Untitled Blog Post

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in making a title for these blog posts that I don't even feel like writing the damn thing so today that's the best I can do. I've had a throbbing headache all day that has put me in kind of a weird mood so excuse the mess of words that's about to spew forth.

Been really busy both with work and non-work related things. I lost about a week and a half of my life to two very addictive video games. The first of which is called Dragon Age: Origins, a RPG (Role Playing Game) that's sort of a Lord of The Rings type deal but far more interesting,  in my opinion. Then I played Mass Effect 2, another sort of RPG but set in space and with a high focus on 3rd person shooting. That game was amazing and I HIGHLY recommend getting the first one playing it to completion and then playing the second. What makes the game so cool is that every little decision you make effects the future installments of the game. The ending of this most recent endeavor set up some huge potential plot points for the third, and final, game.

I've also been lettering a lot lately, which is always a good thing. First I worked on my graphic novel (currently undergoing a possible title change) which has 45 penciled pages, another 43 pencils on the way and is hopefully going to be colored soon. I've been lettering the pencil pages as they come in, to provide myself with plenty of time to make any changes to dialogue or story elements. In fact, here are some pages from that:

Next my good friend Charles Soule (who you can find on http://charlessoule.wordpress.com/) sent me a batch of pages for his next graphic novel a book called, 27. This is one of the best books I've ever worked on, the art is amazing and the story is so brilliant that I'll be shocked if this isn't picked up and turned into a film almost immediately. Can't wait to be able to share some pages from that book with you, maybe later in the week Charles will let me post some of those pages.

I also lettered the first issue of  "Neverland" this week for Zenescope. This is a particularly exciting project for two reasons: 1) I've long been a fan of Zenescope's "Grimm Fairy Tales" series, in which they tale classic fairy tales a put a dark, sometimes sexual spin on them. The series is very dark and usually has a cool Tales From The Crypt-like twist at the end of each story arc. 2) I am a HUGE Peter Pan fan. Other than "Alice in Wonderland”, J.M. Barrie’s tale of never growing up is my all time favorite classic. So to work on a book that plays within that mythology is a huge geek moment for me. I believe Zenescope has a preview issue already available somewhere (although I didn’t letter that I am on board to letter the series), you should try and find a copy before issue one debuts.

My other obsession this week is, of course, LOST. We’re in the final season of this amazing show and I have a million and one theories running around my head, unfortunately (or fortunately) for you I’m NOT going to be sharing them here. The internet is full of amazing places to read about LOST (in fact, my favorite blog is Brian’s Lost and Gone Forever which I DEMAND you visit right away!!!) and I don’t think it’s where I should be focusing my time. I could literally write all day about LOST and I fear once I start I won’t stop. So in an effort to keep this blog about ALL things Shawn and not just Shawn Loves Lost, I’ll be keeping my insane Lost rant to myself until the final episode has aired. I imagine then I’ll have a lot to say and I’ll take up a full post dedicated solely to that.

What else?

Oh, a few plugs:

1. A good friend of my, Brian Hoffman, has started a website called Eat This New York where he started out blogging about food he had eaten around the city but recently introduced, what I assume is an ongoing, video-blog. The video is hilarious and entertaining and will make you really hungry for pizza. I would post the video here but I want you to see his site and maybe click on some ads and help the guy out so please visit the link for the video.

2. Another friend, this is a guy I’ve know for a much shorter period of time but I respect his work a whole hell of a lot, Victor Quinaz, is very busy. He’s writing  what i believe will be the one of the most fun graphic novels you’ve ever read and also directing and producing a series of parody videos that I am LOVING. The whole premise is MTV’s the Hills but set during the time of the Pilgrims. Great stuff.  The first video, “Pilgrims” you can see below. The second video titled, “Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome” is already getting buzz from places like NY magazine’s Vulture and can be seen either on the Vulture site or on Victor’s Youtube: HERE

 

Okay that’s all for now. My headache has actually gone away a bit and I wonder if i just needed to write for a while. Sometimes i think too many thoughts get back up in my brain and even though I do talk a lot, sometimes some shit just needs to be written out.

I guess that’s why I’m a writer. Weeeeeee!

Back and Better Than Ever: Now With 25% Less Lung Tar!

Hello friends, remember me?

