Today, I have an honest-to-goodness meeting about a Television show!
Some guys at VH-1 are doing a new show called “Totally Obsessed,” and they called me about hosting it. I guess the people behind “Behind The Music” are behind this one, so I’m sure it’ll be a good show. Hosting stuff is a lot of fun for me, because I get to goof off, and make jokes and stuff. Whenever I watch a show, I’m constatnly saying to myself, “What would I do here? As an audience member, what do I want them to do?” so when I get a chance (like today) to be that host guy, I know where to go.
Hey, last night I had dreams. This is a big deal, because I haven’t been able to remember a dream for MONTHS. I can’t recall any of them right now . . . of course . . . because I didn’t take my notebook to the bedroom with me last night. But I know I had them, and that’s a good start. I miss the nights when I’d have lots of vivid dreams. There was a time, a couple of years ago, when I would dream these incedibly lucid dreams almost nightly. It was like living another life when I was asleep. That was cool. I miss that.
After my VH-1 meeting, I have another meeting with a writer. He wrote a really fantastic script, and wants to attach me to the project. I’m meeting with him to give him a letter of intent that he can take to investors, and talk about some things I think can be better in the script. If everything goes according to plan, I may actually be working on a movie next year.
Tonight, I’m reading from, and signing Dancing Barefoot at the October meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Admission is FREE. Directions are here. LASFS is the organization behind LOSCON, where I’ll be speaking on a few panels next month.
Monolith Press is going to stop direct sales of Dancing Barefoot pretty soon, including autographed copies. So if you’re interested in grabbing one, it’s probably a good idea to get it sooner than later.
Speaking of Dancing Barefoot, I went to *my* local comic shop, the one where they pull books for me and everything (anyone else read “Fables”? I freakin’ love that book), and I saw my book right on the shelf next to Death. It gave me quite a thrill to see that. When I paid for my books, the guy told me, “My wife read your book, and loved it. She wants to know when the other one is coming out!”
“As soon as I can finish it,” I told him. “I’m hung up on Chapter 10 right now . . . not that that means anything to you.”
“Well, I read your Vegas story, and I loved it, so now I’m going to read the whole thing. We’ll carry your other book when it’s ready, too,” he said.
Some other guys who work there sort of drifted over, and I got the impression that most of them had read my book, and liked it. L walked out of there feeling pretty good.
I have this idea for a movie: You know how Clerks was about . . . well . . . clerks? What about a film about a comic shop, and all the interesting characters that hang out there? Like the guy who doesn’t work there, but is always there, reading books that he never buys while he sits at the counter? I think it’d be great to explore the relationships between the owner, who probably loved comics at one time, but now really runs the place like a business to support his family, and the guys who work for him, who remind him of the person he used to be. The “spine” of the story could be about a big artist who’s coming to do a signing.
HEY! Don’t steal my idea, fuckers!
Okay. Thanks.
We just found out that Anne’s Grandmother is really sick, so we’re leaving first thing in the morning to drive up to Oregon for the weekend. This means AudioBlogs, and MoBlogs, if you’re interested. Where’d that cool camera phone come from? Funny you should ask. The whole story gets its own post in a few days. 🙂
Finally, I need to thank everyone who wrote in with support, encouragement, and all that stuff about my recent frustrations. I feel guilty and weird, because I’m not *looking* for anything like that, but I’ll admit that a little encouragement goes a long way with me. So thank you. I mean that.

