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Showing posts from 2021

My New Book "They Came From Fort Blue Hill" Is Now Available!

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  Back in late-2019, I had a germ of an idea and decided to just sit down and start writing it. I developed a character I really enjoyed; a down-on-his-luck, small-town reporter named Wes McGavin. I wanted to write a book that people who hate reading books would enjoy. A book that just wanted to be funny and entertaining, but still contained a structurally-sound story. The idea was that Wes thinks of himself as an intrepid reporter, but in reality is a slacker, who was looking for a way to quickly rise through the ranks of journalism and get out of his hometown. The story he lands on is that aliens are being kept at a military base north of town, and he teams up with a disgraced conspiracy theorist to uncover the truth and save both of their careers. I wrote about thirty pages before finding myself in a corner and putting the manuscript aside. If I remember correctly, I picked it up sporadically through the spring of 2020 because, I mean, if you remember that particular stretch of time

The Most Threatening Car In The World May Shock You... Or Not, I Don't Know

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The great thing about going on walks is that it gives you time to think. Sometimes I contemplate the meaning of life, other times I think about how fortunate I am to be alive and taking in the beauty of nature, but more often than not I think about how I should get Chick-Fil-A tomorrow. But one thing that is always on my mind while on a walk is not getting hit by a car. Sometimes my mind wanders to how Stephen King got hit by a car one time and that maybe if it happened to me it'd help me sell a bunch of books, but he didn't sell a bunch of books because he got hit by a car, he sold a bunch of books because he's Stephen King, and just so happened to get hit by a car. Recently I was thinking about cars that look threatening, essentially thinking about whether or not I could profile cars that would be most likely to hit me. I found I really couldn't, so I started thinking about cars that are most threatening in general. Think of the oil tanker from the Stephen Spielberg T

A Very Christmas Christmas: My Annual Hallmark Movie Treatment

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It's no secret that Hallmark movies are objectively trash. There's nothing particularly interesting about them and any form of "stakes" are as hard to find in them as a lead actress who didn't star in a late-80s/early-90s sitcom. That's why for the past few years I've written treatments for movies I thought would be perfect when it comes to placating the rubes who eat up Hallmark's holiday offerings. Who could forget the heartwarming tale of a woman overcoming her husband's death by autoerotic asphyxiation,  A Conundrum For Christmas ? Or the Christmas/Hannukah mashup we all needed, The Christmas Dreidle ? How could I top those? Well, it won't be easy, but perhaps with this... *** A Very Christmas Christmas By Matt Reigle Warren Christmas (played by me) and Jeanine Christmas (Kate Beckinsale) live on a quiet cul-de-sac in the town of Humbugsville, Maryland. Everyone in Humbugsville hates Christmas, and the townspeople  even banned celebrating b

I Spent My Weekend Figuring Out Why Jack The Ripper Stopped Killing; How'd you Spend Yours?

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The identity of Jack The Ripper is one of history's great mysteries. A monster who stalked and viciously killed women in London's Whitechapel district taking six victims in the late 1880s then managed to elude capture. It's a case that will likely remain unsolved entirely, but I think I may have cracked another important aspect of the case: why did he*  stop killing. *(I say he, but there are some pretty compelling arguments into the crimes having been committed by a woman posing as a nurse, The key to that argument is she could have posed as a mid-wife which would have allowed her to walk around Victorian England in bloody clothes without raising suspicion.) Jack The Ripper wrote a series of letters to Scotland Yard in which he taunted authorities. I was reading a book that featured one of the letters — the famous "From Hell" letter, the killer's final letter — when something hit me. Here, read it for yourself: From hell. Mr Lusk, Sor I send you half the Kidn

Snowflakes: The Biggest Lie Ever Told To The Public... Except For All Those Other Ones

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I hate lying... except when I do it, in which case it's fine and I understand its value. The difference is when I lie it's usually about small, inconsequential things like telling someone their hat makes them look cool when it doesn't or telling my neighbor that the kid who lives down the street smashed their mailbox with a bat when in reality it was me. Those are little lies designed to make my life easier, not massive widespread deceptions intended to mislead the public. That brings us to snowflakes. If you think back to your earliest school days, one of the first useless facts you ever learned — long before calculus or the preamble to The Constitution — you were told that no two snowflakes are the same. You sat on the floor in wide-eyed wonder at such an incredible piece of information and would go on to regurgitate for years to come. I remember this piece of information was backed up by the story of Wilson Bentley , who in 1885 at the age of 19 began photographing snow

