Welcome to my... newsletter? Blog? I'm not entirely sure what it is, actually.
I'm going to embrace that ambiguity. I have a number of distinct interests, that sometimes overlap, but usually do not. Under normal circumstances, if I wanted to write about these different interests, I'd set up different venues for each -- a newsletter for one, a blog for another, maybe an actual website for a third. However, that's not going to happen here. Here, they are all going to have to live under the same roof and rub elbows and share a bathroom and yell at each other to put the milk back in the damn fridge, how long has that been sitting out anyway.
What can you expect to see in the coming weeks and months? Here's some ideas:
Music writing. A lot of you already know this, but in case you don't: I run the Best Album account on Twitter (@bestalbum95), which is a 128 album tournament covering a specific year; in this case, it's 1991, and it starts March 22. One thing I do over there is publish what I call Designated Cheerleaders. DCs are essays, written by people who follow the account, in support of albums in the tournament. I publish them on the day the albums in question are in a match, and this year I'm going to publish mine here. 1991, in case you didn't know, was a hell of a year; I won't be writing about Nevermind or Loveless, but I do plan to cover P.M. Dawn's Of the Heart, Of the Soul, and Of the Cross: The Utopian Experience, EMF's Schubert Dip, Hal Ketchum's Past the Point of Rescue, Wir's The First Letter, and Front 242's Tyranny >For You<. Also, I would like to publish other people's DCs here as well, if given permission.
Subcategory: Metal. A few years back, I wrote a newsletter about extreme metal, including a handful of reviews of new releases. It ran for five issues. I'll probably repost those, because I think they're good and not just because maybe six people read them. (But that too.) I might write new ones as well.
Film writing. This is something I used to do more frequently, but less so these days. When I do write something, I post it on Letterboxd. (The link will take you to my profile.) Every so often, I write something longer and deeper than, say, "Lightning McQueen retire bitch". I'll cross-post those writings here, as well as republishing older stuff that I think is, you know, pretty good. Oh, and did you know I was once the house film critic for Comixology? You know, the place you can buy digital comics? It's true, but you won't find any trace of it now. Luckily, I still have all my work, so I'll repost it here, with updated commentary. I haven't read that stuff in years, so it could be fun, or it could make me want to die.
Subcategory: Damnation Decade. Another thing you'll read about here is my fascination with a book called Damnation Decade, a roleplaying game supplement about 70s genre films -- the whole gamut, from Nature Gone Amok to Blaxploitation to Martial Arts to Satansploitation, and everything between. The book includes a list of inspirational films, and I've been working through it, looking at the films as films but also as material for a Damnation Decade game. I also plan to build a second list of 70s genre films, dubbed (with a tip of the hat to the great Scott Tobias) The New Damned Canon. I'm doing a deep dive into 70s cinema this summer, so a lot of this "Damned" stuff will appear then.
Roleplaying games.I've been playing rpgs for most of my life, and I currently run a D&D game for friends and their kids here in Wisconsin. It's in my blood. That said, I don't know how much I'll write about rpgs here, but even so, Damnation Decade pretty much guarantees there will be some interdisciplinary work going on. One project I've been mulling is building a game world like Damnation Decade, using the same sources, but for the FATE rpg. If I proceed with that, you'll see me thinking it through right here in the newsletter. (I guess it's a newsletter.)
The World's Phoniest Bat.This is a comic strip that I write and draw, but is currently on hiatus.(As you can see from the date on that poster, the deadline for my second batch of strips just whooshed by and was never seen again.) I hope to get back to it soon, and I could see this becoming a home for it.
Fiction? I've written a lot of stuff in my 49 years-and-counting existence: plays, screenplays, comic strips, criticism, reviews, RPG material (for personal use, not published), and far, far too many Tweets. One thing I've barely done is write fiction. It's hard! It's scary! For me, it's storytelling without a net -- you can hide a lot of weaknesses in art forms that get interpreted by other people, like plays and screenplays, but with straight-up fiction, it's just you and the reader. There's nowhere to hide. And it either works, or doesn't. I have ideas for some short pieces, so maybe it's time to finally step onto the wire.
There will be a post every Friday, starting March 19, with the exception of Designated Cheerleaders, which are posted on the day of the matches, and could be any Monday through Friday. (My first DC, for Past the Point of Rescue, is due Monday, March 22, so you'll see a post then.) Since I'll be covering a variety of topics, I'll use some kind of descriptive header before the title, like [MUSIC], [DC], [FILM], [DD] for Damnation Decade, etc.
Thanks for reading this, and if you "smashed" that "subscribe" "button," thank you again. In case you weren't aware, there are no spy pixels in this newsletter to inform me when you've read this. In fact, I don't know who is subscribed, or even how many people have done so. I have zero access to any kind of metrics. Every time I publish, I'll be throwing my work out into the void, with no idea if anyone is there to catch it. If you are there to catch it, I'm forever grateful.
