly roam.

I feel so lost,

Trapped in this cage,

And no escape, no escape,

Like story with a single page.

Once you closed,

The book of my dreams,

Nothing else matters,

Feelings felt obscene.

Though I can't say goodbye,

To you in my thought,

I given up up hope,

Of being the man that you sought.

It feels so hard,

This being alone,

When you know who you want,

but cannot atone.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Time: Rewind: Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman

2010-05-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I'm back after a bit of a break this month with another chapter of the Movie Rewind, where I review a great film from Hollywood's history. I had a lot of fun last month reviewing Broadway Melody with Eleanor Powell, so I thought I would continue the trend by reviewing a film by another one of my favorite actresses, Ginger Rogers. The film is 1940's Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman, the film for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress.

RKO Films, the studio that made Kitty Foyle, was never considered one of the richest studios, like MGM and Paramount, but they compensated for that by having having a diverse production slate of films and had an impressive stable of stars in the 1930's, though MGM would corner that market by the onset of the 1940's and as RKO had financial troubles. RKO had many of the most notable stars under it's banner in the 30's, giving actors and actresses like Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, and of course Ginger Rogers. Ginger had teamed up with Fred Astaire throughout much of the mid to late 30's, their pairing being finally profitable for the studio, making 8 films between 1934 and 1939. In fact, they were RKO's number one draw and the only stars to top the list of box office performers while at RKO. By 1939 though, the duo wanted to branch out. Astaire wanted to make his on name and Ginger was eager to stretch her acting chops, having started out on the stage as a serious actress before going into musicals. The to still had a deep affection for each other as Astaire went to MGM to team with Eleanor Powell in the sequel to Broadway Melody, Ginger set her eyes on Kitty Foyle.

The film is a the story of a working class woman set in the early 1930's. Kitty Foyle (Rogers) works as secretary to a wealthy Philadelphia socialite named Wynnewood Statfford VI (Dennis Morgan), helping him in his attempt to succeed in establishing a magazine during the Depression. They fall in love, and she always believes he will ask her to marry him once the magazine is a success. The magazine fails unfortunately and Wyn is forced to return to his parents for employment. Kitty is left behind and decides to leave for New York to take a new job working in a department store. While in New York she meets Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) who loves her, but Wyn Stafford shows up and asks Kitty to marry him. She initially refuses citing the differences in their social backgrounds. She feels that Philadelphia socialites would never accept her. Many of these beliefs are echoed by her father, who cautions her against reaching above her station in life. Wyn agrees to leave behind Philadelphia and move to New York, so that they can be together. They are married in New York and weeks later they go to Philadelphia to let family know about the marriage. The family is overbearing and obnoxious to Kitty, leaving her feeling ostracized and unworthy. She leaves, and eventually divorces Wyn, believing her father to have been right all along. Kitty finds out afterward though that she is pregnant with Wyn's baby. Kitty steels herself and decides to have the baby anyway, bucking conventional wisdom (at the time) about single motherhood. Sadly though the baby is delivered still-born. Meanwhile Wyn marries a rich socialite as his parents insistence, and by chance, Kitty meets his wife and son. This is difficult for her because she still loves Wyn. She observes the life that Wyn is leading but re-connects with Mark Eisen, the young doctor who was in love with her. Eventually Mark proposes and Kitty is finally forced to reevaluate her life and decisions. In the end, Kitty has to choose between money or love, and in so, she is finally able to let Wyn go and be happy.

Kitty Foyle was a huge film for both RKO and Ginger Rogers at the time.It was RKO's highest grossing film of the year and proved Rogers could be a bankable star without Fred Astaire. It also did a lot to change many people's view of Rogers. Because of Kitty Foyle, Rogers diversity made her a valuable commodity. As many of the 1930's biggest stars, like Irene Dunne, Eleanor Powell, Claudette Colbert, and Greta Garbo waned in the 40's, Rogers continued to star in pictures. She seemed to have a knack for picking the right range of roles for her, from musical to comedy, to romance, to drama, and excelled in the industry after many of her contemporaries were left behind.