I know it’s been a while but allow me to explain my absence. On Wednesday of last week I started to feel very tired and my body very sore. At first i assumed it was one of many signs that I quit smoking cigarettes once and for all, so I finished the last of my pack Wednesday afternoon and vowed never to buy another one. As the day progressed I began to feel worse, not only tired and achy but also chilled to the bone.

Around 9pm on Wednesday night I was so cold that I was shivering. My teeth were actually clattering together and my shoulders were so tight that I had started to get a headache from the pressure. I went to bed bundled in sweatpants, long sleeve T-shirt and a hoodie.

3am – Thursday morning I woke up covered in sweat with a pounding migraine. I drank about four glasses of cold water, started shivering again and promptly went back to sleep under the covers, praying for the warmth of the fever to come back and make the shivering subside.

I spent most of Thursday repeating the above until I finally felt well enough to crawl out of bed and shiver my way to Walgreens. I shuffled though the isles like a zombie in a refrigerator, teeth chattering, making slight involuntary moans as waves of icey-coldness traveled from my feet to the nape of my neck and back again and trying to control the involuntary spasms my body was making thanks to the hiccups that started when I got out of bed.  It took me a good fifteen minutes to focus on the wall of medicine and another ten to figure out which one would be best for me. In the end I bought extra strength Tylenol, Motrin and Emergen-C. On my way out of the store I grabbed two bottles of blue Gatorade and held my breath (so as not to hiccup anymore) as the lady behind the counter slowly scanned my items.

Getting back home was maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. I dragged my package of medicinal-products behind me like a wounded soldier pulling a recently detached limb off the battlefield. I’m pretty sure it took me ten minutes to open the door to the apartment and then once I was inside I had to fight the urge to crawl into bed just long enough to take some of the medicine I’d purchased.

Then sleeeeeeep. The most peaceful sleep you can imagine. I woke up around 6:30pm that night, groggy and unsure of what day or time it was. My phone rang and my buddy Rob announced he was coming over because we had plans to watch the BBC superhero TV show, The Misfits. Rob, being the Saint that he is, arrived about an hour later with soup, Thera-flu and Nyquil. I took the newly acquired meds, drank some of the soup and watched Misfits, barely able to follow the show or enjoy my company thanks to all the various drugs at work in my system fighting off whatever terrible flu-bug had invaded my body. When the show was over i thanked Rob again and crawled back into bed.

I must’ve been exhausted because when I woke up on Friday morning I noticed that I had left the front door unlocked and the lights in the apartment were all turned on. I was feeling a bit better though and a ton of lettering work had come in while I was out of it so I spent most of Friday alternating between computer time and nap time.

Saturday rolled around and I was in a lot better shape, my appetite came back a bit so after sleeping in I dressed myself (still unbelievably cold)  and ventured out to Trader Joe’s™ for some food shopping. I returned home and cooked myself a delicious meal of chicken, broccoli and pasta devouring it as if I’d been starving in a Fat Kid camp all summer long and then sat down to finish up one of the lettering projects that had stacked up since Wednesday.

Today, Sunday, I’m happy to report I feel much better (almost 100%) and that my sickness has morphed into a deep cough and a bit of congestion. I haven’t had a cigarette at all and when I do cough I expel a gray/black substance that I can only assume is a bit of the damage I’ve done to my lungs. Sexy, isn’t it?

Okay, all this typing and thinking has all but worn me out. Time to shower, do a bit of exercise and eat some breakfast. Now that I’m back expect a full week of updates and nonsense. Hope you all had a better past few days than I did. Stay well, wash your hands.

48 Random Questions

Found originally via http://jrsblahg.blogspot.com/

I saw this on the site listed above and since I spent most of today away from my computer I figured I’d answer these questions and post this bad-boy as today’s blog post. So without further ado I present:

