O-Dark-Thirty

Please don't go see A Walk Among The Tombstones . I like movies. It's what we do. I like Liam Neeson, the main actor. I like the books by Lawrence Block, who wrote the novel the movie is based on. I'm sad that Liam Neeson was in this movie. The best actor in it was the young man who played TJ. A Walk Among The Tombstones  is a dark movie, unnecessarily dwelling on the dark aspects of humanity and depravity to a level of discomfort - and not simply to advance the plot. The previews made me think this would be similar to Liam Neeson's previous thriller Taken , but it was not. Where Taken glanced at brutal aspects of the wickedness of humanity and returned to the plot of the movie, A Walk Among The Tombstones seems to revel in the scenes that should disturb people of good character. I hoped those scenes were an aberration and the movie would eventually focus on the plot. They weren't and it didn't. Don't give me blatherings about...

I haven't posted much lately. I'm trying to finish my first full-length novel, titled "Zombie Apocalypse, Vampire Raiders of Las Vegas." Okay, that's the working title. If you think you want to write a novel, go for it. I'll tell you it is one of the hardest jobs you'll ever do. You won't believe me; that's okay. A standard novel is 60,000 words. You'll get to 5,000 words and think "This is a piece of cake" and believe you'll be finished by the weekend. If you manage to hit 40,000 words, you will weep that you are only 2/3rds to the virtual goal. You'll wonder if you can ever finish. I suspect there are a lot of people with personal novels in a desk drawer somewhere that have five to forty thousand written words - and they will never be finished. I have a few. When you hit sixty thousand words you will want to go have a celebratory drink. I don't drink, but for a little while I empathized with the roaring al...

Picture this if you would. You're a little kid again - or maybe you're just acting like one. It's a new day. You jump out of bed and get dressed to go outside. You're all clean and bright and shiny and it's a beautiful day out there. You leave your house. If you leave your windows and doors unlocked somebody might break in, but we'll ignore that for the moment. You wander down your own street. You've walked this road a thousand times, so it's safe. I mean, there's Mrs. Jeffrie's dog, but you don't go in her yard, so you're okay. Wait! Here's a strange street. You've never been here before. Ooooh, it looks like fun, though it doesn't seem quite so sunny, but that's okay. You're brave. Off you go wandering down this street. Some strange, sticky thing just stuck to the bottom of your clean shoes. Something smelly, like old cheese, just clung to your pants. The dirt in this road seems to float around...

My favorite photo of Dad My Dad would have been 79 today. When he was six years old, on Monday, December 8, 1941, Dad sold newspapers on the street corner where he lived, in North Canton, OH, telling of the infamy of the Japanese and our entry into WWII. When he was a teenager, living in Detroit, he joined the Sea Scouts. He always smiled when he mentioned that. During that same time, Dad was on a little league team. He loved baseball until the day he died. He played softball on a lot of leagues while he served in the Navy for twenty years. When he graduated from St. Joseph High School he was voted "Most Likely to Become a Coach." He did coach my little league baseball team when we lived in Washington State. We were the Mud Daubers. I was a horrible player, but it was the best time of my life. Even getting hit by a fast ball is a good memory for me - now. Dad joined the Navy in 1954 and became a Medical Corpsman. He loved the sea. Dad met Mom in 1...