A Rankin/Bass "Classic": The Wonderfully Weird "Mad Monster Party

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Nothing feels like a warm, creepy, claymation-y hug quite like a Rankin/Bass holiday special. Even if you're not familiar with the name Rankin/Bass, you'll no doubt be familiar with their filmography which boasts classics like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, The Year Without A Santa Claus, and  The Little Drummer Boy. The company is synonymous with Christmas, but they have a little-known gem to their catalog for the Halloween season:  Mad Monster Party. Released in 1967,  Mad Monster Party ( sometimes inexplicably written as Mad Monster Party? with a seemingly superfluous question mark)   tells the story of Baron Boris Von Frankenstein summoning all the monsters to his Isle of Evil (which oddly enough is in the Caribbean) to tell them about a major discovery he has made and inform them that he will be retiring from his position as the head of the Worldwide Organization of Monster. In attendance are Frankenstein's Monster (who is sometimes refe

G-g-ghost B-b-blog: Why Aren't There Any New Ghosts?

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Ever since I was a young kid I've loved watching ghost documentaries. I find them fascinating and always held out hope that someday we'd be able to scrounge up some proof as to whether or not there is life after death. However, thanks to a recent revelation, I've finally accepted the fact that the whole ghost thing isn't real. It all comes down to one simple question: Why aren't there any new ghosts? Every ghost documentary I've ever seen follows the same formula. There's an old building (almost always a hotel or bed & breakfast for some reason) in which some Civil War soldier clomps through the hallways with his ghost boots. But therein lies the problem; It's almost always a Civil War soldier or anyone else who happened to live in the 1860s or within 80 years or so in either direction.  In addition to Civil War specters, you also hear about Revolutionary War soldier ghosts, Turn-Of-The-Century Prospector ghosts, woman who is sad because her fiance d

Pool Rules: The Most Ignored Set of Rules On Earth

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We are inundated with rules everywhere we look. We have "laws," which are rules that apply to everyone and keep you from doing fun things like speeding or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. We also have social rules that dictate when to bring a gift to a party and why you shouldn't call someone's new baby ugly no matter how true it may be. While most rules are followed, there's no set of rules ignored — even scoffed at — like pool rules. Swimming pools are like the Wild West. Yeah, there are rules, and even people to enforce them, but those people are a lot like a Dodge City Sheriff — easily paid off and usually too busy talking to floozies to notice anyone running afoul of pool law. Upon arrival at any pool, there's always a big metal sign that screams "POOL RULES" at you with a laundry list of do's and do not do's that are trying to harsh your pool mellow. Fortunately, as divided we are as a nation when it comes to anything else

Allow Me To Ruin Hot Air Balloons For You

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If you find yourself awake at some ungodly hour you may spot some colorful blob floating above the horizon without a care in the world. Hot air balloons are seen as relaxing and even romantic by some. I think those giant, colorful nylon sacks are terrifying. First, archaic technology freaks me out. There's a reason we progressed from a technological standpoint. We wanted to make things faster, more efficient, and less likely to be deadly. Hot air balloons are seen as a novelty, much the same way horse and buggies are. If you want to get anywhere on time, use a car. Horse and buggies are only used by anyone who isn't Amish so they can kill an afternoon and post the pictures on Instagram. Look how much fun we had in Lancaster. We held up traffic all afternoon, it was great! There's no practical reason to go for a hot air balloon ride. They're not faster than planes; they're not even faster than zeppelins for God's sake! They're only useful if you find yourself

In A Shock Move, Bobby Flay Leaves Food Network; Nation Devastated

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On Friday morning, we all woke up to shocking news, Food Network stalwart and the most competitive man to ever stand behind a grill, Bobby Flay, was leaving the network after 27 delicious years. If you look at the Food Network roster like a hockey team, Guy Fieri is the flashy goal-scorer, Giada De Laurentiis is the goalie who says certain words in weird ways, and Bobby Flay is the enforcer. Enforcers are competitive by nature and no one in the world of food (save for competitive eating legend Joey Chestnut) is more competitive than Bobby Flay. There's something inherently fun to me about food-based aggression. Not necessarily a school lunchroom food fight, but adults running around a kitchen "stadium" yelling obscenities because their ice cream machine isn't working fast enough is hilarious. Over the years he appeared on Iron Chef, Iron Chef: America, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Beat Bobby Flay . And those are just the ones I could think of. What do they all have

Squid Game Is One Of The Best Shows I've Seen In Years; Please Don't Ruin That For Me

