And You Touch The Distant Beaches With Tales Of Brave Ulysses

I didn't know I had been gone this long without blogging until a loyal reader emailed me and asked where I was, and up to that moment I didn't realize that people were that hard up for fresh content on the internet.

A lot has happened to keep me away from here, good and bad.  We had the longest, most terrible winter I can remember since those Ice Age late 70s winters, only this was worse because I was the one responsible for the shoveling, and the frozen pipes, and the hot water heater and furnace both quitting, and on and on and on.

Why I bothered to make fake snow, I'm not sure.

It got so bad, I started making hooch again.

But some really good things happened, like my grandson was born on January 1, 2014, the first baby born at Cincinnati Mercy hospital in the New Year, and instantly became the cutest baby on the interwebs.

 

And then there was another special delivery:  Haunted House on Sorority Row.  My screenplay got made into a movie got made into a tee shirt.

Close readers of the blog will note that the time from when I became re-acquainted with director Henrique Couto at a local film festival to when this movie was actually screened was very short indeed.  Close to nine months, ironically enough.  I got to go to the premiere in Dayton, Ohio, this winter and sort of felt like the chaperone at a Juvenile Detention Prom.  But the movie played like gangbusters at both screenings and I'm very happy with how it came out.  I would post a photo, but they were all confiscated by Homeland Security.

Another movie, Meateaters, from my old friend Mark Polonia, came out at very close to the same time, almost a twin as it were (grandbaby theme still in full effect).  It is currently available on Full Moon Streaming and garnering some buzz for its whacked-out dino-noir sensibilities.  I'm also quite happy with my screenplay for this one and hope it sees wider release.

That's all the news fit to print, more or less, and I will try to be more diligent as I have a few more projects in the hopper; a project that is on ultra secret down low lockdown is in post production, but I can blab all I want about Doctor Zombie, a throwback horror film I wrote for Mark Polonia, and a segment I have in Henrique Couto's upcoming horror anthology Scarewaves.

Until then you can catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

 

I Was Feeling Kinda Seasick; But The Crowd Called Out For More

Well, it's February, 1st, it is 60 degrees in the midwest, Indiana is going to start teaching Creationism, and Don Cornelius died. 

There is apparently also going to be a prequel to the milestone comics series Watchmen, but I will withhold judgment on whether this is the Fourth Horseman in what is obviously the long-awaited End of Days.

I have been afraid to talk about this unusual winter.  I guess I knew that all that Aqua Net my mother's beauty salon sprayed in the 70s and 80s would one day take its toll, but we have had two very hard winters in a row.  Last year we had terrible ice and snow, including a frostquake, which is an actual thing, and not a D&D spell, or a Superman villain. I also fell off the roof chipping ice out of the gutters on the second story and still pause in wonderment that I landed unbroken.

After last winter I vowed I would never complain about heat again, so we were tested with a boiling hot summer.  Now this unusual weather makes people superstitious, thinking that our winter will somehow get tacked on to the end; I think it is just shaving days off of what we would have had.


But what I really think is that the Earth will spin on and doesn't care about our little part in it, a February kind of thought.

In other news, I am once more going to try to read 50 books in the calendar year, but will try to change it up a bit this go-round.  This year I am going to offer up my favorite book of the month and invite loyal readers to follow along.  If you have been reading this humble blog for a while, I guarantee you will like it.  For January:  The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin.

Until later, you can catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.