Category: WWdN in Exile

I’m working like crazy on actual fiction writing, so my time and motivation for posting in my blog is a bit lacking, as I immerse myself in a dystopian future Los Angeles which is hopefully unique from all the other dystopian future Los Angeles (Los Angelesses? Los Angeli?) that we’re all familiar with.

However, I’m taking a break from all that to point you, dear reader, to this adorable adaptation of Blue Light Special that I helped write for a comic called Blogjam.

I quite enjoy it, and the archives are absolutely worth digging through; there’s some very funny stuff in there. Best of all, regular people like you and me can submit stories from our totally awesome lives in the hopes that they’ll be adapted into future strips.

Plaid Stallions is one of my favorite stops on the Internets for Gen X nostalgia. While Propelling this morning, I came across their scans of Kenner’s 1978 Star Wars toy catalog.

If you’ve read The Trade from Just a Geek and wondered just how awesome my Death Star play set was, take a look at Plaid Stallions’ Death Star play set page.

Once you’ve fully appreciated how awesome and magnificent the Death Star play set is, scroll to the bottom of the vehicle page and take a look at the Landspeeder.

Then, if you will, join me in sending a nasty curse word back in time to the little bastard who convinced eight year-old me that it it was an equitable trade.

I don’t do a lot of interviews, but for reasons that are best left a mystery, I’ve done a whole bunch recently.

One of those interviews was with a podcast called This Week in Geek. My episode is now up, so if you wanted to listen to me talk about geeky shit and don’t want to wait for a new Radio Free Burrito, your long painful wait has come to an end.

Hey, when you’re done, check out the Radio Free Burrito Mix Tape. My iPod thought I should hear it recently, and it totally doesn’t suck.

I came to Soul Coughing at almost the same time I came to Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Underworld, and jazz that went beyond Kind of Blue.

See, this is why the loss of Tower Records is going to seriously hurt a generation of young artists, because it was in a Tower Records that I found all of these things. Sure, it’s great to have the convenience of buying and instantly downloading records and stuff, but the damn kids today who will grow up without ever setting foot in a record store or talking to a hardcore music geek who works there just don’t know what they’re missing.

And they’re missing a lot.

It was one of the most inspiring and eye-opening times of my life, and whenever I listen to Ruby Vroom (which I’m doing right now) I’m reminded of that time. I can feel it in my brain and in my bones. I remember staying out all night with my friend Dave just because we could, not really doing anything more than listening to music and being "artists" — whatever that meant.

We had no real responsibility other than getting home alive, and it was when I really started writing. I filled up tons of thick spiral-bound notebooks with my efforts to figure out who and why I was. When I read them now, they just make me sad.

It was a great time. I miss it sometimes. Okay, I miss it often.

I miss it right now.