48 Random Questions

1) Who is your favorite television celebrity from the days of Black and White?
               Lucille Ball. That’s a no-brainer.
2) What is your favorite volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?
              M because it was the thickest.
3) If your life was a reality show, what would it be titled?
              Hollywood is Sad
4) What Biblical character would you be? 
              John The baptist because that’s the part I played in Godspell at Frenchwoods Summer
5) What is your favorite minority holiday?
               Passover
6) If you were a totem pole what animal would you be and where would you be positioned?
               Monkey in the middle.
7) Curtains or blinds? 
               Curtains, black-out curtains
8) What comes to mind when you smell dirty socks? 
                 That it’s well past time to do my laundry.
9) If you could choose any celebrity to be your roommate who would you choose? 
                Kevin Smith because we both like comics and movies and are kinda lazy
10) You invent a smoothie. What is in it? 
                Peanut Butter, banana, and chocolate. (you didn’t say it had to be healthy) 
11) If you were part of a balcony would you be the railing or the lounge chair? 
                This question is retarded. The railing cause who wants a bunch of ass on you all day?
12) If you could only use one cooking utensil for the rest of your life which utensil would it be? 
                Tongs.
13) What is the most ridiculous dance craze you've ever been a part of? 
                The Electric Slide or the “Shark-Dance” 
14) If you could name a hockey team what would you name it? 
                 The Texas Melters.
15) What's one invention you can't believe we didn't have until after landing a man on the moon?
                The internet.
16) What is the funniest pattern for a button up tourist shirt? 
                Dead babies.
17) If the world were backwards and animals owned humans, what kind of animal would you want to be your master? 
             Monkey.
18) If teleportation was possible to where would you most often teleport? 
              Megan Fox’s Shower.
19) What five items are a necessity in your hurricane survival kit?
              Water, a bong, weed, tissue (I blow my nose a lot) machete.
20) If your finger could dispense one condiment what condiment would you dispense? 
              Honey Mustard 
21) What is your ideal cracker flavor? 
               is Ritz a flavor? 
22) If you suddenly had wheels for feet what is the first thing you would do?
               scream, “What the fuck happened to my feet??”
23) One celebrity who is famous for a reason I still haven't discovered is Everyone on the Hills.
24) What is your favorite 1980's cartoon? 
                Super Friends 
25) What was your favorite after school show? 
                Tiny Tunes and Animaniacs.
26) What do you believe a training bra is training for? 
                This is stupid. Next question. 
27) If you could put a zipper on any article of clothing what article would you choose?
                 NEXT!
28) If you could scream anything at a bad driver what would it be? 
                 What do you mean “if”? (the answer is Fuck-Nozzle) 
29) What's your favorite animal that often appears in Native American folklore? 
                   Coyote.
30) If you could only use floor lamps for lighting your home for the rest of your life, how tall would you like the lamp to be? 
                   Six foot.
31) If you owned a cereal company what current cereal would you purchase to sell as your own?
                   Cheerios.
32) Money is no longer an object for you. What country do you buy? 
                   Jamaica.
33) If you could shrink any person and carry them in your pocket who would you shrink?
                   A hooker.
34) If people's knees bent the other direction what design would you give to chairs? 
               Who came up with these questions and how can I punch them?
35) You've been assigned to clean up an abandoned landfill. What's the first thing you do? 
                  Fill it in with concrete 
36) If you could make a pillow out of any material what would you choose? 
                   Boobs.
37) If you started your own airline what would you name it?
                   Sedation Air
38) To what one city would your airline refuse to fly? 
                   Miami 
39) If flowers weren't the norm for romanticism what item would you choose to symbolize love? 
                   Tacos.
40) How much midriff is too much? 
                   I’m keeping the answer answer the last guy wrote: “Depends on the midriff”
41) If money didn't exist what would you use for currency? 
                    Body Hair because I’d always have some.
42) If you were stuck on a bus with the Brady Bunch and they insisted on singing and taking requests what song would you request in hopes that it would be so good they couldn't follow their own act and would stop singing. 
                Come On Get Happy 
43) If male and female weren't the only two sexes what would you call the third and what would make them different?
                    Michael Jackson. (Oooooh BURN!)
44) You invent a new shape. What do you call it? 
                     Pee-poo Jim-Jam.
45) If your life mirrored that of "Friends" which recurring character would you want to show up for sweeps week? 
                      The hanukkah armadillo.
46) If you could eat at any television eatery which one would it be? 
                     Monk’s Cafe (cue Seinfeld music) 
47) If you could change your name to anything, to what would you change it?
                       Cletus.
48) If you could change any past decision in your life would you? 
                         Nah, that’s how paradox’s start…

THANKSGIVING DAY EXTRAVAGANZA!