Kitty Foyle's message at the time was quite forward in it's thinking. Lauding a lead actress at a major studio to star in a film that promoted many principals that at the time were not considered common. Principals like single motherhood and female independence. Rogers though really raised the bar in her role, showing her depth and range and despite some of the elements on the film not holding up as well, particular elements like the belief that a woman can only rise so high, Rogers is stellar in her role. Next to her performance in Top Hat, this is my all time favorite Rogers role and the role that I really credit for helping me break the conventions of the stereotype that I had of her as well. The same stereotype that I envision that she so desperately wanted to prove that she could break. Ginger Rogers was establishing a new role, revealing in female empowerment, and embracing the changing culture of the time. A culture where many of America's women were entering the workplace to man the factories while the country was at war.

The film itself though, is based on Christopher Morley's 1939 novel, Story of an American Girl and it of itself is very different than the screen version. Adapted by famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (one of the Hollywood 10 who would later be blacklisted as Communist sympathizers) he is credited for having glamorized much of the traditionally more risque moments of the book. In the novel, Kitty originally has an abortion instead of a mis-carriage and Trumbo toned downed some of the explicit sexuality within to make it more palatable to the Motion Picture Association's rating system. The book's explicit nature was so profound that Rogers initially turned it down, only changing her mind after reading the screenplay. The film itself ends on a far more upbeat tone then the book, painting a picture for a more hopeful future, giving it a more traditional Hollywood ending. Still, Trumbo's work won him his first Oscar for screenwriting and helped establish himself as one of the pre-eminate writers in film throughout the 1940's, and even throughout the following three decades despite having to write under a pseudonym or use a front to get his work published from the Blacklisting.

Though some of the other performances in the film don't hold up as well as Rogers and many of the ideas and thoughts within may seem dated, in viewing the film as a product of the time you can see what a daring motion picture that it is, despite glamorizing some of the toils of the working woman's oppressive daily grind. As a film it helped to establish Rogers as more than just a dancer and comedienne, it made her a star in her own right. In terms of he greatest actresses of all time, I really think Ginger Rogers is vastly under-rated, trapped in the stereotype of her teaming with Fred Astaire. I firmly believe her to be the most diverse actress of her generation, excelling in all fields and genre's of film. Perhaps matched only in terms of diversity with the great Audrey Hepburn. Still Ginger is one of my favorite stars, if you've never seen the film treat yourself o a very surprising tale along with a very powerful performance from the one and only Ginger Rogers. Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-05-17T17:28:00.000-07:00

Chapter 15

Ally threw herself backwards, away from the horrible claw reaching out towards her. The light was dim inside the stable, though a soft glow still clung to the lantern on the wall behind her enabling her to still see the man who had been her father. He was trying to free himself from a tangle of bodies, having been thrown under her brother and fiancee. He wasn't her father anymore though, not really. His face had become a twisted mess, his mouth distended into a gaping maw of sharp black teeth and even duller black eyes that stared back at her. She crawled back, her hands tearing at the hard packed earth, fingers clawing at the clay floor so hard that her nails peeled and bled. She screamed again, harder, when she saw her brother and fiancee had also begun to move, they too, having turned into the terrifying creature her father had become.

The thing that had been her father shot his hand forward, having freed his torso. His thick claws grabbed at the hem of her muddy dress, finding purchase. Ally screamed even harder, thrashing so fiercely and using her feet to kick back off the earth so hard that that part of her dress and petticoat tore away. She had kicked so hard that she lifted off the ground and when her dress tore, she landed hard on her backside, letting out a soft cry as she landed, shuddering as a wave of pain shot along her spine. Her head still throbbed from the two huge lumps and her stomach felt tender and bruised. Her fingers bled from torn nails and her lip had split again from her last cry, letting her taste her own coppery terror.