It’s an opressively hot October afternoon. I have the worst writer’s block of my life. I can write a few words together, I can create one or two images, but I can’t connect them. I want to tell the story of the young girl who sees the carnival come to her small town, the girl who is just 18, and aware of her power over men, the girl who tries to use this power on a young ride operator so she can escape her small town. The girl who has her power turned back on her and ends the story crying in an empty field surrounded by torn tickets and cigarette butts.
I want to tell the story of the powerless man who watches his wife cry herself to sleep at night. The man who can’t provide for his family, the man who can’t protect them from the Bogeyman. The man who wanders his empty house at night, looking for the joy he knows once lived there. The man who waits for exhaustion to claim him in the deep of night, and give him a brief reprieve from his sadness.
The stories sit cross a river of doubt and frustration, and the ferryman demands a payment I don’t have. I decide to walk down the shore, in search of a bridge.
I find myself in Old Town Pasadena, in front of Hooters, where this whole journey began. Maybe my muse is inside.
I walk in and find the place filled with middle-aged businessmen who drink beer and leer at the young waitresses over fish sandwiches. A young girl with hair so bleached it looks like straw says, “Welcome to Hooters!”
“Can I get food at the bar?” I ask.
“Of course!”
“Thanks,” I say, and take a seat.
The waitress working the bar appears to be about the same age as me, in stark contrast to the other girls who look like they’re all in their early 20s. There are heavy bags beneath her tired and sad eyes.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
“A Guinness and a cheeseburger,” I say.
She turns, and pours me a pint. It’s still settling when she puts it in front of me.
“Not many people drink Guinness in the middle of the day,” she says.
“Is that a fact?” I say. In my mind I’m Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, and I’m in a 1920s Hollywood speakeasy.
“It is,” she says, “I think this is the only pint I’ve poured all day.
“Well, I don’t like to drink beer I can see through,” I say, as I lift the now-settled glass to my lips.
Her laugh doesn’t make it to her eyes, but it’s still friendly. I find a kindred spirit in her sadness. We’re both in a place we didn’t expect to be. I bet I’m the first guy she’s waited on all day who hasn’t stared at her skimpy outfit while talking to her.
“Hey, honey, can we get another pitcher of Bud over here?” calls a guy in a George Zimmer signature suit at the corner of the bar. His tie is loose and he bounces his leg on the rail. It shakes under my foot. I don’t like that at all.
I look around the restaurant. I’ve never seen it this full during the day. John Fogerty tells me that there’s a bad moon on the rise.
“Sure,” she says, and walks down to the taps.
Two young girls turn heads as they walk in and sit at a table behind me. “Oh my god! Your eyebrows look so great!” the tall one says.
“Don’t they? I totally had them tattoo’d on,” she says.
I tune them out and count the rings down my glass: one . . . two . . . three.
Four.
I look down the bar and see Men’s Wearhouse and his business partners putting their best midlife crisis moves on the waitress — my waitress. Brown Suit stares at her chest while Blue Suit flashes a capped smile at her. She giggles and fusses with her hair, and fills their glasses.
“Hurry back!” Brown Suit says, as she walks back up the bar.
Five. I stare at the top of my beer. It looks like clouds over a black sky.
“So what do you do?” she asks.
” . . . I guess I’m a writer.”
“You guess you are, or you are?”
“I am. I’m blocked today.”
“By what?”
“The Bogeyman.”
“What’s that?”
“A convenient literary metaphor.”
“You are a writer.”
I laugh. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Have you written anything I’ve read?” she asks. A loaded question.
“Probably not,” I say, “I wrote one, and the people who read it seem to like it, and I’m working on another one.”
“But you’re blocked today,” she says.
“Yeah. This place is sort of involved in my career choice, so I thought I’d come here and try to break the block.”
“How’s that working out for you?” she asks. A flicker of mirth passes her eyes.
“Well, at the very least, I’ll get a Guinness out of the deal.”

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but I can’t write. I’ve started and stopped so many times this morning, I lost count.
I want to write. I need to write, but I can’t get my words to work. I’ve grown so frustrated, I want to scream.
I mean, it took me several minutes just to write that, for fuck’s sake.

Major updates to my Gallery, including some new Vegas images.
But I’m most excited to share the first few shots from our road trip to Tulsa this summer. Right now, I have Eastbound California, Eastbound Arizona and Eastbound New Mexico completed. I hope to have the remaining Eastbound galleries completed by the end of the week.
UPDATE: The direct links to the roadtrip and vegas aren’t resolving correctly. Thanks go to Tim, who pointed out it was the trailing slash in the URL that made it resolve incorrectly.
I asked some nija monkeys to beat up the server until they *do* work. In the mean time, you can still see the new pics by following the links on the main gallery page. Sorry ’bout that.
Here is a funny Fark Photoshop featuring yours truly to make the pain go away.

I just read that bOING bOING dot nET hit their 10,000th link today.
Congrats to, Cory, Xeni, and everyone else who makes bOING bOING teh rock.