Cleaning out file folders from the old desk. Found these.

Yes, cassette labels created for my old band, The Frame.

Copyright 1992, 1994. Life was so much…something then.

Um…a dude named Gorbichov gave me a thumbs down because I'm NOT Kevin Smith? WTF is that about? Did I portray myself as Kevin Smith and he was disappointed that I lied to him? No! Or is it just he's on a mission to thumbs down everyone who ISN'T Kevin Smith? Pretty rude, man. Pret-ty rude.

You're not the only disappointed that I'm not Kevin Smith. I'm pretty disappointed about it myself.

I'm on StumbleUpon here, BTW. Friend me if you're on it.

Okay, here's the news.

First, CreateSpace is giving me fits. I'm trying to get the audiobook for Love Letters reissued from there, but three attempts at uploading the ZIP file of my .AIF files is going nowhere. And so far support is unhelpful. Not to be a spiteful ass, but is this why the service is free? There's got to be some answer besides sending them a CD of the audio files–I was hoping uploading would take less time, but we'll see. Hell, if they don't work, there's always CafePress, but the joy of CreateSpace was getting them listed on Amazon. I'm trying to work through it, because I want to do Sunday Before You the same way and then more audio beyond that.

Second, as you might have seen, Daily Kicksplode is on permanent hiatus. If you didn't see it, it's because it never really caught on as far as having an audience went. And I just can't spend any time on things that aren't pulling their weight. I loved the concept of the site, but maybe someday if we go full-time with this nonsense, we can re-launch it. But for now, it's done.

Third, Colors Are Overrated is not on hiatus, but posting over there will be slow. As I do have a passion for black but it too has not enough of an audience.

Fourth, my first children's book is online. Emily & Oscar is up at emilyandoscar.com. I'll be building it online as well.

More news shortly, I believe. Stay tuned.

So I started responding to a post over at Sore Eyes regarding George Clooney as the Last Movie Star and then I realized it would be rude to leave a small essay as a comment, so here goes. Go read that first.

I agree that Mr. Smith has been in some eminently forgettable films. I AM LEGEND and I ROBOT spring to mind. And I think that among his action flicks, ID4 will probably be remembered as fondly as any other Irwin Allen film or perhaps as the 90s version of something like DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. But, in Smith's defense, while he knows that the cash comes from his stint as Action Guy, he does still strive for things like ALI and PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. He did work for Redford in BAGGER VANCE and although Schepisi might have a warm spot in only my heart for ROXANNE, Smith was in his version of SIX DEGREES.

But Clooney's box office has come from mainly the OCEAN's series (which was driven by star power) and *cough* BATMAN. So yeah, my question would be what kind of deal does Clooney have so that he can be in a string of films that don't have huge box office gains and yet still basically pick and choose whatever he wants. Maybe he makes that much money off of ER reruns? I have no idea. I wanted to say it's because the small films he's in still turn a profit because they *are* small, and maybe that's the case. SOLARIS underperformed given its budget. But SYRIANA almost doubled its production budget in worldwide box office, THREE KINGS made a profit worldwide, PEACEMAKER doubled its budget worldwide, and the rest…well, Box Office Mojo doesn't have budgets listed for them and I'm too lazy to go hunt them up right now. And I'm sure Clooney is who sold the tickets to those.

Clooney does have star power. And I think he's an excellent actor. Even though I'm one of the five people on Earth who didn't enjoy O BROTHER, it's still the film in which (among his that I've seen anyway) he does the most acting and isn't playing his usual Clooney on-screen persona.

I'm not quite sure if I even made a point in here. And I don't feel like formatting this properly. Just had to put this somewhere. And oh, that's what this is for, isn't it?

Postings have been slow on Needcoffee and stopped altogether on Kicksplode due to Flupocalypse hitting the One Tusk compound. I managed to dodge the worst of it due to taking heroic doses of Vitamin C. How big were the doses on a daily basis? If I had taken the same amount in caffeine in a short amount of time, I'd have killed myself about four times over.

Whatever. It worked. But now I get the exhaustion of insomnia plus the exhaustion of post-illness. Bravo!

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Okay, so I've been listening to a bunch of the great old radio shows like Lights Out and Inner Sanctum (Lights Out has one of the best taglines in history: "It…is…later…than…you…think…"). Some of them are cheesy. Some of them aren't even remotely scary. But they're fascinating nonetheless. But having heard quite a few of them, I'm tempted to think that surely some version of this scenario must have figured into one of them…

"Five astronauts…one space station…one gun." Of course, make each astronaut from a different country and then that sounds like one of their heavyhanded message productions that would happen from time to time.

I would love to recreate those same productions with a new cast, but using the same classic foley techniques.