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By now, you've at least heard of Squid Game, the new Netflix series from South Korean writer Hwang Dong-hyuk. If you haven't congratulations on not being tethered to the internet 24/7.  It tells the story of 456 people who have been selected to play children's games for money, the only catch is if they lose a game, they're shot immediately. I don't want to get into spoilers because people on the internet are incapable of handling that, and I don't want to overanalyze the show because that — much like many of the characters on the show — has been done to death. I think we should just enjoy the show, and leave it at that. Let's not run it into the ground like we have so many other things. Listen, just because I like a show doesn't mean that I want to be inundated with it until I have no choice but to hate it. Since we're approaching Halloween and  Squid Game is the most popular anything at the moment, there is already a rush on getting magenta coverall

Let's Leave Gardening To The Professionals

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In the history of mankind, there are some huge milestones, like the invention of the printing press and the time one monkey clubbed another to death with a bone. Also, agriculture was a big deal. If it weren't for agriculture, I wouldn't be typing this on an Apple computer. That isn't to say we wouldn't have ever gotten computers, there just wouldn't be a company called "Apple" because the only people who would know what an apple is are the ones who found one in the woods. Growing our own food is key to our survival and keeping our society from collapsing, but please, let's leave it to the professionals because gardening is a dumb hobby. Anytime I hear someone talk about how they're going to start a vegetable garden I laugh because they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. Their first garden will be their last. Usually, people start a garden because they think it saves money. Maybe at first it does, because all you need to get sta

A Smorgasbord of Restaurant Takes

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Going to a restaurant is one of those experiences that most of us are very familiar with. We know what going to one is like and we know which aspects of it we enjoy and which ones we don't. I've got a lot of feelings about this topic and seeing as this is my blog, we're going to talk about a few of them. Restaurants where the servers give you a hard time are dumb Everyone is familiar with a place like this; restaurants that are perhaps less known for the quality of their food than they are for the intentional lack of quality when it comes to customer service. People (read: rubes) flock to these places to be treated like shit by the waitstaff. Apparently, some people find this funny, but what I don't understand is that if you were treated by the staff at Chili's the same way they treat customers at Chicago's famed Wiener's Circle  you'd be appalled. What's the difference? One place told you in advance so there was time to mentally prepare, otherwise,

My Treatment For ALF: The Reboot

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What’s the first thing you think about in the morning? Do you go through the list of things you have to do that day? Do you think, “man, I really have to take a leak?” Maybe you're like me and the first thing that pops into your head is “I still can’t believe no one has rebooted ALF yet!” ALF was a sitcom in the late eighties about an alien from the planet Melmac named Alf (which was an acronym for “Alien Life Form”) who lived with a suburban family and was always causing good-natured trouble and trying to eat the family’s cat. It’s the kind of show that seems like a prime target for television network suits to warm over for a new generation of boob tubers. We live in the golden age of lazy TV and film reboots and remakes. Why come up with anything fresh and new if the public will still throw sacks of money at a new Star Wars or Marvel movie? If a show from the 70s or 80s was remotely popular, then why not make it a screwball buddy comedy? Nothing is safe. Even The Three Stooges w

A New Season Of Tiger King Is On The Way, Long After Anyone Cared About Tiger King

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Looking back on the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have one shared memory. It's not of gathering supplies or the fear that came from the pandemic swallowing the earth. No; the one thing we all remember is watching a Netflix documentary series about a merry band of cat-loving lunatics called Tiger King. Tiger King told the story of zoo owner joe Exotic and the trouble he found himself in for allegedly trying to hire someone to kill the Grand Pooba of Crazy Cat Ladies, Carole Baskin, who is herself alleged by some to have killed her late husband. It was a wildly entertaining documentary series, that was the biggest thing in the world in late-March/early April of 2020. Then, like anything that starts out fun, it was run into the ground. Endless news stories and pontificating talking-heads inundated our TVs, think pieces (like this one. whoops) filled our social media feeds, and then came the death knell: the parody songs that became huge on TikTok. By the Summer of

Hey, Folks: Silence On Elevators Is Fine

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Elevators are a part of our everyday life. So much so that I sometimes just wind up in the elevator without even realizing it. I'm just walking around and a minute later I'm several floors higher. That's wild because 130 years ago it was a contraption (anything new was a "contraption" back then) that awed and terrified the masses. Now, the scariest thing about elevators is getting stuck in a confining space with a stranger. The second I see someone down the hallway I start mashing that "door close" button like I'm playing Street Fighter. I hate sharing elevators with people I don't know. I'm not scared of catching an infectious disease or getting curb-stomped to death a la Drive .  I just don't want to talk. For some reason, I spent my entire childhood being lectured about the dangers of talking to strangers. I wasn't even supposed to let them give me candy or help them find their lost puppy! Now, as an adult, if I don't talk to a