Yes my friends it’s that time of year when American’s across this Nation get together with their friends and families to stuff themselves past the point of comfort. We watch parades on the TV and marvel at the great technology that allows us to make enormous replicas of our favorite cartoon characters and then fill them with hot air and drag them around our favorite major metropolis. There are many traditions on this day but none of them do I like more than explaining what we’re thankful for.

I’m sure your family does something similar: Everyone is sitting around the table covered in gravy and the remains of some helpless bird when the head of the family (in my case it was Mom who would always start) looks around and asks, “So, what is everyone thankful for this year?”

Since this is my first year far enough away from my family that i can’t drive home for the holiday I figured I’d still play along at home. So, Mom, if you read this, print it out and read the following when you go around the table this year:

What am I thankful for? There’s actually a lot but when I start to go over it all in my head I realized that all the things I have to be thankful for came down to two people, my parents. Without them I wouldn’t exist. I’m not just talking about them doin’ it and having Baby Shawn. I’m talking about their unending support and unconditional love. I think I was a good kid but I know I wasn’t easy. I never took the path of least resistance with anything I’ve done. If it was a mountain to climb I somehow found myself at the bottom of it. I picked a career that makes no promises. Sure, potentially i could make it big as a writer/creator and live the good life but let us be honest, those chances are slim. Still, my parents never stop encouraging me to follow my dream. They continuously give me emotional and monetary support whenever I need it. The latter being a big deal because they are by no means rich. I tell them how much they mean to me as often as I can but still feel it’s not enough. Without them I don’t think I would be the person I am. I wouldn’t have the confidence it takes to face daily rejection as a writer. I wouldn’t have the sense of humor it takes to stay light even when faced with the insurmountable debt I face because I’m out of work. I wouldn’t have made it though some of the dark times in my life over the past two years without the foundation they built within me. Maybe it’s because I’m so far away that I’m feeling so mushy (and I apologize if this isn’t the silly diatribe you were expecting to read)but I needed to get this out there. My parents, and I think ALL parents, are crucial to who I am. A lot of my friends have nice parents and a lot of them don’t but no one has parents like mine. They are one of a kind and I wouldn’t trade them in for anything. I’d say that 60% of my will to survive and make a place for myself out here in LA-LA Land comes from my desire to finally be able to show them it was all worth it. To thank them in front of the world for being the greatest two people to ever fuck and make a baby would make me just about as happy as i could ever imagine feeling. Since I haven’t made it to that level yet this blog will have to suffice. So, one last time, thanks Mom and Dad for literally everything I have and will get in this life.

As for the rest of you I’m thankful to have any readers at all let alone the support that I’ve gotten over the last few months. My new friends on twitter, my Reel Big Fish friends who came for that article but have stuck around and my facebook friends who put up with my stream of conscious updates and constant shilling of my blog I owe you all a ton of gratitude. It really means a lot to me that you care and that I can provide you with some kind of semi-entertaining content.

On that note I’ll urge you all to go eat a shit load of food, get really sleepy and, right before your eyes roll up in your head and you drift off into a tryptophan-induced coma, find the person (or people) who mean the most to you and thank them from the bottom of your heart for being there.

Also try not to get killed on Black Friday. :)

 

I’ll be back Monday with the usual chicanery and nonsense or as my buddy Dave recently said, “To blog the fuck out of shit.”

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Human fetus found...

I got no direction for this post today so I may start to ramble. If my semi-coherant ramblings annoy or bore you I suggest you skip today's blog post. No hard feelings. Seriously, I won't be offended. Look here's a happy panda to prove it:

Still there? Good.

Hi. I'm Shawn and I was recently let go from my day job. There's a bitter-sweetness to getting let go from a job you're not committed to. On the one hand I have no job which means I have no money which could become a problem for my landlord at some point. On the other hand, I have no job which also means I can stay up late, look at porn in the day time and drive around laughing at people stuck in traffic because I don't actually have anywhere important to be. Also I can get a lot of writing and lettering done.

Speaking of lettering, as luck would have it, I just picked up three new jobs.