Still, fear over ruled her pain and she rolled over, crawling as far away as she could on her hands and knees. She stopped when she reached the wall of the stable and looked around for a weapon, anything she could use. She looked desperately, for anything, running her hands along the wall trying to find anything she could use. Finally she flashed on the lantern and she pulled herself upright on the wall, fighting the wave of vertigo and nausea that came over her. Her fingers closed around the wire handle of the lantern and she pulled it free, her fingers shaking with terror.

She turned around, thrusting the lantern forward, washing the three creatures in the lantern's meager glow. The one that had been her father was just steps away as Ally pushed herself as far against the wall as she could. The other two had also freed themselves and were but steps behind the first. Her father still clutched the torn shreds of her dress, but stretched his mouth wide in a fetid hiss as he closed in. Tears streamed from Ally's face, though she made no sound, her voice choked off by the thick lump in her throat. Suddenly the beast's eye went wide and it jerked forward, lunging at Ally's throat. Instinctively Ally lashed out with her only weapon, bringing the lantern across and smashing it against the side of the monster's face. The lantern exploded, erupting against the beast in flames. The creature reared back, the flames licking at the monster as it let out a weird, strangled sort of cry. It thrashed backwards, flailing against the creatures behind it. The fire licked at the monster almost inhumanly fast, spreading across it and the other two beasts like wildfire.

The oil from the lantern hadn't stopped there though, the fire and oil licking at the dried bits of hay that lay strewn about the stable, catching in small bits until reaching the first bale, from which the whole building caught. In mere seconds, the stable was burning fiercely. Ally swatted herself as small bits of her own clothes smoldered from errant bits of oil and embers, falling to the hard floor. She watched as her father quickly burned, his sallow flesh melting away. Tears, from both her heart and the thick smoke that was forming inside, streamed from her face. Her father had fell against her fiancee and her brother, the flames catching against them as well. They seemed to burn bright and fast, the only sound coming from them a mix of throaty growls and hisses, as even in flames they tried to crawl towards her.

Turning her head away, Ally couldn't look anymore. She feebly crawled away, pulling herself upright once she reached the exit of the stable. Once clear, she stumbled towards the small boathouse that had once tied the raft to the other side of the river. She fell hard by the door but she didn't have the strength to pull herself back up again. Ally Marshall merely turned over, rolling her back against the side of the boathouse, and lay there in the muddy earth. Then she watched the stable burned itself to the ground and burn away the only family she had ever known.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Movie Review: Iron Man 2

2010-05-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Paramount Pictures Iron Man 2 is arguably one of the most anticipated films of the year, attempting to deliver on what was considered one of the best, and most unlikely, comic book box offices success. Needless to say I was eagerly awaiting the release of the picture this weekend and headed out to a very early showing this past Friday. I can honestly say I was not disappointed in the least bit. Iron Man 2's success relies on the powerful performances it gets from nearly every member of the star studded cast and the great direction of the returning Jon Favreau.

Iron Man 2 picks up closely where the first film left off. Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey, JR) is leading Stark Industry and has publicly admitted to being Iron Man, His business has never been stronger but the US Government is increasingly concerned about the thought of a privatized military weapon being in the hands of a public citizen and is desperately trying to get a hold of the Iron Man armor from Stark. Meanwhile in Russia, the son of a former scientist that worked for Tony Stark's Dad, Howard (Mad Men's John Slattery) named Ivan Vanko (played by Mickey Rourke) is angry at the legacy of hurt and embarrassment his family has suffered at the Stark's family's hands. Taking blueprints his father had comprised with Howard Stark in the 60's, Vanko designs an arc reactor like the one that keeps Tony Stark alive. Using that reactor and his own design, he creates an exoskeleton that emits whip like energy projections and vows revenge on Stark for making his father die in shame.