The Non-Political Reasons I'm Not A Fan Of Hobby Lobby

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Hobby Lobby winds up in the news way more than a craft store ever should, which is never. I get that people disagree with the ownership's conservative political views and that's what usually gets them into the news cycle. That's not what bugs me. There are plenty of other reasons I don't like the place. For starters, I hate the name because it makes no sense. They went with Hobby Lobby because it rhymes. It's not a corridor or hall connected with a larger room or series of rooms and used as a passageway or waiting room, and it's definitely not a group of persons engaged in lobbying especially as representatives of a particular interest group. It's a craft store! I also don't like that boring ass Helvetica font sign of theirs. It's just so lazy from a creative point-of-view, and shouldn't creativity be a craft store's strong suit?  But the latest reason I'm not a Hobby Lobby fan is the revelation that they have enough bread coming through

A Million Dollar Idea: Warden Matt's Good Time Premium Prison Wine

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Every now and then I do a blog about a new business idea I've come up with and sometimes I second guess the thought of sharing it. Why give a million-dollar idea away to you, the unwashed masses, for free? That'd be foolish of me. But here it is anyway. A couple years ago I got hooked on the Netflix series Jailbirds   and recently saw that a new season of the show will soon be released. If you're unfamiliar, the show follows the daily lives of those in prison. Simple enough, right? What I remember the most about the first season of the show was that prison inmates have discovered uses for toilets that those of us on the outside could have never dreamed of. I only knew of two uses, but they were using their commodes as a makeshift communication system more reliable than AT&T's network. They also passed notes and even food (gross) through the toilets. The other thing I remember is how to make prison wine. This is where my new business idea comes from. You see, in pris

I'd Like To Welcome "Eccentric Fire Extinguishers" To The List Of Things I Hate

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Some of the most fascinating people in history have been what many would consider "eccentric." Rocket scientist and ceremonial magician Jack Parsons; billionaire and bottler of his own urine Howard Hughes; and singer, TV shooter, and man who thought he could move clouds with his mind Elvis Presley are just a few of my favorite  true eccentrics. But, conversely, some of the worst people in the world are those who go out of their way to convince people that they're eccentric when they aren't.  Do you know what kind of people don't need to convince others they're eccentric? The eccentric. The worst example of a product that people can buy to promote their faux-eccentricity I've ever seen slapped me in the face the other day when I came across this ad: Eccentric fire extinguishers: because the purpose of a fire extinguisher is to show off your extinguisher is to show how lovably kooky you are, not to, y'know, extinguish fires. Here are a few of the differe

The Celebrity Fast-Food Meals Are Becoming A Scourge... Unless They Want To Give Me One

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What do J. Balvin, Travis Scott, and Korean pop sensations BTS have in common (aside from me not having any clue who they were before typing their names just now)? All of them have been bestowed the high honor of a McDonald's signature meal. Forget being knighted by the Queen;  this is a real honor, and you don't have to let some geriatric monarch hold a sword inches from your jugular to get it. McDonald's seems to have started a trend and now Burger King, the fast-food equivalent of the kid who always copies your homework, has started offering their own celebrity meals . While these meals are meant to be nothing but a harmless publicity stunt, I submit for your approval that they reveal an underlying truth about the public at large: that fast-food corporations (correctly) think we're all total morons. Let's first take a look at McD's J. Balvin meal. What the hell is a J. Balvin? I'm not sure either so let's learn together. Per Wikipedia:  José Álvaro Os

DVDs, BluRays, Streaming, Then What?: A Question That Fascinates Me (For Some Reason)

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Aside from bullet trains, supersonic aircraft, sound, and light; is there anything that moves faster than technology? Probably; but it still moves pretty fast. In the brief period that humans have inhabited the floating, spinning rock we call Earth, technology has progressed from stone tools being the cutting edge of technology, to launching civilians into space because Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were bored. That's amazing. One of my favorite areas of technological advancement is when it comes to ways that media is delivered to the masses. Centuries ago, Guttenberg told the world to hold his beer and blew everyone's mind to pieces with the printing press. A contraption that seems archaic by today's standards but nonetheless changed the trajectory of human history and made books cheaper to produce and accessible to the masses. Then nothing worth noting happened for a long, long time until that raging douchebag Thomas Edison whipped up a wax cylinder. Now music could be capture