To RECAP: just got fired. just got hired.
It's the scary world of freelancing and I'm at the heart of it. It's not ideal, I mean I'd love to have a steady day job that paid a lot and I loved but so far all of those elements haven't aligned. Instead it seems the things I love the most are the least stable (this could be extended to the girl I love as well but that's another blog all together).

Here is a picture of bacon:

In other news...

- I'd like to apologize to anyone who watched Trauma last night as per my suggestion. Last nights episode was lame and utterly boring. It was embarrassing all the way to the end, especially knowing I'd just soapboxed about it's greatness. Usually there is more violence and mishaps and less stupid character moments and whining.

- New York City has announced that starting today there will be FREE WI-FI AVAILABLE IN TIMES SQUARE! You can find more info if you click HERE.

- Know who is STILL pretty hot even though she hasn't stopped aging? Gina Gershon:

- Do you believe in ghosts? Like REALLY believe? Me neither but my friends over at horrorsquad.com seem to have found what they believe to be the most convincing footage to date. GO HERE and check it out. I watched it and was no more creeped out than when I saw Paranormal Activity (which was terrible and NOT scary).

-I read a lot of news online. My google reader has over 200 feeds and on a given day I have well over 1000+ articles to read/browse. Out of all of those possible stories, every so often, there is a standout headline that catches my eye and refuses to let go. This one comes from the Miami Herald and it's my favorite in a long time. :

Human fetus found in Orlando waste water tank

The Associated Press

A human fetus has been found in an Orlando waste water tank.Orlando Police say an employee of the Water Conservation Plant found the fetus Thursday morning and called authorities.
The Medical Examiner's Office says the fetus is 14-15 weeks gestational age. There is no criminal investigation being conducted at this time.

Not a huge article but GOD FUCKING DAMN if that title doesn't put asses in seats I don't know what will. I do want to note that I find it weird that there is "NO CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION" happening at all. It makes me wonder: why the fuck not? It is assumed this fetus accidentally dropped out of a lady while she was on the toilet and got flushed? Do they think the fetus slipped out whilst some lady was swimming in a public lake and it got filtered into a waste tank?

Now, I'm not pro-life by any means. I don't believe a fetus is a life but I do think if someone drops their unborn baby into a PUBLIC WASTE AREA that should be considered a crime. At the very least it's littering.


That's all the time I have for today. You've been wonderful. Please send thoughts, concerns and comments to the white box marked "comments", all will be publish and some will be replied.

DEFORMED BABIES

Sometimes I have stories or ideas that I absolutely love. I mean I really, truly love them. They are like babies. Which is why when they don't work out I don't just stop working on them and walk away. How could I? If you had a retarded kid would you kick it to the curb? While instinct might be to run from the deformed, mentally challenged monster that sprung from your loins, most people don't. Instead you do your best to raise that child, teach it to function as best it can in this cruel world and love it with all your heart because, after all, it's your child.

So, obviously, when one of my creative babies comes out only partially functional my instinct it to trash it but I know that I can't. My love is to strong so instead I work to fix it. To shape it. This results in a FOUR STAGE cycle that lasts for the duration of the project and it goes like this :

1. Frustration - My first instinct. I just want it to work. I KNOW it makes sense when I think about it in my head in broad strokes but when I start to add in the finer details things get jumbled and confusing. I'll try to approach the story from different angles and sometimes that helps. Maybe I'll switch the location of a scene or swap in a character for one who wasn't working but when those things don't solve the problem I move into stage...

2. Denial - Maybe it DOES work and I'm being to hard on myself. This usually works for a day or so. I convince myself that what I'm unhappy with is actually not bad and that I'm just letting my low self-esteeme get the better of me. This makes it easier to watch TV, surf the internet and procrastinate for as long as possible before I move into stage...

3. Depression - My least favorite stage. Some time has passed and I decide it's time to re-examine whatever story I'm stuck on. I do a read through and slowly die inside with every turn of the page. Phrases like, "This is terrible", "I can't believe I wrote this", "I'm going to be working a shitty day job forever"....the hits just keep on coming. This is followed by excessive eating of junk food, smoking, drinking and feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing and animosity towards anyone or anything I perceive as having more talent than me. This stage can last anywhere from a few hours to a few months before I move into the final stage...