At home, Stark has discovered that the element that powers his arc reactor is slowly poisoning him and if he can't find a viable substitute, he will die. Placing his trusted assistant Pepper Potts (Gwynth Paltrow) in charge of Stark Industry, they head to Monaco along with his new assistant Natalie (Scarlett Johanson). Deciding to relish the short time he has left, he decides to drive his own race car in the Grand Prix until he is confronted by Vanko. After a knockdown drag out fight he manages to stop Vanko and returns home with Pepper, despondent over the information that his technology is in other people's hands and representing a danger to people. Between that and the blood poisoning, Tony starts falling further into drinking and partying. In fact he falls so far that his best friend, Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) steals a suit of armor and battles the out of control Stark.

Vanko is freed from prison by Stark's rival, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and agrees to build an army of drones for Hammer Industries. As Stark is confronted by Col. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and made to confront his demons, Rhodes takes his suit to the military and with the help of Hammer, outfit the suit with a variety of weapons. At the new suit's, dubbed War Machine, unveiling, Hammer shows off both his drones and the War Machine suit, not realizing that Vanko controls them all. Stark is forced to cage his demons and rush to the unveiling to stop Vanko, Hammer, and his best friend, from destroying everything he hold important.

The real key to this films success is the cast. Robert Downey, JR continues to show why he may be the best bit of casting in a super hero movie ever. The center portion of this film is very Tony Stark centric, and in most super hero films that is a kiss of death, people want to see Spider-Man and Batman, not Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne. Yet Downey makes his character so charismatic that even at his self-centered and narcissistic best, he electrifies the screen. Even when Stark bottoms out, you root for Downey's redemption BECAUSE of his ability to make Stark so likable. I also can't say enough about Gynwth Paltrow's under stated performance as Pepper Potts. She and Downey have an un-mistakable caustic chemistry. The romance is very much a throwback to the romances of the 1930's and 1940's, or for a more modern reference, like in Moonlighting. Where beneath the arguing and contempt they have are two people who love each other but just can't admit to it.

The supporting cast is great as well. Rourke as Vanko looks to be having the time of his life in the role, relishing in the over the top nature of his character but finding enough real menace and nuance in his performance to keep the character from being one dimensional. Don Cheadle steps into Terrance Howard's role of James Rhodes well, maybe even bringing a bit more gravitas to the performance. Scarlett Johanson as Natalie Romanov, of the Black Widow (though she is never called that) brings a great quality top the film. Her action sequence towards the end is great, really showing off the fight training she did and hopefully setting her up for a bigger performance in the Avengers movie. I was afraid that she would be more of a throwaway character meant to add some sex appeal for the fans, but I thought she added nicely to the role. Oh and added sex appeal. Even Sam Rockwell has Justin Hammer offers a great foil for Stark. Never having Stark's charm or luck, he manages to make Hammer both light and dark at the same time. Constantly balancing the dark overtones if the character with a comedic element that added the right amount of levity at the right time. My favorite bit of casting was John Slattery of Mad Men playing Howard Stark. Maybe it was a bit of type casting with his easy familiarity with the 60's era look that his scenes were in, but it was inspired.

I can't say enough things about the great casting of this movie, though you have to give director Jon Favreau credit for the job he did. He manages to take a huge sprawling movie and find a great blend of action, drama, and comedy and yet all the while allow his actors to breath and express themselves. Favreau, an actor himself in movies like Swingers, Couples Retreat, and in Iron Man itself as Stark's bodyguard and driver Happy Hogan) is really an actor's director. Understanding the craft of acting with his background, he allows the actors the chance to find themselves in the role, to do several different takes to find just the right one. He turns the process of directing into a collaborative effort and you can really see it in the performances of the actors, especially in Downey's.

The effects of course are spectacular. Like that should even be a question at this point. The script is solid as well, though I did have a few faults with it. The fight scenes between Rourke and Stark are a tad to short for my tastes. When Rhodes and Stark go at it, it builds to a climax, but when Rourke's character is involved I though the battles were a little quick. Provided, the final battle leading up to the confrontation with Rourke is great, I just wish it had given us a bigger payoff. Also much of the script borrowed elements from the seminal Iron Man tale, Demon in a Bottle, which chronicled Tony's descent into alcoholism. While I understand not wanting to do to much drunk Iron Man for fear of audiences thinking that they were ripping off the Will Smith super hero film Hancock, I would have liked to have seen the performance that Downey, a former addict himself, could have given as a bottomed out billionaire.

