Wednesday’s Child is Full of Woe

I wanted to hate Netflix’s “Wednesday.” I wanted to hate it so much that I refused to publicly discuss it until now. Truth be told, I didn’t hate it. In fact, the show inspired me to get off my ass and get my fingers back on the keyboard. What a kick in the groin that is—wanting to hate a show, only to be moved to continue honing your craft. That’s like being taught how to love by your school bully.

I’m sure I wanted to hate “Wednesday” for the same reason the fans of the 60’s series wanted to hate the 90’s Addams Family movies: it was a vast departure from the property they’d been endeared to. I can still remember plopping my happy ass on my living room floor after Trick-or-Treating to watch the Addams Family movie; the movie was the purest representation of the characterization I had. As an adult, I can recognize how narrow-minded that was of me. Beginning “Wednesday,” I had the same defeatist expectations the fans of the 60’s show had in the 90’s, the same as the fans of the cartoon strip had when the 60’s show hit the air.

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Wreddit Writes – Journal Prompts (Volume 1)

Since my last blog post, I have been beating my head against the wall trying to figure out what to blog about. I want to be more authentic, as a person, instead of just going for a cheap laugh. At the same time, I want to avoid the cliche “live, laugh, play with yourself” that I’ve come to despise. The good news is that I’ve been ingesting a steady diet of Henry Rollins interviews, so that’s going to be good for my mental well-being. But as of late, I’ve been on a sincere search of blog content to really connect with you all as my readers.

The idea hit me like a little brother who has never been grounded because their parents are too tired to actually parent. I started trolling Reddit, looking for different questions, prompts, ideas, etc. I’m thinking it’s going to be a great way to get my fingers moving and really examine myself.

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If We’re Being Honest

I looked at my blog today, with a degree of sadness. When I first started my writing career, my blog was super active, and I looked forward to my new posts hitting every week. Now, the page looks like a shell of the blog it used to be, and that makes me sad. If we’re being honest, I think there was a mental block, because I don’t know how to process the things I feel like I need to say.

There is a commercial aspect to my communication apprehension. If I type what’s on my mind, there is the very real fear that my platform may look unsavory. It’s not that the beliefs I have are unsavory, but my natural stress & anger responses to them may be. Since publishing “Broken Promise Records” in 2017, I’ve been very vocal that I wanted everyone—regardless of their size, shape, shade, beliefs, or orientation—to be able to see themselves in my work. If I were to type a manifesto about how I think people who wear green neckties should be taken out back, and shot, would that alienate people from my work. I don’t believe that, but what if I did? Blame it on ADHD, blame it on poor social skills, but I can’t just be a little angry. If I were to go on a diatribe, I would feel awful that someone saw the words I write as harmful to them.

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The ’59 Sound

“Did you hear the ‘59 sound coming through on Grandmama’s radio?

Did you hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls?

Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?

Did you hear your favorite song one last time?”

-The ‘59 Sound – the Gaslight Anthem

Music & Lyrics written by Brian Fallon, Alex Rosamilla, Alex Levine, & Benny Horowitz

As appears on the album “The ‘59 Sound,” released on SideOneDummy Records

July, 2019.

Matthew was sick. Sick sick. Matthew was the kind of sick you couldn’t sleep off, or go to work in spite of better judgment in regards to your own health, or even drown in cheap booze to kill the germs according to some wive’s tale passed down along the generations of Central Pennsylvania mountain people. Matthew was sick and he wasn’t getting better. A man that had once been built sturdy enough to earn him the nickname “Moose” had become frail and sickly. The curly locks his wife had loved had surrendered to a shorn scalp, with little whisps of prematurely gray hair remaining. Truly, he’d been sapped of the strength to be himself, and that’s what broke my heart the most about Matthew being sick.

Treatments were unsuccessful and Matthew decided he wanted to pass at home.

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The Dewey Decimal Deathmatch: Books vs. eReader

I’ve said, on more than one or two occasions, that extremism is bad. To be so devoted to any one secular side of a spectrum or argument makes one blind to the opposing perspective makes one blind to the world around them. More often than not, I’ve applied this philosophy to terms of political leanings, or social issues, but there is an exception. Books.

In another life, I was a commentator for professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and part of my duties was assembling statistics on fights. My job was to analyze data, to create hype around the fights to occur, and provide analysis of the fights after they’ve gone down. I’ve seen grown men get hit so hard they don’t know what day of the week it is, or what town they’ve come from. All of that considered I’ve never been more internally conflicted by opposing choices than choosing between a physical copy of a book or an eReader such as an Amazon Kindle or a Nook.

For this week’s blog, I’m going to tap into a former life, and I’m going to break down the tale of the tape, and analyze the war of attrition between the Book and the eReader!

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