4. Mysterious Over Confidence and Motivation - By far the strangest stage. I can describe what happens but not WHY it happens. The depression cloud lifts. I start to feel human again. Confidence builds ever so slightly. Then I start to read anything and everything. I watch a lot of movies and TV. I talk about the craft. I bounce ideas off of other writers. Suddenly I'm filled with the desire to right my wrongs. Even though it's been a struggle I'm suddenly positive I can leap this hurdle. This is the point where I pick up a RED PEN and start making serious notes. I make note cards and outlines. I write character profiles, make lists of what they want and fear. I do all the leg work and then

CLICK. POP. BOOM.

Everything works. Honestly folks it's like fucking magic. I don't know how or why. All I know is that eventually the smoke clears and the end is in sight and plain as can be.

Right now I'm somewhere between stage 2 and 3. I work on a lot of projects at once so that if I'm stuck with one script there is another that needs attention but lately I've been putting a lot of effort into reworking a script written over five years ago. All the parts are there but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to assemble them. It's like having a billion piece puzzle with no box top to give you guidance. Usually these things work themselves out but it's been FIVE FUCKING YEARS.

How much longer do I have to have these characters, stories and voices in my head before I get it right and can put them to rest? Sigh.

I think I'm edging my way towards Stage 3. Maybe that means the end is (finally) nigh.

Where the Hell Has The Time Gone?

It's been a long time since I last blogged. Last I left off I was embarking on the long trek to Los Angeles, CA by way of my car. There are a ton of pictures from that trip and some very interesting blog posts that I could write about (who knows maybe someday I will) but for now we're skipping ahead to the present day.

It's October 30th 2009 and I've been living in LA for almost FIVE MONTHS. I found a job doing temp work in a doctor's office, which has been a great way to get paid but not creatively fulfilling in the least. I work with a variety of people: women to young to have children but already have three, tall Hispanic men that speak mumbled English and middle-aged mid-western women who have big hair, big thighs and loud voices. The office is pretty busy, housing three doctors who are all Internal Medicine practitioners as well as Nephrology specialists (if you don't know what a Nephrologist is I hear there's this amazing thing called a "Google" that answers your questions, mostly accurately, on this series of tubes called the Internet).

The day job has kept me afloat these last few months and allowed me a lot of free time to work on my own stuff when I'm not in the office. I've been taking on a lot of lettering projects, over-seeing the (slow but awesome) development of my graphic novel "Detectives In Space" (DUE OUT.....er....I don't know, I'll do a whole separate post about the current status of DIS), writing a tv pilot, shopping another pilot, working on several screenplays and putting some final edits on a script was waaaaaaay back. Needless to say I keep busy but still find time to watch a lot (too much) of TV, movies and comics (technically reading but whatever). So I figured I'd use this unusually light day do one of my favorite blog tricks: Bullet points!

• Paranormal Activity/Saw VI - The former was a huge chunk of crap. It was boring beyond belief, not scary and, worst of all, horribly written/improved. I don't usually flat out slam a movie, if I hate it I just never speak or think of it again, but this movie is the exception. Maybe it's all the hype surrounding it. Maybe it's because people kept telling me it was going to be better than Blair Witch (I hated that movie but found it actually much more enjoyable than Activity was). On the flip-side sits SAW VI, here's a movie I NEVER thought I'd enjoy. I watched all the films just before the summer and, while I like the first I felt they got successively dumber and harder to watch due to the excessive gore. When I went in for Saw VI I was expecting to watch the whole movie with my hands over my eyes during the torture and my head spinning during the "story" parts. I was wrong (oh shit, I think a pig just flew by my window) this movie was the MOST enjoyable of the series to date. Sure it was waaay to on the nose with the Financial metaphors but it was fun and lite and NEVER took itself to seriously.
  
• TV- In the time away from the blog the summer ended and the great FALL TV SEASON is once again upon us and moving along nicely. I have some shows I love and I'd like to recommend them to you now (in no particular order): Modern Family (the best sitcom of the season - it is a comedy with a ton of heart), Community (discovered how great this is last night and now I'm hooked), Fringe Season 2 (much improved from the first run of episodes. The best stuff moves the larger story along but the stand-alone installments are getting better), Dexter (this is the best season yet, this show gets better with every single episode ever since season 1 episode 2).
  