Don't get me wrong, I think they did a lot of things very well in the script, setting up not only the next Iron Man film, but establishing Stark's place in the wider Marvel universe teasing both the upcoming Captain America film and the next years Thor film. It also practically establishes the beginning of the Avengers movie setting up characters like the Black Widow and Nick Fury's role as the founder of the Avengers. In fact, with only one small exception which I won't mention, I thought most of the cameo stuff was fairly innocuous and un-obtrusive. Truthfully, the script had a nice blend of action and levity and it really allowed the cast to give very great performances.

All in all I thought Iron Man 2 certainly lived up to the hype. While maybe not as polished as the first film, it's certainly as enjoyable and as entertaining. Robert Downey, JR establishes himself as one of the most affable actors to watch on the screen, really capturing the audiences attention. Favreau continues to build on his bankable legacy as a director and is quickly becoming a box office force to be reckoned with. The film has a fabulous cast with great acting and it reminds us that films can still be fun and enjoyable blockbuster affairs without sacrificing story quality. Iron Man is a really good movie that elevated by the cast and crew to a better picture than you conceive because it is so apparent that the crew is having so much fun. You should definitely check out Paramount Pictures Iron Man 2 as it's clearly the front runner for the summer box office. Not because I said so, but because it's truly worth it.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Flash Fiction: Under a Dead Sun: Past Sins

2010-05-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

Chapter 14

Cody stared at the Johnson brothers, his ire growing by the second. Buford Johnson was dead, even he knew that, a belly wound of that nature was fatal. The delay had cost them time and there was no way that they were going to make Desperation before tomorrow afternoon. It was to dark to try to traverse these trails at night, to easy for one of the horses to break an ankle or throw a shoe. Instead, Cody Jarrett seethed, stuck in the middle of nowhere with the one person he couldn't kill, the one person who knew the name of the man who was going to sneak them out of the country, Beau Johnson.

"He ain't got much time left Cody, ....my brother ain't got much time left. I jus' wanna make him comfortable."

A belly wound was a helluva way to die, Jarrett should know, he'd killed plenty of men that way. Your stomach acids bled into your body, very painful. It would be more merciful to just shoot the poor bastard. Cody's hand danced over his Colt, fingertips itching to grab the pearl handled revolver, and splay both of these bastards brains over the rocks. But he needed that damn name. Getting this much money across the border with his face plastered over every wanted poster in the fucking county wasn't going to be easy. Beau had the name of a man who could sneak them across down the Colorado and into Old Mexico. At least until some of the heat wore off him for a little while at. Jarrett had made a lot of enemies in the last few years and with the US Marshall's office on his ass now, it seemed a good idea to lay low for awhile.

Still, even without that name, with this much money at his disposal and his reputation in a town like Desperation, maybe he didn't need the Johnson boys as much as he thought. Sometimes a smile and a bullet could make a greater payment than plain old American currency. Besides, why share this kind of bounty 3 ways when you could keep the whole fucking lump sum for yourself. Jarrett felt that familiar warmth in the pit of his stomach, that euphoria that built whenever he un-sheathed his pistol. Whenever he knew he was about to kill a man. Cody Jarrett smiled and eased the pistol free, hearing that welcoming click as he thumbed the hammer back. Slowly, ever so slowly, he squeezed the trigger, hearing the roar of the gun as he fired two rounds into Buford Johnson's chest. Beau jerked himself back, scrambling backwards like a crab.

"What the FUCK CODY!"

Cody cocked the pistol again and slowly moved it side to side, as if shaking his head no, when Beau went for his gun. He kept it trained on Beau as he lowered himself into a crouch in front of the perspiring Beau.

"Now Beau, I appreciate the love you had for your brother, but I'm afraid I have plumb run out of patience here. I aim to get to Desperation and out of this fucking territory and I aim to do it quick. Now I need you to give me the name of the contact or you'll be joining your brother a might bit faster than you figured."

Beau was flush with fear, though he steadied his voice before he replied.

"That name is the only thing keepin' me alive Jarrett, it's the only chip I got left in this stake. Why the fuck should I give you the one thing you need me for. You're the most wanted man in the territory. You NEED me Jarrett. If you think you can get out of this fucking place without me you are fucking crazy. I'm afraid you're just gonna hafta shoot me you crazy bastard."

"Fair enough Beau."

Cody thundered the last 4 shots in his gun into Beau, his body jerking as the hot lead burst through his chest. He picked himself up from the crouch and wandered back to the small fire they had set up. He calmly reloaded his pistols, ejecting the spent shells onto the dusty ground. Grabbing his canteen and some trail rations, he settled down, resting his head on his saddle to eat and grab a few hours sleep. He glanced at the Johnson Brothers and smiled, already feeling more confident in his choice. He tossed back a long pull of the canteen and started rolling a cigarette, it would be dawn soon enough and he had plenty of trail to cross.

End of Line.
Gerrad!

Word Balloon: Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle

2010-05-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

May is most certainly Iron Man month, with the big sequel to the film rolling out in just 1 day (as of writing this). As I did with Watchmen and Wolverine last year and Kick Ass this year, I thought I would continue the trend and turn a spotlight on Marvel Comic's Iron Man in this column.

Since the success of the first film, I think the origin of Iron Man is pretty well ingrained into people. Billionaire weapons manufacturer Anthony Stark is captured by terrorists and forced to make them a bomb. Dying as a piece of shrapnel is inching towards his heart, he creates a power source and constructs a suit of armor to protect him and allow him to escape. Traumatized over the destructive powers of the weapons he has built, he vows to use the armor to protect the world, though he is still a victim of his own narcissism and billionaire playboy ways.

Despite Iron Man's longevity and character appeal, he has really been one of Marvel's B characters for most of his publishing career. Iron Man has never had the great creative teams nor Marvel's dynamic artists on board and seminal Iron man stories are few and far between in the characters nearly 50 year existence. Up until Marvel's Avenger push the last few years, which has seen the character quality and impact improved greatly, Iron Man has really only had one creative defining story arc by arguably his one and only great creative team. That story is the seminal "Demon in a Bottle" arc collecting Iron man Volume 1 #120 to #128 by writers David Michelinie and Bob Layton, with art by John Romita, Jr. Carmine Infantino and Bob Layton himself.

Michelinie and Layton had been tasked to fill in the next arc on the series and they were teamed with John Romita, Jr, son of Marvel legend John Romita who was one of the longest tenured artists on Spider Man. This marked Romita's first monthly penciling assignment and he was teams with Layton and Michelinie, who were already established at Marvel. The writers both stated they never set out to write a relevant story, they simply looked at the kind of life a person like Tony Stark would live. Rich, famous, and dealing with the stresses of running a multi-national corporation, partying, and the strains of being Iron Man, they figured that Stark would have problems outside of the usual villain of the week. In fact, they looked at alcoholism as the villain of the week for this arc. The fact that this story IS so identifiable with Iron Man, and the fact that the legacy of this storyline is still a resonate factor in Iron Man almost 30 years later, though, is relevant.

Demon in a Bottle is really about Tony Stark hitting rock bottom. After a battle with the Roxxon Corporation, the Iron Man armor begins to malfunction on Stark and he crashes. After running a series of tests and finding no problems, he visits a Casino with his then girlfriend, Bethany Cabe, but it is attacked y a group of villains, including Whiplash. He dons the armor again and defeats the villains with some help from Bethany, but overhears one of the goons saying that "Hammer" wants Stark alive. After the battle, Iron Man appears at an event to meet a foreign ambassador, but his suit again malfunctions and he kills the dignitary with a repulsor blast. Forced to turn over the Iron Man armor to the authorities, Stark slips deeper into drinking.