• The Muppet Movies - recently re-watched all the films. It's VERY CLEAR at what point Henson died and his son, Brian, took over. Not that the Brian Henson run films are bad (I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE A Muppet Christmas Carol) they just don't have the same feel as the films his father was making. If you haven't seen them in a while I highly recommend re-watching all these films (even the post-JH ones)

Tonight is Devil's Night, a holiday I didn't even know existed until I saw a movie that would become I favorite of mine, The Crow. This is a classic revenge flick, years before Uma Thurman would try to Kill Bill, Eric Draven clawed his way out of his grave to avenge the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Shelly. I would request you all curl up tonight in your favorite movie watchin' spots, rest up for a night of Halloween fun by watching The Crow. You can thank me later.

Enjoy!

SHAWN READS - New Blog Content Starts Now!

----------------
Now playing: Cake - Wheels
via FoxyTunes
----------------
Everyone is doing a blog these days. All the cool kids and definitely the hipsters. The comic people and the movie people and the sports people and the news people and the collectors and porno freaks and meths heads and the grandma's and the golfers.

<------The people in the picture next to these words even have a blog. That's how I got this picture. These people, I don't know them and they don't know me. They seem like nice people.

The lady seems to be holding some kind of small dog or maybe it's a purse...if you can tell please leave a comment (This is the interactive portion of the Blog). Also the guy in the background seems to either not know or not care that his picture is being taken and, by contrast, the dog next to him is looking right at the camera. Maybe he's a seeing-eye dog.

----------------
Now playing: Cake - Short Skirt, Love Jacket [LIVE]
via FoxyTunes
----------------

I digress, I was saying that everyone has a blog and I've had one longer than all of you. I just didn't know what i wanted to do with it. I hate talking about my daily routine because right now it's fucking boring. There's cool shit happening but I can't talk about most of that without coming off like a complete name-dropping Douche Popsicle™ (sorry for the language mom I'm sure you'll get me back by posting something corny and embarrassing in the comments of this blog). What I can do is entertain you, something that many blogs forget to do. i can also inform you, which is the point of today's blog ( the above was only the INTRO, smooooth).

I spend a lot of time reading an online news stream I have coming in using RSS feeds to the Google Reader. if you look over to the RIGHT SIDE --------------------------------->
You'll see Shawn's Shared Items, that's the article I want you to also read.

That said, in an effort to entertain and educate you instead of boring you to death by bitching about how lie is unfair because i hit a mailbox with my car and it cost me $500.00 to repair the car and another $600 for the mailbox (the Insurance is paying for the mailbox actually), I plan on highlighting other stuff I read or sometimes a specific article from the column over hee-ya-->

Before we get to it let's celebrate with a happy "little person":

---------------
Now playing: Cake - The Distance
via FoxyTunes
----------------

SHAWN READS - BLOG EDITION:

1. My good buddy Dave has started writing a blog and now that we're going to be living on separate coasts I'm REALLY glad he did. I get to check-in with him without the burden of having an actual telephone conversation. It's great! Seriously though his blog is pretty good so far and he's a gifted artist always talking about this comic he's writing and drawing, always posting pages of art....it's a sight. It's called KARATE and FLYING.

2. Another friend of mine and an EXTREMELY talented writer/musician and lawyer, Charles Soule named his blog after the title of one of his novels. It's not found a home with a publisher yet but I've read it and can tell you it's ACES. I'm telling you it's as good if not better than Fred the Guitar Playing Midget, 4 real. The blog and the book are called LAND OF 10,000 THINGS.

3. Blake J. Harris. If you don't know this name you're either in a coma or you DON'T have your finger on the pulse of the future of Hollywood. That means you're not cool. In fact it means you're a total asshole. I bet you walk about above everyone else, working in some corporate officeo n the 58th floor of some skyscraper in a big lass city built on the bones of poor people. You're a monster and a tyrant and you know what? You'd fit right in because Blake's blog is called TYRANNY ROCKS




unless it's Tranny Rocks
and I've been misreading it ------>













Okay that's today's blog. If I remember/feel up to it there will be more tomorrow and in the future to come. if not back to the usually random phone posts and photos.

Your Friend Shawn.

(special thanks to Cake for providing the soundtrack to today's post.)

----------------
Now playing: Cake - Never, Never Gonna Give You Up
via FoxyTunes
----------------