Heavily drinking and despondent, Stark convinces his friend Scott Lang (the Ant-Man) to sneak into prison and get information from Whiplash on Hammer's involvement. Discovering that it's his business rival, Justin Hammer, he and James Rhodes (his friend and eventually War Machine) fly to Monaco to confront him, only to be captured. Hammer explains that he has seized control of the armor to ruin Stark's reputation and to get his company back on top. Eventually Stark escapes but Hammer sends a group of super villains after him. Tony manages to regain control of his Iron Man armor and defeat the villains, though when chasing after the fleeing Justin Hammer, Stark crashes and significantly damages the island the complex was on, sinking it and destroying it.

Tony returns home and continues to binge drink, alienating his friends and co-workers, prompting his butler Jarvis to quit and to descend so deep into alcohol that his own girlfriend relates a story about the loss of her first husband to drugs. Stark relents and vows to get treatment, both to save his relationship and to save his company, which is now in the grips of a corporate take over.

This story arc is considered one of the 1970's greatest tales and still generally holds up very well, really only lagging at the ending, where Tony cures his alcoholism in the final issue of the arc. Being the 1970's though, they didn't really craft stories in a long term fashion like that, though its tales like Demon in a Bottle and the stuff that Chris Claremont was doing on the relaunched X-Men title that were changing that. Stores were being crafted with long term plot developments in mind, where a single issue or storyline would have repercussions months, or even years after the initial arc had finished. Michelinie and Layton were at the forefront of creating a new way for comics to be read and probably do not get as much credit as they should have. This is a comic that really tried to inject realism and tell a story where the hero, for the most part, is flawed and un-flattering. For the first time in Iron Man's long history, the reader was engaged in Iron Man's life and world, telling a tale we all know well, that of the rise and fall of a hero, but crafting it in such a way that Iron Man for the first time, was truly human.

This was John Romita JR's first monthly gig and as such some of the learning curves really show. Still even in this raw form you can see his real strength really start to shine through, his storytelling skills. He injects a sense of realism and tragedy in the pages that help to accentuate the story. Today his storytelling skills are his strength, really crafting the pages in such a way to tell the story in a way that needs no words. This is relevant even 30 years ago in his work on Demon in a Bottle. I think he is also helped amiably by writer Bob Layton's inks over his pencils. Layton was an established inker and used his knowledge and craft to help fine tune some of the rough edges of Romita's art. Even the fill in issue by industry legend Carmine Infantino, one of the most renowned "workhorse artists" of the 1950's and early 60's. Infantino had created the Silver Age Flash and even helmed DC Comics in the early 70's before returning to freelance penciling in the late 70's. His fill in issue of Iron Man I always thought was a great bridge, bringing the old guard of comics to the new talent, and ultimately the new way in which comics were published.

As you enjoy the second Iron Man film you will see several instances where they reference Demon in a Bottle, though they are never a slave to the story. They incorporate elements of the tale to tell their own modern version of the story. Where alcoholism is simply a symptom and not the villain. Still, a nearly 30 year old tale STILL maintains its relevance to Iron Man. It retains it for a reason, it's that good. While the film create sits own mythology, its fun to look back and see the basis of these myths and to pay homage to the material and the creators that make these movies possible today.

Iron Man was a character that never really got his due in Marvel. Up until right before the successful launch of the Iron Man film, he was simply one of Marvel's characters. It's great to see Iron Man really regaining his place as one of Marvel's top tier superheroes. For my money, you can't go wrong starting with the Demon in a Bottle trade and there is never a better time than now to check the book out. It may even lead you towards some of the really good stories being told today about Iron Man by authors like Warren Ellis and Matt Fraction, all of whom look to Demon in a Bottle as the turning point for Iron Man. Check it out.

End of Line.
Gerrad!